Biden late than never

(Joe's got Barack's Back, courtesy of BAGnews Notes/Defense Department?)

Sorry about the no-post yesterday. I had a very busy (and good) day Friday on the job hunting front. More descriptive news to come once things are finalized. And someone else had a good job hunting day yesterday: Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Barack Obama's VP pick.

While I am underwhelmed (like many others) after all of the hype and teasing (and wrong about my guess that it was Vilsack), I think the more interesting topic of discussion is what this choice says about what Obama wants in a running mate and as a VP (assuming he wins the election).

1. Obama wants someone who will get down and dirty and attack McCain on his behalf and not sully himself with attacking. Biden can get off some great one-liners (calling Rudy Giuliani a guy whose every sentence only contains "a noun, a verb, and 9/11.") but can also have some duds. Obama's willing to bet that Biden's stupid statements will be greatly outweighed by some terrific slams of McCain and whomever McCain chooses. All in all, I think Joe is a much better defender/attacker on someone else's behalf than his own.


2. Obama talks about change, but he wants people who know the Washington players (and are players themselves) to be deeply intertwined in his campaign and administration. That is how he ran his senate office and primary campaign, and how it appears he will attempt to leverage his agenda in the first 100 days. Remember, most of Obama's key staffers are Daschle and Gephardt people; he is trying to learn from Bill Clinton's mistakes in his first 100 days which featured lots of people who weren't as familiar with the powers that be...and who made lots of rookie mistakes.


3. Since Biden will be in 73 by 2016, the VP slot is as high as he will ever go. Joe will only have as much power in an Obama Administration as Obama let's him have, and Joe's ability to tone down that famous ego during the campaign and behind the scenes in the White House will be what gets him more power, not leaking key details to reporters or grandstanding.


4. This also means that Obama really wanted to pick Mark Warner, who I think is the odds on favorite to be the party's nominee in 2012 or 2016, depending on whether or not Obama wins in November. Why? Obama told John Kerry jokingly that what he really wanted for his birthday was "Indiana, Colorado, and Virgina." And while picking empty suit Evan Bayh might have kept Indiana in play, Virginia would have been locked up with the selection of Warner, their beloved ex-governor who is cruising into the U.S. Senate (like Obama was in 2004). The key note speaker slot is now the grooming appointment for a nominee's successor, like the Secretary of State slot was in the early days of the U.S.


5. Joe Biden is the vanilla pick. A choice that placates most "wings" of the Democratic party, but doesn't exactly get them all worked up like a more daring pick would. Obama is enough excitement for one cycle.


6. Obama decided his biggest vulnerability as being seen as too green for the job and that some wing voters might be concerned with his "finger on the button" since he is a newcomer on the national scene. Biden is designed to reassure such voters that Biden will be there to talk him out of making a bad call. And since Joe is the "poorest" Senator (which means he is still a several hundred thousandiare), Biden helps present a contrast with McCain (especially if $200 Million man Mitt Romney joins the ticket) and tap into his "working class Catholic roots."

There you have it, my version of the CW. Have a great weekend and enjoy the end of the Beijing Games.

McCain never means what you think he means

Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Courtesty of IMDB)

John McCain, the senior senator "from" Arizona, had this to say about an 86 year old water compact between states within the Colorado River Basin, which includes his "home" state.

"I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties," McCain said while on his way to the Aspen Institute. "I think that there’s a movement amongst the governors to try, if not, quote, renegotiate, certainly adjust to the new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource."

Democrats and Republicans from Colorado (as well as the Denver Post) read this to mean Arizona wants to get more water from the river basin, at the expense of Coloradans.

Lucky for McCain, Mitt Romney and Jon Hunstman came to his rescue, saying essentially the old man didn't mean what you think he means. First here's the former Massachusetts Governor, who is openly pleading to be on McCain's ticket.

“Senator McCain has no interest in reopening the compact,” Romney said. “Senator McCain believes as I do that a compact that’s been worked out between the governors and between the states is the right way to go. States are the ones who build these kinds of understandings. The federal government shouldn’t meddle in that compact."

That explanation clearly doesn't square with what McCain said. Let's try that again. Current Utah Governor Huntsman, the only prominent Utahn to endorse McCain?

"We're going to know over the next year whether [the Colorado Compact] is an interest for the governors," Huntsman said.
"It can't be Washington that says the time is right to open the compact," he said. "It's got to be we in the region saying, 'We're having trouble with this or that and, therefore, it's time to re-evaluate the mechanics of the compact.'"

So I guess it will be "reevaluted," just not on "Washington's" terms. Except John McCain is not a governor or a state legislator, he is a U.S. Senator, and is running for President.

Funny how that inane Romney quote never made it into the Salt Lake Tribune's version of the story.

Kind of reminds me of something:

I strongly disagree. Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me.

And yet...

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, [....] disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. “This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree,” Holtz-Eakin said. “He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.

So who is the authority for what John McCain means? It seems it isn't John McCain, or surrogates that say politically tone-deaf things, but only surrogates that clean up after McCain's "gaffes." Glad we cleared that all up.

CONsulting

Utah's legislative leaders whined to the media today that mean ol' Jon Huntsman didn't properly genuflect before them before he decided to switch state employees to a 4 day work week.

Left out.
That's how some state lawmakers felt when Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. instituted a four-day work week without their input or approval.
Huntsman announced the change in late June and on Aug. 4 state employees switched over to working 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday.
"The governor gave us a heads up, but I don't recall any consultation on it," said Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble. "We probably got 48 hours notice that he was going to announce it."

It takes a lot of nerve to complain about etiquette when you are the same guy who chewed out a pizza delivery girl for not taking his personal check because you see yourself as a very important and powerful person above such trivialities as the rules that apply to everyone else.

Other legislators were more diplomatic in their complaining:

It might have been wiser for Huntsman to get more collaboration at the start, said Rep. Douglas Aagard, R-Kaysville, who co-chairs the Government Operations Interim committee.
"Any time you involve stakeholders - and we definitely are - if you thoroughly vet it, you get a better product."

To paraphrase a commenter on the article, what about voters? When were we consulted about vouchers, the $24 million for Real Salt Lake, restricting wildlife ballot initiatives, and now the attempt to limit further initiatives/referenda? Let's go back into the wayback machine to Monday with our favorite senator who a few hours later was blacklisted by pizza delivery drivers:

Monday, Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble, R-Provo, told the Deseret News editorial board that government doesn't work best when elected representatives are constantly, and frivolously, overruled by the citizens they are elected to make decisions for. In other words, the pure democracy of initiatives and referendums doesn't work well compared to the republican form of government of elected representatives.

Apparently, government works best when lobbyists and special interests can give lawmakers all kinds of perks, gifts, and campaign donations so that the lawmaker can pass laws that favor said interests and then lawmakers can retire on their campaign war chests before voter can get wise of the scam.

It's Vilsack

(Photo Credit: Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)
[I don't have photoshop on this computer, so just imagine the O logo with the V logo]

Apparently the thing to do this week is to wildly speculate and denigrate any of Obama's "short list" VP candidates. First, it was VA Gov. Tim Kane and how he was bad. Then it was IN Sen. Evan Bayh, then there was a facebook page against him and some oppo dumps on how his wife is a corporate shill. Next up is DE Sen. Joe Biden, who is in Georgia now but is not liked for his pro-credit card stance on the 2005 bankruptcy bill, as well as voting for the War in Iraq and the PATRIOT Act. So who is left? KS Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who has ties to Ohio and is pretty progressive for Kansas, although not terribly exciting and the PUMA folks might dislike her being picked over Hillary Clinton. But my bet is on former IA Governor Tom Vilsack.

Why? First look closely at this promo image put out by the Obama campaign.

To me the first letter blurred out looks like a V, and he is the only possible candidate I could think of that starts with that letter. Also, I haven't seen him get a speaking spot, unlike the others named...he's as good a guess as any.

Here's Vilsack's advantages:

1. He is from Iowa and has won multiple times there. Obama's path to the White House is dependent upon keeping Iowa in his column.
2. Vilsack is pretty main stream to moderate Democrat. Nothing too objectionable in his policy stances for liberals save maybe his support for charter schools, but most Democrats aren't too worked up about that, and as VP he will have next to no impact on Education policy unless Obama allows him to.


3. He was Hillary Clinton's biggest supporter in 2007-08, and John Kerry's in 2003-04. The establishment won't be upset


4. Yet he is considered "outsider" because he isn't some long serving member of Congress or some administration.

Disadvantages:

1. He ran such a terrible campaign that he dropped out before any other Democrat running for president.


2. Vilsack is not going to excite anyone to go to the polls, he shores up a state Obama seems to already have in the bag.


3. He lacks "foreign policy experience" that the beltway believes Obama needs to have on his ticket.


4. He exudes "caution," signaling Obama will be a risk-adverse pol and not a game changer in DC.

What do you think?

leaving information behind

No Child Left Behind was premised on the idea that by testing students and giving parents information on which school did worse or better, along with increased federal funding, market principles would make schools/education better. Think of it as vouchers-lite. Yet Utah's administrators are either incapable or unwilling to give parents this critical piece of the puzzle.

Utah won't make public the list of which schools met goals and which didn't until Sept. 30, which is more than a month after most Utah schools begin classes. That could make it difficult for parents to take advantage of options offered by the law. Schools that accept federal money for serving low-income areas but fail to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for two years in a row must send letters to parents offering to bus students to better-performing schools. But schools can't send those letters if they don't know whether they met goals.
[...]
This isn't the first time Utah has released its results after the school year had started, and it might not be the last, said Judy Park, state associate schools superintendent. In fact, it's a problem with which many states grapple.
Among nearby states, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho and Wyoming have publicly released their data. California, Colorado and Arizona have not.
States are supposed to release the results before school starts, but the results are based mostly on state tests that often aren't given until the end of the school year.

In short, schools test students at the end of the year to see how much they learned that year, but then the processing of the test results takes longer than the summer. Other states test only 120 days into the school year, during which I guess they test what students learned thus far in this grade as well as retention from last year. But that's also crazy. And keep in mind this lag time is with a mostly, if not completely multiple choice bubble sheets test. Not that anyone switches anyway...

In fact, very few students take advantage of the option to transfer.
Nationwide, only about 2 percent of eligible students chose to be bused to another school in 2006-2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Only 27 Utah students chose to transfer to another school under NCLB in 2006-2007, according to the Utah Office of Education, though that number might actually be higher because of confusion over a new data system, said Karl Wilson, state director of Title 1 programs.

So has NCLB had any positive impact on education at all? It has united liberals and conservatives that something needs to be done to get rid of NCLB or at the very least radically overhaul the system. I guess that's something.

Friday round up

1. Someone the other day said that the Chinese lead in the Cold War era medal count chart is solely due to their dominance in the diving and weightlifting events. Well if you took out swimming and track and field, the US would also never have a chance of keeping pace with the Chinese. Each country is pursuing its strengths in a strategy designed to net the most medals...and in other news, the sky is blue.


2. Utahns (and NBC) seem genuinely confused as to how to pronounce Beijing. This is the second such local story I have seen on the subject this week. So here goes: Běijīng. Mandarin is a tonal language: "Ma" in Mandarin has several different meanings (like Horse or Mother), but you pronounce them all differently via the length and infliction of the vowel (try it out for yourself here).
   

   [Prof. S. Robert] Ramsey said he believed Bay-zhing [the false pronunciation] came into usage because it sounded more foreign, more mysterious. Some in the West may subconsciously believe the harder-sounding "jing" sounds like a slur against the Chinese, he said.
   What strikes him odd is that the "zh" sound isn't used in the English language.
   "You have to work to get it wrong," he said.

   So now you know; no more excuses.


3. I didn't know anyone in Bountiful had tatoos.
   

   City employees in Bountiful will need to make sure they cover their tattoos.
   City officials have banned employees from having tattoos in easily visible places in an effort to make sure employees put city government in a good light.
   The policy mirrors that of the Los Angeles Police Department, which bans tattoos on the face, neck, head and hands.
   City Manager Tom Hardy says male employees will also have to take their earrings out. The new policy includes a grandfather clause for existing employees who already have tattoos.

   This has raised a lot of stink for some reason. I hope Bountiful has an exception for truly culturally/religiously-based tattoos, like the Maori (some of whom are Mormon BTW) have. But otherwise, I don't get all the fuss. If anyone thinks that you can get a tattoo on your neck and still get an office job anywhere in the planet, they are sorely mistaken.


4. I don't get platform fights. Does anyone outside of party loyalists/single-issue activists care about what is written in those things? Until the press/activists/the public actually start pressing a president who doesn't fulfill some plank, the platform documents are utterly worthless. A waste of paper. Don't make Al Gore cry.


5. If you really are a patriot and a hero with lots of character, you don't go around telling people (even through your spokespeople or surrogates) that you are one or keep pointing to your act of heroism whenever you are criticized. Otherwise, you sort of look like you really aren't and that there might be something to the criticism.

Have a good weekend everyone and enjoy endless coverage of women's beach volleyball and more golds and world records for Michael Phelps, who has to be a robot or something.

diversity, coming to a Utah near you

Interesting demographic projections:

[A] third of the state's growth since 2000 has come from minorities, according to Utah Population Estimates Committee data.
Utah is expected to be 20 percent minority by 2010 when the nation will be 36 percent minority, according to figures provided by University of Utah demographer Pam Perlich. Salt Lake County is expected to be 30 percent minority by 2010.
[...]
Two-thirds of Utah's minorities are Latinos, a group whose numbers swelled by 105,000 to reach 306,500 between 2000 and 2007, according to a Census Bureau report released last week.

Soon, being the anti-immigrant candidate is not going to be politicially tenable.

our health insurance is insane

(image courtesty of Allstate Tax and Accounting Inc.)

My current health insurance is the best I have ever had--it gives my wife free pre-natal care (the vitamins, the checkups, the tests, you name it)--but it still attempts not to pay bills from my doctors and dentists occationally, although way less than my previous ones. And guess what, my insurance is run by the state government...if this is socialized medicine, count me in.

But still, I will lose this great insurance in a few months when my job ends. That last sentense makes perfect sense to Americans, but no sense to anyone else in rest of the developed world. Think about it, do you loose your car insurance or your homeowner's insurance or your life insurance if you change jobs or get divorced? But health care, for some reason, you do. What would you do to keep your good health care?

In a country where insurance is out of reach for many, it is not uncommon for couples to marry, or even to divorce, at least partly so one spouse can obtain or maintain health coverage.

There is no way to know how often it happens, but lawyers and patient advocacy groups say they see cases regularly.

In a poll conducted this spring by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group, 7 percent of adults said someone in their household had married in the past year to gain access to insurance. The foundation cautions that the number should not be taken literally, but rather as an intriguing indicator that some Americans “are making major life decisions on the basis of health care concerns.”

I was lucky that my wife's employer offered "domestic partnership" health insurance when we were engaged and I was still in law school. How many people do you know are stuck in a marriage or job they hate because of health insurance? Do you agree with me that it is crazy?

If you do, call Sen. Hatch (or your senators if you don't live in Utah) and tell him to support Sen. Bennett's (and Sen. Wyden's) Healthy Americans Act that would make health care fully portable from job to job and marriage to marriage. Among other things the next president needs to do, our health insurance system (and with it our health insurance) drastically needs to be reformed. Urge your Senators to support and pass this bipartisan method of radically changing the system and saving us all lots of money, time, and headaches.

missing in action

I didn't want to talk about the Georgia-Russia mess for the last couple days because it was difficult to know which country started what, and why. But now that Russia finally decided it had proven its point and agreed to halt days after Georgia's unconditional cease fire, I think we should observe the following facts:

• George W. Bush's National Security Advisor and, in his second term, his Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, wrote her PhD dissertation entitled "The Politics of Client Command: Party-Military Relations in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1975." She was H.W.'s Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor during the key period after the Berlin Wall fell. She was supposed to be an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe/Central Asia.


• June 16, 2001 Joint Press Conference with Presidents Bush and Putin:
  

  [Question:] And to President Bush. Did President Putin ease your concern at all about the spread of nuclear technologies by Russia, and is this a man that Americans can trust?
  [...]
  PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.
  
  There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him. (Laughter.)



• AFP wire report 19 hours ago:
  

  US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also been noticeably absent on the diplomatic scene, having failed to interrupt her holidays to fly to Tbilisi in support of the Georgian government.
  
  Instead senior State Department official, Matthew Bryza, who oversees the Caucasus region was sent, two days later than planned, to join a joint EU-US mediation effort to win a ceasefire.



• OK, so where was President Bush when the fighting broke out between Russia and Georgia?
  


• August 30, 2005:
  
  And around that same time...
  

  After catching a Wednesday night performance of Spamalot (where she was booed when the lights came up), the Secretary of Insensitivity went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue. While browsing thousands of dollars in new shoes (replacement dominatrix boots?), a horrified fellow shopper shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” For being so forward, Condi rewarded her by having her security toss the shopper from the store — and then decided to cut her stay short to, uh, do her job.



• August 6, 2001:
  
  Why do we care about that document that Karen Hughes is handing President Bush...
  

  [9/11 Commissioner] BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 [2001] PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB [President's Daily Brief]?
  RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

  
  So what did the president do after he was briefed?
  

  Bush listened to the briefing, [Pultizer Prize Winning Author Ron] Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Summer reruns, I guess.

when semantics matter

When is a junket not a junket? When you tote along a colleague from the other side of the aisle. While this article is over a year old, the same behavior keeps on happening.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) led a group of mostly freshman senators on a global warming trip to Greenland to see melting glaciers last week. But it really sounds as if Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and David Obey (D-Wis.) may have gotten the best gig.

Murtha and Obey led a bipartisan trip to France for the ostensible purpose of visiting the new Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial -- for which they had secured federal funding. They also had a brief stopover in Paris for a ceremony at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial and briefings by embassy staff on the new French government.

The trip has caused something of a headache for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) -- and not just from the wine. (Rehberg, some readers may recall, took a taxpayer-funded congressional delegation trip several years ago to Kazakhstan, where, after drinking several shots of vodka, he fell off a horse, got trampled by another, broke his ribs and allegedly called the locals "coneheads.") The Montana Democratic Party is attacking Rehberg for his participation in the week-long excursion to France and another trip this week to South America orchestrated by a group called the Montana World Trade Center (which also has hosted Democratic lawmakers in the past).

Thanks for journeying with me into the archives. Now resume your dog days of summer.

embarrassing

Still President Bush, portraying your dumb grumpy impatient jingoistic uncle.

(H/t DailyKos)
When my wife saw him during the opening ceremonies, she said that until you see him meeting with foreign leaders like Putin, you forget he is still president. His irrelevancy, still embarrassing Americans abroad.

Opening Ceremonies Friday

(Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGES)

Today the Summer Olympics begin in Beijing. If the air there wasn't bad enough, they added to the horrible air pollution using TONS of fireworks. Hey, its their right, the Chinese invented them about 800 years ago. And to be polite guests, everyone has to pretend that the air is just super!

(Photo Credit: Yeves Herman/Reuters)

And that they have no impact on Darfur, and don't violate people's rights even when they are denying visa for Dafur critics like 2006 Speed Skating Gold Medalist Joey Cheek (Hat's off to Romney for asking the Chinese to let him in) And good for America's Olympians who made a statement by choosing former Sudanese "Lost Boy" Lopez Lomong to bear the U.S. flag.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is fluent in Mandarin, points out the phrase "human rights" is often (mis)translated as "personal empowerment" in Mandarin and perhaps this is why the Chinese government doesn't get why the world community is so irate about Tibet, Darfur, etc. If so, this is a pretty poor excuse, but maybe he has a point: that before we can change minds, we must understand the culture and understand the language. The intellectual basis of human rights is that of individualism and not collectivism. Guess which culture is more collectivist and which is more individualistic?

Sigh

But I should not be such a serious policy nerd. I should just chillax and enjoy the pageantry and sport. For some reason, I can't ever seem to enjoy NBC's tape-delayed-corporate-sponsored-touching-mini-bio-dramas they do every 2 years. But hey, your mileage may vary. Have a great weekend everyone!

good thing we test/burn chemical weapons in Dugway

Whether or not you believe that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the lone gunman anthrax mailer...we now have a local connection.

Utah's Dugway Proving Ground produced one of two strains of anthrax that FBI investigators say was used in the deadly September 2001 poison-letter campaign that killed five and injured 17.
The federal investigation once again focuses attention on Utah's chemical and biological testing facility in Tooele County's west desert. It made headlines in March 1968 when a deadly cloud of nerve gas drifted off the base and killed 6,000 sheep grazing on the west slopes of the Stansbury Mountains.

Poison-letter campaign? So how did he get anthrax from Dugway? How does it move from Dugway, Utah to Fort Detrich, Maryland? Someone please explain this to me.

View Larger Map
In high school, I played basketball games against Dugway, at least one in Dugway (and I played other games in nearby Grantsville). And the air out there was terrible...I don't care what the government says, it isn't healthy.

Is LaVar breaking the law?

(Images from LaVar for Congress.com)

Do you remember the LaVar Christensen? Last cycle, Jim Matheson crushed him to the tune of 59% to 37%, despite LaVar's "America Needs Utah" slogan. Currently, he is trying to regain his seat in the Utah House of Representatives.

A source informed me that LaVar is currently an LDS singles ward Bishop somewhere in Sandy and has been conscripting his parishioners into doing things like stuffing envelopes for his state house campaign at his aforementioned singles ward. (Apparently, he tried to pull a similar stunt by using taxpayer money to produce pro-LaVar propaganda for school children) For someone who wishes to be a lawmaker again, he sure seems ignorant of the law.

The LDS Church, like other religious organizations in the U.S., are organized as tax exempt non-profits under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. To gain its tax exempt status, the Church was "required to make certain representations, including a representation that it will not participate in any political campaign on behalf of, or against, any candidate for political office." Branch Ministries, Inc. v. Rossotti, 40 F. Supp.2d 15, 19 (D.D.C. 1999), aff'd, 211 F.3d 137 (D.C. Cir. 2000). If a church engages in political activities, the IRS can revoke that church's tax exempt status (not withstanding the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause). Id., 40 F. Supp. 2d at 20, 24-27.

Naturally, the Church leadership repeatedly admonishes its members and lay ministers not to use Church facilities or supplies for political activity. Remember when some Mormon thought using a BYU alumni list to raise money for Mitt Romney was a good idea? The Church came down hard on that one. Currently, they are attempting to thread the needle on the issue of gay marriage in California.

They may be willing to test the bounds of the definition of "political activity" over the issue of gay marriage and the Church's official level of participation in this fall's ballot inititive to overturn the Califorinia Supreme Court's decision. But I highly doubt that they are willing to risk their non-profit status for someone like LaVar "Tolerance is the religion of people who no longer believe in anything" Christensen.

Oh, and LaVar, if God really wanted you to be in the state legislature (as you claim), he wouldn't have told you to drop out of the House so that you would get beaten like a mule by Jim Matheson in 2006.

captive audience

Have you ever filled up your tank and been forced to watch an ad? I did once while driving in another state, and I thought it was incredibly annoying. But I guess it is all the range in lots of states, since you know, those oil companies are only making $12 billion a quarter (or $1,500 a second).

Anyway, Barack Obama is trying really hard to keep Florida in play. Even though he has spent millions more than John McCain (who has spent zero in FL since the primaries) in the state already, John McCain has a significant lead in the Sunshine State. So Obama's new tactic? Do an ad attacking John McCain on energy (and touting Obama's energy plan) on those gas pump TVs.

Here's the ad:


Interesting strategy. In 2004, George Bush advertised on cable channels that fit is supposed voter demographics, like the Golf Channel. He even managed to get himself on some bass fishin' show. Liberal bloggers believe that such microtargeting is a smart tactic that helped Bush win, and that Democrats should mimic this technique. Are Americans sorting themselves by what they watch to such an extent that it is better for Obama to get his mug on those cardboard coffee sleeves than place an ad during American Idol? Not yet, and I don't think it would be a good idea to place political ads in the theaters either, even if it is during another Michael Moore "documentary" or the Passion of the Christ 2: the resurection.

UPDATE: Many gas stations refused Obama's ads because they attacked oil companies' contribtions to John McCain.

Washington Oil Party

(a play on the idea that this is the GOP's version of the Boston Tea Party)


(Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior)

Rep. Rob Bishop (1st-District) prides himself on being a former history teacher in Box Elder County, a man of "family values." I used to think that family values was code for pro-life anti-gay-rights, and in Utah, a hint that you went on an LDS mission while your opponent has strayed from the faith (or never was a member in the first place). Now I am really confused.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has one son getting married next Tuesday and another leaving on an LDS mission the day after. So he had planned to take advantage of Congress' August recess to spend the week weeding and preparing his home for expected guests.
Instead, he now is flying back to Washington to join a GOP protest about taking that five-week vacation without first voting on GOP legislation designed to help lower the cost of oil.
"We will go on the House floor, and talk to whoever is there. We do not think it is right to go on vacation until we have dealt with this issue," he said Monday.

That's right, the same guy who voted 18 times during the past 90 days to adjourn the House, now wants a special session to vote on drilling offshore so we can save 1% when we fill up our tank in 2030. So was it a political stunt the first 18 times, or just the last two times when you held a slumber party on the House floor? Even the President, who wants offshore drilling badly, even Bush won't ask for a special session on off-shore drilling. But it is more important to be in Washington right now if you are a non-partisan get-things-done kind of guy...it's not like one of your sons is getting married or another son is going on a two-year mission. Sounds like some one is paying their dues to get in the good graces of their fellow party members.

Lee Davidson calls the stunts "spontaneous" protests, when anyone paying attention (especially somehow who getting paid to pay attention for his readers) would know that this was a coordinated effort between the White House, the McCain campaign, and the Republican leadership in Congress to harp on off-shore drilling, since the polling arguably shows the public might favor it.

"I was truly amazed at what I saw there. There was a unique feeling or spirit. You usually don't see that kind of energy on the floor. Usually, you are talking to a lot of empty chairs. But the floor was full, and the galleries were three-quarters full. All the tourists were responding plausibly for what we were doing," he said.
[...]
"Since even pre-Civil War times, I don't think anything this spontaneous and dramatic has happened before," he said.

Now maybe that bolded word is just a typo or mistranscription and Bishop actually said "positively"--Lord knows I have a pretty big glass house on the typo front--or maybe this was a Freudian slip.

In any event, as a history teacher, Bishop doesn't have to look that far back to see examples of political stunts, in fact, he can just look back to the past 18 votes he cast over the last 90 days.

the crazies: a preview

Friends of mine inexplicably get the Deseret News every day, despite only asking to get Sunday only. One of their favorite things to read in the paper is what they call "the crazies" --the letters to the editor. There is even talk by my friends of starting a blog dedicated exclusively to deconstructing the insanity. To encourage such an effort, I hereby give my readers a taste. Here's one, in full.

Energy beliefs are naive
Published: July 31, 2008
It's disheartening to read the naive beliefs expressed in many of the letters regarding energy. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow; therefore they are not reliable energy sources. Electricity doesn't spring magically from the ground.
It's created by generators. Without a waterfall, fire is the energy source that powers generators. Fire comes in two practical forms: fossil fuels and nuclear power. The Green Gestapo blocks any effort to utilize these potential fire sources. Still, they insist we must switch to electricity. The ambiguity, contradiction and plain silliness of this reasoning is maddening to anyone with half a brain.

Ron Russell

Salt Lake City

Let's see here, belittling group you disagree with by calling them naive, check. Next, using alliteration to belittle, check. Comparing them to Nazis' Gestapo (short for Geheime Staatspolizei: "Secret State Police"), who murdered millions of Jews, Homosexuals, and disabled, check. Oh and I forgot, projection, check.

You see, electricity that is generated via renewables like solar and wind energy are not all used as they are being produced. Rather, there is this thing called a "battery" where electrical energy can be stored, maybe you have heard of those new gizmos? When you search for solar energy storage, you get nearly 3.5 million hits, including news stories of the latest storage technique discovered by scientists at MIT (wind energy storage generates a measly 1.06 million hits). And if anyone can explain what Mr. Russell was talking about with regards to "fire," I am all ears.

Our friend Mr. Russell also uses the straw man technique to suggest that environmentalists demand that we exclusively use solar and wind to supply 100% of our electricity needs immediately. Nobel Laureate Al Gore (So named to peeve Mr. Russell) has proposed a path to achieve the goal of switching to renewables exclusively within 10 years. Former Swift Vote Vet for Truth funder T. Boone Pickens has invested serious cash in building wind farms in Texas and promoting the idea of moving towards wind power generation. Currently, Germany generates something like 20% of its electritiy from solar, thanks to some serious incentives. The U.S. hundreds, if not thousands of acres of uninhabited land where the wind is fairly constant and the sun does shine alot--certainly a lot more than in Germany, whose whether is more like Seattle than San Diego.

If we can improve battery technology, improve transmission lines so that less energy is lost when moved, lower the costs of producing solar and wind energy, and reduce our consuption via increased efficiencies, Al Gore's plan is possible...and preferable to listening to idiots like Mr. Russell.

You know what really grinds my gears? Giving people a soapbox who don't know what they are talking about.

Shouting into the void?

(Talking to the multitudes at Utah State)

When a politician pounds a podium when the cameras are turned off, did it make a difference?

he House officially adjourned, Rep. Rob Bishop scuttled back to his rented Washington apartment Friday afternoon to finish laundry and prepare for his trip back to Utah for the August break.
He didn't get too far.
Called back to the floor by colleagues, the Utah Republican, wearing flip-flops, khaki cargo shorts and a collared shirt, joined other Republicans on the darkened House floor for rotating speeches pleading with the Democratic leadership to return to session.
The C-SPAN cameras were off and the television lights shuttered, but that didn't stop Bishop and about 40 cohorts from complaining that the Democrats had skipped town without offering any help to an American public suffering from high gasline prices.

Rep. Bishop is willing to do pretty much anything for his party, including showing up the House floor in attire unfit for a country club rambling on to no one.

However, on Friday afternoon, Obama expressed a willingness to consider offshore drilling if Republicans would vote for increased fuel standards etc. I am sure Bishop and his colleagues believe Obama caved (as do I) and they will therefore be even less willing to compromise with Democrats on their ideas--solar, wind, fuel standards, efficient appliances/windows/doors, etc.

I am not spam

Google is trying to ward out spam blogs. I did not know there was such a thing. And who would read it? But in any case, how did I become a suspect spammer? By being a blogger before Google owned blogger?

This post will be delayed until I am deemed a human being/non-robot and my muzzel is removed. Thanks Google.

people don't want to give props

The other day, property tax notices went out in Salt Lake County. And people at work in my office were mad and in shock. "$900 more?" One exclaimed, "I will have to sell my home!"

Some proposed increases are huge. The biggest is a 293 percent hike for Clarkston, Cache County. It would cost an extra $465 a year on a $250,000 home there, if approved. (Town leaders did not return numerous phone calls seeking reasons for that increase.)

Some proposed hikes are tiny. For example, Payson is proposing a 0.2 percent hike that would cost just 27 cents a year on a $250,000 home.

News of the hikes come in big, required-by-law newspaper ads and notices mailed to homeowners this month showing the assessed value of their property. (The notices and ads also include the time and place of hearings about those proposed hikes.) A list of all proposed hikes is also on deseretnews.com (click on graphic "Truth in taxation, 2008").

Utah's "Truth in Taxation" laws require public hearings and newspaper ads any time local governments propose to raise overall property tax revenues (not rates) beyond what they collected the previous year (not counting money coming from new growth).

The State Tax Commission compiled a list of 85 governments going through that Truth in Taxation process for hikes this year, all of which will be holding hearings during the next month or so as they decide whether to impose the proposed increases.

This is one of the "ironies" of this economic downturn. Prices on fuel and food are rising rapidly (and others gaining more slowly) while home prices tumble and wages stagnate. Yet property taxes are increasing.

This story helps make my case the other day for keeping earmarks around, albeit in a more transparent form. If people go nuts about the rate hikes now, imagine if you got rid of earmarks and reduced federal income tax accordingly (which would have a relatively minor impact on filers' bottom line) but jacked up property taxes to make up the difference in each locality. People would go ballistic. And maybe they should, but it just shows how impractical such a proposal is to implement.