Obama Come Lately?

The Obama administration is taking no small amount of heat for being slow to react to the Libya crisis. At least it's reacting now, and it's likely Mr. Wacko over there in Tripoli will be gone fairly soon by one means or other.

The President chose to wait until there was some kind of international consensus about what to do. Many of us would have preferred that we just send in the Marines and kick a little butt -- I felt that way, too. But if you look back in history not so very far, you can see where doing it the other way got us. You do remember Bush's "coalition of the willing" before we went to Iraq, right?

Jumping in late is kind of how we do things. How many people did Hitler and the Japanese kill in their respective marches of occupation before we got involved in World War II? It feels good, in a perverse sort of way, to have a clear villain like Gaddafi to hate -- but there are quite a few more around the world who mistreat whole populations, but manage to do it very effectively under the radar.

What's going to be very interesting is what happens after Gaddafi is removed and the finger-pointing begins. After World War II, liberated populations in Europe shaved the heads of collaborators in public -- many of them women who had slept with the enemy. There are a lot of dirty hands this time around. Just for starters, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Usher and others have 'splainin' to do after reportedly taking big bucks to perform at private Gaddafi parties. But who rehabilitated Gaddafi in the first place and welcomed him back into the civilized world? Libya served on the U.N. Human Rights Council, for heaven's sake. Gaddafi ordered an airliner shot down and later, he wasn't such a bad guy after all? And who's been supplying his regime with weapons? The West in general would do best to stay out of the collaborator hunt. One concern for the U.S. going forward is what side the newly emerging governments in the Middle East are going to perceive we were on.

Yes, we were late getting into the game, but at least we're in it now. You can still turn things around, even after the two-minute warning.

Insanity's Poster Boy

Mr. Gaddafi has just delivered a speech lasting more than an hour. Yesterday I hated him; today, it's more about sadness. If you need a definition of insanity, he's it. It's hard to feel hate and pity simultaneously. Libya is waking up from a nightmare -- and the first step in the healing process is to become aware that in the end, scary as it is, it's just a nightmare.

Presidential Love

I watched with interest some of the ceremonies related to what would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. Why do we love this man so much?

When I say "we," I mean this in a very general sense, because some people hated the Reagan area for various reasons. Mr. Reagan certainly wasn't perfect. Contrary to popular belief, he was not singlehandedly responsible for the fall of Communism in Europe. There was Iran-Contra, and Star Wars. But a lot of people loved him, and if you're a Republican running for office, at some point it's almost required that you invoke him. It may not get you elected, but it certainly can't do you harm.

I can't explain it; I'm not that diligent a student of history and don't have the credentials to debate this issue here, but it must be that we perceive that he made us feel good about ourselves as Americans.

I can think of a lot of Presidents who are respected for accomplishing important, even historic things during their terms, or after their terms. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are both appreciated for what they do. LBJ turned landmark legislation into law. I don't remember what Eisenhower did, but he's associated with the good old days and a time of stability. Harry Truman was praised for his no-nonsense style. JFK faced down the Russians during the Cuban missile crisis, and said, "Ask not…" But we didn't love any of these people the way we loved Reagan.

The last President people felt this for was FDR. And before that, it was Teddy. Americans did not feel this for Woodrow Wilson or Herbert Hoover. Or Grover Cleveland. Or William Howard Taft. No -- you have to go back to Abraham Lincoln for genuine (though not universal) love. It seems we only get one of these every 30 to 50 years.

Clara Bow was the "It" girl back in the 20s. Someone tell me what actually makes an "It" President -- and how long do you think we'll have to wait before the next one comes along?

Safe Speech

The shooting in Arizona has been followed by the expected discussion about right-wing talk radio, Sarah Palin and her map with crosshairs on it and the like. I agree that we'd all benefit from an infusion of civility in our discourse, but what exactly is safe?

The threat of terrorism has caused us to implement all kinds of security measures which have slowed us down and lowered our quality of life. Commercial air travel is now a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but we put up with the inconveniences and embarrassments we wouldn't ordinarily tolerate because they make us safer -- or at least, makes us feel safer. But there always seems to be someone who figures out a way to get around our carefully crafted safeguards, and we have to tighten the cinch still further.

Maybe we can keep most bad guys off airplanes, but what are we going to do about speech? It's very easy to blame the cable channel whose politics you don't agree with or the Internet for rhetoric that seems to give permission to people to do outrageous things. But do we now have to water down what we say in the course of legitimate debate to avoid sending the lowest common denominator of nut case over the edge? Do we have to start tiptoeing around verbal eggshells?

The young man who shot up that Tucson parking lot clearly had a track record of mental instability, and he sent out plenty of signals ahead of time. Is there any way to intervene earlier and more forcefully with people like this, especially before they have access to guns? Talk about "Second Amendment solutions" -- maybe there should be a solution to the Second Amendment.

All I know is, I don't want to live in a world where I have to pass through a full-body scanner before going to see my congressional representative at a public meeting. If we start restricting access to gatherings like the one in Tucson, where is it going to end?

BTW, do you notice that after every one of these shootings, we go through the same struggle trying to make sense of it? Are we going around in big circles, or are we really learning something new, and acting on the information?

Is It Safe to Appear Now, Mr. Gore?

Even though climate change, misnamed "global warming" by Al Gore, has taken a beating as a theory of late (though most respected scientists still accept it), those who think it's a hoax have a little 'splainin to do.

• The Blizzard of 2010, with first snow ever in some areas of the South.
• Three hard freezes in a row in Florida, $100 million plus in crop damage.
• L.A. gets half its annual rainfall in five days.
• Airports closed by snow in the U.K. and much of Western Europe.
• Flooding on Australia's "Sunshine" Coast forces evacuation of entire town.
• Torrential rain and flooding on the Indus River displaces millions in Pakistan.
• October storm in the Midwest has among the lowest non-tropical pressure recorded in the U.S., comparable to Category 3 hurricane.

So are we just doing a better job of reporting on things that have always happened, or is something new happening?

Fantasy or Nightmare?

I recently dreamed the following: President Obama was on TV in 2011, addressing the nation. He announced that he would not seek a second term for President. A short time later, Hillary Clinton announced that she was a candidate, again.

I have gradually come to the conclusion that Obama is toast as far as 2012 is concerned. If he really wants the Democrats to put their best foot forward in '12, it would require a "sacrifice fly." The Dems would very likely have the country's first major-party female nominee for President, with the potential of energizing women the same way Obama energized minorities, young people and Bush-haters in 2008. It just might be sufficient to overcome the handicap of being Democrat.

Health care will show itself historically to be Obama's Vietnam -- the same force that caused Lyndon Johnson to tell us, "Ah shall not seek, and ah will not accept..."

This is the Democratic Party's Hail Mary pass, if you don't mind mixing sports metaphors. If Obama doesn't throw it, 2012 will go down as the first year of the Republican dynasty of the 21st century.

Guess it's time to wake up now.

Ordinary People?

One of the qualities that attracted Republican primary voters in Delaware to Christine O'Donnell, as one of them told CNN, was that she was "one of us." That means, an ordinary American just trying to get along in today's hard times, as opposed to those out-of-touch fat-cat politicians.

If I read my history book right, the Founding Fathers were not ordinary folks. As a rule, they were well-educated, wealthy landowners -- in other word, the elite. If you consider the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution works of genius, well, genii are a pretty rare breed. None of them was one of us.

Getting back to Ms. O'Donnell, how "one of us" is she? Setting aside her admitted dabbling in witchcraft (does that fall under "girls will be girls"?), what about this mishandling of campaign funds to make personal ends meet? Does that fall under, well, times are tough, and we all have to play a few creative money games to get by?

Campaign funds aren't exactly public money, but pretty close. The amounts that appear to have been misused by O'Donnell seem trivial in comparison to the public funds that may be wasted -- or stolen -- in Washington on a daily basis, but the Bible talks about the need to be "faithful over a few things" before an individual is made "ruler over many." And wasn't honor one of the Christian virtues touted at Glenn Beck's rally?

Do the people of Delaware -- or other states, for that matter -- really prefer candidates who see virtue in dodging legitimate questions, or flat-out walking away from cameras, when they're stumped for answers? If so, they will get exactly the representation they deserve in November -- and so will the rest of us, if we don't get out and vote.

There, now I've said it.

What You Don't Know

How many of those who bought their homes in a quiet residential area of San Bruno knew that they were on top of a 30-inch natural gas transmission line that would someday blow up and obliterate much of their neighborhood? Do you know what's underneath your feet right now?

It's called infrastructure, and it makes much of what happens in our lives work. This kind of infrastructure is ugly. It's best when it's invisible, and when it's working the way it should, we don't even know it's there. We flush a toilet, and the business we just did is carried out of our lives by a system invisible to most of us. It's, uh, not our business anymore. It just disappears--unless, of course, there's a sewer backup or something. In Christchurch, New Zealand, a 7-point earthquake heavily damaged infrastructure, making toilets unflushable and water undrinkable. All of a sudden, the residents had to think about things they never spent much time thinking about before.

A number of years ago, I remember a big to-do in a Southern California city where I worked about a truck that was going to be passing through the area on a nearby freeway. As I recall, it was carrying nuclear fuel rods. Local officials were all steamed up about it. Quite frankly, I don't remember what happened, but I think the truck passed through without vaporizing any cities along the way.

A big fuss was made about that shipment, because we knew ahead of time it was coming. But how many thousand gallons of unknown unpleasantness pass through the area unannounced on the same freeway every day? And how about the railroad? I remember a train wreck in that area involving a tanker car that had some unpronounceable chemical on it. Fortunately, it didn't leak. Had it done so, 25,000 people would have had to be evacuated immediately. But freight trains carrying nasty stuff travel the same route daily, without incident. We’re surrounded by potential danger, whether we think about it or not -- but it almost always stays potential.

This doesn't relieve those who operate the trucks, trains and pipelines from maintaining them and government from seeing to it that the maintenance is done. The bottom line is, we seem to need this unpronounceable stuff somewhere in our lives, even though we don't know what it is or how we use it. But after a while, things in the system that deliver them call attention to themselves and require repair or replacement -- and more often, of course, as they age.

I guess that's why we have skin. If we didn't, we'd have to look at a lot of less-than-photogenic parts of the human body -- yucky unless you enjoyed dissecting frogs in biology class. We don't have to know what those parts are or where they are -- we just expect them to work, silently and invisibly, if at all possible.

But is there such a thing as too silent and too invisible?

I'll Be Glad When 9/11's OVER

OK, I, too am angry about Mr. Qu'ran Burner down in Florida. Anyone with a brain -- and a heart -- knows how despicable an act this will be. But I'm tired of hearing about it, and of looking at, and listening to, him. Fine, Anderson Cooper, you sliced him and diced him in your interview. General Petraeus, I'm sure you're right about this act exposing American forces to reprisals. But as we get more and more vocal about this, we're elevating the stature of a crackpot, and giving an act far more attention than it deserves.

We're giving this screwball an enormous amount of power, telling the world that his act will endanger American troops abroad (as if they aren't in enough now). While one part of me wants to put a bag over his head labeled, "This is not a toy," I wonder what would happen if everyone just ignored him? Kinda the way we treat Pat Robertson. I think this guy's 15 minutes are now UP.

We all get sucked into debates about lofty principles, like free speech, freedom of religion, property rights, sensitivity to others, etc. -- but who are the principals (yes, I spelled it right) involved? This preacher's own daughter calls his church a "cult," according to reports, and he's been sued for mismanagement of funds. Before him, though, there's the New York imam of proposed-Islamic-center fame, whose own background is also a little questionable, for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism. At the least, he's not a very good fund-raiser -- or wasn't, until he got all this free publicity.

BTW, I wonder if there would be such a fuss about this mosque thing if, by now, there had been a real memorial at Ground Zero. That site may be hallowed, but right now it's little more than hollowed (I spelled that right, too).

Going forward, the only good news on both of these fronts will be here Sunday--when it’s finally September 12th.

There, now I've daid it.

Notes From the NZ Quake

I've spent a good part of the last several days listening online to Newstalk ZB's radio news coverage of Christchurch, New Zealand's 7-point earthquake, which occurred early last Saturday morning. Here are a few observations.

Christchurch is New Zealand's second-largest city, with a population of about 400,000. The earthquake's epicenter was about 20 miles to the west. An estimated 100,000 homes in the area were damaged. The city's central business district, where 89 buildings were damaged, was closed off. The city's tallest building, a seven-story structure built in 1906 and used for offices, will have to be demolished. Other historic buildings, some dating back to the middle 19th century, sustained damage, including the city's historic cathedral.

The quake knocked out power, phone service, and water. While the first two were restored fairly quickly, area residents were warned to boil water because of damage to sewage facilities, and were also asked to hold off on flushing toilets. Those who didn't take this advice came down with gastroenteritis.

Liquefaction occurred. This involves water pushed up from below ground and turning the surface into jelly. This shifts pipes and other underground infrastructure, and when the soil hardens again after the quake, that's where they are. It could be months or even years to rebuild those systems.

Remarkably, no one died and relatively few were injured, but aftershocks in the 5-point range continued to occur right through Tuesday, and nerves are now frayed. Few have been able to sleep. Some people can't take it and have left the area. Folks in other parts of New Zealand have opened their homes to Christchurch residents to give them a little peace -- especially the children.

I heard that there were offers of financial help from all over the world, to which the New Zealanders have said politely, thank you, but we can take care of ourselves.

The incumbent mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker, was facing a stiff re-election challenge in October. He was trailing his challenger in the polls. But he has performed so well as a community leader during this disaster that one radio commentator suggested that the election was "over" and that the challenger should "find a garage and go park it." If you perform well in a crisis, no one can beat you.

The quake is still getting a good deal of coverage from the Newstalk ZB radio network. If you're interested, here's the link:

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/streaming/newstalkzb-streaming.asp

What About Pakistan?

The phenomenon of what I call selective compassion has always interested me. Americans and others fell all over themselves to help the Haitians after January's earthquake. The world responded after the tidal wade swept through South Asia a few years ago. But here's Pakistan, which has experienced a truly cataclysmic flood that has displaced millions of people throughout much of the country and more or less wiped out much of its agriculture. The U.N. reported that 90,000 children were in immediate danger of death. But how much reporting have we seen about it here? Has anyone put on a telethon for those people? Why don't we care?

Is it geography? Pakistan is the other side of the world, after all, not like Haiti. Is it "disaster fatigue?" Possibly. But I'm not sure either of those explains it. I think it's because it's Pakistan, next door to where we've been fighting a war, and we're not quite sure whether those people are really our friends.

List this one under Mike's impossible solutions to modern problems: We have 90,000 troops already in that region. Too bad we can't move a substantial number of them into Pakistan to help out those flood victims, though I guess we’ve sent a few. If theTaliban do a better job of helping out, whose side do you think the people in that country are going to be on?

I know, I know, that's not what we're over there for, and of course, the Pakistanis probably wouldn't care for the idea of U.S. troops on their soil. But I like to oversimplify complicated situations -- please forgive me.

The Mosque Thing, Take Two

It's shocking, some say, that the Muslims want to build an Islamic center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Now, at least one activist has called for a moratorium on building mosques anywhere in the United States.

I've always operated on the principle that one shouldn't go where one isn't wanted. But I upset a few friends recently when suggesting that on those grounds, there would have been no Rosa Parks, no lunch-counter sit-ins, and perhaps, no civil rights movement.

The idea of an Islamic center near Ground Zero is offensive to many Americans, just the way those lunch-counter sit-ins offended many whites in the Deep South back in the 1950s and '60s. Not the same thing at all, some of you will say. Think of the 9/11 victims' families! It's just another liberal appeasement. But how liberal an idea is private property?

To be honest, I don't really want an Islamic center near Ground Zero, either. If I were advising those behind this project, I'd beg them to put it somewhere else, if for no other reason than to defuse this controversy. But the law doesn't require sensitivity to anyone's feelings--or even wisdom.

Most terrorists that we're concerned about lately seem to be Muslims, but only a minority of Muslims are terrorists. Do we object to locating a Catholic church near a park where children play because some priests are pedophiles?

Keep extrapolating from forbidding the building of mosques, and where do you end up? A new crusade against Islam? If you'll excuse me for a minute, I have to dig out my history book, but as I recall, the last one didn't go all that well for the Crusaders.

There, now I've said it.

Unwanted Guests

When I heard about the Islamic center proposed near Ground Zero, my first impression was: Why are people so dumb as to insist on going places they're not wanted?

My second impression was, well, with that attitude, there probably would have been no Rosa Parks, sit-ins at lunch counters, or the civil rights movement in general.

There, now I've said it.

The M Word (repeat)

To paraphrase the old Universal Pictures slogan from the 1930s, "A Good Blog Is Worth Repeating." This one goes back to Oct. 13, 2008, before the passage of California's Proposition 8. Reposting is about not having anything new to say -- but on this subject, I don't:

The M Word

The debate over same-sex marriage could be ended very easily by rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, if you don’t mind the Biblical reference. Just remove the word “marriage” from the law.

You may or may not accept the premise that a certain percentage of human beings are just wired gay, which I do, seeing as how that seems to be the case in mammals generally. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a hardware or software issue, or even what Miss California thinks.

Your local county clerk would issue licenses for domestic partnership (or whatever you want to call it) ONLY, and these would have the full legal status that marriage has now. There would be no government-performed ceremonies (including judicial ones), so the religious or philosophical objections of clerk’s personnel or other officials would have no bearing – it simply would be none of their business.

In many religions, marriage is a sacrament, and that is its proper status. Churches and other religious or quasi-religious institutions should be free to perform gay marriage ceremonies, or not, and if marriage had no legal status, there would be no opportunity for lawsuits over this issue.

This all comes under the heading of my impossible solutions to modern problems, although I heard that someone is mounting a California initiative with very similar provisions. But frankly, I’m tired of listening to this debate. Boycotting a business that supported Proposition 8, in the middle of a recession, makes no sense. And is a straight marriage that lasts six months “better” than a gay marriage between two committed partners that lasts 20 years? Will gay unions really undermine the family unit as we know it? We should be celebrating and reinforcing the commitment, not the ceremony.

If we’re really committed to the separation of church and state, removing the word “marriage,” with all its emotional and spiritual accoutrements, from our legal codes would be a great place to start.

There, now I've said it.

The Devil Makes Us Do It

We can't live with him and we can't live without him. THE DEVIL, that is. Let's face it. As Americans, we have this vague sense of unease unless there's a DEVIL to kick around.

Get thee behind me, Hitler! Stalin! Mao! Manson! Nixon! Khomeini! Saddam! Osama! Madoff! And now, Hayward! (taking the pressure off Obama).

Doesn't it feel good to find someone we can all get mad at simultaneously? Republicans, Democrats, everybody? It's THE DEVIL!

Did you watch the coverage of Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, appearing before the congressional committee Thursday? On the top right of your screen, an angry member of Congress. On the lower right, Tony Hayward. On the lower center, the BP well spewing oil at 18,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf. And on the left panel, a pelican covered with oil, dissolving into the slow crawl of the mug shots of the 11 oil rig workers killed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Hate doesn't get any better than this.

What do these congressional hearings accomplish? Do we learn anything new? Of course not. But we all need to vent, and our representatives vent for us. At least this time, they're representing us.

Thank you, Tony. You don't realize what a service you are performing for the national psyche. You are THE DEVIL, and we need you.

Only do me a favor. Stop referring to the disaster as "the accident." It wasn't. From the reporting I've seen and heard, there were plenty of warnings about the potential of a disaster that BP deliberately chose to ignore. It was no accident.

Beyond all this, we may have to ask ourselves, what are we going to do without you?

Too Many Ringy-Dingys

Those of you who consider campaign signs to be blight on the landscape at least have a choice. If you really hate them, you can alter your drive-to-work route to avoid them. But there's no escape from robo-calls.

We're California Republicans in our house, and there were some hot contests, of course, in the primary. Meg started her calls first -- seemed like it was at the end of April. And it seemed like once a day. Steve was late with his barrage, but once they started, it was daily. Just in case we got tired of hearing their voices, then all their endorsers chimed in with their recorded messages.

It didn't stop there. All the local officeholders did it, too. The coroner is not one you usually want to get a phone call from, but there he was, and of course, his opponent. The retiring treasurer/tax collector told us to vote for his assistant.

My favorites were the ones from candidates inviting us to join in on a teleconference in progress. It would have been nice if they had called before the thing started. What's up with that?

For those who know our phone number, we almost never answer the phone live anymore, so during campaign season it just means half a dozen or more extra messages per day piling up on the answering machine. So I was busy with the Delete button -- except one time.

Sarah Palin called, urging me to vote for Carly Fiorina. I kept that one for a while so other members of the family could hear it. Sarah generally has kind of an annoying voice, but we were struck by her giddy enthusiasm in boosting Carly. It reminded us of someone, and it finally came to us who.

A few years ago, we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel, and had left a wake-up call. It was the recorded voice of none other than Mickey himself. "It's gonna be a great day," Mickey bubbled, "So let's…get…started!"

Anyway, thanks for the call, Sarah, bye-bye now! (DELETE).

No Fail-Safe for Human Beings

Amid all the finger-pointing spawned by the Gulf oil disaster, there's one simple fact that's crystal clear. It was a human failure, not a technological or mechanical one, that's to blame.

If we're to believe 60 Minutes, there was clear warning of a problem weeks before the oil rig blew up, when a gasket on the rig's blowout preventer was damaged. But the warnings were ignored, apparently because BP, which was in awful bloody hurry to get drilling going, took control of how things were going to be done.

I suppose you could make the argument that all technical failures are human failures, since the technology is created by humans. But this isn't quite one of those situations where some engineer used faulty calculation accidentally. This involved a loud, in-your-face warning which was ignored. Why? To maximize profits and minimize losses? To get a bonus? To strut around at a stockholder's meeting?

It's a given that our legacy methods of generating energy involve risk. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a lot more harm can be caused by a problem on an oil-drilling rig or an ocean-going tanker, or in a coal mine or a nuclear power plant, than anything that could happen with windmills or solar panels. And even if human beings behave perfectly, there are always earthquake and hurricanes, etc.

But there is no protection against disaster if profit or status is going to trump safety, and if those we entrust to regulate our riskiest endeavors don't do their jobs. The fact is, the vast majority of drilling rigs, tankers, coal mines and nuclear plants work just fine. But there is no technological safeguard, no mechanical backup yet devised, that can protect us against laziness, greed, or excess ambition.

Maybe Arnold's Right

California's "governator" has made no secret of the fact that he would love to run for President, if the law allowed it. Our Constitution, of course, doesn't, according to standard interpretations of the 14th Amendment. . He wasn't born here. In the case of Barack Obama, the Birthers just won't let go of their claim that he really wasn't born here, either, and has no legal right to be President.

Even if Arnold Schwarzenegger could run for President, I probably wouldn't vote for him, but I wish he could anyway. From what I read, the constitutional provision barring such a thing dates back to Alexander Hamilton. In this nation's infancy, there was a real fear that we could fall under the domination of a foreign power, and the birth requirement was a link in the chain of defense.

But that was then, as they say, and this is now. Millions of immigrants have made our country what it is today without trying to take it over in behalf of a foreign power, because our system has allowed them to prosper. As for domination by foreign powers, well, someday, at the rate we're going, we may have to turn over the keys to China or India. But that's a whole 'nuther animal.

Personally, I've had it up to here with people who think that simply because they were born here and speak English, it makes them better than those who weren't or don't. Your birth is something you have absolutely no control over -- so how can you take credit for it? As for English, if that's what you were raised with, there's not much more credit you can claim for that.

The fact is, if most of us who were born here had to take a citizenship test, we'd fail miserably. Immigrants who have taken the steps to become citizens, like TV late-night host Craig Ferguson, for example, or our governor, have demonstrated a commitment to this country that most of us don't have to.

I am all in favor of immigration reform to come up with a system that's well-defined and realistically enforceable. As for the presidential issue, I'm all in favor of a residency requirement -- even a long one -- for naturalized citizens who want to run for President. But this "born here" part of the Constitution, while it's a nice tradition, has outlived its usefulness. And Birthers, don't we have more important things to argue about right now?

Hail Mary Passes

OK, let's talk first about what we agree on: BP and its key contractors are responsible for what will go down as one of the greatest environmental disasters of the past 50 years. They will pay for it. Heads will roll.

While some pundits are busy bashing BP for the disaster -- which the company richly deserves -- they're also bashing the company for the desperate measures it's taking to try to deal with the oil leak in the short term. So the big dome didn't work because of ice crystals, and the shredded-tire thing may not work, either. But unless these pundits have a brighter idea, they shouldn't interfere with Hail Mary passes. What are those oil executives supposed to do? Shoot themselves? How would that stop the leak?

There is plenty of time later for finger-pointing, and it may not stop with the oil companies. The government agency that's supposed to be regulating this industry is plagued with conflicts of interest. Still another reason for the Tea Party to hate government. The regulators don't regulate. Oil rigs in other parts of the world are safer because greater safeguards are demanded of them.

And, of course, if you want to look at the bigger picture, what's being done about our unsupportable thirst for oil? Our government ignored the wake-up call of some 35 years ago, the Arab oil embargo. But so did the American consumer. We all failed to push for change, which would have occurred if it were demanded by sufficient numbers.

So whether it's via the Virgin or voodoo, let the eee-vil companies do what they can -- unless one of the rest of us has a solution.

Oil's Three Mile Island

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may have been one of those unlikely accidents waiting to happen, but it did. I don't know about you, but I had absolutely no idea the sources of oil these rigs tap into can be a mile or more below the surface of the ocean. A mile or more. Think of the undersea pressures -- and the risk. You think something might go wrong with something like that? But in spite of all the drilling that's done in the world these accidents are pretty rare. The question of course is, are they rare enough?

Accidents happen at nuclear power plants, too, but the oil industry seems to have those beat. There just seems to be a lot more exposure for oil rigs and ocean-going tankers. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said something interesting this week on Bill Maher's HBO show. Many more American lives are at risk protecting our oil sources in the Middle East than in the effort to exploit sources of oil here at home.

Well, that's fine. But there's something to be said for these alternate energy sources we could have been exploiting since the 1970s. Take solar power. What's the worst thing that could happen? Someone could get a really nasty sunburn. Or wind power -- a lot of toupees could get blown off. OK, you could be scalded by geothermal steam. But catastrophic damage? The potential just doesn't seem to be there.

Maybe some of these environmental wacko green ideas aren't so ridiculous after all.

Thank You, Arizona

Don't get too upset at the folks in Arizona. They've just decided to deal with something that's been ignored. If a tooth is bothering you and dental care is unavailable, the pain may eventually drive you to cruder home remedies, like pliers.

OK, maybe we haven't exactly ignored the immigration issue. We've talked about it a lot, sort of like health care. That was an aching tooth that got dental attention. Many of us didn't approve of the procedure, but at least we took a whack at it.

I've often said that if I were elected to office, the first plank in my platform would be to reduce the tax code to a single 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. For the immigration code, I'd be willing to go up to three pages.

Of course, it will be longer than that. But at whatever length, it probably won't be something everyone believes is fair. Those who played by the rules will be upset about the breaks that will likely have to be given to those who didn't. But if the rules weren't enforced in the first place, who is to blame, exactly? Sometimes the lack of enforcement was lazy. More often it was deliberate. But it doesn't really matter. The rule book needs revision, and we'd better get on it.

Maybe we should be saying, "Thank you, Arizona," for moving this issue to the front burner. Something tells me that cap-and-trade can wait. I have no scientific evidence for saying that, but immigration law would now appear to be a much higher priority. We'd better start asking ourselves how many more Arizonas we want to see out there.

Calling Out the Militia

Are we really going down this road again? Arming ourselves against a government takeover? Waiting for the black helicopters? Listening to Art Bell reruns?

Concern has been raised about a violent backlash against Democratic members of Congress who voted for the health care bill. I think some of it is a little overblown. So Sarah Palin has a map with crosshairs on it targeting districts of vulnerable Democrats in November contests. So what do you expect from Annie Oakley? And then some Congressman held up a picture of Nancy Pelosi in front of a crowd outside the Capitol and made slapping gestures. The CNN reporter was shocked. But what kind of behavior are we expecting? A certain amount of this, in my view, comes with the territory, and we have to consider the source.

That said, am I not concerned about the revival of the wacko faction? You betcha! One talk-show host -- nobody I ever heard of until this week -- wants angry people to throw things through the district office windows of offending members of Congress. And some have obliged. A number of representatives report that they have received death threats. Because of health care? I guess it takes a little more to get my rile meter that high.

I heard the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center interviewed on NPR's "Fresh Air" today. This organization studies hate groups. He said that several factors have combined to enrage to violent levels the unhinged, or barely hinged. The election of a black President. Illegal immigration. The bailouts. Gay rights and the removal of God from our school system. And now, Obamacare.

So yeah, those who speak to audiences do have a responsibility to watch what they say these days. The population of those with perspective and a sense of humor is shrinking faster than the Antarctic ice shelves.

Enemy of the Good

OK, at first I supported health care reform. Then I said, scrap the bill and start over. I don't like some of the things that are in the bill. I don't like the fact that important stuff has been left out of it. I think the President handled the campaign badly. The method by which this thing is being pushed through Congress stinks. But are we ever going to deal with this issue, if not now?

I just think back to last year when my wife and I were trying to get individual insurance. We were turned down by the same company through which I'd been insured by my former employer because of a non-life-threatening physical condition. Lucky for us -- it's the same company that now wants to raise rates 39 percent. We did find somewhat affordable insurance with another company. But during the process, as we were questioned about our medical backgrounds, we were made to feel like we were trying to cover up a criminal past. Sure, there's freedom of choice: the insurance companies get to choose those who then have the privilege of paying their premiums. As I've said before, if you don't see something wrong with that picture, your eyesight's a lot worse than mine.

The basic business model of insurance seems to be founded on the avoidance of paying claims. If I'm wrong about this, please tell me how.

It upsets me that this bill doesn't effectively deal with tort reform. Because of it, individual doctors and hospital corporations are forced to load up on -- uh, insurance to protect themselves -- and who pays the premiums?

Now it may seem like a counter-intuitive argument, but the law requires you to carry at least minimal auto insurance coverage if you plan to operate a motor vehicle on a public street or highway, so what's wrong with requiring everyone to have health insurance? You may be 27 years old and think you're immortal -- but suppose you're hurt or stricken with some expensive illness out of the blue. Who pays for your care, if you can't? Doesn't enlarging the risk pool minimize the pain for everyone in the end? Isn't that what insurance should really be about?

As for the screwed-up system by which this bill has moved through Congress, well, it follows one of my universal principles: if there's a system available to you to get what you want, you're almost certainly going to use it -- regardless of whether someone else without access to that system thinks it's fair. But don't feel badly for them: they have access to another system unavailable to you, and they'll be working it.

So if the Democrats successfully work the system on this issue, chalk one up for them. If not, can we count on the Republicans to address health care, or health insurance reform, and are we as voters going to keep congressional feet to the fire on this? I should live so long.

There's a "There" There

It's difficult to find anything positive to say after the 8.8 earthquake catastrophe in Chile. But I do have one.

I think it's really interesting the way U.S. correspondents -- or at least the English-speaking journalists -- based in that country are suddenly the go-to reporters on this story. Of course, these are people who likely live in Chile and just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

If you heard them on the air before, they were usually buried deep in the newscast somewhere. And since it was South America, they were probably talking about a military coup or a war criminal's arrest or some company nailed for despoiling a rain forest. But now, these nobodies are providing the precious details of the top international story. They're stars. You're going to remember their names. It has always amazed me how the world generally ignores an entire continent. Africa gets a lot more respect than South America, which isn't close to anything we really care about.

It takes a lot to make us care about South America. Argentina had to start a war with Britain. Colombia had to supply us with illegal drugs. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela had to kiss up to Castro and Iran and threaten to cut off our oil. Brazil, which has achieved about the highest level of energy independence of any country on the globe, doesn't get nearly as much attention, except at Carnival time.

Oh, by the way, I think we're supposed to pronounce Chile like "Chillay" if we want to be in the ball park -- not like the spice or the restaurant chain. "Sheelay" is probably the most accurate rendition. Just thought you should know, in case you find yourself talking about it.

How's That Again?

I'm glad to hear that Dick Cheney is "resting comfortably" in the hospital following his heart problem. But how else does one rest? Uncomfortably?

Just wondering.

Toothless Tiger

No, this isn't another post about you-know-who. It's about the concept of regulation, and I thought it appropriate, with the new credit card law taking effect this week.

The law does a few good things, like requiring notice of interest rate hikes, restricting abusive fees and controlling the availability of cards to college-age kids. But there is no cap on interest rates, and there's nothing to prevent the issuers from arbitrarily lowering -- or even raising -- the credit lines attached to those cards.

Personally, I think credit card agreements should be more contractual instruments. You agree with the issuer on terms up front for a period, say, up to five years, in which your credit line is fixed and they can't raise your interest rates beyond a certain level above prime, unless you show a pattern of delinquency. We should live so long.

What really needs attention, as I've observed many times before, is the FICO score system (note the four-letter acronym beginning with "f."). If you pay off -- and cancel -- your credit cards tomorrow, you're in danger of lowering your credit score. So the experts tell you, pay the card off -- not too quickly -- and leave the account open. But the card issuers may choose to cut your credit line anyway (which also lowers your score). So you can't even say, take this card and shove it.

But I digress -- back to the bigger issue. I like the idea of small government, too, but we expect government to provide, at the very least, for our safety and security. To me, this means, by extension, protecting us from becoming victims. This requires REGULATION. You hate what the big banks are doing to you, but is government on your side? After being blamed for causing a crisis rivaling the Great Depression, have financial institutions, Wall Street or the insurance industry been required to change a single practice (other than the few outlined in the credit card law)? The FDA is supposed to be regulating the pharmaceutical industry; is it effectively preventing harmful drugs from making it to market? In general, government is much more effective at paperwork (or electronic file) generation than doing the most significant part of its job.

Sorry folks, the free market doesn't work without rules of the road. The President and Congress need not only to provide us with reasonable (what a devil of a word that is!) rules, but also to provide a government large enough -- and dedicated to -- enforcing those rules. Can you blame the Tea Party people for being fed up with a government that just isn't there for them? If it were, size wouldn't matter.

Republican Nightmare

So what do you think would happen to President Obama's approval rating if Osama bin Laden were captured or killed on his watch? Given the impressive enemy captures of recent days, it could actually happen.

Would Jimmy Carter have had another four years if the Iranian hostage rescue attempt had succeeded? Just wondering.

OK, So I Lied

As long as today is the day of Coming Clean, I have to confess that my statement in the last post that I had better things to do than watch Tiger Woods' mea culpa today was false. Of course I watched it!

And you know what? I'm willing to cut this guy a little slack. Some critics have called this media event a public relations disaster; others have said when Tiger talks about his "problem" it smacks too much of "the Devil made me do it." But I actually think it worked.

If it were me, I would have made it a real news conference, allowing some members of the golfing media to attend and ask questions, telling them up front that I would not answer anything I thought was out of bounds. The criticism remains that the whole thing was staged.

But Tiger did what he had to do, which was apologize to his wife, family, close friends, his sponsors, his foundation staff and board, and the kids who benefit from his foundation. He had to do this for himself, whether or not it was good PR. From what I know about addiction treatment programs, one of the required stations of the cross is apologizing for your transgressions and making amends. It doesn't require the addict to actually win forgiveness, just to make the effort, and I think Tiger was sincere in that department.

I still maintain that he owes no apology to golf fans; indeed, they will feel cheated if Tiger stays away from golf for too long. And in spite of how some pundits feel, the average bear will accept the apology.

Will there be more revelations? Probably. Tiger certainly has no obligation to furnish details of his misdeeds to the general public -- the tabloid press will take care of that. This story is going to go on for quite a while, but eventually it will all be old news.

Given Tiger's admissions, he has forfeited the right, as I said yesterday, to be thought of as an Arnold Palmer. But as for role-modeling, what's wrong with the image of a celebrity who admits his mistakes and then turns his life around? It's the second half, of course, that counts.

Please Pass the Tea

So far, I haven’t been to a Tea Party, but the movement is forcing me to wake up and smell the coffee.

First of all, most of us would like to see a smaller, less intrusive government. You don’t have to be a wacko to want that. No one likes the idea of staggering debt, right? But can we agree we need government to do a few things? Such as:

1. Safety and Security. This is clearly the first duty.

2. Infrastructure. This is basically pothole repair on a grand scale. And, in the case of Washington, D.C. today, snow removal.

3. Regulation. Maybe this isn’t a Tea Party priority, but look at it this way: Traffic signals not only prevent accidents but actually improve the flow of traffic, right? Regulation is an extension of police power. Police are there to protect us from being victimized in the course of normal activity.

4. Education. Providing for a workforce that is ready to compete.

OK, I didn’t include health care. That would be nice, but we can’t afford a top-to-bottom reform all at once. What we CAN afford, it seems to me, falls under (3) above. Start doing something about insurance company abuses. Perhaps other parts of the health care industry (which it shouldn’t be) need regulation as well. And at least some access needs to be provided for those who can least afford it. We’re paying for these people now anyway (or, Tea Partiers, should we just let these people die at home or in the street?).

With all of the above, the critical part is making sure the money is spent properly. We throw a lot of money at safety and security, for instance, but are these dollars actually making us safer and more secure? Are bridges being built to nowhere? Can we reasonably regulate without stifling markets? Education spending may seem frivolous if it doesn’t advance us toward the goal of creating a prepared workforce.

The Tea Party won’t be much of a party unless the movement can coalesce around the things it really agrees on. Simply changing out members of Congress is only a first step.

Obama Doubt

Are you a sufferer? I’m not talking about “I Told You So” – an entirely different disorder. Did you vote for Obama and now question your choice?

It’s true that the President has made some serious errors in judgment. Health care reform is a good idea, but it’s a meal he should have served in courses. Closing Gitmo sounded good, but is it going to come back to bite us – indeed, has it bitten us already? You can add your own items to the list. And there’s the overarching question: Is he doing what he was elected to do?

I’m a Republican, and many of the things John McCain was saying in 2008 and continues to say today make sense – so much sense that Mr. Obama himself is saying some of them. I would have voted for McCain, were it not for the Big One in the errors-in-judgment department: Sarah Palin.

As far as I’m concerned, the selection of Palin as the VP candidate -- a potential spare President – represented a security risk of the first magnitude. Could anyone seriously conceive of a person with that level of ignorance about the world sitting in the Oval Office? McCain either actively supported this choice or went along with the campaign staffers who came up with it – some of whom are now admitting their mistake. That was a fatal error for me, and I voted Democrat.

Obama’s clearly in a lot of trouble. He may indeed be a one-termer. Is he damaged goods for the rest of that term? As I said in yesterday’s post, it’s only the end of the first quarter of this game, and attention spans are no longer what they used to be – and they were never long to begin with. Many of the presidents whom a majority revere today – FDR, JFK, Reagan and Lincoln, for example – had widely varying degrees of popularity during their tenure. And few were elected with the enormously favorable margins that Richard Nixon enjoyed to begin his second term.

So yes, I’m suffering from Obama Doubt. At the moment, it’s not terminal -- but check back with me later.

The Game Isn't Changed

President Obama’s State of the Union speech was a great speech, but no game-changer. But how many games do you remember a State of the Union speech changing, anyway?

Personally, I’m a little tired of the media hanging the President’s whole future on a speech. You know the thinking: “If he doesn’t hit out of the park this time….”

I didn’t hear much that surprised me. He did convince me that he “gets it” as far as the average voter’s real priorities are concerned: jobs, tax cuts for small business, etc. Health care wasn’t even brought up until halfway through the address. I think health care -- or at least health insurance reform – remains a major issue and of critical importance to the average American family. It’s just that we’re all tired of hearing about it. Republicans and Democrats agree on most of what needs to be fixed. So let’s tell ‘em to fix it!

Quite frankly, the only thing that really surprised me in the speech was that the word “nuclear” came out of Obama’s mouth without him choking on it.

None of us doubts the ability of this President to deliver a great speech. But a speech can’t really change the game, because the teams’ field positions are exactly where they were before Mr. Obama uttered word one. This is only the end of the first quarter. It’s all about where we go from here.

The Haiti Laboratory

The 7-point Haiti earthquake, as I said in an earlier post, is a clear candidate for the greatest tragedy of the century, which admittedly is still young. But at the risk of sounding cold, it’s a critical learning opportunity.

At some point we have to set emotions aside and look upon Haiti as a sociopolitical laboratory, if we can use that term, albeit an unwanted one What questions does it raise, and what answers will it provide, about human behavior in such circumstances?

Of course, all these situations have unique elements: Haiti is not California, nor central China, nor New Orleans, but since human beings are involved, there are common elements. This was a major earthquake that hit a population center – something that really doesn’t happen that often – so we need to pay attention to the questions.

Do we need to revise our estimates of how long human beings can survive after being buried under rubble? What causes them to survive so long – is it faith, temperament or genetics?

The stories of courageous family members digging out their relatives against all odds are heartwarming, but how is the great mass of the population behaving in unbelievably extreme circumstances? Is there any reason to believe people in more “civilized” places would behave any better? How do you think you’d behave after a week without water?

What role does communication play in affecting human behavior -- online, satellite and conventional (“old-fashioned,” if you prefer) methods?

There’s a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking in play here, revolving around the issues of planning and security. One camp says you have to assess the situation first in order to apply help most effectively, ensuring the security of those providing the help. The other says, jump in and help those you can, and when the victims see that they’re getting help quickly, security will take care of itself. So who’s right?

Retired Gen. Russel Honore, who was military commander in the Katrina hurricane response and now a CNN consultant, is in the second camp. He said early on that able-bodied Haitians should be recruited to clear landing sites for helicopters around Port-au-Prince, to get around the blocked-roads problem. Was that done, or was that idea even feasible?

Who can manage these situations most effectively? Does there need to be a “czar” to run things – civilian or military?

In Haiti’s case, why did it take more than a week to figure out that victims in outlying cities also need help? Did Katrina teach us nothing?

Rebuilding Port-au-Prince will probably take decades, and some may be wondering, is it worth it?

George Clooney’s telethon took over most of the networks in the U.S. Friday as well as others around the world. It likely had much better pickup than the State of the Union message will get on Wednesday. The big question, of course, is what happens with the ADD-afflicted audience in, say, six months or a year from now.

The big overarching question is – are we really going to take what we learn from Haiti and apply it to the next disaster?

I Won't Hold It Against Him

I think a Republican victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday would be a good thing. If it happens, it will be a clear sign that the health care bill belongs in the circular file or the wood chipper.

I haven’t read this bill (as I’m sure most members of Congress haven’t). But from what’s been reported from many different sides, it’s a mess. There are things it does nothing about, like wellness, tort reform and drug prices. The problems that are addressed aren’t dealt with for several years.

Many will consider a GOP win this week a black eye for President Obama, but I won’t hold it against him if it comes to pass. He should be given a lot of credit for shining the spotlight on the need for health care reform. We all would agree it’s a job worth doing, and if so, it’s worth doing right. It’s very hard to scuttle a ship that’s been so long in the building, but let’s face it, this one just doesn’t float – and frankly, I would have just as much respect for the President let this one sink. Nobody is getting ahead with this bill except the special interests.

So will a Republican win inTed Kennedy’s home state presage a sweep for that party in the mid-term elections? Not necessarily. If you’re running for Congress –especially if you think this bill is a bad idea – you have an obligation to come up with something better. The health care debate has given us all a great education in how Congress works – and a yearning for a better way to make sausages.

A Nation That Needs Building

While only 10 percent of this century is in the books, January 12, 2010 will surely be remembered for one of its worst natural disasters, anywhere on the globe.

While one American religious figure (who needs no publicity here) has called the Haiti earthquake God’s payback for revolution and/or voodoo, it could be argued that this is God’s two-by-four aimed at waking the world up to a country that needs attention – but this presupposes that you believe that God is involved at all, a whole different discussion.

While the U.S. is busy with nation-building halfway around the world – supposedly in the interests of national defense -- Haiti is a nation that needs building right now. And it’s only 700 miles away.

Haiti is a poster child for “failed states.” Its government was incapable of responding to Tuesday’s cataclysm in the most basic of ways (indeed, the government itself is a victim). Haiti is one of the first independent countries in our hemisphere, but in 200 years – basically since the last big earthquake there – no one has really shown its people how to do things. It needs that kind of help, and in contrast to the countries we’re involved in on the other side of the world, I believe Haiti would welcome it.

A right-wing talk-show host (again, someone who needs no publicity here) has suggested that the Obama administration will use the Haiti disaster to burnish its image and boost its approval rating. I submit that there’s plenty of time later to judge motives for helping Haiti, but there’s no time now for such things. After seeing the images conveyed on TV and through social networks, who can even think of ulterior motives right now? We just have to help, in any way that’s available, as fellow citizens of Earth.

Name of the Game

In Yemen, there are a surprising number of fans of a popular English sport -- but they play by a different set of rules. It's called, of course...uh...Yemeni Cricket.

Sledgehammers and Flies

I love CNN, but ENOUGH already with the frigging touch-screen machine. Did they really need to use it to tell the story of the balloon-boy incident? Maybe it’s useful for elections. I suppose if I had spent a gazillion dollars on such a device, I’d be compelled to use it, too. But are you really going to watch CNN because they have a touch screen and can interview holograms?

I guess I’m getting old. When it rains, the weather coverage on some of the major-market stations gives me a headache. All that zooming in and out to tell me that it’s raining right down on my neighborhood. When I was in Florida a few years ago during an approaching hurricane, the TV stations didn’t just have satellite views; they could slice and dice the clouds sideways. But they still couldn’t forecast intensity correctly – the hurricane fizzled out before it reached Miami. The headache was the same, though.

I saw one of my favorite high-tech TV devices more than 40 years ago. The female weathercaster in Hartford, Conn. used to write the information in chalk on a clear plastic screen in front of her. But because (or so I was told) the station could reverse the polarity of the TV picture so the viewer could read what she was writing, I was really impressed by that girl’s ability to write backwards. The fact that her wedding ring was on the wrong hand kind of gave it away, but still…

In the really old days, the weather people used Magic Markers or something similar. There was a weathercaster at the station I worked for in Washington, D.C. who would begin his show by saying “Getting oriented,” and drawing a big circle on the map around the Washington area. That was on the 6 o’clock news. After the show was over, the weathercaster would go out and have his usual well-lubricated dinner. So when the 11 p.m. news rolled around and he said “Getting oriented,” he was successful at drawing the circle around Washington only about 60 percent of the time, hitting Richmond or Charlotte instead.

But at least he was the one with the headache.

OK Dave, We Heard You

I don’t know about you, but I’ve kind of reached my limit on people apologizing on the air for things. And of course, it’s usually men, and it’s usually about the same thing. Maybe it’s a real ratings booster when you hear that some public figure is about to issue a mea culpa, but it’s turned into a channel switcher for me – especially when it comes to men apologizing for the usual thing.

It’s unclear to me whether David Letterman helped or hurt himself by all this very public activity. I know two things: First, it’s going to limit his material for a while. He won’t have the standing to make jokes about the sexual misadventures of other public figures, especially politicians, and when you’re a comedian, that’s a problem. Second, most of us will forget about it in relatively short order.

You would think this lesson would have been learned by now: certain kinds of celebrity come with a price, There are just some things you can’t do anymore in the modern media environment, and your responsibility as a celeb is to a) not do them, or b) at the very least, get away with them. I’ve said many times that what President Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky was a security risk of the first magnitude – just my opinion. We all laughed at President Carter when he revealed that he had lusted in his heart – but he shouldn’t he get a little credit for not proceeding on to the next step?

Look – faced with the same temptations as some of these people, I don’t know whether I’d be able to resist -- but I’d sure as hell try.

In the meantime, I just wish some of those household names would go into their closets, as the Bible suggests, say a few Hail Marys or whatever is appropriate, and spare us the public spectacle.

Flying Down to Rio

Why the long faces about Chicago losing the 2016 Olympics? OK, I’m not from Chicago. And I suppose there are more than a few red faces now that Oprah, Michelle, and the President couldn’t make it happen. But isn’t it time South America had the Games?

South America is a continent. Yet the rest of the world generally seems to ignore it. How many news stories do Norte Americanos hear on a daily basis about South America? OK, there’s Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Colombian drug cartels. And, oh yeah, the Falklands war, going back a ways. But South America gets so little respect, the rest of us don’t even bother to stereotype it anymore.

It’s been pointed out that a South American Olympic venue might be less subject to terrorism than a U.S. location. And who can argue with Rio as a physical backdrop? Brazil in general is considered one of the hemisphere’s leaders when it comes to energy independence. No doubt the country has problems, though they will now get more than passing attention from the rest of the world. Good heavens, we might even learn something.

And finally, who wants the Olympics anyway? They’re expensive, and often considered a giant pain in the rear end by many in the chosen community. I say, let the South Americans have their turn.

Hit the Reset Button

I’m probably contradicting myself here. I told you earlier that health care was the angel that we had to wrestle with, like Jacob in the Bible, until we got the blessing out of it. The angel, though, may not be Senator Baucus and his bill. Or maybe he’s Jacob and the bill is the angel. I’m confused.

The bill does good things and bad things -- but if it’s hundreds of pages long, it’s doing too many things. It’s just going to be another big game to play, like the tax system. But the bottom line is, this country isn’t ready for full health care reform.

We’re just too used to putting up with abusive systems, on the grounds that it’s the way life is. Most of us just aren’t dissatisfied enough. We’re not mad as hell, and we’re still OK with taking more of it. While insurance companies screw a lot of people, they perform a great service for others – they shield them from having to deal with costs. If your insurance company pays off on the $40 your hospital charges for a toothbrush, it’s not your problem – that’s what you pay premiums for. As long as you have a job and you’re covered, other people’s problems aren’t yours.

This will only be solved comprehensively when enough people demand that it be solved. We’re just not there yet. If we begin from the premise that there is a moral obligation to provide health care for all with a reasonable set of rules, we can make it happen, but most Americans just don’t feel that way about it yet.

The President is trying to argue that reform can be accomplished without raising taxes. It’s beginning to rhyme with READ MY LIPS, and he’s painted himself and this effort into a corner. If we really want reform, it will likely involve raising taxes. If there’s a real commitment to reform, that wouldn’t be an obstacle. But we’re not ready. The declaration “We can’t afford it” can be easily translated: that’s not a priority now.

The perfect doesn’t have to be the enemy of the good, but with all due respect to the legislators who have worked so hard on trying to reach a compromise, it certainly should be the enemy of the s—tty. I say, hit the reset button and start over on this, and bite off what we can really chew.

Choose Your Words

In a recent post, a fellow blogger I know expressed concern about “defeatist” Democrats in Congress who favored a U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. Personally, I don’t care for terminology like “victory” and “defeat” in the kinds of conflicts we find ourselves involved in today. Even “mission accomplished” has a bad sound now.

When it comes to Afghanistan, it seems to me there are two reasonable goals. The little one is whacking Osama bin Laden. I’ve heard all the arguments about how Al-Qaeda is a hydra-headed entity and that taking him out wouldn’t accomplish anything. I disagree. Such an act would have a tremendous symbolic impact around the world. Of course, it would have had a much greater impact if we’d done it in, say, 2002.

This can be done with relatively few operatives. When the Israelis want to track down international terrorists who have done bad things to them, they put teams together, send them into whatever countries their targets are living in, kidnap them or kill them, and apologize for it later (if they even bother).

The big goal in the region is keeping the terrorists away from the nukes in Pakistan, and the question is, how do you do that? Is it by nation-building in Afghanistan – or should we really be nation-building in Pakistan – or both?

So how many troops does it take to destroy the terrorist elements in those places and help stabilize the governments involved? I’m no military strategist, but based on what’s happened historically, the U.S. is not going to accomplish these ends with 10,000 or 20,000 more troops. This is a commitment that would seem to involve hundreds of thousands – a Vietnam-level commitment at least.

And as I’ve said before, if you really want to go to war, the whole country has to be involved – basically every American family – and that involves re-instituting the draft. It’s not fair to be sending the same people over for five our six tours. With a draft, if the President and Congress really wanted to fight a war, they’d have to bring the country with them.

I don’t envy the President having to make a decision about how to proceed. But instead of dealing with “victory” and “defeat” and all the emotional baggage packed into those terms, I hope he works with colder terms like “cost-benefit ratio.

In the end, “victory” means, to me at least, that we can answer yes to the question, “Are we safe now?”

Wrestling With the Angel

From all appearances, this health care debate is a giant boondoggle. The bills to reform it are thousands of pages long and nobody really knows what’s in them. Lobbyists are swarming over Congress. Fist fights break out at town hall meetings, where “ordinary people” are outnumbered by members of interest groups. And of course, it’s the wrong time to be thinking about this, many say, in the middle of a deep recession when so many have no jobs.

But is it the wrong time? I submit that if everything in the economy was going swimmingly, there would be less interest in reform, not more. When things are good, who’s interested in changing anything? Success is something you don’t generally feel like messing with.

As for the town halls, fist fights at least show that citizens are involved in this debate. The difference between a member of a political interest group and an “ordinary” participant is as thin as the color of the T-shirts being worn. And can you think of a time in recent memory when there were town halls around the country about a particular issue? Wouldn’t it be nice if we’d had them in advance of, say, our invading Iraq?

This debate is forcing the populace to pay a lot more attention to the influence of lobbyists in Congress, and is prompting individuals to mobilize -- and no lobbyist can outweigh the influence of an engaged electorate.

If you’ll pardon me for going biblical on you, there’s the well-known story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. The match went on all night, and the angel tried everything to escape Jacob’s grasp, including knocking his hip out of joint, but old Jake would not let go until he got his blessing. I believe that’s the attitude we need to solve the health care problem. We have to resist the pressure to meet some artificial deadline or just let go completely. If we wait for a time when things are better, well, they’re just never going to be good enough, so let’s finish what we’ve started.

The P Word

PANDEMIC! Doesn’t that sound awful, like WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE? It’s just one of those words whose definitions we think we understand, but don’t. The dictionary says pandemic means “occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally large proportion of the population.”

There’s nothing in there about severity. In other words, if hangnails were contagious, and all of North America got them at the same time, that would qualify as a pandemic.

Did the authorities and the media panic the population? In the beginning, they did not know what they were dealing with in swine flu, and it was the fear generated by the uncertainty that caused the problem. Many media outlets that I watched bent over backwards to avoid blowing this out of proportion, but the little P word kept coming up.

A couple of years ago, my wife had a business trip to Miami, and I went with her. It was in August, and a tropical storm named Ernesto was bearing down on South Florida. The TV stations pre-empted all their programs and went into 24/7 disaster mode, as the storm was forecast for a direct hit on Miami at Category 3. Are you impressed that your local TV station has Doppler radar and neighborhood zoom graphics in its weather segment? You should live in Miami. You’d see each cloud bisected and trisected every way from Sunday. Their weather graphics would blow you away a lot faster than the hurricane.

At the Cuban restaurant Café Versailles, where we went for lunch, the whole building was boarded up, and we almost left until I saw a little sign saying “Abierto” (open) near the door. At our hotel, the staff took all the blades off the ceiling fans in the open-air bar. People scrambled into stores to buy water, batteries, etc. I have always been fascinated by hurricanes, and I was thrilled to be in Miami at that time (cheap adrenaline thrills at the expense of others, as described in an earlier post).

So along came Ernesto, but he miraculously fizzled to a weak tropical storm within the space of three hours. The TV stations no longer had anything to talk about, The NBC affiliate news staff said, “We’ll keep you updated on Ernesto, but now we return you to our regularly scheduled program: Fear Factor.”

As one local Miami ham radio operator put it on the weather net, “Well, they’re real good at tracking, but they suck at intensity.”

So were all these preparations and media warnings a waste of time? Ernesto could easily have intensified to a Cat 4 or 5 as quickly as it weakened. And that 3.2 earthquake that woke you up last week could have been a 6.9. The swine flu could just as easily have been 1918 all over again. Nothing wrong with a little fire drill now and then. And one of these days, we’ll just about get it right.

There, now I've said it.

Saying What You Mean

I think we should cut Joe Biden a little slack – his superiors certainly haven’t. Asked on the Today Show whether he’d advise family members to avoid air travel to Mexico because of the swine flu, the Vice President said he’d advise them, and Americans in general, to avoid unnecessary air travel, or travel in “confined spaces” like subways, altogether. The White House, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and even Biden’s staff spent the rest of the day making woefully inadequate explanations of what he “really meant to say.” It was perfectly clear to me.

This is not a new concept. I know people who travel frequently on business, and they maintain that they catch more colds during the winter months due to their time in airplanes. It’s not just one person coughing on a plane, but usually multiple people if there’s a full flight, and you’re dealing with recirculated air. This wouldn’t keep me from flying, but I can understand my friends’ concerns, and Biden’s. I don’t think it was “fear-mongering.” He was asked for his advice – he didn’t issue an executive order. And let’s face it, the explanations of what he “meant to say” just dug the Administration into a much deeper hole than he did.

Then there’s Carrie Prejean, Miss California. During the Miss USA pageant, this young lady was asked a question about same-sex marriage, and said she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. She deserves – and received from some quarters -- praise for saying what she believes. But last night on Fox News, when Greta van Susteren asked her a few follow-ups, like how she felt about civil unions, she said those involved should have “some rights,” and when van Susteren asked if that included adoption, Prejean said she didn’t want to get into politics.

OK -- I have defended beauty pageants, making the point that many pageant contestants are not the airheads they’re often taken for. In the case of Ms. Prejean, however, while she’s to be commended for telling us her true feelings, she clearly hasn’t thought about this whole issue very deeply, and she’d better start doing so if she’s going to be a national spokeswoman for heterosexual marriage (or at least learn some lines). I’m not going to call her an airhead. But after last night’s performance, it’s safe to say that she isn’t exactly a Rhodes Scholar, either.

There, now I've said it.

Ghost Stories in the Dark

A lot of our modern news reporting reminds me of sitting around a dying campfire on a summer night telling ghost stories, each storyteller challenged to raise the fright level over the last.

Take Melissa Huckaby, charged with the murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, which on its face, may qualify for the crime of the century – but that’s not quite enough. Reporters have dug up information suggesting that Huckaby has kidnapped children before and given them drugs. She also may be an arsonist. She did have past convictions for petty theft and also had a nasty divorce. Oh, did I hear them say that the Cantu murder occurred in a church?

I’m sure if they shave the back of Huckaby’s head, they will find the number 666 neatly tattooed above her right ear. Someone better get on the phone to Wes Craven – there’s definitely a movie here. I’m curious, however, in what country this woman is going to get a fair trial. If little green invaders come to Earth, let’s hope they’re available for jury duty.

What is the take-away from this reporting? Even your next-door neighbor from a respected church family could be a monster waiting to strike. You can change the scenery – make it Wall Street, and there you have Bernie Madoff. It all happened without warning, the story goes, until we get to the part about the obvious signs being there that were ignored – or no one listened to those few would who were trying to give us the heads-up.

It’s not that we shouldn’t hear about this stuff. It’s just seems to me that the media enjoy it a little too much, and so does the audience (My name is Mike, and I’m an adrenaline junkie….)That’s why horror movies have always done so well at the box office. But the stories that used to scare us aren’t good enough anymore, so the next camper has to tell us a better one. We all need to have our world rocked once in a while, but when does the rocking stop?

SARS and the bird flu didn’t quite cut the mustard, but now we have the swine flu. This could be the greatest pandemic to sweep the globe since 1918. Or not – we won’t know for a while yet. I do agree that most health authorities are taking the precautions they need to take. But in the meantime, it looks like we all get to share a good shiver.

The Fickle Media Spotlight

By now, you have heard the tragic story of Sandra Cantu, the 8-year-old from the California Central Valley city of Tracy, who had been missing for 10 days. Sandra’s story led the evening news in the San Francisco Bay Area almost every night since her disappearance. Hundreds of volunteers came from all over the region to help authorities search for her. There were tearful nightly appearances by family members and neighbors, and there were candlelit prayer vigils. How did it end? The little girl’s body was found by farmworkers in a suitcase pulled from an irrigation pond.

The Cantu case provides a disturbing parallel to a 1997 case I covered as a radio reporter in Southern California. Anthony Martinez was 10 years old when he disappeared from the town of Beaumont, not far from Palm Springs. While he was missing, his story led TV newscasts all over the region. Volunteers turned out in droves to look for him. There was a “prayer circle” one weekend in a local park, attended by Beaumont’s mayor. This story also ended badly. Anthony’s body was found about two weeks later in the foothills near what is now the Joshua Tree National Park.

These stories always bother me, for reasons apart from, or in addition to, the tragic circumstances involved. Exactly how do these cases become media events? Why do certain kids get the attention, when there are probably hundreds of other missing children around the country whose stories don’t make that level of news? Do they have better PR, with more media-savvy relatives? Are they cuter than other missing kids?

True, the media have to cover these stories, and it’s clear that the best way to dramatize any story is to focus on individual examples instead of statistics. But what conclusions are we to draw? Does this coverage teach a valuable lesson about adults doing a better job of watching kids, or does it just make parents more paranoid?

Does the coverage pump up false hope? When the tragic end is revealed, are all those volunteers feeling as if they wasted their time? And most disturbing: is all that praying a waste of time?

In the case of Anthony Martinez, a suspect is in custody and the wheels of justice are grinding away. As of this writing, the facts in the case of Sandra Cantu have yet to come out. But I wish I could come to a conclusion about all of this. Maybe that’s part of the pain we feel after these cases – caused by the inability to wrap them up and file them away under some neat philosophical heading. At least, that seems to be my problem.

There, now I’ve said it.

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Making Folks Whole

A key feature of the Obama administration’s plan for reviving the economy involves making the banks whole, but what about consumers? As some top economists have been telling us, until the federal help gets down to the household level, it won’t be enough to start the nation’s economic engine.

Much of this unwholeness has to do with credit cards. Comedian Jon Stewart recently proposed that the feds give consumers enough money to pay off their credit card debt. They’d be whole, and the banks would be, too, at least as far as that segment of their balance sheets goes.

But how do you give consumers the money while ensuring they actually use it to deal with their debt? You could offer them a choice: The feds could say, we’ll pay off your credit card, but in return, you agree to hold only a single card with a credit limit of $1,000. Or, the card becomes a charge card only – you have to pay the balance off at the end of the month. Those cardholders with existing credit lines who don’t need the help and want to continue with their card companies could do so under their current terms. Simply put: If you accept government help, you live with the conditions imposed. But you don’t have to accept that help.

This would not preclude the banks from loosening up the restrictions on the bailed-out consumers after, say, one year. But the banks would have to hang on to those deals they make.

The other leg of this stool is revising the whole credit score system so that it’s based on individual creditor performance. A bank’s relationship with the cardholder should be based on that relationship only, not on how that debtor is performing with other creditors. If a debtor accepts direct federal help, perhaps one of the conditions could be the imposition of a baseline credit score, which would go up as the consumer responsibly deals with debt going forward.

Once consumers are made whole, they will resume spending, because they’ll feel better. Will it be at the same level as the old days? No. The nation’s economic engine will be running at much lower RPMs.

But really, would that be so bad? Does reality have to bite?

There, now I’ve said it.

About Face

I changed my mind, bit the bullet and joined Facebook.

Concerns about privacy caused me to hesitate, but as I often tell anyone who will listen, the privacy horse left the barn a long time ago in this country, so why not?

As of this writing I have a dozen Facebook friends, most of whom I used to work with. What amazes me is how much these people have to share. Particularly the women. They all seem to have hundreds of pictures of themselves. Now I’m three times their age in many cases, and I have a only a third as many photos. And no small number of those are from film, so I’d have to convert them into jpgs for posting. That’s a lot of work. If I wanted to make Facebook a full-time job, I’m sure it would be easy. I think it must be a consuming occupation with some of these folks. And I see how this amoebic acquisition of friendships can become addicting.

But here’s my problem. My life just isn’t all that interesting, and I have no way of holding up my end in the sharing department. I was a journalist for a long time, and spent most of it concerned with what was happening to others, not to me. In this profession, we’re often so involved with others’ lives that we sometimes substitute that for living our own. But maybe that says more about me than about the profession.

I do hope my newfound friends forgives my lack of production. There will be very little to post on the wall for a while -- just for perspective, I have about enough for a Twitter a month, or a Christmas letter every couple of years. As for Facebook, I enjoy reading about what’s happening to people I know, although I’m still partly at the “What’s the point?” stage of the whole experience. I think there is one, which I expect to fully grasp in time. For now, though, please be patient.

There, now I’ve said it. Your friend, Coughswitch.

Go Figure

The current economic downturn offers many reminders that we shouldn’t take things too personally. I was really offended about a notice I received until I found out that many others are having the same experience -- but it still doesn’t compute.

I have been dealing with a particular credit card company for more than 25 years. I have never had a late payment in that time. On rare occasions I could only make the minimum payment; other times I have been able to pay the balance down to zero at the end of the month.

Recently, I received a notice that as of mid-April, my annual interest rate would be increased to almost 18 percent. “Extraordinary changes in the economic environment,” they said. This particular company received federal bailout funds, and the major federal interest rates are almost zero, so where does the company come by the 18 percent figure?

That’s only half the story. The same company sent me a promotional offer saying that if I transferred a balance over from another card, I would enjoy zero percent interest on that amount for an entire year. So times are so tough that my regular rate will be 18 percent, but they can still offer zero percent on transfers.

Then there are the penalty rates. If for some reason I am late on a payment, the company has the right to raise the rate to almost 30 percent. Now in these extraordinary times, it might not be unusual that someone would be late on a payment or unable to meet a minimum. So if the company can’t get the regular payment out of a debtor in that situation, where do they think they’re going to get the 30 percent interest from? And you’re trapped: If you cancel your account, your credit score could be damaged, so the personal finance gurus say.

One of these, Suze Orman, is telling us that paying the minimum amount on your card each month isn’t good enough to protect your credit score or your credit line. Which sounds to me like the minimum payment the credit card companies want isn’t a minimum at all. It would be nice, then, if they told us what the real minimum is. Please don’t get me started on the whole FICO score thing – that’s a whole ‘nother discussion.

Many of these credit card issues will go away when new federal regulations take effect – but they don’t until 2010, so how are the card companies going to be treating customers between now and then?

In a much earlier post we speculated about the end of the credit card. The cards won’t go away, but put me down for this prediction: within 10 years, the revolving balance thing will disappear, going the way of credit default swaps and other such instruments. Either the banks will eventually conclude that revolving balances are bad business, or more likely, they will be flat-out illegal. There will be cards, but you’ll have to settle up every month, just like in the old, old days. Junkies, the street will be dry before you know it.

There, now I’ve said it.

Stimulate This

According to the experts, much of this country’s wealth – what’s left of it – is concentrated in the hands of relatively few. How do you pry those funds out of the death grip of those gotrocks who have them? They’re hanging on to it for fear they’ll lose it. Of course, if the economy collapses altogether, whatever they have will be worthless. The wealth has to be put into circulation somehow.

What’s needed is a broad-based incentive program for people to spend money. Apparently, lower prices aren’t good enough, nor are appeals to patriotism. There needs to be a bonus for parting with cash. How about tax credits for buying a car, or big home appliances? Is a flat-screen TV a qualifying home appliance? What would be the harm? How about credits for travel or eating out?

The private sector has been doing things like this for decades, maybe centuries, and it works. I just signed up for a program whereby a company gives me airline miles for using my credit card to eat at participating restaurants. Some of my favorites are on the list. I’m already hearing you: a) I shouldn’t be using a credit card, and b) I shouldn’t be eating out in these times. But with the airline miles I might be able to take a nice trip someday – or not. I’m at least thinking about the deal, though – why? Because I’m getting something extra. The bonus in these programs is often unrelated to the product they’re based on. The kicker with the restaurant rewards program is that there’s a time limit to qualify for extra airline miles – if I don’t spend within a certain period, I lose those miles. So there’s both a carrot and a stick.

What about all these executives that got their zillion dollar bonuses when their companies were failing? You can’t take their millions away from them. But is there a way to basically force them to spend it? That’s a penalty you’d think they could live with. Get them to put their money in circulation somehow. Whether we like it or not, much of our economy is based on consumption. Hold guns to their heads and make them consume.

Here’s something to think about. What happens if all of us conspicuous consumers get used to the idea of living with less? Then I guess we’ll be in real economic trouble.

There, now I’ve said it.

Properly Placed Pride

A few months ago, before Michelle Obama became First Lady, she got into trouble with some folks for saying that her husband’s candidacy for President represented the first time in her adult life that she had been proud of her country. So how did you feel before that, the critics asked.

Well, I’m proud to be an American, but it’s a little hard to be proud of some of our recent behavior. Let’s face it, folks – the current world economic crisis is basically our fault. Wasn’t it we who invented credit default swaps and sub-prime mortgages? Didn’t more than a few of us lie on those home loan apps? Didn’t our regulatory system fail miserably, with Bernard Madoff as the poster boy? Haven’t our auto companies been making vehicles with no future, and haven’t we been buying them? If you want to expand the view somewhat, don’t our baseball players take steroids and our Olympic gold medalists smoke pot? And single mothers have 14 children? And not long ago, wasn’t torturing prisoners of war OK?

But the good news is, we can still be a role-model for the rest of the world, as we admit our mistakes and work ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in. Those are hallmarks of being American. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.

And of course, there’s pilot Chesley Sullenberger and his crew. So we still have a few things left to be proud of.

There, now I’ve said it.

In Crises, We're All Local

In an earlier post, I mentioned how the Christmas gift of an Internet radio had changed my life -- or at least my media consumption habits. It has reinforced my faith in the value of local radio.

I have spent the past few days listening to the live stream of 3AW 693 in Melbourne, Australia. The station has been providing continuous coverage of the devastating brush fires which, as of this writing, have taken more than 170 lives. As is the practice with many American news/talk stations, the usual programming has been suspended to devote full attention to the fire coverage. The only difference, perhaps, is that the station is running its full load of commercials, including spots for car dealerships, real estate companies and even funeral parlors. If that seems insensitive, it doesn’t seem to bother the audience, who recognize their local station as a vital resource.

While cell phone, messaging and Twitter might otherwise be a source of competition in newsgathering, communication out of the worst fire-affected areas has been difficult. Callers to the station who are put on the air ask about the fate of loved ones in the disaster zone with whom contact has been lost, and often, other callers phone in to report that this one or that one is safe.

While the news reports have been full of compounding tragedy, the fact that the station is there and doing its job is a calming community influence. All of the talk-show hosts are filling their regular shifts. Even the weekend specialty hosts who normally deal with gardening and other subjects have shifted gears and turned into news moderators.

Admittedly, the BBC, CNN and other major news outlets have been offering full and accurate coverage of the disaster, but there’s no substitute for hearing how the locals do it. And with live Internet streaming, this local coverage is now available worldwide.

While the accents of those on the air are different, the coverage strategies are the same – as, at bottom, are the stories: the tears, the heroism, the generosity toward those most impacted. The next phase, of course, will include the effort to catch arsonists and to make a review of evacuation policies and brush clearing rules in residential areas. Welcome to California.

We have a lot to learn from each other and a lot to share, and Internet streaming shows just how critical traditional local sources of news are to a community. The method of distribution may be new, but there’s no question in my mind that what we call local radio is here to stay.

And let’s let the Australians know that we may be on the other side of the world, but we hear them.

There, now I’ve said it.

Clearing the Raised Bar

No, Michael, they won’t let you do it: puff away on a bong, like thousands of other people your age. You might squeak into a Cabinet post if you didn’t figure your taxes right – but only after a considerable dose of red-face time. But when you’re up on a pedestal, it comes with the territory.

How many of us lower lights would pass a drug test, or survive a tax audit? Relatively few, I expect. But some of the laws have become so complicated or even hypocritical that beating them is kind of a game. Pot is a no-no, but if someone took a picture of Michael sipping a vodka tonic, that wouldn’t be held against him – even though alcohol is many times worse than marijuana in terms of the number of lives lost. And with our tax laws as complicated as they are, does the average bear compute the consequences of everything that happens in life before filling out a return?

But those are the perks of being a lower light: You can get away with stuff, and no one is really going to care. It all may not seem fair, on the surface, but I submit that it is. Smoking pot may be a peccadillo down here below, but if you’re a star and you take big money from those who think it’s a big deal, you have to play by their rules. When it comes to Cabinet positions, the consequences of not doing so fall not only on the nominees, but also on those doing the nominating and the vetting.

The fact is, role-models are more of a necessity today than ever before. If you don’t think we value them – think about all the attention we’re giving pilot Chesley Sullenberger and his crew for their heroism after the Hudson River airline accident. Or just look again at the pictures of almost two million people who stood out for hours on a recent cold winter morning in Washington, D.C. to watch something extraordinary happen.

If you find yourself up on that pedestal, the world will give you a lot – but get used to the idea that the world expects a lot in return, too.

There, now I’ve said it.

Halfway Meetings

No one can say that our new President hasn’t been breaking new political ground, schmoozing the Republicans in Congress. Cocktails and Super Bowl parties are just part of the process. It’s behavior we haven’t seen from the White House, at least in a very, very long time.

But the Republicans, while they appreciate the respect being shown, aren’t budging, at least publicly, when it comes to the economic stimulus. Mr. Obama’s plan didn’t get a single GOP vote in the House. So what’s missing?

Compromise has to go further than a cocktail party or a meaningful chat. To many, the word compromise means, we’ll get along just fine if you just do it my way. But it all comes down to: What is my side going to give up to get your support? The congressional Republicans genuinely appreciate President Obama for his outreach, and he has loads of popular support, but it doesn’t mean they’re going along with something they don’t believe will work. What are the Democrats willing to give up?

We all agree that sacrifice in these times is a good idea, as long as we don’t have to do the sacrificing. Wall Street may be largely responsible for tubing the entire world’s economy, bur when it’s suggested that compensation limits be imposed on firms taking bailout money, what we get back is, you don’t understand the Wall Street pay structure, that bonuses are like the tips waiters get in restaurants. In like manner, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to save a billion or two by calling on California state workers to swallow two unpaid furlough days a month, their unions head for court.

So while the boat is sinking, most of the passengers expect the other guy to pick up the bailing can – after all, wasn’t it the other guy who punched the hole in the boat in the first place? Everyone’s ankles are wet now – soon, it will be their knees.

The problem is, all those things we believe we’re absolutely entitled to are only there by mutual agreement and based on conditions that may not apply at this moment. Are we all prepared to give a little – give up a little – to get something back, like survival? You’d think when you consider the alternative, the choice would be clear.

There, now I’ve said it.