Am I the Only One ...?

... who sees that Michael Medved's pieces in The Daily Beast are, well, stupid, badly reasoned, and generally silly?

Recent examples:

• He thinks that people are getting older, and that older people are more conservative than younger people, and so a Republican resurgence is imminent.
• He believes that John McCain was a charismatic presidential candidate, and offers as proof the fact that he outpolled Republicans seeking congressional seats, in 2008.

There are many more: instances in which Medved looks at a piece of information, then draws conclusions that ignore the history, the context, or an important countervailing factor. I expect him, any day now, to point out that average temperatures have plunged since last August, disproving all the claims about "Global Warming."

A Gubmit Takeover of Fop!!!

An increasing number of "red" states have stood up against the federal government and for their principles of states rights: they've announced their refusal to establish the state insurance exchanges required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). So, as the Act provides, the federal government will do it for them.

That's right: to defy the feds, these states will, in effect, invite the feds in to supervise directly the operation of their health care systems.

And another thing ...

Two disc-jockeys on an Australian radio station called the hospital where the Duchess of Cornwall had been admitted, pretending to be the Queen and the P. of W., and managed to get through to a nurse who told them something about the young woman's condition.

Then the nurse who took the call committed suicide.

Everyone is shocked and dismayed. Of course, the death of the poor nurse is sad, and regrettable. And probably the prank phone call and the resulting notoriety caused it: I have known people in my life who, I am certain, would have been driven off their tracks had they been the subject of any public notice of any kind. Some people are just not capable of dealing with a lot of attention from strangers --that's one reason they don't go into politics.

But can we really pretend to be outraged by the behavior of radio announcers? Not, I suggest, if we have listened to many of them. Literally nothing is out of bounds for them these days, no matter how offensive, puerile, nonsensical, or just plain stupid and meaningless. The sort of stuff that occupies the airwaves, at least on talk radio, is literally no different than you can find in any video arcade or fast-food restaurant. And that includes the empty pauses, the stuttered phrases, the back-and-forth bickering and side conversations --talk radio is really just a race to the bottom, aimed at making the ordinary chap feel comfortable. That is especially true on local shows; but those local jocks have learned at the feet of the masters (we all know who I mean).

Failure Is Not An Option

I mean, can we just, please, drop this stupid formulation?

Is success an option? If so, just choose it, boyo, and be done.

We ought to insist that, at least, people in responsible positions, when they make pronouncements on important public issues, avoid the simplistic and the stupid.

Neither failure nor success are options! They are potential outcomes.

Everywhere I turn: Fop.

So, Which Is It?

I mean, what do the Repubs mean to tell us about the "fiscal cliff?"

Remember, two or three years ago, when they discovered the national debt, I mean, the Debt, it was declared "an existential threat" to the United States. It was essential to our very survival that we take any and all steps, immediately, to reduce the debt, which of course means reduce spending. To be sure we did so, our fearless leaders placed a metaphorical bomb in the Capitol, and metaphorically lit its metaphorical fuse.

Now we are entering the winter of our discontent. The fuse has pretty much burned down on the Austerity Bomb, a.k.a. the Fiscal Cliff (to mix metaphors), and the same prognosticators who came up with the "existential threat" notion are very, very upset at the prospect of ... a drastic reduction in the Debt. The prospect of Reducing the Debt is, suddenly, the existential crisis du jour.

That is what will happen if there's no deal; debt reduction on a  big scale. There will be big tax increases (Boo! Job Killing! Punishing the Job Creators!) and big spending cuts (Yay! I mean ... wait a minute ... the cuts are to defense industries? Boo! We meant cut payments to The Takers who are too lazy to work! Boo!), and they will all happen on January 1 unless the President gets serious, ignores the fact that he campaigned on tax increases for the rich, and he won the election, and settles down to extend the tax cuts for the rich.

But what about the debt? It's an existential crisis, remember?

Or is it?

Fiscal Cliff Notes

Let's see:

• Obama wants tax increases for the rich; additional stimulus; and to keep the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98%.
• The Repubs want to cut Social Security & Medicare; $800 billion in tax revenues; keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone.
• The fiscal cliff promises big cuts in defense, big tax increases on everyone.
• No one is talking about the payroll tax cut, which affects primarily low- and middle-income wage earners, and effects them immediately and significantly.

So, what's to argue? As the only serious thing, on January 1, is that the payroll tax cut lapses, thus decreasing everyone's take-home pay with their very first January payroll check; and there's apparently no one on either side who cares, let's just all relax. Obama would be nuts to cave to the Repubs; in January he will have plenty of congresspeople knocking on his door to talk about lowering tax rates. He should wait until then.

Oh, yeah: Boehner has promised to insist, every time in the future that a debt ceiling increase is needed, on tying any increase in the ceiling to further budget cuts. This is a congressman threatening to hold up payment of expenditures that the Congress has authorized, in order to score political points. How very adult!

It's as if the Repubs in Congress, like George Clooney, can only think of one thing when they wake up in the morning. But for George, it wasn't Fop.