Planet Utah

Mark Sanford...nice

I've been waiting for some high-profile politician to mention Barack Obama and use the phrase "call a spade a spade" in the same paragraph. That would lead to full mobilization of the race police. As far as I know, it hasn't happened yet. Even better than it not happening, though, is that in this article, Mark Sanford--who I think is probably considered the risingest of GOP stars, following the blockbuster revelation that Bobby Jindal frequently takes a penny but rarely ever leaves one--walks right up to the edge of the abyss...and then lets fly the modified phrase, "call an ace an ace."

As they say, he doesn't miss a trick.

What do Republicans bring to the table?

Barack Obama has stones. I will give him that. Between the stimulus package and his newly proposed budget, our president has made himself a big, fat target for Republicans. Massive spending on dubious projects? Check. Tax increases on the most productive members of society? Check. More welfare with fewer strings attached? Check. A wholesale embrace (even a little nose nuzzle) of left wing climate change orthodoxy? Check.

If you were Karl Rove, you could have a field day with all of this.

You could, that is, if you had anything better to offer. I'm not sure the Republicans do. If they don't, though, this would be a good time to come up with something. Something roughly equivalent to what Obama has put out there: a budget for 2009/2010, and a fiscal/economic/policy plan for the next 10 years.

Republicans ought to embrace Obama's stated ends--a return to fiscal sanity, health care coverage for the whole population, improved public education, a revitalized housing market, etc.--but show how they would get there differently. There's no need to play it safe, either, because the president hasn't played it safe. He has left himself open to a long list of criticisms. That means that Republicans can take some chances. They may draw some fire for certain proposals, but they will always be able to say, "Do you really think HIS ideas are better? Look at what he suggests doing on this issue..."

That, by the way, is how the GOP defeated Bill Clinton's proposed health care reform: primarily by talking about the many ways in which it was a crazy proposal. After that, Clinton never made the same mistake again: he never took a position on a high-profile issue that left him vulnerable to obvious, salient criticisms from the right.

Barack Obama, however, has done that very thing. Republicans ought to take advantage--not to hamstring the new president, but to persuade the American people that the GOP has better ideas on every issue that matters.

Footnote: I, for one, don't think that Repubicans do have better ideas on every issue that matters. But if they do, they've now got a great opportunity to make their case.

Bobby Jindal should resign

I'm kidding. Actually, I'm doing satire.

So the guy didn't give a great speech. Big deal. But people ARE making a big deal about it. Over at Politico, they (apparently without irony) pose this question: "Did he blow the chance to be the GOP's 2012 hope?" In the attached article, they quote a political scientist who says that Jindal's speech may some day be seen as the nadir for Republicans in the Bush era.

As Keith Olbermann once said before he went crazy, "Any further comment on my part would be superfluous."

Footnote: Hey, did anyone else find Nancy Pelosi highly annoying last night? She wore a permanent phony smile, and she acted as if she was participating in a contest to see who could give President Obama the quickest, most frequent, most enthusiastic standing ovations. Every five seconds she leapt from her chair and applauded rapturously... (I'm not even joking about this part: if you watched her closely, you could see her getting ready to jump up when the president neared an applause line. It was as if she was worried that someone else would get their ass out of the chair before she did.)

Anklenote: Is there a new SNL this weekend? If so, I would expect some fun at the expense of Pelosi and Jindal.

We need one more Indian thing

If one's an anecdote, two are data, and three make a trend, right now the media have almost  everything they need to start writing stories about how all things Indian are hot.

First, you had the success of "Slumdog Millionaire" at the Oscars.

Second, you had Bobby Jindal giving the GOP's response to President Obama's State of the Union speech.

Third...?

Footnote: Come on, India! You can do it!

And if the people wanted you to jump off a bridge?

The following nicely sums up the post-partisan, Schwarzennegerian governing creed that has California in such great shape today:

“Even though it is against your principles or philosophy,” (Schwarzenegger) said he believed that officeholders should be doing “what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.”

Now that's leadership.

Footnote: And how does one know, exactly, "what the people want you to do"? And assuming you can figure that out, should you do it even though you think it is wrong? And if that's the case, why even bother holding elections for offices like governor, state representative, and state senator? What you really need is just a good pollster to decipher the will of the people, and then a competent bureaucracy to do whatever the people want. Just cut out the middle man (the politician) altogether. Ultimately, you could probably even automate the whole process.

Anklenote: So, enough sarcasm. What's really going on here? I think it's very simple. After trying, and failing, to govern as a mildly conservative Republican, Schwarzenegger decided that it was more important to be liked than to be right. As almost always happens when politicians make this sort of decision, he ended up being neither.

What a black belt doesn't mean

I'm still studying Krav Maga. In May it will be a year. I still enjoy it, but my learning process has slowed a lot. When you know nothing, you learn a lot quickly. I had to learn a ton in order to pass my yellow belt test last September. The next belt, though, the orange belt, requires technical modifications to and expansions of everything I learned at the yellow belt level. So, it's more demanding. It's also harder to learn, which means that class is less enjoyable because it makes me feel like an ass. So, I don't go to the intermediate classes nearly as often as I went to the beginning classes. Long story short, it's going to take me much longer to earn my orange belt than it took me to earn my yellow belt.

Anyway, one thing I've learned in the course of my training thus far is that black belt does not mean what I thought it meant. Here's what I thought it meant: "You are a bad ass."

Not necessarily so, for a whole bunch of reasons.

First, while Krav Maga is organized around the concept of street fighting, many other disciplines are organized as sports. Learning to excel at a sport won't necessarily help you in a fight. Sports have rules designed to keep things safe and fair. Street fights do not. In a street fight, for example, a guy would be stupid not to take a free shot at your groin if he had one. In some karate dojos, on the other hand, a groin shot is considered dishonorable. So, you don't learn how to deliver one, and you don't learn how to defend against one. If you get in a street fight, that could be very problematic.

Second, even the disciplines (like Krav Maga) that are oriented toward training for a real fight can never simulate the conditions of an actual fight without people getting hurt. In a martial arts studio, things are very structured. There's no real surprise, no adrenaline pumping, plenty of "do-overs," and an endless supply of cooperative training partners who: a) don't want to hurt you; and b) want to help you practice whatever technique you're working on. In a street fight, though, you may catch a surprise fist to the nose before you even realize you're in a fight. Your adrenaline and crazy heart rate may keep you from performing techniques properly that you've done a thousand times in the studio. You may land a kick that always causes your cooperative training partner to double over, but that barely seems to faze your tough guy opponent. Your street opponent may try something on you that you've never seen in the dojo, and that you therefore have little idea how to defend.

All of this adds up to the following: if you pit a guy with no formal martial arts training but plenty of street scraps against a guy with a black belt but no actual altercations under his belt, the latter may very well get his butt kicked.

Third, no two black belts are exactly the same. Some disciplines grant them after almost no time at all, while others grant them only after a decade of study. Some black belt practitioners are highly skilled in their discipline, while others are not. (Think about a college grad from Harvard vs. one from a party school.) Knowing that someone has a black belt won't tell you much until/unless you know: a) what discipline he studied, and b) what he had to do to get his belt.

Fourth, some guys who fight in the street are good at things that martial arts may not be good at. Krav Maga, for example, is largely a stand-up, offensive discipline. But what if the guy who starts trouble with me manages to get me to the ground? Then I'm in trouble, particularly if he's on the large side.

Fifth, anybody can get knocked out. A good shot to the chin or the jaw or the temple can rattle your brain so much that it just shuts down. Even a guy who's never been in a fight before can throw a haymaker with a lot of force, and even a trained martial artist can have trouble blocking it. If that haymaker lands in the right spot, down goes the black belt.

Enough!

As I scanned the headlines on the Drudge Report today, I saw something or other about President Obama's $75 billion plan to help people facing foreclosure. Or maybe it was a $75 billion plan to help banks that have been hit hard by people defaulting on their loans. Or maybe it was both. Don't know. Don't care. What I do know is that I am sick--SICK--of bailouts in all shapes, forms, and sizes.

Before I continue complaining, let me acknowledge that I have been blessed in this life in about as many ways as a person can be blessed. Oh sure, I could be taller, and better looking, and more outgoing, but I'm talking about the stuff that really matters. I'm talking about being raised by parents who taught me important life lessons (e.g., "Never get married, son..."), who gave me the means and the desire to succeed, and who served as excellent role models when it came to hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and accomplishment. Given that, it was much more likely that I would end up a successful professional who earns a good living and has some sense about money than it was that I would end up working at Wal-Mart, amassing a huge amount of credit card debt, and not really knowing or caring how I would pay my bills during retirement.

Even so...I'm now officially tired of being asked to pick up part of the tab for people, businesses, and politicians who made lousy decisions over the past four or five years. And I'm especially tired of it because I went out of my way NOT to make lousy decisions during that same period. For example, one of the reasons I left Phoenix for Austin was that in Phoenix I could not afford to live in the parts of town in which I wanted to live. That's not because I didn't make enough money to live there, or because I couldn't have gotten a loan to buy a place in those parts of town. I do make enough money, and I could have gotten a loan. (If you remember those heady days, there were people practically begging you to borrow their money.) When I say I couldn't afford it, I mean that there's a certain amount of debt I'm comfortable taking on, and there's a certain value I attach to a place to live. Looking around Phoenix, the places that I wanted to live would have required me to take on more debt than I was comfortable taking on, and were priced out of proportion with their value to me as a place to live. So, I didn't buy. In fact, I didn't even stay. I moved to a place where housing was more affordable.

Having done that, though, here's the message I'm now hearing from my government: "Well done! Unfortunately, there were a bunch of people and businesses who weren't quite as sensible and responsible as you were, and they ended up making really bad decisions. We hate to ask, but we're going to need you to come up with some cash to help them deal with the consequences of those decisions."

Huh?

A free market economic system and a political system that is supposed to put a premium on individual liberty and responsibility only work if people, businesses, and other public and private institutions are forced to live with the consequences of unwise actions and decisions. I'm not talking about bad luck here, as when the company you work for decides to pick up and move to China, leaving you without a job. I'm talking about bad choices, as when you decide to take out a loan you can't afford, or when the lender decides to make that loan.

If we are now living in a time/place in which we don't have the courage of our convictions, that is, we don't have the stomach or the will to let people suffer the consequences of their stupid choices, then I'm not sure our economic and political systems are well suited for the job. Something along the lines of European social democracy would probably work better. And no, I'm not joking.

Footnote: My only hope in all of this is that there are lots of people out there who feel like me, and that our anger will congeal into some sort of political movement, or at least will force a public debate/discussion of the kinds of issues I've addressed in this post.

In case you missed the good news from Iraq

It's summarized by Krauthammer: who else?

Footnote: This isn't the main point of Krauthammer's piece, but it is an interesting point--we got so used to thinking about Iraq as a fiasco, it's hard to shake the mental etch-a-sketch and start considering the situation from scratch. When you do that, though, and compare Iraq's role in the Middle East in 2003 to its role in 2009, and then start thinking about the role it might play 10, 15, or 20 years from now, it's hard not to say, "Wow..."

Anklenote: If the Washington Post wants you to sign in to get at the Krauthammer article, and you don't have an account, try Bug Me Not. It's a great free service that lets you use other people's log-ins to sign in to sites with which you are not registered.

The Suns are a laughing stock

Or at least a head-shaking stock. You can read about it here.

I've generally supported Steve Kerr's moves, beginning with the Shaq trade, and including the firing of Mike D'Antoni and the trade of Boris Diaw and Raja Bell. When it came to hiring Terry Porter, though, I felt kind of like I did when the GOP nominated Bob Dole.  Sure, he was certainly an adequate choice, and he was as deserving as anyone, I suppose, but there was not a lot there to get excited about. Well, Bob Dole lost the election in uninspiring style, and Terry Porter lost the Suns in the same fashion. Now he's out, and is holding an IOU for about five million bucks.

That's bad, but it's particularly bad if you're Robert Sarver. He doesn't buy into sports franchise economics: lose money on a team while you own it, make it all back (and then some) when you sell it. He doesn't want to lose money while he owns it, and he hates--HATES--paying people for doing nothing. But that's exactly what he'll be doing with Porter: paying him for doing nothing.

Whose fault is that? Steve Kerr's. No doubt about it. If your coach is so bad that you fire him mid-way through his first season, you have to begin entertaining serious doubts about the guy who hired him. That guy is Kerr.

Beyond the lousy hire, Kerr also tried to change the general direction of this team from 7SOL (that's "seven seconds or less," a reference to Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo, run-and-gun style) to more of a defense-oriented, half-court offensive style. I don't have any problem with that change in the abstract. But when you do that, what happens to Amare Stoudemire, who is at his most devastating when he gets into the lane, a lane that is now clogged by Shaquille O'Neal? And what happens to Steve Nash, who is a liability on defense, and whose offensive game is made for run-and-gun, not for walking it up the court? If you've watched the Suns this season, you've seen what happens. So, again, you have to look at Steve Kerr and say, "Okay, so tell me how you thought this was going to work...?"

Anyway, what's done is done, and we're faced with the only question that matters: what do the Suns do now? Start rebuilding. First and foremost, that means getting rid of players around whom you cannot rebuild, and keeping players around whom you can. And that, in turn, means getting rid of Shaq and Nash. Actually, in the case of both, it's less about getting rid of them than about giving them a chance to win elsewhere. Both of these guys could still contribute to a championship team. So, let them go where they've got a shot at it. Get as much value for them as you can. If you can't get decent value, then hang on to them. Their contracts will be up soon enough anyway.

As far as coaching goes, if I were Robert Sarver, I would do what they did with Isiah Thomas in New York: "Okay, pal, you bought the groceries, you cook the meal." In other words, let Steve Kerr take over as coach next year. That will either be the first full year of a rebuilding process, or the last full year of the old regime. There won't be much at stake, so it will be a good time to let him get some coaching experience. If he's terrible, you can get rid of him. If he's good, you can keep him. And in the meantime, you bring Flip Saunders in as GM, just to keep the pressure on Kerr...

Footnote: There's one thing that I've always liked about the Suns--they don't stand pat. We haven't had to tolerate years of mediocrity in the way that some other franchises have. (See: Clippers, Los Angeles.) The Suns will swap out players, swap out coaches, make blockbuster trades, do what they have to do to try to improve. This hasn't gotten us a championship yet, but it's created a situation in which we've never been too bad for too long, and it's always been possible to remain optimistic. So, while we are at a very low point now, I don't expect we'll stay there for long.

Who cheats on Jennifer Connelly?

In the last two Jennifer Connelly movies I saw, her movie husband cheated on her.

Really? I mean, REALLY? You're gonna do better than Jennifer Connelly?

If you're a moviemaker and you ask me to believe that life as we know it is a mere computer program invented by machines and broadcast directly to the human brain, while human bodies serve as batteries to power the aforementioned machines--until, that is, humans are liberated by a messiah with Christ-like powers, who leads them in an epic war against the technologically superior but philosophically handicapped machines, well, all of that I'm going to buy into. But a guy cheating on Jennifer Connelly? No way.

Footnote: In truth, guys will cheat on anybody, though you'd be throwing away a LOT when it comes to Jennifer Connelly. Perhaps because of that, she's played dull and somewhat shrewish characters in the couple of movies to which I referred above. I mean, if she were laid back and fun AND gorgeous, it just wouldn't be believable that a guy would cheat on her.

That got me thinking, though...she hasn't showed much range in her choice of roles over the past decade or so. I wonder if she just doesn't have range.

By way of contrast, think about the guy who plays Don Draper on "Mad Men." In that show, he's your classic alpha male, master of the universe sort, though in the Gary Cooper strong/silent way, not in the Donald Trump self-promotional way. The same guy, though, has had a recent story arc on "30 Rock," in which, despite being very handsome, and despite playing an M.D., he is actually kind of a hapless beta male. He's believable in both roles, too.

I'm not sure JC has that kind of range. Even so, I still wouldn't cheat on her.