Poltifact.com is an interesting site that provides a much needed breath of honest air in our national political debate. But they seem to lean away from the President bias-wise. One example: in calling out his "lie" that he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making less than 250K they point out that the Health Care Reform bill imposes some forms of taxes on behaviors irrespective of income. To my mind they seem to be reaching. Here is one gem of analysis that particularly stood out:

Obama has made the case that the tax penalty for people who decline to buy insurance should not be considered a broken promise on taxes. If that tax, better known as the individual mandate, were the only new measure we were considering, we might be inclined to rate this a Compromise. But the fact is, if you're a happily uninsured smoker who likes to tan, you are facing a triple whammy.

Now, this may technically make a fibber out of the President, but it also seems like about the most reasonable policy I can imagine. As a tax-payer, I definitely want take a little something up front from this theoretical citizen (Charlie Christ by Christmas?) before they inevitably end up getting their chemo/radiation/oxygen/melanectomy/skin-graft/death-panel referral, etc. through the county ER.

Self Reflection

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." I had a peak at the letter my Professor wrote to the judge today, and it got me thinking. This was not a letter of recommendation, but rather a note from an old friend. This was never intended for my eyes. The other clerks were looking through their files, and I thought I would peak at mine. This is a professor whose class I did very well in, and ended up TAing for in the fall. He had many good things to say, including, that I was a good citizen. He also had some interesting things to say that I had not expected. In his eyes I am rough around the edges, dont dress up, probably come from a unprivileged background, and have trouble with some social cues. This is coming from my favorite professor, the teacher I respected most. I do not even know why any of those negative aspects would be relevant to me being a clerk. He is right about a couple of things, I do not come from a privileged background and I never really cared about how I looked in class. Ok, I also might come off a little rough around the edges at first. However, I never really consider myself as having trouble reading social cues. But does it matter how I consider myself, or am I just what other people see me as? I had never had that many interactions with the professor, so I racked my brain trying to pin point where his idea could have gotten that idea. We had never interacted in social circumstances, all our interactions had been academically related. It is strange to see yourself in another persons eyes. Clearly me and the prof come from different backgrounds. I went to an small hippie liberal arts school and he went to Harvard for our undergrad. He is Catholic and I am Jewish and there must be many other cultural differences. I wonder if we have differing expectations of social cues. Perhaps we can never really know who we are until we see ourselves though someone else.

Sedars

It's been awhile since I last blogged. Two passover seders, a fantasy baseball draft and a brother's visit.

Things are good. The GF and I had two sedars, one at my parent's house and one at hers. Nothing special. At my families sedar, we tried to speed through everything to get to the food, because we wanted to eat at GF's parent's house we sped through everything, by normal standards to get to the food, because of toddlers and babies. At the GF's we didn't skip anything, just didn't do any of the haggadah after the meal.

The week before passover my brother came to town. He brought his baby and wife to visit. It was a nice visit, but my niece cried a lot. And I didn't get anything done.

My friend, D, got out of the hospital. So we have been talking again. Which is nice. He feels like a loser, because he has no job or girl. I think it's kind of ridiculous. When you get out of a hospital for a mental condition. I think just getting back to normal is enough of a goal. even if normal means volunteer work, or minimum wage part-time job and masterbating to porn on the internet. Doing those things and re-entering society is enough. Girlfriend? Most girlfriends require a steady paying job, no? Maybe he'll meet a girl that will love him for who he is. (and hopefully he'll love her back; but that isn't even the happy ending story in movies.)

Note: as I publish this, my friend Doug is feeling good again. Which is great. One week out and he seems fine. Hope this is his last visit to the Hospital.

Fantasy baseball season is happening, and I need to get a life. Fantasy baseball is all I think about, and want to talk about. I didn't draft well this year. So I'm doubtful I'll be able to defend my title. Wish me luck. Players that I shouldn't have drafted. Ben Sheets, Chris Coughlin, Nate McLouth. Wish me luck.

I won my college basketball bracket, but don't think I'll get paid. Which is just like George, even when I win, I lose; or at the least I don't win.

Peace out.

GCNOF

My Passover In Puerto Rico

Last year and this year were the first years I can remember when I did not make it home for passover. Last year the Jewish Law Student association had a Seder, and I made Matza ball soup for 50. This year I went to the Chabad house's Seder. They rented out a room in one of the fanciest hotels in San Juan, the El San Juan Hotel and Casino. There must have been over a hundred people at the Seder, including 15 or so kids who ran around the whole time. I had fun, and if nothing else the wine flowed like water during the Seder. I sat next to two Israelis who opened moved to Puerto Rico, and opened up a kiosk in the mall selling dead sea beauty supplies. On my other side was a clerk for the 1st Circuit court of appeals. There was also a family visiting their mother, from Buffalo, and a MIlF. Let me start off by saying that I had no idea how hot Israeli woman could be, at least the saphardic ones. I could not tell them apart from the Puerto Rican Jews. I need to go visit the holy-land. At some point I accidentally consumed gifilta fish thinking it was chicken. I quickly learned my mistake, but pretty much finished the fish anyways. However, I have no interest in ever consuming the stuff again. The Rabbi went a little to the conservative side when telling the story of passover. After the usual story he started to talk about Israel, and how we had to love and defend the country no mater what. He harped about the unfair view given of Israel by the other western countries. At one point he mentioned the killing of the Hamas member in Dubai, and how no one really know who killed the man, so it was unfair to point the finger at Israel. The two Israelis at the table looked at me and said it was the Massad, their faces saying duh. I tried to keep my liberal views from getting the best of me and kept my mouth shut. I just wanted to enjoy the Seder. After the meal the family across the table from me decided it was time to leave, and the grandmother, who lived in PR, started handing out her business card. All it said was her name, number, and consultant. I asked the MILF, who seemed to be in the know, who she was. The MILF winked at me, like we were both sharing a joke, and said she would tell me later. It turns out the grandmother was part owner of one of the biggest banks in PR. She is one of us so it clearly came as no surprise. I now have her card, but what would I need her consultation for, unless I wanted to get a loan in PR. Anyway I traded numbers with the Israelis, and hopefully I will hang with them before I go back. P.S. My dick parts the sea.

A whole lot happened in DC

I went to DC last weekend and it rained almost the entire time we (me and my girlfriend) were there. We flew in on a red-eye on Friday morning, and I felt like didn't get any good sleep on the flight. But we packed it in. Saw the Capitol, Library of Congress (on Friday), the Holocaust Museum (on Saturday), the Portrait Gallery (on Sunday), and the Natural History Museum and the Hope Diamond (on Monday). In addition we walked the mall and saw the World War 2 Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.

I also saw a couple of old friends and talked (on the phone) to a few more. The highlight of the trip was seeing cousins from my father's side of the family that live in the area. All in all a good visit.

Here's a brief lowdown of our trip, in case you are planning a visit to our Nation's Capital.

The Capitol Hill tour was a waste for me, as we got the cheap and impersonal one. Make sure to have someone in your congressman's office actually give you the tour.

The Library of Congress had an awesome exhibit by the political cartoonist Herb Block, who cartooned from 1929-2001, which was one of my two favorite things.

Check out Herb Block or Herblock's cartoons here:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/fire.html

The Nazi Propaganda Exhibit at the Holocaust Museum was my other favorite. That exhibit contained video, newspaper clippings and other media on how the Nazi's came to power in Germany; how they coerced or convinced the rest of Germany (non Jewish or Gypsy) to follow them. Kind of crazy.

My saddest thought during the whole Holocaust Museum visit was the this stuff happened in Africa very recently. And we didn't really stop it(I don't know if we tried).


Here's a list of other things.

Thing the GF wanted to see the most: The Hope Diamond.
Best Flight: A nonstop on Jet Blue
Best Milkshake we ate: The Good Food Eatery; Southeast near the Capitol
Best View: (well besides from the Washington Monument) The 12th floor W Hotel on 15th St., NW
Best Dinner: Chef Geoff's in downtown
Best Reader: Cousin B. (She's a first grader)
Best Coffee: Elli's
Favorite Monument: Still the Jefferson Memorial (Although we missed it this year)
DC's Best Ethnic Food (with hot waitresses): Ethopian Restaurants
(hope the gf isn't reading this)
Best Place to Walk or Run: The Mall and Tidal Basin Area
Best Place to stage an intervention with a spouse that spends too much time following sports: Dave and Busters. (really I feel sorry for Cousin S. as Cousin B. (not the first grader) really does spend too much time on sports. I don't understand his sports addiction, but that's definitely what I would call his relationship to spectator sports.)

Best.
GCNOF

The Cat Shepherd

When Liberals talk about the President there is plenty of having it both ways. We get so upset at his scathing betrayals because he is the Second Coming. Lately the needle has been swinging to the negative. There seems to be a flurry of “his first year sucked”, and “his agenda is stalled”, but I see a very different picture.

There is plenty to complain about, but it's important to remember that it could be so much worse. Theoretically, with the Presidency and a Super-majority in Congress, a much larger Stimulus, a public health plan, lawful adjudication of terrorists, meaningful banking reform, repeal of DADT, etc. should have been a matter of paperwork. The problem is that Obama isn’t fighting the Republicans. And by that I don't mean that he isn't fighting against the GOP with enough ardor. I mean the GOP is not the obstacle to his agenda. They have made it clear that they would filibuster a resolution to declare puppies cute, but that doesn't really matter, or at least it didn't for most of the last year.

The GOP has whole-heartedly embraced their irrelevance with proposals like a spending freeze, less banking regulation, and a “shadow budget” that raises most people’s taxes. If there was any chance of them being able to achieve these overwhelmingly unpopular, ill-advised objectives, I doubt they would still want to. And yet there are plenty of people listening to their cable news antics. The Stupacks and the Lincolns hear them loud and clear and are digging their heels in to have something to tell their angry, conservative-leaning constituents in November. When Obama talks about compromise and bipartisanship it means trying to placate both Democrats and conservative Democrats.

And yet Obama is actually accomplishing something. His policies have immediate benefits: a soldier comes home alive, a teacher keeps their job, a bridge doesn’t collapse. It is difficult to get excited about things being “less bad”, but it is none the less real. We are still waiting on health insurance reform, but it feels like we are going to get something, if not the public option that the vast majority of Obama's supporters, not to mention most Americans want. When HCR passes everyone who's been predicitng doom and gloom since Scott Brown's election will suddenly remember just how superhuman Obama is. Of course they will still be wrong.

I'd describe him as a cautiously effective centrist. Rahm Emanuel knows that the tasks set before his boss are too important to tackle boldly. It is more like a vicious uphill slog that we are slowly, painfully winning. Clearly everything that happens in Washington is a deal with the Devil, and it seems that Obama has made a calculation that to successfully fight the Neocons, health insurance providers, GM’s management, the Religious Right,and the conservative wing of his own party, he desperately needs the support of the pharmaceutical industry, the investment bankers and the military contractors. With friends like these…

Health Care Reform By Easter; Moscow By Secular Christmas

Obama's recent speech was a remarkably good sign that this thing is in the bag, if only because he doesn't have the courage to stick his neck out unless it is a known outcome. This bill will not really affect most of us who get decent insurance through employers, but it should have a hugely positive effect on the slice of Americans who are being cut out by the current system either because of preexisting conditions, un(der)employment, or because their employer is too small to bargain for a decent plan.

And I hope this legislation is the first step towards something like the elusive "public option" and even single-payer. Yes, I'm saying it out loud, Michelle Bachmann is right; many supporters of this legislation do hope it will snowball into an eventual government takeover of health care. First we regulate the industry and set up "exchanges", then tomorrow we will have a public option, then with little or no fanfare you will wake up one morning to an essentially single payer system.

The way Bachmann and I see this happening is that a health plan run by the Federal government will be more popular and probably cheaper than private plans so private plans will go out of business. If you are a free-market ideologue you would know the outcome of this competition in advance: the back-asswardsness of public sector management would create a wasteful, bureaucratic, Kafkaesque nightmare of a health plan that wouldn't be nearly as attractive as the efficient, service-oriented system forged in the beneficent fires of the free-market. It seems pretty basic that you would only fear a public option if you actually thought it was going to be successful. Maybe Bachmann is a closet Marxist with her undue concern for the fate of private industry in the face of public competition. Her name does sound kind of foreign.

Obviously Medicare is popular because it is free, but it tends to get high marks for service too, and by any accounting, the government spends less money providing health insurance to senior citizens than private insurance companies charge healthy adults. A government run plan open to all citizens that charged self-sustaining premiums would presumably follow suit and most people would choose it over private plans. Only the very wealthy would choose very high-end private plans, which is certainly the American way. And insurance companies would have only their own greed and incompetence to blame for getting cut out. They should have taken a page from Hollywood's book and self-policed to keep The Man out. But Wall Street only sees the short game so here we are, very close to taking the first step towards what me and my new found comrade, Ms. Bachmann, predict will one day become something similar to single-payer health care. I love the smell of collective bargaining in the morning.