How Do I Loathe Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

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Within the past week, Vice President Dick "Darth" Cheney has said he has no idea why his popularity is so low. Furthermore, he implied he didn't care, as he feels polls are irrelevant and that he will be redeemed by history, just as Gerald Ford was regarding Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. He's not reading the same history books I am. The books I read imply there's no parallel. Ford's pardon of Nixon was to save the nation from the torture of a trial. Cheney, by admitting he approved waterboarding, approved of torture. Ford's act, by letting us put Watergate behind us, made the nation feel more secure. Cheney's acts, no matter how much he denies their effects, have put the nation more at risk. US waterboarding of Islamic terror "suspects" is one of the best recruiting tools Al Qaida ever had.

First Lady Laura Bush asserted that her husband has not been a failure as President of the United States. She's not reading the same history books I am. Despite what Mr. and Mrs. Bush both seem to think, there is no way history will call him "another Harry Truman." For Truman, "the buck stop[ped] here." Dubya has spent most of the past 4 weeks trying to convince people none of the bad things that happened during his administration are either his fault OR his responsibility. Further, Truman knew HE was the Commander-In-Chief, and he fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur's butt when MacArthur wouldn't obey Truman's orders. Had Dubya been in office during the Korean War, however, he'd have agreed to whatever MacArthur wanted--and nuked China. Then where would any of us have been?

Candidate for the GOP National Committee chairmanship Chip Saltsman (as part of his nomination presentation, I think) sent GOP members a CD with his "parody" of Puff, the Magic Dragon, which Saltsman called Barack, the Magic Negro. He's not reading the same history books I am. He's not even remembering the same past 40 years of history I do. His kind of offensive race-baiting went out back in the 1960s, but he is oblivious to that. He's mad that other GOP members aren't defending him and his crap.

I am astonished that Saltsman thought he could ever get away with such a disgusting and offensive thing. I am astonished that Laura Bush seems to have abrogated her ability to think for herself. I am amazed at Cheney's arrogance and utter lack of logic.

What they all have in common, however, is this: they are all breathtakingly out of touch with reality. Only one question remains: are they really that dumb and deluded, or are they that calculating and calloused that they just don't care? [In Cheney's case, at least, I vote for "don't care." See my earlier post on what we should call the Dubya era. As I noted there, when asked about the number of American, let alone Iraqi, lives lost in pursuit of this folly called the Iraq War, all Cheney said was "So?"--Ed]

Intelligent evil is worse than mere stupidity or ignorance, even if the person remaining ignorant made a conscious decision to do so. Those who choose to do evil are always more culpable than the merely inept. The biggest mistake made by those who deliberately do evil is that they believe that what's in their own best interests is exactly the same as what's best for the whole country--even after palpable demonstration (such as the current economic meltdown) that they are wrong.

A soupçon of French Revolution, anyone? In 1789, ninety-seven percent of France's population had no more than 1/3 of the votes in the national government, lived for the most part in grinding poverty, and was expected to carry 99% of the costs of government on its back. The aristocracy and the clergy (the first and second estates, you may recall) held 2/3 of the votes, and thus always made sure THEY were not taxed . . . and shamelessly flaunted their luxurious living conditions in front of the poor. Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake," but that myth has such traction because it is in essence true. Mel Brooks wasn't far wrong when, in History of the World, Part I, he had the French king say "These are my people! I love them! Pull!" as he (playing said king) used the peasantry as skeet-shooting targets.

One tangible example of the Dubya administration's arrogance is its insistence on ramming through as much of its agenda (by every underhanded regulation and executive order and staffing decision it can) in these waning days of its power. Who cares that the present administration was totally repudiated by the November election returns? As one Dubya staffer said, "We're in charge until 11:59 on January 20, and we are going to run the government right until that last minute." People who believe that--and worse, who aren't ashamed to say it out loud--care not for the welfare or the desires of the nation as a whole. They care only for their own use of power.

It is the height of blind arrogance. Then again, why am I complaining? The more dumb things the Republicans do, the less likely they are to regain any meaningful grip on power . . . and that may well be a very good thing for the country as a whole.

Yoda Pegged It

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Remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Jedi Master Yoda tells Luke Skywalker that Luke's problem is that his mind is always looking away, always somewhere else, and not focused on whatever business is at hand?

When I watched It's A Wonderful Life, again [how many years in a row has that been, now?--Ed.], on Christmas Eve, I suddenly realized that George Bailey is the spiritual father of Luke Skywalker. His mind was always somewhere else, not on what was going on around him. His resentment of the circumstances that kept him in Bedford Falls, away from his dreams of college, of seeing the world, and apart from the larger life he thought he wanted, all would have made him an ideal candidate for being turned to the Dark Side of the Force.

Thank God for Clarence the Angel! Clarence was no Yoda--nor even an Obi-Wan--but he had enough practical intelligence to get through to George before it was too late. Clarence showed George that the world was a much meaner place without him; Yoda showed Luke that Luke was in literal danger of making the world a meaner place by becoming his father. Both mentors succeeded in convincing their students that living in the moment, being contented with what they had, was all that mattered. And they both ultimately achieved their happy endings.

[A quick aside: I read a review of It's A Wonderful Life which claimed it didn't matter that George, through the generosity of friends and family, repaid the $8,000 shortage in the savings and loan's accounts. The reviewer claimed the crime had still been committed and George would still have to pay the price. The reviewer obviously was no lawyer. Not only did George NOT steal the money, neither George nor his uncle had any intent to defraud the savings and loan. No intent, no crime. Yes, charges may have been filed, and investigations would be done, and sooner or later, it would be seen that the evil Mr. Potter wrongly kept the money once he realized George's uncle had unwittingly given it to him. Ultimately, Potter, in trying to engineer George's final downfall, merely hastened his own.--Ed.}

The ending of It's A Wonderful Life always used to irritate me. I thought it would have had more impact if no one had come through with the replacement money, but had shown up to give George moral support. After this year's viewing, however, I'm not so sure. Maybe I need a little "happy ending" fantasy of my own . . . maybe it's the downward drag of current nationwide economic circumstances . . . maybe it's just that I'm a little older, a little wiser, and a lot sadder and more disillusioned about humanity in general . . . for whatever reasons, I found myself sobbing by the end of the movie, grieving for the suffering its plot revealed and wishing desperately that such an ending were a real possibility in this world.

I haven't felt that much visceral pain in a long time. I hope I don't have to experience any more any time soon.

New Holiday Music

As much as I must listen to my eternal favorites, I also enjoy listening to new holiday music every year. This year produced several CDs of note [pun intended--Ed.], and even a few disappointments.

Bela Fleck and The Flecktones' Jingle All The Way is remarkably eclectic. It got off to a somewhat slow start, with an almost tribal rendition of Jingle Bells which struck me as being on the edge of bizarre. On the other hand, Fleck's bluegrass take on Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride was downright inspired. But what can you say about someone who can and does play Bach on the banjo? The rest of the CD is much closer to inspired than to bizarre. I recommend it. Its final cut is yet another cover of Joni Mitchell's River, which has in its relatively short life become a massive "must do" piece. I think I alone have CDs by seven or eight different artists which include covers of River. They are all excellent and heartbreaking, all at once.

Truly great music withstands any treatment it is given. I've heard disco versions of several Beethoven works, and by golly, they ALL sound great. Mitchell's River likewise touches the heart no matter in which genre it is performed, no matter by whom it is performed. Joni's a genius. And that song is achingly, poignantly, beautiful. [Sometimes, however, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. I love Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, but find I cannot listen to parts of it without hearing the words to an Alpha-Bits commercial from the last 1960s: "It's the one and only cereal that comes in the shape of animals . . ." Let's face it: I'm hopeless.--Ed.]

Another CD worth your time and your ears is Enya's And Winter Came. Ever since I heard her CD single of Silent Night (Oíche Chúin in Irish Gaelic), I wondered when she was going to do an entire album. This one has been worth the wait. Her frequently dreamy, nearly meditative wall of sound perfectly accompanies a cold, snowy winter's day. I listen to her music, and I feel totally comforted and at home. Enya transcends the "New Age" pigeonhole she most frequently is assigned.

Another fun CD is Harry Connick, Jr.'s, latest, What A Night! A Christmas Album. I like Harry's singing very much--when Memphis Belle came out and I heard the soundtrack, the first thing I thought of was the old Looney Tunes wartime cartoon wherein Farmer Porky's hens start laying ridiculous quantities of eggs after they hear that scrawny rooster version of Frank Sinatra croon--their bobby socks roll up and down, they cry out "Oh, Frankie!" and faint . . . and suddenly lay entire pyramids of eggs. I had the exact same "Oh, Frankie!" response the first time I heard Harry Connick, Jr., sing. Crying out "Oh, Frankie!" in a female falsetto has become a bit of SOP whenever I hear anything by Connick, in a public place or not. I'm sure it embarrasses those who don't get the reference. I don't care.

The thing I like about his latest CD, however, is that he's included a few purely instrumental tracks. He's a superb piano player. It's about time he showed it off, even a little bit. His vocals on Zat You, Santa Claus?, are the wittiest I've heard since Louis Armstrong's, though, so I'm glad it's primarily a vocal performance CD.

On the other hand, I found one major disappointment with new holiday music this year. Spyro Gyra's A Night Before Christmas is entirely pedestrian. I am so underwhelmed! Spyro Gyra's first hit, the monster Morning Dance was such a marvelous work, and such a unique and happy sound, that I expected something similar from this CD. If I hadn't known which group performed it, however, I'd never have guessed it was Spyro Gyra. What happened? I have no idea. I will listen to it again, after a long break, to make sure my initial impression wasn't too hastily formed. But I'm going to have to wait until way past St. Patrick's Day to be able to give it a fresh ear.

Still, the old classics are the best. I don't think anyone will ever top the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas. No one has to, either. I may have more CDs with covers of tunes from that album than from any other Christmas recording I own. Every one of them is quite good if not brilliant. As with Joni Mitchell's River, the ability of superior music to improve whatever treatment it's given makes itself manifest. That's to every listener's benefit. Merry Christmas and Happy Listening!

At The Nexus Of Science And Religion

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I confess to being one of those people who sees no real conflict between the concepts of science and of religion. For me, science is designed to answer the question "How?" and religion, the question "Why?"

There may seem to be overlap, but that's only because people are all-too often imprecise in how they use language. Science can tell us the Universe began in the Big Bang--but it cannot tell us why the Big Bang happened beyond a physical description of the conditions, which equals "how." Only religion can answer the larger philosophical question of Who prompted that "how" in the first place.

I was paying not enough attention to a program on the Science Channel HD this afternoon when I heard a cosmologist express an idea that was one of the most creative and yet simple observations I've heard in years. I regret that I wasn't paying closer attention. I have no idea what his name is or at what university he works--but I think his idea is well worth exploring. He himself admitted he may be wrong, but as he also rightly noted, this is how science and knowledge advance. People observe things; they formulate theories (in the scientific sense); they then test the theories by making more observations which will confirm, modify, or obliterate those theories. They then make further observations to test the "new" theories.

[Note that Darwin's "theory" of evolution is a "theory" only in that scientific sense; so far, no evidence has been repeatedly observed which contradicts it; at most, additional observations have caused minor modifications to the "theory's" details. Only the ignorant still deny that Darwin's general "theory" is correct.--Ed.]

Anyway, this cosmologist's idea came from his observation that, based on what we now know, the Universe cannot be as big as it is when considering how old it is. For when we "run the cosmic clock backwards," certain parts of the Universe that must at some point have been in mutual physical contact have not had enough time to come back together. He called this "the horizon problem."

So in a flash of insight, he postulated that at some point in the past, the speed of light must have been faster than it is now. He calls this "VSL," or "varying speed of light." Other scientists have called is idea the "very silly speed of light." If he is correct, however, we must retool Einstein's general theory of relativity . . . and I can no longer display my bumper sticker that says "186,000 miles per second. It's not just a good idea. It's the law."

But it makes sense to me, based on yet another fundamental law of science (and one against which I've been fighting most of my life): the second law of thermodynamics, which says in its most concise form that "entropy increases."

We all know that things change over time--hot things cool off, orbits decay (anyone remember SkyLab and Mir?), wind-up toys slow down. Entropy increases. Things get messier, often seemingly of their own accord. But the changes are due partly to loss of energy sources, partly due to the action of friction, and partly due to the effects of gravity. We all know gravity bends light waves. That's one of the major predictions of Einstein's theory which has been proved only recently. Only recently did we get the technological sophistication to make the measurements/observations in a way that can be confirmed independently. Remember, the sine qua non of the scientific method is independent corroboration, by observation or by duplicating experimental results. That's the main reason that those who claimed to have produced "cold fusion" failed. No one could repeat their results when performing their same experiments under rigorous, scientifically-controlled conditions.

The other thing I like about this cosmologist's idea is that it embodies Occam's Razor: when you have more then one possible explanation for something, the simplest one normally is correct.

He may well be proven wrong someday. Still, it doesn't matter to him or to me. What matters is that his idea will engender further scientific inquiry. With additional facts come additional knowledge, and that is never bad . . . despite what many claim happened in the Garden of Eden.

Rachel Maddow Missed The Point

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On her eponymous MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow called President-elect Barack Obama's choice of fundamentalist pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration a "lose-lose" proposition. Warren used his California church to campaign vigorously in favor of Proposition 8, which revoked the legality of same-sex marriage in that state; he has equated same-sex relationships with pedophilia and incest.

Obama, for his part, has a strong record promoting equal rights for gays, but himself is opposed to same-sex "marriage."

Warren and Obama do seem to agree on certain other issues, such as the need for caring human stewards to protect the environment and to look after the less fortunate and homeless among us.

Maddow thinks Obama's choice is a "lose-lose" proposition because it has offended a great number of Obama's erstwhile supporters yet will not gain Obama any measurable support among fundamentalist Christians.

Maddow missed the point. Obama himself acknowledged that he and Warren disagree vehemently on many issues, but that doesn't mean they must be disagreeable about doing so. In this regard, Obama is implementing two of his most important stands during the campaign: (1) it's never wrong to have dialog with those with whom you disagree; and (2) it's important to "reach across the aisle" and to take actions proving that he's the president of all Americans, not just those who voted for him.

Furthermore, Obama is accomplishing two other goals that Maddow [and all the other talking heads I've heard complaining about this decision so far--Ed.] has forgotten: (1) "Hold your friends close, but hold your enemies closer." (2) He's not so beholden to anyone or any group for his election that he's going to adopt 100% of any group's agenda just because that group voted for him.

This man is incredibly secure in his own skin. I already know I'm not going to agree with him about everything--indeed, we've already disagreed on at least one issue of great importance to me [he voted for giving immunity to the telecoms who illegally eavesdropped on US citizens because enacting other provisions in the legislation mattered more to him than opposing telecom immunity did--Ed.]. Still, I have great respect for his sense of his internal integrity and his confidence in his own judgments. He thinks through his decisions before he makes them. He knows it's impossible to please all of the people all of the time. He's the embodiment of Harry Truman's Oval Office desk sign: The Buck Stops Here.

So while I find Rick Warren's stand on same-sex marriage odious, I am not as upset about Obama's choosing him to give the inaugural invocation as are Maddow and the other talking heads with public pulpits [yes, a lot of conservatives are not happy about it, either--they disagree with Warren's stand on environmental issues or they think Obama is trying to co-opt their cause--Ed.]. Unlike them, I get the point.

What Will We Call The Past Eight Years?

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Arianna Huffington says we should call the past eight years the "How Could We Know?" era--because it's the excuse everyone from those who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff to Dubya himself cited in denying responsibility for the atrocities (fiscal and otherwise) inflicted during their watch.

She makes an excellent argument. In today's Huffington Post, every case she cites (from Iraq to Fannie Mae to Citibank to Madoff) reveals the identical pattern. Those responsible create a plan; they then diminish, dispute, and destroy anyone (in a position to know) who questions said plan; they then carry out said plan with no regard for reality nor any transparency or accountability; they then look askance and say "how could we know?" when it all falls apart . . . as it inevitably does. The ambiguities deliberately created by the planners themselves become the planners' refuge from their responsibilities for making and carrying out those plans in the first place.

She's correct. But after watching clips of two interviews, one with Dubya and one with Darth Cheney, both of which aired Monday night, I have another nominee: let's call it the "So?" or "So What?" era.

For the very first time, as far as I can tell, the president acknowledged that Al Qaida was not a presence in Iraq until AFTER we invaded. He was oblivious to the consequences of his admission, however. He didn't seem to grasp that Al Qaida wouldn't have gone into Iraq at all if we had not already have been there. Dubya was indifferent to the fact that the US invasion caused the problem in the first place. His understanding was limited to the idea that "we" are fighting the "war on terror" where Al Qaida "chose to fight." It is irrelevant to him that Al Qaida made that choice solely in response to what it saw as US provocation. His exact words to the interviewer were "So what?"

Cheney's response to a similar question which focused on the terrible loss of American lives was ever shorter: "So?"

This is beyond appalling. Its callousness and willful disregard for the sacrifices ordinary Americans have been forced to make are almost incomprehensible to me.

I am willing in Dubya's case to chalk it up to his willful indifference to learning anything or even acknowledging anything that contradicts his pre-conceived world view. But Cheney? He simply doesn't care, so long as Halliburton gets its millions and billions of profits at OUR expense. In response to a question I have long and often raised in this blog is this: being stupid is bad, but being evil is worse.

What worries me the most, however, is that President-elect Obama doesn't think that bringing the malefactors to justice should be one of his highest priorities. He seems to be leaning to the Gerald Ford approach: in pardoning Richard Nixon before any charges were officially brought against him, Ford said "Our long national nightmare is over." I hope I am wrong about that. Not only is justice delayed "justice denied." Justice denied sets extremely dangerous precedents for the future--indeed, they mean the end of our entire system of checks and balances.

Consider this: the most frightening thing about Richard Nixon's take on executive power, as is so ably exploited in commercials currently airing for the film Frost/Nixon, is his assertion that "when the President does it, it's not illegal."

That statement is so wrong on its face that I scarcely know where to begin pointing out its flaws. First, it says the president is above everything, even the US Constitution. Second, and as a direct result, it says there's no such thing as a "government of laws and not of men." Third, it says that the president never can be held accountable for anything done under his ægis. Fourth, it's just as stupid a doctrine when someone more liberal is in power as it is when someone more conservative is in power. It's equal-opportunity absolute monarchy masquerading as representative democracy.

It's just flat-out wrong. It's the essence of un-American. And it makes me want to puke. America deserves so much better!

Step Right Up! The Long Knives Are Out!

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Let the sacrifice begin. What's left of the American economy is about to be slaughtered on the altar of Republican ideology. Last night, enough Republicans in the US Senate voted against the already-shrunken Big Three auto bridge loans to scuttle them. Why? Union-busting, plain and simple. GOP senators, mostly the ones from Southern states filled with foreign auto non-union manufacturing plants, insisted the United Auto Workers accept wage cuts before the end of 2009 that the union was willing to accept by 2011 (the end of its current contracts). Wage cuts that amounted to only a few dollars an hour according to the figures I saw on the news last night--and after the UAW had already conceded more on other issues, such as health care and pensions.

Oh, the GOP senators had lots of "justifications" for their actions. Some claimed the bridge loans were just too expensive. Like giving $15 billion IN LOANS to American auto makers--with a whole slew of conditions--is going to break the budget after giving $700 billion to the banks with no strings attached . . . even when the banks still aren't using the money to loosen up the economy.

[Which leads me to an another observation: all the news reports I heard this morning said the upside of the present situation is that it's a very, very good time to buy a car. I say "Sure it is. IF you can get the credit to do so." And that's the rub, isn't it? We're back to the banks hoarding--or spending on their CEOs and their perks--the money the government shoveled at them supposedly to help us. All the banks are interested in doing is helping themselves. When are we collectively going to realize that the only thing that trickles down when you employ "trickle-down" economics is pee?--Ed.]

Some of the GOP senators claimed the Big Three had no one to blame but themselves. They got themselves into their present mess; the US Senate had nothing to do with it; let the Big Three get themselves out, or go under. I say: if that is such a sound bit of reasoning, why didn't they apply it to the $700 billion banking giveaway?

Some things are just too big for political ideology. The Senate GOP members who voted against the already-severely-reduced-bridge-loans bill are going to find they've won only a Pyrrhic victory if something isn't done to salvage even part of this mess. The fallout from their irresponsibility is going to hit their states' people just as hard as it hits everyone else in the USA once the ripple effects of failing to prop up the Big Three swamp the 2.5 million US workers in related industries . . . and then the rest of us whose livelihoods are connected to theirs.

It will make The Great Depression look like a cake walk. I just hope that enough of the country can hang on until President-elect Obama is inaugurated and effective measures will be taken. Heaven knows Dubya won't do anything. Keith Olbermann asked in all seriousness last night on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann whether anyone besides him has wondered if Dubya's whole purpose in getting elected was to screw up the government as much as possible. Heck! I've been saying that for years. GOP right-wing ideologues are so determined to go back to the Gilded Age, when there was no income tax, the federal government was small, and they held all the money and all the power, that they are willing to run the whole country into the ground to get what they think they want. If they succeed, they are going to find themselves presiding only over the ashes of what once was America.

Keep Mike Duncan As GOP National Committee Chairman!

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This is my week for writing about NPR's Morning Edition, isn't it? In an interview this morning with Steve Inskeep, Mr. Duncan explained why he wants to keep his job as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and explained steps he and the committee are taking to make sure the GOP "stays" relevant and viable on the national political stage.

The body of the interview consisted of Inskeep reading comments posted by Republicans at the GOP National Committee's "Republican for a Reason" web site and letting Duncan address them. Duncan repeatedly asserted that the GOP is a "big tent" party that welcomes all people with varying beliefs (religious and otherwise) and best reflects the timeless values of the American people.

But he rejected the substance of every comment Inskeep read. When Inskeep asked him whether the GOP is out-of-touch because people who are worried about their jobs and health care are not too worried about tax cuts, Duncan's only answer was that the GOP needed to do a better job of communicating its ideas.

Duncan's answer to a GOP member who expressed the desire that the GOP distance itself at least a bit from the religious right was to say that the GOP attracts people of all views due to its timeless values.

Duncan also trotted out the canard that all the Democrats want to do is irresponsible--because they want to "spend us out of recession." First, that simply isn't what the Democrats want. What the Democrats [and an awful lot of Republicans, if the presidential election returns are any indication . . . which they are--Ed.] want is a return to fiscal sanity. The Republicans during their past 8 years of being in power have spent us into such a deep hole we may never get out--while cutting taxes for the richest Americans at just as dizzying a pace. The facts show who's been irresponsible, and about what.

Duncan, however, remains clueless. In another part of the interview, he claims the GOP had in insurmountable lead in the presidential election until the economy went south. He goes on to claim that the electorate was voting to punish the GOP because of the perception that the GOP had been in charge for the past 8 years. First, it was no "perception." The GOP was in power during the past 8 years, and GOP fiscal policies, no matter how much they try to spin the facts otherwise, are the direct cause of our present economic woes. Second, even before the economy tanked, Obama was gaining steady ground on McCain, and had already put several states that used to be GOP strongholds into play. All the economic meltdown did was help a lot of people make up their minds about how to vote sooner than they might have decided otherwise.

Duncan also claimed that this "spending [our way] out of recession" has been rejected by every president since Jack Kennedy. For the sake of argument, even assuming that statement is true, look how carefully Duncan cherry-picked his administrations. Kennedy presided over the beginnings of a large economic expansion (the "Go-Go Sixties"); Johnson was the last president till Clinton to submit balanced budgets to Congress. Nixon's carrying on the Vietnam War 5 years longer than he needed to produced record (at the time) deficits, forcing Ford and Carter to deal with inflation and stagflation. Reagan started the modern trend of massively transferring wealth to the already wealthy at the expense of the middle class--but since he was such a nice grandfatherly figure to so many, it was OK by them. Bush Senior said "read my lips--no new taxes" and then had to pay for Reagan's excesses by raising taxes . . . thus cutting off his re-election chances. Clinton worked hard to improve the country's fiscal status, and it was working, too, until Dubya used Florida to steal the election in 2000 and wipe out all the gains Clinton had made.

If Duncan had intellectual honesty, he'd have made his list of presidents longer . . . but that would have forced him to admit that FDR DID, indeed, spend us out of the Great Depression, thus torpedoing Duncan's entire argument. As economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has cogently noted more than once, "government is the spender of last resort." When the banks won't lend, businesses and consumers can't spend, and until spending goes up, the economy won't grow--so the government then becomes responsible for restoring economic health to the nation.

And President-elect Obama's plans to improve our infrastructure as a massive part of that spending will give us back more than ten times their costs in the benefits they'll confer on the entire country.

So I say leave Duncan in his post. As long as he's just mouthing the same tired old canards for which the GOP is known, and of which everyone is presently sick, Obama's plans will have more chance for success than they would otherwise. The vitality of the US depends on it.

A Bold Fresh Piece Of @#$#$)&#

Shocked! I am shocked, I say! Yesterday, in an interview with Renee Montaigne on NPR's Morning Edition, Fox News blowhard Bill O'Reilly actually said something with which I agree 100%. He called himself a "bloviator." Amen! He's the biggest spewer of hot air I've ever heard. Of course, he didn't meant it about himself that way, but then again, he's not exactly the pointiest stick in the pile, is he?

He also kept his streak of saying the most incredibly stupid, jaw-dropping things alive by claiming to be the child of a working class family. He supports this by noting (1) that he grew up in Levittown, New York; and (2) that when his family took their vacations, they travelled by bus. "I never took a plane ride until I was 17," he boasted.

Alas for him, his evidence absolutely contradicts his claims. First, anyone who knows anything about 20th century US history knows that Levittown was the first modern subdivision in the USA. Yes, the houses were on the small side by contemporary standards, but by the standards of the World War II generation, they were a massive step up from living in apartments in the city. Second, just because Levittown has become a working class neighborhood does not at all mean it started that way. O'Reilly noted in the interview that his father had a college degree. That alone takes him out of the "working class," as far as I'm concerned.

Now if his father had been a fisherman, living and working at the docks on Long Island, then I'd have cut O'Reilly some slack. Working on a fishing boat is a classic blue collar, working class job. But living the life of O'Reilly's childhood [pun intended--Ed.] most assuredly was and is not a blue collar life. Not on Long Island, which is (except for the docks) where the prosperous live.

Besides, "vacations"?!? I don't care that his family rode the bus. That his family got a vacation every year at all means his family was not working class. Puh-lease! My dad was a career NCO in the Air Force, and my mother was a career civil servant, who had to change jobs every time Dad got reassigned. Neither one of them had a college education, though they both worked towards it in their later years. The only "vacations" we ever got were when we travelled from one end of the US to the other to visit all the relatives on both sides of the family every time my dad's Air Force career required us to move. We had about a week to accomplish it each time, too. So it's not like we got to stop and see the Grand Canyon or anything. It was 10-12 hours a day in the car, stopping to sleep at what even I, at grade-school age, could see was a cheap motel [it was all we could afford, you know--Ed.], and then driving on for another 10-12 hours the next day. That isn't exactly a "vacation," now, is it?

O'Reilly even claims he knows why the Dubya Administration went so horribly wrong [this after spending the past eight years loudly defending it against all reason--Ed.]: it suffered from "Rich Guy Syndrome," which O'Reilly defines as the notion that somehow everything will always work out, because, due to Daddy's money, it always has. I do not quarrel with O'Reilly's definition of "Rich Guy Syndrome." Indeed, I tend to agree with it. But my mother puts it best and more colorfully: "He started the game on third base and thinks he hit a home run." But it's not as if Dubya didn't get his money until last week--so why hasn't O'Reilly bothered to say this before now?

Still, I shouldn't be surprised that Bill O'Reilly doesn't want to hear the facts--he's already made up his mind. He likes his version of reality better than the actual facts. So he's just doing what all the other people of his political ilk do. He thinks he's a "bold fresh piece of humanity," but he's really just full of bold fresh crap.

Fresh-Squeezed Juice

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Orenthal James Simpson was convicted of kidnapping and other crimes in relation to his attempts to "retrieve" memorabilia from some dealers in Las Vegas--items he says belonged to him and were stolen. He's going to serve up to 33 years in prison, though at his present age of 61, I doubt he'll be incarcerated that long.

He seemed somewhat bewildered and expressed tearful sorrow to the judge at his sentencing hearing, according to the clips I saw on TV yesterday. The judge was not impressed. Neither, for that matter, was I. For the source of his bewilderment was that he was being convicted at all. The judge explained it in copious and coherent detail, again according to the clips I saw. I was especially impressed by her forthright statement that this conviction had nothing to do with the fact that he was not convicted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman back in 1991 . . . though to an awful lot of us, he should have been.

What struck me about Simpson's confusion was the irony of it. I saw the same reaction among males when they first learned of the murder charges against "the Juice." The consensus was "he wouldn't do that! He's a Heisman Trophy winner!"

Like that had anything to do with it.

When are people going to learn that sports prowess does NOT equal moral decency? I regret to predict that most males are not going to master this learning curve any time soon, given the universality of their confusion resulting from a Heisman winner's being charged with, let alone be tried for, murder. For whatever it's worth, most of these same males had the same reaction to the entire Pete Rose gambling on baseball mess.

The real moral of the story is that none of us should make the mistake of thinking that our heroes, athletes or otherwise, are perfect.

For whatever it's worth, I actually felt a pang of sorrow for OJ. His confusion was genuine. Still, my pang didn't last long. My ultimate hope is that his time in prison will let him reflect on all the things he's done wrong in his life--he is, as the facts plainly show, a physical abuser, and thus carries all the erroneous thinking and emotional baggage that goes with that--and maybe he'll finally be able to confront honestly the beast in his mirror.

Either that, or he can resume his hunt for "the real killer." After all, people who murder others at random are more likely to have committed other crimes, too. Simpson is much more likely to find "the real killer" in prison than he ever was on the golf course.

Pardon--Your Myopia Is Still Showing

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Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show today asserted that President George W. Bush would be evaluated better by historians than he is being evaluated today by his fellows. In support, he cited recent events in Iraq, starting with Dubya's putting General Petreaus in charge.

Things have settled down a bit in Iraq of late, true. But Scarborough's myopia is showing: we wouldn't be in a position to have to laud recent improvements had we not invaded in the first place! C'mon, Joe! Get a grip, get real, and get a clue--better yet, take two: they're small.

Extracting us (even a bit) from a mess he put us into in the first place is no great feat warranting the vindication of history. It's just an acknowledgement that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Correctly Defining The Problem Is The Key To Finding The Real Solution

A report on NPR's "Morning Edition" Monday began a series exploring the explosion in federal government contracting since Ronald Reagan infamously said "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." Contracting out government services has increased every year since that 1981 pronouncement, and has certifiably exploded during the Dubya administration. Did you know that there actually are more contractors in Iraq right now than there are US military personnel?

But Reagan mis-defined the problem, and we are now suffering the long-term effects of his error. The reason he mis-defined the problem is that he forgot (if he ever knew) to whom employees, be they federal or be they contractors', are required to answer for their work.

Contractors are answerable to their company's owners, and their first duty is to maximize profit for their owners. Federal employees, on the other hand, are answerable to ALL of us, and their obligation is to do their jobs to the best of their ability for the good of the people of this country.

This is why contracting out government services is a bad idea. Those whose first duty is to make a profit do not care whether they make it by gouging the public. [Indeed, they are the real pigs at the public trough.--Ed.] Case in point: the IRS has been forced to contract out collection services. People who owe back taxes are being harassed by collection agencies--who have a strong motive to make people pay because they get to keep 25% of everything they collect. As the second report in the NPR series (this morning) noted, however, the contractors are hassling even people who do not owe back taxes--nor are those contractors required to tell people why they are calling--resorting in terrible abuses, as demonstrated starkly by the recordings played of several phone calls between a contractor and an individual allegedly owing the IRS money. Furthermore, and inexcusably in my book, the contractors do not have as much success in collecting as do regular IRS employees!

But the money the collection agencies keep doesn't come out of the IRS budget [remember, it comes directly from what they collect--Ed.], so the IRS can cut the part of its budget that used to pay for its own collectors. Everyone can claim that efficiency has been increased and costs reduced, thus trimming "fat" from the budget and giving people the illusion that waste has been eliminated. In fact, we have lesser quality service at greater expense--for if IRS employees made the collections, 100% of what they collected would go into the public coffers.

If all the contractors were required by the terms of their contracts to comply with the same laws and regulations that IRS employees must obey, I'd be less upset with the situation. But all the contracts are set up to benefit the contractors, ultimately at our expense, whether it be monetary or otherwise. This situation repeats itself in nearly every contracted-out situation of which I've heard.

Consider: virtually all of the contracts awarded in connection with the war in Iraq were awarded without competitive bidding. We've seen the terrible results of that in terms of the shoddy work that was done, let alone the work that was supposed to be done that was not. All of it was paid for with your money at exorbitant rates that far exceeded the value given for the price paid. And we collectively have no recourse to get the money back. The entire contracting situation has been set up in fact to legalize looting the public coffers--so where does that save us anything?

Another case in point: as reported widely (I've seen it on several news shows and in several newspapers during the past two weeks), companies who have been contracted to handle Medicare claims have managed to increase the complexity of the paperwork involved, increase the costs of processing the paperwork (hence increasing their own profit), and reduce the amount of services provided by measurable factors averaging 10%. So the contractors are making more money, the government is spending more money, and the public who receives the services is getting measurably less than it did before the services were contracted out to private companies.

I for one would rather spend a bit more to ensure the people providing services we demand are dedicated public servants whose goal is to do the best for the country than I would to pay people to line their own pockets at our collective expense. "Frugal" is NOT synonymous with "cheap." Businesses are in business to make money. Public servants are here to serve the public. Taxes ARE the price we pay for civilization. Let us spend our money more wisely so that we can keep on being "a government of laws and not of men." President-elect Obama's pledge to make the federal government run "smarter" seems in line with that goal. As such, it correctly defines the problem and is an excellent first step in undoing the damage that Reaganomics has done to this country over the past 20+ years.