Intelligent conversation

I know I promised to get back on a regular schedule, but the new job conspired against me this week. I had forgotten how intransigent grown adults came, which is funny considering that I've been married and had in-laws for 10 years.
I was watching Olbermann earlier tonight. His final guest was John Cleese, easily one of the funniest and smartest writer/performers in Christendom. I found myself thunderstruck by the level of discourse between host and guest. You just never see a smart broadcaster interviewing a smart, engaging guest on television anymore.

I'm alive and almost thriving

So, it's been a week in the new job...a good week. My staff is friendly and competent, as is everyone else at the paper. It's getting colder quickly, but it's not too bad. The rheumatiz is starting to flare up, but it does that at this time of year anyway.

Today was my first non-12-hour day, as I've had to learn the set up fast and get back to paginating on old software on buggy G4s. It came back to me quickly, thank God. My new boss is no hurry to reinvent the product, so I'm just going to tweak and adjust as I go along. I do have to get the new website up to speed by Tuesday, so Saturday is work day this week.

Oddly enough, I've been too busy with newsroom duties to follow the prez race. That's how it is at small papers; you're too busy newsgathering and editing to watch the big picture. I'm going try to catch up tonight, but it looks like things are going as I have predicted: McCain and the GOP are disintegrating and Palin is conducting an ongoing audition for her own show on Fox News.

My cable modem is now installed, so I'm going to force myself to get back on a daily blogging schedule. More tomorrow, whether I'm feeling it or not.

Peace.

This pretty well says it all

In today's New York Times, columnist and critic extraordinaire Frank Rich sums up the McCain campaign so succinctly that his piece should be required reading for every so-called pundit and political observer:

As if the Palin pick weren’t damning enough, McCain and his team responded to the financial panic by offering their own panicky simulation of the Bush style of crisis management in real time. Fire the S.E.C. chairman and replace him with Andrew Cuomo! Convene a 9/11 commission to save Wall Street! Don’t bail out A.I.G.! Do bail out A.I.G.! Reacting to polls and the short-term dictates of 24-hour news cycles, McCain offered as many economic-policy reboots in a month as Bush offered “Plans for Victory” during the first three years of the Iraq war.

Epiphany

I just got in from Michigan and I am wiped. I worked a little in between connections (O'Hare wasn't too bad today) on a post I'll have up tomorrow about an epiphany I had this weekend about Sarah Palin and this guy.

Northern Exposure

I'm halfway through my sojourn and, I must say, the northern latitudes are bursting with pretty colors about right now. In case you haven't bothered to guess, I'm near the Canadian border right now haggling with a fine publication about possibly becoming an unlapsednewsguy. 

Okay, I know that some of you who know me in the real world have heard me swear off the business 100 times (in fact, I think I may have done so in one of my earliest posts here). I don't know that the present situation before me would be any better or worse, but I do have a good feeling about it. It would be good money-wise, I like editing newspapers, and a change of scenery could do me some good. 

I dunno, we'll see.

This place has all of the charm of a little lake town mixed with the daily brutalities of supply-side economics. The people are ridiculously nice and, to a person, charmed by my unwittingly southern accent (hey, my grandpa escaped Kentucky 75 years ago!). My possible predecessor is leaving a solid paper with a good staff and stable readership. The publisher is an old newsroom guy (definitely a plus) and corporate leaves him alone (an even bigger plus).

I should know by mid-week if this is the place for me. I know now, however, that this blog will continue in its current form, regardless of where I post from. Some would question letting a smartass like lapsednewsguy edit a daily paper, saying he/she/it is too biased; I contend they are mutually exclusive. I dare say the readers of my old papers were never able to suss out my politics, primarily because my politics were none of their business nor relevant to my job.

Contrary to the Idiot Queen of Wasilla's recent screeching, you can have opinions and be even-handed. The secret is to actually listen when other people speak and be prepared to be wrong sometimes.

Of course, that would never occur to her...

Taking a break

I'm taking a break from my furious blogging regimen of late, as I have business in town Friday and out of town Saturday through Tuesday that will occupy my time. I may fire off one of two posts, but I doubt it. I've been so busy pontificating about America's future that I need to take a few days to attend to mine. I'll be back to my schedule of late by the middle of next week.

Ramsey is half-right

Radio host Dave Ramsey is circulating a plan to save the economy that makes some sense, at least to me. Aside from praying for Congress not to panic, he thinks the government should insure these crappy mortgage bonds, which would give them value they sorely lack now. He also wants to let everyone behind on their mortgages to roll the past due back into their principal and get a fixed rate at six percent. 

All of that seems reasonable, but the last part of the plan is stupid. He wants to abolish the capital gains tax. He says this would give rich people more money to invest in the economy. That's the same horseshit Reagan and Bush shoveled for years as wages stagnated and personal debt skyrocketed. Rich people are rich generally because they don't let the rest of us get our hands on their money. It's true that increased bank deposits and T-bill purchases would help with liquidity for a while, but we would be right back in this mess a few years down the road.

I think Ramsey is right about how irresponsible consumers have been in managing their finances and he often gives his listeners good advice; however, he is wrong about capital gains. The rate is too low and should be raised to the top income tax rates. That would improve the federal government's liquidity and lessen the need to sell T-bills to China and Saudi Arabia to keep the government afloat.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I may be a lapsed news guy, but I do still adhere to the old notions of keeping news seperate from commentary. I do, however, recognize that cable news is a different beast than other news sources. I honestly wouldn't mind Fox News so much if it dropped its "fair and balanced" horseshit branding. Conservatives tune in to hear what they want to hear. Progressives tune in to MSNBC because Rachel and Keith carry their banner. Any intelligent person would admit that.
What I hate is vacillation, much like what you get now on CNN, which can't decide if it wants Fox viewers or MSNBC viewers. It appears that NBC wants the ratings we lefties bring, but not the apparent stigma we have with a certain semi-retired newsreader's friends.

Newt in '12

Once upon time, I was an unpaid intern at CNN's Washington DC bureau. One of my jobs on Saturdays was to wait on guests for The Capital Gang program (hosted by Pat Buchanan, who is actually an incredibly nice man despite his politics). The guest who made the biggest impression on me was Newt Gingrich.
Newtie, as his mom calls him, was still a minority backbencher at the time with a penchant for camera hogging. Being a news junkie, I knew of his work, which consisted of throwing molotov cocktails at the Democratic leadership and trying desperately to pass himself off as an intellectual. I remember him holding court in the green room, giving the most half-assed, comp-lit undergrad assessment of John Wayne that I had ever heard.
A few years later, Newt got his chance to show just how Churchillian he could be. He decided he would be Prime Minister (just like ol' Winston) and use his new Republican majority to invalidate Bill Clinton. Putting on his best defiant-in-the-face-of-the-face-of-the-Luftwaffe pose, he let a funding resolution expire that forced a government shutdown in 1995. He expected Clinton to capitulate to all of his idiotic demands, only to watch ol' Bill laugh his ass off when the American people rose up en masse against Winston Jr.
Then, in 1998, Gingrich took time off from getting blow jobs off secretaries in his car to orchestrate Clinton's impeachment. Bill laughed even harder this time, knowing the Senate would never remove him and watching his polls numbers spike to record highs.
Since leaving the House in disgrace, Newt has published books and given speeches extolling his own Churchillian virtues. He snagged a regular gig as Fox News's pseudo intellectual, sort of like George Will without a bowtie. He wisely passed on running for president this year, not having the money or national organization to get the GOP nomination.
I believe Gingrich was keeping his powder dry for 2012. "Why?" you ask. Well, it turns out Newt was busy behind the scenes lobbying Republicans to vote against the Wall Steet bailout. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told MSNBC this morning that the Republican leadership assured him they had their quota of votes to pass the measure, only to discover Newt was burning up the phone lines trying to sandbag the vote.
Why would Newt care about this vote? Two reasons: 1) voting no on the bailout is great politics for House members, all of whom are up for reelection; 2) It's an issue he can hammer Obama with for the next four years as he travels the country raising money for his nomination fight in 2011-12 against Mitt Romney (forget Palin).
I, for one, am heartened by this development. Obama is every bit as capable as Clinton and appears to be much more of a natural born leader. Newt was in over his head back in 1995 and, from what I can tell, hasn't appreciably changed since. Combine that with the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as a national presence and you have the makings of one King Hell Daddy ass-whuppin' in four years.
I can't wait.

Bailout

Are you looking for info about this whole bailout mess? I can give you the 10 cent version:
Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury want to use at least $700 billion to pump cash back into banks and other domestic and foreign lenders sucking hind tits now because they overpaid for tens of billions of dollars of worthless mortgages. The Dems and GOP haggled, agreed to some token oversight of how the money is spent and I'll-believe-them-when-I-see-them restrictions on executive pay at the firms receiving federal money.
McCain and Obama both support the measure, albeit reluctantly, but that's now academic. The members of the House of Representatives have been flooded with calls from their constituents who oppose the plan. Being fond of their jobs, 227 Congresspersons voted today according to the wishes of voters rather than the lobbyists who feed them blow, hookers and unmarked bills.
To better understand the ramifications of all this, check out Paul Krugman and Barry Ritholtz.

Self-fulfilling

You may not believe this, given the work I have posted in this space, but I used to have great respect for John McCain. I would go so far as to say I may have even voted for him over John Kerry if he were the GOP's candidate in 2004. I didn't agree with his social conservatism, but he always struck me as a fiscal and foreign policy pragmatist. I thought he would have a better chance of getting things done than Kerry because congressional Republicans would be forced to play nice with one of their own.

In the intervening years, the senator from Arizona has really, really showed his ass. His very conscious effort to transform the media into a hallelujah chorus allowed him pander behind the scenes to all of the religious zealots and lobbyists he railed against on his way to national prominence in 2000. He wrote and spoke incessantly about Honor, so much so that he became honorable without having to define what that word means. He was the Political/Media Establishment's perfect man. He shit gold and spit perfect wisdom, or so it seemed.
McCain's efforts paid off handsomely in this presidential election cycle. The aforementioned chorus carried him when his campaign sputtered in late 2007. Republicans eventually realized he was their only candidate with enough stature to beat Hillary Clinton.
Then came Hurricane Obama. This handsome, self-made young man swept onto the national scene and captured the media's attention, taking away the unquestioned adulation that McCain and his supporters expected to carry him to November.
The public wanted someone new, a leader who recognized that the economy is fundamentally fucked and that the occupation of Iraq was a huge mistake; in other words, a candidate who stands for everything McCain doesn't.
So McCain did the only thing he could do: he gave up any pretenses of nobility or honesty and bared his fangs. He picked a self righteous dimwit for his running mate and committed to bald-faced lying on a daily basis. He foresook everything he claimed to believe in.
Johnathan Chait of The New Republic sums it up best:

"The pattern here is perfectly clear. McCain has contempt for anybody who stands between him and the presidency. McCain views himself as the ultimate patriot. He loves his country so much that he cannot let it fall into the hands of an unworthy rival. (They all turn out to be unworthy.) Viewed in this way, doing whatever it takes to win is not an act of selfishness but an act of patriotism. McCain tells lies every day and authorizes lying on his behalf, and he probably knows it. But I would guess--and, again, guessing is all we can do--that in his mind he is acting honorably. As he might put it, there is a bigger truth out there."

In other words, the end justifies the means. McCain likes to call himself a maverick. He used to brag about standing up to clowns like Donald Rumsfeld. In his desperation to win the presidency, he has shown himself to be no better.

I know this is flogging a dead horse, but Tina Fey really owns our VPILF-in-waiting.