Meet the Press

As usual I tuned in my Sunday pundits.  David Gregory had some democrats and republicans on Meet the Press, talking about the fiscal cliff.  He had Timmy "Turbotax" Geithner, US treasury secretary, claiming that his administration has planned trillions of dollar in spending cuts.  Then he had tax gadfly Grover Norquist on claiming that Obama wasn't offering a dime in cuts, but instead trillions in new spending.
   They can't both be right. One of them is lying.  The moderator, David Gregory, offered no help in sorting out who was the liar. Gregory isn't contributing to a useful debate so long as us viewers are saying, some one is lying, so nothing anyone says is worth listening to.  'Cause we cannot tell who is lying for sure, although we have our suspicions. .
   So what happens next?
1.  Congress fails to pass anything.  In which case taxes go up for everyone and some painful spending cuts take place real soon now.  This is called "going over the fiscal cliff".  Doing nothing is easier than doing something. 
2.  Congress does what Obama wants, passes a soak-the-rich tax hike. Most of us escape the tax hike.
3.  Congress does some serious spending cuts (Medicare reform) and gives Obama his tax hike in return for signing the spending cuts. 
   Place your bets. 

Email ought to be as private as Snail Mail

Law enforcement, (and anyone else) should be required to get a warrant signed by a real judge in order to tap your email.  Or read old email left on  servers.  Email carriers should be forbidden to keep copies of email on their computers, and be required to erase records of transmission from sender to recipient as soon as the email  is delivered. 
  Investigations should be limited to emails sent AFTER the investigation begins and the warrant obtained, investigators should not be allowed to  read every email a subject sent since he grew old enough to type. 
   And even if this is made into law, the wise citizen will suspect cheating and never write anything incriminating in email.  Or facebook, or anywhere else. 
   This would be a good issue for the Republicans.  I mean who is in favor of cops snooping thru their email?
   Law enforcement will be agin it, but they always are.  Tapping email and phones with a warrant is enough, they will just have to make do. They don't need to troll thru every email the suspect ever sent.

Fashion for Men

The Wall St Journal now does pieces on men's fashion.  That must be the Rupert Murdock influence.  Anyhow the article had photos of young slender male models wearing stuff that would get them laughed at any place I ever worked and any school I ever attended.  And at any party I ever threw or attended.  There was the pegged lime green cargo pants with combat boots and a navy blue blazer.  There was a poorly fitting loud checked wool suit, belt up above the navel, and baggy everywhere.  There was a guy in a plain gray shirt and a matching plain gray turtleneck. 
   Any guy would have to be totally naive to turn up anywhere dressed like that. 

More Topic Changing

NPR is still pushing for an immigration bill.  They have a new twist this morning.  We just give them green cards without a "path to citizenship".  Translation: we let them in to work but we don't give them the vote.  Sounds like we make them second class citizens, eligible to pay taxes and work long hours, but not eligible to vote.  That's good old liberal NPR's idea, not mine. 

HIstory Channel, Mankind, Story of Us

Mankind, The Story of Us, now playing on the History Channel, which I get on cable.  It's one of those re enactment shows, actors in period costumes waving swords and such.  It has some problems with production values.  Such as a show lamenting the terrible death toll of the 14th century plague.  Lots of gruesome shots of awful skin lesions, corpses tossed into the river, mass graves and other such gruesome stuff..  But the background score, instead of being something solemn and slow, is this perky little dance number with a  strong drumbeat to it.  While the voice over is saying how awful, the score is saying, show me some more of this.
   The don't use maps much.  They keep mentioning interesting stuff happening at out of the way places that I never heard of before.  They never bother to cut to a map and show where that out of the way place is.  They do a lot of talking about the Mongols, all with shots of Mongol horsemen in full costume galloping across the plain.  They show a map of the Mongol empire at it's peak, but then it's back to those same horsemen galloping.  Then don't talk about how long the empire lasted.  There is no mention of the conquests of Russia and India.  No mention of Subotai's invasion of Western Europe, aborted only because of Genghis Khan's death, and the recall of all senior Mongols to the Gobi to select his successor.  Harold Lamb feels that Subotai's army might well have reached the English Channel if Subotai had not been recalled on account of Genghis Khan's death. 
   They did another episode spent trashing the Crusaders.  No mention of the Byzantine Emperor's appeal to Pope Urban for a Frankish army to save his empire.  No mention of the extra ordinary projection of military power across a thousand miles by a pre industrial society.  No mention of Muslims roughing up Christian pilgrims headed for Jerusalem.  No mention that Palestine was a Christian land recently conquered by Islam. No mention of the extraordinary feats of arms where by a handful of Christian knights, at the end of a thousand mile supply line, beat vastly superior Muslim armies.  The producers wanted to trash the Crusaders and they proceeded to do so.
A low grade TV show.

Topic Changing

With the "fiscal cliff" only one month away, you would think the lame duck session of Congress would concentrate on doing something about it.
  This morning I hear NPR pushing for an immigration bill in the lame duck session.  Nice idea, but the immigration bill doesn't have a 1 January deadline.  Plus its a controversial issue, which will soak up more time and hot air than we have between now and 1 January.  Unless its a ploy to drive us over the fiscal cliff, we ought to do immigration after New Year.
   And, the presenter was taking the opportunity to push the "Dream Act" (green cards for college grads and veterans) which failed to pass a little while ago. 
   How about some lesser steps that might have a chance of passing?  Such as awarding full citizen ship to anyone who serves honorably in the armed forces.  Such as awarding green cards to college graduates in science, engineering or mathematics?  Such as clearing up the current logjam of immigration applications.  It's fair to give each applicant a yes or no answer within two months of putting it their paperwork. 

Tax and Spend

Obama is doing a full court press for a soak-the-rich income tax hike.  Not a peep about spending cuts.  Obama clearly hopes to get himself a nice little tax hike to stave off bankruptcy for a little while.  The Republicans aren't saying boo.  They ought to be saying, "Do some real spending cuts and THEN and only then will we talk tax hikes." 
  As things are going, Obama will get his tax hike.  And no spending cuts will happen.