Which News should be the News?

Driving around getting lunch today, I got to hear more NPR on my radio. They were talking yet again about the '08 Primaries (kind of like yours truly), and something struck me as I listened to them go on.

All they were either:

• Talking about who was winning each party's primaries and/or polls; or
  
• Talking about their talk about who was winning each party's primaries and/or polls

They were not talking about the issues or the candidates views on the issues. Being honest, I have to admit I heard some conversation about the issues, mostly about Giuliani having the balls to be pro-choice. Ever since the Iowa Caucuses (or slightly before), that type of report dropped off sharply in favor of the more sports-like who is currently winning the competition reports. I'm sure that there is still a bit of issue reporting going on, but the dominant weight is on the current standings. I guess that's just more exciting.

Still, I have to stop and wonder which type of story better serves the public good: reporting that informs voters about the candidates or their views/policies or reporting that informs the public which candidates the Press's pollsters believe is currently most favored.

Japan and Iran

This is, I think, the first time that I’ve made three posts to my blog in one day. I just keep reading things that I want to remark on so I type them up here where I can delude myself that someone will read them.

So, after wading through the Election ‘08 news and the President-is-going-to-the-Middle-(Muddle?)-East-to-pretend-he’s-done-something-there news, you might have gotten to the news about the confrontation between three U.S. Navy warships and five Iranian speedboats. It seems our ships were trolling along in what most of the world thinks is international waters when several speedboats came zooming up and radioed that they were going to explode our ships or something. We got it on tape even. We believe that since the boats came from the direction of Iran, they were Iranian.

Iran says the tape is a fabrication and denies the entire incident. No surprise there. Personally, I don’t see how they think this sort of brinksmanship behavior benefits them. Really what does it get them? Shake your fist at the big kid in the playground and then run away claiming it never happened?

Anyway, I got to thinking for some reason of December 7, 1941, a different armed attack on the U.S. Navy (and others). There are plenty of things surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack to criticize the Japanese about if you have a mind to do so. However, at least the nation that perpetrated that action had the balls not to deny having done it. Had the current Iranian government been in power in Tokyo in 1941, after Pearl Harbor got bombed, they would have denied it happened, denied that the U.S. ever had those ships, claimed the pictures were fabrications, and probably argued that Pearl Harbor had strayed into their territorial waters.

Somehow, I don’t think I’d believe them then either.

Speaking of the stupidity of the Media...

Take a look at this column from CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/08/Dobbs.January8/index.html#cnnSTCText

I don't agree with the author's populist views, but I share his glee.

New Hampshire results and Misc thoughts on some candidates

So New Hampshire is over and the media is buzzing with the fact that they were…

Wait for it…

WRONG. That’s right, Clinton defied their austere pollsters and experts and pulled out a win over Obama. Maybe Iowa didn’t decide everything after all. Maybe they now look kinda dumb for what they have been saying the preceding four days.

McCane won. No surprise there; he won there last time. Didn’t help him over all though, did it. The press is trying to make it a story though by talking about how this will make it a real race for the nomination now. Query: If THIS is what will make it a real race, why was the press reporting on the Republican race so much for, oh, the last six months?

Clinton won. No real surprise there; she is, after all, the OTHER front-runner in her party. And this Primary was back East in a state adjacent to the state she represents in the Senate.

The radio treated me to excerpts from the comments of several candidates this morning. Obama was talking about getting the country behind his progressive agenda. By the way, for the uninitiated, “progressive” is how you spell “liberal” these days. They like the former word better because it sounds so good; after all, who can be against progress? Of course when you and the other guy are trying to go in opposite directions, one person’s progress is the other’s backslide. Maybe we should stop using liberal and conservative. We could call them the Progressive Left and the Progressive Right or maybe, instead of Democrat and Republican we could have the Progressives and the Family Value-ists? Either way, see yesterdays rant, I mean blog, about bi-partisanship.

I ripped on Obama a bit above so it’s only fair I rip on Clinton a bit too. Have you noticed that she wants us to se her first name? Obama is Obama, but Clinton is Hillary. I see it as sort of like Madonna or Cher. She must think it makes her more personable or something. Maybe she wants to try to separate herself from Bill a bit? I suppose she could go the Jennifer Lopez/Lindsey Lohan route. They became JLo and LiLo didn’t they? She could become… oh never mind; it doesn’t work. But I digress. While I don’t particularly like or agree with Obama Barack, he at least seems honest about what he wants to do and where he comes from. Hillary, on the other hand…. Hillary is an opportunist. I cannot respect a person who, having been the wife of the governor of Arkansas and helped him win the election as the boy from Hope, decided that it was more opportune to her political ambition to move to New York so she could run for office there. I cannot help but think she did so because she believe the people of Arkansas knew her too well. I don’t know what Hillary believes in. I know that Hillary seems to be quite adept at saying whatever her audience and public opinion want to hear in order to buy the most votes.

NPR interviewed one young lady, a New Hampshire independent, who attended Clinton’s rally last night and who had voted for her in the primary. The reason she voted for her you ask? You wouldn’t guess in a hundred years and even then you’d have to give up. She voted for “Hillary” because Clinton “broke down” and got choked up at one of her rallies. A definite issues voter there, what? Whether Clinton was acting or genuine, that’s a terrible reason to vote for a candidate.

EDIT: When I went to edit, the font got all weird. Odd.

So last night after I wrote this, I drove somewhere again which means, more likely than not I was listening to NPR. They were blathering on about Hillary's turn around and how her getting all emotional and saying how she had "found her voice" somehow made the "normal people" feel she empathized with them. The commentator had noted that many people had thought she was arrogant and acted like she knew the "Clinton Dynasty" (Which apparently means her) was "destined" to win, and thus were rooting for her to fail. Which was the real Hillary, I wonder? I tend to believe the arrogant, opportunistic represents her true colors. Aren't focus groups a wonderful thing? "Hey Boss, people think your arrogant and acting better then everyone else. You need to be more emotional so they see you as a human being. Survey says we'd pick up 15 points that way."

And what the heck is this "Clinton dynasty" thing? For a President the only dynasties I see are from families Adams and Bush. Maybe Roosevelt too (FDR was practically his own dynasty). In Ohio, Taft is a dynasty. In Missouri, Blunt might be. But Clinton? Give me a break.

Sort of an Addendum

The BBC on-line reports, "High turnout in crucial New Hampshire vote." Now think about that for a minute.

I'll buy that Florida was a crucial vote in 2000. I'll buy that Ohio was crucial in 2004. Or at least they were last and thus carried the presumption that the outcomes there would decide the Presidential race.

But New Hampshire? The SECOND of FIFTY states? For a Primary election no less? What are the rest of us states? Swiss cheese?

The press tells me today that 72% (or something close to it) of the elected Presidents finished in the top two for their party in New Hampshire. Isn't that just amazing folks? Imagine the citizens of New Hampshire managed to figure out who the top two candidates in each party were and vote for them 72 percent of the time. If I lived in New Hampshire, I think I'd feel vaguely like my intelligence was just insulted. That is as amazing and useful a statistic as the one which told us that in 80% of the games won by Kurt Warner, he had a right-handed center lineman. Yup that's a shocker alright.

I for one do not propose to let New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, or CBS do my thinking for me. The more the press decides on a clear "front-runner" based on the outcomes of two states with minimal electoral votes, the more I hope that front-runner chokes in the stretch. Isn't that a stupid reason to vote for, or rather against, a particular candidate?

Bi-partisanship and Pundits

Today is the day of the New Hampshire primary and the press waits in breathless anticipation of the result. I say breathless because they haven’t stopped talking about it long enough to take a breath. Meanwhile, back on Deep Space Nine….

Date from yesterday shows a marked drop in violence in Iraq since The Surge™ started. However, the ever-wise talking heads of a liberal or democratic bent opine that it was not, in fact, The Surge™ that caused the improved situation. The Surge™ was a non-entity, you see, because deployment of 30,000 more troops would make no difference in a county of millions. Instead, as one commentator said while I was picking out my shirt for today, the drop in violence resulted form something that occurred months before The Surge™ started. This seems to ignore that during the first portion of the surge, the casualty numbers kept climbing. Of course in a dynamic and chaotic situation such as Iraq it is utterly impossible to nail down exactly what causes what. That’s the problem with an environment where you can’t control all the variables. Still, it looks like sour grapes and petty partisan politics for the pundits to run around claiming The Surge™ is not responsible for the improvement. For that matter, I am not sure what the same pundits are advocating as a course of action if they are correct. Should we 1) Go back to what we were doing pre-The Surge™; 2) Withdraw our troops and hope they are not part of the solution; or 3) Just continue doing exactly what we are doing without giving any credit to the troops for the success?

Likewise, another of this morning’s news stories was about the Justice Department deciding to pursue a criminal investigation with regard to the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of interrogation video tapes. One commentator offered that this was a move by The Administration (meaning all Republicans somehow, I think) to dilute the Press’s focus of the Congressional inquiry into the same matter. The commentator pointed out that, with a criminal investigation underway, people would be less willing to testify to Congress and would assert their Fifth Amendment right more. Mind you, had the Justice Department not to initiate its investigation, these same commentators would be suggesting a partisan motive for NOT doing so.

I toss those two tidbits out because of a third news item, apparently a groups of folks including Mayor Bloomberg (I may or may not be spelling that correctly) met and declared that the number one challenge facing this nation was the extreme partisanship of its politics. This group called for the principle agenda of the next President to be bi-partisanship. (Bi-partisanship is a buzzword for cooperation and compromise.) Of course, to have cooperation and/or compromise, both sides have to be willing to do so. If just the leader wants tries to do it but the kids don’t want to play along, then it won’t work and the leader simply looks ineffectual.

Why is partisanship so “extreme?” I’ve got lots of theories starting with wondering if it really is worse now than it was. Are today’s partisans worse than the Federalist/Anti-Federalists? Are they worse than the Northern and Southern states circa 1850? I don’t know. From my limited view, much of the current acrimony started with the New Deal. A President had a Congress dominated by his party and he was able to “get things done.” Of course, anyone opposed to his policies felt things were being done to them. From 1932 until 1994 or so, Washington was either controlled by the Democrats or divided, which resulted in a generally Democratic lien to policy including social policies. Many members of American society, call them Fundamentalists though not all of them are, found their sacred institutions under attack by “liberal” policies. They saw Roe v. Wade, the ban on prayers in school, and gay rights as attacks on their religion, their God. These actions to them were not just wrong, they were evil. People tend to get excited when they think that, and excited people are unreasonable. They rallied, organized, and formed groups such as the Moral Majority. And they formed a deep seeded resentment and hatred for the “left.”

Then in the mid-nineties, Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America swept into power in both the House and the Senate. G. W. Bush followed into office in 2000 and suddenly the folks who had felt so “done unto” for seventy years suddenly saw the opportunity to “undo” so much of the “damage” and start “doing unto” the left. This agenda was rigorously pursued. The left, unused to such treatment after seventy years of never being completely out of power, found the other side’s former shoes a bit more uncomfortable that they liked and they started to resent all the things that were being done unto them and their policies. They longed to return everything to the “correct” way they had had it before. The funny thing is that of course, while it is right and proper to cram your (correct) philosophy down the other (incorrect) person’s throat (often for their own good), it is somehow never as right or proper when someone else does it to you. In any case, if the polls are any prediction, 2008 will likely lead to the left having complete control of Washington. The right did that to themselves.

It was anger at a current administration that swept the Democrats into office in 1930-32, and it was anger that swept the Republicans into office in the mid-nineties. Because of that anger, there was a deep seated need for revenge, a need to give it to the other guy for a change. Now, with the shoe apparently on the other foot, the liberals are the ones who are mad and they want their revenge. It sounds good to urge the next President to make bi-partisanship the top of the agenda, and it may even be the best course, but I just don’t see that happening. Instead, I see the Democrats sweeping in and doing their damnedest to cleanse the heresy of the Bush Presidency, it policies, and its “achievements.”

The problem is that revenge is never the best path to common ground.

Obama, Huckabee, and Iowa

The big news this morning was the result of the Iowa Caucus. The big news this afternoon was the Iowa Caucus. By this evening the big news was the "Obama juggernaut" and the "revolution" and, oh yeah, the Iowa Caucus. One commentator commented that the Presidential race was now between Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Another used the term "destined" when speaking of Obama's run for the White House. Yet another ask how Clinton could possibly counter a young, charismatic, African American who seemed pre-determined to be the next President. More yet offered that yesterdays results in IOWA clearly showed that the entire NATION was demanding change. In fact, I don't think we need to hold primaries in the other 49 states; the press has decided that Obama and Huckabee are the candidates. I mean why bother.

We should forget that Iowa and New Hampshire are smaller states. We should forget that they are both mostly rural states. We should forget that they are but two of the 50 states. I wonder (and am too lazy to research) how many of the candidates who won Iowa and/or New Hampshire did well in the end. McCane didn't. Howard Dean didn't. Gary Hart didn't.

Or maybe, just maybe, the press is over-hyping this just a wee bit. Ya think? Like watching the first four plays of the Superbowl or the first frame of a bowling game and then getting all excited about the destined winner.

Oh, and Huckabee was mentioned a few times. They talked about how he blends social values (read that as pro-life evengelical type thinking) with issues that the average American cares about (which was explained to mean things like a stagnating buying power or heathcare availability). See right there, Huckabee's out as far as I'm concerned. Eight years of King Gheorge and the Party Of God is already too much. (I stuck a silent "h" in "George" because it's the first letter of the word holy, dontcha know. I probably should have said "Duhbyha" so he could be twice as holy.) Huckabee is an "evengelical Republican" from the Bible belt and that flunks my test, no matter how aw-shucks-golly-gee likeable he is.

Problem is I don't really like ANY of the three leading Democrats either.

On statistic that I heard, that if true, should scare the pants off any Republican candidate. Apparently 100,000 people participated in the Republican Caucus and 200,000 people participated in the Democrat Caucus. It looks like, whoever eventually wins the various nominations, 2008 will be a year that leaves the GOP longing for the glory days of 1930 and 1932.

Okay, what sense does this make?

Did you know that the most common profession among state legislators is that of educator? That's right, teachers write most of our laws. So try this on (and it may take a bit of explanation, so stick with it).

When you probate a deceased person's estate in Missouri, it will either be independent or supervised. Supervised means that every little thing the executor does has to be approved by the probate court, making it a much more expensive and time consuming way to go. So, if you can, you prefer being independent. Missouri statute section 473.780 governs when you can and when you cannot be independent. Here's what it says:

You can be independent if the will explicitly says you can.

You cannot be independent if the will explicitly says you cannot.

If the will is silent then you can be independent if 1) in the case of an intestate estate, all the heirs agree to it in writing; 2) in the case of a testate estate, all the devisees agree to it in writing; or 3) if it is a combination of testate and intestate estates, then all the heirs and devisees must agree to it in writing. See http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/C400-499/4730000780.HTM

At law, a testate estate is when the decedent left a will and an intestate estate is one where someone dies without a will. A devisee is someone who is specifically bequested real property, i.e. land. by contrast, a legatee is someone who is specifically bequested personal property, i.e. cars, jewelry, coin collections, etc. I looked it up in Black's Law Dictionary.

So today, I had a small testate estate where the deceased had died in a nursing home. She had already sold any real property she owned and had only money accounts which were all specifically bequested to a single legatee. This is the poster child for independent administration. But her will had no provision either for or against independent administration, so I had to look at the rest of the statute. Let's see.... I have a will so I'm testate. If I'm testate then I need signed permission from all the... devisees. Except I don't have any real property in the estate so I have no devisees. And I fall through the cracks.

Any lawyer would know the difference between a devisee and a legatee, or at least know that they are different things. The distinction is important. Yet by common usage (read grammatical laziness) the two terms are frequently used to mean both or even the other. That's like saying that right and left are both directions so we can use whichever one we feel like. And that is exactly what the Missouri legislature has done. They said devisees, but as a matter of practice everyone knows they meant devisees and legatees. (And wouldn't you be surprised to find out that on the St. Louis County Probate Court's form for identifying devisees and legatees, they are simply both referred to as "legatees.")

I've oft heard that this nation of ours has too many lawyers. Perhaps it just needs to elect more of them to the legislature. I think (hope?) that if that were the case, if well-meaning teachers were not the largest group in the legislature, maybe our statutes would be a bit better drafted.

Bright Light! Bright Light!

My fianceé and I went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets to celebrate the New Year. We’ve been trying to save money since suddenly everything needs expensive repairs around the house (cars, cats, roof, furnace, etc.), and this was our little treat to ourselves. I won’t say much about the movie, both because I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it and because this post is not a movie review. I’d give it a B- because I had some issues being able to suspend disbelief.

I’m sure all of us have had at least one associate go on a rant about people who drive while talking on their cell phones. Likewise, we’ve been in some quiet surrounding like a library, romantic dinner, church, etc. and been interrupted by someone’s peppy cell ringtone. Some places, such as courts forbid cell phones outright. More often, these days we are simply asked to turn off our cell phone ringers. Of course, the movie theatre has just such an announcement on the screen prior to the show, and, to be honest, I didn’t hear a ring all movie.

However, I did find the regular appearance of bright little cell phone screens popping up in the laps of patrons ahead of me as they sent text messages back and forth to their friends rather distracting. Actually, in the dim theatre, they might better be described as mildly blinding.

The thing about common courtesy is that it is so damn uncommon.

I doubt a single one of those anxious texters gave an iota of thought to how their activity might affect anyone else’s enjoyment. It’s not that they knew but didn’t care (I hope), it simply never occurred to them. They thought that part of the movie was not important, got an a text from a friend who was more interesting than the movie, or maybe had just trained themselves to not be bothered by the bright little screen, and got no further. I can’t say; I’m not them. However, it was rude to everyone behind them whether they thought about it or not.

Textiquette doesn’t stop there by the way. Consider the nonverbal message you send when you interrupt a face-to-face conversation you are having with someone to read and/or answer a text message on your phone. If you need help, it runs along these lines: “The person who sent this to me (whether I know who it is or not) is more important and more interesting than what you are saying to me right now.” Ask yourself, if instead of texting you, that person were to walk up to the current conversation and just began talking, interrupting someone in mid-sentence, would that be courteous. By immediately reading the message, that is what you let them do. And, if you should halt the conversation while you answered them, how would that play?

So, to all you folks out there addicted to text messages: THINK! Be polite. Remember in many circumstances sending a text message is just as annoying and just as rude as the ringing cell phone.

The U.S. and its Environmentalism

I was listening to NPR on the way home from work yesterday and they were discussing the top news stories on the Onion for the year. The discussion had segued into the fact that 2007 might mark the year that global warming had moved from a “Is it?” to a “What do we do about it?” question for the average U.S. citizen.

I got to thinking about what Joe Citizen (hereinafter “J.C.”) meant by that. I wondered if J.C. (including myself) were willing to make the hard choices and sacrifices solving this problem may require. Or, in our typically U.S. mindset, when we said “solve the problem” did we really mean “Find a way that I can keep doing everything I’ve been doing so that, with no inconvenience to me or alteration of my lifestyle, I don’t have to feel guilty about it because I’m causing a global problem.

Then I thought about something Dad observed once. The problem here, the real core of the problem, is that we have too many human beings on this planet. No matter what the solution, if everyone takes the same solution and the population keeps growing, we will hit crisis every time. Consider, what would a nation with our population do if God suddenly threw a switch and we had to instantly revert back to wood burning, pre-automobile, technology. It’s not pretty and I’m thinking that all that wood being burned would create a fair amount of CO2, probably more than either our air or our forests can sustain. Hell, if we just talk about the CO2 produced by human breathing, there is some numerical threshold where the sheer number of people breathing creates global warming.

So, how do we fix this problem? Any attempt to regulate population is a “Human Rights Violation” and immediately unacceptable, ask any Liberal. We’ve all seen how upset they get at China for its draconian population control policies. If we tried it, the proposal would die in Congressional committee. I wonder if survival of the species if a Human Right. Still, controlling population seems to me to be necessary to actually solving this problem. Any other solution, be it more efficient engines and MPG requirements, hybrid cars, wind power, or anything else I can think of, simply moves the critical threshold instead of solving the problem.

If we won’t control population then we have but one option. Our eggs are already in the technology basket and we must double down the bet. We must create more efficient technologies, not to solve the problem, but to buy time to avoid it. We must establish successful and self-sufficient off-planet colonies where we can send our extra people without creating a continual drain on our Earth’s dwindling resources. Then we have to pray that we never run out of room to expand. In The Matrix, Agent Smith observed that humanity is a virus. If we take this approach, we’d be acting like one.