Framed

Frankly Speaking

Thomas "What's The Matter With Kansas?" Frank nails it:

You've got people [in the Republican party] whose philosophy is one of cynicism towards government and one of complete disrespect towards particular branches of government. ... They've run these branches of government completely in reverse, put people in charge of them who don't believe in the mission, and done everything else to make government accountable not to the voters, but to the business community.

This has resulted in disaster in numerous cases. Now, when you look upon the disaster, do you say this is because government doesn't work? Or do you say, this is because a philosophy of government doesn't work? The obvious conclusion to anybody watching this stuff unfold is to say government just can't do anything right -- look how badly it's botched this job.

But the correct answer is that government obviously does work in certain circumstances, in other countries, and it's even worked here when it wants to. What they're doing right now at the Fed and the Department of Treasury is they're playing the game exactly right -- they're intervening decisively, quickly -- they're doing it exactly right. When the chips are down and when it's something conservatives care about, they can make government work.

But the natural conclusion is just to blow it all off with cynicism. It's so easy to be cynical. We confuse cynicism with sophistication. The correct answer is that it's a philosophy of government that's failed, but you can't say that in the media.

This is what I've been saying in my argument that Republican rule actually imposes more taxes on society than Democratic rule does.  It's disastrous to put people antithetical to the whole idea of economic, industrial and environmental regulation in charge of the agencies charged with enforcing those regulations.  It's a disaster that hits squarely in the wallet.  It's a tax on bad economic and social philosophy.

Pizza Economics

For the last ten years, I've enjoyed picking my sons up from school at lunchtime and taking them to the nearby Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet there.  My schedule this semester doesn't permit me to do that as often as I'd like now, but I was able to fit it in yesterday.  It was only my second time there this school year, and the first in over a month.

I was surprised to see only two cars in the parking lot when I pulled into the restaurant at about 11:25.  In the recent past, the joint would be jumping at that hour, full of high school students, healthcare workers, tradesmen, and the obese.  I had the fleeting thought: are they closed?  Was there a botulism outbreak I didn't hear about?

But no: the Pizza Hut was open, though no food was on the buffet yet, which was also unusual.  Apart from my son and me, there were only two customers in the place.

I talked with Cindy, the waitress who has served us for a decade or more.  "It's been like this," she shrugged.  "People are just staying home more, not spending money if they don't have to."  Another fleeting thought crossed my mind: how long will they survive with so few lunchtime customers?

By the time we left the restaurant at 11:45, there were more people there.  I felt somewhat relieved--until I recalled that we used to pass by people lined up to come in at that hour as we exited.  They just weren't there.

OK, it was Monday--but I couldn't help but read the relative quiet of the Pizza Hut as evidence that our economy is in serious trouble.

Prescience

This was written on September 12, 2001 . . .

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

. . . by Hunter S. Thompson.

R.I.P. Don S. Davis

Wyndham Earl: What is your greatest fear, Major?

Major Briggs (drugged with sodium pentothal): The possibility that love is not enough.

Don S. Davis--Major Garland Briggs in Twin Peaks--died of a heart attack last weekend.  Characters in that show were never two-dimensional.  In his first appearances in the series, The Major seems like a slightly off-kilter stereotype of a emotionally stunted law-and-order military man.  But as the series unwinds, it becomes evident that he is so much more, thanks in large part to Davis's understated performance.  There was always more to The Major than Davis revealed--which is why his scenes ended with me always wanting to see more of him.

(h/t to Meredith Yayanos at Coilhouse)

Clueless

Despite his many, many failings, Bush is not a racist.  At least I don't think so.  But he is surely clueless, nattering on in the presence of the President of the Philippines about what yummy food those little brown people cook.

Celtics

YAY CELTICS!

25 years ago, my friend Paul made a Celtics fan of me.  More than that: he made me a basketball fan.  Even more: he made me a sports fan.

That was new.

I grew up in a medium-sized town that had no major league sports teams.  I was gangling, weak and uncoordinated--and I came to despise all things athletic because of the physical humiliations I endured in gym class and elsewhere. 

Then I met Paul, a born and bred Bostonian, and that began to change.  The Celts had Bird, Parish, McHale, Johnson and Ainge starting for them, and were on a tear.  Paul would bring the local papers to work, read through the sports sections, and chat me up about the team.  He didn't care that I barely knew how basketball was played, or that I had never watched a basketball game either in person or on TV before.  He gave his enthusiasm to me without expecting much in return.

It worked.  That year, I began to change.  I listened when Paul told me about the games.  I started reading the sports pages of The Boston Globe; hell, I even read the Boston Herald sometimes.  I tuned in games on our tiny hand-me-down TV in our apartment in Jamaica Plain.  I was hooked.

Rooting for the Celtics soon brought about other changes.  A few years after meeting Paul, I joined a gym, something the younger me would never ever have considered.  I didn't always go that regularly--I still don't--but the point was that some psychological barrier between me and my body had been broken.  Still later, I started long-distance cycling, and though I was living in Ohio at the time, my first long ride drew me back to The Hub for the Boston - New York AIDS Ride.  I began to take some pride in what I could physically accomplish.

None of that would have happened without the Celts.

For 22 years, I have read the sports page of The Boston Globe every day for Celtics news--even July, August and September when there is no NBA news at all.  It's been a long and sometimes-discouraging couple of decades.  But there's probably a lesson in keeping the faith that long, maybe one that won't be evident to me until after the confetti settles in the Boston Garden and they scrub the Gatorade stains off the parquet.

Maybe back in Boston there's a young twenty-something geek like I was who is starting to change make some changes in his life thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Pierce, Garnett, Allen, Rondo and Perkins, et als.   As for me, I'm going for a bike ride.

GO CELTS!!

Cars

All other things being equal, I would prefer to drive a car made by unionized American workers in the employ of an American corporation.  I come from an auto town, one that has made Autolite and Champion spark plugs, LOF window glass, GM transmissions, Dana drive trains, and  Jeep Wranglers. I teach UAW students and count UAW members as  my neighbors.  In addition to these local biases, I also believe in a certain economic patriotism; I don't see how the U.S. economy can thrive unless it makes something.

The problem is that all other things are not equal.  Far from it.

Yesterday, Honda yet again raised the bar for the global auto industry by celebrating

the start of production of its FCX Clarity, the world’s first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle intended for mass production. In a ceremony at a factory an hour north of Tokyo, the first assembly-line FCX Clarity rolled out to the applause of hundreds of Honda employees wearing white jump suits.

Honda will make just 200 of the futuristic vehicles over the next three years, but said it eventually planned to increase production volumes, especially as hydrogen filling stations became more common.

Instead of waiting for the long-promised "Manhattan Project" that American politicians keep saying they'll get around to enacting someday to help us transition to the post-petroleum economy, Honda went out and built a hydrogen-powered car.  Sure, this is a gamble, a risk--but sticking with the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine is a gamble and a risk too.

“Basically, we can mass produce these now,” said Kazuaki Umezu, head of Honda’s Automobile New Model Center, where the FCX Clarity is built. “We are waiting for the infrastructure to catch up.”

Why couldn't GM, Ford or Chrysler have made what Honda announced yesterday?  Fuel cells are not brand new technology.  Using electric motors to power cars has been done for 90 years.  To be sure, there were various engineering challenges that had to be addressed, but it's not as if Honda has done magic or invented a whole new concept.  This is not to denigrate Honda's engineering feat in the slightest, but only to point out that the chief problems they had to overcome were the size and cost of the fuel cells; they did not develop an entirely new concept.  I have little doubt that American engineers working for the Big Three could have done what Honda's engineers did, had their bosses directed them to do so and adequately supported them.  But they didn't.  Now how long do you think it will be before we see the first American fuel cell vehicle in production?

Not only has Honda leaped ahead of Detroit in terms of engineering and manufacturing, but they're also taking a page from Madison Avenue's old book of automotive marketing and launching their new car with pizzaz.  The car doesn't look like a clunky science fair project, but like a sleek ultra-modern sedan.  Jamie Lee Curtis is getting one of the first five, and Honda has decided to set up three FCX Clarity dealerships in the Los Angeles area, just about guaranteeing that more Hollywood stars will soon follow suit.  Just as celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz helped make the Toyota Prius a hot property, I wouldn't be surprised if the new Honda got some buzz from The Beautiful People very soon.

Instead of figuring out how to design, engineer and market fuel cell vehicles, GM is flogging the hell out of its gigantic GMC Denial Denali SUV in commercials on the NBA finals that feature it occupied by a lone unseen driver; Ford is stuck with way too many of its nine-passenger Excursions; and Chrysler is offering to guarantee gas prices at $2.99 a gallon for three years in an effort to move more of its Jeep Commanders.  These are the acts of a desperate domestic industry; what a contrast with the bold, brash move by Honda.

Sure, in late 2010 the Chevy Volt may hit the showrooms, and I hope for GM's sake it will be a huge success. But given Detroit's extreme reluctance to part with the petroleum-powered internal combustion engine, I won't be surprised if a Japanese manufacturer beats them to it and offers a plug-in hybrid well before that.

No: all other things are not equal, and the inequality is growing.

Stone Karma

I was never a big Sharon Stone fan.  As Katharine Hepburn put it, "It's a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what's between her ears  instead of between her legs."  I was never terribly attracted by her hard-but-bland face.  Even her sexual persona seemed forced to me.

I did, though, momentarily reconsider my modest opinion of her when she took off after the Chinese government by suggesting that this month's devastating earthquake was karmic payback for its treatment of Tibet.  Taken literally, the comment was nonsense to me; I don't believe in some ethereal force that balances the rights and wrongs of the universe.  Still, there was a certain in-your-face quality to it that I liked.  Maybe, I allowed, there was more to Sharon Stone than I'd thought.

Except that there wasn't.  In the face of the predictable criticism from Chinese authorities--and the banning of her movies from the lucrative Chinese market--she caved in quickly and meekly:

"Due to my inappropriate words and acts during the interview, I feel deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people," Stone said in the statement. "I am willing to take part in the relief work of China's earthquake, and wholly devote myself to helping affected Chinese people."

And then she apologized again--and blamed the media:

"Yes, I misspoke. I could not be more regretful of that mistake. It was unintentional. I apologise, those words were never meant to be hurtful to anyone, they were an accident of my distraction and a product of news sensationalism."

Her quick reversal reconfirms me in my earlier attitude toward her.  In effect, she's saying gosh, I had no idea that speaking out about human rights might upset people!  I had no idea that I might take a financial hit for speaking my mind!

In other words, she really has no understanding of human rights or repression.  Maybe she just thought that criticizing China over Tibet was trendy.  At any rate, she made it far easier for the Chinese to ignore criticism of their repressive policies--which is definitely bad karma in my book.

Scrambled

Under the McCain golf gear program, we can probably expect to see a lot more of this:

A senior Justice Department official says a $500,000 federal grant to the World Golf Foundation is an appropriate use of money designed to deal with juvenile crime in America.

"We need something really attractive to engage the gangs and the street kids, golf is the hook," said J. Robert Flores, the administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Can't wait to see Crips vs. Bloods in a Texas scramble.

Relax?

Michael Lind has an article in Salon today in which he declares that "liberalism has already won the national debate about the future of the country."  The headline of his essay urges liberals to "relax."

Relax?  We won??  Who knew.  Last time I checked, we still had no national health insurance, and the plans presented by the mainstream Democratic candidates all called for working through the existing scheme of for-profit health insurers rather than establishing a single-payer, government-run, not-for-profit system.  Last time I checked, gay marriage had become permissible in just two states, while nearly two dozen have amended their constitutions to forbid such a result.  Last time I checked, unionization rates were positively anemic, the middle class was shrinking, corporate CEO's were paid 450 times the annual earnings of their workers, we had no national energy policy, global warming was on the march, and spending on the military was soaring.

If this is liberal victory, then may the secular humanist gods spare us from ever knowing what defeat  looks like.

As I read down to the last five grafs in Lind's article, though, I discovered that Lind's "liberalism" looks a lot different from mine.  Here's how he defines victory for liberals:

By rejecting the radical right, the American electorate has not endorsed bold new initiatives. The public has merely signaled its support of the older New Deal/Great Society/Civil Rights liberalism that the right sought to uproot.

*  *  *

For the moment, however, the prospects for the moderate, reformist center left are better than they have been in nearly half a century. If it is hard for most conservatives to admit that they have lost, it is even harder for many liberals to admit that they have won. But sometimes history forces you to take yes for an answer.

In other words, the "victory" of liberalism lies in the fact that we still have Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Wow.  Forty years after the end of the Great Society, that's not progress.  That's not victory. That's a redefinition: liberalism is now the "moderate, reformist center left" that defines winning as not seeing its gains of four decades ago eroded.

Though Lind goes through the motions of cautioning against "complacency" by "liberals and centrists," the gravamen of his article--and the verb in its accompanying headline--is that us progressive types can now return to our forty year nap.

Dangerous advice, that.