A Useful Idiot

Nothing is more valuable to the New York Times than a conservative opinion writer who constantly rags on conservatives. For this purpose, David Brooks is ideally suited. The “conservative voice” at the Times is constantly distancing himself from the rubes from his side of the ideological aisle, when he’s not displaying his man-crush on the President. This works beautifully for the Times and David Brooks. The Times gets to respond to people who complain about their liberal bias by pointing to Brooks and saying, “Look, there. We have a conservative opinion writer on our staff!!” Brooks on the other hand gets to enjoy the celebrity that comes with being every liberal’s favorite conservative, and the cocktail party invitations that come with that distinction.

The other day, Brooks was in full-throated, hand-wringing mode about the latest shortcomings of his conservative brethren, when he came up with this jewel:

“There are very few Republicans willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40% of American kids are born out of wedlock”

　

Can I ask you a question David? Why, when you see destitute inner city neighborhoods where 40% of all births are to unwed mothers, do you instantly look to the federal government as the fount of all solutions? Does it ever occur to you, that this scandal might be the result OF 40 years of government policy? Does not the well intentioned welfare regime of the Great Society bear SOME of the responsibility for what has become of these neighborhoods? From food stamps to aid to mothers with dependant children programs, these neighborhoods are already the victims of active government intervention. Instead of instinctively assuming that the only possible solutions to poverty come from Washington, does it ever occur to you that maybe we should look to institutions that are a bit closer to the problem? What role might the churches in these neighborhoods play in combating the problem of out of wedlock births? And what about the governments that are closer to the problem: city councils, and State governments. Would giving the parents of kids in these neighborhoods the opportunity to remove their kids from the failing government run schools help turn the tide?

No, David, for you, the only possible remedy for societies ills is to double down on the 40 year strategy of throwing money at the problem with programs conceived and run by the federal government, regardless of the record of failure they have wracked up. Since 1964 and the onset of the War On Poverty, this nation has thrown 15 TRILLION dollars at the inner cities. Today, the poverty rate is virtually unchanged from what it was then. But despite that dismal record, you chastise your fellow republicans for being unwilling to promote yet more “active intervention”.

Enjoy your status and those lovely Manhattan cocktail parties David, but sorry, you’re a tool.

How About THIS Idea??

   " The Mystery of Government is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."
                                 
                                                                                                     P.J. O'Rourke
　

　
When our founding fathers wrote our constitution, they identified only three federal crimes: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the total number of federal crimes numbered in the dozens. Today, there is literally no reliable, definitive number, since the federal code is over 27,000 pages long. In 2011 alone, 40,000 additional federal laws were placed on the books by our elected officials. Ignorance of the law may not be an excuse, but it sure ought to be a mitigating factor! The best guess that I could find while researching this business was 1,298,000 federal laws…give or take a million.

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai all those years ago, he brought with him the Ten Commandments. Soon, the Levitical laws and rules had ballooned the original ten to over 600. By the time Jesus came along, that number had been blown up by a torrent of rules and regulations handed down by the Pharisees, prompting our Savior to say this:

“ …Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
                       
                                                                                Matthew 22:37-40

It is claimed by apologists for the present system that our politicians are simply responding to the demands of the citizenry for protection against bad men with bad intent. We are to blame for the ponderous size of our federal code. We the people have demanded rules and rules we now have, rules that cover every possible activity of daily living from the size of our toilet paper to the size of our Big Gulps. So how come the existence of over a million rules has not brought with it safety, consensus, and the pursuit of happiness?

Here’s an idea. How about we declare a one year moratorium on the passage of any more laws? How about we give every elected official a year off, with pay? They all work so hard. I know because every one of their commercials tell me so: “ Eric Cantor. Working hard for working families.” “ Tim Kaine has been working for Virginia for years, creating well-paying jobs for Virginia families.” It sounds exhausting! Why don’t we give all of them some well-deserved R&R? Let’s see what would happen if we went 12 months without passing any more laws. Could the Republic survive 12 months if our Senators and Congressmen, Assemblymen and City Council members stayed home? We could put everything on auto-pilot. Keep funding levels where they are. Of course the bureaucrats would still have to come to work to keep the government functioning, but how about we give our law-makers a year off from all that law making?

It would be weird hearing no speeches on C-SPAN. Meet The Press would probably have to shut down. Fox News and MSNBC would have to find something else to scream about. Poor lobbyists would be out of work too, since there wouldn’t be anyone to lobby. Imagine. Maybe after a whole year apart, our elected officials might actually miss each other. Republicans and Democrats might discover that the other guys weren’t all that bad after all. Maybe absence would make the political heart grow fonder and perhaps less rude and obnoxious. And maybe after a year without our government trying to pass laws to help us, we will all relearn how to help ourselves, and each other. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the cooling off period will do us all some good. Harry Reid will finally have time to work on his stamp collection. Mitch McConnell can devote some time to his passion for oil painting. Hillary Clinton will have the time to hit up the gym to lose that fifty pounds she’s packed on traveling the world. A year without campaign commercials might just be the tonic America needs.

We Are All Replacement Refs

Awesome photograph. This picture perfectly encapsulates where we are as a nation in 2012. Two overwhelmed people looking at the same event, the same set of facts, and coming to wildly different conclusions.

Last night, the final play of the Packers-Seahawks game came down to this photograph. The splendid rookie quarterback, Russell Wilson, lofted a last second, Hail Mary towards the corner of the end zone with no time on the clock and his team down 12-7. The intended receiver, Golden Tate shoves a defender in the back just before leaping in the air to catch the ball. However, the football lands in the waiting hands not of Tate, but of Packers safety M.D. Jennings. They tumble to the ground and these two replacement officials, standing directly over the pile of players make their calls simultaneously...one ref signals touchdown, the other a touch back. Replays seemed to show rather conclusively that Jennings had, in fact, intercepted Wilson's pass. But after a 10 minute delay, the terrified referee touched the button on his microphone and told a deliriously happy home crowd that the horrible call he had just made would stand. End of game, but not the end  of story.

The twitter universe that I am contemplating joining went apoplectic with rage and indignation. The replacement officials were making a mockery of the game, Roger Goddell should be executed, this was the biggest miscarriage of justice since the acquittal of OJ Simpson, these Division II referees were totally overwhelmed by the speed of the professional game, completely out of their depth and had lost control of the game. Actually, I feel for these guys...because everyday that I wake up and go to work and try to live my modern life, I feel an awful lot like a replacement ref.

I often feel overwhelmed with the speed of life in 2012. I too, feel completely out of my depth, and everyday it's a struggle to maintain control of my slice of the world. Replacement officials...I feel your pain. One minute, you're a perfectly happy and contented Division II referee getting psyched up for the big Randolph Macon v. Hampden Sydney tilt coming up in Ashland next Saturday. Suddenly, you get a call from some really nice man from the NFL asking you if you would be interested in becoming a referee at the highest level of the game. It would be great and you would be doing the NFL a big favor, says the nice man. Plus, they promise to pay you ten grand per game! It's a dream come true, the opportunity of a life time. The next thing you know, you're standing over a pile of yellow and blue uniforms with 65,000 intoxicated, fanatical lunatics screaming their lungs out at you with the outcome of a game hanging on your decision. For a slow-motion instant, silent and dreamlike, you're back in Ashland throwing a flag on the Yellow Jackets for having too many men on the field. You wonder what you possibly could have been thinking when you said "yes" to that nice man from the NFL.

Did the refs blow the call last night? Yes. Did they call too many penalties during the game? Yes. Will the fiasco at the end of the game distract from the amazing grit and determination of a rookie QB driving his team to victory in just his third NFL start? Unfortunately, yes. Do these replacements deserve all the blame for the horrible situation in which they find themselves? No, no...a thousand times ..NO! Mr. Goddell, pay the real refs, and stop being the story. The players, and the fans deserve better.

My Great Day At The Ballpark

In a fit of generosity, my brother decided a while back to buy me a ticket to see a Nationals game. We are both stubborn, rabid baseball fans, the kind who illicit lots of eye-rolling from our friends and family when we get started quoting the starting lineup on opening day for the 1955 Yankees, or when we hold forth on the various theories concerning the philosophical underpinnings of the sacrifice bunt. So, I have been totally geeked up about this game for weeks now. The plan was for my best friend, my brother-in-law and me to meet Donnie at the centerfield gate around noon yesterday. This would involve us riding the infamous D.C. Metro from Franconia to the Pentagon, switching from the blue line to the yellow line, then switching once again to the green line at some place called “L’enfant Plaza” and then cruising into the Navy yard station that drops you off a mere 200 yards from the center field fence. To my amazement this potentially disastrous trek came off without incident, so at roughly 12:15 I spotted Donnie’s waving hand amongst the sea of red curly W’s. The sky was bright blue, the sun was out and it was 65 degrees.

We spent an hour or so enjoying the beautiful ballpark. Not only is National’s Park gorgeous, the atmosphere was buzzing with the enthusiasm that only comes with being a contender. The Nats have the best record in the big leagues. I’ve watched at least parts of all of their games on MASN and now I was finally getting the opportunity to see them in person. The magic number was 6 at start of play on September 23. All year I have watched the dominant pitching staff make National League hitters look silly. Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzales, Jordan Zimmerman, And Edwin Jackson make up a rotation that has been the envy of baseball. So who do we get to see towing the rubber on this beautiful day??? Some guy named Chien-Ming Wang. I should have viewed it as an omen of things to come, but, lost in the moment, I celebrated the diversity that is big league baseball in 2012. It was time for lunch.

We settled on Hebrew National hot dogs, a side of nachos and a Sam Adams Oktoberfest draft. Then it was time to go find our seats. Donnie had told me that we would be sitting on the second level between home plate and first base. I naturally conjured up images of myself catching numerous fowl balls off the bats of fooled Brewer right handed hitters. What I hadn’t counted on was A. the inability of Chien-Ming Wang to fool hitters, and B. the physical impossibility for a baseball to travel from the field of play to the location of our seats. See, my brother is not able to buy baseball tickets or anything else on-line. He says that this is because he is afraid someone will steal his identity. What that actually means is…he doesn’t know how. If he did he could have gotten on the Nationals’ fine, easy-to-use website and picked out a seat that in fact WAS on the second level between home plate and first base. No, Donnie prefers talking to a real person, the human interaction crucial to our well-being. So, he bought our tickets from “Flo” in promotions.

We began our climb at roughly 12:55. We were in section 321. The signs were confusing. There were rumors of an escalator, but we couldn’t find it. Instead, we took the winding switchback walkways and followed the arrows pointed upward. After twenty minutes or so, and after passing the disturbing skeletal remains of a long dead Senators fan, we finally arrived at our seats. We were on the front rail of the nose-bleed section roughly a thousand feet from the first base bag. Bob Uecker was making fun of our seats. But, it didn’t matter. We were at a big league baseball game, and I was having a blast. Then it got ….weird.

Suddenly for no apparent reason a whole section of fans in section 450 burst into hysterically raucous applause. The four of us immediately began to squint down at the field to see what we had missed, but there was no one on base and nothing of import had transpired. However, two batters later the Nationals turned one of the most amazing, exciting double plays in the history of the game that ignited the crowd into a frenzy. Later, from an usher, we learned that the fans in section 450 were a group in town for the National Association of Psychic Mediums convention ( NAPM ). A couple of innings later, the NAPM crowd let out an ominously deflated groan. We watched Bryce Harper lose a ball in the sun two batters later. These people were spoiling the game for us! It should be against the law for the clairvoyant to attend baseball games Meanwhile, our man Wang, displaying the most laborious windup in history, did not impress. During the long delays between him getting the sign and actually pitching the ball, I found time to Google this mysterious man from Taiwan. I discovered that late in 2006 Wang revealed that he had discovered that he was the biological son of a man who he had always thought was his uncle. The Taiwanese press apparently had a field day with this revelation. Mysteriously, Wang has struggled to get hitters out ever since.

By the fifth inning I was ready for more food. I laid down $20 for a chili covered bratwurst with cheese and onions drizzled over the top just because. As I was settling back into my seat, the psychics were exasperated by some soon to be revealed catastrophy. Sure enough, Jayson Werth proceeds to lose a ball in the sun and two more runs score for the Brewers. The good news was, Donnie was slowly but surely getting over his altitude sickness, and was reporting that feeling had returned to his extremities.

Yes, the Nationals lost the game 6-2. And yes, our four seats just happened to be the only seats in the stadium that remained in the shade the entire game, and yes, the high winds whipping off of the Anacosta river did enter into the stadium through section 321, and said winds were responsible for most of our nose bleeds and head aches, the bottom line was simple…we had a great day at the ballpark.

Weekend Ramblings

Here are my very unscientific college football picks for the week.

1. South Carolina will beat Missouri. Why? Despite the fact that South Carolina has the worst nickname in all of college sports, the “gamecocks”, “cocks” for short ( cringe ) are a better team. In addition, this will be Missouri’s first road SEC game, after which, the Missouri coaching staff will be demanding an explanation from someone as to why anyone thought joining the SEC was a good idea.

2. TCU will beat UVA. Why? Because it’s UVA.

3. Florida State will beat Clemson. Why? Because when a team gives up over 70 points in a bowl game, I never take them seriously again.

4.Oklahoma will beat Kansas State. Why? Because Kansas State is essentially the Virginia Tech of the Midwest, a nice little program who never beats anyone important.

5. Oregon will beat Arizona. Why? I have no idea. They play football in Oregon?

6. Notre Dame will beat Michigan. Why? Because God is on their side.

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Ok, moving on to other topics, I did go fishing yesterday. It was fun and relaxing. I caught three fish. None of them seemed too terribly annoyed. Maybe because I let them all go. I feel pretty good about myself for that $23 I sent to the government for the privilege, I don’t mind telling you. Paying my fair share to help Richmond provide “fishing programs” for my state brings an awful lot of self esteem with it.

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Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax return yesterday. Dude had 13.7 million in income and paid 1.9 million in federal income taxes. That’s a 14.1% rate, if you’re keeping score at home. But the two things that I found most shocking were A. that this release did NOT satisfy the democratic party. And B. that Mitt gave over 4 million bucks to his church. Whoa. That’s like 30% of his income. Yet another reason I’m glad I’m not a member of the Mormon church!

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My daughter came home last night for the weekend. She arrived around 10 and brought her new roommate, Jess, with her. It’s been a month since I last saw her. She is just as beautiful as I remembered, only a bit smarter. One day soon she’s going to walk through my door after another month in grad school, and it’s going to dawn on her that she is sooo much smarter than me. Who am I kidding, she probably already has. Maybe it happened last night.

Going Fishing...

Modern life can be a complicated mess. Mysteries and contradictions are everywhere. Devoted free market men like myself are frustrated to the point of cynicism when we find crony-capitalists in positions of influence in our political party of convenience. Devoted followers of Christ spend half our time appalled at the narrow-mindedness and irrelevance of the churches we attend. Small business owners are stunned at the level of contempt with which we are held by the current president. Lifelong sports fans carry around with them the unspoken intuition that our favorite sports are being destroyed right before our eyes by the influence of money and the overexposure that it brings. Nobody fixes their own cars anymore because they’re all just big computers on wheels. Every time we go to the grocery store, that tube of toothpaste or that box of maccaroni & cheese is just an ounce or two smaller than it was last month, but the price is the same. Our newspaper just got an inch skinnier, on the same day that it’s price went up 33%. A complicated mess.

But you know what’s not complicated? Fishing. I say “not complicated” when what I mean is “less” complicated. I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods the other day to buy a license, and to replenish my tackle box, and discovered that capitalism has turned fishing into a bizarre avocation involving many brightly colored accessories of dubious purpose. I resisted the urge to become a high tech, cutting age modern angler, preferring to remain a guy who just wants to take an afternoon once in a while to get away from everything and everyone and fish. The State charges $23.00 for the privilege. I was told by the enthusiastic cashier that the money from these licensing fees went towards, “ fishery and hatchery management, habitat development and protection, fishing and conservation programs, and many other valuable programs.” And here I thought that this was just another government money grab. Maybe I’ll write for a list of those “other valuable programs”. But if I do it will just hurdle me further down the dead end road of cynicism when I discover that my fishing license fee was helping to fund Planned Parenthood or something. No, I’ll pass on digging deeper into the reasons why I just paid 23 bucks for the right to fish for one year in the state of my birth.

Sometime soon, maybe tomorrow, I’m going to drive out into the countryside somewhere and find a place to fish. I will not use my cell phone. I will not use any artificial lures. My rig will be the same one I’ve always used, night crawlers and a red and white bobber. I will stare at that bobber and contemplate the meaning of my existence. I will pack a sandwich and maybe a beer or two. If I catch anything, I will enjoy the slimy feel of it’s scales as I hold it in my hand and stare into the depths of it’s glassy eye. Then I will place it gently back into the water and watch it disappear. So simple. So clear. So unambiguous.

At the end of the day I will be refreshed. I will feel whole. On the drive back into town I will try not to think about my complicity in funding those “other valuable programs”.

Game Over.

Poor Mitt. You gotta feel for the guy. For the first time in his entire campaign, he finally tells the unvarnished truth about something and BAMM...game over. Not to say I told you so, but go here for proof that I warned all of you Romney fans about the political facts of life months ago. Although he spoke the truth, there are a few quibble-worthy points to make.

It is a fact that roughly 47% of Americans pay no income tax. This is the result of 40 years of pandering by BOTH parties. This fact has indeed created a huge constituency for whom tax cuts offer no benefit. To respond, as most liberals do when confronted with this reality, along the lines of ,"Yeah, but all Americans pay payroll taxes!!" is nonsensical. Of course we all pay payroll taxes. The reason we all pay is because the law provides no escape, no deduction or qualifying dodge to get us off the hook. In addition, payroll taxes are payments we all make for a future benefit ( Social Security ). Herein lies a quibble. When Romney calculates the 47% of Americans who are "dependant" on the government, he includes retirees whose only claim against that government is the Social Security check they earned through a lifetime of paying into the system. These people are merely collecting on a promise, and can hardly be described as "dependant".

 Mitt's serendipitously recorded words were correct about the electoral landscape. Any Democrat running for the Presidency starts out with a huge base of support that in large part consists of those citizens with a vested interest in government spending. That percentage has been growing each year since LBJ's Great Society was launched over 45 years ago. But to be heard writing off nearly half the country as hopelessly dependant and helpless is never a good thing for one's electoral prospects. The fact that his statement is mostly true doesn't change the facts on the ground. Just because something might be true does not mean that it should be said. Any husband who has been asked by his wife if a particular pair of pants makes her look fat knows this instinctively.

If I was Mitt's speech writer, here's what I would have him say....

     " The fact that we have a social safety net in this country is something that we should all be proud of, it speaks well of our national character. As Americans we all believe in providing for those who have fallen on hard times, because we know that in America, bad luck and bad fortune are often temporary setbacks. Government plays a vital role in helping men and women recover from the unexpected, unplanned setbacks of life. But our safety net has over time been transformed into a hammock and government "help" has become a way of life for too many of our people, at precisely the same time as too many of us have been taken off the tax rolls. This is an untenable reality. Our tax system has become a tool of manipulation that government and business use against the rest of us. When you're in line at the grocery store and watch a twenty-something man wearing $200 sneakers buying beer and lottery tickets with food stamps, it should upset you because something is wrong with a system that allows that. But you should be equally upset when huge agri-business corporations receive billions in tax preferences to not grow things, or when politically connected businesses get subsidies written into our Byzantine tax code by their own lobbyists. Many of us complain about how complicated our tax code is, but it's complexity is by design. The more convoluted the tax code, the more power the code writers have. On day one of my administration, our 73,608 page tax code will be  replaced with a one page flat tax with no deductions for anything. For our country to be able to provide adequately for the weakest among us, everyone needs to have skin in the game. For some of you the new system will mean higher taxes, for others your bill will be lower...but all of you will be treated equally, and none of you will be able to game the system to avoid paying."

Poor Mitt doesn't have it in him to offer a transformative alternative to the cradle to grave welfare state. We can only hope against hope that President Obama, once he is no longer running for office will have the guts to confront the deniers in his own party and face the deteriorating mathematics of socialism