Jim Manis on Most Anything

Jim Manis can formulate an opinion about a good many things, including those about which he has little knowledge. (And some dude named "Lazlo.") Visit The MagicFactory.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Specter Reads Writing on Wall:

And concludes his best route is to switch horses 'cause he ain't no longer in mid-stream. Sen. Arlen Specter, having once been a Democrat, returns to the fold, following his previous party's flirtation with the ultra right. What was a good Jewish boy doing with a bunch of Southern Baptists anyway. By-the-by, some 200,000 PA voters switched parties last year and joined the Democrats.
(Read the story and see the senator smile at NPR.org.)

Will the senate now be filibuster proof? (See The New York Times' story.) The question now is in the hands of the court. Minnesotans and the rest of the country are waiting to see if comedian Al Franken will be seated after having narrowly defeated his Republican opponent this past fall. However, we all remember how a Republican dominated court elected George W. Bush the first time in 2000 after Al Gore won the popular vote. Once things enter the legal system, it's a coin toss, which might explain why so many innocent victims remain in jail.

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The 100 Days:

The press has been pushing the first-first-100-day-analysis of the Obama administration recently, although neither the White House nor the general public seems much interested. However, there is some value to the process.

Obama's poll numbers remain high even as the country, and the world for that matter, is at best adrift in a large stagnant pool with no destination in sight. The general perception is that Obama's leadership is strong. (See The New York Times.) At least Obama is not Ahab.

But the feeling seems to be that the president benefits from our perception that Obama is something more than simply not being George W. Bush. Regardless of what other differences might exist between the Democratic and Republican parties (or not exist, as many critics have complained since the Kennedy administration, which actually had most of the same goals as the Republican party, especially on military intervention and taxes), with few exceptions, the Republicans have generally favored having a weak follower of a president, while the Democrats have preferred a strong charismatic leader.

When the Republican party put forth Lincoln, now generally perceived as our greatest president, it wasn't because the party believed he was a strong leader. The strongest men in the party ended up in his cabinet. He was the compromise candidate that the party leadership believed could be pushed by men pulling his strings. As things turned out, the party leadership underestimated their man.

Some decades later, the Republicans again found themselves confronted by a strong young man who wished to claim a leadership role, and they made him their vice presidential candidate. Teddy Roosevelt became the next strong Republican president only as a result of McKinley's death. Later Roosevelt left the party and formed his own third party. Later Republican presidents, until Nixon, were all "do nothing" office holders.

Tricky Dick Nixon was the one exception to the strong man rule in the Republican philosophy, but he did fit the other requirement of the party—he was the least charismatic man in American national politics. The next time the Republicans managed to succeed in bringing a candidate to the White House they made a completely 180 degree turn, selecting a man who was all charisma and who never had an original idea enter his head—Ronald Reagan.

In short, the two parties philosophies seem to be on the one hand have a "leader" who is pushed out in front of the mob, who can then be steered in the direction that people behind the scenes who actually possess power want the country to go in, while on the other hand the Democrats want a leader who is strong enough to battle his way to the front and then pull the country in the direction it ought to be going. Provided he actually knows what direction that is. (Note: After one thousand days in office, it remains unclear whether Kennedy ever figured that out; and after more than five years, it was definitely clear that Johnson had not figured it out. Carter came to office sixteen years too early; his style would have worked best during the Clinton years; and Clinton came to office decades too late; had he entered the White House in the 1960s no one would have cared about his "zipper" issues.)

(If you've followed me this far, check out The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz on the press's fascination with anniveraries.)

Swine Flu Outbreak:

Wash your hands; cover your mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing; stop French kissing strangers!

I hate it when my mother-in-law talks about common sense; she's the very embodiment of a dizzy blonde even though she's never been blonde without the aid of a bottle. But in this case common sense seems the best protection against the coming pandimic.

A significant number of people have already died from the virus in Mexico, but no one seems to yet know how virulent the disease is, just how many people are seriously affected by it out of all those who are infected. So far, in the countries where it has shown up outside of Mexico, it hasn't seemed serious at all. The concern has to be for citizens of countries with large numbers of poor and uneducated people living in close proximity with one another and little knowledge of or easy access to good "common sense" hygene. (See The New York Times' story and The Washington Post story.)

Are the Bees Back?

Over the past couple of years, bees have been disappearing as has been well documented in the press, even 60 Minutes has addressed the topic. No one to date has found an answer to the problem, but along with the current heat wave, I've encountered a return of bees, at least bumble bees and just today yellow jackets.

Over the past two summers I rarely encountered either of these two pollinating creatures, both of which used to be so plentiful as to be considered pests, but now their reappearance is bringing as much joy to my yard as the new trees I planted last fall and the return of rabbits and squirrels and song birds. Perhaps if nature is optomistic about the Obama administration.

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Thursday, April 23, 2009

When the Gypsies Became Settlers:

In the year 2009, "the economics of more" came to a halt. Suddenly the nation of perpetual motion ran out of places to go. Or maybe they just recognized that they had been racing around in a circle all along.

The big news is that fewer people changed residences between March 2007 and March 2008 than at any time since 1962, when the U. S. population contained 120 million fewer people than it does today. (See The New York Times' story.)

Is Pakistan the New Vietnam or Korea?

Or none of the above? It's too early to tell, but various forces (generally mislabeled) under the heading of "Taliban" are closing in on the Pakistan capital are threatening the current leadership. Considering the dangers, especially the nuclear weapons that government possesses, America may once again find itself drawn into a civil war on the other side of the world.

Certainly, there are major differences in this situation when compared to those earlier ones. India, for one, has a vested interest in Pakistan not falling under the control of radical groups in possession of nuclear weapons. Neither China nor Russia has any interest in seeing this happen either.

One of the questions that is almost impossible to answer is what would a government in Pakistan lead by these insurgent forces actually look like? Most of the focus has been on the concern that the rest of the world would have when such anti western forces possess nuclear weapons, but there should be some considerable doubt that this would ever happen.

It is unlikely that the Pakistan military would surrender itself to the insurgents. More likely that the top leadership will attempt to use the instability of the insurgents to come to power itself. No government in Pakistan has been able to rule without the backing and full complicity of the military there.

Hey! Vice! Why the Hypocritical Turn on Secrecy?

Dick "the Emperor" Cheney fought to keep everything in the government a big secret when he was vice president, but now that the heat is on over the legality and the effectiveness of his leadership in torturing prisoners, he's demanding that more and more government documents be made public. What's that all about?

Dick "I-shoot-friends-in-the-face" Cheney is feeling the heat. The call for investigations leading to criminal charges is growing louder, and the assertion is being promulgated that torturing people didn't lead to much of any worthwhile information, despite all the proof that the TV show 24 provided. (Uh, … that's just a fantasy world. Oops!)

Cheney has asserted all along that torturing people provided critical information that stopped further terrorist attacks—along with furnishing him with sadistic glee—but there has never been any proof. Possibly more secret government documents could do that.

Not likely. What Cheney now wants out in the public are documents that illustrate other people besides himself were making assertions. He's trying to defray responsibility and create an atmosphere of doubt. It's an old defense attorney's ploy. Well, it worked for Alaskan senator Stevens, who, although guilty as sin, escaped jail time because the prosecution withheld evidence.

Note that F.B.I director Robert S. Mueller is on the record as stating that he did not believe coercive methods brought about any useful information. (See The New York Times' story.)

The Price of Oil:

New York Times' writer Jad Mouawad explains the factors keeping the price of gasoline at the pump at around $2 a gallon while consumption of oil world wide has gone down and reserves are at their highest peek since 1980.

A number of factors are envolved, including investors who are using oil as a hedge against a weakening dollar and suppliers who have continued to cutback production. Most experts forecast gasoline prices rising in the U. S. during the summer driving season to an average of about $2.35 or more per gallon.

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Automotive Fuel Efficiency? Look to China:

The Chinese are leading the way in automobile sales and fuel efficiency, according to a report filed by New York Times' writer Keith Bradsher. The world economy may be in an awful slump, and Detroit may have collapsed into a sink hole, but the prognosticators who proclaimed the twenty-first century as the century of China may have their strongest evidence to date.

Highlighting the story is the Chinese government's reduction of its tax on the sales of automobiles with engines no larger than 1.6 liters down to 1 percent. This apparently along with China's energy concerns has sparked a wider interest in cars with small engines. The future, apparently, does not belong to those who drive gas guzzling cub holders.

Meanwhile in the Tech Industry:

Today's big news is that Oracle, a software company, is buying out Sun Microsystems for some $7.4 billion. Evidently, there is still plenty of cash in the system. Sun is best known as a hardware/server company, but it is also responsible for Java and the Microsoft Office alternative, OpenOffice. Expectations are that Sun will lose some 10,000 jobs as a result of the buyout, or a third of its workforce.

For sometime now, the tech industry has been saying that it is still solvent even if the banking industry and the housing industry and the auto industry have been flushed down the tubes. It will be interesting to see of the release of Windows 7 by Microsoft in the near future will help spark an economic recovery.

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Quote of the Week:

Comes from Arizona's Attorney General: "What we have is a kind of cultural icon—guns on one side, workers sending remittances home on the other. Within our own contexts we don't see a problem."

He is quoted by the Washington Post in today's paper in an article revealing the difficulty in quelling the guns and drug trafficking along the southwestern border, John McCain country, where fondling your gun is the preferred form of making love.

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

CIA Torture Memos:

You can read them at the ACLU site. You can also join the ACLU while you are there and sign a petition encouraging your representatives to file criminal charges against the high ranking officials who authorized this illegal behavior. Of course Big Brother is watching. Big Brother is always watching, he just sometimes becomes confused. Which is both the good and the bad news.

Changing Times:

Graduates at the prestigious Wharton School of Business (owned and operated by the Ivy League institution known as the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia) are finding that their $200,000 undergraduate educations are not leading to jobs with Wall Street banks.

Mom and dad coughed up the big bucks expecting their little ones to come home with the mega brass ring, but the Street is experiencing difficulties, and now "the best and brightest" are seeking a rewarding life down other avenues. (Caution, all puns are either intended or stumbled upon.)

Steven Greenhouse reports on the changing times in today's New York Times. My favorite quote is "'Over the past three years, you saw 10 to 12 kids from Wharton going to each of the top five banks,' said a Wharton senior." For me, the use of the term "kids" to describe a college graduate is a telling choice of words. By the age of twenty, I would have never referred to someone of that age as a "kid." I certainly didn't want to be thought of that way.

Nailed:

Gail Collins colors in the lines in portraying Texas governor Rick Perry as a colossal hypocrite in his recent encouragement of the dingbats in Texas calling for secession from the union. The zingers are two many to quote here. Read Collins' op-ed.

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

When the Rich Stop Spending:

The Washington Post's Michael Rosenwald employees some interesting statistics in his article today about the spending cutbacks among the rich and their effects on the economy. Last year households with earnings in excess of $100,000 per year dropped their daily spending from $185 per day down to $160 per day. By last month that spending had dropped down to $101 per day.

Back in 2006, "80 percent of all discretionary income was controlled by households earning more than $100,000." By this past September, discretionary spending among this group had fallen off by 40 percent.

The argument is that the constant media attention to our economic difficulties has caused the securely wealthy to become fearful even when they need not be. There is no mention in Rosenwald's article about shame.

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Guns, Guns, and More Guns:

Bob Herbert points out the illustrative fact in his New York Times column today that, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people, in the U. S. almost 120,000 lives have been lost to gun violence, none of it attributable to terrorism.

While people are being slaughtered by lunatics and criminals, no elected official is advocating any new legislation in attempt to limit the carnage. Just the opposite. Some legislators in places like Texas are calling for more people to carry guns in places like school classrooms where disturbed students can begin firing their concealed weapons at fellow students and teachers when the whim takes them.

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Monday, April 13, 2009

The Characters Who Govern Us:

The New York Times' Adam Liptak portrays Supreme Court Justice Clarence Tomas in today's paper. According to Liptak, Thomas hasn't asked a question in any session of the court since February 22, 2006. That's more than three years.

The occasion of Liptak's article was Thomas's appearance at a dinner sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute. If Liptak is accurate in his reporting, Thomas, widely considered the second most conservative member of the court, comes accross as nearly inarticulate and hardly thinking in a logical manner.

Apparently, Judge Thomas was trapped in some sort of SciFi channel time loop that caused him to wax nostalgic about the time he spent in grade school reciting the pledge of allegiance and seeing crucifixes in every classroom.

Compare the Thomas' characterization with that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as delivered by Washington Post staff writer Robert Barnes in Sunday's paper. Keep in mind that Ginsburg has just come off major cancer treatment.

And consider the Emporor and his new close: George W. Bush is still living in a closed community, hiding from any critical examination of his behavior over the previous eight years, insisting that in some distant time, in a galaxy yet to be discovered, his behavior will at last be vindicated. (See Eli Saslow's depiction in The Washington Post.)

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Obama To Battle Banks Over Student Loan Business:

President Obama is setting out to attack the student loan business that has placed American youth into perpetual debt. Half of young people are going to college and most of them have been going deeply into debt to the failed American banking system for ten to twenty years of their working lives.

For a number of years now, the cost of higher education has been rising at a rate not only faster than inflation but faster even than the spiraling cost of health care. Under the Bush administration, the cost was shifted from tax payers onto the backs of the young people who were attending college with the beneficiaries being the banking industry. Instead of grants, students are given loans with government guarantees so that even if the students couldn't pay the loans back, the taxpayers would.

In other words, the very people whom the shift was ostensibly intended to help were not receiving that aid. The banking industry was. With interest. Thus driving the actual cost of education even higher.

Now not only are the colleges and universities benefiting from the increased and opaque funding of higher education, but so are the banks, thus helping to fuel the wild and irresponsible speculation that industry was involved in for the past decade. (See The New York Times' story.)

By the way, the Bush family has deep ties with the banking industry.

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Is the Movie in Production?

This just in: The kidnapped captain has been rescued from the pirates in the Indian Ocean. This story is just too good. (See the MSNBC story here.)

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Legalizing the Illegals:

Will Obama push to have the 12 million illegal aliens now residing in the U. S. provided with legal status? This is a hot button issue that conservative Republicans would like to latch onto. Currently, Republicans as a whole appear even more inept than George W. Bush, which is really saying something.

Out of work Americans hate the thought that illegals might be stealing their opportunity to work, but the truth is that the illegals have been here for quite a while and no one seriously believes that they can be rounded up and shipped out of country in significant numbers to actually affect the economy in terms of freeing up jobs for the unemployed. It just ain't gonna happen.

So they're here, why not make them legal so that they can start functioning as full fledged, tax-paying citizens? And who better to pressure their employers to stop hiring illegals?

(See The New York Times' story.)

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Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Obama's Election Enriches Gun Dealers:

According to a gun shop owner interviewed on NPR, there has been a steady run on gun stores for guns and ammo since President Obama's historic election. Gun dealers across the nation have been selling out of guns and ammo as gun lovers fear the new president will turn the country into a socialist nation (whatever that means).

So far, even with the recent rampage in multiple murders committed by gun owners around the country, there seems to be no mood within congress to pass any serious gun legislation that might effectively curtail the violence committed by gun owners.

Part of the NPR interview includes a reflection by a woman who intends to have as much ammo as she can buy for her AK47 Assault rifle, with which she intends to defend herself against unknown and otherwise imaginary attackers.

On a side note, the Vermont legislature legalized same-sex marriage. Texans, however, shouldn't fear. People marrying in Vermont will only have their marriages recognized in states that have legalized same-sex marriage. The legislative vote was to override a gubernatorial veto, indicating a large number of Vermont's elected officials were in favor of the new law.

UPDATE: To date, no one has poled gun lovers on their views of same sex marriage; however, significant data exists to show they favor marital rights with their significant guns.

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Saturday, April 04, 2009

Unemployment Rate Climbs Toward Double-Digits:

With the additional loss of 663,000 jobs last month, the unemployment rate in the U. S. now stands at 8.5 percent. In addition, when the number of underemployed workers and those who have simply given up on seeking employment are added in, the figure stands at 15.6 percent. (See The Washington Post story.)

In other economic news, the fast food industry is starting to reflect the downturn as it loses customers. Maybe the obesity problem in this country will become slightly diminished.

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The High Cost of Buying a College Diploma:

Yes, I'm a cynic. Andy Kroll complains about the high cost of higher education in a recent Salon.com piece, and with good reason. The price of a higher education has been steadily increasing at a rate higher than even the cost of health care. We might add with little increase in value as well, if we match it against the value of the same service provided a generation or two ago. The very real increases in cost have been in services provided outside the classroom. Kroll makes no mention of where the increased revenues are going.

Nor does he examine the changing demographics of college students. Approximately 2 out of 3 high school students now choose to attend college upon graduation. Those numbers are simply unprecidented in human history. Currently only about 70 percent of high school studens graduate. While this number is appalling, it nevertheless means that something like half of students who enter high school will go on to attend college. Thus colleges are no longer elite institutions for elite people with elite careers ahead of them. College has become the new high school, but funding is another matter. While America was determined to provide a free high school education for its youth, there is no equivelant aproach to college. Instead, colleges have become revenue streams for the people who run them.

One thing is perfeclty clear: a college administrator's power is directly proportional to the size of his or her budget.

NOTE: Check out the statistic illustrating that the unemployment rate among colleges graduates is equal to about half the national rate, which would mean that unemployment among those without a college diploma is more than double the graduates' rate.

Also NOTE that Kroll's story focuses on a family who chose to have five children and is now complaining about the strain they are under to finance all of their children's education at a Big Ten school. Call me an old foggy, but when I was growing up, only a very few parents could afford to send just one of their children to such an institution.

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Is Google Becoming the New GM?

For the past couple of years, Google has been working hard to lock up the world's knowledge base, scanning everything that's ever been in print, determining for its own nefarious purposes what should be known and by whom. For the latest on Google's advancement in its plans to control the world's access to knowledge, see Miguel Helft's "Google's Plan for Out-of-Print Books Is Challenged" in today's New York Times.

Remember back in the 1960s when General Motors was the fourth most powerful economic entity in the world, surpassed only by the U. S., Britain, and the U. S. S. R.? (GM is now facing bankruptcy and the U. S. S. R. doesn't exist anymore. You already know the financial mess the other two are in.) Thus the question "What happens when one entity garners so much power?"

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