Year: 2015

Seen this one?  Love has no labels.  Three minutes.  Too good to miss.

And have you heard what George Takei had to say about the Indiana law Republcans enacted that lets businesses deny service to gays (or Jews or whomever) if dealing with such people offends their deeply held religious beliefs?  “If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove.”

No one says you have to have one of us to your home for dinner.  But if you open a restaurant?  Or a bar?  Or a bowling alley?  I’ll have the eggplant, please — with Cap’n Morgan and diet and a size 9-1/2 shoe.

All my best books were written by other people, beginning with David McClintick’s 1982 Indecent Exposure — look! my name in the center of the front cover of a New York Times best-seller! — and now, as I stall and stall trying to find the energy to deliver the TED recap I’ve been promising . . .

. . . how do you recap 90 talks?! not to mention dinners, exhibits, the oxygen bar, and chance encounters? . . .

. . . I am rescued by a comedian whose TED act ddn’t grab me (about her sitting on a Western-style ceramic toilet in Iran that somehow cracked in half) but whose write-up of the 2015 TED experience is way better than mine would have been — and with pictures!

So “my work here is done.”

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But let me add just a few personal highlights to which Negin, no matter how Farsad-ed, could not have been privy.

Like my solo test-drive of this thing, of which there are only three in the world, each valued at $300,000 so I drove it very carefully, with a top speed of 35mph (or in my cautious case, maybe 15mph) — and a range of about 30 miles (or in my case, averaging maybe 7mph for 5 minutes, about 3000 feet) — taking three hours to charge.  Basically, it’s a high-tech three-wheeled electric motorcycle with pedals and a steering wheel, if there were such a thing, all enclosed so you can’t get wet in the rain.

No, they didn’t let us out on the street; we drove around a little obstacle course set up in a portion of the enormous basement of the Vancouver Convention Center.  If it’s ever sold here for under $10,000, I’ll bet a lot of folks will buy it.  (Certainly more practical than this bizarre vehicle, that you actually can buy for $300,000 today.)

Except in cities.

What city-dweller needs a car anymore when he or she can have his own car and driver for way cheaper?

Except in Vancouver which, to the consternation of the assembled TEDsters, still, for now, lacks Uber.

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You know what?  Let me stop here . . . and perhaps up date this page tomorrow or Monday with more stuff for those who are interested.

But in the meantime:

What if 3D printing were 10 times faster?  It’s coming!  Watch it here — free!.

Why do ambitious women have flat heads?  Watch it here — free!

And, yes, what did Monica Lewinsky have to say?  Watch it here — free!

Have a great weekend.

But first, in response to yesterday’s post:

Bob: “Really?  Hillary, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and Elizabeth Warren — if they are president and we are attacked … God help us all.  We can only hope that the remaining 98% of the voting population that is not uber-liberal will do the right thing.”

☞ This strikes me as unconvincing.

You couldn’t have had any less liberal guys in the White House than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — willing, even, to torture. Yet they first failed — badly — to prevent the attack . . . and then, after 15 Saudis leveled the World Trade Center and wounded the Pentagon, they invaded . . . Iraq — and failed to kill Bin Laden.

I don’t doubt they meant well; it just turned out disastrously.  So many lives wrecked.  So many tax dollars wasted that could have gone to strengthen our country.

But wait!

Guess under which president Bin Laden was killed?

And under which President far fewer American lives have been lost?

Barack Obama!

Nor is President Obama a liberal fluke.  Most people think of FDR as the original liberal — but an effective commander in chief (remember World War II?).  Left-leaning Harry Truman dropped two atom bombs.  John Kennedy, a Harvard liberal, faced down Khruschchev and got the missiles removed from Cuba.

So, Bob, as much as one might admire the reckless bravery of a John McCain, or the boundless self-confidence of a Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or George W. Bush, I wouldn’t leap to the conclusion that a liberal — who champions the interests of those in or striving to enter the middle class (and, yes, even the downtrodden) — would be a push-over if we were ever again attacked.

Thoughtful, perhaps.  Wise, perhaps.  Cagey or nuanced or far-sighted, perhaps.  But not necessarily weak.

A SINNER IN MECCA

Parvez Sharma — a gay Muslim — risked his life making his second documentary.  (The first, “A Jihad for Love,” won awards and has been screened everywhere from the U.S. State Department and film festivals in the West to the darkened rooms of Muslims in countries where the consequences, if discovered, could be dire.)

It premiers at the HotDocs festival later next month.

Read the story here.

Wow.

I know: TED.  Just so much!  Maybe Friday.

In the meantime . . .

HILLARY

Victor: “Did you see this piece?  ‘There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face.’  Sounds like he has been reading your blog.”

So it does.  Though, frankly, as a Hillary fan (and neutral until we have a nominee), I’m not eager to “press” her on anyone 593 days in advance.  (I’m also a Bernie Sanders fan and a Martin O’Malley fan, and certainly an Elizabeth Warren fan.)  If Hillary does run, and does win the nomination, we should remember to trot that link out in about 540 days — and then re-run it every day until November 8, 2016.

REDHEADS

I never really paid much attention — just as it always surprises me when people notice I’m left-handed — tons of people are left-handed just as tons of people are red-headed (though, interestingly, no redheads are left-handed*) — but the first 7-minute episode of Redheads Anonymous web series was released on St. Patrick’s Day and it’s fun.  Especially for me, because I’ve known its star and creator star since she was two.

Meanwhile, in the more purely superficial department, there was this red hot exhibition last fall.  (Why am I so embarrassed about being superficial?  I should own it.  Wear it like a badge.  Look at these guys!  Click here for even more.)

*I assume that’s not true; I just thought it sounded funny.  If 10% of Americans are left-handed (though 30% are apparently mixed-handed — I write with my left hand but throw with my right arm) . . . and if 4% are redheaded (I saw an estimate of 2%-6%, which probably has more to do with defining how red you have to be to qualify, or else how could the range be so broad?) . . . then 1 of every 250 Americans is a redheaded leftie.  More than a million!

For weeks before an election that could have hiked the minimum wage, reformed immigration and revitalized our crumbling infrastructure — at once boosting the economy and strengthening the nation — all the media could focus on was Ebola.

The death toll among those contracting it here?  Zero.*

(November would also have been a chance for the 92% of Americans who favor universal background checks to vote for representatives who’d pass them; the vast majority who favor ENDA to vote for represenatives who’d pass it; and student-loan holders to vote for representatives who’d allow them to refinance at today’s low rates, as homeowners do.)

Ebola consumed mindshare that would better have been devoted to a logical discussion of the policy choices the election represented, but we seem to choose our leaders largely on how tall they are and how much we’d like to share a beer.

War?  Peace?  Investment?  Austerity?  You make my head hurt even trying to think about such things!  I just like the candidate’s hair.

Plus, everyone’s lying to us anyway, so why even try to figure out whose policies would be best?

But actually, not everybody’s lying to us.  It’s not equivalent on both sides.

George W. Bush told a multi-trillion dollar lie to get elected — “By far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cuts would go to people “at the bottom of the economic ladder.”  He and Dick Cheney told us they would go to war in Iraq only as a last resort — and somehow, 70% of the people who voted to reelect them came to believe Iraq had a hand in attacking us on 9/11.

Even if it were true that Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet (he never did) . . . even if it were true that he should have gone across the street to make some fundraising calls (there was “no controlling authority” and the cost to the taxpayers of the phone calls was, in any event, infinitesimally trivial) . . . what difference does it make?  

The important thing Al Gore has long been saying is that we, as a species, face catastrophe if we don’t address climate change.

And on that point the opposition works actively to mislead.  So much so you could write a book about it: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

So let’s consider for a moment the seemingly co-equal controversies of the last few weeks: Hillary’s emails and the 47 Republican senators’ letter seeking to undermine the President’s negotiations with Iran.

• One involves war and peace — things that make a meaningful difference in average American lives.  (Ask any family struggling to get by because we spent a trillion dollars in Iraq that we failed to spend here; ask the family of any vet suffering from PTSD.)

• The other involves a ninth taxpayer-financed Republican Congressional investigation into Benghazi.  (The first eight found no wrongdoing; including the the most recent to release its findings.)  The Secretary’s emails relating to Benghazi — the only ones the Republicans claim they’re after — make zero difference in average American lives.

WRITING THE AYATOLLAH

The New York Daily News dubbed the 47 Republican signers “traitors.”

Jonathan Capehart reports for the Washington Post that retired Major Gen. Paul D. Eaton prefers a different characterization:

“I would use the word mutinous,” said Eaton . . . “I do not believe these senators were trying to sell out America. I do believe they defied the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act. . . . a gross breach of discipline.  . . .

“I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on to succeed. . . . The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran.”

This is a big deal.

THE EMAILS

This is not.

Critics argue the Secretary should have used two separate email accounts, even though it wasn’t then required by law.  But what difference would it have made if she had?  Would those critics have trusted her to assign Whatever-They-Think-She-Is-Hiding to the proper account?  One presumes they would have demanded her private emails even if she had kept two separate accounts.

And what exactly do the Republicans think she is hiding?

If it’s nothing specific, why not subpoena the private emails of all elected and appointed officials?  Some of them have doubtless done something wrong — or at least emabarrassing — that we could uncover if we went through all their emails.

(And what about texts?  Hand-written communications?  Diaries?  Phone conversations?  Private thoughts?  Would we go after them if we could?  Why is it only emails that matter?  And why do we think it’s okay Lindsay Graham doesn’t send any?  What’s he trying to hide by avoiding the one form of communication easily subpoenaed?  Should we start investigating all those who don’t use email?  Their aides?  Their spouses?)

Or should we perhaps save our investigations for important things where there’s credible evidence of possible wrongdoing that needs to be investigated?  Like four days of massive traffic jams blocking access to the George Washington Bridge.  Who ordered that and why?

What’s the similar mystery Republicans feel bound to unravel with Secretary Clinton?  They say they’re only after Benghazi emails.  Do they think that after eight investigations, and against all reason, it will turn out she secretly wished the four fallen Americans harm?  (Here’s how she eulogized them, by the way.)

Others hope to find some kind of impropriety involving gifts to the Clinton Foundation.  But really?  Is it in any way credible that as Secretary of State — or President — she would put some foreign government’s interests ahead of our own because it had given $50 million to help the Foundation fight AIDS or repair Haiti or combat childhood obesity?  Really?

You will recall that Bush/Cheney defied requests even for the list of attendees, let alone transcripts, of the secret White House meetings held to formulate energy policy.  Any chance Cheney had a conflict of interest with Haliburton?  That Bush was favoring the oil industry to enrich his friends?  That he protected Enron, even as it was bringing consumers to their knees manipulating prices?

Somehow this seems more ripe for review than the Clinton Foundation’s receivingforeign support for its humanitarian work around the world.  How would that have hurt American consumers?

To a reader who wrote to express outrage over the email “scandal” I replied:  “What is it you suspect Hillary of DOING?????  Are you still upset the Clintons lost $35,000 in a failed real estate deal called Whitewater?  Or that someone in the White House travel office may have gotten a raw deal?  Does that overshadow, for you, the eight years of peace and prosperity and progress the nation enjoyed under the last Clinton administration?  What of the Clinton Global Initiative that (like the Carter Center) has helped millions upon millions of people – real, living, breathing, individual people?  Is the important thing to focus on here not all the good the Foundation has done/is doing, but, rather, that you just don’t like Hillary?”

Sorry, but I get a little steamed.

Even the New York Times got some of it wrong initially.

As Media Matters reported:

The indispensible Paul Krugman writing in the indispensible New York Times (support reason! subscribe!):

By now it’s a Republican Party tradition: Every year the party produces a budget that allegedly slashes deficits, but which turns out to contain a trillion-dollar “magic asterisk” — a line that promises huge spending cuts and/or revenue increases, but without explaining where the money is supposed to come from.

But the just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground. Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks: one on spending, one on revenue. And that’s actually an understatement. If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the first decade.

You might be tempted to shrug this off, since these budgets will not, in fact, become law. Or you might say that this is what all politicians do. But it isn’t. The modern G.O.P.’s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And that’s telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.

So, about those budgets: both claim drastic reductions in federal spending. Some of those spending reductions are specified: There would be savage cuts in food stamps, similarly savage cuts in Medicaid over and above reversing the recent expansion, and an end to Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies. Rough estimates suggest that either plan would roughly double the number of Americans without health insurance. But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security. What form would these further cuts take? We get no hint.

Meanwhile, both budgets call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including the taxes that pay for the insurance subsidies. That’s $1 trillion of revenue. Yet both claim to have no effect on tax receipts; somehow, the federal government is supposed to make up for the lost Obamacare revenue. How, exactly? We are, again, given no hint.

And there’s more: The budgets also claim large reductions in spending on other programs. How would these be achieved? You know the answer.

It’s very important to realize that this isn’t normal political behavior. The George W. Bush administration was no slouch when it came to deceptive presentation of tax plans, but it was never this blatant. And the Obama administration has been remarkably scrupulous in its fiscal pronouncements.

O.K., I can already hear the snickering, but it’s the simple truth. Remember all the ridicule heaped on the spending projections in the Affordable Care Act? Actual spending is coming in well below expectations, and the Congressional Budget Office has marked its forecast for the next decade down by 20 percent. Remember the jeering when President Obama declared that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term? Well, a sluggish economy delayed things, but only by a year. The deficit in calendar 2013 was less than half its 2009 level, and it has continued to fall.

So, no, outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing. And the question we should ask is why.

One answer you sometimes hear is that what Republicans really believe is that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but they’re afraid that the public won’t find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.

But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.

But this is, of course, not a policy direction the public would support if it were clearly explained. So the budgets must be sold as courageous efforts to eliminate deficits and pay down debt — which means that they must include trillions in imaginary, unexplained savings.

Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were never sincere? Yes, it does.

Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.

“By far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cuts, presidential candidate George W. Bush promised voters would go to people “at the bottom of the economic ladder.”  With that multi-trillion-dollar lie he was able to win nearly as many votes as Al Gore — even in Florida — and the crucial fifth vote on the Supreme Court, to which he would go on to appoint two more conservatives, who would go on to give yet more political power to the rich (Citizens United; McCutcheon), who would go on to fund further Republican political gains in state legislatures and governors’ mansions, the House and Senate.  Their goal now: the White House in 2016, and the chance to replace four octogenarian Justices (two of them liberal) with 48-year-old conservatives.  Game, set, and match: control of all three branches of government.  Hurrah for Fox News, Sarah Palin, and Mitch McConnell, who tells us that “by any standard” — housing? employment? the Dow? military casualties? — “Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”

Are your kids registered to vote?  Do they understand what’s happening to their country?  Did you forward them the Jon Stewart clip I posted Saturday?  Did you have a chance to watch?

There is some slim but real chance you’ve not yet watched this 9-minute clip, in which Ferguson meets Benghazi and Fox News literally explodes in shame.  Or would, that is, if it had any.*

*All of which would be little more than laughable if they and right-wing talk radio hadn’t done so much tangible harm. Polarizing our country, poisoning our politics, and giving us things like the Iraq War that left so many scarred or dead and cost us trillions.

Still so much going on at TED — I’m about to go for my solo test-drive of this thing! (do they know how badly I drive?) and one of the speakers makes a somewhat plausible case that 80,000 colonists a year will be flying to Mars and another is blind as a bat but has developed the ability to see the way a bat does . . . and I met the guy who invented Siri and the Estonian who engineered Skype and a Romanian who has a great way to make phsyical therapy more palatable and a Spaniard who “came out” to a book I wrote 40 years ago and even got to fawn over Jeff Bezos a little and meet one of the Bezos scholars, a freshman at Harvard, who lives in Pennypacker Hall, which I just find so cool because she climbs the same stairs up to her room I did, a few decades ago, when I was in Pennypacker — just no time to write about.

So in the meantime:

PAY IT FORWARD

Schmalz alert!  But what’s wrong with a little schmalz every so often?

So much going on at TED — just no time to write about.

So in the meantime:

THE MINNESOTA EXPERIMENT

“This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Increased the Minimum Wage — Now, His State’s Economy Is One of the Best in the Country.”  Spread the word: middle-class economics works.  And winds up enriching everybody!  (Did the rich do better under Clinton, who raised taxes on the rich and the minimum wage, or Bush, who slashed taxes onthe rich and froze the minimum wage?   Hint: the stock market soared tripled under Clinton, cratered under Bush.  Obama, too, raised tax rates on the rich — yet the the stock market has again tripled.)

Check it out.

Sorry to be late with this, which I’d usually post on a Friday when you had the whole weekend ahead to find 20 minutes to watch . . . but I got thrown by the time difference.  Did you know Vancouver is three hours behind the East Coast?  And observes daylight savings time — but that two Canadian provinces don’t and a third, Newfoundland, is half an hour askew year round?  (And what’s up with Arizona?)

But while I edit my Hillary email/Senate Iran letter thoughts, watch John Oliver, Edward Norton, and an all-star cast make Infrastructure super fun and scary.  Rated R, for language.

(Spoiler alert: how self-destructive are we?  We should just add 25 cents a gallon to the federal gas tax and be done with it.  Oliver doesn’t go that far — he doesn’t venture into the realm of science fiction, an alternative universe in which we, as a nation, make rational decisions — but that, in fact, is what we should do.  And by the way?  If you were getting 18mpg in 1993, the last time the tax was hiked, but will be getting 36mpg going forward, then, adjusted for inflation, the federal gas tax you’d be paying to drive a mile would still be lower than it was in 1993.)

C’mon, Congress: man up!