A Primary Proposal

This year, the primary system, which is still a work in progress, seems to have finally begun to break down. Florida and Michigan have run afoul of party rules because, in a bid for relevance, they have moved their primaries into January. "Too early," the parties say, and they're right.

But does it make sense for South Carolina, dark, fire engine red South Carolina, to have as much influence over the candidates as it does? And this year, Florida, which would have gone for Gore in 2000 if your grandmother's bridge club had brought their glasses with them to the polling place, can't even select which Democrat party candidate it prefers.

Republicans face a similar dilemma, although they only stripped half of Michigan and Florida's delegates. Meanwhile, both parties give voters from every state a relatively equal voice. Obama was propelled into the forefront by his win over Hillary in South Carolina. South Carolina?? Who cares which Democrat they like best? Democratic voters in the Palmetto State don't count in November, any more than they count in Mississippi or Alaska. And why should New York or Massachusetts get a say? They'll vote for the Democratic candidate regardless of who it is.

The only states that should really count are Florida and Ohio, and maybe Pennsylvania, since those voters really could go either way. In fact, let's take a look at the 2004 election results. According to Wikipedia, the states most evenly divided between Republican and Democrat voters were:

1. Wisconsin, Kerry, 0.38%
2. Iowa, Bush, 0.67%
3. New Mexico, Bush, 0.79%
4. New Hampshire, Kerry, 1.37%
5. Ohio, Bush, 2.11%
6. Pennsylvania, Kerry, 2.50%
7. Nevada, Bush, 2.59%
8. Michigan, Kerry, 3.42%
9. Minnesota, Kerry, 3.48%
10. Oregon, Kerry, 4.16%
11. Colorado, Bush, 4.67%

So. What if we gave THESE states more influence over who we choose? After all, don't we care about who Wisconsinites and Ohioans are more likely to get excited about? Don't we want to know who will motivate them to go to the polls in November? Screw Connecticut and Idaho. We already know where their electoral votes are going.

Reorganize the primaries so they're done in order of closest races in the previous election first.
January 3: Wisconsin and Iowa (yes, Iowa keeps their first spot)
January 8: New Mexico
January 10: New Hampshire
January 17: Ohio and Pennsylvania
January 22: Nevada
January 24: Michigan and Minnesota

You get the picture. It would benefit both parties to know which of their candidates is most electable. The only slight, insignificant problem is the fact that the states, not the parties, control their own primary dates. And it would be hard to convince New Hampshire to give up their first spot without, say, a constitutional amendment.

But it's nice to dream.

Third Best President, EVER!

I know nobody is still reading this blog, but I had to post this find *somewhere*!

Doing research for my column, I came across this old ABC News poll. They asked respondents who the nation's greatest presidents were. In February, 2002, the results came back: Lincoln, Kennedy, GEORGE W BUSH!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
uh oh - milk came out of my nose
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Check it out: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/poll020221_president.html

Everybody Cries With George

As the First Family starts shuffling out of power, the first one to go will be Jeb, the President's brother. Jeb's two full terms as governor of Florida end next month, and apparently there are all kinds of parties and commemorations for him at his "Retirement". Today, his father, the elder George of the President Georges, broke down and cried while giving a speech about his son in the Florida State Capitol. I'm sure it was an emotional time for him. It seems that what most teared him up was talking about his son's defeat in the 1994 gubernatorial election. Jeb went on to win in the next election in 1998.
We all know the history. Jeb and Georgie ran for governor of their respective states in 1994. George defeated governor Ann Richards in Red Texas. Jeb couldn't knock out popular governor Lawton Chiles in Purple Florida. After a term and a half, George ran for President and won, in a well-known sign of the apocalypse.
If you think about it, had Jeb become governor in 1994, he might have run for President instead. He was certainly considered a better candidate. Despite his unconsitutional and highly political intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, he's smarter, more articulate, better traveled, and more thoughtful than his older brother.
It makes me wish I had voted for him instead of Chiles. It makes me want to cry for our country too.

How to Design a Better Alarm Clock

     It's no secret that I'm a night person. I've always had a really hard time waking up. The only good times of my life, waking up-wise, were during summer breaks from school and the year that I worked the night shift at work. That year, I worked from 8 to 5. PM to AM. I would usually get home around 5:30-6:00 and sleep until I woke up without an alarm clock at noon.
     Throughout the years, I've had a variety of alarm clocks. My favorite was a Star Wars clock that looked like C3PO and R2D2. Instead of music, they would talk. "It's time to get up!" They'd yell, along with some stuff about the rebellion needing me and the empire needing destroying. Unfortunately my rampant curiousity of my elementary school years combined with a Phillips screwdriver put an end to that clock. Since college, I've had a "gentle" alarm clock. That is, the music starts softly and gets progressively louder. I've gotten progressively used to it. So much so, that even after it is blaring morning radio shows at full volume, I still don't hear it. No matter what I do to get myself out of bed in the morning, I'm almost always still groggy and tired and totally not alert.
     One morning, in the beginning of August, my wife uttered three words which accomplished what no alarm clock in my 30-year history has ever been able to do. "Honey, I'm Pregnant!"

Breathe

     For the first time in 6 years, it feels like I can finally breathe again. I need to admit to you that I had lost faith in the people of this country, as they allowed themselves to be suckered by weak vilifications of gays, pharmacists, doctors, judges, Clintons, Kerrys, environmentalists, and scientists.
     Yesterday, Democrats picked up 28 seats in the House (double what they needed to take control) and 6 seats in the Senate (exactly what they needed to take control). This is momentous because:

• The Dems have not had control of both houses since 1994


• This is the first time since 1948 that the Democrats didn't lose a single House seat


• President Bush has never governed with anything except the full, unwavering support of both chambers of Congress

     However, this isn't what you might call a historic election.

• In 1994, Republicans took control of the house by gaining 54 seats. They took control of the Senate by gaining 8 seats.


• In 1948, Democrats retook the House by gaining 75 seats! They retook the Senate by gaining 9 seats.


• Democrat control is slight - 1 vote in the Senate and 14 in the House. This is a far cry from 1964, when the Dems had a 155-seat majority!

     At the beginning of my post, I said that I could breathe for the first time in 6 years. Actually, 2000 is just when it got really bad. For my entire adult life, Republicanism has been on the rise in America. This is the first time it feels like somebody isn't waiting to jump down my throat. When Bill Clinton became President in 1992, right-wing talk radio smothered the airwaves with the 2-minutes hate. 2 minutes became 2 years, then 14 years, while the shrill cries of victimization continued to rain down on us. Today, those voices are silent. Well, if not silent, less noisy. They've taken to cannibalizing their own, something they watched Democrats do for years with great relish.
     But what's really exciting about these results is that the highly corrupt and ineffectual Republican majority is no more. For 6 years, they have been no better than a rubber stamp for Bush's inane ideas. Look, everyone knows Bush is an idiot. It wasn't his idea to run for President. He doesn't even do most of the Presidenting work. It's hard to blame him for that. He is what he is. It's not hard to blame Republican Congressmen for jumping to do his every crazy bidding. They've been guilty of dereliction of their duty. Their jobs are to serve their constituents. Instead, they serve the Party. That won't happen anymore.
     I'm really not hoping for the days of 60%+ Democrat majorities in Congress. I don't think that kind of power is good for anyone. Democrats have a long history of abuse of power in the 40 straight years of controlling the House. But Republicans seem to be worse. In 12 years, they have redefined abuse of power, from redistricting between censuses to allowing the President to defy the Constitution. Not to mention the excess of bribery, sexual abuse, and general corruption.
     We've got a long way to go to fix this country. But it starts today.

Is Sex Sex?

     In case this blog is your only source of news, here's a newsflash for you: Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley was caught sending dirty emails to a 16-year old boy working in his office. A gay ephebophile[*] in Congress is bad. A Republican one is worse. That is, if you're the type of person to go into a frothing fit when the topic is sex. Like Republicans.
     Clearly, however, even to a level-headed blogger like myself, Foley is disturbed and his predatory actions towards children were criminal. And the GOP Congress wasted no time condemning Foley and beginning an investigation. Or did they? New revelations have come out showing that Republican leaders have known about Foley's actions as early as last fall. What did Dennis Hastert, the Republican Speaker of the House, do about this? He quietly asked Foley to quit it, and Foley promised he would. (Cue fond memories of the Catholic Priest molestation scandal)
     Now, as bad as Foley's behavior was, covering it up isn't a crime to the extent that say, sending 2,000 Americans to early deaths in Iraq is. But it does expose the faux outrage the House Republicans have been mustering up since ABC News broke the story last week. Um, you knew about this months ago, and now you choose to denounce it? How timely.
     Of course the wonderful Atlanta Journal and Constitution can't let a Republican scandal go by without at least getting a dig in at Democrats - perhaps Bill Clinton - as it goes by. In a so-called "equal time" column, Brent Bozell the Third expresses his, "Oh yeah, well your mother!" moment, by reminding us that even though Foley told his young victim he wanted to "slip off" his shorts, Democrats sometimes have scandals too.
     In fact, the sex aspect is too good for Bozell to pass up. He equates Foley's actions with Clinton's consensual adult "relations" with Monica Lewinsky. So someone out there tell me. Do all Republicans really believe that consensual adult sex is equivalent to a Congressman asking a 16-year old boy if he makes him horny? Is sex just sex? I guess this guy (and by extension the AJC) want you to think so.
     At what point do the loyal followers of the Church of Bush stop and think, maybe I should stop drinking the kool-aid? Maybe, even though "Liberals" are the root of all evil, Republicans don't have God-like powers of goodness. Are Americans really stupid enough to buy another weak excuse from this corrupt bunch of crooks?

Evil or Entrepreneur?

     Given the success of national blowhards Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and Neal Boortz, maybe I can't blame him. After all, it certainly seems like the era is past when an impartial newsman rises to national prominence through unbiased analysis. Clearly, appealing to the uneducated and the aggressively self-serving is in Jim Wooten's best professional interests.
     My question is, why does the Atlanta Journal-Constitution feature him? The AJC is supposed to be (was?) a newspaper. It provided news and analysis. As we all know, newspaper readership has been dropping. And so newspapers around the country resort to stunts to boost their numbers. Think you have to buy the Sunday paper to get the good ads? Think again. On certain holiday weekends, the AJC has delivered the advertising sections, despite the fact that I cancelled my subscription a couple of years ago. Still, that's not enough. Perhaps knowing that educated readers, looking for broad, unbiased, well-rounded news sources, are increasingly looking at the internet for their news, local papers like the AJC are going after the "mentally relaxed" market. Read Jack Shafer's July 27th article on this topic in Slate entitled, "How the New York Times Makes Local Papers Dumber.
     It's a shame the AJC is contributing to the decline of the national dialogue in the name of "balance". Just because some guy comes along promising to sell more papers to white supremacists doesn't "balance" him with reasonable authors. Jim Wooten's columns frequently play down to his readership's lack of mental acuity. And his positions come straight out of the wildest GOP caricature. George Bush notwithstanding, I believe most educated Republican voters are nuanced in their beliefs. Perhaps they don't approve of abortion, but they're not sure it should be outlawed. Or maybe they think the federal government should butt out of business, but worry about global warming. Not Jim. There's no nuance to him. Take any issue, imagine what some redneck in 1960's rural Mississippi would say, then read your imagination on the AJC's opinion page.
     Lately he's been railing about city planning issues. If you're not from Atlanta, you have to understand a little of its history here. Right now, Atlanta is one of the largest, sprawlingest cities in the country. This is due to a number of factors, including its small size before the Interstate Highway system and its rapid growth since, the lack of geographical boundaries like an ocean or mountain range, and its racist history. Yes, racist. The "City Too Busy to Hate" is one of the most segregated cities in America after Whites fled downtown during the Civil Rights era. Today, predictably, White suburbanites endure the nation's longest commutes as they drive an average of 35 miles from their home to their job. Today, there's no such thing as "going against traffic" in Atlanta. With sprawl, backups go both ways.
     Why is this happening? Not only are homes moving outward, but so are jobs. You might live 20 miles northeast of the city. Your job might be 20 miles northwest. Or southeast. Or 40 miles north. Cities in the past had large feeder highways going in and out of city centers. Now, we need one connecting every point to every other point. Imagine drawing a line from every square on a chess board to the center of the board. Now imagine drawing a line from every square to every other square. Plus, imagine that every time you draw a line, or make it thicker, the board gets bigger in that direction. It's just not possible to build roads to compensate. The only way to make life livable is to increase density.
     Jim, who is opposed to living near Black people, disagrees. "Move jobs outward", he says, pandering to the imbeciles living 40 miles north of the city who are convinced the jobs are going to move next door to them. What happens when the jobs move 40 miles even farther?
     I digress. It's so easy to point out the flaws in Jim's stupid columns that you miss the point entirely - he exists only to make trouble. Let's look at some of his recent works. Guess his position on college students using condoms. Correct - he's against. (It's all Bill Clinton's fault that college kids have sex, anyway) Is it right for a fraternity that celebrates slavery and civil war to relocate to a Black neighborhood? Yes, but only because the civil war was really only about being gentlemanly and wearing riding on horseback and wearing hoop skirts and because the Black people in the neighborhood were poor. Is government good or bad? Bad! How dare they try to regulate business. I mean, Good! If they pay for kids to go to Christian school. I mean, Bad! If it's taxing luxuries and corporations instead of poor people. Minimum wage? Please. Like you don't know. Ann Coulter? A national hero. Al Gore? A national villain, invoked in as many columns as possible, along with Bill, Hillary, and John Kerry, to rabble-rouse.
     Jim, you're a comic. You're a two dimensional drawing of an right-wing demagogue. You're a hypocrite and a shrill one at that, screaming about "liberals" hating everything and having no ideas, then doing the same yourself. You're the reason the dialog is so poisoned. You would think in a blood-red state like Georgia, you wouldn't be able to blame Democrats for your problems. But somehow you've managed. Just like your insistence that Republicans could clean things up in Washington if only they had control. I mean, for a few more years. That's all. Bill Clinton made congressional Republicans take bribes.
     And to the AJC: maybe people listen to AM radio to get pissed off. But that's not why I read newspapers. And that's why I don't buy yours.

Be Careful What You Wish For

     You know the rest of the title quote. "Because Republicans just might get it." In the July/August Issue of "Washington Monthly", Alan Wolfe wrote a piece called, "Why Conservatives Can't Govern". This piece was widely talked throughout the summer, mainly because of its stunningly obvious, yet largely unspoken thesis. That is, Conservatives can't govern because their basic philosophy is that government doesn't work. Read the piece - it's very interesting.
     Since liberal Democrats ruled the country for something like 40 years, Republicans have formed themselves into the party of opposition. The Conservative wing (which has recently gone wacko, BTW) became extremely strong. Among its tenets: government should butt out. Less is More, at least when it comes to government. Of course, a nation of 300 million people needs a government. And a nation of 300 million people that is highly sophisticated, with some of the best transportation systems, mandatory schooling, and well-run cities needs more government than you'll get in, say, Lebanon.
     "All Politics is Local", said Tip O'Neill. And today's article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution does not disappoint. Under the headline, "Tech students endured threats in free speech crusade" (free login), Andrea Jones tells the sob story of Conservative Georgia Tech students Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar. Ruth and Orit sued Georgia Tech to remove an anti-harassment rule for Tech's dormitories. The rule barred verbal assaults and harassment in Tech's common living spaces. Ruth and Orit, two of the people for whom the rule was originally designed, fought to have it struck down in the name of free speech.
     Hey, maybe they're right. The rules were put in place originally because "good old boy" group were harassing women and minorities, hoping to push them out of what had been all-male, all-white schools. By the way, today, Georgia Tech is less than 28% female and less than 25% non-white. This in a country in which 51% of the general population is female and nearly 37% is non-Hispanic White. Just saying. Anyway, maybe Ruth and Orit are right. The country was built on free speech. If women and Blacks can't handle the pressure, they shouldn't be in school in the first place, right?
     So it should be no surprise that after they win their court battle, and Tech is forced to repeal their anti-harassment rule, Ruth and Orit are...harassed! Surprise! Congratulations, ladies. You've gotten what you wanted. Except... you didn't really want this? You wanted to harass dirty liberals and those Southeast Asians that keep populating your dorms? Not good, White American red-blooded Conservatives? Better call the newspaper. Conservatives broke government again!
     Just as a note... Ruth Malhotra is a self-described "conservative Christian". Orit Sklar's name sounded familiar. When I looked her up, I remembered why. I'm embarrassed to report that she's the President of the Georgia Tech Jewish Student Union, an organization I helped found in 1997-98. Oh well. I can't be responsible for my successors. Imagine how Bill Clinton must feel right now.

Victory

     So the month-long war against the terrorist army Hezbollah has come to a halt. Predictably, everyone involved is declaring victory. Israel, Hezbollah, the UN, the US. They can't all be right, right?
     Right. What the hell does "victory" mean, anyway? Nasrallah thinks it means surviving against Israel. He's wrong. Israel thinks it means destroying Hezbollah. They're right, but when they didn't accomplish that, they changed their tune. The UN thinks it means we stop harassing poor, innocent terrorists. I can't even begin to assess that. George Bush thinks victory means everyone hates you and people are about to die. Mission Accomplished!
     Clearly, Israel did not come out of "Operation Change Direction" with a true victory. Hezbollah is still entrenched in southern Lebanon, is still being fed arms and money from Syria, Iran, and from terrorist sympathizers worldwide, and is still hell-bent on destroying Israel. However, Israel did do a lot of damage to Lebanon. And that sends a very clear message to every one of Israel's less-than-friendly neighbors. It says, "We'll do the same to you if you allow terrorists to attack us from your side of the border." It's a clear message to Egypt. It's a clear message to Jordan. And it's an especially clear message to Syria.
     Almost unanimously, the media highlight Hezbollah's burgeoning public image in the Middle East and points to it as Israel's failure. Israel wasn't fighting a public affairs battle. It especially was not trying to win "hearts and minds" in Lebanon. It was trying to tell governments - governments that actually care about the well-being of its citizens - that it will not stand for their tolerance of terrorists in their midst.
     The Anti-Semitic press screams about "massacres", most "proof" of which has been manufactured. But the world knows that Israel has been mightily restrained. Obviously, it really could have leveled Beirut. Obviously, instead of a few hundred casualties, there could have been a few hundred thousand. The reason there wasn't was because Israel wasn't fighting Lebanon. It was fighting a terror organization that happened to be inside Lebanon. Once Lebanon takes responsibility for its border, that won't be the case.
     Israel accomplished what it meant to do. It stopped the reign of terror in the north. It disabled Hezbollah's ability to make war without authorization from a sovereign country. Is Hezbollah gone? No. But that's a job for another day, for another country to handle. Ultimately Hezbollah is Iran's expeditionary force, and only a nation willing to take on Iran can stop them.

Life Insurance Racket

     Now that we live in a 2-income house (as opposed to a house that either my wife or I could afford on a single salary), we're investigating life insurance options so that in the case of the untimely demise of one of us, the other does not have to move.
     So far, I'm fairly disgusted by the industry. I mean, insurance is a scummy business as a whole, but life insurance has more obfuscations and fear-mongering than I'd expect outside a Republican election platform. When you buy car insurance, it's pretty straightforward. If you pay $X per month, the insurance company will fix your car, pay off anyone you damaged, and possibly pay for your own injuries in the case of an accident. Different policies cover different things, but it's not complex. I thought property insurance was as straightforward, but since reports came out from Katrina of insurance companies playing games and not paying for destroyed homes, it turns out that that sector is about as trustworthy as Mel Gibson producing a Holocaust movie. (The whole "wind" vs "water" debate is crap. People clearly believed they were buying hurricane insurance, and the insurance companies were happy to let them think so.)
     When I bought my first house, I purchased a "home warranty". That was probably the most worthless thing I've ever spent money on. It was supposed to cover anything that broke in the house, with a few small print items that were excluded. So when a pipe burst in my crawl space, I called the insurance company. "Not covered." Why? Well, the part of the pipe that broke is excluded in the small print. My A/C died. "Not covered." Why? The way it broke was excluded in the small print. After 2 years of having Every. Single. Claim. denied, I cancelled the stupid policy. I started getting warning letters. "This is your last chance!" I read. A month later, I got a letter saying, "This is your final chance to cover your house!" I got phone calls weeks after that offering discounts. I'd rather send my money to a deposed Nigerian prince.
     Which brings me back to life insurance. There are 2 types of life insurance. They're called "Term Life" and "Cash Cow". The insurance companies usually give prettier names to the second, calling it "Whole Life", "Universal Life", "Premium Guaranteed Life". And they talk down the first, calling it "Rental Insurance". Term Life is insurance. You pay the company $X, and if you die, they pay your beneficiary $Y. Permanent Life (Perm), what textbooks will call the Cash Cow, is actually a hybrid product. It's a mix of Term Life and investment account. Perm Life premiums usually stay constant over your entire lifetime, while Term Life premiums go up. But this is misleading. Term Life payments stay constant, while the insurance payments in Perm Life go down. They don't tell you this, because the dollar amount on the check will be the same. What they don't clarify is that part of the money comes from your own investment account. If you wanted to buy Term Life with a declining payout, your premiums could stay constant too. Think of your mortgage. Your payments stay the same, but behind the scenes, more of your money goes to pay down principal instead of interest, as time goes on.
     So where's the scam? After all, what's wrong with saving money? Nothing, if your retirement plan is to buy 40 year CD's that you can only cash after you die. Life Insurance companies pay really crappy returns. If all you're interested in earning on your savings is 6% annually, a CD will take care of that for you. Better yet, you can actually use a CD before you die.
     Now, I do have to mention that there is one huge benefit to Life Insurance - payments after death are tax-free. It's like a Roth IRA that pays out when you're dead. This is a good way to avoid estate taxes if you want to pass down money to your children. Since there are no estate taxes on spouses, however, nobody gains anything if your spouse is the beneficiary. Except for the insurance company, who's been making tons of interest on your money for 30, 40, or 50 years. Anyway, that's estate planning, and unless your estate is worth millions of dollars, you don't have to worry about it. (If it is worth millions of dollars, there are other ways to shelter the money before dealing with life insurance.)
     On the New York Life webpage, the insurance company tries to help you with the confusion. It's heard the saying "Buy Term and Invest the Difference", so it wants to give you a Fair & Balanced analysis on which is right for you. The page has headlines like "Do You Prefer Renting or Owning?" and "Invest the Difference in What?". Translations: "You prefer owning to renting, and we say Term is like renting", and "Do you really want to go through the hassle of planning for your future?"
     Maybe some of you who are older and wiser than me can cut through the bull that the insurance companies are feeding us. Explain to me a good reason why Perm is not a ripoff. If I'm disciplined and responsible with my savings, I figure I'm always better off buying Term, until the day comes when I no longer need Life Insurance (house is paid off, kids are through college). Why is someone always trying to steal my money?