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It is interesting that our President chooses to rely so heavily on the "Sputnik moment" metaphor given that the average American is about as likely to be able to perform the miracle of loaves and fishes as to correctly identify and explain the significance of Sputnik. Hell, half of us can't find Ohio on a map of our own country. Why would we know about something that happened in 1957?

Accordingly very few people, even among the minority that know to what Sputnik refers, remember the American response. Project Vanguard in the Naval Research Lab (one of the many non-civilian precursors to NASA) was already working on building a rocket booster powerful and reliable enough to put a satellite into orbit. Sputnik took Americans by surprise; more importantly it rendered an entire nation butt-hurt to the point that all pretense of rational thought was abandoned. We let our emotions make decisions for us, attempting to launch a Vanguard booster well before it was ready in order to, I don't know, show the Commies that we were…second?

With a "plan" like that it is hard to see what could go wrong.

*sad trombone*

Amongst the lofty sounding Sputnik metaphors and soothing rhetoric the President mentioned repeatedly the need to better educate the American workforce. Earlier I talked at length about the dubiousness of this logic, but let us accept it at face value for just a moment. If what we really need is a highly educated, technologically skilled workforce, then the budget proposal we saw today does not make a lot of sense:

(One) component of his FY 2012 budget, which will be released tomorrow, will likely pile more debt upon students who decide to pursue graduate school, potentially making the dream of higher education even more unattainable for many Americans. The move, say administration officials, is needed to ensure that a popular financial aid award stays available at current levels…Host Candy Crowley questioned (OMB Director Jacob) Lew about whether this would make graduate school less accessible for many Americans:

CROWLEY: Here's the problem, I guess. If you are a graduate — let's take one of your examples. You're a graduate student; you are, right now, getting loans. You don't have to pay those loans or any interest on them until you graduate. But now you have to pay — or it accumulates, I'm assuming — you have to pay interest beginning on day one of grad school, and that makes it so that you can't go to grad school.

LEW: Well, let's just be clear. Interest will build up, but students won't have to pay until they graduate. So it will increase the burden for paying back the loans, but it will not reduce access to education. That's, I think, part of how you can responsibly have a plan that deals with the challenge of solving our fiscal crisis, getting out of the situation where the deficit is growing and growing, but also investing in the future.

Part of me wants to make a detailed, reasoned response to this nonsensical argument. A bigger part of me wants to walk up to Jacob Lew, press my palms to the corners of my mouth, and exhale forcefully to make really loud farting noises.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have found our Vanguard moment. If anything can motivate Americans to seek and acquire the skills we so badly need to compete with the Chinamen it is an extra $5-10k in debt saddled to each professional degree. The message, of course, is that you should go to graduate school anyway. Think of the extra debt as additional motivation to take whatever the lousy job market offers you when you finish – and a reminder not to get too uppity with Management in that job you won't be able to afford to lose.

POSTSCRIPT: On its third attempt Vanguard succeeded in putting a grapefruit-sized metal ball into orbit. But. But! It's still in orbit, unlike Sputnik. It is in fact the oldest man-made object in orbit at present. So, uh, suck on that, Ivan. What, didn't they translate The Tortoise and the Hare into Cyrillic?

There is a lot of buzz about the Super Bowl commercials run by various automakers this year. I did not watch much of the game and the few I've watched online have been underwhelming. It's hard to get excited when you remember that ads used to look like this:

Or if you want to up the Gee Golly-ness a few hundred percent, you can always enjoy the Jam Handy produced GM instructional videos of similar vintage. If nothing else, watch the first minute of Part 2 to see the boss's locker room oration:

People of my age are left to wonder if the Fifties were actually anything like these contemporary media suggest – implying that everyone in America was on strong psychoactive stimulants for an entire decade – or if the Hollywood version of 1950s America was simply an elaborate cover. Either way, I am both amused and terrified of this stuff.

By the way, Jam Handy was an Olympic medal winner in 1904 – and quite possibly insane, judging by the films he left behind.

Today is the 49th anniversary of a classic height-of-the-Cold-War moment: the exchange of Rudolf Abel for captured U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers over the Glienicker Bridge in Potsdam. Here is the contemporaneous story from Time Magazine. A little-known fact about this little-remembered incident is that Powers was accompanied by American graduate student Frederic Pryor, who had been detained by the USSR as a potential spy. In reality, Pryor simply stumbled into a spy trap in East Berlin and was not in fact an agent. He went on to teach Economics at Swarthmore, Michigan, and other elite universities for decades. He is still alive and semi-retired.

I want so badly to go next year and re-enact this for the 50th anniversary. If you don't know who Rudolf Abel is, fix that. If you are ignorant of Gary Powers and the U-2 incident, fix that too.

Quick question – why did the CIA give Powers a poisoned suicide pin (which he failed to use as he had been ordered to do) while also giving him a parachute? It appears that giving him neither would have produced more desired results than giving him both.

After months and months of prodding, the House Republicans have finally coughed up a list of specific things they want to cut from the budget. The hit list totals…wait for it…$58 billion.

Wow! $58 billion sure is a lot of money! Unless of course we're talking about the Federal budget. Let me double check something.

Yes, we're talking about the Federal budget. Let's take a quick look at these cuts in perspective, despite Perspective's well-established liberal bias. Click to embiggen:

Wow, over 4/10ths of one percent of the FY2011 budget! Oddly enough the $58 billion all comes out of non-defense discretionary spending, which makes sense because I think that is the largest share of the budget.

Oh.

Well surely they targeted wasteful spending and clear examples of unnecessary programs.

Oh for fuck's sake.

You could almost respect their misguided zeal – rhetorically, if not in practice – for "cutting spending" if it was not such an obvious smokescreen for partisan hackery. Like, "Let's target everything our donors and base don't like and call it fiscal responsibility" as though cutting the National Endowment for the Arts is actually going to make a dent.

Or perhaps I'm just being cynical. Maybe the two most unnecessary items in the budget really are job training and the EPA.

Kinda taking a personal day today, but seriously, check this shit out. Watching all 9 minutes might be unnecessary, but make sure you get the Beck clips:

Partial transcript:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Now, catch Glenn Beckon Tuesday night, this diatribe about the Caliphate. He starts talking about ancient Babylon. See if you can follow this. I did. Let`s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLENN BECK, HOST, FOX NEWS "GLENN BECK": Iraq is really important, especially to the Shi`ites, especially to the 12ers who are in charge of this country right now because what is in Iraq? There`s one place that we told our bombers not to bomb. Does anybody know what it was? Two wars in Iraq, we said, No bombing there. Ancient Babylon. Ancient Babylon. Why? Because the Bible tells us that that is the seat right here of power of a global evil empire. Well, that`s also where the 12th imam from Iran is supposedly going to show up! Everybody on this side wants ancient Babylon for their caliphate!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: You know, before we go any further, I have rarely heard anything like this on television in my life, but the — well, let me just ask our guests. Eric, the — what is he saying about the decision by our bombing fleet, our bombers, those who are directed and their civilians who control our military under both Bushes, President Bush, Herbert Walker, and then, of course, George W. Bush — that they somehow decided, as part of some global caliphate they`re envisioning and hoping to move along — they told our bombing people when they put these sorties together, Don`t hit ancient Babylon because that`s going to be the center of evil –

ERIC BOEHLERT, MEDIAMATTERS.ORG: Right.

MATTHEWS: — the power — it`s going to be the seat right there of power of a global evil empire. He (INAUDIBLE) are the Bushes involved — what in hell is this man talking about?

And:

GLENN BECK: I want the left to know I plant my flag in this soil. Groups from the hard-core socialist and communist left and extreme Islam will work together, because they are both a common enemy of Israel and the Jew.

Islam wants a caliphate. Communists wants a communist new world order. They will work together and they will destabilize, because they both want chaos.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Gene Robinson.

ROBINSON: It — this makes absolutely no sense on any level. It makes no sense on any level.

MATTHEWS: Where this Communist Party meeting these days?

ROBINSON: Well, don`t you know how –

(LAUGHTER)

ROBINSON: — the communists and the Islamists have always worked together? Except the fact that they`re always trying to kill each other.

MATTHEWS: And the socialists, too.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: You know who hates — you know who hates — who hates the socialists the most? The communists.

ROBINSON: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Doesn`t this guy have any sense of history?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: And socialists were a big part of building the modern Israel. What is he talking about?

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: This is the stuff normally you would prescribe medication.

They make an excellent point throughout the broadcast by pointing out the golden rule of being a wacky Bircher / truther / Alex Jones type conspiracy peddler: once you find yourself in the hole you've dug, there's nothing to do but keep digging.

As they do with every president, this past weekend the media devoted 72 hours of non-stop coverage to the centennial of the birth of a deceased ex-president. Given that Wednesday is the anniversary of William Henry Harrison's birth we can expect an equivalent outpouring of attention and adulation.

The coverage I saw over the past few days was very strange – it kept describing this person named "Ronald Reagan." But that must be a common name or something, because the person they described didn't sound anything at all like the Ronald Reagan who was once president. Ronnie has long since mutated from merely Overrated to Canonized, but now we appear to have reached a stage beyond that. It is no longer sufficient to idealize the man and his accomplishments – we simply recast him and his entire political life based on whatever ideological cause needs to use him as a mascot. This is despite the fact that if Ronald Reagan was alive today, it's pretty clear that he would think that most of the people who say his name with great reverence are idiots. Which is saying something.

Two interesting quotes courtesy C&L, one from historian Richard N. Smith and the second from the director of the Reagan Library.

Before he became an icon, Ronald Reagan was a paradox: a complex man who appeared simple, at once a genial fundamentalist and a conservative innovator. As America's oldest President, he found his most fervent supporters among the young. The only divorced man to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan as President rarely attended church. He enjoyed a relationship with his own children best described as intermittent. Yet his name was synonymous with traditional values, and he inspired millions of the faithful to become politically active for the first time. During eight years in the White House, Reagan never submitted a balanced budget or ceased to blame Congress for excessive spending. He presided over the highest unemployment rate since World War II and one of the longest peacetime booms ever.

And…

If the Age of Reagan is anywhere consigned to the history books, it is among those who claim his mantle while practicing little of their hero's sunny optimism and even less of his inclusiveness. Reagan, after all, excelled at the politics of multiplication. Too many of his professed admirers on talk radio and cable gabfests appear to prefer division.

If there's one thing modern conservatives are constitutionally incapable of understanding, it's the idea that anything, least of all a person, can be complex. Everything is black and white. Good and evil. Right and wrong. For it or against it. So they created a Reagan who just so happened to stand for whatever it is they need him to stand for. Their Reagan is some kind of Conservative Superhero who gave no quarter, not the real Reagan of whom Joe Biden speaks fondly regarding his willingness to cut deals at the drop of a hat. This distorted image of their hero makes about as much sense as Teabaggers invoking the spirit of Washington or Hamilton.

For conservatives, and possibly for all of us, "Reagan" has become like Gandhi or Martin Luther King – a Santa Claus figure, a mascot. We know almost nothing about him (and what we do know is wrong) but we know he was Good and worthy of our adulation for some reason, a reason that varies based on whatever it is we need Reagan to represent in our preferred narrative.

But seriously, who was that guy they were talking about all weekend? The name sounded familiar, but that's about it.

I am about 3/4 of the way through Overhaul by Obama appointee and "car czar" Steven Rattner. It's worth reading on a number of levels, talking extensively about the many factors behind the decline of the auto industry, the nightmare of working in Congress, the bigger nightmare of watching everything die in the Senate, and the politics of a hostile anti-regulatory climate. Most interesting, however, is the fact that he pulls no punches regarding how much of the auto industry's trouble was/is of its own making. Free trade and increased competition certainly did a number on the Big Three, but that shouldn't obscure the fact that these companies were run terribly. Like, epic bad. A group of people randomly selected from the phone book could have done as well. Maybe better.

Anyone who follows the domestic auto industry even casually already knows this. To know the name "Rick Wagoner" is to know exactly what kind of ass clowns were making the decisions that drove the world's largest manufacturers into the abyss. Although Rattner does not say it (being a finance / Wall Street guy himself) I think this is a very important point to bear in mind in an economy with such staggering levels of income inequality. Simply put, why do so many of the Upper Management caste make so much money when they are so egregiously terrible at their jobs?

The whole argument behind bloated executive compensation is that companies must pay big in order to attract the very best people. In reality we find that many of them – and Wagoner will be the poster child for years to come – are world class idiots. There is no other way to put it. There is no candy coating on an objective assessment of his performance and that of the other GM/Chrysler top brass. If the one trick they seem to have learned in their expensive educations (cut costs + something something = PROFIT!!!) doesn't work they are dumbstruck. They stand around like deer in headlights until someone fires them. GM paid Wagoner $23 million as a severance package, and yet the guy seemed incapable of grasping concepts that an undergraduate would probably get. He knew less about the auto industry than the average car blogger.

If executives get paid so goddamn much to ensure that only the finest talent fills those important positions, why do the companies large enough to take down our entire economy keep failing so spectacularly? With the exorbitant compensation packages offered to executives at AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman, GM, every major airline, and dozens of other failed Fortune 500 companies in the past 20 years, why could none of them attract "talent" talented enough to recognize the imminent failure of those billion dollar enterprises?

So much of it boils down to the dominant ethos of the post-New Deal economy in this country – IBG, YBG (I'll be gone, you'll be gone). Individuals in these positions have no long term view of the health of the business, the economy, or anything but their own personal bottom line. Just do whatever enriches us today and don't worry about the consequences. By the time the company is either insolvent or begging for a bailout, I'll be gone and you'll be gone. Honestly, I doubt Rick Wagoner and his nine-figure net worth care much that the economy has gone to shit and his former company is now on life support. He and the many others like him on Wall Street and throughout corporate America are doing just fine right now having been lavishly compensated for "talents" that appear in hindsight to have been limited to lining their own bank accounts and making stupid decisions.

As little as the weather excites me as a topic of conversation – especially in the form of hundreds of "OMG snow!!1!!" Facebook updates – I have to admit as a native Chicagoan that this is pretty stunning:

Lake Shore Drive reduced to a parking lot of abandoned cars is one of those things we would expect to see only in the midst of the apocalypse or after the Commie A-bombs started raining down. Still, it is worth noting that by Thursday morning LSD (and most of the rest of Chicago) was open to traffic. Compare this to the Blizzard of '77 in western New York and southern Ontario, which shut down Buffalo – Buffalo! – for nearly two full weeks. Snow was piled up to traffic lights and power lines in some areas and cleanup crews needed to use metal detectors to find cars buried under 30 foot drifts of rock-hard snow. I mean, that's some crazy crap.

So despite my general distaste for weather related chit-chat, today's topic is "Holy crap I thought we were going to die and we ended up having to eat Steve from Accounts Payable" weather tales. Sound off in the comments. If at least one of you hasn't been through a category 4 hurricane, a tsunami, or the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius I'm going to be surprised.

And disappointed.

An obscure state legislator, Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia's 43rd House district, received a disproportionate amount of attention earlier this week for proposing that the state eliminate the practice of licensing drivers. Illustrative of his mastery of the Constitution, Franklin eloquently notes, "Free people have a common law and constitutional right to travel on the roads and highways that are provided by their government for that purpose. Licensing of drivers cannot be required of free people, because taking on the restrictions of a license requires the surrender of an inalienable right." He had the following exchange with a local reporter regarding this legislative masterpiece:

Franklin told CBS Atlanta News that driver's licenses are a throw back to oppressive times. “Agents of the state demanding your papers," he said. "We’re getting that way here.”

CBS Atlanta's Rebekka Schramm asked Franklin, “How are we going to keep up with who’s who and who’s on the roads and who’s not supposed to be on the roads?”

“That’s a great question," Franklin said. "And I would have to answer that with a question, ‘Why do you need to know who’s who?’”

“What about 12-14-year-olds who want to drive? What would stop them?" Schramm asked.

“Well, what’s stopping them now anyway?” Franklin answered.

We Georgians are well acquainted with Rep. Franklin, not merely for his brilliance but also for his productivity. In the current state legislative session he has proposed 50 bills in the first two weeks, including the first 21 bills to enter the hopper. Let's take a quick look at what Rep. Franklin has been doing for the people of Georgia.

HB1 – "to provide that prenatal murder shall be unlawful in all events…"

OK, so he's throwing pro-lifers a bone. No harm in that.

HB2 Georgia Right to Grow Act – "to protect the right to grow food crops and raise small animals on private property so long as such crops and animals are used for human consumption by the occupants"

So your neighbor can keep a donkey or a chicken coop in his yard. At this point I need to emphasize that Franklin's district is in suburban Atlanta.

HB3 Constitutional Tender Act – "to require the exclusive use of gold and silver coin as tender in payment of debts by or to the state"

Because according to the Constitushin, FRN ain't real money!

HB4 Life, Liberty, and Property Restoration Act – "to create the Joint Committee on Repeals"

No idea what this means, but I am going to have to assume that it's something crazy.

HB5 Freedom of Choice and Security Act – "to amend Chapter 11 of Title 16 …(to) repeal Article 4"

Ch.11, Title 16, Art. 4 outlaws the following things, among others:

16-11-102: Pointing a gun at another person
16-11-106: Using a firearm in the commission of another crime
16-11-113: Transferring a firearm to someone cannot legally own one
16-11-122: Possession of a sawed-off shotgun or machine gun
16-11-127: Carrying a firearm onto school property or at school functions
16-11-131: Possession of firearm by convicted felon
16-11-132: Possession of firearm by individual under 18
16-11-134: Discharge of firearm under the influence of drugs
16-11-170: To provide background checks under the Brady Act

Yeah.

HB6 Emergency Defense of the Home Act – "to repeal the power of the Governor to suspend or limit the sale or transportation of firearms during times of emergency"
HB7 Right to Travel Act – the drivers' license thing
HB8 Due Process Restoration Act – "to prohibit certain forms of surveillance without search warrants"

Hey, we finally found one that isn't completely fucking bonkers!

HB9 Kathryn Johnston's Law – "to provide that the use of forced entry in the execution of a search warrant is prohibited"

There. Now we're back on track.

HB10 Child Protection Act – "to provide that no local governing authority shall prohibit the construction of a fence between properties of a sufficient height to prevent a person at the highest point of observation in one residence to observe activity within an adjacent property"

Read that explanation carefully and note just how high the proposed fence in question would have to be to prohibit, for example, viewing one's neighbor's yard from a 2nd story window. But your bizarro 25 foot fence will enhance Child Protection!

HB11 Freedom from Compulsory Pandemic Act – "to repeal the authority of the Governor to issue mandatory vaccination orders"

A logical extension of the pioneering work of Dr. Jennifer McCarthy at the University of Google.

HB12 Georgia Food Freedom Act – "to exempt from local regulations certain retail sales of Georgia grown agricultural or farm products directly from the producer to the consumer"

If history has proven anything it's that unregulated food is safe.

HB13 – "to prohibit the levy or collection of income taxes"

Well that 'll fix our massive budget deficit.

HB14 – "to change the term "victim" to the term "accuser" …where there has not yet been a criminal conviction"

OK, that seems reasonable. But I'm sure his motives are somehow insane.

HB15 – "to provide that no person employed by or under contract with…this state…shall be permitted to address any committee or subcommittee of the General Assembly"

Common sense lobbying reform? Bobby, I'm disappointed. What has gotten into you?

HB16 Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act – "to eliminate provisions for a utility to recover from its customers the costs of financing associated with the construction of a nuclear generating plant"

We'll recoup the costs from the general tax revenues instead.

Oh wait.

HB17 – "to abolish the Department of Human Services"

I hear they mostly spend their days playing Duck Hunt anyway. Good riddance.

HB18 – "to abolish the State Road and Tollway Authority"

Bobby, we're starting to run out of sources of income. I'm not sure you realize this.

HB19 – "to provide that federal reserve banks and branches located in Georgia shall not be exempt from state income tax"

Can a state tax a Federally chartered bank? Man, I wish the Supreme Court offered some guidance on this complicated question of federalism.

Oh wait I just tripped over McCULLOCH v. FRIGGIN' MARYLAND. FROM 1819.

HB20 – "to provide for the comprehensive regulation of federal tax funds"

This is so poorly written as to obscure its intended meaning, but from the complete bill I gather that this is some kind of scheme to create a state panel to rule on what Georgia's tax dollars can and cannot be used for by the Federal government…which sounds really constitutional.

HB21 – "to provide findings of the General Assembly regarding the constitutionality of certain federal laws and other mandates; to provide that any judicial officer, law enforcement officer, agent, or employee of the federal government, any multinational government, any international government, or any global government commits the offense of racketeering by color of law when he or she attempts to enforce any law not recognized as valid."

If you're going to propose the first 21 bills you might as well go out in a blaze of glory – Nullification! "Global government" paranoia! The common sense assertion that states get to pick which Federal laws are "recognized as valid"! Boy, I wonder if Rep. Franklin had any crazy left for the remainder of the session after this 21 bill burst of furious activity…

HB37 – "to provide that political parties shall provide documentation that their candidates in the presidential preference primary meet the qualifications of the United States Constitution to hold the office of President of the United States"

Oh hell yeah.

You're money well spent, Bobby. Reading your list of legislative proposals I can't imagine what our state government could do to streamline its operations, reduce waste, and get more accomplished.