Is there something wrong with majority rules?

When Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), representative of the double consonant majority of New Hampshire, said the title of this blog he was speaking to history… not to the future.

But, and I’m sure it was a big one, BUT, he probably wasn’t planning on being in the minority any time soon.

I ask instead, when did Wal Mart gain the same rights as Walt Henry?  Why does Conoco deserve better treatment than Conner Lavery? I don’t know.  What I do know is that Wal Mart has more money than Walt and that Conoco more power than my cousin Conner.  I do know that in the waning hours of of stupidity and foolishness, there will no doubt be a few Cassandras – a few oracles of reason – a few Americans who question if Murrow was right.  If Murrow’s words still ring true.  If “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” still means something.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure.

~Forth

P.S. The health insurance industry is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress. What’s in your wallet?

Post Office Stimulus

Watch it, you slacker.  The last half is the best.

~Forth

Outsourcing Reactions

I could react to the Un-State of the Union and the Republican response but I’m not up for it and frankly my readers would rather hear other people talk about it I’m sure.  In case you were wondering where the joke was in that sentence it was “my readers.”  Everyone knows no one reads this blog for me.

The second video is particularly interesting.  I have little or nothing against Bobby Jindal other than I don’t like the argument that government must suck because it has always sucked.  That just sounds defeatist to me.

Smart people saying stuff:

Darn’t I can’t get a youtube video to Brooks and Shields from Jim Lehrer News Hour reacting to Obama.  If you follow this link and click on the left dot in the bottom right of the video you’ll get that part of it.  WHY MUST THE INTERNET BE SO HARD.

I can get them reacting to the Republican response though:

Brooks has always been billed as a conservative columnist but I’m guessing there are conservatives howling at his reaction as Progressive and Liberal.  Meh, I disagree with him a lot but I think he’s smart and honest.

~Forth

Milk

I don’t want to get thrust into the Gay-Rights issue because that really isn’t my political scene but Milk was excellent.  From the writing to the directing to the acting it was well made.  What I enjoyed most was the unexpected parts that came from me being wholly unfamiliar with the plot.  If you’re unfamiliar with the basics, in 1978 Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to a major office in probably the United States but certainly California.  His time in office was cut short by his assassination – not a spoiler – but not before he was able to accomplish much in the name of the Gay community.

When I saw the previews I thought the movie looked credible but I was afraid that Sean Penn was overplaying the role.  After seeing the movie it is clear that the trailers were cut to be startling so they used the parts that were overplayed possibly.  At any rate, Penn plays the role of a gay San Francisco City Supervisor admirably.

James Franco, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch round out the cast as his boyfriend, political competitor, and campaign aid in that order.  Loyal readers will recall my distaste for Pineapple Express but Franco has redeemed himself in this movie.  While I would not call his performance spectacular he showed he could act in this movie – far more than he did in Spiderman or Pineapple Express.  As a side note Back has found out that initially Heath Ledger was rumored for Franco’s role.  Josh Brolin takes the prize for my favorite scene.  For those who have seen the movie, this was the scene where Brolin is drunk.  He also seems to fit the period piece well.  Something about his look screams 1970s.  Matt Damon was initially rumored for this role but his schedule conflicted.  I think Brolin does it well though.  Emile Hirsch is good, credible- adds to his resume.

I couldn’t help but connect the chronology in my head though.  There we sat on a December evening in 2008, thirty years after these events.  The movie takes place ten years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  Fifteen years after John F. Kennedy.  The death of Bobby stood out in my head more though.  When Dr. King died, Kennedy was supposed to be giving a campaign speech at a rally in what was considered a dangerous ghetto neighborhood in Indianapolis.  He was told not to go through with it by the police but he got up there anyway.  His speech is said to have kept the black population of Indianapolis from rioting that night as they did in other cities but really it was the courage that he showed that made me think of him.  Of course just two months later he too was shot in California.  Ten years later Harvey Milk in San Francisco, by no means the equal of King or RFK but to the Gay Rights movement it felt like it.

Whatever the politics we feel as if we live in a safe and secure environment.  Assassinations such as these seem so improbable these days.  We have a laugh with the President when he jokes candidly about dodging a thrown pair of shoes, “They were a size ten” he says.  Watching a movie such as Milk and then remembering ten years prior to 1968 makes me more skeptical that life is that safe and secure.  How long do we have before something else happens?

~Forth

Debate tonight.

I like watching ABC for the debates.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for George Stephanopoulos since Sam Seaborn’s soaring rhetoric was rumored to have been written after him.  That is not confirmed by IMDB.com though.  Whatever, I like him.

Here are some of the many maps that follow the only 270 votes that really matter.

Politico: Obama 207, McCain 163, Toss-Up 168.
Rove.com: Wait, who?!? Obama 273, McCain 163 Toss-Up 102.
Pollster: Obama 320, McCain 163 Toss-Up 55
270towin: Obama 264, McCain 163 Toss-Up 111
Real Clear Politics: Obama 264, McCain 163 Toss-Up 111

That is a grand average of: Obama 265.6 McCain 163 Toss-Up 109.4

This of course means next to nothing but it does give you a picture of the quickly decreasing time between now and the election.  It seems that everyone is agreed on McCain’s states -odd really- and no one really agrees on Obama’s.  While I’m sure there is a reason it is something to consider.

~Forth

Straw Men

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Oscar Wilde

In a recent Foreign Policy article a few of Sen. McCain’s worst ideas were laid out.  Ten in fact.  It is here that I found my latest post.

We start with the gas tax holiday, which I’ve always been against:

“I propose that the federal government suspend all taxes on gasoline now paid by the American people—from Memorial Day to Labor Day of this year. The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus—taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer, or trucker stops to fill up.”  This was in a speech in April.

The problem I saw with this was always that at the end of the holiday prices would jump and that would cause a big time drawback.  Foreign Policy adds to my thoughts by pointing out that dropping the 18.4 cent tax would hurt the Highway Trust Fund.  That is frightening because I only just saw an article the other day which said that the fund is near bust as it is.

We’ll move on though.  Next: “Drill Baby Drill” or “Drill right here, right now.”

“Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. … It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore.”  This statement and the “right here” quote came less than a month ago, while the infamous “Drill Baby Drill” from a surrogate a week or two ago.

Of course the whole time the Base has been chanting this the “angry left” has been pointing at the government studies that say “production of the new supplies would not even begin until 2017 and would have little effect on what Americans pay at the pump anyway—just a few cents a gallon by 2030 under the best-case scenario.”  Even better is the Thomas Friedman quote where he says, “When I hear McCain pounding the table for ‘drill, drill, drill,’ it reminds me of someone pounding the table for IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution.”  I don’t know what people think would happen if we opened drilling.  It’s not Jed Clampett out there.  This is a tough job.

This one infuriates me: “The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit.”  What the hell does that even mean?  We have been borrowing to pay for the damn wars in the first place.  How can we “profit” from victory?  Besides which the article in FP points out that McCain isn’t even willing to say what “victory” would be.  I don’t think winning a war is a sensible deficit reduction plan.

I don’t know much about this next one but I sure had a good laugh over the answer.  McCain on contraceptives: “Asked on the campaign trail if he thought grants for sex education should include instruction on contraception, McCain turned to an aide for help, saying, ‘Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception—I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.’ The reporter asked, ‘Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?’ After a long pause, McCain replied, ‘You’ve stumped me.’”  To be fair that quote came back in ‘07 before Davis and McCain had raised the iron curtain.  I don’t blame the man because there are a metric ton of issues but it is comical none the less.

Here’s another that makes me angry, “If I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America.”

The article points out that by the time we build these 45 plants they may be obsolete -not to mention vastly more expensive- but I have another point  to add.  I’ve read articles about this subject and one of the major problems is that fissile material is not exactly cheap and available.  With China going nuclear it is at an even higher premium then it was ten or even five years ago.  Beyond that there is the environmental impact from the coal plants it would take to run the nuclear plants.  That’s right, the process of enrichment is so energy heavy that some of the largest polluters in America are actually providing energy for nuclear enrichment plants.

There are others on the list but these were the ones that tripped my trigger.

~Forth

P.S. Tropic Thunder was better than Pineapple Expres, and Tom Cruise was spectacular.

Politics for Idiots

Sure Forth does all this politic stuff and I usually never mention anything about it. I’ll tell you why this is: I’m a political moron. Literally. I don’t know shit about politics. Since I’m so free to admit this, I’ll give you the rundown of the 2008 election based on the idiotic thought processes that occur to my simple brain:

McCain/Palin: Mmm k….Republicans are generally bad. The one who is running this country right now hasn’t done a great job, so why should any other person of the same party? There are a lot of republicans in my hometown. The reason is, they are simple people who like good down-home boys to relate to. My dad says he likes Sarah Palin because you could sit down and have a beer with her. I can sit down and have a beer with my dad but that sure as hell doesn’t mean he should be playing first mate at the helm of this country. Besides, McCain is old as dirt. He’s going to die and then not only will the country be fucked, but it will be fucked with an inexperienced GILF calling the shots. This ticket is like putting Charleton Heston and Lynne fucking Spears in charge of the country–It’s bad news either way.

Obama/Biden: Obama is the opposite of George W. Bush. So what’s the real problem? Obama knows how to hold the attention of thousands of people for more than ten minutes and he’s really good at it. Since it’s time to shake things up regarding the old white guy as president thing, we might as well have a non-white male running the country if it can’t be a cuckolded woman. Obama was raised in the midwest, he pushed his way through lots of shit to make it to the top, and he knows what has been going on, what’s wrong with it, and how to make things alright again. Plus, he’s a handsome man–in sort of a JFK way, and since we all loved that guy, why not Obama?

Nader: Give it up. We appreciate the decades of effort, but seriously.

Bristol Palin/embryo: First of all, keep this shit out of the media. The last thing we want to hear about is Jamie Lynn 2.0. But since it’s out there, I’m going to comment. Do they not have the Pill in Alaska? Can it not be flown up on a rusty Cessna or something? Do you understand the words Trojan? Durex? LifeStyles? I mean, having visited the fair state of Alaska last summer, I can understand there being nothing for you crazy teens to do there but bone, but next time try to shack up with someone other than Three-Pump Chump, k?

In other unrelated polical news, Forth and I recently saw Tropic Thunder, which none of us were particularly thrilled about, but it ended up being far better than Pineapple Express. And as for Tom Cruise…well, he was better at life than he has been since Jerry Maguire.

Show me the goddamned money.

**Back.

Pale in Comparison

So… It is hard to blog about the latest developments in politics and ignore the fact that the news of Palin’s daughter but that isn’t really why I’m here today.
Instead lets talk about the poor choice of the McCain Campaign and why I’m still worried.
Here are the facts: Gov. Palin is the chief executive of Alaska, est. 2006 pop. 670,053. Prior to becoming governor in *cough* *cough* 2006 she was mayor of Wasilla, est. 2008 pop. 6,715.  Here’s a picture from a fellow WordPress Blogger in Alaska, Mudflats.

For reference, ForthandBack International Headquarters and Resort is located in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee County, which also has an executive, has a est. 2006 population of 915,097.

Also of interest, is the fact that her acceptance speech in Dayton was in front of a crowd of 15,000, which is twice the size of the town she has lived in virtually her whole life.  I have nothing against the small town since both Back and I comes from small towns, but I have to say, I am uncertain that I’ve met anyone in either of those towns I felt capable of becoming the Vice President in under two years.

What has the selection of Gov. Palin done that is positive for the McCain campaign?  Excitement, conservatism, and of course unconventionality.

The excitement gap has been discussed at length in the conventional news media.  John McCain has been at a disadvantage for a long time when it comes to energizing anyone to follow him.  His message of honor and commitment to the nation is that of a bygone era.  While we may seek to regain that sentiment it is unlikely that anyone will become excited when Sen. McCain talks about staying the course and sacrificing for the greater good.  The surprise of Palin has spun out a message-less kind of excitement because it was so surprising.

Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton and will not be welcoming to the tent hoards of Hilary supporters.  If the McCain campaign thought as much, Palin’s second speech in which she was booed for mentioning Hilary Clinton is proof enough.  No, instead Palin brings in conservatives.  What worries me is not that McCain wasn’t going to get the conservative vote, but instead that this selection will get a few more out than he might have before.  There was always the chance that some would just refuse to vote.  That chance had always worked in Obama’s favor since he has been registering and energizing more new voters than previous campaigns.  Some of that effect may be mitigated now though by the excitement brought on by what seems to be the highly conservative VP pick.  On the major divisive issue she is Anti-Abortion, Pro-Guns, and Pro-Drilling.  She will attract those highly conservative members of our country that I frankly don’t trust.  On the more intimate matters it seems she is the conservative leader of America’s most conservative state.  Her 90% approval rate has fallen to 65% but is still very high.  On the plus side, this state was so conservative that it was never even considered in play for Sen. Obama.  Whereas Biden (D-DE) makes Pennsylvania playable, Palin brings McCain no states.  Of course, Biden didn’t bring Delaware since it was already blue.

Unconventional is my polite way of saying Gov. Palin is a woman.  She makes it hard for the Democratic ticket to attack without looking like bullies and she might bring a few females from the middle that were unsure of Clinton’s liberalism.  Before Palin they might have stayed home.  Here is what I will say about it though.  It feels like cheap politics.  A choice made because she is a woman.  Sen. McCain has spoken of experience, insight, and service.  Gov. Palin was not chosen for those reasons.  She was chosen because of what she is, conservative and feminine.  Hilary Clinton is a woman but she had to work hard for every vote she got.  Gov. Palin was chosen as what looks like a political expediency in the waning months of a campaign that has been able to keep it close but never close enough.  Is this a complement to our better half or a pander?  It is my feeling that Sen. McCain was trying to hit two birds with one stone -the heart strings of women and the purse strings of conservatives.  But sometimes, you miss both birds.  When the luster wears off, as it appears to be doing already, I think we’ll see that McCain is running out of trick plays.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Alaska’s Republican State Senate President Lyda Green: “She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”  (Green is from Palin’s home town of Wasilla.)

~Forth

The Polls are a Mystery

Twice today I have come across a Democratic talking point that has caught my ear.  I believe it to be a talking point because the mouths I have heard it from are Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe and House Speaker Pelosi.

Their point was larger than what I am going to talk about but essentially it says that the Obama-team is not as concerned with the polls as the press, or for that matter, the nation.

Plouffe – “We don’t pay attention to national polls.”

Pelosi – “I’m very comfortable with those polls.”

Why do I find this interesting?  Well for one I’ve gotten a bit annoyed with hearing about how the Democrats are “PANICKED” and how in one commentator’s words, “the luster has come off of Sen. Obama.”  Of course, I am not so naive as to think that simply because one of Obama’s consiglieres tells me to not worry, that I should not worry.

Instead, I look to the logic.
Pelosi – “These are polls of likely voters.  Likely voters are people who have voted in the last two elections, and they are likely to vote again.”

Plouffe – The electorate in 2008 “is going to be changed in some fundamental ways from 2004.”

The two made such similar points that I cannot help but see a conference call or talking points sheet being responsible.

The importance of it all struck home to me when I read the Pelosi piece.  I have been a bit concerned about a perceived drop in the polls.  There has been a change in my cynicism in the past year.  The interminable march that was the Bush Presidency nears its closure and there is a chance that things can get better.  This drop in the polls rejuvenated the cynicism of old.  Another four years of policy decisions that I disagree with, of cowboys who believe the world is their oyster, of Karl Rove on White House speed dial, and of Democrats making snide aloof remarks from the wings.  I do not want that.

What these two articles did not elaborate on for me was youth.  To have voted in the past two presidential elections a voter must be 26. I am 27.  That means that by these talking points, virtually no one younger than myself counts in the polls.  If this is true then it is a major gap in the polls.  They would thus skew towards the older and more conservative.

It has also been brought to my attention that these polls can only reach potential voters who have land lines.  Strike two.  I know so many people in my age group that do not have a land line.  I also know many of my parents friends that would not know the term “land line” despite having one.

I hesitate to take it at face value and I have a hunch that the pollsters are smart enough to have fixed this to some degree by adding in single voters but I imagine there is still a bias since there seem to be a good number of people who have never voted and thus would never be contacted.  I think Obama takes the lion’s share of these.

~Forth

Jon Stewart is a Bit More

HEY!  I’m going to a wedding so here is something to watch that is a throwback to when everyone realized that Jon Stewart was something a bit different than the rest of the talk show hosts.

Mazel Tov

~Forth