Romney’s Choice of Ryan

by Rich Beckman on August 13, 2012

I feel like I have read sev­eral times on lib­eral blogs that Rom­ney now has to carry Ryan’s bag­gage as well as his own. I do not think so.

The Ryan pick does indi­cate that Rom­ney was not com­pletely con­fi­dent of enthu­si­as­tic sup­port from his base (which amounts to the Tea Party). Choos­ing Ryan makes the base feel a lot bet­ter about Romney.

To win the gen­eral, Rom­ney has to move to the cen­ter at least some dis­tance, but with­out a Tea Party approved run­ning mate, he could not afford to do that.

Back to the bag­gage. My mem­ory is that when the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date picks a run­ning mate, it is the run­ning mate that must con­form to the candidate’s posi­tions. Ryan’s job is to take Romney’s con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage to the base while Rom­ney mod­er­ates him­self for the gen­eral electorate.

Democ­rats will do every­thing they can to hang Ryan’s pre­vi­ous posi­tions around Romney’s neck. Romney’s long record of being on every which side of every issue will make that a lot eas­ier. But any­where where Romney’s con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tion dif­fers from Ryan’s, we can expect that Ryan will be talk­ing up Romney’s posi­tion, not his own.

I still believe that in the end, Obama wins with a solid margin.

UPDATE: “Well, first of all, Con­gress­man Ryan has joined my cam­paign and his cam­paign is my cam­paign now. And we’re on the exactly the same page,” …the page being Romney’s page, not Ryan’s.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/romney-ryan-no-longer-supports-his-plans-medicare-cuts.php?ref=fpb

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What George Zimmerman Is Guilty Of

by Rich Beckman on August 12, 2012

Although I have never blogged on this sub­ject, I have gone on the record else­where that, given the facts as they were being pre­sented, George Zim­mer­man is guilty of the mur­der of Trayvon Mar­tin…prob­a­bly sec­ond degree murder.

I have never argued that he would be found guilty in a court of law. Given the facts that have come out, Mr. Zim­mer­man has the law on his side.

In an arti­cle in today’s Orlando Sen­tinel, Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, explains why he expects to get the judge to throw the case out. It will not sur­prise me if he suc­ceeds. It will sur­prise me if the case goes to trial and Zim­mer­man is found guilty.

But Zim­mer­man is guilty. How? The con­fronta­tion between the two men was ini­ti­ated by Zimmerman’s fol­low­ing Mar­tin. Yes, the bet­ter response by Mar­tin to being fol­lowed would have been to call the police. But this is where the con­cept of “white priv­i­lege” affects per­cep­tions of the case.

Yes, I would call the police. Just about every­one I know would have called the police. In my uni­verse, the police present no threat to me. Except­ing one time, when I have been pulled over there was a rea­son for it. The one time there was not a rea­son, the offi­cer, upon real­iz­ing he had pulled over the wrong car, apol­o­gized and sent me on my way with­out even look­ing at my license or registration.

When I was in mid­dle school, I was out in the mid­dle of the night with two friends just goof­ing around and the police showed up. We got a lec­ture (“a neigh­bor might shoot you by mis­take”) and sent home. Not taken in, not escorted home, sent home.

For many African Amer­i­can males, the police rep­re­sent some­thing very dif­fer­ent. It is not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that “call­ing the police” is not the first thought that went through Martin’s head.

To fol­low some­one is to ini­ti­ate a con­fronta­tion. Zim­mer­man fol­lowed Mar­tin. He did so with­out cause or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. He had already called the police, the dis­patcher told him they did not need him to follow.

The con­fronta­tion was ended with the killing of Mar­tin by Zim­mer­man. Zim­mer­man is guilty of murder.

Zim­mer­man will be exon­er­ated by the legal process because the legal process does not rec­og­nize that to fol­low some­one is an aggres­sive threat­en­ing act.

An Indi­ana judge recently demon­strated that being fol­lowed is a fright­en­ing expe­ri­ence.

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Alternate Future Presidential Press Conference

by Rich Beckman on July 16, 2012

Reporter: Mr. Pres­i­dent!!! Mr. President!!!

Pres­i­dent Rom­ney: What? Oh, right! What is your question?

Reporter: Sir, you are the duly elected Pres­i­dent of the United States, correct?

Pres­i­dent Rom­ney: Yes, that is correct.

Reporter: And that means you are also the Com­man­der in Chief, right?

Pres­i­dent Rom­ney: Yes, that is cor­rect, the Con­sti­tu­tion itself makes it so.

Reporter: And you draw a salary as Pres­i­dent and Com­man­der in Chief?

Pres­i­dent Rom­ney: Why, yes. I believe there is a statute to that effect.

Reporter: Very good, sir. Given that, could you please explain why the US mil­i­tary has attacked Iran?

Pres­i­dent Rom­ney: Oh! I see your con­fu­sion. No, at the time that attack took place, the First Lady and I were doing a tour of our man­sions, we do not like to leave them to the staff for too long with­out check­ing up on them. You never know when the oppor­tu­nity to fire staff will arise!

So, you see, I was on a kind of sab­bat­i­cal from the Pres­i­dency when the attack took place. I can­not be held respon­si­ble for the actions of the peo­ple I left in charge while I was away.

Next ques­tion, please

Update: I added the line “You never know when the oppor­tu­nity to fire staff will arise!”

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The War on the Postal Service

by Rich Beckman on March 29, 2012

What is the Repub­li­can Party at peace with?

There is the War on Women.

There is the War on Voting.

There is the War on Entitlements.

There is the War on Science.

There is the War on Pub­lic Schools.

I’m prob­a­bly for­get­ting something.…

But who knew there was the War on the Post Office? Quite a stealth war, with the main offen­sive push tak­ing place back in 2006 when the Repub­li­can con­gress passed the Postal Account­abil­ity and Enhance­ment Act which was then signed by Pres­i­dent Bush.

Sec­tion 803 of Title VIII of the act

Estab­lishes in the Trea­sury the Postal Ser­vice Retiree Health Ben­e­fits Fund, to be admin­is­tered by OPM. Requires the Postal Ser­vice, begin­ning in 2007, to com­pute the net present value of the future pay­ments required and attrib­ut­able to the ser­vice of Postal Ser­vice employ­ees dur­ing the most recently ended fis­cal year, along with a sched­ule if annual install­ments which pro­vides for the liq­ui­da­tion of any lia­bil­ity or sur­plus by 2056. Directs the Postal Ser­vice, for each year, to pay into the above Fund such net present value and the annual install­ment due under the amor­ti­za­tion schedule.

The act includes this:

‘‘(3)(A) The United States Postal Ser­vice shall pay into such Fund—
‘‘(i) $5,400,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2007;
‘‘(ii) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008;
‘‘(iii) $5,400,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2009;
‘‘(iv) $5,500,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010;
‘‘(v) $5,500,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011;
‘‘(vi) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012;
‘‘(vii) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2013;
‘‘(viii) $5,700,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2014;
‘‘(ix) $5,700,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015;
and
‘‘(x) $5,800,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2016

That’s $55.8 bil­lion dol­lars over ten years.

And you thought the Postal Ser­vice was in finan­cial straits because it was not run efficiently.

Why would the Repub­li­can Party be at War with the Postal Ser­vice? I have no idea. But my guess would be that UPS and FedEx would pre­fer to not have to com­pete with the Postal Ser­vice. In defense of UPS and FedEx, I sus­pect the Postal Ser­vice does enjoy the advan­tage of the legacy of tax­payer sup­port in that many of the build­ings were con­structed with tax­payer funding.

But note that nei­ther UPS or FedEx or any­one else wants to do what the Postal Ser­vice does: deliver mail to 150 mil­lion addresses through­out the country.

Or it could be the Repub­li­can Party has it in for the Postal Ser­vice because

The Postal Ser­vice has been named the Most Trusted Gov­ern­ment Agency six con­sec­u­tive years and the sixth Most Trusted Busi­ness in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

We must not have the pop­u­lace trust­ing a gov­ern­ment agency.

Here is the post­ing I first read of this (I was referred to it on Facebook).

Here is another I found when I Googled. It is from six months ago, but it ref­er­ences H.R. 1351: United States Postal Ser­vice Pen­sion Oblig­a­tion Recal­cu­la­tion and Restora­tion Act of 2011, which still sits in com­mit­tee for almost a year now.

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Let Us Help You Imagine the Future

by Rich Beckman on March 26, 2012

And that, to me, fully sums up the Repub­li­can case against Barack Obama, or at least one weird vari­ety of it. Obama is about to do all sorts of hor­ri­ble things: bank­rupt the nation, induce hyper­in­fla­tion, con­fis­cate guns, bring back the Fair­ness Doc­trine. About to do them.

That is Jonathan Bern­stein over at A plain blog about pol­i­tics dis­cussing Santorum’s new ad against Obama (I guess he has no hope of beat­ing Rom­ney…), Oba­mav­ille.

It is amus­ing that the right is begin­ning to fall back on what Obama is about to do (at this point it is get­ting dif­fi­cult to run against what he has done). I sup­pose there may be some item or few that Obama has done in his first term that he did not talk about dur­ing the cam­paign, but I have no mem­ory of such. Based on that track record, there is no rea­son to think that Obama is going to do things in his sec­ond term that he has not talked about doing.

Unless one wants to use cur­rent Repub­li­can office­hold­ers as the exam­ple. Wis­con­sin Gov­er­nor Walker did not cam­paign on the issue of strip­ping pub­lic employ­ees of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights. But once elected, he did so. Indi­ana Gov­er­nor Daniels did not cam­paign on the issue of mak­ing Indi­ana a Right to Work state (in fact, I am rea­son­ably sure that he specif­i­cally denied any inter­est in doing so). But once elected, he did so. I sus­pect there are plenty exam­ples of late.

It does seem (at least to me) that the right tends to be most ener­get­i­cally against that which they them­selves do and most sus­pi­cious of oth­ers doing the same thing they do (not that the right has a monop­oly on this).

And yes, I under­stand that the right believes that Obama has already started bank­rupt­ing the coun­try and induc­ing hyperinflation.

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Not the Most Embarrassing Thing I’ve Ever Done

by Rich Beckman on March 24, 2012

Gen­er­ally, though not always, the laun­dry around here is accom­plished by the fol­low­ing process. My wife, Debby, sorts it and puts it into the washer and moves it into the dryer. Once the dryer buzzes, I get it out, fold it and deliver it to the bed­room (or wher­ever it goes). Some­times when I am emp­ty­ing the dryer I see that there is a load in the washer wait­ing to go into the dryer and I will put it in.

Yes­ter­day that is exactly what hap­pened. I emp­tied the dryer, grabbed the clothes out of the washer and tossed them into the dryer and turned it on (after clean­ing out the lint trap). Then I car­ried the dried clothes from the base­ment to the sec­ond floor bed­room and com­menced to fold.

After a cou­ple of min­utes Debby was at the bed­room door ask­ing me why I was dry­ing dirty clothes that were cer­tainly dry when I put them in the dryer.

In my defense, weak though it may be, the base­ment is cool and damp. The clothes felt cool and damp.

On the other hand, as I moved them over the fol­low­ing thoughts went through my head:

Gee, this was a small load.

Gee, this stuff is hardly wet at all, I’ll have to be sure to get back down here pretty quick ’cause these will be dry in short order.

I knew this front load­ers spun the water out good, but this is excep­tional, I won­der if it is due to the small load.

Live and learn.

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It Does But It Does Not

by Rich Beckman on March 20, 2012

In the con­tin­u­ing saga of the GOP House efforts to undo the Afford­able Care Act, the House is cur­rently work­ing on a repeal of the Inde­pen­dent Pay­ment Advi­sory Board (IPAB).

Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office:

The House will act this week to repeal another part of Oba­maCare: IPAB, which empow­ers a board of unelected bureau­crats to deny care and raise costs.

If the IPAB will raise costs then repeal­ing it will save money, right?

Well…

Tea Party activists are upset about some­thing else entirely. GOP lead­er­ship has opted to fund the $3.1 bil­lion cost of repeal­ing IPAB with leg­is­la­tion writ­ten by Rep. Phil Gin­grey (R-​GA) that would reform med­ical mal­prac­tice laws.

So repeal­ing the IPAB will cost 3.1 billion.

The bill has to have a “pay for” ele­ment to off­set the costs of repeal­ing IPAB. Boehner’s office sim­ply makes ref­er­ence to the IPAB rais­ing costs. Which to believe.…

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Disney World

by Rich Beckman on March 17, 2012

When my daugh­ter was the cutest lit­tle girl ever, she walked back to me after a cou­ple of min­utes talk­ing to Santa Claus and, beck­on­ing me to lean down close, qui­etly said with much con­vic­tion “He’s a fake.”

I was reminded of this event when my wife and I recently spent a few days at Dis­ney World. It’s a fake.

I have spent my entire life not going to Dis­ney World for that exact rea­son. I ended up there because it rep­re­sented an oppor­tu­nity to spend many hours with the grand­son while his par­ents attended the Day­tona 500 (twice!).

We stayed at River­side in Port Orleans (and I believe there was a fur­ther sub­di­vi­sion of Riverside…but it seemed mean­ing­less and arbi­trary). The “river” is really a, I sus­pect man made, chan­nel. There is no cur­rent, one end is at a lake, the other end is just an end.

At River­side is a large water wheel in the river that does not flow. Water is pumped up into a sluice which runs sev­eral feet and dumps the water on the wheel. The wheel, via a cou­ple of gears, turns a large axle that reaches into the cen­ter of the din­ing hall and, again via a cou­ple of gears, turns an large umbrella that sets just beneath the ceil­ing. Much ado for noth­ing. But the turn­ing wheel is an impres­sive sight.

We spent time in Down­town Dis­ney, just an out­door mall really; a day in the Ani­mal King­dom, which is a mediocre zoo; and a day in Epcot, most of which is also an out­door mall.

For much of my life var­i­ous peo­ple have told me that I had to go to Epcot Cen­ter. That I would like it. Well, not so much. The Space­ship Earth ride was inter­est­ing, but I would much more enjoy going through it with the lights on to see how it is laid out inside that golf ball.

Dis­ney is expen­sive, but at least one can see where a lot of the money is going. There are the free buses, the free water taxis, the fire­works, the exten­sive grounds, the numer­ous swim­ming pools, the end­less fake.

This is not to say that I did not have a great time. I was with great peo­ple that I love. Time in hell would have been pleas­ant. Dis­ney was a blast.

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Where Do Babies Come From?

by Rich Beckman on March 12, 2012

As the war on women con­tin­ues, the lat­est salvo is issued by the North Car­olina Hanover County Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. They have unan­i­mously turned down

a state fam­ily plan­ning grant that would cover con­tra­cep­tive sup­plies along with other med­ical ser­vices related to fam­ily planning.

…

“If these young women are being respon­si­ble and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this prob­lem to begin with,” Davis said.

Com­mis­sioner Jonathan Barfield said he was “one of those absti­nence guys” and agreed with Davis’ comment.

There you go. The prob­lem seems to be that the local women are all hav­ing sex with each other and get­ting pregnant.

Note that the com­mis­sion­ers are all men.
Hat tip: TPM

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Rush’s Low Point

by Rich Beckman on March 7, 2012

It has been a few days now since Rush Lim­baugh insulted the George­town law stu­dent for three days run­ning and then gave the non-​apology apol­ogy. And spon­sors have been dump­ing him in response to the social media tsunami (I can not believe I spelled that right the first attempt).

I am still see­ing blog posts about the trou­ble Rush is in (now the music group Rush has demanded that Lim­baugh stop using their music on his show.)

Rush is not in trou­ble. He knew he was going low when he went there. He under­stood there would be an out­sized reac­tion to what he said. This is inten­tional on his part. The reac­tion proves his con­tin­ued rel­e­vance (which makes one won­der if he was begin­ning to doubt his con­tin­ued relevance).

There will still be spon­sors. His show will con­tinue. His audi­ence will remain.

The best response would have been to ignore his state­ments, but even if every­one man­aged that it would sim­ply result in Rush say­ing even worse things.

What he said was bad enough. I sus­pect he will say some­thing as bad or worse some­where down the road. It is what he does.

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