Raging Cynic

In Mr. Ryan’s vocabulary, it seems so. Paul Ryan (Rep - Wi), the Republicans’ guy on the House Budget Committee has found it fitting to label Obama’s budget plan, should it pass, as “the moment America turned European.”[ WSJ - 1 Apr., 2009]. This, as opposed to the GOP plan which, as he puts it, would “preserve our system of protecting our natural rights.” I must be confused, would this be the right to pay through the nose for public education on the colleges that are hiring more part time faculty and raising tuition due to lack of government funding? Or the right to take a tragic credit hit due to some unforeseen medical expense? Maybe the right of our veterans to have to drive farther and farther to visit a VA clinic since the Bush administration cut their funding.

It’s far past the time that we as Americans stopped letting pundits and politicians try to scare us with xenophobia. Germany, with the largest GDP in Europe and fourth largest in the world, offers great health-care benefits to citizens, nearly (and in some regions, completely) free college, a safety net for retirement and unemployment. All of this while taxing corporations LESS than America does (so Mr. Ryan can get off his high-horse and shut up about how the Obama tax plan would strangle the small-business). By using a (shock) progressive tax system, which places more responsibility on those who benefit more from the national well-being.

The Cold Ware is long over. And even when it wasn’t, Communism was never Socialism. The American citizenry needs to realize, at long last, the benefits of socially responsible spending and taxation.  Mr. Ryan can watch from the corner.

In an April 1st opinion piece released to the Wall Street Journal [l ink], former Bush “Adviser” Karl Rove accused the Obama administration of engaging in tactics of intimidation to bolster support for the proposed economic plan. I’m not going to argue costs and benefits of the plan here. This is a “pot calling the kettle black” rant. Karl Rove, whose campaigns of intimidation and mudslinging  got Bush into the White House and helped start us down this road of insanity and prove to the world that and idiot can run the world (so long as we don’t care how it’s run), has the gaul to start saying Obama isn’t playing fair by reminding a Democrat which side he’s supposed to be on?

It seems to me that what Rove is really upset about is the (extremely vague) possibility of his job description becoming obsolete with the arrival of politicians who choose not to hide behind hatchet men.

I’m sure all of us state-side have been thoroughly inundated with those messages about the switch from analog to all-digital television. I’ve been seeing these spots for months without giving them much thought. Seems just like government televised spam to me. I’m sure it’d cost less to do a mass mailing, but we’re talking TV here, not something as un-important as, say, ballot measures and polling places. I digress. After enough of those spots I finally started to think about graft. Let’s face it, it takes a lot to get those government gears turning.

Finally a thought came to me. People can get discounts for their digital converter boxes, but how about the smaller stations that still have to try to reach their customers? Lower-power stations don’t have to switch to digital transmissions. Less viewers means less revenue for them.

And the viewers in remote areas who were relying on these smaller stations, who tailored their news for smaller, more localized group (almost like the bloggers of broadcast TV), what will they have? Won’t they be more likley to swtich to the shinier digital stations? Stations that can be tuned in with that digital box without having to fool with more buttons and settings? Even less revenue for those smaller stations.

Media consolidation! That’s what it boild down to. Running smaller stations that already can’t afford the switch will be pinched harder and harder with less viewers and ad revenue.

Here’s a fine example from the Charlston Gazette [ link] where WSAZ had to fire eight people to afford the $4 million equipment upgrade. How many stations throughout the US are going to be shaken down or left on the curb?

Oh, and in a humourous note, the city of Wilmington, N.C., was used as a proving ground, switchign to digital last week, months ahead of the nation’s Feburary switch. What’d they to? Flipped a giant switch. Adorable.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m pleased as punch that Hillary finially came to her senses and dropped out. Better for all of us, I’m sure she sees that. And, though I don’t know how much good a Catholic VP will be for building Obama’s support base and I don’t know much about the guy, I didn’t know much about Gore before he came up either.

What’s bothering me though is the several very redundent emails per day that I’m getting from the various Democratic groups I’m affiliated with. And it’s the same stuff. They’re just recycling the same material three, four, or five times a day. Crying out loud peope, organize your selves! These are different groups for a reason, they should be serving their different demographics with different information. If there’s information on other lists, include it as links, blurbs.

Is it that they’re just too lazy to do that? Don’t have the expertiese? Or just lacking the organization? Maybe it’s that comic rule of threes blown out of proportion; they think that if they repeate the information over and over, people are more likely to read it? All gets ignored by me. One compiled newsletter would work so much better.

Okay, I know it’s been a WHILE since I’ve posted anything. But I’m getting on track again.

First think I’d like to point out is there’s a Bay Area Team Bike Challenge for the month of May. It’s set to coincide with Bike to Work Day (May 15th) which, true to its name, encourages people to bike to work. Gas is hitting record highs, oil companies are making record profits; stick it to ‘em. Google directions has a sweet program where you can see how to get places using mass transit. Better, they give you cost of the trip on mass transit vs driving. Absolutely brilliant.

Second,  anyone who wants a good, passionate, cynical view of the American political landscape from someone who can say “saw this coming three decades ago” should look into picking up a copy for Gore Vidal’s Imperial America. It’s a few years old but the points he makes are still extremely relevant to this election cycle just as they were to the last.

I’m off to find a bike to fix up for the Challenge ^__^

And, as Fidel Castro steps down, the Bush administration asserts that no changes in US policy toward Cuba will take place until more democratization occurs.

Does it make sense? In and of itself, yes. But in the wider view of who we trade with, not in the slightest. Consider how much business we do with. . .  let me think, China. Seems a fair comparison; both communist countries (on paper), both woefully lacking democratic participation, both countries with tight restrictions of expression and a good amount of rights that the UN seems to think people should have.

Where’s the difference?

We all know it: China’s rich. We could not afford to not do business with them. But what does that say about America philosophically? What would the founding fathers think of a country that would only stand by its beliefs when economically convenient?

Now, I don’t think we should go “spreading democracy” (which is already flawed for assuming democracy is spreadable and that we’re equipped to spread it) but if we have the president and willingness to not do business with a country which is, as we claim Cuba to be, such an affront to our “American Ideal” we shouldn’t act as if those ideals are second-place to money. Once we do that they become commodities themselves.

Which would be a nobler ideal: putting values aside for goods or putting differences aside for good?

A gunman, spouting off about killing the mayor and, acording to his brother, disgruntled over traffic tickets impinging his constitutional rights, killed five people at a city council meeting last night.

Over parking tickets.

And his brother defends this nut job, saying,

“My brother went to war tonight with the government,” Gerald Thornton said in an interview with a local television station after the incident. “He decided that he could no longer verbally work it out.”

[ Article from NYTimes]

There was no war with the government. Your brother went from screw-loose crazy to dribbling oatmeal crazy, killed five innocent  people and was shot to death by the police. The only thing your sociopath brother did was prove that the Kirkwood police should take local crazies more seriously.

These were members of the community who took time out of of their lives, away from their families, to try and help their community. War with the government? These were neighbors!

Hate speech is not protected because of the risk it poses to other people and society as a whole. Hate speech against the government shouldn’t be either. The right to criticize the government is integra, don’t get me wrong. But lauding this gun-toting maniac’s actions threatens people and society and Gerald Thorton there should show more respect for those who died because his brother couldn’t handle a parking ticket.

Nothing like a leap-year winter; one extra chilly January day and the last State of the Union address of a presidential term. Except for the 30% of Americans who still approve of Bush (guess that would be the thirty percent who haven’t been keeping up with the news over the last seven years), most probably shared me experience of sideways jokes punctuated by the akward silence as the room contemplates that eternal Bush musing, “can he really mean that?”

Some of my favorite excerpts:

In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth, but in the short run, we can all see that that growth is slowing.

Sure we’re confident in the long run. We’ll have (heavens willing) a brilliant former law professor in as President for the next eight years. And growth isn’t slowing. We’re fucked. First hint: the disgusting fall in the value of the US dollar since Bush took office ( chart). Second: every time Bush comes up with a “plan” to fix the economy, the market heads south.

We have other work to do on taxes. Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we’ve delivered over the past seven years will be taken away.

Members of the Congress should know, if any bill — raises taxes reach — reaches my desk, I will veto it.

And yet $300 checks to American taxpayers? How many morgages will that keep from going into default? Is that something this jackass thinks we can afford? We’ve been portioning our economy off to foreign countries to finance a war that has lost it’s support (domestically, internationally, and ideologically) and was founded on lies (I’ll never know how Powell sleeps at night) because we had to build a nation (sorry, fight terror. . . or was it spread democracy?) and have gotten utterly quagmired. NOW Bush thinks he can afford to buy off the American people with money that isn’t his and is becoming less and less ours? How about listening to Congress once and a while? You know, those people we elected when we couldn’t kick you out?

Just as we trust Americans with their own money, we need to earn their trust by spending their tax dollars wisely.

Twit

On trade, we must trust American workers to compete with anyone in the world and empower them by opening up new markets overseas.

Hehe. . . as poor as the Dollar is doing, I don’t see how giving Corporate America more outsourcing options is going to help the American work force. Ah, but herein lies the genius of Bush; the weaker the Dollar gets, the less benefit there’ll be for moving a job overseas. Sweet.

To keep America competitive into the future, we must trust in the skill of our scientists and engineers and empower them to pursue the breakthroughs of tomorrow.

Except for stem cells, cloning, and things related to that evolutionary gobbledygook.

On matters of life and science, we must trust in the innovative spirit of medical researchers and empower them to discover new treatments while respecting moral boundaries.

Did anyone see “defining moral boundaries” in his job description?

On matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says.

Wasn’t there something about powers not within the constitution being reserved for the people? Maybe I got that backward. Constitution didn’t say anything about illegal wiretapping so they must be included?

Tonight, the armies of compassion continue the march to a new day in the Gulf Coast.

Is that the army that blows up hospitals or the one that blows up the checkpoints of an occupying force?

I won’t go further into the mess of military stuff he dumps on the table like so much soiled, rotten cabbage, but if you didn’t get the chance to watch it, the transcript is up on CNN ( link).

Well, I’ll sleep a lot better (whiskey helps)

Finially, the CIA has identified the REAL backers of international terror. After about six-and-a-half years, of running down Al-qaeda and bring democracy to Iraq, we’re taking the war to the true causes of terror and unrest in the world. California whales. Bush’s insistence that Navy training in San Diego’s waters is just a cover to keep PETA off the Administration’s backs. Clearly, using SONAR to beach whales is the weapon to end terrorism, why else would it be so important to train there? And anti-sub exercises? What terrorists have subs?

Come on Bush, you don’t have to lie to the American people like we’re the UN . Congress has backed you this far, I’m sure they’ll understand that killing off whales is critical for national security and international piece. All makes sense to me.

Jack ass.