FlamingText

What I look like, apparently

Thanks to Susannah, not just for painting it but for portraying me bathed in a glowing nimbus of golden light.

Congress To Vote on Bill to Disband Congress

Insiders Say 'Passage Certain.'
   House Resolution 402: The Government Streamlining and Paperwork Reduction Act is scheduled to come to a floor vote early Thursday, with analysts already predicting that it will be approved by a wide margin. House Republicans say they believe they have more than enough votes to assure passage of the bill before sending it back to the Senate floor, where an earlier version already passed by a 62-36 margin, with two senators abstaining. President Bush has already said that if passed he will sign it into law, joking with reporters on one occasion that it was the "Last time I'll ever have to bother with that extra step."

   Although the controversial move to abolish the legislative branch's role as the only branch of government with the authority to draft new laws, approve budgets or declare wars may surprise many, others see this as a logical extension of a conservative agenda that has been advancing by degrees over the course of the last several decades: The move towards a smaller Federal government. Grover Norquist, GOP fundraiser and a leading light of the conservative movement, summed up this sentiment when he famously stated "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

To many beltway observers, H.R. 402 paves the way for exactly that.

Shifting Tides
   Starting with the Republican "revolution" of 1994 and the resulting "Contract with America," a series of ideological shifts in conservative thought have hinged on the premise, popular with many voters, that small governments that operate efficiently are invariably preferable to large governments with many layers of bureaucracy. While the years since the 2000 elections, which saw the Republicans gain control of both Congress and the Office of the President for the first time in since 1952 (minus a period from June 2001 through the end of 2002 when Vermont's Jim Jeffords switched his party affiliation), have in fact seen a growth in the size and influence of the Federal government, the rhetoric remains a powerful plank in the Republican platform. Shrinking and "streamlining" government consistently polls as one of the top political priorities of the party's conservative base.

   "When you come right down to it, are three branches of Federal government really necessary?" asks Rep Browning, R-Indiana.
"I mean, when we speak of checks on executive power, aren't we really talking about an institutionalized forum for second-guessing our Commander-in-Chief? The tremendous red tape in the current process merely serves to hamstring the vital activities of President Bush and his administration. How can they be expected to wage a successful War on Terror if they have to keep checking with Congress to see if every little thing is legal, or if they have to get every little budget item approved?"

   Indeed, Rep. Browning's statement echoes the White House's own complaints of late that constitutional restrictions on the Executive's exercise of broad powers presents an odious restraint on the President's ability to wage an ongoing war.

'Red Tape'
Recent revelations that the White House has authorized intelligence-gathering operations far beyond the scope of those approved by Congress have prompted forces within the GOP to advocate for a “final solution” to the question of Congressional oversight. Speaking on the subject on last Sunday’s Meet the Press, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had this to say:
“The problem is not that the president is acting without consulting Congress. The problem is that Congress’ continual demands for accountability undermine the successful prosecution of this war. The American people are serious about the War on Terror, and they demand results. Legislatures don’t produce results; They produce red tape.”

“If you look back at the history of successful military campaigns, one common factor you’ll find in all of them is that they weren’t conducted by committee. In ancient Rome, it was Caesar, not the senate, who oversaw military operations. Likewise, Alexander the Great didn’t consult a bunch of representatives before he moved his troops, he just did it; He acted quickly and effectively. Napolean, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne: Same thing. Victory on the battlefield requires bold initiative, and time and again Congress has shown it has no stomach for that.”

The Loyal Opposition
   Yet agreement on this point is not universal. Across the aisle, many Democrats are campaigning fiercely for a compromise version of the bill that would allow for Congress to continue to hold what would amount to a largely ceremonial role in government, akin to the English House of Lords but with less actual power. Under the terms of this compromise, Congress would still consist of an elected body of representatives from the states, but that body would not be able to draft legislation, would hold no power of veto, would not approve judicial or cabinet appointments and would no longer exercise final budget approval. The executive branch would assume all of those functions, in addition to the sole ability to declare war. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has been one of the strongest advocates for this provision, threatening to hold up the final passage of the Senate version of the bill with a filibuster if necessary. Ironically, if Kennedy and his fellow Democrats succeed in this, filibustering will in essence become the sole remaining activity of the revamped Senate.

“It is important that we keep alive the spirit of vigorous debate that has been the lifeblood of American democracy for the last 230 years. It is of vital interest to the continuing health of our great republic that voices representing the constituencies of the states of the Union continue to be heard on the pressing issues of our time, even if those voices are voices of dissent, and even if those voicing their dissent are powerless to act. The right to futile protestations that are routinely ignored by those in power is a treasured cornerstone or our democracy.”

High Hopes for the Future
It remains to be seen if the bill's supporters can muster the two-thirds majority required to end a filibuster, but GOP insiders are optimistic. Queried about what a future with no House of Representatives and no Senate holds in store for career politicians, Senator Smitts, R-OR, expressed a sentiment heard more and more in the corridors of the Capitol these days:
"Are you kidding? Do you know what a Senator's yearly salary is? I could make that in a month in a private consultancy. And once I'm freed from all these intrusive ethics "rules," I can assure you the dividends on my stocks alone will cover the loss of income from my job in the Senate."
Smitts added, jovially, "I have a feeling my portfolio is going to do very, very well this year."

  In a press conference on Tuesday, the President seemed equally upbeat. Fielding questions from the White House press corps about how he saw this affecting judicial appointments, President Bush replied
"Well, obviously it's going to streamline those tremendously, they'll be tremendously streamlined. We have positions that have been held up for approval for years, literally years and years under the current system. That's a tremendous amount of wasteful red tape! I promise you, and this is a promise, that those positions will be filled within two weeks of this bill's passage. Two weeks! It is high time our nation got on with the business of rolling up our sleeves and getting down to the business of this nation."

Asked how he saw the future of relations with the judiciary under the new two-branch system, the President quipped:
"Well, we don't consider it so much a two-branch system as a one-and-a-half branch system."

Caveat Emptor

   So obviously I'm back after spending the holidays in Ohio, where my family members, I am happy to report, failed in their attempts to kill me with pork products. While I was there I got caught up on some TV watching. Since we don't have the cable at my house out here, trips home to see the parents present a unique opportunity for me to spend a few days steeping in hour after hour of mindless video stimulation.

   I saw my first ad for Floam (warning: clicking the link will take you to the floampage, where the floamvertisement will play in its floamtirety) while I was there. I saw it shortly after seeing my first Floam, which my neice had received as a stocking stuffer. I don't really have a lot to say either way about Floam itself, but I will say that the ads are floamtastic!

  I'm sure this is old news to all of you cable-watchers, but humor me because it's all new to me and I never imagined such a world of wonder. Jesus, Floam just makes everything better! Use it to decorate your bike! Weatherstrip your house! Serve it in a casserole! (Caution: Do not serve it in a casserole. Pregnant women and nursing mothers should avoid contact with Floam.)

  Also, I saw those ads for Enzyte, which is a revolutionary over-the-counter herbal supplement that is supposed to make your penis bigger. Except the ads never come right out and say that. They just think it. Real loud.

  I know I posted a while back about how internet gambling is now legit enough to buy honest-to-god ad time, so I suppose it was just a matter of time before this happened. I looked up Enzyte (not that I was, you know, interested for myself or anything....) and it turns out that it costs a hundred bucks for a month's supply. And as far as I can tell, the manufacturer is prohibited from making any direct claims about whether Enzyte can enhance one's manly portions. The ads are heavy on subtext, light on details. They feature a disturbing character named Smiling Bob whose face possesses a permanent lunatic full-teeth-and-gums smile, and he is seen doing things like golfing really well and also dressing up as Santa. The latter is supposed to be rendered less troubling by the fact that we see a line of adult women lining up to sit on Santa's lap, but one has to wonder what department store would stand for that sort of thing. Anyway, the ads don't really have to say what the magic pills are supposed to do because you already know the script from every other unwanted email you've ever received. No word on whether or not it can refinance your home or help you lose weight fast.

  Penis pills are a brilliant idea for so many reasons; First of all, I can't think of anything else for which men would agree to pay $100 a month for the rest of their lives based on a hint that it might actually do something. Even better, even if the product doesn't do anything, nobody is going to ask for their money back. Can you imagine what the court case would look like if they did?

Attorney: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I direct your attention to Exhibit A, photograph one, labeled "Before." Take a good look. And now, I direct your attention to photograph two, labeled "After." As you will no doubt agree, the promised results are, shall we say, somewhat lacking."
Plaintiff: "Hey!"
Juror #1: "Can we see 'before' again?"
Attorney: "Certainly."
Juror #4: "He's right. Same size and just as crooked, too."
Plaintiff: "That's normal!"
Judge: "Counsel will please advise his client against any further outbursts in this courtroom."
Attorney: "I apologise on my client's behalf, your honor. He is suffering from emotional distress as a result of the product's lackluster performance. Now he is faced with the troubling reality of living the rest of his life knowing that his manly portions will never be any larger than they are right now.
Juror #11: "Like a 'right turn only' arrow..."
Plaintiff, head in hands, voice muffled:"Oh dear god."
Attorney: "You see? You see what they've done to this man? Do you see what their false promises and snake-oil cures have done to this poor, desperate little man?"

I just can't see anybody going through with that. Ergo, it's the perfect scam!

  So today’s internet scam is tomorrow’s legitimate business is next year’s globe-spanning empire. Which means the time is ripe for my brilliant million-dollar idea, the Smart Pill™, an idea that I got from this old vaudeville routine:

1: “Hey, you’re the guy who sold me those Smart Pills!”
2: “Another satisfied customer. What can I do for you, friend?”
1: "Those were nothing but sugar pills!"
2: "See, you're getting smarter already!"

  Of course I'd only charge $50.00 for a month's supply. I think that's what the market will bear. After all, it's not as if I'm promising it will make your penis bigger.

Actually, now that I think about it, fifty bucks is probably too much...

One bilious screed deserves another

  My big brother used to be a bleeding heart liberal like me, but then he got himself a wife, kids, a mortgage and a good job working for The Man. Finally, he started golfing. Somewhere in the middle he seems to have become a fairly hawkish conservative. It's okay, I still like him.

But sometimes he sends me things like this. I don't know if he's trying to convert me or merely annoy me but so far it's mostly accomplished the latter. The following post is my response to this fairly hateful piece of writing by author Mark Steyn. If you want to see me get really pissed off, then read on. Otherwise, skip it. I'll get back to not writing about politics in my next post, I promise.

  Hilarious. Mr. Steyn, by virtue of his expertise as a theater critic, first offhandedly dismisses all those crazy predictions of environmental change resulting from human activity with a wave of his hand and no accompanying evidence whatsoever, on the grounds that some prior predictions (which he cherry-picks, with the benefit of hindsight, on the basis of their inaccuracy and kookiness) didn’t come true, or at least not so quickly as those nutty scientists back in those groovy, flare-pants-wearing seventies were predicting. What were they smoking? Yet if his point is that issuing prognostications of future events which are accurate down to the year is a difficult business, fraught with the potential for embarrassing miscalculations and necessitating future foot-from-mouth extractions, then he’ll get no argument from me. He then goes on, with a straight face, to issue a series of dire-sounding prognostications of future events complete with accurate-to-the-year timetables.

  According to Mr. Steyn, we here in “the West” are in grave danger because we are giving too much attention to “secondary issues”, like whether our citizens have access to health care or housing or, you know, food, and not enough attention to national defense, religious ideology, and family values. And you know, I was just wondering why all through the last election cycle I didn’t hear any politicians talking about the need for strong defense, or why we should value families, or why God thinks homosexuality is wrong and evil. They were too busy complaining about the so-called “environment” and how we’re not taking care of our poor and homeless and the loss of living-wage jobs and other boring unimportant stuff like that. Which is probably why the budgets for the EPA and the Health and Human Services Department dwarf that for Defense. It’s insane, I tell you, how these politicians, with their constant obsession with helping the poor, preserving the environment and reducing deficit spending, continue to ignore issues like national defense and Islamic terrorism!

  Round about a century ago lots of alarmed prognosticators were issuing similar warnings about the dreaded tide of immigration that threatened to swamp our great nation with hordes of unwashed, uneducated and probably criminal immigrants who did not share our religious and cultural values. Sometimes they spoke other languages, or when they did speak English, they often had an accent! The Pope-worshipping Irish and the Jesus-killing Jews were going to overwhelm us and turn us into a nation of illiterate heathens with more loyalty to their European pontiffs and arcane ancient religions than to our great American way of life. Why, oh why didn’t we listen to those warnings when we had the chance? If we had, our system of government wouldn’t be the Irish Catholic theocracy it is today and I’d be allowed to legally purchase birth control, practice Protestantism, or drink some kind of beer other than Guinness. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. (By the way, have you picked out your outfit for the mandatory St Patrick’s Week festivities yet? I have -- It’s green!)

Yes, Steyn warns, we in the developed world all need to be very alarmed at the high birth rates in the Islamic world. Thus, the following observation:

"Some countries are well above (the 2.1 babies per woman necessary to maintain stable population figures): the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?"

  Gee, I don’t know Mark. High infant mortality rates? Food shortages? Desertification? Large foreign debts? High unemployment rates? All the sorts of problems that one would predict when people with no money and no health care have seven children families? Oh wait, right. I see where you’re going with this, Mark. They’re all predominately Islamic countries. And watch out, they’re coming this way!

  And we can’t count on environmental devastation to stop them either, according to Steyn. I mean, if those environmentalist Chicken Littles back in the seventies had been right, we could expect to see the world population doubling in the last thirty years. And a rise in global temperatures in the same period. And famines in sub-Saharan Africa as the rising populations there faced increasing competition for food and water, even as the combination of increasing agricultural production pressures and warming trends accelerated the expansion of the neighboring desert. I mean, to hear those wackos talk, you’d think that hordes of locusts, pushed out of their normal habitat range at the desert edges around the Sahara by increasing equatorial temperatures, would descend on bordering nations’ crops and cause widespread food shortages.

  Wait, you say that did happen? Whoops! Well, I’m sure it’s an honest mistake on Steyn’s part. I mean, it’s not as if anybody he cares about is dying. Sure, if it was Europe suffering a massive heat wave resulting in an estimated 50,000 deaths there in the summer of 2003, that would be another matter. What? That happened too? Well, okay, but to be fair, a lot of those people were old, and also many of them were French. I mean, it’s not as if any link has been drawn between rising ocean temperatures and an increase in category 4 and 5 Hurricanes. Oh, wait. Okay, but still, Steyn is from Canada, and it’s not as if one of Canada’s popular national symbols, like say polar bears, were reported to be drowning in the Arctic Ocean as the distance between ice floes becomes too great for them to swim. Really? Well, maybe the Canucks can put some other animal on the back of their two dollar coins. How about the muskrat?

Anyway there is no cause for panic. As Steyn assures us:

"There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying about.”

   Well, that’s a relief! Now, normally if I wanted information about the global climate, I might consult a climatologist or a meteorologist or something. Or, I dunno, maybe a global consortium of climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists working across disciplines to study climate change. Or NASA. Or NOAA. But hell, why bother. Mark Steyn, theater critic extraordinaire, has spoken. Hallelujah! I’m glad, because if I based my opinion on actual research done by people who really know something about the topic they’re discussing, I might be worried. Mr. Steyn’s completely uninformed opinions, by contrast, make me feel all warm and snuggly about the future.

   I’m sorry, I got so distracted contemplating our bright, sunny future filled with clean air, drinkable water, stable global climate and plentiful fossil fuels that I almost forgot the point of the whole editorial : Radical Islam. Or the perils of Multiculturalism. Or the folly of European social democracies. Or something.

   Birth rates! That’s right. It’s all about demographics, stupid! (That’s the title, after all. Focus, man, focus!) See, demographics are basically math, and Steyn is using this word demographic to show that he knows what he’s talking about because, unlike the controversial science of meteorology, he believes in math. He’s making projections based on current trends and following them to their logical conclusions, thus arriving at his logically-derived thesis that crazed Islamic extremists are going to come rolling down Mainstreet, Canada next Tuesday to trample our freedoms, rape our women and eat the spleens out of our still-breathing bodies. Let me explain how this sort of projection can work in the hands of somebody who starts out with the end in mind (as Steven Covey recommends we all do if we wish to achieve success in life.) Ready? Here we go: Two minutes ago, I ate a banana. It took me a minute. Then, I ate another banana, which also took me a minute. That’s two bananas so far. If this trend continues, by the end of 2006, I will have eaten 518,400 bananas. Holy crap! That’s a whole lot of bananas! Will there be enough bananas left over for anyone else? I need to be stopped before our banana-loving way of life here in the civilized world is ruined forever!

   One thing I’m unclear about is what he’s suggesting be done about this. One possible interpretation of this editorial is that we in the West need to step up our reproductive rates in order to keep up with the burgeoning populations of the countries he names. However, it’s worth noting that Somalia, first on the list with the highest birth rate in the world, has an infant mortality rate of 116.70 per 1000 births, the seventh highest in the world. Afghanistan has the #2 IMR, with 163.07. Figures on poverty and health conditions in the other countries he names are similarly appalling. So these countries are “winning” the global population race by producing record amounts of children who will die in childbirth, starve to death, or die of preventable diseases. And if he is proposing that we in the West close the population gap by stepping up our own birthrates while simultaneously cutting the social services which Steyn dislikes so much, what he is really suggesting is that we set about creating our own army of impoverished, starving children. You’ll pardon me for concluding that fighting fire with fire is not the wisest way forward in this instance.

   Or maybe he’s trying to tell readers here in the States how lucky we are that we don’t live in one of those European social democracies that provide health care for their citizens. We should be overjoyed that instead, we live in the USA, where over half of our taxes go to “defense”, and instead of investing in the physical well-being of taxpayers, that money is instead spent on killer robots (“Because automating the killing process is the wave of the future!"™), or missile defense systems that don’t actually work and wouldn’t stop a terrorist attack even if they did. Again, what a relief! And here I was worried about how I was going to pay for cat food when I turn 75 and have no means to support myself because my pension fund stopped paying out ten years back and the entire Social Security fund was swindled away long before that. Thank God I don’t live in France or Germany where I'd have to endure a thirty-hour work week, six weeks of vacation a year, and guaranteed health care! I’m happy just knowing that my taxes are going to something more sensible, like the aforementioned useless weapons systems, or interest payments on the deficit.

  Or maybe he’s suggesting that we abandon multiculturalism, destroying our open societies to save them, as it were. Enforce one unified set of cultural norms on all alike as a condition of living in a modern democratic state. And here I must confess a certain sympathy to his case, because I too sometimes have a hard time swallowing the beliefs and customs of other cultures. For instance, there are an awful lot of people in the world today who believe in some form of Divine Father Figure who lives off in the clouds, spying on his creations 24/7, and ultimately doles out either eternal spankings or endless helpings of delicious Heaven Pie to them depending on how obediently they adhere to the byzantine dictates of his Appointed Representatives here on Earth. And I think that belief system is just plain weird. Not only weird, but it looks from here like a pretty transparent means for the so-called Appointed Representatives of His Divine Majesty to trick masses of people into serving their own selfish ends. Like, for instance, having more children than they can support by convincing them that birth control is evil, just so said Divine Representatives can then command huge armies of believers. But unlike Steyn, I find it alarming whether it takes place in Kabul or Rio de Janeiro.

   But, much as I disagree with that worldview, I’m willing to tolerate those bizarre cultural beliefs in others as long as their adherents don’t attempt to force them on me by teaching them as fact in public schools or legislating them into laws that I will then be expected to obey. Even so, I should point out that there’s tolerance and then there’s tolerance. So for example I support Ann Coulter’s right to say things like “"[T]he government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo" as long as she never acts on those thoughts or incites others to act on them. If she does, then she’s violating someone else’s rights. See how that works? You can believe any stupid thing you want, you can even say it out loud, but if you act on it then you have to answer for your actions. It’s not a perfect system, given that it means I have to live in a world where pundits like Coulter or Mark Steyn can go out in public and say whatever asinine shit they calculate will keep their readers’ attention while those of us who know better are forbidden by law from tasering them until they shut the hell up. Like I said, it’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got.

  This is also, not coincidentally, my rebuttal to Steyn’s indictment of our pluralistic societies here in North America, or more to his point, in Europe. It might not always work to try to engage people in the system. People can, after all, be unruly, and many of them believe very stupid things and act on those beliefs. There is a temptation to force them to abandon their wrongheaded beliefs and adopt some more constructive ones. It’s just that every system people have come up with so far to do that has ended up sucking even worse. So until we think of a better system, we’re stuck with what we've got.

   Now normally I might end this by suggesting that Mark Steyn abandon his aspirations to professional punditry and go back to his day job, but the fact is that I can’t in good conscience recommend that. If there’s one thing I dislike more intensely than a pseudo-intellectual neo-conservative jackass, it’s a theater critic, or, as we call them in the business, a "failed actor." Nothing throws more cold water on my ongoing efforts at producing bad theater than critics of same. So instead, I will recommend that he quit working altogether and go on the Canadian dole, which, if he is to be believed, should provide him with more than ample funds to allow him to support a large family of European-descended, highly civilized future citizens.