Personal Musings category archive

John McCain is a conservative hack.

He’s probably one of the few conservative hacks with some integrity left, but his “maverick” reputation is sorely overblown.

It seems to have more to do with his willingness to actually talk to reporters while not reading from a teleprompter than with his voting record.

So why are the wingnuts so unhappy with him? According to Brendan, who is strong-willed enough to subject himself to right-wing talk radio, Glenn Beck went into full meltdown mode today.

Kojo Nnamdi promised to explore that question on his show today. From the website:

John McCain is public enemy number one to many conservative talk show hosts, who’ve been criticizing his presidential bid with growing intensity in recent weeks. While many of these hosts have audiences in the millions, McCain’s aides say they don’t expect the attacks to hurt them much at the polls. We look at the rift between talk radio and the senator from Arizona, and the role it’s playing in the Republican primary.

So I devoted 32 minutes of my evening to listening to that segment (Realplayer), and, when it was done, I had had a few chuckles and was 32 minutes older.

But there were no answers to the question of “Why is the Republican Party determined to devour its young (or, in McCain’s case, its old)?”

I do have a few stray thoughts, but they are not well-formed enough to stand on their own.

Perhaps it is that he opposes torture, the wingnuts’ Viagra;

or that he can see that illegal immigrants, in addition to being illegal, are also human beings (Oh! I forgot! He sold out on that one. Hack.);

or that he thinks candidates should not necessarily be for sale to the highest bidder (whereas it is a principle of wingnutism that everything is for sale to the highest bidder).

It seems clear that, of the candidates for the Republican nomination, McCain is the one who has the best chance of winning the general election.

He’s a conservative hack, but he’s not an empty suit.

Let’s hope the wingnuts have their way, he loses the nomination, and, for the good of the nation, the Republican Party disappears from political discourse so that the nation can redeem its virtue and save itself from both moral and financial bankruptcy

I just got back from my polling place. No lines–that’s why I chose to go at 10:00 a. m–but one of the poll workers told me that turnout had been pretty good. As I left, three people were arriving.

We shall see what we shall see.

. . . should be fun on Super Tuesday. Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Center City Philadelphia, 6 p. m. tomorrow.

Looks like a great day to vote for Obama.

I find it interesting and completely irrelevant that, in the Democratic primary race, Hilary Clinton keeps touting her “experience.”

Now, I do not agree with those who would dismiss her experience as First Lady as irrelevant. Whatever the dynamics of the Clintons’ relationship, it is clear that Hilary Clinton was no Dolley Madison, whose reputation was made on White House parties and dinners.

And before the White House years, she was a successful lawyer, who graduated in the era when, if a woman applied for work at a law firm, she was offered a job as a secretary, whether or not she had a law degree.

“Experience,” in this context, of course, means “managerial experience in government,” as, opposed, to say, experience in leadership, experience in administration, or experience in management.

A critical analysis of American history indicates that experience in government is, at best, an “independent variable” and, at worst, completely irrelevant to performance in the office of President.

In other words, job experience does not make a president. Leadership, integrity, and foresight make a president.

And those qualities are forged by life, not by a job history.

(It’s a long windy post. I suggest you just agree with me, but, if you wish, you can read on.)

I will consider our greatest presidents. They are, as far as I am concerned,

• George Washington
• Thomas Jefferson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Franklin Roosevelt

(No, Ronald Reagan does not make the list. He did far more damage than good, despite Neocon myth-making.)

George Washington had little experience in government. Before the Revolutionary War, he was a successful planter and a so-so officer in the Virginia Militia. He servered in the Colonial Virginia House of Burgesses (the legislature), but had not govermental managerial experience.

During the Revolutionary War, he managed to win two battles: The Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Yorktown. And he would not have won the Battle of Yorktown without the presence of the French fleet in the York River, which cut off the British from any retreat, and a large contingent of French troops.

(He was, however, a wise enough commander to realize that the American revolutionary troops did not have the resources to beat the British is the traditional (at that time) style of pitched battle of massed troops on an open battlefield. He chose, instead, to wage a war of insurgency.)

(Yeah, there were other victories on the battlefield for the Revolutionary army: Saratoga, Cowpens–which was sort of the basis for the movie, The Patriot–and Kings Mountain–but Washington wasn’t involved in them).

He could have been King–or President for Life. And he turned it down. Because, like the rest of the Founders, he feared most that this country would fall into the hands of despots, and he wanted to set the againsts despotism.

Conclusion: Managerial experience in government: minimal.

Thomas Jefferson similarly had limited experience in government.

Like Washington, he served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and also served as Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War. He also served in the First Continental Congress for two years, but, frankly, it had little or no purpose except to try to fund the Continental Army.

Yes, he had served as ambassador to France, taking him away from the nation during the early years of the Revolutionary War, and he served as Vice President under John Adams. He served as Secretary of State for a while under George Washington, but had little or no influence; Alexander Hamilton was in ascendancy.

He was Vice President under John Adams. At that time, the Vice President was the person who came in second in the presidential election. As Jefferson and Adams had opposed each other for the presidency, Jefferson had almost no influence or roll in the government. (As part of that election, the Federalist Party enacted the spiritual ancestor of the “Protect America Act.”

As President, he doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase, avoided War with Britain (the War finally came in 1812), and engineered the demise of the Federalist Party.

It can easily be argued that his greatest contributions were as a political thinker and as leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, rather than as an elected leader.

Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government almost non-existent.

Abraham Lincoln was a corporate lawyer. In those days, that meant he was a lawyer for the railroads, the dominant corporations of their time. He served in the state legislature for eight years–a part time post–while he pursued his legal career.

He also served as a Captain–an elected post–of the militia in the Black Hawk War. He served for 90 days and saw no action.

Many consider him to have been the best president in the history of the United States.

Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Goverment: Minimal.

Theodore Roosevelt served a term in the New York State legisture. Later, he ran for governor of New York and lost. He subsequently served on the United States Civil Service Commission, the Board of New York City Police Commissioners, and other boards and commissions, as well as UnderSecretary of the Navy.

He was elected Vice President to President McKinley in 1900 and because president when McKinley was assassinated.

Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government: High, but complete irrelevant to his election.

Franklin Roosevelt served as a Senator in the New York State Legisture for five years. Later, he served as Assistance Secretary of the Navy during World War I and, a decade later, as governor of New York.

Elected president in 1932, he led the nation through the Great Depression and, because of his commitment to helping persons who were starving and out of work, was hated by Republicans and termed a “traitor to his class.”

Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government: Moderate.

Whenever I hear a reference to the bank, UBS, I cannot help but think of Martin Mull’s old television show, Fernwood 2Night, on the mythical UBS network, the motto of which was

We put You before the BS.

Still so true.

With apologies to Samuel L. Clemens.

It’s amazing how much money people get for running companies into the ground:

Countrywide Financial said on Monday that Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, a lightening rod for criticism over the subprime- lending meltdown, is giving up a $37.5 million severance package.

The package is less than a quarter of the money Mozilo collected selling Countrywide stock in 2007 as the company’s shares slumped almost 80%.

The Calabasas, Calif., lender said Mozilo is giving up cash severance payments, post-closing consulting fees and continued perquisites that he was owed in connection with the mortgage lender’s takeover by Bank of America (BAC).

There’s something wrong about rewarding executives for failure.

But in the closed-bubble world of American CEO’s, overpaying incompetence is somehow seen as attracting the best talent.

It seems to be sort of like professional football coaches.

The losers keep being recycled to new teams at higher salaries.

Has anyone else noticed how all the guys in the commercials for Levitra, Viagra, and stuff like that there always have wives who look to be 20 years younger then them?

Gosh, we can’t all be Dennis Kucinich.

From the Wilmington News Urinal. Follow the link for more details:

What started as a road rage incident ended with the arrest of a 58-year-old Brandywine Hundred man on gun charges after he got involved in a fistfight between three men and ordered them to the ground at gunpoint, police said.

Gregg N. Lynch, of the 100 block of Murphy Road, was released on $20,500 unsecured bail Wednesday after being charged with felony aggravated menacing, possession of a firearm during a felony, carrying a concealed deadly weapon and disorderly conduct.

The three men involved in the fight were not immediately charged, Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh of the Delaware State Police said.

“It’s still an active case under investigation,” Whitmarsh said Thursday.

It all started at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the parking lot outside Dick’s Sporting Goods in the Brandywine Town Center, where the occupants of two cars each claimed the others cut them off.

The three occupants — two teenage boys and a 27-year-old man — stopped and got into an argument that turned physical.

Shoppers called state police.

Before troopers could arrive, Lynch pulled up in a pickup, brandished a Glock 9 mm pistol and ordered the trio to “get to the ground,” police said in court records.

(snip)

“I have every right to have a gun,” Lynch replied, according to the records. “I don’t have to show you anything.”

Troopers who arrested Lynch said he didn’t have that right because his life was not in danger.

(Of course, this means that, if you have gun, you are forbidden to come to the aid of someone who needs your aid–ed.)

Troopers said they found the unloaded Glock, an unloaded 9 mm Baretta pistol and a loaded .22-caliber revolver during a search of his truck.

(snip)

Whitmarsh said Lynch’s brandishing of a gun implied he was going to use deadly force.

“If he’s threatening someone to comply or face deadly force, then he himself has to be threatened with serious bodily injury or death, or be in fear that someone else will face seriously bodily injury or death,” he said.

Lynch never claimed that he was making a citizen’s arrest and made no mention of holding the men at bay until police arrived, Whitmarsh said.

I’m not a big fan of guns. They are dirty, messy, and noisy, and, in the wrong hands, usually result in bad things happening.

I also think that persons who carry guns around with them are generally pretty much asking for trouble.

But, in this case, the gun user ended a confrontation that could have resulted in someone’s getting hurt.

End result. No one got hurt.

And the guy who ended the confrontation gets arrested.

Mr. Lynch may be a crackpot of some sort. I don’t know. He may have broken a law here. But, based on the contents of the news story, he seems to have acted on the side of justice, if not on the side of law.

But, as we know, the law and justice are seldom related.

As far as I am concerned, the district attorney (or whatever they call that position here in Delaware) should drop these charges and find something with which to charge the road rage guys.

From CREW:

Very, very late last night, just before midnight, the Bush administration submitted a filing in CREW v. Executive Office of the President, our lawsuit challenging the failure of the White House to preserve and restore millions of missing emails. We first documented the massive loss of White House e-mails in our April 2007 report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act.

The latest filing from the Bush administration raises some very troubling questions that the White House clearly does not want to answer. (The filing from the White House and related documents can be found here.) This is how CREW’s chief counsel, Anne Weismann, described the situation:

With this new filing, the White House has admitted that although it has long known about the missing emails, it did nothing to recover them, or discover how and why they went missing in the first place. The missing emails are important historical records that belong not to the Bush administration, but to the American people. As a result, the public deserves a full accounting and hopefully, now that the matter is before a federal court, we will get one.

Holy two-face, Batman, do you think they might have something to hide?

H/T to Linda.

My nomination for the most annoying ad campaign of the decade:

It even beats out the Dude.

The Current Federal Administrator clearly does not see himself as a liar who makes up wars and destroys the fabric of the Constitution of the United States of America.

But, then, the White House has admitted that it makes up its own “reality.”

When I was much younger, I used to make up my own reality also.

But I knew it was made up and it usually wore off in four to six hours.

Not four to six years.

Which leads me to another musing: the phenomenally stupid idea of a politician’s (or anyone else) “looking to his or her ‘legacy.'”

What more does that mean than that someone is doing something because of how it looks, not because it is the right thing to do”?

We already have a perfectly good word for persons who do things because of how those things look, rather than because they are the right things to do:

“Hypocrites.”

A “legacy” (or, more properly, since no Last Will and Testament is involved, a reputation) grows from all the things someone has done, not some last, desperate, “Casey at the Bat” effort to salvage an already failed reputation.

Mr. Bush can look to his legacy all he wants.

But all of us are forced to look at his legacy: failed wars, wasted lives, failing economy (oh, yeah, Raymond Krauss says “Buy gold”), lies, deceipt, and (there’s that word again) hypocrisy.

And no amount of last-inning grandstanding can overcome the score of the first eight innings. All the pitchers pitches–sales pitches, that is–have been used up.

Sorry, in this game, Mighty Bushie has already struck out.

Anyhoo, back to the Fantasy Dome:

Dan Froomkin:

“I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions,” Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 2 News. Bush held several interviews with Middle Eastern journalists last week in anticipation of his trip to the region, which starts tomorrow.

“When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative,” Bush said of himself to Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: “I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human — human being, and believes in human dignity.”

The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation — “liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria.”

On a personal basis, Bush told Bilbassy-Charters that he hopes that people would know “that he hurts when he sees poverty and hopelessness” and “that he’s a realistic guy.”

Bush’s self-image contrasts sharply with his image among his fellow Americans. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the job is doing, and a CNN poll in November found that 58 percent of Americans rated Bush either a poor president, a very poor president, or the worst president ever.

Bush’s view of himself is particularly delusional as he heads to a region that remains traumatized, angry and distrustful on account of Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, his antagonism of Iran and his perceived crusade against Islam.

Many of my Democratic friends are extremely upset that the Democratic majority in the House and Senate has not been able to change the course of the nation.

For example.

It is indeed upsetting. At the least, there might be some satisfaction in seeing Senator Reid call the Republicans’ bluff and force them to actually stand in the podium to defent their odious policies of

• domestic spying,
• making up wars,
• selling the country to the highest bidder, and
• making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Concomitantly (I’ve waited a year to work that into a post), it remains that, because of the extraordinary party discipline of the Republican Senate, the Democrats don’t have the votes in the Senate to break a filibuster.

Where does this discipline come from?

Find the answer here.

They are just following orders.

Also posted on Kos.

The return of Naderism:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans. They are expected to join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a “government of national unity” to end the gridlock in Washington.

The underlying fallacy of this idea is that we need more, not less partisanship.

It is time for people of good will to unite against those who undermine the Constitution of the United States of America, who sell the nation to the highest bidder, who defraud the electorate, who violate the ideals of the Founders, and who betray the blood shed by those who fought to make us free.

It is not time to compromise with them.

Penn State alumni think that Happy Valley is the Only Place on Earth.

Sort of like Virginia Tech alumni, who think that Blacksburg, Va., is the only place on earth.

(Happy Valley and Blacksburg have something in common. They are both surrounded by miles and miles of not much of anything except mountains.)

Nevertheless, I hope Penn State wins the ball game tonight, because I am a Joe Paterno fan.

He is one of the few really classy coaches in American College Football.

I remember the first time I saw a Joe Paterno coached Penn State team in a bowl game. Orange Bowl, 1969, Penn State vs. Kansas. My brother and I sat up and watched it.

Kansas had a seven-point lead going into the final seconds of the game.

Penn State scored.

And went for a two point conversion. And this was back when the field goal was king and taking the safe choice was the common choice. Penn State went for two–almost unheard of in those days.

And made it.

After the game, the interviewers asked Joe Paterno why he had his team go for two. Now, I can’t remember his exact statement–it was many years ago. But it was something to the effect that

“Ties aren’t fun. This game should be fun.”

I hope Penn State wins tonight.

(If you don’t understand what “go for two” means, go here.)

(Link fixed. Thanks.)

David Ignatius explores the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (emphasis added):

My Christmastime reading of the Adams-Jefferson letters was prompted by this year’s most interesting political speech but one I also found troubling — Mitt Romney’s Dec. 6 speech on “Faith in America.” It was a fine evocation of our twin heritage of religion and religious freedom, until he got to this ritual denunciation of the bogeymen known as secularists. “They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism.”

Anyone who reads Adams and Jefferson — or for that matter, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton or other voices of the American Enlightenment — can make their own judgment about what the Founders would say about Romney’s broadside against secularism. My guess is that their response would be something like: “That is bunkum, sir.”

(snip)

One theme in this year’s political campaign has been whether the United States will move from the faith-based policies the Bush administration has celebrated to a more rationalist and secular approach. In this debate, religious conservatives like to stress their connection to the Founders and to the republic’s birth as “one nation under God.” But a rereading of the Adams-Jefferson letters is a reminder that in this debate, the Founders — as men of the Enlightenment — would surely have sided with the party of Reason.

From the local rag:

You’re standing at a checkout counter, ready to pay, and the twentysomething behind the register is talking on her cell phone. So you wait, and wait, and wait, and when the clerk finally finishes her conversation, she offers not an apology, but a grimace that suggests you’ve interrupted.

Sound familiar? It has a name: the Service Gap.

That’s not a hip clothing store for soldiers. Or a new motto for the London subway system.

It’s business-speak to describe a phenomenon fueling plenty of holiday-shopping frustration: the difference in how baby boomers and members of the “millennial generation” define the concept of customer service.

(Aside: If clerks are using cell phones while they should be checking out customers, that is not a service problem. That is a management problem. Management has clearly failed to lay out the expectations of the job. And this surprises us how?)

The other day, when I left the cooling tower place and before I started my quest for a Real Ham (TM), I stopped at the Cooling Tower Town’s Super Wawa to fill up with gas ($2.85). The pumps, as usual, were crowded, with at least two vehicles waiting to get to them.

I pulled into the nearest line where the pumps were on the correct side of the vehicle.

The person ahead of me was not pumping gas. Rather, she was sitting in her car.

“Okay,” thought I, “She’s waiting for the car ahead of her to pull away so she could move.”

More fool I.

After about four or five minutes, she got out of her car, ended her cell phone conversation, and started to open the little cover over the fuel pipe on her Cattle-Rack. (Something she proved incompetent to do, but that’s another story.)

SHE’D BEEN SITTING THERE BLOCKING THE BLANKETY-BLANK PUMP TALKING ON HER BLANKETY-BLANK CELL PHONE FOR HEAVEN’S KNOWS HOW LONG.

And was easily 20 years older than me. (And I’m old.)

My friends, being a rude, selfish, inconsiderate a$$hole is not a generational phenomenon.

It is rather another manifestation of the constant,

K sub I,

the Idiocy Constant in human nature.

When you get enough persons gathered together in one place, a certain percentage of them will be idiots. It’s just a fact of life.

Sooooo, I went to the local post office today to mail Christmas presents.

I wanted to get them off because a couple of them were to APO addresses.

I thought that by going early, I would miss the rush.

More fool I.

The rush got there before me. And the early rush included large numbers of persons picking up certified mail, registered mail, and holiday holds. When those persons got to the counter, the clerks had to leave their stations to look for their mail. further slowing down the process.

The clerks looked pretty numb.

(Thank heavens I had my mp3 player–I was listening to Diane Rehm’s Friday News round-up.)

Then, when I finally got to the counter, got the postage figured, and filled out the customs forms, the credit card/debit card system went down.

No, I didn’t have $67.41 cash on me. I got cleaned out over the weekend and made the mistake of not stopping at the ATM on the way to the post office.

The clerk was kind enough to hold my packages while I went to the ATM, though when I got back, I had to stand in line again.

The clerk told me that she had heard that this was not a local outage–that multiple post offices were affected.

I said to her, “There must be hell to pay in L’Enfant Plaza” (Post Office HQ is in L’Enfant Plaza South–I did a training class there once for the security department).

First smile I got from her all day.

Delaware’s playing for the championship.

Not that I’m a big Delaware fan–they kick my alma mater up and down the field regularly, but two of my kids went there and a third is considering it, and, hey! it’s football.

Unlike what goes on up the road a piece.

Addendum, 12/17/2007:

Well, someone played football. It wasn’t Delaware.

I mentioned a little while ago that I believe that bigotry is at the heart of the Republican furor over immigration.

I am convinced that, if hordes of English-speaking Canadians were pouring over the the northern border to take jobs in the call centers of Sioux Falls, the hullabaloo over illegal immigration would merely be a baloo.

Atrios nails it. It’s the “Southern Strategy” all over again once more redundantly.

Hating the other is very popular among Republicans even if immigration per se isn’t so important. So Republican primary candidates have to signal they’ve got a sufficient amount of hate, and they do that by wanting to “double Guantanamo,” invade several more countries filled with scary Brown people, enacting punitive measures against immigrants, etc.

Immigration isn’t the issue. Hating immigrants is the issue.