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I really don’t want to have to hear all this right now

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I mean, this is June…June 2011, right?  Almost 17 months before the 2012 election?  I find that I grow fatigued already with the attention being paid to the early stages of the Republican Party’s presidential contest (I would be fatigued with the attention to the Democratic Party’s contest right now, too, if there was one).  There’s too much time before the election, and too much opportunity for things to happen—to change—for me to believe I’ve got to lock in to a candidate right now.  Yet the drone of activity continues.

It now seems clear that Rick Perry’s made up his mind to run for president.  Fine.  (I’ve been fighting off an imagined letter explaining his strategy, but I don’t know if I can fight it forever.)  One reason the Perry prospectus is positive is that the Newt Gingrich political brain trust that quit on him earlier this month was a bunch of Perry people, so they’re now available, if asked, to work on the makeover of yet another Texas governor into a national leader.  (Wasn’t the last one we sent you enough for a while?)  Gingrich says that was just a difference of opinion about how to run a campaign…wonder what his reasoning is today to explain his major fundraisers also calling it quits?

There’s been some consideration lately that perhaps Michele Bachmann is not so out of the mainstream after all; this is disturbing, too, and appears to be true to the extent that the mainstream is no longer where it once was.

But there was some not-disheartening news today in the stories on Jon Huntsman’s announcement of his candidacy for president.  He was able to make the point that he believes himself to be the best person for the job without resorting to irrational and hysterical (and untrue) accusations about President Obama.  No ominous warnings about socialism, or death panels, or usurpers and traitors, or even accusations that he doesn’t love his own dog.

“He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love,” Mr. Huntsman said of Mr. Obama. “But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better president, not who’s the better American.”

I don’t really want to be undergoing a presidential election right now, in the same way that I really don’t want to be undergoing a colonoscopy right now.  If I must, though, I could get used to one that sounded like that; on the other hand, I’m far too used to the sound of Americans’ religious bigotry showing its resilience, as it did again today.

Beware of those peddling politics for dummies

Pat Ryan 6 Comments

The chattering classes say Republicans are in trouble because of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposed changes to Medicare.  They say that because, across the land, there has not been a rousing call for its adoption by acclamation, and therefore we can ascertain that the proposers are on the outs with the American people.  In fact some people do object, and for a number of reasons, but I don’t know how much trouble the whole GOP is in over this issue, since I try not to make the sweeping generalization my first conclusion or give myself credit for being able to see the future or into the minds of others.

But I think that what’s happening right now on this subject is a good thing.  We need to talk about details if we’re going to find a way out of our federal budget mess.  No one has wanted to talk specifics because, well, talking about paying more and spending less is not fun.  But beyond that, few in power dare to address specifics for fear that the short attention span American voter and the heat-before-light American news media will fixate only on the fact that someone proposed something and rain down ridicule and ignominy upon them until the end of days (no, not until October 21, for much longer than that).  Any open discussion or real give and take on a serious issue becomes more and more unlikely as it becomes more and more clear that the discussion will be intentionally twisted into a negative campaign ad.

We have to talk specifics on this, but that doesn’t mean that we have to do everything that is proposed, or that every unadopted proposal is a failure.  Ryan’s plan may never become law, but it already served the purpose of getting us talking about details.  Now we need to keep talking, not recoil from the negative reaction to the first serious plan and never say anything ever again.

The budget crunches in this country are real and can’t be solved just with accounting tricks; it’s going to mean painful cuts in programs that people need as well as ones they want.  For example: here in Texas our state law requires a balanced budget and there’s only so much money available this time around—tens of billions of dollars less than the current budget.  Absent a multi-billion dollar windfall of biblical proportions, the only way out means someone’s ox gets gored…or likely in this case, everyone’s oxen.  As Patricia Kilday Hart made the point in a recent column, the discussion is about what gets defined as an “essential” government program.  In order not to reach into the state’s savings account this time, there are budget plans that make some changes:

It cuts state Child Protective Services “intake” offices so severely that officials predict 85,000 calls about abused children will not be answered.

It shortchanges school districts for the 80,000 new students expected to show up at the front doors of public schools next year.

It cuts Medicaid reimbursement rates to nursing homes so drastically that the industry predicts 75 percent of the nursing homes in Texas will shut their doors, leaving 60,000 elderly Texans without care and 47,000 employees without jobs.

The polls have been showing for a while that people want the budget fixed, they just don’t want the fix to hurt them.  Well, “they” are going to have to get over that or “we” will get nowhere…except closer to the edge as the wind picks up a little bit.

News on the march

Pat Ryan 3 Comments

Tidying up the files and hoping no one has noticed the “funny” little comments at the top of the page while I find out where they’re coming from:

I am still annoyed at the decision announced last month by the Obama Administration not to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged September 11 attack plotters in civilian court…actually, “shameful” is the word that first came to mind.  It caved in to bullying and fear-mongering from those who don’t really trust the justice system and want a guarantee of a conviction, which they believe they get from a military tribunal instead of a dozen New Yorkers off the street (I refer you to a prior discussion to the issue last year).   On the other hand, Osama bin Laden didn’t get a public trial, either…

Good news and bad from our Texas Legislature.  The state senator who took heat for her plan to railroad accused sex offenders by changing the rules of evidence in their trials had the temerity to defend her position in the paper by claiming her plan actually protects the rights of the accused!  On the other hand, the bogus statistical machination that the state education agency has been using to falsely pump up the annual student assessment test results is on its way out.

In another development on the fungible facts front, the Arizona senator who intentionally misspoke on the Senate floor about the use of funds by Planned Parenthood, and who had his press secretary try to explain it all away by assuring reporters that those words were “not intended to be a factual statement,” has had the Congressional Record edited so that he’s not lying misspeaking anymore.  Because members of Congress have granted themselves the “privilege” to do things like that.

Some days you think you have a pretty good handle on things and the world is spinning in greased grooves…and then you’ve got to figure out how to reconcile that world with one in which an Iranian government power struggle in the 21st century has led to arrests on charges of sorcery, and where the Chinese have outlawed time travel in works of fiction.  If they’re against mythical stories, why do they keep calling their country a republic?

If you know anything, thank a reporter

Pat Ryan 7 Comments

Is it funny-strange that a blog that comments on reporting and journalism has a category for Woeful Journalism but not one to sing its praises, or is it just funny-sad that there hasn’t been a need to have one?

People who came to journalism post-Watergate and later, like I did, have a lot of complaints about the state of the art/profession/trade as it exists today; I suspect our elders have their own hit parade of infamies that we committed.  But my complaint has never been about how the digital revolution is changing the way information is presented to the reader/listener/viewer/consumer/custo-mer, because to my mind the delivery method is a tertiary concern.  The primary concern should be the content, with a little preserving-and-protecting-a-free-and-independent-press as a secondary.

I’m fine with electronic self-publication (duh!), and there’s not a damn thing wrong with everybody expressing their own beliefs and opinions.  But I don’t ever confuse what I and thousands and thousands of other people do at our own private keyboards with what real, professional reporters do out in the world every day.  Today I ran across two great examples of why that job is hard to do, and why it can be dangerous to do.

When the Earth quakes and the ocean covers the land and nuclear reactors split open, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is.  When a dictator sends his army against its own people to suppress their expression of a desire for freedom, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is.  Real reporters leave their comfortable homes and go where the news is happening, to observe real events and talk to real people, to report, so the rest of us can know what’s going on.  The biggest risk we stay-at-home bloggers take is suffering a fragmented hard drive.

The next time you hear someone complain about the biased news media, remind them that it’s real reporters, working for all kinds of publications, who provide us all with the raw data that pundits and demagogues misconstrue to suit their own purposes, and that sometimes they risk their lives to do it.  More times than you probably imagine, they lose their lives doing it.  We owe them our thanks and our respect.

→UPDATE Mar. 21: Times reporters released by Libya

This is how nothing gets done

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

OK…finally, I’m going to write; I don’t even know what’s been so important for the past week that I couldn’t find time to write, or even to start to write.  But today is different: as soon as I let the dogs out I’ll be nailed to the keyboard—about time I wrote about this amazing revolution in Egypt and linked to those articles backgrounding the Muslim Brotherhood before Mubarak flees and a new government is already in power.

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That was weird: a broken fence slat.  Looks like something on the other side of the fence, where they’re building the new road, slammed into the middle of that fence slat and broke it in two; hell, the big piece was knocked out into the garden.  I’ll just get a hammer from the garage and nail it back in, and then hit the blog—maybe something about the deafening cognitive dissonance of all the talk about “high taxes” while today’s news reports that our tax burden is lower than it’s been since 1950!

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You’d think a grown man would be smart enough to, first, change out of his dress shoes before stepping into the garden, and second, be careful enough to avoid the dog poop obstacle course between the back door and the back fence.  After I clean off my shoes and walk around to check out the other side of the fence, I’m back at the blog—gotta check on the reaction to the story that new government spending under Obama has been less than the tax cuts under Obama!

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Wow; I learned more about the neighbors in the last 20 minutes than I have in the whole nine years we’ve lived here.  Dude just kept talking, changing from one subject to another, with no apparent destination in mind.  I like the guy, but it was too cold for just standing there for a chat.  Now, just let me get this mess on the desk cleared off and I’ll get to work…I should riff on David Frum’s post about how the crazy talk on the talk shows is getting even crazier as the ratings start to slide.

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I had a nagging feeling I’d forgotten something: well, now’s a good time to get that stack of papers off of the kitchen counter.  Some think getting a  new job is a pain in the neck, but I have a much lower opinion of it.  Forms for new health insurance, and receipts, and registration info for the new 401(k).  At least I can do that quickly on line, and then start writing…what’d I do with that article about the brain being wired to resist new science?  That can mesh with the story about the people who insisted on believing—despite the absence of any evidence—that a terrorist attack was being plotted in a Port Arthur Ramada Inn conference room…15 years ago!

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OK then, I’m going to start with—was that the dryer?