Words Don't Matter

I've only watched the Republican convention in bits and pieces.  The conventions aren't worth watching if you've been paying attention to the campaign before now.  They're just week-long infomercials for the party talking points.  What's that you say?  The Republicans think Barack Obama is a bad President?  And they think Mitt Romney would be less bad?  Stop the presses! 

I don't need to spend hours watching TV to find out that the people speaking at Mitt Romney's convention are mostly in favor of voting for Mitt Romney.  I wanted to watch Chris Christie, just to see if he was able to get through a 20 minute speech without taking a snack break, but I honestly forgot it was happening.

Having said that, the little bits of Republican convention I've seen have been really strange.  Tuesday night I watched my old buddy from the primary debates Rick Santorum run his mouth for a while.  I just couldn't resist.  My blog and I miss Rick so much.  I tuned into MSNBC literally about 4 seconds before Rick started, just in time to hear Rachel Maddow say "he's not telling the truth.  Let's listen".  Now, I'm sure Rachel was finishing a sentence that went something like "If Mr. Santorum says (insert stupid Republican talking point here) during this speech tonight, he's not telling the truth.  Let's listen", but it was still hilarious and a perfect introduction for the man who the second half of the 20th century forgot.

Anyway, Rick rambled and rambled about his god and all that.  He didn't mention Mitt Romney a whole lot, which seemed strange.  I wonder if they've told Rick that Mitt won.  Or maybe Rick won't believe it until his god tells him personally.  Then Rick said America holds out a loving hand to all of his god's children.  He forgot to add "except if you're gay, or black (or really any minority for that matter), or not super into jesus, or if you're a lady who doesn't understand that men are supposed to be in charge of your lady parts.  If you fall into one of those categories, well fuck you, but loving hands for everyone else".  They must have left that part off the teleprompter. 

Like I said before, I completely missed Chris Christie, but I'm given to believe that he didn't start a fight or eat anyone, so I guess he more or less nailed it.  I don't know why I'm so mean-spirited about Christie, well except for the fact that whenever I see him on TV he's belittling someone or yelling at a reporter.

Wednesday night was even stranger, and I honestly only watched a total of like 12 minutes.  I caught about half of John McCain's speech.  The Republcan party is supposed to be the fiscally responsible party, but Senator McCain's speech would have been shorter if he had given us a list of countries he doesn't want to invade.  Unless he thinks we're going to find buried treasure in Iran or Syria (which is funny, because that was essentially the Bush administration argument about oil in Iraq), we're going to need a way to pay for John McCain's ever-growing list of fun new wars.

Quick McCain sidenote:  Everyone on MSNBC's convention coverage panel after McCain's speech felt obligated to heap the praise on McCain for not playing ethnic politics with Barack Obama during the 2008 election.  First of all, I seem to remember some crazy lady from Alaska running around trying to paint then Senator Obama as "pallin' around with terrorists".  I'm pretty sure she was connected with the McCain campaign in some ancillary way.  More importantly, is the bar really that low now?  Is not stooping to the lowest possible level now all you have to do in politics to get praised as a great guy with tons of integrity?  Sigh.

Anyway, then I watched like three minutes of Condoleezza Rice.  First of all, with her and Herman Cain, the Republican party now has two black friends.  Two!  And I'm not even counting Michael Steele, who's more of a high school acquaintance that the Republican party is facebook friends with, but wouldn't actually go hang out with.

Secretary Rice talked about education and the importance of good schools and good teachers.  It sounded really good, but also highly suspect coming from a party that:
1) has spent the last two years busting teachers unions in every state they control.
2) has spent the last 32 years demonizing science, learning, knowledge, facts and the very idea of being educated.
3) has ruined textbooks for the whole nation by doing stupid things in Texas.
4) wants to cut the entire Department of Education.
And I realize that they think #4 will actually help, but the fact that they think parents and local school boards know more about education than, ya know, professional educators, just circles right back to #2.

I'm not really sure how Condoleezza Rice got stuck being the one who had to talk about education, but I guess when you're the Secretary of State you kind of have to know about everything. 

Then Paul Ryan started.  I thought he was supposed to be all energetic and exciting.  He looks like a muppet and I was still bored.  I spent the first three minutes thinking of new Romney/Ryan campaign slogans, like "Hey ladies, Mitt and Paul would like to have a word with you about your uterus." or "you might as well vote for us, because if you're planning to vote for the other guy, we're not even going to let you register".  Catchy, no?  Anyway, after three minutes I went back to watching Almost Famous on cinemax, and I had already missed the airplane scene.  Stupid Paul Ryan.

I'm not planning to watch Mitt Romney tonight.  It's going to be dull, and I already know what he's going to say.  Plus I hear he's going to try to tell us who Mitt Romney the person is and let us get to know him a little, and I really couldn't be less interested in that.  But mostly, I'm not watching because the words don't matter.  Conventions are about stagecraft.  It's four days (or, if you decide to have your convention in Florida during hurricane season, sometimes three days) of patriotic backdrops, silly songs, weird video packages and mindless cheering. 

I'm told the Republican party has a platform that they've agreed upon.  I'm also told Mitt Romney doesn't agree with some of it, but I'm told that doesn't really matter.  Other than the tax cuts (which I swear is the only thing Republicans really believe in) I haven't heard much about this so-called platform.  The actual Republican platform, the one about outlawing all abortion and telling poor people to go fuck themselves if they get sick and cutting taxes but never actually getting around to the whole cutting spending thing, that's sort of like Republican fight club.  They all know about it, but they're not going to talk about it.  It's like how Barack Obama is going to take away everybody's guns in his second term, but he's not saying it now, because he's all smooth and shit.

And this is why I'm not watching Mitt Romney, because the words don't matter.  It's all nonsense.  Mitt Romney isn't going to stand there tonight and tell me what he's going to do as President, I'm not sure he even knows yet.  He'll sit there and tell me about his family background or whatever, and he'll talk about all the terrible things Barack Obama has done in the alternate Republican universe, and he'll make uncomfortable jokes that uncomfortable delegates will laugh uncomfortably at, but he won't actually tell me anything.

I honestly don't know if the Democratic convention will be any more informative (I doubt it).  Sometimes I wonder why I bother paying attention.  I was watching Chris Matthews as I was finishing this up, and he played a clip of Paul Ryan from last night talking about "the strong protecting the weak" and "caring for the least among us".  Now those are some good talking points.  So what if his economic policies do the exact opposite of those things?  I mean, his mom thinks you should vote for him, and look how cute his kids are!

Tea Party Conversations: Labor Unions

Welcome to the first in my, let's say, 26 part series of tea party conversations.  OK, I don't really know how many parts there will be.  Like most things, I'll keep doing this until I get bored with it and then I won't do it anymore.   

Generic Republican: Those labor unions are trying to bankrupt your state.  Support us, and we'll take them on and put state government back in the hands of the people.
Prospective Tea Person: Wait, aren't labor unions made up of people?
Generic Republican: Well, are you in a union?
Prospective Tea Person: No.
Generic Republican: I didn't think so, union membership is way down in this country over the last 30 years, for some reason.  Unions are made up of other people, different greedy people who aren't you.
Prospective Tea Person: So you're saying labor unions are bad?
Generic Republican: Not exactly, it's just that they're too powerful.  They need to be put in their place.
Prospective Tea Person: How do you plan to do that?
Generic Republican: By stripping collective bargaining rights so they can't hold the state hostage.
Prospective Tea Person: But what good is a union if they can't collectively bargain?
Generic Republican: Exactly, we're not trying to destroy the unions, just take away their power, which is out of control.
Prospective Tea Person: Didn't labor unions play a huge role in building this country and the middle class?
Generic Republican: No, that's the liberal agenda re-writing history.  This country was built on American ingenuity and drive, and freedom and Jesus.
Prospective Tea Person: Oh, I like all of those things.
Generic Republican: Yeah you do.
Generic Republican: Anyway, we're really only talking about public worker unions, like those greedy teachers.
Prospective Tea Person: Don't public labor unions also include police officers and fire fighters?
Generic Republican: Those damn greedy teachers with their fat pensions and five figure salaries and summers off.  Don't you hate working in the summer?
Prospective Tea Person: I really do, it's hot and I just want to go to the beach.
Generic Republican: Beaches are filled with teachers all summer, just sitting in the sun being lazy.
Prospective Tea Person: Well, I don't like that, but isn't education important?  Shouldn't teachers be paid more and given more resources so they can teach our kids?
Generic Republican: There's that liberal media bias twisting reality again.  You don't need some teachers union and some big government bureaucracy to educate your kids.  Don't you know how to educate your kids better than the government?
Prospective Tea Person: Well yeah, but we still need good teachers.  I can't home school my kids, I have my own job.
Generic Republican: Sure. Listen, I wish we could pay everyone more, but we need to balance these state budgets, and this is the only way to do it.
Prospective Tea Person: But what if you just raised ta...
Generic Republican: NO!  No, no, no.  Don't even say it!
Prospective Tea Person: I'm just saying maybe you could balance your budget by taking in a little more money.
Generic Republican: You're talking about redistributing wealth, are you some kind of communist?
Prospective Tea Person: No, I didn't mean...I'm sorry I brought it up.
Generic Republican: It's OK, you're new.
Prospective Tea Person: OK, so I understand why you need to strip collective bargaining rights for unions, but then who will protect the rights of workers if unions can't?  How will they ensure that they're treated fairly?
Generic Republican: See, that's the problem.  These unions aren't about being treated fairly.  They've been using their collective bargaining power to gain an unfair advantage over everyone else.
Prospective Tea Person: Oh, I see.  So, really, you're just leveling the playing field.
Generic Republican: Now you're getting it.  Workers don't need protection anymore.  Nobody wants to exploit them, we just want things to be fair.
Prospective Tea Person: I like it when things are fair.
Generic Republican: Of course you do, everyone does. 
Prospective Tea Person: So, you have to balance the state budget, and the only way to do that is cut pay, pensions and benefits for public workers...
Generic Republican: Right...
Prospective Tea Person: ...but you can't do that if they can collectively bargain, so you have to strip their collective bargaining rights...
Generic Republican: Exactly...
Prospective Tea Person: ...and you're not really destroying the unions, you're just eliminating the unfair advantages they have now.
Generic Republican: Bingo! 
Prospective Tea Person: I'm glad you were here to set me straight.  Here I was thinking labor unions were looking out for workers and regular people.
Generic Republican: I'm glad I could help.  Welcome to the Tea Party, let's get you a tri-corner hat.
Tea Person: Yeah!

The Bush Legacy

The end of a decade is a good time to look back and try to put the events of the last ten years into some kind of context. It's a time for top ten lists of the most important events of the decade, the teams of the decade, the music videos of the decade (for the 2 or 3 people who still watch music videos on MTV7 or wherever you can find them now). Frankly, I'm a little disappointed so far. The E! channel should be counting down the 25 most embarrassing celebrity moments. Some network should be telling us about reality TV's 20 most obvious signs of the coming apocalypse. ESPN should be engrossed in an orgy of all-decade teams by now. I demand pointless nostalgia and unfair comparisons. How will I know what was important to me this decade without someone on TV telling me?

Luckily, as always, I'm here to help. I don't think it's a stretch to call George W. Bush the most influential politician of this decade. He was the President for 8 of the 10 years and, for better or worse, his administration shaped American foreign policy for decades to come. I made a quick comment about the Bush legacy earlier this year, and now's as good a time as any to explore that a little more.

First, let me say that I voted for President Bush twice. And, for all the mistakes and questionable policies that followed, I'm still not sure you could convince me that I had a better option in either election. It isn't my intention to defend the Bush administration or to kick dirt on a guy who, for the most part, has left the stage pretty gracefully now that his time is up. I just want to take a closer look at a few points and try to figure out how we'll remember the 43rd President in 20 or 30 years.

About a month or two ago, I commented that the real Bush legacy was actually somewhat decent ideas executed incredibly poorly. I was talking about no child left behind, and I haven't changed my opinion. If you sat down during the 2000 election and made a top 5 list of important things you wanted to see the next President tackle, you would have had to put public education on the list. President Bush set out to be the education President, and he could have been. I don't have to lay out a whole case about how President Bush never got the job done on education. All I have to tell you is, if you made the same top 5 list today, a decade later, you'd still have to put public education on the list.

I have a theory about Presidents. I think, each President, if he or she really tries hard, can be transformative for the country on one major issue. Over time, if every consecutive President pulls his or her weight, we get most of our big problems solved. President Obama has chosen health care (at this point, I think the guy from Indiana Jones would say he's chosen unwisely and then watch the President's face melt away). President Bush had his chance at education, and he couldn't get it done. I'm not saying all the bad public education from here on out is his fault, but we may have missed our window.

I'd say this is too bad. For a President to go down in history as the guy who saved public education, when we know how important education is to a country, that would have been a pretty good legacy. Instead, our students are still losing the race in math and science and our country is in danger of losing the race for discovery, for innovation. It's a missed opportunity, nothing more, nothing less.

One of the most interesting pieces of the Bush legacy is Africa. President Bush's record on aid to Africa, and specifically helping to fight AIDS in Africa, is incredibly good. If you're reading this, and you're a real Bush hater who doesn't know anything about his record on Africa, take some time to look into it. It will be jarring, you'll feel like Neo when he found out about the matrix. It's such an outlier compared to the rest of his foreign policy reputation. There are two things I find especially interesting about this.

First, I find it interesting how little this gets mentioned by the media. I'm not one of these liberal media conspiracy theorists, but if George W. Bush had spent his eight years not helping Africa, but instead trying to screw different African nations out of oil or diamonds or something, Keith Olbermann would still be doing a nightly segment about it. It's a little disappointing.

I also find it interesting how little the Republican party talks about this. It's as if they decided that helping Africa wouldn't play well with their base, so they'd just sort of keep quiet about it. I find this especially odd since Barack Obama got something like 113% of the African-American vote in the last election. I wonder if any Republican strategist even tried suggesting that maybe some African-American voters would be interested to find out about the last Republican President's excellent record on Africa.

Obviously, the big deal for the Bush administration is the two wars. It should also be obvious that this is where the poor execution most disastrously hammered the Bush administration. So, let's talk a little about war, specifically Iraq. Why not Afghanistan? We all know the story there. We got attacked, we identified a country that provided a safe haven and support to the group that attacked us, so off to Afghanistan the troops went. Support for this war was pretty broad, it started off pretty well, then we decided to invade some other country and, well, like I said, we know the story. So, on to Iraq.

(Before I get into this, quick war sidenote. I recently saw a facebook group that was titled something like "soldiers aren't heroes." The premise seems to be that just because someone wears a uniform, it doesn't automatically make them a hero. OK, fine. But, in a country with a volunteer army, at a time when anyone who volunteers can be absolutely sure about being sent to a country where things unexpectedly explode on a regular basis, isn't it at least a little heroic to walk into a recruiting office and raise your hand? Really? Not even a little? I only mention this because, when I hear people say they hate the war but support the troops, I think about how Vietnam Vets were treated when they came back and I think, "holy crap! we learned something." Let's keep it that way.)

Poor execution example number one: Lying about why we needed to invade Iraq. Don't start with me about this conservatives, we were told Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they didn't. You can call it whatever you want, but those of us living in reality call that a lie. This is poor execution because I feel like I would have supported the Iraq war if I had been told the truth about it. I can't say for sure, because we don't know the whole truth, but if we had been told that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, who oppressed his people and hated us, who would harbor anti-American terrorists and develop weapons of mass destruction if given the opportunity, wouldn't that at least have been a case worth considering? Yes, it's not a slam dunk, still pretty hypothetical, but still somewhat compelling, and also true, which people generally like.

Poor execution example number two: Exit strategy. I don't think it would have been easy to develop a workable exit strategy. We were overthrowing a government, there's not a three month exit strategy you can just tack on to the end of that. Maybe there was no exit strategy once we decided to go in. Still, sometimes I wonder if the administration started believing their own story about being greeted as liberators. Cheney and Rumsfeld and those guys seemed honestly surprised sometimes by the difficulty of the post-invasion period. That's a pretty disastrous miscalculation.

Poor execution example number three: This is the one that always baffled me. Why didn't the Bush administration draw a clear line between the invasion and the re-building effort? Why not say the war was over after the successful invasion and characterize everything else as nation building or peace keeping or whatever? Wouldn't this have played better domestically and abroad? Wouldn't it also have been at least somewhat true? Maybe they felt like people wouldn't buy it. Maybe they felt like it needed to keep being a war to fit into the whole war on terror thing. I don't know, but I'm still a little confused by this.

Bottom line, I think the former President honestly believed Iraq was going to be a serious threat one day. I think, right or wrong, he did what he honestly thought was best for the safety of Americans. I don't think you get points for effort when you're the President, so if he was wrong, he was wrong. I also think it's shocking how badly he and his very experienced cabinet and advisers handled both wars. Lots of people probably expected policies they didn't agree with out of this administration, and maybe even some bad guy stuff, but I don't think a lot of us expected gross incompetence. That was a curveball.

Then there was hurricane Katrina. The botched federal response and the President's perceived indifference to this disaster were really what rendered him politically irrelevant for the rest of his second term. I think this was so surprising for everyone because President Bush had a history of really good instincts when it came to reacting to disaster.

Think about the days and months after September 11, 2001. A few days after, the President made remarks at ground zero, most famously including telling us that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." What a great moment. It didn't make anyone safer, but I think it was the first time since the attacks that a lot of us felt like we could feel safe again one day. A couple of months later, President Bush threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. No one would have blamed him for shying away, not going out into the middle of a big crowd like that. But he did, he ran out in an FDNY jacket and threw a strike from the mound. People talk a lot about how the terrorist attacks gave President Bush a mandate for action, how we all got behind him because we were scared. But they forget how he rose to the moment, how he gave us someone to get behind.

This is why hurricane Katrina was so jarring for everyone. The way the President seemed so disengaged, so unfamiliar with what was happening, so barely interested. The best theory I have is that a hurricane wasn't terrorism, and after four years of worrying about nothing but terrorism, the President couldn't remember how to get up for something else. I don't know, but this effectively ended the Bush presidency, and with it, any chance the Republican party had of holding onto power.

Some quick hits on things I don't have full paragraphs for:

The patriot act: Ben Franklin suggested that those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither, so there's that. (some people will argue that Franklin actually said "essential liberty". So? Isn't it all essential liberty?)
The economic collapse and subsequent bank bailout: President Bush isn't blameless for this, but he's also no more to blame than anyone else in the federal government, they all get an equal piece of that mess.
The 2000 recount: Jim Baker and the Bush people outsmarted the Gore campaign and the Supreme Court. Maybe they didn't play fair, but there's a lot to be said for winning.
Fiscal Responsibility: This one makes me crazy. There are like four things left that I still agree with the Republicans on, one of them is not spending the country into oblivion whenever it can be helped. Six years of controlling the White House and Congress and all we got was this lousy exploded deficit.
The Constitution: From Dick Cheney's assault on separation of powers to ignoring certain amendments when they were inconvenient (1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, for example), the Bush administration's record on the Constitution can best be described as atrocious.
Medicare Part D: Honestly, I don't know much about this, but from the little I do know, it seems he was trying to make medicine cheaper for people, so that's mostly good.

So, what's the Bush legacy? I don't know, that's for everyone to decide on their own. My take? I think George W. Bush was a President with clear leadership skills and a great deal of potential whose better angels were too often shouted down by his demons (be they metaphorical or Vice Presidential). I think hardly anything is ever as good or as bad as we remember it being. I think the two wars are a spare that Barack Obama or some future President has to pick up for Mr. Bush. I always thought it was a cop out when the Bush people would say they'll let history be the judge, but maybe they were right. There's a lot of history to be written before we close the book on George W. Bush.

What The Hell Happened To...

Education?

I've worked at a couple of different colleges now. I'm not that much older than the kids starting college these days, but it seems as if quite a bit has already changed about pre-college education in this country since I was there. Kids don't seem to be learning certain things anymore, like math, or spelling, or how to write or speak in full sentences. Sure, some kids are picking this stuff up at home (or on the mean streets of Sesame) but the preponderance of the evidence tells me they're not getting this stuff from school anymore. So what the hell happened to education?

I have some theories. Most of these things were already present when I was in school, but have since conspired to lead to some sort of breakdown. Also, keep in mind that I went to Catholic school because, well, my parents correctly diagnosed New York City public schools as suckariffic and thought I'd be better off. Anyway, who's to blame for this mess? A few different groups, starting with...

Foreigners. Actually, this is probably less about actual foreign people and more about egghead multi-nationalists. At some point, someone decided American children needed to learn second languages. I would have no objection to this if most of us actually spoke two languages, but we don't. I took two years of Spanish in elementary school (I think, it's possible I'm making that up), four more in high school and four semesters of Spanish in college. If you dropped me into the middle of Spain right now, I'd be able to say hello and goodbye, count to ten, order a Coca-Cola and ask where the library is (I wouldn't actually be able to get to the library, because I wouldn't understand anyone's answer to my biblioteca query). And I'm not a stupid guy, I went to college for free, and it wasn't because of my awesome jump shot.

Why is this a problem? Look at how much time I wasted not learning Spanish. 200 minutes a week for six full school years and then four semesters of college. Imagine what I could be doing right now if I had spent that time learning something I could use, or at least something I could remember.

Solution? Find a way to teach kids languages in a way that will, ya know, work. Maybe this means starting them earlier. Maybe this means spending more time on conversational uses and less time conjugating verbs. I think it would be great if most Americans spoke multiple languages, but do we care enough to make it happen? I don't know, but fix it, or stop trying. One or the other.

Who's next? Christians. I don't like picking on Christians, really. I know a lot of Christians, they're mostly nice people, I used to be one myself. And maybe this one isn't really the fault of actual Christians, but rather the fault of people who exploit their faith for votes. But isn't it interesting that America's fall to something like 804th in the world in science education seems to have coincided with this whole neoconservative thing about not teaching children evolution? And I know, I just said I went to Catholic school, and I didn't turn out so bad. But, I know more about Genesis than I do about, say, chemistry or calculus, and I'm not sure this is a good thing.

Solution? This is an easy one. When people say they want you to teach stuff in science class that isn't, um, factually accurate, politely tell them no and move on. Everybody has to get on board with this though (I'm looking at you Republicans) because as long as some of the people in charge keep pushing to allow science class to also be catechism time, we'll keep having this stupid debate that teaches kids that there's no scientific difference between stuff you can prove and stuff you just believe in.

And speaking of Christians, George W. Bush. No Child Left Behind was actually pretty well named, because if you don't go anywhere, you can't leave anyone behind. President Bush did the worst thing you can do with a serious problem. He proposed something that looked and sounded like a good idea, so everyone stopped paying attention, then his administration executed this idea as poorly as possible (this, by the way, is the real legacy of the Bush administration, not actually terrible ideas executed unbelievably poorly).

I will, however, take one idea from the former president. I'm a big fan of national standardized testing. I hear a lot of teachers complain that they wind up teaching to the test. This tells me the current tests don't focus on things kids actually need to know. If that's the case, we'll have to fix that, if that's not the case, then everyone shut up.

Last problem? Unions. This is a surprising one for me. I'm generally a big supporter of unions, I was sort of raised that way. But, a while ago I wrote that I'm generally against big government programs, but I support health care because we need it and it's too important. I feel the same way about teachers unions, only the exact opposite. Education is too important, we shouldn't have anything standing in the way of our ability to reprimand, discipline or fire bad teachers.

This leads me toward my big solution for education, which starts with the teachers. Teachers should be making huge, six figure salaries. Being a teacher should be like being a doctor or a lawyer, something the smart people want to do when they get to college because that's where the money is. That's my pitch to the teachers. Yes, if you're a bad teacher, I'll want you to start working on your "would you like fries with that?" (yes, by the way, I'd love some fries right now), but if you're a good teacher, you don't need union protection and I'm planning to double or triple or quadruple your salary.

Add this to my other solutions: Spend more time teaching kids things they can actually use, in ways that will actually work, no more religion in schools (this means school prayer too, don't even get me started on that) and national standardized tests to pass each grade that actually test kids on the things they need to know. I think this is a pretty good start and could, mostly, be done pretty quickly.

My Republican friends will say we don't need a big national education thing, that communities and school boards and parents know more about what their kids need to be learning in school. No, they really, really don't. I can't emphasize how little I want parents and local politicians involved in this plan.

How do you pay for it? I don't know, do I look like some kind of economist? We're probably going to have to raise taxes. I don't know why people are so willing to spend money to invade countries but when it comes to public education and health care it's all about the fiscal discipline. Actually, maybe I do know, maybe they went to crappy schools.