Shutdown

I sit here waiting for the last vestiges of sanity in the House Republican caucus to please take control. So far, there's no sign that will happen.

When the government shuts down, my staff will be partially furloughed. I get to rotate some people in every day to perform excepted tasks. I am excepted and so will not be furloughed. My people are lucky. Most of my agency is furloughed for the duration of the shutdown.

Of course, a shutdown will have a huge economic impact. Around 800,000 federal workers will stop getting paid. Many will cut back on purchases, including eating out, travel, buying household goods, even buying a new car or new house. This will have have an extended economic effect, affecting businesses in their community. Many workers are in danger of losing their car or house or pulling their kids from school. Since there are federal workers throughout the country, the economic effect will occur everywhere.

Stupidly, there are enough votes in the House to pass a clean funding bill if House Speaker Boehner would bring it up for a vote. He won't though, because of the few dozen Tea Party nihilists, who want to shut down the government, holding everything hostage.

Their condition for voting on funding, delay of Obamacare, would be laughable if it weren't so horribly evil.

The only way this gets better is if the American people wise up and throw out these jackasses in 2014.

Let it fail, we dare you.

If Obamacare is a “trainwreck” that is going to damage America, kill grandma, yada, yada, yada, then the Republicans should just shut up, stop obstructing and let it fail.

If it does fail, won’t they then reap the huge benefits in the next couple of elections? Since they ONLY do anything these days for political reasons, that seems like the obvious move for them. After all, they don’t really care about preventing damage to America or they’d be doing more in Congress than trying to stop abortion, defund non-existent ACORN, and repeal Obamacare.

But they know it’s not going to fail. They know that once people find it saves them money while providing actual healthcare, Democrats are going to benefit. Because of their non-stop fearmongering and sabotage, Republicans are going to be punished for years.

Any way you look at it, the Republicans have screwed themselves. Let’s hope they don’t take the rest of us down with them.

America! Pay Attention!

Please note that a Republican Senator from the state of Texas is currently in the middle of a “talk-a-thon” on the Senate floor to make his point that millions of Americans should not have health insurance.

Please note that while his Republican colleagues don’t support his procedural tactics, they do support his goal: to deprive millions of Americans of affordable health insurance.

Please note that these Republicans are willing to shut down the federal government, throwing hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work, delivering a possibly recessionary blow to our economy, and eliminating crucial services to millions of citizens, in order to keep millions of Americans from buying health insurance.

And if Obamacare goes, the insurance companies could once again deny you coverage for a pre-existing condition, cut your children off your insurance at adulthood, and will no longer be subject to competition that is already lowering prices in states that have set up their exchanges.

Republicans! Screwing over Americans because they really, really hate Obama.

Wegmans Arrives!

After years of waiting, the Germantown Wegmans opened up this week.  We went on opening day, last Sunday, to check it out.

Wegmans is basically a HUGE supermarket with everything. Yes, they carry everything. Fresh produce, baked goods, gourmet foods, a deli, meat and fish, and regular grocery items. There's also an enormous cafe with a large variety of buffet choices. We had dinner there.

To give you an idea of the size, there are 28 checkout lanes.  See below.

The store is creating 500 new jobs. We're happy it's here.

The freakout over Syria

The terrible situation in Syria is complex and unstable. The President’s threat of attack seems to have yielded concessions from Syria and Russia that were unthinkable a few weeks ago. It remains to be seen whether it will work out favorably and Syria will actually give up their chemical weapons.

What is sure that both the right and the far left are already condemning the President.

This article by David Harada Stone nails it.

On Sept. 9, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was asked during a press conference in London whether there was anything Assad could do to avoid a military strike and he replied: “Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov jumped at Kerry’s seemingly off-the-cuff remarks, urging (as in ordering) longtime Russian ally Assad to comply with Kerry’s demand. When an interviewer asked Obama if he would put airstrikes on hold if Assad gave up control of his chemical weapons, he replied, “absolutely.” Strange that a “gaffe,” which is what many pundits contend Kerry’s remarks were, would generate such a seemingly well choreographed response. In fact, Obama and Putin had apparently been talking off and on about such a plan for months.

…

So here’s the chronology: Obama draws a “red line.” Assad crosses it, murdering hundreds of civilians in a gas attack. Obama threatens to retaliate. Congress hems and haws, the left revolts, the Tea Party sides with the dictator because the enemy of their enemy (Obama) is their friend, Kerry provides an opening, Lavrov responds, a deal is struck to get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons (Obama’s goal all along) and … (wait for it) PUTIN WINS! See how that works?

…

One could – if charitably disposed toward the president or even just possessed of a modicum of fairness – give Obama some credit for bringing this situation to a head. He pursued what he knew would be a politically unpopular course to make a principled stand. He knew that history would judge America and his presidency harshly if he let the world just walk away from a nearly century-old norm against the use of chemical weapons (and no, the fact that Reagan turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons outrages in the 1980s would not have softened that judgment). It seems safe to say that without Obama’s threat nothing would have happened, except maybe more chemical weapons attacks on Syrian civilians.

Check out the whole thing.

A dozen people massacred. So what else is new in America?

Life does go on, through Columbine in 1999, through Virginia Tech in 2007, through Sandy Hook in 2012. Each atrocity provides a jolt to the nation and then recedes with little effect, until the next unimaginable event occurs, except each time a little more imaginable. Everything was supposed to change after a man with a semiautomatic weapon mowed down 20 elementary school children in their classrooms last December. But for the politicians, nothing changed. Now, another massacre, another roster of funerals. Again, again, again. Link

One of the usual responses gun supporters offer to this all-too-common tragedy is to paradoxically insist on broader access to guns, including arming teachers in schools. But, if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that this guy managed to kill a dozen people in a naval base. Likewise, Nidal Malik Hasan, was able to kill 13 people at Fort Hood, an army base. The large number of armed guards, security checkpoints, and the ready availability of guns to highly trained military personnel didn’t stop these massacres. So just why are we arming teachers? Just when does a good guy with a gun actually stop a bad guy with a gun?

The Daily Kos has been keeping track of gun deaths in the United States since Sandy Hook. Every week dozens of people are killed in gun accidents, including a disturbing number of children accidently killed by themselves, siblings or friends. The list also includes a high number of accidental deaths caused by police, security guards, military personnel and others who are trained to handle guns. Check out some of their GunFail posts. The weekly toll of America’s gun culture is staggering and eye-opening.

Sorry, Egypt. Really.

Never let it be said that America elects only its elites. We also throw a bone to the shallow end of the gene pool.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

America, especially the people who elected these three, should be proud.

Abrams' Star Trek

I watched the Blu Ray of Star Trek: Into Darkness the other night and I want to revisit the review I posted right after seeing the movie in the theater. Minor spoilers ahead.

I love two main things about the two Abrams’ Treks. One, the cast is fabulous. They’re charismatic, obviously having fun, and really stand on their own in their portrayals of these iconic characters. Really, I can’t say enough about how great the cast is, not only the seven main characters, but the supporting cast as well, including Bruce Greenwood who is fantastic as Christopher Pike. Without this cast, I doubt the movies would have been successful.

The second thing I love is the scale of the two films. The budgets are obviously higher than the original cast and Next Generation movies and it shows. We see sprawling Earth cityscapes, beautiful space views, and lots of fun technology. There’s a vibrancy to the Abrams’ movies that’s missing from the rest. What’s more, the effects generally serve the story rather than the other way around. In short, this doesn’t feel like second-rate Star Trek.

The big problem with both movies is also two-fold. One, there is an appalling lack of understanding of basic space science. In the first one, Prime Spock tells the story of a supernova that “threatened the galaxy.” That’s scientific nonsense as supernovae are local phenomena. Then there’s Romulus’ “unexpected” destruction by a perfectly predictable shock wave, one that would have been continuously monitored by a sophisticated space-faring race like, oh, the Romulans. This scientific ignorance is repeated in Into Darkness when a character beams from Earth to the Klingon homeworld (something they can’t do even in the Next Generation’s time). Later, the Enterprise travels from the Klingon homeworld to Earth in literally two minutes. The producers just don’t seem to understand that space is BIG. This may seem like nitpicking to some, but it undermines believability and the willing suspension of disbelief. And that’s a problem.

The second, bigger, problem is stupidity of plot. Characters overlook obvious solutions, motivations are murky, and contrivance is frequent. In Into Darkness, the plot needs to get a group of specific characters into a specific place so someone can attack them. But rather than have the attacker be clever and figure out where the meeting is taking place, they actually say there’s a Starfleet regulation requiring them to meet in that specific room. That’s a ridiculously contrived and silly way to explain something easily explained. In another example, at the start of the movie the Enterprise is sitting underwater as they help a primitive culture survive a volcano. Only thing is, there’s no reason whatsoever for them to be underwater rather than in orbit. They just do it because otherwise the natives won’t see the ship and take it for a god. Contrived.

The plot and science flaws stood out even more for me on this second viewing. I’m disappointed. Still, I find both movies very entertaining and look forward to the next one, hoping the story will be the equal of the great cast and production.

An economic wake-up call

Some good news. The deficit has fallen precipitously.

New Treasury Department figures confirm what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in the spring: the budget deficit for fiscal year 2013 will be dramatically lower than it was the past four years. The government recorded a $148 billion deficit in August, 22.5 percent smaller than in the same month of 2012, and is on track to total a $642 billion annual deficit when the fiscal year ends on September 30.

…

Meanwhile, Congress has already enacted $2.4 trillion worth of austerity measures in the past two years, nearly all of it in the form of spending cuts. Those policies have helped push deficits to their current lows. The fiscal austerity that has helped drive the deficit down has also undermined economic growth, not just in 2013 but for years to come. Cuts to education programs, safety nets, infrastructure investments, and research programs will actually cost the country far more down the road than they save today. The falling deficits and lowered debt-to-GDP projections give the country room to enact targeted spending measures that would kick the economy into the sort of higher gear it needs to bring unemployment back down to pre-recession levels.

I’m sure this will change the conversation and Republicans will now agree to some stimulative spending to help still struggling Americans.

Oh, I forgot. The above is good news only if you’re not interested in completely defunding the government.

Lunch Haunts - National Building Museum

On Sunday, Carol, Ben and I took the Metro downtown to visit the National Building Museum. Every couple of years they have some architects construct a miniature golf course inside the building. Carol and I read about it and we wanted to play. The course closed after Monday, so we were getting in just under the wire. Not surprisingly, many other people had the same idea.

The Building Museum hosts exhibits related to buildings (duh), architecture, urban planning, landscaping, etc. The building itself is pretty amazing and it's a nice, cool environment. (Note that the nearby BBQ restaurant, Hill Country, has set up an outside BBQ joint on the side lawn). For $5 each we had a choice of the easy or more challenging 9 hole golf course so we went for the challenge. After waiting about forty-five minutes, we had our turn.

The holes were rather odd, being based on urban elements of Washington DC, so it was an unusual and difficult course; they were really constructed more for artistic purposes than to be a good miniature golf experience. Via moving panels, the terrain on the first hole changed depending on where you stood to tee off while one hole incorporated a transparent plexiglass ramp leading up to a vortex and a tube to the lower green. The hole below was wood, sculpted as a relief of the Chespeake Bay water table. (Note that after hitting my first shot off the side, I started back at the tee and made it in the hole in one shot, the only person I saw do it.)

We enjoyed the experience a lot. Ben won the game, 42 to 43 to 43.

Afterwards we went to Ben's favorite Chinese restaurant, Chinatown Express, located in nearby Chinatown (again, duh) for their excellent fresh, handmade noodles. 

::Edited to correct the golf scores.

So Long, Futurama (again)

In about an hour, the last new Futurama will air on Comedy Central. This is actually the third "last" episode over the series on-again, off-again fourteen year life. The first was when it was cancelled on Fox. The second was the last of four Futurama movies commissioned and aired on the Cartoon Network. It's possible some other channel will pick the show up for further adventures of the Planet Express crew, but there's nothing currently in the works. (And in tragically sad news, Family Guy still airs every week.)

During Futurama's run on the Fox network, it was in its prime. There were many, many great episodes, endlessly rewatchable, and only a few mediocre ones. The last couple of seasons on Comedy Central have had more than their share of meh and even some outright bad episodes, but there have been enough good ones to make it worthwhile. The last half dozen or so, save one, have been really good, sending the series out on a high note.

So, so long Fry, Leela, Bender, Professor, Hermes, Amy, Dr. Zoidberg and a supporting cast of thousands. You will definitely be missed. Here's hoping to see you in yet another parallel universe.

All hail the 51st state!

One of many disaffected conservative areas nationwide, a California county has voted to secede from California. Because socialism, probably.

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday in favor of seceding from California to form a new state called “Jefferson.” Siskiyou also plans to invite nearby counties in California and southern Oregon to join with them in casting off the bonds that have tied them to their fellow Californians and Oregonians for generations.

Residents attending the supervisors meeting were virtually unanimous in supporting the predominantly Republican county’s secession. According to the Redding Record Searchlight, a local paper, one member of the board of supervisors raised a laundry list of complaints related to “regulation, restriction of rights, lack of representation, regionalism and restoration of limited government.” A staffer from Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s (R-CA) office attended the meeting and claimed that “she and other LaMalfa staff members supported the effort to secede, but she did not know LaMalfa’s thoughts on it.”

Of course this is blatantly unconstitutional, but I say go for it. The loss of California’s services will pretty quickly disabuse them of the notion that government isn’t valuable. However, Jefferson is a terrible name for a state.

Might I humbly suggest Dumbassistan?

Douchebag of the Week!

This is Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens:

“Let me tell you what we’re doing (about ObamaCare),” Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens bragged to a crowd of fellow Republicans in Floyd County earlier this month: “Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”

After pausing to let applause roll over him, a grinning Hudgens went on to give an example of that obstructionist behavior, this one involving so-called “navigators” who are being hired to guide customers through the process of buying health insurance on marketplaces, or exchanges, set up under the federal program.

“We have passed a law that says that a navigator, which is a position in that exchange, has to be licensed by our Department of Insurance,” Hudgens said. “The ObamaCare law says that we cannot require them to be an insurance agent, so we said fine, we’ll just require them to be a licensed navigator. So we’re going to make up the test, and basically you take the insurance agent test, you erase the name, you write ‘navigator test’ on it.”

Yes, Republicans and Republican civil servants are happily denying people health insurance. They’re enthusiastically preventing families from obtaining affordable options for when they’re sick or injured. They’re applauding the obstruction of federal law, passed by Congress, signed by the President, and validated by the courts. They just don’t care if you’re suffering.

And of course, it’s not just this douchebag. The Republican House has spent over $50 million on pointless votes to repeal Obamacare.

Republicans: If you don’t have health insurance, they hate you.