NFL Pink Month

I was actually afraid to post this for fear of being attacked as some sort of misogynist jerk, but I find the NFL’s “pink month," with players wearing the fluorescent socks, gloves, towels and what have you, for the Susan G. Komen corporation breast cancer “awareness,” seriously annoying. I think we’re already pretty well aware of breast cancer by now.

Then I was referred to this breast cancer survivor who is even more annoyed by the whole “pink month thing” than I am, and there are a dozen or more comments following her post of fellow cancer survivors who agreed whole heartedly with her. Read her article; she’s a nice lady. It struck a sympathetic note for me, in that I have Parkinson’s Disease, and I have no more desire to make a career out of that issue than those ladies do to put on pink tee shirts and join a parade. I have a life, and it isn’t about what cells my brain may or may not be producing.

Back to the NFL, it occurs to me to wonder, what color does the NFL wear for Leukemia, and in what month does it wear that color? What color does the NFL wear for ALS, and in what month does it wear that color? It only sponsors cancer "awareness," and only one form of cancer; that which is specific, essentially, to women.

Magnanimous? I think not. The NFL is pandering to a specific demographic in order to secure and expand its female fan base, and exploiting women in the process. I actually respect those players who choose not to go along. Real football players don’t wear pink.

Gasoline War: People Lose

Oil companies have long been a favorite political target, condemned by quoting their profits only as large numbers out of context and for the essentially irrelevant subsidies they receive from the federal government. The very first post I wrote on this blog was a dissertation on the folly of such scape goat tactics and the relatively modest profit margins that are actually made by oil companies.

When they use “supply and demand” as an explanation for skyrocketing gasoline prices, though, as they are currently doing here in California, I will join the critics in calling bullshit on them. Every time the price of gasoline goes up we are told that it is “due to a shortage,” or is caused by the “law of supply and demand” and we calmly go along. In this case, one California refinery experienced a fire and another was shut down due to a power failure, and so gasoline shot up to an average of $4.72 in a matter of days.

Nonsense. For one thing the refinery fire was in early August, so let’s not be using it as an excuse for prices that shot up in October. That’s like going to the hospital with a broken leg and claiming that it happened in a car crash three months ago. A story like that is going to have the ER doctors calling the police. Or the guys with white coats.

The larger point is, though, that the fact that you are making less gasoline does not mean that it costs more for you to make it. A shortage allows you to raise prices, it does not require you to do so. It is greed which is the cause of the increase, not the shortage. It would be entirely economically feasible for gasoline to be in short supply and remain exactly the same price if greed did not lead to producers charging more for it simply because the shortage allowed them to make more profit by doing so.

The governor’s solution is not to clamp down on pricing and immoral profit, but to allow the sale of “winter blend,” which the oil companies already have in stock, early in the season, proving that he’s bought into the “shortage pricing” lie. It also allows them to restart the two refineries on the winter blend rather than restarting with summer blend and making the conversion on schedule. Despite a slight decrease in gas prices which will result, this is a win for everyone except the consumer.

Anyway, high gas prices are due to profiteering, not “supply and demand.”

Chargers Fail

The Chargers are probably going to win our division by default simply because nobody, including the Chargers, wants to win it. Losing last night to an 0-4 team was a bit beyond embarrassing, especially after being in command of the game for the first 40 minutes but leading by only ten points and having second and goal at the two but scoring only a field goal.

Charger fans are wailing about the officials, apparently forgetting that the replacements are gone and these are the regular guys. The post game show analysts in San Diego harped endlessly about the call for roughing the passer that reversed an interception but, as Norv Turner properly pointed out, the officials don’t call based on intent. Not to mention that Ingraham led with his helmet and, given that fact, it doesn’t matter where he hit Brees. You can’t hit an opponent leading with your helmet, period. It was a perfectly good call.

Charger fans are also whooping it up about the “awesome performance" of Ryan Mathews who ran for 80 yards in the game. Yes, 80 yards is apparently an “awesome performance” for Charger fans now that Ladanian Tomlinson, who used to average 95 yards per game, is gone.

Ahmad Bradshaw of the Giants ran for 200 yards yesterday, and a total of seven running backs gained more than 100 yards on the day. Frank Gore gained 106 yards as part of San Francisco’s team total of more than 300 yards rushing on the day. Mathews ran for 80 yards out of the team total of 117 yards and Chargers fans are excited. Please note that five running backs outgained our entire team.

Perhaps the “awesomeness” of the performance by Mathews is that he didn’t fumble. It doesn’t take much to excite San Diego fans these days.

LSU Fail

And to Florida. Could have been worse, I guess; could have been Alabama.

The defense ran out of depth on the bench, and the offense didn't help their cause by not converting on third down until the fourth quarter. I blame that more on the coach than I do the players, though. I have never considered Les Miles to be any sort of play calling genius, but that was ridiculous. I have a nine year old grand niece who could call plays better than that, and she plays soccor.

Given the quarterback, calling a rollout on second and goal was rather questionable in and of itself, but to do so and only send a single receiver that direction so that when that one receiver is tackled the end zone is empty on that side of the field... What genius called that work of art? Oh yes, the grass eater over there on the sideline.

As the announcers kept saying of Florida's offensive play calling in the second half, "make your opponent's defense think." Les Miles didn't even make his own offense think. This week may be the most angry that I have ever been at that clown, even more so than when he failed to put Jarret Lee into last season's BCS title game.

Employment Wierdness

The “Establishment Data” portion of the September report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the economy created 114,000 new jobs. The “Household Data” says that the labor force increased by 418,000, which would seem to hint that unemployment would be increased, but it also says that unemployment decreased from 8.1% to 7.8% during the month. Odd.

When 418,000 new workers share 114,000 new jobs, unemployment drops?

Even more strange is that the Household Data says that employed workers increased by a whopping 873,000 in September. Interestingly, the media is not quoting this number, probably because nobody believes it, even though it is this number upon which the much touted drop to 7.8% unemployment is based. Usually the drop in unemployment is based on workers dropping out of the work force but, oddly, that number is not reported for September. Perhaps they are reporting them as “employed” instead.

These are “seasonally adjusted” numbers, remember, and nobody knows how these seasonal adjustments are arrived at. It's a secret formula known only to the BLS. I am beginning to believe the “seasons” upon which the adjustments are based have nothing to do with the Julian calendar, but are based on how many months until the election.

I Don't Have Much

I don’t know why anyone is surprised that Obama appeared listless and displayed a passive demeanor in the debate last night, since that is invariably the way he appears when speaking without a prepared and well rehearsed speech. He gives a hell of a campaign speech, when he is fully engaged with the audience, but when speaking extemporaneously or when explaining policy he is far too engaged within his own head.

The “fact checking” seems to be a bit slanted toward Obama, for instance on the claims about the Romney statement that Obama's health care law cuts $716 billion from Medicare which will hurt current beneficiaries. Obama supporters, and the “fact checkers,” claim that the health care law will “limit payments to health care providers and insurers as part of an effort to rein in costs over the course of the next decade,” and are not cuts to senior citizens' benefits.

Seriously? Does anyone think that providers will accept $716 billion in reduced payments without reducing the degree of services provided? What planet are they living on? Try telling a gravel supplier that you will only pay $600 for the truckload of gravel instead of the $900 that he quoted, and see how much gravel he delivers. It will be a “truckload,” but it won’t be the nine cubic yards you were expecting.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, even when it’s a Democrat who is promising it to you. "We're going to pay less and get the same services," and you believe that, why? Because it's Obama saying it to you?

Five Things

The writers at Tom Dispatch usually provide thoughtful and meaningful discussion on topics of the day, but the other day Mattea Kramer wrote on five things that won’t be discussed in this election cycle and why they matter in the future of this nation. At least two of them actually are being discussed, Medicare and deficit reduction, and she has some rather odd ideas as to why they matter.

1. Immediate deficit reduction will wipe out any hope of economic recovery: is her first point and she might be more accurate had she used the word “immediate” twice, the second time being just before “recovery.”

“When the government cuts spending,” she says, “it lays off workers and cancels orders for all sorts of goods and services that would generate income for companies in the private sector. Those companies, in turn, lay off workers, and the negative effects ripple through the economy.”

This is the standard pablum of speakers who argue against reducing military spending, but I have argued that the purpose of the military is to defend against foreign enemies, not to provide civilian jobs. Likewise, the function of our government is to govern, not to provide direct employment of the civilian labor force. In the first level of employment that Ms. Kramer applauds, where does the government get the money with which it pays the salaries of those workers? Right, it gets it from that second level of workers who are employed by businesses other than the government. Sooner or later, the private sector must be weaned off of the government teat, and the longer it takes for that to happen the harder that process becomes.

2. Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources: and on this one I agree entirely. Politicians on both sides have been pandering to the self indulgence of a lazy and greedy American public with endless and self destructive tax cuts and this fiscal irresponsibility has led to a position which becomes ever more painful in recovery. And still this campaign is one of even more tax cuts and a circular firing squad of blame for “overspending.”

3. Neither the status quo nor a voucher system will protect Medicare (or any other kind of health care) in the long run: which is another issue that actually is being discussed.

She’s probably right on the point she makes, but then she says that, “Medicare could be significantly protected by cutting out waste. Our health system is riddled with unnecessary tests and procedures…” and goes on to blame complexity and overuse for the cost of health care, which is utter nonsense. The cost of health care is due entirely to the for-profit model of health care delivery and the government’s unwillingness to regulate that industry to even the most miniscule degree. The monetary abuses within the health care delivery industry simply stagger the imagination, and the government is fully complicit in all of them.

4. The U.S. military is outrageously expensive and yet poorly tailored to the actual threats to U.S. national security: and the only argument I have with that is that there actually are no threats to U.S. national security.

5. The U.S. education system is what made this country prosperous in the twentieth century -- but no longer: a point which is sheer idiocy.

What made this country prosperous in the twentieth century was first and foremost that we were the last man standing after World War Two, and second that we developed a robust and effect labor movement which protected the well being of the American worker. Certainly the GI Bill and our education system made a difference and I would not argue that our education system has not deteriorated, but to think that we will regain prosperity by sending everyone to college is absurd.

Obama’s premise that “the jobs of the future require a college education” envisions a future in which everyone is sitting at a computer processing data and manipulating financial resources and where all the goods and services somehow magically happen without human intervention. Garbage picks itself up, foodstuffs pick themselves at farms and transport themselves to… Delusion.

Krugman's Referendum

Paul Krugman has an editorial today in the New York Times in which he says that this year’s election is a referendum; not as profound a statement as he thinks it is since, by definition, every election is a referendum. He says that voters are “being asked to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare…” To the extent that he may be right is the extent to which this nation has lost any sense of principle and has sunk into a quagmire of self interest, because the referendum he poses is “what is the government going to give me?”

The debate which is not being held is “should this be a nation which takes a person’s liberty from them, or their life, without due process of law?” We do not even debate that. Our president has ordered that these things be done, and we accept it despite the fact that out nation’s constitution expressly forbids it.

Another debate which is not being held is to ask if this nation should have the world’s largest military, a military stationed in every corner of the world, and be a nation perpetually at war? We actively support that status, despite the fact that our nation’s constitution expressly forbids the formation of a permanent standing army.

We are, in this election, not discussing our wars abroad, the state of our military empire, or the death and destruction that we impose daily in nations overseas. We are not discussing the constant abrogation of the mandates of our constitution. These are mere principles, and principles mean little or nothing to us. Instead we are discussing what the government is going to provide in the way of benefits to us. We demand that our government spend money which it does not collect in the form of taxes to provide to us the comforts of healthcare, infrastructure, and pensions.

And it's all good because, Paul Krugman tells us, "borrowing costs are at historic lows." Having what you cannot pay for is good merely because debt is cheap. (And governments never repay debts.)

2000 men and women are dead in Afghanistan, 4500 in the sands of Iraq. Did they die so the Sally and Fred could have good jobs? Did they die to protect Johhny's pension? What they thought they were protecting, what they swore an oath to protect, was the constitution of these United States, and we blithely overlook the violation of that document every day and discuss what Obama has done to cut taxes and provide comfort. We dishonor their deaths every day with this campaign of selfishness.

Bread and circuses. An empire rotting from within.

Four Headlines

I'm not even going to bother telling you the sources; you'll figure it out soon enough. One headline reads, optimstically "Consumer Spending Jumps in August." The next is slightly less of a cheerleader, "Spending Climbs But Wages Don't." The third goes for realism, "High Gasoline Prices Lift Consumer Spending in August." The fourth must be, and is, a business publication, "Consumer Spending in US Stagnates."

Closer investigation shows that consumer spending rose by 0.5% in August, virtually all of which was higher gasoline cost, and consumers had to increase credit card debt to pay for it. The economies in Europe and China are crashing, the Middle East is in turmoil and threatnening to come unglued, and drought is slamming this country with no end in sight. Only 29% of large companies forsee hiring, down from 56% six months ago.

And yet voters "generally feel the economy is improving" and Obama is gaining in the polls as a result of it, which proves that people in this country are immune to facts and hear only what they want to hear. We will walk off the cliff with happy smiles on our faces.

Voting Tribally

Only in the very loosest sense of the word is democracy still alive in this country. What we have left is a sort of tribal warfare between two mobs of fanatical lunatics, warfare that is essentially meaningless since we are in any case governed by a wealthy oligarchy which is going to keep the general population under its heel regardless of which side wins.

In a discussion last week I suggested that winning an election without proposing any principles or policies but merely by disparaging the opposition and becoming the “lesser of two evils” was a losing proposition for the nation, and I was met with the response to the effect that the only thing which counted was winning and that “how we do that doesn’t matter.”

That is a repugnant and fanatical statement, and I reject it outright. Of course it matters “how we do that.” No one who believes in democracy can make such a statement. To say that is to legitimize the election of 2000. Obama supporters who say that are as delusional and fanatical, and as repugnant, as the Tea Partiers who demand Obama’s birth certificate.

This week in a discussion I suggested that while Romney was a bad choice and that I supported much of what Obama has done, and while I do not expect a perfect candidate, there are some “bright lines” which I cannot cross. Killing people overseas with Hellfire missiles when we do not even know who they are, killing Americans without due process of law, initiating war without Congress... These things I cannot support.

The response was similar to last week. It doesn’t matter what Obama has done, our side must win regardless because, while our side is killing people all over the world and detaining people without charges or trial, the other side is unthinkably evil.

When we are voting tribally, without even thinking about what or whom we are voting for, then this is not democracy in any meaningful way. This is the abandonment of judgement and reason, which are required ingredients of democracy. These are two mobs incited by the frothing of the oligarchy for its own purposes, and is the failure of democracy in the nation which was the “great experiment” in democracy.

Democracy is failing in this nation because the people in this nation have given it up. We gave it up in the 1980’s for flat screen televisions and SUVs. We gave it up in the 1990’s for our 3000 sgft homes. We gave it up in the 2000’s so that we could be “kept safe from terror.” We held the “great experiment” in our hand, and we opened our fingers and let if drop.

Cheerleading On Jobs

CBS Evening News did a segment, its first of the evening, on “signs of the improving jobs picture.” The headline read, “Holiday hiring bolsters jobs outlook,” which might give you a hint of the nature of the piece. Since when do temporary jobs constitute an “improving jobs picture” or a “bolstered jobs outlook” in the real world?

It actually was worse than I thought it was going to be. The reporter described five companies’ plans for holiday hiring. The first planned on hiring 5000 more than last year, the second planned a 10% increase, about 5200 temporary jobs, the third said hiring would be “up slightly,” the fourth said it planned “down slightly,” and the last said it would be “about the same.”

So this “improving jobs picture” and “bolstered jobs outlook” consists of 10,200 rather low paying jobs nationwide which will last for about three months. Has the cheerleading gotten rather desperate, or what?

Then they had a guy from Moodys who said that retailers would see a “modestly disappointing season,” that would see some growth but “not the kind of growth that they would like or the kind that they saw in the last two years.” The reporter summarized that as a “disappointing season but not a disaster,” and Scott Pelley added his profound summary of, “improvement but slow.”

How anyone gets an “improving jobs picture” out of that utterly escapes me.

Embarrassment at the UN

President Obama spoke at the UN yesterday and it was mostly about the Libyan consulate and the death of Chris Stevens. Very moving except that he blamed it on a reaction to that stupid movie and launched into a discussion of defending freedom of speech. It was a very pretty speech, Obama is quite good at pretty speeches, but it was somewhat lacking in contact with reality.

The initial position of the White House was that the attack was reaction to the silly movie, and when Libyan officials said it was a planned attack by militants the White House vigorously denied it. Finally they were pretty much forced to accept it and vowed to bring the militants to justice, but now he’s back to blaming it on the movie again, even as the FBI is tracking down the militia who organized the attack..

A couple of other things leaped out at me. One was that in listing the countries in which citizens have risen up and demanded freedom from dictators and oppressive governments, he rather glaringly omitted Bahrain. That might have something to do with our naval fleet being stationed there, or with our great good ally Saudi Arabia’s assistance in continuously putting down that ongoing popular revolt.

We’re all for democracy and freedom of the people in the Middle East, but only when it is convenient to our immediate purposes.

And of course he spoke of a nuclear-armed Iran, saying that it “would threaten the elimination of Israel” and that it ”risks triggering a nuclear-arms race in the region, and the unraveling of the non-proliferation treaty.”

In addition to democracy and freedom, we’re big on posturing over non-existent threats such as, first, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and, second, that it would use a nuclear weapon on Israel if it had one. There is no evidence for either position. The endless hyperventilation about nuclear arms races never fails to crack me up, not to mention that Iran is a signatory to the NPT and has never been shown to be in violation of it, while our great good friend Israel refuses to sign it. Do people like Obama ever even listen to what they are saying?

We know that Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and Obama’s position is that Iran is trying to achieve nuclear weapons. Obama never admits the first, and his claim on the second is known by the entire world to be bogus, but that doesn’t keep him from making the claim, much like Bush kept claiming that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

But, knowing that Israel has nuclear weapons and accepting Obama’s premise that Iran is seeking to develop them, and given that both countries are in the Middle East, what is that if not an existing nuclear arms race in the Middle East? But Obama prates about an arms race “starting” if Iran gets a nuclear weapon because he is pretending that, at this point, there are no such weapons in the Middle East. Presumably, Israel doesn’t have any and we destroyed Saddam’s nuclear bombs when we invaded Iraq.

Am I the only one who is embarrassed for my country?

Replacement Refs

Sunday Night Football announcers continuously flogged the “replacement refs” to the detriment of the game. I don’t mean the refs, I mean the announcers. Forget about the stupid refs, you morons, we turn on the television to watch the football players.

Both teams are being called by the same set of refs, and the “bad calls” go one way as often as they do the other. I assume the dispute is about money, but I don’t care. I don’t care about the stupid refs. When I watch football I am watching the guys wearing helmets and, occasionally the girls wearing short skirts. I am not watching the referees to see how well they are performing. I don’t care how well they are performing.

At the end of the Packers-Seahawks game there was apparently a bad call that cost the Packers the game. I didn’t see it because I don’t watch football on ESPN. All football announcers are idiots, but that crowd is insufferable. I have watched the clips online and, yes, that was a bad call, but the only reason that it “gave the game to Seattle” was that it happened at the end of the game. Further, had Green Bay played up to its usual 23 points instead of the lousy 12 points it had, this call would not have mattered. One play does not make a game.

The regular refs blow calls too. Ask San Diego about Ed Hoculi. The call he blew here in the Denver game was a lot more flagrant that that call, and it not only cost San Diego the game, it took them out of the playoffs. After that whenever he was assigned to officiate a game in San Diego he wore a bullet proof vest, and was booed more loudly that the Chargers team was after their debacle this past Sunday.

Stuff happens. Coaches need to get over it and deal with what is within their control. Players need to shut up and just play football. For the fans, there is still plenty of excitement and fun; quit focusing on what might be wrong and just enjoy what is still right and valuable about America's favorite game.

Football Weekend

LSU squeaked out a win; closer than I expected actually as Auburn pretty much shut down their running game. Discipline has never been the Tigers’ forte, but they were more than usually undisciplined, with late hits and procedure calls. I thought Les Miles was going to either rip a player’s head off or have a heart attack a few times. I didn’t see him eating any grass, but LSU was never trailing by very much.

Georgia Tech was nothing if not entertaining. First they were trailing Miami by 19-0. Then they scored 36 unanswered points and led 36-19. Then their wheels came off and they lost in overtime, still with the same 36 points, a final score of 42-36. They performed this feat in Grant Field Bobby Dodd Stadium in downtown Atlanta, and the crowd was not happy.

Nor was the crowd happy in New Orleans as the Saints lost their third in a row. I must say I am pleased as punch to see them open 0-3, as this is the team with players who filed a lawsuit based on the theory that they should not be punished for taking money to physically injure players on opposing teams. They haven’t lost to good teams, either, as all three losses have come to teams with losing records. In fact, the teams which beat New Orleans have a record of 0-6 in games in which they did not play the Saints.

The Chargers game was mercifully blacked out locally which, hopefully, is the beginning of a trend if they are going to keep playing like that. I followed a “live blogging” stream online while watching other games, and some of the comments were hilarious. Like, “If anyone asks again if Gates is playing I will track them down and kill them” (he was) and, “Oh look, I think Michael Turner is sobering up.”

Philip Rivers had a quarterback rating of 42.5 by the end. I think a quarterback who never enters the game has a rating of 38.5, so obviously there is room for improvement. The much vaunted Ryan Matthews had 44 yards and one fumble, but he went a whole game without getting injured.

The team is, of course, downplaying the absolute beat down which Atlanta handed them, saying that they will “be fine next week.” They offer, of course, no clue as to precisely why they will be fine next week, nor as to why they stunk up the stadium this week. The only thing they offer which approaches an explanation is that Atlanta is “a very good team.” Okay, well, San Diego is supposed to be a very good team as well, and when two very good teams meet the result is not supposed to be a blowout.

The less said about San Diego State the better.

Democratic "Tea Party"

I have written before about my feelings of the recent trend in politics, in which the discussion in liberal circles is not to talk about what our side should be doing or what policies we should embrace, but rather to dance around with glee over the seeming incompetence of the other side and anticipate a victory at the polls by default. I don’t find such a victory anything to celebrate, any more than I would celebrate receiving a trophy for a race merely because no one else showed up.

I read one post where the writer said that he is enjoying the election, and his next words were about how even Republicans are stepping away from Romney because he is such a terrible candidate. He spoke of Tim Pawlenty leaving the Romney campaign for a lobbying job. He went on to admire how Obama is able to capitalize on Romney's mistakes with counter punches. Every bit of the enjoyment he described had to do with the ineptitude of the other side, and he said nothing about our side winning on its own merits.

When I was first in the sales department my boss drummed into me that I should never, even in my own mind, disparage my competition. "It is they," he would say, "who challenge us to produce excellence. If they were mediocre then we could sell garbage. Good competition is our biggest asset." His point was that when I thought poorly of my competition I did not do my best work.

What I see too much of is Democrats enjoying the lead not in terms of our side having a winning message, but rather in terms of the incompetence of the opponent. We are not enjoying our good candidate so much as we are gloating over the missteps of the other one. It weakens our message because the more the other side screws up, the less of a real message is required from our side. It is, in fact, producing a very uninspiring Democratic message, and it tastes bad to me.

Obama at one time knew this principle. When McCain "suspended his campaign to support passage of TARP" there was considerable media talk about the stupidity of that. Did Obama pounce on that and join the mocking of McCain for his misstep? He did not. He stayed with his message of hope and change. In this campaign he pounces of every slip of Romney's tongue, and his supporters do likewise. This is, in fact, the nature of the campaign, and it is the sum of the discussion in liberal discussion.

I joined in the discussion on that post, stressing that I was not a Romney fan and that, while I would take such a victory, it is not the kind of thing that I can enjoy, even when my side is winning. I'll take it, but there is no nobility in it, and no joy.

I was met with open hostility told first that it sounded like I was engaged in “sour grapes” and then that I was a “Democrat who hates Democrats” and that I was “looking for any excuse to find fault with his fellow libruls.”

The liberal side has its own “Tea Party.” They haven’t formed a formal club or given themselves a name, but it’s a large group and for them discussion consists of “you agreeing with what I say or me screaming at you.”

They’re not very smart, either. One of the rebutters said that “the only important thing is to keep Romney out of the White House and how we do that doesn’t matter.” I rejoined that, since we were rejecting such things as principle and honor, we should simply shoot Romney in the head. He replied that “I'm surprised you couldn't find something better than an extreme exaggeration/extrapolation as a basis for this latest slam.” Actually, the “extreme exaggeration” was a deliberate selection to illustrate the absurdity of his claim that “how we do that doesn’t matter” and, of course, he missed the point.

Defining Patriotism

We have, for the most part, utterly redefined “patriotism” in this country. About 1% of the nation still defines it as joining the military and accepting inconvenience, hardship and risk of death to defend his nation. The rest define it as letting someone else do that for him and voting for the politician who promises to give him personally what he wants to have for himself.

Thus we have campaigns aimed at “focus groups,” with speeches about the “Dream Act” when speaking to Hispanic groups, about Social Security and Medicare when speaking to seniors, about wages and unionism when speaking in factories, etc. We have pundits opining that gays and lesbians will vote for Obama because he has now embraced gay marriage.

Think about that for a moment. I’m 70 69 years old, and I’m supposed to be perfectly okay with Obama killing people all over the world, not on any battlefield, without even knowing who they are but based merely on what he perceives as suspicious acts, because I think he will protect my Social Security. The government can engage in a lengthy list of heinous acts, and I’m supposed to vote for its reelection as long as it preserves my Social Security. And, yes, my experience suggests that a good many voters actually take such a position.

For several months I have been engaging in discussions online where the topic is the electorate “voting in their best interest” or wondering how anyone can vote for Republicans when it “is against their interests” to do so, and in those discussions suggesting something along the lines of,

Personally, I am opposed to the whole concept of voting for one's own personal interests. I believe that it is the responsibility of the voter to examine the spectrum of the candidates' views and proposals and to vote in the best interest of the nation as a whole. The nation is bigger than one person and social responsibility requires that one put national well being ahead of personal comfort and even personal safety. Only a small percentage of modern society does this, by joining the military or similar endeavors, the rest vote for the candidate who promises to give them what they personally want.

Not one single time have I met with any acceptance of that concept, and I have been the target of considerable hostility as a result of posting it. We are, I am told in no uncertain terms, a nation of individualists, and the only reasonable way to vote is for whatever best serves the individual who is casting the vote. I sometimes get reminded in a rather snide manner that the 1% rate at which people join the military is why we call it an “all volunteer” military, which illustrates that my point missed the mark by a very wide margin.

I keep getting reminded; we have precisely the government we deserve.

The President's Men

One of the issues I have with President Obama is that he appointed Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense. Every time Panetta opens his mouth I am reminded of the utter incompetence of our government that such a man would hold any position in it, let alone a series of such high positions. The man is stupid beyond belief, and is arrogant and a warmonger to boot.

Now he is framing Afghanistan as impending “victory” by saying that the killing of our soldiers by the Afghan troops that they are training as comrades in arms is “the last gasp of a Taliban insurgency that has not been able to regain lost ground.”

Where have we heard that before? Oh, yes, Dick Cheney just before Iraq descended into total chaos, and as usual, Leon is alone in his idiotic opinion. General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, corrects him in the same article, saying that the attacks are “a very serious threat to the Afghanistan campaign.”

One reason to hope Obama loses is to get rid of Leon Panetta, Eric Holder and Timothy Geithner. What we get to replace them might not be any better, but it’s hard to see how they could be worse. We could get lucky, and keeping these people four more years is a disaster.

Courtesy Lives

I have discovered a new donut shop, one which is an adequate replacement for my favorite which closed more than a year ago. I went there Tuesday for the second time and a couple had walked in just before me. They were uncertain what they wanted, and the man behind the counter said to them, "I'll take care of this gentleman while you decide?" with a distinct question mark on the end.

That's a very small thing, but it was a delightful little gesture of courtesy which brightened my day, almost as much as the glazed cinnamon roll which followed it. Those rolls are sinfully good, and I'm limiting myself to one of them per week.

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription which my doctor's office was supposed to have transmitted to them on Monday. They had not done so and, without me having to ask her to, the young woman behind the counter called my doctor's office and got the prescription over the phone. She turned out to be a pharmacist, because she then filled the prescription. While she was doing all of this she repeatedly made eye contact with me and pleasantly said that it would be "just another minute."

When she delivered the prescription to me she thanked me and apologized for the delay. I told her on the contrary, that it was my pleasure to thank her for taking care of the problem caused by my doctor's office.

Be courteous to each other, folks, it makes life so much more pleasant.

Politics of Distraction

Every once in a while an economist fakes me out and says something that makes sense. Damn them anyhow. Here I am condemning them as complete idiots, and one of them hauls off and says something that validates a position I’ve been holding for more than a year.

I have been maintaining to my fellow liberals, progressives, whatever label they presently go by, that the Bush/Obama tax cuts are not the cause of income inequality and that making our tax code more progressive will not correct the imbalance in wealth and income that exists in this nation at this point. There are other aspects of futility to this discussion, including my contention that we should be talking about raising the lower incomes rather than merely trying to tear down the upper ones, and that talking about “fair share” sounds like a bunch of ten year olds, but…

Anyway, all of this has been about as effective as banging my head against a brick wall. It has made no difference to the brick wall of the conviction by liberals that every bad thing in the universe was caused by Republicans, most of it by George Bush personally, and it feels good only when I stop doing it. Of course I’m too stupid to stop doing it, so I still have a headache.

Along comes Dean Baker who, despite being an inflationista sometimes speaks reasonably, with a post today at Beat The Press in which his main point is that when we are arguing about taxes that progressivism and the middle class have already lost the battle. The central point he makes is when he speaks of, “changes in laws and institutions that had the effect of restructuring markets in ways that redistribute income upward.”

Notice that he points out that it is “restructuring markets” that has redistributed income, not changes in levels of taxation. He provides very concise and clear examples of precisely what he is talking about, for example the offshoring of jobs which was abetted by government policies and which enhanced profits for the wealthy business owners while driving wages downward for the working class. Read his piece, which is very clear and understandable, and note that the destruction of the middle class began with the Clinton Administration and has continued throughout Obama’s term in office.

His point, which is absolutely correct, is that as long as we are talking about whether or not the “Bush tax cuts,” all or any part of them, are to be continued, then we are not talking about government policies which have been and are destroying the middle class in this nation. These policies began in a Democratic administration, and it is an existing Democratic administration which is distracting us with “Bush tax cuts” and refusing to address a correction of them now.

Wonderfulness, Part Two

Bruce commented that he could never understand why food and energy were left out of inflation reporting, and suggested that it was to make the inflation appear to be lower than it actually is. The reason given by economists is that food and energy prices are “too volatile” and that they make the inflation number jump around too much. Leaving them out results in a more stable number for consumers to look at.

If that seems silly and incoherent to you, well, you must remember that we are dealing with economists here and sounding silly and incoherent is what they do. They go to places like Princeton and the University of Chicago to learn this stuff. You and I just pay our bills and balance our checkbooks, tasks which I suspect would utterly defeat the average economist.

There are times that food and/or energy prices are rising more slowly than the rest of the market, and times that including them would actually lower inflation rather than raising it. I have no idea how often that would be the case, but it is not the case right now.

The idea that inflation makes debt easier to repay does have some validity for businesses, because their income does automatically increase along with inflation, so it requires a smaller portion of their gross income to repay the debt after inflation has run its course. That is offset, however by the fact that inflation also increases the cost of doing business, so the amount of profit (or net income) that is consumed in paying the debt may not be any less, and may even be more.

The problem is that economics and accounting are not the same thing, and economists don’t seem to realize that. Economists can look at a sweeping big picture and say that the dollar is worth less and therefore the debt is easier to repay, but that is abstract theory which doesn’t translate into what happens when actual money changes hands.

Similarly, Dean Baker says that there can be no labor shortage because all the parking lot owner has to do is keep raising the wage he offers until he is able to attract the workers he needs. That sounds fine, but Baker doesn’t realize that there is often an upper limit to what a business can charge for its product. When the parking lot owner is having to charge $75/day to park a car people start riding the train instead of driving to town and pretty soon he doesn’t need any employees.