TV TV!

Lately Sally and I have been watching this show called The Glades using Netflix’s streaming service, and I gotta say that I’ve been digging it.  If you’ve never seen it, it’s another Sherlock Holmes knock-off, this time done as a police procedural set somewhere in the Everglades, with our resident “Holmes” played as a former Chicago homicide detective exiled to rural Florida following an affair with his boss’s wife.  In typically Holmes fashion, the lead—here named Jim Longworth—is a borderline anti-social misfit, though The Glades’s producers have altered the formula somewhat by making him a decided ladies’ man rather than playing him as asexual the way that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the producers of the TV Show House tend to do. 

In any event, I’ve been loving the show’s first season despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it so closely follows in Conan Doyle’s footprints, footprints that’ve lately become a well-blazed TV trail.  I mean, how many misfit TV detectives are out there right now?  Gregory House is the most famous, but I think Castle, Lie to Me, and at least a couple of CSI franchise shows also follow the format, and it’s a good bet that a number of shows from the new season will, too.  But who cares, right?  I mean, I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I’m happy enough that for once a sizable number of folks seem to agree with me.

Anyway, after The Glades ended, Sally and I wound up tuning into the GOP primary debate for a while.  I know I said I wasn’t going to, but in the end, we decided that we wanted to see the spectacle first hand.  So we watched as some of the minor candidates walked through a bit on school reform and then watched all of them tackle the question of immigration and border control.  To my mind, what we saw went something like this:

Questioner: Immigration reform is a big issue.  How would you tackle it?

Rick Perry (going Macho): I’d deploy the U.S. Army to screen the border with Mexico, and I’d throw all those illegal dirtbags out of the country, pronto!  They’re takin’ U.S. jobs.

Mitt Romney (vainly trying to sound tougher than Perry): We don’t need the Army.  We can do it with technology!  We can build a fence—

Questioner (in disbelief): You want to put up a 2,600-mile fence?

Romney:  Absolutely!  With TV cameras and satellite coverage over every square foot.  And guard dogs!  And… and… and… sharks with frickin’ laser beams!  We have the technology!  We CAN control the border!

Newt Gingrich (slaps forehead): If you build a fence, Mitt, the illegals will just bring a ladder.  Why, when I was in Congress back in 1986…  and Ronald Reagan… 20 million illegals already in this country, and many of them already have families…

Questioner: Okay, Ms. Bachman… Let’s say the fence is up.  What do you do with the 20 million who’re already here?  Do you break up their families and deport them?

Michelle Bachman:  A fence!

Rick Santorum:  Yeah!  A fence!

Questioner: But what about the families, Ms. Bachman?  What do you do with them?

Bachman (slams table with clenched fist): I said a fence!  With guard dogs!!!

Questioner: *sigh*  Back to the original question, Mr. Cain.

Herman Cain:  We don’t need no damn fence!  We got laws in this country.  We just need to ENFORCE those laws!

Jon Huntsman:  No.  What Newt said was right.  And Ronald Reagan!  And don’t break up those families… 

Rand Paul:  Fuck that fence!  Employers should be free to hire whoever the fuck they want, and if Americans are too stupid to get the jobs, then fuck them, too.  I mean, a fence?!  You wanna know why they want a fence?  I’ll tell ya.  They don’ wanna keep illegals out.  They want to keep Americans and THEIR MONEY in!  Mexico’s growin’ twice as fast as America right now.  Pretty soon, all our jobs and all our money’ll be headin’ down there.  And THAT is why they want to build a fence!  It ain’t to protect jobs.  It’s to protect them so’s they can keep gettin’ at YOU and your MONEY!

So.  I’ve read a few summaries of the debates, and most of them said that Romney came off pretty well.  I didn’t see that myself.  For my money, Rick Perry was the only Alpha Male up there.  I mean, his idea of deploying the Army to screen the border with Mexico is ludicrous on its face—and yes, he did really say that—because it would take the entire army deployed 100% full time to successfully screen a border that large, and even then it’s an extremely iffy proposition.  But the way he said it, well, the man delivers his lines with conviction.  Watching him debate, I find that I can believe that he really does go jogging with his pistol on. 

On the other hand, I thought Romney came off stiff and awkward, Huntsman seemed the non-entity that he is in the polls, and New Gingrich looked like he was—easily—the smartest man in the room.  To put it another way, Gingrich was Gandalf to Perry’s Aragon and Romney’s Boromir.  Rand Paul at least came off as Samwise Gamgee—wise and tough in his own way—but poor Jon Huntsman was Pipin, Gandalf’s “fool of a Took!” while the rest were such complete non-entities that they didn’t even make it out of the Shire.

Gingrich won’t get elected, and I don’t want him to, but with the possible exception of Rand Paul, he’s easily the most well-informed on the issues, and he has something interesting to say about each and every one of them.  His defense of school choice via vouchers was well thought-out and concise (full disclosure: I loathe the idea of school vouchers), and his story about Ronald Reagan’s attempt at comprehensive immigration reform back in the 1980’s not only managed to name check the party’s patron saint, it also brought up a pair of excellent points about illegal immigration.  First, you can’t tackle the issue of immigration solely by securing the border, and second, there are a lot of long-term illegals in the U.S. who’re established members of our society.  Breaking up their families to throw them out of the country would be both inhumane and economically stupid.  Meanwhile, Newt’s finer points seemed to escape everyone but Huntsman and Rand Paul, and even Huntsman could only add that he thought that Newt was basically right.  I mean, Newt was obviously right, but no one else besides Paul and Huntsman even try to answer intelligently.  They all just stood there rattling their swords and trying to act tough.  In that, Bachman was actively ludicrous and Romney came off like Doctor Evil-light.  Paul’s answer, the strict Libertarian answer, was interesting theoretically, but as with a lot of what he says, for me it’s not realistic in the real world.  I just don’t know how much I believe that government is really trying to hold people in!  That’s a little too Orwellian for me.

In any event, I read a few debate summaries this morning to get a feel for the rest of the action and came away disappointed by the lack of depth to the coverage.  Still, my favorites came out of Slate and The Guardian.  Check them out if you’re interested. 

Or you can just wait for the next debate.  They’ve got something like six more scheduled for later in the fall.  And maybe that’s why the coverage of this particular debate was a little light.  The newspapers didn’t want to burn all their matches in one shot.  Something to that, I think.

Notes 9/7/11: Presidential Football Preview

·         It’s not like I thought he could win or anything, but having just read a breakdown of his campaign on Slate.Com, I’m now more convinced than ever that Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign is dead in the water.

·         While we’re on the subject of politics, I’ll tell you that I downloaded Mitt Romney’s 59-point plan for fixing the country today, but that I haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.  That said… how many other people are go get and actually read this thing?  I mean, I’m planning to skim it and offer a synopsis as best I can, but the thing is LOOOONG, even for a political junkie/college European History major like me.  Ugh. 

C’mon, Mitt.  For a smart guy, releasing this huge tome was an awfully DUMB move.  Nobody reads anymore, big guy.

·         Last thing on presidential politics for the day: The big Republican debate is tonight.  You’ll recall that that’s the one that Speaker John Boehner protected by refusing President Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress about a prospective jobs and public works proposal.  Thus, we had the ugly spectacle last week of Obama’s request to speak to the nation being denied by Congress so that it now conflicts with the first game of the new NFL season.  And I think most folks who pay attention recognized this as a rather transparent attempt by the White House to simply overshadow the Republicans.  So although I don’t usually like Boenher a lot, I thought his response here was the right one, really the only one he could give.  That it happened to embarrass the Hell out of the President was simply a nice bonus

If you’re wondering, I don’t plan to watch either the debate or the speech on Thursday, mostly because I find it easier to read the synopsis in the New York Times the next day.  Politicians tend to use so many words to express so few actual ideas after all, and the Times’s summaries are usually both fairly complete and inclusive of some context when necessary. 

Still, the debate might get interesting.  It seems that everyone in the field now has a vested interest in tearing down Rick Perry while Perry himself looks more and more like the only guy in the race with an actual clue about how to run a successful campaign.  Personally, I’m expecting fireworks.  With any luck, either the stage itself will spontaneously combust, or they’ll scrap the format altogether and let the candidates go straight at it, Thunderdome style.

·         I’ve been working a little around the edges with my friend Alan Evans on a potential new comic project.  There’s not much to it yet, but I’ve enjoyed the chance to work on creative writing a little bit.

·         Finally, Tennessee Titans football starts this Sunday.  With that in mind, here’s my really, really quick season preview:

Game	Prediction
@ Jacksonville	W
Baltimore	L
Denver	W
@ Cleveland	W
@ Pittsburgh	L
Houston	L
Indianapolis	W
Cincinnati	W
@ Carolina	W
@ Atlanta	L
Tampa Bay	L
@ Buffalo	W
New Orleans	L
@ Indianapolis	L
Jacksonville	W
@ Houston	L

If you’re wondering, that’ll put the team at 8-8.  Not a bad record, all things considered. 

Of course, there are games in there that could easily go either way—Cleveland, Indy (depending on the state of Peyton Manning), etc—but I think you can count on winning a game or two you think you might lose and losing a game or two you ought to win.  So… 8-8.  That’s my official prediction.

That’s all I got.  See ya tomorrow!

What Do You Do with Your Money?

Around the office this week, we’ve been talking about the economy.  One of the persistent questions that’s come up lately is this: Where can you put your money?  

Right now, nowhere looks like a safe bet.  In stocks, you’ve got a kind of triple whammy coming: the specter of European debt default, an imminent downturn in the domestic economy brought on by super-cuts to domestic governmental spending, and rising domestic inflation at a time when the Federal Reserve has just promised to keep interest rates low for the next eighteen months.  And, oh by the way, unemployment is stuck at around 10% and starting to look like a permanent national fixture.  Any one of those things would be bad.  All three of them together are, well… you’ve seen the stock market lately, right?  I mean, it’d probably be a decent time to invest in high-quality value stocks if you’ve got some money lying around, and you can confidently call the bottom of the market.  But calling the bottom of the market is a lot easier said than done.  For example, if Greece really does default and thereby drags down some of the big European commercial banks with it, well, I mean, there are market bottoms and then there are market bottoms.  NPR’s Marketplaceclaimed that something like that wouldn’t just pull down Italy, Ireland, and Spain.  A default that big would likely destroy France, too.  And probably the rest of the Euro-Zone as well. 

I dare say there are some big American banks with exposure to at least some of that soon-to-be-toxic European debt, too.  It really is quite a nightmare scenario.

Regardless, even if the worst doesn’t come about, I think that personal investors can be forgiven for looking at some other potential investments besides stocks.  At a minimum, it seems likely that American and European demand for consumer goods is likely to tail off even further over the course of the next year or two, and I know that at least for me personally, I’d just as soon not ride that wave down into the abyss.  Maybe there will be some few profitable companies (Apple, Proctor & Gamble, various utilities, etc.), but even those seem likely to be over-bought.  And even a good company is a bad investment if you overpay for its stock. 

So what else is there?

Well, unfortunately, the bond markets are affected by the same forces that are affecting stocks, albeit in different ways.  Bonds are ostensibly safer than stocks, of course—at least, you’re more likely to get your initial investment back in any case—but they’re hardly risk free.  In fact, lately the risk of default has been a real risk.  Moreover, with interest rates as low as they are now, bonds really don’t pay.  At all.  The Federal government right now is selling Treasures with roughly 2% yields.  That’s unbelievable!  If you believe that inflation is higher than 2%—and you’d be a fool not to believe that—then bottom line, you know that the government is actually making money by borrowing right now.  Or, to put it another way, right now folks are so scared of what’s coming that they’re actually lending to the U.S. government at a loss!  And this less than a month after we almost defaulted!

So bonds are out.  In fact, they might even be worse than stocks right now.

That leaves commodities, of course.  You can buy gold or oil or pig futures or whatever the Hell else catches you fancy, I suppose.  Around here, we’ve been talking about gold and oil, but my colleagues and I agree that gold might be in a bit of bubble right now given its current valuations and that while oil is probably not a terrible investment, it’s still not exactly safe, either.  I mean, we are talking about a significant potential drop in consumer demand in the U.S. and Europe, after all.  That seems likely to send oil lower, at least in the short term and on a rather unpredictable timeline, and if there really is a serious contraction in the U.S. and in Europe, all those Asian countries that depend on exports to the West to drive their economies are gonna suffer, too—probably even worse than we are.  And that’ll drive down demand for oil even more.

So.  What do you do?  You can’t just sit on your money because inflation will erode its buying power, even if you put it in something like a CD or a money market fund.  Those things pay less than Treasuries.  But none of the major investments look particularly safe, either.  No matter what you do, you’re looking at the risk of some serious losses in the next 18-months, even if you don’t do anything!

It’s a tough issue.  If I had the answer, trust me, I’d have opened with it. 

Hell, part of me thinks that the government ought to raise taxes now just because all the other uses for the world’s ambient capital are all so awful.  Nationally speaking, I think that might actually be the least-worst solution.  All the other alternatives seem to lead to even more unjustified asset price bubbles and ultra-low risk premiums in return for capital investment.  Frankly, that’s a game I’m getting a little tired of playing.

Eh.  Come to think of it, I think Warren Buffet said that this week, too.

Debt Deal, Part 2

Now that the deal is struck, and I've had a chance to read through it, I think I'm kind of warming to the debt deal.  Reality is, I think, that the government is so amazingly dysfunctional, that we actually need these so-called crises to spur us to any sort of action.  So we cut a trillion now, and if a true bipartisan deal isn't reached by Thanksgiving--a likely failure given the lowered stakes--then we cut another trillion-and-half across the board.  Entitlements, the military... all the sacred cows get the axe.  I kind of love that.  I actually think that that kind of insane craziness is what's necessary to install some fiscal responsibility in our Congress.

The only thing that really disappoints me in all of this is Obama.  Man, he caves under pressure every time.  Yes, he got Osama, but besides that, he has been a complete and utter pussy as a President.  I mean, he may well get my vote next time around, but boy oh boy, that will be by far the best of a bad set of options.

Debt Deal

Well, it seems like the debt deal is finally going to get done, and as it happens, the price turned out to be massive cuts to defense and Homeland Security spending.  Republicans got to cut at least $2.5 trillion in federal spending, and Democrats got to take a substantial part of that from a combination of defense, non-defense security, and foreign aid spending.  Which means, I think, that the war in Afghanistan is over.  It may take some time to wind it all down, but bottom line, there’s no one left in Washington who still cares enough about it to give it—or the Army fighting it—any funding.

As far as the American People are concerned, I think the real import of this event will take some time to sink in.  Americans are not by any means the most subtle or intuitive people on earth.  They are easily fooled by even the meanest form of political or economic bait-and-switch, and lately, they’ve been coerced on all sides into voting against their own economic interests through an increasingly brutal use of so-called “values” wedge issues.  The facts of this particular bait-and-switch are that today’s Republicans drape themselves in the flag and image of Reagan while running full-speed away from the real man’s actual legacy.  Because while it’s true that Reagan was basically a supply-side economics guy, he was far, far more of a pragmatist than is today’s Republican Party.  People forget that Reagan raised interest rates *a lot* to get inflation under control in early 1980s.  He also raised taxes in his second term and didn’t apologize for it after the fact.  So while it’s true that he believed in “trickle down” economics, he was neither insane nor overly dogmatic about the way he governed.  He increased spending when that was needed, notably on defense but also on other issues.

Today’s Republicans don’t care about any of that.  They care about dogma more than facts, and they’re willing to wreck the country just to make the other guy look bad. 

I just can’t get behind that.

It’s frustrating to me, a registered Republican, because I feel like there’s no one left to speak for me in the Capitol.  No one seems to care about actually balancing the budget.  No one seems to care about how the country’s actually running.  The Republicans only want to eliminate tax revenue, and the Democrats only want to increase social spending.  They care about the execution of the dogma more than about the actually effects of their actions.  And it’s so bad right now that they can’t even come to a simple compromise anymore, even in a time of crisis.  Somebody’s got to win and someone’s got to lose, and the other guys can never do anything right.  With nihilists in Congress, it’s become a dangerous proposition.

People just don’t seem to get that some spending cuts are actually de facto tax increases.  For example, if the Federal government cuts funding for schools, sure the schools can lay off some teachers, increase class sizes, and use old text books, but they’re also going to have to raise property taxes—at the local level—to make up for the new shortfall in Federal spending.  Likewise, I think if more Americans knew the real effects of coal-fired power plants, we’d have a lot less crying about spending on the EPA.  The real cost to unregulated industry is increased asthma rates—paid for via increased Health Care spending—as well as higher food prices due to damaged aquifers, fisheries, and the like, and a general need to clean the water before you use or drink it.  That process of cleaning water is not free.  It is, in fact, quite energy intensive.  Along the same lines, utility bills are not technically a tax.  And since greater energy spending is technically an increase in consumer spending in lieu of a tax—albeit one that makes neither good economic nor social sense—it’s more palatable to today’s meathead Republicans, the actual effects of the policy be damned.

Once again, I’d be curious to get the thoughts of some of my classmates on this.  I mean, they’re the ones who’re really gonna get screwed here.  Is this enough of a betrayal by the Right to make them rethink their personal politics, or have they not yet read the fine print?

Keep Your Damn Government Hands Off My Iron Man!

Following up on one of last week’s posts, we saw this week that both Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump have formally dropped out of the 2012 presidential race.  Leaving almost no one besides Romney actually running.  With that, Slate seems to think Tim Pawlenty is now your next Republican presidential nominee.  Eh.  They may well be right.  Still, if more than 1-in-25 Americans can pick Pawlenty out of a line-up, I’d be astonished. 

BTW, if you actually go through and read that article, ask your self a question: How many Americans can actually chant, “Keep your damn government hands off my Medicare,” with a straight face?  If Slate’s to be believed, there’s a whole movement out there.  Scary.

***

Sally and the kids and I had a nice weekend.  Kind of laid back.  A lot less physical labor than we’ve had in the last few weekends past. 

I took Friday off completely from working out and instead went out for a few beers with some of the guys from work.  Nice time.  To say that I don’t get out much is to make the understatement of the year.  Still, I had a little hangover on Saturday morning, so my planned five-and-a-half miles of interval runs turned into a straight, 5-mile aerobic-paced jog, and when I eventually got into the water, I didn’t have my best stuff at all.  Plus, we were out of Gatorade at the house, so I actually bonked towards the end of the swim, and that left me feeling headachy and wasted for the rest of the day.

Which isn’t to say that Saturday was a bad day.  We had a leisurely brunch at one of the local diners after swimming, and then we drove to the Honda dealer, where we (eventually) made a deal to trade in our CRV and my mom’s Nissan Altima for a new Honda Pilot.  Unfortunately, that took several hours.  But now, Sally tells me, she can carry fully HALF of Hannah’s Brownie troop with her in the car when they go out on outings.  This, apparently, is a good thing. 

I’m sure the dog’s gonna like it at any rate.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ironing and watching the new Iron Man cartoon on Netflix with the girls.  They loved it.

Sunday was rainy.  I’d planned to do a long ride (with more intervals!) to close out my Week 3 training, but I ended up bagging it.  I’d been exhausted all week, and Saturday’s workout left me feeling even worse than I’d felt during the week, so that by Sunday morning, I was ready to close out my Week 3 training early and head straight into my regularly scheduled Rest Week.  Thus, instead of me going long on the bike, it was Sally who went, going for a quick brick: 8-mile ride/2.5-mile run.  She looked good doing it, too, which was nice. 

I did eventually make it to the pool Sunday afternoon, but I only put in about 1700 yards of mostly tempo work.  After that, it was more ironing with Iron Man, and then the skies cleared up long enough to let me grill hamburgers and hot dogs.

So now it’s my Rest Week, and I’m slowly but surely starting to feel like myself again.  Finally.  It’s a good, too, because we’ve got our first actual triathlon of the season on Sunday.  Admittedly, the Milford Y-Tri is a short race—300-yard pool swim, 10-mile ride, 2.2-mile run—but it fit well into our schedule, and it’s hard enough if you do it at a dead sprint.  Which is what I did last year.  Last year, I also won my age group here, and as I mentioned last week, I’d really like to defend the title belt.  Plus, this’ll be Sally’s first triathlon, and I’m excited to see her race.  I think she’ll do well.

***

I keep feeling like I need to call my mother.  She’s been dead for maybe four weeks now, and mostly I just can’t shake the feeling that I haven’t talked to her in a while.