Morning Fog

What Hope Exists For A Lasting Budget Deal ?

Some observers are studying the tea leaves of autumn and finding cause to hope that Republicans and Democrats may be focusing now on working together for a budget deal. 

Such a result could fund the federal government for a longer term, avoid another shutdown, and institute measures to slow or halt the acceleration of the nation's debt.  What's not to like?  But it it possible?

Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray says she, for one, is "ready to make some tough concessions," but warns that "compromise runs both ways," and Republicans will have to be prepared to agree to weed out some of the special interest tax loopholes (these are the things I like to call corporate entitlements, like the immense incentives we the people give the oil companies to make greater profits).

But as we already know, Republicans to date have made very clear that their idea of "compromise" is the complete surrender to their views, even if the latter have been clearly repudiated by the voting public.  Latest utterances of the party's movers and shakers don't give much hope for a change in that attitude.  In fact, Republican Senators' refusal today to confirm another Obama nomination to fill one of several vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals (DC Circuit) proves the GOP is yet again ready to throw monkey wrenches in the machinery of government.    

It's a game in which democracy would be the only loser, so let's be certain the GOP doesn't win it.   

 

Conflicted American Voters

In looking at what some voters are saying in some of the rural and mainly Southern districts that have voted so many tea-party politicians into office, Jim Tankersley offers an interesting tapestry of the contradictions and paradoxes that seem to characterize the attitudes of American voters generally.  In one small community, we have them all:

• Businessmen who, when times are booming, pat themselves on the back as brave, rsik-taking entrepreneurs but when risk comes knocking at the door, blame the government.
• The guy who prospered (for a while) in the real estate development business - a business that, in macro terms, merits major blame for precipitating the downturn in the first place - then made the unwise decision to deal with the downturn by quitting construction and opening a retail business in mid-recession; but doesn't blame his failure in the least to simple bad business judgment. 
• People who want government out of their lives, until things turn bad; then expect the government to improve things for them.
• The small store owner who loses business to a new big-box store; sees that as a government (?) plot aimed against him, seemingly unaware that this kind of transfer has been going on for 20 years or more, or that it points again to his failed business judgment. 
• Bankers (the other gang who merit blame for the recession) blithely blaming the drying-up of loans on the government, too.

Not to make light of the real difficulties small businessmen, in small towns, especially in rural areas, are facing.  Things are bad, and regardless of who's at fault, people suffer as a result.  That they should turn in their distress to the party that has steadfastly sought to block the government's efforts to bolster the economy and that has purposely brought on immense waste of taxpayer money in shutdowns and lost economic opportunities ... well, that's just one more paradox.

It's one that Obama and the Democrats will have to deal with.  There's no altering reality, and no way to alter voters' deep-seated failure to see reality, either.  Mr. Tankersley's article does, as it claims, enable us to understand why tea-party politicians have been so stridently anti-establishment, and why it's very likely that some of them will be returned to office.     

 

Cruz Missile?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is certainly the man of the hour, especially, but not only, in rural Texas.  Rational Republicans are concerned by him; the folks at home love him; Democrats malign him publicly but secretly, I'm sure, absolutely love him. 

It's not so surprising.  Populist demagogues have always had this same effect.  In earlier times, their influence was local or regional, and they couldn't become nationally famous so quickly; but their power within their localities might last for decades.  

On the other hand, today's breed of demagogue can rise rapidly to national prominence.  That's what's happened with Senator Ted.  But I predict his moment on the stage will be all the shorter because national exposure of ridiculous characters tends to lead to their political demise.  Their political views reflect all the erudition and sophistication of a sixth-grader, and while it's only to be expected that ignorant rednecks will love another ignorant redneck, their fierce declarations seldom stand up to the bigger stage.   As they soar into open air, they explode like a Chinese firework, or a missile. 

 

 

Still, we should not be complacent.  This guy is bad news.  He reminds me most of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.  He even looks like him, with the "do" so reminiscent of the 1950s, the intense sincerity of the eyes.   McCarthy did a lot of damage before his Senate colleagues finally woke up; and even today, you can find McCarthy deniers on the web -- McCarthy was maligned, he was right, he was railroaded by a conspiracy of ... well, whatever. 

Let's not do this again.

 

 

 

 

The GOP: Out Of Touch, Ever So Much

I've said many times that in my humble opinion, today's U.S. Republican Party doesn't get it; they're out of touch; they can't acknowledge the reality of contemporary U.S. society. 

So it's nice to see a clear restatement of that same theme:  I recommend Fareed Zakaria's recent piece about "the dark side" of republicanism.  (It should not be lost on us what rage this opinion may engender in the tea-party mind, coming from a guy with a name like Fareed Zakaria.)  Anyway -- as Zakaria points out, the self-deception continues, and probably won't subside much just because of the latest setback to Republican fanaticism.

So far, there is no indication that cooler heads will prevail.  Senator Ted Cruz vows to continue the fight against "Obamacare," and has a new windmill, the FCC, against which to tilt.  (FCC to Cruz - "we just implement what you idiots legislate, fool!") 

Reacting to a Democratic suggestion that immigration reform would be a good focus for Congress's attention now, another Republican legislator, Raul Labrador, reportedly said:

Anything we negotiate right now with the president on immigration will be with that same goal in mind, which is to destroy the Republican Party. 

A very strange goal indeed, for the Republican Party, to destroy itself.  But it's eerily insightful, and there we have it, directly from the horse's [ass's] mouth.   Republicans may actually succeed in achieving it, if they're not careful. 

Government Shutdown - How Dumb!

Dumb?  You thought I was talking about Congress, didn't you?  Well, that would certainly be appropriate, but no, I think that particular cesspool of ignorance has been pretty well covered in many comments over the past couple of weeks.  

So, no, I'm referring to the reactions I'm seeing - ad infinitum - of "average Americans" ("we have met the enemy and he is us" - Pogo) and of the media who "cover" them.

Today we saw people upset about the World War II Memorial being closed due to the shutdown.  The closure makes sense to me.  It might seem that there is no reason to "close" an open-air monument, although I think there's also a counterargument that National Parks personnel need to be there to protect the monument from vandalism, crowd damage, and for visitor security. 

After all, it wasn't so long ago that a deranged Chinese woman threw green paint all over several national monuments.  And ... look!  Right there on TV, it looks like someone defecated on the WW II memorial !!...oops, no, my bad, that turns out to be someone claiming to be a U.S. [I stress the U.S. though he apparently prefers to ignore it] Senator by the name of Cruz...

But let's look at the people.  Ripping up barricades and carrying them to dump in front of the White House.  Again, an argument for basic civics in schools.  Dump them in front of Congress, dummies!  I forgot though - Congress is farther away.  And look, there's none other than Sarah Palin, urging them on, and that Cruz thing.  We see why people might have been misled.  These two politicians epitomize the GOP mantra - "my way or the highway," and the people be damned.  Rotary International has a motto - "Service Above Self."  These two self-promoters (and several others) have it just backward, self above service.

Our media deserve plenty of blame too.  In covering this entire mess, they have generally gone for the low-hanging fruit.  The politics of it all is too difficult to explain, or too boring, so they focus instead on inanity.  People whining, for example, about museums being closed.  Or dead veterans' families being "denied" burial benefits (they weren't denied, they're just postponed).  And on, and on.  They forecast the impending effects of a debt default - on people's 401(K)s!  So is the government supposed to be responsible for maintaining the value of people's investments now?  I can't imagine either Democrats or Republicans endorsing that.  Investment by definition means risk.  So what about the real dangers of a default, the destruction of confidence in the dollar, economic downturn, and the like?  Again, maybe too complicated for today's "reporters" whose "beat" seems to be exclusively "human interest."

It's said people get the government they deserve.  Maybe the media too.

Solving The Personal Pronoun Problem - or, The Story Of "O"

English is an oldish language.  I'm told they had it in Great Britain even before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and discovered it here on this side of the Atlantic.  Maybe that's why it sometimes seems so awkwardly old-fashioned.  

For example, in this age of changing gender roles, the now outmoded-sounding "women's lib" and its successors and assigns, the increasingly responsible roles women play in professions and the workplace generally -- in that environment, the English-language convention that we refer to a person whose gender we don't know or can't predict as "he" (e.g., "our next director, whoever he may be") has become hopelessly outmoded, not to mention inaccurate.  

Writers have wrestled with this problem for a couple of decades, at least.  The popular alternative lately seems to be to say "she" in one sentence and "he" in the next.  That's nice if you happen to be writing more than one sentence.   But can't we do better?  How about something new?

Well, my first thought was to combine all our third-person singular pronouns into one.  I came up with "S-HE-IT" but for some reason it just doesn't sound quite right.  Could we abandon "she" and "he" and just use "it" to refer to everything?  Some languages do.  Hey, Turkish, I happen to know, is one of those.  And then it hit me.  The power of "O!"

In Turkish there are no linguistic genders.  "He" is "o."  "She" is "o."   "It" is "o."  O boy!  Here's the answer!  Actually Turkish is one of those languages where the personal pronoun isn't used all that much anyway -- they hardly need it, so let's adopt O.  And it makes sense in other ways.  Other English pronouns are one-letter words:  There's "I," and "u" is increasingly in use (You don't still use "you," do u?).  "A" is in use elsewhere, and "E" might sound too much like "he."  But "o" is perfect.  Maybe we should capitalize it to make it stand out?  "If a person wants to be a successful manager, O should..." 

It will work for possessives, too.  Most of our possessives conclude in "r" - her, our, your, their.  But "or" already has another meaning, so let's go with the analog of he/his -- O/os.   It may sound a little odd at first, but I'm sure we'll get used to it rapidly.

It won't be long at all before every writer, be O male or female, will be using O in os novels, books, and articles.  Everyone will love om for it.  And even in cases when we do know the gender of the person referred to, we'll use these forms -- "have you met my uncle?  O's a nice guy."

Syria -- No Longer Serious?

Have you heard much news of Syria lately?  I haven't.  Yes, there was a report as recently as yesterday that US Secretary of State Kerry was pleased with developments there.  But by and large, the crisis atmosphere that drives the news cycle has been absent.  In turn, the sense that we were about to go to war with Syria, Russia, or both, with possible reverberations into a larger conflict, has almost entirely subsided.

That is the magic of diplomacy.  It averts war.  And in this case, it seems, we owe the relatively calm on this particular issue to Vladimir Putin.  It's encouraging for world peace for two reasons:  A tense situation has been defused, and Russia obtains a bit of the legitimacy it craves as a serious player in world affairs. 

[If I were to put this situation into an American analogy, it might be that Russia, having played the tea-party role in the world and finding it unproductive, is now seeking to be the relatively more sober Republican establishment.]

Of course, it may occur that Assad reneges on his promises; or that trouble develops in identifying, accounting for, or destroying the Syrian government's chemical and biological weapons.  And nothing has been done to solve the serious unrest within Syria.  For now, however, a situation of high tension -- the sort of tension that can lead to posturing, error, and lethal conflict -- has been defused.

Rural Universities To Lose ROTC

The Army's recent decision to close a small number of ROTC programs in smaller universities, and spend the money elsewhere (in more urban areas), sounds at first glance like good money management.  The Army says these smaller programs, most of which are in the South, haven't produced enough second lieutenants, and the money could be spent better elsewhere.  Fair enough, if that's true.

From my own experience as an ROTC grad, and in the army, the decision seems counterintuitive, however.  In the army it seemed for some reason that about 50% of the officers I met came from (mostly rural) parts of Ohio, but beyond that, a huge percentage of the rest came from various southern states.  I wonder if the number of fresh-minted second lieutenants produced may be less important than statistics indicating what percentage of grads from these small programs actually remain in the service. 

Can't say if the Army has looked at that.  It would be interesting to know.

Things have definitely changed since my day, though. In the 1960s universities were falling all over each other in a rush to drop ROTC programs.  Now, many of those that did have restored them, and the military, as the referenced article indicates, is finding bigger universities in urban areas a much richer recruiting ground than rural ones.

"Nuts" To Negotiations

My title today could be taken in two ways. 

One meaning might be that the “nuts” (I don’t know any other way to describe those politicians of the Republico-Lipton stripe and their enablers among the Republican traditionalists, who have so little regard for either the integrity of our legislative process, the reputation of our government abroad, or the will of American people), [whew!] should feel justified in trying to extort concessions to their point of view, which has already been rejected by voters.  

But I didn’t mean it that way. 

On the contrary, Obama’s response to any such preposterous expectations should be “Nuts!” in the McAuliffean sense.   In fact it ought to be much firmer than that – after all, unlike the Germans McAuliffe faced, this Tea Party Army’s approach boils down to nothing more than, “We’re surrounded! You give up!”  Unable to enact their extremist program, they seem to be suggesting their political opponents ought to give them a prize just for being stubborn.

Instead, it seems only fair that in the face of continued Republican recalcitrance, the White House should move toward higher, rather than lower, expectations:  For example, agreement on a full government budget, rather than a silly short-term solution; wrapping in a long-term increase of the debt ceiling now, without revisiting the issue at mid-month; and certainly, no delay or changes to the Affordable Care Act.

Elections remain discouragingly far in the future; but we already can see what the result for the GOP will be.  It’s too bad that they can’t.  

Online Comments - The Pros And Cons And Cons

A friend recently pointed me to a very interesting column by Alexandra Petri, in which she highlights the decision the Popular Science website made recently to cease allowing readers to "comment." 

Their reasoning, as quoted by Petri, is one of the best defenses of "science" that I've seen recently, one that may partially explain why, in our current age, basic scientific concepts seem so subject to questioning and even downright challenge:

We have this mistaken idea that some things are up for debate that frankly are not actually up for debate. People may disagree on them, but the only reason that they disagree is that, well, some of these people are wrong. You do not have to give people who are objectively incorrect equal time. There is no point disagreeing about facts. If you are constantly reduced to proving hundreds of years of scientific consensus over again before you can even start to talk, you waste everyone’s time. Jean Kerr once memorably noted that “the real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.”

Whether there's an active cabal of people seeking consciously to undermine science, I can't honestly say; but what does seem clear is that there are many people about who either aren't very well educated, or who simply are too narrow-minded to allow reality to conflict with the myths of their literally interpreted faith.  (Come to think of it, I guess those are the same thing.)

Nor am I certain, as Petri suggests, that the same sort of cabal exists on political or news sites.  Perhaps it does.  But I think the main negative and very regrettable effect of the profusion of unfounded commentary against everyone and everything, in science and politics, is that our media have picked up the habit of treating ignorant views as deserving "equal time."   Too often on the internet or even in the legitimate press, does one see features pitting evolution against "creationism" as if the two were fully equal competitors for the crown of correctness.  They aren't.  One is fact, one is raving.  Those who profess journalism as a profession ought to know and respect the difference. 

(Note: For a different view, consult http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/youtube-makes-over-its-comments-popular-science-just-shuts-them-off/2013/09/25/e70cadbe-25db-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html . But this writer typifies the problem of laisser-faire journalism I describe, by failing to see any difference between comments on idiotic home videos, and comments on matters of import.