Where To Begin?

So many topics to potentially discuss. Let's get the obvious one out of the way, shall we:

1. I'm moving to D.C.! The time has come, the grand curtain has fallen on this crazy California experiment of mine. It has been a great 7 years on the west coast, no doubt, but for a wide variety of reasons, it's time to wrap it up.

The nuts and bolts, FAQ, quick factoid summary is this: I don't have a job in DC yet, but have several strong leads and will be blasting my super impressive resume to everybody who's ever even HEARD of a lawyer in that town.

I am leaving California the last week of October, and hope to return in 4-5 days. It's a bit of a drive which I am currently doing by myself, but am entertaining the possibility of having some peeps join me during portions of the trip. It is kind of long and boring to ask any one of you to do the whole thing, but if anyone wants to fly to SF to start it off, and then fly back from Denver or somewhere else in the middle, email me. We'll talk.

I will miss California. Quite a bit. But it's just a state with fairly nice weather, and the people I care about (non-professionally) are elsewhere.

California To-Do
Quit my job
Quit my apartment
Sell my furniture
Go to Muir Woods and/or the Headlands once more
Finish potential tattoo design
Lunches with my Bay Area peeps
Salvation Army a ton of clothes
Plot a route, with stopping points
Forward my mail

What did I forget?

2. The Tigers make me so, so very sad. Everyone keeps saying they fought a good fight last night, and while it's true -- it was, objectively and subjectively, a great game -- it ignores the fact that the game never should have been played. The Tigers had a small but solid lock on the division title, and all they had to do was play barely passable .500 ball for the last few weeks. Instead, they got swept by the lowly Royals, and a week after that lost their series matchups against the Royals again, Minnesota, and Chicago--three teams that they are supposed to beat routinely.

Leyland says "we have nobody to blame but ourselves." No shit sherlock, you guys suck. Nobody in the history of baseball has imploded this badly at the end of the season. I mean, you can argue that it's fine because they clearly would have been outclassed during the playoffs, but geez. Unless the Twins go to the Series this year, you can't even argue that this entire season hasn't been a complete waste.

3. I had a rant about Letterman but the Tigers pissed me off again, so I forgot. I think it was basically: we don't know any of the details of his relationship, except that the chick was younger and worked for him. While this is bad for HR purposes, the moral reprehensibility is undetermined. We don't know anything about the nature of this relationship, and to assume that he was praying on a poor defenseless (female) staffer is rather sexist. They are both adults, as far as we know, and it is rampant speculation to assume that she was a) trying to sleep her way to success, or b) the victim of unwanted sexual advances by a powerful superior.

We have nothing to suggest either is true. It's really just a private matter between the parties involved and their spouses. I can appreciate that it "draws attention" to workplace inequity, but only because these are coworkers that had a relationship. Not because of the inequity, which is only suggested.

I guess I remembered more than I thought. It bugs me when people assume that women are being preyed upon simply because they have sex with someone that isn't their professional equal. When men do that, nobody bats an eye. It's unfair and inherently sexist.

And Now For a Different Point-of-View

Even amongst you like-minded readers, I may get some heat for this one. No worries.

One of the big stories today is that the man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 was released to return home to Libya. He has terminal cancer of some kind, and it was uniformly agreed he would not live beyond 3 months.

This guy (Megrahi) was convicted in 2001 so he hasn't been in prison very long. And you may recall, the 1988 bombing killed 270 people. But Scottish law--the plane crashed in Lockerbie, so he was tried/imprisoned by the Scots--allows "compassionate" releases of prisoners in Megrahi's situation.

Needless to say, pretty much everybody is against this. I've seen numerous firestorm opinions about how terrible a decision this was by the Scottish government. I've even seen no less than four Facebook status updates decrying his release.

I disagree. I think it's fine.

Why? Because why not. What purpose does it serve to have this man die in prison, as opposed to at home with his family? In fact, it only adds more vitriol and poison into the world. Had he died in prison, it'd be a minor news story and the victims of Flight 103 (the families of those lost) might pause a moment and be glad he's gone from the earth. But is it better that he die in prison? It adds nothing of value. It doesn't make the dead return to life, and it's not, as everyone has been screaming, justice that he die in prison.

Justice means that he was held accountable. I don't recall the specifics of his charges, or what he was ultimately convicted for, but he was caught, tried, and imprisoned. He was brought to justice. His illness makes it virtually impossible for him to cause harm again. Justice was served, and anything beyond that--wishing that he'd die in prison, sick and alone--is vengeance. Vengeance is unbecoming and, while it is an understandable desire for those who have been wronged, it serves no purpose. Vengeance adds nothing to our humanity, and is in fact only a reflection of the baser instincts we should strive to overcome.

I keep reading that Megrahi "didn't have compassion for the victims of 103, why should we give him any?" But compassion is easy to have when it involves your grandmother. It's much tougher to apply when the focus of the compassion is a man that by all accounts is a fairly evil guy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't give him compassion. It makes us better people having done so.

More on Cops

That whole Gates dust-up is still going a bit, with Obama speaking at length on the subject during his press conference last week. And now the three of them (the President, Gates, and the police officer) are having beers or something. Which is a surprisingly pragmatic way to resolve things.

I am sure that this cop is not a bad person. I don't think Gates is a bad person. I think they were both on edge for different reasons, and as I said before, the duty falls to the police in that scenario to keep things rational. They screwed up by arresting him.

I don't have a problem with cops, in general. Lots of generalizations can be made about them, and I do suspect that many of the stereotypes about cops are "more true" in some areas of the country than in others. They have to be on guard all the time, and it leads to a pretty no-nonsense attitude that can be off-putting to the general citizenry.

Especially when the general public hasn't done anything wrong. As was the case with Gates, and as was the case with this guy in Mobile, Alabama, who is tasered and pepper-sprayed by the cops, and then arrested for not leaving a department store bathroom when told. That alone is already beyond stupid, but the clincher is that he was deaf and mentally challenged. Kudos all around, officers.

It's this kind of situation that gives cops a bad name. The inability to think outside the box for just a moment, and to go with brute force when several other possibilities exist. And then--and this is key--to refuse to admit a screw up when it happens. I don't know if it's pride, or some sort of face-saving attitude, but when cops arrive on the scene to find it is not a robbery, or burglary, or trespassing, they need to defuse and walk away. It may be the somewhat militaristic attitude that seeps into police work that gives rise to the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude.

Again, I respect the need for safety and caution. When that gentleman in D.C. was shot to death after charging his car into a blockade a few weeks back, I thought it was a reasonable response by the cops. That is not analogous to either of the above situations; when there is danger to life and limb, the scenario is entirely different. I am sorry that man was killed, but it is not the fault of the police (from what I saw; if things came out later, I didn't hear about them).

But there's a difference, and we should expect the police, who are in a position of great authority in this country, to be able to distinguish between the situations. If someone is argumentative but in their house and not committing a crime, walk away. If someone won't come out of a department store bathroom, maybe you have to break the door down eventually but pepper spray? Tasers? Completely unnecessary. They should have busted down the door, recognized the situation, and taken the poor guy for ice cream before returning him home.

I know what it's like to have to stay "above reproach". It's a big part of practicing litigation (at least, the way I practice it) because the ultimate arbiter--the judge--usually appreciates when attorneys don't engage in shenanigans or try and pull one over on the court. Plus, when I lose (it happens, very occasionally) I can feel like I did my best in the situation.

It's not a perfect analogy to police work, but it's worth considering. Or, you can take a note from probably the greatest movie of all time: "Be nice. Ask him to walk. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice."

In Swayze We Trust.

But Your Home is Your Home

(3 posts in as many days! Don't fret, I'll disappear again soon I'm sure.)

UPDATE: See, Obama agrees with me. But man, he went on at length. Somebody is going to take issue (wrongly) with the "police acted stupidly" portion. Even though it was the police "acted stupidly in arresting him after they had discovered no crime taking place." Which is 100% truth.

-----------------------

There's been a minor news story making the rounds lately concerning Henry Louis Gates, a professor at Harvard, being arrested for (basically) breaking into his own house. You can read more about it here, though most of the story is reaction now.

Mr. Gates has alleged that he is the victim of profiling and racism by the police. Of course, because this isn't a cut-and-dry case, he is now receiving a lot of flack for his own less-than-perfect role in the ordeal.

It broke down like this: Gates returns home from a trip to find his front door jammed. I'm unclear as to why--maybe an attempted B&E while he was out of town, or just weather--but he had to go around back to unlock the door. He did so, and returned to the front door but still couldn't open it. His driver helped him force it open. A neighbor, apparently saw all this and called the police, reporting that two black men were breaking into the house. In broad daylight, of course. And Gates walks with a cane, like most burglars.

I'll stop right there because that, my friends, is racism. I don't know the neighbor's goals or purposes, but calling the police on your black neighbor because he is trying to force open his door is extraordinarily shady. It is not, as some say, "being a responsible neighbor" because if you were responsible, you'd know he was your neighbor.

Skip ahead, though, to where Gates is inside and on the phone to see about repairs to the front door when the police arrive. Now, I don't know the specifics of what they saw, and we never will now that this has become a big deal, but if you see a 60+ bespectacled man on the phone in an allegedly broken-into house, and he walks over to you with a cane, you might assume right off the bat that he's not a burglar.

The problems arose when the police refused to show Gates their badges, and Gates got super pissed about being accused of burglarizing his own house. These were both unreasonable errors; however Gates is a private citizen and is allowed to be pissed off, unreasonable, and generally rude while in his own home. Police need probable cause or a warrant to enter your house, and for good reason. It is your home, and--surprising libertarian bent on my part--you shouldn't be made to do anything you don't want to do inside your own home.

But the police are not entitled to be rude, disrespectful, and unreasonable. They are the police, and to enforce the law with clean hands, you have to play everything above board. If they had simply received his identification and left, Gates could have made a stink about it but he'd have far less ammunition.

Instead, they refused to give their names, and insisted Gates step outside to discuss the situation. That's unusual by itself, because it indicates that the police did, in fact, have an idea that he lived there, because otherwise they'd have probable cause to go in and get him as a "burglar". When he did come outside, they arrested him for disorderly conduct. On his own porch.

That is some serious bull. Gates, and everybody else, is completely allowed to be an asshole to people while in his own home. You don't have to be his friend or visit him if he is. The police do not have a right to pull you out of your home, no matter how belligerent you are, without probable cause or a warrant for your arrest. These guys had neither, and made the colossally bad decision of arresting one of the nation's most eminent scholars on a trumped up charge.

I'm not saying Gates has clean hands here. It is easy to say he should have held back on the race card business, but when you've studied profiling for years, and then find out your idiot neighbor called the cops because they thought you were breaking into your own house, you're allowed to be skeptical. And then the police fed right into his skepticism by harassing and arresting him.

Anyway, ya'll know I'm not black. I don't pretend to understand what it's like to be profiled. But I understand how pissed off I would be if someone--race aside--called the police on me in my own home. It's up to the police to act professionally, and boy did they fail miserably.

Final tally: one racist neighbor, one asshole cop, and one jerk academic. But the seeming tie between the cop and academic goes to the academic, who was at home.

Brief Update Regarding Two Items

First -- and I hope that this is the last I will say on this -- I'm going to talk about newspapers failing again. Mostly because Weingarten discussed it in his chat today.

I think it is fascinating to watch reporters, even humorists, try and argue that the news should cost money. They know it's their livelihood at stake, so I don't begrudge them one bit, but think about how often we associate reporters with "the truth" and "getting to the story". They don't regard capitalism as a reason to keep information hidden, unless it's THEIR capitalism, in which case suddenly the question becomes, "How can we charge people per story?"

But let's all just breathe a moment. Weingarten posed the question (paraphrased): why do people think the news should be free? I'd have thought the answer was obvious. We have never paid for the content; we pay for the medium.

We pay for a television set; a radio; a computer; and a stack of dead trees. These items allow us access to the news, but we don't pay for the content. We pay for the access. The newspaper is just a very old version of a cable-modem, or a television set. The sooner newspapers realize this, the quicker the solution will make itself known.

What's the one news source you can think of that has no advertising, but survives? National Public Radio (and local equivalents) and the Public Broadcasting Service. PBS mixes entertainment in, but is still akin to NPR. Newspapers are going to have to go non-profit if they want to survive. And the old guard is just going to have to accept it, if they want to live.

Item Two! I'm headed back east for a few days to watch one of my sisters do something academic. I'm pretty sure the middle one. Don't miss me too much while I'm gone!

The Slow Death of the Newspaper

From the Washington Post's weekly chat with media man Howard Kurtz:

Howard, could part of the problem be that because consumers already pay for online access that we don't also want to pay for online content. I spend $50/month for online access. I can't see myself paying any additional $ for online content. To say that everything online is free is not quite accurate. It's just that the service providers are the ones making the money, not the content providers.

Howard Kurtz: Fair point. Everyone pays for Internet access. But that's like saying you already paid to buy a TV set, so why should you now have to pay for cable? (And look, some people don't.) I grew up thinking television would always be free, and now people pay cable providers--and pay extra for premium channels--because they think the content is worth it. Computers and online access aren't cheap, but content also costs money, and iTunes is but one example of how people are willing to pay for what's important to them.

Kurtz, I love ya, but this is way off.

The television is analogous to a computer, not to the content ON the computer. The most accurate analogy is: "That's like saying you already paid to buy a television, so why should you have to pay for cable?" We all pay for cable (illegal connections are a side note and not relevant to the analogy). We all pay for internet access.

What we don't pay for are television shows that come as part of cable. That's the analogy; paying for newspaper content would be akin to me paying for The Daily Show on Comedy Central. I already buy my cable, and there's no way I'm paying twice for both delivery and substantive content. I already hate that Pizza Hut does the same thing.

I don't know what the newspapers will do. I don't have a solution. But they've tried a pay-for-content model and it doesn't work. The reason? News is free. News is news, which means it almost immediately becomes worthless. It becomes "old news", and then it's just information, and not something you should have to pay to get. The 25/50 cent charge for a paper is tiny and has long represented a minor convenience charge for being able to take the news with you. You can still go to the library and read the paper, after all.

iTunes is not an accurate model. You can't just pick one of the few successful pay-for-content endeavors and copy it. iTunes is perfect for what it serves: music. Music is not ephemeral; unlike the news, it doesn't become instantly irrelevant the next day. Okay, well, this may not be true for some bands, but you see the point. You buy a song, it's yours. I don't want to buy an article about the White House's position on climate change as of Monday, May 11, 2009, at 12:30 pm. It has no permanence.

I still believe that advertising can, and should, work to support the newspaper industry. I firmly believe in reporting and journalism, and agree that blogging and twitter do not provide a significant alternative. But this talk of charging people for content is just plain crazy. People will not pay for something that has historically--even if "historically" means 15 years--been free.

"Well, allow me to retort."

The State of the Union was great. A+ for the President, although part of that grade may come from the fact that he can string sentences together and pronounce words correctly. I've missed that.

Then came Bobby Jindal, rising star of the Republican Party. Rising for some unknown reason, given his sad little rebuttal performance last night. Is it because he's "ethnic-looking"? Do the Republicans really think that if they just copy all the superficial aspects of Obama ("Weird name? Check. Dark skin? Check! Young guy? Check.") they can take the White House?

You heard it here first, folks: Jindal will never be President.

First, he has none of that charm that Obama has. He comes across as smarmy and lame, and that--I believe the proper term is "shit-eating"--grin he had plastered on his face as he approached the podium was just disturbing. Plus, what is he, 37? He graduated high school in 1990. That puts him in nearly my sphere of educational experience (Rhodes scholarship aside) which makes me think he has even less authority than the governor of a backwards-ass state more than $2 billion in debt.

But let's assume he can image himself up a little bit better. He remains a GOP talking point with no sense of personal responsibility, or party responsibility, whatsoever. Let's look at the "mea culpa" he delivered last night:

In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear -- our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust -- and rightly so.

The Republicans can't even take responsibility for what happened when they controlled all three branches of government. Republicans "went along with earmarks"? THEY PUT THEM THERE. He makes it sound as if they fell asleep at the switch, and some legislation gnomes slipped into Congress and loaded all the bills with pork.

Then, Jindal takes Obama to task for implying that we (America/Americans) won't persevere through this economic crisis. Let's note first that Obama said "we may not be able to reverse" our economic slide if the stimulus plan isn't passed. If we do nothing, and simply pray that things get better, then it is quite possible we will collapse. A fair point, but not what Jindal quoted:

You know, a few weeks ago, the president warned that our nation is facing a crisis that he said "we may not be able to reverse." Our troubles are real, to be sure. But don't let anyone tell you that we cannot recover. Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her. This is the nation that cast off the scourge of slavery, overcame the Great Depression, prevailed in two World Wars, won the struggle for civil rights, defeated the Soviet menace, and responded with determined courage to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The American spirit has triumphed over almost every form of adversity known to man, and the American spirit will triumph again.

But actually, that's just the usual skewing of your opponents position. Weasely, for sure, but not all that out of the ordinary. I thought it was even worse that Jindal's litany of triumphs was so jumbled. We "cast off the scourge of slavery", did we? And who was it that put that scourge upon us in the first place? We had to fight a war with ourselves to get rid of slavery. And the Great Depression? Has he not read a history book? Again, a creation of our own selfishness and greed. The struggle for civil rights: fought, and won, by the liberals of this country against the conservatives.

The American spirit isn't a genetic by-product of being born in America. It is, more accurately, the human spirit. The freedoms given to us by our Constitution allow the human spirit to thrive, so it is understandable that we would begin equating the ingenuity and perseverance of Americans to some sort of nation-specific gift. But let's not make the mistake of thinking that it is something only Americans can do.

2 Cents: The Octuplet Lady

I am a few weeks late on this, but I watched the Dateline (or whoever) special last weekend and, as I watched, I thought that I would probably have to lay out some sort of blog post on the Crazy Baby Factory Lady.

(see, e.g., this article if you're unclear as to what I'm talking about)

The interview she did with Ann Curry helped make her seem less whack-job crazy, and more standard-style crazy like most of us. I think you have to break down her issues into two distinct categories: Wanting To Have Kids and then Raising 14 Bloody Children.

Wanting to Have Kids
Nadya Suleman wanted to have a big family. There are many reasons for this, and it sounds as if the way she was raised had a big influence on this desire. She underwent in vitro fertilization (or something similar) 5 times, and ended up with 6 kids because the last pregnancy resulted in twins. Then, according to her interview, she was happy and done.

But she had potential eggs left over at the clinic. And, she's religious or spiritual in such a way that she wanted to give those eggs a shot. I can respect that, even if my own opinion on the matter would be significantly different. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but the doctors gave one more go at pregnancy (for a presumably 7th or 7th/8th child) and BAM. A friggin' percussion section takes up residence in her uterus.

Now, I don't "agree" with someone who wants to have any more than say, 3 kids on their own. 2 or 3 children, as a single parent who is still pursuing her education, already taxes my conscience. 5 or 6 is downright silly. But I'm also aware that it's my opinion and I don't think there is anything inherently immoral about it. Especially after seeing her interviewed, where she came across as tired and a bit exasperated but not unduly nuts.

Her worst decision was in having "one more go" at her remaining ova. I can see the moral significance--if you believe that every "life" deserves a chance, you'd want to give these eggs a shot--but maybe they should have been donated to another infertile couple instead.

Raising 14 Bloody Children
So she got pregnant with what she thought was 7 kids (the 8th was a surprise during delivery). It is possible to selectively abort multiple fetuses in this situation, but after reading the above rationale for having the babies, why on earth would anyone expect her to do this? She wanted to give those eggs a shot, and boy howdy did they take her up on the offer.

But what's done is done, and I can't really fault her for not terminating any of the fetuses. Moreover, she now has 14 kids. Should she select some to give up for adoption? That seems arbitrary. Everybody is calling on various companies to boycott her, but while I believe she has been guilty of poor decision making, once the kids are out of the womb and walking around, my greater sense of charity towards the children overrides any sense that she should be punished. Because let's be honest, punishing Suleman is just punishing her children, who didn't do anything wrong here.

So I think anybody who wants to send them diapers or crates of baby clothes should go ahead and do so. Whether or not it "encourages" this kind of behavior is irrelevant; the behavior happened and now there are 14 kids that need assistance.

Final Tally
For those keeping score at home, here were Ms. Suleman's objective mistakes:

1. One of her first 6 children -- the 4th, I believe -- is autistic. That right there should have been the end of the line as far as having more babies; raising an autistic child has got be as taxing as 2 or 3 developmentally normal children.

2. ADOPTION, lady. One of her common refrains to Ann Curry is that she just wanted to have a big family like she didn't have, and that she wanted to have children all her own. I can respect that. I can even respect having one or two kids biologically to sate that desire. But after that? There are SO many children that could use a better home, why on earth would you have even 2 or 3 more on purpose when you could just adopt?

"Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice..."

Time for some pithy commentary, right quick. You all can look up these stories on your own, they don't pay me* to hyperlink for your lazy asses.

- The U.S. Post Office is asking to halt mail delivery on Saturdays. I understand the reasoning--Saturday mail is just for residential, it would cut some serious costs out for the USPS--but dang it, it's just un-American. Saturday delivery is what makes this country great! It's what allows me to drag my feet to Thursday before returning a Netflix movie, and still get my new one for Saturday night!

I will tighten my belt, if the USPS asks me too, and accept this change, but I really hope that if/when times are better for the beleaguered civil servants, we get our Saturday mail back.

- The HD roll-out is off, no wait on, for February. Apparently, people are whining that they're not ready yet despite more than a year of notification, ultra-cheap government discounted set-top boxes, and a goddamn barrage of commercials every hour on the subject. For some reason it seems like the Democrats want a delay, and the Republicans think it's a bad idea. For once, I'm on board with Republicans (everyone take note, so that I can reference my bipartisan views in future blog posts). Enough notice is enough, let the people cry out in terror when their TV goes away mid-February. Maybe it will do them some good.

Because if you haven't figured this digital transition shit out by now, you're too stupid to be watching TV in the first place. Read books for awhile, and when you get what's happening come back and we'll talk.

- What is wrong with the Pistons, man? I have some level of faith in Curry but damn, how can a team with this much talent be so lackluster? They need to play Iverson, or don't play him, but this half-assed "X minutes per game" is no good. You can't get a player like Iverson and then insert him into an offense in a special role. He is the focus of the team wherever he plays, and if you want to use him you have to realize that.

Now I'm not saying they have to use him. They could trade him away, Detroit's got more than enough talent to go it without Ive. But they have to fish or cut bait, as it were.

* Okay, so they don't pay me to blog at all. But we have an understanding: they don't know.
** The title is meant to be read in the voice of the 80s Superfriends narrator.

Armchair Quarterbacking the GOP

(Note: I am too pissed to write about Prop 8. It is a morally and legally indefensible ballot initiative that I am still hoping can be destroyed at the Federal level. But more on that when I've actually checked whether that's true.)

There is, by all accounts, going to be a lot of hand-wringing and "soul" (I used the term loosely) searching within the Republican party now that they've been so spectacularly defeated on so many levels. I would be remiss if I didn't offer my own 2 cents.

Forgetting Sarah Palin
It is said that Palin energized the GOP "base", but in reality, she energized only the very vocal, socially conservative minority. Many fiscally conservative Republicans were aghast at her selection, and eventually made their opinions known.

Now, the talk (and McCain's concession speech last night) is that Palin is a rising star in politics. I disagree. Not because she's not a good politician -- she clearly is -- but because her brand of politics is exactly what brings in less than half the country. Obama's win is a repudiation of the idea that America is socially conservative. Americans don't like being labeled one way or the other, but it is clear from last night that those who side with God and guns alone are not going to win. If Palin doesn't change her methods and viewpoint, then heralding her as the Next Big Thing will only mean continual defeats.

Few voters were brought into the GOP because of Palin. Far more were pushed out. The math is pretty simple.

Return to Your Non-Whackjob Roots
That doesn't mean that the GOP can't be "big tent" and include the fundamentalists and social conservatives. Democrats certainly don't want them (for the most part). But you can't let them control your party. You can't let them dictate a platform of backwards-looking social ideals. They can't be the most vocal wing. They have to shut up, sit down, and realize that they are far better off with a GOP government anyhow.

Democrats have done the same thing, for many years, with minorities. Yesterday's election notwithstanding, African-Americans have long been "assumed" Democrats because honestly, are they going to vote Republican? Not in meaningful numbers. It is not a policy of the Democratic party to do this, but rather laziness and a sense of entitlement by party leaders. I'm not endorsing it as a Democratic strategy, but Republicans might want to look at how it has worked out.

Fiscal Conservatism Isn't Terrible
I may have differences of opinion with conservatives about the role and size of the U.S. government, but I respect those opinions. I would like to argue those ideas with Republicans, but they seem far more focused on God, abortion, and gays. That isn't to say people shouldn't disagree with me on those issues, but if you put fiscal conservatism up front, you have a much stabler platform.

The GOP hasn't done that of late, because their "base" won't let them. That's why I said above that you have to make fiscal conservatism your base, and social conservatism your fringe. Argue economics and big government, and FAR more Americans will join up. Argue that all gays will burn in hell, and you're in for a long, cold political winter.

End Note: This may be the last political post for awhile. No promises, but I'm sort of exhausted. I am still angry about Prop 8, so I may have to tear Californians a new one, but overall I'm spent.

Not Cool, Boris

Just* when you thought the Cold War was over, it rears up during the Olympics and smacks you in the face!

*It ended 20 years ago.

This whole Russia vs. Georgia thing has me bothered. For once, I understand the politics completely (as opposed to say, Iraq and their many insurgents and whatnot). Georgia doesn't like Russia, and the Georgians don't like their pro-Russia province of South Ossetia (note: not an official province/state, it's like "the South" in America, but smaller). Georgia decides to start smacking the South O's around, and big brother Russia steps in to quell that shit.

Only Russia, after sending the Georgians positively flying out of S.O., keep attacking. They're attacking actual Georgia, not S.O.-Georgia, and are hinting that they aim to depose the elected El Presidente of Georgia.

Georgia is a nascent democracy that we (and by "we" I mean "our country") have been urging to become more democratic. We pushed for Georgia's entry into NATO (NATO voted no, wisely, because otherwise we WOULD be at war with Russia right now) and told them we'd support them. Only, you know, just by being very, very stern with Russia should it become aggressive. Lots of glaring and furrowed brows, but not so much with the tanks and missiles.

So that's what we're doing. We're very upset with Russia, you see, but we can't really send TROOPS because it's Russia, yo. That's a big-time war that, while I appreciate Georgia's predicament (which they are at least 50% responsible for themselves) a World War Three is not a great solution.

Nobody has clean hands here--including us--but if someone is going to intervene it has to be Europe first. People are comparing this to Germany and the Sudetenland (because you can't throw a stone in international politics without hitting a Nazi Germany analogy). But German appeasement by other local nations is not the same as appeasement by a superpower halfway around the world.

Still, if Russia keeps trying to flex its collective nuts, eastern Europe is going to get a whole lot messier in the near future. It's so nice that I can come full circle and revisit my childhood fear of nuclear annihilation.

Wanted: Business Acumen

One of the biggest reasons I believe I'll never make a killing with investments, or real estate, or any of those power-broker Wall Street type things, is that everytime I hear "Fannie Mae" I think they're talking about candy.

Housing crises be damned, I want some chocolate nut fudge.

On Which I Pontificate on a Splendiferous Multitude of Topics

This Whole Olympics Thing
This whole Olympics thing is coming to a boil here in good ol' SF. My opinion: the Olympics are about countries coming together in athletics. The ideal time to lambaste China would have been when the International Olympic Committee was deciding to put the Olympics in Beijing. But ya'll screwed up and didn't argue against it well enough, so now that's where it is.

To put up a fuss when the torch-bearer goes by is just juvenile. China's human rights problems are significant and well-documented, but the guy/gal carrying the torch has nothing to do with that.

This sort of touches on my problem with protesting generally. It seems pretty useless about 90% of the time. If you want to change something, you change it. You don't sit on the curb and yell. It's the 4-year-old in the toy store approach to getting your way.

Protesting does have its place, in my opinion, where the harm is immediate and local. Some guy is arrested unfairly; some politician is holding a vote on a community issue. But China, my friends, is not local. Nobody in San Francisco can do squat about China's human rights abuses.

Those Goddamn Bicyclists
Listen, I like riding a bike. I wish I had one. But it does not give you a license to ignore both pedestrian and traffic laws. Riding through the intersection against the green light and making me jam on the breaks, and then flipping me off, means that dear God are you lucky I wasn't having a crappy day or you'd be pinned under my front tire right now. Ass.

This problem is more endemic in the Bay Area than anyplace else I've lived. You may have heard about some of the problems we have on Critical Mass night. I hate it, because I really do support riding to work and all that jazz. But that holier-than-thou, I yield to no man or vehicle attitude negates every good intention you idiots may have.

Stop Supporting Hillary You Morons
She is not a bad person. She would be a good candidate, if we did not have a better one. She is not the best candidate and she is not worth putting in the White House simply because she is a woman.

There is no reason not to vote for Obama. He has as much experience as Hillary (her "35 years" is worth about as much as my 30), he is more honest, and he is much smarter than the last "inexperienced" President. That guy needs to be run out of town on a rail, or something.

Hellooooo Ladies
Because you people complain that I don't talk about my personal/social life enough around here. Fair enough. But is a not-so-subtle but completely uninformative remark about an upswing in my dating life really better than nothing at all?

They Have the Plant But We Have the Power...

I know there is some discontent among the nation's TV watchers over the current Writers Guild strike. But who can make any sense of the whole complicated thing?

It is in these times of confusion and despair that the Internet community turns to me, someone with no insider knowledge and only a superficial understanding of the key issues involved, to explain the whole mess. Thus, I present to you:

Whiny Hacks Who Get to Live a Hollywood Lifestyle While Still Being Unattractive
vs.
Soulless Corporate Machines That Would Rather All Human Existence Were Under Their Control ala The Matrix

The writers think they're getting screwed out of money. Of course they are. We're ALL getting screwed out of money, every day. They have a point though, in that they don't get paid squat for "new media". This is because they have really shitty contracts and, apparently, shitty agents. And the major studios and media companies have excellent lawyers that do nothing but think of ways to screw writers (and actors; and directors; and anybody who isn't them).

Sympathy for the writers begins to wan, however, when one realizes that the money they lose out on comes in the form of residuals. Residuals are when you get paid well after a TV show or movie is actually produced, because it is distributed in DVD form or played in syndication. Everybody involved in these shows gets a check (size depends on involvement in the production, usually) anytime the media they helped create is reproduced or replayed.

First of all, "everybody" in the preceding paragraph doesn't mean technical people. Grips, stagehands, and others usually get nothing except their weekly paycheck. Writers, actors, directors and producers get the residuals.

Second of all, this concept--which is very dear to Hollywood--likely seems quite foreign to most Americans. If I write an outstanding brief, I may get a bonus (hah!) but if my brief is used as a template for years to come, will I see a penny? Nope. This is true for most professions; you're paid for your work and that's that. So when actors/writers complain that they "need" residuals to get them through the lean times, most people are highly unsympathetic. I would love for my work today to carry me through unemployment in 2009, but it's not going to happen.

Of course, despite being a little out-of-touch with what most people would consider "fair compensation", it is still this uninformed writer's opinion that the WGA is the side to support. For one thing, out-of-touch does not equate to wrong, and the corporate studio systems is absolutely screwing the writers out of compensation. They do this by classifying produced materials in such a way so as they do not have to pay the writers (i.e. anything on the web is "promotional", not a show, and thus writers get no part of the revenue gained from such "promotion").

This is unfair and they are right to complain; the residual system may be loopy to many Americans, but it what Hollywood uses. To single out the writers as ineligible receivers of "new media" profits is unfair and greedy.

But writers? Most of you aren't as good as you think you are (I am assuming somebody writes "According to Jim") and if you want sympathy, you should stick to the straight facts. Reminding people that you'll still be getting paid in 2015 for your work on "Cavemen" is not going to help your cause.

Now do Classical Gas!

Wheeee!

I'm not sure how reported this will be outside of California (since it was only a 5.6) but we had a good ol' quake this evening.

This was easily the biggest one I've felt. Even though it was based out of the San Jose area (roughly 30 minutes south) it shook the building for a good 10/15 noticeable seconds.

California: If The Fires Don't Get You, The Vibrations Will.

How 'Bout a Little Fire, Scarecrow?

UPDATE 8/23: Seriously on fire again. And no relief expected until Thursday? I don't know too many folks down in the SD these days, but I hope those that continue to live there are doing okay. And not losing their houses.

---

Apparently, my old town is ablaze again.

Longtime readers of this blog, and its previous incarnation, may remember that the same thing happened in 2003 or 2004. Big huge wildfire, school shut down for almost an entire week, and the skies were extraordinary.

If you were expecting the Rapture, that was the time to get down on your knees.

But, it all cleared up. Nobody ascended to heaven and roving bands of demonic hellhounds appeared at levels significantly less than expected. As a burgeoning member of the California legal community, I was pleased with these results, as membership in the California Bar is like having a FasTrak to the inferno.

Still, I can't help but think that the ominous threat of seismic shifting is (maybe) a bit more dangerous than wildfires. The Bay Area's natural catastrophes come with much less warning and, in the worst cases, far more damage.

Knock on wood.

Instead of Coffee in the Morning

I wake up and check out CNN, which often provides enough of a jolt to get me through the next few hours caffeine free. Today, it's the headline that some escaped convict is terrorizing my alma mater. No, not San Diego--they have rich kids there, no felons are allowed--but rather Virginia Tech! Luckily nobody I know personally goes there anymore, but it's still rather disturbing to see such news posted on CNN. If it were 1999, I'd be armed with a baseball bat and some TeamFortress and I wouldn't be pretty happy not to go to class today.

As an aside, what's up with Tech always starting so early? It's only August 21st! I guess that's usual for VT, but it always seemed a week or two earlier than everybody else.

Back to deposition editing...