Who's The Bad Guy?

So I recall around inauguration day seeing so many young kids bleary-eyed with excitement over the election of Barack Obama. While he wasn’t my guy, it was kinda neat seeing little kids excited about politics. Somehow, then-Senator Obama made politics something of a pop-culture phenomenon. As a certified political junkie, I was interested in, and somewhat amused by, seeing that I (or, perhaps just my interests) had become hip.

But, alas, all my dreams (and those of little kids) have been dashed on the rocks of recent polls and elections, leaving them (and the President) in tatters. How could the hopes and dreams of young children be so brutally and violently taken away from them? Who was the culprit who crippled the President and corrupted the policy making process so badly that the kids who had life-sized cardboard cut out President Obamas in their bedrooms, are now wondering why no one seems to like their hero anymore?

It’s the Democrats.

Let me back up a couple years. Back in the 2006 election cycle, when the D’s first secured big wins in the off-year elections, they were successful in part because it was an off-year election (one in which the President was not up for election). The party out of power always does well in off year elections. But, they were even more successful than most thought they would be because they went out and recruited a lot of conservative leaning Democrat candidates to run for House seats in conservative districts.

A clever move at the time. But, in the midst of our (Republicans) defeat, I recall consoling a number of my allies that all was not lost. “Speaker Pelosi now has a bunch of ‘blue-dog Democrats’ that will not go along with every whacky thing she’s got. They may for the first year or so, because they owe her for all the money she funneled into their election campaigns. But sooner or later they’ll want to stay in the House. And to do so, they’ll have to try to reflect the values of their conservative districts.”

So, the House may have peaked too early for the D’s. They peaked too early because the ideal time for the House to muscle through their most ideologically pure objectives would have been in 2007. The Senate on the other hand, was primed for their ideologically pure dominance between the times Arlen Spector handed the D’s the 60 vote supermajority back in April of 2009 (see my April 28 note) and Senator-elect Scott Brown rocked the political world by placing his red-bum in the darkest and purest of cobalt blue Senate seats in the country (the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat).

Of course, for the White House anytime between January of 2009 and now, President Obama can sign any whacky legislation he wants. But you gotta have all three (House, Senate, and the White House) primed for action at the same time.

If you look purely at the numbers (as I did during my September 4, 2009 note), the D’s could have passed any piece of legislation they wanted – without 1 Republican vote. They could have had their Health Care bill and eaten it too. They could have changed the national anthem to Zipadee Doo Dah.

But could they really have? Were the blue dog dems in the House going to go along with it? The House did pass a health care bill. The Senate, then, changed it. Stripped some things out, put other things in. The hope, they say, was that so long as the Senate passed something, the House and Senate negotiators could have sorted out the differences (made the bill more pure) in Conference Committee (where different versions of bills coming from the Senate and House are reconciled into a final draft).

But then that pesky promise of then candidate-Obama about putting C-SPAN cameras into the Conference Committee chambers got in the way. Televising Conference Committee negotiations, in my opinion, is absurd. We see enough grand-standing on the House and Senate floors on C-SPAN that would NEVER take place if the cameras weren’t there. Never would a bill get reconciled in Conference if cameras were involved. Not a chance.

But, Senator Obama (perhaps in his naiveté as still a newcomer to the Senate, or in his zeal to say anything that sounds good – as some politicians are wont to do) made the stupid promise…many times. C-SPAN seized on that, and started pummeling the House and Senate leadership with it, bludgeoning them (and the health care bill along with it) to death. (The voters, really, put all the nails but one in the coffin of the bill. However, C-SPAN added one last nail for good measure.)

So here we are. The President’s popularity hovering in the upper 40% area, and Congress’s effectiveness shot. Who should the children look to as the “bad guys”?

I submit it can’t be the impotent R’s (who now, finally, are showing signs of life). I submit the D’s are the ones who shot themselves in their collective foot – perhaps making the President, after one year, a lame duck.

Giving From A Distance

So, somewhere along the line, being the Christmas nut that I am, I picked up a little book called "A Christmas Miscellany" that contains a ... miscellany of short stories, poems, recipes and news clippings about Christmas originating from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

It's a neat book that my wife and I have enjoyed reading from a little each night, mostly entries painting vivid pictures of an old fashioned Christmas. One entry in particular really caught my attention last night when I read the following portion from it:

"In these days the squalid regions of our great cities are being explored and improved by various methods of systematic beneficence. 'Christian Settlements' are established; bureaus of charity are formed and associations for the relief of the poor are organized. A noble work; but, after all, the most effective 'bureau' is one that, in a waterproof and a stout pair of shoes, sallies off on a wintry night to some abode of poverty with not only supplies for suffering bodies but kind words of sympathy for lonesome hearts. A DOLLAR FROM A WARM HAND WITH A WARM WORD IS WORTH TWO DOLLARS SENT BY MAIL OR BY A MESSENGER BOY. The secret of power in doing good is personal contact. Our incarnate 'Elder Brother' [Jesus Christ] went in person to the sick chamber. HE anointed with His own hand the eyes of the blind man and He touched loathsome leper into health. The portentous chasm between wealth and poverty must be bridged by a span of personal kindness...."

That passage nearly caused me to drop my book. Convicted by my own inadequacies of beholding to the truth written in that passage, I wondered aloud to my wife how many people in society (myself included) write a check to a charity, pat ourselves on our back for being charitable, then move on thinking we are good?

Of course, there's nothing wrong with cutting a check and giving from a distance. Indeed, that IS good. But, as I once heard someone speak on the difference between good, better, and best, I can't help but to think that (in Christian terms) writing a check and calling it good is the rough equivalent to the Law of Moses, whereas the "warm hand with a warm word" is the higher law taught by the Savior.

This lesson taken from an author's pen in 1913 will stick with me for some time, and I'm hopeful that I will not only have future opportunities to give, but to give in person with a warm word or two to offer.

All the best, and Merry Christmas!

They're Finally Taking My Dare

So, back on September 6, 2009, as Congress was returning from their recent round of beatings at the Health Care Town Halls during the August recess, I dared the D's in a note to go ahead and pass the health care legislation on their own. They had the votes. Why wait around for the R's to get on board? If the bill was that great, the D's could monopolize the credit for a revolutionary new health care system.

So I posited.

And, it appears now, that they're finally taking me up on my dare. (I was kinda hoping they wouldn't. Again, I like the Wyden/Bennett bill.)

But, it hasn't been pretty in rounding up those D votes.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121900797_pf.html

These are two examples of the sausage making process that produces votes.

And, for those who haven't been following closely the sausage-making process, there's no bill! There's no stack of papers that says "the health care bill" on it for Senators to read. Our elected officials don't have the rumored-to-be 700 page bill they can thumb through, to survey exactly what they are voting on (see my June 30, 2009 note).

In all the negotiations within their own party, the D leadership have been swapping sections in and out so much, there hasn't been a "THE BILL" that anyone could actually look at. Especially the R's. Reports from the Hill are that they have been completely shut out from the negotiation process. I'll grant that there's little reason in negotiating with someone who's premise is different from yours. But the D's should at least provide the R's a working copy of the bill so they can read it and establish their own reasons for voting no on it.

Or, are the D's concerned that if the R's have the working draft, they'll actually let the citizens of this good country know what's in it?

I'll leave that question hanging out there for all of you to consider.

In the meantime, I'm gonna drink (hot chocolate) to my health, and wonder how much time all of the Senators will have to read the 700'ish page bill once a final draft gets kicked out onto the floor of the Senate...before the vote is called.

The Solen Rule

"If you have to do something in secret, you probably shouldn't be doing it." These sage words have actually rung through my head on a number of occasions when I was considering doing something that I wouldn't be proud of later. And sure enough, those words have prevented me from making many stupid decisions.

Now, of course, keeping my wife's Christmas gift secret (and other things like that) are excepted from the "Solen Rule", just like personal financial, health, etc. information that may end up exposed on the Internet (reference the article below) are excepted.

I think our Google guy might have meant something other than what was inferred in this article. I'm thinking he meant the type of secrets that conceal bad behavior (illicit affairs, drug use, kicking dogs, pollution, etc), not necessarily your bank account number, home address, and other pieces of data that will allow people to steal your identity, etc. If he didn't mean to make this distinction, he should have. Because there's a huge difference, I think, between trying to keep poor behavior secret and keeping your wife's Christmas gift secret. And I wish the writer of the article would have made that distinction, rather than seeing an opportunity to poke the Google guy.

Can you imagine the difference following the Solen Rule would have made in the life of a Tiger Woods, and all the other dirtbags who cheat on their spouses, embezzle money from their employers, commit tax fraud, pirate dvds, neglect their children, and root for the White Sox? How many times do we do things - large or small - that we think, in the process of doing it, "no one will notice"? And how many lives have been destroyed when someone actually did notice? These are rhetorical questions.

But, with that in mind, I pass onto you, my faithful readers, the Solen Rule, for your consideration.

(The article link pasted below is for your reference.)

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http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people

The 25 Days Of Christmas

So there I was, 3 or so years ago, scratching my head, wondering why it was that Christmas wasn't quite the way it was when I was a Liberty Elementary School Leopard. Back in those days, we'd practice for our school Christmas concerts, make paper chains (advent chains) counting down the days to Christmas, even playing with dreidels and learning about Hanukah from Mrs. Rubel.

At home we'd be decorating for what seemed to be weeks. Piling into the family car, driving out into the forest, trudging into the muddy snow, and exercising every Oregonian's God-given right to chop down a tree, getting home, kicking off the moon boots (only to have the foam insulation stay on the foot like socks), decorating the tree, staring at the wrapped gifts under the tree while listening to Bing belt out some carols.

Ahhh, those were the days. But days long gone, I thought. Why was that? Was the magic somehow gone because I grew up? Has Christmas become too commercialized? I rejected those arguments not only because they were too easy, but because they have been the laments of ages past. So, why was it?

While reveling in childhood memories, it occurred to me that when I was a kid, every day in December seemed to be a Christmas-oriented day. At school, at home, at church; one way or another, I was doing something Christmassy every day.

So, I adopted what I call the 25 Days of Christmas. Each day in December I will take a few minutes (at least) to do something specific to Christmas. Reading A Christmas Carol, chopping down a tree, baking some Christmas cookies for my neighbors, whatever. Something.

I was floored by how successful my first 25 Days of Christmas was. It was as if all of my childhood Christmases were brought back to me as an adult. And I am resolved that this will be one family tradition (in my new family) that will stick.

I challenge all of you to do this (starting when you read this blog), and see this Christmas become one of the most memorable of your adult life to date. You can't skip a day. You have to do something. Write a card, read Luke 2, something. But do it every day, and you will look back at Christmas 2009 as the year you got your Christmases back.

All the best, and Merry Christmas.

Here are the Advent Chains (is that what you call them?) that we made on December 1, 2009.

Don't Blame President Obama

Whatever you think of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to President Obama, don't blame him for it. (Of course, you conspiracy theorists - you know who you are - will.) While I'm not entirely sure he would have been my selection for the award, I can hardly see what it harms for him to get it. Life isn't always a zero sum game (i.e. he wins, I, therefor, must lose). Sometimes when the other guy wins, it doesn't matter to me. (...unless one of you submitted my name for consideration....)

I can just see him waking up in the morning being informed of the award and thinking, "oh hey, right on. ... Oh, &$%@! Here comes the whirlwind. Even when I win, I lose."

Rather than worrying about some prize he won (that has absolutely zero impact on our daily lives), shouldn't we rather concentrate ourselves on things like the health care debate, tax policy, etc - the things that will have a real impact on us.

Let's get past the 10th grade mind set of who wins the popularity contest, and move onto important things that actually matter, like why the Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series in over 100 years.

I Dare Them

So, when members of the Senate and the House come back to The Hill on September 8, 2009 from their August recess, the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate can gavel in, call a vote on a health care bill, pass it, and send it to the President for signature before the subway drivers who take the Senators from the Capitol Building back to the Senate office buildings can break for lunch.

Please refer to my April 28 blog for more details on this, but the D's don't need 1 R vote to pass this bill, exactly as they want it. Just call the vote, and hand President Obama and the Democratic Party the victory on health care reform they have been hoping for since President Clinton breathed life into the issue back in the 90s.

Will they call the vote?

If not, why not?

These are rhetorical questions, of course. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves, but I don't think they will.

I've long thought that good policy makes good politics (see my Feb 26 entry). In this case, if the health care reform the D's are proposing is such good policy, it may take a while for the citizenry to comprehend the goodness of it, but the voters will come around. That being the case, the D's, while perhaps initially taking a beating in the popularity polls (given the August Health Care Town Hall melees - yes, I'm using a French word), will eventually be held as heros of the American people.

So, if the D's truly believe this is good policy, why not go ahead and pass it, temporary bad polls be damned?

We shall see.

I still think they should go with the Wyden/Bennett plan referred to in my blog of June 12.