Economics

In common with the first presidential debate, I left tonight's televised spectacle in disgust after about 20 minutes. The Vice-Presidential debate entertained me somewhat more. There were two reasons for this.

1) Sarah Palin's bizarre personal style. I divine two possible explanation for her performance. Either she really does talk like that and she saw no reason to gussy up her elocution, or she spent some time with a DVD of Fargo cribbing from Frances McDormand's Oscar-winning riff on a woman from a small town in the Northern Districts of America. Either way she chose to exude that aura. "You betcha"? Winking at the camera? What a trainwreck, what a ridiculous person. Just going from her appearance at that debate (which she chose, and carefully!) can you imagine her pinch-hitting for McCain, across the table from Sarkozy or, God Forbid, Vladimir Putin (the bogeyman himself!)?

Of course the argument goes that she is actually a canny operator and that her attitude was carefully massaged, which I'm willing to believe. But the reverse is that she represented what the GOP thinks we want. That implied insult ought to be enough to send American voters running away from them at the polls, but who I am kidding. It horrified and entertained me, at any rate. I like to imagine that McCain's vice-presidential selection was controlled by John Waters--"Who will be the most tawdry and grotesque while still being at least a simulation of politics?"

2) Rum. Katy and I drank for the debate, which put a glow on it and made it enjoyable.

Tonight, though, I was bored and agitated by the rules of the debate, most prominently that the candidates were not allowed to engage one another. Just before I quit watching, McCain took an opportunity to lie about Barack Obama's tax plan, and then Brokaw refused to allow Barry to address the falsehood. It would have been against the rules, sure, but if that's the case then the rules sucked.

I also had a problem with both candidate's answer to the question about whether the economy was still going to be messed up even after the bail-out (no wait, we're calling it a rescue now). Both of them dodged. This is stupid. The economy is not going to be okay, even if the present crisis is averted, because the problem is systemic rather than temporary. We've had two major bubbles in the past ten years (remember the Dot-Coms?) because of how our economy is structured. It is designed to favor explosive growth and so it seeks to create opportunity for it even when none exists. Entirely speculative value is the result, as in the late 1990s; companies that did nothing to produce wealth were assigned illusory dollar values. More recently, the housing market increased trillions of dollars in value in spite of the fact that it had scarcely changed physically. Why did this value rise? Demand rose! Why was demand rising? Because the value was rising! Get in, cash in, take a loan to buy a house.

In hindsight it was clearly a bubble, but even the financial giants were taken in by it, sustaining and extending the bubble to make their buck, and now we're paying the price of exuberance. And of course it is going to hurt. Several trillion dollars in illusory value disappeared from the economy a year ago August, there is going to be an economic contraction in consequence. The lesson should be that we need to set up provisions to prevent such bubbles from ever occurring again, to design the economy for stability and steady growth rather than explosive expansion and dizzying contraction. But neither candidate indicated that he had especially learned this lesson.

DVDs

Come now, people who rent movies from various outlets and services, what is your problem? Can it really be so difficult to make that mental leap between the amount of care with which one has to treat a VHS, and the level of caution demanded for the continued usefulness of a DVD?

I will tell you a story, reader:

Not long ago I wanted to watch a movie called "Last of the Mohicans" starring Daniel Day-Lewis et al., a film which I greatly enjoy, especially the beautifully acted, staged, and shot ending of the film, 10 minutes of cinema which are definitely part of my mental highlight reel. Not only was I looking forward to seeing this movie, but I had a guest at whom I had praised the film. We were both to be sorely disappointed.

I put the DVD in the drive of my computer (which, lacking a dedicated DVD player, I use to watch films) and we began to watch it, and we saw no more than thirty seconds of Daniel Day-Lewis and friends running through the woods before the video locked up. I ejected the disk, looked at it to determine the level of scratchiness (very high!), wiped it on my shirt (this being the approved method of dealing with DVD errors) and reinserted it. The video froze again, in nearly the same spot, and this time was such an apparently serious problem that my very DVD drive locked up. Es war kaputt! In the end I was required to eject the drive manually (that is, with a straightened paperclip shoved carefully into the appropriate maintenance aperture) and reboot my computer.

To sum up, somebody had handled that DVD with such carelessness and abandon that it broke my computer, albeit temporarily. How does this even happen? Did some prior user store the disk in a bag of gravel and slice it with a cutthroat razor? It's very simple--when you are watching the DVD, it is in the tray that projects out of the device you're watching it with. When you are not watching the DVD, it is in its case. By following these directives, the DVD should last you in the range of decades at least.

But no! Some arrant fool marred the data surface of the DVD, rendering it useless forevermore, and worse yet, this was a DVD rented from the University of Iowa Main Library, that is to say, a public good, making this not only an example of rank technological incompetence but also of the tragedy of the commons.

Speaking of which, I am making this post on a public terminal in the Library computer lab and about 15 feet from me a young man is using the computer provided to watch fan-edited videos of the Japanese anime series "Yu-Yu Hakusho" on Youtube. He has been doing this for as long as I've been here, about 1/2 hour. Is he making better use of University resources than I am? Maybe.

Tempest in a Teacup

My opinion on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy is that it's a complete waste of my time, and I doubt anybody outside the insular media community even cares about it. People like William Kristol, whose column today was focused on Obama and race, desperately want to find a "Gotcha!" for Barack Obama, and it's telling that this is the best they can do.

These are the problems I have with the reportage:

1) Why should I care that Obama belongs to a congregation led by a somewhat militant black preacher? It is fatuous to suggest that Obama bears any responsibility for the opinions of his minister, no matter how long he's been a member of the congregation. I myself was for the first 18 years of my life a member of religious flocks, the leaders of which held opinions wildly at variance to my own--disbelief in the theory of natural selection, fear and hatred of homosexuals, etc. etc. I'm no more obligated to defend or deny these beliefs than Obama is.

2) There is a towering double standard at work here. The close association between the Republican Party and its religious allies, many of whom are apt to make statements far more anti-American than Rev. Wright's, is not questioned with nearly this much vigor.

3) There is an important element to the argument against Rev. Wright's statements, never spoken, but always implicit. It is the belief that Wright doesn't have the right to be so angry about the status of African Americans in the country today. Kristol accuses Wright of "using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment", and frankly this is a ridiculous accusation. The racial resentment exists all by itself, because after 140 years of promises, African American communities still have not got their fair share. People like Kristol apparently believe that there isn't anything wrong, and it's just a few agitators like Wright stirring things up. I am mystified at how ignorant and brain-dead someone can be, and still get a slick job writing columns for the New York Times. Kristol insists in his column that we're making racial progress, we don't need a new racial dialog, and in fact it would be counter-productive. If we just keep our heads down, eyes forward, and don't talk about it, everything will be fine.

He even has the temerity to quote Pat Moynihan, a Nixon adviser who in 1969 said that America needed to ignore the race issue for a while and just let "Negro progress" continue on its own. Kristol claims that racial progress "has in fact continued in America" (not bothering to support this assertion with anything, but who cares, it's only journalism) and happily slides past the fact that he was just talking about an adviser to Nixon, the king of the Southern Strategy. I take back what I said about Kristol being better than David Brooks--this column was such a complete lemon that I really feel sorry for whoever has been duped into signing Willy's checks.

Mea Culpa

A person of whom I am fond pointed out to me that I once said this:

My money is on Romney. He is made of plastic, has no actual positions or beliefs, and if you squint hard enough in low-light conditions he kind of looks like Ronald Reagan. He also has the support of the party elite, which counts for everything in the GOP, probably to the extent of making his coronation a near inevitability.

If my money was on Romney, all that money is lost now, because I was wrong and dead wrong about him. Silly me.

John McCain, eight years too late, has secured the nomination from the Grand Old Party and run Romney right out of town. It remains to be soon who Johnny will choose as his running mate. But, dammit, I'm not afraid to make assertions based on my own analysis and gut impulses, and I'm not afraid to later admit that I was quite completely wrong, as I was about Romney and I was about Thompson. In both cases I was bamboozled. So what? I'm going to say right now that... I have not the least idea who will be the second half of the Republican ticket. Probably some odious mound of flesh to balance McCain's ticket without being able to demand too much on the platform. McCain isn't one to share the power or the limelight. Perhaps he will be some creature belonging to Mike Huckabee, to draw the evangelical vote. Perhaps he will come from the Romney end of things, the better to pull in money. In any case there are holes in McCain's appeal. He is strong among moderates, but I think that when Obama takes the Democratic nomination, Barack will stomp his ugly old-man Naval aviator guts out in that section of the electorate.

In my admittedly poorly founded opinion (see the above for some errors I have made!) I think Obama is a super candidate the likes of which America has not seen in a long time. He is charismatic, a superb speaker, and I think behind his facade of the "last honest politician" there lurks a very canny and very dangerous street-fighter. I think Barack Obama is my generation's Bobby Kennedy, only this time he's going to make it through alive. I think (and this is the time on my blog when I begin to use weasel words!) that he is going to win the Democratic nomination. After all, it is now virtually a mathematical impossibility for Hillary Clinton to catch up to him in either delegates or the popular vote, and I hope to Jeezis that I won't be proved wrong this time. But I think that, when it comes down to Barack Obama and John McCain, Barack will turn poor Johnny into hamburger. All you need to do is watch any of Obama's appearances, and then imagine the gloves coming off, as they would against a member of the other party. The old man hasn't got a chance, frankly. He's weak everywhere Obama is strong, and Obama isn't really that weak anywhere. Barack will eat him. I look forward to it.

Additionally, I've always wondered why the Republican Party is called the "Grand Old Party." The Democratic Party, as it is descended directly from Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Federalists, is something like 70 years older. This does not make sense to me. Then again, the actual structure of parties is meaningless, as their standing changes fluidly. For a long time the Democrats were the conservative party that dominated the South, and the Republicans had a stranglehold on the African American vote. Things are always changing.

McCain has the Experience

File this one under s**t I knew in 2004 but an experienced public servant like John McCain still hasn't caught up with.

Briefly, John McCain alleged that Iran was supplying Al Qaeda in Iraq with weapons and training. Unless you're a high-ranking member of the Republican Party, you've probably heard that Al Qaeda is a fundamentalist Sunni organization, and Iran is a fundamentalist Shi'ite state. Barring any Bushism queries like "There's more'n one kinda Mooslam?", you should also know that these two kinds of people have a hard time getting along. To whit, Iran backs Shi'ite groups like Hezbollah and, in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. Al Qaeda, by contrast, likes to blow up Shi'ites. Now, you could say that this was a slip of the tongue, but when somebody makes the same statement repeatedly during an appearance in the Middle East designed to promote his foreign policy expertise, it's hard to justify that excuse.

And of course Lieberman is there for the save:

A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

I like that Roy Cohn thing he's doing there, whispering in the Man's ear to keep him from stumbling. Maybe if the Democrats win a comfortable senate majority in the upcoming, they'll strike him from the records and leave him to languish on his own--no loyalty = no committee positions for the new Zell Miller.

Hey What?

Okay, this is a practice which I have well established for myself, but might well be unfamiliar with people who I know: I like to imbibe alcohol and then watch action movies. I think that, even given the fact that I am consuming alcohol alone and in isolation from others, the fact that I make a ritual of it with involvement in film, this helps to some extent. Sometimes a person has to consume chemical poisons. This is truth, it is fully legal, I am of age, etc., etc., and so on. I have partaken of alcohol and watched Die Hard, and found it good. The action is very well staged, and I respect the acting of Bruce Willis. My one concern is that Die Hard has locked him into a practice of action movie heroism which has obfuscated and even annihilated his comedic talents. I was far too young, at the time Die Hard was made, to be familiar with his comedic work, but it is my understanding that prior to Die Hard Willis was a sit-com actor. Die Hard did away with this. Bruce Willis cannot now be filmed, except as a killing machine.

(Also, it should be noted that at the precise moment I am writing this, I am listening to a false and manufactured Symphonic Metal album created in direct relation to a cartoon series on the Cartoon Network: The Dethalbum, as birthed by the nonexistent and fictional Metal Band Dethklok. I recommend it highly, as I do recommend the film Die Hard. Especially when one has been influenced by chemicals.

There was a time, when I was younger, when I believed that behavior-modifying chemicals were something bad. I had contempt for alcohol, and marijuana, and hallucinogens, and so forth. But in light of experience I must recognize that that the mind itself builds barriers between the emotional self and the conscious self, which can't be broken down, except with the assistance of chemicals. After all, it makes little sense for me to believe that things like lithium et al., can improve the mental perceptions of people by modifying them chemically, and then to disbelieve the efficacy of alcohol and THC, and so forth. Not to say that I have ever done anything illegal in my entire life. I never drank before I was 21, and I have merely observed the effects of illegal narcotics. Seriously. I am a paragon of lawfulness.)

But yes, by God, I have spent time today with my friends, seen how they were doing, and when they departed, drank distilled spirits with the express purpose of watching a ridiculous action movie and then blogging about it. I won't waste anybody's time by trying to describe the gyrations that John McClane puts himself through, in pursuit of Justice. He is a man governed by naught but his own physical powers and the rule of Nemesis, Ancient Greek goddess of retribution. Nemesis was the goddess of "to give what is due." I have been familiar with Greek myth for a long time, since I was a young lad in elementary school, in the system that the state of Iowa calls "Talented and Gifted" or "TAG". I built a diorama. Do not question it. I consider Nemesis the greatest of the pantheon, because where other gods and goddesses bring their own ideas and prejudices, Nemesis gives only what one has earned. This is the greatest justice; each man receives a reward or punishment appropriate to his crimes and virtues.

Thus there is something elemental about the Die Hard series, that exceeds the power of normal action movies. I think there is a part of the population which disregards this kind of film, because it is stupid, because it is not self-aware or reflective--it worships violence, force, and power, and is fundamentally against reason and is (at least it could so be characterized) fascist in sympathy. But it appeals to something in human nature that cannot be denied. John McClane is active, not passive, and he dispenses that final justice which cannot be obtained in real life. Though his world is naive, he represents an idea that will not be denied. Justice, in the form of his Beretta pistol, awaits those who believe themselves above justice.

Whoa Depressing

For one of my classes I read a German children's book called Pünktchen und Anton by Erich Kästner, which was published in 1933. It was a pretty cute book about a couple of kids living in Berlin at around that time, having kid adventures. Kästner is the guy who wrote the book on which Disney based "The Parent Trap", by the way.

I was just now writing a 3 page paper (in German, mind you--I have mad skills!) and I was thinking about it, and I realized that all kinds of totally horrible things probably happened to Pünktchen and Anton during their 20s... during WWII, I mean. Like, given his age, physical fitness, and like course of education, Anton would almost certainly serve in some military capacity, with a high likelihood of death or maiming. Pünktchen, living in Berlin, would have her own problems to worry about.

Aw man, the book is semi-ruined for me now.