Thursday, April 30, 2009

As the Washington World Turns

I've never understood why more people aren't into politics like me. It's the world's greatest soap opera, it really is. And because I've been running crazy all week, I'm just going to give non-chronological re-cap of my favorite episodes:


"The Flyover"
Much hyped, fun to watch, but not an episode I'm going to remember a few seasons from now, kind of like that "ER" where they cooped Carter, Maura Tierney and that hot Croatian doctor in a classroom and made them do "Hamlet." (Yes, that really happened.) It started on a sunny day in Manhattan, with busy New Yawkers ignoring homeless people on their way to work. Then, suddenly, this giant 747 goes swooping over the lower part of the island, naturally reminding the jaded Manhattanites of that other sunny day eight years ago. Turns out, it wasn't a terrorist attack, just an ill-thought attempt to snap a picture of Air Force One over the Statue of Liberty. The mayor got all mad, the president got all mad, some chick that worked for the Bush Administration got all mad and accused the White House of "felony stupidity" (and she would know all about both felonies and stupidity, having worked for the Bush Administration). The episode ended in a too-quick montage of a staffer at the Defense Department insisting to his boss that he'd cleared the flight with the FAA and NYC authorities before getting fired anyway and a techie buying the White House an update for PhotoShop, all while the theme for "The West Wing" plays in the background.


"The 100 Days"
Clip show. Bo-ring.


"Flipper"
Previously on "As the Washington World Turns": two senators from rival parties share a train speeding away from the capital; one of them gets elected vice president; the other votes across party lines on a controversial stimulus bill, and now his own party is targeting him for electoral extinction. (Roll credits) The crusty longtime Republican senator holds a press conference to announce that he's switching to join the Democrats. (Note, we don't need any set-up scenes showing him meeting with his own party leadership to tell them first, because he didn't bother to do that.) He's not just becoming an independent, like the last guy who fled the GOP, or the guy the Democrats kicked out a few years ago. He's going full on to the other side. Now Democrats will have a basically fillibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate (once the plotline about the Minnesota seat is resolved, probably during sweeps). Is the Republican party in trouble? Is there a place for moderates there? The episode ends with the president and vice president personally welcoming the newest Democrat, but a minor key line in the play-out music reminds the viewer that Sen. Specter (what a great character name!) may or may not be a friend. Kind of like Admiral Cain on "Battlestar Galactica."


"Hoof in Mouth"
This two-parter had its set-up in last week's episode, "The One With the Simulated Drowning," where the White House agonized over whether to make public the previous administration's memos outlining appropriate use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding. Just when the WH though it had gotten out okay, the chief of staff went on a Sunday talk show and vacilated over whether the people who ordered the controversial methods would be prosecuted. While pundits argued over the wisdom of this, a mysterious illness began showing up in almost 200 people in a country of 100 million. Eager to change the subject and show some leadership, the WH swiftly moved to contain the new flu strain in the U.S., and finally got its Health and Human Services Secretary confirmed (a plot that had dragged on way too long). But then, right at the end of the episode, the vice president made some mildly boneheaded comments that would seem to contradict the "we've got this under control" message. In the "previously..." recap, we saw then candidate Obama deciding to select Joe Biden as his running mate despite his history of entertaining gaffes. Now the episode closes with Obama staring out from the WH residence balcony, taking a series of cleansing breaths while watching his children and becardiganed wife play with the new dog on the official WH swing-set.

"The Very, Very Short Goodbye"
One of the reliable liberal votes on the Supreme Court is retiring - like, practically immediately. It's something the president had anticipated doing, just maybe not quite this soon. By replacing a liberal justice with another (presumably) liberal justice, the president won't get as much flack as he would otherwise for changing the court's composition. But (added drama alert!) Justice Souter wasn't supposed to be a liberal vote back when President Bush the First appointed him, now was he? Once a judge gets his or her lifetime appointment, he/she may not always do what's anticipated.

To be continued...

Maybe stupid should be a hate crime

It's been interesting to see the rest of the country discover what we here in northwest North Carolina have known for some time - that Rep. Virginia Foxx is both a bigot and an imbecile. Foxx's idiotic rebuttal of the need to include sexual orientation/identification in the federal hate crime definition has made national headlines, and put her squarely in the crosshairs of left-wing commentators. (Let's hope they keep here there.)
In arguing against legislation that would add crimes targeting gays, lesbians, trans-gender people and even heterosexual people who were merely non-gender conforming (like the children who recently committed suicide after being teased), Foxx said on the floor of the House chamber that it was erroneous to name the bill after Matthew Shepard because he wasn't really murdered for being gay.

First of all - not true. And I only base that on the fact that the men who did the actual crime testified that - holy sh*t! - they picked Shepard out because he was gay. They even tried to use "gay panic" as a defense for the murder! Maybe this is overly simplistic, but I would assume that the people who committed the crime in question would understand their own motives better than some ass-hat 10 years later on the other side of the country. Maybe that's just me. But even if Shepard's killers hadn't confessed, I would think that intelligent people could deduce that someone wanting merely to rob somebody else doesn't torture that person and tie him to a fence in the middle of nowhere. It just seems like overkill if all you want is the guy's wallet.

More important point - who gives a shit? I think there's a valid debate to be had about the "hate crime" designation (the extra burden it puts on prosecutors, for one), but Foxx wasn't engaging that debate. She was pulling the time-honored political hack trick of distracting from the real issue with something trivial. Even if Shepard's supporters had been guilty of pulling a Jessica Lynch (not true, but let's just imagine for a minute), making him the poster child for a type of crime he didn't really represent - so what? Does that magically erase the fact that one out of 12 trans people will be a victim of murder? Not for me.

But I think that what's the most jaw-dropping about this whole thing is Foxx's defense that her comments were based on a handful of sources she read on the Internet, all refuted by actual facts. I find it deeply disturbing that an elected official with a fairly educated staff would not only base her vote, but testify on the permanent record of the U.S. Congress, with that little to back her up.

My problem with Virgina Foxx isn't that I disagree with her politics. I disagree with Howard Coble, too, but I know him to be an intelligent person with a genuine interest in educating himself about things he doesn't know, but that will impact his constituents. Foxx, on the other hand, isn't interested in encountering any facts or experiences that might challenge her entrenched world-view. That's what makes her a bad representative, not the fact that she's conservative. It's Foxx's responsibility to seek opinions from people who have perspective that she doesn't, like the thousands of LGBT folks that live in her district. And she's just not willing to do that.

(And in a week that saw Sen. Arlen Specter ditch the GOP because of what he saw as their increasing hostility to moderates, the last thing Republicans need is yet another excuse to paint them as ignorant, out-of-touch bigots. I swear, if I didn't know better I'd think Foxx was a liberal plant to make the GOP look bad.)

Friday, April 24, 2009

Too bad their governor doesn't believe in global warming

This is really sad. A community of Yup'ik Eskimos might have to abandon their village in Alaska because of flooding brought on by melting glacial ice. And what could be melting the ice? Certainly not anything you or I or our massive SUVs and coal plants could be doing, no siree.

You know, the "global warming is a myth" crowd, those modern-day Flat Earth people, are really missing the point. They've spent so many years insisting that climate change is a fairy tale thought up by left-wing anti-industry idealogues that they've totally missed the fact that climat change is already happening. It doesn't really matter to me whether our man-made emissions are the sole cause of climate change or just a contributing factor. It's happening. I wish they'd grow the hell up and deal with that.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Wherein I actually have thoughts about a beauty pageant

In all this flap over the drama at the Miss USA pageant, I can't decide what bugs me more: that Miss California is a bigot or that Miss North Carolina's win was totally overshadowed by the fact that Miss California is a bigot. Actually, there are a number of things that bug me, so I kind of want to blow my ref whistle and take them one at a time:

1. We still have beauty pageants??? Okay, seriously... One thing I've never understood about pageants is that they are clearly *beauty* pageants (rewarding one definition of beauty, at that), and yet they persist on judging answers to questions that even presidential candidates have trouble parsing, live on the air. Personally, I think that any competition using a gossip blogger as a judge doesn't really have much business exploring the nuances of civil rights.

2. The judge that asked Question X of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was said gossip blogger Perez Hilton, he of the erudite criticism of Jennifer Love Hewitt's cellulite. And, what, now he's the Michael J. Fox of gay marriage rights? Regardless of how Hilton and I might intersect on some issues, I have to go with TLo on this one.

3. Miss California... Oh, honey. First of all, let me say that I understand from experience how difficult it is to craft a cogent response to any question on live TV, even on a totally innocuous issue. Prejean was articulate and concise, which is far harder than it looks. But her rationale for denying same-sex couples the right to marry - it's the way she was brought up - was neither relevant or sufficient in answering Hilton's question. But I would be willing to let that slide - knowing that sometimes points get lost in the heat of the moment - if she'd been willing to clarify or add to her position since then. Instead, she's entrenched herself, speculating that her answer is what lost her the title and saying she's "Biblically correct." Now she's a darling of the religious conservative wing of the anti-gay movement, even planning to appear at the Dove Awards. Which brings me to...

4. I am so sick and fracking tired of the media's total lack of criticism of anti-gay "Christians" who say that their opposition to gay rights is based on Biblical teachings. There's so much wrong with that I don't know where to begin.

But mostly...

5. Hilton's question included mention of Vermont's decision last week to legalize same-sex marriage, and today the Maine state legislature took up the same issue. Ten years ago, even four or five years ago, a person stating publicly that same-sex marriage was just always wrong wouldn't have faced nearly the level of ridicule that Prejean has. It's going to take more time, but those of us who believe that every American should have the same protections and priviliges as every other American are winning.

And one more thing... Where does Prejean stand on using illegal drugs?

Friday, April 17, 2009

Senator Burr's no good, horrible, very bad day

Richard Burr is an interesting guy. Not personally - I mean, I'm sure his immediate acquaintances think the Senator's lovely, but he's never been the type to make the rounds on the Sunday talk shows or accuse other Congressmen or Senators of being "unAmerican," for instance. For the 14 years he's repped this area of North Carolina, Burr's been a moderate conservative (though a more reliable Republican vote since he joined the Senate in 2004), never really an idealogical wingnut. (Full disclosure: I ran into him once in Advance Auto. And his wife and I went to the same college. Also, she sold my friend's house.)

So, bless his heart, he and his staff were probably completely unprepared for what happened this week. One minute, Burr's telling a private audience the same charming story he's been telling for months about how last fall he advised his wife to withdraw as much money as she could before the banks collapsed, and the next minute he's Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World." And just like that, another formerly anonymous elected official learns the hard way that nothing is ever private.

I have the same questions that everyone else has: has Burr never heard of the FDIC? If he was so worried that his family's finances would disappear into a zombie-bank void, why did he assure North Carolinians that they didn't need to withdraw their own funds? If the banks were in such dire trouble, why didn't he prevail on then Senator Elizabeth Dole to vote for TARP (as Burr himself did)?

It was a silly thing to do, and a really silly thing to say in public. But I'm more concerned with the media treatment of the story. Burr is up for reelection next year, and marked for a takedown by Democrats salivating over the fact that President Obama won N.C. and Senator Dole lost. (And we will beat him, btw.) That makes this newsworthy locally, but nationally? MSNBC, really? Could it be that progressive PR folks were desperate for a story to counteract the current media fascination with anti-tax "tea parties"? What could be better than a promising conservative caught in a financial semi-goof? (If they'd caught Burr's comments on camera, that's what!)

For the record, I think the Democrat/progressive response is maybe a little much. Have you ever heard that expression, "don't brag; let others do it for you." The same goes double for bashing your opponents. Score your points and let it go. We've got a year and a half to go before the election, and the last thing we want to do is allow Burr to paint himself as a victim of a left-wing media persecution. And on that subject...

I've said many times that I don't think the media has a liberal bias - compare coverage of Iraq War protests to this "tea party" BS if you don't believe me - but they do have a "what's right in front of me" bias that's been made worse by shrinking editorial staffs. An ever-more organized and energized progressive blogging network is going to get better and better at bringing small issues before media outlets with big reaches. The Richard Burrs of the world - and the spokespeople who work for them - have to be ready for it.

Telecommunication breakdown

Full disclosure: I have absolutely no idea how many gigabytes of data I download each month. I'm just proud I know that a GB is bigger than a megabyte, which is bigger than a kilobyte, and that's all you're going to get from me. So I can't say one way or the other that Time Warner's plan to test-market a tiered bandwith pricing system in my area would've cost me more one way or the other. And I think that's kind of the problem.

I don't know if anyone at the cable company is aware of this, but the economy's mildly f*cked right now. So blithely informing people that what's already the largest utility bill for many might go up without any translation of how much or for whom is just bad corporate communication. Maybe if Time Warner had been prepared with a breakdown of typical Internet usage for a family or business, people wouldn't have freaked out. As it is, we were left wondering - is this just for the guy who watches every TV show online or plays World of Warcraft for 14 hours every day, or is my cable bill going to go up? Will I get a discount if I use less than my allotted amount of whatever? Should I relocate my small business to an area where I can better budget my cable-related expenses?

(Speaking of the proverbial Internet TV guy... Could this proposal possibly be motivated by a loss of revenue in Time Warner's TV division? In other words, if we can't get them on the tube, we'll nail 'em on YouTube? Surely not.)

For now, Time Warner has blinked. But they haven't totally given up the idea.

Quick Hit ('cause I'm on deadline)

Um, WOW.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Stay classy, Tar Heels

Full disclosure: I hate and despise the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I hate their teams, I hate their magazine, I hate their admissions marketing, I hate their perception of themselves. I don't even like driving past the signs for Chapel Hill on the way to the beach.

So I'm not posting this to take advantage of a ripe opportunity to bash the privileged, overly book-learned snobs at Carolina. I really do think last night's raucous protest of a speech by Rep. Tom Tancredo really is a "teachable moment" on the distinction between free speech and hate speech, how to respond ethically to people which with you disagree, etc.

For instance, throwing things, blocking the door and screaming obscenities aren't usually conducive to dialogue, at least in my experience. Unless, of course, the protestors weren't interested in dialogue, but in silencing Tancredo's extreme views on immigration policy. I can sympathize, because I, too, think Tancredo is a wingnut. But when we supposedly tolerant, open-minded progressives set the precedent of shouting down and running off anyone whose ideas we don't like, we forget that somewhere, somebody thinks the same thing about us. Do they have the right to break windows to keep us away?

This reminded me of a speech I saw several years ago by Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He told a story about a town (I wish I could remember where) surprised to learn that the Ku Klux Klan planned to have a parade through its downtown. Instead of counter-protesting and bringing the KKK massive amounts of publicity, the townspeople just agreed amongst themselves to stay away. All the downtown businesses closed during the parade time. So the KKK had their march, and had it through deserted streets. The town made its point without sinking to the level of its opponent.

Our ideas should be strong enough to handle scrutiny, which in miy mind includes debate with people on the opposite end of the issue. I hope that the UNC students involved in the protest do some serious self-examination... and maybe eventually some maturing.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

This is *totally* like that time the British took over my house so their soldiers could live there

In honor of the many Americans who tomorrow will take part in Tax Day "tea parties" to protest President Obama's draconian, socialist, wealth-redistributing policies, I humbly present some statistics:

Tax rate on income above $250,000 a year from now once Obama's budget allows the previously scheduled expiration of President Bush's tax cuts: 39%.

Tax rate on income above $250,000 for this year: 36%

Tax rate on income above $250,000 in 1993: 39%.

Tax rate on income above $250,000 in 1988, following the two terms of Saint Ronnie: 57.2%

To re-cap: Obama's budget would - a year from now - let Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of Americans expire when they were supposed to anyway, at which point their tax rate will revert to what it was at the beginning of the largest expansion of the American economy in history, which is almost 20 points less than those same wealthy people paid under their favorite president.

So, those of you who are crying ala Glenn Beck about how Obama's policies are going to destroy our fragile republic, you have two choices: educate yourself, or f*ck the hell off.

Friday, April 3, 2009

People kill people

I go back and forth on the whole gun issue. I grew up in the country, where it would take the Sheriff an hour to get to my house and where random wildlife would frequently wander up on the porch to steal cat food. We owned guns, locked in a cabinet in my dad's office. He went hunting once or twice a year. Other than that, the only time the family guns saw the light of day was when the dogs went crazy barking late at night, and Mom would simply flip on the porch light and do a quick walk-by with a .22. (I think I felt safer with the dogs.)

Not long after I got my first apartment, my city had a mini-crime wave that kept me up many a night. The guy I was dating at the time got me a gun, mainly so I could feel safer and, if the worst should happen, I could use it to scare off - not hunt down and kill - an intruder. I think it's still in a shoebox in the utility room.

At the same time, I understand that not everybody feels safe where they live or work. Knowing that you've got a 9 mil. in the glove compartment makes you not worry as much about getting mugged driving home in Atlanta, or Chicago, or wherever. The idealist in me doesn't want to live in a world where I need to have the constant presence of a weapon to feel safe. My practical side worries that packing heat will give me a false sense of security.

I find myself thinking about this yet again, given today's shooting at an immigration center in upstate New York, where more than a dozen people were killed. Last weekend here in North Carolina, eight people shot and killed at a nursing home. Six more in Santa Clara, Calif., added to the 11 in Alabama and the four police officers in Oakland. Sure, the disturbed people who committed those crimes most likely would've found a way to kill without access to guns. But would they have been able to kill so many? The pro-gun lobby is fond of saying, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Sure, but people with guns kill a hell of a lot more people.

On one side, there's the argument that an ordinary citizen with a gun could've stopped many of those shootings (as happened at Appalachian Law School, where other students tackled and disarmed the gunman). In Kennesaw, Ga., the town mandated gun ownership for every citizen decades ago, and crime has since plummeted. My problem with this goes back to the false sense of security. The reason we call the cops during a crime isn't just because they have the weapons - it's because they've been trained how to function in an emergency. They're not immobilized, thinking of family and wondering if this is really happening to them. The guy who buys a gun at Wal-Mart doesn't necessariliy buy the skills to use it.

But the fantasy that banning guns would eliminate gun crime doesn't work either. In fact, a 2003 CDC study found inconclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced crime, largely because the laws (regulating the guns themselves, ammunition, etc.) were so patchy. And of course, there's the very real argument that, if guns were illegal, criminals would still get them because, well, they're criminals.

Clearly there are complex social and policy concerns here that I just don't know enough about. I know that guns will always be with us, and also that they're not a magic protective wand for any victim.

(By the way, that same ex that bought me the gun also got me a cheap knock-off katana sword, which I keep by my bed. Sometimes when I hear a funny noise at night, I reach over and hold its handle, and I instantly feel safer knowing that any intruder to my house is most likely not banking on running into a damn Samurai. Plus there's the added bonus of not blowing my head off accidentally.)

Crisis management: ur doin it rong

This week the Dell plant in Winston-Salem announced (and I use that term loosely) another round of job cuts. As with last month's round of layoffs, the company refused to say how many jobs were being eliminated.

Let's set aside the appearance that Dell is spacing out its job cuts in order to get around mandatory layoff-reporting procedures. Let's just let slide for a moment the tackiness of letting the mayor read about it the local paper, after he's the one who encouraged the city council to ok the multi-million dollar incentive package Dell got for moving here in the first place. This is still boneheaded on a dozen different levels.

For starters, last month's non-announcement announcement triggered speculation that the company was going to ax hundreds of jobs, when it was actually more like 150. One of the top rules of communicating during a crisis is that, in the absence of "official" information, rumors get printed as fact because the press has nothing else to go on - and the company ends up looking worse in the long run than if they'd just been up front at the start. Moreover, people get pissed because they feel lied to, a feeling that doesn't go away easily or quickly.

It reminds me of the time that the museum where I worked in college laid off me and the other part-time staff for all of January and February because ticket sales dropped off so steeply during those months. That's something that I and the other fairly intelligent staff understood. The problem was that our president (no longer there, thank heaven) informed us of this two days before Christmas. We had no warning - no paychecks socked away or bills prepaid. I hadn't even done any Christmas shopping because I'd been working every weekend for the previous six weeks, the busiest of the year. As you can imagine, all of us felt an immense sense of betrayal, to the point where I still can't think of that president without getting angry at the way he treated us.

But here's the best part. The museum did the exact same thing the next year, but this time, they told us in early October. Nobody got mad, nobody quit in protest, leaving the others shorthanded. But we were able to prepare for two months without a paycheck.

Most people are smart enough to handle the truth, or at least some version of it. If you look at any scandal involving a private company or government official(s) in recent memory, you can trace the controversy back to the fact that the people in charge forgot that it's always the cover-up and almost never the crime that'll get you every time.

I don't work for Dell, but with my city taxes I help support them. When Dell lies or conceals facts from the mayor, they're lying to me, too. I have kind of a problem with that.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

"I would tell them that God loves them..."

Check out this awesome video shot at a demonstration by Westboro Baptist, the people who picket funerals for U.S. military killed oversees, among other things. The guy in this interview, a Christian who (like me) thinks that the Westies have it all backwards, is great.

I've been a Christian all my life, and I continually examine my beliefs and evaluate how those beliefs jive with the actions some of my fellow Christians take. The best rationale for my religion I've heard in a long time came from a religious studies student at the college where I work, who said, "Christians should work for the reduction of suffering in this world," until we reach the presence of God, where there is no suffering. What are the good people of Westboro Baptist doing to reduce suffering?