Misplaced Priorities

Let’s see if I understand this. People are losing their homes and others, having already lost their homes, are living in their cars or pitching their tents in washes. The dollar is cratering, rising food costs are squeezing family budgets, education is seriously under-funded, college graduates can’t get jobs and Arizona struggles with its budget.

In the mean time an assistant basketball coach gets a nice raise to $725,000 and an absentee head coach draws down $737,790. In addition there are performance bonuses he probably won’t get unless the assistant coach performs a miracle; in which case his earnings kick up to over a million bucks.

Decades ago one of our greatest universities, The University of Chicago, gave up on intercollegiate sports. Students still got to play games, most stayed in school for four years, and no one ever got a degree in “Family Studies.”

What a world.

That 3:00 a.m. Call

This big debate about who will be ready when the 3:00 a.m. call comes is just so much political campaign hooey. No one is effing ready when the phone rings at three in the morning, you’re lucky even to find the damned thing.

Huh? Hoozat? Schnozzz… uhhuh? Terrorists? Wrong number. Zzzzz.

You know who I want to answer that call?--- A light sleeper!

“Too Many Germans, Too Little Text”

That used to be the comment made about any instance of scholarly screed that endlessly over-analyzed too small a body of information or text. You know, that three volume work on the “Epistosomous Fragments”--- a handful of papyrus fragments found in some 4th Century B.C. desert kitchen midden.

I was reminded of that old saying by my early morning reading of a selection of nationally syndicated political wise guys. Pretty much the same things are being said over and over again, particularly about today’s ‘crucial’ primary, but none of it is really new. Shut up, already. Wait for the votes.

Tired of Politics? Then Try These!

Sabrina, my plum, I think you’ll like this first recommendation as much as your old Uncle does. As I’m sure you know, I admire pretty women of all ages but I prefer them nicely dressed, as do the sharp-tongued but hilarious ladies who preside over Go Fug Yourself.

This is fashion commentary of a high order, taking on the dress failings of the Over Aged Destroyers, Starlets, and Bimboi of the red carpet set."The day Sharon Stone stops thinking she's every man's dominatrix fantasy is the day Courtney Peldon wins a Golden Globe. Look at this woman -- she's a nutjob, and proud of it. Are those her nipples I can see through that shiny armor? Are those hot pants she's wearing under those strips of filmy fabric? "You know what? It doesn't matter. They are what she says they are, because she makes the rules, you weak little maggot, so get down on your knees and beg mommy for a cookie before she rips out a hunk of your hair and spanks you with a slice of Honeybaked Ham."----GFY

God, I wish I’d written that.


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If all of that is too, well, much the politically exhausted might want to take a breather with Stuff White People Like; perhaps while seated in a chair designed by a famous architect from the 1930s.

"--- as with all things, white people will do whatever it takes to secure authenticity including paying thousands of dollars for a small piece of furniture. "If they are able to acquire this prized furniture, they will forever refer to it only by the designers name. “I spend hours in the van der Rohe, just looking through these beautiful books of his work.”

And now, back to politics.

Iraq War? What Iraq War?

In politics what’s not being said is as revealing as what is. Nothing much is being said about getting out of Iraq. McCain loves being there and the surviving Democratic candidates treat the issue of getting out like some sort of disfiguring skin disease…we have to do something about it, but until we figure out what let’s not call attention to it.

If I were a Republican strategist I would be enchanted with all the bad economic news. While people are losing their homes, and their personal economies are cratering they tend not to pay attention to what’s going on overseas; and the Republicans can use hard times as an excuse to cut taxes on the rich.

The enormous cost of the Iraq war is one of the causes of the slow decay of the American economy. An article in the London Times examines just how expensive this war is:

“The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

“The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.”

Read “The Three Trillion Dollar War.”

Super Delegates

It looks increasingly likely that the Super Delegates to the Democratic Convention will decide the Democratic candidate. For discussions and background on this let me refer you to two articles.

The first was by Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse in Sunday’s New York Times. The second is by Walter Shapiro and appears in today’s Salon. The Shapiro article is bit more detailed in ringing the changes on all the possibilities.

The chance that the Super Delegates, who are the apparatchiks of the party, could give the nomination to someone who had not won a majority of delegates through the primary/caucus system is a real possibility.

This would be a problem for the Democrats. Failure to support the majority candidate would be a public relations nightmare and would certainly drive away the newly energized younger voters. These newly active voters would view it as betrayal by “the old guard,” and as “beltway politics” as usual. Bad news.

On the other hand the institution of Super Delegates was intended to protect the party from being swept away by fashionable enthusiasm and guarantee a voice for sounder political judgment.

Outcome: The party will be damned if it does, and possibly damned if it doesn’t, run counter to primary results.

Stimulate Me, Baby!

If I understand it correctly the Data Port household is going to get a nice twelve hundred-buck check in the mail some time in May. The Congressfolks want us to go out and consume in order to make the economy better.

Frankly, I can’t think of anything more exquisitely ‘Murican than that. First of all the money is borrowed, probably from the Chinese, and added to the national debt. Then we are urged to do what we do so well, spend the borrowed money on stuff that we want right now, rather than save up for it, or pay off some debt.

Some people will save or pay off debt, but I don’t see how that’s going to help the economy, or correct the systemic failures of an under-regulated capitalism. Paul Krugman, in today’s NY Times column, suggests that we would all be better served in the long run if the money were spent on public works projects.

Some of the Data Port’s windfall will be spent on a bottle or two of better quality booze than we usually drink- thus doing our bit for the economy- and the rest will be put in savings for the inevitable rainy day.

A Very Important Person

That's me, apparently. The Governor called me! Janet asked me to vote for Obama. Earlier on I received two calls urging me to vote for Hillary. Thanks for the calls, guys, but I've already voted for John Edwards.

Politics and The Super Bowl

Driving to a Super Bowl party and listening to the hype on the radio. Wow! This was going to be the greatest, most important event in history, greater even than the invention of sliced bread and the square hole in the Chinese nickel; greater than the invention of money.

Just listen to the pre-game and the play-by-play: Breathless excitement. Sports destinies hanging in the balance. Pundits wisely observing that everything hangs on the next play; that it’s time for the team to ‘step up’; That blah blah will surely blah blah, or if not, then blah blah blah.

The really important stuff was going on down on the field, where two teams and their handlers were having a simply splendid nock-about. I loved it. I was a Giants fan in a family of Pats rooters.

Americans love this stuff. I love it. The teams gave us whacking good entertainment. But it is, after all, only a game.

Now, what has all this to do with Politics?

Americans like their political campaigns to be as much like the Super Bowl as possible; as breathless; as minute-by-minute exciting, and as filled with frantic commentary as any half-time show. The media work hard to satisfy us, to turn the campaign into a horse race. Will there be a winner by a nose or by three lengths?

The trouble is that when a horse race is over it’s simply over, done, and finished. Whoever wins the Super Bowl has, well, won. There are no consequences. But when a campaign is over there are profound consequences, the end of a political campaign is just the beginning of something tremendously important.

The effect of treating the campaign like the big game is that the candidates are forced to buy into the approach. Sprinting to the finish line, going for the last minute Hail Mary pass, the debates and discussions between them become, at best, superficial. There is no time for lengthy, reasoned, debates that would unpack the real differences between them, or lay out programs in detail.

Oh, well. Go team, Go!

After Edwards---Pascal’s Wager

A number of comments on the John Edwards campaign web site urge supporters to go ahead and vote for Edwards on Super Tuesday. The thinking is that it would be useful to send as many Edwards delegates as possible to the Democratic convention. This would be a way to push Obama and Clinton toward a more aggressive policy on behalf of the poor and an acknowledgment that we are in fact a nation divided between rich and poor.

If continuing to vote for Edwards seems too much like throwing your vote away, then I would urge you to vote for, and actively support, Obama.

As a left progressive myself I can’t see Clinton accomplishing any of my own political goals on health care, Iraq, reinstatement of Bush tax cuts or halting the corrosive effect of money on the political process. Nor do I expect Obama to do any better on particular legislative agenda items.

What I do see in Obama and the young men and women who support him is the desire to alter the underlying character of the American political process. Naïve? Madly optimistic? Maybe so, but it might just be that the time for a sea change has come. What else can we believe in?

With Clinton things won’t get better; with Obama things won’t get worse; but there is, at least, the promise of hope.

It’s a Pascal Wager.

AP and NPR Report Edwards Withdrawing

Apparently the announcement will be made at Noon today in New Orleans. The Associated Press is reporting that Edwards will not announce an endorsement of either of the two leaders for the Democratic nomination.

The Old Folks' Candidate

Regular readers of my irregular postings here at The Data Port know that I am a fan of Professor David Kaiser’s blog History Unfolding. Kaiser’s style is un-bloglike in at least one respect since his commentaries are longer than the usual blog entry. Still,they are well worth any reader’s attention.

His most recent post comments on, and analyzes, the South Carolina primary. One paragraph especially caught my eye:

“I have no doubt that Obama would be a far stronger candidate in November than Clinton for two somewhat related reasons. First, as I have already suggested, she would be scandaled half to death by the Republicans. But more importantly, she (like John McCain on the other side) is the old folks' candidate, and the young folks, bless their hearts, will decide the election. They did the same in 1932 and 1936 (in the latter year, fully 90% of the 21-35s may have voted for FDR.)" (Italics mine)

You may read his entire post here.

I have voted, early, for John Edwards

Good Reading

Here's the NY Times follow-up story to the LA Times firing.

Editor Fires Parting Shot at His Chain
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
The ousted editor of The Los Angeles Times on Monday argued that cost cuts, a lack of investment and an aversion to serious news is damaging the newspaper industry. (link)

The Local Press- A Death Spiral?

If you don’t read Inside Tucson Business you missed David Hatfield’s January 21st Media column. Hatfield reports that Lee Enterprises, which owns the Arizona Daily Star, is loaded with cash. In 2006 Lee reduced its net debt by $179 million. In 2007 the reduction was $135 million.

Lee has been so successful at milking its cash cows (my words, not Hatfield’s) that it plans to buy back thirty million dollars worth of its own stock.

In the meantime newspapers in Tucson seem to be headed into the death spiral common to papers across the nation. Owners interested only in continually increasing cash flows cut news staff in order to make up for decreasing ad revenue. As news coverage declines so does readership, and as readership declines so does ad revenue. To make up for loss of revenue you cut wherever you can but the easiest cuts are made in the newsroom

A story on NPR this morning reported that yet another LA Times editor has resigned in protest over a four million dollar cut in its newsroom budget just as we are rounding into a peak news year.

Meanwhile, here in the Old Pueblo the Star cut eleven folks from its newsroom and cancelled Ernesto Portillo’s column, reassigning him to general features. (Other money-saving firings in the media world: Jeff Smith from the Citizen and Sal Quijada and Mark Horne from KGUN)

It’s good business to reinvest in your infrastructure. In the newspaper business the most important part of that infrastructure is your news staff. The Star should be hiring, not firing. Lee Enterprises looks able to afford it.

The Data Port doesn’t hasn’t been in the prediction business, but I’m going out on the limb here: Lee will soon sell the Star to Gannett, a move that has been long rumored but is now imminent. When that’s been done it will cancel the joint operating agreement that has kept the Citizen alive and fold the Citizen into the Star.

And then there will be lots of newspaper people looking for PR and advertising jobs.

The Data Port Endorses… Voting!

I went on line this morning to change my voter registration from Independent to Democratic. There were two reasons for this, one of them perfectly trivial and the other rather more serious.

The trivial reason first: Ever since I’ve been old enough to vote I have voted in every election, city, state, and national, for which I was eligible. I include school board elections and bond votes, referendums, initiatives, and judges. I couldn't bring myself to break the string.

The more serious reason is this: As readers of this blog know (and, I suspect, certain unnamed government agencies as well) I am an unreconstructed old lefty. As unhappy as I am with the current thrust and tenor of the Democratic Party it still comes closer to my core political beliefs than the Republican Party.

I will vote for the Democratic candidate for president, whomever he or she may be.That being the case, it seems to make sense to cast a primary vote for that candidate who offers the best combination of viability and closeness to my personal political bent.

That candidate is John Edwards.

In Debt Yet? You bet!

As a follow-up to Saturday’s Data Port entry about credit card debt let me refer y’all to the front page of today’s Arizona Daily Star and an Associated Press story: Pocket Plastic is New Credit Crunch.

“Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.

“An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country's largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears."

If you read the article closely you’ll notice that the credit card weasels have done just what the mortgage weasels did, they've sold off the debt to investment trusts and now the trusts are in trouble.

The Giffords Conundrum

At least two of Congresswoman Giffords’ votes have been profoundly annoying to CD 8 Democrats and, indeed, to progressive Democrats across Arizona. Her vote to join Republicans in granting Bush’s $70 billion dollar Iraq funding request has been ably dealt with by Michael Bryan over at Blog for Arizona.

I, too, received the Giffords letter explaining her vote. Bryan’s analysis of that letter is, in the best sense, lawyerly. Of particular interest is Bryan’s note that the funding for materiel replacement is a separate issue and could have been voted for without a total capitulation. Less noted was Giffords voting with the Republicans against a bill that would have reinstated the inheritance tax.

Now what are Progressives to do?

Would they (should they) launch a ‘send-a-message’ attack in the primary? It doesn’t seem likely. The most obvious candidate happens also to be the Vice Chair of the state’s Democratic Party. I doubt that Latas is willing to fall on his sword just to send a message.

Another alternative would be to support some third party candidate, possibly a Green. But even if a Green could beat her in a primary race no Green could win the seat in the general election.

Under the circumstances Giffords’ single most valuable political characteristic is that she is a Democrat and will vote with other Democrats to organize the House. Progressives may not be “doing” well with her at the moment, but they can hardly do without her. They will have to bite the bullet and vote Democratic.

Are We in Debt Yet?

With four shopping days left before “Holiday” I toddled off to the malls yesterday to do my Merchants Day shopping. I had read that sales were down but business seemed pretty brisk judging from all the plastic I saw being tendered.

No money, just credit cards. No kidding. No one was buying anything with folding green, with money they had now; they were all contracting to pay with money they hoped to have sometime in the indefinite future.

When I was a kid (and don’t you hate it when some old guy, some really old guy, says that?) there were no credit cards. That’s right, Virginia, Santa was on a strictly cash and carry basis.

Instead of credit cards every bank had a “Christmas Club.” Folks made regular deposits during the year into modest little interest-bearing savings accounts. Then at Christmas they had money to buy stuff with.

Well, that was during the depression. We’re all better off now, which is why we’re all in debt.

Merry Merchants Day to my fellow bloggers!

Daily Star’s new E-Edition

If you are a newspaper junky, and especially if you follow the development of on-line journalism, it’s well worth your time to take a look at the new electronic version of the Arizona Daily Star.

I can’t think of any other papers that are presenting this way and I think it’s terrific. Until the end of the year you’ll be able to sign on for free but after that a subscription will cost you just what subscribing to the dead tree edition costs.

In itself I think that this attempt to charge for what the New York Times and other major daily papers give away on line is interesting. If you subscribe this way you see exactly what dead tree subscribers see…all the stories, all the ads, all the photos, the TV Guide, the obits, the comics, the want ads, laid out on each page just as they appear in the paper edition.

You leaf through the paper page by page, or skip to your favorite section. Click on a story and that story pops up on the right side of your computer screen in an easy-to-read text version with photos or graphics at the bottom.

To me the value of this is that I can read the paper, scanning page by page, exactly the way I read it at my breakfast table. I find that reading this way I miss a whole lot less than when I try to read the current e-version. For one thing you scan the whole first paragraph of a story and any photos or graphics catch your eye. When you’re through with the news you can read the funnies or check the TV listings.

In the end the great advantage of this new version is that it is uncluttered. The current (free) version of the Star on line is such a visual hodge-podge, filled with distracting visual snippets, mostly ads and promos, that it is painfully distracting to look at.

Of course in the new version you will not be able to comment rancorously on stories that offend you as you can in the current version. I love the new look and think it’s an interesting experiment, but for the same price I think I’ll stick with the dead tree edition.

To take a look at the E-Edition click here. Sign on as “Star,” password “Free Trial”

The Brass Monkey

One of my favorite motorcycle rallies is The Brass Monkey.The Monkey celebrates its 35th birthday in chilly February, hence its name memorializing a tragic emasculation.

I've posted all the details over at my other Blog, Data Port Two.



But in the meantime, what the hell is a Brass Monkey?