Such a Pleasant Day

The Misanthrope was in DC for the last three days doing work-related things.    Normally, I would take the train or the shuttle, but this time I decided to fly myself.  In the post-9/11 world, flying to Washington, DC is not a simple task.  

Reagan National (KDCA) was out of the question.  Aside from security issues, big airports like that are not very accommodating to small aircraft like the FantaPlane (yes, it's orange; see picture above, taken in Canada last year) as we make our approach to the runways so slowly that it screws up sequencing for the passenger jets.  Last year I flew into Philadelphia International a couple of times and the poor approach controller had a hell of a time getting me in between jets doing 170 knots on approach.  I do about 120 knots on approach at a huge airport.  You do the math.

With DCA out, that left three smaller airports that are within 15 miles of downtown Washington: College Park Airport (KCGS), Potomac Airfield (KVKX) and Washington Executive/Hyde Field (W32).  Because of 9/11, those airports are now in what is called the Washington Flight Restricted Zone (FRZ), which is a circle centered on Reagan National with a 15 nautical mile (1 nautical mile = 1.15 statute miles) radius.

To be able to fly into the FRZ, you have to get a special security clearance that allows you to fly into those three airports (also known as the "DC 3").  Details can be found here.  Luckily, I started the process about a month ago by (a) going to get fingerprinted by the TSA at Reagan National and (b) going to the Dulles Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) to be vetted by an FAA official.  You'd think they could have the fingerprinting and the vetting at the same airport, but you'd be wrong.  Anyway, I made the trip and completed the tasks.  The final step was a briefing on FRZ procedures and moving around the Washington Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ, which I would get at Washington Executive/Hyde Field when I landed.  Pilots sure seem to love acronyms (e.g., VOR, PIREP, TAF, METAR, ADF, HIWAS, EFAS and on and on), but it does make things go faster.

I decided to fly into Washington Executive/Hyde Field because Ray Isherwood, their security coordinator, had been very helpful in guiding me through the process for getting a clearance.  It turned out to be a great decision. 

First of all, don't let the name fool you.  It's 10 miles from the Capitol, but I could have been in Iowa at a small rural field.  The place was empty.  Fetter Aviation, which runs the airport, was housed in a small building near pavement with grass growing through the cracks.  I admit to being a bit concerned with my choice when I touched down.

But the service I got there was fantastic.  A gentleman named Lloyd met me at my plane, gave me a ride with my bags to the office and then completed all of the paperwork for my final security clearance.  Lloyd also made sure I saw the required video lecture on flight operations in the FRZ and ADIZ.  There's some very interesting procedures in such a tight security zone and there was certainly talk of some unpleasant scenarios.  I am not kidding when I say it is a serious matter and I am not supposed to discuss some of them.

Lloyd, along with the owner, Stan Fetter, also helped set me up with a rental car and gave me a ton of good tips on how to operate in the FRZ.  After I had left, there were powerful thunderstorms approaching, so Stan went out personally and made sure my plane was secure.

My pleasant day started yesterday when I returned to the airport on Wednesday afternoon.  Another Fetter Aviation fellow, George, helped me out with dropping off the rental car and loading the plane.  He was very friendly and he and I got to talking about his background (ex-Navy), where he was from (Texas) and how he ended up at Hyde Field (long story).  George, along with Lloyd and Stan made me feel right at home.  Super service all around.  I will definitely go back there when I visit DC again.

My return flight was just under 2 hours from liftoff to touchdown.  I had a strong tailwind, so I averaged 150 kts of ground speed (about 170 mph).  Air Traffic Control gave me my preferred route, which you can see here.  (For some reason, they had me taking off from Potomac Airfield, which is only about three miles away and is often confused with Hyde Field.)  Cruising at 7000 feet, I was poking through the bases of some cumulus mediocris clouds, keeping an eye on their vertical development for signs of building thunderstorms.  I got a fantastic view of nearly the whole Chesapeake Bay as I passed over Maryland and into Delaware.

When I got to the New York area, my route took me directly over JFK at 5000 feet.  Passing over Sandy Hook, NJ, I was startled to see a Qantas 747 flying below me at 3000 feet on approach to JFK.  I'm used to seeing big traffic when I fly in and out of my home airport, Linden, which is about 10 miles south of Newark, but I had been cruising placidly for so long that the sight of that huge white mass shooting out from beneath the left side of the FantaPlane was a shock.

The approach controllers at JFK gave me vectors off my assigned route that took me along the south shore of Long Island so that I would steer clear of some thunderstorms that were developing by LaGuardia.  It was nice to know they were watching me.  Finally, I had East Hampton airport in sight, cancelled my IFR clearance, did a normal visual approach and greased the landing at a quiet field.  Fantastic.

At the airport, I didn't have my car as the Scottish Lass had taken it to New York, so I was dreading the long wait for the utterly undependable, insanely expensive taxi service out here.  But my pleasant day had a great ending as Mike, the manager of Sound Aircraft, my local FBO, took pity on me and gave me a ride right to my front door.  Mike is a supremely nice guy.  He even bought me dinner after I passed my FAA checkride for my license years ago.  It was a great way to end the trip.

From the time I got into my car in DC to the time I walked through my front door in Sagaponack: about 3 1/2 hours.  No check-in or baggage screening.  No waiting at the gate.  And an experience made all the better by such fantastic service at both ends. 

A pleasant day indeed.

Hell Freezing Over

It's usually a cold day in hell when I like what Paul Krugman has to say, but this post really captures the weirdness of Obama's proposal.  As Krugman notes, love it or hate it, we are talking about 1970s level tax rates.

As he also notes, Obama's people aren't even sure what the details of the proposal are.  I made a passing reference to this in my previous post when I noted that it wasn't clear if Medicare taxes were included on the income above $250K or if it would even be the same tax rates.

If you're going to appeal to the middle class by pitching "soak the rich" policies, at least have your details in order.

Two Minutes to Midnight

Tonight, Tony Alva, Jackson and I will be going to Madison Square Garden to see Iron Maiden. 

Yeah, I know.  It's a pure nostalgia tour and it's not the same as seeing them in the day, but I am looking forward to it nonetheless.  

Kick off prayer circle at the Molly Wee at 7PM!

Shade of the Past

I've seen a number of articles like this one noting that foreign investors have been buying up "trophy" properties in New York City.  Reading these reports reminds me of my first job, working in the real estate investment banking group at Goldman in the early 1990s.  This was during the workout of the savings & loan debacle and I remember well the Resolution Trust Corporation selling off huge portfolios of bank-owned real estate for pennies on the dollar.

I also remember the sale of Rockefeller Center to Mitsubishi Estate, an arm of Mitsubishi Group, in 1989.  There were similar articles at the time predicting that the Japanese would soon own all of New York and America.  Flash forward to 1996 and Mitsubishi took a bath on the deal (they paid $1.4BB for the property) and eventually lost control of the buildings.  In retrospect, what the Japanese buyers had done was buy up a lot of property at the top of the market.  Indeed, one of my first assignments at Goldman was to go out to LA and report on various large assets owned by a Japanese bank.  Every quarter, we'd prepare a report for them that said the same thing - you're fucked.  But in the corporate culture of Japanese banks, I later found out, up and coming executives being groomed for the top would be rotated through different departments for one year stints.  The result was a system that rewarded managers who kept the problem from exploding on their watch.   So, they would hire Goldman to give them an appraisal of the situation and then do nothing and hope they would get to the end of their year to pass the turd onto the next guy.

I can't help but feel that history is repeating itself.  For one thing, the properties mentioned so far, the Chrysler Building and the Flatiron Building, may be iconic, but they are not Class A office space by a long shot.  The office space inside the Chrysler Building is cramped and filled with columns.  The elevator system is atrocious and not up to the requirements of a modern office building.  Like its sister building, the Empire State, it is not a prized office space.  It does well only because of its location.  The Flatiron is a wonderful building, but suffers many of the same defects and is not in the same desirable location.  If and when the New York office market goes into a downturn, these are the kinds of assets that start to hurt first.

It is also interesting to read that investors are seeing the buildings as a bargain because of the weak dollar.  No doubt this makes sense at the moment, but the weak dollar is not going to continue forever and this kind of currency exposure can whipsaw an owner who will not be able to sell these assets quickly.

Things may work out for these guys, but I can't help but fell a strong sense of deja vu all over again.

Happy Birthday

Today is the 224th birthday of the United States Army or the 233rd if you include the Continental Army, which preceded the United States itself and was created on June 14, 1775.   Included in that 1775 army were several of my ancestors, including a few who had joined the cause even before this and answered the call at Lexington and Concord in April.  It seems hokey to say it these days, but I'm pretty thankful that they signed on a for a cause that seemed hopeless at the time, even if it now seems inevitable.  The privations in those early years made for a pretty unpleasant life.

In the course of the Presidential reading program, I have been reminded that before the Civil War, the idea of a large standing army was considered a frightening threat to freedom.  Indeed, one of the reasons why Washington was considered such a great statesman was that he commanded an army to victory and then relinquished control as soon as the battle was over.  Few at the time could believe that he would have the strength of character to do such a thing.  

The notion that civilian volunteer militias, called up only when there was a threat, would be more effective fighting forces than a regular army corps was prevalent in the thinking of most Presidents right up to Franklin Pierce.  Gradually, the experience of the Mexican War and the Civil War, along with the advance of military technology, would make it clear that militias were not as effective as a regular, trained army.  But even up to the beginning of World War II, the notion of a large standing army fit uncomfortably in the American psyche.  In some sense, it still fits uncomfortably and I happen to think that is a good thing.  

Mike Wants Some Meat

Okay, Mike, here you go.

Today, Barack Obama proposed what he called the "doughnut hole" approach to "fixing" Social Security.  Under his plan, wages up to $102K annually would pay the SS payroll tax.  From $102K to $249K, no payroll tax.  Above $250K, the payroll tax kicks in.

So, what is wrong with this plan?  It seems reasonable, albeit in a populist way.  The guy making more than $250K won't miss that income, right?  And it helps keep Social Security solvent for the lower wage earners, right?

The problem is that Social Security is not supposed to be a welfare or a wealth transfer program.  It is a pay-as-you-go program that is supported by the current workforce.   It was meant to be a kind of synthetic savings program so that working Americans would not retire into poverty because they had been forced to relinqush a bit of their checks every month into a "savings" program.  Everybody pays into the program and receives benefits based on a point system, so it's not quite like putting your money away, but there is an attempt to make contributions match with disbursements.

But here's the catch.  There's a cap on benefits, which is why we have a cap on contributions.  So this new tax liability does not come with the promised benefit, which makes it, essentially, a combination welfare program and wealth transfer mechanism, which is what it is not supposed to be.

If Obama's proposal were to lift the cap, the new tax would not contribute any excess capital to the Social Security trust fund.  It would be an incredibly inefficient savings plan for me, but at least I would have the possibility of getting a government IOU in 30 years.  Unfortunately, it also would have little, if any, effect on the solvency of the Social Security program as you'd simply have massive disbursements in the out years.

But if his proposal doesn't lift the cap, it is essentially a brand new tax on my earnings for which I receive nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  That's a pure wealth transfer program and that is not what Social Security is supposed to be.  Given the taxes I am already paying for inept government services, I am not inclined pay more.

There are other problems.  Employers foot a portion of the payroll taxes, so there would be a new burden on them.  I can tell you from experience that if companies are paying a new payroll tax on their high earners, they are going to find that extra money by letting a lower earner go or not hiring for an open position.  If this new tax funds an increase in benefits for lower wage earners, you can bet that management will reduce retirement programs to balance out the new benefit.

This kind of proposal is what I find objectionable about the whole Obama campaign.  It is a populist, soak-the-rich policy program hidden behind a lot of posing about hope and change and this aura of faux "reasonableness."  

But we've seen what happens to economies when soak-the-rich programs are put in place.  Look at the UK in the 1970s, where the top marginal income tax rate was, effectively, 100% at one point.  The country was nearly killed.  Look at the 1970s in this country, when high marginal rates were the order of the day along with stagnant growth and high unemployment.  Look at the cities, with their high tax burdens, where people fled in droves to avoid paying. Look at New York State, which was nearly destroyed by its insanely high corporate taxes in the 1980s.

It's unclear if Obama is also proposing to include Medicare taxes as well in this proposal.  If he is, we are talking about a scenario where I would be paying a top marginal federal rate, inclusive of payroll taxes, over 50%.  That's before New York State and, in my case, New York City taxes, which would drive it over 60%.  These are the kinds of tax burdens where people begin to go out of their way to avoid paying taxes by any means possible.  In the case of one of my investors, he is literally renouncing his U.S. citizenship because the tax burdens are so high (he also holds a passport from an EU country).

This is why I feel a dizzy flashback to 1976 when I hear Obama talk.

Once Again, Misanthrope Leads and the MSM Follows

Misanthrope on June 11:  The three stages of working for Obama.

Wall Street Journal on June 12:  The three stages of working for Obama

I Guess Those 18 Months Made the Difference

Jimmy Carter in November 2006 arguing that Obama doesn't have the experience to be the President yet.

Worst Jobs In The Current Environment

Working for Barack Obama.

Stage one: Deny there is a problem

Stage two: Claim that the person doesn't really work for you.

Staqe three:  Throw them under the bus and claim they were not the (insert name of departing person) you thought you knew.

Anybody see a disturbing pattern here?

A Serious Threat

The Times has an article today on the ridiculous kangaroo court proceedings going on in British Columbia against the Canadian magazine Macleans.  Macleans published an article critical of Islam and offended Muslims brought an action against the publication in the terrifyingly extra-legal British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.  They note that free speech has been curtailed in several Western countries by laws that prohibit speech that offends.

It's times like this that I am reminded of the genius of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Imagine being hauled in front of a tribunal here in the U.S. where the normal rules of evidence that apply in real courts are not relevant.  Where, as the defense counsel for Macleans argued:

“Innocent intent is not a defense....Nor is truth. Nor is fair comment on true facts. Publication in the public interest and for the public benefit is not a defense. Opinion expressed in good faith is not a defense. Responsible journalism is not a defense.”

In other words, there is no defense.  It's all about feelings.

Let's not go down this path, as so many other countries seem to be.

FedEx Are Lying Scumbags

Today I gave up on a package that FedEx was supposed to be delivering for the past 2 weeks.  I just told them to send that shit back if they couldn't be adults and figure some way for me to get it other than my going out to Brooklyn.  What's the point of paying for FedEx if I have to go to Brooklyn to get my package?

The package was 2 replacement batteries for my laptop (don't even get me started on the "MacBook Pro Shitty Battery" issue).  The issue was that Apple requires a signature to deliver the package.  Usually, this problem is solved by signing the little door tag they leave when you aren't home.  When the delivery man sees it the next day, he can leave your package.

Except, as I learned today from an idiotic supervisor at FedEx, Apple asks them not to allow that because they don't want packages left outside the door.  Which is why there was no package after I signed it and left it on my door for two days.  It would have been nice of them to tell me that earlier.

Then there was last week, where the tracking page said that the delivery man had made two attempts to deliver - on a day when I was in the apartment all day long.  So, lying scumbag #1 right there.  Also, let's add on the FedEx call center woman who told me the package would be on the truck, so I should be sure to be at home that day.  Lying scumbag #2

Then there was the nice operator on Friday who told me that she would have it left at the FedEx facility on Leroy Street, which is pretty close to me.  Except that, as I learned today, you can't do that because it was a "Home Delivery" package, not a "Business Package."  So, lying scumbag #3.

What's the point of this rant?  For one, I am actually really fucking pissed off.  It's a little ridiculous to use FedEx and then not get the package for 13 days.  I am also really annoyed that they claimed to make delivery attempts when I was there and knew they didn't actually try.  And it's also annoying that operators for FedEx would suggest solutions for the package that were not possible.

So, if you are ordering something from Apple on line and you might not be around for a signature, be sure to request that it be delivered USPS, because FedEx is a bunch of lying morons.

Olympic Rescue Dogs!

When I say, "Jump," you're gonna say, "HOW HIGH!!???"

Mystery

Why are the guys who scale New York skyscrapers always French?  

A History Lesson for Obama

A nice dissection of the nonsense that spews from his mouth on foreign affairs.

Millard Fillmore

I am now on our 13th President, Millard Fillmore. 

Zachary Taylor's biography nearly did me in.   Since Taylor's personal papers were burned by Union troops during the Civil War, the biographer is forced to focus mostly on military records.  After 100 pages of descriptions of the various forts Taylor commanded, I was climbing the walls.  The payoff was a Presidency that lasted all of 16 months and was pretty much horrible.

Fillmore's biography has been a welcome relief.  For one thing, Fillmore was not a slaveholder.  It's been a long time since the previous one, John Quincy Adams.  (Van Buren owned a couple of slaves early in his life, so he doesn't fully count.)

For another, Fillmore was from New York and it's been an interesting review of political maneuverings in the state, as well as a good history of the rise and fall of the Whig Party.

Fillmore seems to have been unfairly maligned by history.  He was actually quite an impressive man in his early career and seems to have been a reluctant VP candidate with Taylor.  His place in history seems to have been determined mostly by the terrible picture painted of him by Thurlow Weed, the head of the New York State Whig machine.

Next up is Franklin Pierce, number 14, and he represents a milestone in the reading program.  When I finish his bio, I will be 1/3 of the way through the U.S. Presidents.  (42 men have held the office, but Grover Cleveland is counted twice as he had the only non-consecutive terms, hence GWB is the 43rd President.)

Pierce, then Buchanan and, finally, greatness.  After reading about mediocre to awful Presidents for so long, it will be exciting to read about Lincoln.

A Burning Question

California is considering a rather hefty tax on porn.

When I heard about this, it reminded me of a question that is always burning in my brain:

Why are we still producing porn? 

Seriously.  Even the most dedicated pervert, with unlimited dollars and time (and other items, presumably) could never exhaust the current supply of hardcore pornography.  Even if you just start from the 1980s, I am certain that there is plenty of material for even the most outlandish kinks.  Okay, maybe there is a limited supply for the dead nun with Jell-O stump-fucker fetish, but most of what is being produced is pretty much plain vanilla porn.

I don't know why, but I am absolutely fascinated by this phenomenon.

Obama's Diplomacy Gets Results!

Unfortunately, the result is mostly derision and a lecture from Fidel Castro.

Welcome to the real world, Barack.

(Note: Jackson thinks the article is suspect.  It is from Granma, which is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.  Granma regularly publishes the speeches and writings of Cuban leaders.  The article is part of a running series called "Reflections" by El Jefe Maximo himself, Fidel Castro.  I assume this meets Jackson's legitimacy test.)

Well...yeah.

Joe Lieberman writes an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today that reiterates what I have been saying all along.  Obama loves to invoke the names of Truman and Kennedy (and even Reagan) when discussing foreign policy, but what he is proposing as his approach to foreign policy is almost exactly the opposite of the way those Presidents viewed the world.  It makes no sense as an historical allusion.  As I have said numerous times in this space, Kennedy's foreign policy would make the heads of most hardcore Democrats today explode in fury.  In fact, given such disasters as the Bay of Pigs, he would be reviled as worse than George W. Bush.  (If you think the Iraq war has been run badly, go and have a look at the total mess Kennedy created in Cuba.)

I have no brief for Kennedy, who was actually a pretty lousy President, but, seriously, Barack, you're no Jack Kennedy.

God Damn It

I hate it when those Repuglicans use Christianity and its symbols politically to gain advantage with voters.  It's the old style of politics and it must stop.

Oh, wait...

Question Time

John McCain is proposing that as President he would adopt something similar to the "Question Time" for the Prime Minister used by parliamentary democracies like the UK, Canada and Australia.

While some of the logistics will need to be worked out, I think that this is an excellent idea and I applaud McCain for suggesting it.  If done properly, it could provide a more effective way for the legislature, specifically the minority party, to interact with the Executive Office.  It would also put some pressure on the President to be well-versed enough in the issues to take on adversarial questions.  That would be a pretty big benefit.

He has also pledged to hold weekly press conferences, unlike Bush, who has tended to have them only once a month.

McCain has started to lay out his vision of how he would run the Executive Office and I like what I am hearing.

Jazz Odyssey

I've had some time lately to focus on guitar playing.  Normally this would start with a return to the classical material, but I need something new and fresh so I have started to delve into jazz improvisation.

It's a very strange world for me because I have a lot of theory already and a full mastery of the fretboard, but I don't have ready access to the basics of jazz language in the way that I do for, say, rock guitar.  (Obviously there is very little improvising in classical guitar.)  This is partially because, well, I really can't stand the sound of the saxophone.  That's pretty limiting when trying to pick up ideas from the great jazz players.  Also, I tend to love the piano most of all in jazz and it's not easy to get playable ideas from those guys because they have so much to work with that can't be played on the guitar.

At any rate, this will be a long process, but I am already enjoying the challenge.  And the challenge is both getting used to a world I don't know and also digging my way through the horrific pedagogy that comes in some of these jazz texts.  Here's a quote from Jazz Guitar by Larry Coryell:

The first solo phrase (in bars 2-4) draws from F Mixolydian; just after that, the four notes in the extra first half of bar 4, E-G-D-C, come from C Mixolydian.  When I got to bar 9, I played a C# leading tone into a Dorian ascending scale, which is connected to the C Ionian mode or C major scale...I used the half-whole diminished starting from B for bars 17 and 18 to cover the IV7 going into the #IV diminished.

Everybody got that?  This will be on the exam.

The truth is, nothing he says there is that complicated, but it almost certainly is not what he is thinking when he is improvising.  And I had to laugh when he introduced some of his "secret" scales later in the book.  

For example, his "Charged Up C Mixo-Pentatonic b5."  So, what is this deadly weapon?  It's pretty much just the minor pentatonic scale with every note between the flat third and the 5th included.  It's a 9 note scale.  Put another way, it's every note there is is except for 3.  A better way to say it would have been to point out what most jazz players know instinctively - in the minor pentatonic scale, there is a lot of tension and ambiguity between the third and the fifth.  When they play, they play with this a lot.   I guarantee nobody is thinking "Yes! Now for the Charged Up C Mixo-Pentatonic b5 run!"

The way it really works is summed up well in another, much better book I obtained on jazz guitar:

Learning to improvise can be a confusing experience.  You are asked to deal with a large number of seemingly unrelated musical entities, then fashion them into coherent solos.  On top of this, you hear the great players spin long, complex melodic lines that sounds as if they were created from the 17th mode of the cryptophyrgian harmonic major scale.  They aren't.  These lines are actually made up of small, simple, easily identified structures which the players have combined in interesting ways.

Great improvisers are communicating, talking through the music.  And the way we learn to speak a language is to listen, imitate, learn basic phrases that we can combine to express whatever it is we want to talk about.

It's pretty humbling to realize that I can basically only say "Da Da" at the moment.

Awesome

There's hope for me yet...

Wait...huh??

In his victory speech in North Carolina, Barack Obama said, "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did."

So, he wants to pursue the diplomacy of the Presidents that got us into World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War and brought us the blockade of Berlin, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis?

That's a hell of a promise, no?

(BTW, do any Democrats today realize that they are completely out of step with Kennedy's foreign policy views?)

New Band

My new band will be called James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse.  

Details coming soon.

MagDog Princess of Power!

Got the good news yesterday that the new chemo regimen has managed to shrink Maggie's tumor.  This is the first time that we have seen an actual reduction in the tumor, so it is very exciting news.  Since sarcomas are very fast-growing, you can tell pretty quickly if the drugs are working.

We get the next look in three weeks.  Although I'd love to see a further reduction, I'd be very happy with stable disease (i.e., no progression) as she is essentially healthy otherwise.

Rock!

The Wit and Wisdom of Pepcid

From the side of the box:

Under "Suggestions for avoiding heartburn."

"If overweight, lose weight."

November 2008

The more I watch this race, the more I see a Pauline Kael scenario in November 2008.  Supporters will say, "I can't believe Obama lost.  Nobody I know voted for McCain." 

Up the Irons!

For Tony and Jackson.

My God, They Were Serious

A few weeks ago I was at a dinner which included one of the propaganda ministers...er, media relations experts for MoveOn.org.  In the midst of his other idiotic drivel, he mentioned that Republicans would be surprised when Democrats started attacking McCain on his war experience.  He claimed that was going to be a major part of the Democrats' strategy.  His reasoning was that it had worked for the Republicans with Kerry.

For obvious reasons, I took this as the baseless conjecture of a political hack.  The idea is so daffy that I thought he was joking.

It turns out, he was serious.

If they are truly planning on taking this tack, watch for a McCain landslide in November.  This has to be one of the most foolhardy approaches I can imagine.  

Note to Democrats: When one of the biggest challenges facing your party is the perception among swing voters that you are vaguely anti-American, trying to hit a guy who was tortured in a POW camp is probably not the way to go.

Also, if you are going to send out somebody to try this strategy, try not to have him sound like a complete idiot.  Fighter pilots in 1967 were dropping laser-guided bombs from 35,000? (Laser guided bombs were not deployed in Vietnam until the year after McCain was shot down.) 

Week 6 - John Quincy Adams

Yeah, I know I skipped Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.  Look, if you want to know something about each President, read the bios like I do.  I can't be writing essays every week on these guys. 

JQA marks a bit of a turning point in the Presidents.  He was the first President not of the Revolutionary generation (although he was alive during the Revolutionary War, he was just a boy).  At the end of his term, Jefferson and Adams were dead (both on the 4th of July, 1826, within hours of each other), leaving no signers of the Declaration alive. 

I am kind of relieved.  Although they were all clearly imperfect men, it's hard not to get the impression that the first five all shat marble and were demi-gods.  Although Monroe was not quite the intellectual match for Adams, Jefferson or Madison, he was still an impressive guy.  In case you didn't know, that's him holding the flag in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.  He was also simultaneously Secretary of State and acting Secretary of War during the War of 1812 (which I know understand for the first time in my life) and he personally rode out at the head of troops to reconnoiter the arrival of the British in the Chesapeake.  Can you imagine Condi riding in a tank in Iraq?  

Adams followed through on Monroe's focus on foreign affairs and I have been enjoying the ride, but I have to admit that I am looking forward to Jackson, who, at the very least, was a certified nutjob.

After Jackson, though, the going gets heavy.  Check out this post-Jackson lineup:

Martin Van Buren

William Henry Harrison

John Tyler

James Polk

Zachary Taylor

Millard Fillmore

Franklin Pierce

Jame Buchanan

Oy, that's eight weeks of hell.

Aces High

Holy Crap! The Misanthrope, he loves him some Iron Maiden, but he also loves him some flying. I had no idea that Bruce Dickinson is an ATP-rated pilot with a type rating for the Boeing 757!

Yeah, Bruce and the Misanthrope would be great friends.

Genius Level?

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A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

The Scottish Lass and I just watched this one tonight and it was a pleasant surprise.  Definitely worth renting.

Aargh

Disappointing news on the MagDog front today.  The tumor has grown again, which means that the current cocktail of chemo is not having an effect.  

We are switching to a new drug (doxil - a liposomal form of doxorubicin) tomorrow and we will check in two weeks to see if that works.  There is another chemo option beyond that.  If neither of these work, we'll have to roll the dice with radiation therapy.  Radiation is better targeted and is generally more effective at killing large amounts of tumor, but the radiation can also damage surrounding tissue and we are talking about the heart here.  If we get to the radiation option, we are making the gamble that the side effects will be low.

It's a bit of a blow, but Maggie is still otherwise normal.  Her heart and lungs are fine and she is not in any obvious discomfort.

Sadly, this is not an April Fool's post.  I wish it were.

A New Method

After the UK swing, I've been trying to get back into my training program for triathlons.  With the races so far away and the weather cold, it's sometimes hard to motivate to go out and run or bike.

What I discovered yesterday is that if I put my iPod on and listen to "Aces High" or "Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Iron Maiden, I will sure as shit get my gear on and go running in less than ten minutes.

Up the Irons!

Misanthrope - Revised Modern English Version

Check it.

Back from the UK

The Misanthrope got back from the UK on Wednesday night.  He and the Scottish Lass had a blast at wedding outside Glasgow and then headed to Edinburgh, Brighton and London to see friends.  It was a whirlwind trip, but we had a great time.  The wedding itself lasted from 1:30 in the afternoon until 4:00 AM, which found us in the bar at the hotel with the bride, groom and several others.  

Our return from JFK featured a delightful cab ride in which the driver inexplicably decided that it would be smarter to drive all the way to LGA on the Grand Central and then turn south to get the BQE to the Williamsburg Bridge.  When I questioned this (absolutely ridiculous) route, the driver became enraged and told me he had lived in New York for 25 years.  When I told him I had lived here for 38 and he was taking a route that made no sense, he started yelling at me and telling me that I must always trust the taxi driver.

Needless to say, no tip and I thoroughly enjoyed the call to the TLC to complain as I had written down his name, license number and all the relevant details.

Welcome back to NYC!

Hey, I'm in a Band?

I just found out, via MySpace, that I am in a band called "Via Skyway." The music is pretty damned good and you should check it out.

Imagine that!

All kidding aside, I have always enjoyed playing on George's gorgeous songs and I look forward to playing yet more.

I do note, however, that despite having the entirety of Microdot in the band, George fails to mention us an influence.  Bad George.

You See Kids?

It's just like I always said.  Don't let yourself be videotaped for "Girls Gone Wild" because you might inadvertently be screwing yourself out of a $1MM payday for being the prostitute who slept with the Governor of New York and, thus, brought his political career to an end.

I wish I had a dime for every time I had counseled a young girl thusly.

Children As Children

I just noticed this article on CNN of the death, apparently by suicide, of a young woman who, as a child, had held the records for the youngest cross-country flight and trans-Atlantic flight. She was 11 when she flew across the US (with an instructor on board for safety).

Near the end of the article, there is a quick mention of the death of a 7 year old, Jessica Dubroff,  attempting to break the record with her father (not just a flight instructor) in 1996.  The short mention does not do justice to the grotesque circumstances of her death and the dangers of parents who forget that their children are children, not small adults, and should not be used as vessels for fulfilling parental dreams. Van Meter is quoted as having said, "accidents do happen," but this is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened.  An accident is something you don't expect to happen.  Every decision surrounding Dubroff's flight was almost guaranteed to create a disaster.

I know about the circumstances of this accident because I receive a CD every two months called the "Pilot's Audio Update."  It a helpful hour or so of commentators talking about aviation issues, mostly flight safety and recurrent training.  On a recent edition, one of the commentators read through the NTSB report on the Dubroff accident.  

This was not an "accident."  The little girl and her father were flying very early in the spring (his decision) because her birthday was coming up and he (not she) didn't want to miss the record.  The Rockies present serious safety challenges for a normally-aspirated plane (ie, one that does not have a turbocharger to produce consistent power as the air gets thinner at high altitude) at any time of the year.  Flying them early in the spring is not the wisest safety choice due to the strong winds and mountain turbulence.  At high altitudes, normally-aspirated planes rapidly lose their ability to climb, meaning that the pilot has fewer options as the terrain rises.  We don't encounter this problem much in the East (except for maybe crossing the Alleghenies), but I have taken my own plane up into the 'teens in altitude and the loss of performance is substantial.  Now try and imagine that the airport you are taking off from is already at 5,000 feet and you will realize that mountain flying in this kind of plane is a serious proposition even under the best of circumstances.

But the father went ahead with the early spring plan because he wanted the record.  

When he and his daughter took off on the day of the accident, there was another, far more experienced pilot in a jet on the field who decided to delay his departure because of the severe weather and the mountainous terrain around the airport.  Visbility was low.  There were thunderstorms in the area and a wind shear advisory in effect.  The terrain around the high-elevation airport was mountainous.  Why did the father decide to depart instead of waiting?  It turns out that he had media interviews scheduled at the next stop and he didn't want to be late.

It goes on and on, with horrific decisions made by the father that all seemed to be driven by his need to get the record (through his child) and to ensure that he made the next appointment with the media.  Anybody with half a brain knows that a 7 year old girl is not equipped to make complex risk decisions concerning weather and flight safety.  And I think anybody with a daughter will know how heavily invested little girls can be in pleasing their daddies.  Even as I type this, I get angry and start to shake.  The commentator on the Pilot's Audio Update could barely get through his piece without choking up with sadness and rage.  It was just child abuse, plain and simple.

It's really just sick.

You Should All Know This

ἄνδρα+ μοι ἔννεπε++, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον+, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:
πολλῶν δ' ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ' ὅ γ' ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
5
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ' οὐδ' ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
10
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.

ἔνθ' ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον,
οἴκοι ἔσαν, πόλεμόν τε πεφευγότες ἠδὲ θάλασσαν:
τὸν δ' οἶον νόστου κεχρημένον ἠδὲ γυναικὸς
νύμφη πότνι' ἔρυκε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων
15
ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι, λιλαιομένη πόσιν εἶναι.
ἀλλ' ὅτε δὴ ἔτος ἦλθε περιπλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν,
τῷ οἱ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ οἶκόνδε νέεσθαι
εἰς Ἰθάκην, οὐδ' ἔνθα πεφυγμένος ἦεν ἀέθλων
καὶ μετὰ οἷσι φίλοισι. θεοὶ δ' ἐλέαιρον ἅπαντες
20
νόσφι Ποσειδάωνος: ὁ δ' ἀσπερχὲς μενέαινεν
ἀντιθέῳ Ὀδυσῆι πάρος ἣν γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι.

ἀλλ' ὁ μὲν Αἰθίοπας μετεκίαθε τηλόθ' ἐόντας,
Αἰθίοπας τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν,
οἱ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος οἱ δ' ἀνιόντος,
25
ἀντιόων ταύρων τε καὶ ἀρνειῶν ἑκατόμβης.
ἔνθ' ὅ γ' ἐτέρπετο δαιτὶ παρήμενος: οἱ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι
Ζηνὸς ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν Ὀλυμπίου ἁθρόοι ἦσαν.
τοῖσι δὲ μύθων ἦρχε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε:
μνήσατο γὰρ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονος Αἰγίσθοιο,
30
τόν ῥ' Ἀγαμεμνονίδης τηλεκλυτὸς ἔκταν' Ὀρέστης:
τοῦ ὅ γ' ἐπιμνησθεὶς ἔπε' ἀθανάτοισι μετηύδα:

A Great Little Ditty

Tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam furentem audacia, scelus anhelantem, pestem patriae nefarie molientem, vobis atque huic urbi ferro flammaque minitantem ex urbe vel eiecimus vel emisimus vel ipsum egredientem verbis prosecuti sumus. Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit. Nulla iam pernicies a monstro illo atque prodigio moenibus ipsis intra moenia comparabitur. Atque hunc quidem unum huius belli domestici ducem sine controversia vicimus. Non enim iam inter latera nostra sica illa versabitur, non in campo, non in foro, non in curia, non denique intra domesticos parietes pertimescemus. Loco ille motus est, cum est ex urbe depulsus. Palam iam cum hoste nullo inpediente bellum iustum geremus. Sine dubio perdidimus hominem magnificeque vicimus, cum illum ex occultis insidiis in apertum latrocinium coniecimus.

Quod vero non cruentum mucronem, ut voluit, extulit, quod vivis nobis egressus est, quod ei ferrum e manibus extorsimus, quod incolumes cives, quod stantem urbem reliquit, quanto tandem illum maerore esse adflictum et profligatum putatis? Iacet ille nunc prostratus, Quirites, et se perculsum atque abiectum esse sentit et retorquet oculos profecto saepe ad hanc urbem, quam e suis faucibus ereptam esse luget; quae quidem mihi laetari videtur, quod tantam pestem evomuerit forasque proiecerit.

Ac si quis est talis, quales esse omnes oportebat, qui in hoc ipso, in quo exultat et triumphat oratio mea, me vehementer accuset, quod tam capitalem hostem non comprehenderim potius quam emiserim, non est ista mea culpa, Quirites, sed temporum. Interfectum esse L. Catilinam et gravissimo supplicio adfectum iam pridem oportebat, idque a me et mos maiorum et huius imperii severitas et res publica postulabat. Sed quam multos fuisse putatis, qui, quae ego deferrem, non crederent, [quam multos, qui propter stultitiam non putarent,] quam multos, qui etiam defenderent [,quam multos, qui propter improbitatem faverent]! Ac, si illo sublato depelli a vobis omne periculum iudicarem, iam pridem ego L. Catilinam non modo invidiae meae, verum etiam vitae periculo sustulissem.

Read It And Weep Mathdude

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Mi mi

Awesome.

(This one's for MikeDot.)

Insane.

(That one's for Macho LD)

Holy Forking Snit

Bear Stearns just sold itself to JP Morgan for $2/share.  That's down from $30 at the close on Friday, $57 on Thursday and about $150/share a year ago.  That's 99% of its equity value wiped out.  The deal was rushed to make sure that Asian markets did not open before the banks balance sheet was shored up.  The Fed stepped in on Friday because they didn't want a major bank to start defaulting on credit derivative counterparty agreements.  If the market started to freak out that counterparties on these CDOs were not creditworthy, all hell could have broken loose.

Kids, it's going to start getting even uglier out there.

John Adams (b October 30, 1735 - d. July 4, 1826

John Adams, the second President (1797-1801), was also the first one-term President.  Despite his massive accomplishments, he has somehow fallen between the cracks and is not nearly as revered as the members of Virginia Dynasty (Washington, Jefferson, Madison).  There is a Washington Memorial and a Jefferson Memorial in DC, but, as far as I know, no Adams Memorial.

This is partially due to his misfortune in having to follow Washington.  He took over the Executive Office at a time when the split between the Federalists (particularly Hamilton) and the Republicans (in the form of Jefferson and Madison) was exposed at last.  With Washington in office, his legendary figure kept the spirit of the Revolution alive.  When Adams took over, it was time to have the public debate about the form of government and, ultimately, what he Revolution had been about.  Adams was on the Federalist side of the divide, but he was led, along with the Federalist faction itself, into ruin by the strong will of Hamilton and his increasingly far-reaching plans for Federal power (e.g., the controversy over the New Army).

His failure to find the immortality of Washington and Jefferson also seems to have been a matter of personality.  Adams seems to have been both blessed and cursed with a kind of perverse contrarian streak.  This certainly liberated his thinking and made him clear-eyed about many popular subjects (unlike Jefferson, he saw that the French Revolution was headed for disaster), but it could also make him small, combative and overly angry at the world.  Where Washington was aloof and serene and Jefferson ethereal and complex (and self-contradictory), Adams was more direct and acerbic and this could make him an object of scorn and ridicule.

Unlike, say, Jefferson, Adams was at every major Revolutionary event, from the Stamp Act Congresses to the Second Continental Congress to the Constitutional Convention and played a major role in all of them.  In later years, Adams was particularly vexed by the fame accorded to Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence, arguing that Jefferson had been chosen as a mere prose stylist to memorialize ideas that had been put forward by men like Adams himself over the previous years.  Jefferson had barely spoken a word during the Second Continental Congress.  Indeed, he was far ahead of most in his vision of independence from Great Britain as the way forward.  In old age, Adams raged against the increasing reverence accorded to July 4th as the seminal date in the Revolution.  The fact that this trend tended to elevate Jefferson also irritated him no end.  He saw history as a messy affair, filled with uncertainties and contradictions, and he disliked the tidy narrative of inevitability that was developing around the Revolution.  Sadly, his own acerbic personality and his periodic rages tended to render his attempts to set out his account of the era almost unreadable.

Which is a shame, because not only is Adams worthy of a place among the great marble leaders we revere today, he also holds the unique distinction among the early Presidents of not being a slaveholder and being an abolitionist.  In that respect, his moral compass was a good deal more precise than Jefferson's or Washington's.

Credit Where Due

I do tend to bash the Grey Lady quite a bit these days, but mostly because it sometimes seems intent on destroying its own great legacy.  But the paper's breaking of the Spitzer prostitution scandal and today's op-ed calling him out for his "arrogant" public statement are reminders of how good the paper can be when it is on its game.

By Contrast...

What the f*ck is going on with Eliot Spitzer??

His first year was an unmitigated disaster and he had almost managed to make himself a complete lame duck governor.  That's no small feat.

But a prostitution ring??

I think it is safe to say that he has managed, in one year, to firmly secure a legacy as one of the worst Governors of New York in modern history.

UPDATE: He's gone.  Jeebus.

Slack-Jawed Further Update:  He has NOT resigned?  Is he on crack?  We may find out soon that he is!

George Washington (b. February 22, 1732 - d. December 14, 1799)

As promised, the first in a weekly report of Misanthrope's 2008 President-a-Week reading festival.

What a way to start and what a time to start.  "Father of the Country" is such a cliche, that it is easy to forget just how extraordinary Washington truly was.  It is also fascinating to review his approach to the Presidency and how drastically different it is from today's view of the office.

The text I chose was Joseph Ellis' His Excellency: George Washington and the man that he describes is a force of nature.  Washington was physically imposing (he was 6' 3" at a time when that was a gigantic height; by comparison, Alexander Hamilton was 5' 7") and seemed to be impervious to death.  There is story after story of Washington riding into a hail of bullets during the Revolution with the calm confidence of one who believes he cannot be killed.  He was also an unquestioned leader of men and there can be no doubt that his personal commitment was the single most important factor in keeping the underpaid, underfed and under-equipped Continental Army together until the British would blunder in to the trap at Yorktown.  I confess to finding myself tearing up when reading about the privations endured by the Army during the lean years following Saratoga, sufferings that struck me deeply because I know that many of my ancestors on my mother's side (12 in all) were suffering there with him.  It is an everlasting testament to his character and strength that those men, after suffering so much to follow him, loved him with a devotion that is deeply moving.  And it is in this aspect of his character, his ability to endure and to remain the last man standing until victory was his, that Ellis locates the source of much of Washington's greatness.

In peace, Washington's decision to lay down his sword and commission at Annapolis and allow the new country to grow under civilian government is another testament to his unusual personal strength and honor.  When compared against any  other revolution in world history, the bloodless developments after success and the Treaty of Paris stand virtually alone.  It was in large part due to personal loyalties and devotion to Washington that the tumultuous period of his Presidency was bloodless and calm.  In a very literal sense, he simply "presided" over the government and held himself above the existential debate that was playing out in the new federal government.  There is no doubt that Washington was a devoted Federalist and that Hamilton was his man, but he was also a close friend of Jefferson (at least until Jefferson betrayed him and began to insult him behind his back) and he let the eternal debate between local and federal government play out in a peaceful manner.  Over 200 years later, it is still being played out today.

Inevitably, one must confront the fact that Washington was a slave owner and that he did not free his slaves until after his death (and after Martha's death for those slaves that were part of her dowry).  Towards the end of his life, he was acutely aware that his slave ownership (he stopped buying slaves early on) was antithetical to the cause for which he had spent so many years of difficulty.  One is struck by the chances lost.  For example, during his first term,  a petition from a group of Quakers appeared before Congress to introduce the gradual abolition of slavery.  Normally this would not have been taken up seriously as even the anti-slavery northern delegations knew that the issue could tear the young government apart.  This petition, however, was signed by Benjamin Franklin, the only other Revolutionary figure with a stature equal to Washington's.  One must wonder what might have happened had Washington signed his name to it as well.  But Washington believed the new government could not survive such a divisive measure and let the moment pass.

If you are only familiar with the general outlines of the Washington story, it is well worth going back and reading it in full.  I was surprised at how moved I was by the story, by Washington and by the reminder of how incredible and extraordinary, in the most literal sense of the term, the American achievement was between 1775 and 1799.

Maybe Today Is Not the Day

Obama's key foreign affairs advisor, has resigned over comments she made to a UK newspaper in which she called Hillary a "monster."  (Yeah, I know...no arguments here.)

There will be much hue and cry from the Obama faithful about how she was railroaded, etc.  Unfortunately, she also managed to blunder in a BBC interview in which she essentially said that Obama won't be able to get U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months, as he says in his stump speech.

This all comes on top of the revelation that key economic adviser Austan Goolsbee had assured Canadian officials in private conversations that Obama's anti-NAFTA pandering was just campaign talk and not to be taken literally.  And foreign policy adviser Susan Rice admitting on television that neither Hillary nor Obama are ready to take that "3 AM" call yet.

And, now, Obama's intelligence advisor is on the record as disagreeing with Obama's position on FISA.

Are any of these missteps horrific? Not really, although if Powers is meant to be in a senior foreign policy position she should be more aware of using diplomatic language.  Calling Hillary a monster was kind of a bush league mistake.

That being said, this weird trend in Obama's camp suggests two things. 

First, a lot of Obama's policy talk is just pandering for votes and he shouldn't necessarily be taken at his word.  Sure, politicians do this all the time, but isn't Obama's whole campaign based on the lofty notion that he would not be an "old politics" candidate?

Second, it suggests to me that Obama is a bad manager.  A slip here or there is part of the game, but four advisors with very close relationships with Obama screwing up so royally tells me that he is not keeping on top of his policy team.

On top of it all, Hillary has managed to push him way off message and into a desperate, flailing attack mode.  How did Obama get from "audacity of hope" to "when is Hillary going to release her tax forms"?  

Crikey.  Somebody needs to send an adult to Obamaland to crack some freakin' heads.

One Down, 42 to Go

The Scottish Lass and I were in Washington, D.C. this past weekend for the 40th birthday of a very old and dear friend.  We took advantage of the trip to visit Mount Vernon, the home of the first President of the United States, George Washington (b. February 22, 1732 - d. December 14, 1799).  When contemplating this trip, I decided that it would be a good impetus to launch a project I had been thinking about for many years.  

As a result, I am now on my "President-a-Week" reading program.  For the next 42 weeks, I will be reading  biographies of the Presidents of the United States in chronological order.  No, I will not be reading Grover Cleveland's biography on two non-consecutive weeks.

The time frame of the project requires that some decisions be made.  For example, choosing a Washington biography turned out to be incredibly difficult as many of the "standard" bios are as large as 7 volumes.  That's a level of detail (and reading commitment) that seems out of step with the spirit of the project.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a series of biographies edited by Arthur Schlesinger that are nice introductions, but are a little too light.  In certain cases like Millard Fillmore (to whom I happen to be distantly related - typical, huh?) these may have to suffice as there are, frankly, almost no biographies to be had.  But when the subject is a major figure like Jackson, I have searched for a more substantial text.

Where I have read biographies (about 12 of them, by my count, including next week and the week after), I am going to look for something that adds a new perspective.

The chronological program is going to make for some rough periods.  Let's just say that April (Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore) is going to be brutal.

Anyway, week #1's selection was His Excellency George Washington by Joseph Ellis.  More thoughts on Washington later, but I leave you with Opal's summary after our visit to Mount Vernon: "He's like the 18th Century Superman."

MagDog Update

Maggie went in for her third chemo session yesterday and we got a bit of good news.  The echocardiagram showed that the tumor has not grown since the last session.  This is a very good sign in fibrosarcoma, which tends to grow very rapidly.  Another piece of good news was that her blood chemistry remained normal following the use of carboplatin, the new drug she got last time.  As a result, we were able to increase the dosage for that drug in this round, which should be helpful.  Having stabilized the disease somewhat, the next goal is to start shrinking the tumor.  The vet is investigating what might be available to us in terms of radiation therapy as that would give us a huge boost in reducing the tumor.

All in all, a good result for this stage.  We are very pleased.

With the Correct Note Selection, You Can Write An Entire King Crimson Record

This is a pretty fun way to write a 10,000 note piece really quickly.

Was the Misanthrope Right?

A couple of days ago, I shook my head at another loopy economic idea ("patriot employers") coming out of the Obama camp that begs you to stop taking him seriously.

In that post, I noted that I was surprised that Obama would be talking such nonsense when he is advised by very respected free-market economists like Austan Goolsbee.  There's no way he's been suggesting this kind of nonsense as policy to the campaign.

Well, look who Canadian television is naming as the Obama campaign source who told the Canadians to ignore all the heated anti-NAFTA talk as "campaign rhetoric."

BTW, note to Obama and Clinton:  It doesn't make you look like you are going to "repair America's image" when you start blathering on about how you are going to hold our two largest trading partners at gunpoint until they do what America wants.

Misanthrope Comments, McCain Listens

Misanthrope on Wednesday at Instapundit.

John McCain on Thursday on the campaign trail.

Remember that when McCain starts to try and defend "Tales from Topographic Oceans" while campaigning.

Seeing the Truth

Click here for the best coverage of the Obama-Clinton debate I have ever seen.

What White People Like

Best blog I've seen in a while.

Every Time I Think the New York Times Reaches the Bottom...

Reading the New York Times lately has become a very depressing experience.  The paper has always had a left-leaning editorial slant, but the reporting was generally high quality and substantive.  I don't really mind papers having a bias.  It's honest to admit that you believe certain things and that you are reporting through that prism.  It helps the reader evaluate what you are reporting.

But when did the New York Times suddenly decide that a few people "questioning" something is the basis for a hard news item?  First it was the ludicrous article about McCain and the "questions" about his "affair" (we don't know, we have no evidence, but we're just sayin'...), brilliantly taken down by Michael Kinsley in this piece on Slate.

Now it's this piece of nonsense from the Times about "questions" over whether McCain, who was born on a U.S. military installation in the Panama Canal Zone, is a "natural born" U.S. citizen for the purposes of the Constitutional requirements of the Presidency.  Who is doing the questioning?  The paper quotes an associate professor at Catholic University's law school and, uh, nobody else.  It then goes on to quote numerous sources who make it clear that this isn't even close to being an issue.

Here's a more informed story on the issue, one that references, you know, actual laws and stuff.

What the heck is going on at the Times these days?  It's like they've lost their minds completely. 

Crikey.

New New Deal Anybody?

Every time I get close to thinking that Obama might not be so bad, I read another one of his loopy ideas like this and I wonder how we can possibly be considering this guy seriously.  Just the term "patriot employer" is so redolent of creepy government interference that I can't believe he is putting it forward.

I'm astonished at this because one of his economic advisors is a very serious free market economist (and college classmate of mine) Austan Goolsbee.  For some reason, I cannot believe he signed off on this nuttiness.

This Was Surprising

Rasumussen is reporting that Obama's negatives are 43%, up from 36% last year.

I was pretty shocked to see this as 43%, that's Hillary Clinton territory.  

The interesting number was the "depends on the opposition" number - 18% for Obama and 29% for McCain.  It looks like McCain has got his work cut out for him.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea?

SpongeBob in your pants.

To be fair, it can be used orally or under the arm as well, but I would suggest having a clear policy with your spouse to avoid mistakes.

The truth is, some percentage of children will grow up to be adults who find themselves with cartoon characters on sticks protruding from their rectum anyway.

WTF?

This is just creepy.

And what is it with British Airways these days???

Unelectable at any Speed

Nader is back.  Did he cost Gore the 2000 election?  In a narrow sense, I suppose this is true.  There is no doubt that the people who defected to him were not former Bush voters.  But let's face it.  Gore ran a horrible campaign and is a very hard person to like.  And let's also face it, he was running against a guy who didn't really have very impressive credentials, which makes his loss even more appalling.  So, yeah, Nader cost him some votes, but Gore did the real damage. 

(I also don't think the case is that strong that Perot, with 19% of the vote, cost Bush the 1992 election.  If Perot hadn't run, it would have been a closer race, but Clinton still drubbed Bush in the Electoral College 370 to 168.  Even if you flip some of the larger states (e.g., New Jersey, Colorado) that went Bush in 1988 back to his column, you don't get a win.  Perot's main effect seems to have been to ensure that people could forever point out that Clinton was not elected President by a majority of American voters.)

Nader polled only 0.3% of the vote in 2004 and wasn't even on the ballot in several states. Given the way Obama is likely to run away with New York and California, where I suspect most of the hard core Naderites can be found, he isn't nearly a match.  In fact, he will probably drop out before polling day.

Also, Obama is not Kerry or Gore.  While I may decry the national silliness and swooning over Obama, I do not in any way make the mistake of assuming that he is an empty suit.  Whatever his policies, Obama has been running a near perfect campaign and has shown himself to be very shrewd.  Despite a maddening reliance on rallies and slogans, he is a formidable candidate.  Voters go to guys like Nader and Perot when they are frustrated with their own main party candidate.  I suspect that people who chose Nader over Kerry or Gore are not going to be as frustrated with Obama.

One Crazyland thought that popped into my head was a campaign where Bloomberg also throws his hat into the ring.  That would open the door for a Hillary independent run.  And Huckabee could stay in as well.  It'll never happen, but it would be massively entertaining to watch Obama versus McCain versus Hillary versus Huckabee versus Nader versus Bloomberg.

Ha

SNL does pull out the goods from time to time.

First, as much as I hate him, Huckbee can laugh at himself.

Second, I love the takedown of Obamamania and Hillary's delusional cackle.

Further Crimson-related Note

If the eminent Professor of Pocketology known as DJ Macho LD were to form a band with the Misanthrope from scratch, I am convinced it would sound like Fripp's early 80s band League of Gentlemen.

Quotation of the Day

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Star Wars...those nutty STAR WARS

Oh my God, this guy nails it.

I confess.  He's right.

Here's the follow-up.

The story about the guy asking for shoes in the Wal-Mart is priceless.

Seriously?

A couple of nights ago I was at a dinner where one of the attendees started to talk about the passing of Fidel Castro.  I almost fell out of my chair when he immediately trotted the tired old line about how Cubans had "universal health care and high literacy."  

Seriously?  People still cling to this line of defense for Castro?  As I said to this person, "If you gave me control of the army and the police, the ability to jail anybody who dissents and a series of outside donor states who propped up my economy, I'm sure I could deliver the low-quality health care you are describing to everybody."

Is the bar really this low?  Even this guy had to admit that Castro had built a police state and utterly destroyed the Cuban economy and infrastructure, but somehow this was a fair trade-off for access to medical clinics.

As I said, I almost fell out of my chair because I would have thought that even the most devoted fellow-travellers had seen the light about Castro in recent years, particularly after the clampdown he began after September 11, 2001, when he knew that the outside world was no longer watching.

It beggars belief, but what was more frustrating was that this guy kept trying to back track and claim he was not supporting Castro or excusing him.  That argument might have held water if I didn't learn later in the dinner that he had actually been employed as a PR person by Castro to help him improve his international image.  (His one contribution - ditch the fatigues for something casual, like a jump suit.)

You can't make these people up.

Red

As many of you know, the Misanthrope, he is the fan of some of the 1970s progressive music. (Okay, no more Manoloblogging.)  

This is partially because when I was learning to play guitar and I was attracted to some of the virtuosity of guys like Steve Howe and partially because I get bored with the simple harmonic structure of rock very quickly.  I don't know how to square any of this with my adoration of The Who.

At any rate, I happened upon a live performance video of King Crimson (the current "double-trio" version) and it got me looking to dig back into my Fripp collection.  Sadly, most of it was on vinyl and most of that was stolen in my junior year of college.

So I went to iTunes to see if I could pick up "Discipline," my favorite Crimson album.  Nope.  No Crimson on iTunes.

This led to some web searching and I came upon Discipline Global Media, the company that now distributes Crimson and related music and also promotes other new artists.  The Rosenbergs, a band I remember seeing with Dfactor in Dumbo back in 2000 or so, were with DGM for a while.

This introduction and series of small essays by Fripp is, I think, fascinating for all those who have been interested in the "label for artists" dream and the frustrations of working with large record companies.  I have to commend Fripp for his clear-eyed review of where things went wrong.  He understands, having run things from the other side, that record labels are businesses and that businesses need to be run for profit.  And this leads to decisions that are unrelated to artistic love of the music.  Sometimes the artist you love and want to promote is simply not going to sell records.  And that has to be agonizing for somebody who started a label for the purpose of putting out music that would not otherwise be heard. 

(Side note: E.G. Records, Crimson's label in the late 1970s and 1980s, was actually run out of the 4th or 5th floor of the apartment building I grew up in.  I used to see Robert Fripp in the elevator four or five times a week.  The only problem was, I was too young to know who he was and I didn't pick up the guitar until I was 14.  It kills me that I didn't get a chance to talk to him after learning about him.)

On a related note, I was geeky enough to sit through a very long but fascinating documentary on Yes last night.  I really only like the "classic" three records (The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge) with the occasional track on a later record, but I became engrossed in the interviews about the periods before and after that era because of the monstrous band politics and the absolutely shocking business mistakes the band made.  Their first manager signed them up for something like an 18 album deal with Atlantic!  They sold their publishing rights in 1970 to buy a PA like the one they had seen for the band Iron Butterfly!  They were so screwed that the ended up touring constantly to pay off their debts and live their lives.

Yeah, I know, it's a common story (although selling the publishing for a PA is a new low), but in the documentary they compared Yes with Atlantic label mates Led Zeppelin and noted what an incredibly good manager Peter Grant was.  And I have to wonder if Grant's excellent management might have been why Zeppelin was so consistently good musically.  Touring constantly meant Yes rarely had six months off to recharge or write material without getting on a bus or plane.  And their output started to suck pretty rapidly because of it.

Anyway, enough snowy day ramblings.

Eh...

Much fun is being had with the report that Hillary Clinton's campaign spent $95,000 at a deli in Iowa during the caucuses.

For those of us who live in NYC, this figure seems about right.  At my local deli, $95,000 only buys three cups of coffee, a package of Ho-Hos and that little vial of Energy Drink in the red and orange wrapper.

The Power of Love

Dfactor's blog Waved Rumor is an excellent one-stop shop for all things rock related.  I stopped by there today and found this gem.

When I saw the date, I knew immediately that this was the series of concerts that my cousin Janie (pronounced, "JAN-EE," as it is short for "Janice" - she was named for the Misanthrope Mom) attended in 1977.  What makes the story legendary in our family, however, is that she was too young to go by herself.  Things were pretty loose back in 1977 in New York, but not all parents were okay with having a 12 year old girl go to Madison Square Garden to see KISS.  

The upshot was that my Aunt Phyllis, who must have been about 47 at the time, went to every concert and sat with Janie.  I can't even imagine what she must have made of this at the time.  Aunt Phyllis reached 21 years old well before Rock'n'roll got started.  Her teenage memories are of the 1940s and WWII.

Anyway, it's pretty amazing that she was willing to sit through what must have sounded like WWIII just so her daughter could go.

Serenity

Wallace and Maggie find a sunbeam at the beach house.

Blood in the Streets, the Town of New Haven

I was saddened to see that the Yankee Doodle is in danger of closing.  I'm not really surprised though.

When I was in college, New Haven was pretty much a dump.  There's no way to hide it; the place was devastated.  And I know that I often thought how nice the city could be (it was once considered one of the best places in America to live).

As they say, be careful what you wish for.  Soon after I graduated, the city and the campus began to improve considerably.  This, of course, meant rising rents.  Demery's, the site of so many delightful Friday night fights, was turned into an Au Bon Pain.  The pizza place near my residential college where they sold crack out of the kitchen closed and was replaced by nicer shops.

Obviously, it is nicer, on the whole, to have a cleaner, more pleasant campus.  The downside of these changes is that awesome institutions like the Yankee Doodle get squeezed out.

In my Senior year, I lived off campus on Park Street and I think I must have eaten at the Doodle 3-4 days a week.  Two eggs, coffee and toast cost $0.80.  A hamburger and coke was something like $1.50.  The place only had a few stools in a mini-diner format and it closed at 2 PM.  I quickly learned that the owner did not want to be friends with the students (or most of the customers) and I would often chuckle into my eggs as some newbie would come in and try to befriend Rick or his daughter.  Although the Doodle was sparse, it was never downtrodden or dirty.  It was a total timewarp from the 1950s, when, it seemed, they also froze the prices.

A group of alums have banded together to try to save the Doodle and I intend to contribute.  At the very least, I owe Rick the real value of all those meals I got there for next to nothing.  There is no doubt that the real estate value (given its location in the middle of 7 of the 12 residential colleges) is too high now to make it work on its own.  But there is nothing wrong with devotees banding together to try to preserve something that made the lives of so many undergraduates just that much better for decades.

P.S. - When I was there, the record for the hamburger eating contest was 12.  I am still certain I could have held the title briefly in that period.  The record is now in the mid-twenties, which is deeply disturbing.

McCain/Romney '08?

Romney is about to endorse McCain, giving him his delegates and securing the nomination.

Romney never really got me excited, but I think he is a smart, serious guy and he would address the McCain age issue very well.  I think a lot of people would feel comfortable knowing Romney would be the back up if McCain got sick or stepped down after one term.

And, mercifully, it would shut Mike Huckabee the fuck up.  I cannot stand that guy and he should not be allowed to gather anymore support for 2012.

Rock 'n' Roll

Last night, the Scottish Lass and I went to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll with Brian Cox and Rufus Sewell.

First of all, Brian Cox could read the ingredients from a box of Wheaties and he'd still be cool.  No, I'm not silly enough to claim that he was the better Hannibal Lecter, but he's just always enjoyable to watch. (IMDB tells me that he and Anthony Hopkins have shared three roles - Lecter, Titus Andronicus and King Lear.)

Rufus Sewell, eh, not so great but Stoppard gives him a lot of lines that are, shall we say, tough going.

At any rate, I can't say I loved it as I think Stoppard bit off a bit more than he could work with in a single play (the story of Czechoslovakia post 1968, "useful idiot" intellectuals at Cambridge who played at being Communists but never saw what was really happening, the navel-gazing silliness of the flower power movement in the 1960s), but I must commend it to Chrispy and StinkRock for placing, of all people, Syd Barrett in a central role in the play.

Indeed, they play a bunch of early Floyd in the little breaks between scenes, including "Astronomy Domine" and "Jugband Blues."  (Bizarrely, they also play "Vera" from "The Wall," which is a great little tune.)

The play was so wordy and overwrought in places that it was a bit difficult to sort out what Stoppard was trying to achieve, but as I see it this morning, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd seem to be a kind of metaphor for all of the "revolutionary" spirit of the 1960s.  Barrett is a pure force of beauty who succumbs to insanity.  The machine he helped build, Pink Floyd, becomes a commercial mega force, no doubt skilled at what they do but lacking something of the pure nature of the Barrett craziness.  This template is overlaid on the events in the Czech Republic, where the Plastic People of the Universe are the apolitical force of nature that does more good than all the intellectuals who claim to take up the mantle of the people.  It's not clear whether or not Stoppard is claiming that the beauty is inevitably linked to being mad.

Yeah, as I said, it's a bit hard going for a single play.  But it was so unexpected to see the ghost of Syd raised on Broadway and with such affection.  If StinkRock and Chrispy look, they can probably find discount tickets as the show is ending in 6 weeks and the house was nowhere near full.

Yes, Russians Are Basically Crazy

I was taught to play guitar by a Russian and I can tell you that Russians are amongst the most unique mix of intense intellectual and scientific achievement and flat out, moonbat, wingnut, craziness on the planet.

This article reminded me of my teacher.  He was a very smart guy and he had been trained at one of the best conservatories with the best teachers.  And he was very wise about many difficult subjects.  But every once in a while he would tell me that Russians had invented cars that ran on spiritual fuel or machines that could fly to the moon on chocolate and he would be totally serious.

There's something awesomely eccentric in the whole thing.  It's kind of like British eccentricity with a deeper, sadder soul suffering at its core.

That's why my German car only runs on oil.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Awesome van.

Is Anybody Actually Surprised?

If you didn't think Obama was going to try to bring the New Deal back from the dead, you were deluding yourself.

A Mixed Bag

Just got back from the vet.  The ultrasound showed a small increase in the size of the mass on her heart, but the increase was nothing compared to what would have been expected in this period of time.  That may sound like a hollow victory, but the vet was actually quite pleased with the result and with Maggie's total lack of side effects from the first round of chemo.  We are in the fight now!

So, we are switching the chemo cocktail today to include carboplatin, a DNA alkylating agent (it attaches an alkyl group to DNA to prevent replication; this is effective because cancerous cells replicate quickly) that is very potent but also myelosuppressive.  That is to say, we need to watch Maggie's blood chemistry because the drug suppress her bone marrow activity.  This can result in a weakened immune system.

As always, I will monitor the Biscuit's well-being and comfort, but I am glad that the initial chemo has shown efficacy and that we are able to hit the mass again with a different drug.

Maggie is a tough little dog and I am convinced that our sapphire bullets of pure love have helped her in many ways.

Okay, I Have to Admit It

I am now officially sick and tired of Barack Obama.  This whole thing is so over the top for what has been, so far, no substance at all, that it is beginning to sound more like a cult than an election campaign.  The guy gives a nice stump speech.  Great.  He seems bright and gentlemanly.  Nice.  And I certainly love that he has made Hillary look like the phony she is.

But Obama is surely just as much a phony.  He is long on "uplifting" speeches and extremely short on policy and platform.  Change, change, change - what the hell is he, a bank?  Change to what?  For what reasons?  Change everything?

Blech.

He makes us feel like everything is going to be alright because we are all standing at a "special" moment in history and we can all save the country if we can just "unite."  This is, of course, complete and utter horseshit.  Democracy is not about unity.  It is about disagreement, but civil disagreement.  "Unity" is the kind of crap that you hear about in, dare I say it, totalitarian societies.  It is the sophisticate's patriotism by another name.

And I, for one, have had enough of it.  Uplifting speeches accomplish very little.  What is needed are solid ideas, well thought out and vigorously, but courteously, pursued and defended.  That's not unity, that's a functioning democracy.

Somehow I think this whole carnival comes crashing to a halt if he gets the nomination and has an opponent with more experience and different ideas.  Bring it on.

(As a side note, I am also heavily amused by the constant comparisons between JFK and Obama.  The fact is, JFK would probably be the nominee of the Republican Party today.  He was a vigorous internationalist in foreign affairs who was prepared to send American troops in harms way and who used the CIA to assassinate political leaders.  The Democrats would have a heart attack if he were actually President today.)

This Really Happened to Me

At last, a scientific explanation of the shivers you get after peeing.

This effect was responsible for one of the coldest feelings I've ever felt in my life.  I was hiking the Inca trail in Peru to Macchu Picchu with a tour group.  The local porters that came with the group would set up tents at night and we would eat around a campfire under the most incredible blanket of stars I have ever seen.  (Side note: Quechua, the local language spoken by the porters when they were not speaking Spanish was the basis for the dialogue spoken by Greedo in Star Wars IV:  A New Hope.) (Additional side note:  Han Shot First).

After dinner, I retired to my tent, but about an hour into sleep I had to pee.  So I got up, put on a fleece and went outside to pee over the side of the ridge on which we were camping.  Once I got done, however, I began to shiver uncontrollably and was overwhelmed by the deepest cold I have ever felt.  The high mountain air, which had seemed mild moments before, was suddenly colder than Antarctica.  I had to sprint back to my tent, where it took me 15 minutes to relax my jaw from the chattering teeth.

Coming up soon:  Other bodily function stories related to my time in Peru, including the story of the deaf guy taking a shit on 800 year old Inca ruins in full view of 150 people.

Laughing in Her Sleep

A commenter on Stink Rock quoted the old Microdot song "Biltmore Clock" (I'll post the song if somebody tells me how) in response to a mention of Bill Boggs.  The song was my homage to growing up in New York in the 1970s and 1980s when, let's face it, the place was an open sewer - but an open sewer with a heart.  Anyway, the commenter was right to connect the name to the song, but the New York television presenter was not the person I was naming in the song.

She was actually a homeless person who slept on a grate on Second Avenue in the 1980s who became a test case in the Koch administration's attempts to commit mentally ill homeless people.  For some reason, that affair was New York in a nutshell for me.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for those days in New York.  No, I don't want to return to the days when the subway cars were covered in graffiti and God knows what else.  But something wonderful got sucked out of the city during those final years before a massive new tide of wealth turned it into the yuppie playground it has become.  If you can believe it, when my parents moved into our new apartment in 1977, the landlord gave them two months free rent as an enticement to sign the lease.  Looking back, there's no way that my parents could give us the life we had back then at today's rates.  For a brief period, the inmates were running the asylum and it was CHEAP.

So here's to all the old head shops on every corner, the Irish bars with briskets from the Eisenhower administration still stewing in a steam plate, the Monkey House at the Central Park zoo, the big yellow cabs, the jazz clubs that once ran along 54th Street, where I grew up, the crazy drummer in Central Park who spray painted his hair black (yes, he was real, not just a character in "Taxi Driver"), and all the other wonderful old school New York things that were dead and gone by 1990.

Holy Fucking Shit

The Misanthrope is in awe of the Giants.  

When the game started and the Giants began that first drive that ate up over half the first quarter, the Misanthrope turned to the Scottish Lass and said, "The Giants are playing this thing perfectly.  They will score first and Brady will have been sitting on the sidelines, getting cold, for the first ten minutes of the game."

And it just got better.  The Giants defense swarmed Brady so effectively that they eventually got into his head.  You could see the defeat in his eyes when he walked out of the locker room for the second half.  Doubt had been placed where there had been little doubt the whole season.

As the game progressed, I thought that the Giants defense would start to tire and make mistakes.  And they did start to lose some steam.  But somehow they found another well of energy and they put in an unbelievable showing to the end.  Those guys really believed in themselves.  It was absolutely awe-inspiring to watch.

But the play that few will ever forget was Manning twisting himself free from what looked like a game-ending sack to drop and hit Tyree to keep the dream alive.  

Insane.  Just insane.