Month: July 2009

OK. I set the bar pretty low for our friends over at Fox News. I expect little from them. Basically as long as they don't walk in front of the camera wearing SS uniforms or run segments about how slavery should be re-instituted I chalk it up as some sort of victory. They meet our ridiculously low expectations every time they manage to broadcast for an hour without completely, blatantly, and willfully violating every social norm of the Western world.

They stumbled over that hurdle on July 8th, 2009.

You might know Brian Kilmeade, one of the Regis clone candy-asses who look like John Tesh and populate insufferable morning shows like Fox & Friends. Recently the F&F gang were chatting and having a perky morning chuckle about a study conducted by Swedish and Finnish scientists which suggests that married people are less likely to develop Alzheimer's Disease. Harmless premise, right? The sanitized Ray Romano-style jokes practically write themselves, right? "Well those scientists never met MY wife, Steve!" (*sounds of general merriment*) Let's just say Brian Kilmeade took it in a different direction in explaining why Americans are different from the Scandinavians in the study:

"We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other…"

At this point, his co-hosts, who despite being dumber than bags of sand are smart enough to realize that he's loading grandpappy's shotgun and inserting both barrels into his career's mouth, try to get him to shut the fuck up. Failing that, they try to talk over him. Failing that, Brian Kilmeade keeps talking:

"See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes …. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."

Check out the look on Gretchen Carlson's face after he says that. She looks into the camera, makes a Jim Carrey raised-eyebrow funny face, and tries to non-verbally communicate "Look, this isn't my fault. Don't fire me too" to the NewsCorp lawyers who will be watching the tape on an endless loop for the rest of the week.

I am setting myself up for disappointment here, but I have to believe that even for NewsCorp this guy has crossed a line. They may love putting out a thoroughly biased sham news product but I don't think they want to become America's #1 Source for Eugenics. We may tune in tomorrow and see Brian Kilmeade's eulogy. Or maybe we'll see Kilmeade doing a phrenological examination on a Negroid specimen (probably Juan Williams). Neither will surprise me.

Perhaps at some point in the last eight years you've seen the cheeky "Can someone give Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him?

" bumper stickers. Recent events have underscored just how much truth lies beneath that rather simple joke.

Ever since his Argentine Escapade the calls for Mark Sanford to resign have swelled into a deafening chorus. Everyone from the state GOP to the Democrats to the six largest newspapers in the state to his dog Skip have lined up to kick the Governor while he's down. There is near unanimous agreement that Sanford Must Go. But why? I suppose he did lie about his whereabouts and the idea of the Governor simply disappearing for a few days at a time is admittedly unusual, but I don't think either of those constitute a crime. What it boils down to is a simple issue of morality: Mark Sanford Must Go because he is a Bad Person. A month ago, before any of this happened, of course no one was calling on him to resign. Back then he was merely a horrendous Governor, which is OK as long as one is not simultaneously a Bad Person.

South Carolina is a swampy shithole with a couple of nice beaches and an unemployment rate second only to Michigan. In fact, South Carolina has the second-largest number of counties with official unemployment rates over 20% according to the May data – which is particularly stunning given that the official rates are wildly understated.

(Click here for an interactive and larger map)

Despite the rather obvious fact that his state is an economically devastated backwater, I'm sure you all recall that Gov. Sanford famously rejected the offer of $700,000,000 in Federal stimulus funds. Sure, the money was needed to prevent the layoff of 4,000 public school teachers and 700 prison guards, but Sanford decided that grandstanding for the Teabagging crowd was more important. It was more important – for him and his political ambitions. Not so much for the state.

See, this makes Sanford a bad Governor. A really bad one. It would have made perfect sense if there were calls for him to resign or efforts to impeach him. He violated his basic responsibility for the welfare of his state. Thank god he had a mistress so the residents of SC could be rid of him.

It recalls one of my favorite examples of the Bad Person/Bad Public Servant dichotomy. There have been many small-minded nitwits in the Cabinet over the years – especially since 1980, oddly enough – but few as talentless as James Watt. As Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, Watt:

decreased funding for environmental programs, restructured the department to decrease federal regulatory power, wished to eliminate the Land and Water Conservation Fund (which had been designed to increase the size of National Wildlife Refuges and other protected land), eased regulations on oil and mining companies, and favored opening wilderness areas and shorelands for oil and gas leases. Watt resisted accepting donations of private land to be used for conservation purposes and suggested that all 80 million acres (320,000 km²) of undeveloped land in the United States be opened for drilling and mining by the year 2000. The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled during his term as Secretary of the Interior. Watt proudly boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km²) of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion of that area would ever be drilled. Watt once stated, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber." He also mentioned his Christian faith when discussing his approach to environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

Other cute Watt quotes included describing environmentalists as, "a left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in" and "A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"

Sounds like just about the worst Secretary of the Interior on Earth, right? The calls for him to resign must have been deafening, right? Well, not really. Then he held a press conference in which he responded to a question about diversity in his office with the immortal quote: "We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple." Two weeks later he was gone.

We are, as both a society and political system, wholly taken in by the delusion that everything that elected officials do is immune to judgment. Of course we blame them for things and hold things against them during elections, but we insist that you can't yank an elected official out of office just because you Don't Agree with Him.
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It's all just a difference of opinion. Agree to disagree. That's a noble idea, but it doesn't mean that we have to shovel the idea of objective right and wrong into a roaring furnace. A president who enters office with a large budget surplus and drives the budget, the economy, and the nation into the ground is a bad president. A Governor who ignores the interests of his state because he's eyeballing the White House is a bad Governor. Unfortunately the only thing we can agree upon are cartoonishly oversimplified moral judgments – he cheated on his wife, she embezzled money, he used to do drugs, and whatever else offends our collective puritanical side.
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Sure, South Carolinians are lucky to be ridding themselves of Sanford. But how pathetic are their reasons?

Although it has gotten the news back-burner lately (and what hasn't, with all the famous idiots dying) the President is pushing ahead with the second Democratic attempt at legislation that provides healthcare for every American. Strategically this is a poor idea. Rather, the timing is poor. You will never meet a more ardent proponent of universal healthcare than Ed, but I think the public and certainly Congress are a little stunned at the moment. Sticker shock might be the right term. While it doesn't make me flinch, the idea of another initiative costing another trillion-and-a-half dollars is giving even Congressional Democrats cold, cold feet. It's not the right time. To try it now ensures another colossal failure. The President needs to re-accumulate some political capital, a process that will take time and hinge on the success of one or more of the big ticket items he has already gotten through Congress. In short, when people aren't so scared shitless about the economy we can have a real conversation about trillion dollar healthcare proposals.

Here's what I don't understand. Why does it have to cost a trillion dollars?

Since the moment I formed an opinion on the subject I have been convinced that a successful universal healthcare proposal in the context of American politics must have two things: a user-end cost for those who can afford it and the ability to opt out of it in favor of private health insurance. This addresses two fundamental aspects of the post-Reagan era public mind. First, charging people something allays the impression that it is free and thus will be abused. It won't be the government "giving" people something as much as selling them something, albeit at a heavily subsidized discount. Second, European nations have discovered by trial and error that rich people may be willing to shoulder the costs of national healthcare, however grudgingly, if they are allowed to retain their Right to be treated better than the rest of us. They may eventually consent to having their taxes provide insurance for dirty poor people, but they'll vehemently refuse to sit in the same waiting room with them. If they want to buy their way into the proverbial gated subdivision, we must let them.

And, of course, the 800-pound gorilla in our policy debates is our insurance and for-profit healthcare industries.
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We have to find some way to let Humana and Wellpoint line their pockets. Because of these three conditions, proposals for reform inevitably become convoluted in a hurry. Remember the 10,000 page clusterfuck that was "HillaryCare?" But taking these factors into account I think there is a much, much simpler solution that is rarely mentioned. Perhaps I'm just overlooking something. You be the judge.

We already have this big healthcare donut. The wealthy and the poor are covered while people in the middle often are not. The truly indigent either qualify for Medicaid or receive Emergency Room services that they simply do not pay for. I say that without condemnation or judgment.

It is what our system encourages. As inevitably as poor and starving people will steal bread for which they would pay if they could, poor people who are really sick will go to the ER and welch on the bill. They know that ERs must provide service irrespective of ability to pay. Afterwards they will receive a bill that goes unpaid. The hospital will refer the account to collections (my former line of work) who will see that the debtor hasn't a pot in which to piss and close the account.
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Just add it to the pile of billions in write-offs that happen every day in the industry. On the other end of the spectrum, the wealthy can afford simply to buy insurance. So the rich and poor are already taken care of. Add in the fact that a government program already covers the elderly and we have the framework of a system already in place.

So here's EdCare. Tell me where this admittedly simplistic take is missing the boat:

There are news graveyards and then there are news graveyards.
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Friday afternoons are always dumping grounds for bad or embarrassing news, but a press conference at 4 PM EST on a Friday afternoon that happens to be July 3 takes the cake. At that hour, as we were all in traffic or hoarding fireworks, the ridiculous burlesque that is Sarah Palin's career on the national stage may – may – have come to an end.

Certainly Palin knew that the story would have legs, but to hold a press conference that no one would watch suited her interests at this point. For those who watched, the conference did not dissapoint, showcasing the preternatural mastery of rhetoric we've come to love. In other words, the speech went nowhere, took forever to do so, and sounded as if written collaboratively by Ol' Dirty Bastard, Marcel Duchamp, and Wesley Willis. Thus she passes into history.

I took a semi-informed guess a few months ago that Palin was going to go down to defeat in her gubernatorial race in 2010. My rationale was:

People in the sticks love nothing more than when one of their own Makes It. And they hate nothing more than when their Superstar decides she is too good for them anymore.

As everyone scrambles to figure out Palin's grand strategy, this should not be understated. There was a very good chance that she was going to lose in 2010. That humiliation would cripple any chance she would have had to run for office again in the future. So I still believe that the simplest explanation for her decision is the best. She's getting out before something bad happens. No one expects her to disappear, though. What are her options now?

Well, she could set up a 2010 primary challenge for Lisa Murkowski's Senate seat. That strikes me as a horrendous idea with odds of success somewhere between Operation Ten-go and the Powerball lottery. Palin would need to start running, like, tomorrow. I question how she could quit her job, say she's done with politics, and get back into electoral politics in the span of two months. She's not exactly beloved in Alaska at the moment and, while Lisa Murkowski is a complete idiot, she has incumbency, money, and a lot less of a circus surrounding her than Palin.

She could be preparing for a 2012 run. She says she isn't, but everyone says "I'm not running" right up to the moment when they announce their candidacy. Even if Obama fails spectacularly I'm not sure voters would take Palin seriously enough to consider her a viable alternative. First impressions are important and hers could not have been worse if she shit her pants during the Couric interview. There are two enormous obstacles to a 2012 run. First, she quit. Current or former Governors like Jindal, Romney, Pawlenty, and Crist aren't going to have a hard time hammering her in a primary campaign. "Aww, after three whole years the job was too much for her.

" Second, in her classic Cartmanesque "I do wha I want" style she told no one of her decision in advance and explained herself to no one afterward. A lot of influential Republicans, including talking heads like Will and Rove, have expressed sentiments ranging from confusion to condemnation. Will summed her up as "a quitter."

The most likely option, of course, is that she cashes in.

She seems like a complete whore (in the professional sense) who wants nothing more out of public life than money and attention. Talk radio, Fox News, and the winger lecture circuit beckon and they pay well. The book deals pay even better. She may have decided that keeping up the merest pretense of doing her job wasn't worth the effort. Why not just quit and do what she has been doing without being hassled by people who expect her to work?

She should be able to milk a very lucrative living out of the irreducible twenty percenters who never abandoned George W. Bush.

Frankly I don't think she has left herself a lot of options. Her persona has become so tabloidy and she's playing up her victimhood to the extent that it has become nigh impossible to take her seriously, even among people who may have taken her seriously in 2008. Less than 24 hours after her Big Announcement she was threatening amateur bloggers with defamation suits (and for the record, said blogger isn't scared of this idiot). If that doesn't epitomize how Mickey Mouse the Palin operation is these days, I hate to see what will.
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It strains credulity to think that this is supposed to be a segue into a major presidential campaign. If that's what this is, it is a stunningly inept one. Shocking, I know.

A personal tale, followed by commentary.

I got in a car in Athens, GA at 8:45 AM on Wednesday morning and walked in my door exactly 11 minutes ago at 12:02 AM Thursday. We made good time for the first, oh, nine hours, reaching the Indiana-Kentucky border. Then I hit a pothole and managed to blow out both tires on the passenger side of my car. Like, blown the fuck out. Six-inch gashes in the sidewalls. This happened just after 6 PM, when every conceivable retailer of tires or purveyor of tire repairs would be unlikely to be open.

Fortunately an Army chaplain and Baptist clergyman named T.S. Elliott (no, seriously, his name is T.S. Elliott) pulled over, invited us into his car, and then drove us around attempting to find an open repair shop in the godforsaken middle of nowhere, which is actually a few miles north of New Albany, Indiana. Unsuccessful, Pastor Elliott did the Christian thing and gave us his spare tire. This would enable me to limp home on two spares (as of course I had one of my own) and repair the damage on my own time. As he drove away to the sound of my profuse promises to return his tire at the most immediate convenience, I discovered that the lug spacing on his spare was approximately 1 millimeter off of mine. He drove a Ford, I a Nissan. Hence his thoughtful gift to a stranger was useless.

So we called AAA and they sent a tow truck which arrived at 8 PM, also known as closing time of the one remaining option for automotive service: the New Albany Wal-Mart tire center. Liz called and used her Girl Voice to (somehow, amazingly) talk the Wal-Mart tire center into staying open another half-hour so we could get the enormous, slow-moving AAA tow truck driver to convey our car there in time to purchase the cheapest Chinese Goodyear knockoff in stock and hopefully enable further travel.

Among our tow truck driver and the three employees of the Wal-Mart tire center on the Indiana-Kentucky border there were about 11 teeth, and I needed subtitles to understand them. More accurately I just looked at them while they made sounds and followed with educated guesses of what they wanted me to do based on their body language. I bent the hell out of one of my rims, but the other was fine and, one Wal-Mart tire, $65, and a $60 towing fee later (thanks AAA!) we were ready to roll at 9:30.

Having not eaten all day, we adjourned to the finest open dining establishment in New Albany near 10 PM on a weeknight: the Applebee's in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Now, understand this about Liz and I: we do not eat at Applebee's. We are dietary snobs. Liz has been known to get murderously violent when served non-organic food.

Yet I witnessed with mine own eyes the woman inhaling a platter or riblets (seriously, riblets) while I annihilated an A1-laden cheeseburger like the respective entrees were the finest and most delicious things we had ever eaten.

After that it was a mere struggle to stay awake as we blazed through rural Indiana in pitch darkness.

I got a little Rorschach at one point, responding to "You need to watch out for deer" with "No, the deer need to watch out for me." But we made it home, neither of us able to speak in sentences or remember the last time we were not in a car by the end.

One thing struck both of us. Here on ginandtacos.com I am pretty hard on our country cousins, the denizens of rural America with their medieval worldview and passionate hatred of whatever Glenn Beck tells them to passionately hate. Yet everyone was horribly nice to us. So much politeness. From the Baptist minister who handed us a spare tire to the planet-sized tow truck operator to the furry gnomes who kept open the Wal-Mart tire center at our request to the staff of the sad little Applebee's, everyone was wonderfully nice to us in a time of exasperation and stress.

Moments like this often conflict me. I know that on the most basic level, if I heard what any of these people thought about politics (if anything) I would hate them. I probably do hate them, I just didn't realize it. And of course they were only nice to me because I'm a white, presumably heterosexual, probably Christian (or, if not, at least convertible) male. The pastor probably would have thrown us out of the car if he found out that we are not married, and wouldn't have stopped to offer help at all if I was with my boyfriend instead. So I remain conflicted. It warms my heart to know how capable my fellow Americans are of being kind and helping unfortunate strangers. But it makes me wonder why, if we can be kind to people we don't know, we are so apt to hate those same strangers as soon as we learn a few things about them.
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T.S. Elliott and I got along fine as blank slates in one another's eyes.
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Such would not have been the case had he realized that I think Baptists are lunatics or if I fully realized that he thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old.