Opening Day

First, in Donkey Kong news -  there isn't any.  I have taken a break for the last 2 weeks or so.  Before that I was routinely scoring up in the 180 and 190ks and broke 200k on a couple of occasions but, alas, 250k remains a glass ceiling for the time being.

But today is Opening Day eve - except for the Dodgers and Padres, who open tonight.  As such I thought that this would be a good time to put my thoughts on the season together.

The 25-man roster was finalized yesterday and is comprised of the following:

Catchers: Welington Castillo and John Baker

Infield: Anthony Rizzo, Darwin Barney, Mike Olt, Starlin Castro, Emilio Bonifacio and Luis Valbuena

Outfield: Junior Lake, Ryan Sweeney, Justin Ruggiano, Nate Schierholtz and Ryan Kalish 

Starting pitchers: Jeff Samardzija, Travis Wood, Edwin Jackson, Jason Hammel and Villanueva

Bullpen: Jose Veras (closer), James Russell, Wesley Wright, Brian Schlitter, Pedro Strop, Hector Rondon and Justin Grimm

Unless you are an even bigger Cubs fan than me, a lot of those names are probably unfamiliar to you.  In fact, unless my math is wrong I believe there are only 11 players that carried over from last year's opening day (Castillo, Rizzo, Barney, Castro, Valbuena, Schierholz, Samardzija, Wood, Jackson, Villanueva, and Russell).  That's a lot of turnover in one year.

Does this represent rock bottom or the point where all these players nobody had ever heard of broke through and became stars?  Who knows.

Rizzo and Castro have to anchor the team this year.  End of story.  If they have another year like last year . . . well, it will turn out like another year like last year.  Schierholtz needs to repeat his solid performance last year.  Castillo had a decent year and now needs to take the next step forward.  Barney . . . needs to be relegated to a bench role ASAP.  Bonifacio is a very good 4th outfielder but if he's in the everyday starting lineup we've got big problems.  Same with Valbuena at 3rd.  John Baker - eh, who cares about the backup catcher. The rest (Olt, Sweeney, Lake, Ruggiano, and Kalish) are prospects getting their shot - they need to prove they belong.  Olt has by far the most upside.  He could turn into a bona fide superstar - or he could flame out spectacularly like so many other top prospects do.

The player in the minors to watch is Javier Baez, particularly whether or not they start playing him at 2nd or leave him at short.  If it's 2nd, then I think the clear plan is to get him up here ASAP (I'd guess May 15th or so) and then either bench, trade, or waive Barney.  If he's left at short, then I think they're on a longer timeline with him and they may still be thinking of moving Castro to 2nd or trading him.

On the pitching side of things I think the starting pitching will be serviceable if mediocre and the bullpen is just one huge question mark.  There's certainly no one in the starting 5 that you feel good about when going up against a true ace (or even a good team's number 2) but on the other hand there isn't anybody that I'm marking down as an automatic loss either.  The bullpen is just a huge question mark.  Russell is the lone holdover and is a very solid arm.  Veras is a veteran that has been largely good throughout his career but at 33 who knows how much he has left.  Strop has a good arm but has been inconsistent.  Everybody else is either young and inexperienced or, in the case of Grimm, was a starter and is trying out a new rule.  As such, the pen could end up being a strength, disaster, or pretty much anywhere in between.

Samardzija *should* really be the only one possibly dumped at the trade deadline so at least we shouldn't have to worry about them completely tanking just as they are starting to play well in mid-July like the last two seasons.  But the thing about having a young team is that who stays and goes will be determined by on field performance.  There are a number of other players (like Baez) knocking on the door at AAA so if the MLB team does not perform this is a roster that could be very much in flux this year.

My overall prediction: I'll be semi-optimistic and say 77-85.  I think that they will be a fairly fun team to watch in the sense that you're watching young players who are still excited to play at this level rather than older veterans who are treating it like work.  I think they will show flashes of the talent they have and will probably put together 2-3 long good stretches (1-2 weeks each) where it looks like it's all coming together.  But the youth and inexperience that is sometimes an asset will also show up in inconsistency, mental lapses, and struggles to turn things around during the inevitable bad times.  So out of the 6-month season, I predict they'll play 3 months at or within 1-2 games of .500, one month way above .500, and 2 months way below .500.

On the season ticket front, the home opener is set for Friday and the forecast is . . . less than ideal.  High in the low 40s and 90% chance of rain.  Wasn't planning on going to but may end up having to go if the tickets don't sell.  Time to drop those prices on Stubhub! 

My high score so far

So far, the high water mark is 255,700, which was achieved this past Sunday night on only my second game since returning from our vacation in Houston.  It is actually only my 2nd highest score all-time if you include when I was playing on an emulator a couple years ago (that high was 313,000) but I don't really count that since it wasn't on an actual machine.

You can also see that I reached Level 8 (that's the L=08 in the upper right corner), which is also a high.  This equates to the 36th screen.

A Donkey Kong Tutorial

For the uninitiated, here is a little bit of background on how the game works so that you can have some context with the scores and levels that I am going to post.

The first thing to understand is the difference between levels and screens.  Contrary to what most people think, the game is not just endlessly jumping over barrels - that is just one of the screens (though it is the one that occurs most often).  In total, there are 4 different screens in Donkey Kong, but you have to reach Level 3 before you have seen them all.  Here they are (note that these are just taken from the web, not from my actual machine):

This is the "Barrel Screen" and it is the one that usually comes to mind when people think about DK.  It is the first screen in the game.

This is the "Factory Screen".  It does not appear until Level 3 and is the last of the 4 screens to be revealed.

This is the "Elevator Screen".  It's also the trickiest screen in the game and the one that was designed to kill off the average gamer and force them to fork over another quarter.

This is the "Final Screen" - not because it is the last screen in the game but because it is the screen that always ends a particular level.  You will note that in all the other levels, Donkey Kong is standing next to a ladder at the top.  When you reach the top he grabs Pauline (our maiden in distress) and climbs up to the next level.  But on this level, once Jumpman (yes, that's correct, it's not Mario) removes all the yellow rivets he falls down and the happy couple is reunited:

The game then starts over again at the next level at the "Barrel Screen".  The goal in the first 3 screens is the same - reach the top without being hit by anything.  In the "Final Screen" Jumpman has to walk across all of the yellow rivets to remove them while avoiding the fire.

Level 1 has 2 screens (Barrel and Final), Level 2 adds the Elevator screen, and Level 3 adds the Factory screen.  Levels 4 and 5 add 1 and 2 (respectively) additional Barrel screens and then the game stays at 6 total screens for the rest of the game.  Here is the complete sequence:

Level 1 - Barrel, Final
Level 2 - Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 3 - Barrel, Factory, Elevator, Final
Level 4 - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 5+ - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Barrel, Final

So reaching the end of Level 5 equates to completing 20 screens and then each additional level completed adds another 6 screens.  The game increases in difficulty up through Level 5, at which point it stays constant and you are basically just replaying Level 5 again until you either die or reach the Kill Screen on level 22 (which is screen 117).  For the curious, here are details on the Kill Screen - but the jist of it is that due to a programming error when you reach this screen the game doesn't give you enough time to complete the level, thus making it impossible to continue.

As a final note, the switch settings allows you to adjust the number of lives you have as well as the point where an extra life is earned.  I am playing it at the "official" settings - 3 lives to start, with one additional bonus life earned at 7,000 points (for a total of 4 lives to complete the game).

Blue Christmas

Christmas Eve with a Donkey Kong is a joyous event.  You gather around the soft glow emanating from the finest techonology that 1981 could produce and ridicule your family mercilessly when they continuously fail to get past the first screen.

And so it was this year for me, and a grand time twas had by all.  When at last it was time to retire for the evening, I cheerfully said goodnight to DK, flipped the switch, and went to sleep with visions of hammers and barrels dancing in my head.

On Christmas morning Charlotte awoke bright and early and, as had become her custom, came directly downstairs happily pointing to the machine excitedly saying "Donkey!  Donkey!  Donkey . . . fall down."  So I walked over, turned on DK, and was greeted by this:

Disaster!

Surprisingly, after about 2 minutes of this it suddenly started working fine again.  It was a Festivus miracle!  However, I didn't delude myself that the problem was fixed permanently.  I knew the writing was on the wall.  By the end of the day, the entire left side of the screen was completely freaking out and when I turned it off that night it never turned back on again (at least not in a playable form).

So there it sat - looking sad, dark, and lonely in the corner.  Every morning I'd come downstairs and look sadly over, and every morning Charlotte would still come down, pointing and excitedly saying "Donkey!  Donkey!" and I'd have to explain that it was still broken.

And that is where we stood until earlier this month when I finally got Rick from Rick's Game Repair out to take a look at.  Turns out that the capacitors were getting tired (after a mere 30 years of service) and that's what was originally causing the squished screen on the left side and eventually caused the entire display to lose hold.  So after "quickly" popping off 50 capacitors and soldering new ones back in, he plugged it in, made a couple adjustments, and hallelujah!  We are back in business!

In Cubs news:

Today is the Spring Training opener for the Cubs at the all new Cubs Park in Mesa, AZ, thus officially ending the offseason.  While it will still be 4 and a half weeks until they make their way over to this part of the country, it warms my heart to know that baseball is being played somewhere - even as my ass remains frozen solid in Chicago.

The Blogging Dead

Like a bad horror movie, I have once again risen from the ashes to shuffle mindlessly across the virtual world.

As I did with my novella experiment (which performed very poorly with the public at-large but quite strongly amongst the highly sought after "DeForest" demographic) I am once again repurposing this blog.

Why?  Well, it has much to do with the events of December 7th of last year.  On that day, I awoke bright and early at 5:00 A.M. and headed out into a snowstorm on my way down to Quincy, IL.  Why did I do this and why am I continuing to ask rhetorical questions?  Because at my destination a beautiful, original Donkey Kong machine was waiting for me.  I passed many a stranded vehicle and one jack-knifed semi during my travels, but managed to return safely from my 600-mile, 12-hour journey with the cargo safely intact.

And while I was heading back up I-55 with DK in tow, I was also simultaneously officially becoming a Chicago Cubs sucker season-ticket holder.  My brother Joe and I will be sharing 2 tickets in the lower level to all 81 nauseating glorious home games. 

So I thought that I would use this blog to chart my experience with these two over the next couple months.  I will also throw in some other random thoughts as they occur to me, but these will be the main topics.  So if you don't like Donkey Kong and you don't like the Cubs . . . well, I guess you can just go on ignoring this blog like you have for the past 10 months.

Without further ado:

Donkey Kong:  Bit of a long story (which I will spare you the minute details of) but I actually am only the temporary custodian of this machine.  It will be going to its permanent home at some point, probably in the next 6 months to a year.  So time is of the essence!  I have no desire to make a run at any of the records (you need over a million points just to crack the top-20) but I would like to make it to the kill screen - which happens on Level 22.

The Cubs:  You know the old axiom about the stock market "buy low, sell high"?  Well that's what I'm trying to do here.  Because it doesn't get much lower than where the Cubs are right now.  Losers of 90+ games 4 years in a row (and 101 games in 2012) it is really no surprise that after 8 years my number came up in the Chicago Cubs Season Ticket Wait List.  In fact, as I recently found out, the Wait List is no more - they went through every person on it and still have some additional seats available.  But it has been a dream of mine to be a Cubs season ticket holder so I'm glad I could make it a reality.  My goal for this year is to sell enough of the "premium" games that it doesn't end up costing me an arm and a leg and hopefully the Cubs will surprise everyone and prove to be at least watchable.

It's tough to tell, but this is DK loaded into our Mazda5, ready for its voyage to its foster home.

Here it is in all its glory.

Zac, playing his first game (and big kudos to him for helping me get it in and downstairs)

Our respective scores from our first game - not a good score for me but at least not completely embarrassing

Scores from Day 2 - the 4th and 5th place scores demonstrate what happens when you play with kids on your lap.

Starting to get respectable . . .

Well, the score is definitely good but what's going on with the left side of the screen?  Hmm . . . more on that next time.

So long, Roger

Holy cow, I really truly can't even believe that it's been almost 4 months since I updated this.  That's ridiculous!

It's unfortunate that it took another sad event to finally get me back to writing again, but it is what it is.  Anyway, last week the world lost perhaps the biggest fan of cinema the world has ever known.  At this point it's relatively old news and I find myself at somewhat of a loss as to what to say about the man that has not already been said more eloquently by 100 other people over the last week?  I suppose the only thing I can really do is talk about it from a personal level.

I became a Roger Ebert fan in a very roundabout way.  Siskel and Ebert was probably the first "grown-up" tv show that I started watching sometime in the mid-80s.  It wasn't the kind of thing where I went out of my way to tune in, but if I was flipping channels on a Saturday afternoon and saw that it was on I always watched it.  With its debate and, at times, adversarial format it almost forced viewers to pick a side.  Kind of the movie nerd version of the Jets and Sharks, minus the synchronized dancing.  And pretty much right away I sided with Siskel.  I really have no idea why.  In fact, now I go back and watch clips of the show and think that Siskel often comes off as a very arrogant film snob while Ebert is much more down to earth.  Maybe it just so happened that the first couple of reviews I saw I agreed with Siskel about, or maybe I secretly aspired to be a film snob myself.

In any case starting in high school, and especially after I started working at the movie theatre, I read Siskel's reviews religiously.  I remember how much I looked forward to getting the Tribune every Friday so I could read all of his latest reviews.  If the review was good, it pretty much guaranteed that I'd have to find a way to see the movie opening weekend (it helped that working at the movie theatre let me see almost everything for free).  If it was bad, for the most part I pretty much just completely lost interest in seeing it, at least until it hit the rental shelves.

Siskel's illness and death was quite similar to Ebert's, just over a much shorter time span.  He had surgery to remove a brain tumor in 1998 but then returned to work shortly thereafter.  I, along with most of his followers, thought everything was fine.  Then in early February 1999 he announced that he'd be taking a leave of absence but  expected to be back by the fall.  He died 2 weeks later.  The leave of absence announcement followed by his passing so quickly was eerily similar to Ebert's "leave of presence" blog that came just a day before his own death (though I actually suspect that he wrote it before that and was holding it until then to coincide with the 46th anniversary of his first review).

To say I was bummed about Siskel's death would be an understatement.  He was unquestionably the person that I trusted most when it came to film criticism and, film geek that I was, to no longer have that was a big deal.  So it really was only natural that in my search for a new "guide", the person that I turned to first was Siskel's partner.  A type of transference, if you will.

To my great surprise, I found that now that I was free from the "Siskel vs. Ebert" dynamic I actually enjoyed Ebert's writing and reviews quite a bit.  Above everything, he was an excellent writer and thus his reviews were always enjoyable to read even if I didn't agree with them.  I also always knew that, unlike other reviewers whose taglines appeared constantly on TV previews, his opinion was just that - his honest appraisal of the film he watched.

The thing I quickly learned about Ebert was to just ignore the bottom line star and "thumb" rating.  Because in the review, what he says about the film is almost always dead on - it's just that how strong he reacts to it may not mirror how others will feel.  As a couple of great examples, he gave Spawn (a real piece of shit film, in my opinion) a 3 and a half star review because, although he admitted the plot sucked, "as a visual experience [it] is unforgettable."  Conversely, he gave the original Die Hard only 2 stars (the lowest of the 4 Die Hard films he reviewed) because he absolutely hated Paul Gleason's Deputy Police Chief character (he spends almost half the review railing on this character, who has about 5-7 minutes of total screen time).  But that was quintessential Ebert - a man reacting passionately to what he saw on screen and providing a logical and coherent rationale for why he felt that way.  To me, that is what a movie review is supposed to be - a subjective account of what experiencing the film felt like to him.  He would save his more objective commentary for his Great Movies column that he started in 1999, where he would revisit either films he had previously given 4 stars to or films that were released before he became a film critic. Here he would expound on the virtues of the films he loved and try to highlight their contributions and importance to the pantheon of cinema.  I learned about a lot of pre-1967 films through that, and have seen a number of incredible films as a result.

The other thing that I loved, and in fact came to respect more and more over the years as journalism has become increasingly partisan, was how respectful he was to the filmmakers.  No matter how much he may have loathed a particular film, those ill feelings never extended to the people who made it.  That's something that a lot of film critics - journalists and pundits too for that matter - could learn from.  Consider how he opens his half-star review of Death to Smoochy: "Only enormously talented people could have made 'Death to Smoochy.' Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams."  Now, he's clearly panning the film but wow!  I don't even know if I've ever evene gotten a compliment that's as gracious as that.  He was also known to go out of his way to make amends if he thought he'd actually truly hurt someone - consider the famous Brown Bunny episode.  The whole story is too long to recount here, but it's an amusing tale and if you're interested you can read about the initial fight here and the two of them making up a year later here.

But the quote that I will be forever grateful for Ebert for is this: "it's not what a movie is about, it's how it's about it."  Wrapped up in that seemingly simple statement is one of the ultimate truths of cinema, and that is that each and every subject has an infinite capacity to be either absolutely captivating or maddeningly dull.  You can make a completely enthralling movie about a father and son looking for a stolen bicycle in Rome, and you can also make a soul-crushingly dull movie about one of the most important events in US history.  It was Ebert's goal to eliminate the sentence which begins "I don't like movies about ____" from ever being uttered.

And so I'll say goodbye to a voice that I had tremendous respect for.  I will leave all the "thumb" puns aside and just say thank you, Mr. Ebert - you will be missed.

Many have said that Ebert was more entertaining when he hated a movie than when he loved it - and I'd have to agree with that.  Here are my two favorite Ebert quotes, both about movies he hated:

On Battlefield Earth:  Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in "The Fugitive." I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. There is a moment here when the Psychlos' entire planet (home office and all) is blown to smithereens, without the slightest impact on any member of the audience (or, for that matter, the cast). If the film had been destroyed in a similar cataclysm, there might have been a standing ovation.

 And my all-time favorite . . .

On Freddy Got Fingered:  This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

The Day the Pigeons Rose Up

In what could not possibly be more of a tonal u-turn from my last post, I've written a (very) short and incredibly inane story.  Here it is:

 The Day the Pigeons Rose Up

The word “ordinary” was invented for days like this. 

The pigeons milled around as usual, bobbing their heads and pecking at crumbs dropped by the throngs of commuters, who paid them no mind.  Why would they?  But had someone actually bothered to, and watched long enough, they would have seen the looks pass between them.  A slight, almost imperceptible nod from one bird that said “I know; and I am ready” that would be returned by another nod that said “Yes brother, it is almost time.”

No one knows who gave the signal, or how they all picked up on it at once.  But one minute they were a docile and peaceful pack of feathered monks, and the next they became a rabid, bloodlusting, avian army.

The skies darkened and the air was filled with the high-pitched shrieks of pigeon war-cries.  The swarm was everywhere, lunging this way and that, diving at anything that moved.  Hats were stolen, scarves were torn, faces were pecked.  The initial shock left the people speechless and inert, but it took less than a few seconds for the animal instinct of “attack” to ring out through each individual cortex and the crowd’s collective conscious, and a flight of a different kind began on the ground in earnest.  People ran screaming into the streets and cars ran blaring onto the sidewalks.  Hands went up to shield faces, which just made everyone even blinder and crash headlong into posts, buildings, and each other.

100 birds slashed at the windshield of a taxi cab.  As they pecked the glass, they stared at the horrified, helpless driver with looks that all said the same thing: “Come get some.”  Another flock enveloped a newsstand as the owner tried in vain to close the shutters.

Eventually, the panicking mob found safety inside buildings, and the streets belonged to the pigeons!   A new, triumphant cry went up from the rooftops, statues, and park benches and echoed through the city.  A group of the elders met atop city hall to talk strategy, while almost everyone else simply flew and basked in the glory of victory and empty streets.

The victory proved to be short-lived, however.  A distressful cry was heard over by the sporting goods store, as a dozen people emerged with football helmets, hockey gloves, and tennis rackets.

An hour later, all the pigeons went back to pecking at garbage and pooping on statues.

Off in the distance, two seagulls perched on a gargoyle had watched the entire scene unfold.  The one looked at the other as if to say “what the hell was all that about?” The other gull just shrugged, and flew off. 

20 families will not have Christmas this year.  They will never have Christmas again - not really.  Time may heal all wounds but the scars remain.  At the speed of a bullet the DNA of an entire family is rewritten, and the people that may be molded and remade are not the same people as yesterday.

This morning they kissed their children and sent them off with a "have a good day."  Or perhaps not.  Perhaps they quarreled and parted with a "be good today or else."  It doesn't matter.  No one parted with the thought that it was THE parting.  But then, we never do.  We go about each day, doing what we must, accomplishing what we can - acknowledging what is most important in life but seldom acting in harmony with that.  Because there is always time.  Right up until there isn't.

Don't ask "why".  Or ask it, but know that it is futile.  What answer could be given that would satisfy?  That would bring closure where none is possible?  It is a black hole of logic.  Bring all your sane and rational thoughts and watch them be devoured whole.

So what can we do?  However we react, it will be wrong.  Buddhism teaches that hatred and violence are never solved through hatred and violence but through love alone.  Gandhi said, "we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure it."  I believe in these things; with all of my heart I believe in them. But how do you love something that is truly evil?  How do we endure something like this?  I'm not sure I am strong enough.  I'm not sure we are strong enough.

Every event like this destroys a piece of me.  Harden my heart, and lose part of my humanity.  Leave my heart open to it, and lose hope.  What kind of choice is that?

I search desperately for comfort knowing full well it too is a futile search.  There is no comfort to be found here.  How could there be?

How do we move forward in a world where something like this happens, and knowing that it is just a matter of time before it happens again?  How do parents send their children off to school on Monday?  How do I send ours off in a few years?  How do we go about our lives knowing that everything can be shattered in an instant?

I don't know.

I just know that we will.

"Can a man be brave if he is scared?"
"That is the only time a man can be brave."

We are scared, but we are brave.  We have to be.  It is the only way.

Robin Williams, It's All Your Fault!

I have now officially entered the stage of parenting where I will be seeing lots and lots of kids movies.  This isn't really a complaint - after all I am a lover of films in all forms and I have no problem encouraging that in Anabelle and (eventually) Charlotte.  However, there are times where it is a lot more fun than others.  The Muppets, Finding Nemo, and Winnie the Pooh?  Fun.  Hotel Transylvania?  Not so much.

While I was sitting in the theater Sunday counting down the minutes until Hotel Transylvania ended (like an inmate awaiting parole) I started thinking about an interview I heard last year.  Kevin Pollack was interviewing Billy West on his podcast.  If you don't recognize the name, Billy West is a voice actor best known for doing the voices of Ren and Stimpy as well as Fry in Futurama.  During the interview, Billy was lamenting how his profession is being eliminated.  Modern-day animated features just don't employ true professional voice actors for anything more than bit parts anymore - choosing instead to give all the main roles to established screen actors.

From a pure business standpoint, I understand why this is the case.  As animated films have become increasingly sophisticated and expensive, studios want "star power" to help ensure that they have big names to put on the posters and commercials, and faces to do the talk circuits and promote it.  But something is lost artistically.  In its simplest terms, I think that the skill of a screen actor is the way in which they inhabit a character while the skill of a voice actor lies in the creation of a character.  In other words, when an actor appears onscreen, there are a whole range of things he can do to communicate to the audience in ways both subtle and not subtle.  In addition to the voice, he can use gestures, facial expressions (in both speaking and reacting), and blocking.  In animation, all you have is the voice because the rest is out of your control.  So everything needs to be laser-focused and channeled into that.  That's just not something a screen or stage actor excels at.

Need an example?  Just try imagining an exchange between Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny with different voices.  It's almost impossible.  Now as a counterpoint, try imagining Woody and Buzz from Toy Story with someone other than Tom Hanks and Tim Allen doing the voices.  I don't know about you, but I find that a lot easier to do.

So that led me to thinking about when this shift occurred.  And if you have made the connection to the title, you have the answer I came up with  - Aladdin in 1992.  I remember seeing Aladdin in theatres (random fun fact: it was the first movie Christy and I saw together), which was a big deal because at age 13 most teens are trying to prove how much they've outgrown "kiddy" stuff.  But the big talk was of how awesome Robin Williams' portrayal of the Genie was.  There was even talk that he'd garner an Oscar nomination for it (he didn't, but did snag a "Special Award" at the Golden Globes).  It was (and still is) a fantastic performance and he deserved all of the praise he received.  But I think it had some unfortunate consequences.

I think the period of 1989 to 1994 was a seminal period in the history of animation.  Starting with The Little Mermaid, then through Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and culminating with The Lion King  - this is when studios started thinking about animated movies in terms of blockbusters that might even have award potential instead of just cheap movies that could be counted on to turn a small but dependable profit in the kid market.   Looking at the casts of these films reveals this shift pretty clearly.  The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast have barely any recognizable names - the "big" star in Little Mermaid is Buddy Hackett and in Beauty and the Beast it's Angela Lansbury.  Then Aladdin comes along with the first true blockbuster star in Robin Williams - although Gilbert Gottfried also has what is probably his most memorable role as Jafar's parrot.  Then by Lion King it's pretty much all stars for the big parts - Jonathan Taylor Thomas (who is nobody now but was big due to Home Improvement at the time), Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, and Nathan Lane.  From that point on, nearly every animated film from a major studio has utilized established screen actors for almost all the major roles.  Heck, even Wall-E (which is 75% of the way to being a silent film) felt the need to use Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, Sigourney Weaver, and John Ratzenberger (although technically Fred Willard is actually screen acting since you see him via live action shots).

Now, I'm certainly not saying that animated films as a whole are worse now than they were prior to 1992.  There's a reason why 75% of the animated films I own are Pixar.  It's just unfortunate that just as this particular genre of film started to really take off and achieve huge financial success, the individuals that worked so hard their whole lives to contribute towards that success - actors that most people have never heard of precisely because they were so adept at concealing their identities behind the characters they created - have largely been left out in the cold.  I hope that down the road studios will realize that the reason animated films have gotten so much better was due to the focus on better writing, augmented by the technological advances, and that they have been succeeding in spite of employing screen actors, not because of them.

In the meantime, at least we still have The Simpsons.

Some More Random Thoughts

You know that horror movie cliche where just when you think the killer is dead and buried there is a shot of the undead hand reaching up through the earth in front of the tombstone?  This is the political equivalent of that.  It appears that it took exactly 11 days after the 2012 presidential election for the first steps towards 2016 to be taken.  I know that it has always been said that politicians are perpetually campaigning, but didn't it seem like they used to do it more subtly than this?

In other news, panic is gripping our obese nation as Hostess announced it is going out of business.  But fear not my fellow plump friends, it is very very unlikely that you have seen your last Twinkie.  People seem to think that in a bankruptcy everything just sort of dissolves into the ether of the universe, but that is not the case.  In truth, every asset of the company is still owned by someone - usually in these cases it's a creditor but after that it's the shareholders (everyone with an interest is collectively called the stakeholders).  In a bankruptcy case, a trustee is placed in charge of liquidating the assets in order to pay back the stakeholders as much as possible.  So really, anything of value is going to be sold.  And judging by the rabid response of individuals rushing out to horde or scalp boxes of Twinkies, it appears that they still do retain some value.

In all likelihood, the recipes and naming rights to all of the Hostess products will be sold off to the highest bidder, so unless some uber-millionaire with an Eric Cartman complex buys them all for the sole purpose of having them personally made for him and no one else, you will likely continue to have all your favorites available to serve your 3 A.M. overeating needs.  The only difference is now the next time you have one you will bite into it, shake your head slowly, and say to whatever unfortunate soul happens to be within earshot of you, "they're just not the same anymore."  When in fact they will be exactly the same but what has changed is how you built them up in your mind when you thought you'd never have one again.

By the way, here is my rough guess as to the recipe for a Twinkie:

2 parts unnaturally spongy and obscenely yellow cake
1 part room-temperature dairy-like substance
3 cups sugar
A dash of loneliness

For the record, I love Twinkies.  But to paraphrase Jim Gaffigan, I've never finished a Twinkie and said to myself "I'm glad I ate that.  I feel good about myself."

Busting a Couple Political Myths

I promise I am not going to turn this into a full-time political blog, but I find that lately it seems to be the only thoughts I have that I feel are worth writing about.  There are two "myths" I want to talk about, although "political spin" is probably a more apt term for these.

Myth #1: Republicans are the America First party, and Democrats are the Blame America First party.

This is a quick one.  It's definitely true that Democrats and liberals (not necessarily the same thing) show up in force to protest a whole lot of things; from wars to Wall Street abuses to animal cruelty to union strikes.  But the right is certainly no stranger to protesting the "injustices" of America, whether it's holding tea party or NRA rallies or putting up giant, horrific anti-abortion posters in the Loop.  And as much as the left likes to bitch and moan about things, you know what they don't do?  File petitions to secede from the U.S.  How one party attempts to be the "Party of Patriotism" and the "Party of Secession" at the same time is a level of bi-polarism that is so stunning to me that I'm almost impressed.  Rest assured that the next Republican who tries to slap the "un-american" tag on a liberal idea is going to get this thrown directly in their face.

 Myth #2: Republicans were ready and willing to work with President Obama in his first term, but he failed to bring them to the table.

It doesn't surprise me in the least to hear Republicans saying this one, especially around election time, but I was surprised to hear it said by many Democrats and pundits as well.  These people all have very short memories.  Let's just review a couple choice examples of the "goodwill" Obama faced in the first couple months:

From an e-mail from RNC chairman Mike Duncan on Wednesday, November 12th 2008 (note this is 2 months before Obama is even sworn in):

"There are three seats in the House and two in the Senate that still hang in the balance. Winning these races and strengthening our Republican numbers in both chambers of Congress is critical to blocking Barack Obama’s left-wing agenda . . .The Obama-Biden Democrats and their liberal special interest allies are trying to steal these election victories from Republicans. . .Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are hoping to add more seats to the Democrats’ Senate and House majorities so they can steamroll our opposition to their extreme, ultraliberal schemes. . . Every Republican vote we can add now will help our Party stop the Obama Democrats’ leftist policies in the U.S. Congress. "

On January 19th, 2009 Rush Limbaugh summed up his hope for the Obama presidency in 4 words: "I hope he fails."

In February of 2009, the first of many national tea party protests were held.

On May 10th, 2009 (i.e. 110 days after Obama took office) Dick Cheney goes on Meet the Press to tell the country that the U.S. is less safe under Obama.

A veritable love-fest yes?  These are the examples I was able to dig up in less than 5 minutes, although I have every confidence I could come up with about a dozen more in short order.  The fact is that the first example of bi-partisanship Obama was offered by Republicans was in John McCain's concession speech on election night 2008,  and the next was in Mitt Romney's concession speeh in 2012.

 Myth #3: A tax increase directly leads to higher unemployment.

 This is the one I really wanted to talk about.  It really surprises me that this is not common knowledge but either people are not well-versed in how our taxes are calculated or (more likely) they have opted to remain willfully ignorant.

The key to understanding this is in understanding what is taxed: profits.  Again, that sounds extremely simple (and it is) but this is where people fail to connect the dots.  Profit, in its simplest form, is revenue minus expenses.  All employee wages, including those of the CEO and board members, are fully deductible as expenses.  The only thing which is affected is retained earnings (i.e. where dividends and additional bonuses are paid from).

Let's work through a quick, simple example: suppose you have a business making $100 million annually.  They also have a total of $80 million in expenses (of which employee wages and associated payroll tax comprise $40 million).  That leaves the company with a total profit of $20 million, which is subject to tax.  So, at a 15% tax rate that would be $3 million, which would leave $17 million going into retained earnings (or distributed via dividends) after taxes.

So now let's say the tax rate increases to 20%.  Given the same facts as above, the business is now left with 80% of their $20 million profit, or $16 million.  So the difference in these two scenarios is an additional cost of $1 million to the business.

How do they make up for the $1 million hit?  The first question is, why do they need to? The increase in taxation had absolutely no effect on whether or not the company was profitable.  The only effect was the amount available to go into retained earnings or to be paid in dividends.

But let's say that, for whatever reason, they need after-tax income to be at least $17 million.  That means you have to cut wages, right?  Hardly.  Presumably, the individuals you employ actually, you know, do something right?  If you cut your sales force by $1 million, how much will your revenue drop by?  If it drops by more than $1 million, than you have just cost yourself even more money by cutting wages.  More importantly, if it drops by less than $1 million, that means they are currently costing you more money than they are bringing in and you should lay them off anyway, regardless of the tax structure.

Let's say that instead of cutting your sales force, you want to save the money by cutting from support staff like HR or IT.  Again, the same principle applies.  You will still need those functions, so if you can meet your company's needs either by utilizing less staff or by outsourcing the function, then you should do so regardless of the tax structure.

Please also keep in mind that everything I'm talking about above applies to an increase to the corporate tax rate.  I thought it went without saying that an increase to personal tax rates would have no impact on employment decisions, but that is the connection a lot of these CEOs tried to make during this election cycle.

So am I trying to suggest that an increase to the corporate tax rate has no negative effects?  Definitely not.  As I mentioned, the impact is to retained earnings and that is what is used to pay out dividends.  That means that if, in the aggregate, retained earnings decrease there will be less overall dividends paid out and that will lower the rate of return on investments.  That means a direct hit to the bottom lines of investment banks as well as to 401(k)s.  Retained earnings is also what a corporation uses to make large purchases (like another company) or to expand their business.  Thus you can certainly make the argument that an increase to corporate taxes negatively affects business investment and lower GDP growth, which in turn will lower the rate at which new jobs are created.  But saying "less new jobs will be created" is a far cry from "existing jobs will be eliminated."  And as with most things, it appears that politically we'd rather throw around sound bites and argue about false problems than have a real dialogue about the true consequences of our decisions.

  

What Now For the GOP?

A couple weeks ago I listed out the 5 big reasons that I chose to support Obama.  With the election now in the rear-view mirror I want to expound on the last point I made, which was that I hoped an Obama reelection would send a message to the GOP that they needed to return to the center if they ever hope to move back into the White House again.

Specifically, they need to jettison most, if not all, of their platform on social issues.  While I could talk at length about a dozen or so, I really want to concentrate on 2 - gay marriage and illegal immigration.  While I don't necessarily think that these are the two biggest issues in the country at the moment (though they both are very important) I'll put it bluntly: the GOP will never have success on a national level (i.e. presidential elections) until they jettison their opposition to gay marriage and soften their hardline stance on illegal immigration.

For both of these I am not arguing these on the basis that they are the right thing to do, although I think anyone who has read this blog over the years knows that I do feel that way.  I am simply presenting this in the context that these two positions are impacting the Republican party in a significantly negative way, and I just don't see any path forward for them other than to reverse themselves.

For gay marriage, the reasoning is pretty simple.  8 years ago, opposition made complete populist sense.  At that time, nearly 2/3rds of the country was against it.  That is not the case anymore.  Support for gay marriage has grown considerably over that time, particularly in the last 2 years, and now stands at approximately 54% in favor vs 42% opposed.  A party should not be purely a reflection of the majority opinion, but continuing to hold this position would not only defy political logic it would also fly in the face of pretty much everything the GOP purports to stand for.  The rallying cry of the Republicans, and the Tea Party in particular, since 2009 has been a rejection of government overreach.  So to take a purely social issue (I don't think anyone rejects gay marriage on economic grounds) where the majority of the country is on the opposite side from you and say that while you disagree with government interference in general you still think this is one case where the government absolutely needs to be involved just presents a huge credibility problem.  Rather, changing positions on this issue actually presents a golden opportunity for the GOP.  Much as a free speech advocate will defend Nazi hate speech, the Republicans have a chance to conclusively demonstrate that they really do believe in limited government - even if the result of that is allowing something which they think is morally wrong.  In that way, this is actually not a compromise for them at all; it's just a return to the values they have claimed to hold all along.

The 2nd issue is a bit trickier and would definitely be a reversal for the GOP.  And really, this is about demography.  This election, black voters made up 13% of the electorate.   Latinos made up 10% (up from 8% in 2008) and they are the fastest growing segment of the country.  That's nearly one full quarter of the electorate that currently votes overwhelmingly Democratic.  That leaves the GOP with the daunting task of needing to capture about 60% of the remaining vote to have a majority.

Now, I don't have a silver bullet when it comes to telling the GOP how to win over black voters, and I don't think anyone else does either.  But there most certainly is one when it comes to Latinos and it's immigration reform.  What does the GOP need to do?  Well, for starters they need to tone down the rhetoric, stop blaming illegals for all the country's problems, stop crusading against every public service that gets provided for an illegal, and generally expand their list of solutions from the current roster that is pretty much limited to self-deportation and building bigger walls.  Those are good starts.  Then whatever they end up presenting better have the words "path to citizenship" in there somewhere.  How do you sell that to your base?  It won't be easy, but I think you start by reminding people that we are a nation of immigrants and that the reason we have this "problem" is because opportunities in this country are better than just about anywhere else.  You tell them that by providing a path to legality you will clamp down on seedy businesses who are thriving on what is essentially black market labor and you will increase tax revenue when their earnings are now reported on W-2s instead of getting paid under the table.

As a side note, I wrote most of this yesterday and today I saw this article where Sean Hannity (of all people) and John Boehner have basically come to the same conclusion.

This is all a very tricky situation for the GOP.  If Tuesday demonstrated anything, it was the great chasm between local and national politics.  Even though President Obama won a pretty decisive victory, the Democrats only managed to pick up 3 seats in the house and will be in the minority by a 233-193 margin over the next 2 years.  To understand why, I think it's helpful to take a look at this map of the House election results.  Look at states like California and Illinois.  Even though Obama carried each of those states easily, there are significant chunks of red in each of them.  More interestingly, look at states like Ohio and Florida where Obama pulled out narrow victories.  Even though those states went blue for him, those states are overwhelmingly red when it comes to Congressional elections.  But then look at the states that went for Romney, like Louisiana, Missouri, and Indiana.  Outside of New Orleans, St. Louis, and the Chicago metro area (respectively) there's barely a drop of blue to be found.  This creates a very difficult problem for the GOP to solve, because while their path back to the Presidency lies in tacking to the center, they are going to have to do it by asking Representatives from very conservative districts to make compromises that will almost certainly prove to be very unpopular back home.  And unpopular decisions back home will almost certainly lead to fiercer primaries that is likely to produce even more conservative candidates.

It's a dangerous tightrope that the GOP must walk.  But walk it they must if they ever want to get back into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave again without a visitor pass.  If they don't, then it is likely that the present makeup of our government will be the status quo for the next decade - red House, blue Presidency, and the Senate in flux (but a very slow flux since only one third of seats are up every 2 years).  That will not foster compromise and will not lead to effective governance.  And the country will suffer for it. 

When Misleading Becomes Dishonest

We're in the height of campaign season, so a certain amount of embellishment and exaggerating is to be expected.  But there is one particular oft-repeated refrain I've heard from Romney and the right which I find to be misleading to the point of genuine dishonesty.

The way that it is said comes in many different ways, but this pretty much sums it up:

Republicans will point out that this is completely accurate and, yes, those were indeed the gas prices on the day Obama took office.  But what makes this completely misleading are the implications from this, namely 1) that it was a good thing that gas was this low; 2) that gas prices were that low for an extended period and 3) that gas prices will go down again if Obama is voted out of office.

The truth is a bit more complicated.  First of all, the highest gas prices have ever been was $4.12/gallon, in July 2008, 6 months before Obama took office.  In fact, gas was over $3.00/gallon pretty much continuously from May 2007 onward.




Hmm, you know what?  This looks suspiciously like another chart I know of, specifically the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same time period:

Gas prices rocketed downward because we were in the midst of an epic financial collapse.  So, yes, we can easily achieve those gas prices again if you want to root for another financial crisis.  The Dow lost nearly half it's value from October 1st, 20007 (13,930) to February 2nd, 2009 (7,062.93).  There's the tradeoff for you: give up half your 401(k) and other investments in exchange for gas that's $2/gallon cheaper.  Seem fair to you?  Even if you don't have investments and don't care, does that strike you as a good trade-off for the country?

By the way, the day after Obama took office (it was closed for MLK Day on the day of his inauguration) the Dow closed at 7,949.09.  Yesterday it closed at 13,345.89.  Funny how you won't see that on a Photoshopped sign spreading around the internet.

I am not espousing that Obama is responsible for both the gas prices and the stock market recovery, and I am certainly not suggesting that he is responsible for one but not the other.  The truth is that, by and large, he has very little to do with either.  Both were hit hard by the financial crisis, and both are now returning to the levels they should be at - those dictated by supply and demand.  Obama's main role in the crisis was to provide temporary assistance where it was needed (something I believe he did a very good job with) and help with legislation designed to make sure this type of collapse does not recur (something I think he did a rather middling job at).  But, right or wrong, the President gets all the praise and all the blame for everything that occurs under his watch and such is the case here, no matter how undeserved or wrong it is.

But that's ok; if my friends on the right want to play this game I can do it too.  Here's a picture from this year's GOP convention that captures my feelings on their role in the deficit nicely.  Only difference is, I can actually support this one with actual facts.




Sources: Gas prices from here.  DJIA chart was my own creation in Excel, from the Yahoo Finance data.

Back to Politics Part 2 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Obama

If you're confused about the title, you obviously have not seen this movie.

So, if I believe everything I said before (and I do), why am I supporting Obama again?  Because this election is not a referendum on his first-term performance relative to my expectations, it’s about the next 4 years.  And, even with the knowledge that he will not be tackling the systemic problems I hoped he would, by a wide margin he is still the candidate that is more closely aligned with my personal positions.

As Christy and I were driving in the car on Friday, in what amounted to a 6-hour trip to IHOP (that’s a story for another day), she was expressing her own personal frustration at not being informed about the various candidates and how hard it was to actually get informed.  Nothing that comes out of a candidate’s mouth can ever be taken at face value, and their websites are just their mouths in a different format.  Newspapers, magazines, and news shows all have their own agendas too, so it actually is quite difficult to ever feel comfortable that you’ve gotten at any kind of “objective truth”.  In any case, down the line in this discussion she asked me “why should I vote for Obama?”

Now, it’s not that I didn’t have an answer for her.  It’s more that the Mark Twain saying “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have enough time” applied here.  I could easily have meandered through an hour-long diatribe about everything I agreed with Obama on and everything I disagreed with Romney on, but I knew that’s not what she wanted.   I think that she, like most Americans, doesn’t want to listen to hours and hours of back and forth between candidates and pundits and have to read between the lines and tease out the truths.  She wants to know, quite simply, what are the important points that each side believes, and what are going to be the actual consequences of choosing one side versus the other.

That set me to the task of trying to compile a succinct list of the main reasons I am supporting Obama over Romney.  And after about 10 minutes, I had a list of about 4 or 5 main points, and they are as follows:

1. Supreme Court Appointments – It is impossible to know when a Supreme Court vacancy will open up.  However, given that there are currently 4 justices in their 70s (Ginsburg – 79, Scalia – 75, Kennedy – 75, and Breyer – 74) and that the average retirement age of a justice is 78.7, it is likely that there will be 1 or 2 appointments in the next presidential term.  Right now the generally accepted interpretation regarding the makeup of the court is that there are 4 conservative justices, 4 liberals, and Kennedy is the swing vote (though it can probably be said that he leans conservative).  And since, of the four justices in their 70s, only Scalia is a conservative, the potential for the court to swing decidedly conservative under a Romney administration is clear.  And with Supreme Court appointments being for life, that is a swing which may last a long time.  Would a conservative Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade?  I honestly don’t know, but certainly many conservatives hope so.  Also, the issue of gay marriage will almost certainly come before the Supreme Court in the next few years.  If you want to ensure that Roe v Wade is not getting overturned anytime soon, and you want the issue of gay marriage to come before a court that is not any more conservative than it is right now, you need to vote for Barack Obama.

2. Obamacare – I really don’t like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but not for the reasons that conservatives don’t like it.  I don’t like it because, for all the ridiculous amount of effort and angst from the right, it’s remarkable how little it actually does.  Still, it did away with lifetime limits and will end pre-existing conditions, and also includes a mandate for everyone to carry health insurance (however toothless that mandate may be).  And I can tell you from firsthand experience that here at Blue Cross since its passage there has been effort like never before on reducing costs and keeping premium increases as low as possible.  And the bottom line is that this legislation took us one step closer to ensuring that every American has health insurance.  But the full impact of these changes don’t go into effect until 2014 or later, and Romney has outright stated that he intends to work towards repealing ACA in his first term.  If you believe that ACA is a step in the right direction and that we need to work towards the day when -  like a police force, firefighters, social security, and national defense - health insurance is something that every American is provided with, you need to vote for Barack Obama.

3. Climate Change – This one is pretty simple.  One side acknowledges that climate change is real and is largely the result of human activity, and the other side doesn’t.  In 2010 Obama signed an executive order which will increase the corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFÉ) standards from 27.5 to 35.5 by 2016.  As an executive order, Romney would have the power to undo this change at the stroke of a pen.  Obama also heavily supports investment in alternative and renewable energy; Romney supports more domestic drilling and is only concerned with getting us off foreign oil – not oil in general.  If you believe that climate change is happening, is manmade, and is a serious threat to us and our planet, you need to vote for Barack Obama.

4. Social Issues – The GOP is supposed to stand for hands-off government.  Turns out that this is only the case when it comes to gun control, taxes, and corporate regulation.  When it comes to being involved in your personal decisions they have no qualms whatsoever in getting actively involved to decide what is best for you and the country.  Part of being “hands-off” is acknowledging that things will occur that you don’t personally agree with, because above all you believe that it is not the government’s place to interfere.  That is the libertarian view, but the GOP abandoned it long ago.  There are literally a hundred issues I could point to here, but I’ll just pick a couple: gay marriage, any form of marijuana (growing hemp, recreational use, and medicinal use), internet gambling, separation of church and state, and abortion.  If you are a progressive when it comes to social issues and don’t believe that the Bible should be the basis for social legislation, you need to vote for Barack Obama.

5. Send a Message to the GOP – This one is closely tied to #s 2, 3, and 4 above.  For all the bashing I do of the GOP (and I am aware I do a lot of it) it does not come from a place of hatred.  It comes from a place of frustration, because deep down I still feel that the GOP is my party and that it is currently being held hostage by a bunch of lunatics.  I am a fiscal conservative – I believe in a flat tax, balancing the budget, reducing the deficit, and that a voucher system is a fantastic solution for both our education and health insurance problems.  Those are all ideas championed by conservatives before they got control of both Congress and the Presidency and decided that unlimited spending was OK as long as they were in power and that they would concentrate on social issues.  And if you think I'm exaggerating about the spending, I urge you to read this article written in 2003 by the conservative Christian Science Monitor.  I want to see a debate on how to best deliver universal health care to all Americans while not busting the budget and how to lower carbon emissions without killing the economy – not whether or not we should do either of those things.  I thought that the Democratic Congressional takeover in 2006, followed by Obama’s victory in 2008 would have forced them to reinvent themselves as centrists.  Instead they’ve opted to double down, summarized best by Mitch McConnell after the Republican landslide in 2010; “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”  Not “our top priority is to get Americans back to work” or “to get the economy going again” or “to work with Democrats to get legislation passed which helps all Americans.”  Nope, number one objective is “Screw You Obama.”  If you want to send a message to Republicans that they need to meet Democrats and the majority of the country in the center, you need to vote for Barack Obama.  

Back to Politics (Part 1)

I initially intended this as one entry but, as I so often do, once I got going I found that I had a lot more to say about it than I initially thought.  So I am dividing this into two entries instead – the first expressing my disappointment with Obama’s first term and politics in general, and the second discussing the reasons why I am still supporting Obama for a 2^nd term.

Contrary to what it may appear on this blog, I have by and large steered clear of politics for the past couple years.  I still try and stay current and keep myself informed, but I no longer read the Economist cover to cover every week or watch all the Sunday morning political shows like I did from 2006 to 2010.

A large part of this is, no doubt, purely a function of having a lot less free time than I used to.  With Anabelle and now Charlotte soaking up a lot of that time, I find that I really want to spend the free time that I do have doing something fun and relaxing like watching sports or a movie, reading a good book, playing video games, or, in the rare times that we can get out of the house, having a night out with Christy.  I don’t consider it an abdication of my duty as an American; it’s more that I see it as my role to make an informed decision as to who the best people are to govern and then expecting them to, you know, actually do the job they were elected to do.  Politics as a hobby has lost pretty much all appeal to me, especially since it is always so monumentally frustrating.

Four years ago, things were different.  For the first time in my adult life I actually gave money to a political campaign (to both Obama and McCain in the primary and to Obama in the general election).  And for the first time since I was 17 and interning for state Rep Vince Persico, I volunteered for a campaign.  I still clearly remember driving out to Indiana on a Saturday in October with Joe to knock on doors for 3 hours.  We only talked to about 2 dozen people, most of whom wanted nothing to do with us, but I at least felt like I did something.  Obama ended up carrying Indiana and, though I know it’s almost certainly not true, I like to think that I had just a little bit to do with that.

Today I feel quite differently.  I have been very frustrated with how the last 4 years have gone.  I haven’t given any money or time to any campaign, and don’t plan to in the next 3 weeks.  I, like a whole lot of Americans, am just frustrated by the inane squabbling and posturing of politicians.  Contrary to what the talking heads on the cable news shows will tell you, most Americans would much rather see the country unified and working together towards something (anything) rather than see every single point of either party’s agenda get accomplished – which will never happen anyway.  And that is what I am most disappointed in Obama about.  I did not elect him to solve all of our problems.  I did not think that he had a “silver bullet” solution for the economy – in 2008 most economists agreed that it would take about a decade for us to fully emerge from this crisis and contrary to how the GOP wants to spin it that was always the case and is still today.  But Obama ran on a platform of changing the way Washington works and that is what got me excited.  I don’t expect government to solve our problems; I expect the government to function at a level that allows us to solve our own problems.  And the epic disappointment with Obama is not that he failed at doing that, it’s that he didn’t even try. 

The analogy I use is a family trying to pull itself out of poverty.  Unless you come from money or have otherworldly athletic skills, the best way to succeed in this country today is with a solid education.  But for millions of Americans, that’s just not an option.  They can only afford to live in poor areas with terrible schools and even if they have all the best intentions and graduate high school, more likely than not they don’t have the education fundamentals or the money to succeed in college.  So they do the best they can, scraping by and floundering.  And of course then they have kids of their own, born into the same situation and almost pre-destined to struggle through as well and the cycle just continues.  What it takes to break the cycle is for two parents to decide that they’re going to move to where the education system is better or send their kids to private school, even if those decisions mean that they both need to work 2 jobs and 80-hour weeks, spend next to nothing on non-essential items, and pretty much never take a vacation.  That’s an unbelievably hard thing to actually do – you will miss a lot of your kids growing up and they will probably resent you for it for a long time until they’re old enough to understand why you are doing it – but that’s the kind of commitment it takes if you want to break the cycle.  There’s no glamour in it at all.  You have to be willing to say, “I am not going to be the one to be successful and have a comfortable life, but I will do everything in my power to make sure I am the last generation in my family that has to say that.”

That is what I wanted from Obama.  I didn’t want him to do the “glam” work of solving our health care system or climate change  because, quite simply, I believe these problems to be unsolvable given the current state of our government.  I wanted him to dig in and tackle the rot in the system that makes government so ineffective.  I wanted him to tackle our campaign finance system – which is arguably the one single problem from which most of our other problems (or at least lack of solutions) stem.  I wanted him to address the almost limitless access that lobbyists and big donors have to candidates.  I wanted him to get actively involved in reviewing each and every government program and office, fix or eliminate the ineffective ones, and develop metrics to judge them on and rules for accountability when they fail to live up to expectations.  I wanted him to make some Congressional recommendations mandatory, so that when a bipartisan commission is formed to address a problem (like Medicare, Social Security, or the debt) it isn’t just an exercise in futility when reports and recommendations are completely ignored and never even brought to a vote.

These are the things I wanted him to work on, even if it meant he got crucified in this election for “not working on the real issues.”  If he solved even one or two of the issues above history would remember him as a great President.  As of now, if his Presidency ends this January, the only thing historic about him will be that he shattered the race barrier.  Elsewise, he will be known as yet another in a long line of politicians whose oratory skill greatly exceeded his governing skill – a nice man with lofty ideas who over-promised and under-delivered.

I pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again