A new report from our conservative friends at the Heritage Foundation exposes the myth of poverty in America: shockingly, most poor people have refrigerators and microwaves! Not all of them, maybe, but lots of them also have X-boxes and air conditioning. Thus, I guess, we need to quit giving subsidies to the poor until they start acting poor by eating rancid food cooked on wood they gather from discarded pallets in those trash-filled yards of theirs.
They probably also have heaters and catchers’ mitts, but the survey didn’t ask those questions, nor did it ask if they can afford to run their air conditioners.
Oh, and you’re not homeless if you’re living in a homeless shelter, which might also suggest you’re not dead if you’re in a mortuary.
This is the latest reprise of the old Reagan myth of the welfare Cadillac, which he used to excellent effect to make substantial cuts on the anti-poverty programs of Johnson’s Great Society. But the big welfare cutter was that uber-liberal Bill Clinton, who succeeded in ending welfare as we know it by ending welfare as we know it.
Simply put, there are no poor if we give them food and housing and energy subsidies and they then spend some of their vast discretionary income on luxury items like toys for their kids. The survey, somehow, never asked questions as to whether the rich sometimes live beyond their means. I know the middle-class never does, which is why there have been so few foreclosures on McMansions.
What the study really shows is just how uncharitable the conservative movement is at heart. (Rich people have hearts, too!) In their minds, the fact that poverty programs—radically reduced in recent years and due to be cut even more in the debt-ceiling budgets of both Republicans and Democrats—have allowed some poor people to actually afford what most of us consider the necessities of life just shows that we need to cut back more on poverty programs.
I’ve always known this, but it’s refreshing to see a published report that makes it so abundantly clear: the poor don’t matter to conservatives. No more of this trickle-down bullshit. Let them eat cake!
Poverty in the United States is defined as an annual income of $22,000 for a family of four. I’d like to see the fellows of the Heritage Foundation live for a year on $22,000, even if they get food stamps and free health care, then come back and write a report on poverty in America. I’ll loan them a pencil.
More on this study here:
http://www.theshriverbrief.org/2011/07/articles/economic-justice/because-you-have-a-refrigerator-and-a-stove-you-are-not-poor/
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
A fine race
Australian Casey Stoner makes the pass that would give him the lead over reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo. It was a fine race, and two other races in the other classes were also exceptionally exciting.
Mary and I took a ride into the mountains in in our aging but still classy Mitsubishi Spyder convertible and had lunch on the deck of a good cafe. The weather was perfect. Then back home to enjoy a lazy Sunday around the house while I watched races and practiced Spanish at my leisure.
It was an entirely above-average day.
(Notice how I'm not writing about politics? I'm not even thinking about politics.
Politics? What politics??)
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Race time
Motorcycle Grand Prix racing isn’t particularly popular in the United States. Worldwide, MotoGP ranks second only to soccer in popularity, with huge crowds at the races and television viewers in the millions. In Europe, Asia and South America, small, fast bikes have always been the favorites of riders and racers, totally unlike the Harley culture that dominates here. Today's race at Laguna Seca in Monterey will draw about 80,000 spectators, and part of the thrill of being there is just riding in with tens of thousands of other riders and seeing the hills covered with parked motorcycles, probably ninety percent of them sport bikes of one stripe or another.
Even without much background in this kind of racing, though, a GP Championship race should be exciting to watch. These are the greatest riders of their generation on the fastest bikes in the world, multimillion dollar thoroughbreds with full factory support. Top speeds on most tracks exceed 200 miles per hour, but the real excitement is in the corners, where riders achieve seemingly impossible lean angles, hanging off the inside of the bikes and dragging their knees on the ground, riding at 99 percent for the whole race and all-too-frequently making the small mistake or misjudgment that sends them flying in spectacular crashes.
Most regular viewers will admit that part of the excitement is in the crashes, but we don’t have to feel too guilty about this. Track safety improvements over the years mean that there hasn’t been a GP fatality in my memory, and although broken bones and dislocations happen, most of the time the rider jumps up and tries to restart the fallen bike to get back in the race. Even when a rider is down and can’t remount, it’s rare to be out with injuries for more than one or two races.
These guys are tough. American rider Colin Edwards fractured his collar bone this season and was screwed back together with seventeen titanium pins. His doctor said he couldn’t ride again until he could do some push-ups, so Colin dropped to the ground and put out two. He said the pain almost knocked him out, but he was back for the next race and finished third in the rain, a wet track meaning you have to slow down a little and ride with more finesse and smoothness, which makes the race a little less physical.
The real thrill, though, is in watching the close racing for the lead and epic battles back in the pack for spots as low as tenth or even lower. The best riders turn in lap times only a few thousands of a second apart on tracks that are typically between two and three miles long, and they race with an amazing consistency. If a rider loses a full second in a lap it usually means he’s made an error and misjudged a corner or got stuck fighting it out for position with another rider, which can force taking a defensive line through a turn.
I watched qualifying last night, in which riders have a full hour to put in their fastest lap, then go back to the pits to make micro-adjustments in the bike’s setup, then back out onto the track. The true qualifying laps come in the last ten minutes, when setup is as close to perfect as they can get it, and riders put their heads down to turn in a 99.9-percent performance to determine their starting position on the grid.
Pole position at Laguna was taken by Jorge Lorenzo, the Spanish rider who won the championship last year. Second is Australian Casey Stoner, off the pace by only seven one-thousands of a second. In fact, the first seven riders are all within seven-tenths of a second of each other, typical of GP qualifying. It amazes me to think that rider skills and bike development are all so close that less than one second over a two-mile track can mean the difference between a world champion and a distant also-ran. At these speeds, a winner with a two or three second lead over the rest of the pack will have a huge lead in actual distance. More exciting is when two or three riders battle it out and finish within inches of each other, the winner often determined by a well-planned pass in the last turn.
The races are most exciting, of course, if you follow the whole season and know each of the riders and how the standings have evolved over the last nine races, with eight more to go after Laguna. For even a first-time watcher, though, there should be enough adrenaline flowing to get you through the rest of the afternoon.
This is the second year in a row that I won’t make it down to Laguna Seca for the race. Last year I was taking an intensive Spanish summer course at Southern Oregon University. Although classes ran from Monday to Thursday, there was no way I could be gone for two or three days without studying. This year I’m recently back from two weeks in Washington, DC and a two-day bike excursion to Reno where I met up with several friends and got lucky at the blackjack tables, coming home up about a hundred dollars after expenses. In the end, I decided it was time to stay home for a few days straight.
Prior to that, I had an attendance record that was mostly unbroken for a lot of years; I can’t really say how many. I remember at least once leaving the track late in the afternoon after the last race and riding home straight through with only gas breaks, getting home well after midnight and then teaching classes the next morning. Usually, I’d just miss classes and ride home Monday.
Watching on television is almost as good, though, and actually even better for seeing the up-close battles that go on the full length of the track.
Racing is covered on Speed Channel, today’s race starting at 5pm Eastern time, 2pm out here on the Best Coast. There’s still time to set up your DVR.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Deus ex machina
The people we count on to take reasonable care of us are letting us down. Like almost all Americans, I’m disgusted by our nation’s leaders’ handling of the debt ceiling crisis. The budget negotiations are where Congress fights out its taxing and spending plan for the next year. Raising the debt ceiling should be a routine procedural event that happens mostly out of public sight, a page 5 story at best. Instead, Republicans are using it as yet one more opportunity to pile on to President Obama just to make him look bad while they ignore our real problems, primarily crushing unemployment and millions of Americans living hand to mouth with little or no hope of improvement any time soon. Or ever.
And like almost all of us who voted for Obama, I’m disappointed in his performance. To give him credit, he’s trying to do what he said he would do when he came to Washington: create a new kind of politics that rises above party politics and special interests and instead engages in genuine problem solving. Still, it was at best an unrealistic hope from the beginning, and it was clear from even before his first day in office that Republicans weren’t playing by the same rules. Quite the contrary.
So now we have the Tea Party extremists holding enough votes in the house to defeat any compromise, even if it’s tilted heavily towards Republican goals. They hold such power because they’re crazy. Game theory points out that when one side appears completely irrational in its demands, the other side will always make major concessions. It also points out that when one side really is completely irrational, it will crash the system. You can only negotiate a hostage crisis if the bad guys haven’t already decided to get as much press as they can, then kill all the hostages anyway.
We’re the hostages.
All of this has been too depressing to write about again, so I’m glad to see in a poll published today that most Americans still give high approval ratings to at least one big player: God. A majority of fifty-two percent of Americans approve of God’s performance, though nine percent disapprove and forty percent are unsure. Only an even fifty percent approve of God’s handling of natural disasters, a surprising number since God causes natural disasters, but I guess half of the population thinks he does a good enough job cleaning up after Himself.
And a substantial majority of seventy-one percent approve of how God created the universe. I have to agree with them that the universe works very well indeed. I mean, look at string theory.
A majority of Americans still like Obama as a person, even though they disapprove of his performance. The poll didn’t ask if people still like God as a person, but apparently they do.
We sure need His help right now, some kind of "plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.” Deus ex machina.
What that could possibly be, God only knows.
And like almost all of us who voted for Obama, I’m disappointed in his performance. To give him credit, he’s trying to do what he said he would do when he came to Washington: create a new kind of politics that rises above party politics and special interests and instead engages in genuine problem solving. Still, it was at best an unrealistic hope from the beginning, and it was clear from even before his first day in office that Republicans weren’t playing by the same rules. Quite the contrary.
So now we have the Tea Party extremists holding enough votes in the house to defeat any compromise, even if it’s tilted heavily towards Republican goals. They hold such power because they’re crazy. Game theory points out that when one side appears completely irrational in its demands, the other side will always make major concessions. It also points out that when one side really is completely irrational, it will crash the system. You can only negotiate a hostage crisis if the bad guys haven’t already decided to get as much press as they can, then kill all the hostages anyway.
We’re the hostages.
All of this has been too depressing to write about again, so I’m glad to see in a poll published today that most Americans still give high approval ratings to at least one big player: God. A majority of fifty-two percent of Americans approve of God’s performance, though nine percent disapprove and forty percent are unsure. Only an even fifty percent approve of God’s handling of natural disasters, a surprising number since God causes natural disasters, but I guess half of the population thinks he does a good enough job cleaning up after Himself.
And a substantial majority of seventy-one percent approve of how God created the universe. I have to agree with them that the universe works very well indeed. I mean, look at string theory.
A majority of Americans still like Obama as a person, even though they disapprove of his performance. The poll didn’t ask if people still like God as a person, but apparently they do.
We sure need His help right now, some kind of "plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.” Deus ex machina.
What that could possibly be, God only knows.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Double-dog dare ya
Obama’s warning to Eric Cantor—“don’t call my bluff”—was a misstatement overlooked by everybody I’ve read. Granted, the prez issued the challenge in a moment of anger as he walked out of talks on raising the debt ceiling, but I doubt he meant to suggest he is bluffing. Nor is Cantor, for that matter. It’s clear he’s willing to let the US default on its credit obligations, no matter the economic consequences, and then let the blame fall on the president,despite Mitch McConnell’s warning that default would bring irreparable harm to the Republican “brand.”
So branding is what this is all about.
What Obama meant to say was “I’ll call your bluff and raise you a trillion.” He’s willing to play a deadly game of chicken with Republican fundamentalists because he knows he’s going to win this one.
In any case, Obama is right to hold out against a short-term resolution which would put us back in the middle of this absurd debate two more times before the next election. Once the debt ceiling gets raised and fixed in place until after November 2012, I doubt it will carry any weight as a campaign issue. Most people have no idea what the debt ceiling is anyway, and come November plus one, the issue will still be jobs, jobs, jobs.
Actually, I’ve had a great impulse to write about all of this, but two things have kept my keyboard quiet: one is that everybody else is writing about it to the degree that there’s not much else to read, and I see no compelling reason to endlessly repeat the litany of dire consequences to arrive if we fail to act by the August 2nd deadline. Second, I keep waiting to see what will happen the next day, but the next day is always exactly the same as yesterday, and I haven’t seen an opportune moment to jump in.
Meanwhile, important news stories barely get mentioned, including the arrest of a woman who cut off her husband’s penis and ran it down the garbage disposal: “Catherine Kieu Becker of Garden Grove reportedly prepared dinner for her husband and put a poisonous substance or drug in his food to make him drowsy. While the man was sleeping, Becker allegedly tied him to the bed. When he awakened, Becker cut his penis off with a knife and threw it into the garbage disposal, turning it on as she did so.”
Clearly, Kate learned a lesson from the perfectly named Lorena Bobbit, who after cutting off her husband’s penis, drove off in her car and threw it in a field, where it was somehow magically recovered and surgically reattached. Lorena’s husband John went on to a brief career as a porn star, proving I don’t know what exactly except that modern medicine certainly has come a long way.
The message to men is clear: put the toilet seat down after you pee.
In the end I believe Obama will use his executive authority under section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Suppressing the tea party insurrection and rebellion is what this is really all about, after all.
So branding is what this is all about.
What Obama meant to say was “I’ll call your bluff and raise you a trillion.” He’s willing to play a deadly game of chicken with Republican fundamentalists because he knows he’s going to win this one.
In any case, Obama is right to hold out against a short-term resolution which would put us back in the middle of this absurd debate two more times before the next election. Once the debt ceiling gets raised and fixed in place until after November 2012, I doubt it will carry any weight as a campaign issue. Most people have no idea what the debt ceiling is anyway, and come November plus one, the issue will still be jobs, jobs, jobs.
Actually, I’ve had a great impulse to write about all of this, but two things have kept my keyboard quiet: one is that everybody else is writing about it to the degree that there’s not much else to read, and I see no compelling reason to endlessly repeat the litany of dire consequences to arrive if we fail to act by the August 2nd deadline. Second, I keep waiting to see what will happen the next day, but the next day is always exactly the same as yesterday, and I haven’t seen an opportune moment to jump in.
Meanwhile, important news stories barely get mentioned, including the arrest of a woman who cut off her husband’s penis and ran it down the garbage disposal: “Catherine Kieu Becker of Garden Grove reportedly prepared dinner for her husband and put a poisonous substance or drug in his food to make him drowsy. While the man was sleeping, Becker allegedly tied him to the bed. When he awakened, Becker cut his penis off with a knife and threw it into the garbage disposal, turning it on as she did so.”
Clearly, Kate learned a lesson from the perfectly named Lorena Bobbit, who after cutting off her husband’s penis, drove off in her car and threw it in a field, where it was somehow magically recovered and surgically reattached. Lorena’s husband John went on to a brief career as a porn star, proving I don’t know what exactly except that modern medicine certainly has come a long way.
The message to men is clear: put the toilet seat down after you pee.
In the end I believe Obama will use his executive authority under section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Suppressing the tea party insurrection and rebellion is what this is really all about, after all.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Bright lights, big city
Recently back from my caregiver responsibilities with Broschat in Washington, DC. I never gave a second thought to making this trip. When I heard he was going in for prostate surgery, I knew immediately that I would be going out to join him.
I find it hard to put the right word to this decision. It wasn’t a favor. It wasn’t a responsibility or obligation. It was simply what I was going to do. Our almost fifty years of friendship was certainly a big part of the decision. Friends help out friends when they can. And I was the obvious guy for the job. I had the time, being retired and having no important plans for a few weeks in summer, like going to the beach. I’d been through the surgery myself and knew what recovery looked like. And since I knew Michael would never let me spend a dime of my own money while I was there, finances were never an issue.
Actually, I became quite uncomfortable with his unwavering insistence that he pay for everything, but you can’t out-stubborn some people on some issues, and I knew I would never win this one. “I’ll have the filet mignon, and have room service send up more ice.”
The visit itself was mostly an enjoyable vacation. My real caregiving responsibilities ended after the first few days when he got the hang of changing pee bags without ripping out his catheter. Still, since I’d been through it myself only two years ago, I knew the first few days would be difficult to manage alone when you’re still foggy from the effects of anesthetic and nervous about having a tube coming out of your Weiner. I actually liked having a catheter since it allowed me for the first time in my life to sit through a whole movie without getting up to go to the bathroom, but it definitely takes a little getting used to.
We faced only one minor crisis, which didn’t feel at all minor at the time. After his discharge from the hospital, it became clear—I’ll spare you the details—that the catheter wasn’t catheterizing, and I had to put in a call to one of his urologists. The good doctor handled it beautifully, telling us to come back into the hospital and directly up to the ward Michael had just left, avoiding the blunt-force trauma of going through the emergency room. A quick (but obviously painful) flush of the system with saline solution and everything was back to normal. We went back home and I made the patient some broth from a can of chicken noodle. I ate the chicken and noodles.
By the next day, we were on solid foods again and going out for short walks. Despite his admission on his own blog that he was scared shitless, (pissless, actually, but never mind), Michael never showed any outward signs of emotional stress. He seemed to take it all in stride, which made my modest duties easy.
Within a few days I was completely in vacation mode, and it was a great visit. Two days in Colonial Williamsburg, where we always ate with only the best people and stayed on site in a converted something—a mill or granary or privy, I wasn’t quite sure which. Williamsburg has been restored to its condition of roughly 1750, and its many homes and other buildings, concerts on period instruments, and historical reenactments create in even a jaded historical revisionist like myself a swell of patriotic fervor. Nor did they ignore some of the dark side of our revolution against the British: One reenactment of the mob trial of a loyalist whose only crime was his not very prudent political pronouncements caused, I hope, conflicted feelings in even the most ardent jingoist when they started to tar and feather the poor accused. He was saved only at the last minute by a forced “confession” and a promise to get out of town, which meant back to England.
My favorite event of the visit was an outdoor performance of slave music and dance, which we attended after dark. No actual whippings, but I found it inspirational to watch the human spirit rise up in song and dance under the harshest conditions possible.
Later in the visit, we went to a baseball game, which the Nationals won, if only on the strength of two monumental errors by the Cubs in the first inning. I don’t even follow baseball, and I had a great time.
Plus a few drives in the country in the new Miata, with the top down, of course.
Overall, I recommend a visit to Broschat next time he has major surgery. Two weeks together in his small apartment and we showed no sign of getting on each other's nerves. He’s a wonderful host and a gifted story teller, and he has a great collection of DVDs. We watched a different movie almost every night.
Even though I loved Washington and environs, it’s good to be home. Yesterday, Mary and I decided to go for a drive and a walk in the country, enjoying a high temperature of eighty degrees, our dry climate, and a cooling breeze. We drove with the top down in our aging but still-satisfying Eclipse Spyder for about twenty minutes to get out of town, then through some lovely and largely empty country roads to the trailhead, where we walked for an hour without seeing another person. A typical outing out this way. This in contrast to the drives in the Miata through the madness of DC surface-street traffic and congested freeways, and walks on “trails” which we shared with scores of other walkers, wild-hare bicyclists, and rushing traffic just a few feet away. Enjoyable enough, but still. . . .
Bright lights big city have their charms, but I guess I’m mostly a country boy at heart, though it’s taken me about twenty years to realize and accept it.
Male readers take note: if you haven’t had this surgery yet, you have a even chance of needing it sometime in the next ninety days, so get your PSA checked and a caregiver lined up.
Buy a sports car. Get tickets to a ball game.
I find it hard to put the right word to this decision. It wasn’t a favor. It wasn’t a responsibility or obligation. It was simply what I was going to do. Our almost fifty years of friendship was certainly a big part of the decision. Friends help out friends when they can. And I was the obvious guy for the job. I had the time, being retired and having no important plans for a few weeks in summer, like going to the beach. I’d been through the surgery myself and knew what recovery looked like. And since I knew Michael would never let me spend a dime of my own money while I was there, finances were never an issue.
Actually, I became quite uncomfortable with his unwavering insistence that he pay for everything, but you can’t out-stubborn some people on some issues, and I knew I would never win this one. “I’ll have the filet mignon, and have room service send up more ice.”
The visit itself was mostly an enjoyable vacation. My real caregiving responsibilities ended after the first few days when he got the hang of changing pee bags without ripping out his catheter. Still, since I’d been through it myself only two years ago, I knew the first few days would be difficult to manage alone when you’re still foggy from the effects of anesthetic and nervous about having a tube coming out of your Weiner. I actually liked having a catheter since it allowed me for the first time in my life to sit through a whole movie without getting up to go to the bathroom, but it definitely takes a little getting used to.
We faced only one minor crisis, which didn’t feel at all minor at the time. After his discharge from the hospital, it became clear—I’ll spare you the details—that the catheter wasn’t catheterizing, and I had to put in a call to one of his urologists. The good doctor handled it beautifully, telling us to come back into the hospital and directly up to the ward Michael had just left, avoiding the blunt-force trauma of going through the emergency room. A quick (but obviously painful) flush of the system with saline solution and everything was back to normal. We went back home and I made the patient some broth from a can of chicken noodle. I ate the chicken and noodles.
By the next day, we were on solid foods again and going out for short walks. Despite his admission on his own blog that he was scared shitless, (pissless, actually, but never mind), Michael never showed any outward signs of emotional stress. He seemed to take it all in stride, which made my modest duties easy.
Within a few days I was completely in vacation mode, and it was a great visit. Two days in Colonial Williamsburg, where we always ate with only the best people and stayed on site in a converted something—a mill or granary or privy, I wasn’t quite sure which. Williamsburg has been restored to its condition of roughly 1750, and its many homes and other buildings, concerts on period instruments, and historical reenactments create in even a jaded historical revisionist like myself a swell of patriotic fervor. Nor did they ignore some of the dark side of our revolution against the British: One reenactment of the mob trial of a loyalist whose only crime was his not very prudent political pronouncements caused, I hope, conflicted feelings in even the most ardent jingoist when they started to tar and feather the poor accused. He was saved only at the last minute by a forced “confession” and a promise to get out of town, which meant back to England.
My favorite event of the visit was an outdoor performance of slave music and dance, which we attended after dark. No actual whippings, but I found it inspirational to watch the human spirit rise up in song and dance under the harshest conditions possible.
Later in the visit, we went to a baseball game, which the Nationals won, if only on the strength of two monumental errors by the Cubs in the first inning. I don’t even follow baseball, and I had a great time.
Plus a few drives in the country in the new Miata, with the top down, of course.
Overall, I recommend a visit to Broschat next time he has major surgery. Two weeks together in his small apartment and we showed no sign of getting on each other's nerves. He’s a wonderful host and a gifted story teller, and he has a great collection of DVDs. We watched a different movie almost every night.
Even though I loved Washington and environs, it’s good to be home. Yesterday, Mary and I decided to go for a drive and a walk in the country, enjoying a high temperature of eighty degrees, our dry climate, and a cooling breeze. We drove with the top down in our aging but still-satisfying Eclipse Spyder for about twenty minutes to get out of town, then through some lovely and largely empty country roads to the trailhead, where we walked for an hour without seeing another person. A typical outing out this way. This in contrast to the drives in the Miata through the madness of DC surface-street traffic and congested freeways, and walks on “trails” which we shared with scores of other walkers, wild-hare bicyclists, and rushing traffic just a few feet away. Enjoyable enough, but still. . . .
Bright lights big city have their charms, but I guess I’m mostly a country boy at heart, though it’s taken me about twenty years to realize and accept it.
Male readers take note: if you haven’t had this surgery yet, you have a even chance of needing it sometime in the next ninety days, so get your PSA checked and a caregiver lined up.
Buy a sports car. Get tickets to a ball game.
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