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. 

Legalize Downloading

This is the youth vote issue par excellance.  Republicans could take it up and attract just about everyone who owns an Ipod.  Not a peep out of Republicans or Democrats on this issue last election.  It's like they never heard of it.
  That probably comes from two reasons.  Pols are mostly old fuds in their 60's who don't even do email, and have lost contact with the college age generation.  They don't understand.  And the labels have given lots of money to keep downloading illegal.  Money talks to most pols.  Money may not vote, but it does talk.
   Just making downloading legal would be a fairly drastic step, it would mean the end of copyright.  Authors depend upon copyright for their livings, many of them would stop writing if copyright went away.  Movies need big money to make.  Without copyright protection they could not raise that big money, so we would be reduced to watching things like the Blair Witch Project.
   A decent  halfway step, would be to reduce the length of copyright.  Used to be copyright and patents ran for 14 years.  The last copyright law revision, aided by Disney and the labels, jacked copyright up to life of the author plus 70 years, halfway to forever.
  With copyright set to 17 years, most of the music sloshing around the internet would be legal.  The young are playing and downloading mostly stuff that was popular when I was in college, and that was more than 17 years ago. 
   Trouble is, making a policy of "17 year copyright" meaningful to the young would take a heap of doing.  Most of them would have difficulty connecting "17 year copyright" with "most of my music would be out of copyright" and "downloading out of copyright music is legal".

War for Women, Part 3

Daughter visited for Thanksgiving.  We did some political talking.  She sees the Republican loss as due to no free contraception.  Jobs, the economy, cuts little ice with her.  Even with an unemployed boy friend and unemployed brother, it was lack of free contraception that got her turned on, even shouting.  Discussion of jobs and the economy held no interest for her.  She is employed and that's good enough for her.  She doesn't see Great Depression 2.0 as anything much.
   If her viewpoint is typical, the US of A has some serious trouble in store. 

Walmart's on light gray Sunday

Time to refill my prescriptions, so off to Walmart on Sunday.  Place is busy, but not really crowded.  Run into my niece and her two daughters in the toy aisle.  Passed bins of low price DVD's.  Mostly Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.  Looks like those are the last decent movies out of Hollywood, and that was quite some time ago.