We're Doomed!

Al Gore is an optimist. But really, when you look at the level of political discourse in this country (flag pins!), how can you believe we're ever going to have what it takes to avoid disaster?


Anyway, here's an Al must-see. This is his most recent update to "An Inconvenient Truth." While you're there, you might want to look at some of the other speakers that are offered. It's an opportunity to hear some of the brightest, most interesting thinkers -- for free!

Too Funny; Too True

My brother, Chip, sent me this one:

McCain's Economic Background

Hat tip to The Political Cat, where I first saw this.

Power in Numbers

Actually, this is kind of depressing:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 20,304 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Arianna

As the sidebar indicates, I'm a daily reader of the Huffington Post. I would say it's a guilty pleasure, but it's not really a pleasure. I find myself wincing repeatedly at all the celebrity worship that goes on there. I understand that Arianna Huffington is above all else a celebrity, and this is a world she thinks is important, but it makes it harder to find things worth reading there (and there often are).


Arianna is an intelligent woman, but I wonder if she doesn't value her celebrity more than her intelligence. Case in point is this interview with John Stossel on ABC's 20/20.

Stossel is a well-established jerk who has been a libertarian water boy for years. She should have known she could not go on his show as a "celebrity" and come off looking intelligent. True to form, Stossel pulls out two charts -- one on the earnings of "poor people" and one on employee accidents before and after OSHA, which are supposed to prove that "ending welfare as we know it" was good and OSHA is bad, and Arianna is supposed to respond to them. This is tailor-made for television, because there's no chance to actually study the charts and see what the definitions and assumptions are. Stossel has a chart, so it must be true. And Arianna responds to them as though she accepts the definitions and assumptions, even though she doesn't know what they are.

So, of course, Arianna comes off looking bad.

Now, this was predictable. This is Stossel's mode of operation.

Which leads me to wonder what she was thinking when she agreed to go on that show. And what means more to her: intelligence or celebrity?

Update: The fact that the Huffington Post is pumping the video of the appearance so heavily suggests there's nobody there with the courage to tell her how bad she looks.

Rethinking the Draft

Now that I'm safely past it, it's time to rethink the draft [self-aware irony intended].

One reason we ended the draft was because having a large standing army made it too easy to see military action as the only answer to international problems. If you've got a hammer, every problem is a nail.

But now we see there's a downside to this. I'm sure many people pointed it out even 30 years ago. By maintaining an all-volunteer military, the burden of taking military action is concentrated on a small number of people. These people, and their families, live in military enclaves (bases or towns around military bases) and tend to be invisible to the wider public. So they can be abused repeatedly without political consequences. The rest of us just don't notice, so long as we can run our SUVs.

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (6)

[Stolen from Steve Clemons' The Washington Note.]

Food Pantry

I've been working one morning a week at the local food pantry. It operates out of the basement of a Methodist Church in the neighborhood. I spend about 4 hours there, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., or later.




There are seven or eight different jobs you can do there, and when I first started volunteering, I was mostly put on the box brigade. For 4 hours, I cut up food boxes as they were emptied, and stuffed the cut up pieces into another box. When the box is full, it's carried away and another box is begun. Eventually the boxes full of boxes are taken to a recycling point, or just carried out to the trash. It's not exciting work, but it's steady, and it's gratifying to stay caught up.



For the past few weeks I've been rotated around to other jobs. The layout of the pantry is like this: every family unit that comes in the door gets a number, so there's somebody who passes out numbers. I actually did that the first week I volunteered, because they weren't sure I was able to count and wanted to see me in action.

When the person's number is called, they have a sit-down interview with one of two ladies who check their ID, look them up in the card file, and make sure they haven't been at the food pantry before in that calendar month. The ladies fill out a small slip of paper that contains information about the number of people in the family unit, how many children, whether they have cooking facilities, whether they're homeless, etc. It's all material to how much and what kind of food they should be given. The annotation "No Pork" means the family is Muslim. That slip of paper is passed on to the caller.

The food is packed into plastic grocery bags at several work stations behind the caller, and the caller lets each workstation know how many people and how many children are in the next unit to be packed. There is a unit that packs only U.S. Government donated food. There is a unit that packs cereal, spaghettios, canned vegetables, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish, and whatever other types of "non-perishable" packaged food we have. There's a unit (sometimes it's so big that it's two units) that packs fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen meat, cheese, eggs, and other produce that is donated by local stores (close to expiration date) or purchased from the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Finally, there's a work station that bags junk food. This is candy that didn't sell and is near its expiration date, or test marketed candy that didn't sell. It's also bottles of "energy drink" (water, sugar, caffeine, artificial flavoring) that didn't sell. People are hungry, so we give them energy drinks. But hey, it's donated by the same people who donate eggplant, tangerines, eggs, and apples, so we say "thank you" and pass them out to the folks.

Lately I've been assigned to the caller job. It's not too far removed from what I did when I started my career with SSA 30-odd years ago. A lot of one-on-one contact with the clients, and it can be funny, heartwarming, depressing, or exasperating, depending on the person you've got in front of you. This week a woman about 40 years old whispered to me, "I'm so nervous. This is the first time I've been here." I'm glad she came.



We have a "remainders" bin on the table I call from, and each person gets to select one additional item from the bin. It's usually full of things like cans of beans, and obscure things that were donated by people who were cleaning their kitchen cabinets. There was a can of artichoke hearts in there this week that I finally talked somebody into taking (to keep from slipping it into my own pocket). Nobody knows about artichoke hearts. I told the lady they went good in a salad.

But the best one this week was a non-English-speaking lady who pulled out a boxed tube of hemorrhoid cream. She made an up-and-down tooth brushing motion with her hand. I shook my head and pointed at my butt. She put it back.

One more thing: people sometimes lean close and ask if we have any toilet paper to pass out. If we don't, they're happy to have paper towels. Suellen and I have made it our mission to make sure there's always a roll of toilet paper for anyone who asks for it.

McCain Runs Away from Bush

Quite apropos of my post below, McCain is trying to distance himself from Bush, which is no surprise to anybody. Another reason, in case we needed one, to make sure that the word "failure" is always preceded by the word "Republican", not by "Bush".

Should We Be Nice Guys?

I think the strongest weapon Democrats have in their arsenal is the fact that the Republicans have failed so miserably.

Iraq: Republican failure.
Afghanistan: Republican failure.
Osama bin Laden: Republican failure.
Taking care of men and women in uniform: Republican failure.
Katrina: Republican failure.
International relations: Republican failure.
Energy policy: Republican failure.
Global warming: Republican failure.
Clean government: Republican failure.
Efficient government: Republican failure.
Apolitical bureaucracy: Republican failure.
Torture: Republican failure.
Respecting the Constitution: Republican failure.
Uniting the country: Republican failure.

Everywhere you look: Republican failure.

It really does go on and on. It's so obvious, even Republicans see it! It is no wonder they are having trouble finding people willing to run for office at the state level. These are all clubs Republicans should expect to be battered with.

I support Obama for many reasons but have a concern: if he is the nominee, these clubs will be left on our shoulders. Being reasonable and respectful of people who disagree with him is intrinsic to who he is and the campaign and country he wants to run.

I fear that -- as a result -- we will not be as effective as we could be in building strong Democratic majorities in Congress. It's probably better for the country if Democrats don't run an angry campaign, but it's better for the country if we throw out as many Republicans as we can, too! And face it, the Republicans are not going to change; their campaign will be an in-the-gutter, Willie Horton type. Oh, McCain will try to hold himself above it all, and tut-tut the slime merchants, but somehow they'll just do it anyway. [Update: whaddaya know?]

If Hillary is the nominee, I have no doubt she will be using the clubs of Republican failure every day of the campaign. It's intrinsic to who she is and the campaign and administration she wants to run. The campaign part of that appeals to me on a very elemental level.

So do we substitute "Bush" for "Republican," let Republicans think we still respect them, and allow them the fiction that Bush isn't the natural result of their "values", or do we let them have it? It's a problem.

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (5)

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (4)

"Today should be a national holiday – we have been nothing if not Fools, these last few decades, burning our wealth into thin air so as not to have to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. The impact on our economy and prosperity – and national security – has been colossal. The national palm should strike the national forehead with force enough to jar Mt. Rushmore."

Andrew Tobias

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (3)

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (2)

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (1)

I am a daily reader of Andrew Tobias' terrific blog (http://www.andrewtobias.com). Tobias is the author of "The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need". This is his entry for March 13, 2008:


RECORD BUDGET DEFICIT

According to this from Reuters:

The U.S. government turned in a $175.56 billion budget deficit for February, a record for any month . . . a 46.3 percent increase over the previous all-time single-month deficit . . . [and] for the first five months of fiscal 2008, which began last October 1, the deficit reached a record $263.26 billion, up 62.3 percent from the $162.16 billion for the same period of fiscal 2007.

The previous record deficit for the first five months of a fiscal year was set in 2004, a year in which the government also reached its previous record full-year deficit of $413 billion. The White House last month estimated that the fiscal 2008 deficit would hit $410 billion, but that excludes undetermined supplemental spending requests for war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan.


F Of course, not only does the reported deficit not include spending for the wars, it also omits the money we are looting from the Social Security Trust Fund. Figure a true deficit by fiscal year’s end that could be within hailing distance of $1 trillion.

The National Debt – $9.4 trillion (up $400 billion since Labor Day) – will, as I’ve long suggested, be $10 trillion by the time Bush leaves office. Three-quarters of that, accumulated since 1776, will have been racked up under just 3 of our 43 presidents: Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Worse, the National Debt has grown relative to the size of our economy. It was 30% of our GDP when Reagan took office; it will be about 70% of GDP when Bush leaves.

Overall, more than 85% of the debt will have been racked up under Republican Administrations.

The interest on this mostly Republican debt now amounts to about 40% of all the personal income tax we pay. The closer it gets to 100%, the less we have to spend on anything else.

Who was Mario Contasino, really?

A British game company is about to release an "alternate reality" video game called "Turning Point: Fall of Liberty." It is my understanding that this is one of a series of games they've produced that takes a moment in history that went one way, and imagines what would have happened if something else had happened.

Here's the scenario:

On December 13, 1931, a man looked the wrong way before crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City and was struck by a car going 30 miles an hour. He was badly injured and spent the next 8 days in Lennox Hill Hospital. The New York Times said the car was driven by a man named Mario Contasino, who lived at 300 Yonkers Ave. in Yonkers, N.Y, and who had been driving more than 8 years without an accident. He was the sole support of his father, who had been in the U.S. for 50 years, and his 2 sisters.



The pedestrian was a fellow named Winston S. Churchill. Churchill blamed himself (another Englishman looking the wrong way before crossing) and autographed a book (according to the Times) for Mr. Contasino.

What would have happened to the world if Churchill had been killed? That's the premise of the video game.

To kick off the PR for the game, the company is trying to find Mario Contasino or, more likely, his descendants. So they've enlisted an Oxford historian to help them out, and the historian has enlisted the volunteer help of genealogists in the United States. And here's what's been produced so far:

There is no record in the U.S. Census, from 1790 - 1930, of anyone with the last name of Contasino. A street-by-street check of the Yonkers Census in 1930 indicates there is no street address of 300 Yonkers Ave. A search of Ellis Island and Castle Garden immigration records records only one Contasino, Giuseppe, who arrived in 1913 at the age of 1. There are no Social Security records that record the death (from 1950 to present) of anyone named Contasino.

So far, it's a dead end.

Do you think it's possible the hospitalization was a cover-up to explain why Churchill was not seen for a while, while he travelled to [fill in the blank] to meet with [fill in the blank] about [fill in the blank]? Conspiracy theorists will have a hey-day.

This says it about right

From Lance Mannion via Atrios:

If the Government is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.

And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas.

Republican Hilarity

Governor Mike Huckabee is upset that they stopped counting votes in the Washington caucus while John McCain was ahead. The campaign released a statement that said in part (thanks to TalkingPointsMemo):

"The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted-with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.

"In other words, more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party. ...

"This is not about Mike Huckabee. This is not about Senator John McCain. This is about the failings of the Washington State Republican Party. All Republicans should unite to demand an honest accounting of the votes, so that Republicans can have full confidence in the results, and full confidence in the eventual Republican nominee. As I said, we are prepared to go to court, and we are also prepared to take our case all the way to the Republican National Convention in September.

"Our cause is just. We must reemphasize the sacred American principle that all ballots be counted in a free, fair, and transparent manner."

I guess Huckabee forgot that five Republican members of the U.S. Supreme Count decided that was no longer a sacred American principle.

Chelsea Bashing

The recent dust-up concerning the MSNBC reporter asking why the Clintons were "pimping out" their daughter Chelsea brought to mind a "joke" once told by John McCain at a Republican Senate fundraiser:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

This when Chelsea was a teenager. McCain apologized, so I guess we should forget about it.

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/25newsb.html.

The talking heads say Hillary and McCain are cordial with each other, but if Hillary wins the nomination, this will be a very personal campaign, I think.

Obama Rally

Suellen and I got to the Obama Rally before 7:00. There was a big screen TV tuned to CNN, but that's about all they had to entertain us for the next 4 hours, until Obama came out. We learned that there were two kinds of tickets: the blue tickets, which were the preferred tickets because they gave you the maximum exposure to Obama, and the white tickets, which were our tickets, of course. We staked out a place along the ropes between the two sections and began to do what we did for the rest of the evening: stand in place.




After about 3 hours things started happening. The bleachers behind the main stage had been empty, and they started picking groups of people and asking them if they wanted to stand behind Obama during his talk. It was clear that the quality of the spot we had staked out was rapidly deteriorating as blue ticket people (who knew better than to arrive before 10:00) started filling in. So when they asked us, we said, "Sure!" They then opened the ropes and led us through the blue ticket group to the bleachers. But as I was about to climb up, the person who was leading us saw my camera said, "You can't take pictures up there." Unable to believe this rule, I said, "You mean no FLASH pictures, right?" And she said, "No, no pictures at all." Now the reason I came was to take pictures, so at this point I bailed on the bleachers, and Suellen went ahead. As I'm walking back through the blue ticket group I realize nobody is paying any attention to me, nobody knows what color ticket I have, and maybe I should just sort of blend into this crowd. Which I did, in a pretty excellent place to be taking pictures from.




Suellen wound up in the bleachers behind Obama, but because she's short, I don't think you could have seen her on TV. She stood up there under the blazing TV lights for about 2 hours, and after a while she signaled to me in American Sign Language, "H-O-T!" We were dressed for a Winter Storm Warning, after all. After a while I spotted Jesse Jackson about 20 feet from me and signaled her, "J-E-S-S-E," and pointed in the direction. The rest of the time we just waved back and forth to each other. Secret Service agents were all over the place (I had been wanded by one on the way in), and there was one Hispanic woman agent who kept staring at me, and I don't think it was because she wanted to give me her room number. I considered smiling and waving, but decided that might be interpreted as smart alecky, and I didn't want to be tazed. Or shot. So I didn't.

I guess it's too late to make a long story short, but the next stuff happened in less than 20 minutes, which was just a small part of the evening. Senator Dick Durbin came out and introduced Barack, and he and Michelle came out. He gave his speech (most memorable line: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek," which is a good line to make you want to get up off your butt and get involved), then he and Michelle came out and worked the ropes. I stopped taking pictures long enough to shake hands with both of them, which was cool. And then they were gone.

We walked about 10 blocks back to the L, which we took up to our stop, then walked the 2 blocks from there. Got home at 12:55. Seriously past my bedtime.

Final observation: he is a seriously impressive person in person.