Monday Musings

Just a couple thoughts that occurred to me over the weekend:

First of all, on the late night wars. Two things bother me, or rather two opinions bother me. One is the opinion that Conan O'Brien is a victim. Look, I've always liked Conan and I think he's pretty funny but let's be honest: the guy just got paid $33 million to NOT host a tv-show. Every day of my life, I've NOT hosted a tv show. Where's my check? I think that NBC and Leno pulling the plug on him was unfair, but he's been adequately compensated for it and then some. He's not a victim. The second opinion that annoys me is people responding to this story with "how can these celebrities get paid and companies throw around all this money when there are millions starving in the world" or some derivation of that. Entertainers and athletes are paid exorbitant amounts of money. Deal with it. They are paid that much because their is a market for their services, and that is the market rate. If you don't like it, I'm sure that Cuba and Venezuela would be glad to have you.

I was saddened to learn that apparently Dennis Hopper has late-stage terminal cancer and is facing his final days. Did I just have my head in the ground or has this just not been widely reported? Not like I'm the world's biggest Dennis Hopper fan but I've always enjoyed him and his work. I loved him in Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, True Romance, and, yes, even Speed and I think he qualifies as an American film icon. And not even the worst of human beings deserves the slow horrid death that cancer brings, so all I can wish for him is as little pain and as much peace as possible in his final days. It's times like these where I think that instead of the endless memorials and tributes that are going to be shown in his honor after he dies, wouldn't it be nice if we paid tribute to him now while he's still around to enjoy and be touched by them? That's something that's always seemed so backwards to me.

The other strange bend to this story is that he's apparently using his final days to file for divorce from his wife, supposedly to keep her from contesting his will. That just seems like some misguided priorities to me. You find out that you've got a month or so to live and rather than trying to cope and be at peace with it and learning to detach and disassociate yourself from materiality and things that will no longer be of concern to you shortly your thoughts turn instead to "Bitch ain't gettin my money!" And his wife, for her part, is certainly not doing much to elicit sympathy. Under their pre-nup, she is still entitled to one quarter of his estate even if they're divorced. So does she say "I don't care about the rest of the money; let's not spend the rest of our time together fighting." Nope. She's supposedly "barricaded herself into their house" while he's been at the hospital. Classy. And they have a 6-year-old child together (Galen). So always remember Galen: even (and, apparently, especially) in the face of death, money is always the most important thing.

The Downfall of the Two Party System

I intially started this as a response to Weir's comment about the difference in Congressional voting patterns between Republicans and Democrats, but as is so often the case I found that I had more to say about it then I first realized and thought it deserved to be a topic in it's own right.

I believe that we are currently witnessing the downfall of the two-party system. To be sure, it will be a slow, painful, agonizing death but I think that we've seen the cracks in the foundation already and those cracks will just widen given time. Allow me to elaborate.

The fundamental weakness of the two-party system is, unsurprisingly, its binary nature. Outside of the primaries, you don't get a diverse range of choices on the issues. You don't like candidate A or candidate B's position on a particular issue? Tough luck; pick one. This can be overcome when the system is functioning at its best, and that's when there is a semi-clear line of demarcation between the two parties that occurs at or near the center of the political spectrum. In that scenario it's fairly clear what each party stands for and when you elect more members of one party you can have a reasonable expectation of their priorities and you can also expect that they will more or less vote together. But the fundamental flaw which cannot be overcome in this system is that you have no good method of registering discontent with the ruling party other than to vote for the other side. That often leaves the electorate in the awkward position of voting for someone they don't ideologically agree with, just because they're fed up with what the current party has been offering. And small wonder that these voters are fickle and will abandon you the first chance they get; they never agreed with you in the first place!

But the real breakdown occurs when one party, rather than being spread throughout their half of the political spectrum, becomes ideologically clustered around the last 20% of it (as the Republicans have). Then, by definition, the other party is left to cover the remaining 80%. That might seem like a good thing for the party with the wider base, but it actually becomes a huge hindrance. You've got somebody who is 10 "points" right of center in the same party with someone who is all the way left. At that point the question becomes less "why can't you two stay together on an issue?" and more "why the hell are the two of you in the same party?"

Here's the other problem. The Democrats don't actually cover the remaining 80% of the spectrum abdicated by the Republicans. At heart, most Democrats are left of center. So they move to the right to try and fill the void left by the Republicans but they're not going to go all the way to 30 "points" right of center. I'd say they're probably only going about half that far - to about 15, but let's not get hung up on the numbers since they're pretty arbitrary anyway. The point is that you've now got a fairly sizeable gap in ideology between the two parties and that's a huge problem. When the two parties each inhabit an entire half of the political spectrum, the members in the middle aren't too far apart, no matter which party they belong to. That makes compromise feaible and, since they are by definition compromises by centrists, they tend to be pretty good ones. But now that you've got a gap in ideologies between the parties - forget it. It might as well be a chasm as far as compromise is concerned.

So the result is depressingly logical: complete gridlock when the Democrats are in charge and lots and lots of legislation that the majority of the country disagrees with when the Republicans are in charge. Taken in this context, it makes all the sense in the world that the period of our greatest prosperity (recently) occurred when we had a Democratic president with a Republican congress (94 - 2000). We avoided the gridlock of the Democratic congress while at the same time the Republicans were forced to come back towards the center to avoid a veto.

So is this unavoidable? I don't think so, but it will take a lot of time and, most importantly, a lot of courage from a small group of people (but then again isn't that the recipe for most major changes?). I used to think that the Republicans would be the ones splintering. That the fiscal conservatives would disassociate themselves from the religious fundamentalists and return to the center. I think they had a chance to do that, but that ship has now sailed. They realize that their base, while extremely passionate, is small and thus abandoning the party for the center would most likely just lead to political obscurity. Some (like Bob Barr) went to the Libertarian party and political obscurity was indeed the result (unless you consider .4% of the vote in the 2008 Presidential election to be "relevant"). Others (like Jim Webb) flipped and joined the Democratic party. But most just shuffled to the right along with their colleagues.

So what about a new 3rd party springing to national prominence? I just don't see it happening. Perot had a chance to do it in the early 90s but he was only interested in getting himself elected; the creation of a viable 3rd-party alternative was not on his agenda. Nader's Green Party? I don't think they'll ever have mass appeal, even among the left. Libertarians? There was a time when I'd like to have thought that but then something changed. I went to one of their meetings and they are just an incoherent mess. The Economist hit it right on the head when they said that they can basically be put into two groups: anarchists and drug decriminalization advocates. Hardly a platform with mass appeal.

So, yes, that leaves the Democrats as the most likely to fracture, and I'll give you a script for how it might happen. They lose power in either 2010 or 2012. The Republicans then proceed to pass a lot more legislation that is horribly unpopular. At some point they probably get us involved in another war too. The people once again get fed up with them and give the Democrats another go. The Dems take control and all the same gridlock happens again. The electorate is fed up with them yet again, but they also still remember that the Republicans haven't done anything they agree with for a long time. So then the key will be that a small group of important and popular Democrats have to get fed up as well. And it would probably have to be a group of either just retired or those thinking about retiring who don't have a whole lot to lose. It would be a big risk but if you got enough people to jump at once and enough momentum you could basically have a microcosm of how Obama overtook Hillary in the primaries. If you are able to move people from "well that's nice, but it'll never happen" to "wow, there might really be something here" you can do anything.

Hey, I can dream can't I?

Why the Democratic party is like a 4-year old

So thanks to the special election in Massachusetts yesterday, the Democratic party will no longer wield a super-majority in the Senate. This is seen as a big deal. And it certainly sounds like a big deal. No longer will the Democrats be able to wield supreme legislative authority, effortlessly passing bill after bill and relentlessly ticking off campaign promises. Oh wait, they weren't doing that. Remind me again about all the shining legislative achievements they've pushed through in the 6 months since Franken was sworn in as the 60th Democrat. It seems to me that they were languishing, and largely failing, to keep all of their caucus together while the Republicans just voted "no" to everything. And it further seems to me that they will still be doing that.

But from reading the news and the blogosphere you'd never know that. Pundits are talking about the Democrats being "devastated" and Democratic bloggers everywhere are lamenting the loss of the super-majority. And the more I read, the more it all started to seem very familiar. Let's roleplay a little - and no I'm not talking about getting out my dominatrix outfit (which I look damn hot in BTW). It's 3 months before Christmas and all your 3-year-old son can talk about is how much he wants a Buzz Lightyear action figure. On and on he goes about how great it is and how every night he dreams about it and generally how perfect and wonderful his life would be if only he had a Buzz Lightyear action figure. And on Christmas morning he gets it and you watch his eyes light up and he jumps up and down screaming and tells you how amazing and wonderful you are for getting it for him and how he'll never be bad again and will love it and cherish it for ever and ever. And for the next few weeks he goes everywhere with it. Eats with it, sleeps with it, goes to pre-school with it. And he treats it with the reverance that a monk would treat a first edition of the Bible. But then gradually the novelty of it all starts to wear off. Inevitably it starts getting nicked up and eventually after one too many ill-fated takeoffs a wing snaps off and once you caught him in the nick of time before he subjected Buzz to "military stress testing" with a lighter and an aerosol can. And eventually Buzz just gets thrown in the toy chest with everything else and gets largely forgotten about. Fast forward a year later and you are looking to give away some toys to Goodwill and you say "he doesn't ever play with this Buzz Lightyear anymore so he'll never miss it. And I bet some other kid would really like it." So you give it away. A few days later your son notices that it is missing and now, of course, he is irate and inconsolable. "How could you have given away my favorite toy in the world?!?!?! I loved that toy and now there will never be another one like it . . ." and so on.

So I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how rarely your child plays with a toy, don't give it to Goodwill. It's just not worth the hell you're going to catch.

No, wait, that's not it. The point is that the Democrats finally got the one thing that they've wanted forever. And they were really excited when they got it. But then they misused, neglected, and then ultimately stopped using it and despite that now they're all horribly depressed that it's gone.

So now supposedly the new gameplan is to try and get the Senate version of the healthcare bill to pass the House, thus bypassing the reconciliation process and negating the need for it to pass the Senate a second time. My opinion? If the idea of bringing a bill back to a place where you control 59 of the 100 seats fills you with such terror that you will do anything to get around doing it, then maybe it's not a very good bill. What the Democrats should do (and of course won't) is just start over. Pass a small bill that just eliminates pre-existing conditions and lifetime limits, declare victory, and move on so that maybe you actually have some legislative accomplishments to run on this November. That's what they should have done even before yesterday, but it's even more what they need to do today.

My Gratuitous Top 10 List

As (sort of) requested here is my list of the top-10 movies of the "aughts" with caveats galore. The first being that there are many films which I know are excellent that I haven't yet seen. And I only put about an hour of thought into this after consulting about 10 different "top" lists on the web, so there's also almost certainly at least a few movies which I have seen that I'm just plain forgetting about. Take that as an open invitation to try and persuade me with which masterpiece I'm obviously missing. So without further ado:

10. The Dark Knight - I wonder if Heath Ledger's performance would still have garnered the same acclaim had he not died. I'd like to think so, because it's simply one of the best performances ever filmed. The rest of this movie is nothing more than a decent superhero/action movie, but with his performance it's enough to elevate it onto here.

9. High Fidelity - Ah the movie that introduced the world to Jack Black. A romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies. Just the right balance of comedy and drama with just enough philosophy thrown in.

8. The Fog of War - This shouldn't surprise any frequent reader, since I've talked extensively about this documentary on here on at least two occasions. If you still haven't made time to see this, consider this just one more nudge.

7. Memento - I feel a little odd putting this here, because I find that I spend a lot of time arguing that this movie isn't as good as most people think. However, that's because I find myself talking to a lot of people who want to place this up there with the greatest films of all time and I'm just not there with it. Still, as just a pure cinematic experience this is hard to top. Few films have the power to just reach out and grab you from the opening credits, engross you in a story, and not let go till the end as much as this one did.

6. Almost Famous - Another odd one because looked at separately no component of this movie stands out as exceptional. Everything (story, dialogue, directing, characters, acting) is pretty much good but not great. But what can I say? I just flat out love it! Probably the best way I can describe it is "immensely watchable". I can pretty much watch this movie any time, any place. That's a rare quality for a film. I remember that after seeing this in theatres, it was one of the 5 films they were offering on the little personal TVs on my flight to Amsterdam (it was pre-"On Demand"; the movies just ran in a loop). I think I ended up watching it 3 times on the flight over and twice more on the flight back.

5. Pan's Labyrinth - I am a sucker for a good fantasy (which are, admittedly, very rare) and this is one of the best (even despite the fact that, technically, it may not even qualify as a fantasy). Some of the most engaging scenes and breathtaking images.

4. Lord of the Rings - Speaking of great fantasy . . . OK, so maybe it's a cheat to include this all as one movie, but I think it's actually more of a cheat to split them up. It's clearly all one story and I like them all equally anyway.

3. Waking Life - There are only two movies ever where after I finished watching it at home I've just instantly watched it again. This is one of them (Trainspotting is the other). This film pioneered the "live animation" look that's now unfortunately been ruined by investing commercials. It's the perfect look for this film. Yes, it's really "just" a collection of scenes where random people wax philosophically but I found every single scene engaging and almost all of them had at least something to say that I'd never thought of before. I also learned how to lucid dream from watching this film. Talk about practical usage!

2. City of God - When I first saw this film, I think I told everyone I knew that they needed to see it. But when they inevitably asked "what's it about" I found that I could never explain it in a way that made it sound even a fraction of as interesting as it really is. I find that I still have this problem, so I'll just say this. I guarantee you that no one who has watched it would dispute it's inclusion on this list.

1. Mulholland Drive - This will probably not be a very popular choice. This is a movie that splinters people. It's the ultimate "love it or hate it" movie. After I recommended this, a number of people saw it and then asked me to help explain it to them. Curiously I found that for everybody (myself included) whether or not you understood it was irrelevant to whether or not you liked it. It took me probably 5-6 viewings before I felt like I understood everything (or *almost* everything) but fitting all the pieces together was probably the most enjoyable part. Watching it, letting it all sink in, coming up with theories during drives to and from work, then rewatching it to see how my theory fit, and then doing it all over again. If that sounds like torture, then this is not the movie for you. If it sounds like fun though, you've got a fun little puzzle ahead of you. A word of warning though; the DVD has no chapter stops. Yeah, David Lynch is a quirky guy (to put it mildly).

Honorable mentions: Minority Report, Kill Bill (1&2), Inglorious Basterds, Avatar, Spirited Away, Best in Show, WALL-E

5 Movies that I'd like the 2 hours of my life back:

5. Transformers I and II - I love the Transformers. I still have the original 80s movie on VHS. I also don't have a problem looking at Megan Fox. But you'd find yourself both more entertained and more fulfilled staring at a Megan Fox poster for 2 hours - even if someone took away the poster after 30 minutes and you were stuck staring at a blank wall for the next 90.

4. Dumb and Dumberer - I didn't expect the genius of the Carey/Daniels original, but I did expect to laugh at least once. And I didn't. Not once. This is the start of a common theme for the rest of the movies on this list: when you don't have an idea, DON'T MAKE A SEQUEL!

3. Ocean's Twelve - One of the few films that actually made me angry as I watched it in the theatres. A pivotal plot point that revolves around the fact that Julia Roberts' character looks like Julia Roberts. Are you f'n kidding me?!?!?!? You. Can. Not. Do. That.

2. The Whole Ten Yards - I like to imagine that during filming right after the director yelled "cut" each time Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry just burst out laughing in disbelief that they were getting paid for this. I don't think this movie had a script. Seriously, I don't.

1. Matrix Revolutions - Even after "Reloaded" I still defended this series. I had faith in the Wachowskis (being a big fan of Bound and the original Matrix), that they would tie up the loose ends and wrap up the story in a satisfying way. I could not have been more wrong. After seeing it, I remember writing an e-mail saying that "I wish when I had gotten to the theatre Keanu Reeves had just kicked me in the nuts and stole my $7. That would have been more honest." I still feel that way.

Happy New Year, Decade, Etc!

OK, so as usual I'm not exactly on top of things. Oh well.

First of all, I was very excited that yesterday my favorite Cub of all-time was finally recognized as one of the best players of all-time. Dawson, Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, and (believe it or not) Shawon Dunston are the reason that I am the Cubs fan I am today. Congrats to the Hawk!

Random thought; as I was walking around in the cold earlier this week for some reason I started thinking about futuristic movies (there is actually a train of thought that led to this, but I'll spare you). I realized that I have never seen a movie set in a "happy" future where it was cold. Anytime it is cold in the future, it's always as part of a desolate world where the Earth has become a barren wasteland or somehow uninhabitable for humans. Now the opposite isn't true; just because it's warm in the future doesn't mean it's happy (e.g. Waterworld and Mad Max). It's as if to have a happy future, we have to solve winter. So help me out here movie buffs: can anyone think of a movie where a happy future still had cold in it?

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's. I don't know about you, but it didn't really feel like the end of a decade to me. It might just be that the end of the last decade was such a big deal that everything else pales in comparison, but even though I was young I recall the change from the 80s to the 90s being a far bigger deal. Personally, I think the culprit is that it never really had a good name. Saying goodbye to "the aughts" just doesn't have the ring of the 80s or 90s.

Avatar

So as promised I got the star rating for Avatar up on Saturday. However, I thought that a little more discussion about it was in order.

As far as this film representing the next leap forward technologically in film, I can tell you unequivocally that you can believe the hype. It is hands down the most amazing looking film I've ever seen. Cameron has managed to create a living, breathing world in a way that has never been done before in the history of film. And he has done it, presumably, almost exclusively with CGI. And the fact that I say "presumably" is itself a remarkable statement. Because I simply can't tell. There are things I saw which I have no possible idea how they would have been created without CGI, but there's no "dead giveaway" that makes me able to say for sure that it is. I think that Cameron learned (which, sadly, George Lucas did not) that most of the time where you run into trouble with CGI is when you have CGI characters present with non-CGI ones. He sidesteps this by basically making everything (and everyone) CGI. I counted only a very small handful of scenes where CGI and non-CGI characters were present in the same shot, and the shots were either so brief or they were so laden with other effects that your eyes aren't drawn to the differences. Ccompare this with, for example, the scene near the beginning of The Phantom Menace when we first meet Anakin. Anakin's master is all CGI and we don't believe for a moment that he's actually in the shot with the actors.

It only took me about 20 minutes into the film to realize that it was a guaranteed Oscar winner. Seriously, if it doesn't win Best Visual Effects they should just do away with the award. Sorry Star Trek, looks like you picked a bad year to come out.

Basically the movie looks so amazing that even if everytime a character had opened their mouths to speak chimp noises came out instead it still would have been a 4/5 star movie. So it should have been a no-brainer for it to earn 5 stars. So why only 4.5? Well, the story and dialogue are quite underwhelming. The story (in its largely spoiler-free form) is basically The Last Samurai meets The Secret of Mana. It's a serviceable story and it's never boring but it also abounds with cliches. I can totally forgive that, because the look of the film is so spectacular that in a way it's nice to be in the confines of a familiar story. You can feel free to look around and admire all the little details (and believe me there are a TON) without having to worry about getting lost. The dialogue, however, is another story. There's at least a half dozen examples where one character says to another character something that the other character would obviously already have known and it's clear that the only point is to provide expository dialogue. It just feels very unnatural. Also, there is just no form of subtlety here at all. As just one point that isn't a spoiler of any consequence but just summarizes it perfectly, the humans on the planet are mining for a rare mineral. And rather than just name it something that already exists, the writers decide to invent a new one and the name they choose is "unobtainium". The film is unabashedly pro-environmentalism and anti-war. There's nothing wrong with that but, again, some form of subtlety would be nice. The worst part is that it's unnecessary; the themes would have come through just fine without several characters basically outright stating them. It feels dumbed down, and maybe that's the point. All in all, it's certainly not something that ruins the movie but it is a detraction. I just wish they'd spent maybe $2-3 million less on the effects and invested in a decent rewrite of the dialogue.

Overall, the movie is just what it promises to be: a true cinematic experience. If you are thinking that you will eventually see it, do yourself a favor and see it the way it was meant to be seen: on an IMAX. The 3-D is awesome but not compulsory, in my opinion, but the large screen is. I don't know how the film will hold up once it gets to Blu-Ray but I guarantee you anyone that pops it in for the first time is going to say "wow, this would have been amazing to see on a huge screen." Don't be that guy (or girl).

I Am S-M-R-T

So, I have been playing a lot of online poker recently. And surprisingly enough, I have been doing well for a change. I bought in for $105 over the Thanksgiving week and through last weekend I had cashed out $300. But I started to feel a little bored with it and thought "you know what? For once in my life how about cashing out while you're still doing alright and before you get to the point where you've suffered 12 bad beats in a row and are vowing never to play online again?" So on Wednesday night I cashed out $100 of the $109 left in my account and thought "ok, I'll just screw around with this last $9 and then I'll take a break for a while." So that's what I did. And here's where the smartness comes in. At 10:00 at night on Wednesday I decide to enter a $3.30 tournament with 865 players. And I start doing really well. But at about 11:30 I start doing the math and realizing that with 250 players still left even in the best case scenario I'm going to be there a while. But what can I do? I'm certainly not going to just give up and go to bed. So I keep playing and playing. We get down to 45 players left and I'm actually the chip leader - but it's 1:30. Finally, I lose a couple bad hands and get crippled and then the final blow comes when I flop top pair (Jacks) and push only to run into pocket Aces. I'm out. It's 2:25. Final finish: 20th place. My payout? $8.54. Yep, I missed out on about 4 extra hours of sleep for less than $10. To those of you who are single (or at least don't have kids) that's probably not that big of a deal but let me assure you that when you are the parent of a 3-month-old sleep becomes quite precious indeed. It's sure as hell worth more than $2.14/hour. And of course, I just turned around last night and lost the remaining $14 in my account so really it was all for nothing. Oh well, at least I now really will be done for a while and I still did turn a profit (again, for now).

Leaving work in less than an hour to see Avatar. I'll have at least my star rating of it up by tomorrow (I know you all can't wait). Next week I am in the office on Monday, working from home on Tuesday, and then have the rest of the week off. As much as I will miss Christmas in Texas, it will be nice to just have 5 days off and not have to travel anywhere farther than Aurora and Tinley.

For you sports (and especially Cubs) fans out there, it was just reported that the Cubs finally traded Milton Bradley; and no, it wasn't for The Parker Brothers. It was for Carlos Silva, who is arguably the worst starting pitcher in MLB right now. The worst part about all of it is that I now can no longer make fun of the Sox for trading for Juan Pierre. My only hope is that during the Crosstown Classic next year I get to see Pierre bat against Silva. I'd like to know what happens when a player who specializes in hitting very week ground balls to second meets a pitcher who specializes in giving up towering home runs?

Playing Catch-Up Again

So as you might be able to tell if you look to the right side of this page, I've continued my recent kick of watching lots of movies (or at least lots more than I have in some time). And the result has been rather underwhelming. While I didn't expect the likes of Terminator and Angels & Demons to wow me, I had high hopes for Up in the Air. And while it was "good", I actually despised the ending so much that it seriously crippled my appreciation for the movie as a whole. Without giving anything away, it has one of those endings which make you re-examine earlier events in the film and realize that they don't make a whole lot of sense. Very disappointing. Still, given that as of this morning it got nominated for 6 Golden Globes (including Best Picture) I appear to be in the minority. As a side note, it was nice to see that my 2 favorite films so far this year (Inglorious Basterds and 500 Days of Summer) were also nominated for Best Picture.

I've got tickets to see Avatar in 3-D at the Navy Pier Imax on Friday. I initially bought tickets to it with the idea that it would be a fun, mindless sci-fi action movie. Now, however, after seeing Ebert give it his most glowing review ever, IGN come pretty close to that as well, and it too getting a Best Picture Golden Globe nomination, I would have to say that my expectations have definitely been raised. I can't really argue with the people who say that the previews do not look promising, but my response is this: please name me one feature film James Cameron has directed that isn't good (at least in the last 25 years)?

I'm still following the health care debate closely but I don't even really know where to start with that. Four months ago I wrote (of Democrats) "if you sit there and worry about every opinion poll and detrimentally alter the bill to fit the popular mood of the hour, you've got a good chance of ending up with a spectacularly crappy bill. And that's what'll get you killed in the election next year." Sadly, this looks to be exactly the route that they are following. I've seen the focus since that time shift dramatically from "we need to pass sweeping health reform that will ensure that every American is covered and that costs are kept down" to "we need to do everything in our power to pass something so it doesn't look like we've just wasted an entire year." Other than the actual Senators currently out pushing it, I don't know a single person that likes the current Senate bill (though, since it seems to change almost daily, I'm not even positive what the "current" Senate bill incarnation is).

Ironically, about the only that Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning voters can agree on these days is that this bill is terrible. If they pass it in its current form, it will basically achieve nothing they set out to do other than (maybe) insuring a few more uninsured. It will do nothing to increase competition or keep costs from sky-rocketing, and they didn't even make an attempt at litigation reform. And even for the extra people who will be covered, with the amount that the bill's going to cost it will almost undoubtedly end up being far cheaper if the government just sent those people a check every year for the rest of their life and told them to buy their own insurance from a private insurer. And that's before they end up adding all the inevitable pork that will go in via the amendments that will be necessary in order to get this thing passed. As low as my expectations always are for the Democrats to be unified when they control Congress, I really stand in awe of their ineptitude right now. It reminds me of watching the Bears this season. You can learn to take the losses. There's no shame in just flat-out getting beat. What is so hard to swallow is when you don't get beat; you beat yourselves. I am constantly reminded of the Lewis Black joke: "The Democratic party is a party of no ideas, and the Republican party is a party of bad ideas. So you got the Republican standing up saying 'I've got a really bad idea' and the Democrat stands up and says 'and I know how to make it even worse'." Or, to paraphrase Lyle Lanley, "Y'know, a Democrat in power is a little like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it."

Back to the Cold

So anyone who has been following Christy's blog knows that we just got back from spending Thanksgiving in Houston. It was a great trip and we did a lot of relaxing but both Christy and I managed to catch a cold on our last day there and combined with the turn in weather it has made the adjustment back a little more difficult than usual.

A few people have asked me for my opinion on the "climate-gate" scandal. I think that this guy sums it up for me pretty well. If you don't feel like reading that article, the gist is that I think it's an embarrassment and I am a staunch believer that scientific dissent should never be bullied or silenced for political, theological, or ideological purposes. But I think the outrage has been severely misdirected. The ire should be reserved for the individuals involved in the e-mails. Instead it seems to be being used to suggest that the whole case for climate change has now somehow been undermined, and that's just not true. The fundamental evidence behind climate change being real and man-made remains as strong today as it did 2 weeks ago, and nothing I've seen in any of the e-mails changes that one bit. Yes, there are admissions of things that are unknown and unexplained, but that is hardly a smoking gun. Every year scientists find out new pieces of information on evolution and make corrections to prior assumptions, but each revision does nothing to call into question the initial theory put forth by Darwin 150 years ago. Creationists like to leap on every change and reside in the margins of what is still not known to "prove" that evolution is incorrect, but that is just a failure in understanding the scientific process. Something as complex as evolution or climate change is unlikely to ever be modeled to the point of 100% accuracy, but it is not necessary to achieve that level to draw the conclusion that they are correct. Still, again, that does not excuse a lot of the bullying and dismissive tone and tactics in the e-mail. Like it or not, one of the consequences of free speech is allowing others to put forth misinformation and things you don't agree with. History has proven that where science is concerned the facts always win out in the end, even if it takes a lot longer than some people are comfortable with.

Not much else going on right now. I updated my reviews with a few more movies I've seen. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Adventureland; I highly recommend it. The new Christmas Carol, while decent, really just made me want to go home and watch the Muppet version, which I dutifully did on Tuesday. I'm also finally getting around to reading again. Currently, I'm making my way through What the Dog Saw . . . and Other Adventures; the new book by Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers fame). This book is actually just a collection of articles he has written for The New Yorker over the years but it is just as compelling as his other books, even if it doesn't have a single common theme like his other books. At about 20 pages per story, they are long enough to be meaty and substantive but also short enough to be accessible for people who don't like making a commitment to reading 400+ pages.

Aghanistan - Time to Pack It In

Let me start out by stating what I believe should happen in Afghanistan. There should be a truly multinational coalition (say 20-25 countries) committing a total of about half a million troops that all have the understanding that they will likely be there in some form for a decade or more. There has never been a successful counterinsurgency (at least in the last few hundred years) which lasted less than a decade and so that should be the expectation (discounting the 8 years we have already been there since we're now just about back to where we were in early 2002). I believe that if we leave Afghanistan the Taliban will once again take over and all of al Qaeda will move back in and set up camp. The force I've outlined above is what I believe is necessary to achieve a long-lasting stability.

Here's the problem. It's not going to happen. Our "coalition" is essentially us and Britain and about 10-15 other countries who have committed a couple hundred troops each. And most of those countries are now losing their taste for even that level of involvement. So, like it or not, that is going to leave us to do almost all the heavy lifting ourselves. Right now we have approximately 68,000 troops stationed there. Now General McChrystal has reportedly asked for 45,000 more. And I don't blame him. Roughly speaking, 68,000 is one Memorial Stadium-full of soldiers. While that's a lot, it hardly seems like an adequate enough force to secure an entire country. Even with the additional 45,000 (which is by no means guaranteed), we're just talking about upgrading from Memorial Stadium to Michigan Stadium. Again, I am just skeptical that it's enough to get the job done.

So while I think it's going to take a couple hundred thousand troops at a minimum, even if we were capable of it I just can't possibly in good conscience recommend that we supply them all. So if we're not going to have the international support we need, and we're not capable of supplying all the troops ourselves then in my opinion we're just delaying the inevitable and losing more soldiers in the process. This is the epitome of the bad choice/worse choice scenario. From where I'm sitting it seems like the only thing worse than leaving is not leaving.

I think the final straw for me was the election debacle. Before then I could at least somewhat convince myself that we were helping support a legitimate democracy in the Middle East. But instead it appears that we are backing an extremely corrupt regime that seems to only really care about clinging to power and cannot or will not bring about democratic reform. And while it may be better than the Taliban, I don't think it's enough of an improvement to warrant a seemingly endless commitment of blood and treasure.

"Fiscal Conservatism" = Leaving Trillions of Dollars of Debt to Your Children

Another guest blog from our buddy Joe Mays.

The term "starve the beast" is attributed to one of Ronald Reagan's staffers in a Wall Street Journal article from 1985. It refers to cutting taxes on the wealthy in order to destroy the U.S. government, thus crippling it's ability to provide popular social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This philosophy is not fiscally responsible, though it's been the guiding principle for all of the conservative Republican administrations throughout my lifetime.

I was born in 1979 when we had very little national debt. The WWII generation had been good stewards of our economy. They learned the lessons of the Great Depression - only spending what they could afford, while building a society that was competitive. Since then, Republican administrations have applied for and promptly charged our national credit cards to the limit, leaving us and our children in peril. They hoped that our nation would eventually go bankrupt and leave all but the most-fortunate among us saddled with a national debt we could never repay.

That's the story of the dreaded 1980's. Growing up during the Reagan and Bush I presidencies, I stood helpless as I watched our national debt balloon into a huge threat to the country we love, as well as a massive political issue. As soon as a Democratic administration took power, I remember the Republicans campaigning on deficit reduction - they said we must stop government spending now! Luckily, President Clinton had the courage to stand up to them. Mr. Clinton shut down the government because he knew that debt reduction would take some time - and that debt reduction must happen hand-in-hand with economic growth. Rather than destroy our economy, Mr. Clinton stood with the working families in our country, and we eventually got a balanced budget and began paying off our national debt.




During the Bush II years, I saw irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy, unjustified wars, and the largest expansion of government in recent memory. As a result, our national debt exploded. All of the bullshit that the conservative Republicans spewed during the 1990's was a lie. It is now plain to see. As soon as they took control, they turned our serious debt problem into a grave catastrophe - and got us mired in two wars - and destroyed our economy.

...And now the tea-party crowd wants us to give them another shot. They want us to believe that conservatism is the true solution to our debt problem. Let us not forget history. This is a shameful political ploy. We must rebuild our economy first, and start to make the long-neglected necessary investments in our future. Only after that will we see real debt reduction.

I am a true champion of fiscal responsibility. As someone who was a powerless child when our nation's debt was amassed, I strongly resent past generations for leaving us in this position. Perhaps in the 1950s this was considered a "conservative" stance. But it is no longer. During my lifetime, the conservatives created the national debt as we know it - only a liberal president bothered to balance the budget. Let us not forget this. In the memorable words of The Who: "I get on my knees and pray that we don't get fooled again."

The Long-Awaited Conclusion

So to complete my economic post from last week, I'll take on the 500 lb gorilla in the room head on. Yes I am going to advocate government intervention. No, I don't think that makes me a socialist.

My rationale is based on my belief in Keynesian economics. Until Michael Jackson died, John Maynard Keynes was easily the most talked-about dead guy of the last year. Nevertheless, since there were a lot of people dropping his name in an effort to sound like they knew what they were talking about even if they didn't or if what they were advocating had nothing to do with the Keynesian model, I think a brief and extremely simplistic description is in order.

In a "normal" economy (we'll set aside what the exact definition of this is; just think of an economy humming along at about 2% real growth per year) you have high employment and everyone spends their money "normally". Your "normal" demand is defined as the sum of domestic consumer spending, business investment, and government expenditures. In other words, these are the "inputs" into the economy. Now you hit a recession (for the example, the reason is unimportant). One of the main hallmarks of a recession is higher unemployment. As unemployment rises, those left jobless have less disposable income and thus spend less, which causes aggregate consumer spending to fall. Even those who still hold jobs are now more uncertain (typically measured by consumer confidence) and thus begin to elect to save more of their earnings rather than invest. This further hits consumer demand. The fall in demand causes more companies to layoff more workers which further triggers a fall in consumer confidence and you get a vicious cycle of falling demand to unemployment to falling demand, etc. So the Keynesian argument is that when consumer demand falls the government must step in to plug the gap so that demand as a whole (consumer spending plus business investment plus government expenditures) can be normalized again.

It's important to realize that anything the government does in this situation is technically "government intervention"; even tax cuts. If taxes are at level A, and a Congressmen proposes changing them to level B in order to combat the recession, that's still government intervention! I hear the idea of lowering taxes presented as being synonymous with laissez-faire economics and that's simply not the case. True laissez-faire economics would say change absolutely nothing during a recession. Again, we are talking about specific steps to combat a recession, not changing the tax policies of the country in general (where a reduction in taxes and, presumably, government WOULD be a move towards a more laissez-faire style).

OK, so in my previous post I illustrated why I don't believe that personal tax cuts are effective in increasing consumer demand, so that leaves two options: increasing business investment or increasing government expenditures. Most often, you hear only about government expenditures while increased business investment gets short shrift. I think that's a mistake. First of all, anytime you tell Congress to "spend some money" you are just asking for trouble. Not all government expenditures are created equally. Some are just horrifically wasteful and serve no purpose other than to help the sponsoring Congressmen get re-elected. But even if they all are "good" expenses, you still have problems. Any temporary government expenditure has the inherent flaw that once the project is done so is its stimulative effect. Giving a million people a job for 2 months helps them for those 2 months but at the end they're back to being unemployed. A lot of times the government spending amounts to paying people as a temporary stop-gap and hoping (praying) that by the time the project is over the economy has magically recovered and everyone will now be able to find jobs again. Still, I think it's better than just straight tax cuts because here you are giving people that had no income (the unemployed) some income and thus you are more significantly increasing disposable income. Plus, you were going to be paying them unemployment anyway, so you might as well pay them for doing something (we'll leave the discussion of whether or not unemployment payments are a good idea for another day). Again though, you still have the fundamental problem that when these workers spends these wages so little of it is actually getting filtered back to the U.S. economy. If you are going to go this route, the best thing to do is spend it on infrastructure, because that's something that needs to be done anyway and the government will ultimately pay for regardless.

So with all that as a backdrop I think that the most effective way to combat a recession is to increase and encourage business investment. Encourage in the sense of offering more guaranteed loans for entrepreneurs, where the government and the private bank share in the interest for the successful loans and the government bears the brunt of the failed ones. And directly increasing investment by partnering with new or existing companies to establish new entities in cutting-edge industries. The key is that you want to create something that will be self-sufficient when the government involvement is over and thus any employees hired to start-up such an operation will still have the jobs when the government is no longer there. A good example for this would be partnering with someone like GE to build a plant to manufacture solar panels. Now you're providing temporary work to the construction industry, then when the plant is done you're providing permanent employment for the surrounding area, and you're starting to reduce the trade gap by bringing manufacturing back here and (hopefully) helping to keep more of the money spent in the U.S. cycling through the domestic economy. I would structure any such arrangement so that after a specified period of time (depending on the industry) the government will exit the business and retain only a minority, non-voting interest in it, to be divested as soon as it is possible to do so while recovering the initial investment (plus a reasonable amount of interest).

OK, so that's how I feel about the different elements of the Keynesian tools. Best is increasing business investment, worst is personal tax cuts, and straight government expenditures are in the middle. In reality though, I'm not advocating just one approach. I don't think that the government should do all business investment and nothing else. The fact of the matter is that traditional economic models are very sterile. They basically assume that we are all machines. But the truth is that we are emotional beings and economic models designed to address that (behavioral economics) are still in their infancy. The bottom line is that the economy not only has to get better; people have to feel like it's getting better. That's the only way to break the cycle of people feeling increasingly uncertain and spending progressively less. If you're a die-hard from the school of tax cuts and you see the government spending tons of cash, that's going to make you more uneasy about the economy and you're likely to continue to spend more conservatively. Similarly, if you're of the mindset that tax-cuts are worthless you're unlikely to go out and spend more when you receive one. Thus, a calculated balance of all 3 approaches seems to have the best chance of success. This, of course, is completely at odds with the bipolar nature of our government.

And just in case you're not yet utterly sick to death of this, one final note. Notice that you never hear too much about Keynesian economics during the times when the economy is expanding. The flip side to spending during a recession is higher taxes and interest rates during the good times in order to both combat inflation and to run surpluses so that when the inevitable bad times do hit you have money socked away to pay for the spending and reduced tax revenues during the recessions. But think hard about the last time you heard a politician proposing raising taxes during a boom. It seems that somewhere on the road to recovery, all these devout Keynesians jump off the bus.

Busting an Old Economic Myth

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. As I might have imagined, they were pretty much all across the board. That's bad in the sense that it doesn't really help me narrow down what I want to concentrate on but good in the sense that there doesn't seem to be any one thing I do that bores the living crap out of everyone.

As I sit here watching Mythbusters, I've decided that I want to take down a myth myself. In particular, I want to explode the oft-repeated myth that lowering individual taxes or sending people additional tax rebates has a stimulative effect on the economy. And for this I'll be returning to one of my favorite topics: economic theory. I can hear most of your groans from here, but fear not loyal reader! I am not going to use a lot of detailed stats and arcane theories. I'm going to lay this out in pretty simple language.

First of all I am not a communist, socialist, hacky-sack wielding hippy, or a left-wing ideologue. As a general tax policy I believe that the fairest tax would be one that is flat and low. But I am not talking about a good general tax policy, I'm talking about stimulating the economy.

So let's first go through the conventional argument about why lowering taxes has a stimulative effect. A person makes X amount of money per paycheck. This leads them to consume Y amount of goods. Thus if you increase X by 10% (through an income tax reduction or additional income) they should now go out and spend an amount greater than Y. Multiply this a couple million times and overall demand gets stimulated, which causes businesses to produce more goods, which means they need to hire more people, and pretty soon the economy is roaring again.

So what's wrong with this theory? Absolutely nothing, provided that you are reading this on dried, rolled-up parchment by the soft light of a hogs-fat candle. The problem is that this theory is several hundred years old, and it completely discounts the global economy. There's an old expression that the mistake generals always make is trying to fight a current war just like they did the last one. That's what is happening here too. We're trying to solve today's problem with yesterday's solution.

Allow me to illustrate. Back in the day there existed these things called "local businesses". And when the local townspeople received extra money they spent it at these businesses and all the magic of increased demand and stimulus described above really did apply.

But now when consumers get extra money, there's no guarantee that they'll spend it locally. In fact, there's a good chance that the bulk of your purchase may not even be spent in this country. We know this conclusively by the fact that we have a huge trade deficit ($574.7 billion over the last year - sorry; I know I promised no stats). You make a purchase on Amazon or at Wal-Mart, there's a real good chance that whatever you're buying was manufactured elsewhere. And, sure, Wal-Mart or Amazon do get a percentage from each sale but we're talking in the area of 1-5% (depending on the item). And given the scale of both operations it's unlikely that an increase in volume will cause them to make any significant hiring decisions.

So, in a sense, actually everything with this theory still does in fact hold. If all you care about is that the global economy is stimulated, then it absolutely still works. But I seriously doubt that most of the proponents of a tax cut are doing so because they believe it will help China's economy more than ours.

Here's another issue. There is always the assumption that an increase to a consumer's paycheck will automatically lead to an increase in their disposable income. That's simply not true. Someone who is in debt is actually already over-consuming and thus it's far more likely that they will just use the extra income to pay down debt. While that is better for the individual, it doesn't have any direct stimulative effect. Similarly, someone who has a wealth surplus already has the capacity to consumer more than they do and they have chosen not to. It's unlikely that they will decide to consume a great deal more given a small amount of extra income. Far more likely that they will decide to save or invest the extra cash. Now, both that and the consumer who pays down their credit cards will have net positive effects on the economy. Credit card companies getting paid back and savings accounts getting filled means banks can extend more credit to other consumers and increased investment leads to growth in the industrial and business sectors. But, again, these are long-term effects and not short-term boosts.

So what we are indeed looking for is someone whose income currently is in lock-step with their expenses; they have no net debt or wealth. Now this person is quite likely to spend any extra income on additional consumption. But I would hardly call it efficient to throw a lot of money at every consumer just to hit the 5% (max) in this position. It's like putting out a candle with a firehose.

So if tax cuts are not the answer, then what is? Do I have any thoughts on that? Well as a matter of fact I do.

To be continued . . .

Suggestions?

So I have very little today, and that's actually what I want to write about. I feel like no one really wants to read about my day to day activities but then it also seems like when I blog about politics or economics I can hear crickets chirping in the comments section. So, anyone got any suggestions for me on things I should blog about? Mainly I'm looking for things that I can express an opinion on (e.g. not "I've always wondered how maple syrup gets made. Can you explain that to me?"). And even if you don't have an idea for a topic, it'd be nice to know what kind of topics you've liked most/least that I've written about. Right now my only gauge for the interest level is the comments, but I also realize that's not always a good indicator. Should I just do political or economic posts? Should I axe both of them completely and just do humorous ones? Should I accept that no one cares about my thoughts and just post pictures of Anabelle? Any and all suggestions and comments are welcome. I've been pretty much meandering my way through this blog for the past couple years now writing about whatever I felt like, and I'd like to start to get a little more dialed in.

I also have become more open to the idea of having additional guest contributors, so if any of you are interested in writing something for me to post, please let me know.

Busy Everywhere

So a whole slew of things have kept me busy at work (12 meetings this week through Wednesday and 4 more tomorrow) and baby has been keeping Chrity and I busy at home and that has left my blog suffering. Things at work should slow down a bit after this week so hopefully I'll get back in the groove.

I have no doubt that I'll be talking a lot about Anabelle here, but in general I'm going to leave the weekly updates and the multitude of pictures and videos for Christy to post on her blog. Since we have 90% the same readership, I see no reason to post it at both places.

So just a couple thoughts I've had over the last week. First of all, the Olympics. Even before the announcement on Friday I was fairly indifferent to whether it came to Chicago or not. Although I have no immediate plans to change jobs or move, it would be a bit naive to just assume that they'll both be unchanged 7 years from now. Thus I found myself unable to get excited about getting to experience the Olympics firsthand nor could I muster any dread about how it would inconvenience my commute for a couple months. As for the decision itself, in my opinion it was always going to be Rio and, given that South America has never hosted the games, that's exactly where it should be going.

Given that, I frankly don't care that Chicago was eliminated first. The 2010 winter games will be held in Vancouver. Quick, can someone tell me the runner-up location? Didn't think so. There's no prize for 2nd or 3rd, so who cares? Plus, I was working from home on Friday and saw all the news coverage leading up to the announcement and on several occasions it was reported that the 1st round of voting often has a lot of surprises. Supposedly there are a lot of voters who say "ok, I'll vote for your city after mine's eliminated" so you can actually end up doing far better in subsequent votes than initial ones (similar to a run-off election reversing the popular vote from the initial election). Thus we were told that the 1st round was actually the most dangerous and that nothing would be a surprise. Well, apparently either the press didn't really believe that or they just meant that the acceptable surprise would be Rio getting eliminated, because suddenly once the vote was announced it was "an absolute shocker" and "something no one expected." I was sitting there going "I just sat here 5 minutes ago when you told me that anything could happen and nothing would surprise you." Gotta love spin.

In any case, I am also predictably displeased at the spinning of this into an Obama failure, but I'm not even going to waste much of my breath on that. Since he went to Copenhagen to pitch for it, it was his failure, and if he hadn't gone the knock would have been that he didn't try hard enough for it. For some people, the sun never shines during a Democratic presidency and every little thing is just further evidence that he's working hard every day to destroy our country.

To continue the happy topics, I am once again sounding an alarm bell on the economy. Actually, just on the stock market. I do believe that the recession is over and we will see overall positive GDP growth this year and next. The trouble is that the stock market seems to have priced in a very aggressive V-shaped turnaround whereas it's far more likely that we're going to see a more messy U-shaped one.

If you have a minute and care at all about financial stats, take a look at this chart. It show the price to earnings (P/E) ratio for the S&P 500. For the laymen, that's the ratio of a company's stock price to their latest earnings per share. Historically, a P/E of between 8 and 10 is a sign of a fairly stable economy. A level below that usually indicates that people are irrationally gloomy on the market, and once we get above 15 people are starting to get a little slap-happy (and the almost 45 we hit at the height of the dotcom boom was euphoria of a kind usually only acheived via high quality street drugs and proved to be just as fleeting). If we are truly just starting to pull out of one of the worst financial crises ever, why in the world are we sitting at almost 19 right now? That's the kind of number you should only see during a period of robust growth. It's an indicator that we are once again trying to buy our way out of the problem. People buy a stock today not because they believe it's actually worth what they're paying but because they believe that someone else will decide it's worth more tomorrow (the so-called "greater fools" theory). That's not creating value or rewarding profitable companies, it's just gambling. Not that there's anything wrong with that; the trouble is that eventually you run out of greater fools. Anyway, I'm just saying don't be surprised when we see another big slump in stock prices over the next year to 18 months. Of course, if we really do start seeing signs of strong GDP growth between now and then, then maybe these optimistic expectations will be justified. But I have a feeling that if that in fact does happen, we're going to see this P/E ratio get pushed even higher into silly territory again. Finally, I'd like to state once again that I am not a believer in trying to time the market so I wouldn't advise anyone to touch their 401ks and start unloading their stocks. The market deserves to be at this level; it just doesn't deserve to be there right now.

Negotiating with the ACLD

So on Saturday at around 1:30 A.M., having endured my daughter’s relentless screaming for the past 6 hours I began, for the first time, to really come to grips with how powerless we are as parents right now. And this is pretty new to me. No matter how powerless I have been in the past I have at least felt like I had some negotiating power. Some wiggle room. Some possible way to lessen the pain. But not now. We are confronted with a force that is utterly decisive and completely uncompromising. And it was in this spirit that I began to liken my daughter to a labor union. Only instead of layoffs, we attempt to negotiate laydowns. Here now a transcript of what the negotiations would look like if both parties could speak.

Us: Thank you for meeting with us today Anabelle. As your parents we feel like there have been some miscommunications recently and we want to clear these up so that hopefully we can all live together more peacefully.

ACLD: No problem. I came here straight from my nap.

Us: OK. First of all, the screaming. What’s the deal with that? Are we upsetting you? Is there something we’re not doing right?

ACLD: No; you’re doing just fine. I just choose to scream. It’s my right.

Us: But when you scream is it because you’re unhappy? Do you need to be changed? Are you hungry? Are you too hot? Too cold? Do you want your back rubbed? Do you want us to stop rubbing your back?

ACLD: I’d rather not say. My advice to you is to assume that it’s all of the above and try each solution 4-5 times because I also reserve the right to change my mind about what’s bothering me at any given time.

Us: OK, well let’s move on. As you may be able to tell from our disheveled and slightly crazy appearance sleeping has been something of an issue. Especially for your mother.

ACLD: Oh, really? I’m sleeping fine.

Us: Yes, we know. But we’d like a little more consistency. We’re going to need a minimum of 5 laydowns per day, for a minimum duration of 2 hours each, with the longest one occurring between the hours of midnight and 5 AM.

ACLD: Hmm; how about this? I’ll give you 4 laydowns per day, at random times, and of indeterminate length.

Us: OK, but can you try to make the one in the middle of the night the longest one?

ACLD: Well, I can’t promise I’ll try. But I’ll try to try.

Us: Fair enough. So what guarantees do we have that you’ll stick to this agreement?

ACLD: None whatsoever. In fact, I’ve already changed most of the rules we’ve already agreed to. Don’t worry though, I’ll change them back again. Maybe. Now if you don’t mind, I’m getting hungry, or sleepy, or cold. In any case, I’m about to start screaming so I’d advise you to start trying to figure out what’s wrong with me.

Back at Home

So Miss Anabelle had her homecoming yesterday, and now her and I are relaxing and watching the Bears game. Christy and my mom left about an hour ago to do some grocery shopping, which doesn't sound like much but is actually two landmarks. It's the first time I've been alone with Anabelle and the first time Christy has left her (not counting the times when the nurses took her to the nursery at the hospital). Not that she requires a whole lot of effort at the moment. It appears that at the moment she's got day-night confusion, so she pretty much does non-stop sleeping during the day and then the last 2 nights she has been wide awake from about 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. Last night Christy and I took 1.5-2 hour shifts keeping her occupied during that time so that the other one could get some sleep. Hopefully this is something that we can remedy pretty quickly; I'm back in the office tomorrow so it's gonna fall more on Christy to keep her quiet at night and I'll have a pretty exhausted wife on my hands if she decides that's the schedule she wants to keep long-term. And you'd think that it would be an easy problem to correct. Just wake her up more during the day. Well, let me tell you, as hard as it is to get her to fall asleep in the middle of the night, that's how hard it is to get her to wake up during the day. We've tried moving her arms and legs, changing her diaper, and even undressing her and blowing on her to give her a little bit of a chill (which sounds mean but is what they recommend) but she can pretty much sleep through anything when she's determined.

So it's back to the office and an attempt at some level of normalcy tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a decent night's sleep tonight and get some work done tomorrow. Although I expect people at work to be very understanding over the next couple of weeks, I really don't want to fall too far behind in my work. As time goes by I'm likely to just get more and more sleep deprived (at least for the next 6 months) so I've got to do my best to stay on top of things while I'm still functioning at something close to 100%.

As I type this now the Bears just fell behind 14-7 in the 3rd quarter. Anabelle is still sleeping straight through it but now daddy's crying. And like her at 3 in the morning, he's inconsolable.

Parenthood: Day 2

So, unsurprisingly, the last 28 hours have flown by in a blur. After the birth, we had to play the waiting game for a while. Apparently there are a lot of other babies in Evanston that share Anabelle's birthday (or the preceding couple days) because there were no recovery rooms available to us right away. Probably the biggest issue with this was that in the labor and delivery rooms there are no sleeping apparatuses for people other than the mother, and at that point I had been up for about 30 hours straight. So when Christy took a nap at 1:30 while Anabelle was up in the nursery getting her first bath I left Christy's mom to watch over her and headed home to get a few hours sleep (another big benefit to living 2 blocks away from the hospital). Never have 2 hours of sleep passed so quickly or felt so good.


By the time I got back to the hospital Christy had been moved to our recovery room and Anabelle had joined us again. That's pretty much where we've bee since, doing our best to please Miss Anabelle and keep her happy when she's awake and comfortable when she's asleep. We all tried to go to sleep at around 9:30 with varying degrees of success. At about 11:00 Anabelle started fussing so mommy fed her and she went back to sleep. Then at 12:30 the nursery came and took her away to get her Hepatitis immunization shot. At 4:30 she woke up again and after mom fed her it was dad's turn to get her to go back to sleep. Then at around 8:30 we all woke up for the day.

Since then it's been a bit of a circus here. Our pediatrician, Dr. Bernstein (who goes by Dr. Andy) came by and took a look at her at 9:30 and said that everything looks good and she is definitely on track to go home tomorrow. At about 9:30 she started to get cranky and we were joking that it was because she had just turned 1 day old and was depressed about how old she's getting. Between 10 and 11 we had visits from the food service people with our breakfast, the on-duty nurse to check on Christy and the baby, one housekeeper to attend to the trash and a different housekeeper to change the linens, and Christy's doctor. Finally, a lactation consultant came by to help Christy with breastfeeding and just left a few minutes ago. In between all that I also got to change my first of many, many diapers. Now we are just awaiting a circus of a different sort as various friends and family stop by to visit.

Tomorrow my mom is flying in from Texas so it will be nice to have an extra set of hands around the house to help out during the first week and I'm so glad she was able to make it up to visit her new granddaughter!

Think that's all for now. Here's a few more pictures from Anabelle's first day of life!

Baby Time!

Update #2: And she's here! After 51 minutes of pushing she arrived screaming her little head off at 9:06 A.M. She's quite a horse at 8 pounds, 11 oz. Mama and baby are currently getting to know one another. Here's the first of many, many pictures:

Update #1: As of 5:30 she is 7 cm dilated on her way up to 10 at ~1 cm per hour. Once she gets there, they tell us that we can expect between 1 and 3 hours of pushing till we're done. Do the math and it means a baby by noon and maybe as early as 10.

It's currently 4:41 A.M. and we're in the labor and delivery room at Evanston Hospital awaiting Anabelle's arrival. I was finishing up playing some online poker (where, shockingly enough, I actually won some money) and heading off to bed at a little before 12:30 when Christy came out of the bathroom and said "I'm not sure, but I think my water might have just broken." Unsure of what to do with this uncertain information, I just said "well, lay back down and try to sleep. If it's something, then we'll know soon enough and if it's nothing well then I guess we'll know that soon too." Not more than 4 minutes later she sat up and said "yep; that was definitely my water." Before I could even get her a towel from the linen closet she'd already had her first *real* contraction and immediately knew that they were different from the preparation ones she'd been feeling over the last couple weeks. So we got up and immediately started making all the last minute preparations. The contractions started coming every 4-5 minutes and after about a half hour we called the doctor to see if we should head over to the hospital. He said that we should so at about 1:30 we did just that.

After getting relatively settled and a few more contractions any lingering doubts Christy had about getting an epidural went out the window. They administered it to her at around 3:00 and since then she has been resting comfortably. She can still feel her legs and move them around but all the pain from the contractions are gone. It's funny because she can watch the little monitor and see the point where the contraction is at its peak and used to cause her absolutely excruciating pain but now she might as well be watching a video game.

She has been advised to try to get some sleep if she can and given that I got to lay down for a whopping 4 minutes so far tonight (I know, poor me) I am going to try and do the same. My completely non-medical opinion predicts that we'll have a daughter at 10:04 this morning. So far everything is going smoothly and everyone at the hospital, especially our nurse Amy, has been wonderful. I'll update more when I have a chance.

This is the monitor Christy is hooked up to. The upper left number is Anabelle's heart rate. It fluctuates between about 130 and 155. The upper right number measures the contractions. When it hits about 30, the contraction is starting (so you can see that she was in the middle of one when we took this). The highest number we've seen so far has been 118. Not sure how high they go.

This is the actual machine that does the monitoring. The monitor from the picture before is really just the screen on the left blown up. The paper on the right tracks the heartbeat and contractions so the doctors can see what is happening over time.

Have no idea what this is. Possibly the machine that goes "Bing!"

Relatively Quick Hits

First of all, still no baby. We've got an appointment set up for Friday to induce if she doesn't come before then, so at least there's an end in sight. We're still hoping that she comes on her own in the next 48 hours though. Since we've started telling people about the Friday plan, it seems as though everyone has an opinion on inducement. Let me put this as delicately as I can. Your opinion is valid, but we don't wish to hear it.

Today Max Baucus unveiled a summary of his health care bill. It's the most moderate of the current bills and carries with it an estimated price tag of $856 billion over the next ten years. It has no "public option" but would create insurance exchanges and bar insurers from dropping policyholders in the event of illness or from excluding people on the basis of pre-existing conditions. It specifically addresses that it will not provide coverage to illegal immigrants and no federal dollars will be used for abortions (though there are a couple caveats to this that will surely be more than enough ammo for the extremists to continue to rage). I'll reserve final judgment until the complete bill is released and analysed but my initial impression is that it addresses most of what Obama wanted and represents a step in the right direction. I'm firmly convinced that if a bill is to be passed this year that this will be the one. The more progressive bills from the House just don't have a chance in the Senate.

Tangentially related, former President Carter has made some comments indicating that he believes racism played a part in Rep Wilson's outburst-heard-round-the-world last week. While I don't necessarily disagree with him, I think it's counterproductive to talk about it right now. Playing the race card in any form just causes people to dig in their heels. It's not conducive to reconciliation. That comment, like the original outburst itself, just serves as a distraction which quickly dominates the debate. Suddenly we're talking about race relations in America. That's a worthy topic but not one that has any place in a health care debate, and it's going to take immense focus to get something done in the next couple months.

Finally, I've been following the debacle that has been the Afghanistan elections and I'm beginning to think along the same lines as George Will. It might be time to start packing it in. I understand that if we leave the Taliban will just set up shop again and it will once again become a training ground for terrorists. I'm starting to think that's the "better" of our options though. Mainly, I just don't think anyone has the stomach to do what really needs to be done: a probable decade-long commitment from an international force totalling half a million or more troops. After our surge, we'll have a total of 65,000 troops there. That may sound like a lot (and it is) but think about it this way: the football stadium in Champaign holds 70,000 people. Do you really think a football-stadium worth of troops can control a country the size of Texas? And these "elections" have proven to basically be the final straw with me. It's obvious that those in power have no desire to establish a flourishing democracy; they (like all bad leaders) just want to cling to power. So now we are spilling our blood and spending our money to support an illegitimate government while achieving little more than forcing the Taliban and the terrorists to move their camps across the border into Pakistan. I just don't know what we're actually accomplishing anymore.

Bears Hangover

If you have absolutely no interest in Bears football, you'll probably just want to skip this post.

So in the matter of about 4 hours Jay Cutler went from Bears savior to pariah. It will be interesting to see what kind of a reception he gets next week during his first home game. My prediction is that he'll get cheered but god help him if he doesn't get off to a good start or throws an early pick. As bad as his performance was (and it was pretty bad), I'd urge my fellow Bears fans not to overreact. It's still just one game. Not that I'm comparing the two, but Favre once threw 6 INTs in a playoff game, and also threw 5 in a regular season game. The point being that even the great QBs can look absolutely terrible on occasion. It's actually a good thing that the 4 INTs were a career high; it would be much worse if he'd already done that 3-4 times. Still, the wrap on Cutler was that he can't win a big game and folds in pressure situations and this certainly didn't do him any favors in that regard.

If you break down the 4 picks, one was an absolutely atrocious throw (the first one), one was actually a sensational defensive play (the 2nd one), and the other two (while still absolutely Cutler's fault) had as much to do with the receiver and the QB not being on the same page as the throw itself. For the 3rd pick, Cutler is scrambling and he sees Knox cutting across the middle but then almost simultaneously as Cutler releases the ball Knox abruptly cuts back. As a receiver, that's what you're supposed to do. When you see your QB out of the pocket, you run to that side of the field so that he doesn't have to throw across the field away from his momentum. But Knox worked mainly with the 2nd and 3rd team during preseason, so Cutler and him likely don't have a good rapport yet but that should change (and hopefully soon). Finally, on the last pick (although again an ill-advised throw) Knox really needs to help his QB out and doesn't. It's a quick out route towards the sidelines and Cutler throws it to where both his receiver and the corner are (which is why it was ill-advised; there was no separation). Both the receiver and defender turn and see the ball coming, but rather than come to the ball Knox inexplicably decides to move backwards and gives Al Harris an easy pick. If he makes a move towards the ball, 8 times out of ten they both fight for it and it drops incomplete.

As for positives from the game, the defense (apart from one Nathan Vasher slip) actually played spectacularly. Although you rarely say that about a game where the D gives up 21 points, considering the 4 turnovers (which doesn't even include the idiotic "fake" punt) it really was. Of course, as I sit here and write this it looks like Urlacher is now done for the season and 2 other defenders went down with injuries, so it could be that this is the best effort we'll get from the Bears D the whole year. If so, it's a shame to waste it.

In the end, this doesn't change my season win prediction. In reviewing the schedule, I already had this game marked down as an L when I came up with the 11-5 mark. That still doesn't stop me from being disappointed about yesterday (and force me to repeat my mantra: it's not THAT they lose, it's HOW they lose). I also have them losing this week at home to the Steelers, before winning 7 of their next 8. This is how I see the rest of the season:

Pitt L
@ Seattle W
Detroit W
@ Atlanta L
@ Cinncy W
Cleveland W
Arizona W
@ San Fran W
Philadelphia W
@ Minnesota L
St. Louis W
Green Bay W
@ Baltimore L
Minnesota W
@ Detroit W

That's 7-1 at home this year, and 4-4 on the road. I still think that's doable. Assuming, of course, that we are spared any more Rex Grossman impersonations from Mr. Cutler.

Still the Proud Parents of a Fetus

So, as of about 13 hours ago Miss Anabelle is officially late and her parents (and especially her mother) are not too pleased about it. Actually, it turned out to be a blessing that she didn't come yesterday. For some unknown reason (possibly Jimmy John's poisoning) I suddenly got extremely sick yesterday afternoon around 1:00. I spent the next 3 hours in bed with the shakes and then started feeling extremely hot and got a splitting headache. All I could think about was "please don't let Christy go into labor right now." Luckily she didn't and, happily, though I am still not 100% I am feeling much better today. So now Anabelle is once again welcome to come at any time now (though I wouldn't be terribly upset if she waited till after the Bears game tonight).

Christy and I walked into downtown Evanston on Friday night, had dinner a really good BBQ joint, and then went and saw a movie (Extract). As you can probably see by my review to the right, I didn't think too much of it. Definitely my least favorite of Mike Judges' movies (the best of course being Office Space, then Idiocracy, and even Beavis and Butthead Do America was better). It's not that the film was terrible; it's more that there weren't any truly hysterical parts and none of the characters were all that likeable. Still, at this point we have to treat every night out as potentially our last for a while so it was still a good time.

Today I am just trying to rest up and get ready to watch the Bears tonight (pending fetal escape plans)! Call it Cutler fever, but I am actually quite optimistic about the Bears this year. Their early schedule is pretty tough, but I'm predicting 11-5 and a 1st round bye in the playoffs.

Slacking Again

So I didn't really intend to not post anything for 2 and a half weeks. Ironically, it's not for lack of anything to say. I actually have a whole bunch that I want to write about but haven't found the time. Well, that's not quite true. I haven't found the time to do it while I've been at work, and I'm not accustomed to blogging on my own time. For once I find myself working pretty much from the time I get to work all the way till I leave (a truly novel approach, I know). And not because I have tons and tons of work to do; it's just that from now on every day when I leave I have to think that I might not be coming in for the next 4-5 days so I am trying to get as much done as possible so I don't fall too far behind when Anabelle finally comes.

Speaking of Anabelle, she continues to make us wait. The first week of September came and went, thus proving me wrong (not for the first and surely not for the last time). Christy had a doctor's appointment today and she told us (for the second week in a row) that she could go into labor at any point now. She also told us that Christy is 4cms dillated and almost 100% effaced. For those uninitiated with that terminology . . .um, google it. But just to give a frame of reference, if you are in the hospital and in labor they won't allow you to get an epidural until you are at 4cm, so it's usually an indicator that you're pretty far along in the process.

As you can imagine this past weekend was rather uneventful, as we pretty much just sat around waiting for a baby that decided she's not ready to come out yet. It was nice to have one last relaxing 3-day weekend but the trouble was we couldn't ever fully relax knowing that at any moment we might have to spring into action. So instead I geeked out and played about 20 hours of Final Fantasy III and watched a lot of mediocre movies as well as the entire first season of 30 Rock.

OK, I'm just getting set to watch Obama's speech to Congress. I'm hoping to have a blog on that as well as a couple of other random topics in the next couple days.