The Unkindest Cuts of All

Yesterday on Facebook I was taken out to the intellectual woodshed for a wire-brushing by my friend Bob, who took me to task over his contention that I was “casting blame [at our political classes] very one-dimensionally.” He accused me of “…devolving into dogmatism …,” noting that, “All your spears seem to be reserved for the Republicans and you have no criticism for the other side…”

Yes, I tend to be hard on Republicans because I'm basically conservative, and I expect better behavior and clear, rational discussion of serious issues from people that are supposed to be thoughtfully and seriously conservative. Unfortunately, there appear to be no rational, thoughtful Republicans left … only a bunch of unyielding, unthinking demagogues led around by the nose by Grover Norquist and the Tea Party, reduced to shouting slogans and petulantly refusing to compromise on any issue.

All that said, in one regard I agree 100% with the Republicans (incredible as that may seem): government spending – in relation to income – is out of control. Both parties are at fault, even though Republicans insist it's all the fault of the big-spending Democrats (it's worth remembering that the Republicans are the party of a president that fought two wars on credit while cutting the taxes that might have helped pay for them). Democrats, on the other hand, believe there’s nothing wrong with spending money we don't have on social programs that are often of questionable value. Every member of Congress tries to bolster his or her chances of reelection by steering government spending for the benefit of the home district, or to curry favor with particular unions, ethnic groups, special interests, or whatever. It's a game everybody plays, and it's cynical and disingenuous for either side to claim otherwise.

Yes, the real issue, as the Republicans rightly point out, is spending, which absolutely must be brought under control. Simply raising taxes to generate a larger amount of money to spend only makes the problem worse. But when the deficit is as huge as it is, refusing to even hypothetically consider the possibility of maybe discussing raising taxes to help lower the deficit strikes me as, to say the least, irresponsible.

So, we have to cut spending, and we have to at least think about taxes. The two are related, no matter how much the hyperconservative right would wish it otherwise. Today, I'll talk about cutting spending. On Sunday, I'll look at taxes.

Disclaimer: everything I know about economics could be placed in a thimble and still leave room for a herd of elephants and a brass band. I'm just sayin' ...

Let's start at the beginning. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says:

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…”

That seems pretty clear to me: Congress can spend money, and has the authority impose taxes to get the money to spend. So far, so good. The devil is, of course, in the details.

What are the common defense and general welfare functions of government that tax revenue should pay for? The Constitution doesn’t say. They are easier to identify at the state and local level of government – things like police and fire protection, schools, and sanitation are services we generally expect our local (state and below) governments to provide. The higher one goes in the government, though, the less obvious are the things we can all agree should be paid for by tax revenue – most of us would probably agree on the need for an army, a court system, and the general legislative and executive mechanisms of government, but how about educational standards? Regulation of commerce? Social Security? Food safety and purity? Air traffic control? Workplace safety? Protecting minorities from discrimination? Aid to poor families? Printing every government publication in both English and a million other languages (because why should immigrants have to learn to speak English)?

Riddle me this, Batman: what should we cut, and by how much?

It’s easy to throw out sound bites like “$4 trillion in cuts,” but when you come down to naming the specific things to cut that will add up to that $4 trillion, you’ll be deafened by the bellowing of all the oxen being gored. Every government program you can name has its ardent defenders who can marshal great throngs of supporters, petitions with thousands of signatures, and reinforced platoons of expensive lobbyists to argue that it is vital to the life of the Republic and can’t possibly be terminated or reduced in any way.

So, what would you cut?

I have some suggestions (which I'll post here in a few days), and many people have logged their suggestions at websites like The National Taxpayers Union and Representative Eric Cantor's "You Cut Citizen Review of Government." But it's Congress that will have to make the tough decisions and incur the wrath of the constituents who will be angered by specific reductions.

I wish I had the answers, but I don't. I have ideas, and so do many others. What we don't have are leaders with the political will and courage to make the tough decisions in spite of pressure from vested interests (including you and I) ...

What should we cut? And what else do we need to do to dig our way out of the current economic crisis? Come back on Sunday, when we'll look at the unpleasant but necessary topic of taxes, and continue our discussion of the things we should cut.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Tomorrow is Cartoon Saturday, and not a day too soon.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

May I Have Yet Another Envelope, Please ...

Although it is very difficult, I have to finally make a decision and select one - just one - person from the huge crowd of worthies clamoring for the dishonor of being named Ass Clown of the Week.

Our previous recipient, named on June 24th, was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who - based on his disgraceful performance in a non-supporting role - was also a strong candidate for a second award. But the competition this week was extraordinarily strong, and although it was very difficult to pick a single dishonoree, I am forced to conclude that the third recipient of the Ass Clown of the Week Award goes to Grover Norquist.

Mr Norquist, the head of a group called Americans for Tax Reform, has never been elected to a national office, and yet he has managed to maintain a stranglehold on efforts to address all aspects of the current budget crisis by his ironclad insistence on dogmatic purity on the part of all those members of Congress who have signed his "no new taxes" pledge. If the United States Congress remains in total gridlock, the nation is driven to default on its debts, and Republicans continue to insist that negotiate means do exactly what I say or else, it will be largely thanks to this unelected gadfly who revels in the power he exerts over members of Congress who are more concerned about kissing the backsides of their hysterical bases than on helping Real People and keeping a strong and economically secure America.

Mr Norquist, congratulations. Hang this award on the wall of your library along with your collection of fawning references to yourself. If the economy finally goes all the way down the toilet, we'll know who to blame.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Take another look at the photo of Mr Norquist above, then go back and read this post. Coincidence?

B.

Thinking About the Movies

I’m still too wound up about Republican and Democratic ass clowns to write coherently about politics or the economy today, so I have decided to steal a meme from Margaret (Peggy or Peg, too), who admits that she “totally stole it” in her turn from Tammie at Irregular Tammie, who admits she stole it from Theresa. So go ahead and sue me.

Let’s go to the movies…

Name a movie you have seen more than ten times: Airplane! One of the funniest movies of all time … every time I watch it, I laugh myself silly and see something I missed before.

Name a movie you have seen multiple times in the cinema: The Two Towers and The Return of the King. I saw these in the cinema the first time, then a second time accompanied by a live orchestra and chorus at Wolf Trap … a tremendous experience.

Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a film: Sean Connery.

Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a film: Vin Diesel, if you call him an actor.

Name a film that you can and do quote from: Airplane! All the time. And don’t call me Shirley.

Name a musical that you know all of the songs and lyrics to: None, but The Phantom of the Opera comes close … All I Ask of You and The Music of the Night are some of the most beautiful songs I know.

Name a film that you would recommend everyone see: Duck Soup, or almost anything by the Marx Brothers. For sheer madcap fun, nobody’s ever done better than the Marx Brothers (am I right, Gilahi?) … and God knows we all could use a little fun these days.

Ever walked out on a film? Not yet.

Name a film that made you cry: Oddly enough, Saving Private Ryan. The scene where the old man breaks down and cries in the Normandy cemetery always gets to me.

Popcorn? Absolutely.

How often do you go to the cinema? Almost never. The cost is outrageous and the behavior of the ass clowns in the audience with their cell phones and loud talking takes a lot of the fun out of the experience. I’d rather buy or rent the movie and watch it at home.

What's your favorite film genre? Thrillers, followed by Science Fiction and Horror, and Comedy.

What's the first film you remember seeing at the cinema? Old Yeller.

What film do you wish you had never seen? Alien³. One of the most stupid sequels ever (which is saying a lot), and a tremendous comedown from the gripping terror of Alien and the desperate heroics of Aliens (you just have to love the scene where Sigourney Weaver stomps out in the powerloader suit to fight the alien queen and save little Newt, shouting “Get away from her, you BITCH!”).

If you could be any character portrayed in a movie, who would it be? Rufus T. Firefly as played by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup. Crooked, funny, and completely over the top.

Total number of films you own on DVD: 271, of which we’ve actually watched less than a quarter … we’re saving them for days we’re snowed in or I’m put out of work thanks to Republican insistence on budget cuts rather than fixing the tax code.

Last film you bought: The King’s Speech.

Last film you watched: Toy Story 3. My son-in-law and I took granddaughter Leya to the theater to see it, and we had a wonderful time.

Five films that mean a lot to you:

1. The Return of the King, because I love the story, and because the acting and cinematography were superb. I could watch King Theoden’s heroic rallying of the troops before Minas Tirith a million times and be on my feet screaming “DEATH!!” every time.

2. Se7en, because it’s one of the most atmospheric, bizarre, gripping and intricately-plotted thrillers I’ve ever seen, with an ending I never saw coming … and because it’s worth the price of admission to hear Brad Pitt complain about having to find a book by the “mar-kwiss duh shar-day.”

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it’s pure escapist fun, with the most exciting first ten minutes in movie history (not counting the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan, of course).

4. Singin' in the Rain, because it’s just so entertaining on so many levels, and is full of great music and dancing.

5. Shall We Dance? (the original Japanese version, not the 2004 Richard Gere/J-Lo version), because it was fun, well-acted, and told a good story.

I don’t tag people for memes, because you can figure out enough ways to waste time on your own…but if you want to take this one on, go ahead. I’d be interested in your answers.

Have a good day. Watch a movie. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Bookless Library

You know by now, Dear Readers, that I love to read. I wish I were taller, because I'm up to my you-know-what in books. This is not, of course, a bad thing unless you have to pack them all to move, which I did frequently while I was in the Air Force.

But the technology of reading marches on. Just as cuneiform on clay tablets gave way to papyrus scrolls, which gave way to bound vellum, which eventually ended up as the hardcover and softcover books we know today, all those weighty books are themselves giving way to digital formats that can be "read" on an electronic device. Agnes has her Sony Reader, Andrea has her Nook (in addition to her newer website devoted to reading and book reviews, check it out here), and I've even considered buying such a device to help save weight on our upcoming trip to Germany. I recently stuck my toe into the digital water by taking my daughter's advice and downloading the Kindle app onto my iPhone ... but more about that later.

The electronic book formats are slowly taking over. I didn't realize just how quickly this was happening until I read this Time Magazine article yesterday: Is a Bookless Library Still a Library? The article describes the new Library Learning Terrace at Drexel University, which is a library without a single book ... just rows of computer terminals on which readers can access digital volumes stored in the e-version of what we used to call "the stacks."

But is it reading?

Of course, you say ... you're still "reading" the same information, just presented in a different way. Instead of unrolling a scroll, or pondering icons pressed into clay tablets or leafing through your mass market paperback, you're simply "paging" through the digital equivalent by swiping your finger across a screen or pushing an icon that advances the image of the page.

But is it really reading?

I admit it. I'm a traditionalist. I like the feel, the weight, the smell of a real book. Sitting in front of a fire on a snowy evening with a cup of hot chocolate and a flat-screen electronic reader just doesn't seem the same to me. Yes, I see the advantages ... toting a small, lightweight electronic device rather than a pile of heavy books on a trip is certainly easier on your back and saves packing space. But on a day-to-day basis, give me a real book any day.

I even love books about books. One of life's great pleasures is a read through Alberto Manguel's wonderful book The Library at Night, and Robert Danton had this to say in his recent book titled The Case for Books:

"Consider the book. It has extraordinary staying power. Ever since the invention of the codex sometime close to the birth of Christ, it has proven to be a marvelous machine - great for packaging information, convenient to thumb through, comfortable to curl up with, superb for storage, and remarkably resistant to damage. It does not need to be upgraded or downloaded, accessed or booted, plugged into circuits or extracted from webs. Its design makes it a delight to the eye. Its shape makes it a pleasure to hold in the hand. And its handiness has made it the basic tool of learning for thousands of years, even when it had to be unrolled to be read (in the form of the volumen or scroll rather than the codex, composed of leaves connected to a binding) long before Alexander the Great founded the library of Alexandria in 332 BC."

Yes, there's no substitute - most of the time - for the good old book.

But getting back to my daughter's recommendation to download the Kindle app for my iPhone...

Perhaps I might like it if the screen were larger. Or if I didn't have to worry about running out of power in the middle of a good part of the story. Or if I weren't just a grouchy partial luddite.

There's probably a Kindle or some such device in my future. But that doesn't mean I have to welcome it with open arms ... more with a sigh of resignation.

There's just nothing like a book.

Have a good day. Read something. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

How I Spent My Weekend

1. Took a last load of junk to the landfill. Decided that when I grow up, I want to be the guy who drives the huge front-end loader that picks up the loads of crushed junk and dumps it into the trucks to be taken away.

2. Spent two hours on Saturday being run ragged around a playground under the blazing sun by a hyperkinetic almost-four-year old with an amazing ability to invent games that involve Oma and Opa climbing around and doing things on jungle gyms that 60-year olds really aren't flexible enough to do.

3. During breaks in the frenetic activity described in #2 above, told stories (with sound effects) to the grandchild. Had to go back periodically and re-tell sections of the stories when Leya told me that I was doing it wrong. Had to think very quickly on my feet each time Agnes asked Leya, "Do you know the story of ______? Okay, Opa, tell the story!" ... and I had no clue what she was talking about.

4. Walked Nessa about 350 miles.

5. Finished power-washing the deck.

6. Pulled all the weeds in the front flower beds and the garden that could be seen on Google Earth.

7. Did a load of laundry. Just one. No sense in overdoing things.

8. Shook head in disgust over the behavior of elected reprehensives who are more interested in pandering to their political base than in actually fixing the economy and helping Real People.

9. Wondered why it is that hours on Saturday and Sunday are 65% shorter than equivalent hours on Monday through Friday.

10. Isn't that enough?

That's all for today. I need to get ready to head back to the salt mines for another week ... or may be it's my seat on the galley. It doesn't matter, though, and I'm not complaining - at least I have a job.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Of Smiley Faces and Courtroom Drama

It's just after 5:00 AM as I start to write this. On a Sunday. When I went to bed last night, I made a special point of turning off the alarm so I could sleep late, and I nevertheless found myself wide awake at 4:40 ... having slept exactly 40 minutes later than I would on a normal working day.

Ergo, I'm cranky.

I had planned to write a lengthy and - hopefully - coherent and detailed post on the subject of fixing the economy, but I'm sitting here looking at my notes and nothing is coming together in my head except the vague notion that I really want to go back to sleep.

Thus, I'm tossing my original idea for today's post in exchange for some more rambling on different topics related to the 10th of July.

Today is the birthday of the man who invented one of the most widely-recognized symbols ever devised. Harvey Ball was a commercial artist working for a public relations firm who was asked in 1963 to devise a program to ease tensions in a pair of insurance companies which had just gone through a difficult and hostile merger. He developed a "friendliness campaign" which featured its own logo ... the now-ubiquitous "smiley face" -

The smiley face has spawned countless variations, including the frowny face ...

And the inventive "Mr Yuck" symbol distributed by poison control centers to warn small children away from things they shouldn't drink ...

Mr Ball was paid $45 for his design, which he never tried to copyright. He later declared the first Friday in October to be World Smile Day (motto: "Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile"), and when he died in 2001 the World Smile Foundation was established in his name to honor Mr Ball's memory and promote good works.

It was also on this date in 1925 that the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" began in Dayton, Tennessee. It pitted legal giants William Jennings Bryan (for the prosecution) against Clarence Darrow (for the defense) in a case accusing schoolteacher John T. Scopes of violating a Tennessee state law that made it an offense to "teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals." The dramatic trial pitted religious fundamentalists who believed in the literal truth of the Bible against those who believed that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was scientifically correct and consistent with religious beliefs. In the end, Mr Scopes was convicted and fined $100. The court decision was later overturned on a technicality, and the case was never retried. The case was dramatized in the wonderful play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (no, not the Confederate general), which was turned into the 1960 film starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (the character based on Clarence Darrow) and Fredric March as Matthew Harrison Brady (representing William Jennings Bryan).

Of course, the Creationism - vs - Evolution controversy continues to this day.

And now it's 6:15, and I'll try to go back to bed.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

And another week slides by into history ...

Former First Lady Betty Ford has passed away at age 93; a man in Wyoming is under arrest after killing three of his children and another person and wounding a fourth; tabloid newspaper News of the World has collapsed (and threatened to take the UK government with it) after revelations that its reporters hacked into the cell phones of crime vicitims and others; an Australian man has been killed and several others injured during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; and House Democrats are learning from House Republicans - where the Republicans absolutely refuse to even think about discussing taxes, Democrats are now refusing to discuss cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Congress may play reckless chicken with your future, but you can always count on Cartoon Saturday to help you grin and bear it.

Following up on yesterday's post about Little Green Men, we lead off with a pair of cartoons about aliens ...

And ...

The linguist in me bubbled to the surface when I saw these three clever cartoons riffing on the symbols we use every day ...

And ...

And this one ...

And then we have the ultimate result of too much use of on-screen symbols (or emoticons) ...

Here's your terrible pun of the week ...

Thinking back to her last guest post, Nessa wanted me to include this one (which, at the rate the economy is going, isn't really all that far-fetched) ...

This one goes out to my favorite 14th-century lady, Craziequeen ...

And finally for this week, a nod to our elected reprehensives in Congress, without whom us would-be comedians would have much, much less to talk about ...

It looks as if it will be another hot and steamy weekend here in Northern Virginia. We'll be visiting our local grandchildren later this morning, after I take one more load of junk to the landfill, and we'll spend the rest of the weekend doing the usual set of quasi-relaxing chores. Maybe I'll even have a chance to relax on The Swing From Hell ...

Stranger things have happened...

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Little Green Men

Continuing our series of bizarre events that happened today in history...

It was on this date in 1947 that the Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record newspaper reported that a flying saucer had crashed near the local Army base. In the coming days, a local rancher found pieces of a strange, lightweight metal scattered over the local hills, and an Army public information officer put out a statement claiming that the Army had recovered the wreckage of a "flying disc" - a statement later contradicted by an Air Force spokesman who claimed the recovered wreckage was that of a weather balloon.

Over the years, the Roswell flying saucer story has grown and morphed with added details: that the bodies of the alien crew were recovered and are in storage at (insert "CIA headquarters" or your military facility of choice), that the Air Force reverse-engineered the wrecked flying saucer and has a "ghost squadron" of such vehicles waiting to prevail in a future war, that one or more of the alien crew survived and is being kept in a secret facility as an advisor to the Department of Defense. Earlier this year, in her book titled Area 51, author Annie Jacobsen claimed that the bodies recovered at the crash site were the results of a joint attempt by Joseph Stalin and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele to produce a race of child-sized warriors to crew miniature warplanes.

The idea that there are other worlds out there, inhabited by creatures that do not necessarily have our best interests at heart, is a staple of science fiction. H.G. Wells' famous novel The War of the Worlds is one of the classics of alien invasion literature, and has been filmed several times - in 1953 and again in the 2005 special effects extravaganza starring Tom Cruise. Another classic of the genre was The Day the Earth Stood Still, first filmed in 1951, and later remade (poorly, in my opinion) in 2008. Better than both of those films was the original novella on which both movies were based - Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates. There was also the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, which featured this scene beloved of modern-day Republicans:

Today, of course, the real threat of alien invasion comes not from outer space, but from other places here on earth ... but that's another story.

Have a good day. Watch out for flying saucers. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

Thursday Odds and Ends

First of all, thanks to all of you who sent wishes for my recovery from the miserable summer cold I've had the last few days. I'm still not hitting on all cylinders, but am feeling considerably better today ... well enough, unfortunately, to go to work, where I can feel yucky AND clean out my in-box. How much better does life get?

I'm still not completely back to normal (or whatever passes for it in my case), so today I'll just offer a few odds and ends that you may find interesting...

If you've ever described something as "the greatest thing since sliced bread," you may be interested to know that it was on this date in 1928 that sliced bread first went on sale at a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, courtesy of the invention of the Rohwedder Bread Slicer by an Iowa jeweler named - oddly enough - Otto Frederick Rohwedder. You can read the entire history of sliced bread here. This is what the original Rohwedder Bread Sliver looked like:

We've all had the experience of dealing with things which drive us to distraction because they are poorly designed. Naturally, there's a website dedicated to such things ... it's called Bad Designs, and includes a long list of examples of poor design, sorted by category and including design suggestions that would have made the devices more useful, less confusing, and generally better. It's an interesting place to visit.

Need to find everything you ever wanted to know about flirting? Here it is: The Social Issues Research Center (SIRC) Guide to Flirting. It's a very useful website that includes general topic headings such as "Where to Flirt," "Who to Flirt With," "Nonverbal Flirting," and "Verbal Flirting." I wish I'd had this handy guide years ago, instead of routinely embarrassing myself over the years while I learned by trial and error. Thanks to my good friend and fellow dancer and shameless flirter Joy for bringing this to my attention.

And Minnesota is still closed.

That's all for now. I need to conserve my energy for another day of work.

Have a good day. Flirt well. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

"The Mother of All No-Brainers"

I'm not feeling well today, so this will be a short post. Just deal with it.

My old friend Kerrie posted a link to this article on her Facebook page yesterday and asked for comments from "those of you with hands-on business experience" - The Mother of All No-Brainers, by David Brooks. I thought the article was a brilliant summary of why and how the Republican party has failed the country in general and fundamentally conservative people like me in particular, and said so in a comment (although I have no "hands-on business experience"). Other commenters dismissed him as a "one of the NY Times elitist class," probably for daring to point out that the emperor has no intellectual or economic clothes.

Read the article and let me know what you think. I'm going back to bed.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo