Blast from the Past

My wife and I were watching Blast from the Past this weekend. I got the tip off a National Review list of the 25 Best Conservative Movies of the last 25 years. I love anything with Christopher Walken.

Its a good little comedy, and it has some subtle parts where the characters discuss things like marriage and manners. It doesn't really hit you over the head, but conservative values are given a positive light for a change! Plenty of other films like Pleasantville depict values from an earlier era as backwards and oppressive.

The Fantastic Journey

Okay, I'm back!

I was searching IMDB for new stuff to add to my Netflix queue when I ran across this TV show called The Fantastic Journey from 1977. This is a show I recall from my childhood, but I had no way of finding it for years. I remember there was a guy from the future with a handheld device that would amplify his thoughts and produce telekinetic results (requiring significant mental concentration on his part). For some reason, that aspect of the show struck me as innovative and original in Sci-Fi at the time. Okay, I was just a kid.

Anyway, over the years I remembered that one feature, but I had no idea what the show's title was. I also had no knowledge of any of the cast, the year it was produced, the creators or writers, the characters names, etc. In short, I had nothing to google, so it remained a mystery to me until tonight. Unfortunately, I checked on Netflix and it is not available on DVD.

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!"