Campaign Rhetoric

If you thought that deceptive rhetoric ended when George Bush left the White House, think again. This was yesterday in the New York Times.

“Congress should not and cannot go on vacation before they have made sure that working families aren’t seeing their taxes go up by $1,000 and those who are out there looking for work don’t see their unemployment insurance expire,” President Obama said Thursday as he encouraged Congress to reach a compromise.

One minor point is that what states provide is unemployment insurance; what the federal government provides is extended unemployment benefits.
It is not insurance at all, because insurance payouts are the result of premiums paid into the program. State benefits are paid from premiums paid by employers, federal benefits are paid from general revenue. The President’s phrasing here is less deception than it is merely ignorant. It’s
a minor point, but I expect better from the chief executive of my nation.

The bigger point is his argument about a tax increase and his claim of its effect on a “struggling economy.” Republicans have long claimed that tax cuts stimulate the economy, while Democrats and economists have long provided convincing evidence that they harm the government more than they help the economy, and from the day he took office Obama has embraced a policy of repeated tax cuts with all the fervor of the most ardent Republican.

And what he’s talking about is not a tax increase, it’s the expiration of a tax cut, so he is not arguing against a tax increase, he is arguing in favor of the repeat of a previous tax cut which is expiring. And again, tax cuts are a Republican policy, not a Democratic one.

He might more accurately phrase it, “...working families aren’t returned to a policy of saving for their future retirement.” Or, “...working families aren’t required to pay for future benefits.” Or, “...we extend the Obama policy of government borrowing money to pay for people to retire.” But don’t give me that nonsense about a tax increase.

What is "Normal Growth?"

Matthew Lynn at Market Watch describes the similarity between the current economic conditions and the depression, not of the 1930’s, but the one which began in 1873 and lasted 23 years. I’m not sure that I agree with all of the five points that he makes, purportedly in support of his theory that this recession will not end until 2031.

One of his points made is, for instance, that recoveries can take a long time. How is that a valid comparison to these economic times? It’s nothing more than an observation of historic fact, and a pretty obvious one at that. So what? It offers no evidence that this one will take that long.

He does, however say in connection with that, “when their origins are in a debt bubble they should be measured in decades not years.” Interesting point, but I’m not sure that it needs to be true. The current recession was certainly triggered by a debt bubble and has lasted for a long time (depending, of course, on how you define “recession”), but it has done so because we have never dealt with the debt. It has neither been paid back or written off, but is still being held and, as such, is still an anchor preventing recovery. My theory is that if we had allowed the companies which were financially underwater to collapse and written off all of the bad debt the 1% would be considerably less rich and we would be well on our way to recovery by now. I could be wrong, but there are a lot of people who think I’m not. I didn’t pull that idea out of my ass.

“[W]hen their origins are in a debt bubble they should be measured in decades not years” because nobody wants to deal with the debt, which means writing it off. If it could be paid back, it would not have caused a recession, so forget getting it paid back. It is bad debt and the people who hold it need to take the loss. Instead, we impose even more loss on the taxpayer and make the whole mess worse instead of better by throwing borrowed money at the holders of the bad debt, who now have a bunch of cash in one hand and a bunch of bad debt notes in the other.

He does say one thing that is, I think, brilliantly on point, “The parallel with the 1930s is dangerous, because it has convinced bankers and policy makers that if you can just pump up demand, everything will be okay.”

It’s convinced economists like Paul Krugman, who has an indomitable ability to look at events and draw the wrong conclusions. The sun came up at 6:05am and there was an earthquake at 6:06am, therefor the sunrise caused the earthquake. Likewise, World War Two caused the end of the Great Depression. Or, New Deal spending did that, depending on which theory he’s on at the moment. Of course, New Deal spending ended in 1937 and the economy went back into recession, which would prove to most people that “creating demand” actually doesn’t make everything okay, but…

World War Two created demand all right, but it did that by destroying most of the civilized world. It did not create current demand in terms of prosperity, my parents can tell you that for damn sure. Rebuilding the world after that war destroyed it created plenty of demand and built prosperity at a tremendous rate after that war ended.

If I’m building houses and the market has become so glutted that there is no demand for new houses, my business is going to suffer a depression. I can create demand by blowing up my neighbor’s house, can I not? He’ll need a new house and I get to build it, so there you are. That’s what World war Two did. I doubt we’re going to see anything like that to create a demand big enough to end this recession.

“The global economy,” he says, “will eventually get back to normal growth,” but I’m not so sure it will. When you start putting beans into a jar, for a long time it appears that there is no time in the future that you will ever have to stop putting beans in that jar. But the capacity of that jar is not infinite and at some point it fills up. There are some 7 billion people on this planet, and I’m not sure that 7 billion people can live the same way that 5 billion did. I suspect that what we have been defining as “normal growth” may have become “unsustainable growth,” in which case it isn’t coming back.

Where's the "Fraud"

CBS Evening News tonight opened an item on the Texas A&M band story with the statement that a fraud inquiry had been opened, but then said nothing about it in the story itself, merely describing various hazing rituals imposed on new band members. The website synopsis for tonight's news includes the same teaser, "Authorities looking into the death of a band member at Florida A&M open a fraud inquiry" but the report, again, contains no discussion of fraud. Searching for news of fraud connected to Texas A&M, I find a story dated May 2009, and several in June 2010, but nothing reporting in 2011 by anyone. Wierd.

One More Time On Football

The local news was, not surprisingly, filled with glee about the Chargers defense not allowing a touchdown in 7 of the last 8 quarters. I'm not sure how impressive that is, considering that it was against one team with a record of 3-8 and another which had a five-game losing streak going. The Chargers face Baltimore Sunday night, which is 10-3 and has a four game winning streak going. Um...

San Diego State football goes to the Big East in 2013. You've already heard my opinion of that. Now we find out that all of State's other sports will go to the Big West. The what? I had to look it up, since I have never heard of it.

Oh good, our basketball program will be facing such titans as Cal Poly and Long Beach State. Those are a couple of the big, better known schools in the conference. Steve Fisher says that it won't hurt recruiting. I guess he had to say that; the question is, does he believe it?

My other issue lies with having football and other sports being in different conferences. Kansas, for instance, has mostly had pretty crappy football teams but after losing to Kansas State on the gridiron the Jayhawks could usually take solace in knowing that come basketball season they would beat the pants off of the Wildcats. When the two sports are in different conferences...

Pithy Comment

From Ian Welsh in a comment thread at his site, "Obama has a long history of proposing left-wing shit he knows won’t pass, and which if there is any danger of it passing, he will sandbag himself."

Indeed. I wish I had been able to put it as succinctly. It took me several posts, each of them several paragraphs, and he summed it up in one terse sentence.

Foot In Mouth Disease

While Obama is undoubtedly intelligent and makes great speeches, although now that he is in campaign mode I don’t listen to him much, he is capable of saying things that are remarkably tone deaf.

For instance he was at the Army-Navy football game and made a very positive impression. He spent half of the game with the Navy and the other half with the Army, did not inject politics while he was on air, and seemed to just be having a good time. He did say one thing in his initial address which grated on me, however.

“The highest honor and greatest privilege which goes with the office which I hold is serving as Commander in Chief of our men and women in uniform.”

That’s one of those things that sounds good at first impression, but after a moment one begins to realize that he actually insulted most of the nation. I used to be one of those “men in uniform,” but I haven’t been in some fifty years, so what am I to him now, some sort of collateral duty? Serving internationally as the chief executive of the world’s largest economy is, what, some sort of side job? These are things that he does when he has spare time because what he’s really “into” is being the number one man in the world’s largest military?

He is accusing the Republicans of “raising taxes” because they are balking at renewing the temporary payroll tax cut which he sponsored, but two years ago he was disparaging them for using “deceptive rhetoric” when they accused him of wanting to raise taxes when he was declining to renew Republican taxes which were expiring. Why is it “deceptive” when they do it but not when he does it?

When he was accused by a reporter of being “soft on terrorism” he responded by suggesting that the reporter should “ask Osama bin Laden and Anwar al Awlawki” if he was soft on terrorism. You know what? Bragging about assassination is about the last thing that I want my President to be doing, unless it’s joking about assassination.

Republicans aren’t the only ones speak unadvisedly.

Cleaning Up The Swamp

The problem is not economic inequality. The problem is not that the rich have too much money, or how they got that money. The problem is part of what they do with that money. They buy legislators.

You are not going to get the rich to quit buying legislators by telling them to stop doing it. People do not stop doing what is working for them until it stops working for them. Pitching tents in public spaces and screaming at rich people that you don’t like them may feel good, but it does not make anything stop working for rich people.

We have to make the sale of legislators stop working for them and, more importantly, we have to make it stop working for the legislators.

The argument has been made that if we throw these corrupt legislators out that we will simply have more corrupt legislators take their place and, furthermore, that even when an honest person is elected to office he becomes corrupted by the cesspool which is the seat of our nation's government. Perhaps that is so.

We can correct that, and the way we do it is to not merely throw the legislators out of office but to prosecute them for being unduly influenced by the money they receive from the rich, for taking bribes to act against public interest. To prosecute them for taking bribes to operate against the interest of the people who are paying their salaries as public servants. It is fairly certain that the example will in fairly short order clean up the swamp. Taking bribes is one thing when the worst you risk is leaving office with a pocket full of money. It’s something else entirely when you risk prison.

The rich cannot buy legislators when legislators are not for sale.

Oh Keep It Under Your Mattress

CBS News did a piece the other night about how the collapse of MF Global had wreaked havoc with farmers who had put their cash reserves, which they “were saving to buy feed and seed” into that financial firm. “They thought their money was as safe with MF Global,” the reporter intones, “as
it was at the local bank.”

Oh, give me a break. They thought nothing of the sort. They put the money at MF Global because they were greedy and they got burned. The local bank was offering low interest rates while the New York financial house was offering high returns, and the farmers wanted the extra money.

Everybody who puts money into investment has to know that high return on investment is a trade off against risk, and that safety and return exist in inverse proportion to each other. If they don’t know that, then they should keep their damn money in a sock under their mattress and allow it to lose value.

Endless Tax Cuts

Obama and the Democrats are still flogging the payroll tax cut and, at the risk of sounding like an elitist Republican jackass, which I most emphatically am not, I’m not all that crazy about the tax cut itself, and I have problems with this rhetoric on several grounds. I’ll try to explain.

The tax cut weakens the Social Security program, which is under heavy attack and doesn’t need weakening. I understand that that funding is being replaced from the general revenue stream, but separateness from general revenue is one of the program’s greatest strengths, and reducing it at this point is very bad judgement.

I’m not crazy about tax cuts in general. After eight years of Bush tax cutting do we really need four years, or perhaps eight years, of Obama tax cutting? We cannot seriously continue to believe that tax cuts serve any useful purpose. After almost twelve years of cutting taxes and no gains in any dimension we have to realize at some point that they are merely self destructive pandering to the voters.

This tax cut is being promoted for the express purpose of “giving people more money to spend,” and that strikes me as contributing to an American attitude that is unhealthy and which is a good part of what got us into this hole to begin with. It is a different wording of George Bush’s “go shopping.” This national obsession with spending is beginning to sound a little sick, really. What do Americans do? They spend money.

Finally, I have a major problem with Obama’s insistence that the payroll tax cut be “paid for” with a tax increase on the rich. The whole concept behind the formation of Social Security was that it was people putting their own money into a fund upon which they would retire, such that in old age they would not be subject to the charity of others but could retire with dignity on their own resources. Obama thinks we no longer need to do that, that the retirement of the middle class should now be funded by the rich, and I find that idea deeply repugnant.

The American people, of course, love it. "I can buy a television and a car, because some rich guy is contributing to my retirement fund."

I am all in favor of a progressive income tax, and I think it should be significantly more progressive than it is now. People should pay to support the government proportionally to the degree to which they benefit from the operation of that government. But the endless prating about tax cuts, the standalone rhetoric of “tax the rich,” and the idea that the rich should provide funding for the retirement of the middle class are all concepts that are not consistent with what I perceive the American vision to be.

Well, He's Consistent

Obama has one to add to his "We're denying them space in which to plan their attacks" with his stance banning the Plan B contraception bill. He says that little girls shouldn’t be able, “alongside bubble gum or batteries -- be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect."

Indeed. If you consider making them not being pregnant an adverse affect. And since the pills cost $45 per pill, I doubt that "little girls" are going to be buying truckloads of them with their bubble gum. And when is the last time you saw batteries next to the bubble gum in a store?

They are also very difficult to use properly, you know, and the instructions are very difficult to comprehend. "Take one pill."

And this is the president known for his towering intelligence.

Double Standard?

I have been waiting for outcries about "income inequality" to erupt over the baseball contract of Albert Pujols, but none have been forthcoming.

Apparently $100 million bonuses for bankers are an abomination and evil, while $250 million for a baseball player is just fine. Okay, if you say so.

It Is The Season

I’ve never before seen the actual numbers on the “seasonal adjustments” that the government uses for various things, but I’ve always distrusted them. I basically don’t believe anything that the government, its representatives, or its politicians say to me about pretty much anything, and I’ve assumed that “seasonal adjustments” were the government’s way of concealing bad news to assure that present elected officials would be reelected.

So when The Market Ticker provided a link to the “unadjusted” numbers for yesterday it came as no surprise to me to see what the revealed.

The market was ecstatic that “seasonally adjusted initial claims” for unemployment compensation was the lowest in nine months, at 381,000 for the week and that, further, it had dropped from 404,000 the previous week. Joy from all sides, everyone, and reelect Obama in a landslide.

But wait. The “unadjusted initial claims” for unemployment, meaning the actual number of people who walked in the door and filled out applications because they lost their jobs, was 523,642 for the week and was an increase of 151,000 over the previous week.

Well now, isn’t that interesting? Instead of being a bit under 400,000, it was well over 500,000 and instead of decreasing by 23,000 it increased by 151,000. That’s one hell of a “seasonal adjustment” isn’t it? What “season” are we in that requires a 27% adjustment? And of course I know this is a stupid question, but it’s rhetorical, why are only the “seasonally adjusted” numbers reported?

I’ll bet the title led you to think this was going to be a Christmas story.

A Man's Actions Speak For Him

Salon has headlines reading “The evolution of a populist” and “The Obama we’ve been waiting for.” Robert Reich is swooning over “The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency.” While I will not say that what Obama is saying is bad stuff; people, he is campaigning for reelection. He is giving us the same rhetoric he gave us for an entire year during 2008. We loved it then, and we love it now, but are we going to love what we get during the four years of his second term?

Well, how much of what he said in 2008 turned out to be real? No, we’re not going to play word games about promises kept; like a promise to end the war in Iraq and troops coming home by Christmas, a promise made by him and kept by Bush. How much of what he portrayed himself to be did he turn out actually to be? Why, in the face of pretty speeches during campaign season do we suddenly forget almost three years of corporatism and catering to the wealthy?

His actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what he says.

Heat Is Good

We have heat. That's fortunate, since the silly frost advisory is continuing and it is 37 degrees again this morning. I care a lot less, what with having a working furnace. Interesting; I would not have guessed it, but some of our local dog walkers actually own parkas.

The new furnace came with a CO detector, so we are now legal, and a programmable thermostat. So much for my wife turning the thing down to an arctic setting when I'm not looking; she doesn't know how. Heh. One of the few instances in our house where I hold the power.

Now, if I can just figure out how to reset the damned thing myself...

But This Is Progress

I’m not sure this is entirely the right target yet, but it one whole hell of a lot better than Kumbaya gatherings in public parks with tents, campfires and singalongs. Going after legislators themselves would be my preference, but targeting lobbyists is definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

Update: Aha, and it gets better! They are going after legislators.

More than a thousand activists and constituents came together for a “Take Back the Capitol” action, as 99 or more delegations descended on congressional offices, demanding meetings with members of Congress...

This is getting better. I might be beginning to think this could actually accomplish something. It's early, but it's a start.

Not Exactly Progress

The San Diego Union-Tribune is in new hands as of yesterday, when Doug Manchester took over control. This is a local guy famous for building hotels, the major one of which was boycotted due to his financial support for the infamous Proposition 8. That may give you an idea what is going to happen to what was already pretty much a rag, useful only for wrapping dead fish.

I Give Up

I'm just not going to even try to make sense of it any more. San Diego State football will be in the Big East Conference, while all of its other sports will be in the Western Athletic Conference. What part of that makes any sense, other than the WAC? Splitting the sports into different conferences is pretty bizarre but, the Big East? Does anyone realize how far West SDSU is? It can go no farther without falling into the furshlugginer ocean. Well, okay, it's actually the Pacific but...

Oh, That's Good Timing

The guy came to inspect our 35-year-old furnace today. The verdict: toast.
It is so bad, in fact, that he red tagged it, so we have no heat tonight. The weather forecast for tonight:

Do I have to tell you how rare it is to have frost advisories in San Diego? The good news is that a crew will be here tomorrow morning to install a new furnace and air conditioner. The bad news is that we will have to cough up some $9000 for that exercise.

Update, 6:30 Wednesday morning: Ah yes, I now recall that our fireplace is cleverly designed to send all of the heat up the chimney so that we can admire the flames visually without having to run the air conditioner too much. This is, after all, Southern California. Shit. I am considering setting a chair or two on fire in the bedroom. I am too old for this and there is a reason, after all, why I live in Southern California.

Where the temperature is currently a toasty 37 degrees. Shit.

Even New Planets Are Not Immune

Liberal blogs are so filled with hatred for Republicans that even the discovery of a new planet is used as an opportunity to mock and criticize the GOP. After citing the discovery of a planet which might have an Earth-like climate, a Balloon Juice poster went on a tirade about how the GOP would stand in the way of us traveling to that planet and would demand an end to Social Security, etc. Dude, it's just a new planet light years away, and has nothing to do with politics. You need a hobby.

Big Win. Big, Big Win.

When I predicted that the Chargers could lose to the Jaguars I had never watched the Jaguars play football. After last night I still have never watched the Jaguars play football. That team is an embarrassment to the NFL and should have its license rescinded. Games against them should only played on an exhibition basis, something like the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters. They should use a 5-6-0 defense, since if their defensive backfield ever served any useful purpose being on the field, it certainly was not apparent to me. The boos from the stands diminished only because the fans were leaving in droves.

Yes, the Chargers won, but it was a little hard to really enjoy it. It was like winning a battle of wits with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. It was like Lyoto Machida winning a fist fight with a six year old. It was like LeBron James winning a one-on-one with a fifth grader. I mean, you don’t really celebrate something like that. You shrug, say “Oh really?” and move on.

And I find watching MNF on ESPN excruciatingly painful. In part it is the jabbering of the talking heads, which is a bit more obnoxious than most because there are three of them to the normal two, and they call each other “Jaws” and “Coach” and engage in endless adolescent repartee about their good old days when they themselves were actual jocks.

The other issue is the endless commercials, which are interrupted once in a while for a football play. I lost count of the number of times that we would return from a string of commercials, there would be one football play and we would return to another string of commercials. Sometimes they repeated that sequence two and three times in a row. All televised games have commercials, of course, but ESPN is vastly more obnoxious with theirs than anyone else.

Hope Is Eternal

Hope is now worth actual money. Reuters, no less, has a headline today that reads, “Wall Street set to edge up on euro zone reform hopes.” What’s really bizarre is that it is actually a credit downgrade upon which those hopes are pinned, because the article goes on (emphasis mine),

Stocks were set to edge higher at the open on Tuesday as investors hoped S&P's downgrade warning for the euro zone would help force budget changes at a European Union summit this week.

The illogic of this whole concept is stunning, of course. When the credit agencies were threatening to downgrade US credit there was huge alarm that it would cause the bond market to go crazy and the stock market to collapse. In the actual event, of course, everyone yawned and pretty much nothing happened because investors figured the credit rating agencies didn’t know what the hell they were talking bout.

Now the thinking resembles a billiard shot; being that the downgrade will alarm not the bond market but the governments and will cause the governments to do something about their budgets. That action would please the hell out of the bond buying deficit hawks, of course, but it would also trigger a recession and crash the stock market, but naturally “no one could have seen that coming.” Fabulous.

We won’t go into hope and its effect on general elections.

Our Big Chance

With Kansas City beating Chicago, the Chargers now have it within their power to take sole possesion of last place in their division by losing to the Jaguars tonight. I am just breathless with anticipation. I believe our plucky little team can pull it off, despite being favored by three whole points over that hapless 3-8 team.

A panel of experts on the teevee last night was opining that the Chargers did not really need to stop the Jaguars' star running back, since our run defense is pathetic in any case, but could win by focusing on their inept passing offense. I'm like, "What?" If Maurice Jones-Drew runs for 500 yards and ten touchdowns, how is stopping them from passing going to help us?

Oh well, onward and upward. Eli Manning lost, but he didn't look bad enough in the process to suit me. I don't know how Green Bay is undefeated with that defense, because it absolutely stinks. They play a real football team and they will get creamed. The Cowboys lost to Arizona. Really? Denver's defense finally met it's match, but this time their offense finally got in gear and Tebow actually played quarterback, going 10 of 15 for over 200 yards and two well-thrown touchdowns.

And, sure enough, we do get LSU - Alabama for the title. Geaux Tigers.

Time Frame Matters

Tom Dispatch has an article regarding the ongoing deterioration of our planet, and I guarantee it will be as thoroughly ignored as everything else on the topic has been, for one simple reason. It starts with, "...the International Energy Agency suggested that, by century’s end, the planet’s temperature could rise by a staggering 6º Celsius." That will cause 90% of the country's population to stop reading right there.

The end of this century is ninety years away, and nobody cares what happens ninety years from now. They should care, of course they should, but they don't. Not only that, but they have no clue what "Celsius" is and that makes them care even less. You're not even speaking their language.

If people cared about how future generations are going to live they would not be demanding tax cuts and continued government spending. We would not have a demand for lower taxes while we have an infrastructure that is crumbling to rubble in front of our eyes. We would not be demanding foreign policy that creates long term enemies to destroy imaginary threats.

We give lip service to the future and live for the moment, bankrupting ourselves in every dimension for the sake of instant gratification.

If you want to address the climate change issue you cannot talk about what it's going to do ninety years from now. No one will act on that. You need to show that it is damaging all of us today. Not just Texas, we don't care about Texas unless we live there, and too few of us do. All of us and this year, then we'll worry about it.

American Exceptionalism

So, you have some visitors in your home and they start kicking the hell out of your dog. You tell them that you don’t want them doing that and tell them to stop. They say no. You tell them that you are really fond of your dog, that this is your home, not theirs, and that you want them to stop kicking your dog. They say that kicking your dog makes them feel good and continue to kick your dog. You can’t throw them out, even though it’s your house, because they are bigger than you are and, they claim, they are doing you a favor by being in your house.

In what universe does that make any kind of sense?

In the universe where we are making night raids on homes in Afghanistan and the government there has been trying for years to get us to stop doing it, with no success. Instead, we make even more of them, to the point where we average ten raids every single night. We say that it serves our purpose, has a “high risk to reward ratio,” and we really don’t care that it’s their damn country.

We are back into the Vietnam-era realm of “body count warfare” now, which is a sure sign that we are losing the war, and the claim is made, notably by unnamed “officials,” that, “Thousands of Taliban insurgents, hundreds of them midlevel commanders, have been captured or killed in the raids.”

What they don’t say, something that is reported only by overseas sources, is that 90% of those captured turn out to be completely unconnected to the Taliban and are released the next day. But we are generating numbers, as we did with the Vietnam body counts, to justify our military activity and to secure promotions for the officers conducting it. The fact that the host nation doesn’t like it does not concern us much.

More of the much admired American exceptionalism.

(Football) Tigers Redux

Once again, after trailing 10-0 midway through the second quarter and failing to achieve a first down for the entire first half, the LSU Tigers wind up beating Georgia by a final score of 42-10. It must be something in the bayou water down there. And yes, it would not surprise me a bit to learn that Baton Rouge football players drink directly from the swamps. You should see the things that they eat. If it doesn't eat them first, they will fry it up in bacon drippings and eat it.

Cause and Effect

Krugman, Baker and others are claiming that the current deficit and debt are not caused by a combination of excessive spending and inadequate taxes, but rather by the recession, which caused tax revenues to collapse and at the same time drove upward the costs of the “social safety net.” I'm calling nonsense on that, and here’s why.

Keynesian theory, even if you subscribe to it and for the moment let’s suppose that we do, says that the government should spend during lean times to support and “restart” the economy, and that it should pay off that debt and build a surplus during prosperous times, sort on the "save for a rainy day” concept. The current debt and deficit is caused by our failure to do the latter in the 90's and the first decade of this century.

The Great Depression and World War 2 caused us to build up a huge debt. Contrary to common Keynesian thought, the latter did not cause us to recover from the former, it added further to our economic woe, because we spent heavily to win that war, expenses which were not countered by tax revenue. An economic boom in the 50’s and 60’s brought our debt under control, but the growth of the Cold War exacerbated it once again.

The Clinton Administration raised taxes and balanced the budget, and then the Bush tax cuts were passed because we were developing excess revenue in a booming economy. Rather than pay down the debt, we reduced taxes for the specific purpose of not paying down the debt. I do not recall any Keynesian economists howling with outrage when we did that. Keynesians are only outraged by spending cuts, not by tax cuts.

Had we left the tax rates where they were and used the excess revenue to pay down the debt, then the economic downturn of 2008 would have caused far less governmental revenue problems. Instead of turning a small deficit into a huge one, it would have turned a surplus into a small deficit, and the debt would be far smaller and growing at a much slower rate.

So how do we respond to the deficit and debt in the midst of the economic disaster? Of course, the way we deal with everything, tax cuts. Payroll tax cuts, business tax cuts…

Reminds me of the carpenter with the saw and the baffled look. “I don’t understand,” he moans, “I’ve sawed it off three times and it’s still too short.”

And CBS Swoons

CBS News did a report this evening swooning over the dramatic turnaround of the economy, citing the "unexpectedly large number" of new jobs and the "surge in consumer confidence." They did admit that "about half" of the drop in unemployment was due to people who quit looking for a job.

So 120,000 new jobs is a "large number" when 127,000 new workers entered the work force, is it? That seems about 7000 jobs short of a winner to me. And with 127,000 new jobs and 320,000 workers leaving the work force, how do they come up with that "about half" nonsense? If Tommy has one apple and Jane has three apples, does Tommy have "about half" of the net total of four apples?

Where do we get these idiots?

This Is The Good News?

Headlines are crowing about a drop in unemployment to 8.6% which does look like almost stunningly good news, but on closer examination it’s rather like a shiny new car with no engine under the hood. The number of new jobs added was 120,000, which barely keeps up with the number of new workers entering the work force.

Update: Actually, it doesn't keep up because, on average, 127,000 new workers enter the work force each month. The population of the U.S. increased by 172,000 in November.

So why the drop? Because 315,000 workers left the work force, that is they simply quit looking for work, and are no longer counted as "unemployed." Not only that, but of the new jobs added, how many were temporary, holiday season workers?

Of all the people in this country who are working age, only 64% are either working or are looking for work. A full 36% have simply given up or are working under the table, which means they are working for substandard wages and without benefits.

Update: Most people would interpret that as an 36% unemployment rate. Oh, sorry, 36% + 8.6% = 44.6% unemployment rate. Yikes!

But Democrats are as happy as pigs in slop. Obama will be reelected in a cakewalk, because unemployment is dropping before the election and now is "in the 8% range.”

Congress is currently debating the continuation of extended unemployment benefits. They should not continue them, because if they don’t then millions will lose extended benefits and will, as a result, quit looking for work. They will therefore no longer be counted as unemployed and the unemployment rate will drop to somewhere around 5% or so.

Is this a great country, or what? American exceptionalism.

Tim Sullivan Masterpiece

Tim Sullivan has a masterpiece in the San Diego Union-Tribune today regarding the tenure of Chargers' head coach Norv Turner and GM AJ Smith. The opening paragraph is one for the ages.

Abraham Lincoln would have fired Norv Turner by now. Possibly twice.

And it just gets better. His point is that Abraham Lincold did not hesitate to get rid of generals who did not win battles, and that if the owner of the Chargers wants to keep the fans on board and sell season tickets, he needs to make the changes that will regain the loyalty of the fans. It doesn't matter how good Turner is, or Smith, it matters that the people who buy tickets are happy. Read the piece.

Interesting Weather

All day yesterday we were warned of "damaging high winds" and given advice on how to prepare ourselves. Today the LA Times has headlines of "Fierce winds blast Southern California; thousands without power." As far as I know, San Diego is in Southern California, but the wind here is out of the East at 5 mph and there is not so much as a leaf on the ground, let alone any trees. We are, admittedly, very near the coast, and I understand that North County and the mountains did get wind, but nothing like they had in LA. What a difference a few miles can make.

Looking at the satellite image, the storm center causing this is already well to the East of us, so apparently the storm track did not behave quite as predicted. I'm not complaining, mind you.

One thing that confuses me though, is that they are talking about "Santa Ana" winds, and the system producing these winds is not what I have known to meet the definition of Santa Ana in the fifteen years that I have lived here. That wind has always been a result of high pressure centered over the high desert plains and draining due to gravity through the passes of the coastal mountains. The wind supposedly gets its name fron Santa Ana Canyon, although that is subject to a bit of dispute.

This wind is the result of counterclockwise circulation around an intense low pressure system, though, and is actually storm wind, so I question the media's use of "Santa Ana" in describing it. I suspect they fell prey to thinking that any strong wind is a Santa Ana, which is not actually true.

American Ideals

Obama is pressing hard to prevent Americans from returning to putting money away for their own retirement, saying that the nation will “suffer a massive blow” if its citizens are forced to return to pre-recession levels of contributing to their own retirement savings account. The account is called Social Security, of course, and it was Obama's idea to reduce the level of savings in the first place, putting money borrowed by the government into that national retirement savings account instead.

Now he wants not only to continue the reduced level of contribution to savings for retirement, he wants to reduce it even more, and to “pay for it” by increasing taxes on rich people by an equal amount. He is angry at anyone in government who opposes this idea.

He wants us regular folks count on someone else to put money into the retirement savings account for our benefit, let rich people do it, so that we can spend our money on flat screen televisions and new cars instead of having to put it aside for our own retirement.

If we had any self respect, we would reject that idea. America, we claim, is founded on the ideal of self responsibility and self reliance. But in reality we merely pay lip service to those ideals, and the idea of having rich people pay for our retirement so that we can spend more money now is hugely popular. “Tax the rich.”

Tax Cuts Upon Tax Cuts

David Atkins has an article over at digby’s place that praises the Democratic plan which would not only extend the payroll tax cut but which would increase it from 2% to 3.1% and would extend it to employers as well. It would be “paid for” by taxing incomes over $1 million at 3.25% and would therefore be “revenue neutral.”

We are so in love with this “tax the rich” that we don’t even want to pay for our own retirement. We want “the rich” to put up the money that we will live on after we become too old to work for a living.

In any case, when you are deep in debt and there are no jobs available, taking money out of your left pocket and putting into your right pocket does nothing to help you. Lowering taxes on one group while raising taxes on another is not policy, it is pandering to get votes, because it doesn’t alter the economics of government one iota.

President Obama campaigned on criticism of Republicans for their policy of tax cuts, and the first major legislation he pressed for once in office was a “stimulus” which consisted in large part of tax cuts. Tax cuts as economic stimulus has been embraced by Republicans for decades and rejected by Democrats, economists, and most people of sanity, but Obama touted the tax cuts in the "stimulus” as some sort of major victory.

Since then he has continued to criticize Bush for cutting taxes, while at the same time extending the Bush tax cuts of which he is so critical and adding so many tax cuts of his own that I have lost count of them. In one speech he even bragged that he had made more tax cuts for more people than any president in history, and in that same speech referred to the Republicans “driving the car into the ditch” with tax cuts and spending.

Now, after more than a full year of bleating about “fiscal restraint” and “living within our means,” he wants to add yet more tax cuts. Why? Because it is reelection campaign time, and tax cuts will get him votes. It will get him votes because Americans don’t want good governance, they want tax cuts and they want to punish the rich.

Is this a great country, or what? American exceptionalism.

Daily Question

(click on image for broader view of the stairwell environment)

Question: Can a small calico cat fall 11' 3" down a stair well and land on the bottom step without being injured?

Answer: Apparently she can, although it wreaks a certain amount of havoc on the nerves of the humans who cohabit with her.

Interesting

The Chargers will play their next game on Monday night in Jacksonville against the Jaguars, a team which just fired its head coach. I wonder if that will have Norv Turner feeling a little bit wierded out after losing six games in a row. He claims that he doesn't think about things like that.

Nick Canepa wrote a front page commentary in the Union-Tribune today to the effect that Norv will be fired at the end of the season, but that A.J. Smith is an excellent GM who should be retained. There were 173 comments to the online version and I scanned to be sure; every one of the comments said that Canepa was either stupid or insane. My opinion is that he is both.

And in addition: I don't believe that opinion pieces should published be on the front page of a newspaper, and for damn sure stupid opinions uttered by a jackass should not be.

An Unworthy Cause

All of this froth about the 99% and the 1% is getting really old. If your income is $100k per year, which group are you in? Right, not only are you are one of the 99%, you are not even near the top of the 99%. Are you suffering? Do you live in squalor, or on the street? Do you wonder where your next meal is coming from? No, of course not.

Then why are these idiots “occupying” Wall Street to tell the 1% how miserable you are?

It’s a metaphor, you say. Well, if so, it’s a bad one. I am unmoved by the sad plight of people who live in homes of 3000 square feet. If you want to calculate what percentage of people are homeless and stage a propest for that number I am with you. Hell, just use the number of people in families living below the poverty line and I will listen to you.

Protest in behalf of people in need and I will pay attention. Protest against people who you believe have too much and I consider you to be greedy, selfish and ignorant. If you are religious envy is a sin, if not it is merely ugly and unbecoming.

If, on the other hand, economic inequality is your issue and you want to go to Washington and protest against legislators who pass laws which result in unequal economic opportunity, laws which result in destroying the level field upon which the game of finance is played, then I am with you all the way.

Space Is Not Speech

Liberals everywhere are denouncing the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from public spaces as “an infringement of free speech.” I am not going to argue the methods being used to accomplish those evictions, they may very well be unjustified and some of them certainly appear to be, but the fact of those evictions is a somewhat different matter.

What is government supposed to do when one group’s free speech prevents another group’s right to that same freedom? Occupy Wall Street has claimed title, for instance, to a public square in San Diego that is routinely used by non-profit organizations for various purposes, mostly to raise money for their charitable causes. They have been unable to do so several times in the past month, despite obtaining the proper permits from the city, because Occupy Wall Street has refused to leave the square.

So the government cannot deny free speech to Occupy Wall Street, but Occupy Wall Street can deny free speech to anyone else who wishes to use that public space?

It is my belief that one is entitled to one's rights only to the extent that the exercise of those rights does not interfere with the ability of other citizens to exercise their rights in equal manner. The role of government and of law enforcement is to assure that all citizens are able to avail themselves of their right to free speech, not just those who make the most noise, nor just those who have any particular message.

Occupy Wall Street is entitled to say whatever they want to say, but the ability to occupy any particular piece of public property is not part of “free speech” and no person or group has the right to monopolize public space.

Vanishing Linebackers

They are called "the second line of defense." Their purpose is to be there when a running back gets past the defensive line, thus "line" and "backers." So Willis McGahee pops through the line of scrimmage and... Hello? The linebackers seem to be off on a sightseeing trip somewhere. Perhaps that's why management frowns on football players dating the cheerleaders. "Hey, you. Put the girl down and get back to work."

Norv Turner was at the podium after the game taking questions. Notice I did not say "answering" questions. Asked why he did not try to score at the end of the game, when he had the ball, 1:33 left and two time outs, he babbled something about how "we had had trouble getting it in the end zone" (which seemed to me to be all the more reason to keep trying), and about not wanting to get Philip Rivers hit (which seemed odd), and balls popping up. In other words he didn't try to score because he didn't want his team to make a mistake. How wierd is that?

But it got even more wierd. He was asked why the running back who was averaging six yards per carry was on the sideline when the Chargers were approaching field goal range in overtime and he stammered something about not knowing why Matthews came off and assuming he would be off for only one play, and that not only did he not know why Matthews had not returned to action, he did not even know that he had not done so. Norv is calling the plays, and he does not know which running back is on the field.

I have not been among those calling for Norv Turner to be fired, but that little tidbit has sold me. Norv Turner should go.

And one question I’d like to know, which Norv was not asked. Was Nick Novak aware that he had been shown taking a piss on the sideline on national television when he missed the winning field goal?

Well, That's Okay Then

Pakistan is in a major uproar over an American a NATO attack on two military bases inside Pakistani territory which killed at least 24 of its people. Now our loyal, honest and trustworthy allies, the Afghan government is saying that the Pakistanis fired first, so that's okay then. The Pakistanis are the bad guys for firing on us when we send heavily armed military helicopters across their borders, and they should expect to lose lives when they do something that stupid. Next we will hear that they somehow lured us across the border. Taunting, maybe.

Update, still Sunday morning: Oh, my bad. It turns out that it was at night and that American and NATO forces received fire from across the border while they were still in Afghanistan, and they then called in the air strike. They do not explain why, when receiving fire from Pakistani territory, they bombed the shit out of Pakistani forces instead of simply departing.

Newsflash, OWS

Occupy Wall Street has a new message for getting back at "the rich" and is now suggesting that we all refuse to do our holiday shopping at big stores. Limit our shopping, they are telling us, to small neighborhood-owned stores.

News flash, people. When big stores experience a revenue decline due to dropping sales they do not fire the Board of Directors or major stockholders. They fire the $10/hr clerks and the $7/hr stock boys. Execution of your brilliant thinking would not hurt "the rich" so much as it would add to the number of jobless persons.

Good Turkey, Awesome Football

LSU sleepwalked through the first quarter and had me muttering dire threats of mayhem and destruction on anyone who came within reach of me, but then they came out of their slumber and kicked ass. When Mathieu returned the punt to tie the score the cat fled the living room and I did not see her again until sometime in the fourth quarter. Molly does not care much for football. Actually, she's pretty much indifferent to football, she just doesn't like... Well, you can imagine what she doesn't like.

And I'm still somewhat less than dazzled by LSU's tackling abilities.

We still have the Iron Bowl upcoming. When I lived in Atlanta my best friend was a third generation Auburn graduate, and I would go to his house to watch the Iron Bowl every year. His father would be there along with his sons (guess where they were planning to go to college), and I would cheer for Alabama just to keep things rowdy. Fun times.

The halal turkey was awesome, and I don't feel much like facing Mecca right now, so I think we're okay. The store sells these disposable roasting pans to avoid having to cleanup, but I don't know why anyone would buy them when cleaning a roasting pan is such a fun and rewarding endeavor.
I know, I'm probably not a well person.

Hmmm, Government Worked

It's a bit unclear to me what role the Antitrust Division of Justice played as opposed to the F.C.C. in this, but AT&T has bitten the bullet and will not go through with the T-Mobile merger. This is a case of the government protecting the consumer whichever agency played the major role, and it's refreshing that Antitrust even showed up at all, so let's all acknowledge that we do have a case to make here for keeping Democrats in play.

Why Is This Surprising?

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmm."  Scientists have done some experimental calculating and are now concluding that the outer portion of the Earth's core is not a mixture of iron and oxygen as they had postulated, but probably contains quite a lot of silicon. They are surprised, but I'm wondering why, exactly. Haven't they ever studied the composition of lava?

Happy Halal Thanksgiving

I am delighted to say that the turkey sitting in my refrigerator, waiting to be cooked tomorrow for reasons that have only partly to do with the most important football game of the weekend, is a Butterball. I'm sure that will thoroughly piss off Pam Geller, and that actually adds to my pleasure. I am going to enjoy every moment of cooking that bird.

My nephew learned to speak Pashtun while he was serving in Afghanistan.
I may call him and get him to teach me a few phrases to mutter over the bird while I am preparing and cooking it.

The "most important" football game? Oh, you silly, poor benighted people. Arkansas at LSU, of course. Geaux Tigers.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Logical, We Are Not

I actually am tired of criticizing Obama, but he just keeps stepping in dog poop, raising his foot and announcing that it smells like apple pie.

After cutting taxes so many times that I have lost count, he is demanding that Congress extend his latest tax cut, at the same time announcing that he will veto any bill that attempts to circumvent a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction “trigger” that consists entirely of spending cuts. This after a full year of insisting that deficit reduction must be balanced between spending cuts and increases in revenue, otherwise known as tax increases, and rejecting “deals” which did not include sufficient revenue increases.

He is simultaneously saying that his number one priority is to restore the economy, notwithstanding that the $600 billion reduction in military will reduce the size of the military, and that all of those service members who will be downsized will no longer be “military personnel” but will then be “unemployed persons.” In addition, of course, all of the people servicing the former military personnel will also be “unemployed persons,” as will all of the people making the supplies used by the downsized military.

Yes, I do think we need to cut defense spending, and by a good bit more than $60 billion per year, but in doing so we need to consider how to deal with the unemployment that it will cause. Obama is not discussing that.

Nor is he discussing how he is going to reduce the military and at the same time engage in a “buildup of forces” in both the Middle East and the Pacific. He leaves unexplained, as well, why such any such buildup is beneficial, and Michael Brenner suggests that it is not.

Language is the first victim of muddled thinking. So it is with the Obama administration’s groping for shibboleths to lend gravitas to its floundering foreign policy. First there was “leading from behind;’ then fight, talk, build in Afghanistan. Now Hillary Clinton is ‘pivoting’ toward China and the Pacific.

Probably "denying them space in which to plan their attacks."

Nor does he explain why he is saying he will veto any bill which does not cut defense by $600 billion while his Secretary of Defense is saying that if we cut defense spending we will leave ourselves so drastically weakened that we will encourage our enemies to attack us. Panetta, notably, does not name the enemies which he claims will be so emboldened by the gutting of our military that will result from a, roughly, 10% reduction in spending.

And everyone is bleating about how illogical the Republicans are.

Tax Hikes, Forsooth

Some time ago the liberal media was excoriating Republicans for what they referred to as “sleazy rhetoric” in referring to the expiration of tax cuts as “tax hikes.” Republicans were, at the time, accusing Democrats of “raising taxes” because they were attempting to let the “Bush tax cuts” expire, and the liberal media regarded that as some kind of dastardly accusation, because letting tax cuts expire is not the same thing as raising taxes.

In fact, Chris Matthews and others claimed, Republicans made the Bush tax cuts expire on purpose, specifically so that they could later accuse the Democrats of raising taxes when the Democrats tried to let them expire. You follow that? The claim is actually rather astonishing, in that it would require that the Republicans knew that the Democrats would be in power when the Bush tax cuts expired, which is taking the “reading of political tea leaves” to a rather ridiculous extreme.

Then Obama comes along and gets a “payroll tax cut” passed and, guess what; it has an expiration date. How many people are surprised, now, when President Obama accuses the Republicans of raising taxes when the Republicans want to let the “Obama payroll tax cut” expire?

"This payroll tax is set to expire at the end of next month. ... If we allow that to happen, if Congress refuses to act, then middle-class families are going to get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time," Obama said. "We can't let that happen, not right now."

(Emphasis mine) Indeed, we cannot let the Republicans “hit the public with a tax increase.” Give me a break.

Get Fuzzy Today

Totally broke me up.

On Representative Government

Digby has a post in which she praises Bernie Sanders for confusing Wolf Blitzer. Other than the small detail that a reasonably intelligent fifth grader could confuse Wolf Blitzer, the basic premise that Sanders is taking is, in my opinion, flawed because he keeps repeating, “Well, I think that position is way out of line with what the American people want.” Right, and the average infant just wants its mommy to hold it 100% of the time, too, but that’s just not a realistic expectation.

I keep harking back to the decision that the people of Tucson made when, fearing that water from the Central Arizona Project would be lost to Mexico if it was put into the ground, they held a referendum and decided that it should be put directly into the city’s water system. The result was city water that was unfit for human use, hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the water system, and a new decision to put the water into the aquifer after all, which had been the urgent recommendation of the experts all along, and was what the city government had initially decided to do before the referendum overrode their decision. “What the people want” is frequently a very stupid thing to do.

Whether or not it is in this case is irrelevant. The point is that making decisions on how to steer the ship of state based on “what the people want” is not how our government is designed, and for very good reason. That argument is the very worst one to use in making a point for decisions regarding proper governance, because it is itself a circumvention of proper governance. We elect representatives to represent us, which is why they are called “representatives” after all, and then we don’t let them represent us. Instead, we insist on bypassing their decisions and letting “what people want” be the determining factor in how decisions are made.

If this is how we are going to run the nation we might as well do away with election of representatives and simply make decisions based on polls. And don’t tell me that Congress is so badly broken that governing by polls would be better. Go ask the people of Tucson how they liked their water in 1994.

Three Way Tie

Today is Monday. Arkansas plays LSU in "Death Valley" on Friday, and Alabama meets Auburn on Saturday, and sportscasters are having erudite discussions with wrinkled foreheads about how to resolve the "three way tie" that results from LSU losing and Alabama winning. One idiot says that would put LSU in third. Morons.

Update, 7:30am: The "morons" comment was not about the inaccuracy of their speculation, but about the speculation itself. I have a revolutionary idea, let's wait until the games are played and then discuss what should be done about the rankings based on the results of the games.

Sort of reminds me of the "talking heads" on the political shows. "Well Fuddpucker could win in Iowa eight months from now and then that would cause turmoil in Zanzibar, which would give him a lead going into the Lower Slobovia primary." Unless, of course, he is first caught having relations with a goat on the steps of the capitol prior to Iowa.

Case in point: watching a bunch of idiots babbling on "This Week" about how "the Republicans don't want Romney." Actually, I don't think the Republicans really care who they get; they just want Obama out. It's the media that doesn't want Romney, because he doesn't say all sorts of radical and idiotic things for them to laugh and giggle about.

Wierd Football Weekend

I missed the LSU/Mississippi game because I was at a funeral service, but a final score of 52-3? And how often do three of the top five ranked college teams lose in one weekend? And how often does the SEC West have the top three positions in the rankings?

Unlike some people I correspond with, I think LSU will defeat the Hogs next week, and we may be moving toward a LSU/Alabama national championship game. I know, I'm getting ahead of the game a bit.

The Chargers set a new record for bizarre today, in part because Chicago's #33 may be the sorriest excuse for a cornerback I have ever seen. Or maybe he just had a bad day, but it seemed that Philip Rivers could complete an 80-yard pass to Vincent Jackson any time he wanted to. Unfortunately, that doesn't help when you're in your opponent's territory and need to score with a short game, because that long bomb was the only thing the Chargers had.

The Chargers had zero yards of offense in the fourth quarter, running only four plays the entire quarter, two of which were interceptions thrown by Philip Rivers. In one case he was trying to throw the ball away, and seemingly could not find the sideline. That's sort of like not being able to hit the wall of a barn while standing inside the barn.

The Chargers can no longer take solace in "at least we are still leading the division," because they are now third fourth in the division, which has only four teams. Tim Tebow's team is second. (At the time of my original post the Kansas City game was not yet complete.)

Ignoring The Problem

At “Informed Comment” I commented in response to a post by Juan Cole regarding the bailout of banks which he regards, quite properly, as a sellout of the people. My comment was to the effect that we should be aiming our protest at the legislators who perpetrated the sellout of the people, not the banks who benefited from it, and the response was entirely negative.

“Diffuse the issue, cloud it by pointing fingers at Also Unindicted [sic] Co-Conspirators,” said one response. “The government is just bought property, sir. The beneficiaries are not passive or innocent,” said another and, “Oh, yee [sic] defender of banks,” was the beginning of the third.

It seems that the vast majority of progressive/liberal activism simply does not care about malfeasance in government but has focused on a cause that consists entirely of a bitter enmity against “the Wall Street rich” and an undying determination either to punish them or to make them less rich. Suppose that such effort was successful. Suppose that Wall Street in its entirety was demolished, with every bank and every financial house burned to the ground. Suppose that every person employed in any capacity in every one of those institutions, right down to the secretaries, were thrown in prison. What would we have left?

We would still have the corrupt legislators taking bribes from weapons manufacturers, taking bribes from the health insurance industry, taking bribes from the ship building industry, taking bribes from highway contractors, taking bribes from the oil industry, taking bribes from the drug industry, taking bribes from overseas reconstruction companies, taking bribes from security companies, taking bribes from subcontractors to the Army Corps of Engineers, taking bribes from communications companies… The list is all but endless.

We would have eliminated the beneficiary of a $1 trillion bailout which is the cause celebre’ today, but we would still have a vast array of industries throwing billions of dollars in bribes at corrupt legislators to steal trillions of dollars of taxpayer money every year endlessly into the future.

President Obama pointed his finger at Wall Street because they were an easy target, an easy way to divert attention from the cesspool of corruption which is our government, the government of which he is the Chief Executive. He promised to clean up this cesspool, and all he has done is participate in the climate of corruption and point a finger of distraction, a distraction swallowed whole by his loyal sycophants.

My Issue With Tim Tebow

(Other than, “Omigod, why is this idiot playing quarterback in the NFL?”)

Alcoholics Anonymous has a tradition of anonymity which has come to mean only “I will not tell anyone that you are in AA.” It always meant that in part, of course, but it also includes a concept which has largely been dropped of “I will not broadcast that I am in AA” as well, and the reason for that has to do with human fallibility. If a member of AA is making a big public deal of his participation and gets drunk, he does damage to the credibility of the organization, and weakens their ability to provide a solution for people with alcohol problems. He becomes an example that the AA program does not work.

Of course, it does work for many people, but by going public one risks becoming a “bad example” unless continued success can be guaranteed. Human nature being what it is, that can never be the case. The AA tradition of non-self-revelation does not apply on a personal level, merely at the level of “press, radio and film,” that is to say that while people do not hide that affiliation, they do not flaunt it either.

I believe that people of religious conviction should not flaunt that conviction for precisely the same reason. There certainly is no reason to hide such conviction, and I am not suggesting that anyone should do so, but making public display of it in all venues strikes me as risky, at best.

Tim Tebow attributes his faith to all sorts of success, but to what does he attribute the loss to the Detroit Lions? Were the Lions more powerful than Jesus that day? Does the fate of the entire Denver team depend on the ability of Tim Tebow to maintain some intangible "faith quotient” for each game? Giving credit for success is fine, but what happens when the success doesn’t continue?

How should we view Tim Tebow’s religion if Tebow exhibits human frailty and gets caught up is some moral scandal? He attributes his success to his faith and his Savior, to what would he attribute his failure? Or does he, perhaps, think that he is a person of such perfection that such failure is simply impossible? That concept seems more than a little bit arrogant, doesn’t it? Tebow is walking on the edge of a precipice here.

Philip Rivers, who is a better quarterback on his worst day than Tebow will ever be on his best day, is also a man of very deep religious conviction. He doesn’t hide that, but he keeps discussion of it in the realm of his private, personal life. He does not inject religion into the venue of the field of athletic endeavor. Instead he displays a charming humility, a quality which Tebow most profoundly lacks, and elevates his teammates and the coaches under whose direction he works.

As a result, not only do I have a greater respect for Philip Rivers as a football player and a person, but I have a greater respect for the depth of his religious conviction.

Oh, Crap

If there is anything the NFL did not need it is a Tim Tebow 20-yard td run with 58 seconds left capping a 95-yard drive to give Denver a four-point win over the New York Jets. The league has gone completely to shit.

Right, Call On The Marines

Sometimes I am just embarrassed when Barack Obama opens his mouth and says things in behalf of my country.
I thought that he had reached a nadir with his claim that we were spending billions of dollars and hundreds of lives in Afghanistan in order to “deny the terrorists space in which to plan their attacks.”  Now he is explaining how our troop buildup in the Pacific will maintain peace, and specifically why we are stationing Marines in Australia.

Those 500 Marines “will help ensure the security of vital sea lanes, as the U.S. moves to blunt China’s expanding influence,”  he says.

So, first one has to assume that China is a threat to the sea lanes off the Australian coast. I’m not sure where his feverish little imagination got that particular concept from. Then one has to assume that if a Chinese fleet, which they don’t have, materialized and made threats to our shipping, which does not transit that area, that 500 Marines on shore would somehow be able to defend our shipping from that Chinese fleet.

I am a big admirer of the United States Marine Corps, and would be the last person to denigrate their abilities, but 500 shorebound Marines against a Chinese fleet…
I don’t think I would bet on the Marines.

What's Constitutional About OWS?

As I continue to read about Occupy Wall Street, I continue to wonder if this nation has any democratic future at all. The supporters of OWS write that in disbanding these groups the mayors are denying them their right to assemble and to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” Meanwhile the court says they have a right to assemble, but not to camp permanently in public spaces, which is what the mayors are breaking up, and Matt Taibbi wrote of them last week,

“People don’t know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: (Bleep) this (bleep)! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.”

That hardly sounds like a petition to government, it sounds more like the flower children of the sixties only, probably, without the drugs. Not to mention the following, written by one of the protestors, which hardly sounds like someone dealing with matters of national governance,

We declare “victory” and throw a party… a festival… a potlatch… a jubilee… a grand gesture to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement’s three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry.

We dance like we’ve never danced before and invite the world to join us.

Some have even had the poor grace to compare OWS to Tarhir Square. Those Egyptians were very focused and knew precisely what they wanted. They wanted Mubarek out. They gathered in numbers which made it impossible to remove them, and they were not holding some sort of party with group conscience discussions where everyone has a chance to talk about anything he has on his mind. There was one topic in that square; they wanted Mubarek out.

If you want to protest something, and have a real issue about which to do it, then by all means do so, but a group campout with your collective kitchens and libraries, with your tent cities and your donated blankets and making yourself at home is not a protest.

Navy Comes Full Circle

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a nice front page article today about the U. S. Navy’s newest type of ship propulsion, whereby diesel engines drive generators to provide electricity for electric motors which turn the propellors to actually drive the ship. Oh, really?

Look at the ship pictured at the top of this blog. She was built in 1940, and she has (are you ready for this?) four diesel engines which are permanently coupled to generators, which provide electricity for the two huge electric motors which turn the propellers. Fancy that.

Dr. King They Are Not

Too many comments are comparing Occupy Wall Street with Dr. Martin Luther King and I have to speak against that comparison, which I consider odious. Dr. King did not march to demand that freedoms be taken away from white people. He did not march in protest that white people had too many privileges and too much opportunity and should therefore have some of that taken away from them. Indeed he praised a nation that created that privilege and opportunity, and his demand was that people of color be granted equal access to it.

Occupy Wall Street cries “tax the rich” so that equality can be created by dragging those who have down to the level of those who have not, and Dr. King would be appalled by such an approach to equality.

If the demand of Occupy Wall Street was “let us work” I would be with them 100%. If they were demanding that the jobs which have been sent overseas be returned to this country I would fully support them. If they were demanding that the jobs which are still available here pay better wages I would support them calling a general strike to promote that goal. Whatever disruption they cause to society or inconvenience to law enforcement in pursuit of any of these purposes would be fully justified.

But disrupting their society merely to express that “I’m pissed off” and voice a demand to “tax the rich” draws neither sympathy or support from me.

Update: That being said, I do not support the forcible ejection of them from public spaces, either. Zucotti Park is privately owned, but Bloomberg is treating it as public space and is violating court orders to allow the park to be reoccupied. Wrong.

Bad Optics Indeed

John Cole at Balloon Juice said that he finally watched the 60 Minutes piece about insider trading by Congress. He commented that the one who looked the worst in the interviews was Nancy Pelosi, that she “looked evasive, defensive, and just didn’t look trustworthy.”

News flash, John. Nancy Pelosi would look that way if she was reading aloud from the Declaration of Independence.

At Least CBS Isn't NBC

NBC announced today that it has hired Chelsea Clinton as a regular broadcast person, adding her to a long list of aristocracy on its staff. They have Luke Russert, son of the immortal Tim Russert, they have Jenna Bush (we all know who her father is), and they have Meghan McCain on MSNBC. CBS just hires the hoipolloi.

Gingrich? Really? Newt?

I could understand Rick Perry rising to the top in the polls. Nobody knew who the hell he was, and he sounded... Well, okay, he sounded like an idiot, but he was providing the kind of idiocy that Republican primary voters love, and he can be rather charming. So it was understandable that before it became apparent that his IQ was in single digits that the Republicans voters would love him. I get it.

I could understand Herman Cain's rise, too, kind of. Nobody ever thought his IQ was above room temperature, but he had that tax thing with nines that low information voters (aka Republicans) could wrap their minds around.

But Newt? Newt has been around since dirt was invented and it is patently obvious that he is not only an idiot, but is childish and a spoiled brat as well. He has, to boot, a sour and nasty personality that I suspect even his mother could not tolerate. How is he getting any attention?

Public Service & Unemployment

I know I’m going to be harshly criticized for this, but it’s been brewing in the back of my mind for quite some time and I’m just going to ask it. Why do we have both unemployment payment and public service employment? It seems to me that if we had any sense, public service employment would
be our unemployment program.

Here we are paying one group of people to clean our parks and haul off our garbage, and paying another group of people who have lost their private sector jobs to, um, look for work and otherwise do nothing. Why do we not put people who have lost their private sector jobs to work cleaning our parks and hauling off our garbage until such time as they regain work in the private sector and not pay anyone to sit on their asses and do nothing?

We can't replace firefighters and police, obviously, but do I need to point out how much such a program would reduce problems with unfunded public service pensions? Do I need to point out how much a program like that would reduce taxes?

"Foreign Policy Success"

Think Progress has listed what it believes are Obama’s great foreign policy successes which the Republicans are not giving him credit for. I read them and could not prevent myself from laughing out loud. There is much to admire in President Obama, both as a person and as a President, but if this is the best we can do as a list of his success at foreign policy, we definitely need to elect somebody else.

Liberals like to claim that Republicans stretch the truth and make false claims, but this list reveals that such practice is by no means limited to Republicans.

Killed Osama Bin Laden, Ramped Up Campaign Against Al Qaeda: What have we come to where the insertion of a military team into the sovereign territory of an ally without their knowledge or approval to assassinate someone is labeled as “foreign policy” at all, let alone as a “foreign policy success” which tops the list? How, precisely, did killing Bin Laden “ramp up the campaign against Al Qaeda,” and if it did, how would that be foreign policy?

Mobilized Int’l Coalition To Protect Libyan Pro-Democracy Demonstrators: Actually, he was dragged into this one by France, and he started a war without Congressional authorization in violation of his authority under our constitution. The purpose is somewhat questionable, as the war was actually and admittedly for the purpose of regime change, but it did succeed. So we’ll give him this Bushian success, somewhat like a bank robber who got away with it.

Ordered The Complete Withdrawal Of U.S. Forces From Iraq By End Of The Year: And we’re back into lala land, because he did nothing of the sort, George Bush did that before he left office. In fact, Obama tried valiantly to undo that, arguing for more than a year to strike a deal with Maliki that would allow our troops to remain longer.

Isolated And Weakened Iran: In what world is an adversarial position considered “successful foreign policy”? Success of foreign policy would be bringing Iran to the negotiating table, as he promised to do in his campaign, and reaching agreement with them on their nuclear program. The claim is a bit weird in any case, since Iran is selling all of the oil it is able to produce at world prices.

Repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Indeed he did, but this cannot possibly be stretched into the realm of foreign policy.

Halved The Number Of Russian And American Nuclear Missile Launchers: A success of some significance to be sure, but given how far back in history the Cold War resides…

Supported Democratic Transition In Egypt: I quit laughing at this one and became a bit angry, because he actually supported the military regime right to the bitter end. He gave some trivial lip service to the protestors, but supported Mubarek until he no longer could, and then tried to promote Mubarek’s deputy as a successor.

Killed Senior Al Qaeda Leader Anwar Al Awlaki: again we have assassination as a “foreign policy success,” and this time assassination of a US citizen without even charges, let alone conviction in a court of law. Mere accusation by the administration that he was a “Senior Al Qaeda Leader” despite there not only being no actual evidence for that, but considerable evidence to the contrary.

Strengthened U.S.-Israel Relationship: You have to be kidding. This claim, after Israel cancelled a building freeze and rejected a peace process on the day that our Vice President arrived in Israel for a state visit.

Maybe His Brain Exploded

There is a piece in Salon about why the GA (graduate assistant) at Penn State didn’t call the police when he caught Sandusky in the act of raping a young boy in the football dressing room shower. It’s in the form of a Q&A with Joan Tabachnick, who is described as “author of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s guide,” and Ms. Tabachnick basically says that the GA was so shocked that he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing, felt shame as having made the discovery, was overcome with concern about what would happen to the child if he did report it, was so overwhelmed with respect for Sandusky that he doubted his own instinct to think that the act was wrong, repeated that he was so overwhelmed by the monstrosity of the act than he could not comprehend it, and finally something about the Catholic Church hierarchy (even though this was a football coach at a state university) and challenging authority.

It is, without question, the most unmitigated pile of bullshit I have ever read.

The comments are pretty much universally to the tune of “he knew they would believe Sandusky’s denials and he would get fired,” which I suspect is precisely why he did not report it. Mostly along the lines of if the university was going to cover it up then he was certainly going to go along.

Football Rivalries

A friend of mine wondered what it would be like to see either Alabama or LSU play the Chargers. Heh. I opined that either one of those teams would blow the Chargers off of the field. The SDSU Aztecs might have to stay focused in order to beat them. Slippery Rock U would probably lose.

Anybody Got An Ark?

This does not happen often in San Diego. Sunspots might not be our issue.

No, That Isn't What We Meant

So, somebody started spreading the word that 2012 is coming, a year which is supposed to be the end of the world, and that the Sun is experiencing increasing activity, with sunspots sending out solar flares, and suggested that a massive solar flare might wipe out the Earth.

NASA, with its usual gift of stellar wordsmanship (heh), said that no, solar flares would not wipe out the Earth and that solar flares were a “problem in the same way that hurricanes are a problem.” They probably should have picked a better way to phrase it, because the result was pretty predictable.

“NASA Forecasts That Solar Flares Can Wipe Out Entire Cities.”

NASA hasn’t responded to that one yet, but I rather suspect that what they meant to say was that solar flares are actually rather small on a global scale, and that we can see them coming in time to take protective measures to prevent them from doing much in the way of great damage.

Follow The Bouncing Ball

When I was a kid we had a whole bunch of cats who lived, mostly, in the house. We were always going to give away the latest litter, but often did not because they were too cute, and we were sometimes not entirely sure how many cats we had, because they didn’t usually stay still and allow us to count them. My father was very fond of cats.

One day Dad brought home this ball made out of “super rubber” that bounced with extraordinary enthusiasm. He thought it was great fun to set the ball rocketing around the living room and watch a handful of cats go utterly insane chasing it, bouncing off of walls (both cats and the ball) and running into each other, which occasionally started a cat fight. Playful, of course, the cats were all on friendly terms.

Then, of course, Dad discovered the laser pointer…

Anyway, this European economic crisis reminds me of that ball, and the stock market and economists remind me of our room full of cats. One moment the European economy is predicted to collapse into total ruin within hours and our stocks are sinking like a rock in a millpond. Then a plan is announced which is going to fix everything and ecstasy rules the day. That evening someone announces that the plan won’t work, or that they aren’t going to participate in the plan…

The one thing that can make American politics look reasonable is European economics and American reaction to it. The whole subject appears to me to have just gone utterly, batshit insane. Europe needs a dose of economic lithium.

Unbelievable (not)

"It doesn't matter how it looked, the only thing that matters is that we're four and one and that we're leading the division."

That was the team consensus after beating teams with a conbined record of 1-11 in the first five games. Since then, after four games against teams with records at .500 and above and losing all four of them, they have changed their tune only slightly and are saying that they "believe in themselves" and that they just "have to keep going after it," whatever "it" is. They don't say what "it" is because they don't have the most remote clue what "it" is.

The Chargers game plan has been to get behind and give the opponent a false sense of security, and then to throw long passes and win the game at the last minute when the opponent has slacked off due to its false sense of security. Amazingly, this has actually worked fairly well for a while, but now teams are catching on and are lurking in the weeds late in the game and are jumping on the Chargers long routes. They either deck our receiver or, somewhat more colorfully, intercept the ball. I don't know why anyone thought this was not entirely predictable.

The Chargers were tired of being criticized for playing badly while leading the division, so they chose to quit leading the division. Brilliant.

And Both Sides Are "Heads"

There is a massive, record-breaking storm hitting Alaska right now, and heading toward San Diego, so of course several climate change advocates are jumping on a bandwagon to claim that this proves their case. Sigh.

When there was a massive snowstorm last winter and climate change deniers claimed that it disproved climate change, these people were quick to say that “one weather event proves nothing,” and to trot out the “weather is not climate” defense.

But every time there is a massive rain storm they want to claim it proves their case. The reason that annoys me is that I am one of the people who thinks that the world’s climate is indeed worsening, and when these idiots do this they weaken the cause.

Just as when the National Weather Service predicted an unusually high number of large hurricaines for this year, these folks were quick to claim that as "proof" of climate change. Their case was, to say the least, rather seriously weakened when the predicted hurricaines failed to materialize.

Educational Priorities

Ohio State, USC, North Carolina, and now Penn State. Tony Barnhart has it exactly right that college athletics has lost its way and that, in a larger sense, higher education in this nation has turned into something pernicious and greedy which protects the cash cow that is represented by its athletic programs. The “conference realignment” nonsense is but a small symptom of that disease, and when it reaches the point that institutional greed is protecting child rapists something has to be done.

Certainly I am a huge fan of college football, but the images last night of large numbers of college students rioting in support of a football coach who actively abetted the sexual abuse of children sickened me. What are we teaching our young people, that they can develop such a priority? If the game has to be suspended on a nation-wide basis in order to restore football, a game for God’s sake, back into its proper place in the panoply of the college experience, then that should be done. Today.

Chargers PITA

Not only do I have to watch the Chargers this evening, I have to watch them on the NFL Network no less. I thought that television "journalism" had hit the ultimate low with ESPN, but the NFL managed to take the bar so low that it is actually underground.

The Next Generation

CBS News has gathered what it considers to be "todays brightest minds" to offer snippets of wisdom concerning how best to "set America back on the right course." Their selection is a bit odd, including the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, the head of the Republican Mayors Association and such, but at least Michelle Rhee has nice legs. Oh, come on, how could I not? They put her in the front row wearing a skirt that barely covers her ass. They didn't do that on purpose?

And, yes, I'm still watching CBS News. I have to do something. I stopped watching everything on MSNBC. Give me a break.

Anyway, their "brightest minds" are mostly babbling nonsense such as "ending partisanship" to right the sinking ship that is America, but asked what they see "that is working now, going right today" several of them cited the wonderfulness of the upcoming generation, and how awesome today's young people are.

They should have been in State College PA last night to see students rioting in support of Joe Paterno. How heartened would they be by the idea that for todays education seekers a football coach is more important than the integrity of the education system itself.

Not Good Enough

Joe Paterno was informed that his assistant coach was having sex with young boys in the locker room on the Penn State campus, told his superiors at the university and then sat back and did nothing further. He should have reported the incident to the legal authorities as soon as he was informed of it, and he sure as hell should have done so when his superiors took no action for years.

Now he being allowed to resign at the end of the season. He should not be allowed to resign at any time, he should be fired in disgrace. He should be locked up and the key thrown away. By failing to report the sex abuse to the proper authorities, and by remaining silent for years when his superiors covered up sex crimes, he is complicit in those crimes.

Penn State should be ashamed of itself, and the football team should refuse to take the field so long at that criminal is part of the university’s athletic department.

Still Getting It Wrong

I had a brief moment of hope that maybe the “Occupy Wall Street” people were finally making some sense when I read the headline that they are planning a march from New York to Washington, and then I read on and saw that it is only a small splinter group of them and that their target is to rescind the Bush tax cuts for the rich. That is off target in so many ways it’s difficult to decide where to start.

The tax cuts in question are actually Democratic tax cuts. Blaming Obama for Bush’s wars may be misplaced, but taxes is another matter; it was Obama who put these current taxes in place for this year and next, and it was the Democratic Party in control of Congress which failed to make even a token effort to rescind them for two full years prior to that. They are no longer the “Bush tax cuts.”

Inequality of wealth is not due to the 3% cut in taxes which the Bush government granted to both the wealthy and the middle class at the same time. While “the rich” had their taxes cut from 39.6% to 35% the middle class had theirs cut from 28% to 25% and the poor had theirs cut from 15% to 10%. All of that may not have been the most fair thing in the universe, but it certainly was not the root cause of the protested 99% inequality in the distribution of wealth.

“The rich” did not get that way because of not paying taxes, despite all of the popular rhetoric claiming that to be the case. They fall into two classes of theft, actually, both of them entirely legal.

One class became rich in much the same manner that homeowners did, by turning paper into money. When you buy a house for $150,000 and five years later it is “worth” $500,000, did it become larger in that five years? Did it begin performing some function not previously performed? Of course not. It is still worth the $150,000 you paid for it, only now you can persuade some sucker to pay $500,000 for it. Or to lend you $500,000 against the “equity” in it. The wealthy on Wall Street became rich in much the same way, selling “financial instruments” for high prices that were actually worth the cost of the paper they were printed on.

The other class is the owners of companies who shipped production jobs overseas, stealing those jobs from the middle class. Occupying Wall Street is stupid, because those companies are not headquartered on Wall Street, and taxing those owners is stupid because doing so is not going to bring those jobs back.

Politicians, Obama in particular, have sold us on “tax the rich” as a diversion to take the heat off of themselves, and "Occupy Wall Street” has bought in to the diversion with great enthusiasm. Rather than holding elected officials accountable, they seem to think that a token punishment on “the rich” who have been sold to them as the source of their problems will make everything wonderful again.