Dispatches from the Flying M

Hot Air Balloons

Here are some images from this morning's first-ever Cinco De Mayo Hot Air Balloon Festival. The Douglas Dispatch calls it the Cinco De Mayo Air Balloon Festival, but that's sadly typical of the Dispatch. The wind has picked up since I took these--if it's anything like yesterday, the morning flights will be all they'll manage.

 

Donald Chump Goes to the Cleaners

We'll probably never really get to watch Barack Obama and Donald Chump play poker together. But now we know what the result would be.

We all--those of us who accept the historically accurate, documented details of his life, anyway--know that when he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama was part of a regular poker game comprising legislators of both political parties. I have a feeling he did very, very well.

Because the way he played Donald Chump was masterful.

Obama's birth certificate--the one that the state of Hawaii releases publicly, to serve as proof of birth in any legal proceeding in the United States--has been available for more than two years. There's no question as to its authenticity. Every Hawaii official who has a reason to know has verified it. Every media organization that has investigated it has reached the same conclusion. The Honolulu newspapers reported his birth in August of 1961.

You'd have to be an idiot to think otherwise.

Sadly, there are plenty of idiots out there. But the king idiot, America's #1 sap, has made Obama's birthplace the centerpiece of his fraudulent run for the White House. Donald Chump, who's been a publicity hound ever since his privileged birth gave him the flimsiest platform for it, was suckered into believing the most outlandish conspiracy theory possible.

Somehow, he thought that Obama's unemployed mother and student father raised the money for a flight to Kenya, in order for her to give birth there (to what end?), then spirited the baby back into the US, convinced the newspapers to run phony birth notices, convinced the state to issue false documents, and convinced every witness to lie about it.

A trained monkey would know it was nonsense. But not Donald Chump.

He bet on it. Then Obama raised him, and Chump saw the raise and raised again. Chump kept doubling down on this ridiculous theory, and Obama drew him in with a poker face and a master's cool. Finally, when the time was right, Obama showed the document--the one that's legally meaningless, that is not recognized by the courts, as the short-form one is--and showed Chump as the sap that he is.

Once again, Obama is the smartest guy in the room, and Chump is the idiot.

In response, of course, Chump went for another race-baiting attack--how could someone like Obama (meaning, poor and black) get into Harvard Law? he asks.

Well, how could someone without the smarts to get into Harvard Law rise to its most exalted height--President of the Law Review?

Obama has achieved more in his life--president of the Harvard Law Review, state legislator, US Senator from the great state of Illinois, President of the United States--than Chump, known mostly for owning casinos, going bankrupt, and hosting the most inane "reality" show in the history of TV--could ever dream of.

Today, Obama demonstrated what a fool Chump is. He also showed, once again, how smart he is--by recognizing that America's military mission, in the years ahead of us, will be against terrorists, requiring close cooperation between the intelligence and military communities, and nominated the Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, to take Bob Gates's job as Defense Secretary, and David Petraeus, the smartest general in the country in decades, to take over the CIA. This is a bold, genius move. George W. Bush gave us one of our worst SECDEFs ever in Donald Rumsfeld, and one of our best in Gates. Replacing Gates was always going to be tough. But replacing him with a guy who speaks spy, and putting our best general at the head of the spy department?

Not something Chump ever would have thought of. That's why Obama is president, and Chump is...

...well, he's just Chump.

A Modest Medicare Proposal

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Dreamland) has a problem.

He's been lauded by the conservative-loving media for weeks, because he had the "courage" to introduce a budget that is based on imaginary numbers and assumes actions by corporations that history and common sense both tell us will never happen.

He believes (or claims to believe) that tax cuts for corporations will spur hiring. The fact is that corporations have done just fine lately, even with reduced work forces, and they're sitting on tons of capital. The reason they're not hiring is (see above): They're doing just fine lately, even with reduced work forces.

Ryan seems to believe that putting more money into their bank accounts will magically cause them to change their ways--to put the interests of their country ahead of the financial interests of their stockholders. That's not what corporations do. That's not what they're supposed to do. And wishing won't make it so.

Where this becomes about Medicare is in the fact that another aspect of Ryan's budget would destroy Medicare, while putting in place another program that's called "Medicare," but isn't. News flash--if the president forcibly abolished Congress and declared himself sole ruler for life, but still called himself "President"--he wouldn't be. He would be a dictator. The name of something is not that thing. The thing is the thing, and what Ryan is pushing is not Medicare.

I doubt that he would admit it, but his plan shares some commonalities with President Obama's Affordable Care Act, which Ryan no doubt tries to dismiss with the pejorative "Obamacare." Contrary to the picture painted of the ACA by the right, it's not a socialist system, and it keeps the health insurance coprorations deeply involved in the health care of Americans.

Medicare (and the VA) are, in fact, much more socialistic in nature. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What the ACA (And Mitt Romney's plan in MA, for that matter) included that Ryan leaves out is only the key component that makes ACA and Romneycare work. These plans force the insurance companies to accept everyone, regardless of preexisting conditions, but they make it financially plausible to do so by also pushing millions of healthy people into the system. The premiums from the healthy, who don't yet need expensive care, pay for the unhealthy who do.

Only in Ryan's plan, he simply wishes that insurance companies would be delighted to take on all those seniors, without the counterweight of a new healthy population to spread the risk. That won't happen. Medicare came about because insurance companies wouldn't insure seniors. There's nothing in Ryan's plan to make that change. See above: Corporations don't do things that are not in the financial interest of stockholders. Unless they're forced to. By government regulation.

So Ryan has offered a plan that will never get passed, and that most Americans polled deeply despise. Pretty soon the "courageous" tag will fall off, to be replaced by the "loser" tag. And anyway, if Ryan is courageous for offering an imaginary plan that doesn't address the real issues, then President Obama should be considered a superhero for finally taking on the one thing that will do the most to destroy the economy in the future--the growing cost of health care--and bringing millions of uninsured into the system.

There are two potential compromises here that would work to solve Ryan's conundrum.

1) He and the other Republicans could get over their knee-jerk, unrealistic opposition to the ACA, and instead work to expand it to also include age as a preexisting condition that insurance companies can't deny. The health insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to not insure seniors. Giving seniors vouchers or coupons is meaningless if a) insurance companies won't accept them, and b) the value of the vouchers and coupons is insufficient to provide meaningful health care. By expanding the ACA to include seniors, and keeping government regulatory eyes on them to make sure that seniors can get the care they need for the money they have available, Medicare could remain a guarantee of health care while having its financial structure changed.

That, however, is only the second-best compromise, because it still keeps insurance corporations in the mix. As long as they're part of the system, health care costs will be a problem, because money that should be going to care is instead going into profits for those corporations. And regulation or not, the way insurance companies increase profits is by taking in ever-higher premiums while paying out fewer claims.

So solution #2 is the better long-term option. This one also was kicked around during the health care debate of 2009, and it never went anywhere, but it truly makes the most sense.

2) Instead of expanding the ACA, expand Medicare to cover all Americans.

As with Social Security, we'd all pay into the program through payroll withholdings. But that would be counterbalanced by the fact that we'd no longer be paying into group health care plans as we are now. For most people, their paychecks would be a little fatter than they are now, because the cost of health care in this country--when it doesn't have to contribute to corporate profits and multi-million-dollar salaries, when the burden is shared by the healthy and the sick, when the poor don't have to wait until they're desperately ill and then seek care at emergency rooms--would come down significantly.

Those who could afford it could continue to buy their own private health insurance or pay direct costs for premium care if they wanted to, just as they do now. But they'd be paying into the system, too, and it would be there if they needed it. The desperately poor and long-term unemployed would get assistance to cover their medical needs. Most Americans would be taking home more pay, which would be good for the economy.

Okay, it's a little bit socialist. So what? Should we ignore the best options because of labels other people put on them? Or should the richest country in the history of the world turn its back on the health of its citizens, and its own long-term financial stability at the same time?

If Ryan was truly courageous, he would pick one of these--ideally #2--and run with it.

Blurbing

I recently promised here to keep you apprised if and when I write a blurb for another author's book. I have, in fact, just done so (and there are two more in the stack to be read soonish).

The book I read was a short story collection coming soon from a dear friend and neighbor, author Weston Ochse, called Multiplex Fandango. Wes writes tales of horror and dark fantasy that take the reader to some scary but memorable places, so that's the approach I took to the blurb.

Rather than repeat the blurb here, I'll send you to Wes's site, where you can read it and easily find out more about the book. Check it.

Brewer Surprises

I've said some fairly harsh things here about our governor, Jan Brewer. All in all, she's done an awful job, and needlessly consigned some of my fellow Arizonans to an early death. That's deserving of whatever harsh words are thrown her way.

But I also believe in credit where it's due, and this week Gov. Brewer surprised many of us by making the right choice on two significant issues, vetoing two ridiculous bills that the morons in the state legislature passed: the "birther" bill, which was designed specifically to try to exclude American citizen Barack Obama from the Arizona ballot in 2012, and a bill to allow guns on campuses.

So thanks, Gov. Brewer, from those of us on the sane side of the spectrum.

Who's the Boss?

I didn't get to watch President Obama's speech the other day, but I read it after the fact, and heard some clips from it. It was a terrific speech--not one of his stadium-rousing barn-burners, but a low-key address that was still packed with both emotion and facts. A few choice quotes:

"But there has always been another thread running throughout our history - a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we've built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We've laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We've supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has benefitted from these investments, and we are a more prosperous country as a result.

"Part of this American belief that we are all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. 'There but for the grace of God go I,' we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further - we would not be a great country without those commitments.

"For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally born a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. This is not because we begrudge those who've done well - we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. Moreover, this belief has not hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale, who continue to do better and better with each passing year."

***

"But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program - but we didn't pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts - tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

"To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our national checkbook, consider this: in the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.

"Of course, that's not what happened. And so, by the time I took office, we once again found ourselves deeply in debt and unprepared for a Baby Boom retirement that is now starting to take place. When I took office, our projected deficit was more than $1 trillion. On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more. In this case, we took a series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs, kept credit flowing, and provided working families extra money in their pockets. It was the right thing to do, but these steps were expensive, and added to our deficits in the short term."

***

"The fact is, their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. As Ronald Reagan's own budget director said, there's nothing 'serious' or 'courageous' about this plan. There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There's nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know."

***

The speech was just one part of a week in which Obama owned the Republicans, beginning to end. Starting with the budget agreement last Friday night, the deal that prevented the government shutdown Obama and the Democrats were trying to avoid, while the Tea Partiers in the Republican caucus were pushing for. At first, like a lot of liberals, I didn't like the deal because it gave up too much. It seemed like the president had negotiated from a position of weakness.

It was only days later--right before the final vote in Congress on that deal--that we discovered the real math, which I believe Obama understood all along. That deal didn't cut $38.5 billion from the budget for the next six months, which would have been terrible for the recovery. Instead, it reduces direct spending by only about $350 million. Still not great, but far, far better for the economy.

By the time the Republicans did the math, it was too late for them. Enough of them bailed from the plan that Speaker Boehner wouldn't have been able to ram it though the House with just Republican votes, but the Democrats got on board and saved it. The end result is that Boehner loses face with the Tea Party wackos, loses control of a big part of his caucus, and looks like a speaker who'd rather side with Democrats than with the controlling wing of his party. Good deal for Obama and Harry Reid, bad deal for Boehner.

The icing on the cake was Obama's "accidental" open mic moment the other night. He was overheard saying this about Boehner: "I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?'" About Paul Ryan, he said, "Eliminating the health care bill would cost us $1 trillion dollars. It would add $1 trillion to the deficit. So when Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he's just being America's accountant and trying to you know be responsible, this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill -- but wasn't paid for. So it's not on the level.”

Now, neither of these are things that Obama wouldn't have said in public--he pretty much made those points in his speech. But by being overheard on an open mic, those points got a lot more attention than when they were buried in a long plicy speech full of math and other complex ideas that tax the minds of some voters. Obama described reality, and he did it in a way guaranteed to make headlines. Accident? Maybe. But I doubt it.

When I wrote Barack Obama: The Comic Book Biography, I reached the conclusion that most of Obama's opponents underestimated his abilities, and they usually regretted it. I think the same thing is happening now. They're underestimating him and he's showing that he's smarter and tougher and trickier than they are. He's winning every round right now. It may take a while for people to realize it, but Barack Obama has just had a very good week. And with 2012 on the horizon and more Tea Party battles to come, I think he's just getting started.

Arizona Crazy Strikes Again

Congratulations to Arizona's legislature for keeping our fine state on the nation's front pages, as an example of government run amuck. The latest idiocy these fools have perpetrated is passing the country's first "birther" law, requiring candidates to show a long-form, hospital-issued birth certificate (or any of a range of other paperwork, which will be evaluated by the Secretary of State). Of course, until she became Governor by default, our Secretary of State was Jan Brewer, so holding that office is no guarantee of sanity.

Gee, you think this is aimed at President Obama's reelection campaign in 2012? Of course, his citizenship status is only questioned by the ignorant and racist, since it's been clearly established for years. And, people--even if he didn't have a birth certificate and was born in Kenya (he wasn't) or the Panama Canal Zone (no, that was John McCain)--his mother was a US citizen! He is a US citizen, period.

We can hope that Brewer has the presence of mind to veto this bill. But...how likely is that?

Awards

It must be genre book awards season, because I've seen lots of nominations announced lately for lots of good books (and comics).

Since the lists would get so long, I'll just post links and you can check 'em out for yourself:

Thriller Awards (International Association of Thriller Writers)

Scribe Awards (International Association of Media Tie-In Writers)

Shirley Jackson Awards (for horror, dark fantasy, and suspense)

Eisner Awards (comics)

Good luck to all the nominees!

 

The Speech

I'll have more to say about the president's speech later in the week, when I have more time. For the moment let's just say that it was a remarkable speech, an affirmation of what liberals believe and why we believe it, and why his course of action is more sound and plausible than the fairy tale that Paul Ryan offers.

And this, which occurred to me earlier when reading more about the Ryan proposal. Ryan exempted current Medicare recipients, and those within 10 years of joining Medicare, from his Medicare-destruction plan, because seniors vote and seniors love Medicare, and he didn't want to turn that bloc against him and his kind. What he fails to understand--what he can't understand because he and his ilk are not wired this way--is that seniors don't just like Medicare because it helps them. They like it because it's the right thing to do, not just for them but for every American coming along who will otherwise be unable to afford comprehensive health care. Seniors want to know that future Americans will have the dignity of good health and decent treatment for generations to come. Ryan can't imagine anyone caring about other people--he is only out to help himself and his rich friends grow even richer. That's what his entire "budget" document is about--redistributing the nation's wealth from those who have little to those who already have so much.

Fortunately for us, there are only so many Paul Ryans around.

Here's a choice quote from the speech: one of many.

"Part of this American belief that we are all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. 'There but for the grace of God go I,' we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments."

You can read and watch it here.

The Unbearable Lightness of Jon Kyl's Ethics

Sometimes I wonder if Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spends his days shackled to his desk in his Senate office so he doesn't wander around in traffic, or sit on a bench at the bus terminal telling his paranoid fantasies to invisible beings.

Maybe that sounds harsh, so let me back up a little.

After I moved to Arizona, the first thing I heard about Jon Kyl was his defense of some invasion of privacy or other. When people check into a hotel, he argued, they write their name in the ledger, which other people can then read. Isn't that a way of giving up one's own privacy?

Mind you, I moved to Arizona less than seven years ago, not back in the 1950s. What Mr. Kyl seemed unaware of, so very recently, was that for the most part hotels use magic boxes called computers, and don't require people to write their names on actual ledger books anymore. And haven't for quite some time. Either Mr. Kyl doesn't get out much...or he doesn't get out much without a keeper.

The most recent embarassment (sadly for Arizonans, virtually every time he opens his mouth, we wind up embarrassed--if someone can point out something intelligent he has ever uttered in public, I'd love to hear it) largely went unnoticed by the national media, because it happened last Friday, in the midst of the great and absurd debate about whether the Republicans would be allowed to shut down the entire government because a) they wanted to pretend to care about deficits, and b) they really, really hate the poor, and women, and especially poor women.

Here's what Kyl said: "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does."

Of course, that statement has as much factual legitimacy as the claim, for instance, that Britney Spears is a major figure in the world's artistic landscape, or that the problem with spiders is that they don't have enough legs or eyes.

The fact is that abortion is 3% of what Planned Parenthood does. Three % is, last I checked, not even close to being "well over 90%." If you want to get closer to the truth of the matter, Planned Parenthood prevents far more abortions than it provides, by making contraception readily available to low and middle income women. Hence the "Planned" part of the name. And the "Parenthood" part.

When Kyl's office was asked about this ridiculously fantastic statistic that Kyl apparently made up on the spot, the explanation offered was that the claim was "not intended to be a factual statement."

Read that again. I'll make it bigger. NOT INTENDED TO BE A FACTUAL STATEMENT. As Dave Barry often says, I am not making this up. You can read about it here or here, for starters.

So a sitting United States Senator goes to the floor of the Senate and makes a claim that he knows is not true.

Let's use real English. That's not "not...a factual statement." That's a lie.

You expect that sort of thing from the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs of the world. They're professional frauds. To catalog their lies would be a full-time job, and it would be a job that would drive any sane person mad in no time.

But from a sitting United States Senator? From the Minority Whip of the Senate? Is it too much to expect a person with that sort of responsibility to at least sort of pretend the truth matters? A little?

I called Jon Kyl's Tucson office today, because in spite of reading all about this, I couldn't quite believe it happened. The young man who answered the phone claimed not to have heard about the whole thing. I described it to him, and then asked him which was true--because there is, in fact, another possibility here. Is Senator Kyl a knowing liar, I asked, or is he simply grossly ill-informed?

I'm not sure which would be worse--a Senator who lies to the nation, plainly and without remorse, or one who has not the least clue what he's talking about, when the nation is on the verge of a government shutdown that could cripple our economic recovery.  What do we taxpayers pay them for, if not to know a little something about the issues confronting them?

So I asked the young man at Kyl's office. Which is he, a liar, or grossly ill-informed? "Probably neither," he said.

"No," said I. "He HAS to be one or the other. There is no third choice here. So which is it?"

He couldn't answer that one. Nor could he transfer me to anyone who could. What he did do, which I appreciate, was fill out a constituent action form, guaranteeing that I'll have my question answered, in writing.

Yeah, right.

I hope Senator Kyl's office lives up to that promise. I really want to see what the answer is. Senator Kyl, liar or idiot? Or the third option, of which I denied the existence because, at that moment, I couldn't really wrap my brain around it: both at once?

If I get my answer, I'll let you know.