J.D. Rhoades's Blog, page 21
October 13, 2013
Make Up Your Minds: Is The ACA Slavery or the Holocaust?
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I’ve noted before how our crowded media environment has led politicians to resort to wilder and wilder rhetoric and crazy hyperbole to try to draw attention to their side.But I have to say, the current fight over the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) has created some truly grade-A hysteria among its opponents, both on the right and the left.For instance, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli has been fond of using his stump speech to claim that the resistance of some states to implementing the Affordable Care Act is analogous to the states that refused to honor fugitive slave laws in the pre-Civil War period.Venerable conservative George Will, whom I used to actually respect, parroted what has apparently been distributed via fax, text and email as the latest anti-Obamacare talking point.“I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’” he groused, “as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law, and then we change them.”New Hampshire State Rep. Bill O’Brien apparently got the memo, too. He called Obamacare “a law as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, that allowed slave-owners to come to New Hampshire and seize African-Americans.”To be fair, some on the left are as prone to overheated rhetoric over the ACA as those on the right. Michael Moore, for example, lambasted Obamacare because it didn’t ban the health insurance industry altogether and create a single payer system. “If you’re going to ban slavery,” he said, “ban slavery.”Yes, because a law that keeps insurance companies from denying you coverage based on pre-existing conditions is exactly like a law requiring that human beings who achieved freedom be returned to owners who would most likely beat them half to death with a bullwhip before castrating them for running away.And having to have health insurance is exactly like being forced to pick cotton from sunup to sundown, having your wives and daughters subject to rape, and living under constant fear of having your family broken up and sold to someone hundreds of miles away. It’s eerie how similar those two things are.For some Republicans, however, comparing the ACA with slavery doesn’t create the horror they’re looking for. Nothing will do for them but to equate it with the Holocaust, because after all, nothing makes you look more reasonable and level-headed than the knee-jerk Hitler reference.“You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo — the IRS,” said Maine Gov. Paul Lepage. Sheryl Nuxoll, a Republican state senator from Idaho, characterized the health care exchanges set up under the ACA as “much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps.”Ted Cruz, in his famous “Green Eggs and Ham” faux filibuster, compared Republicans who doubted the efficacy of his “defund Obamacare or we shut down the government” strategy to the European powers who rolled over for Hitler in the 1930s.Yes, because creating an online health care marketplace where people can compare and contract different plans is exactly like forcing people into an unheated cattle car with no room to sit or lie down and no sanitary facilities and taking them hundreds of miles to a hellhole where they’ll be tattooed with numbers on their arms and either worked to death or herded into extermination chambers and asphyxiated en masse with Prussic acid. Those are entirely the same thing.Here’s the thing about the health care system: You really can’t opt out of it. At some point, you’re going to get sick, and you will receive medical care. We don’t just let sick people die for lack of money, because despite the efforts of the Teahadists, we’re still a civilized country. And if you don’t have the means to pay for it, then the rest of us foot the bill.While the ACA isn’t perfect, it is one means of making sure that more people have the ability to pay for the medical care they get. It was arrived at by grueling negotiation and multiple compromises, and it was found constitutional by the Supreme Court.Equating it with slavery or the Holocaust makes you look like the kind of teenage drama queen for whom cleaning her room before she goes out is The End of Life As She Knows It.
Lose the tantrums and grow up.
I’ve noted before how our crowded media environment has led politicians to resort to wilder and wilder rhetoric and crazy hyperbole to try to draw attention to their side.But I have to say, the current fight over the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) has created some truly grade-A hysteria among its opponents, both on the right and the left.For instance, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli has been fond of using his stump speech to claim that the resistance of some states to implementing the Affordable Care Act is analogous to the states that refused to honor fugitive slave laws in the pre-Civil War period.Venerable conservative George Will, whom I used to actually respect, parroted what has apparently been distributed via fax, text and email as the latest anti-Obamacare talking point.“I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’” he groused, “as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law, and then we change them.”New Hampshire State Rep. Bill O’Brien apparently got the memo, too. He called Obamacare “a law as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, that allowed slave-owners to come to New Hampshire and seize African-Americans.”To be fair, some on the left are as prone to overheated rhetoric over the ACA as those on the right. Michael Moore, for example, lambasted Obamacare because it didn’t ban the health insurance industry altogether and create a single payer system. “If you’re going to ban slavery,” he said, “ban slavery.”Yes, because a law that keeps insurance companies from denying you coverage based on pre-existing conditions is exactly like a law requiring that human beings who achieved freedom be returned to owners who would most likely beat them half to death with a bullwhip before castrating them for running away.And having to have health insurance is exactly like being forced to pick cotton from sunup to sundown, having your wives and daughters subject to rape, and living under constant fear of having your family broken up and sold to someone hundreds of miles away. It’s eerie how similar those two things are.For some Republicans, however, comparing the ACA with slavery doesn’t create the horror they’re looking for. Nothing will do for them but to equate it with the Holocaust, because after all, nothing makes you look more reasonable and level-headed than the knee-jerk Hitler reference.“You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo — the IRS,” said Maine Gov. Paul Lepage. Sheryl Nuxoll, a Republican state senator from Idaho, characterized the health care exchanges set up under the ACA as “much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps.”Ted Cruz, in his famous “Green Eggs and Ham” faux filibuster, compared Republicans who doubted the efficacy of his “defund Obamacare or we shut down the government” strategy to the European powers who rolled over for Hitler in the 1930s.Yes, because creating an online health care marketplace where people can compare and contract different plans is exactly like forcing people into an unheated cattle car with no room to sit or lie down and no sanitary facilities and taking them hundreds of miles to a hellhole where they’ll be tattooed with numbers on their arms and either worked to death or herded into extermination chambers and asphyxiated en masse with Prussic acid. Those are entirely the same thing.Here’s the thing about the health care system: You really can’t opt out of it. At some point, you’re going to get sick, and you will receive medical care. We don’t just let sick people die for lack of money, because despite the efforts of the Teahadists, we’re still a civilized country. And if you don’t have the means to pay for it, then the rest of us foot the bill.While the ACA isn’t perfect, it is one means of making sure that more people have the ability to pay for the medical care they get. It was arrived at by grueling negotiation and multiple compromises, and it was found constitutional by the Supreme Court.Equating it with slavery or the Holocaust makes you look like the kind of teenage drama queen for whom cleaning her room before she goes out is The End of Life As She Knows It.
Lose the tantrums and grow up.
October 12, 2013
Review: BROKEN HARBOR by Tana French
Broken Harbor by Tana FrenchMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy and his new partner Richie Curran get called out to investigate a brutal crime in a crumbling, failed, mostly empty housing estate. Two children are dead, smothered in their beds. The unemployed father is dead of multiple stab wounds and the mother is barely alive and unconscious.
The detectives immediately find more strange and unsettling things at the Spain house. There are holes smashed in the walls, with video cameras pointed at the holes and at the hatch to the attic (which is covered with wire, as if to keep something from getting out). The wife had confided in her sister that she thought an intruder had been entering the house unobserved over the past few months. And someone has set up an observation post in the empty house across the street so as to watch the place.
It's the slow peeling away of the layers of this mystery that keeps the reader fascinated and engaged. If you're looking for an edge of your seat, "who will survive and what will be left of them" thriller with the heroes in danger at every turn, this is not the book for you. The drama and conflict comes in the interaction of the characters and in their personal lives, particularly Mick's travails with his mentally unbalanced sister Dina and the memories they both carry of their mother's suicide at the beach resort that was replaced by the development where the murders took place. This means that the book sometimes gets a little slow and talky. I also had trouble swallowing one of Richie's decisions, one that's the setup for the major reveal. It just didn't seem like something that character would do.
But, as always with Tana French, the prose is absolutely beautiful--I stopped to read the soliloquy at the beginning of Chapter 18 three times because it was so perfect, even though I knew there was a major turning point about to happen. And the ending was absolutely shattering. Recommended.
View all my reviews
October 6, 2013
The Creature From Planet Koch
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If you’ve turned on your TV at all in the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen the ad.Funded by the billionaire right-wing Koch Brothers through the organization “Americans for Prosperity,” the ad features a gray-haired woman of a certain age, identified only as “Tricia,” railing against the Affordable Care Act.
“Obamacare is dangerous. It can’t be implemented,” says Tricia (described on the AFP website as “an AFP activist and cancer survivor”) in a hectoring, indignant tone that suggests that she thinks “Obamacare” is a synonym for “killing puppies.”“Your well-being judged by a bureaucrat in D.C. is devastating,” she goes on to say. Powerful stuff, and it makes you think. Mostly it makes you think, “What the heck planet has this woman been living on?”You don’t want bureaucrats intervening in your health care, “Tricia”? Then I assume, despite your apparent age, that you’re either not on Medicare or you’re not using it. You’ve also clearly never dealt with private insurance — you know, the type that’s going to still be covering most people now that “Obamacare” is coming into full effect.Because I can tell you, if you had, you’d know that having people you don’t know giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on your health care decisions is pretty much the norm, whether those people are in Washington or in a corporate headquarters far, far away.You like being able to pick your own doctor? Great, so do the rest of us — and we can, so long as our doctor or hospital is “in network.” Who decides who’s in “network”? News flash, Trish: It ain’t the patient, and it never has been, at least if you live in the same world most of us do.“Tricia” mentions that she’s had cancer twice and gotten great care. So I assume she’s been on the same insurance all her life and never had to worry about not being able to switch insurance companies because her cancer would be a “pre-existing condition.” Not only that, but she’s probably also been able to afford to pay if a doctor she wants is not “in network.”No, I think I know what planet “Tricia” is from. She’s an emissary from Planet Koch, the Billionaire Planet, where people can afford to have CEO-level corporate insurance or can pay health costs out of pocket and pick their doctor if insurance doesn’t come through.But that’s not the planet where most of us live. Most of us live in a world where it’s a relief to not be terrified of changing jobs because a new insurance plan might call your kid’s asthma or your wife’s arthritis a “pre-existing condition” and refuse to cover it.We live in a world where full coverage for preventive care makes sense. We live in a world where we look forward to finally being able to compare plans, including their costs, side by side, in an open marketplace.We live in a world where we look forward to more stories like that of 61-year-old Arkansan Butch Matthews, who’d been paying for his own insurance for years and watching the price go up and up and up, but who recently went on Arkansas’ new exchange and found a better plan with a lower deductible for a thousand dollars less a month.Those exchanges, by the way, may be the thing that scares the Koch Brothers, those Creatures from The Billionaire Planet, the most.How many times have you heard someone say that they’d like to change from a job they hate, or they’d like to start their own business, but they couldn’t afford to lose their family’s health insurance? The fear of bankruptcy due to uncovered medical expenses is the thing that has kept people in thrall to lousy jobs and bad bosses for years. And that’s just changed.True, a lot of people will still be getting health insurance provided for them (and picked out for them) by their employers. A survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that fewer than 3 percent of employers were “at least somewhat likely” to drop coverage for full-time employees, and only .5 percent said they definitely would.But what happens if employers do start cutting insurance benefits, say, by designating workers as “part time,” and more and more people go to the exchanges for their insurance? How will the Creatures From the Billionaire Planet keep the workers in line then?
Answer: They won’t. And that’s why they’re so desperate, and why they’re running dishonest ads like this one.
If you’ve turned on your TV at all in the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen the ad.Funded by the billionaire right-wing Koch Brothers through the organization “Americans for Prosperity,” the ad features a gray-haired woman of a certain age, identified only as “Tricia,” railing against the Affordable Care Act.
“Obamacare is dangerous. It can’t be implemented,” says Tricia (described on the AFP website as “an AFP activist and cancer survivor”) in a hectoring, indignant tone that suggests that she thinks “Obamacare” is a synonym for “killing puppies.”“Your well-being judged by a bureaucrat in D.C. is devastating,” she goes on to say. Powerful stuff, and it makes you think. Mostly it makes you think, “What the heck planet has this woman been living on?”You don’t want bureaucrats intervening in your health care, “Tricia”? Then I assume, despite your apparent age, that you’re either not on Medicare or you’re not using it. You’ve also clearly never dealt with private insurance — you know, the type that’s going to still be covering most people now that “Obamacare” is coming into full effect.Because I can tell you, if you had, you’d know that having people you don’t know giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on your health care decisions is pretty much the norm, whether those people are in Washington or in a corporate headquarters far, far away.You like being able to pick your own doctor? Great, so do the rest of us — and we can, so long as our doctor or hospital is “in network.” Who decides who’s in “network”? News flash, Trish: It ain’t the patient, and it never has been, at least if you live in the same world most of us do.“Tricia” mentions that she’s had cancer twice and gotten great care. So I assume she’s been on the same insurance all her life and never had to worry about not being able to switch insurance companies because her cancer would be a “pre-existing condition.” Not only that, but she’s probably also been able to afford to pay if a doctor she wants is not “in network.”No, I think I know what planet “Tricia” is from. She’s an emissary from Planet Koch, the Billionaire Planet, where people can afford to have CEO-level corporate insurance or can pay health costs out of pocket and pick their doctor if insurance doesn’t come through.But that’s not the planet where most of us live. Most of us live in a world where it’s a relief to not be terrified of changing jobs because a new insurance plan might call your kid’s asthma or your wife’s arthritis a “pre-existing condition” and refuse to cover it.We live in a world where full coverage for preventive care makes sense. We live in a world where we look forward to finally being able to compare plans, including their costs, side by side, in an open marketplace.We live in a world where we look forward to more stories like that of 61-year-old Arkansan Butch Matthews, who’d been paying for his own insurance for years and watching the price go up and up and up, but who recently went on Arkansas’ new exchange and found a better plan with a lower deductible for a thousand dollars less a month.Those exchanges, by the way, may be the thing that scares the Koch Brothers, those Creatures from The Billionaire Planet, the most.How many times have you heard someone say that they’d like to change from a job they hate, or they’d like to start their own business, but they couldn’t afford to lose their family’s health insurance? The fear of bankruptcy due to uncovered medical expenses is the thing that has kept people in thrall to lousy jobs and bad bosses for years. And that’s just changed.True, a lot of people will still be getting health insurance provided for them (and picked out for them) by their employers. A survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that fewer than 3 percent of employers were “at least somewhat likely” to drop coverage for full-time employees, and only .5 percent said they definitely would.But what happens if employers do start cutting insurance benefits, say, by designating workers as “part time,” and more and more people go to the exchanges for their insurance? How will the Creatures From the Billionaire Planet keep the workers in line then?
Answer: They won’t. And that’s why they’re so desperate, and why they’re running dishonest ads like this one.
September 29, 2013
Running the Same Losing Plays
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Imagine if you will, the following interview on your favorite sports network:ANNOUNCER: Good evening, sports fans, and welcome to “College Football This Week.” I’m your host, Biff Barkley, and today we’re talking to Wing Nuttington, coach of the Fighting Pachyderms of Red State U. Coach, good evening.COACH: Good evening, Biff.ANNOUNCER: Coach, I’ll be blunt. Your performance last season was nothing short of embarrassing. You lost every big game. Your offense made dozens of fumbles and unforced errors, your ground game didn’t come near to living up to expectations, and your defense was so inept you would have had trouble stopping a pack of geriatric nuns from crossing the goal line at will. What do you think you need to change in the 2014 season?COACH: Absolutely nothing, Biff.ANNOUNCER: What?COACH: We’re going to come out and run the same strategies and plays, in exactly the same order we ran them last year, with the same people.ANNOUNCER: But … but why?COACH: There’s a small group of hard-core fans who love our plays. They’re the people we need to please. Everyone else can go pound sand.If you heard that from the coach of your favorite team, you’d be screaming for his ouster, if not his actual head. But “do the same thing we lost doing last time, only louder,” seems to be the prevailing strategy of a substantial segment of the Republican Party, and sadly, that’s the one that seems to be in the driver’s seat. “Hey,” they keep saying, “I’ve got an idea! Let’s take another vote on repealing Obamacare!”In 2012, the Republicans ran hard against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and pulled out all the rhetorical stops in trying to demonize it. It was “socialism.” It was a “government takeover of health care.” How a program that left the majority of the nation’s health insurance in the hands of private companies was a “government takeover” and how a plan that forces said companies to compete in an open and transparent market is “socialism” has never been explained, at least not coherently.So after the Republicans spent all that time and money hanging the PPACA around the president’s neck, guess what? The American people voted him back in by a substantial margin. And while polls show people still have a negative reaction to the word “Obamacare,” when they’re asked about things like not being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and being able to buy insurance on an exchange where they can compare plans and prices, they think the actual provisions of it are pretty neat.And yet, even after the election, the Republican House keeps passing bill after bill repealing Obamacare, and every one of those bills is DOA in the Senate. Now, with the insurance exchanges about to kick in, wingnuts like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are trying their most desperate tactic of all: threatening to shut down the government entirely if the PPACA isn’t defunded.There are a lot of Republicans who remember how the shutdown of 1996 came back to bite the GOP, and they’re not anxious to see that failed play run again. But they’re not in control. It’s gotten so ludicrous that Cruz (much to the displeasure of Speaker Boehner) leaned on House Republicans to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open but defund Obamacare.He then said he’d “speak against” the bill he himself had supported “as long as he could stand,” because he knew that once the CR hit the Senate floor, the bit about defunding Obamacare would get stripped from it faster than an exotic dancer’s bikini top.This is the “if we don’t get what we want, we’ll hold our breath till the country turns blue” school of governance, and it reached its nadir Tuesday with Cruz standing in the Senate reading Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham” (ironically, a story about someone who claims he hates something until he actually tries it).
Cruz’s strategy to kill Obamacare failed, as, after 21 wasted hours, the Senate proceeded anyway on Wednesday, as already planned. Cruz knew his “fake filibuster” would fail. Everyone but the dwindling number of Teahadist fanatics knew it would fail. Obamacare, passed by both houses, signed by the president and approved by the Supreme Court, will continue to be the law of the land.But it’s that small number of dead-enders (24 percent of Republicans, according to a May CBS poll, and 8 percent of the total electorate per a Rasmussen survey in January) that Cruz apparently is counting on to propel him to leadership of the far right, the next Republican nomination, and thus to the presidency.
How’d that work for your team last time, coach?
Imagine if you will, the following interview on your favorite sports network:ANNOUNCER: Good evening, sports fans, and welcome to “College Football This Week.” I’m your host, Biff Barkley, and today we’re talking to Wing Nuttington, coach of the Fighting Pachyderms of Red State U. Coach, good evening.COACH: Good evening, Biff.ANNOUNCER: Coach, I’ll be blunt. Your performance last season was nothing short of embarrassing. You lost every big game. Your offense made dozens of fumbles and unforced errors, your ground game didn’t come near to living up to expectations, and your defense was so inept you would have had trouble stopping a pack of geriatric nuns from crossing the goal line at will. What do you think you need to change in the 2014 season?COACH: Absolutely nothing, Biff.ANNOUNCER: What?COACH: We’re going to come out and run the same strategies and plays, in exactly the same order we ran them last year, with the same people.ANNOUNCER: But … but why?COACH: There’s a small group of hard-core fans who love our plays. They’re the people we need to please. Everyone else can go pound sand.If you heard that from the coach of your favorite team, you’d be screaming for his ouster, if not his actual head. But “do the same thing we lost doing last time, only louder,” seems to be the prevailing strategy of a substantial segment of the Republican Party, and sadly, that’s the one that seems to be in the driver’s seat. “Hey,” they keep saying, “I’ve got an idea! Let’s take another vote on repealing Obamacare!”In 2012, the Republicans ran hard against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and pulled out all the rhetorical stops in trying to demonize it. It was “socialism.” It was a “government takeover of health care.” How a program that left the majority of the nation’s health insurance in the hands of private companies was a “government takeover” and how a plan that forces said companies to compete in an open and transparent market is “socialism” has never been explained, at least not coherently.So after the Republicans spent all that time and money hanging the PPACA around the president’s neck, guess what? The American people voted him back in by a substantial margin. And while polls show people still have a negative reaction to the word “Obamacare,” when they’re asked about things like not being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and being able to buy insurance on an exchange where they can compare plans and prices, they think the actual provisions of it are pretty neat.And yet, even after the election, the Republican House keeps passing bill after bill repealing Obamacare, and every one of those bills is DOA in the Senate. Now, with the insurance exchanges about to kick in, wingnuts like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are trying their most desperate tactic of all: threatening to shut down the government entirely if the PPACA isn’t defunded.There are a lot of Republicans who remember how the shutdown of 1996 came back to bite the GOP, and they’re not anxious to see that failed play run again. But they’re not in control. It’s gotten so ludicrous that Cruz (much to the displeasure of Speaker Boehner) leaned on House Republicans to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open but defund Obamacare.He then said he’d “speak against” the bill he himself had supported “as long as he could stand,” because he knew that once the CR hit the Senate floor, the bit about defunding Obamacare would get stripped from it faster than an exotic dancer’s bikini top.This is the “if we don’t get what we want, we’ll hold our breath till the country turns blue” school of governance, and it reached its nadir Tuesday with Cruz standing in the Senate reading Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham” (ironically, a story about someone who claims he hates something until he actually tries it).
Cruz’s strategy to kill Obamacare failed, as, after 21 wasted hours, the Senate proceeded anyway on Wednesday, as already planned. Cruz knew his “fake filibuster” would fail. Everyone but the dwindling number of Teahadist fanatics knew it would fail. Obamacare, passed by both houses, signed by the president and approved by the Supreme Court, will continue to be the law of the land.But it’s that small number of dead-enders (24 percent of Republicans, according to a May CBS poll, and 8 percent of the total electorate per a Rasmussen survey in January) that Cruz apparently is counting on to propel him to leadership of the far right, the next Republican nomination, and thus to the presidency.
How’d that work for your team last time, coach?
September 22, 2013
Miss America Is American
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I did not actually watch the Miss America Pageant. While I like the sight of pretty girls as much as the next fellow, I find the whole beauty pageant concept kind of archaic and cheesy.But like with many televised events (“American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” etc.), who won, who lost, and who said what somehow ends up being reported as actual news.So when I found out the next day over my morning coffee that the winner was Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, and that she was the first person of East Indian descent to win the crown, my reaction was something like, “Huh. Interesting,” after which I clicked over to see what Dilbert was up to.The great slavering hordes of the Internet Ignoramii, however, were not so blasé. They immediately took to the Web and showed once again that the ’net disseminates stupidity at least as well as it spreads knowledge. Within moments of the announcement, Twitter blew up with the usual charming folks railing against the idea of a brown person winning the tiara.“How the [bad word] does a foreigner win Miss America? She is a Arab! #idiots,” wrote one.“Have we forgotten 9/11?” railed another.“Congratulations al-Qaida. Our Miss America is one of you,” tweeted a third.You know, unlike some people on the right who have sounded off recently in the national media and in the pages of this paper, I really am proud of my country. But I have to say I really do start to worry about it when a substantial number of its citizens can’t tell the difference between India and Arabia. Hint: Arabia’s the one with the sand, the camels and the oil, India’s the one with the trees, the cows and the call centers.
Apparently, Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes was miffed because his favorite, Miss Kansas, didn’t win. “The liberal Miss America judges won’t say this — but Miss Kansas lost because she actually represented American values,” Starnes said on Twitter and his Facebook page.To be sure, Theresa Vail, of Manhattan, Kans., is pretty badass. She’s a veteran of the National Guard, a skydiver, a boxer, and a self-described “grease monkey” who also likes to hunt — with a bow and arrow.
DAAAAAAMN....She’s a scholarship student in chemistry and speaks fluent Chinese. She rocks a pair of very cool tattoos, which she refused to cover up for the swimsuit competition, saying that her platform was “empowering women and destroying stereotypes,” and that hiding her ink would be hypocritical.I’d love to have a beer with her, although with that figure, she probably drinks light beer. What the heck. Just this once, I can forgive that. But Starnes and other critics of the choice seems to be saying that Miss Davuluri doesn’t “represent American values.”Really? She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., to parents who immigrated here 30 years ago. She went to the University of Michigan, where she made the dean’s list, won the National Honor Society Award and the Michigan Merit Award, and graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science. She wants to become a doctor like her father, her aunt and several of her uncles.
DOCTOR, DOCTOR, GIMME THE NEWS...Smart, hard-working, focused — sounds to me like both Miss Vail and Miss Davuluri are all-American success stories. But one of them has brown skin and an exotic sounding name, and some people can’t seem to get beyond that, seeing her as just another strand in their ridiculous mental web of imaginary grievances and made-up resentments.Fortunately, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this applies on the Internet as well. The initial wave of racist posts and tweets was met by an even more ferocious wave of online support for Miss Davuluri and derision for the buffoons who can’t tell an Indian from an Arab — or a pretty, bikini-clad honors student from Syracuse from a bomb throwing jihadist.Let’s let the new Miss America have the last word. Asked about the backlash, she said, “I have to rise above that. I always viewed myself as first and foremost American.”And isn’t that the truest of American values?
I did not actually watch the Miss America Pageant. While I like the sight of pretty girls as much as the next fellow, I find the whole beauty pageant concept kind of archaic and cheesy.But like with many televised events (“American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” etc.), who won, who lost, and who said what somehow ends up being reported as actual news.So when I found out the next day over my morning coffee that the winner was Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, and that she was the first person of East Indian descent to win the crown, my reaction was something like, “Huh. Interesting,” after which I clicked over to see what Dilbert was up to.The great slavering hordes of the Internet Ignoramii, however, were not so blasé. They immediately took to the Web and showed once again that the ’net disseminates stupidity at least as well as it spreads knowledge. Within moments of the announcement, Twitter blew up with the usual charming folks railing against the idea of a brown person winning the tiara.“How the [bad word] does a foreigner win Miss America? She is a Arab! #idiots,” wrote one.“Have we forgotten 9/11?” railed another.“Congratulations al-Qaida. Our Miss America is one of you,” tweeted a third.You know, unlike some people on the right who have sounded off recently in the national media and in the pages of this paper, I really am proud of my country. But I have to say I really do start to worry about it when a substantial number of its citizens can’t tell the difference between India and Arabia. Hint: Arabia’s the one with the sand, the camels and the oil, India’s the one with the trees, the cows and the call centers.
Apparently, Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes was miffed because his favorite, Miss Kansas, didn’t win. “The liberal Miss America judges won’t say this — but Miss Kansas lost because she actually represented American values,” Starnes said on Twitter and his Facebook page.To be sure, Theresa Vail, of Manhattan, Kans., is pretty badass. She’s a veteran of the National Guard, a skydiver, a boxer, and a self-described “grease monkey” who also likes to hunt — with a bow and arrow.
DAAAAAAMN....She’s a scholarship student in chemistry and speaks fluent Chinese. She rocks a pair of very cool tattoos, which she refused to cover up for the swimsuit competition, saying that her platform was “empowering women and destroying stereotypes,” and that hiding her ink would be hypocritical.I’d love to have a beer with her, although with that figure, she probably drinks light beer. What the heck. Just this once, I can forgive that. But Starnes and other critics of the choice seems to be saying that Miss Davuluri doesn’t “represent American values.”Really? She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., to parents who immigrated here 30 years ago. She went to the University of Michigan, where she made the dean’s list, won the National Honor Society Award and the Michigan Merit Award, and graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science. She wants to become a doctor like her father, her aunt and several of her uncles.
DOCTOR, DOCTOR, GIMME THE NEWS...Smart, hard-working, focused — sounds to me like both Miss Vail and Miss Davuluri are all-American success stories. But one of them has brown skin and an exotic sounding name, and some people can’t seem to get beyond that, seeing her as just another strand in their ridiculous mental web of imaginary grievances and made-up resentments.Fortunately, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this applies on the Internet as well. The initial wave of racist posts and tweets was met by an even more ferocious wave of online support for Miss Davuluri and derision for the buffoons who can’t tell an Indian from an Arab — or a pretty, bikini-clad honors student from Syracuse from a bomb throwing jihadist.Let’s let the new Miss America have the last word. Asked about the backlash, she said, “I have to rise above that. I always viewed myself as first and foremost American.”And isn’t that the truest of American values?
September 20, 2013
Just Sayin'
In a recent online debate, some right winger trotted out the old cliche that "Democrats are the real racists because Robert Byrd."
If your go-to argument to counter the completely accurate observation that today's right wing movement has an ugly strain of racism running through it is to point out that a Democrat, now deceased, was in the Klan in the 1940's and opposed civil rights in the 1960's--over 50 years ago--then you have decisively lost the debate.
If your go-to argument to counter the completely accurate observation that today's right wing movement has an ugly strain of racism running through it is to point out that a Democrat, now deceased, was in the Klan in the 1940's and opposed civil rights in the 1960's--over 50 years ago--then you have decisively lost the debate.
September 19, 2013
Wow. I May Have Been Wrong. Go Figure.
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You know, if this whole Syria thing keeps going the way it seems to be going, I may have to do something unheard of: I may have to admit I was wrong. Shocking, I know.It’s just been one surprise after another. First, it looked inevitable that Barack Obama was going to, all on his own, order a cruise missile strike on selected, limited targets in Syria, not to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime, but to punish it for using poison gas on civilians.I’m no fan of either Assad or of poison gas, but as I’ve said here before, getting involved in the dog’s breakfast that is the current multisided Syrian religious conflict will bring us nothing but trouble. And I just didn’t see how a limited strike was going to do any good.The idea, I suppose, is that Assad would lose a few government buildings, maybe a command center or two, and decide, “Aw, the heck with it, this isn’t worth it,” and get out of the chemical weapons business. Let’s just say I had my doubts.Then, lo and behold, the lipless little troll actually agreed to give them up. Or so he says.As I understand it, the sequence of events was this: John Kerry says, in answer to a question about how Assad could avoid an attack, “Well, he could give up his chemical weapons to international control, but there’s no way he’ll do that.”Russia’s own crazy man, Mad Vlad Putin, goes, “Oh really?” and suggests they do just that. Assad, to the general astonishment of the entire world, says, “Yeah, sure, OK, whatever.”So does that make it Kerry’s or Obama’s “idea,” since Kerry was supposedly speaking “off the cuff” and not making a serious offer? Or was he making a serious offer couched in an offhand remark? Or was the whole thing really Putin’s idea? Historians will no doubt be arguing about that for a long time, but hey, if it works, it works.Clearly, that’s a big “if.” Assad could just be stalling for time, although time may not really be on his side. Since President Obama faces an uphill battle getting Congress to agree to the strike, the delay he asked for (and got) on the congressional vote gives him and Joe Biden time to work the phones for an authorization if Assad turns out to be just shining us on.And whatever else you may have to say about Crazy Uncle Joe, he knows how to work the Senate, while Nancy Pelosi in the House has a much better track record than the current speaker of bringing her caucus in line.If Assad does back out or drag his feet, he’s given those two some powerful points to persuade the reluctant. And I bet they won’t have to call anyone a “cheese-eating surrender monkey” or accuse them of wanting to cause another 9/11 to do it.On the subject of that congressional vote, I confess to being a little surprised that President Obama went that way. But I shouldn’t have been. There was really no other route to take if he wanted to stay within the law.The whole point of an attack on Syria is to punish the regime for violating international law on the use of chemical weapons. But Article One, Section Eight of the U.S. Constitution states that it’s Congress that has the power to “define and punish … Offenses against the Law of Nations.”Now, you and I know this Congress is about as useful as socks on a rooster, but the law is what it is. And the War Powers Resolution only allows the president to commit American forces in the event of “(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” None of that has happened here.It’s true that multiple presidents of both parties have flouted both of those principles, aided by spineless Congresses that have refused to take action, but that’s a problem, isn’t it?Anyway, it remains to be seen if these negotiations will result in an actual plan that everyone can agree on. And even if it does, destroying chemical weapons isn’t a matter of dragging them out to the curb Monday morning and leaving them for the trash man.We’ve been at it with our own chemical arsenal for decades now, and we’re not in the middle of a civil war.But if President Obama’s “red line” comment and subsequent threat of military action result in even substantial reduction in stockpiles and the cessation of use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, then I will have been entirely wrong about this, and Barack Obama will have been right.
Mark your calendars.
You know, if this whole Syria thing keeps going the way it seems to be going, I may have to do something unheard of: I may have to admit I was wrong. Shocking, I know.It’s just been one surprise after another. First, it looked inevitable that Barack Obama was going to, all on his own, order a cruise missile strike on selected, limited targets in Syria, not to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime, but to punish it for using poison gas on civilians.I’m no fan of either Assad or of poison gas, but as I’ve said here before, getting involved in the dog’s breakfast that is the current multisided Syrian religious conflict will bring us nothing but trouble. And I just didn’t see how a limited strike was going to do any good.The idea, I suppose, is that Assad would lose a few government buildings, maybe a command center or two, and decide, “Aw, the heck with it, this isn’t worth it,” and get out of the chemical weapons business. Let’s just say I had my doubts.Then, lo and behold, the lipless little troll actually agreed to give them up. Or so he says.As I understand it, the sequence of events was this: John Kerry says, in answer to a question about how Assad could avoid an attack, “Well, he could give up his chemical weapons to international control, but there’s no way he’ll do that.”Russia’s own crazy man, Mad Vlad Putin, goes, “Oh really?” and suggests they do just that. Assad, to the general astonishment of the entire world, says, “Yeah, sure, OK, whatever.”So does that make it Kerry’s or Obama’s “idea,” since Kerry was supposedly speaking “off the cuff” and not making a serious offer? Or was he making a serious offer couched in an offhand remark? Or was the whole thing really Putin’s idea? Historians will no doubt be arguing about that for a long time, but hey, if it works, it works.Clearly, that’s a big “if.” Assad could just be stalling for time, although time may not really be on his side. Since President Obama faces an uphill battle getting Congress to agree to the strike, the delay he asked for (and got) on the congressional vote gives him and Joe Biden time to work the phones for an authorization if Assad turns out to be just shining us on.And whatever else you may have to say about Crazy Uncle Joe, he knows how to work the Senate, while Nancy Pelosi in the House has a much better track record than the current speaker of bringing her caucus in line.If Assad does back out or drag his feet, he’s given those two some powerful points to persuade the reluctant. And I bet they won’t have to call anyone a “cheese-eating surrender monkey” or accuse them of wanting to cause another 9/11 to do it.On the subject of that congressional vote, I confess to being a little surprised that President Obama went that way. But I shouldn’t have been. There was really no other route to take if he wanted to stay within the law.The whole point of an attack on Syria is to punish the regime for violating international law on the use of chemical weapons. But Article One, Section Eight of the U.S. Constitution states that it’s Congress that has the power to “define and punish … Offenses against the Law of Nations.”Now, you and I know this Congress is about as useful as socks on a rooster, but the law is what it is. And the War Powers Resolution only allows the president to commit American forces in the event of “(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” None of that has happened here.It’s true that multiple presidents of both parties have flouted both of those principles, aided by spineless Congresses that have refused to take action, but that’s a problem, isn’t it?Anyway, it remains to be seen if these negotiations will result in an actual plan that everyone can agree on. And even if it does, destroying chemical weapons isn’t a matter of dragging them out to the curb Monday morning and leaving them for the trash man.We’ve been at it with our own chemical arsenal for decades now, and we’re not in the middle of a civil war.But if President Obama’s “red line” comment and subsequent threat of military action result in even substantial reduction in stockpiles and the cessation of use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, then I will have been entirely wrong about this, and Barack Obama will have been right.
Mark your calendars.
September 8, 2013
Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Bubble People
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I stood in the window of my office, looking down on a street that was as dark as my mood and as empty as my bank account. From somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a lonely saxophone. I felt a rush of melancholy before I realized it was my ringtone.I fumbled the cheap cellphone out of my pocket. “Sluice Tundra, private eye,” I said.“Mr. Tundra?” a female voice said.“That’s what my mom calls me,” I replied.The woman sounded confused. “She calls you ‘Mr. Tundra?’”“We’re not a close family,” I said. “What can I do for you?”“Oh, Mr. Tundra, please come quickly,” she said.“What seems to be the matter, Miss …”“Winger,” she said. “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ It’s about my husband. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.” She gave me an address in a neighborhood that was so upscale that even the trash collectors wore Dolce & Gabbana.When I got there, she was waiting at the door, dressed in a low-cut dress that was as flimsy as the rationale for restrictive voter ID laws. She led me into a luxurious living room.The guy seated on the couch looked to be in his early 60s. He was a big man, with a disgruntled expression on a red face that looked as though it had never been gruntled. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.“Mrs. Winger,” I said, “does your husband have some sort of immune disorder?” She just shook her head, so I added, “Then maybe you can explain why he’s inside a bubble.”“I don’t know!” she cried. “It started last summer. And it’s getting worse.”“I think you’ve got the wrong guy, sister,” I said. “I’m a private eye, not a doctor. I’m not sure what I can do to help.”“I talked to several doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong. I just need to know who did this to him.”I tapped on the bubble. It was hard, like plastic. I leaned over. “Can you hear me in there?” I shouted. It was then I spotted the “Romney 2012” pin on his lapel. I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Mr. Winger,” I yelled. “You know that Romney lost, right?”“Yeah,” he replied, his face getting even redder. “But only because the takers outnumber the makers! Obama voters just want people to give them stuff!”“How do you feel about the liberals opposing the president’s proposed intervention in Syria?”“What opposition? The left are a bunch of hypocrites for being silent about it! Those dirty leftists won’t say anything bad about Obama! Ever!”“Hmmm,” I said. I turned to his wife. “What does your husband watch on TV?”“Why, Fox News, of course,” she replied. “Like everyone else. We have it on all the time.”“And does he listen to the radio?”“Only conservative talk radio,” she said proudly, adding, “like everyone else.”I straightened up. “Mrs. Winger, your husband is trapped in the Conservative Bubble. He only watches or listens to things that confirm what he already believes, even if those beliefs have squat-all to do with reality. Like this idea that leftists aren’t speaking up against war in Syria. A lot of them are. Michael Moore, Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas …”“Who?”“See, that’s a sign of being a Bubble Person,” I said. “You complain a lot about what ‘leftists’ say or do, but you really don’t know of any. If you did, you’d know that there’s a lot of arguing on the left about Syria, and a lot of the people arguing oppose intervention.”“Well, why aren’t the liberal media reporting that, then?” she demanded. “And why are Barack Obama and John Kerry for war in Syria?”“Maybe because the media aren’t really liberal,” I said. “They never saw a Middle East war they didn’t cheerlead. At least until it goes bad, which it usually does. As for Secretary Kerry and President Obama? On their most ‘leftist’ day, they’re moderates. But you won’t hear that inside the Fox News/talk radio bubble.”“Well,” she said, her own face beginning to take on the same red shade as her husband’s. “I can see you’re just another one of those people who’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.” As she spoke, the air around her began to shimmer. She was developing a bubble of her own.“Sorry, lady,” I said. “You asked who did this to him? He did. And now you’re doing it to yourself. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’ll send you a bill for my time.”
I left, headed back to the mean streets, knowing I had as much chance of getting paid as a North Carolina teacher has of getting a pay raise. Some people you just can’t reach.
I stood in the window of my office, looking down on a street that was as dark as my mood and as empty as my bank account. From somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a lonely saxophone. I felt a rush of melancholy before I realized it was my ringtone.I fumbled the cheap cellphone out of my pocket. “Sluice Tundra, private eye,” I said.“Mr. Tundra?” a female voice said.“That’s what my mom calls me,” I replied.The woman sounded confused. “She calls you ‘Mr. Tundra?’”“We’re not a close family,” I said. “What can I do for you?”“Oh, Mr. Tundra, please come quickly,” she said.“What seems to be the matter, Miss …”“Winger,” she said. “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ It’s about my husband. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.” She gave me an address in a neighborhood that was so upscale that even the trash collectors wore Dolce & Gabbana.When I got there, she was waiting at the door, dressed in a low-cut dress that was as flimsy as the rationale for restrictive voter ID laws. She led me into a luxurious living room.The guy seated on the couch looked to be in his early 60s. He was a big man, with a disgruntled expression on a red face that looked as though it had never been gruntled. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.“Mrs. Winger,” I said, “does your husband have some sort of immune disorder?” She just shook her head, so I added, “Then maybe you can explain why he’s inside a bubble.”“I don’t know!” she cried. “It started last summer. And it’s getting worse.”“I think you’ve got the wrong guy, sister,” I said. “I’m a private eye, not a doctor. I’m not sure what I can do to help.”“I talked to several doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong. I just need to know who did this to him.”I tapped on the bubble. It was hard, like plastic. I leaned over. “Can you hear me in there?” I shouted. It was then I spotted the “Romney 2012” pin on his lapel. I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Mr. Winger,” I yelled. “You know that Romney lost, right?”“Yeah,” he replied, his face getting even redder. “But only because the takers outnumber the makers! Obama voters just want people to give them stuff!”“How do you feel about the liberals opposing the president’s proposed intervention in Syria?”“What opposition? The left are a bunch of hypocrites for being silent about it! Those dirty leftists won’t say anything bad about Obama! Ever!”“Hmmm,” I said. I turned to his wife. “What does your husband watch on TV?”“Why, Fox News, of course,” she replied. “Like everyone else. We have it on all the time.”“And does he listen to the radio?”“Only conservative talk radio,” she said proudly, adding, “like everyone else.”I straightened up. “Mrs. Winger, your husband is trapped in the Conservative Bubble. He only watches or listens to things that confirm what he already believes, even if those beliefs have squat-all to do with reality. Like this idea that leftists aren’t speaking up against war in Syria. A lot of them are. Michael Moore, Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas …”“Who?”“See, that’s a sign of being a Bubble Person,” I said. “You complain a lot about what ‘leftists’ say or do, but you really don’t know of any. If you did, you’d know that there’s a lot of arguing on the left about Syria, and a lot of the people arguing oppose intervention.”“Well, why aren’t the liberal media reporting that, then?” she demanded. “And why are Barack Obama and John Kerry for war in Syria?”“Maybe because the media aren’t really liberal,” I said. “They never saw a Middle East war they didn’t cheerlead. At least until it goes bad, which it usually does. As for Secretary Kerry and President Obama? On their most ‘leftist’ day, they’re moderates. But you won’t hear that inside the Fox News/talk radio bubble.”“Well,” she said, her own face beginning to take on the same red shade as her husband’s. “I can see you’re just another one of those people who’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.” As she spoke, the air around her began to shimmer. She was developing a bubble of her own.“Sorry, lady,” I said. “You asked who did this to him? He did. And now you’re doing it to yourself. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’ll send you a bill for my time.”
I left, headed back to the mean streets, knowing I had as much chance of getting paid as a North Carolina teacher has of getting a pay raise. Some people you just can’t reach.
September 6, 2013
The Usual Gang Of Anonymous Right Wing Dimwits Continues The Lies On Voter Suppression
My wife Lynn, who's been a poll worker for the Carthage precinct past the five years and a registered voter here in Moore County since 1992, has a letter in the Pilot this week explaining why she's not doing it any more.
The usual gang of right wing fuckwits has showed up in the comments, anonymously attacking her (and me as well, although I'm used to it), and asserting the usual Rethuglican claptrap about how "it's not a big hassle, why don't you stop whining, and (the biggest lie of all), we need to stop rampant voter fraud."
But even their own leaders are admitting it's not about fraud at all:
"The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama's ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama's national field director admitted, shortly before last year's election, that "early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election."Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly" I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.”Columbus Ohio GOP Chair Doug Preisse, on early voting"Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”So it's not voter fraud they're mad at...they just know more early voters (and African Americans) vote Democrat. I mean, you can't really keep denying it when your party's own officials admit that it's not about voter fraud, it's about suppressing traditionally Democratic voters.Well, I guess you can. If you're a pathological liar.
The usual gang of right wing fuckwits has showed up in the comments, anonymously attacking her (and me as well, although I'm used to it), and asserting the usual Rethuglican claptrap about how "it's not a big hassle, why don't you stop whining, and (the biggest lie of all), we need to stop rampant voter fraud."
But even their own leaders are admitting it's not about fraud at all:
"The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama's ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama's national field director admitted, shortly before last year's election, that "early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election."Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly" I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.”Columbus Ohio GOP Chair Doug Preisse, on early voting"Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”So it's not voter fraud they're mad at...they just know more early voters (and African Americans) vote Democrat. I mean, you can't really keep denying it when your party's own officials admit that it's not about voter fraud, it's about suppressing traditionally Democratic voters.Well, I guess you can. If you're a pathological liar.
September 5, 2013
Yeah, Good Luck With That One
Florida Man Invokes 'Bush Doctrine' To Justify Shooting Neighbors | TPM LiveWire
Woodward’s attorneys argue that an attack could have been expected based on the words of his neighbors. They go on to mention the “Bush Doctrine,” a concept that justifies a pre-emptive attack based on the need to defend from a threat.
After all, we don't want the smoking gun to be...a smoking gun. Or something like that.
Well, as a colleague once said, as a lawyer, you can't just stand there and shrug and go, "Eh, I got nothin'," no matter how much you may feel like it.
Woodward’s attorneys argue that an attack could have been expected based on the words of his neighbors. They go on to mention the “Bush Doctrine,” a concept that justifies a pre-emptive attack based on the need to defend from a threat.
After all, we don't want the smoking gun to be...a smoking gun. Or something like that.
Well, as a colleague once said, as a lawyer, you can't just stand there and shrug and go, "Eh, I got nothin'," no matter how much you may feel like it.
