I Just Can't Summon The Energy To Care

In our first meeting back, the Head of School talked about how connected we have become in the ten years since 9/11.  Frankly, I don't see the causation that his speech implied, but the correlation is undeniable.  My dad and I watched United 93 the other day (with Rescue Me probably the finest work of mass art about 9/11).  In it, the passengers on the plane use the Airphones to contact loved ones, even the police to learn about the Twin Towers and that they would have to try and seize the plane.  Obviously they failed, but we have a Capitol building today because they tried.

Anyway, we're more "tethered" today than ever before.  For some people this is awesome, for others it's an example of how everything has gone to hell.

But lost in the value judgments - as our Head pointed out - is the simple fact that this has happened and it isn't going away.  We need to teach to a tethered world, not pretend that we live in the world of Cicero or Thomas Jefferson.

One of the issues that he didn't discuss is the fact that in a tethered world, everything is immediate.  Nowhere is this more true than in the Blogosphere - the nebulous entity of political affinity groups.

In the Blogosphere, everything is immediate, everything is zero-sum and everything is life or death.

This is how we got into the silliness of the timing of Obama's speech.  To recap for those of you who have lives:  Obama wanted to address the Congress on their first day back on the jobs issue.  He asked Boehner if he could speak on Wednesday.  Boehner did not seem to object, so the White House announced it.  Then Boehner said, "no" because the GOP is having another idiotic debate on Wednesday.  Obama gets pushed back to Thursday.

On the one hand, Obama comes off looking wimpy.  That's the prevalent take among both right wing triumphalists and left wing manic progressives.  Markos Zuniga - whom I respect more than his front pagers - has made roughly that case here.

Some of Obama's poll number slippage has, indeed, been caused in part by an increase in his wimpiness factor.  But c'mon, that's not the real reason.  People are only upset that Obama isn't picking more fights with the GOP because times are really tough.  If times were good, no one would care.  People still like Obama personally, but they are frustrated because things just don't seem to be getting better.  And they would like to see him fight more for things that he believes in.

But the timing of his speech?  No one really cares beyond the solipsistic internet crowd.

Back during the campaign, Plouffe's big contribution was: "Don't worry about winning the day, win the election."  The Obama campaign refused to let the 24-hour news cycles - with its inanities - drive their campaign.  It worked brilliantly.

Now, I am not sold that Plouffe's brand of campaigning will work in 2012, but the "Boehner made Obama move his speech" controversy is silly.  It is part of the silliness that infects Washington.  It is a great example of the pettiness that makes people hate politics.

Now, Markos is right that the Obama team stepped on their message by first calling Boehner a shifty liar and then acquiescing to the move.

But Obama had no choice. Congress controls who can address it.  This was not a fight that Obama could have won.  He might have made the GOP look petty and foolish, but really, wouldn't that be redundant after the debt ceiling debate?

Frankly, this timing works better, as it is after the GOP debate, right before the NFL season opener.  I don't know why Obama didn't ask for this time slot first.

But the fact is, it doesn't matter at all in the long run.  This is the sort of stupid nontroversy that crops up in the interconnected, tethered world of the internet age.

Perhaps the only reason this "Obama caved" storyline is gaining traction is because Obama HAS caved too much to the GOP.  What will be interesting about the speech is that it will give Obama a chance to lay a challenge before the GOP House.  Can he continue to hammer that challenge once it has been made?

That IS a legitimate story to follow.

Back In The Saddle

The Great Meetings Week has begun here at school.  Inevitably, these meetings say the same thing year after year.  Some of the details change, but the form follows the same familiar grooves.  

Because it only happens once a year, it's not mind-numbing.  In fact, it's a gentle ritual to get us ready for the school year.

And unlike Thing One and Thing Two's school, we have power, so that's a plus.

I want to post something lengthy on Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, but that will have to wait a few days.

Why I Am An Episcopalian

Can I get an Amen?

Escape From Nantucket

It began in the sunny grim morning light.  The short long trek to the docks.  Desperate for a boat.  Any boat.  OK, any boat that could carry a Honda Odyssey minivan.  The scene smelled of chaos, unchanged Depends and coffee.  People milling around, mulling their options.

By noon, people were offering up their children, especially the unruly ones, for a place on the ferry.  It felt like Saigon in '75.  I know, I was there.  In the sense that I saw The Deer Hunter a couple of times.  A commodities trader was offering up his wife's virtue for a place on the boat for his Porsche Cayenne.  In the distance, a pedigreed dog barked.

At 3:30 I heard the magic words.  I was getting off this god forsaken, windswept rock.  No more trying to get by on seared sea scallops and braised oxtail on a bed of pureed fingerling potatoes.  No more scavenging for $5 ice cream cones.  I was free.

When I got to Hyannis, I struggled to find fuel.  It took me five minutes to find an open gas station.  Could I make up those five minutes?  Were they lost to me forever?

As I moved west, the scene of devastation intensified.  In Medford, I saw a Whole Foods.

It was closed.

A shudder ran through me.  I killed and ate the dog.

As I made my way through Connecticut, I noticed that some of the houses had no power.  I took what was left of the dog and made clothes from her hide.  She was a small dog, so I only made mittens.

When I got home, I was met with a chaos so profound, my mind swooned to grasp the enormity of it.  There, on our back deck, were looters.  They devoured the food my Most Wondrous Wife had prepared.  Admittedly, she prepared it for them and invited them over and they were our friends and colleagues, but still.

Looters.

In the distance, you could hear a generator humming.  I made a mental note to kill the owner and steal the generator should we lose power, which we hadn't.

I began to sink into an uneasy sleep.

What new horrors would the dawn bring?

And then I remembered and my blood ran cold.

No school tomorrow...

God Save Us All

We are bearing up well under the tremendous onslaught of Irene.  It almost rained here a little bit.  And the winds can only be described as stiff.

It is apparently raining in some places a whole bunch.  And people may go HOURS without electricity.

Frankly, I'm disappointed.  I was hoping to do some looting, if only so that the punditry wouldn't be able to say that in New Orleans they scavenged for food and water looted, but in Nantucket there was surprisingly no looting.  Amazing.

But since Irene has turned out to be just a really windy day with intermittent sunshine, I am unable to make my socio-economic-political statement about the redistribution of wealth.

UPDATE: I went to the ferry to see when I could get off the island tomorrow and the strong winds literally blew SAND INTO MY EYE.  Who's laughing now?

At least out here, Irene has been similar to the Great Virginia Quake of 2011:

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

So, Hurricane Irene... Have you heard of it?

I am stuck on Nantucket hoping to get the Family Truckster off via stand-by (not gonna happen).  The Wife of Wives and Thing One and Thing Two are currently headed to the Cape and home.  Ironically, they are likely to get more storm effects in central Connecticut than I am out here on a low lying island.

It looks like the real problem with Irene is going to be flooding.  The winds are already crapping out some, but the rains and storm surge are going to be a real problem.  It was the storm surge that drowned New Orleans, but the one thing most people can feel good about is that they don't live in a bowl-shaped city that lies below sea level.

Having said that, if you're planning on using the NYC subways anytime soon, I would think about taking the bus.

There is going to be some bad ass coastal flooding.

On the plus side, all that newly vacant beachfront will need to be rebuilt.

Stimulus!

But it won't be any fun if people are dead, so I hope everyone is smart and goes inland.

With God As My Witness I Will Never Fly Delta Again

A Delta approved postcard.

Yesterday we returned from Ireland.  The Most Excellent Wife and Field Hockey Coach and her team flew Aer Lingus.  I flew Delta.

That may have been the team's biggest win of the week.

Flying Delta is roughly the equivalent of having a midget boxer stand in front of you, treating your balls as a speed bag.  The blows keep coming without mercy.

We had a tight schedule to get back, get off the plane, drive home, pick up the car and get to the Cape to get to Nantucket to save my parents from Thing One and Thing Two.

So, naturally, Delta's flight was delayed about an hour and a half.

I realize that planes sometimes get delayed, in this case by weather in the US.  But the problem with airlines is that they are like Lily Tomlin in her old AT&T skit: "We're the phone company.  We don't care, we don't have to."

Naturally, I had thrown my back out that morning turning quickly with bags all over my shoulder and had only gotten about two hours of sleep while battling some sort of Irish super virus.

So waiting in an airline terminal for three hours was just a win-win.

I explained to the gate attendant that my back was in spasm, but she said there was nothing she could do, of course.

Once on the plane, with its too small seats, I tried to sleep.  Naturally, for the six and a half hour flight, the in-flight entertainment was screwed up.  The headset didn't work.  Nor - I should point out - did it work on the flight OVER to Ireland.  And they showed the same damn movies coming home from Ireland as they did heading over there.  Because what really makes the time fly is TWO showings of Water For Elephants and Jane Eyre with the sound off.

The food was like some sort of chemistry experiment.

Meanwhile,well ahead of me over the Atlantic, Aer Lingus had video monitors for each seat.  The food was edible.  And they left on time.

We've heard that older airlines struggle with legacy costs like pensions.  I don't care.  If I have a choice in the future, I am going to fly Southwest or Virgin America or some airline that gives a damn about making their passengers feel like they are more than cattle headed to the abattoir.

When I win the lottery, I'm going to buy an RV that has wings so I don't have to fly anywhere ever again ever.

Still Alive, Despite The Fish And Chips Diet

Finally found both free Wi-Fi and a power converter that works.

Belfast was surprisingly energetic and lively.  Oddly, they seem to be basing their hopes for tourism on the Troubles and the Titanic.  I'm reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  Next up is The Belfast Postulate, The Rise of Disaster Tourism.

It really is amazing how much Ireland looks like Ireland. It almost feels like a joke when you look out the coach window at the green fields, the sheep and the pasty people.

Dublin is a truly magnificent city, but our hotel is easily the worst hotel for the cost I've ever stayed at.  Tiny room, no air and the disco on the ground floor pounds out a bass beat until 1am everyday.

Off to see the Book of Kells for some reason I can't explain.

The View From Ireland

1) Airplane travel sucks.  The seats are too small and too close together, especially when you have a two year old with an ear ache screaming his head off behind you.

2) This lack of sleep makes you forgetful.  This is why I may have left my iPhone on the plane.  I am... not happy.

3) It's amazing how much Ireland resembles Ireland.

4) It is not always easy understanding Irish people speaking English.  I thought it might be a form of passive resistance, but the guy we couldn't understand turned out to be a Protestant.

5) There is a Protestant history of Ireland and a Catholic history of Ireland.  It's difficult to tell if they agree on anything.  Amazing that the Good Friday accords have kept the peace this long.

6) St. Patrick loved him to Jesus.

7) Sleep deprivation is awful, but losing something important when you travel - like a freaking iPhone - is much worse.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Taking A Break, Probably

I'm headed to Ireland to see if I can spot the riots in England from Dublin.

Don't know whether they have Internet or Magic Leprechauns over there.

So, light posting, probably mostly devoted to jet lag.

It Begins! The Perry-neum, Part II

While I've been flogging the horse at the lead of the Perry bandwagon since January, I fully acknowledge that he's another nut.  In fact, that was exactly why I thought he would become the GOP nominee.

He's conservative as hell and he "looks" like a TV president.  Republicans are pretty good at what the Reagan White House identified as the central theatrics of politics: TV news with the sound off.  If it looks good, it is good.

But Perry - who moved ahead of Romney on InTrade today - has too many little soundbites out there to haunt him.

Consider what we've learned of him so far in 48 hours since he declared:

- Any federal role in education is unconstitutional.

- Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (and probably unconstitutional).

- Ben Bernanke's monetary policy is "treasonous" and  "we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas."


- He goes jogging with a loaded gun.

Now, I don't think these things disqualify him at all from the GOP nomination.  In fact, they probably will help him cement his frontrunner status.

But he will have to tone down the Texas-sized crazy a little bit.  He doesn't want to make Bachmann look like the SANE Teatard in the race.

And to Ross Douthat and other "sensible" Republicans lamenting the tone and content of the GOP nomination process, I give you this widely disseminated line from Jonathan Bernstein:

What you’re upset with isn’t the candidate — it’s the party. It’s inconceivable that anyone could get the Republican nomination while using anything but solid Tea Party rhetoric on pretty much every issue. They’re all going to claim that taxes should never, ever, ever be raised no matter what, that half of what the government does is evil or unconstitutional or whatever, that the scientific consensus on climate is some sort of crazed conspiracy, and so on down the line. I’ve been saying for some time now that the odds are against Republicans actually nominating a candidate who believes crazy things — but the odds of them nominating someone who says crazy things has gone up.

Warren Buffett for Treasury Secretary

Frankly, at this point, I'd go with Jimmy Buffett, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1&hp

The Sage of Omaha - or whatever they call him - has come out and pointed at two essential absurdities in our tax debate.

First, carried interest and other loopholes mean that people who work with investments pay a pittance in percentage of their income in taxes.  Buffett's rate is about 17%.  That's roughly the same percent at the fry cook at Wendy's.

Second, increasing taxes on investors does not preclude them from investing.  People do not measure themselves against abstract standards, they measure themselves against their contemporaries and colleagues.  For instance, my material well being is probably superior to John D. Rockefeller's.  I mean, I have an iPod and penicillin.  He had piano recitals in the parlor and mustard poultices.  I win.

But I'm doing a lot worse than his great grandkids.

If you raise taxes on the capital class, they won't stop working, they won't stop investing.

Buffett's position should not be controversial.  Taxes on the mega-rich (Buffett's term) are historically low.

I would like to see Obama talk about a job's program funded by new taxes on the mega-rich.  Yes, it won't pass.  But 75% of the country will support it and give him some reason to explain to voters why the employment picture sucks.

From what we've heard Chicago DLC Third Way Party Hack White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and 2008 Wunderkind Plouffe Diddy have argued that he should not pursue plans he cannot achieve.

Which begs the question: do these idiots pay attention?  Is there ANY plan you could see the GOP agreeing with?

People have noted that all the economists have left or are leaving Obama's team and being replaced by hacks like Daley.

But a jobs program wedded to a tax on the mega-rich is a winner on all fronts.

Only a Teatard would see it otherwise.

Well, How About That?

I always thought the Ames Straw Poll was an irrelevant exercise.  That's what the Serious People say.

Then Nate Silver tells us that one of the people who finishes first or second in Ames will win Iowa in February.  If true, I'm going with Bachmann over Paul.  The 4000+ votes for Paul are probably not that far off from the 4000 he'll receive in February.  The Paultards are devoted but few.  I made the mistake in 2008 of mistaking their energy for real numbers.  Not going there again.

And if THAT wasn't enough, apparently failing at Ames is enough to push some candidates out of the race.  Been nice knowing you, Tim Pawlenty.

By all accounts we are headed to a three way race with Bachmann winning Iowa, Romney winning New Hamster and Perry winning South Carolina.

I've said all along that the real race is to be the Anti-Romney.  Right now, Bachmann is that person.  But the spotlight is now going to shine brighter on her and Perry from now on.  She's been very disciplined recently, but you still have weird moments like her aides and husband shoving and elbowing reporters.

Normally, Romney is the nominee and you can ignore the Fried Butter eating yokels in Ames.  But watch Perry's fundraising numbers.  If the Texas bundlers and whales come in hard for him, Romney's ONLY advantage - cash - is gone.

The good news out of all this: so far Newt, Cain and Santorum are still in!

Some Standard And Poors Guy Says It Out Loud

So an exec at S&P comes out says - sort of - that the GOP is the reason for the downgrade.

What he said was (and I'm paraphrasing), "There are certain elements in Congress who were saying that default was not a big deal.  That's not the way a AAA country acts."

Well, yeah.

Of course there was only one party saying that default was not a big deal, but let's not stoop to calling names, shall we.

Saw something similar in Matt Bai's piece about the Iowa GOP debate.  The crystallizing moment of that debate was when the Fox guy asked, "Would you veto a deficit reduction deal that had $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases?"  And EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RAISED THEIR HANDS.

Now any sane commentator would note that this is not sane.  That this represents the failure to compromise that is the hallmark of the modern GOP and is fiscally stupid.  Bai mentions that in his piece.

Then, after justifiably excoriating the GOP for being intransigent and, well, ignorant, he says, "Well, the Democrats would have done the same thing if Social Security cuts were on the table."

It's the reflexive "both sides do it" that allows the GOP to get away with being insane.  Especially since
A) Social Security isn't a problem
and
B) Medicare is, and Obama DID offer a compromise on both SS and Medicare.  He did offer to effectively cut benefits by pegging SS to a different inflation metric.

So, it was objectively false and subjectively misleading.

OTOH, we have seen the generic ballot move significantly towards Democrats.

So, even though S&P doesn't say "Tea partiers caused the downgrade."  And Matt Bai can't refrain from "Both sides are bad." It seems as if the public is getting the message anyway.


UPDATE: Here's a nice summary of the S&P thing:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/whos-really-responsible-for-us-debt-downgrade.php?ref=fpblg

The New Gilded Age: Judicial Version

I thought this was an interesting take on the 11th Circuit Court's opinion:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/08/cant_emphasize_this_enough.php?ref=fpblg

Nut sentence:
It's hard to explain just how outside the mainstream this kind result would have been just 5-10 years ago.