Mowing the Lawn

Is news really so hard to come by that people are talking about Mitt Romney using the word "zany" to describe Newt Gingrich?  You'd think Mitt Romney was caught on tape spouting an expletive while smoking a cigarette made by illegal immigrants. What's next? A flibbertigibbet? A will-o'-the-wisp? A clown? Apparently, the "z" word is strictly off limits in political discourse and worth devoted coverage when it breaks the lips of a politician.  The Los Angeles Times noted that Romney "lobbed some rhetorical grenades" by using the word.  "With lines like this, just think about what Mitt Romney has saved for Thursday night's debate." The Daily Mail called the comment Romney's "most personal assault yet on Newt Gingrich." ABC News characterized Romney's new word as "the latest in a string of attacks" and Ed Rogers, who writes as one of "The Insiders" for the Washington Post, reasons ...

What would you change if you could amend the constitution?  Would you circumscribe or maybe expand the government's role in controversial topics of the day like health care or deficit spending or owning private industry? Would you add something entirely new? (Consider President Bush and his support for a constitutional defintion of marriage.)  Would you leave the document alone and allow legislatures and courts to interpret it in light of current values and interets? (Consider President Obama's changing position on gay marriage.) Would you clarify passages and remove room for interpretation? One hundred fifty years ago, seven southern states had this chance for change when they declared their independence from the United States of America and set about adopting a new Confederate Constitution .  Given the opportunity to start from scratch, the Confederate framers chose instead to improve upon the United States Constitution.  And why not?  Part of the justifica...

A popular refrain in the ongoing debate about the cost of health care in the United States accuses health insurers of making record profits at the public's expense. During a press conference last year, President Obama put it this way: "There have been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits, right now. At a time when everybody's getting hammered, they're making record profits, and premiums are going up." The inaccuracy of that statement is pretty easy to prove, but let's take it at face value for now and agree with the assertion that record profits are a bad thing, especially when the customers who fund those profits are hurting economically. (Let's also agree that President Obama doesn't really think we're all staggering around drunk when he says "everybody's getting hammered".) What then should we make of the fact that the Federal Reserve just announced record profits of $47.4 bi...

Too often I find reporters trying to strike a balance in their reporting by publishing comments that have little news value.  For example, take the following quote from an article in the New York Times about possible Republican health care proposals .  The comment seems to have little to no news value and sullies an otherwise useful article about the types of proposals that might become part of bipartisan health care reform: Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said, “If the Republicans’ health care plan was a plan for a fire department, they would rush into a burning building, and they would rush out and leave everybody behind.” The statement is inflammatory.  It is contradicted by the article.  It does not benefit the national discussion on healthcare.  It allows partisans a cute sound bite for avoiding the debate about whether our nation should invest in sweeping changes, incremental improvements or more of the same.  Surely there is at least one Democrat who can p...

The Democratic leadership in the Senate unveiled their health care bill on Wednesday: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  With a name like that, what's not to like.  Who doesn't want to protect patients?  Who doesn't want affordable care? In my quest to know more about the bill, I'm steering clear of the radio, TV and blogs.  Tomorrow morning will find my radio fixed firmly on the sports talk stations.  I'm not quite ready to be inundated by punditry from the left and right.   Still, I want to know what the bill contains.  Until about an hour ago, everything I knew about the bill I had learned from NPR.  It will reduce the deficit by $130 billion.  It is 2000 pages long.  There aren't enough votes yet (60) to bring it up for debate.  I needed more, so I turned to the New York Times for an (unhelpful) overview and have been perusing the analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Here's what gets me after a quick read.   The headlines a...

As we were driving home from Boy Scouts last night, I asked Braeden what he thought about the election process the day after. "I feel clean," he said. What a great answer. His whole life, he explained, he has only known one president. Now there will be a new president. There will be a chance to start again. A clean slate, I suppose. What makes it even more interesting is that I know Braeden preferred John McCain to Barack Obama. He's observant enough, though, to recognize the historic nature of the outcome. He's excited to show the rest of the world and elements of our own society that a person's race doesn't matter. People will judge you on the merits of what you say, what you believe and what you do. That is part of the greatness of America. It may have been narrowly applied by our founding fathers, but its a notion that can't be contained.

Eric Jorgensen and I were talking about ballot measures and voting systems as we trailed our trick-or-treating boys on Halloween night. One of the methods we discussed was range voting in which voters assign an acceptability score to various candidates or choices. Think of it like giving each option an approval rating. The candidate or option with the highest total score wins. I like the idea. It seems emotionally more satisfying to be able to express your level of support for a candidate or outcome instead of an all or nothing approach. In our current political environment, there are no viable third-party candidates. Casting a vote for someone other than a Democrat or Republican is more likely to spoil the chances of the candidate you would have selected if forced to choose between the two major parties. I hear people talk about the election between George Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. Bill Clinton won with less than a majority of votes. If you were to give just the Pero...

John McCain gave a good speech on Thursday night. That's high praise considering his delivery often bordered on monotone and the speech hit a speed bump with a listless recitation of what feel like obligatory Republican bullet points: Lower taxes Strong defense A culture of life Judges who don't legislate from the bench Family values I'm for all those things, but I'm also for a little enthusiasm. In the end though, I thought Senator McCain made a better case for change than Senator Obama. What's more, he did it in a way that sounded more like a plea than a performance. It may have lacked flourish, but he made up for it in authenticity. Removed from the immediate aftermath of the speech, two things have stuck with me. The first is the way in which he openly criticized the Republican Party. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost -- we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptation...

I was looking forward to reading Senator Obama's acceptance speech at the covention on Thursday night. I made a conscious decision not to watch the speech because I didn't want to be distracted by the pomp and spectacle. Thelma was watching it when I got home from work, though, so I decided to stick with it. I haven't gone back to look at the transcript yet. My immediate impressions after watching it? I felt like I was watching multiple people. On the negative side, there was the doom and gloom Obama predicting the end of the American dream if he wasn't elected. There was the ridiculous Obama insisting his candidacy is somehow a selfless act. There was the naive or disingenuous Obama claiming he could somehow pay for his giveaways by pruning government. On the other hand, there was the Obama who argued for more personal responsibility. There was the aggressive Obama willing to challenge his critics directly. There was the ambitious Obama declaring that we coul...

I'm tired of negative politicians telling me that life in America is on the brink of disaster, that no one in the world likes us, that the only hope for America is to elect some politician who can make everything better. Senator Biden's speach to the Democratic convention is just the latest example. "We learned [from our parents] the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough. That was America's promise.... but today, today that American dream feels like it's slowly slipping away. I don't have to tell you that. You feel it every single day in your own lives." What a bunch of empty words. The problem is not the American dream. The problem is the American dreamers. Too many of us aren't willing to "try hard enough." It isn't sufficient for us to just "make it". We want more than we've earned so we go into debt to finance our purchases or vacations. And because we aren't wil...

I found myself pleasantly unmoved by Barack Obama's announcement that he has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. I'm not sure Obama could have selected anyone in serious contention that would have made me more inclined to vote for him in the Fall. In picking Biden, though, he selected someone who is clearly experienced in foreign policy and generally even-handed. Both are important considerations for me. When we lived in Connecticut I used to listen to Imus in the Morning out of New York City. Biden was a frequent guest. He was never too partisan and I generally agreed with his foreign policy assessments. Thelma, Braeden and I watched him campaign (on C-SPAN) during the Iowa caucus season and were impressed on balance by his demeanor and positions. He has a reputation for verbosity and not choosing his words carefully. The Republicans and affiliated pundits will blow all that well out of proportion in the upcoming days. Some of it might stick and some of it should. I...