On My Mind

Creating Change

2012-02-14T14:16:00.000-08:00

Greece: this is how it’s done. Not with coffee klatches and singalongs in public parks. You do not change the power structure with persuasion, you change it by making it fear you.

I am not necessarily a big fan of labor unions are they are constituted today, but I am an unrelenting supporter of collective bargaining. When we went on strike we did not sit outside holding hands and singing songs. We shut them down. When they tried to run the plant using supervisors we barred the gate, cut truck tires and overturned trucks. When they threatened to call in the National Guard we told them to go ahead, and that if they did so we would burn their factory to the ground.

Had we been demonstrating our resolve by singing songs they would not have believed us, but they had seen the tenor of our determination and they absolutely believed that we would do precisely what we said that we would do. The National Guard stayed in its armory and we won the day.

Were we right? I don’t know. Were the higher wages that we were demanding justified? Well, they had no more right to hold them down than we did to demand an increase. It was power against power. As we saw it, we were fighting for our future.

I am not in this fight because I am now an old man and it is not my future that is at stake. I fought for my future and now these children of privilege must fight for theirs. They think they can do that with campouts and singalongs in public parks. They are pathetic. If that is the best they have
to offer then they deserve no future.

No, I am not advocating the overthrow of our government by force. We did not burn their factory to the ground. We merely showed them that we were willing and able to do it and made them fear that we might.

Fear is the only language that power understands.

Where's Our Next War?

2012-02-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

CBS News is still frantically campaigning for a war with Syria. Every night they run a highly melodramatic piece about the "desperate fight for freedom" and the "struggle to live free" of the "unbelievably brave freedom fighters," describing the latest "massacre" and complete with the same film clips every night in "an exclusive report from CBS staffer Clarissa [Whatever] reporting independently in Syria."

I haven’t yet figured out how a CBS staffer providing exclusive reports is “reporting independently” precisely. Perhaps it just means they aren’t paying her expenses, or won’t bury her if she gets killed.

Last night they also provided a self aggrandizing narrative of how Clarissa got into and out of Syria, creeping through mud drenched fields in the dead of night with no trees under which they could "take cover" and "literally wading through canals" risking death or worse. She was very impressed with herself.

Scott Pelley then asked Clarissa, "Last year President Obama led NATO to launch an air campaign to support the rebels in Libya and overthrow Ghadaffi. Is there any chance of anything like that in Syria?"

As if she would have better sources inside the rebel camp for that information than he would have in Washington, making it the silliest question asked so far this week. But he has to keep finding different ways to inject the suggestion that we go to war in Syria, which he does about two nights out of three.

And note the "to support the rebels in Libya and overthrow Ghadaffi" part. He seems to forget, or be ignoring, that the UN mandate under which we were operating expressly forbade assisting either side, and prohibited any attempt at regime change. I guess that's okay, since our government also ignored those two provisions.

Meanwhile, as Glenn Greenwald points out today, NBC News is agitating that we go to war with Iran. Personally, I think we are going to push Pakistan too hard and will accidentally wind up at war with Pakistan. Although it could be Somalia.

Meanwhile...

2012-02-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

While we are in the midst of a pissing match over who will or will not pay for birth control pills, Athens is on fire. You won't see that in the New York Times, or much of any American media. The problem? The people want one thing, government doesn't agree, and the people are pissed off. In this country we "occupy" a public park and sing songs; have a nice campout. In Greece they let the government know that they are really pissed off.

And The Winner Is...

2012-02-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

I have to laugh every time the President and his opposition get into one of these spats. Presently, Obama loyalists are saying that he is now a runaway winner in the November election because Republicans have "gone too far" with this contraception issue. This time, liberals are saying, the public will realize that Republicans are batshit insane and that they harbor a visceral hatred for women and so, according to Tom Friedman, the “Republicans might as well sit out” the 2012 elections and reserve their energy for 2016. (So I guess he’s suggesting they sit out the midterms in 2014 as well.)

News flash. This is February, and the election is in November. By the time voters go to the polls nine months from now they will not even remember that this little pissing match even took place. Exit pollsters will ask what role the “contraceptive issue” played in the vote that they just cast and the voter will give a blank look and say, “What contraceptive issue? What are you talking about?” Except the question won’t be asked, because the pollster will have forgotten about it too.

The election may be decided by some trivial little pissing match, they usually are in what passes for democracy in this nation, but it won’t be this one. It will probably be a misplaced flag pin on a lapel or something, but this one will have been forgotten.

$48B Trade Deficit

2012-02-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

The 245,000 jobs created did not result in universal enthusiasm and joy, as it turns out that the general public is still concerned about jobs, and the consumer confidence index dropped in January. Rather understandable, since the people who are crowing about what unbounded good news that is all have jobs, while tens of millions of the public at large still do not. If you have been unemployed for eighteen months and have no real prospects of employment it’s hard to be enthusiastic about news that some 245,000 jobs have been created and left you out.

Meanwhile, our balance of trade went farther into the red to the tune of $48.8 billion last month, the highest deficit it has seen since before the recession. The media should be screaming bloody murder about this, on the front page above the fold, but they barely mention it, on page twelve.

The problem with the trade deficit is twofold. One is that it creates more debt in this nation, the other is that it is the result of our overvalued currency which makes us less competitive worldwide and reduces our exports. Do I need to add that restoring our ability to export goods would add jobs? “Taxing the rich” will not come close to offsetting the $48 billion per month we are losing due to trade and monetary policies. This is another example of tinkering with trivia instead of tackling the real issues that face this nation’s economy.

There is a little gem hidden in there that blows the whistle on gasoline prices, too, but no one is picking up on that either. CBS News ran a segment the other day asking why gas prices are so high at this time of year, when lower usage normally causes them to drop. One reason given was that “several refineries are closed for maintenance,” causing lower supplies and keeping prices up. Noted in the trade data, however, is that exports “grew slightly in December, with records set for petroleum, services and advance technology goods.” If gasoline is expensive due to the short supply caused by closed refineries, why are we setting export records in that commodity?

Free Lunch For All

2012-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

I don’t get this latest political controversy in the first place, and I sure as hell don’t get the so-called “accommodation” which Obama offered. To begin with I had no "dog in the hunt," because birth control is a nonissue for me and I believe that health insurance should provide it at no cost just as I believe that auto insurance should provide oil changes at no cost.

Well, okay, maybe not. If health insurance is going to provide daily routine health care, then women’s reproductive preventive care should be part of it.

So the health insurance plans offered by employers must include contraception, and the premium cost is shared between the employer and the employee. Religious organizations freak out because they don’t want to be forced to pay for something that they don’t believe in. Churches are outraged, Republicans are delighted and Democrats are dismayed. Why would Obama do something this controversial in an election cycle?

Well, it worked didn’t it? We’re not talking about the economy, jobs and the unemployment rate. We’re talking about how the fate of the nation rests on who pays the cost of birth control pills. That was his goal, to distract us from talking about issues for which he has no solution. In all fairness, nobody has any solution for that, really, but that is beside the point. Talking about that hurts him, so he wants to be sure we don’t.

Maybe if we talked about it more something could be done that would at least help create jobs and reduce unemployment, but he doesn’t care about that. He cares about getting reelected.

Unfortunately for Obama, he forgot that many Democrats are also Roman Catholics, and Catholics can be even more intransigent and unreasonable than Tea Partiers, so he is forced to beat a hasty retreat. His hasty retreats are often conceived deep in the recesses of his Harvard mind, and he really should vet them with someone on this planet before trotting them out.

He says that “the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.”

Now, trying to describe what’s wrong with this is sort of like trying to describe the Aurora Borealis to a blind man. I mean, you know what the Northern Lights look like, but how do you put it into words? Similarly you can smell the dead fish in his statement, here, but how do you define the components of the odor?

We’ll start with contraception being offered not by the employer but by the insurance company hired by the employer. If a man kills his wife he’s a murderer, but if he hires someone else to do it he’s not a murderer? So churches are fine with, “I’m not okay with contraception, but I’m okay with hiring someone else to do it for me.”

Or is it a case of the church saying that they actually don’t mind providing contraception to their employees, they just had a moral objection to paying for it and are willing to accept it for free?

According to the statement, the service is being offered “free of charge.” Well, what if someone comes up to that insurance carrier and says that they don’t want any of the other services, but they do want the “free contraception” which they offer? Even drunks figured out long ago that the “free lunch” at the neighborhood bar was not really free.

And how does is government able to dictate to a business that it must provide a service and not be paid for it? More specifically, it must do that based on religion, because it must provide that service to religious customers without payment, but may require payment from secular customers. Not only is that an unwarranted government interference with a business’ ability to conduct its affairs, but it seems to me to be government favoritism toward religious institutions and therefor unconstitutional.

What if Obama walked into, say, Target and started walking through the store and marking items at random and saying, "You have to give this item away free to anyone who is a Catholic," next week? Would we all applaud?

Unfortunately, this “accommodation” will probably hold up, because Democrats are too loyal to point out the flaws in it and Republicans are too stupid to even notice them.

Tribal Campaign

2012-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

It’s interesting how writers can inadvertently reveal themselves. David Atkins has a piece at Hulaballoo today having to do with an outfit which purports to fact check campaign ads, and to do so on a sufficiently timely basis to be effective within the campaign. (Good luck with that, by the way.)

David says that, "When I want to see what latest lies are coming out of the conservative media establishment" he knows where to look and follows that with, "When I want to see what latest conservative attacks are coming down the pike" he also knows where to look, and he stops there.

I don't see him expressing any interest in "what latest lies are coming out of the liberal media establishment" or "what latest liberal attacks are coming." Is that because he believes that liberals don't lie and/or attack, or because he merely doesn't want to catch them doing it? If it’s the former I have news for him, and it’s the latter I have to ask why not.

Glenn Greewald has an interesting piece about how liberals were almost unanimous in their hatred of everything that Guantanamo stood for and wanted it closed forthwith, until it became apparent that Obama is not going to close it, and now a majority of liberals are either indifferent to its presence or favor leaving it open.

That single issue is not the point, so much as that each side today believes that everything the other side says is a lie and everything that their own side says is the truth, and any amount of “fact checking” is not going to change that. This political campaign is not about facts, as David’s expression of interest points out; this campaign is about tribalism.

Office For Life

2012-02-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

George Stephanopoulos is interviewing Mitt Romney, and he asks him, "Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception?" Disregarding the question itself, Romney has not been a governor since 2006. Was he elected to that office for life?

Similarly, some nitwit was addressing Rick Santorum, and began a question, "Senator, do you agree..." How many United States Senators do we have in this nation? Well, according to the constitution, one hundred. According to the media, several times that number, because apparently that office is held for life, no matter what the voters decide.

Bill Clinton is sometimes referred to, properly, as "Former President Clinton," but he is more often referred to simply as "President Clinton," and the media frequently addresses him as "Mister President" to this day. I have never seen him correct anyone who addressed him in that manner.

Ignorance in king in this nation, and it seems that elected office is for life.

Technocracy Redefined

2012-02-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

I have never actually disagreed with anything written by David Brooks in one of his editorials, but don’t worry; I’ve never agreed with anything he’s written either. That’s because I’ve never figured out what the hell he’s talking about. Frankly, I don’t think he knows either.

Today he’s babbling away about Obama the “technocrat” and I actually started reading it because I wanted to see what could possibly lead him to level that charge. I can imagine Obama as many things, but “technocrat” is not really one of them.

Early in the piece he pronounces that “The essential truth about poverty is that we will never fully understand what causes it,” which is a little strange because poverty is clearly caused by a lack of income. Even David Brooks should be able to figure that one out. I realize that conservatives have tons of theories about how welfare programs cause poverty, countering the liberal theory that such programs help to alleviate poverty.

Having told us that we can never understand the cause of poverty, he then waxes inanely eloquent at rather great length about the nature of the cause of poverty.

There are a million factors that contribute to poverty, and they interact in a zillion ways. The list of factors that contribute to poverty could go on and on, and the interactions between them are infinite. Therefore, there is no single magic lever to pull to significantly reduce poverty. The only thing to do is change the whole ecosystem.

This is what I meant about neither agreeing or disagreeing with anything that Brooks writes. What in the hell does any of that mean? He seems to be saying that creating jobs will not “significantly reduce poverty,” which rather beggars any contact with reality.

He then admonishes us that “If poverty is a complex system of negative feedback loops, then you have to create an equally complex and diverse set of positive feedback loops.”

Okay, we can “never fully understand” what causes poverty, he says, but then he describes it as a “list of factors” which creates a “complex system of negative feedback loops” which must be countered by… Whatever. Nowhere, of course, does he mention a lack of availability of decent jobs.

He also doesn’t seem to understand what a “feedback loop” is. By the theory he espoused there, the old saying about a chain and its weakest link would have to be changed to read, “To unchain anything, one must cut every single link in the freaking chain,” because a breaking a “feedback loop” is much like making a chain fail, all it takes is cutting one link. Just as a chain is dependent on each of its links, feedback is dependent on each part of its process, and a feedback loop ceases to exist the minute that any one element within that loop is removed.

If action A leads to B which leads to C which leads to D which leads to E which leads to F, then killing D eliminates the journey from A to F without doing anything about A, B, C, E or F. Feedback loops are extremely easy to disrupt.

And I’m still waiting for the “technocrat” thing, which he finally drops on us out of thin air. There is no buildup to it, no lead-in, just,

Members of the Obama administration aren’t forcing religious organizations to violate their creeds because they are secular fundamentalists who place no value on religious liberty. They are doing it because they operate in a technocracy. Technocrats are in the business of promulgating rules. They seek abstract principles that they can apply in all cases.

Emphasis mine. And here I thought that technocracy had to do with the application of science to the conduct of social order. I was waiting for Brooks to tell me the advanced scientific principles that Obama was cramming down our throats and about which Brooks was prepared to go all Luddite in his resistance to, and instead I’m getting that he is all pissed off that Obama is in search of “abstract principles” which can be universally applied, which actually sounds like an attempt at applying some sort of “fairness doctrine” to me.

He winds up with a little homily about how our society should be more like a rain forest than like a military battalion, and I can't even begin to explain that one. Go read it for yourself.

Subron 8: A Joke Backfires

2012-02-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

Dockside, New London Submarine Base, “availability period.” That’s one of those weird Navy terms which means the opposite of what it sounds like. It means we are undergoing repairs of various types and are “available” to the sandcrabs (civilian shipyard workers) and are not actually available to perform missions.

I’m down in the battery well replacing a couple of cables, with a “non-qual” helping me. This is a guy who is new on board and has not yet performed the studies and tests needed to earn his "fish," the silver dolphin insignia worn by submariners. The process usually takes about six months and, in addition to serious study and performance testing, is accompanied by a good bit of hazing.

I drag a fairly heavy cable into place and, trapping a piece of it under my foot where he can’t see it, show him how it comes up about six inches short of reaching its attachment point. I make a big show of straining to make it reach, near as dammit pulling it out from under my foot in the process and ruining the plot, and finally “give up.”

“Shit,” I tell him, “We’re going to have to stretch it. Go up to tubes forward and get me the cable stretcher.”

He’s looking at me a little skeptically, and I get annoyed and tell him to just get his ass in gear and go get it. While he’s gone I head up to get coffee.

Of course the Torpedomen don’t have the cable stretcher. They lent it to the motor repair facility just last week. The non-qual comes back to tell me that, and I am hugely annoyed with him.

“Just get me the damned thing,” I yell at him. “Get your useless butt ashore and get it. There’s work to be done and you’re holding it up. Don’t come back without that effing cable stretcher.”

He heads ashore in pursuit of the cable stretcher and I finish my coffee and then return to the battery well and finish installing the perfectly adequate length of cable. His pursuit, as you may have concluded by now is fruitless; the motor repair facility doesn’t have it either, having lent it just two days before to the torpedo testing lab; the torpedo testing lab lent it to…

He returns to the ship sans cable stretcher to find the electrical division secured for the day and everyone laughing their asses off at him.

A few days later I’m pulling wires through some conduit and this same kid is helping me again. We’re using a lubricant to do this which we call “monkey shit.” I’m sure it has an official name, but I have no idea what that name might be, as I’ve never heard it called anything else. I have even put that term on requisition forms, and gotten what I ordered. I use the last of what we have, and I hold out the empty can and casually say to him, “Run up to supply and get me another can of monkey shit.”

He neither takes the can nor replies and I look at him. He’s glaring at me and shaking his head. “I may be a boot,” he says, “but I’m not stupid. You’re not doing that to me again.”

Doing Democracy

2012-02-08T08:18:00.001-08:00

The Americans who are being put on trial in Egypt were there we are told, to “teach Egyptians how to do democracy.” The Egyptian government says they incited the riots and that is what the trial is about. My suggestion is that our government get those who who are still in Egypt out of the country, using force if need be, and then let Egypt do whatever it wants to. Just tell them that they aren’t getting their hands on our people.

That doesn’t mean that I have a lot of sympathy for the idiots who felt the need to go to Egypt. When a country is in the midst of a low level civil war, I would suggest staying the hell out of that country. And they were teaching Eygpt “how to do democracy” were they? Are you kidding me? Someone from the land of American politics was teaching Egyptians how to “do” democracy? This nation lost touch with how to do democracy decades ago.

The Drones Resume

2012-02-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

This absolutely infuriates me. From Reuters yesterday,

A U.S. drone aircraft killed 10 suspected militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region near the Afghanistan border on Wednesday, security officials and residents said, the fifth such strike this year.

In Wednesday's attack, a drone fired two missiles at a house suspected of being a militant hideout in the village of Thapi, 15 km (10 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

Emphasis mine. We now kill people on suspicion, and we kill them by the houseful on suspicion. This is who we have become. Not only assassins, but assassins of a degree and willfulness that we don’t even care about certainty. This is what this president has turned my country into and moreover, fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse this policy.

And note that they are called “militants,” not terrorists. They are not suspected of plotting to attack the United States, but rather to attack our forces in Afghanistan, which is their country. They are Taliban, which has never killed a single American who was not attacking them in their own country. And we kill them in their houses, along with their wives and children, based on suspicion that they might be planning to resist our occupation.

And it goes unnoticed while we complain about how much money the rich have; while we parse political talks to find phrases we can take out of context and use to attack the speaker; while we wrangle over how much money our government spends without giving any thought to the purpose of that spending, merely arguing over the amount of it.

I once wore the uniform of the armed forces of this nation, having volunteered to put my life at risk to defend this nation and it's people.
I most certainly would not make that same choice today.

Now, This Is Wierd

2012-02-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

I have never quite gotten the point when my wife checks the expiration date on sour cream. I mean, I don't really get using cream that has gone bad in the first place, but worrying about its "use by" date seems just misplaced to me. But this weekend I caught her actually removing the lid and smelling it to see if it was okay. Smelling it. Lady, it's freaking sour cream; it smells bad when it's good, what does it smell like when it goes bad?

Well, by definition it doesn't "go bad," it is bad, but...

Actions Drown Out Words

2012-02-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

The United States is all kinds of indignant over the fact the Russia and China exercised their veto on the Syria resolution, pronouncing the move "disgusting" and such. No one in our government recognized that it happened as a result of our own damned fool actions.

We led NATO into a war in Libya which was supposedly for the purpose of protecting lives, the so called “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and then from the day we started the mission said that it would not end until Ghadaffi was gone. So whatever we said before, the war was actually about regime change because we didn’t stop until Ghadaffi was not only gone but dead.

“Your actions speak so loudly I can’t hear what you say.”

Now Russia and China are saying that they are not going to support any kind of US-led resolution on Syria because they are concerned that the US and NATO will make use of any such resolution to “engage in regime change as they did in Libya.”

It’s not an invalid position. The UN resolution regarding Libya specifically prohibited action in support of either side, and the US-led NATO forces openly and blatantly supported the rebel forces. Not only did they do so, but the leadership of this country specifically said that support of the rebel forces would not end until “Ghadaffi is out of power,” which is undisguised regime change by force.

So on the “fool me once shame on me…” theory, Russia and China, having supported R2P once and gotten regime change by force, are not going to support R2P by the same actors a second time. I cannot say that I blame them.

Oh, Well, That's Okay Then

2012-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman says that a crash in Europe won't affect the US economy much, a mere 2% or so, so we don't need to worry about Europe's economic devastation. So we've all been hyperventilating over Europe for nothing. What a relief.

Now if he can just get this nation's inflation rate up to 5% so that the government prospers while poor people starve, he would be happy as a proverbial clam. Paul Krugman is an idiot.

Super Bowl

2012-02-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

That was a really good game. Two excellent teams, both well coached, playing proficient and disciplined football. That is what a championship game is supposed to look like.

Until the last four minutes, during which the Patriots displayed a rather stunning degree of ineptitude.

Eli was clearly the better quarterback of the two. No contest. Brady threw the ball away resulting in a safety, he threw an interception that was just a stupid throw, and at the end of the game he was missing his receivers. On the interception, I knew when the ball left his hand that the throw was idiotic, and the pass that Wes Welker dropped was a poorly thrown pass. (Yes, Welker should have caught it nonetheless.) Manning either completed his passes or threw the ball away.

Is It Wisdom? Or...

2012-02-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

I’m reading “The Operators” by Michael Hastings, which was recommended to me as an “explosive” expose of the war in Afghanistan. I’m a third of the way through it or so, and mostly it’s just boring. One whole chapter is devoted to describing going out to dinner and telling stories about waking up smelling like strippers. A whole chapter.

He makes one statement which, I think, illustrates why he wrote the book, and why a lot of people think it so “explosivly” reveals the misconduct behind the conduct of the war. He says that, “I didn’t quite get it, but then no one quite got what Graeme Lamb was saying. Wisdom is like that.”

Actually, wisdom is not like that, but bullshit is, and too many people mistake bullshit for wisdom. True wisdom makes the point and is understandable; otherwise, why make the point? Bullshit seeks to impress, and frequently does so with obfuscation. Remember the old saying that goes, “If you can’s dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

I think that Stanley McChrystal baffled Michael Hastings with bullshit, and he passed it on in his book.

Super Bowl Sunday

2012-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am so excited. Pant, pant, pant. Eli Manning, who said he would sit out the season if the Chargers drafted him, versus Bill Belichek and the team that did victory dances on the Chargers' logo at midfield. Of course, the mood I'm in at the Chargers right now...

On a related note, our local small town newspaper was recently bought by Doug Manchester. This is a local developer best known for having his hotels boycotted due to his contributions toward the passage of the infamous Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage. He has already begun turning it into a lesser rag than it was.

His paper editorially proposed a $1.2 billion waterfront stadium proposal, on the front page no less, and he cannot understand why it is not gaining any traction. Even Dean Spanos, owner of the team, is still backing the $800 million midtown proposal. Manchester feels his proposal is much better for the city. He does not say that he would be the best developer to handle his proposed project, but...

Why The Sudden Confidence?

2012-02-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

The stock market is swooning over the latest jobs report, as are some of the media outlets and pundits. Other media outlets and pundits are saying either that the BLS reports are lies, or that the numbers underlying the jobs creation of 243,000 and drop to 8.3% are much more bleak. I don’t buy the first assertion, but there certainly is some validity in the latter, as the numbers leaving the work force is pretty stark, and the percentage of the population which is employed is essentially unchanged from the low point which it reached at the bottom of the recession.

The question that occurs to me, and one that has not been explained, is what caused the increase in hiring? What is the source of this sudden increase in confidence that caused employers to start adding employees?

It’s not consumer spending, that was dismal in December, so why the January hiring? Housing prices were down in December. The European crisis is showing some small signs of resolution now, but it was still in full explosion mode when this hiring occurred. American politics have not improved. There is much horn honking and bell ringing about the new jobs being added, and rejoicing about the economy improving based on those new jobs, but no explanation of what invoked the hiring.

Do we have a self licking ice cream cone economy? The economy is improving because employers are hiring, and employers are hiring because the economy is improving. Which means employers are hiring because employers are hiring?

I don’t think these numbers are lies, per se, but I don’t trust them either. And that’s nothing against the Obama administration; I didn’t trust them when the Bush administration was doing them either. They are based on the “household survey” and the “birth-death model,” and they are not only “seasonally adjusted” but the January numbers are “annually adjusted,” and this years January numbers are “adjusted for the 2010 census” as well.

So in most months they are “adjusted estimates” and this set of numbers are estimates that have been triple adjusted. Just how seriously should we take that kind of thing?

The government estimate of retail sales uses a “birth-death model” to estimate retail sales, one which became so widely discredited that it is no longer even reported. Or if it is, they no longer report it by that name.

For the “birth-death model” the government had a group of retail stores which they interviewed monthly, and retail sales estimates for the nation was reported based on that group of stores. Then they make some complex and unexplained “assumptions” about new stores and the death of existing stores, but they do not assume that any of the reporting stores are in the “death” category, and any of those stores which did not respond were assumed to have zero change in sales.

You do see the flaw in that, right? The government did not. Think Circuit City. They didn’t accommodate the concept that stores might not respond because they were out of business and their sales had dropped to zero. So that meant that the increase reported by other stores was bogus, it was not true increase in overall sales, it was business they inherited from stores which had closed. Meanwhile the defunct stores were being included as if they were still selling at their previous pace, so retail sales estimates were wildly inflated.

Is jobs reporting by the BLS suffering from similar flaws with its “surveys” and its “seasonal adjustments” and such? Well, I certainly don’t know the answer to that, and there is no way to really be sure whether it is or not.

In the case of retail sales, there is one certain measure to evaluate relative retail sales levels, and that is to look at sales tax collected by states. Those are real numbers and are available in pretty close to real time, as retailers pay those taxes monthly for small retailers and weekly for large ones. By comparing those tax collections on a month by month basis we can get a pretty accurate estimate of what retail sales are doing. We used to see those numbers published fairly regularly, but I haven’t seen them in quite a long time. Perhaps someone got tired of them being in conflict with government estimates?

For employment there is a similar measure, and that is income tax withholding submitted by employers. That is also real numbers and is submitted in real time, since the money is paid to the government within ten days of being withheld from employees paychecks. The increase in job creation should be pretty easy to verify within a couple of weeks if those numbers are made public. Somehow, though, we never see confirmation of the BLS “estimates” by showing that they are reflected in the employer income tax submissions.

I can’t help but wonder why not.

Sin By Juxtaposition

2012-02-03T18:31:00.001-08:00

All of this hyperventilating about the health insurance that religious organizations are required to offer is just plain silly. Makes me glad I forswore formal religion all those years ago. The fact that a church must provide insurance that covers contraception for its workers does not mean that those workers have to engage in the practice of contraception, for heaven’s sake.

My health insurance pays for Cancer treatments, but that doesn’t mean that I have to get those treatments even though I don’t have Cancer, just because my insurance offers it. Sheesh. Somehow these bishops think that just being offered a service is a road to hell, even if you decline the service.

If I know that you are unhappy in your marriage, for instance, so I come up to you and offer to kill your wife and you say to me, “Oh good lord no, I don’t believe in murder,” have you done anything wrong? Show me a District Attorney who is going to charge you with anything.

The Obama Administration’s requirement is perfectly reasonable.

Leading The Parade

2012-02-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

I can’t find where I read it now, but one editorialist commented that the earlier date for the change away from a combat role in Afghanistan was a welcome move but that a “more stately roll out of the policy would have been better; a presidential announcement more suitable than a somewhat hapless comment by the Secretary of Defense.”

Except that this has long been the way this administration does things, using the leakiest White House staff in history. By “leaking” policies in advance they can get media and public response before the official "roll out” that the editorialist refers to. If the response is favorable they can then proceed with the policy. If it is unfavorable they can deny that they ever had that policy in mind at all and that the “leaker” was misinformed, merely “misspoke” or that his remarks were taken out of context.

On the Libya issue that was called “leading from behind.” I've commented on Obama’s leadership as “looking for a parade to get in front of.” The “White House leak” or that offhand comment is how the Obama White House forms that parade. When enough people have joined the parade, and it is safe to do so, Obama comes out and gets in the front of the formed up parade. Leadership.

Afghanistan Role Change

2012-02-02T13:00:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times, and the non-stop flapping gums of Leon Panetta, we now hear that we will "step back from a combat role" in Afghanistan in mid-2013, and that "role of our troops will gradually change from combat to support." There is no mention of troops coming home, and no mention of what factor, precisely, will prevent the enemy from shooting at and/or bombing our troops. Just that the "warlike nature" or our presence in Afghanistan will begin diminishing sooner.

Absent from this is any declaration of victory or any real reason at all. One might infer reasons, of course, such as that the French have gotten fed up and are leaving, and that all American decisions are now based on the fact that Obama is actively campaigning for reelection.

To paraphrase a former president, "We do these things not because they are hard, but because they are easy."

And, of course there’s the usual phrase that comes every time that Panneta shoots off his mouth, namely that, “Since then Mr. Panetta’s advisors have been scrambling to clarify his remarks and are now saying that…” It seems that the President still does not quite have his Secretary of Defense under control, and that the role of Panetta's "advisors" is not so much to "advise" as to play the role of the guys in the parade who follow the horse teams with the wheelbarrows and shovels.

Obama's Wonderful Mortgage Plan

2012-02-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

This was actually first announced several days ago, but our progressive president is pushing his "mortgage rescue plan" pretty hard as part of his "populist" reelection campaign. The plan will is the rather awkwardly named, "Broad Based Refinancing to Help Responsible Borrowers Save an Average of $3,000 per Year" plan, and it will,

"...provide borrowers who are current on their payments with an opportunity to refinance and take advantage of historically low interest rates, cutting through the red tape that prevents these borrowers from saving hundreds of dollars a month and thousands of dollars a year."

Precisely why do homeowners who are "current on their payments" need rescuing? Why does the plan do nothing for homeowners who are behind on their payments, homeowners who have lost their jobs and can't make their payments, and homeowners who are in foreclosure? It only works to lower payments for homeowners who don't appear to be in need of having their house payments lowered. That is just plain weird.

Answering My Own Question
It is the usual campaign ploy used by all politicians. It sounds good and and relies upon the fact that voters will listen to the "buzz words" it contains, "helping homeowners," "saving $3000 per year," "cutting red tape," and not listen to what it actually says. Something like naming a bill the "Clear skies Initiative" when it actually allows an increase in the emission of pollutants.

Election Coverage

2012-02-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

I actually tuned in to MSNBC election coverage last night for about ten minutes or so. Good Lord.

Republicans, I heard, all just despise every one of their candidates and would vote for a jackass if it was on the ticket. A real jackass, I mean, the kind with four legs and hooves. The majority who voted in the primary wish that someone else were running. Almost all of them had at least three reasons not to vote for Romney, but voted for him anyway. If Obama had been in that primary, he would have gotten 207% of the Republican vote.

That’s sort of hard to reconcile with the highest voter turnout for a Republican primary in something like 100 years, but the Rhodes scholar princess was undeterred by trivial data like that.

Chris Matthews told us at great length how even the candidates are unhappy as hell, and that none of them are “having any fun” in this campaign. He spent almost five minutes describing how grumpy and disgusted Romney is and how much he is hating this year’s campaign, and for several minutes of his diatribe there was film of Romney being shown, laughing hilariously, waving and kissing babies with great glee. He sure looked like he was enjoying the hell out of himself, giving Chris an unbroken track record of not knowing what the hell he is talking about.

Then we had Chuck Todd come on to tell us that Romney was the big winner among left handed auto mechanics of Lithuanian descent. He carried 80% of them, Chuckie told us, with eight votes. One left handed auto mechanic of Lithuanian descent voted for Ron Paul, and one of them didn’t vote at all. He was unsure why that one left handed auto mechanic of Lithuanian descent did not vote, and suspected that he might be dead, although why that would prevent him from voting was uncertain. That one non-voting left handed auto mechanic of Lithuanian descent, however, does “leave the door open” for Newt Gingrich.

Now Romney’s support among right handed auto mechanics of Lithuanian descent was somewhat...

The Provenance of Rights

2012-01-31T09:49:00.000-08:00

There is little wonder that the argument over civil liberties and justice in this nation is incoherent; people argue the constitution without ever having read that document before declaiming their opinions on its content. In a comment thread at Ian Welsh’s place, someone made this statement.

Rights are not given by the government. They are inherent. They are ours before the notion of government even comes into it. They are, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “unalienable.”

Yes, of course I know governments shit on rights all the time. I get it. But government doesn’t grant rights. Rights are not that which are granted, they are that which can’t be taken away — unless we let them. And there’s a lot of letting going on.

The Declaration of Independence is not a governing document for this nation, and so anything it has to say has nothing to do with what our government may or may not do. Our governing document is the constitution and, more specific to this discussion, its Bill of Rights. If you read that document you will see that it specifically does grant some rights while, as the commenter suggests, it merely assures others.

When it says that the “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not infringed,” it is not giving citizens the right to bear arms, which is the point the commenter makes, it is accepting that there is an inherent right to do so and dictates that the government may not interfere with that right.

When the constitution says, on the other hand, that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,” it is giving that right specifically and not merely guaranteeing a previously existing right. How, in fact, could the right to a trial be “natural and inherent” when the trial process itself is a construct of government?

The whole argument about what creates the rights which people enjoy is an exercise in mental masturbation, in that it feels good but does not accomplish the intended purpose of the organ which one is using. More important is the commenter’s second point, that being that governments can take away rights, including those rights which they did not grant to begin with.

While we are busy arguing about who has too much money, we have a president who has declared the power to void that part of our constitution which reads that no person may be “deprived of life without due process of law,” because on mere secret presidential direction an American citizen may be summarily executed.

We need to be less concerned with provenance of our rights, and more concerned with where our rights are going.

Subron 8: Comms Etiquette

2012-01-31T07:03:00.000-08:00

I had a couple hours before going on watch and was unusually caught up on sleep, so I thought I’d check with the forward torpedo room and see if I could get up a pinocle game. The Torpedomen forward were the best pinochle players on the boat for some reason, maybe because we didn’t fire their fish very often and they had the most free time on their hands, and I spent a lot of time up there playing pinochle with them.

So I reach for the 3EM and dial up tubes forward. This is a comm system that works something like the very old fashioned telephone; you turn a dial to the station you want to talk to, turn a crank to ring it at the other end, and talk away. There is one important step, which I had forgotten in this case, which is to listen first and make sure no one is already talking on the system, because it’s a single circuit and if you turn the crank when someone is already talking on the system you produce a very unpleasant growling sound in their ear.

So I’m sticking the headset to my ear after turning the crank and at the same time thinking, “Oops, I forgot the sound check,” but am not really worried about it, until I hear from the headset a voice ask, “Who did that?”

This is not good. In fact, this is very bad. It’s worse than you probably think.

As an EM1, first class petty officer, there are not that many people on the boat who outrank me; a couple of dozen or so. Between the less than stellar sound quality of the comm system and the ambient noise level I do not recognize the voice, but the fact that he’s asking that question strongly suggests that this not only is one of them, it’s one who outranks me by quite a bit. Which means I probably don’t want to answer his question.

Stalling for time, I ask, “You don’t know?”

The voice on the other end responds, simply, “No.”

Which is all I need to respond “Ain’t I lucky” and hang up.

I decide to skip the pinochle game in tubes forward. Anything that requires going through officer’s country for, say, the rest of the day seems like poor judgement.

Inflation Is Our Friend

2012-01-30T16:03:00.000-08:00

The ability of the ideologue to ignore facts in favor of supporting his favorite ideal never fails to surprise me. The concept of, “Don’t confuse me with a bunch of facts when my mind is already made up,” is firmly entrenched in the American political psyche.

In a discussion elsewhere online there was a back and forth regarding the brilliance of Paul Krugman. I mentioned that his excellence might possibly be flawed by his call for higher inflation to “reduce the effective interest rate on debt,” and was loudly shouted down and told that inflation is our friend. I pointed out the inflation reduces the value of savings, thereby rewarding those who accumulate debt while punishing those who invest and save for old age, and was told that I am an idiot.

So in the liberal world, taking money away from retirees by reducing their Social Security payments is a heinous crime against humanity, because it is Republicans who are suggesting that we do this. Reducing retirees access to medical help by cutting Medicare payments is inhumane and bloodthirsty, because it Republicans who are suggesting that we do this. But reducing the amount of food that retirees can buy by making that food more expensive is an act of brilliance and social responsibility, because it is Paul Krugman who is suggesting that we do this.

I am certainly glad that we cleared that confusion up.

Rockets Red Glare

2012-01-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

Daniel Larison writes a piece yesterday condemning Mitt Romney for his anti-Obama message, which was to the effect that Obama ignores the horror of Gaza residents raining rockets down on the heads of poor innocent Israeli children. He (Larison) points out that Obama has condemned the Gaza rocketry on many occasions. For instance, this in Obama's first address to the United Nations,

"We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It’s not paid by politicians. It’s paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night."

That’s Obama speaking. Then Larison reminds us that Obama said in a 2010 address to the United Nations,

"The courage of a man like President Abbas, who stands up for his people in front of the world under very difficult circumstances, is far greater than those who fire rockets at innocent women and children."

Heady stuff, and in the same speech Obama makes reference, Larison tells us, to “the young boy in Sderot who wants to sleep without the nightmare of rocket fire.” Indeed, we are all caught up in the image of innocent children who sleep the sleep of the pure of heart and peacefully undisturbed by…

Oh to hell with it, I can’t keep this up. Does the word "Hellfire" ring a bell?

How many Israeli children have actually been killed by rockets fired from Gaza? No, I don’t actually know the answer, but these are unguided rockets, and if the number was very high you can bet we would be hearing that number a lot. How many children have been killed by Hellfire missiles fired on the orders of one Barack Obama? Yeah, we don’t know that number either, because our government goes to great length to keep us from finding out what it is, but I’ll guarantee it’s a lot higher than the first one.

And he’s standing at the UN making speeches denigrating the courage of men “who fire rockets at innocent women and children.” Give me a break.

Get The "Good Jobs"

2012-01-29T08:42:00.000-08:00

In one of his campaign speeches, that is to say one of his campaign speeches that was not masquerading as a State Of The Union Address, Obama made one of his typical statements about how if you wanted to get a "good job" you needed to be able to go to college. He went on to say that meant that colleges need to keep their prices down and that if they don't then he's going to cut the money that the federal government gives them. That's another of his threats that he can't carry out, but it sounds good and gets lots of cheers, which is what Obama is all about for the next ten months, so I need to get used to that.

Anyway, you need to get a job because driving a truck to haul supplies to feed and clothe the people who live in your nation is not a "good job." He is touting his success at saving millions of jobs in the auto industry buildling cars and trucks, but since none of those jobs required a college degree and are therefor not "good jobs," why is he so proud of having saved them? What, he's the president who saved a bunch of crappy jobs?

When I grew up jobs that did not require a college degree were "good jobs." When I got out of the Navy I went to work as a maintenance electrician for a company in Milwaukee in a factory building that was over a mile long. There were literally thousands of people working in that plant every day building transformers for the Tennessee Valley Authority, each transformer the size of an apartment building. Not one of those workers was college educated, and every one of those jobs was a "good job," not just because of the pay scale, which was excellent, but because of the satisfaction it provided. We were doing something that mattered. We were building something that would change the way people lived.

Various reasons are given for the rising cost of higher education; overpaid educators, sports programs, cutbacks in public funding, etc. I would suggest that supply and demand is a large player in that issue. When a commodity is in greater demand than it is able to supply then the price rises. Look to braying jackasses like Obama who sell college as nothing more than a ticket to a "good job." "Getting a good job" is the worst reason to go to college. It is an institution of higher learning, not a damned job training mill. Colleges today are filled with young people who don't even have a clue what they want to learn, who actually have no interest in learning anything, they're just there to "get a better job."

The presence of these deadbeats, and from an educational standpoint they are deadbeats because they are not there for what that educational institution is designed to offer them, drives up the cost of operating these institutions in precisely the same way that unproductive workers drive up the costs for a manufacturer. This whole idea of college as a "pathway to a better job" is destructive. We need to make our jobs better because they're better, not because they have "smarter" people in them.

Sea Stories

2012-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

At the request of a couple of friends, I'm going to start including a few "sea stories" in my posts. It's important that you understand what these are, they are "sea stories." Some of them are true, some are ledgends told over beers late at night when reason and sanity have been discarded. Of the ones that are true, some are personal experience, and many are not. They are told for fun and to capture the "essence" of the men who served in diesel submarines. They were a very special breed of men.

I don't know how good I'll be at writing them, how often I will do it, or for how long I will keep it up. That will, in part, depend on your comments. Let me know what you think. I'm going to call it the "Subron 8" series, because I liked the squadron insignia, wich included a dolphin and an eight ball. The first story follows.

Subron 8: The Skipper's Car

2012-01-27T10:40:00.000-08:00

We had just secured the special sea detail and I was stowing my foul weather gear, heading for the crew’s mess to get a snack before going on watch. Pughead joined me and, as we were drawing coffee, asked me if I remembered the docking incident a couple months earlier, when our bow clipped a car parked dockside.

“Oh hell yeah,” I laughed, “we really creamed that sucker.”

“Well, you know whose car it was?” he asked me.

I told him I didn’t and he started laughing, “It was the skipper’s car, man.”

----

Docking at New London Submarine Base can be tricky, depending on the state of the water. The base is on the New London River and the piers are at right angle to the current, which runs stronger at low tide than at high tide. When you turn and start moving into the pier you need to get with the program, because the current is moving you sideways. If you are on the upstream side of the pier you can ram the pier if you don’t come in fast enough, and if you’re on the downstream side the current is taking you away from the pier. New London doesn’t have any tugs, so the maneuver requires that you make the turn, approach at pretty high speed, and then back the motors hard at the last minute to stop alongside the pier.

It’s not as hard as it sounds, but it’s not for the faint of heart either and standing on the forward deck during that maneuver is something of a treat. I was coming up for my crow pretty soon, and being an Electrician would no longer be on the deck gang, and I was going to miss it.

On the day in question we were approaching on the downstream side of the pier and, since we’d been at sea for several weeks, there was a pretty good crowd of families and such there to greet us. We’re eyeing the distance between ship and pier and the closing rate and are pretty happy because we’re coming in close and fast; at this rate we might not have to use the capstan to winch in to the pier at all. And then a certain sense of unease begins to set in; the sea wall, is getting really close, we are still moving at a hell of a clip, and we haven't felt the screws stop in preparation for backing.

I look up at the bridge to see if they are awake up there. No, actually, it appears they are not; they’re waving to the people on shore. Hello? I’m not sure whether to shit or yell “fire.” I start waving my arms and pointing to the oncoming sea wall, and feeling like some kind of idiot. Three other guys join me and finally the geniuses on the bridge notice that all is not well.

As soon as I see that the OOD is screaming into the 7MC I turn back to watch the oncoming sea wall, and decide that maybe I don’t want to watch that. But it’s hard to take your eyes away from it, as the bow of the boat looks bigger and bigger and those cars and people look smaller and smaller. We feel the screws stop and then go back, really fast. I’m not sure the EM’s actually let them come to a complete stop before reversing them, and they really pour the coal to them. The boat is shaking like a drunk having the dt’s and it’s slowing, finally, but…

Diablo hadn’t had the GUPPY mods and we still have the peaked, overhanging bow, and all eyes are on the “bullnose” as it zeros in on a car parked on the seawall. A woman is standing beside the car, her eyes big as dinner plates as she watches the oncoming disaster, and nobody on shore or on the boat moves a muscle. I don’t think anyone so much as blinks an eye. Me, I’m not even breathing.

We’re down to about the speed at which a man walks when the bullnose hits the car right between the headlights. The boat continues forward about ten more feet before a lower part of the bow hits the seawall and the brings us to a nice gentle stop. Later investigation reveals no significant damage to the ship, but that car... Well, in a contest between 1,800 tons of submarine and a couple tons of car, the car does not fare well.

Now it’s our turn to play dumb ass because we are all frozen in place staring at the crushed car and are forgetting to get the lines over, and the guys with the high foreheads up on the bridge are screaming at us to get moving and tie the damned ship up. Oh yes, that. I, personally, don’t think they have any room to be quite so indignant, but whatever.

----

So I asked Pughead who had been conning the ship when we hit the skipper’s car, and how much trouble he was in.

“You don’t remember?” he asked, I shook my head. “Well,” he went on, “That’s the interesting part. The Captain had the con.”

“You’re shitting me. The skipper hit his own car?”

“Yep, and it gets even better. He turned a claim in to his auto insurance company. ‘One car hit by submarine.’ Claimed it on his, you know, not collision but his ‘act of god’ insurance.”

“Did they pay it?”

“Well, they were going to, but then they found out that he had the con and said that meant that meant (are you ready for this?) that he was driving the submarine. So they said that the accident was his fault, and charged him a deductible under his collision insurance.”

We’re laughing our asses off and he says, “But it gets better yet.”

“Oh yeah, how can it get better?”

“He’s trying to get the Navy to pay the deductible.”

Killing Hostage Takers

2012-01-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

The media keeps repeating that the SEALs had an option for “detaining” the hostage takers, but I have absolutely no problem with the SEALs killing the hostage takers in the process of rescuing their captives. In fact I’m inclined to think that killing them should be the default. Sort of let them know that, “If you really want to surrender, we’ll let you, but you better make that desire very clear and do it very fast.”

What I have a problem with is the President of The United States standing at a podium afterward and smugly talking about how we have “brought them to justice.” That is not how our constitution defines “justice.” In this country, justice is not delivered through the muzzle of a gun.

That mission was not about delivering justice. That mission was about rescuing people who were being held hostage, and if killing was needed to accomplish that, then so be it. If that meant that the bad guys did not get justice, then that’s life. Sometimes bad guys don’t get justice, sometimes they just get killed in the process of committing a bad act.

So it’s fine for Obama to be pleased with the rescue, and even with how it was done, but a constitutional scholar should know better than to refer to extrajudicial execution as “justice.”

State Of The Union, 2012

2012-01-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

It took me a couple of days to put my thoughts together on this because, for one thing, I kept finding myself becoming a bit overheated. I try not to write here when I’m agitated, so I had to step back from time to time and regain my objectivity. Yes, I actually did say that. If you think what I write here is, um, a bit heated at times, you should see what I decide not to post.

I fell asleep several times during the actual event, so I had to rely on a transcript, which you can use to follow along. He actually did make some pretty good points, and I will not skip over those when I get to them. I don't bash Obama for the fun of bashing him. I voted for him and I want to see that vote made good. He just keeps doing things that are in direct contradiction to the motivation for my vote.

He pretty much lost me with his opening statement. In 2003 he was referring to Iraq as a “dumb war.” In his 2008 campaign he was calling it “the wrong war.” Now he is claiming that it has “made America safer and more respected around the world.” How he can imagine or pretend that it has done either of those two things is beyond my comprehension, and by beginning that little fable with a recitation of his trip to Andrews AFB to “welcome home some of the last troops” he tries to establish his connection with ending that war, which is a flat out lie. That war ended on precisely the schedule laid out by George W. Bush before he left office. In fact, Obama tried to negotiate an extension of our military presence in Iraq, and upon failing to do so claimed the withdrawal date as his own accomplishment.

On Economic Growth

He first talks about “when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known.” Ah, yes, the miraculous economic boom following World War 2 and, “if we did it then we can do it again.” Paul Krugman sings that song, too. Of course back then returning combat veterans comprised about 14% of the population, while today they comprise about one tenth of one percent.

The larger difference is that back then we didn’t have any competition, because we had just spent four years bombing it into rubble. This time we have rather stupidly bombed Iraq and Afghanistan into rubble, and they were not our competitors. Our competitors we left fully intact, making consumer goods and high tech goodies while we focused on making instruments of war with which to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan into rubble. So sadly, no, we certainly can do a lot better than we’re doing but we can’t do the 1950’s and 60’s again. I’m not sure that bombing India, China and South Korea into rubble is a good idea.

I’m leaving out the “great country” and “keeping promises” cheerleading, which will shorten the discussion quite a lot, but I will take a quick look at how effective he is at bullshitting by telling the truth, that is spreading manure by stating facts which are entirely accurate.

“In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. American manufacturers are hiring again, creating jobs for the first time since the late 1990s.”

Opponents are claiming that his statement is untrue because a) there weren’t that many jobs created and b) he’s claiming credit for jobs he didn’t create. The first is crap, there were 3.16 million jobs created in the private sector in that time period, so he’s actually understating the facts. The second is idiotic: he does not claim, even by implication, that he or his policies created those jobs. It is a nice clean statement of fact and, even as he made the statement, I had not doubt as to its truthfulness.

It is, however, manure because the work force is also growing, and because of that and the low number of new jobs the portion of people in the work force who are actually employed is essentially unchanged since the worst of the latest recession, with participation having increased by only 0.3% since that time. That means that if you are of working age your chance of getting a job are no better now than they were in 2008.

“Together, we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion.”

Well, yes, but that’s in ten years, not one. With a current deficit of $1.4 trillion, that means we’ve reduced the deficit by a whopping 15% so far. So in the next ten years the increase in the debt will be $12 trillion instead of $14 trillion. Are you properly impressed?

“And we’ve put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again.”

Except that the people who wrote the legislation and economic experts who review the effectiveness of it disagree wildly on just how much it prevents future crisis, and the banks that were “too big to fail” then are even bigger now than they were then.

He embarks on an almost orgasmic paean about the auto industry, excitedly says that “the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs,” and winds up with a triumphant, “the American auto industry is back.”

Well, adding 160,000 jobs in a couple of years is not to be sneered at, for sure, but it’s somewhat less than overwhelming given that we need to add 200,000 jobs per month in this country merely to keep up with population growth. And saying that the industry “is back” at this point is sort of like saying that the 49ers have won the game when they score a touchdown in the first quarter. The auto industry may be "back," and I hope it is, but it’s a little early to be beating victory drums.

Then he gets to the part about restoring American manufacturing and, as I feared would be the case, the first thing he brings up is taxes. After saying that companies “get tax cuts for moving jobs and profits overseas,” the next thing that he says is, “companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.”

Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, of course, from about 600 Republicans for the last dozen years or so. Did we really elect a Democratic president to spout Republican slogans at us? Yes, I believe we did, because he goes on, “if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here.” Tax cuts for businesses! What a novel idea. It’s amazing that some Republican hasn’t already proposed that. Oh, wait…

He doesn’t give any real details on his “bipartisan trade agreements,” and it’s probably in the best interests of his reelection chances that he doesn’t. He describes them as creating “millions of new customers for American goods,” but he leaves out the “trade” part where they create millions of American customers for foreign goods, and thereby millions of foreign jobs making those goods. I don’t know if you remember Ross Perot and his “giant sucking sound” in the NAFTA debate.

The we have the quintessential “Americana moment” with the blushing laid off single mom in the audience, the community college, the magnanimous corporation opening a plant in a destitute village, the tuition getting paid, the wonderful job with laser technology due to “partnerships.” Applause all around. Close up camera shot of the single mom looking embarrassed and pleased. Happiness abounds.

It would have been, I think, a little more patriotic had he chosen an example using an American corporation rather than Siemens, which is a huge German company. That’s splitting hairs, perhaps, and it’s not all bad having foreign money paying American wages. Still, it would be a little better, I think, if he’d used an example where American labor was generating American profits and income tax revenue, rather than German profits.

And the idea of community colleges pairing with industry to train workers is a little on the trite side. Actually, it’s a lot on the trite side, since it’s been around since before Obama was born. I remember Jimmy Carter using it, and it never turns out to have any significant impact. We can always cite anecdotes of lack of worker skills, but the unemployment problem is not about lack of “skills and education.” We need something that addresses the central issues, not just tinkering around the edges with tired old cliches.

On Education

His section on education is about a fifteen minute continuous cliché, trying to pose education as a solution to the economic conditions that we presently face which is, at best, presenting a long term solution to a short term problem and at worst just sheer nonsense. Manufacturing jobs do not require a college education, and it’s questionable that they even require graduation from high school. He presents the same old generalities that he and his predecessors have presented a thousand times: give states more money for more teachers, require kids to stay in school, somehow create better teachers (magic!), tuition tax credits (tax cuts!), lower interest on student loans, lower tuition…

He does a few of what I call his “specialty statements,” which are saying things that sound really good but, when broken down and examined carefully, make absolutely no sense. “States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets.” Really? Higher than what? California, for instance, is cutting their programs for food assistance, and all but eliminating their in-home health care programs for the elderly, so what else should we cut in order to fund universities?

What he’s really saying, of course, is that education is so important that the federal government is going to do a lot of talking and mandating but is not paying for any of it and that it is up to the states to foot the bill.

“So let me put colleges and universities on notice:” he says, “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” What does that mean and how, precisely, does that help young people obtain college educations? I suppose that he is in some manner demonstrating how “tough” he can be, but I don’t see how he is helping anyone with that kind of statement. Why is everyone cheering as he threatens to cut funding to higher education?

On Immigration

He got particularly dishonest in immigration, and it was the first time that I caught him in an actual lie. After saying that he “put more boots on the border than ever before,” he then makes the totally untrue statement, “That’s why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.”

No, the main reason is that our economy crashed as he was taking office and there are fewer jobs to be had in this country, and so fewer people are crossing illegally in pursuit of those jobs.

After castigating Congress for not tackling immigration reform, he than says, “let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, and defend this country.” This from the head of an administration which is arresting and deporting undocumented workers at a rate far exceeding any previous administration.

Understandably, he did not dwell on this topic very long.

On Energy

The first thing he did in his discussion on energy was “open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” Are you kidding me? Just twenty months after Deepwater Horizon, and in the face of disastrous evidence of a dangerously warming planet, he authorizes an enormous amount of new offshore drilling.

He then touts our natural gas reserves, another environmental disaster in the making, and makes shale gas and its extraction sound like one of the best things to happen since the initial discovery of oil. He will require drillers on public lands to “disclose the chemicals" they use, but does not say that there will be limitations on those chemicals, so the only difference is that now you will know what is poisoning you instead of having to wonder. Drillers on private lands, which is much of the country is most of them, are not affected by the requirement and can continue to poison us with unknown chemicals.

He waxes at some length about “clean energy” and “executive orders,” but we are left mostly uninformed as to what the hell he’s talking about. The Navy is going to buy enough clean energy to power a quarter million homes. Does that clean energy come in buckets? In barrels? Do they ship it in tankers? Or is it boxed so that it can be shipped by truck? Over what period of time are they going to make this purchase, and what are they going to do with it?

“I’m directing my Administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes.” Um, what?

On Infrastructure

Okay, Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge, forefathers, all that good stuff, and then this from total lala land,

“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

Dude, the money we are “spending at war” is all borrowed money. We can’t “use half of it to pay down the debt” for heaven’s sake, because you cannot pay down debt with borrowed money. Good God, does he think we are totally stupid? Well, that was a dumb question, because of course he does.

“Now is a really good time to build,” apparently because there are lots of unemployed construction workers. That would be a good reason if the purpose of building was to provide jobs. Building is desperately needed and I’m not arguing with his statement, I just have an issue with his reason.

I think he could have spent more time in this topic than he did. I believe the American Society of Civil Engineers would agree with me.

On Financial Reform

Financial reform starts with, oh no, here comes “mortgage relief.” You know what, I can’t “save $3000 a year by refinancing my home at historically low rates” because I already have that low rate which I got it when I bought the house many years ago and I never refinanced with the fancy “get rich quick” schemes that mortgage companies have been offering me all these years.

But my car is worth less than it was when I bought it. In fact, it is worth less than I owe on it. Why is Obama not offering to “forgive” my car loan? Come on man, I didn’t know the car’s value would go down. I didn’t understand things like that I would have to pay, you know, interest on that loan. I thought that if the car broke down I could stop making payments. Why isn’t he offering to cancel my car loan? I thought that in this country if I did something stupid that the government would bail me out of the situation I got myself into. (That was snark. The only debt we have is our home loan.)

Here’s one of his “specialty statements," “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.” Did you follow the thread that brought us here?

First an admission that, “…mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.” Then we have, “…the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates.” That’s on the mortgage that they couldn’t afford and/or couldn’t understand, but which they undertook anyway, and that is a policy of “no bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.” Right.

He does a really clever thing with spilled oil and spilled milk and his feelings about regulations. That’s “eliminating burdensome regulations that hamstring businesses,” which is another popular Republican theme from a Democratic president. Yes, he manages to work in a reference to “crying over spilled milk.” He mentions the “Gulf two years ago,” but does not connect that to his earlier declaration of opening up “more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” Of course he doesn’t.

We then reached another moment when I actually sat up and listened as he expounded at some length about financial regulation and investigation of financial wrong doing. Some of it requires Congressional action, which we all know won’t happen, but I respect and appreciate that he called for specific action by Congress. The part of it which had to do with executive action sounded good, but it is so disparate from his past action and his unbroken record of “looking forward not back” that I am more than a little bit skeptical. I like it, but I'll believe it when I see it.

On Taxes

On taxes, Obama is almost 100% Republican, starting by saying that the “most immediate priority is stopping a tax hike.” Never before Obama have I seen a Democrat refer to the expiration of a tax cut as a “tax hike.” Republicans have been doing it for years as an underhanded method of popularizing renewals of their tax cuts, but since Democrats are not generally associated with tax cuts they have never really needed to engage in this particular form of deception. Obama is all tax cuts all the time, and he is dead set to renew his pet tax cut right now, and so we have this rhetoric of “stopping a tax hike.”

He then goes into a very lengthy and heartfelt dissertation about “$1 trillion per year on tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.” It’s hard for me to describe how much this frustrates me, not because of the subject itself, but because it is so freaking trivial and distracting. No, it is not “class warfare,” and yes, the wealthy should absolutely pay more taxes than they do, but to keep harping on this subject is something on the order of the Captain of the Titanic complaining about the arrangement of the freaking deck chairs.

If the amount is correct, and I rather question that it is, then correction of the problem would eliminate less than 8% of our deficit, even assuming that the deficit is our largest problem in the first place, which it is not. If we restored the economy it would eliminate about half of our deficit, and if we got health care costs, not health insurance, but health care costs, under control we would have a federal budget surplus. The trivial amount of tax which is not paid by the rich is not worth the time we spend discussing it, and it is time that we do not spend discussing things that really do matter.

Getting the economy back on track matters, and we are not going to do that by making the rich pay a little bit more of their income in the form of taxes. Getting the cost of health care under control matters, and the tax rate paid by the rich has nothing whatever to do with that. Neither does health insurance, which doesn’t generate health care costs, it pays those costs. Health care costs are generated by drug companies, hospitals, medical labs, and associations of doctors. We don’t even talk about those things at all, we barely talk about real means of restoring the economy, and instead we blow a lot of hot air about whether rich people pay enough taxes.

On Congress

He launches an attack on Congress; slamming their insider trading in the stock market, legislating favorably for companies whose stock they own, campaign contribution bundling, lobbying and the filibuster.

All well and good, I despise Congress as much as anybody, but we can’t vote for Congress to replace the President, so he’s wasting his breath here. He needs to campaign against some Republican to be named later, not against Congress.

He tries to be fair by adding the, “The executive branch also needs to change. Too often, it's inefficient, outdated, and remote,” but it’s less than a home run because he left out “corrupt.” He asks Congress for authority to change the executive branch, which is a bit of a farce since he didn’t think he needed permission from Congress to start a war in Libya.

After pissing off John McCain and Eric Cantor almost continuously for more than an hour, he declaims that we need to “end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction.” I’m pretty sure that elegant piece of rhetoric did not come from the Dale Carnegie course on “How To Win Friends and Influence People.”

On Foreign Policy

I’ve never bought into the nonsense that Obama’s foreign policy was “apologist” or any of the similar criticism, but it has seemed to me that it lacked any clear overall pattern. His policy has appeared to be one of reacting to the conditions of the moment. After this speech I’m not sure that even he knows what his policy is, that he has an overall policy at all, or that he even knows what is going on in the world or even in his own Cabinet.

As to Al Queda, he tells us that what remains of them are “scrambling” and know that they can’t hide from us. Once again he is not on the same page as his Secretary of Defense, who tells us that there are still a lot of them, they are almost everywhere “out there,” and that they are still very dangerous. Panetta’s “so we need to spend lots of money on weapons” is unstated but clearly implied, as is Obama’s “I killed Bin Laden so you need to reelect me."

Obama has a tough job here, because he wants to claim credit for winning wars, but he also wants to keep the voters afraid of ongoing threats, so he has to walk a tightrope. If all the wars are won, voters might feel free to dump him and he won’t have the “I can keep you safe” lever to pull, but if he overdoes the threat he might convey the message that he hasn’t done a very good job of keeping us safe. So he goes all passive mode and says “wars have been won,” but throws the Iran nuclear threat in there at the end.

“Through the power of our diplomacy,” he says, “a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program now stands as one.”

Well, sure, if you ignore China, Japan and India, all of whom are still buying oil from Iran and have clearly stated that they have every intention of continuing to do so, and Russia, which has said that it has reached its limit on sanctions and will not go along with any more. I sometimes wonder who is advising Obama, or if anyone is.

You also need to deny the evidence that Israel is going to throw a huge load of grits into the fan by launching an attack on Iran before the end of 2012.

Other than that, yes indeed, the world “stands as one.” That’s almost as delusional as taking half the money we no longer spend on war and using it to pay down the debt.

He says that “Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever.” Which sort of overlooks the minor detail that their economies are on the verge of collapse.

He claims that “Our iron-clad commitment -- and I mean iron-clad -- to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history,” which is just weird. We had a joint military exercise scheduled recently, but cancelled it when Iran threatened to close Hormuz, but other than that, what “military cooperation” is he talking about?

“We've made it clear that America is a Pacific power,” he says. Yeah, by stationing 2500 Marines, ground troops, in Australia. Marines are pretty awesome troops, but I don’t think that 2500 of them constitutes a “Pacific power.” Yes, I know we have vast numbers of forces in the Pacific, but this is the only addition Obama has made that can be seen to justify his “we have made clear.”

He says that across the world “opinions of America are higher than they've been in years,” and that “as long as I'm president, I intend to keep it that way.” The first part is true and I won’t argue the second because I can’t read his mind. There is evidence, however, that he is not accomplishing that goal. Worldwide opinion of this nation went up when Obama was elected merely because we elected him or, more likely, because we got rid of George W. Bush. Since he has been in office, unfortunately, world opinion has been dropping again, because Obama has turned out to be just about as much of an imperialist as Bush was.

On Defense

His spending plan of “a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget” remains intact. The “saving half a trillion dollars” is infuriating.

First, that’s in ten years, not one, so it’s a very, very small fraction of what we spend on war material. And it is not a reduction in spending, it is a reduction in the rate of increase in spending, because the cut is not from the current budget, it’s from projected future budgets. If spending which was budgeted to grow at 4% is altered to grow at only 3% have you “reduced spending” by any amount at all? No, you are still increasing spending, you are just doing it a bit more slowly.

How much money do you “save” by increasing your spending more slowly? Well, that’s a philosophical question related to asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Then answer doesn’t matter. What matters is that the policy requires tax increases.

All in all, this was one of his most forgettable speeches.

Oh Good, Pirate Rescue

2012-01-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

So "commandos" (yes, we have progressed to using that James Bond term now) rescued some Americans from pirates. I don't think they used cutlasses, but I'll bet it was even more dramatic than that because it was the very same commandos who killed Bin Laden, and it was authorized by none other than the President himself.

So now, after hearing that "Obama killed Bin Laden" for a year or so, we are going to hear how "Obama rescued Americans from pirates." The man is simply awesome.

"The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice," Obama said in a statement.

That actually means killing them, because that's what the "commandos" did. There were nine captors, and all nine of them were dead before the "commandos" left with the rescued American citizens. President Obama has his own definition of "justice" you know. "Bringing someone to justice" means killing them.

Romney's Taxes

2012-01-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

Romney released his income tax records and the left is outraged and indignant over the amount of taxes he paid; or, actually, didn't pay. Let's try this one more time, people,

Mitt Romney does not determine his own freaking tax rate.

He pays the taxes determined by Congress. If you are outraged by the tax rate he pays, take it out on the Congress that passed the laws creating that tax rate. Take it out on President Obama who extended the Bush tax cut for the rich for two years.

Military Priorities

2012-01-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

Well, the war crimes trial of the Iraq war, the Iraq “My Lai” investigation if you will, is finally done, and one noncom has been convicted of “dereliction of duty” and will serve three months. The rest of his platoon walks after killing a couple of dozen Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in Haditha in northern Iraq. Excuse me, I meant to say, after they created a couple dozen items of “collateral damage.”

Having never been in combat, I am not going to comment on the specific actions of men in combat, but the noncom in question did say one thing that rather jarred me. In an interview he said that, “As platoon leader my first responsibility is to see that none of my men is injured or killed.” That struck me as a truly remarkable statement.

This is the “finest fighting force in the world” is it? A fighting force whose “first responsibility” is the safety of the troops, rather than the mission? I have known quite a few Marines, I respect them deeply, and most of the ones I’ve known would respond to that with something like, “It that’s the case, son, then you’d best park your platoon on the sofa back home and let some real men do the fighting.”

I served in the Navy, which the arms-carrying branches usually considered as a rather cushy and sort of candy ass service. (They usually changed their minds when we cleared Hampton Roads and dived the boat, but…) Even us sailors knew, though, that the ship and its mission was why we were there. If our personal safety was our “first priority,” we would not have been on the freaking ship in the first place.

If this guy is typical of our modern military, then we have a major problem. Certainly “force protection” is a valid concern, I have no problem with that, but when personal safety is the “first priority” of the leadership of our fighting forces then we might as well not send them into combat. They are not going to win many battles against any kind of determined foe.

What Do You "Live For"?

2012-01-24T07:07:00.000-08:00

Many writers have noted that Joe Paterno "lived only for family and football" and that he even said that he would probably die as soon as he retired from football coaching. Which he did, of course. They say that like it was something wonderful; how dedicated he was to his job as a football coach.

Sorry, I don't think so. To me that shows a very deeply flawed person. Someone who is so deeply defined by profession and only by profession, for whom the horizons of life are that narrow, has something very wrong with them. They are ignoring most of the broad spectrum that is life.

Wishful Thinking?

2012-01-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

The Guardian presumably has a rather liberal reader base, but the title would probably be true for conservatives as well. In any case, you probably know just how accuratly predictive this poll turned out to be.

Practice What You Preach

2012-01-23T08:20:00.001-08:00

Here’s another thought for you in the disconnect between what the Left preaches and what it actually practices.

The liberal/progressive movement decries the influence that “evangelicals” hold over Republican politicians, with their stance on gay marriage, abortion and such, and yet they happily accept a president who is willing to have the rights of survivorship, power of attorney, inheritance and other spousal rights to be determined by the religious institution and definition of marriage, saying, “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

He says that his views on gay marriage are “evolving,” but that is merely a stall. He uses that to make “his base” believe that he might someday change his mind. Don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, the tie between religion and government, for this president, remains firmly in place; the religious definition of marriage is what the state should use to determine who a person should have the right to chose as the person to make decisions for them if they are unable to do so, the person to inherit their possessions, the person to fill the hole left by their death.

But it is the Republicans, not Democrats, who are influenced by religion.

There was a scene in “West Wing” where a group was discussing the open service of gays in the military and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs closed the discussion by pointing out that the arguments against it were the same ones that would have prevented him, an African American, from achieving the rank that he held. He didn’t call them idiots, but the word was clearly implied. He gave them a withering look and left the room.

Barack Obama looks at arguments which a generation ago would be used to prevent him from marrying freely and says those arguments were wrong, but when those same arguments are used today to prevent gay people from marrying freely he has no argument with them. That is the very definition of hypocrisy, and yet the liberal/progressive movement claims him as the nation’s salvation and claims that we absolutely must reelect him.

Super Bowl Rematch

2012-01-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

NFL football has deteriorated to an offense that consists of nothing but 4-yard forward passes. They run the ball once in a while and throw a downfield pass, a few of which accidentally result in big gains, but the game itself is the 4-yard forward pass because no team defends against it. It's actually easy to defend, merely jam the receiver at the line of scrimmage and don't let him run the route, but no one does it, and so that completion rate is about 80% and that is what all teams do.

This weekend's games were drawn out, low scoring affairs of marginally successful running and 4-yard passes. Both games were given as gifts to the other team by rookies who were not paying attention to what they were doing. A Ravens receiver catches the winning touchdown in the end zone and has it batted out of his hands because he is not paying attention to the defender nearby. A 49er's punt returner loses the ball because he was carrying the ball like an idiot, inviting the other team to strip it from him.

The way college teams play the game is infinitely more exciting, and they are more focused and more skillful than the idiots that the NFL puts on the field. Of course, college players are allowed to make contact in practice, so what happens in the game is familiar to them. NFL practice consists of touch football, so I don't know why we would expect much when they are actually hitting each other.

Phil Simms Is Just Stupid

2012-01-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

CBS is probably my least favorite network for watching NFL football, certainly so when Phil Simms is at the microphone. I think that idiot was hit on the head a few times too many in his football career.

For instance, he was swooning over the Raven's defense, which was a bit odd given that the Patriots never found it necessary to punt. Just after they ripped off two 10+ yard runs against the Ravens, Simms opined that, "The Ravens game plan is so well thought out and so well executed." Oh really? Perhaps so, if that game plan is to tire out the Patriots' place kicker.

At another point he said something about "you have to defense every play with that pinpoint accuracy and such good defense." I'm unsure what the hell that even means, but the pass in question was significantly off target, and there was no defender even close.

There is almost certainly no brain connected to his mouth.

Gingrich Smackdown

2012-01-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

The Republican Debate opened with a question to Newt Gingrich regarding his ex-wife’s claim that he had asked her for an open marriage, and I think this may be the first time in my life that I have ever been on Newt’s side or agreed with anything that he said. He replied to the question with,

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” Gingrich told the CNN moderator.

He added, "I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate." And then continued,

“Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

I do think the “go through painful things” was more than a bit disingenuous. Perhaps “been put through painful things” would be more accurate, with Newt as the putter, so he’s trying to slide past the issue that he was being accused of some pretty slimy behavior. Still, while I disagree with that particular phrase, the topic had nothing whatever to do with his fitness for the office being contested, was nothing more than scandal mongering, and I agree with the rest of what he had to say.

The moderator tried to bail out of his faux pas by claiming that, “As you noted, Mr. Speaker, this story did not come from our network. As you also know, it is a subject of conversation on the campaign. I'm not -- I get your point. I take your point.”

Give me a break. And he calls Newt “Mr. Speaker” which Newt has not been for 13 years. What’s with this “elected to office for life” that we seem to have adopted in this country lately? A person is entitled to the honorific only for so long as he/she holds that office. The exception would be judges who are appointed for life, but we only have one Speaker of the House.

Newt promptly engaged in smackdown number two, and I agreed with him for the second, and probably the last, time in my life.

"John, it was repeated by your network. You chose to start the debate with it. Don't try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start this debate with it."

Whatever else Newt may or may not be, he knows how to kick ass.

He then went completely off the rails, and returned me to my comfortable position of regarding him as a complete asshole; finishing his smackdown of the media by saying that he is “tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”

Friday Food Blogging

2012-01-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Got this one from the newspaper the other day, but modified it more than a little bit. It turned out pretty well, and passes the "wife test" even after a drive home that included a flat tire.

Slow Cooker Chicken
6 Chicken thighs, deboned and skinned
1 large Sweet Onion, sliced
4 Carrots, peeled and sliced
1 can, Petite diced Tomatoes
1 can, Chicken Broth
Frozen Peas
Olive oil
Garlic, crushed
Oregano
Thyme

Put the onion, carrots, tomatoes and broth in slow cooker and set on low.

Cut the chicken thighs into about four pieces each. Put about a quarter cup olive oil in a bowl and add the garlic, Oregano and Thyme to it. Mix that well. Dip the chicken pieces in the oil/herbs mixture, coating well, and put them in the slow cooker on top of what’s already in there.

Cook eight hours on low, being sure not to remove the lid. Add some frozen peas about thirty minutes or so before serving.

Right Thing, Wrong Reason

2012-01-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

I was delighted to read that President Obama had put a stop to the Keystone Pipeline yesterday. Initial evidence earlier this year was that he would approve it, but recently he has been bowing to public pressure and environmentalists and granted a delay, and now we have a final rejection. Then I read the details which gives his reason for the rejection.

"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," Obama said in a statement. "I'm disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration's commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil."

I’ll take that last sentence first, with its “commitment to American-made energy” and to his desire to “reduce our dependence on oil," because it is just pure nonsense. The pipeline would be carrying Canadian-made energy which is oil; so the statement is, at best, totally unrelated to his rejection of the pipeline and is thrown in merely to distract the voters.

Then there’s the “arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," which is enough to make a sane person either have a coronary of fall out of his chair laughing. The project was proposed in 2005. This is 2012. Seven years is not sufficient time to “gather information” to make a decision?

He says specifically that the decision is not about “the merits of the pipeline” but is due to the Republicans, which is a clear statement that he is making a purely political decision for the purpose of making Republicans look bad and for no other reason. For the next eleven months that is the only reason our president is going to do anything, is to make the Republicans look bad and to get himself reelected.

After three years of “being above partisanship” and cooperating with Republican demands, suddenly, when the election season begins, he has become the steely eyed liberal who is beating up the other side and is going all out to be the die-hard liberal who will go to any length to defeat the evil designs which they have for this nation. And if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn on which I can give you a really good deal.

And rejecting the pipeline damn well should be “about the merits” of it.

I think the dangers to the aquifer are a bit exaggerated; the Alaska Pipeline has operated for 34 years without incurring any of the kinds of spills that are promoted as threats to that water source, but any threat to the Ogallala Aquifer is unacceptable if it can be avoided. It’s also not unreasonable to assume that in today’s climate of corruption and greed the pipeline would not be built with the integrity that the Alaska pipeline was built.

The larger issue, though, is that the pipeline would be carrying oil extracted using possibly the most environmentally disastrous procedure ever devised by mankind, and we should not be involved in encouraging that process. Sure, if we don’t use that oil someone else will, but that boat don’t float with me. Just because evil is happening in the world and we can’t stop it doesn’t mean that we have to participate in it. Building that pipeline would mean participating in it, and we damn well should not do it.

The initial delay was, of course, simply an effort to put the issue off until after the 2012 elections, which I regarded as cowardly. It was pretty clear to me that he would approve the project after he had been reelected. Now he has realized that rejecting it benefits his reelection chances, especially since he can blame it on the Republicans.

Someone once said that doing the right thing for the wrong reason has no more merit in heaven than doing the wrong thing. Politics is not heaven, certainly, but motives count with me, and Obama gets spitballs from me for this gesture, not flowers.

My New Favorite Excuse

2012-01-19T07:21:00.001-08:00

Is the captain of the semi-sunken cruise liner off the Italian coast. He did not intentionally leave his sinking ship before the passengers had all departed safely, he "tripped and accidentally fell into a lifeboat." He actually made that claim. I guess that American sailors just don't fully understand Italian mariners.

The Fallacy of Polls

2012-01-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

Somebody did a poll of some group of people, and Think Progress described the poll by saying that it “asked an incisive question.” I’ll give you the questions in a moment, but first the definition of “incisive.”

Incisive adj. Penetrating, clear, and sharp

And the questions: they ask which is worse for the American economy, “inherent unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy,” or “over-regulation of the free market.”

First of all, please tell me which of those two questions is “penetrating” or “clear,” let alone “sharp.” They are, in fact, both conclusions rather than conditions, both are extraordinarily vague, and the first one is so biased as to render to poll all but self-answering. What idiot would ever pick any answer that did not include the word “unfairness.”

To anyone who can get outside of ideology and actually think with the slightest trace of logic and intellect, this poll and its “conclusion” that “most Americans agree with progressives” make the Washington Post, and ABC News who conducted the poll, and Greg Sargent who drew that simple-minded conclusion, look like complete idiots. I’m actually amazed that the result was as disparate as it was.

But this is the way that political discussion is done in our nation today.

Too Much Money

2012-01-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

I have been reading articles and posts all morning in which Mitt Romney is castigated for the amount of taxes, and the tax rate, that he pays on his income, and I fail to see the point of such criticism. Romney did not write the tax laws, did not participate in writing the tax laws, never lobbied for tax laws, and has never held a federal office of any kind. What is he supposed to do, cheat on his taxes to pay more than he owes?

Why do we persist in demonizing everyone except those who are creating the situations which we deplore? The rich “pay too little tax” because Congress passed laws declaring that they should do so. We should be angry at Congress, but we give them a pass and vent our spleen on the people who “have too much money.”

And therein, I believe, is the point. I don’t think we really give a damn what they pay in taxes, I think we are just pissed off that they have too much damned money.

On Firing Head Coaches

2012-01-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

The Baltimore Colts lose their quarterback, not only their starting quarterback, but their only quarterback and the quy who has been 100% of their offense for years. They lose him for the entire season, win two games and fire their head coach.

The Oakland Raiders lose their starting quarterback early in the year, then they lose their second string quarterback. They have to go out and sign up a quarterback who had retired earlier in the year. They also lose a running back who is potentially All-Pro. They win eight games for a .500 season and fire their head coach.

The San Diego Chargers have their All-Pro quarterback healthy all year. They have their first round draft pick running back healthy all year. They win eight games, only one of which is against a team with a winning record, for a .500 record on the season, and do not fire their head coach.

There is undoubtedly a planet on which that makes sense. It isn’t Earth.

Insanity Abounds

2012-01-17T09:28:00.000-08:00

Stock car racing has devolved into complete nonsense now, making even less sense in its regulatory processes than the US government.

Last year at Daytona and Talledega, the two superspeedways, drivers discovered that two-car tandems were vastly faster than either single cars or “packs” containing three or more cars, and the racing was…. Well, there was no racing as you and I understand racing. There was high speed certainly, but the two car tandems were just ridiculous.

So this year, NASCAR is trying to make sure that two cars cannot “hook up” for the same kind of extra speed. One might think that authorities would look at shape of the cars to do that, since the issue is an aerodynamic linkage between two cars that allows them to go faster, but no, NASCAR is reducing the parameters of the cooling systems of the cars in hopes that the pushing car will overheat and force the tandem to break up so that the driver of the rear car can cool his engine down.

What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Well, actually several things can go wrong; one being that the pushing driver doesn’t decide soon enough to cool his engine and it overheats and blows up. That dumps lots of oil, water and engine pieces on the track, which cause a whole bunch of other cars to wreck. That would indicate that NASCAR’s plan did not turn out very well.

Another possible outcome revolves around the fact that, with the rear car overheating, the two cars must trade places, taking turns pushing and leading. The more prone the pusher is to overheating, the more often they must trade places, and the more chance there is that they will wreck themselves in the process. So NASCAR’s plan increases the likelihood of a wreck, which some might say is a good thing. I don’t.

Finally, NASCAR claims to be trying to restore the “big pack” racing, where up to twenty or more cars raced in a single “draft,” or aerodynamically linked parade of cars. Why, exactly, they think that a car will overheat while pushing a single car and not overheat as one of the trailing cars in this “big pack” eludes me. Taking twenty cars, instead of having ten of them prone to overheating in ten tandems, you will have nineteen of them prone to overheating in a single twenty-car draft.

I definitely think that Brian France should run for President.

Cruise Ship Question

2012-01-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

I have never seen a ship sink... Okay, mandatory pause here for a corny submarine joke. What is the difference between a submarine and a regular ship? Hint, it is not that a submarine can dive. Give up? Answer: it is that a submarine can surface.

Cynical old submariners will add, "usually." Any ship can dive once, it's called "sinking." The trick is coming back to the surface, and you can only do that if you a) are a submarine and b) have your shit together.

Anyway, that Italian cruise ship that hit the rocks and essentially sank was gashed and took on water on the port side, and yet pictures show her lying on her starboard side. The gash in her hull can be seen, well above the present waterline. WTF?

Sports Line Of The Week

2012-01-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

From Gary Kamiya at Salon, whose sports writing is usually completely yawn worthy and who in general knows as much about football as my cat does, comes this little jewel,

"The Giants were helped by the fact that the Green Bay receivers appeared to mistake the football for an incoming hand grenade."

He then goes into rapturous paens of ecstaty over Alex Smith. Yikes. He wants the Giants/49ers game to be played on San Francisco Bay rather than at Candlestick Park, because Alex Smith is the only one who can walk on water. That might create problems for the receivers, but we're talking about Alex Smith - he don't need no steenkin receivers.

Coming Around On Tebow

2012-01-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

After watching Tim Tebow the past few weeks, I have changed my attitude of him quite a lot; mostly as a person, but also as a football player. As a college player I was prejudiced against him because he played for Florida and the only SEC team I like less than Florida is… Well, actually, there is no SEC team I like less than Florida.

Like the rest of the world, I kind of forgot about him last year, and this year I found all of the hype a bit annoying. I thought, too, that his public affectations of religiosity were in poor taste and that they were self serving. I no longer think that, really, and I’m seeing a young man who is dedicated, enthusiastic and refreshingly ethical.

I think the media and a lot of bloggers are being a bit unfair to Tebow with this stuff about God and Tebow’s won/loss record. I have written on several occasions about the risks that are incurred in public displays of faith and why I believe one’s faith should be reserved to private venues, but I don't believe that Tebow has ever actually ascribed a victory to God's intervention. He frequently says "I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," but listen to him; he never says "for this win" or anything similar to that. In fact, he never says what he is thankful for, merely that he is thankful. Yes, I think his utterances lack a certain amount of taste, but this fashion of accusing him of claiming that God is on the side of the Denver Broncos is, I'm pretty sure, just not accurate.

Here's what he said last night after Denver’s loss to New England. Notice he says what he is thanking his teammates for, and what he is thanking Broncos fans for, but...

"But before we talk about that I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and thank my teammates for the effort they put forth not only tonight, but our entire season and also I want to thank the Broncos fans for all their support this season. It definitely meant a lot."

That’s actually a pretty nice statement, isn’t it? Later in the interview he was asked, “How do you make sense of losing in the context of your faith?”

“Something I pray before games, during games, after games is regardless whether I win or I lose, whether the hero or the goat, it doesn't matter, I still honor the Lord and give Him the glory because He's deserving of it. Just like my faith shouldn't change, neither should that. That's how I try to approach it, and sometimes even in a loss you can honor Him more. For me, I just pray that my character, and who I am doesn't change even though you can be dejected, you can still feel hurt, you can still feel disappointed, but you can still honor the Lord with how you handle things.”

Does that sound like someone who is claiming that God is on his side? It doesn’t sound like that to me, and in fact, it sounds to me like a young man who is more concerned with being a person of good character than he is with winning football games. He sounds like someone who knows that how you play the game is more important than the outcome.

Maybe our politicians, of both parties, could learn something from him.

NFL Playoffs

2012-01-15T07:20:00.000-08:00

So far the home team has won every game, and I would be somewhat less than astonished if today did not continue that record. The Denver win last weekend was a surprise, and was rather a fun one.

This week the surprise was the 49ers, and San Francisco got away with a bad case of stupid. When you are playing a team that passed for 600+ yards each of its last two games, and averages 39 points per game, no matter how good your defense is, you do not tell your offense to sit on a six point lead. Still, it made for an exciting finish.

Is Tebowmania finally finished? But now Bradymania begins.

Rate The Candidates

2012-01-14T10:57:00.000-08:00

You can take a quiz to see which candidate has values which most nearly match yours. There is a scale on the left on which you set the relative importance of the issues, then answer the questions. You don't see the candidates until the end.

I got Ron Paul in 1st at 37% and 1 of 11 categories (Afghanistan war), and Obama 2nd at 24% and 0 of 11 categories. On about half the questions, though, I had to answer "none of the above." Let me know who you get.

MLK Monument

2012-01-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

Apparently public outcry over the quotation on the Martin Luther King monument reached critical level and resulted in a decision that it will be changed, but I think the whole damned thing should be dynamited and started over. The statue is a monstrosity. His pose, with arms crossed across his chest, is remarkably untypical of the man, and the expression on his face appears hostile and angry.

At the risk of sounding racist, I cannot understand why a Chinese artist was chosen for this work. Not just ethnically Chinese, but a person living in China, who speaks no English and who built the monument in China from Chinese materials. It should have been done by an African-American artist who had lived through the experience of the civil rights campaign.

The Right To Fail

2012-01-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article about the continuing problem of bee colonies dying off, and one sentence kind of leaped out at me. It pointed out the dischord between the rhetoric of overtaxation, and the casual expectation that we place on government to spend money in our behalf. It was simply this, “Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

I used to have my own business installing machinery in steel plants. In the 1980’s the steel processing industry became so weak that plants pretty much quit installing new machinery, and my business failed. It simply never occurred to me that the government should make up for what I had lost. That concept, that the government should protect me from failure, is simply not in my mindset.

I wound up becoming a landscaper. After digging holes for a while and a dozen years in landscape management, I finished with six years as a website programmer. “If you can’t get a job doing what you do, get a job doing whatever you can get a job doing.” That I should expect the government to make up to me what I had lost simply never occurred to me.

Now we have “disaster relief” for beekeepers who lose too many bees.

I remember watching a piece on “farm relief” some years ago. It used to be that farms made money in good years and banked that money as a reserve against the bad years. Now they spend the money on new equipment and such in good years, and the government makes up their losses in bad years. One elderly farmer did not really approve of the new way of doing business. “They’ve taken away our right to fail,” he said.

I have to agree with him. My career doesn’t look like much, and not many people would consider me a success. But whatever success I have achieved, I did it when Americans still had the right to fail.

Superstition

2012-01-13T08:38:00.001-08:00

I am not superstitious. I walk under ladders, I pet black cats, I sneer at broken mirrors… I am not setting foot outside of my house today.

It has to do with my ship leaving port to go screw around off the north coast of Russia, which was the Soviet Union at the time. I don’t know what we were going to be doing; I was an electrician, and they didn’t tell me those things. They told me how fast to make the boat go, and when we were diving. The usually didn’t tell me when it was time to panic, as that was usually self evident.

We left New London on Friday the 13th of some month. I think it was February, and it was probably 1960 or so. We never reached the coast of Russia, because we hit several storms that beat the crap out of us and forced us to return for repairs. There was, at one point, some small question as whether or not we would even be able to make it back. To a man, we blamed it on the date of our departure.

What Kind of Control?

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

Michael Hastings wrote a piece in Reuters a couple of days ago extolling the prowess of Obama in wresting control of the military away from… Well, it’s unclear who was controlling the military before Obama took control of it; generals/admirals, Congress, or the industrial half of the Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Whoever it was, Obama stood steely-eyed at a podium in the Pentagon to symbolize his assumption of command over the armed forces some three years after becoming Commander-in-Chief.

Tom Englehardt had a different view of the same event, viewing Obama’s use of the Pentagon podium as a metaphorical aircraft carrier and the moment as an implied assertion that with regard to the land wars in the Middle East we are declaring victory and going home.

I have a view that is in between, but somewhat closer to Tom Englehardt than Hastings. Obama has done a better job of controlling the military than Bush did, and by quite a lot, but to say that he has “taken control of it” is a bit of a stretch I think, and his “new” strategy is long on forehead and more than a little bit short on reality.

For one thing it is, as Englehardt points out, hauntingly reminiscent of Rumsfeld, and we all know how well that worked out. I may be a little older than Tom, and I grew up in the Air Force, and I recall echoes of Billy Mitchell all too well. “We don’t need the Army, we can win wars with aerial bombardment.” The military is always obsessed with its newest toys, and always believes that the new technology will replace combat. It never does.

If you want to avoid combat, stay out of wars.

All three of us agreed on one aspect of the moment, that it was politically inspired and was a key moment in a reelection campaign. As such it is, in the long run, probably no more meaningful than one of his cheerleading stump speeches at a “town hall” in the nation’s heartland, and the “change” contained within it is probably no more realistic than the change he advertised in 2008.

Premature Indeed

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Interesting case on People’s Court yesterday. A renter decided not to move into an apartment after paying the first month’s rent. The landlord said that if he could rent the place out right away he would return the non-renter’s money. He did so and put a check for the entire amount in the mail the same day that the new renter signed the lease. But the story did not have a happy ending, or it would not have ended in court.

The day the landlord mailed the check he received notice that he was being sued for the money, in the amount of the check which he had just mailed. The suit had been filed the very next day after the non-renter had asked for the money back and been told he would get it if the place was re-rented. The landlord promptly went to the bank and stopped payment on the check, and sent a letter to the non-renter saying that he had done so and that they would meet in court.

The judge asked the landlord why he stopped payment on the check.

The landlord, a gentleman in his eighties, answered the judge, “Judge, I returned that money because it was the moral thing to do. But this man turns out to be sue happy. He could have had his money several months ago, but if he wants to wait until a judge orders me to return his money I’m perfectly happy to let him wait until you to order me to return his money.”

The judge, laughing her head off, so ordered, but the plaintiff did not get the usual award of court costs due to the suit being deemed “premature.”

Insanity Abounds

2012-01-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

The liberal blogs are trying to convince me that the field of Republican candidates are incoherent idiots who will drive this country on a course of insanity if elected, but I’m not all that convinced that there is any real degree of sanity at the helm right now.

Leon Panetta was on Face The Nation this past weekend and said that with respect to their nuclear program we must, “try to convince Iran that if, you know, they want to do what's right, they need to join the international family of nations and act in a responsible way.” That’s an amazing statement considering that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while our client state, Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons, has steadfastly refused to sign on to that agreement. Further, Iran has opened their nuclear facilities to international inspection, while Israel has not.

He went on to say that sanctions are “working to put pressure on them, to make them understand that they cannot continue to do what they're doing.” If you think about that, it reveals a certain lack of logic. If sanctions were convincing them that they “cannot continue to do what they're doing” would they still be doing it?

And what is it that they are doing that we cannot tolerate? Well on that topic he gets really confusing. “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us.”

So the “red line for us” is that we have to stop them from doing what we admit that they are not trying to do. And we have to reserve the option of using bombs for the purpose of stopping them from doing that which they are not trying to do. Probably by bombing the shit out of facilities which they don’t have.

Scott Pelley of CBS News, meanwhile condensed all of this discussion into a tiny little throwaway line at the end of a marginally related news item, saying that, “And on Sunday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told CBS News that Iran was within one year of being able to build a nuclear weapon. Thank you, David."

Pitiful, Just Pitiful

2012-01-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

I quit watching MSNBC for obvious reasons; tried ABC (blecch), tried NBC and decided that I could not stomach Brian Williams, and finally settled on CBS but am having trouble with that one.

They did a piece last night, for instance, on the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist by "somebody," without speculating on who might have done it, and at the end of the piece said that, "Last Sunday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told CBS News that Iran was within one year of being able to build a nuclear weapon."

Actually, what Panetta said to CBS on that network's Face The Nation was, "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon, no."

It's difficult to take our any of our news media seriously when all of last month we were being told what a booming event the current Christmas shopping season was, with malls crowded, deals being offered, stores being open long hours and shoppers buying at a frenetic pace, and that all of this was turning the economy around and look at how low the unemployemnt application numbers are going.

And today we see that December consumer spending was, in fact, less than stellar; rising 0.1% for the month after a 0.3% increase the previous month. Not only that, but unemployment applications are rising again, just 1000 short of the 400,000 mark as employers discard holiday temporary help, which surprises everyone for some strange reason.

Cold Turkey v. The Patch

2012-01-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

New evidence emerges that "the patch" doesn't help one quit smoking. Take out your coloring book, turn to page four and color me surprised.

After almost thirty years of smoking 4+ packs per day of Pall Mall regulars (yes, you read that right), I had made several efforts to "cut back" or "taper off" and quit, with no success whatever. Then I read the doctor's report which contained the phrase "well advanced emphysema" and became motivated, and quit cold turkey. It was not easy, but I have not had a smoke of any description since.

I'm always a bit embarrassed when a doctor says "good for you" that I quit smoking. Reality is it's damned stupid that it took such a degree of damage to motivate me to stop.

I can't read people's minds, but I suspect that people who use "the patch" and can't stop smoking are not sufficiently motivated to beat a serious addiction, while people who use it and do quit would have quit without it. If you really want to stop smoking and are committed to doing so you're going to stop no matter what method you use, and if you lack that serious commitment then all the tricks in the world are not going to help you.

Because, make no mistake, it requires serious intent, and half measures don't get it done. I think that, in order to beat that addiction, any addiction really, one has to make up your mind that you want it badly enough to stay with it no matter how much it costs or how badly it hurts in the short term. If you want freedom badly enough then whatever the symptoms are, they will pass and that freedom will come.

PS: the "cold turkey" method is much less expensive & probably faster.

Debacle

2012-01-10T07:47:00.000-08:00

I would not hav minded LSU failing to win, had they played a competitive game, but that performance last night was shameful, and was a disgrace to a great school and a great football conference. The defence was tentative, lethargic and was tackling like NFL players, while the offence... Well, the less said about the offense the better. They were not even trying to advance the ball and only twice even attempted a pass of greater than three yards.

Not to take anything away from the Crimson Tide. They have played great football all year all year, and they did so last night. But the game was far more of a blowout than the score would seem to indicate. Alabama had reached scoring position seven times in the first three quarters, while LSU had never crossed midfield and had achieved a whopping two first downs.

We are all liberals now.

2012-01-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

David Atkins, at digby’s place, writes a lengthy and rather incoherent piece on what he views as the principles of liberalism, which illustrates that he doesn’t have a clue what the hell a liberal is, and that he is totally incapable of any form of coherent thought. He says at one point that, “For a liberal like me, who is primarily interested in the well-being of the American middle-class…” Someone who has that primary interest is not a liberal; he is a smug, ignorant, self-satisfied, greedy pig.

This is the kind of bigot who cheerfully declares that brown people in other countries should be blown to pieces if doing so will preserve the "freedom” of the American middle class people whose well being is his primary interest. Read his piece, if you can stand the smug self adulation which he spews at great length, and you will discern that David has essentially no idea whatever what a “liberal” is, a trait which he shares with most other writers who call themselves liberals.

The dictionary gives a couple of basic meanings for the word, one of which is “tending to give freely; generous,” and I’m sure politicians in the Democratic Party are leaning on that one rather heavily. The more important one is “favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.” Oh yeah, right. How many Obama supporters meet that definition? I was blacklisted from commenting on one “liberal” blog because I refused to admit that Obama was justified in starting the war in Libya.

But the term is more than a word, it is a political theory defined as,

A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

It is difficult to square that “autonomy of the individual” with David’s statement that, “Liberalism is and has always been about intervention.” He goes on to say that liberalism “is unavoidably, inescapably paternalistic in nature,” which contradicts, just a little bit, the concept of “protection from arbitrary authority.”

His jackassery reaches something of a crescendo with his admission that, “Conservatives use force of government as well, of course…” and goes on to say that while liberals are using the “force of government” for good purposes, conservatives are using it for bad purposes. At this point we are all supposed to run to the polls and vote for Obama because, of course, we all agree with David’s definition of “good purposes.”

He’s on a par with the lady who would not vote for Nixon because “his eyes are too close together.” He just uses more words.

Professional Football? (updt Monday)

2012-01-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

I swear to heaven, the lack of ability on the part of NFL players to tackle ball carriers is absolutely astonishing. I watched four NFL games this weekend, eight teams, and not one of them had the tackling ability of a decent high school team. More than once a defender made a clean miss on a ball carrier that was standing flat footed; just plain whiffed on a stationary target. And these are the playoff teams. Utterly ridiculous.

Update: A comment at another thread pointed out that it took longer to explain the new overtime rules than it did to actually play the overtime. True, but at eleven seconds of playing time, the damned coin toss took longer than the actual overtime did.

Monday thoughts: When you get really bad service in a dining establishment, a 2¢ tip is a more insulting message than leaving no tip at all. Those two points scored by the Falcons was sort of like that 2¢ tip.

Phil Simms ia an idiot. At one point he commented "This is what Denver does, they throw the ball down the field." Actually, vast numbers of writers and fans have been harshly critical of Tim Tebow for not throwing the ball down the field, and I was one of probably several million viewers who were astonished that he was actually doing it in that game. Then he wondered why Big Ben was not being used in shotgun formation more often, apparently not having heard dozens of sports figures discuss how ineffective Ben is from the shotgun and how much more accurately he throws when taking the snap from under center. He also apparently had not noticed Ben taking the snap from shotgun more than half the time before he said that. If Simms had a brain I would wonder if his mouth was connected to it.

The officials at ~~Mile High~~ Sports Authority Field need to quit checking out the cheerleaders' asses and watch what is happening on the field. The Steelers were grabbing Tebow's face mask every time they tackled him and it was never called, and that was clearly a backward pass.

I have to admit, it was sort of fun watching Denver beat the vaunted Steel Curtain. That was a fun game to watch; best of the weekend.

Fool Me Once...

2012-01-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why the American people keep falling for this. I’m talking about Obama at the moment, but it is by no means unique to him. All politicians do it, and have been doing so for years. What I’m talking about is illustrated by the number of articles headlined to the effect of, “Obama finally gets aggressive with Congress.”

For the first three years of his first term, Barack Obama was clearly a creature of moneyed interests. Before he even began the “health care reform” process, he sat down and made a deal with the pharmaceutical industry that drug price negotiation by Medicare would not be part of that reform, and he never gave more than lip service to the “public option.” He named Wall Street insiders to his cabinet. He watered down the “stimulus bill” in size and diluted it with Republican tax cuts. He allowed financial reform to be a farce.

As the election year approaches he suddenly is making impassioned rhetoric about “taxing the rich,” a nominal tax that leaves capital gains protected, about “payroll tax cuts for working men and women,” and he makes a recess appointment that pisses off Congress. The Democrats all cheer wildly, make statements to the effect that now they “finally see the leadership we have been waiting for” and declaim about how they cannot wait to rush to the polls to vote for him.

For the first three years of his first term Obama’s administration arrested and deported undocumented immigrants at an unprecedented rate, far more than the Bush administration had done before him. Now, as he enters a reelection campaign, Obama signs an executive order easing the deportation process for families. His chances of maintaining the Hispanic vote are projected to improve because of “his record on immigration.”

During the second full year of Obama’s first term the release of toxic chemicals into the environment rose by 16% nationwide. The following year’s budget for the EPA was cut from $10.3 billion to $8.3 billion. Obama’s role in that cut is unclear, but he certainly did not lead any public resistance to the reduction, nor does he include environmental issues in his campaign rhetoric today.

Voters listened to his promises of change during the campaign, suffered through three years of corporatism, and now are willing to be suckered again by the campaign rhetoric that they were suckered by the first time. This is not “the real Barack Obama.” This is the Barack Obama who is campaigning for reelection. The things he is doing now are not what he will be doing for the four years of his second term. The things he was doing for his first three years are the things he will be doing for the four years of his second term; making deals with his corporate masters.

Fearless Forecast

2012-01-07T11:30:00.001-08:00

Make a note of the date and time of this post, so that you do not accuse me of hindsight. The Detroit Lions will defeat the New Orleans Saints. It will not be a fluke, freak or miracle. It will be an earned win.

Update: Well, I made this prediction before I knew that Detroit was going to use the "San Diego defense" strategy. I have never understood the concept that one counters a potent passing offense by lining up the secondary ten yards from the line of scrimmage and backing away from the receivers when the ball is snapped and not rushing the opposing quarterback. It is based, apparently, on the rather bizarre theory that four pass completions of fifteen yards each is somehow less damaging than one completion of sixty yards.

Not to mention that the Lions defensive players would have difficulty tackling my twelve-year-old neice. Well, grand neice, to be precise.

It's pretty embarrasing that San Diego's offense was only able to score ten points against this defense, and the head coach kept his job. Wierd.

Darth Vader Burger

2012-01-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

Oho, so that's what you call it. My wife has been cooking these for years. I call it incineration. It's why you don't see her posting recipes here; you don't need a recipe for boiling water.

Military Spending Plans

2012-01-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

Obama is talking about cutting military spending by $487 billion over the next ten years, and making vague references to a further $500 billion in addition to that. Republicans are, of course, aghast. I like it, and wish that the cuts went far deeper.

One problem is that Obama, like all politicians, has a different definition of “cuts” than you and I do. We think of cutting our budget and it means we buy fewer hamburgers, or we don’t buy that television we wanted. Politicians think of cutting a budget and they spend more next year than they did this year, but instead of increasing their spending by $15 million, they increase it by a mere $10 million. That’s a “budget cut” of $5 million.

The other problem is that each session of Congress is independent; the 112th Congress cannot tell the 113th Congress what to do, and that matters in a number of important ways. For one thing, it means that multi-year budgets are completely bogus.

So the devil is in the details, and we don’t have any yet. If his cuts are $487 billion, but only $4 billion of it is next year, and that $4 billion turns out to be merely a reduction from a $14 billion increase to a $10 billion increase then he hasn’t really done much for us. Don’t be taken by the ten-year planning numbers. We need to know from Obama what his spending plans are for the remainder of his time in office; anything that he says about military spending for the year 2020 is utterly meaningless.

Show Me The Carfax

2012-01-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

From Salon.com we have a headline reading, “A jobs report to make the White House smile,” with a subhead to amplify that reading, “The U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low.”

Let’s not bother to hold an election, let’s just name Obama to another term.

Oh, wait. Let’s look under the hood of the current employment report. In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,695,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 274,000. Those “not in the labor force” rose by 1,421,000. If you have given up looking for work you are not “unemployed” and are not counted in that 8.5% unemployment number.

In December alone, while the unemployment rate dropped to “a three-year low,” those "not in the labor force" rose by a whopping 194,000, almost equaling the reported 200,000 new jobs. Civilian population increased by 143,000 people.

Boy, this economy is really humming right along.

Obama's Version of "Shock and Awe"

2012-01-06T06:23:00.000-08:00

I have now read six different accounts of Obama's speech regarding the "revision" of the military's role in the future and his "vision" for how the military will be shaped in the future, and all I hear is a lot of words that sound like a prettied up version of Donald Rumsfeld. And we all know how that worked out when put to the test, don't we?

We are going to rely on high technology and "innovation," and are somehow going to do that while spending less money, which is going to be a nice trick. The military has never before in history bought new toys at low prices, so we'll see how that works out. We're going to focus on computers, which sounds good. When China occupies some oil country in Northern Africa, for instance, we'll throw them using a few dozen geeks heavily armed with Apple MacBook Pros.

He actually says that we are going to be improving technology while cutting procurement and slowing research and development all at the same time, which is on the same level of reasoning as "We are denying them space in which to plan their attacks." Pretty words which, when examined for meaning, have none.

I have to laugh, however, at critics who bemoan ending the policy of us being able to "successfully conduct two land wars at one time." I mean, really? They seriously thought we had that capability?

Unaccountability Defined

2012-01-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

I object as much as anyone to the concept of the “imperial presidency.” I didn’t like it when a Republican president was advancing that policy, and one of the biggest “issues” I have with Obama is the degree to which he has followed the same path, thereby making the process no longer a partisan issue but turning it into a normal part of our method of governance.

That being said, the president must be allowed to appoint people to positions authorized by Congress. The present Congressional practice of blocking those appointments out of petty partisanship is appalling, and I have no problem with Obama using recess appointments to whatever degree he finds necessary. I think, in fact, that he has been remarkably restrained in his use of them.

The only problem I have with his appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is not with the appointee, or the method, or with Obama; it’s with the Bureau itself. This is one of those Congressional abdications which I objected to when it was first passed by Congress as part of the Dodd-Frank illusion.

It was created with enormous powers and no oversight. The rules which it will impose on banks, credit unions, lenders of every description, financial institutions of every description, debt collectors, and essentially every business which deals with business on a non-cash basis, were not written by Congress but will be created by the bureau and will not be subject to review by Congress or any elected legislative body.

I have a problem with unaccountable government bureaucracies. The only thing worse than regulations being subject to the whims of 535 legislators elected by the population of this nation is regulations being subject to the whim of one person appointed by an imperial president.

Leadership Redefined

2012-01-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

The Philadelphia Eagles are keeping Andy Reid, the San Diego Chargers are keeping Norv Turner, and America will almost certainly reelect Barack Obama. Leadership has been redefined in this country.

Spanos said that he is keeping Turner because the players really like him and that they "play hard for him." Did he watch the Detroit game? In the last game, winning against Oakland, the defense gave up 520 yards. In the entire season, the team defeated only one opponent which had a winning record. In any case, the fact that his subordinates like him is probably the very worst reason to keep a manager.

In Obama's case, of course, he's being retained by his subordinates, so... And yes, I do know precisely what I just said.

In the Chargers case, I think it's money. Turner has two years remaining on his contract and Smith three, and Spanos doesn't want to pay off those contracts and have the expense of hiring to replace them. Sure, they'd both get new jobs, but he'd have to pay the difference between their present contract and their new ones. Some other team would get cheap leadership and he would pay the price. Without a fancy new stadium, which he isn't going to get, he's not willing to spend that much money.

Spanos doesn't care about the fans; doesn't need to because his real income is from television revenue. When the NFL strike was pending it was pointed out that owners actually made more money if games weren't played, because player salaries didn't eat into the money that television still had to pay.

Alternative Thoory: Jim Trotter of Sports Illustrated, who wrote locally for many years, suggests that it is simply that Dean Spanos lacks the courage to do what is necessary, and I suspect that may well be the case. It would certainly not be the first time that a family business has been ruined by the second generation because the children thought that simply growing up rich made them intelligent and brave, and exempted them from having to actually learn how to do anything.

I think we saw that with George W. Bush, where many in his administration openly admit that much of the reaction to 9/11 was simply to panic. "We were terrified that another attack might be coming."

Eight Games

2012-01-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

That's how many Chargers football games will be televised in San Diego next year, as no home game will be sold out. Both general manager A.J. Smith and head coach Norv Turner will be returning next year. The players and the San Diego Union-Tribune sports writers are thrilled, as are the coach and GM in question, but no one else in San Diego is. I'm sure that people in Denver, Kansas City and Oakland are pleased.

The good news is that no new stadium will be built with taxpayers money in San Diego, so I guess it's not all bad.

Bowl Games Note

2012-01-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

The ladies wearing the pretty dresses won whatever that was last night. Supposedly football. Does any conference other than the SEC play defense? I can't wait for January 9th. Geaux Tigers.

Now Its The Trade Deficit

2012-01-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

Dean Baker is of the “Krugman School” of government debt economics, “it’s money we will be paying ourselves,” but with a slight twist. He says that, “the foreign ownership of US financial assets, including government debt, is determined by our trade deficit, not our budget deficit.”

Again with the pretense that there is no difference between government debt and private corporate assets, and he even goes so far as to include government debt as a “US financial asset.” If somebody owns the Bank of America, they own a “US financial asset.” (Well, maybe.) If they own US government debt, they own a “US financial liability.” Their ownership of that debt is an asset to them, but it is a liability on the US side of the equation.

And that debt has nothing whatever to do with the trade deficit.

If we owe $600 million to Japan, we are going to owe that money to them no matter what the trade deficit does, because the government does not participate in the trade deficit. Private companies import and export goods and services, and it is that import and export which creates the trade deficit. That’s why it is called the “trade deficit,” because it is caused by trade. Get it? If that trade deficit drops to zero, we still owe $600 million to Japan.

Krugman at least had enough sanity to pretend that our government owing money to China was balanced by American companies owning subsidiaries located in China. Baker tries to tell us that our government owing money to China is balanced by our population buying televisions made in China, and that everything will be okay if we just make our money worthless. We won’t have to pay our debt if nobody wants our money.

“Ha, ha. Fooled you, didn’t we? Bought all your televisions on credit, then turned our money into garbage. That’ll teach you to mess with America.”

He then goes on to talk about the enormous debt which we are passing on to our children in the form of the effects of climate change, and that is a point with which I am in total agreement. I suspect, in fact, that we are underestimating the damage that has already been done. It seems odd to me that someone who is as clearheaded about that can be so stubborn about the need to serve the immediate economic wishes of a greedy generation and unwilling to seek financial stability.

Rose Bowl Note

2012-01-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

Furore arises over the mirrored helmets being worn by the Oregon Ducks. Now it occurs to me why I dislike the Ducks and their zillions of different uniforms so much. Bunch of damned teenage girls giggling over their pretty new party dresses. Football is about how you perform an athletic contest, not how pretty you look with the feathers on your damned outfits.

LSU kicked their ass, here's hoping Wisconsin does likewise.

Krugman's Single Tune

2012-01-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Krugman is at it again, this time in an op-ed column in the New York Times. First of all he actually debunks Keynesian theory, which he claims to support and which says that governments should spend and create government debt during lean times, and pay down the debt during times of economic plenty. Here’s Krugman’s theory,

First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.

Krugman needs to take a reality pill, although he may already be beyond any such remedy. The debt at the end of World War II was about $3 trillion and indeed has, essentially, been swallowed up by a population increase from 130 million people to 313 million. What sort of increase will be needed to swallow up our present debt of $14 trillion? My calculation says it would require a national population of about 973 million people, and I don’t even want to think about the problems that would present.

Or, perhaps, merely 400 million people, each with an income of $6 trillion. What would the “poverty level” be in such a society?

When I was a teenager I once grew 6” in a six month period. Applying Paul Krugman’s theories, I should be about eighty feet tall right now. Feeding me would be a problem. Of course, feeding an American population of 973 million would be a bit of a problem.

He also sort of slides past the fact that even by the “Krugman Theory” of not paying it, our debt is still a problem because we are not even within hand grenade distance of “ensuring that debt grows more slowly than our tax base.” Our population has gone from 130 million to 313 million since World War II, a 240% increase, while our debt has gone from $3 trillion to $14 trillion, which is a 467% increase.

Krugman only uses facts which are convenient to his purpose.

Then there was the whole “debt ceiling crisis” in which the government’s integrity was at stake. The world needed to be assured that “America would pay its debts.” Paul Krugman says America will not pay its debts, because that’s not what governments do.

Then, to the larger audience reading the op-ed than earlier read his blog, he trots out the “it’s largely money we owe ourselves” argument and is a little more open about the fact that “foreigners now hold large claims” on our government debt. He carefully omits saying that those claims amount to a full one-third of our government debt, nor does he come right out and reiterate his claim that we should not worry about it since we aren’t going to pay that money back because governments don’t pay debt.

What he does say is that “every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners,” as if that meant anything. One dollar of American government debt held by the Japanese government is matched by 89¢ worth of factory owned in Japan by General Electric. So what? I owe the bank money on my house, and I own a car. Can I tell the bank to kiss off because my car is paid for?

I don’t happen to think we should be raising taxes at this moment, but Paul Krugman’s arguments are simply idiotic, and I certainly do not think we should continue cutting taxes. If I’d wanted a continuation of the pandering to taxpayers with tax cuts, I’d have voted for a Republican. Debts do matter, the bill will come due, and we need fiscal sanity not only in our government but in our nation.

Oh Good, We Won...

2012-01-01T17:12:00.000-08:00

...against the 25th ranked overall defense, 27th against the pass. If the Oakland pass defenders could find our receivers at all, it was only to commit pass interference against them. The Raiders' secondary did a very good imitation of the Keystone Cops, so now we will hear peans of praise from the San Diego sports writers about the excellence of the Chargers coaching staff and how it was their brilliance that achieved an 8-8 record in the face of millions of injuries to everyone including the ball boys.

Meanwhile, Tim Tebow racked up 50 yards passing on 6 completions of 22 attempts for a 27.3% completion percentage, and took the Denver Broncos into the playoffs with a 7-3 loss to Kansas City.

Broncos, Chargers and Raiders are all at 8-8 with Broncos winning the division on third tie breaker, since all four teams in the division are 3-3 in division play. Has to be the NFL's most pathetic division.

Look, people, I'm recovering from surgery. I can't stand all this excitement.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T07:43:00.000-08:00

I can remember when the BIG GAME was on New Year's Day. The college football Holy Grail. The two best teams of the gridiron duking it out as we gathered on our couches and nursed our hangovers to cheer our favorites and/or grouse about what might have been. Now it's just another NFL weekend, a few more "bowls" of 6-6 college teams, and the college championship still nine days away.

I never went out on New Year's Eve, because that was "amateur night." Damn fools didn't know how to drink. They'd throw up right on you. Us professionals always had a clear thirty second warning that barf was coming. "Excuse me, I need to go puke." Amateurs will keep both eyes open while driving. Idiots; then you don't know which center stripe to follow. Keep one eye closed and there's only one stripe.

I still don't go out. Different reason these past thirty years.

But I celebrate the years and treasure every one of them. There are no good years, or bad ones. Rain is "bad" if you're having a parade, but it's "good" if you're a farmer. Rain is just rain, and a year is just a year. "Good" and "bad" are value judgements that we place on things, and we place them based on how those things affect us. But I'm not the center of the universe, and how something affects me is not the true measure of what it is.

So 2012 is here. Treasure the moment.

He Still Has His Shovel

2012-01-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman clarifies his somewhat obscure reference to the balance between foreign held US debt and American-held foreign assets. It turns out he was pointing out that while foreigners own some US government debt, we should not worry because Americans own investments in foreign holdings. Private corporations, that is, own subsidiaries in foreign countries, and that offsets our government debt held by foreign governments.

Could anything more clearly illustrate that we have become an oligarchy?

Government debt is a liability offset by corporate assets. In reality, of course, that's like saying that Bank of America is broke, but don't worry about it because Wells Fargo has money. That's factually useful only if Wells Fargo buys Bank of America, and Krugman's latest is useful only if corporate America buys the American government. Oh, wait...

In the normal course of things, you have a secured debt in your house because, while you owe money on it, you own the house which is worth more money than you owe. Today's economy has thrown that whole principle in the crapper, of course, and "secured debt" doesn't mean what it used to mean, but still...

In Krugman's new theory I could have a secured loan by borrowing money without owning anything, but by assuring the bank that my friend's house was worth more than I was borrowing. I could write up a balance sheet that showed all of my credit card debt, and then list a house owned by the guy I graduated from high school with as an asset, and the bank would throw money at me.

He then goes on to say that our government is paying less interest to those foreign holders of our debt than private corporations are realizing in income from their foreign assets, and that neatly proves that your idea about the government being "in hock to foreigners" is wrong. How, exactly, it proves that he does not say.

Sam owes money to Fung Yoo. David owns property. David is earning more income from his property than Sam is paying in interest. That reduces the amount of Sam's debt to Fung Yoo? We may need some butterfly nets and white coats.

This Is My Solution

2011-12-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

I think Paul Krugman will get here eventually, so I'll beat him to the punch. If the national debt is money that the government owes to American citizens, then there is a very simple way to deal with our national debt. Just write it off. Cancel it. Erase it. To compensate the people who were holding that debt, just tell them that they don't have to pay taxes any more.

Two huge problems solved in one fell swoop; the debt problem, and the tax problem. I think I am just freaking brilliant.

If You Can't Dazzle Them With Brilliance

2011-12-30T07:40:00.000-08:00

The rest of that is “baffle them with bullshit.” Everyone thinks that Paul Krugman is doing the former, but I have a very good bullshit meter, and Paul Krugman is pegging that meter again.

He’s been making the claim that our national debt is not a problem because it’s money that we owe to ourselves. I have been unable to address that issue on his blog because you can’t comment there unless you are a New York Times subscriber, but apparently someone did challenge that position directly because he is responding with an acknowledgement that yes, a “substantial portion” of our debt is owed to foreign investors.

But his counter deals with total investment, assets v. liabilities, and since the government doesn’t invest money at all the chart he displays is clearly dealing with private investment, which relates to government debt about the same way that a Boeing 747 relates to a groundhog.

He further “clarifies” the situation by saying, “as the budget deficit has exploded, the trade deficit has actually been lower than pre-crisis” and says that proves that, “rise in debt is very much a rise in the amount Americans owe other Americans, not a matter of selling IOUs to foreigners.”

That sounds really good if you are talking to someone who doesn’t know what a treasury note is and doesn’t know that it has nothing to do with the trade deficit which involves consumer trade. Whether the trade deficit is positive or negative, and whether it is big or small, when you sell a treasury note you are effectively “selling an IOU,” and when you sell it to the government of Japan or China, you are “selling an IOU to a foreigner.”

Paul, a shovel is not the best tool to use for getting out of a hole.

Chargers In The Pro Bowl

2011-12-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

Philip Rivers is in the Pro Bowl, but I'm not sure I can figure out why. He leads the league in interceptions and his team will finish with, at best, an 8-8 record. He's 12th in quarterback rating, 7th in percentage of completion and 6th in total yards.

Antonio Gates might make a bit more sense, but even there Aaron Hernandez of the Patriots and Tony Gonzalez of Falcons have outperformed him by a wide margin, and both of those tight ends have contributed to their teams being in the playoffs.

Eric Weddle? Sure, he shares the league lead with seven interceptions, but that is by no means the only measure of a free safety. When it comes to number of tackles he's not even in the top forty rankings, and he's contributed to a pass defense that is no better than tenth in the league.

There's little to celebrate about the Chargers' season, and Pro Bowl selections that are about as reasonable as Obama's Nobel Peace Prize doesn't help much.

The Bill Will Come Due

2011-12-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman has a new and rather innovative theory why we should neither stop spending government money at the present pell mell rate, nor begin taxing to cover the cost of that spending. It’s similar to his, “we will never have to pay the debt because inflation will make it disappear.”

This one is that “it’s money that we owe ourselves” and so we can simply ignore the debt. Basically, he claims, when we borrow money we are merely taking it out of one pocket and putting it in a different pocket. It’s still our money, and it doesn’t matter which pocket we have it in, so let’s keep borrowing and spending because life is good.

He is “refuting” the argument that we are leaving a huge debt to our children and there’s a certain logic to what he says, albeit a very shallow one. The government debt is in the form of treasury bonds and, while the debt is being left for our children to pay, so are the bonds being left to our children, and so it’s essentially a wash.

The first flaw is that our children will not inherit anywhere near all of the assets which he claims, since some 32% of them are currently owned by foreign governments. So the statement that “it’s money we owe ourselves” is a false premise to begin with and about a third of it is money that we owe someone else. Even when he throws that little parenthetical “mostly” in there, 32% of $14.1 trillion is a rather massive debt that we are, in fact, passing on to our children with no offsetting asset.

There is also the little fact that the people who receive government services and the ones who hold government bonds are not the same people. How many people receiving unemployment benefits and food stamps do you know who also hold treasury bonds? I didn't think so. So, yes, we are leaving a huge debt to that portion of future generations which is not rich and does not hold enough treasury bonds to offset the government services which they will lose.

The more serious flaw, however, is that we are setting future generations up to lose governmental function twofold, because when the bill comes due not only will that generation be taxed to repay the debt, but it will be taxed to pay for the services that we are presently getting without paying for them.

We absolutely are leaving a debt to future generations when we pass along to them the requirement that not only must they pay for their own needs, but they must at the same time pay for the services which we received and for which we did not pay. Paul Krugman and his cohorts may be able to play some numbers games which make that look okay on paper, but it can never be okay in practice.

The really serious flaw Krugman's argument is a moral one; the endless insistence in this nation that we receive that for which we do not pay.

The Little Comet That Could

2011-12-27T06:59:00.000-08:00

Just a week or so ago we watched a comet dive to its destruction in the Sun. Oops, not so fast; seems it survived the trip, but had its tail burned off in the process.

Well, maybe not so much. Lovejoy not only regrew its tail but did so in a rather spectacular manner. It seems that, “It’s just not wise to mess with Mother Nature.” Unpredictability reigns.

That's Earth's horizon at the bottom. Click on the image for more, and bigger pictures, which were taken from the Space Station. They are reason enough, seems to me, for maintaining that platform.

The Turner Apologentsia

2011-12-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

The media is generally showing no mercy on the heels of the latest Chargers debacle, but Norv Turner still has his apologists. This from Tim Sullivan of the San Diego Union-Tribune today,

That the Chargers were able to overcome crippling injuries on their offensive line, rebound from a six game losing streak and win three straight blowouts is a credit to Turner’s constancy and his competence.

First of all, the Green Bay Packers won playoff games and the Super Bowl last year with more injuries than we have had at any time this year. Second, two of the “three straight blowouts” were against truly pathetic opponents. Third, six losses followed by three wins is hardly “constancy.” Fourth, if the wins were a “credit to Turner’s constancy and his competence,” which isn't even English, what was the six game losing streak a “credit” to?

I cannot for the life of me figure out what these guys see in Norv Turner. His teams always stink like a long-dead fish for the first half of every season, and at no time during the season are they ever able to play a complete game. Much is being made about this season’s “fast start” with its 4-1 record, but it was nothing of the sort. Despite the record, the level of play was abysmal, with the team barely eking out narrow wins against shabby opponents. As soon as they played against quality opponents they folded like a cheap suit.

Norv Turner has never produced and will never produce a championship contender, and he needs to go.

Home For Christmas

2011-12-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

The "overnight" hospital stay turned into two full days. The surgery went fine, but in the small hours of the morning following I had another stroke. This time it was after the surgery rather than before, so I finally got that done with. The episode freaked the medical staff, as usual, more than it did me, although this one was quite a lot bigger than any that I've had before.

So I'm back at it, but sore and not feeling very well, so it may be a while before I'm doing much.

I did manage to watch the Chargers/Detroit game today, and I wonder if the Union-Tribune sports writing staff still thinks Norv Turner is some kind of coaching genius who should be retained.

Update, Sunday am: No, they don't. They are being rather brutal, in fact, in their condemnation of him. The readers comments are even more harsh, suggesting that the fans might not settle for mere firing; something involving tar, feathers and a rail might be needed.

On Hiatus

2011-12-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

Leaving for the hospital to have the surgery which was scheduled for September and postoned due to the stroke. Will be in the hospital just overnight, but the surgeon said 7-10 days recovery, so posting may be scanty for a while.

Pointing Fingers

2011-12-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

Ian Welsh is a Canadian who does not have a terribly high opinion of America or it’s people, a point of view which I am increasingly coming to share. His latest post is that the people of this nation are to blame for our own problems, that pointing fingers at the rich and at politicians is avoiding our own role in this mess, a view with which I am in complete agreement.

Congress has a 9% approval rating? Bullfeathers. We not only elected these criminals, the vast majority of them have been reelected many times. We knew precisely who they were when we reelected them, and at least 80% of them will be reelected next year.

Stolen elections? As Ian points out, possibly in 2000, but we reelected George Bush in 2004 when we knew full well that he was a murderous thug.

We cannot place blame on our elections being controlled by two parties. They are such because we don’t bother to vote in primary elections, leaving the choice of candidates in the hands of a few ideologues in the primaries and then complain about the choices we are faced with in general elections. We are faced with those choices because we did not bother to participate in the process of making the choices.

We elected a Democratic majority in 2006 based on a promise to end the war in Iraq and when they reneged on that promise and instead funded the “surge” in that misbegotten war we reelected them in even larger numbers in 2008. And look where that got us.

We reelect federal legislators based on the amount of federal pork they bring home to the state, and reelect them because we fear that a “freshman” will not have the power to get the “home state” projects passed. The legislators even say that their responsibility is to “represent the interests of the people of my state” above the best interest of the nation, turning us into a nation divided against itself based on greed.

The people of this nation vote for tax cuts, and only for tax cuts. The claim they want a balanced budget, but they fight tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in spending. In California, the vast majority of propositions which require the government to spend money pass with healthy margins, and 90% of those which raise revenue fail to pass.

Obama’s popularity is rising big time again, and over what? Health care reform did not do it, financial reform did not do it, the stimulus did not do it, repealing DADT did not do it, ending the war in Iraq did not do it, a new stimulus this year did not even get out of the gate, but a 2% tax cut has made him wildly popular.

It is not the wealthy 1% who put us in this mess, it is our government, and it is we the people of the United States who elected this government and who have kept it in office. We have the government and the economy which we deserve.

Seriously?

2011-12-21T19:06:00.000-08:00

After weeks of carping about the coaching failures of a Chargers six game losing streak, the team wins three games, two of them against pitifully weak opponents, and suddenly Norv Turner is a coaching genius whose team would probably have a record of 4-10 if it were not for his brilliant and dazzling leadership and play calling genius.

Give me a break. This is a team whose performance routinely stinks like skunk roadkill for the first half of every season. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl with more injuries throughout the playoffs than the Chargers have had this season. Turner's team has beaten two powder puffs and a team that has not won on the road all season, and suddenly he's a genius.

Publishing Ignorance

2011-12-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

The San Diego Union-Tribune published a "letter to the editor" today which expressed gratitude that military retirement pay is being increased the first of the year, but bemoaned the "fact" that the increase would be "wiped out" by the failure of Congress to pass the most recent tax cut because military retirement pay is taxed.

The Union-Tribune did not point out in an editorial rebuttal, which I believe it should have, that the tax cut in question is a reduction of Social Security withholding and that, while military retirement pay is indeed subject to federal income tax, it is not subject to Social Security withholding, and that the "tax cut" in question will actually not affect military retirement pay.

The Rest Of The Story

2011-12-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

Nick Turse writes a rather odd piece which seems to tell us that the U.S. drone program is headed for failure because no fewer than 13 of its drones “crashed in spectacular fashion” this year. I’m guessing Nick would say that the Ford F-150 is a massive failure as well, given how many of those trucks have crashed in spectacular fashion.

His report has lots of big numbers, like that the MQ-1 Predator flew 228,000 hours this year so far, but is remarkably lacking in actually useful numbers, like how many drones that was. Some thirteen drones crashed, but at least 182 did not crash as far as I can tell, and probably quite a few more than that, because the Air Force had 195 of these things in 2009 but continued to take delivery of them until March of this year. Even with the 2009 count, though, that makes a 6.7% crash rate, which I’d consider to be somewhat less than disastrous.

Apparently his "crashed in spectacular fashion" is based on the fact that each crash caused $2 million or more in damage, but since the Predator itself costs $4.2 million I'm not sure how "spectacular" the crash has to be to exceed $2 million in damage. It doesn't even have to total the aircraft.

It also works out to one crash every 17,538 hours of operation. I suspect Ford would be delighted if one of its vehicles crashed only every 17,538 hours of operation, since that's almost precisely two years. The planes operated by airlines do better, of course, but then they have pilots. Ones who are not texting while driving, and are not drunk. Okay, I might be getting a little bit off track here, and maybe not making much sense, but then, I'm not sure Nick Turse is either.

Anyhow. Compare that 6.7% with the beginning of the program when, in 2001-2002, 50% of the drones crashed. I’d say the drone program is improving rather spectacularly, wouldn’t you?

I’m all in favor of criticizing the government and the military, and I am strongly opposed to drone warfare. But let’s oppose it for valid reasons, like the fact that it too often kills civilians, and that it violates the sovereignty of nations with which we are not at war. We just need to stop this endless nonsense of making up bogus arguments because we don’t like something.

Iraq Redux

2011-12-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

Leon Panetta is one scary dude. CBS News carried a piece last night that was an excerpt of an interview with him for 60 Minutes. In it he claimed that Iran has the capability to “assemble” a nuclear weapon in a year or less and that “we will not tolerate” Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. Asked what his reaction to an Israeli strike on Iran would be, he replied that, “We share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.”

He went on to use the infamous, “no options are off the table.”

I find it rather repugnant to hear the leaders of my country talking about what they will or will not “tolerate” another sovereign nation doing within the borders of their own country.

I find it both repugnant and frightening to hear the leaders of my country threatening to commit acts of war against another sovereign nation, especially on unsubstantiated charges of “weapons of mass destruction” programs which most of the world finds not credible. Did we learn nothing from Iraq and, “We don’t want the next evidence to be a mushroom cloud” rhetoric?

Update, 9:00PM: According to the NY Times, aides in the Pentagon are now backpedaling furiously from Leon Panetta's remarks; No one-year timeline, no war, no "all options are on the table." Hmmm. Interesting, if not altogether reassuring.

Role Reversal

2011-12-20T09:22:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure I even understand the conversation any more. Democrats are now heroes for passing a tax cut, which used to be what Republicans did while Democrats railed against the folly of repeatedly cutting taxes. In fact, Obama is even now railing about how the Republicans ruined the economy by cutting taxes, while at the same time demanding that Republicans pass this Democratic tax cut.

Republicans, meanwhile, are being excoriated because they want to pass the exact same tax cut for a full year rather than merely for two months.

So a two-month tax cut is a good thing because we cannot let American working men and women “face a tax increase” on January 1st but a twelve-month tax cut tax cut is a bad thing because, apparently, we must have American working men and women “face a tax increase” on March 1st.

Somebody needs to explain to me why a "tax increase" on January 1st is a bad thing while a "tax increase" on March 1st is a good thing, because I’m not sure I’m following the logic on that.

Democrats Never Make This Point

2011-12-19T10:39:00.000-08:00

And I'm not sure why. Republicans keep honking about "big government" being a bad thing, but for a nation this size it seems to me that we damned well better have a big government. For one of the largest nations in the world, and the nation with the world's largest economy and by far the world's largest military, to have a small government would be utterly stupid.

Yes, I know that's inane. That's my point. So is the Republican yammer about "big government."

And, as Barney Frank points out, it's Republicans blatting against over- regulation who want to pass laws regulating what we can and cannot do in the privacy our own bedrooms. Morons.

"We're Just Playing Better"

2011-12-19T06:34:00.000-08:00

One certainly cannot argue with that statement, made by Norv Turner, Philip Rivers and Vincent Jackson after the Chargers not only defeated the Ravens but utterly dominated them and destroyed them in every aspect of the game. The Chargers punter, for instance, never took the field for the entire game, while the Ravens scored only once, other than a meaningless touchdown late in the fourth quarter.

The question one needs to ask is, "Why not in September and October?"

Fan are no longer clamoring for Norv Turner to be fired, dazzled by the brilliance of his play calling the last couple of weeks. News flash; his play calling has not changed and the past couple of weeks is further proof that he does need to be fired.

This is a team overawed by perception of it's own level of talent, believing that it does not need to apply itself to win against an average opponent. When backed against the wall or facing an above average opponent, they wake up and actually focus on the game, but until then they are like rich kids in a private school, counting on entitlement to carry them through. That is a leadership problem, and Norv Turner is that leader.

Chargers Preview

2011-12-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Nick Canepa and Tim Sullivan of the San Diego Union Tribune are picking the Chargers to win tonight over the Ravens. I'm not saying that it cannot happen, "any given Sunday" and all that, but those two guys are delusional to expect for it to happen.

The Chargers have not yet won a game against a team with a winning record, and only one of the teams they have won against has a winning record even now, that being Denver. The team with the best record against whom the Chargers won was the Bills, at 5-7, and that team had a 5-game losing streak at the time. The Chargers won against a record of 9-23, and those teams have a current record of 28-51.

And these writers are picking the Chargers to beat a team that not only has a record of 10-3, but has the third ranked defense in the league and the second ranked running game. I'll be happy if they do, but I am not predicting that they will.

You Have To Be Kidding Me

2011-12-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

~~Congress~~ The Senate extended the payroll tax cut, which I consider to be of questionable value, and unemployment benefits, which I consider to be vitally necessary, for two fucking months. Has there ever been a more feckless action performed by a more thoroughly useless organization?

Update, Sunday: And the House cannot even agree to that. Congress is about as useful as putting screen doors between compartments in a submarine. Teats on a boar hog work better. A bucket of warm vomit is more attractive. Pissing into the wind is about as pleasant. And your average pedophile has more decency.

Things I'd Never Heard Of

2011-12-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

First of all, I'd never heard of R+L Transport, who sponsored the New Orleans Bowl, which I'd also never heard of. I have heard of New Orleans, of course, my mother and one sister were born there, and my parents met there while my father was in medical school at Tulane.

Apparently the Aztecs had never heard of the concept of pass defense.

Actually, that's a bit unfair, since for quite a few of the Ragin Cajun catches the nearest Aztec was not only pass defending, he was comitting pass interference, with the penalty declined since the receiver made the catch. The Aztecs did, however, surrender 470 passing yards in the game, and three touchdowns through the air.

I'd never heard of a dead ball penalty for "illegal spinning," and apparently neither had any of the announcers, since they didn't explain it to us. It turns out the call was actually "illegal stemming," which I've also never heard of, and which doesn't make much more sense. It seems it consists of the defense charging toward the offensive team before the snap in an attempt the get them to move before the snap and trigger a "false start" penalty.

That raises a question or two, of course, one being why does everyone else simply call an "offsides" penalty for that? Why is moving toward the other team called "stemming," and if it's illegal when attempting to make them move, thus the "illegal stemming" call, when is it legal?

Anyway, San Diego State managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory last night. That "illegal stemming" call turned a 55-yard field goal attempt into a 50-yard one which won the game with the clock expired.