Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Glenn Beck Is Right

Or: The People of San Diego County Must Hate America -- They Still Support George Bush

By now most everybody has heard the quote from right-wing radio and TV host Glenn Beck: "I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." Let's leave aside, for a moment, that only an asinine knucklehead would say something so hurtful and spiteful.

Instead, let's focus on Mr. Beck's ignorance of California's political road map. A vast majority of the homes lost in Southern California this week were in North San Diego County, a reliable bastion of Republicanism in this otherwise solidly blue state. Mr. Beck is, in effect, calling out his own people.

I would contend Beck has committed the grand-daddy of Freudian slips: It is Republicans who must hate America, because they continue to blindly support a president bent on destroying both the very civil liberties we have held sacred for over 200 years and the idea we should have a burgeoning middle class in America.

Moreover, it is the "we hate taxes" mindset of those Republicans that may have turned what should have been a mere disaster into an utter catastrophe. In their desire to keep taxes low, the good people of San Diego have succeeded in choking their government to the point it can't protect them. As Steve Lopez points out in his column today in the Los Angeles Times, the city of San Diego has just 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents. Contrast that with "liberal" San Francisco, which boasts 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 residents.

Most firefighting analysts say these fires could have been mitigated had there simply been more manpower on hand at the outset. The people of San Diego may have done this to themselves. And the worst thing is that it will be folks like Glenn Beck who will shout loudest that, in this catastrophe, "the government has failed us," when in actuality it is the people who have failed their government.

Still, it is a testament to the good people of California that this is no Katrina. At the height of the wildfires over one million people had been evacuated from their homes. The evacuation was, in large part, orderly and calm, and the evacuees have been well taken care of. I'm no big fan of the Governator, but his leadership during this trying time has been exemplary. And my thoughts are with the good people who have lost their homes and businesses.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Iggygate Heats Up

Or: Ellen DeGeneres Torpedoes Would-be Dog Savers' Careers

By now, almost everybody knows about the strange case of Iggy, the dog that comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres adopted and then passed along to her hair dresser's family. My only question about the whole affair is this: what did Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, proprietors of Mutts and Moms (the animal rescue operation that originally gave the dog to DeGeneres) hope to gain by yanking the dog away from an eleven year-old girl and her family?

One assumes they meant to flip the figurative finger at DeGeneres, apparently for being a "celebrity" who could "always get her way" because of her status. Yet one also can't escape the feeling that Batkis and Chekroun aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. After all, DeGeneres has a considerable soap-box on which to stand. Had they thought this through, Batkis and Chekroun surely should have understood that taking on DeGeneres in this manner could only result in career suicide.

Yet take on DeGeneres they did, and in an unthinking and unfeeling manner. Following this story I'm reminded of the classic T-shirt; you know, the one with the caption "The Last Great Act of Defiance." In this case Batkis and Chekroun are the mice, and Ellen DeGeneres is the eagle.

Mutts and Moms is dead. Batkis and Chekroun may as well pick up the want-ads and begin looking for new occupations. Ladies, Ellen just stuck a fork in you, and you are done. You look like jerks, and Ellen looks like a sympathetic figure who just tallied another notch in her belt. Nice work, Mutts and Moms.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Randon Thoughts On the Day's News

All across the country today Neo-con heads are spinning -- a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist -- upon the news of Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Is now a good time to ask Mr. Gore to save us from the clutches of hell by, pretty please, running for president? I know this may seem a bit selfish, but, at this point Mr. Gore, your country needs you more than does the world.

There seems to be a lot of angst among the liberal blogosphere about the possibility of an "October Surprise" next year, perhaps another terrorist attack, in an effort to elect Republicans. Why would it occur to anyone that another attack will result in continued Republican rule? The Democrats need to repeat this mantra, early and often: It happened on their watch. It happened on their watch.

The Republicans were in control on 9-11, and they completely ignored the intelligence that we were about to be attacked. Call me crazy, but I think another attack will result in an immense Democratic landslide in 2008. Remember: it happened on their watch.

My vegetarian friends are feeling smug nowadays, what with the recent report that methane from the world's livestock are a major contributor to global warming. Personally, I don't think this report in any way validates the vegetarian lifestyle. After all, we as a species evolved largely as a result of our change from being an herbivore to an omnivore. Instead, I think the report merely validates a far more insidious fact: the world is dangerously over-populated, and we are rapidly beginning to exceed the earth's carrying capacity.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

A Weekend In L.A.

My son's flag football team had an 8:00 A.M. game last Saturday in Pasadena. Reasoning that waking him up at 5:00 to make it to the game on time probably wasn't a good idea (much less waking my wife at such a god-forsaken hour), we decided to spend the weekend at my father-in-law's condo in L.A.'s Westside District, which would shorten our drive to the game by at least a half hour.

My son's team lost on a last-second touchdown by Pasadena, ruining our hopes for an undefeated season. After the game, we drove back to the condo to unwind, and then made our way to Westwood Village to take in the shops. I remembered the Village from my younger days as a wonderfully eclectic mix of quirky and unique shops. Today, the Village has been completely corporatized. Instead of the one-of-a-kind eateries that once populated the area, you now have Quizno's and Subway and the ubiquitous Starbucks. About the only unique shop left in the Village is film director Kevin Smith's comic book shop, and it's about to close because Smith can't find someone to run it for him.

As an aside, my wife and I noticed a difference between the homeless people we saw in Westwood and those we see elsewhere: they are electronically outfitted better than we are. We saw one guy sporting a brand-new Ipod Nano, and another with a Blackberry. It begs the questions: how does a homeless person go about downloading music to his Ipod? Where does Verizon send his bill for his PDA? Also, every homeless person we saw was pushing his cans and bottles in identical black carts. Are these government issue? Does West L.A. have some sort of program to make sure its homeless are homogeneous?

Anyway, after our disappointing shopping experience we decided to take our son to see The Rock's new film, Game Plan, at the historic El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. What should have been a twenty minute trip from Westwood took an hour and fifteen minutes, thanks to an immense traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway.

As an outside salesman I drive for a living. I deal with Southern California traffic on a daily basis, so I'm largely immune to traffic rage. I accept traffic for what it is: a pain in the rear about which I really can't do anything. My wife, on the other hand, has a ten-minute commute along surface streets to an office building. She doesn't do traffic. About five minutes in she started with the "hurrumpfs," then the heavy sighs, and then proceeded to have a near melt-down as we inched along. It was not the most enjoyable trip I've ever endured.

Anyway, we finally made it to Hollywood, and all I can say is that, despite the creeping corporatization of the area, it is just as delightfully weird as ever. A couple hundred people were in front of the Kodak Theater, protesting the plight of the Burmese people. Interspersed with them were Spiderman, Cinderella, Darth Vader, an Imperial stormtrooper, Davy Jones, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and no fewer than three Captain Jack Sparrows. Indeed, only a drunken, drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson was needed to complete the entire Johnny Depp filmography.

Here's a short review of Game Plan: If you have a six or seven year-old boy or girl, go see it. There's enough slapstick to keep the boys laughing, and it's cute enough to keep the girls smiling. In fact (and I never thought I would write this about any vehicle starring The Rock), it was not an altogether painful way to waste two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, we made our way to the La Brea tar pits. My son's at an age that skeletons fascinate him, so the walk through the museum was enjoyable for all of us. We got to see the paleontologists pull a real sloth femur from Pit 91. Then, as we walked past one of the pits no longer being explored, we caught a bit of realism: a small sparrow vainly struggling to extricate itself from the bubbling asphalt. This was a bit much for the wife, who didn't exactly come here to see the tar pits in action. My son, on the other hand, was enthralled, and declared we needed to come back in a couple of weeks to "see if we can find the bird's skull." I told you, skeletons fascinate him.

So all in all, it was a successful excursion for the family, although by the end of the weekend my wife had had enough of L.A. We want to go back to take in the Natural History museum, but I think she needs a bit of L.A. detox before again venturing into the City of Angels.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Bush Vetoes S-CHIP Expansion

So today President Bush vetoed the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) recently passed by Congress. "I believe in private medicine," he said, "not the federal government running the health care system."

Great, he believes in a health care system that has caused millions of children to lose their coverage in the six-plus years he's been in power. He believes in a health care system in which insurance companies gobble up from twenty to forty percent of all revenues, as opposed to government-run health care that boasts less than five percent in administrative costs. He believes in a health care system in which even insured individuals are routinely denied needed treatments by their for-profit insurers.

Moreover, he believes the trillion dollars it will end up costing us for his disastrous and unnecessary foray into Iraq is just fine, but spending seven billion per year the next five years to ensure the health of the nation's children is somehow "reckless spending."

So much for "compassionate conservatism." Hell, so much for conservatism. After all, study after study has shown the costs to society for having so many children uninsured -- from increased emergency room visits to missed school days to declining productivity once they reach adulthood -- far outweigh the additional costs of providing them health care. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish.

We can only hope the House finds the needed votes to override this mean-spirited veto. If not, look for this to be another in the long litany of issues in which Bush has effectively hoisted his party on its own petard. 2008 can't come soon enough.