The CEO of Apple apologized today for faulty maps in its iOS6 mobile operating system. On hearing the news, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney immediately bought President Obama a new iPhone with a map to next week’s debate.
Hong Kong real estate tycoon Cecil Chao has offered $65M to any man who marries his gay daughter, Gigi. In a related story, San Francisco real estate tycoon Paul Pelosi is offering $100M to any man who marries his straight wife, Nancy.
CNN reported that a Mormon woman has started a grassroots movement for a day of prayer and fasting to support Mitt Romney. In a clarification, she explained that while the prayers are heartfelt, she had to fast because of rising grocery costs.
After failing to find the body of Jimmy Hoffa under a shed in Roseville, Michigan today, the FBI received a new tip that the remains of the former Teamsters chief were located with Obama’s foreign policy strategy. Unfortunately, no one has been able to find that either.
During an interview on CNN’s The Situation Room, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered a harsh assessment of the Romney campaign. Mr. Romney replied through a spokesman that he would be happy to listen to political advice from the man he beat decisively in the primaries.
In response to new allegations that she practiced law without a license, on top of her previous unsubstantiated claim of Native American ancestry, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said, “Next week I’m going to be a fireman, a princess, and a ballerina.”
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
Once again, I need to thank the government for giving me a news story ripped from the pages of my novel Full Asylum.
Photo source: sott.net
ABC News reports, “According to the TSA, 381 TSA officers have been fired for theft between 2003 and 2012, including 11 so far in this year. ” A friend of mine posted the latest instance on my Facebook timeline this morning: reporters tracked an iPad left at an airport security checkpoint to the home of TSA officer Andy Ramirez. Mr. Ramirez reminded my friend of the character Dora Jarr (get it?) in my book:
Gimbel now saw why the line moved so slowly. A short brunette security guard made small talk with every passenger about the items in their carry-ons. She wore a blue security uniform and work boots and a rectangular ID hung from a lanyard around her neck. It displayed her name, Dora Jarr, in block letters beneath her picture. She confronted an old lady in a green jogging suit across the inspection table. Several plastic bins, a computer, an air horn, and the contents of the lady’s purse were spread out on the table. The guard questioned the lady about some photos she found in the purse.
“This is Randy,” the grandmother explained. “He’s my daughter Susan’s oldest. And this is Mitchell, my son Terry’s middle child. He does very well in school. Barry plays Little League. I went to one of his games, but the other team didn’t show up.”
Gimbel suddenly realized he knew the old woman. It was Mrs. Bentel, his co-contestant on Sorry. Clearly she had recovered completely from her on-air fainting spell. Gimbel fumed as Mrs. Bentel went on about Mindy who plays the flute and Brad who’s into computers. Finally she came to the end of the stack of snapshots. Dora Jarr continued her search.
“What’s this?” she asked, fingering a circular metal object.
“Oh, that’s a compact.”
“Is it gold?”
“Yes. My husband gave it to me on our last anniversary.”
The guard opened the compact and sniffed the contents. “This powder looks suspicious to me. I’ll have to confiscate it. It might be anthrax.”
Mrs. Bentel protested politely. “Please let me keep it. It has great sentimental value to me.”
“If you don’t cooperate with the security procedures, I’m going to call the police.”
“May I speak with your supervisor please?”
“That’s it! I warned you.” Dora Jarr beckoned to a nearby policeman. After a brief conversation he handcuffed Mrs. Bentel. She started to say something, but then her eyes rolled up and she fell to the floor. The policeman summoned the paramedics over his radio while Dora Jarr tossed the gold compact into a gray plastic bin. The compact joined an heirloom fountain pen (“You could stab someone with that”), three silver necklaces (“You could strangle someone with those”), and a bottle of Moche perfume (“You could start a fire with that”)
Abuse of any position of authority is deplorable, and it’s fun to ridicule people like that. But the next time you’re in the airport, please be polite to the many honest and hardworking TSA agents who are doing the best they can with a really crappy job.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
Usually when I bring up the high price of gasoline under the Obama administration, my left-of-center friends point out that many factors that go into gas prices are not under the president's control. That's true, but it doesn't get him off the hook for botched policies on the factors that are under his control.
The American Action Forum has added up the cost for all new government regulations imposed by the Obama Administration. The organization notes that "The estimated $488 billion is not a ceiling, but a floor of the Administration’s regulatory record. Independent cost estimates routinely report higher figures than initial government estimates. All of these numbers are from the government’s own estimates."
By now, Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% comment has been parsed, sliced, diced, and julienned, and there’s little more to say about it. However, the comment was just one paragraph in an hour-long Q&A and it’s interesting to read what else Gov. Romney had to say. There’s some good stuff in there:
On the direction of the country:
I'm very concerned about what the nation is gonna be like over the coming decade or two….I see these two very different scenarios. One is as America really powering the world economy, with an extraordinary economy here, with China working with us, wanting to see stability in the world, and a very vibrant America, with freedom and prosperity for the great bulk of the American people. On the other hand, I really do see something like Europe. And I think that's the path we're on right now.
On becoming successful in America:
And Ann's dad, my wife's dad, was born in Wales. His dad was a coal miner. This coal miner got injured in a coal mining accident; realizing that there was no future there for him or his four children, he came to Detroit and worked in the auto factories until he could save enough money to bring his kids over, which he did. And then they got together as a family and said, you know, to be successful in America, you've got to get an education. And they couldn't afford an education. And the kids and the parents said you know, if we all work, and we all save, we could afford to send one of us to college. And they, they sent my wife's dad.
Can you imagine working every day, taking a couple of jobs, saving your money so that your brother could go to—I mean, I would never do that for my brother—that he could go to co…so he went to college, and got a degree at the General Motors Institute of Technology, which is one of these programs where you work a semester, and then you go to school a semester and.…and then after it was over he started a little company, he became more successful, and he was able to hire his brothers and his brother-in-law, and provide for them in an extraordinary way. By the way, both my dad and Ann's dad did quite well in their life, but when they came to the end of their lives, and, and passed along inheritances to Ann and to me, we both decided to give it all away. So, I had inherited nothing. Everything that Ann and I have we earned the old-fashioned way, and that's by hard work….
In every stump speech I give, I speak about the fact that people who dream and achieve enormous success do not make us poorer—they make us better off.
On being born with a silver spoon:
I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America.
On entitlement reform:
If we don't change Medicare or Social Security, the tax rate—you know what the payroll tax is now, it's 15.3 percent—if we don't change those programs, that tax rate will have to ultimately rise to 44 percent. The payroll tax. Then there's the income tax on top, which the president wants to take to 40 percent. Then there's state tax in most states. And sales tax. So you end up having to take 100 percent of people's income. And yet the president, three and a half years in, won't talk about reforming Social Security or Medicare. And when the Republicans do, it's "Oh, you're throwing granny off the cliff." It's like you're killing the kids. The biggest surprise that I have is that young people will vote for Democrats. They look at this and say, "Holy cow! The only guys who are worried about the future of our country and our future are Republicans." But the Democrats, they talk about social issues, draw in the young people, and they vote on that issue.
On Iran:
The specific on Iran is that we should have put in place crippling sanctions at the beginning of the president's term. We did not. He will say, "Yes, but Russian wouldn't go along with us." Well, he gave Russia their No. 1 foreign objective: For a decade, all they've cared about is getting the missile defense sites out of Poland, and he gave them that and got nothing in return. He could have—I presume—gotten them to agree to crippling sanctions on Iran. He did not, which is in my opinion, one of the greatest foreign policy errors of the modern time....
No. 2, we should have been aggressively supporting the voices of dissent in Iran, and when there was an effort towards revolution there we should been aggressively supporting. And finally we should have made it clear, at least by now, that we have military plans to potentially remove their nuclear capabilities. That doesn't mean we actually pull the trigger, but it means we communicate to them that we're ready to do so. And that it is unacceptable to America to have a nuclear Iran. Instead what this administration has done is communicate to the Iranians that we're more worried about Israel attacking them than we are about them becoming nuclear. It's extraordinary. So those are some thoughts directly at Iran.
I'll step back on foreign policy: The president's foreign policy, in my opinion, is formed in part by a perception that he has that his magnetism and his charm and his persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin, Chávez, and Ahmadinejad. And that they'll find we're such wonderful people that they'll go on with us. And they'll stop doing bad things. And it's an extraordinarily naive perception, and it has led to huge errors in North Korea, in Iraq, obviously in Iran, in Egypt, around the world. My own view is that that the centerpiece of American foreign policy has to be strength….When you stand by your allies, you increase your strength. When you attack your allies, you become weaker. When you stand by your principles, you get stronger. When you have a big military—that's bigger than anyone else's—you're stronger....For me, everything is about strength and communicating to people what is and is not acceptable. It's speaking softly but carrying a very, very, very big stick. And this president instead speaks loudly and carries a tiny stick.
The full transcript of the Mitt Romney “secret video” is available on the Mother Jones website.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about what the nation is gonna be like in the coming decade or two. Check it out on Amazon.com.
The Heritage Foundation Index of Government Dependence "tracks government spending on the federal programs that breed government dependency." Here's the data for 2008-2010. Yesterday the Foundation released a preview of the 2011 data which shows dependence is up even further. The full report will be available next month.
Looks like today's distraction is the secret recording of Romney's remarks at a May fundraiser. Our attention is better focused on the bad news from Fedex. Because of its role delivering packages for so many industries, Fedex's earnings is a valuable economic indicator. Yesterday it cut its forecast due to a worsening economy.
Now that America is respected around the world again, I have to marvel at the skill with which President Obama brought that about. In order to gain insight into how he did it, I compiled a list of Top Ten Barack Obama Foreign Policy Strategies:
#10 Cement relations with our allies by returning a bust of one of their most cherished prime ministers.
#9 Further cement relations by being too busy to meet with them.
#8 Set timetables for troop withdrawals.
#7 Support anti-government demonstrations in countries friendly to the United States, but go out for ice cream during demonstrations in countries hostile to the United States.
#6 Never act without permission from the UN (permission from Congress is optional).
#5 Denigrate, during speeches in foreign nations, the moral sense and national vision of the United States (the “Apology Tour”).
#4 Promise our rivals that we’ll be more flexible after the election.
#3 When the Pakistani government imprisons and tortures the doctor who helped you locate bin Laden, ask for “clarification.”
#2 As a hostile country ruled by radical Islamists approaches completion of a nuclear bomb, give them a stern talking to.
And the number one Barack Obama foreign policy strategy…
#1. Bow.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
Although the total national debt of $16T is more commonly reported in the media, according to the US Treasury much of that is "held by Government trust funds, revolving funds, and special funds; and Federal Financing Bank securities." Many economists argue that the debt held by the public is a more useful measure of the nation's liability:
I’m frequently in discussions with folks who look at America and see only flaws. These individuals dwell mostly, albeit not exclusively, on the left side of the political spectrum. Tell them about the truly remarkable accomplishment of the Founding Fathers in creating the Constitution, and they reply “Slaveowners.”
Aside from being a fallacy of irrelevance, it’s a very sad way to go through life. They miss out on so many wonderful things. So without trying to minimize the many problems we’ve confronted in our history, here’s just a few of the fruits of the energy, ingenuity, and even the greed of Americans – both those Americans who were born here, and those Americans who were born elsewhere, but who came to our shores to seek better lives for themselves:
the Model T Ford
Casablanca
the New York skyline
the Franklin stove
the Declaration of Independence
the Saturn V rocket
the Boeing 747
the transistor
Hubble’s Law
the incandescent light bulb
the safety razor
aluminum-based antiperspirants
Nighthawks
Rhapsody in Blue
Atlas Shrugged
the IPhone
the Great Northern Railroad
Georgia on my Mind
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Disneyland
Las Vegas
Chicken McNuggets
Yes, this is a wonderful country. But don’t take my word for it. Here are some words from someone far more eloquent:
“The shining city upon a hill…a tall proud city, built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” – Ronald Reagan
Michael Isenberg is the creator of another American product, Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
Oil prices rose yesterday in response to turmoil in the Middle East and the decision by Bush/Obama appointee Ben Bernanke to begin another round of "Quantitative Easing", an Orwellian term that means "debasing the currency."
It’s a rare thing for a U.S. Ambassador to be killed in the line of duty. There have only been six such men in our history. The last one, prior to yesterday’s tragic murder in Libya of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, was Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs in 1979.
So it seemed worthwhile to take a moment to ask who was this Chris Stevens who gave his life for his country.
The outline of Ambassador Stevens’s life is readily available on Wikipedia: born in 1960, graduated UC Berkeley, volunteered for the Peace Corps, served in a string of diplomatic assignments throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Official encomiums from President Obama (“Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States.”) and Secretary of State Clinton (“Chris was committed to advancing America's values and interests, even when that meant putting himself in danger.”) have been all over the news today, but the man himself – what he was like, what he liked – is more elusive. Nevertheless, I’ve been able to find a few personal snippets:
Music was part of his life. He was the son of Mary Commanday, a retired cellist, and stepson of Robert Commanday, founder of the San Francisco Classical Voice (SFCV) website. Upon his confirmation as ambassador, his stepfather revealed to the SFCV news, “He played saxophone, about at the Bill Clinton level, but marginally in public. And he performed in one or two musicals at Piedmont High School.” According to his friend Harvey Morris, writing in the New York Times, Ambassador Stevens wrote him this summer that “Somehow our clever [embassy] staff located a Libyan band that specializes in 1980s soft rock, so I felt very much at home.”
The ambassador also wrote Mr. Morris that he “had got into the habit of a daily run through ‘our somewhat rural neighborhood of goat farms and olive groves and vineyards.’”
U.S. diplomats today often seem to be captives of their embassies. Many live and work behind high walls in fortified compounds, guarded by U.S. Marines who are often reinforced by a local security force. They venture out less and less, and the death of Stevens and three other Americans will only amplify this trend.
But Stevens, a 21-year veteran of the Foreign Service, never fully accepted these restrictions.
I witnessed this nearly a decade ago when Stevens was a political officer in Jerusalem. I was a reporter there at the time, and diplomats did not often venture into the West Bank as the fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians raged. But Stevens was always eager to go and take the temperature for himself.
Over time, security concerns made such excursions rarer and rarer. Stevens was frustrated by the limitations.
Perhaps in the end it’s best to let Ambassador Stevens speak for himself. Here’s a video he made earlier this year to introduce himself to the people of Libya.
Many Americans believe that freedom in the Arab world is an impossible dream and saw yesterday's events as confirmation. It is clear from the video that Ambassador Stevens disagreed. The portrait that emerges is of a man who loved the history and institutions that made America a free country and looked forward to working with the Libyan people to build their own enclave of freedom on the shores of North Africa. He compares the Libyan revolution to our own Civil War, so it's appropriate to close with the words of Abraham Lincoln—they apply to all four of those who died in yesterday’s attacks: “It is for us the living…to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
Rest in peace, Chris Stevens.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
The World Economic Forum's rankings are based on the Global Competitive Index, a compilation of 110 variables drawn from public sources and executive surveys.
The September 11 attacks were one of those events where everyone remembers where they were when they heard about it.
I was at a vendor’s conference in one of the big hotels in Boston. The day started predictably enough with lukewarm coffee and damp pastries. Everyone took their seats in the ballroom. The conference organizer got up at the microphone and told some incredibly stupid joke whose punch line was a pun on “Some Enchanted Evening.”
The presentations in the first session proceeded smoothly. When it was time for a break the organizer got up again.
“America has been attacked,” he said.
As he told us that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center, that one of the towers was gone, and that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon, I thought it was another joke. I waited for the punch line.
It never came.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
The number of Americans employed in non-farm jobs has increased (slightly) since Barack Obama took office, which sounds good, until you take population growth into account. The decline in % of population employed shows that we're actually losing ground.
Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, August 2012, January 2009.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
When I hear the anger and name-calling that is hurled at the Right on a daily basis, I can’t help wondering what we did to deserve such abuse. Which of our ideas is so beyond the pale that they invite vituperation?
Photo source: betf.blogspot.com
To try to get a handle on this, I put together a list of top ten right wing ideas. They all seem innocuous to me, but I invite my left-of-center friends to let me know which are the objectionable ones:
10. The millions of producers and consumers who interact in the marketplace know what’s best for them better than a bureaucrat in Washington ever can.
9. If consenting adults want to have sex, that’s fine, but the government shouldn’t force third parties to cover their costs.
8. Entering the country illegally is illegal.
7. Israelis and Jihadists are not morally equivalent.
6. If you subsidize failure, you get more failure.
5. If you tax success, you get less success.
4. Letting people keep their own money is not a “subsidy.”
3. There are bad people in the world. Sometimes it’s necessary for men with guns to stop them from what they’re doing.
2. People who aren't eligible to vote shouldn't vote.
And the number one radical right wing idea:
1. The powers of the federal government should be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution.
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel that shows what happens when the powers of the federal government expand beyond those enumerated in the Constitution. Check it out on Amazon.com.
There’s a subset of independent voters who reason as follows:
“I know that Obama has done a lousy job on the economy. As we saw in today’s monthly report from BLS, we’re not creating enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. Incomes have fallen and food stamp participation is at an all time high. Romney, with his business experience, could probably do better. But I’m worried that if he got into the Oval Office, he would outlaw abortion. I’m going to vote for Obama.”
These voters have my sympathy. I might hang out with conservatives, but I’m pro-choice myself. And jobs or abortions is a crappy choice to have to make. Maybe someday we’ll see a political re-alignment and a viable candidate who supports freedom in the boardroom and the bedroom. Sadly, that’s not reality in 2012. So we have to prioritize.
One thing to take into account is whether Romney can do anything about abortion. Roe v. Wade says a woman has a right to an abortion; that’s the Law of the Land. For that to change, Romney would have to nominate enough justices to the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling — and get the Senate to confirm them. Since the Democrats will either control the Senate next year, or have sufficient votes to mount a filibuster in a Republican-controlled Senate, this seems unlikely. Even if Romney got past the Senate and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, all that would accomplish is turning the decision over to the state legislatures. Abortion would continue to be legal in most states.
Of course, I pointed all this out when independents raised the same concerns about George W. Bush — and I was proved correct. In eight years — six of them with a Republican Senate — Bush couldn’t pack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion zealots. Why do we think Romney can?
So the choice is between the reality of a stagnant economy — with 12.5 million officially unemployed, and millions more settling for part-time work or dropping out of the labor force entirely — and the possibility — IMHO remote — of overturning Roe v. Wade. The families of those 12.8 million unemployed are hurting. It seems unfair to hold them hostage to a chimera.
I know what some of you are thinking. “You’re a guy, Mike, you don’t understand how important abortion is to women.”
Perhaps. But aren’t employment – and the comfort, independence, and self-esteem that come with it – important as well?
Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.
