1979: Best TV Year Ever

I've always been a fan of the 1970's culture, the bizarre fashion, and the incredible rock that came out of that era (Zeppelin, Eagles, Van Halen, Floyd). If you aren't a child of the 70's, you probably wouldn't understand. I was 11 years old in 1979, otherwise known as the best year ever for TV if you were an American kid at that time.

For those who weren't there, let me review. In January of 1979 the Dukes of Hazzard premiered. Fast cars jumping impossible obstacles, Daisy Duke in cutoffs, and Rosco P. Coltrane (say it with the accent on the "P"). What more could a boy ask for? Dialog and plot were irrelevant, my younger brother and I just wanted to drive that orange Dodge Charger and holler "yee-haw" at the top of our lungs. For the girls there was the tall blonde and uncomplicated brother Bo Duke, and the dark-haired cerebral brother Luke Duke. They were like a boy band of two designed purely for marketing purposes, only without the music. The show ran for 7 seasons, spawned a brief spinoff series Enos, two TV movies, and a theatrical remake in 2005. Most people don't know that Dukes was actually based on a 1975 movie called Moonrunners, complete with Waylon Jennings.

Also debuting in 1979 was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. This was a cheesy ripoff of the Star Wars phenomenon, but we didn't care initially. It had spaceships flying and fighting, Erin Gray in tight jumpsuits, and weird aliens. Okay, so Twiki was a very lame attempt to do what R2-D2 did for the George Lucas franchise. Unfortunately, the show quickly degenerated in the second season because the writing got weaker; as I recall my brother and I gave up when they tried to introduce a little blue creature who was obviously Yoda-lite.

There were two towering shows already on the schedule in 1979: The Incredible Hulk and Battlestar Galactica. The Hulk was actually a somewhat poignant adaptation of the comic book, it certainly took itself more seriously than any of the other shows I review here. I used to feel sorry for the Banner character when he had to leave town at the end of each episode, hitchhiking on some lonely road. He was like a lost dog that any kid would want to rescue, "Mom, can we keep the Hulk in our house?" They had a two episode plot where guest star Mariette Hartley was Banner's terminally ill love interest. He tries in vain to save her with his knowledge and special blood chemistry. Heavy stuff.

The short-lived Galactica was the pinnacle of kidTV. Battlestar Galactica arrived in the fall of 1978, and like Buck Rogers it was designed to capitalize on the earlier success of Star Wars. Unlike Buck Rogers, Galactica had Star Wars-quality special effects because the same guy (John Dykstra) did the model work. It also had a more substantial background plot, bigger budget and better feathered haircuts. I can remember that it was imperative for me to catch every episode. Unfortunately the show was such a good imitation, George Lucas sued the producer for infringement and the series collapsed after just one season under the weight of the budgets necessary to do the special effects. 24 years later it spawned a revival on the Sci-Fi cable network, first as a miniseries, followed by 4 seasons of excellent science fiction. The new show is to my adult self as the original was to my 11 year-old self.

Today network TV has degenerated to the point where I hardly watch any shows regularly. Ironically, the best show on this past summer was Swingtown, a show about the 70's. These days I usually rent cable shows on DVD.

Vermont Part II: To The Moon!

One of the announcements the week we visited Vermont was from Democrat Gaye Symington, candidate for Governor in the fall election. She made the bold declaration that her administration would push the use of wind power from 0.2% to 20% of the state's total energy in 10 years.

This sounds familiar. First, there was Al Gore speaking in Washington D.C. July 17th:

I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources within 10 years

Gore was primarily talking about wind, solar and geothermal energy sources according to sources at his nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection. More recently, Barack Obama made the following challenge at the Democratic National Convention in Denver:

For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: in 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Everyone thinks they're JFK launching us on another moon mission. Enough already! What do all these statements have in common? Answer: they are ill-conceived and unnecessary environmental posturing in the face of a real energy crisis. Nobody seems to have mentioned to Gore or Symington the simple fact that wind and solar energy both require some measure of backup, because they are not reliably continuous sources of energy. A single cloudy or windless day can mean that the utility company must reconfigure the electric grid to supply the missing power from another site.

The scale of the conversion necessary to fulfill each challenge is lost on these Democrats. Clearly none of them have scientific or technical backgrounds. We should strive to achieve change, but we should set reasonable goals for ourselves. A consultation with the experts on energy might yield a reality check, see Making Gore's Switch Isn't Quite So Simple in yesterday's Washington Post.

Tellingly, Gore and Symington both ignore nuclear power, which is perhaps the only currently available technology for generating power in sufficient quantity without carbon emissions. Obama mentions nuclear power in a strange way, after listing natural gas and clean coal he says he'll "find ways to safely harness nuclear power." Safely harness? Is he reassuring nutty environmentalists or does he really believe that nuclear power plants are somehow unsafe?

Manu!

In light of the news that Spurs guard Manu Ginobili will have ankle surgery, I dug up this golden oldie.

Vermont Part I

I took the family to Vermont for a week at the beginning of August. Vermont is always a source of political entertainment for me, with it's granola left-wing nutjobs. Despite being the land of my youth, I share no common ground ideologically with most of them.

The headline in the Burlington Free Press the weekend we arrived was "Lesbian Bigamy." A spat between a college professor and her former lover had turned sour. Vermont was one of the first states to offer civil unions, but now it's facing all the sticky questions that come with that legal designation. I'm actually in favor of legal equality for gays, I think it's only fair to offer civil unions if the state offers benefits to heterosexual couples. The U.S. offers some legal reciprocity to married heterosexuals, i.e. if you're married in Connecticut it must also be legally recognized in other states. This protection does not yet apply in cases of homosexual unions. In the case at hand the women were married in Canada (which has gay marriage), but after they split one moved to Vermont and entered into a civil union without first seeking a divorce.

The case highlights the willingness of a lesbian to take advantage of the benefits of marriage when it is convenient, but drop the legal designation in a flash when it no longer suits her. At least one lawyer interviewed in the article agreed that it probably was bigamy. Still, authorities were reluctant to prosecute it because the "gay" part of the equation was precedent setting.

Green Posturing

The mayor of Denver has challenged the organizers of the 2008 Democratic National Convention to "make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet." The Wall Street Journal reported that they've hired environmental activist Andrea Robinson as Director of Greening. How does one become an activist for a living anyway? Is that really a valid career, going around to protest rallies and writing angry letters to politicians? I digress...

The WSJ article contains alot of gems, like the litany of liberal interest groups each making demands that ultimately over-constrain the problem:

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: "That just doesn't exist."

This is absurd on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. There is no logic to the position that trading with other countries, or products made by non-union labor, or cotton that is grown with modern farming techniques are bad for us as a society. I look at this and wonder if the Dems wish that the miracle of the industrial age (enabling the dramatic rise in living standards we enjoy today) never happened. Economics says that competition, another name for trade, forces improvements in productivity, which in turn reduces costs for everyone. Unions, nationalism, and unfounded superstitions about agricultural technology are all antithetical to those goals.

Speaking of agriculture, the real kicker was the description of the catering guidelines:

No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white." (Garnishes don't count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation.

The rainbow food claim sounds like typical new age unscientific garbage. It may be good for culinary artistry, but I doubt that color has any correlation with nutrition. A pile of gray sunflower seeds can pack some vitamins and other essentials, can't it?

The second claim about local food is a common meme going around in enviromental circles these days. It's adherents even have a name: localvores. Trouble is, the idea that local food uses less fuel during transport is actually wrong in most cases. The Boston Globe had an article in 2007 explaining the details:

Judged by unit of weight, ship and rail transport in particular are highly energy efficient. Financial considerations force shippers to pack as much as they can into their cargo containers, whether they're being carried by ship, rail, or truck, and to ensure that they rarely make a return trip empty. And because of their size, container ships and trains enjoy impressive economies of scale. The marginal extra energy it takes to transport a single bunch of bananas packed in with 60,000 tons of other cargo on a container ship is more than an order of magnitude less than that required to move them with a couple hundred pounds of cargo in a car or small truck.

"Local food systems are often built around small-scale logistics," says Chris Foster, a research fellow at England's Manchester Business School and co-author of a December 2006 study on the environmental impacts of food production and consumption commissioned for Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. "You begin to make more trips in cars. More food is shifted around in small trucks and vans, which are relatively energy-inefficient ways of moving."

Democrats and Deficits

John McCain undoubtedly bites off more than he can chew when he promises to balance the federal budget. He is a champion for fighting earmarks and pork, but those amount to a tiny sliver of the budget pie. The real budget meat is in the entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and other transfer programs that currently amount to more than half of the total spending per year. Even if he is successful in forging a compromise fix for Social Security, it is unlikely to shrink.



Meanwhile the Democrats have done an about-face on deficits this election year, and nobody seems to notice. For most of George W. Bush's reign, the Democratic minority in Congress were deficit hawks. They complained incessantly about the supposed squandering of the Clinton surpluses, and held press conferences touting "record deficit" numbers (fiscally irresponsible, but not close to record if you adjust for inflation). Now that they're the majority party in Congress and Obama is the frontrunner, suddenly deficits don't matter at all. Asked about McCain's balanced budget pledge, Obama said:

"I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families"

Note the weasel word he uses, investment. How did we go from Bush deficits being terrible to deficit spending = investment? It's simple, Democratic overspending is good, Republican overspending is bad. Libertarian Steve Chapman takes both sides to task for the coming fiscal disaster. The scariest part is that if the Dems control both the Whitehouse and Congress, the new spending burden will likely be much worse than if control is divided. Chapman notes:

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation added up all the promises made by the two candidates and found that McCain's would cost taxpayers an extra $68 billion a year. Obama's add up to $344 billion a year.

Please Do Piss on the Third Rail

I was not particularly impressed when John McCain said he'd balance the federal budget in 4 years. I think that such a goal is pure fantasy, especially with a Democratic Congress. Many analysts and observers agreed, noting that McCain's own numbers just don't add up. Still, I give him credit for trying. He has his heart in the right place: control spending! Maybe he should throw the Dems a bone and compromise on retiring the Bush tax cuts in exchange for tough cuts on the spending side. Of course that's really only something he could do as President, after winning the election.

I was stunned when he dared touch the third rail of politics a few days later, in Denver July 7th. McCain was roundly criticized by the lefty blogosphere for boldly declaring the impending Social Security crisis "a disgrace." The liberal nuts went insane, he muddied their sacred government cow. Matthew Yglesias called it "peeing on the third rail." The comments sections were flooded with the usual claims that Social Security has no real fiscal shortfall. This issue is the Dem equivalent of Global Warming denial: the science is all against them. The Trustees of Social Security themselves, actuaries with pocket protectors, publish a detailed report projecting demographic trends and resulting revenue versus spending. It says the program is in trouble. What's more, Obama believes there is fiscal imbalance. Why would he propose eliminating the payroll tax cap of $102000 if there were no need for higher revenue?

McCain was asked to clarify. Young people, he said, "are paying so much that they are paying into a system that they won't receive benefits from on its present track that its on, that's the point." Here is a courageous politician, willing to take on an issue that burned George W. Bush just 3 years ago. Anyone under the age of 40 should think long and hard about that. We pay more than 12% of our paycheck to FICA, yet the funds don't legally belong to us. The money is not in an account, it doesn't accrue interest or grow, and it can be redefined by Congress on a whim. In all likelyhood, future benefits for today's workers will be 75% of current benefits or less, and we will be forced to work years longer until retirement.

Note that McCain was not even proposing private accounts as the solution, that was D.O.A. for Bush in 2005. His very reasonable, politically moderate full response reads:

"Now, how do you fix it? Now, how do you fix it? You fix it by reaching across the aisle, and you say to the Democrats, 'Sit down with me at the table. Sit down with me, the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did the last time that Social Security was in deep trouble, and that was way back in 1983.'"

Zoom! Pow!

I'm part of the generation that grew up with Looney Toons on every Saturday morning. My brothers and I would wake up before our parents, and go downstairs to the T.V. room to watch Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian and other classics. We loved other cartoons too, like the old Tom & Jerry ones, the Superfriends (kinda lame, I know), and Deputy Dawg to name a few. I never knew that these would make a lasting impression on me, but they did.

Now that I'm a father, I'm embarrassed to admit that I find myself making cartoon sound effects whenever I play with my kids. When I pick up the baby, there's always an accompanying "zoom!!" or other rocket-like soundbite. With our older daughter, I often "fly" her around in my arms, then set her down with a final "pow," as if she landed on the ground like a superhero with cracks radiating across the dirt away from the spot. All of this is in my mind, like some weirdly involuntary cartoon being played parallel to my real life. When I playfully tickle the girls, I can't help but provide a soundtrack "beep! BEEP! toot toot!"

I know that this must be cultural. I can't imagine that fathers back in 1840 used to do this. "Zoink!"

It Be Not Right

The Times-Dispatch had a Sunday column a couple weeks ago defending Jeremiah Wright, so of course I had to read it. I dislike Wright and his race-hustling contemporaries like Jesse Jackson. The author, Mark C. Hopson has this biographical info:

Mark C. Hopson teaches in the Department of Communication at George Mason University. He is completing a book entitled "The Talking Drum: Exploring the Role of Critical Memory in Intercultural Communication."

The larger point in the article seems to be that we should be sensitive to cultural minorities, this is a view I largely agree with. But being an academic, Hopson tries too hard to tie his defense of Wright into some larger context of language and clashing cultures. The real zinger was this:

Linguist Geneva Smitherman found that such stereotypes hinder the educational process for children. For example, a black child might be called "deficient" for using the phrase, "It be hot in here." But Smitherman and others recognize the interactivity of "be" as perpetually and concurrently encompassing the past, present, and future tense. Thus, "It be hot in here," indicates that it was hot yesterday, it is hot today, and undoubtedly it will be hot tomorrow. Three dimensions of time spoken in one simple word: Is this a deficiency, or a distinct rhetorical artifice? Perhaps it is time to re-present language and culture in our North American school systems.

Is this revisiting Ebonics? I'm all for admitting that language is dynamic, obviously, since Americans don't speak Elizabethan english these days. I freely admit that my diction is not perfect, and I'm sure you'll find some grammatical errors in this blog. But should schools really teach improper grammar to boost a minority's self-esteem? Barack Obama seems to speak the language relatively well.

The Character of a Great Man

There was a retrospective piece on John McCain earlier this month over on Slate, The Great McCain Story You've Probably Forgotten. This political season, it seems that people are looking for a President who can work across party lines, one that respects the other side and can transcend partisanship. Barack Obama has frequently claimed that mantle, but how do we reliably identify such a rare breed of politician when we see them? History has shown that we certainly can't trust what they say. When George W. Bush campaigned in 2000, he claimed famously to be "a uniter, not a divider." Look where that got us.

I think that there are three things to look for in identifying a true bipartisan who governs with principles rather than ideology:

1. Bipartisan legislative achievements
2. Key differences with the party base on some major issues
3. Strong friendships across party lines

McCain has worked on a number of bipartisan bills and cooperative efforts, such as McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and the "Gang of 14" to name a few. He also holds positions on immigration, global warming, campaign financing and the religious right that contradict Republican orthodoxy. In fact, idealogical extremists on the right like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity see John McCain as a traitor because of these views. Finally, it is well known that Senator McCain has a close friendship with independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, with whom he has sponsored many climate change bills.

All of this is fine, but what kind of man is he? I know the answer to that after I read about his friendship with Democrat Mo Udall, the senior Arizona congressman who took McCain under his wing. The Slate article highlights a profile written in 1997, years before McCain first ran for President. Udall was dying with Parkinson's disease in a veterans hospital:

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain.

Rumsfelded

We've all heard the term "to Bork" someone, a verb meaning to malign a person with the intent of denying a promotion or title, particularly with respect to a political appointment. The term comes from Robert Bork, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 by President Reagan. His nomination was contentious from the start, and ultimately he was voted down by the Senate after Democrats and civil liberties groups united to smear his reputation.

Few words derived from political surnames have entered the vernacular. Bork is perhaps the most widely used example. The next most popular must certainly be "Clintonian", meaning charismatic yet slippery, or a convenient parsing of language for personal gain, among others. That such terms are so rare makes them all the more unique and worthy of study.

Now David Brooks has freshly coined the term "Rumsfelded" on the PBS Newshour, referring to Hillary Clinton's dismissal of Mark Penn from her campaign:

I think the basic momentum of this race on the Democratic side is Obama going along smoothly, really no problems, continued potholes for the Clinton campaign. Mark Penn was fired, or pushed out, or "Rumsfelded" out.

Brooks defined the new verb as "Slightly pushed out, much too late, that sort of thing." I'd like to add some new words to the dictionary myself:

• Goreified - greatly exaggerated for environmental hysteria purposes
  
• Kerryness - lacking human qualities; resembling the undead
  
• Krugmanosticate - repeatedly predicting doom despite evidence to the contrary
• Obamatopoeia - naming an action using only empty soundbites containing "hope" and "change"
  

Useful Infidels

What's wrong with this picture?


For those who don't know, this is recently deceased al-Qaeda commander Abu Ubaida al-Masri, who is believed to have helped plan the 2005 subway attacks in London. He was a terrorist. He hated westerners so much that he spent much of his time planning coordinated attacks like the London one, and the failed attempt in 2006 to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners.

So why is he using a Bluetooth cellphone headset? That little miracle of technology would not exist were it not for the coordinated efforts of American universities, European engineers and Asian manufacturing expertise. It is a shining example of the wonders of economic and intellectual cooperation, a tribute to people who build useful things and seek to move humanity forward. It certainly was not created by bearded thugs living in the remote mountains of Pakistan.

One wonders what these guys think when they order their handsets, iPods and satellite dishes from Amazon.com. Do they curse at Microsoft Word when it mangles the HTML of their latest anti-American rant? Do they even notice the irony?

Selling Grandma Out

Christopher Hitchens is a keen observer and formidable commentator. Last week, following the uproar over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke of his grandmother having "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." Hitchens, in typical dry humor, writes:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily.

Obama's grandmother is now 85. I confess that I mused about what that phone call from the campaign trail might have been like. "Hi Grandma, how are you? Listen, tomorrow I'm giving a speech and you're in it. Yeah, isn't that great? Oh, hey I'm going to imply you are just a tiny bit racist, but just ignore it. When I'm President I'll buy you some knitting supplies and a bigger scooter. Love Ya!"

Jesus, MLK and the Rev. Wright

Oh boy, another post on race. On Monday, Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Michael Paul Williams tackled the controversy over Obama's ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright, and actually had the balls to equate Wright to Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. I'm pretty sure that Jesus and MLK preached unity and love for people of all races, while Wright was consumed by hatred and bile. Michael Paul Williams is the T-D's voice of the African-American community, and I occasionally read him to gain some insight on that perspective, but this time I'm floored.

I'm left wondering why it's necessary for one man to have to explain or defend another man's words -- particularly a man most of us hadn't heard of until recently.

Why? We hold candidates for President, the highest office in the country, to a higher standard. We vet them thoroughly, and in this case "another man" happened to be a close spiritual adviser. I agree that Obama has handled the issue well, but don't think that the attention was unwarranted. I wonder if Williams and other African-Americans would be so forgiving if it were found that Bush or Cheney attended a church for the past 20 years that preached wild conspiracy theories about minorities?

America, for so long, denied black Americans fundamental rights. We have made enormous progress. But it appears some people still balk at hearing our anger and reject certain ugly truths about our nation.

Tactically slather on the liberal guilt, then try to claim that Wright was just preaching alternate truths. I'm not buying it. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to criticize policy, fight for a bigger voice in government, and expose the corruption and racism that still exist. I don't think it is acceptable to peddle divisive theories with no basis in fact, like the "HIV was invented by the government" doozy. My family is Catholic, and if I ever hear our priest spew such lazy internet garbage my children will no longer attend that church.

Minority Report

Via Marginal Revolution, Economists Decode Rational Behaviors of Black Women. The article summarizes the recent work of economists Tim Harford (the Undercover Economist), Kerwin Kofi Charles and A. Scott Cunningham on African-American marriage markets and related social consequences. It is a well established fact that African-Americans have experienced a disintegration of the family unit and alarmingly high rates of non-marital births (70%). I've always been interested in this topic, and to many conservatives it would seem to serve as a moral bellwether for society in general. The beginning of this article suggests the root cause is not a moral one:

For policy makers and society in general, who are indoctrinated to believe Black out-of-wedlock births, low marriage rates and single-parent households with all the attendant social ills are a result of a lack of morals entrenched in Black culture, Harford has given a logical explanation: "Marriage markets" where there are large numbers of Black men in prison significantly reduce the lifetime chances of marriage among Black women.

The issue is certainly not new. I did some background reading and found that it had been studied as early as 1965, when sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action". The subject was racially controversial even then. Moynihan went on to become a prominent and respected Democratic Senator. In the past four decades, academics have pondered a number of theories about the destructive shift in African-American family structure:

• women entering the workforce, allowing greater independence
  
• declining work opportunities for African-American males
• expanded welfare programs offering alternative support
• the sexual revolution

Today there is no consensus on any of these theories or their moral implications. The newest thesis advanced by Harford and Cunningham, that the soaring number of incarcerated black men plays a key role, suggests that there is a moral component:

Harford posits Black men who see the competition behind bars have no incentive to marry. The sex imbalance caused by imprisonment allows Black men who are not in jail to enjoy themselves sexually without getting married.

Cunningham explores "the relative shortage of men in Black communities, created largely by the high rates of Black male incarceration." Cunningham hypothesizes "that these high 'sex ratios' allows for men with tastes for sexual diversity to form concurrent partnerships, as well as affects on their condom use.

The rate of imprisonment causes scarcity of marriageable males, which tilts bargaining power heavily in favor of the remaining pool of men, encouraging promiscuity and other risky sexual behavior, which raises STD rates and non-marital births. After reading this, my thought was to ask if there are other subpopulations where this behavior has been observed? One that immediately came to mind were the post-WWII populations in Germany and Japan. Surely they had lost significant percentages of men in their prime. Did cultural or moral restrictions change the outcome, or were they not analogous in some other way?

Superdelicate & Undemocratic

Many Obama supporters would like to rewrite the Democratic party rules. Their candidate holds a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton in the delegate count at this point, so they look to the superdelegates to simply affirm the voice of the people. This self-serving spin on the issue is understandable, but if the superdelegates are to be constrained in this manner they could logically be removed from the equation entirely. Their whole reason for existence would be null and void, and they most certainly would not be super.

In fact, the rules the Democrats adopted were expressly designed to inject a non-democratic element into the selection process. At some point in the early 1980's the Democrats designed a formula that awarded 20% of the vote to party bigwigs, thinking that they would help guide the nomination with their superior vision of the long-term goals. It was supposed to avoid another nasty convention battle like the one that erupted in Chicago in 1968. Of course, they did not have better luck in the Eighties, nominating spectacular losers like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

The Democrats seem to be headed for yet another trainwreck in 2008. The vote is a matter of some delicacy for the superdelegates, who would need a compelling reason to overturn popular opinion on the matter, lest they anger the supporters of the losing candidate. Still, they are not bound to the democratic result by any law. Dr Stanley Fish blogged about the issue recently at the NYTimes. The next time an Obamamaniac complains about "undemocratic" rules, whip this list out:

Anti-democratic elements are everywhere in our political system. The presidential veto is undemocratic. The rules governing filibusters and the closing off of debate are undemocratic. The procedural devices by means of which floor leaders or committee chairmen can prevent issues from coming to a vote are undemocratic. The fact that Rhode Island and California have two senators each is undemocratic. The appointment of senators by governors in the wake of a death or a resignation is undemocratic. The presidential line of succession is undemocratic. The fact that a vice president who has not been elected to the senate presides over it and can cast a deciding vote is undemocratic. Judicial review – the practice by which the Supreme Court invalidates laws passed by the people’s representatives – is undemocratic.

Oil Honesty

John McCain was interviewed by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes Sunday:

"What do you do for the person who just saw gasoline go from three and a quarter to three fifty on its way to $4?" Pelley asked.

"I would love to tell you that I have an immediate answer for that. And I don't. The only way we are going to fix it is to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. We've got to have a crash program, a all out effort," McCain said. "But, I can't give you straight talk and tell you that tomorrow I can change the price of a gallon of gas."

An honest man in Washington! Compare and contrast this with Hillary Clinton.

Oil Entitlement

Hillary Clinton was stumping in Hattiesburg, Mississippi recently. Here is an excerpt:

"Oil hit a $104 a barrel," said Sen. Clinton. "The president said 'I sure wish they'd drop the price' and they said 'No, we won't, Mr. President.' And he said he was disappointed."

Sen. Clinton continued, "I've got to tell you you won't see me holding hands with the Saudis. You'll see me holding them accountable for what they do to the oil price and to our country."

Hold them accountable. Uh, actually Canada supplies more oil than Saudi Arabia, and neither is close to cornering the U.S. import market. Do Democrats actually believe this conspiracy stuff? Oil is a fungible commodity, and the price is set by a world market. Hillary and Obama both lamented the Bush administration's lack of tact on foreign policy. Now, it seems she's saying that we should twist arms to manipulate the outcome of free market trade in our favor.

I'm seeing a pattern here. Democrats think that the solution to everything is a new entitlement. Need healthcare? By golly, government will give it to you. Wages too low? We'll just pass a law saying you get a "living wage." Oil too expensive? Government will make it cheaper by dictating to those dastardly foreigners! No thought is given to the fact that all of these are economic exchanges, people trading goods and services for mutual gain. Strong-arming the Saudis isn't going to change anything. The world oil supply cannot be changed much by an angry woman in the Whitehouse. In the long run, oil demand driven by growth in China, India and all parts of the world will continue to rise.

Code Monkey Getting Old

Several months ago I ran across a blog rant titled "Why a career in computer programming sucks" by an aging CS geek. While I don't agree with some of his points, I found that the kernel of his first paragraph really held some truth:

Computer programming is a job that’s heavily dependent on temporary knowledge capital. It’s temporary because the powers that be keep changing the languages and tools that programmers need to do their jobs. In nearly all other professions, knowledge capital increases as you grow older because you keep learning more about your field. But in computer programming, the old knowledge becomes completely obsolete and useless.

I've been in CS for more than 11 years now, and every time I've changed jobs I found myself scrambling to learn new tools, operating systems, and libraries. This is despite the fact that I've intentionally steered my career choices within the narrow bounds of computational science and engineering on Unix, using C and C++ as my languages of preference. I started out developing on little purple and blue Irix workstations, but when SGI execs flew their company into the ground I migrated to Sun. On both of those systems I eventually became proficient enough to assist in system administration, as well as Rational Clearcase administration.

In my next job much of that knowledge was useless, and I had to quickly learn Redhat Linux, CVS and a variety of obscure cluster utilities. Suddenly, the code I wrote was now Perl, not C++. Today I'm still using Linux, but it's Fedora. Patchadd became Up2date, which became Yum. The clusters I use have completely different queuing utilities, so I'm starting from scratch again. I'm back writing C++ but it's Visual Studio on Windows XP. Raw OpenGL has given way to OpenSceneGraph. Motif GUIs are obsolete, so I use FLTK or another cross-platform toolkit these days. You get the picture.

My jobs have all been interesting and I like to learn, but sometimes I wonder how many more of these paradigm shifts I can weather. Will I be able to pick up C-Plus-Plus-Cubed when I'm 49? Even though some of these technologies are similar, i.e. flavors of Unix like Linux/Solaris/Irix share many common commands, it's the last 10% (the patch administration, dark corners of the software development tools, and system libraries) that takes a couple years to master. My Dad is a Mechanical Engineer. He is 70 and he still uses the same solid mechanics equations and techniques that he learned in 1960.

The author tries to score a few more hits on the CS profession, but most of these fall flat:

• Low prestige - I don't care about prestige, my pay has been relatively good and the engineers and other coworkers have generally treated me respectfully. I've accepted that I'm a nerd.
• Outsourcing - Outsourcing and economic competition are a fact of life in the global economy, especially for ethereal quantities like software. Get a security clearance, defense-related software development cannot be outsourced.
• Project management sucks too - Yes, but somebody has to do it. This is certainly not limited to software or IT projects.
  
• Working conditions - Not that bad. I've had some pretty good (albeit shared) offices. I also generally get to order my own workstations with custom hardware.
  

The final recommendation compares the lowly IT position unfavorably with a career in law. But a JD is a graduate degree, wouldn't it be more fair to compare with a M.S. or PhD in Computer Science? Armed with a graduate degree, a CS major is more likely to have specialized skills that convey better job security, working conditions and prestige.

At least until he gets too old to learn...

Election Demographics

Ann Coulter on the Vermont primary:

Obama won Vermont, but that was earlier in the day. Exit polls indicate he took the black vote. Literally. There was just the one.

Having grown up in Vermont, I can vouch for this. I had one African-American classmate in junior high. His name was not Token.

Not So Imperial

I enjoy Steve Chapman, he's a good conservative (some would say libertarian) writer who isn't afraid to tangle with both Democrats and Republicans. I might be a libertarian myself if it weren't for my hawkish views on foreign policy. Chapman recently wrote about the expanding powers of the Presidency and his concern that Bush and those who will follow him show little sign of relinquishing those powers:

Imperial presidency may be here to stay

He acknowledges that Bush isn't the first President to push the envelope, citing Bill Clinton as an example from across the aisle. Surely, though, Chapman must know that this is a battle with a history at least as old as the Constitution itself? Some Presidents who've overstepped the line: Truman and the steel mills, um... NIXON! Give me five minutes on Google and I'll have a list going back to George Washington.

Let's review two of the examples of abuse he lists for Bush, the FISA/wiretapping controversy and the detainment of enemy combatants with U.S. citizenship. Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats currently have an ongoing fight with Bush over the renewal of the Protect America Act. They have deadlocked over giving telecom companies immunity from lawsuits. On the enemy combatant issue, in 2004 the Supreme Court ruled against Bush on Yaser Hamdi's detainment case.

This is not to imply that I agree with everything the Bush Administration has done in these matters. I don't. I'm just pointing out that the give and take between the three branches of government is alive and well, just as the Founding Fathers intended. From my point of view the Executive, Legislative and Judicial have all expanded their powers. The balance remains the same. The idea that contentious political issues like these would be resolved over a cup of tea is naive.

Praising Bill Clinton?

I strongly believe that economics should be the deciding issue for any Presidential contest. A robust economy heals many problems by increasing the size of the pie for everyone. The private sector adds jobs, tax receipts grow, and the annual deficit shrinks. At least that's the theory.

The economy is like a very complex machine, with many inputs. The President sets the national agenda, and has the power to influence some of these inputs. Chief among those are:

• Controlling federal spending
• Liberalizing trade
• Maximizing investment capital

Of course there are many other factors outside the control of the Executive:

• Domino effects from foreign economies
• Consumer spending
  
• Monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve
• Energy prices (oil!)

Surprisingly, Bill Clinton did quite well with the top three. On spending, he was checked by a Republican congress for 6 years, and his early first-term healthcare proposal was defeated. On trade, he supported and extended NAFTA, despite the opposition of many Democrats. He also signed GATT, which created the World Trade Organization that is so hated by many progressives. Much of this was due to the Clinton Administration's ties to the Democratic Leadership Council, the New Democrats that advocated liberalizing trade, support for Israel, and more business-friendly policies. Clinton also passed the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, lowering capital gains taxes and fueling the superheated economy of his second term.

So, what can we learn in 2008 from all this? Bush does not merit praise for his economic contribution over two terms, especially on federal spending. Outlays as measured against GDP are below the 40-year average, but in the longer term the new Medicare Part D entitlement and Iraq spending will hurt:

Total Revenues and Outlays as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product

The Democrats running for the nomination are not any better. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton propose new healthcare entitlements which will swell the budget. Both have been shamefully pandering to the rust-belt voters over who can slam NAFTA and globalization more:

Democratic Myths Collide with NAFTA Reality

Passing ECON 101 should be a prerequisite to voting in this country.

Mock the Conservative

I'm not one of those who believe that we need to bomb Hollywood to save America. Okay, many of the stars are loudmouthed lefties: Sarandon, Sheen, Penn, Streisand. We have the First Amendment, it's within their rights to say whatever they please. They often end up looking like idiots anyhow.

Usually I can watch my chosen entertainment without getting ambushed by some writer or director. I don't look too deeply for hidden messages, and I don't take offense at jokes on Saturday Night Live or the Daily Show. I can laugh at the creepy Dick Cheney character without violating my political ethos. If I rent an An Inconvenient Truth or anything by Michael Moore, I know what I'm getting and I take it as it is. Recently I ran across two cases where I thought the anti-conservative sentiment was in bad taste.

I'm a sci-fi fan, and I'm working my way through the first season of Dark Angel. I watched the show when it first aired back in 2000-01, but I didn't see every episode. In one of the early episodes the character who runs Jam Pony bicycle courier, "Normal", mentions that his idol is G.H.W. Bush (a.k.a. Bush 41). Up to that point, I thought that Normal was just an effort at creating a bossman character that everybody loves to hate. Keep in mind that this was written well before bashing Bush 43 became a national pastime. So the secret in-joke is that Normal is a conservative. He is constantly ridiculed by the other cool (stereotypically ethnic) side characters for the sin of, um, ASKING THEM TO ACTUALLY WORK FOR THEIR PAY. If you look him up on IMDB, the character's full name is actually Reagan 'Normal' Ronald. It would be excusable if it were actually funny, but most of these "comic relief" efforts could be cut out completely and the episode would probably improve.

The second incident is much more serious, and occurred while watching the documentary film Crossing the Line. I like the documentary and I highly recommend it, but afterward I made the mistake of watching the interview with director Daniel Gordon. He talks about his epiphany that the U.S. and North Korea both have statues and lots of flags in common. In particular, he implies that James Dresnok is "like a Republican sitting on his porch" spouting nationalist propaganda, except that he happens to be sitting in Pyongyang. Excuse me? The flags that fly on porches in the U.S. are flown because its citizens have that freedom to express themselves. The flags that fly in North Korea, not so much. The fact that many Republicans in the U.S. still have a sense of national pride is a good thing, nothing to be ashamed of. Gordon (who is British) might not understand that concept. The Brits, whose empire has shrunk alittle lately, don't have much national pride left. They also share a uniquely European fear of nationalism brought on by WWI and WWII.

Gordon drew parallels between Richmond, Virginia and Pyongyang because they both have statues of men with their arm out. Wow, I guess that Britain, France and any other country that has advanced to the bronze age doesn't have such incredibly unique statues? North Korea has an estimated 800 statues of Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. The Great Leader and Eternal President created a cult around his own persona. I live near Richmond, and I can tell you that we don't have a nuclear-armed cult following of Arthur Ashe or Matthew Fontaine Maury.

Coupons & Condoms

I like to save money, but I also like to shop on the spur of the moment. When I'm in a grocery store, there is nothing worse than having to do coupon calculus. It ruins the spontaneity, man.

The usual scenario goes like this: you're looking at a box of Fudge Bombs for two bucks. The generic is less, but if you mentally subtract the coupon it's easy to figure out the best deal. Oh, wait, this store doubles coupons. So now that's $1.99 minus 2X. In the fine print it says the coupon is only good for three boxes. So that's $1.99 minus 2X/3. No, look closer, more fine print: coupon good for "New Fudge Bombs with Cherry Flavor." The Cherry Flavor is 14oz, while the generic is 16oz. Now compute the price per ounce...

My wife gives me multiple coupons, which means the scenario above is repeated throughout the store. Thus, it has occurred to me that coupons are like condoms. Men will avoid using coupons unless women order us to use them. Have you ever seen a coupon for beer, guns or chainsaws? No? I used to be able to buy a sale item on the spot with the satisfaction that I'd gotten a good deal. Now, I have to dig out the coupon and stand there mumbling to myself while any pleasure in the moment is fading rapidly. Sometimes the coupon is too old, so you can't use it anymore. And don't even think about trying to tell her you forgot to use the coupon.