The Razor

There’s a lot of angst out there among Republicans. Many it seems are tired of being in power - in the few places they still have it like the Executive branch, and haven’t really gotten fired up to snatch it back from the Democrats in the places they’ve lost it – like most of the governorships and the Legislative branch. Some of the ideas that get the rank and file fired up – like gun rights – have been avoided like a political 3rd Rail by the Democrats. Other ideas like free trade and a strong defense have been taken for granted so long that they’ve lost their ability to fire up the base. Worst of all the issues that do fire up the rank and file – like lower taxes and smaller government – have been stomped on over the past 8 years by the Republican leadership and the Bush administration.

Republicans have a right to be questioning their leaders and the status quo right now; the Party has failed them. The question becomes: will this failure kill their chances in November?

6 months is an eternity in politics, and the real fight between the two parties hasn’t even started. It remains to be seen whether the Republicans will continue to lose their stomach for a fight while the Democrats begin to seriously wail on them this Summer, and especially after Labor Day. We’ll get a good sense by then whether they have, or if the Democrats have forced them to get off their asses and fight back.

For the past month I have been monitoring my websites using Google Analytics. The program is a bit much for blogs; it offers a lot of information that’s only useful for ecommerce websites. Still it does offer some interesting tidbits like this:

Total visits: 4,779

1. United States 3,347

2. United Kingdom 310

3. Canada 220

4. Germany 123

5. Australia 67

6. France 48

7. Netherlands 37

8. Poland 28

9. India 27

10. Spain 27

Over 90% of my traffic is from the USA. No surprise; I’m American and write what I know. Still it’s interesting to see roughly a hit a day from Poland. I even have single hits from Iraq, Yemen, Mozambique and Estonia.

I’m an American and I’m proud of my country. But as I have written often, you can be patriotic and still want to see other nations thrive and succeed. And not just Tanzania, Israel and Japan – nations that I have lived, or in the case of Israel admired since I was a kid. Patriotism is not zero-sum. A strong America doesn’t mean a weak China; a prosperous USA does not mean a poverty-ridden India. I hope that the visitors from nations such as these recognize that I may be an American patriot, but I’m not an American bigot. I doubt that they will; I may be an idealist, but I’m not an idiot.

Take a love for animals, an interest in photography, a talent at Photoshop and a Cafepress store, combine them together and this is the result:

Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, passed away over the weekend at the age of 98.

Records show Sendler’s team of some 20 people saved almost 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto’s sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants entered in search of children who could be smuggled out and be given a chance to survive by living as Catholics.
Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis’ death camps — Sendler wrote the children’s real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.

When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips — which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate’s yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.

Her valor went unrecognized in her own homeland until recently when President Lech Kaczynski nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Unfortunately for Ms. Sendler she never got one because her accomplishment didn’t poke a thumb in the eye of the Bush Administration, so Al Gore, the IPCC, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY and MOHAMED ELBARADEI, and of course, Jimmy Carter received the prize instead. Now since she’s dead, she’s no longer eligible – not that it would have mattered any since her legacy lives on through the thousands of people alive today thanks to her heroism.

We saw The Cure last night- and weren’t the oldest geezers at the show (nor for that matter was Robert Smith). The band played for just shy of 3 hours, mostly old classics with a sprinkle of new songs. Opening band was 65daysofstatic – an instrumental band from Sheffield whose sound reminded me of Jesus & Mary Chain with hints of old New Order/Joy Division. The Wife is a huge Cure fan and she wasn’t disappointed. I tend to like everything up through Disintegration and neither was I.

The new stuff is still recognizable as Cure but it’s completely devoid of the old dark undertones/angst. Guess the Paxil works – or Robert just isn’t as depressed as he used to be. Either way the new stuff isn’t half bad; mediocre Cure beats most bands’ best stuff any time.

Our ears are still ringing; it’s the first live show we’ve seen in over 16 years, and I’d forgotten how loud rock music can be. We got home close to midnight after picking up the Kid from the Mother-in-law. 20 Years ago I used to go to clubs that didn’t even open until that time. Amazing how Life changes you, or you change to fit Life – or both.

Here’s the current lineup and a shot of the band from Wikipedia. Robert and Simon looked pretty much like this, while Porl looked like Elton John ca 1977,  wearing a mesh top, vinyl pants and red high-heeled platform shoes.

I hate cop funerals. I hate them with every fiber of my being. Northeast Philly shut down today for the funeral procession of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. Here are a couple of photos taken from philly.com (more there).

Liczbinski’s murderer will not be granted such a ceremonious and solemn funeral. The local mosque will not even bury him.

“We don’t tolerate that kind of behavior,” (Tariq El Shabazz, managing director of the mosque) said. “Their actions are not from Islam. You don’t dress like a woman, you don’t rob people or transgress against them or commit murder. On all three grounds, they are dead wrong.”

Two of the three bank robbers were wearing full burkas when they entered the Shop-Rite to rob the Bank of America branch inside it last Saturday. After holding up the bank and getting away with $38,000 Liczbinski was the first officer to pull them over. He was shot 5 times as he was getting out of his patrol car.

It’s tough to support the free market when you feel like you’re on the wrong side of it. After all I’m making the exact same money that I was making 8 years ago after switching careers 5 years ago and knowing more than ever; yet gas has doubled during that time, my property taxes have gone up by about half, and food and utilities have increased as well. But I can’t go to my client and demand more money. Why? Because they’ll replace me with a cheaper business analyst, most likely one on an H-1b.

But the market is functioning just as well as it always has. During that same 8 years plasma televisions have fallen by roughly 75% by my estimation (and I still don’t own one yet dangit!), and I paid less for the laptop I’m using while getting more power, storage and a wider display.

So oil is getting you down? Worried that it’s going to keep going up as we run out of it? Fabius Maximus takes a critical look at Peak Oil and writes:

...Oil prices rose from $1.80 in 1970 to $36.83 in 1980 (Arabian Light oil price, as posted at Ras Tanura). Reacting to that, global oil consumption peaked in 1979 at 66,048 million barrels/day, then dropped by 14% through 1983 — reaching the 1979 peak again only after 14 years, in 1993 (see the BP Statistical Review for details). During that period the global economy (GDP) increased at roughly 3%, slightly below the post-WWII average (using IMF data). A fourteen percent decline in consumption!

At $120, oil prices are up 6x from the 1990’s average. Almost certainly that price shock has created substantial efforts to change energy use, whose results might have not yet appeared in the data. But they will appear, I suspect. Sooner than people expect.

Yesterday the Family hit the American Helicopter Museum in West Chester PA. This museum is a gem; it’s small but packs a lot into a small space and has top-notch displays, including a complete V22 Osprey. A few weeks back the Family sans me visited the museum and discovered that it was running a “Pennies per pound” special: for $.15/lb members of the nearby Brandywine Airport would take you up in a plane for a ride.

I have to admit that I was nervous, but having grown up in a household with a dad who was afraid of storms and driving on the interstate, I’ve learned to be very careful with expressing my fears to the Kid. I don’t want him growing up with the same neuroses that I have; nope, he’ll have to get his own new ones.

The event was run by The 99’s - a group of women devoted to spreading the gospel of Flight started by Amelia Earhart in 1929. The crowd was small but extremely friendly, ranging in age from toddlers to people in their nineties. The Kid & I took to the skies in a Cessna Skyhawk owned and piloted by a guy who looked to be in his early 30’s. A computer programmer by trade, the guy handled his plane confidently and I lost the last of my nerves as soon as his plane took to the air.

Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly. It is a lifelong dream that began with model airplanes hanging from the ceiling in my pediatrician’s office and later my own room as a kid. It has disappeared in the haze of life, clouded by other responsibilities and tasks only to reappear as crystal clear like it had always been there.

I sat in the back seat behind the Kid and the pilot as he took the plane to about 1,500 feet, explaining what he was doing to the Kid over our headsets. Meanwhile I felt like a puppy in a car, leaping from window to the next, taking in the lush Spring foliage of southeastern suburban Pennsylvania gently rolling below us on a sunny and slightly hazy day. Flying this way in such a small craft is different from the commercial travel I’ve known. It is to commercial flight as a motorcycle on winding country roads is to car travel on the interstate. The fact that about a quarter inch of aluminum separated me from plummeting to my death occurred to me but didn’t trouble me in the least.

After the plane landed I spent the next 30 minutes talking to our pilot as the dream settled in, returning after its long absence. I stood at the edge of the runway watching the other planes take off and land, including a 1947 Piper Cub that the Wife and the Mother-in-law each took turns flying in. I saw the planes and knew that I could do it.

Langston Hughes wrote a famous poem about deferred dreams, yet failed to capture what had happened to mine. It didn’t fester or crust-over; it came back as new and as fresh as ever. It never died; in fact I don’t think it can die. It is such a part of me that I suspect that it won’t die until I do.

Does this mean I will run to take lessons tomorrow? No, but the time will come when I take to the sky again, and it will be sooner than even I suspect.

The Kid (disguised as George Clooney) & I and a Cessna Skyhawk 

And Mayor Nutter blames the NRA:

Mayor Nutter this morning said the National Rifle Association owed an apology to the family of slain police officer Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

Nutter recently signed five local gun bills into law, including one that would outlaw the possession and sale of certain assault weapons. The NRA immediately sued the city on the grounds that the city does not have the authority to enact local gun control. They obtained a temporary restraining order to keep the city from enforcing the new laws.

Liczbinski was killed with a Chinese-made assault weapon.

“I think it’s insane,” Nutter said. “The fact that we put forward a piece of legislation to prevent the sale and use and transfer of assault weapons and have a Philadelphia police officer assaulted on the streets with one, I think makes it pretty clear to anyone who is confused about this issue that there’s no reason for any citizen, any person other than in law enforcement or in the military to have such a weapon.”

The mayor completely ignores the fact that had the laws been passed, they would not have kept the guns out of the criminals’ hands. Why? Because all three were convicted felons, and under current law it is illegal for them to possess any type of firearms – let alone a Chinese made assault rifle, the SKS. Howard Cain, the shooter, had recently been paroled after doing the minimum for armed robbery:

Cain entered the state prison system on Nov. 12, 1997 to serve a 9- to 18-year sentence for robbery, said Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.

Just shy of nine years later – his minimum sentence – Cain was sent to Lycoming House, a halfway facility at 1712 Point Breeze Ave. in South Philadelphia, on Sept. 5, 2006, McNaughton said.

That followed a decision by the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole nine days earlier to grant Cain parole at his first hearing.

On Dec. 12 of that year, Cain walked out of Lycoming House a free man.

However, Cain was subject to parole supervision until the year 2015.

Leo Dunn, a spokesman for the parole board, said Cain’s release was based on five considerations.

“First of all, his acceptance of responsibility for the offense committed,” Dunn said. “His participation in and completion of prescribed institutional programs. The positive recommendation made by the Department of Corrections. His reported institutional behavior. And his placement in a community corrections residency.”

Dunn did not know how frequently Cain was required to meet his parole officer, but Cain had to follow a series of requirements to maintain his freedom, including drug tests and avoidance of alcohol.

Overall, Dunn said, the board granted parole in 61 percent of its cases in March, the most recent month for which statistics were available.

The robbery sentence stemmed from a string of armed robberies of state liquor store in West and Southwest Philadelphia in 1996.

Cain, then 23 at the time of the robberies and listed as 5-feet 8-inches tall and weighing 167 pounds, was found guilty a year later in one case and pleaded guilty in another.

Cain also had a history of fighting and fleeing from the police, court records show.

In 1993, Cain stole a car in West Philadelphia and crashed it into a fence after a brief chase by police. He was sentenced to 11 and ½ to 23 months in city jail.

In 1996, he was stopped by police and reportedly began punching at the officers and then running away. He was caught and sentenced to no more than 23 months in city jail.

So the mayor blames the NRA for laws that would not have prevent the officer’s murder, but remains silent on the parole board that put the guy onto the streets 8 months ago. Life in the liberal looking glass in Philadelphia.

I began watching George Lopez, American Mexican on Comedy Central with high expectations. The Kid has been watching the George Lopez show on Nick at Night, and while the show is a typical sitcom, I found myself laughing more than I expected. So when Comedy Central began pushing the show a few weeks back, I made a note to check it out.

I didn’t make it through the first 10 minutes. Lopez was extremely foul mouthed and every other word was bleeped by the cable channel. Even the close captions used the term. Salty language doesn’t offend me. What annoys me is a monologue that sounds like it’s being given in Morse code. His delivery looked frenetic; he was fidgeting and wild, and really looked like he had to cut back on the caffeine.

The monologue itself was terrible. It was extremely partisan, focusing attacks on Bush, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the failed Comprehensive Immigration bill that died late last year. I don’t mind that as long as it’s funny, but telling the governor to go f*** himself isn’t a joke. He was playing to what I assume was a heavily Latina crowd, and I know enough Spanish to follow along, but “We’re here; deal with it” isn’t an immigration policy. And it isn’t funny.

I don’t know if Lopez felt that he had prove that he wasn’t a sellout for the George Lopez show, or if he felt he had to prove that he still “has it.” But I’ve watched Carlos Mencia who shares many of Lopez’s political leanings and sentiments and laughed. I don’t know what George Lopez’s problem is but he sure isn’t funny.

Link

Best of all London mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone received a sound thrashing, losing to conservative candidate Boris Johnson.

Labour officials were amazingly clueless about the burden these green taxes placed on ordinary Britons and merrily proposed more.

“If someone drops litter, they should be arrested,” Livingstone threatened during his campaign, thinking his resolve would impress rather than infuriate voters with its ecologically correct pettiness in a city otherwise awash in real crime.

Every tax and intrusion imposed by Labour in recent years was justified as being for voters’ “own good.” Ending global warming, reducing carbon footprints, lowering carbon emissions and raising public funding of renewable energy — all were excuses used to hit the voters’ pocketbook with more taxes.

Yet none of these taxes improved the quality of life. Instead, just a few of them — the same ones the green lobby wants here — showed British voters this was a puritanical scheme to reduce the quality of life and substitute a Roundhead feeling of virtue as its own reward.

“In other words, don’t even think about enjoying yourself,” wrote Malcolm Davis on Reuters’ site.

But in the meantime, crime rose, state services declined, the bureaucrats proliferated, the National Health Service deteriorated and British purchasing power evaporated. “Many feel the government is creating a green fear for monetary gain,” Mark Hodson of Opinium Research told the Independent newspaper.

Worse yet, government’s only strength seemed to be in harassing its own citizens. Britain, for instance, had been covered with security cameras — which no doubt would be used by Livingstone to nab litterbugs — but have done little to prevent terrorism. It’s telling that last year a car full of bombs was detected not by anti-terror cameras, but by over-active tow trucks looking for illegally parked cars.

I’m just waiting for pundits to blame the loss on conservative US president George Bush.