Some time ago (January, 2009), Your Wandering Gentile posted the original “Debunking The News,” a list of bogus terms and phrases with what they mean in the real world. Your Wandering Gentile was a bit hard up for new material, so he grabbed the dead tree version of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and found a whole bunch of NEW words and phrases designed to camouflage the speaker’s intent.
Able to capitalize on widespread frustration- If we do not get rid of these defectives with ballots, back into civil war we go!
Advocates dispute claims- Hence their description as ADVOCATES. Remember Robin Williams’ bit about redundant?
Arbitrary and capricious- Detrimentally affects my friends and anyone else who might give me money.
Based on a fresh analysis- Somebody found a way to give us an answer we liked.
Could be the administration’s last shot- Is the administration’s last chance, down by 8 in the bottom of the ninth.
Could be viewed as a rebuke- Will be as appealing as a s*** sandwich.
Could complicate efforts- (Screwed) into a cocked hat.
Critics said the vote was rigged- Myanmar, Miami, what’s the difference, really?
Despite difficult conditions while in captivity- Somehow, this never sounded like a week at Club Med in Costa Rica.
Gave a spirited rejection- Spat in the face.
Have become more vocal in their efforts- It’s like talking to a wall, isn’t it?
Improperly issued- Broke about nine zillion laws and rules by saying “okeydokey.”
Is politically toxic- Pisses own friends off.
Lacks confidence in ________- Thinks _______ is idiotic.
Made it falsely appear- Lied their asses off.
Mounting a robust defense- Look at the tense here…this is something you should have done six months ago!
On shaky ground- I don’t care if it eats garbage and pees 93 octane Unleaded gas. This is very bad for me politically and must DIE DIE DIE!
On condition of anonymity- These people I’m telling you about have guns and know where I live.
Organizers condemned the violence- Organizers weren’t caught participating in the violence.
Said in a statement- Phoned it in.
Starting point- There’s the stable, and there’s your teaspoon. Have a ball.
Taken out of context- Oh, crap, that mike was live.
The exact aim of the attack remains unclear- But this does not seem to be your garden variety Sigma Nu prank, though.
The language was a mistake rather than an intentional attempt to mislead- Sure it was.
These findings worry officials- No good can come of this for officials.
They might have disarmed the bomb accidentally rather than by design- Well! His head and hands are still attached! Excellent! Don’t try that again if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The New Reality- Same old Depression.
Ceremonial job- Almost as good a gig as Former Vice President.
Former Vice President- Money for nothing and Dick’s still free???
16 November 2010
The Tsunami That Wasn’t
President Obama came out of the promised Tsunami in a whole lot better shape than most Democrats expected. Please do not confuse this for being GOOD for the President, but it is mostly wounded pride. He kept the Senate, and most of the Democrats sent into retirement were not exactly Obama’s political allies.
A few of the President’s more vexing figures in the Democratic Party managed to stay put, but Obama’s net loss of votes in the House is closer to 20 than 60. It turns out that Republicans prefer Republicans as opposed to Republicans who caucus with Democrats. Who knew?
In other words, the “Solid South” of Dixiecrats and Demagogues has been thoroughly purged from the Democratic Party. Nixon’s Southern Strategy has come to full fruition.
In the short term, this is a pain in the behind for President Obama. He also has a battalion of right-wing political pundits proclaiming the end of his presidency. It may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Remember that whole “party of no” strategy that Republicans have been using for the last couple of years? Yeah, that’s not going to work so well now. Now they have to come up with something more than that.
Republicans actually have to send things to the Senate that will get to the floor. Gaining the House without getting the Senate gives Republicans two years to propose the Tea Party agenda, and get absolutely nothing passed. That gives President Obama a do-nothing Republican Congress to run against.
If anyone thinks Harry Reid is going to give in to Jim DeMint in the Senate, they should smoke some more of that particular stash.
President Obama is still fairly well liked, while there is no corresponding sentiment for congressional Republicans. A couple of people on the left have some buyer’s remorse and wish that Hillary Clinton were now the President. The people on the right who do not like President Obama didn’t like Hillary Clinton any better. They are unlikely to give Speaker-in-waiting Boehner too much latitude if and/or when he does not deliver.
Obama was the first president in a generation to win a majority of the popular vote. He did exactly what he had to do. The President used a big chunk of political capital to get as much of his agenda pushed through as he could when he was certain he had the majority in the House. This is something which put Republicans into full overreaction mode.
Republicans do not do overreaction well. If one goes back to the forties and the fifties, Richard Nixon versus Alger Hiss and Joe McCarthy versus Decency are key examples. Let us please not start on anything done by a member of the Bush Family.
We now approach two years of Don’t Tread On Me sound bite populism, from what is arguably the most unappealing political body ever. For the Tea Party’s claims of massive grass-roots support, there was no statewide candidate from the Tea Party to outperform expectations for any Republican.
In the cases of Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Ken Buck, Senate seats which had been trending Republican went to the Democrat. Mike Castle is among Delaware’s best liked political figures. The Chicken Lady, Sue Lowden, was tracking WAY ahead of Harry Reid in Nevada. The less one says about Ken Buck, the better.
A case could be made for Pat Toomey, but 1 for 37 is NOT that much better than 0 for 37. Ask Barry Bonds about his postseason hitting record sometime.
The Republicans have a giant Tea Party Albatross around their necks. This overpriced publicity apparatus has produced NO unexpected results, generated no new support, and alienated pretty much every growing population in the country. If Republicans had washed their hands of the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers, they would now be in a better position for free.
Republican misfortune is such: they now own a quarter-billion Dollar machine, and the blamed thing does not work. Do not think that salesmen Karl Rove and Dick Armey have endeared themselves to the party poobahs. While the tea party has blue-collar appeal, they are not self-supporting. There is no death panel like that of Republicans who have dropped 250 million bucks on convincing poor people to do something and got nothing but what they were going to get anyway.
Some of the higher-profile Tea Party figures are already walking back the Tea Party identity. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are already saying “Tea? Tea? No, I ordered a Diet Coke.” The Half-term Halfwit is still bringing her peculiar brand of polar populism, but the audience has seen the quiet exeunt of Republican power brokers.
The Grand Old Party sees the fastest return to power through failure in the near term. They cannot afford a 2014 election cycle with a viable Sarah Palin near the head of the party, so they will get rid of her in 2012. The only thing Democrats could have wanted besides a win this cycle has happened.
The Republicans seized a pyrrhic victory.
A few of the President’s more vexing figures in the Democratic Party managed to stay put, but Obama’s net loss of votes in the House is closer to 20 than 60. It turns out that Republicans prefer Republicans as opposed to Republicans who caucus with Democrats. Who knew?
In other words, the “Solid South” of Dixiecrats and Demagogues has been thoroughly purged from the Democratic Party. Nixon’s Southern Strategy has come to full fruition.
In the short term, this is a pain in the behind for President Obama. He also has a battalion of right-wing political pundits proclaiming the end of his presidency. It may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Remember that whole “party of no” strategy that Republicans have been using for the last couple of years? Yeah, that’s not going to work so well now. Now they have to come up with something more than that.
Republicans actually have to send things to the Senate that will get to the floor. Gaining the House without getting the Senate gives Republicans two years to propose the Tea Party agenda, and get absolutely nothing passed. That gives President Obama a do-nothing Republican Congress to run against.
If anyone thinks Harry Reid is going to give in to Jim DeMint in the Senate, they should smoke some more of that particular stash.
President Obama is still fairly well liked, while there is no corresponding sentiment for congressional Republicans. A couple of people on the left have some buyer’s remorse and wish that Hillary Clinton were now the President. The people on the right who do not like President Obama didn’t like Hillary Clinton any better. They are unlikely to give Speaker-in-waiting Boehner too much latitude if and/or when he does not deliver.
Obama was the first president in a generation to win a majority of the popular vote. He did exactly what he had to do. The President used a big chunk of political capital to get as much of his agenda pushed through as he could when he was certain he had the majority in the House. This is something which put Republicans into full overreaction mode.
Republicans do not do overreaction well. If one goes back to the forties and the fifties, Richard Nixon versus Alger Hiss and Joe McCarthy versus Decency are key examples. Let us please not start on anything done by a member of the Bush Family.
We now approach two years of Don’t Tread On Me sound bite populism, from what is arguably the most unappealing political body ever. For the Tea Party’s claims of massive grass-roots support, there was no statewide candidate from the Tea Party to outperform expectations for any Republican.
In the cases of Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Ken Buck, Senate seats which had been trending Republican went to the Democrat. Mike Castle is among Delaware’s best liked political figures. The Chicken Lady, Sue Lowden, was tracking WAY ahead of Harry Reid in Nevada. The less one says about Ken Buck, the better.
A case could be made for Pat Toomey, but 1 for 37 is NOT that much better than 0 for 37. Ask Barry Bonds about his postseason hitting record sometime.
The Republicans have a giant Tea Party Albatross around their necks. This overpriced publicity apparatus has produced NO unexpected results, generated no new support, and alienated pretty much every growing population in the country. If Republicans had washed their hands of the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers, they would now be in a better position for free.
Republican misfortune is such: they now own a quarter-billion Dollar machine, and the blamed thing does not work. Do not think that salesmen Karl Rove and Dick Armey have endeared themselves to the party poobahs. While the tea party has blue-collar appeal, they are not self-supporting. There is no death panel like that of Republicans who have dropped 250 million bucks on convincing poor people to do something and got nothing but what they were going to get anyway.
Some of the higher-profile Tea Party figures are already walking back the Tea Party identity. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are already saying “Tea? Tea? No, I ordered a Diet Coke.” The Half-term Halfwit is still bringing her peculiar brand of polar populism, but the audience has seen the quiet exeunt of Republican power brokers.
The Grand Old Party sees the fastest return to power through failure in the near term. They cannot afford a 2014 election cycle with a viable Sarah Palin near the head of the party, so they will get rid of her in 2012. The only thing Democrats could have wanted besides a win this cycle has happened.
The Republicans seized a pyrrhic victory.
American Liberal
I am a liberal. I am not ashamed of my beliefs. Let the debate with whichever individual or group begin.
I have a deep mistrust of unaccountable collectives. It does not matter what name an unaccountable collective goes by, be it Corporation or Government. If forced to choose, I will pick Government, because the power of the individual vote, bought and paid for with the blood and suffering of generations of American service people, is ultimately a greater guarantor of transparency than shadowy lucre.
I see the role of Government not as enemy, but as a power of all the people of this great nation to assure that no citizen is denied that greatness upon gender, ancestry, faith, or sexual orientation. Prejudice and bigotry are not American values. They are vices which destroy our nation from within as a cancer.
I know that America is the most exceptional and extraordinary nation in the history of mankind. We achieved this by opening doors, not closing them. By embracing new ideas and different peoples we stood toe to toe against every kind of totalitarian evil and won, with the knowledge that autocrats discarded. Leave walls and paranoia to North Korea…we know they don’t work for us.
I love my Nation, and support its defenders. This means that they must be called into action, not by questionable intelligence, but by irrefutable truth. The sacrifice of our all-volunteer military is not to be treated as a mercenary force for the prosecution of a personal vendetta.
I love my God. I have friends who come from every religious tradition. I have friends who are not part of any religious tradition. My God tells me to judge not lest I be judged. While I feel sad that some have not received the gift of faith, I respect and admire those who continue to do the right thing without the promise of an eternal reward. Oh, that all of my own faith should act so well.
I accept the patriotism and service of Representative Keith Ellison, a Muslim, and Representative Hank Johnson, a Buddhist, as coequals with Representative John Lewis, a Christian, and Representative Anthony Weiner, a Jew.
I embrace the concept of personal responsibility. This means that individuals, who have acted irresponsibly, particularly in the financial services industry, bear the brunt of their bad decisions. Fraud does not deserve continuing reward; speculation is a form of gambling unworthy of public support, and the best talent profits by building strong communities, not spurious investment instruments.
I believe in a free and unrestricted press. When six companies control a disproportionate number of outlets in radio and television, debate ceases to exist. Without debate, our nation strays far from the tradition that it was built upon.
I favor the right to keep and bear arms. I do not believe that a right exists to behave irresponsibly with one’s weapons. I also get that “well regulated” does not mean “unregulated.”
I support the right of labor to organize. I would not go to court without an attorney. It seems disingenuous to expect someone to make a financial decision of potentially millions of dollars, alone, without representation to counter an employer’s legions of accountants, attorneys, and managers.
I am not blinded by hatred for taxes. Our nation prospers with education, infrastructure, a justice system which is free from corruption, and shared responsibilities which assure us of clean and accessible air, water, food and medicine. Employers prosper disproportionately from a healthy, secure and educated workforce, and their responsibility is also disproportionate.
I love opportunity. I reject the notion that opportunity is something which should be limited to those who already have means. This nation’s founders shared a vision of a place where opportunity and prosperity would not be the province of idle nobility, a cosseted clergy, and miniscule enclaves of merchant and financiers.
So when bringing a debate about the future of the United States of America, remember who threw that first tea party. They were not Tories, Loyalists, or Conservatives. They were people like me.
They were American Liberals.
I have a deep mistrust of unaccountable collectives. It does not matter what name an unaccountable collective goes by, be it Corporation or Government. If forced to choose, I will pick Government, because the power of the individual vote, bought and paid for with the blood and suffering of generations of American service people, is ultimately a greater guarantor of transparency than shadowy lucre.
I see the role of Government not as enemy, but as a power of all the people of this great nation to assure that no citizen is denied that greatness upon gender, ancestry, faith, or sexual orientation. Prejudice and bigotry are not American values. They are vices which destroy our nation from within as a cancer.
I know that America is the most exceptional and extraordinary nation in the history of mankind. We achieved this by opening doors, not closing them. By embracing new ideas and different peoples we stood toe to toe against every kind of totalitarian evil and won, with the knowledge that autocrats discarded. Leave walls and paranoia to North Korea…we know they don’t work for us.
I love my Nation, and support its defenders. This means that they must be called into action, not by questionable intelligence, but by irrefutable truth. The sacrifice of our all-volunteer military is not to be treated as a mercenary force for the prosecution of a personal vendetta.
I love my God. I have friends who come from every religious tradition. I have friends who are not part of any religious tradition. My God tells me to judge not lest I be judged. While I feel sad that some have not received the gift of faith, I respect and admire those who continue to do the right thing without the promise of an eternal reward. Oh, that all of my own faith should act so well.
I accept the patriotism and service of Representative Keith Ellison, a Muslim, and Representative Hank Johnson, a Buddhist, as coequals with Representative John Lewis, a Christian, and Representative Anthony Weiner, a Jew.
I embrace the concept of personal responsibility. This means that individuals, who have acted irresponsibly, particularly in the financial services industry, bear the brunt of their bad decisions. Fraud does not deserve continuing reward; speculation is a form of gambling unworthy of public support, and the best talent profits by building strong communities, not spurious investment instruments.
I believe in a free and unrestricted press. When six companies control a disproportionate number of outlets in radio and television, debate ceases to exist. Without debate, our nation strays far from the tradition that it was built upon.
I favor the right to keep and bear arms. I do not believe that a right exists to behave irresponsibly with one’s weapons. I also get that “well regulated” does not mean “unregulated.”
I support the right of labor to organize. I would not go to court without an attorney. It seems disingenuous to expect someone to make a financial decision of potentially millions of dollars, alone, without representation to counter an employer’s legions of accountants, attorneys, and managers.
I am not blinded by hatred for taxes. Our nation prospers with education, infrastructure, a justice system which is free from corruption, and shared responsibilities which assure us of clean and accessible air, water, food and medicine. Employers prosper disproportionately from a healthy, secure and educated workforce, and their responsibility is also disproportionate.
I love opportunity. I reject the notion that opportunity is something which should be limited to those who already have means. This nation’s founders shared a vision of a place where opportunity and prosperity would not be the province of idle nobility, a cosseted clergy, and miniscule enclaves of merchant and financiers.
So when bringing a debate about the future of the United States of America, remember who threw that first tea party. They were not Tories, Loyalists, or Conservatives. They were people like me.
They were American Liberals.
07 October 2010
Hey i've seen this before
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09 September 2010
9/11 Love Story
One promises not to touch the cliches about the pretty September morn or wax eloquently about Manhattan's snaggle-toothed skyline. If the date 9/11 has no significance for the Gentle Reader beyond the litany of now-trite allusions and allegories, then these words have little significance.
As Paul Harvey used to say, this is the rest of the story. It is personal.
On September 8, 2001, I had planned a visit to Manhattan. I am a commercial driver. The firm I was hired onto at the time had a yard in New Brunswick, New Jersey. My plan was to celebrate my birthday with an oft-delayed visit to New York City. I was offered a run from Atlanta to New Jersey, which due to certain regulations faced by professional drivers, I would not have been able to complete by Monday, September 10.
The key issue was that my truck was bog-slow, with a maximum velocity of 62 miles per hour. Had the rig been a bit faster, I may not be here to tell the story.
My itenerary included the World Trade Center. There was no particular motivation besides that of Homer Simpson visiting that landmark. If one chooses one of the world's greatest cities, one chooses the greatest landmarks in that city.
I wound up celebrating in a different form in my hometown of Atlanta. On the night of September 10, I watched one of the great World War II films (Steve McQueen in The Great Escape), and headed to Virginia with a load of dog food. It was as simple as that. At 3 in the morning, I parked my rig in a North Carolina rest area.
The next morning I arose to find the message that the second World Trade Center tower had fallen. Holy cow, I didn't know the first one had fallen. The only channel I could get was the ABC affiliate from Winston-Salem.
I had a pocket full of change and called some old friends back in Georgia. First on the list was my old friend Moses Horowitz, a Long Island native. I asked after his family in New York. There was another friend with whom I had celebrated my birthday, to inform that I was still around and still had a pulse. I made it up to the truck stop in Mount Airy, the model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry.
The image of CNN anchor Aaron Brown weeping lingers in an arid and painful place in my heart.
And I was haunted. I was haunted by a too-vivid imagination, remembering a young woman I had taken to the Decatur bus station, as she embarked for a journey to renew her life in Union City, New Jersey. I imagined the gray uniform shirt of a maintenance person, her face, and the knowledge that the planes hit at least a quarter of the way down the buildings.
I remembered her name. It would not escape me. As rosters of the fallen came from New York, I studiously avoided them. For 49 months, through the memorials and annual recitations, over the photocopied handbills, I dared not go too closely for the abject terror that my passivity had condemned this woman to a martyrdom in New York.
The month after The Wandering Gentile first published in 2005, I returned to Atlanta from a time domiciled in southern Georgia. I rented a room from a woman of my approximate age in the eastern suburbs. She was and remains a friend, although time and circumstance have put a necessary distance between us.
In October, I was invited to visit Helen, Georgia, one of the world's great kitschy places, with her brother and sister-in-law. She went up in her CUV, and her brother and sister-in-law drove their large Toyota. As we neared Helen, 90 or so miles from Atlanta, her sister-in-law put on a stern face.
"Do you remember my cousin?" She asked, then uttered the name. Her face was not one of joy, but of mourning. I could feel my soul sinking through the floorboard of the Toyota. This was the eventuality I had been avoiding for 49 months.
"Yes," I replied meekly, suddenly enervated.
"She remembers you too! I was in New Jersey, and she asked after you!"
They say that life has moments. One questions whether or not he has answers, but when the answer is obvious, bells and whistles go off. Bells, whistles, fireworks, air raid sirens, and tiny European engines echoed throughout my cranium. This was a sign 30 meters tall and backlit.
The Gentle Reader may be forgiven if one has chosen to skip the body of this extended bit of self serving meta. It is of no purpose or weight other than the conceit that it pleases me.
But as we close on the anniversary of a dreadful morning in Manhattan, rejoice in that for most, those who loved someone associated with the World Trade Centers, that someone returned home later on September 11. God lives in the fact that this evil did not cost 50,000 or 100,000 lives. God lives in the flat tire someone had entering the Holland Tunnel, or the train which was delayed on Long Island. I refuse to believe that good and evil do not have some supernatural design.
I also refuse to compel my brethren to believe as I do. That mindset is fertile ground for the evil we saw as innocent lives were taken.
And for the record, that young woman I spoke of taking to the bus station in Decatur? The one whose life inspired my rejoice?
You, Gentle Reader, would know of her as Mrs. Wandering Gentile.
As Paul Harvey used to say, this is the rest of the story. It is personal.
On September 8, 2001, I had planned a visit to Manhattan. I am a commercial driver. The firm I was hired onto at the time had a yard in New Brunswick, New Jersey. My plan was to celebrate my birthday with an oft-delayed visit to New York City. I was offered a run from Atlanta to New Jersey, which due to certain regulations faced by professional drivers, I would not have been able to complete by Monday, September 10.
The key issue was that my truck was bog-slow, with a maximum velocity of 62 miles per hour. Had the rig been a bit faster, I may not be here to tell the story.
My itenerary included the World Trade Center. There was no particular motivation besides that of Homer Simpson visiting that landmark. If one chooses one of the world's greatest cities, one chooses the greatest landmarks in that city.
I wound up celebrating in a different form in my hometown of Atlanta. On the night of September 10, I watched one of the great World War II films (Steve McQueen in The Great Escape), and headed to Virginia with a load of dog food. It was as simple as that. At 3 in the morning, I parked my rig in a North Carolina rest area.
The next morning I arose to find the message that the second World Trade Center tower had fallen. Holy cow, I didn't know the first one had fallen. The only channel I could get was the ABC affiliate from Winston-Salem.
I had a pocket full of change and called some old friends back in Georgia. First on the list was my old friend Moses Horowitz, a Long Island native. I asked after his family in New York. There was another friend with whom I had celebrated my birthday, to inform that I was still around and still had a pulse. I made it up to the truck stop in Mount Airy, the model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry.
The image of CNN anchor Aaron Brown weeping lingers in an arid and painful place in my heart.
And I was haunted. I was haunted by a too-vivid imagination, remembering a young woman I had taken to the Decatur bus station, as she embarked for a journey to renew her life in Union City, New Jersey. I imagined the gray uniform shirt of a maintenance person, her face, and the knowledge that the planes hit at least a quarter of the way down the buildings.
I remembered her name. It would not escape me. As rosters of the fallen came from New York, I studiously avoided them. For 49 months, through the memorials and annual recitations, over the photocopied handbills, I dared not go too closely for the abject terror that my passivity had condemned this woman to a martyrdom in New York.
The month after The Wandering Gentile first published in 2005, I returned to Atlanta from a time domiciled in southern Georgia. I rented a room from a woman of my approximate age in the eastern suburbs. She was and remains a friend, although time and circumstance have put a necessary distance between us.
In October, I was invited to visit Helen, Georgia, one of the world's great kitschy places, with her brother and sister-in-law. She went up in her CUV, and her brother and sister-in-law drove their large Toyota. As we neared Helen, 90 or so miles from Atlanta, her sister-in-law put on a stern face.
"Do you remember my cousin?" She asked, then uttered the name. Her face was not one of joy, but of mourning. I could feel my soul sinking through the floorboard of the Toyota. This was the eventuality I had been avoiding for 49 months.
"Yes," I replied meekly, suddenly enervated.
"She remembers you too! I was in New Jersey, and she asked after you!"
They say that life has moments. One questions whether or not he has answers, but when the answer is obvious, bells and whistles go off. Bells, whistles, fireworks, air raid sirens, and tiny European engines echoed throughout my cranium. This was a sign 30 meters tall and backlit.
The Gentle Reader may be forgiven if one has chosen to skip the body of this extended bit of self serving meta. It is of no purpose or weight other than the conceit that it pleases me.
But as we close on the anniversary of a dreadful morning in Manhattan, rejoice in that for most, those who loved someone associated with the World Trade Centers, that someone returned home later on September 11. God lives in the fact that this evil did not cost 50,000 or 100,000 lives. God lives in the flat tire someone had entering the Holland Tunnel, or the train which was delayed on Long Island. I refuse to believe that good and evil do not have some supernatural design.
I also refuse to compel my brethren to believe as I do. That mindset is fertile ground for the evil we saw as innocent lives were taken.
And for the record, that young woman I spoke of taking to the bus station in Decatur? The one whose life inspired my rejoice?
You, Gentle Reader, would know of her as Mrs. Wandering Gentile.
02 September 2010
Rope-a-Dope, Hawaiian Style
A recurring theme pervades from television news to Facebook chatter: Republicans are going to retake the House, and very well could retake the Senate, too.
Sure they are. And a Category Five hurricane is going to blast straight through the Narrows and wipe New York completely off the map. But neither event is guaranteed to happen in 2010.
Republicans were not going to lose on Stimulus. They were not going to lose on Justice Sotomayor. They had defeat of Health Care Reform sewed up. There was no way that there was going to be any re-regulation on Wall Street.
If one goes back two years to the primaries, Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee. Six years ago, Ryan had been leading in the polls for Paul Simon’s old Senate seat. In other words, we have been hearing about Barack Obama’s imminent doom since he stood up and smoked everyone at the Democratic Convention in 2004.
Six predictions of impending failure have six wins for Barack Obama. It would seem foolish to bet against the President with this much time on the clock.
President Obama is sitting as low on the polls as he ever has. He’s still twenty points up on Bush’s lowest point. He has kept a low profile all summer. This is classic Obama. He’s running the Rope-a-Dope on the Republicans.
For those who may not have had the frustrating pleasure of watching Muhammad Ali fight, the Rope-a-Dope works thusly. Ali would lean back on the ropes and let an opponent pound, pound, and pound some more. Ali was a cerebral fighter. He studied his opponent’s best moves, let the opponent tire himself out, and in the last two rounds, Ali would knock his opponent into the middle of next Tuesday.
At the moment, as the old southernism goes, the Tea Party and the Republicans are (defecating) in high cotton. Someone may wish to remind them where the McCain-Palin ticket stood in the polls on Labor Day, 2008.
The right has been going to the well repeatedly. There is a strong likelihood that a large component of the electorate which wasn’t quite sick of the Tea Party six months ago may have had its fill of screaming white geezers. The party which has been quiet has a strategic advantage.
Democrats will discuss the economy and jobs. James Carville is sitting around, and James Carville is going to be brought back into the game. Nobody has ever crafted as effective a campaign based on the economy like him in the last 50 years. Carville would have been first choice a long time ago, but he was very highly annoyed.
They also have Robert Reich, Clinton’s Treasury secretary, biding his time as a talking head on CNN and MSNBC. As far as the economy and Domestic policy go, the Clinton years are remembered fondly. There are even a few conservatives out there who would be willing to trade places with that woman, Miss Lewinski, if it would reboot the economy to 1998.
This is where the Clinton card gets played. Obama has the Clinton economic team available, and they have very strong credibility, because the economy was strong. The administration is smart enough to realize that it is tough to clean up eight years of mess in less than two. The message has to be Dubya versus Bubba.
The independent center is not going to hear much about the following from Democrats over the next two months: the environment, unless it is linked to green jobs; immigration; LGBT rights; or security (unless it is connected to jobs, jobs, jobs.) This will be extremely frustrating to Liberals and Progressives, but it is also pragmatic. The Democratic Party is not in a position of being the Vegans at the barbecue without alienating the coalition moderates who helped bring them to power.
The base understands that their objectives will be completely and perpetually screwed if Republicans get back into power. It would be the equivalent of choosing Lindsay Lohan for a designated driver.
President Obama’s desires for the next two years are going to be extremely dependent upon voters who have traditionally been more apathetic. Obama’s organization has been strong in keeping a connection to his supporters over the last couple of years. This crucial body may pull the President’s bacon out of the fire in November.
They may very well be the left jab that the Republican Party does not see coming.
Sure they are. And a Category Five hurricane is going to blast straight through the Narrows and wipe New York completely off the map. But neither event is guaranteed to happen in 2010.
Republicans were not going to lose on Stimulus. They were not going to lose on Justice Sotomayor. They had defeat of Health Care Reform sewed up. There was no way that there was going to be any re-regulation on Wall Street.
If one goes back two years to the primaries, Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee. Six years ago, Ryan had been leading in the polls for Paul Simon’s old Senate seat. In other words, we have been hearing about Barack Obama’s imminent doom since he stood up and smoked everyone at the Democratic Convention in 2004.
Six predictions of impending failure have six wins for Barack Obama. It would seem foolish to bet against the President with this much time on the clock.
President Obama is sitting as low on the polls as he ever has. He’s still twenty points up on Bush’s lowest point. He has kept a low profile all summer. This is classic Obama. He’s running the Rope-a-Dope on the Republicans.
For those who may not have had the frustrating pleasure of watching Muhammad Ali fight, the Rope-a-Dope works thusly. Ali would lean back on the ropes and let an opponent pound, pound, and pound some more. Ali was a cerebral fighter. He studied his opponent’s best moves, let the opponent tire himself out, and in the last two rounds, Ali would knock his opponent into the middle of next Tuesday.
At the moment, as the old southernism goes, the Tea Party and the Republicans are (defecating) in high cotton. Someone may wish to remind them where the McCain-Palin ticket stood in the polls on Labor Day, 2008.
The right has been going to the well repeatedly. There is a strong likelihood that a large component of the electorate which wasn’t quite sick of the Tea Party six months ago may have had its fill of screaming white geezers. The party which has been quiet has a strategic advantage.
Democrats will discuss the economy and jobs. James Carville is sitting around, and James Carville is going to be brought back into the game. Nobody has ever crafted as effective a campaign based on the economy like him in the last 50 years. Carville would have been first choice a long time ago, but he was very highly annoyed.
They also have Robert Reich, Clinton’s Treasury secretary, biding his time as a talking head on CNN and MSNBC. As far as the economy and Domestic policy go, the Clinton years are remembered fondly. There are even a few conservatives out there who would be willing to trade places with that woman, Miss Lewinski, if it would reboot the economy to 1998.
This is where the Clinton card gets played. Obama has the Clinton economic team available, and they have very strong credibility, because the economy was strong. The administration is smart enough to realize that it is tough to clean up eight years of mess in less than two. The message has to be Dubya versus Bubba.
The independent center is not going to hear much about the following from Democrats over the next two months: the environment, unless it is linked to green jobs; immigration; LGBT rights; or security (unless it is connected to jobs, jobs, jobs.) This will be extremely frustrating to Liberals and Progressives, but it is also pragmatic. The Democratic Party is not in a position of being the Vegans at the barbecue without alienating the coalition moderates who helped bring them to power.
The base understands that their objectives will be completely and perpetually screwed if Republicans get back into power. It would be the equivalent of choosing Lindsay Lohan for a designated driver.
President Obama’s desires for the next two years are going to be extremely dependent upon voters who have traditionally been more apathetic. Obama’s organization has been strong in keeping a connection to his supporters over the last couple of years. This crucial body may pull the President’s bacon out of the fire in November.
They may very well be the left jab that the Republican Party does not see coming.
28 August 2010
Understanding Your Haynes Service Manual
A few of us in the automotive hobby have come to know and appreciate our Haynes service manuals. However, these manuals are written in ENGLISH, not AMERICAN. Some of the terms may be confusing to those unfamiliar with British automotive jargon.
As a courtesy to friends who enjoy automobiles, or those curious about the hobby, your Wandering Gentile has prepared a glossary of British automotive terms translated into American.
SPANNER- A tool who sends you unsolicited e-mail.
BOOT- An oversize bit of footwear in the trunk.
SPARKING PLUGS- Someone forgot to remove the bloody ground cable, didn't he?
REMOVE NEGATIVE CABLE FROM BATTERY- If followed to the letter on a Lucas/Prince of Darkness system, and owner leaves the key on, his car will become an Austin/Morris/MG/Wolseley/Riley/Triumph/Rover/Standard Chernobyl upon replacement of cable on positive-ground system.
I.C.E.- The people who will have some question about your immigration status if they hear Shakira on your radio.
WHEELBRACE- Thang whut looks lak uh tar arn.
WING- Hey, Ah tole ya they got them fline cars over in Anglund.
OFFSIDE/NEARSIDE- Not even the British are entirely certain about the rules on this one. It's kind of like Cricket. (RIP, Mr Woolmer)
BONNET- Famous NASCAR driver where the hood ought to be.
HOOD- It's like the English have a different word for everything. It looks like a convertible top to me.
CROSS-PLY TYRE- Apparently the belts don't get along.
SALOON- You got to be kidding. John Wayne wouldn't be caught dead in this thing for all the Rye Whiskey ever distilled. He probably wouldn't even fit.
MINICAR- Roller Skate with an attitude.
MoT- Bureaucrats who have an agenda for the promotion of public transit.
FOUR STAR PETROL- Urine with an attitude.
TWO STAR PETROL- Urine without an attitude.
FORECOURT- Where the gas pumps are.
MULTI STOREY CAR PARK- Parking deck. Expensive.
CITROEN- French word for "lemon."
RENAULT- French word for "(excrement)."
(Repurposed from content originally posted at Opel GT.com, March, 2007.)
Scarier than Stephen King.
This quote was found in the comments section of a Think Progress report on Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally in Washington. The commonality of this rhetoric and that of the Tea Party is disturbing.
"It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us, whether they represent us as clowns or criminals; the main thing is that they mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and again, and that we gradually in the eyes of the workers themselves appear to be the only power that anyone reckons with at the moment. …"
"[O]ne can never count on protection on the part of the authorities; on the contrary, experience shows that it always and exclusively benefits the disturbers. For the sole actual result of intervention by the authorities – that is, the police – was at best to dissolve, in other words, to close the meeting. And that was the sole aim and purpose of the hostile disturbers." [...]
"If through some sort of threats it becomes known to the authorities that there is danger of a meeting being broken up, they do not arrest the threateners, but forbid the others, the innocent, to hold the meeting, and what is more, the run-of-the-mill police mind is mighty proud of such wisdom. They call this a 'precautionary measure for the prevention of an illegal act.'
"Thus, the determined gangster is always in a position to make political activity and efforts impossible for decent people. In the name of law and order, the state authority gives in to the gangster and requests the others please not to provoke him."
Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf
11 August 2010
Crudcast Cable
“Dear Mr. Gillon.”
Uh-oh. Nobody puts Mr. in front of my surname unless they want money. It’s kind of like being called “Sir” in a truck stop parking lot.
“Crudcast Cable is offering a unique savings opportunity!”
Yup.
“Now you can have 150 channels of crystal-clear Crudcast Cable, packaged with home telephone service and lightning-fast Internet for…”
However dang many dollars a month they wanted. I forgot, not that I cared all that much to start with. I drive a truck. Mrs. Wandering Gentile only likes three channels, and we can get them with rabbit ears for free.
I shudder to think of what viruses are out there with Justin Bieber’s face on them. I suspect that a few are also on the Internet.
“Our premium 150 Channel Package includes all of your local favorites.”
They don’t carry the low-powered digital channel which happens to be TeleCaramba, my wife’s favorite network. We live close enough to the transmitter to pick up the broadcasts in our fillings.
“We also offer great sports programming from….”
I am the only person in the house who really watches sports at all. I drive a truck. I can tell you which newspapers have decent baseball coverage. It’s not doing me any good when I’m in Walla Walla, picking up apples.
“Crudcast’s news and information selection features great choices from CNN and Fox News.”
My apologies. I just threw up a little in my mouth. CNN is on channel 22. Fox is on 20. MSNBC is on another system.
“For the youngsters in the house, we have Disney, Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network.”
Okay, the youngster is almost 44…and rarely has impure thoughts about Selena Gomez any more.
“We also offer several convenient shop-at-home services.”
I have no clue what they have on these shop-at-home services, but I bet they are neither economical nor a very good use of bandwidth. Thankfully, this is not a habit of Mrs. Wandering Gentile’s. Shop NBC could easily be replaced with something from the same corporate family. Gee, could I guess what it might be?
“Crudcast home telephone service offers great connections and unlimited calling within the continental United States.”
My prepaid cell phone carrier offers ALL FIFTY states and Canada, and the Internet. For an extra five dollars a month, we can have unlimited land line connections in sixty countries on my wife’s prepaid carrier. My phone works everywhere but Oklahoma and some parts of West Virginia. Her coverage is a bit less nationwide, but better in Metro Atlanta.
I also don’t like telephones enough to want another one of the damn things which happens to be less versatile than what I have already!
“Crudcast Internet offers the lightning fast speed that you want…”
Yeah, except when a whole bunch of my neighbors discover that the Aguilas are playing the Chivas. Then the thing packs up like the Cross-Bronx Expressway on a Friday afternoon. I may as well try to find out what Rachel Maddow was talking about at 8 by smoke signal.
So I called Crudcast to see how much they would charge me for just Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network, and the Internet, just for grins.
It was 10 dollars more a month, I HAD to take Fox news when I didn’t want it, and Crudcast’s customer service department left a little bit to be desired, which is a nice way of saying that they suck.
If Jasmine stands on Sasha’s shoulders, we can pick up Macon with the rabbit ears.
Uh-oh. Nobody puts Mr. in front of my surname unless they want money. It’s kind of like being called “Sir” in a truck stop parking lot.
“Crudcast Cable is offering a unique savings opportunity!”
Yup.
“Now you can have 150 channels of crystal-clear Crudcast Cable, packaged with home telephone service and lightning-fast Internet for…”
However dang many dollars a month they wanted. I forgot, not that I cared all that much to start with. I drive a truck. Mrs. Wandering Gentile only likes three channels, and we can get them with rabbit ears for free.
I shudder to think of what viruses are out there with Justin Bieber’s face on them. I suspect that a few are also on the Internet.
“Our premium 150 Channel Package includes all of your local favorites.”
They don’t carry the low-powered digital channel which happens to be TeleCaramba, my wife’s favorite network. We live close enough to the transmitter to pick up the broadcasts in our fillings.
“We also offer great sports programming from….”
I am the only person in the house who really watches sports at all. I drive a truck. I can tell you which newspapers have decent baseball coverage. It’s not doing me any good when I’m in Walla Walla, picking up apples.
“Crudcast’s news and information selection features great choices from CNN and Fox News.”
My apologies. I just threw up a little in my mouth. CNN is on channel 22. Fox is on 20. MSNBC is on another system.
“For the youngsters in the house, we have Disney, Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network.”
Okay, the youngster is almost 44…and rarely has impure thoughts about Selena Gomez any more.
“We also offer several convenient shop-at-home services.”
I have no clue what they have on these shop-at-home services, but I bet they are neither economical nor a very good use of bandwidth. Thankfully, this is not a habit of Mrs. Wandering Gentile’s. Shop NBC could easily be replaced with something from the same corporate family. Gee, could I guess what it might be?
“Crudcast home telephone service offers great connections and unlimited calling within the continental United States.”
My prepaid cell phone carrier offers ALL FIFTY states and Canada, and the Internet. For an extra five dollars a month, we can have unlimited land line connections in sixty countries on my wife’s prepaid carrier. My phone works everywhere but Oklahoma and some parts of West Virginia. Her coverage is a bit less nationwide, but better in Metro Atlanta.
I also don’t like telephones enough to want another one of the damn things which happens to be less versatile than what I have already!
“Crudcast Internet offers the lightning fast speed that you want…”
Yeah, except when a whole bunch of my neighbors discover that the Aguilas are playing the Chivas. Then the thing packs up like the Cross-Bronx Expressway on a Friday afternoon. I may as well try to find out what Rachel Maddow was talking about at 8 by smoke signal.
So I called Crudcast to see how much they would charge me for just Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network, and the Internet, just for grins.
It was 10 dollars more a month, I HAD to take Fox news when I didn’t want it, and Crudcast’s customer service department left a little bit to be desired, which is a nice way of saying that they suck.
If Jasmine stands on Sasha’s shoulders, we can pick up Macon with the rabbit ears.
The Season of Miracles
As this interminable summer of unpleasant confrontations and dreadful poll numbers draws toward its end, be of good cheer, Liberals.
Republicans want to debate extending the Bush Tax Cuts. This is like being a bullfighter in a wheelchair. There is no way this will turn out well.
If the Bush Tax Cuts had worked, it would be logical to expect the following:
1. Full employment.
2. A shrinking deficit.
3. Growth of middle class incomes.
This is, after all, the premise upon which the Tax Cuts were sold in 2001. At the time, the federal surplus was in the neighborhood of half a trillion dollars. The unemployment rate hovered within a few ticks of 5%. The spending power of the median US family was about 20% more than it is today.
Supporters of reinstating the Bush Tax Cuts will argue some points. 9/11 will come up, as will the subprime mortgage fiasco. The suggestion will be made, with some tenuous supporting evidence, that the middle and lower classes are paying less in taxes today than they did ten years ago.
9/11 was certainly an impact upon the American economy and psyche. There are now two wars as a result, at a cost of (roughly) a trillion dollars a year. Our presence in Iraq is questionable, at a cost of having lost bin Laden at Tora Bora.
For those who would suggest that Liberals do not support the armed services, one wishes to query. Starting a war, sending troops without adequate intelligence or correct equipment for the job, and then the whole thing turns out to have been done on crap evidence, well, how supportive is that? Cutting benefits and placing stop-loss orders is not supportive either.
The subprime meltdown is another case of the path to hell being paved with good intentions. Yes, Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Stegall. Being truthful, quite a few Liberals and Progressives were convinced that the economy would continue its exponential growth. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is among the few who get a pass for not following a dumb, but popular, idea.
For every Conservative who loves Madame Palin’s “How’s that hopey changey stuff workin’ out for ya,” there is a guy, whose residence has a license plate, looking for a deregulation Republican to park his home on. This individual is paying less in income taxes, because 15% of zero is zero.
The Laffer curve was great while we were on the upslope. The downslope is as frightening as anything found at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. We are facing something that would have a very peculiar interpretation of y=mX+b. A point came somewhere around five years ago when we passed the intersection where lowering the marginal tax rate would result in increased revenues.
What would work is getting back to what we already know works. The pre-Bush economy worked.
President Obama has been holding this move for months. There is no way he does not want the Bush Tax Cut debate to come to the floor of Congress. The population which would be most affected voted something like 90% in favor of Senator McCain two years ago. There is no political downside for Obama.
If the usual litany of Conservatives begins to pontificate on the virtues of this particular tax cut regimen, then the Democrats don’t have to run against individual opponents. They are now running against people who prospered when most people did not and George W. Bush. That works quite well.
The wealthy will cry victim, as with any group which has become dependent upon public largesse. There is something decidedly unsympathetic about any group prospering on somebody else’s dime. Welfare kings from Beverly Hills to Beacon Hill are even less sympathetic when one has faced the loss of a career, a home, or a marriage to economic instability.
Governments cost money to run. A progressive taxation policy is not punitive to producers. It means that those who have prospered under a free, democratic system are also responsible for maintaining the integrity of the system which has enabled their prosperity.
Producers know that debt is not a smart choice. The nation is overleveraged. We can ill afford to dump US$700 billion on people who sat on it the last time. An economically broken government cannot assure the security of the nation it serves.
And if he has to, Obama’s going to veto the Bush Tax Cuts anyway.
Republicans want to debate extending the Bush Tax Cuts. This is like being a bullfighter in a wheelchair. There is no way this will turn out well.
If the Bush Tax Cuts had worked, it would be logical to expect the following:
1. Full employment.
2. A shrinking deficit.
3. Growth of middle class incomes.
This is, after all, the premise upon which the Tax Cuts were sold in 2001. At the time, the federal surplus was in the neighborhood of half a trillion dollars. The unemployment rate hovered within a few ticks of 5%. The spending power of the median US family was about 20% more than it is today.
Supporters of reinstating the Bush Tax Cuts will argue some points. 9/11 will come up, as will the subprime mortgage fiasco. The suggestion will be made, with some tenuous supporting evidence, that the middle and lower classes are paying less in taxes today than they did ten years ago.
9/11 was certainly an impact upon the American economy and psyche. There are now two wars as a result, at a cost of (roughly) a trillion dollars a year. Our presence in Iraq is questionable, at a cost of having lost bin Laden at Tora Bora.
For those who would suggest that Liberals do not support the armed services, one wishes to query. Starting a war, sending troops without adequate intelligence or correct equipment for the job, and then the whole thing turns out to have been done on crap evidence, well, how supportive is that? Cutting benefits and placing stop-loss orders is not supportive either.
The subprime meltdown is another case of the path to hell being paved with good intentions. Yes, Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Stegall. Being truthful, quite a few Liberals and Progressives were convinced that the economy would continue its exponential growth. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is among the few who get a pass for not following a dumb, but popular, idea.
For every Conservative who loves Madame Palin’s “How’s that hopey changey stuff workin’ out for ya,” there is a guy, whose residence has a license plate, looking for a deregulation Republican to park his home on. This individual is paying less in income taxes, because 15% of zero is zero.
The Laffer curve was great while we were on the upslope. The downslope is as frightening as anything found at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. We are facing something that would have a very peculiar interpretation of y=mX+b. A point came somewhere around five years ago when we passed the intersection where lowering the marginal tax rate would result in increased revenues.
What would work is getting back to what we already know works. The pre-Bush economy worked.
President Obama has been holding this move for months. There is no way he does not want the Bush Tax Cut debate to come to the floor of Congress. The population which would be most affected voted something like 90% in favor of Senator McCain two years ago. There is no political downside for Obama.
If the usual litany of Conservatives begins to pontificate on the virtues of this particular tax cut regimen, then the Democrats don’t have to run against individual opponents. They are now running against people who prospered when most people did not and George W. Bush. That works quite well.
The wealthy will cry victim, as with any group which has become dependent upon public largesse. There is something decidedly unsympathetic about any group prospering on somebody else’s dime. Welfare kings from Beverly Hills to Beacon Hill are even less sympathetic when one has faced the loss of a career, a home, or a marriage to economic instability.
Governments cost money to run. A progressive taxation policy is not punitive to producers. It means that those who have prospered under a free, democratic system are also responsible for maintaining the integrity of the system which has enabled their prosperity.
Producers know that debt is not a smart choice. The nation is overleveraged. We can ill afford to dump US$700 billion on people who sat on it the last time. An economically broken government cannot assure the security of the nation it serves.
And if he has to, Obama’s going to veto the Bush Tax Cuts anyway.
27 July 2010
Fossil Fuel Free by 2023
The left is losing the green discussion. Progressives are already heavily invested in renewable energy, and that is not a bad thing.
But progressives are losing the political center. Last summer, your Wandering Gentile proposed the concept of “Defensive Energy Autonomy Legislation.” The idea is simple. Fossil fuels make America vulnerable to countries that are not likely to act in the best interests of Americans.
It really does not matter which country with oil is acting. There are enough despots on both sides of the authoritarian spectrum to be of concern to everyone.
So what is the easiest solution? Quit using oil! The time to start was nine years ago, but was hindered by an administration with ties to an industry which needs to become as relevant as typewriter repairmen.
This is not a hard sell. Where did the money for the aviation lessons for 9/ 11 come from? It isn’t exactly like al Qaeda was using Terror Scout cookies to pay for it. This was oil money. Petroleum supports terrorism, period.
The first objective is simple. Take steps to help every home and business in America become a net producer of renewable energy. This is a goal which is possible with technology existing today.
The effect of this upon the economy would be spectacular. There would be a need for twenty million new jobs to manufacture, transport, install, maintain, and recycle renewable energy solutions. Even if one million petroleum workers were displaced, there would be jobs to replace those incomes.
Second, but not secondary is the cumulative effect of individuals becoming masters of their energy, as opposed to utility providers and oil companies. When transportation passed from the hands of the private railroads to the automobile a century ago, the new industry fueled spectacular economic growth.
Most people over 18 appreciate the revolution of information technology, and the subsequent boom in the economy under President Clinton.
Making energy an individual ownership as opposed to a collective commodity would also spur massive economic growth.
A few days ago, we celebrated the 41st anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. In 1961, when President Kennedy put forth the idea that Americans would land on the moon by 1970, America was behind the Soviets in space exploration.
The idea that the United States would pull ahead of the Soviet Union was no less farfetched than the idea that the United States can be fossil fuel free in 13 years sounds now. But it will require the same kind of commitment that the Apollo program required in the sixties.
One believes that America is still the country of The Right Stuff.
We begin with a commitment that every square inch of government roof is covered with solar panels. This opens the market for research and development. It also jump-starts mass production.
At the moment, solar is accessible to the affluent. What happens when solar goes from US$20,000 to US$2,000 per household? When development improves the efficiency of solar to support the heating, cooling, cleaning, and cooking needs of any home at less than the cost of a year of commercially generated electricity?
Kids, TRY THIS AT HOME!
Finally, with energy from renewable sources supplanting commercially generated electricity, a point will come where some of the science fiction aspects of renewable energy could become reality. Compressed hydrogen fuel cells might go from tax-subsidized parity with gasoline and diesel to the equivalent of fifty cents a gallon.
Oh yes, there would be a few more benefits, like reduced pollution, the effective end of petrodespots, and exports of technology to other countries who already know us and respect us as a fair and honest broker.
President Obama was right when he discussed leadership in renewable energy as a boon for the United States. Our objective is to equate the end of an archaic technology with the same honorable patriotic motivations as the space program.
The objective is not to deprive our compatriots of a living from work in the petroleum industry. The desire is to assure that American exceptionalism be preserved from the interests which threaten liberty through terrorism, environmental destruction, and the ability to control the flow of energy which sustains our nation’s standard of living.
The time is right. Right now.
But progressives are losing the political center. Last summer, your Wandering Gentile proposed the concept of “Defensive Energy Autonomy Legislation.” The idea is simple. Fossil fuels make America vulnerable to countries that are not likely to act in the best interests of Americans.
It really does not matter which country with oil is acting. There are enough despots on both sides of the authoritarian spectrum to be of concern to everyone.
So what is the easiest solution? Quit using oil! The time to start was nine years ago, but was hindered by an administration with ties to an industry which needs to become as relevant as typewriter repairmen.
This is not a hard sell. Where did the money for the aviation lessons for 9/ 11 come from? It isn’t exactly like al Qaeda was using Terror Scout cookies to pay for it. This was oil money. Petroleum supports terrorism, period.
The first objective is simple. Take steps to help every home and business in America become a net producer of renewable energy. This is a goal which is possible with technology existing today.
The effect of this upon the economy would be spectacular. There would be a need for twenty million new jobs to manufacture, transport, install, maintain, and recycle renewable energy solutions. Even if one million petroleum workers were displaced, there would be jobs to replace those incomes.
Second, but not secondary is the cumulative effect of individuals becoming masters of their energy, as opposed to utility providers and oil companies. When transportation passed from the hands of the private railroads to the automobile a century ago, the new industry fueled spectacular economic growth.
Most people over 18 appreciate the revolution of information technology, and the subsequent boom in the economy under President Clinton.
Making energy an individual ownership as opposed to a collective commodity would also spur massive economic growth.
A few days ago, we celebrated the 41st anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. In 1961, when President Kennedy put forth the idea that Americans would land on the moon by 1970, America was behind the Soviets in space exploration.
The idea that the United States would pull ahead of the Soviet Union was no less farfetched than the idea that the United States can be fossil fuel free in 13 years sounds now. But it will require the same kind of commitment that the Apollo program required in the sixties.
One believes that America is still the country of The Right Stuff.
We begin with a commitment that every square inch of government roof is covered with solar panels. This opens the market for research and development. It also jump-starts mass production.
At the moment, solar is accessible to the affluent. What happens when solar goes from US$20,000 to US$2,000 per household? When development improves the efficiency of solar to support the heating, cooling, cleaning, and cooking needs of any home at less than the cost of a year of commercially generated electricity?
Kids, TRY THIS AT HOME!
Finally, with energy from renewable sources supplanting commercially generated electricity, a point will come where some of the science fiction aspects of renewable energy could become reality. Compressed hydrogen fuel cells might go from tax-subsidized parity with gasoline and diesel to the equivalent of fifty cents a gallon.
Oh yes, there would be a few more benefits, like reduced pollution, the effective end of petrodespots, and exports of technology to other countries who already know us and respect us as a fair and honest broker.
President Obama was right when he discussed leadership in renewable energy as a boon for the United States. Our objective is to equate the end of an archaic technology with the same honorable patriotic motivations as the space program.
The objective is not to deprive our compatriots of a living from work in the petroleum industry. The desire is to assure that American exceptionalism be preserved from the interests which threaten liberty through terrorism, environmental destruction, and the ability to control the flow of energy which sustains our nation’s standard of living.
The time is right. Right now.
Tony Hayward Gets His Life Back
It appears that BP has figured out that Tony Blair’s liability to their bottom line goes far, far beyond his million-pound-a-year salary.
This is one of those moments where most of the reasonable world is sitting here going DUH! Hayward has been a leading candidate for a Marie Antoinette Award since the Deepwater Horizon blowout in April.
The Marie Antoinette Award is a big slice of cake ingested directly through the esophagus, because the mouth is no longer connected to the stomach. There are no excuses for tone-deaf pronouncements about getting one’s life back; the “little people”; a billion gallons of crude cut loose in the Gulf of Mexico not being that big a deal.
Revelations of dead porpoises, sea turtles burned alive, cleanup workers without access to safety equipment, and Corexit causing rectal bleeding were similarly unconstructive. At the moment, the only thing Republicans and Democrats agree on is that they hate BP.
For a lot of people, the dead sea critters were the deal breaker. Porpoises and Sea Turtles are extremely sympathetic. If someone had any sense, someone would have accentuated something positive like dead jellyfish. Nobody likes jellyfish. They sting and appear to serve no great purpose.
Nope. Pictures of Flipper lying dead on the beach were what came out. That is the moment when one needs to wave a white flag, shut the hell up, and stop making things worse.
Tony Hayward did not have that kind of sense. He got a wild hair to go yachting off England, in a nice, clean ocean. This was after he told the press he “wanted his life back.” He is lucky he does not have to ask for his HEAD back.
The sad part is that the majority of the people who are going to get hurt are not BP executives. They are for the most part pensioners in the UK and the US who trusted their retirement to British Petroleum. Their stock takes it in the tuchas, but Tony Hayward and his cronies won’t lose a farthing.
This is a short lesson in crisis management for the incoming executive at BP. Let’s use the recent disaster as a template of what to do.
Upon hearing of a major screw-up which includes eleven dead, PICK UP A BLOODY PHONE and contact the media in the nearest large city. Once WWL and WDSU in New Orleans have been assuaged, move to step two.
Step two is to at least LOOK accountable. You call Richard Branson and bring a significant number of staff from London on a chartered airliner straight into Louis Armstrong International. You have 48 hours to get your happy ass on the ground at the disaster site.
Step three is obvious. You need two dozen truckloads of Dawn dishwashing detergent rolling to Grand Isle within 72 hours. And a bunch of toothbrushes. Spend an hour every morning on the beach with a coffee can, a toothbrush, and some dish soap.
This does not mean that your life will not suck until you get the blowout capped, but you will continue to have a life once people have forgotten about your indiscretion. It also assures that your company is not on the verge of getting shut down or nationalized in the country where it is operating. It also means that the investors whose interests you are in charge of protecting do not get wiped out.
Finally, should you find yourself in front of investigators, particularly a political body, remember that YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM. There is nothing you can do to appear sympathetic. You have just been caught with your knickers down. This is not a shakedown when you are being held accountable for your own mess.
If someone should attempt to make you out to be the victim, make it clear that you are responsible for a giant problem, and you do not see where living up to your responsibilities makes you a victim.
At this point, you and your dealers are back on the path to profitability.
One hopes that Mr Hayward will enjoy Russia as much as Czar Nicholas.
In 1917.
This is one of those moments where most of the reasonable world is sitting here going DUH! Hayward has been a leading candidate for a Marie Antoinette Award since the Deepwater Horizon blowout in April.
The Marie Antoinette Award is a big slice of cake ingested directly through the esophagus, because the mouth is no longer connected to the stomach. There are no excuses for tone-deaf pronouncements about getting one’s life back; the “little people”; a billion gallons of crude cut loose in the Gulf of Mexico not being that big a deal.
Revelations of dead porpoises, sea turtles burned alive, cleanup workers without access to safety equipment, and Corexit causing rectal bleeding were similarly unconstructive. At the moment, the only thing Republicans and Democrats agree on is that they hate BP.
For a lot of people, the dead sea critters were the deal breaker. Porpoises and Sea Turtles are extremely sympathetic. If someone had any sense, someone would have accentuated something positive like dead jellyfish. Nobody likes jellyfish. They sting and appear to serve no great purpose.
Nope. Pictures of Flipper lying dead on the beach were what came out. That is the moment when one needs to wave a white flag, shut the hell up, and stop making things worse.
Tony Hayward did not have that kind of sense. He got a wild hair to go yachting off England, in a nice, clean ocean. This was after he told the press he “wanted his life back.” He is lucky he does not have to ask for his HEAD back.
The sad part is that the majority of the people who are going to get hurt are not BP executives. They are for the most part pensioners in the UK and the US who trusted their retirement to British Petroleum. Their stock takes it in the tuchas, but Tony Hayward and his cronies won’t lose a farthing.
This is a short lesson in crisis management for the incoming executive at BP. Let’s use the recent disaster as a template of what to do.
Upon hearing of a major screw-up which includes eleven dead, PICK UP A BLOODY PHONE and contact the media in the nearest large city. Once WWL and WDSU in New Orleans have been assuaged, move to step two.
Step two is to at least LOOK accountable. You call Richard Branson and bring a significant number of staff from London on a chartered airliner straight into Louis Armstrong International. You have 48 hours to get your happy ass on the ground at the disaster site.
Step three is obvious. You need two dozen truckloads of Dawn dishwashing detergent rolling to Grand Isle within 72 hours. And a bunch of toothbrushes. Spend an hour every morning on the beach with a coffee can, a toothbrush, and some dish soap.
This does not mean that your life will not suck until you get the blowout capped, but you will continue to have a life once people have forgotten about your indiscretion. It also assures that your company is not on the verge of getting shut down or nationalized in the country where it is operating. It also means that the investors whose interests you are in charge of protecting do not get wiped out.
Finally, should you find yourself in front of investigators, particularly a political body, remember that YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM. There is nothing you can do to appear sympathetic. You have just been caught with your knickers down. This is not a shakedown when you are being held accountable for your own mess.
If someone should attempt to make you out to be the victim, make it clear that you are responsible for a giant problem, and you do not see where living up to your responsibilities makes you a victim.
At this point, you and your dealers are back on the path to profitability.
One hopes that Mr Hayward will enjoy Russia as much as Czar Nicholas.
In 1917.
06 July 2010
Fw: American Management Style
This is quite worthy, and beautifully stated.
----Forwarded Message----
From: professor0400@yahoo.com
To: professor0400@yahoo.com
Sent: Mon Jul 5th, 2010 1:19 PM EDT
Subject: Fw: American Management Style
For the past four years, and even before the 2008 elections, I used
slides in my presentations that basically said, "Who would want to be elected
president in 2008?" The conditions were such that failure was the only
option.
Who do we blame for the Great Depression? Most kids of our
generation learned that it was that mean old Herbert Hoover who was elected in
November 1928 and took office in March, 1929. The stock market crashed in
October 1929 and the Great Depression began. Now Hooverdid a lousy
job of trying to help the nation dig out from the stock market crash and his
policies only made things worse so he still deserves the condemnations of
history, but he didn't create the original catastrophe. That was Calvin
Coolidge and the GOP-business dominated interests of the "roarin' twenties."
How does history treat "Silent Cal?" Not as badly as it should. The last time
the richest 5% of Americans earned 90% of the national income was in the late
1920's… until now, when the same conditions prevail. The last time the stock
market went virtually unfettered and banks and other institutions could put
together and market any kind of financial deals they wanted was during the mid
to late 1920's… until now. The last time the nation left its natural resources
unprotected from unlimited exploitation was during the late 1920's to early
1930's… until now. Then we had a dust bowl and agricultural collapse. Now we
have the Gulf polluted and the fishing industry virtually
destroyed. Déjà vu all over again? (Quoting Yogi Berra)
Just as in the early 1930's, a GOP-controlled legislature refused
to take the hard steps necessary to reverse the nation's economic downslide.
Just as in the 1930's, a GOP-minority blocked via the filibuster many of the
changes proposed by Rooseveltto bring the
nation out of the depression. Just as the country had started to recover, in
1935-36, policies that had encouraged development, jobs and infrastructure,
were thrown into reverse because the "country couldn't afford the debt" … and
as a result, the nation suffered a "double-dip" depression that lasted 4 more
years. Look familiar? The same conditions prevail today. Déjà vu
all over again?
Today's budget woes, (deficits running around 15% of GDP, are of
concern, but still pale to other war-time periods in modern American
history. Look at the WWI and WWII periods when the budget deficits were
2-3 times current rates. We have fought America's longest war
and unlike any other wartime period, how have we been paying for Bush's wars?
In other wars, presidents and Congress called for tax increases to pay for what
had to be done. As Americans always do, we grouched and complained, but
we realized that some sacrifice had to be made. But for Bush's war, what
did we do? We've cut taxes to their lowest rates since the early 1980's
and drove up spending. The richest 1% of Americans pay taxes at a lower
rate than the middle 20%. GOP filibustering means that hedge fund
managers (the same guys that drove the economic collapse in the first place)
pay 10% of their multi-million dollar incomes in taxes while an American family
with an $80-100,000 annual income will pay on average 22-26%. Why should
anyone who makes their living from "investing" pay less taxes on that income
than others who make their livings teaching school or managing a small
business? Yet that is the result of the current filibuster and the
trade-offs required to get even a minimum of sense back into regulating
financial markets.
For the first time since the late 1920's, just before the nation
fell into a Great Depression, American workers earn less than 250 times the
senior managers of the companies they work for. As recently as 1980, this
ration was less than 10:1. All the conditions are there for economic disaster,
so the need for some deficit spending, even serious deficit spending is
evident.
But, the argument goes, our children and grandchildren will have to
pay for it all? Well as John Boehner, the GOP House leader said last
week, we could just raise Social Security retirement to 70 and unemployed
people could just take lesser paying jobs. This when a still uncontrolled
Wall Street is paying gazillion dollar bonuses and corporate farmers are
getting annual multi-million dollar allotments from the government. (Like
that farmer in Missouriwho posted a
billboard condemning the unemployed as just being lazy and Obama as a
socialist, too many Americans are looking for the easy answers without the
sacrifice. That farmer, we learned had been paid over $3 million in the last
few years not to grow anything.) Try to change the farm support program
and see if you can get re-elected.
We can eliminate the deficits in less than 5 years if we just go
back to the same tax rates that we had at the END of the Reagan years as president
in 1989. But can we raise taxes? Americans, among all the
industrialized nations of the world, pay the lowest tax rates… and yet we
complain. We'll we are getting what we pay for, bad schools, poor health care
(37th in the world), a collapsing infrastructure of roads, sewers,
water systems, bridges… you name it. In Arizona, the state has
closed half its state parks because it refuses to raise taxes. After all
the rich have their country clubs, they don't need to pay for parks by parting
with less than 1/4 of 1% of their incomes.
No, we will not raise our taxes a couple of percentage points, we
will continue to wallow and accelerate our status as just another banana
republic, with India, China and Brazil simply shaking the dust from their boots
on us. Thank you GOP, de-regulation and tax cuts have trickled down so
well.
________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. Get busy.
09 June 2010
The Tea Party vs. The Constitution
It looks like the valiant opposition over in the Tea Party wing of conservatism had a pretty rotten night on June 8. They managed to get one candidate on the general ballot, Sharron Angle, in the Nevada Senate race. Otherwise, they went 0-for-Tuesday.
The problem that the Tea Party has is that, despite proclamations that they love the Constitution, Tea Party activists don’t really seem to like it much.
Oh, they love the second and tenth amendments, but the Tea Party does not seem to have much love for the other 25 amendments. The right wing hates the ninth amendment outright, and none of them seem to understand the third. Apparently the whole Founding Fathers respect thing has no traction.
The First Amendment is great when conservatives want to protect the Fox Opinion channel. Who among the Tea Party would accept First Amendment protection for a broadcast network showing The People vs. Larry Flynt, uncut? Yet bigoted, racist, seditious, and even treasonous are okay.
If enough people want to watch an uncut movie about a pornographer on broadcast television, then conservatives are welcome to change the channel, or go read a book.
Special disdain exists for the Fourth through Eighth amendments among the fringe elements of conservative thought. These are areas which may be considered among the greatest controls on the power of governmental intrusion which can be found in American jurisprudence. One would think that people who style themselves libertarian would be in favor of this.
Except that conservatives want exception for certain crimes from these protections. What happens if a quasi-Christian group is accused of planning an attack upon civilians? There was an outcry from conservatives about David Koresh at Waco
The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, could at any point decide that it will be the instrument of Divine vengeance against homosexuals. Let’s hold Fred Phelps without trial and subject him to extraordinary rendition, deny him a jury, and tap his phones. While we’re at it, a couple of those self-styled Minuteman vigilantes can go, too. Vigilantism is terrorism’s developmentally disabled sibling.
This primer comes to the point of the 13th through 15th Amendments. If there is a batch of amendments which hacks the Tea Party off worse than this one, please let us know. These are the amendments which ban slavery, assure that anyone, no matter how not white they may be, can be citizens, and allow all citizens to vote.
Amazingly, the Constitution explicitly defines what “Real Americans” are in the 14th Amendment, and how they are to be treated. Oh snap, there is nothing about race, gender, ancestry, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or political beliefs. No wonder Tea Partiers dislike the 14th Amendment.
As a remedy for the Reconstruction amendments, conservatives led the call for restrictive immigration laws. In times of relative economic prosperity, they saw the need for an expendable, inexpensive labor source. An individual with no rights is better than a slave, which obligates the owner to the cost of maintaining his property. That individual can be worked to death, and who is going to organize or demand treatment which might cut a businesses profit margin?
Businesses are also able to defer the costs of these employees well-being to the taxpayer. Then if things go to hell, send the undocumented back, and get off scot-free. Call this de facto amnesty for flaunting labor, safety, wage, and tax laws. If no amnesty for the undocumented, no amnesty should be countenanced for the individuals and businesses that employed them, either. The businesses made out like bandits.
Of course, there is no love whatsoever for the 16th Amendment, which allows Congress to levy taxes based upon income. Progressives aren’t particularly fond of it either, but it is the best of a bad set of options. Otherwise, any other scheme would be a nanosecond from instituting a New Feudalism.
“Libertarian” Tea Partiers espouse the virtues of the “Fair Tax” scheme, a consumption tax. Does anyone think that the affluent would not defer purchases until absolutely necessary, slowing the economy to a crawl and devastating the middle and lower classes?
The rest of the Constitution, aside from Prohibition, deals with who can vote for President (women, 18-year-olds, the District of Columbia, people not paying poll taxes), some restrictions on who gets elected (direct election of Senators, establishment of electing the President and Vice President together, when the Presidential term starts, how long and under what conditions one can be President), judicial obligations to citizens, and Congressional pay.
It is all important, but pretty dry stuff.
The next time a Tea Partier wishes to regale a progressive with his knowledge of what is and is not constitutional; ask him or her about the 23rd Amendment. It’s the one which allows DC to vote for President, and it does NOT start off with “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”
28 May 2010
The Road Trip
Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I are known for taking road trips. Seldom are they successful. In fact, our road trips only seem to lack the presence of Fred and Ethel Mertz for inclusion in an I Love Lucy rerun.
Case in point, a few years ago, I booked a suite online at a hotel in Atlantic City Atlantic City Camden , but five blocks from a bus line to Absecon, where I could switch buses and get to Atlantic City
On top of this, I had erred gravely on the date of Easter. I hadn’t been to church in a while, and many parishes frown upon loaded semis in unreinforced parking lots. So we missed the holiday by, uh, it doesn’t matter. We missed the holiday, and I will not live it down at any point in the next three eternities.
When we got to Camden
So we took a bus to Absecon, and found a nice, albeit retro, suite at Patel’s Motel. It rained all weekend, but was two whole degrees warmer at 58 Fahrenheit than Easter weekend. This required the purchase of copious quantities of shoes.
Our luck in Florida
Then I got the brilliant idea to go out in the sun. People who observe Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras, and me together are prone to observe the three pretty ladies and, “…damn, Casper
I spent two months with my legs in the same peculiar shade of orange as John Boehner’s face. And I learned that an extremely bad sunburn itches. It itches A LOT. I remembered to cover my coconut and arms, but I had NEVER had sunburn on my legs in 40 years of living.
I don’t ever want the second one. From now on I wear a burqa to the beach.
This year, we had an abbreviated visit to Florida
Mrs. Wandering Gentile was not as enthusiastic about us returning to Lone Star Burger for dinner. She wanted chicken, and half a mile before we got to Lone Star Burger, there was an Admiral Squibby’s Connecticut Chicken. I would not have chosen Admiral Squibby’s, being that we have one so close to home their grease spatters our back patio.
Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras (Jasmine and Sasha), and I were to split 16 pieces of Hartford Hot chicken, two pints of El Morro Style black beans and rice, four Big River sodas, and four Adirondack Apple pies.
As Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I were filling our sodas at the fountain, there came an unholy roar from the dining area. The suction pulled my Red Sox cap straight off my burqa.
We entered to find Sasha, the younger, but physically more imposing of the two sisters hunkered in the corner in a Jet Li pose, defending a Hartford Hot drumstick.
Everything else was gone. Our order; a table that the manager was pretty sure was there when he got there; and some New Haven Hush Puppies which were not technically ours, because they had been technically paid for by the polite senior Canadian couple at the next table.
As I made things right with the Canadians, I heard Mrs. Wandering Gentile ask the petite Jasmine what she had to say for herself.
“I was hungry. Can we get ice cream?”
It wasn’t me this time.
09 May 2010
Carol, the Illegal Alien
The following includes the real laws as they are enforced. "Carol" is a composite of several individuals who are detrimentally affected by current immigration legislation. One hopes that the gentle reader will forgive the use of a composite, being that it protects the identities of more than one decent human being who got screwed over.
Carol is an undocumented immigrant. She entered the United States legally in 1992 as a 22-year-old student at a major university in the Southeast. Carol did well in her studies, and married her first husband, a Mathematics major at the same school, in 1993.
At the time they were under the impression that marriage provided automatic permanent residency in the United States. Carol and her first husband did not file the appropriate paperwork in 1993. Her student visa expired with her graduation from the university in 1994.
In 1995, Carol and her first husband split, a couple of months before their second anniversary. She caught him balancing equations with an 18-year-old intern from Tuscaloosa, and neither one had any clothes on.
She continued on a career path at a restaurant chain in a major Sun Belt city. Carol eventually remarried, to Mike, who hated math, and refused to balance his checkbook. They have two boys, Dylan and Josh, ages 13 and 10. Carol managed to ascend to the post of district manager with the restaurant chain when complications arose.
In 2007, Carol went to renew her driver's license. As a result of the Real ID laws passed after 9/11, Carol was asked for more documentation of her residency. As can be imagined, she didn't have any, or know that she had needed any.
Carol's husband, Mike, was unaware that there was any complication with her residency status in the United States. Upon discovery of issues with Carol's documentation, they consulted with an attorney about normalizing her status.
Actually, they consulted with more than one. Several requested fees up front, only to tell them that her case was next to impossible to normalize, once they got a hundred and fifty bucks or so. A couple made promises that there would be no problem in arranging her documentation, demanding fees in the thousands of dollars beyond the thousands of dollars needed for the appropriate government applications.
Only one such attorney was necessary to break the illusion that he could do any better than the attorney who told them, for free, that there was nothing he could do.
The next year, a participant in E-Verify absorbed Carol's employer. Carol's 12 years of exemplary work, commendation and competence vaporized overnight. A large chunk of her family's income vaporized as well. So did their ability to continue to make their mortgage payments, car payments, and provide a better upbringing for their kids.
They are now living in a rented mobile home near Mike's parents. The kids have been taken out of their quality suburban school district, and now face the free lunch lines and the methamphetamine addiction issues common to rural America. The boys now exhibit behavior issues due to the upheavals in their lives.
Carol's husband does the best he can, but his job requires frequent travel. They manage to keep a roof and lights, but her husband has the nagging concern that his telephone will ring with the call that his wife has been removed from their home. They joke that the employment options which would keep him closer to home involve such a drastic pay cut that he would be forced to sell one of the kids.
A large component of Carol's family no longer resides in her native country. Some are in Canada, others in Europe. A few live in the United States, some around the sun belt city where she settled in the nineties. Some are legal, others not so much.
If Carol is caught without papers, she will be returned to her native country for a minimum of ten years for remaining in the United States for more than 180 days without the appropriate papers. That means that she faces a minimum of ten years before she can reapply for legal readmission to the United States.
Neither her husband nor her children speak her native language, so relocation is not an option for them.
There are those who want others to conflate the face of undocumented immigration with a tiny subculture of thugs, young men and women of ill will. But the truth is very different, filled with men and women like Carol and her family. Before considering the one in a hundred with evil in his heart, the ninety-nine like Carol are deserving of our compassion, our understanding, and our embrace as a nation of immigrants.
Carol is an undocumented immigrant. She entered the United States legally in 1992 as a 22-year-old student at a major university in the Southeast. Carol did well in her studies, and married her first husband, a Mathematics major at the same school, in 1993.
At the time they were under the impression that marriage provided automatic permanent residency in the United States. Carol and her first husband did not file the appropriate paperwork in 1993. Her student visa expired with her graduation from the university in 1994.
In 1995, Carol and her first husband split, a couple of months before their second anniversary. She caught him balancing equations with an 18-year-old intern from Tuscaloosa, and neither one had any clothes on.
She continued on a career path at a restaurant chain in a major Sun Belt city. Carol eventually remarried, to Mike, who hated math, and refused to balance his checkbook. They have two boys, Dylan and Josh, ages 13 and 10. Carol managed to ascend to the post of district manager with the restaurant chain when complications arose.
In 2007, Carol went to renew her driver's license. As a result of the Real ID laws passed after 9/11, Carol was asked for more documentation of her residency. As can be imagined, she didn't have any, or know that she had needed any.
Carol's husband, Mike, was unaware that there was any complication with her residency status in the United States. Upon discovery of issues with Carol's documentation, they consulted with an attorney about normalizing her status.
Actually, they consulted with more than one. Several requested fees up front, only to tell them that her case was next to impossible to normalize, once they got a hundred and fifty bucks or so. A couple made promises that there would be no problem in arranging her documentation, demanding fees in the thousands of dollars beyond the thousands of dollars needed for the appropriate government applications.
Only one such attorney was necessary to break the illusion that he could do any better than the attorney who told them, for free, that there was nothing he could do.
The next year, a participant in E-Verify absorbed Carol's employer. Carol's 12 years of exemplary work, commendation and competence vaporized overnight. A large chunk of her family's income vaporized as well. So did their ability to continue to make their mortgage payments, car payments, and provide a better upbringing for their kids.
They are now living in a rented mobile home near Mike's parents. The kids have been taken out of their quality suburban school district, and now face the free lunch lines and the methamphetamine addiction issues common to rural America. The boys now exhibit behavior issues due to the upheavals in their lives.
Carol's husband does the best he can, but his job requires frequent travel. They manage to keep a roof and lights, but her husband has the nagging concern that his telephone will ring with the call that his wife has been removed from their home. They joke that the employment options which would keep him closer to home involve such a drastic pay cut that he would be forced to sell one of the kids.
A large component of Carol's family no longer resides in her native country. Some are in Canada, others in Europe. A few live in the United States, some around the sun belt city where she settled in the nineties. Some are legal, others not so much.
If Carol is caught without papers, she will be returned to her native country for a minimum of ten years for remaining in the United States for more than 180 days without the appropriate papers. That means that she faces a minimum of ten years before she can reapply for legal readmission to the United States.
Neither her husband nor her children speak her native language, so relocation is not an option for them.
There are those who want others to conflate the face of undocumented immigration with a tiny subculture of thugs, young men and women of ill will. But the truth is very different, filled with men and women like Carol and her family. Before considering the one in a hundred with evil in his heart, the ninety-nine like Carol are deserving of our compassion, our understanding, and our embrace as a nation of immigrants.
23 April 2010
One Month
The Republican Party has chosen immigration as its method of suicide. All eight mourners will be found at a Tea Party rally in Wichita Falls, dehydrated and badly sunburned. Survivors will include the Conservative and the Libertarian parties.
To explain: the Arizona Senate has approved SB 1070, a state law which criminalizes undocumented immigration. There seems to be a better than likely possibility that Governor Jan Brewer will either sign the law or it will be left to become law without her signature. And then it will be open season on Latino residents of Arizona, particularly for Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
That will last about thirty days, until every legal mechanism in the state of Arizona pancakes. There will be video, probably of a particularly gratuitous violation of civil rights, upon an American citizen of Latin ancestry. The civil rights violation may be of a photogenic young woman.
In the short term, this is a disaster for the latino citizens of Arizona. In the long term, this is the calving of the Bigot Glacier from the Republican Party. It is not Montgomery on a cold December evening in 1955. This is very likely immigration reform’s Pettus Bridge, its Bloody Sunday.
The difference is that this is 2010. How many violations of civil rights will be captured on video-equipped cell phones? The first half-dozen will be on YouTube within 72 hours. Meanwhile, law enforcement resources will be concentrated upon this onerous enactment.
After a couple of hundred erroneous arrests of American citizens, the dockets of Arizona’s courts will clog like the arteries of a fried food enthusiast.
Note to Citizens and legal residents arrested erroneously: DEMAND JURY TRIALS! Nothing will gum up the works like jury trials. Nothing will work in favor of reform like a justice system full of fertilizer, either, particularly when greater infractions against humanity are going unpunished.
Every improper arrest deserves a big honking Federal lawsuit over civil rights, too. The symbol will be, again, a Citizen, female, preferably a young mother. Video will be involved. (Rule 1 again, this is 2010, fool, there is video everywhere.) Put the feds in the mix.
Arizona is bankrupt. They really cannot afford this kind of publicity. The sales tax is 12% in some places. The real estate market has collapsed. A law that has the potential to generate billions in lawsuits is not going to be a real incentive for businesses to locate in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Kingman or Yuma.
Businesses in Yuma could find it advantageous to relocate across the river in Winter Haven, California. In Phoenix’s dubious downtown, where newcomers frequently ask “where’s downtown?” only to be informed that they’re in it, office rental rates will plummet. Large national and international businesses are not going to hang around to pay for the enforcement end of this debacle. They may well find Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, or El Paso to be much more hospitable.
The stereotypical goat-roping, oversize pickup-driving, sunglasses on a cord-wearing middle-aged-frat-boy Tea Partier is ginning up to celebrate his pyrrhic victory. He will be elated about how “we sure stood up to bring about the rule of law in Arizona.”
Note to Tea Party Traitors: When did anything that y’all supported work out anywhere but in Tea Party Utopia? Do you really think you deserve the country back? The Bush administration turned a budget on a path to zero deficits by now into something like 14 trillion dollars of debt. Nah, screw that. Even when Democrats screw up, they manage to occasionally get something right. A 30% average is still better than nothing.
The crystal ball says that this is the beginning of the very shank of the Tea Party Movement. Most large companies who had an interest in financing Tea Party Rallies against Health Care Reform have no interest in financing rallies against comprehensive immigration reform. The short answer is quite easy: No large national business besides Fox News has an economic interest in enraging 15% of the population of the United States.
With the 15% of the population which is latino, count another 14% of the market which is African-American and sensitive to overt bigotry. Beyond that, about 45% of whites are disinclined to agree with any bigoted manifestation. In other words, any business backing an anti-immigration Tea Party Rally is going to alienate 65% or so of the population instantly.
Whether or not one likes the mentality of some businesspeople, they aren’t STUPID.
Timeline:
Any minute, SB 1070 will become law. Within 72 hours an obvious violation of Civil Rights will appear on YouTube. Within 2 weeks, The Obama Administration will back a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. Within 24 hours of that, Hannity, Beck, and a few of the other Hitler Youth will proclaim a Tea Party on Fox News. Corporate backing will not exist, leaving the group an eclectic mix of white and whiter.
At thirty days, Comprehensive Immigration Reform will be on President Obama’s desk for his signature, a codicil of which will void all non-federal legislation regarding immigration restrictions. Republicans like Mitch (The Chinless Wonder) McConnell will be left to screech, showing racist tendencies.
Oh yeah, one other thing. The Latino vote can turn an election in several Senate races, particularly California, Illinois, Florida, New York, and Arizona.
Stay tuned. This may be a lot of fun for progressives in November.
To explain: the Arizona Senate has approved SB 1070, a state law which criminalizes undocumented immigration. There seems to be a better than likely possibility that Governor Jan Brewer will either sign the law or it will be left to become law without her signature. And then it will be open season on Latino residents of Arizona, particularly for Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
That will last about thirty days, until every legal mechanism in the state of Arizona pancakes. There will be video, probably of a particularly gratuitous violation of civil rights, upon an American citizen of Latin ancestry. The civil rights violation may be of a photogenic young woman.
In the short term, this is a disaster for the latino citizens of Arizona. In the long term, this is the calving of the Bigot Glacier from the Republican Party. It is not Montgomery on a cold December evening in 1955. This is very likely immigration reform’s Pettus Bridge, its Bloody Sunday.
The difference is that this is 2010. How many violations of civil rights will be captured on video-equipped cell phones? The first half-dozen will be on YouTube within 72 hours. Meanwhile, law enforcement resources will be concentrated upon this onerous enactment.
After a couple of hundred erroneous arrests of American citizens, the dockets of Arizona’s courts will clog like the arteries of a fried food enthusiast.
Note to Citizens and legal residents arrested erroneously: DEMAND JURY TRIALS! Nothing will gum up the works like jury trials. Nothing will work in favor of reform like a justice system full of fertilizer, either, particularly when greater infractions against humanity are going unpunished.
Every improper arrest deserves a big honking Federal lawsuit over civil rights, too. The symbol will be, again, a Citizen, female, preferably a young mother. Video will be involved. (Rule 1 again, this is 2010, fool, there is video everywhere.) Put the feds in the mix.
Arizona is bankrupt. They really cannot afford this kind of publicity. The sales tax is 12% in some places. The real estate market has collapsed. A law that has the potential to generate billions in lawsuits is not going to be a real incentive for businesses to locate in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Kingman or Yuma.
Businesses in Yuma could find it advantageous to relocate across the river in Winter Haven, California. In Phoenix’s dubious downtown, where newcomers frequently ask “where’s downtown?” only to be informed that they’re in it, office rental rates will plummet. Large national and international businesses are not going to hang around to pay for the enforcement end of this debacle. They may well find Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, or El Paso to be much more hospitable.
The stereotypical goat-roping, oversize pickup-driving, sunglasses on a cord-wearing middle-aged-frat-boy Tea Partier is ginning up to celebrate his pyrrhic victory. He will be elated about how “we sure stood up to bring about the rule of law in Arizona.”
Note to Tea Party Traitors: When did anything that y’all supported work out anywhere but in Tea Party Utopia? Do you really think you deserve the country back? The Bush administration turned a budget on a path to zero deficits by now into something like 14 trillion dollars of debt. Nah, screw that. Even when Democrats screw up, they manage to occasionally get something right. A 30% average is still better than nothing.
The crystal ball says that this is the beginning of the very shank of the Tea Party Movement. Most large companies who had an interest in financing Tea Party Rallies against Health Care Reform have no interest in financing rallies against comprehensive immigration reform. The short answer is quite easy: No large national business besides Fox News has an economic interest in enraging 15% of the population of the United States.
With the 15% of the population which is latino, count another 14% of the market which is African-American and sensitive to overt bigotry. Beyond that, about 45% of whites are disinclined to agree with any bigoted manifestation. In other words, any business backing an anti-immigration Tea Party Rally is going to alienate 65% or so of the population instantly.
Whether or not one likes the mentality of some businesspeople, they aren’t STUPID.
Timeline:
Any minute, SB 1070 will become law. Within 72 hours an obvious violation of Civil Rights will appear on YouTube. Within 2 weeks, The Obama Administration will back a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. Within 24 hours of that, Hannity, Beck, and a few of the other Hitler Youth will proclaim a Tea Party on Fox News. Corporate backing will not exist, leaving the group an eclectic mix of white and whiter.
At thirty days, Comprehensive Immigration Reform will be on President Obama’s desk for his signature, a codicil of which will void all non-federal legislation regarding immigration restrictions. Republicans like Mitch (The Chinless Wonder) McConnell will be left to screech, showing racist tendencies.
Oh yeah, one other thing. The Latino vote can turn an election in several Senate races, particularly California, Illinois, Florida, New York, and Arizona.
Stay tuned. This may be a lot of fun for progressives in November.
22 April 2010
FEEDBACK
A gentle reader has informed your Wandering Gentile that it is impossible to believe that A: President Obama is acting in the best interests of the United States of America, and B: That the nation is well on its way to losing constitutional protection.
Were this an anonymous individual lacking credibility as a reasonable human being, one's first response is to suggest- rather vehemently and sarcastically- that no further credence be given to Glenn Beck. This is the tack one chose when his meal was interrupted by a Tea Party enthusiast at a truck stop in Nebraska.
But the individual is a friend with whom I disagree. That makes things complicated.
President Obama could stand to be a bit more forceful and yield less on his policies. Indeed, some of his measures have been more Moderate than Progressive. This is to the President's political benefit. It is also frustrating, and sadly necessary.
To suggest that Obama does not have the best interests of the nation at heart is to buy into the belief that he is the puppet of a conspiracy to bring down the United States. After the Bush family's international entanglements (Prescott-Nazi Germany, George H. W.-China, George W.-Saudi Arabia), a more compelling argument could be made for their disinterest in the future of the United States.
What is most truthful is that any public figure has any number of associations which could be construed as harmful to the wefare of the nation in general. The time has come to compare actions as opposed to associations. Just because one knows someone, professionally or personally, is no guarantee that they share values or ideas. This leftover from the McCarthy era deserves a very loud, very public Viking funeral.
With regard to the protections of the United States Constitution, it somehow seems that President Obama, a scholar, lecturer, and professor of Constitutional law would be an ideal candidate for protecting them. The Bush administration was culpable for egregious abuses of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth amendments.
We may not like the accused that the Constitution protects. We also may agree that they are guilty as hell before the trial. But if no protection existed under Bush, the same level of disregard can be countenanced under Obama. One has argued repeatedly that the key difference between Mohammed Atta and Timothy McVeigh is the alphabet used in the Holy texts that they carried.
No effort appears to be underway to deprive the right of trial and human decency to those for whom the teachings of Jesus Christ and violence against their fellow man can cohabit with utter tranquility.
With regard to health care reform, and the Constitutionality thereof, it has not been embraced as fulfilling the desires of the core of either political party. However, it is a positive step. One waits (with bated breath) for someone to point out any key differences with the plan signed into law by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. While there is no guarantee of health care in the Constitution, neither is there a guarantee of an organization reaping massive profits while denying care to those in need.
The interest which serves the greater welfare of the nation is curing sick citizens, not making a small number of executives a bit more wealthy.
Ultimately, we anticipate some sort of re-regulation of the financial services industry, immigration reform, and a new, young, progressive Supreme Court justice to take the place of the retiring Justice Stevens.
One hopes that no offense has been inferred. Some of the conservative speakers are compelling and entertaining. However, they are not acting so much in the interests of their audiences as they are those of the small number who sign their paychecks.
The behavior of President Obama is the same, but with a much larger number of people signing his check.
Were this an anonymous individual lacking credibility as a reasonable human being, one's first response is to suggest- rather vehemently and sarcastically- that no further credence be given to Glenn Beck. This is the tack one chose when his meal was interrupted by a Tea Party enthusiast at a truck stop in Nebraska.
But the individual is a friend with whom I disagree. That makes things complicated.
President Obama could stand to be a bit more forceful and yield less on his policies. Indeed, some of his measures have been more Moderate than Progressive. This is to the President's political benefit. It is also frustrating, and sadly necessary.
To suggest that Obama does not have the best interests of the nation at heart is to buy into the belief that he is the puppet of a conspiracy to bring down the United States. After the Bush family's international entanglements (Prescott-Nazi Germany, George H. W.-China, George W.-Saudi Arabia), a more compelling argument could be made for their disinterest in the future of the United States.
What is most truthful is that any public figure has any number of associations which could be construed as harmful to the wefare of the nation in general. The time has come to compare actions as opposed to associations. Just because one knows someone, professionally or personally, is no guarantee that they share values or ideas. This leftover from the McCarthy era deserves a very loud, very public Viking funeral.
With regard to the protections of the United States Constitution, it somehow seems that President Obama, a scholar, lecturer, and professor of Constitutional law would be an ideal candidate for protecting them. The Bush administration was culpable for egregious abuses of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth amendments.
We may not like the accused that the Constitution protects. We also may agree that they are guilty as hell before the trial. But if no protection existed under Bush, the same level of disregard can be countenanced under Obama. One has argued repeatedly that the key difference between Mohammed Atta and Timothy McVeigh is the alphabet used in the Holy texts that they carried.
No effort appears to be underway to deprive the right of trial and human decency to those for whom the teachings of Jesus Christ and violence against their fellow man can cohabit with utter tranquility.
With regard to health care reform, and the Constitutionality thereof, it has not been embraced as fulfilling the desires of the core of either political party. However, it is a positive step. One waits (with bated breath) for someone to point out any key differences with the plan signed into law by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. While there is no guarantee of health care in the Constitution, neither is there a guarantee of an organization reaping massive profits while denying care to those in need.
The interest which serves the greater welfare of the nation is curing sick citizens, not making a small number of executives a bit more wealthy.
Ultimately, we anticipate some sort of re-regulation of the financial services industry, immigration reform, and a new, young, progressive Supreme Court justice to take the place of the retiring Justice Stevens.
One hopes that no offense has been inferred. Some of the conservative speakers are compelling and entertaining. However, they are not acting so much in the interests of their audiences as they are those of the small number who sign their paychecks.
The behavior of President Obama is the same, but with a much larger number of people signing his check.
10 April 2010
Penance. (Learn it, love it, live it.)
There comes a time when one must renounce evil. It is a key part of the prayers surrounding Roman Catholic baptisms. There is also a point where one is instructed to go and sin no more. This is one of the commands of the reconciliation sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church. These are points of faith which are non-negotiable for believers.
These are also points which should be non-negotiable for the Church, as well. In the case of the sexual abuse of children, there is no excuse. In the case of covering up clerical abusers, none can hide their face from an almighty and omnipotent God. When the Pope himself is complicit in the stonewalling authorities protecting the interests of abused children, the presumption of infallibility comes to a crashing halt.
This is not a point of indicting the Roman Catholic Church. This is a point of suggesting that the Church live up to the same standards it expects from its faithful. The Vatican is culpable in these abuse cases; they are also fundamentally responsible for reconciling with the wronged, the faithful, and God.
The fashionable thing among some circles of progressives is to belittle people of faith. That is tragic. Throughout history, great progressive change has come from places where the faithful and non-believers alike put aside their differences to achieve a common goal. Over the last thirty years, Conservatives have monopolized the positions of the publicly faithful.
Likewise, a conservative mindset of unaccountable behavior has pervaded the Catholic Church in America. The Church has lost the new connection it developed with the faithful it found after the Vatican Council of 1963. The daring outreach to welcome all into modern Catholicism seen under the early papacy of John Paul II has devolved into something resembling the church's medieval incarnation.
This is not a point where the Church holds the same kind of absolute power it held in 1020. If Roman Catholicism is going to survive, then the Vatican is in deep need of change. That can only come from the papacy itself.
The vow of celibacy is something which lives honestly within the vast majority of the Roman Catholic Clergy. But it is not something which is going to perpetuate the Catholic church. The pool of candidates for the priesthood begins limited.
When the candidate pool starts with the condition of foregoing a normal sexual relationship with a woman, it compounds the sins of those who get their pleasure from a position of power over their victims. Whatever the sins of Ted Haggard and Jimmy Swaggart were, they were committed with adults, people who were capable of choosing right and wrong. These were not acts of choice for the children and adolescents involved.
The huge majority of priests who fulfill their commitment to their vows are now obligated to carry the cross upon which the sins of a small number of clergymen will not be hung. It is wrong to protect and hide the sins of a few and ruin the reputation of the honorable. It is foul, and evil, and spectacularly un-Christlike.
A time will come when Rome will be forced to ask forgiveness of those who have been wronged. As John Paul II reached out to the other sects of Christendom, and took steps to reconcile with Judaism, a Pope may find a way to reconcile with the flock he has been called to shepherd.
It will not be an act of faith or goodwill coming from this Pope to atone for the evil committed in the name of the faith he heads. Atonement does not come from tacit support of those who violated children, nor the arrogant posturing which compares an outcry against the same evil to the greatest horrors against humanity. It just is not that kind of atmosphere.
Thankfully, there are places for those who love the Catholic liturgy, and retain their faith in Jesus Christ. It is a sign that a connection with God need not come at a cost of children's suffering to protect those who hurt them.
That is an objective which is worthy of the Saviour served.
02 April 2010
As the GOP Turns
It looks like the Elephant Party is getting a little bit nervous about their prospects. One feels a bit of schaudefreude while watching. One also suspects that he will get over it.
The first thing to remember is that the Republican Party will not be more popular at any point this year than they are right now. At the moment, this is their peak, and they're still hanging within a point or two of a fifty-fifty split on their best issues. This is not a bad sign: it is a harbinger of inevitable doom.
Things are not improving. There are a couple of hundred-hour cycle news stories going right now which look particularly bad, like the large sex club expense, the telephone porn line listed as a GOP donation number, and some not-so-behind the scenes infighting between different factions of the party. The Republicans are on the eve of self-destruction.
Problem number one: the most visible ideologues are quickly becoming irrelevant. Limbaugh is dismissed as an elderly pedophile with erectile dysfunction. Hannity is serving as apologist for domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. Beck may be recalled to Planet Crying Psycho at any moment. The House Minority Whip, Boner Boehner has had a public meltdown on television. Policy is rapidly conforming to Sarah Palin, who does not work or play well with conservatives who are not radicalized.
Problem number two: radicalized conservatives are closing upon the date when they may abandon the Republican party. This is slowly moving toward probability. Some of the most worthy objectives of the Tea Party movement are being drowned out by factions which have co-opted to find a market for prejudiced, self defeating propaganda.
The disconnect will come. Laudable objectives like a balanced budget, and greater individual freedom will begin to conflict with those who would prefer dictatorial powers to enforce their vision of an orderly society. Participants who are sincere about libertarian principles will become disenchanted with factions espousing totalitarian authority in individual matters.
That notwithstanding, without an industry offering unlimited resources to provide venues and media coverage, the majority of tea party supporters will drift away. They may be gone as early as June, inflated participation numbers, Glenn Beck, and all.
Problem number three: President Obama won the game he was supposed to lose. Does anyone else remember the comment that Health Care Reform could be Obama's Waterloo? Well, it was closer to right than anyone thought...with the possible exception of President Obama. He knew his presidency was on the line. Republicans thought it was a game of chance.
Obama was playing a game of skill, say, chess. He won. Obama was also using his board, his pieces, and his rules. Barack Obama is extremely risk averse, and he really hates to lose. This makes him extremely dangerous as an opponent, and pretty much nearly impossible to beat.
Republicans could have been a bit more observant about the President's character. Instead of giving the President his Waterloo, the GOP may well have found theirs.
Watch the short term. President Obama will find a way to commandeer one key rhetorical point belonging to Republicans before the election. A possibility may be found in the post from 14 July, 2009 Cap and Death or Cake and Trade. If he takes the tax cut or national security ball from the Republicans, they can expect a long time out in the woods.
That would be called Checkmate. The President is unlikely to pussy-foot around in dealing with the Republicans in the near term.
Then watch for a screaming turn to the left on 21 January, 2013.
The first thing to remember is that the Republican Party will not be more popular at any point this year than they are right now. At the moment, this is their peak, and they're still hanging within a point or two of a fifty-fifty split on their best issues. This is not a bad sign: it is a harbinger of inevitable doom.
Things are not improving. There are a couple of hundred-hour cycle news stories going right now which look particularly bad, like the large sex club expense, the telephone porn line listed as a GOP donation number, and some not-so-behind the scenes infighting between different factions of the party. The Republicans are on the eve of self-destruction.
Problem number one: the most visible ideologues are quickly becoming irrelevant. Limbaugh is dismissed as an elderly pedophile with erectile dysfunction. Hannity is serving as apologist for domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. Beck may be recalled to Planet Crying Psycho at any moment. The House Minority Whip, Boner Boehner has had a public meltdown on television. Policy is rapidly conforming to Sarah Palin, who does not work or play well with conservatives who are not radicalized.
Problem number two: radicalized conservatives are closing upon the date when they may abandon the Republican party. This is slowly moving toward probability. Some of the most worthy objectives of the Tea Party movement are being drowned out by factions which have co-opted to find a market for prejudiced, self defeating propaganda.
The disconnect will come. Laudable objectives like a balanced budget, and greater individual freedom will begin to conflict with those who would prefer dictatorial powers to enforce their vision of an orderly society. Participants who are sincere about libertarian principles will become disenchanted with factions espousing totalitarian authority in individual matters.
That notwithstanding, without an industry offering unlimited resources to provide venues and media coverage, the majority of tea party supporters will drift away. They may be gone as early as June, inflated participation numbers, Glenn Beck, and all.
Problem number three: President Obama won the game he was supposed to lose. Does anyone else remember the comment that Health Care Reform could be Obama's Waterloo? Well, it was closer to right than anyone thought...with the possible exception of President Obama. He knew his presidency was on the line. Republicans thought it was a game of chance.
Obama was playing a game of skill, say, chess. He won. Obama was also using his board, his pieces, and his rules. Barack Obama is extremely risk averse, and he really hates to lose. This makes him extremely dangerous as an opponent, and pretty much nearly impossible to beat.
Republicans could have been a bit more observant about the President's character. Instead of giving the President his Waterloo, the GOP may well have found theirs.
Watch the short term. President Obama will find a way to commandeer one key rhetorical point belonging to Republicans before the election. A possibility may be found in the post from 14 July, 2009 Cap and Death or Cake and Trade. If he takes the tax cut or national security ball from the Republicans, they can expect a long time out in the woods.
That would be called Checkmate. The President is unlikely to pussy-foot around in dealing with the Republicans in the near term.
Then watch for a screaming turn to the left on 21 January, 2013.
Hutaree Putaree
A great old comedy routine has the members of several fringe groups showing up to protest. The audience is eventually shown a few people protesting the same event, with each individual having a slightly different group name, and slightly differing ethos and objectives. By the end of the routine, the fractious protesters had devolved into fighting amongst themselves over the most trivial of differences.
(My recollection is that it is a Monty Python routine, but I have been wrong before.)
Artistic vision, meet reality.
When the Hutaree Militia story broke on Monday, one expected the worst stereotypes of rural whites of marginal educational attainment. One was not disappointed. Among the detained included an individual with a mullet hairstyle. The apparent headquarters was a primered manufactured home with appliances in the yard. There were nine members, and four were from the same household.
That gene pool is definitely a puddle.
We have entered into an era when the broader populace has been asked what the appropriate role of government is. The answer has been a grudging acknowledgement that there are times when the public sector can do a better job of serving the public than a profit-motivated private sector.
This does not serve certain interests, as they will be obligated to take a pay cut from a killing to a living. The objective then becomes the discovery of individuals willing to act opposing their own best interests.
There are groups who are under the illusion that not only their lifestyle (such as it may be) is threatened, but their very survival is endangered as well. This has to be stressful. The group's nominal affiliation is not as important as the commonality in the methodry.
The group requires poor educational attainment among the leadership. Critical thinking is detrimental to indoctrination. It does not take a fifth grade education to see that there may be some holes in the following:
"We are going to take out some police officers and their families, develop a fortress in four Michigan counties and fight off the Antichrist and the New World Order."
I hate to break this to y'all, but I think you're going to need a bigger boat, and more than nine members. Has someone smoked himself stupid?
There is also little argument that there is a question of discipline in some of the fringe groups. Honestly, who can argue for group discipline when there are appliances in the yard??? And don't even get me started on mullets conforming to the dress code.
Fringe groups are convenient for those who are able to leverage individual dissatisfaction with poverty into rabid, virulent, violent manifestations. Other groups are taking opportunities, not a lack of educational accomplishment. A faceless colussus has ruined the individual. God is on His way back, and He ain't happy.
The main differnce between these mullet-and-camouflage Americans and the Islamists who destroyed the Twin Towers is limited to language and form of worship. Both rejoice at the loss of innocent life; both have chosen the United States as sworn enemy; both draw from the poorest, least educated and most vulnerable populations of their respective societies.
Small terror cells are useful to certain interests. The chaos wrought can be of practical use to artificially inflate the prices of commodities and services. The violence can be used to suppress moderation. They are cheap, effective, and fundamentally expendable.
One looks forward to the Hutaree detainments being the start of a strong program to impede the greatest terrorist threat facing the peaceful people of the United States of America: Right-wing white anti-government Christians.
Oh yeah, how's that profiling stuff working for ya?
(My recollection is that it is a Monty Python routine, but I have been wrong before.)
Artistic vision, meet reality.
When the Hutaree Militia story broke on Monday, one expected the worst stereotypes of rural whites of marginal educational attainment. One was not disappointed. Among the detained included an individual with a mullet hairstyle. The apparent headquarters was a primered manufactured home with appliances in the yard. There were nine members, and four were from the same household.
That gene pool is definitely a puddle.
We have entered into an era when the broader populace has been asked what the appropriate role of government is. The answer has been a grudging acknowledgement that there are times when the public sector can do a better job of serving the public than a profit-motivated private sector.
This does not serve certain interests, as they will be obligated to take a pay cut from a killing to a living. The objective then becomes the discovery of individuals willing to act opposing their own best interests.
There are groups who are under the illusion that not only their lifestyle (such as it may be) is threatened, but their very survival is endangered as well. This has to be stressful. The group's nominal affiliation is not as important as the commonality in the methodry.
The group requires poor educational attainment among the leadership. Critical thinking is detrimental to indoctrination. It does not take a fifth grade education to see that there may be some holes in the following:
"We are going to take out some police officers and their families, develop a fortress in four Michigan counties and fight off the Antichrist and the New World Order."
I hate to break this to y'all, but I think you're going to need a bigger boat, and more than nine members. Has someone smoked himself stupid?
There is also little argument that there is a question of discipline in some of the fringe groups. Honestly, who can argue for group discipline when there are appliances in the yard??? And don't even get me started on mullets conforming to the dress code.
Fringe groups are convenient for those who are able to leverage individual dissatisfaction with poverty into rabid, virulent, violent manifestations. Other groups are taking opportunities, not a lack of educational accomplishment. A faceless colussus has ruined the individual. God is on His way back, and He ain't happy.
The main differnce between these mullet-and-camouflage Americans and the Islamists who destroyed the Twin Towers is limited to language and form of worship. Both rejoice at the loss of innocent life; both have chosen the United States as sworn enemy; both draw from the poorest, least educated and most vulnerable populations of their respective societies.
Small terror cells are useful to certain interests. The chaos wrought can be of practical use to artificially inflate the prices of commodities and services. The violence can be used to suppress moderation. They are cheap, effective, and fundamentally expendable.
One looks forward to the Hutaree detainments being the start of a strong program to impede the greatest terrorist threat facing the peaceful people of the United States of America: Right-wing white anti-government Christians.
Oh yeah, how's that profiling stuff working for ya?
01 April 2010
28 March 2010
One More Analysis of Health Care Reform
Health care reform looks like its dragging on President Obama right now, and it probably is. However, this is still March, and the President is going to look like a genius in November.
The Republicans, in addition to not doing things which benefit quotidian Americans, also manage to not benefit themselves. Should they continue at this rate, we may actually see a political party succeed at self-immolation.
John Boehner with his "HELL NO!" rant is living on borrowed time. While his district is conservative, there is a very good chance that a pro-labor Blue Dog could take the seat from Boehner in southwestern Ohio. It would be comparatively easy.
First of all, there is the link to unions and jobs. Southwestern Ohio is still a place with a long legacy to organized labor. It is also a place which has overlap into the Cincinnati television market, which means that Mitch McConnell is also on the table as a recognizable face.
Link Republican opposition to card check, McConnell's support for NAFTA, and conflate Boehner with both. This could turn into a very ugly, destructive campaign for the man with the unnaturally orange skin.
The Tea Party movement is also sitting at about 14:55 and counting on their fifteen minutes of fame. The key Republican strategists know it, and they're also easing their strongest candidate quietly back toward the center. They need Palin, which also means that they have to protect her.
Sarah Palin is going to be quietly disassociated from her natural constituencies in the Tea Party movement. She makes her face time at the shindig in Searchlight, throws a couple of screeds on twitter, and over the next six months she is going to have to be a new Sarah. The Republican party cannot afford the old one for more than about 60 more days.
Republicans know that there is no possible way that Health Care Reform can be repealed before people start benefitting from it. Once an entitlement gets started, there is no turning back. And once enough people have benefitted from HCR, it is going to be over.
The strategery is to call congresscritters and scream profanities over the telephone. Other bright ideas include shades-of-kristallnacht vandalism, and attempted sabotage of congresscritter homes. The former is a strong image for Democratic candidates. The latter is just embarrassing, because they got the wrong house.
A super-genius in Nashville is sitting under a felony reckless endangerment charge after trying to drive over a car with an Obama sticker with his SUV. This is not the kind of publicity that will further the objectives of a political movement. Indeed, even people who would find the objectives worthy tend to be turned off by this behavior.
Radio hatemongers Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh are weakened. They failed to deliver for their business interests. Glenn Beck's caustic delivery will be the first to go: he isn't delivering on public opinion, and he isn't delivering ad dollars for Fox. Beck may be lucky if he is not delivering pizzas by the end of 2011.
Limbaugh and Hannity may survive, but there is a litany of mediocre right-wing talkers who will see their opportunities suddenly reduced. The Rusty Humphries and Hugh Hewitts of the world will discover their outlets becoming more profitable leasing themselves out to religious broadcasters. Or even better, they will wind up serving an ethnic community.
One looks forward to the day when Lou Dobbs' radio home in Atlanta starts broadcasting in Spanish. Play Salsa and Bachata, please.
The future holds the following: A Teabagger in a restaurant acknowledges the image of President Obama, and states, "There goes the rotten so-and-so who brought socialist medicine to America." All it will take is the first waitress to pour a pot of coffee in his lap and respond, "Really? All I see is the man who saved my grandbaby's life."
That is the final break. At the moment, we have a population who cannot believe that the Tea Parties did not stop Health Care Reform from becoming reality. They are not happy, but it is a mentality which has question as to the outcome of a pro wrestling match where the opponent is "Bob from Syracuse." They got what they did not want, and they aren't coping well.
Democrats are still a bit dazed, but somehow one imagines that they will get used to this idea. After multiple attempts, the United States has managed to develop a health care system which works for its patients as opposed to a private insurance industry. It may not be everything the hard core of progressivism would have preferred, but it is a big step in the right direction.
As for the hard core of progressivism goes, how many people think that there is not at least one of those private insurers who hasn't cooked the books? And who precisely do you think will wind up managing the health care of their customers when the fecal matter hits the ventilation device? Chill out, the Wolf is coming, and he's got Single Payer in his trunk.
There may be a dozen people in the country who will not think its a good idea when all of this happens. There will not be the money available to sway public opinion in that proximate future. Indeed, there may be a great deal of industry support for single payer by then.
To borrow a bit from John F. Kennedy, Mr. Obama, your opponents just blinked.
The Republicans, in addition to not doing things which benefit quotidian Americans, also manage to not benefit themselves. Should they continue at this rate, we may actually see a political party succeed at self-immolation.
John Boehner with his "HELL NO!" rant is living on borrowed time. While his district is conservative, there is a very good chance that a pro-labor Blue Dog could take the seat from Boehner in southwestern Ohio. It would be comparatively easy.
First of all, there is the link to unions and jobs. Southwestern Ohio is still a place with a long legacy to organized labor. It is also a place which has overlap into the Cincinnati television market, which means that Mitch McConnell is also on the table as a recognizable face.
Link Republican opposition to card check, McConnell's support for NAFTA, and conflate Boehner with both. This could turn into a very ugly, destructive campaign for the man with the unnaturally orange skin.
The Tea Party movement is also sitting at about 14:55 and counting on their fifteen minutes of fame. The key Republican strategists know it, and they're also easing their strongest candidate quietly back toward the center. They need Palin, which also means that they have to protect her.
Sarah Palin is going to be quietly disassociated from her natural constituencies in the Tea Party movement. She makes her face time at the shindig in Searchlight, throws a couple of screeds on twitter, and over the next six months she is going to have to be a new Sarah. The Republican party cannot afford the old one for more than about 60 more days.
Republicans know that there is no possible way that Health Care Reform can be repealed before people start benefitting from it. Once an entitlement gets started, there is no turning back. And once enough people have benefitted from HCR, it is going to be over.
The strategery is to call congresscritters and scream profanities over the telephone. Other bright ideas include shades-of-kristallnacht vandalism, and attempted sabotage of congresscritter homes. The former is a strong image for Democratic candidates. The latter is just embarrassing, because they got the wrong house.
A super-genius in Nashville is sitting under a felony reckless endangerment charge after trying to drive over a car with an Obama sticker with his SUV. This is not the kind of publicity that will further the objectives of a political movement. Indeed, even people who would find the objectives worthy tend to be turned off by this behavior.
Radio hatemongers Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh are weakened. They failed to deliver for their business interests. Glenn Beck's caustic delivery will be the first to go: he isn't delivering on public opinion, and he isn't delivering ad dollars for Fox. Beck may be lucky if he is not delivering pizzas by the end of 2011.
Limbaugh and Hannity may survive, but there is a litany of mediocre right-wing talkers who will see their opportunities suddenly reduced. The Rusty Humphries and Hugh Hewitts of the world will discover their outlets becoming more profitable leasing themselves out to religious broadcasters. Or even better, they will wind up serving an ethnic community.
One looks forward to the day when Lou Dobbs' radio home in Atlanta starts broadcasting in Spanish. Play Salsa and Bachata, please.
The future holds the following: A Teabagger in a restaurant acknowledges the image of President Obama, and states, "There goes the rotten so-and-so who brought socialist medicine to America." All it will take is the first waitress to pour a pot of coffee in his lap and respond, "Really? All I see is the man who saved my grandbaby's life."
That is the final break. At the moment, we have a population who cannot believe that the Tea Parties did not stop Health Care Reform from becoming reality. They are not happy, but it is a mentality which has question as to the outcome of a pro wrestling match where the opponent is "Bob from Syracuse." They got what they did not want, and they aren't coping well.
Democrats are still a bit dazed, but somehow one imagines that they will get used to this idea. After multiple attempts, the United States has managed to develop a health care system which works for its patients as opposed to a private insurance industry. It may not be everything the hard core of progressivism would have preferred, but it is a big step in the right direction.
As for the hard core of progressivism goes, how many people think that there is not at least one of those private insurers who hasn't cooked the books? And who precisely do you think will wind up managing the health care of their customers when the fecal matter hits the ventilation device? Chill out, the Wolf is coming, and he's got Single Payer in his trunk.
There may be a dozen people in the country who will not think its a good idea when all of this happens. There will not be the money available to sway public opinion in that proximate future. Indeed, there may be a great deal of industry support for single payer by then.
To borrow a bit from John F. Kennedy, Mr. Obama, your opponents just blinked.
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