Reinventing the Rules

"Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied." - Andrew Sullivan

I wish I had better thoughts about the GOP than Sullivan's, but I don't. What can you say about the House Republicans who have committed to shutting down the whole game because they don't approve of a new rule? It's embarrassing for them and the shutdown as a whole is embarrassing for the entire US government. 

Like every law, the ACA can be debated, tweaked, assessed, and changed as truths come to light during the rollout and impact of the law. So why doesn't the Republican party make this their focus? Instead they claim democrats are not willing to negotiate on the issue. But this assumes negotiation should take place on this issue at this point in time. On his show last night, Jon Stewart rightly pointed out that the debate over this was already held. There is no gap to bridge. Stewart further mocked the ridiculous talking point on the right that Obama should be as flexible with the opposition party as he is with the Russians and Iranians. If Obama can make a deal with the Russians and be heading toward something/anything resembling a peaceful resolution/way forward with Iran, but can't seem to move forward with House Republicans, then it does not reflect poorly on him, but on the GOP. 

I would love for the GOP to develop some sort of constructive criticism of the ACA, which they find so abhorrent, but that criticism does not exist. There is only vague reference to a law and how it spells doom for the economy, the US government, and the American way of life, but without providing any proof of the latter even happening or the two being connected. 

A Feature, Not a Bug

I am an avid watcher of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. While I truly enjoyed John Oliver’s stint as the host of TDS this summer, I am thankful to have Jon Stewart back as host. He can, at times, deliver the most powerful critiques of our media, especially of the 24-hour cable news networks, and the critique he delivered on his Tuesday, September 17th show, was one of the best I have seen. Below is a money quote and the aforementioned portion of the show.

“So my final, not initial, conclusion is: This is deliberate. The chaos, the vomit onto the screen, the very thing we thought news organizations were created to clarify, is a feature, not a bug.”

The Dictator on The Daily Show

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SoTU Thoughts

Firstly, the State of the Union always seems too long. I suggest future presidents shorten them by taking out puffy, wasteful phrases, which do not tell us anything about the direction of the country and the current administration’s plans.

Obama’s speech was moderate. For those looking for words about gun control, disappointingly moderate. I would classify myself as being disappointed with the speech in this regard. After the shooting in Tucson, the State of the Union would have been an appropriate time to suggest the tightening of gun laws and regulating the industry as much as the toy industry. A simple suggestion of reinstating the assault weapons ban or suggesting there is no need for a Glock to hold 20 plus rounds would have been good enough, but Obama ignored the issue. He, like many Dems, is afraid of the gun lobby and what they can do to future election prospects. I think, if positioned confidently, a suggestion to make it harder for people to buy a gun would be widely accepted. A gun gives anyone the power to kill. I don’t understand why, in America, that power is so easy to come by.

The unique seating arrangement, which the media made a huge deal about in the days leading up to the speech, made for more interesting TV, but it was only an artificial show of unity between the two parties. I am sure the next day leading politicians in both parties went back to pointing the finger across the aisle. Either way, I think it should be required for politicians in one party to be seated with their opposing politicians. It is wishful thinking, but maybe the forced amalgamation of the two parties would start to be something greater than a show.

The Republican response was as expected. Let me paraphrase: The country is screwed if you and I, the decent Americans in this country, don’t stop Obama before it is too late. We will overcome this deficit by never asking for you or your company to give more money to the government than you currently do. Even though we have an unsustainable budget, what we need is not more money. We need to cut spending where we can, but overlook the biggest military and defense spending in the world. And raising taxes on households that make more than $250,000 a year would be too big of a burden for those homes to bear. Paraphrase over. Really, this response came as no surprise.

Did I watch the Tea Party response? Hell no, but I did see clips of its awfulness. Michelle Bachman didn’t look at the camera and it looked like her whole face had been injected with botox just a couple minutes before she stepped in front of the camera.

A couple highlights for me:

Watching Boehner fighting back the tears when Obama congratulated him, twice, at the beginning and end of his speech.

The teacher, Kathy Proctor, who was mentioned in the speech, turning to people on either side of her and saying, “That’s me.” The Daily Show did a hilarious couple minutes about this last Wednesday.

Old, White Books

I freaking love Costco. Not everything on the shelves is a steal, but their books always are. Actually, the books are priced so low I feel guilty buying them. What, Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory for $9.84?!? I couldn't pass that up. I felt like I was stealing it for that price. Thanks, Jon. If you leave me your address I will send you a few more bucks in the mail. The guilt I feel from buying a book for that cheap does do its job. I have only bought three books at Costco since I became a lifelong member a couple of years ago.

It doesn’t matter whether I am going to Costco for two two-liter jugs of olive oil or for an 8 lb. bag of frozen strawberries, I will always peruse through the limited and seemingly illegally priced books. Today, I noticed with glee that Jon Stewart’s Earth (currently #1 on Amazon.com) was prominently featured at the end of the book display. I didn’t buy it, not for $15.94, or something like that. All I know is that it was marked at least ten dollars below the MSRP. Anyway, I walk over to the display and lay my hands on Earth. I stand there and flip through the book for a good ten minutes, reading paragraphs here and there and even eyeing a picture of a three-breasted woman (as seen in Total Recall) and deciding, once and for all, I much prefer two.

While I am looking through the book, I notice the two other books placed at the end of the table, Bill O’Reilly’s Pinheads and Patriots (currently #40 on Amazon.com) and David Limbaugh’s (yes, that Limbaugh’s brother) laughably titled Crimes Against Liberty (currently #35 on Amazon.com). Seriously, all I can do when seeing a book like Crimes Against Liberty is laugh. I can’t even open it up. That would be giving it an honor it doesn’t deserve.

When I first ventured into Costco as a member, I noticed right away, without surprise, that the majority of their political books are from conservative authors. So, it was, also without surprise, that when I stood there, looking at Earth, only one other person picked up the book to look at it while a number of Pinheads and Patriots were thrown into shopping carts and one copy of Crimes Against Liberty was toted off. As I watched pinhead, err shopper after shopper step up to the mountain of right-wing books I couldn’t help but notice a stereotype being strongly reinforced. The buyers were all older, white males who looked grumpy and gazed upon O’Reilly’s latest like it was the Bible…every single one of them. Were they also looking at me and feeling like a stereotype was being strongly reinforced? Young, white male in shorts and flip-flops who is jobless and who is probably going to go smoke a bowl after this and then maybe come back a couple hours from now for some free samples because he has got the munchies.

Will I become like them? I hope not. And as O’Reilly’s book continued to find its way into the shopping carts of octogenarians, I walked out of Costco empty-handed, went home, made lunch and special brownies…I kid, I kid…and readied for work tomorrow.

The Party of No

Brilliant TV. The Daily Show on Hawaiian health care.

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40 Years Out From The Moon

Jon Stewart just had a great spot about the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing. You should be able to find it here. It was the first segment of the show. It should be easy to find.

I thought it was a poignant segment because the moon landing has always seemed drastically overrated. Don’t freak out, I understand that America was concerned that if the Russians landed on the moon first, they would use it to possibly attack America. I understand the symbolism of Americans and human beings landing on the moon. However, the moon landing’s importance is diminished in my view by what we have or have not done with our capability to travel there.

In his show tonight, Stewart mocked trips to the moon for golfing and driving. While landing on the moon is admirable, it is hard to see what we have done there since as anything close to admirable. Maybe that doesn’t make sense or it sounds willfully ignorant. Just watch the clip of the show. It makes a lot more sense.

Potato Day...Really?

Watch Baracknophopbia - Obey. So on.

The Dow Doesn't Know All

A gem from last night's show. 

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Town Hall Debate

Live-blogging the VP debate was a first for me. It is something the pros do quite often and I thought I would try to emulate them and possibly disguise myself as a pro blogger. Anyway, as you can see below, there was no live-blogging for the presidential debate the other night. I was busy that night, but I did record the debate on my sleek VCR and finished watching it last night.

I quickly get bored when the debaters dive into Washingtonian and their round about way of speaking far beyond the time limit, but not really answering the questions. There was a lot of that Tuesday night from both candidates. This seemed to be the pattern of the debate. The question is asked. McCain speaks first, offering one to three sentences throughout his speech that sort of answer the question. Obama gets a chance to respond, also offering one to three sentences, and then getting interrupted by Brokaw because he is talking too long. Might I add, Brokaw's persistent mentioning of the answer time limits did get a little annoying. I say, let the candidates answer the question and hack it out for a healthy amount of time. What is two minutes?

Anyway, in a debate like this, where questions aren't really being answered, the candidates use the question as a catalyst to launch them into some aspect of their platform. There is a lot to judge, but I am not necessarily judging a candidate's answer, but what they spend their time talking about. With that said, I thought Obama spoke eloquently about where he wants to lead America and how he will lead America. McCain did this as well, but since McCain maintains that he and his running mate are the ticket for the average American, then he needs to be able to relate to them in a debate like this and he didn't. This is somewhat ironic because all afternoon the news networks touted his skills in town-hall style debates, but McCain seemed uneasy in this format with Obama. He was nervously wandering around the stage, barely making eye contact with Obama and referring to Obama as "that one" during one point in the debate (I don't believe McCain's use of "that one" was at all a racially charged comment, as some have suggested, but it was definitely a poor choice of words).

One thing that I love about the way the Obama campaign operates is their relatively clean campaign strategy. I was disappointed earlier this week when the campaign rolled out a criticism against McCain for his role in the Keating Five. Although that is an important part of McCain's political career, discussion of that old scandal is not going to move the country forward. Anyway, since McCain has been going with spectacularly dirty attacks for about a week now I think those attacks reserved Obama the right to bring up McCain's "Bomb, bomb, Iran" and "Next up, Baghdad" quotes in the middle of the debate. Admittedly, I was laughing out loud when Obama did this because that is a funny attack, but also because it is entertaining to hear attacks like that from Obama because truly, it seems to go against his character.

Many questions posed to the candidates dealt with the country's biggest struggles: the economic crisis, the war in Iraq, successfully capturing/killing Osama Bin Laden, Social Security and health care reform. And throughout the whole debate, McCain was saying he had the solutions to all these crises. He wouldn't necessarily explain how he would solve them, but would just offer something up like this on finding Bin Laden:

"I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I'll get him. I know how to get him. I'll get him no matter what and I know how to do it."

I know McCain cares about solving these issues, but since he has all these magical solutions to the country's biggest problems he should share them with the current president. What the hell are you waiting for McCain?

The Daily Show also picked up on this last night in their debate analysis. I post the whole video because it is all great, but they touch upon the all-knowing McCain at the very end.

Hilarious