American Exceptionalism

  I certainly don't intend to vote for anyone other than President Obama this fall ( I can't see myself ever voting for any Republican in any election unless the Republican party radically changes what they stand for at some point in my life. ), but I enjoy politics in general as a spectator sports, and the Republican contest for the 2012 Presidential nomination has been as entertaining as any political contest in recent memory.  The Republican electorate's futile search for a viable non-Romney candidate has been fascinating.  It's been entertaining as all hell to watch all the Republican in-fighting and the rise and fall of candidates like Michele Bachmann ( Her anit-gay yet flaming-gay husband has been worth the price of admission.  I will never again wonder why Michele Bachman is so f*cked up. ), Rick Perry ( Ooops! ), Herman Cain ( Insert pizza-related sexual harassment joke here ), Rick Santorum ( God, I don't even know where to start with this guy.  Just go ahead and Google "Rick Santorum closet" and have some fun. ), Donald Trump ( ????? ), and Newt Gingrich ( who was at the bottom of the polls and had his whole campaign staff resign, then rose to the top of the polls, then dropped back near the bottom before the first contest in Iowa, then rose back to the top of the polls in time for the South Carolina primary, and now has dropped back into to second place again just a week later ).

Newt Gingrich has been by far the most fascinating of the GOP candidates.  Considering his personal history ( He cheated on his first wife and discussed divorce with her when she was in the hospital for cancer.  He was cheating on his second wife while he tried to get President Clinton impeached for infidelity, and divorced his second wife months after she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. ) and his political history ( He was charged with ethics violations when he was Speaker of the House or Representatives.  He was reprimanded and fined $300,000 by the House by a 395-28 vote. ), it's no surprise that polls show that less than 30 % of the country views him favorably.  As somebody who wants President Obama to win in November, I was pretty happy when it became apparent that Newt actually had a realistic chance to be the GOP nominee.  However, after watching the speech below, I've decided that it would dangerous to underestimate Newt.





That speech was brilliant.  I don't agree with a single word Newt said in it, but it was brilliant.  In 20 minutes, he said just about everything a GOP candidates needs to say to attract GOP voters ( plus he managed to make a sly play for Ron Paul's voters ).  Newt hit all the rights notes, including the notes for all the "hidden messages" that all Republican candidates need to send if they want to attract racist Republican voters while not offending non-racist Republican voters.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that all Republicans are racist.  What I'm trying to say can best be summed up by this quote from Bill Maher:


"I'm not saying all Republicans are racist, but if you're racist, you're probably a Republican"

This may not be something that Republicans want to hear, but it's reality, and every Republican political operative knows it.  In the game of politics, any campaign manager who is actually earning his or her paycheck will try to win votes by any means necessary.  Winning "by any means necessary" means not leaving any votes behind.  It means trying to win every vote that's out there to win, including the votes of racists.

Oh, and by the way, if you think that pandering to racist voters is something that only Republican candidates do, I have two words for you ... Sister Souljah.

However, while both Democrats and Republicans have played the racist-card in the past, Republicans certainly have more to gain from it, especially considering who happens to be President right now.

So as I mentioned in this post, Republicans often need to talk in code, and Gingrich is a master at it.  A particularly good example of this can been seen in the YouTube clip above starting at the 11:25 mark.  Newt says ".. but the centerpiece of this campaign is American Exceptionalism verses the radicalism of Saul Alinsky." and "he ( President Obama ) draws his ( understanding of America ) from Saul Alinsky.".  He also makes sure to link President Obama to Saul Alinsky again near the end of the speech.  I highly doubt that many voters have any idea who Saul Alinksy is ( I'll admit that I didn't until I looked it up ),  but I'm sure most voters recognize that the name "Saul Alinsky" sounds extremely Jewish.  So, I wouldn't be surprised if Newt keeps putting "Obama" and "Saul Alinsky" in the same sentences of his campaign speeches, because if there is one thing racists voters hate more than a black guy, it's a black guy who hangs out with Jews ( BTW, Barack Obama was 10 when Saul Alinsky died, so he clearly never met the man, but I don't think racist voters are going to do the research to figure that out. ).

In any case, it's not really Newt or his hidden messages that riled me up and inspired me to write this post.  What really got me going was Newt's invocation of American Exceptionalism.  Newt's certainly not alone in the GOP field in invoking this concept.  Mitt Romney wrote a book called "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness", so no matter who Obama faces in the general election, he's going to to be attacked on this issue.

The concept of American Exceptionalism can be traced all the way back to 1831, and it has certainly evolved over the years, but when Republicans invoke it these days they are usually trying to say that the USA is a near-perfect nation which never does anything wrong.  They are trying to imply that anyone who doesn't believe that is unpatriotic.   I find that concept to be abhorrent on many levels ( and actually quite an un-patriotic ), and I hope that Obama has the balls to trash this concept when Romney or Gingrich inevitably attacks him with it.  However, I'm not really counting on Obama to show any balls, especially because he's been quoted as saying the following about American Exceptionalism:

 "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

I can kinda see what Obama was trying to say here.  He was talking in the kind of code that Democrats sometime need to talk in.  He was trying to assure people like me that he thinks the GOP concept of American Exceptionalism is silly, but he's doing it in a way that he hopes will keep people from thinking that he's unpatriotic.  However, I think the comment above isn't a strong enough defense against the inevitable "American Exceptionalism" attacks.  The comment above makes him seem wishy-washy to folks like me, and not-sufficiently patriotic to the believers in American Exceptionalism.  I think President Obama need to tackle this issue head on.  If I were on the President's campaign team, I would advice him to say something like the following if somebody like Gingrich brings up American Exceptionalism in a Presidential debate:  

"Republicans like yourself like to perpetuate the fallacy that those who do not believe in American Exceptionalism are not patriotic.  You imply that those who do not believe in American Exceptionalism do not believe the USA is the greatest country in the world.  Well, Speaker Gingrich ( or Governor Romney - BTW, I'll willing to accept that former Presidents should be called "President" in perpetuity, but it's little silly to use to term "Speaker" to refer to a guy who was booted out of his Speaker job by his own party. ), I do believe we live in the greatest country in the world.  However, just because the USA is the best country in the world, that doesn't mean we shouldn't work hard to make it better.  Resting on our laurels isn't what made America great.  Patting ourselves on the back isn't the American Way.  Working hard is the American Way.  I believe that all Americans should be working hard to make this country better.  Words alone won't make us better.  Belief alone won't make us better.  Only action will make us better.  We need to take the actions that will give every American the opportunity to succeed. ( After that, he should point out Democratic policies that will improve America and help ordinary Americans succeed. )." 


Anyway, time to send this post out in time for the Florida Primary.  I'm really looking forward to following it tomorrow night.


Rich

Occupy Wall Street, the 1%, and the Lucky Coin.

   Income equality has been getting a lot of attention these last few months - so much so that's it's certainly going to play a big role in 2012 Presidential election.  Most people you run across have an instinctively emotional reaction to the issue ( "Wall Street Pigs!" / "Dirty Hippies!" ) which is often shaped in large part by their political leanings and personal history.  However, I don't think you can really get to the bottom of this issue, or decide what actions ( if any ) need to be taken unless you consider the roll luck plays in all of this.

Personally, I don't have a problem with income inequality per se.  I like living a relatively free society ( "relatively" is an important qualifier here, because I'm certainly not an anarchist or a Ron Paul-esque uber-Libertarian ), and in any free society you are going to have winners are losers.  Left completely to their own devices, some people will succeed and some people will fail, and ultimately that leads to "haves" and "have nots".

However, while I certainly recognize that life is inherently unfair ( and never can be made completely fair ), I do believe in fairness.  While I know that the playing field of life will never be completely level, I feel like society should take steps to make the playing field more level, which in turn would lower the degree of income inequality. #


( #: I could probably write an entire book about the steps I think society should take to make the playing field more level, but because I don't want to distract from the main point of this post, I'll just list two examples below:


1) The estate tax ( Or as conservatives like to call it, "The Death Tax" ) needs to stay, and if anything, needs to be at a higher rate.  While I do believe well-off parents should have the right to give their kids the benefit of their wealth, I feel this needs to be tempered a bit for the sake of fairness.  If a person becomes wealthy simply because of accident of birth rather than his/her own efforts, I don't think it's too much for society to ask that person to give at least half of his/her inheritance back to society so the money can be used to help the less fortunate.  Bill Gates kids are always going to have an unfair advantage over kids who grow up in poor families.  We certainly shouldn't be changing the tax code to give the Gates kids an even larger advantage ( and for whatever it's worth, Bill Gates agrees ( See the 2:30 mark of this video ) ).


2) Public school funding should be made more equitable.  In the USA, public school funding comes largely from local property taxes.  This means that kids who are already lucky enough to grow up in wealthy suburbs with high property taxes, also get the benefit of very well-funded public schools.  It's just not right that kids with well-off parents get to go to public schools with the best teachers ( If you were a talented and in-demand teacher, and suburban schools were paying $20,000 more a year than schools in poor inner-city areas, where would you choose to teach? ) and the latest high-tech equipment, while kids in poor areas go to schools with 40 year-old textbooks.  I know that it's unlikely that public school funding will ever change in my lifetime, but I really believe that funding for public education should come entirely from federal taxes and the money should be distributed such that every child in an American public school gets roughly the same quality of teachers, textbooks, and equipment.  I should also note that I'm saying this as a parent of two school-aged kids who lives in an area with extremely high property taxes.  I know a more equitable public school funding system would result in less public school funding going to my own kids, but I really think the USA needs more fairness in public education.  My kids don't need a fancy video board in their classrooms if that means poor kids need to use obsolete textbooks.  Heck, I don't even think half of these fancy new educational tools are needed for a better education.  We just had a basic blackboard and #2 pencils in our classrooms when I was a kid, and I turned out fine. )


Of course, conservatives will argue that any attempt to "redistribute wealth" via more equitable taxes or public funding reeks of "Socialism" ( See "Plumber, Joe" ).  Conservatives will make passionate arguments based on fairness ( but they'll make a very different kind of fairness argument than the one I'm making ).  They'll argue that any system that distributes money from people who work hard to people who don't work hard is inherently unfair.

Of course, therein lies the crux of the issue.  Therein lies the argument that often begins ... "Why should I give my hard-earned money to ...".

The truth is, a lot of conservative folks believe that there is a nearly linear relationship between hard work and success.  They feel that the rich have earned every cent they've made, and that it is unfair to distribute money from the hard-working rich to the lazy poor.

OK, to be fair, most conservative don't hold views quite that extreme, but there is certainly an undercurrent of that feeling behind all conservative ideas about tax policy.  There is certainly a belief that rich people have earned their wealth and deserve to keep their wealth.  I'm certainly not going to try and refute that the vast majority of rich people have worked extremely hard to accumulate their wealth.  Most rich people do work really hard.  However, I think a lot of conservatives make the following incorrect logical inference:

Most people who are wealthy have worked very hard.
Therefore ...
Most people who are not wealthy, did not work hard.

The conclusion above simply isn't true, because it fails to take basic probability ( what some might call "luck" ) into account.

Let's say you had 1024 coins, and decided to play the following game with them:

1) You start by flipping all 1024 coins and discarding all coins that do not land on heads.
2) In each subsequent round of the game, you flip all of the coins that are left, and discard all coins that do not land on heads.
3) You play until just one coin is left ( if all coins are eliminated in a round,  you should play the round over ), and the coin that is left is declared the winner.

On average, you'll be left with one coin after playing 10 rounds of this game.  I think most people would recognize that there was nothing special about the winning coin that made it come up heads 10 times in a row.  I think most people would recognize that if you played the same game again, the "lucky" coin that won the last game would have a 50% chance of being eliminated in the first round of the next game.  The lucky coin didn't win the game because it had some special ability to come up heads.  The lucky coin didn't win because it somehow deserved to win.  The lucky coin won because in a probabilistic sense, one of those 1024 coins had to win.

However, as much as people are willing to accept the influence of random chance when it comes to coins, we tend not to consider the influence of randomness in the lives of people.  I'm sure we've all watched those CNBC biographies of successful people from time, and the narrative is almost always the same.  The subject of these biographies is always ambitious, persistent, and hard-working, and we are presented with a series of events in the person's life which lead to the person's success.  Along the way, the subjects of these biographies need to make some critical decisions, and the subject becomes successful because he or she almost always makes the right decision.  After watching these biographies, you left are with the impression that successful people are successful because they are smart enough to make the right choices in their lives.  However, from a pure probability standpoint, it is more accurate to say that successful people made they right choices because they are the people that ultimately became successful.

In other words, exceptionally successful people are not successful because they have some extraordinary ability to always make the right decision.  In any group of exceptionally successful people, you'll find that all the people in that group made the right choices necessary to become successful, because if they had not made the right choices, they wouldn't be in that group of successful people.  The exceptionally successful people in the world are essentially lucky coins.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to say that hard work and talent don't matter at all.  I actually think they matter a lot.  Not everybody can become a self-made billionaire, and the people who achieve that level of successful are almost all extremely hard-working and talented.  I firmly believe that there is a positive correlation between hard work and success, as well as a positive correlation between talent and success.  I'm quite sure that the average person who makes $200,000 a year is more hard-working and talented than the average person who makes $50,000.  I'm sure that the average billionaire who makes $200,000,000 a year is more hard-working and talented than the average person who makes $200,000 a year.  However, the person who makes $200,000 a year isn't 4 times as hard-working and talented as the person who makes $50,000.  The billionaire who makes $200,000,000 a year certainly isn't 1000 times as hard-working and talented as the person making $200,000 a year.  Even the most extraordinarily talented people need some degree of luck to achieve extraordinary success.  Somebody like Steve Jobs was almost certainly a one in million talent and visionary, and he probably would have been a success even if he had been relatively unlucky in business.

However ...

What if Steve Jobs had been raised by his biological parents rather than the adoptive parents who helped mold him into the person he would become?

What if he had not been adopted by parents who lived in area full of high-tech companies ( Including
Hewlett-Packard, where Steve attended after school lectures and took a summer job. )?

What if Steve adoptive father hadn't work on electronics with him in the family garage?

What is Steve's adoptive family didn't have a garage?

What if Steve Jobs had never met Steve Wozniak?

What if Xerox had realized how valuable their mouse/GUI system was before sharing it with Jobs?

What if Ross Perot had not decided to invest in NeXT when the company was running out of money?

What if Apple hadn't decided to invite Jobs back to the company in 1997?

There may have been 100 people out there with the talent and vision equal to Steve Jobs, and I would bet that almost all of them achieved a large measure of success in their lives.  However, a few them were probably ruined by a few unlucky breaks early in life, and most of the 100 probably "only" become millionaires rather than billionaires.

I firmly believe that I live in the greatest country in the world, and I love that my country affords each person the opportunity to be a great success.  However, that opportunity clearly isn't distributed equally, and random chance can certainly play a role in who fails and who succeeds.  I believe in the American Dream, and I certainly don't want to take that dream away from those who have achieved it.
However, it makes me angry when people suggest that the wealthy pay too much in taxes already.  The wealthy are generally very talented and hard working, but they are also generally quite fortunate, and I certainly don't think it's unfair to ask them to share more of that wealth with those who are less fortunate ( Oh, and don't get me stared on all that Laffer curve nonsense, or we'll be here all day! ).  The bottom line is that the wealthy have attained wealth that is far out of proportion with their level of hard work and talent.  It's time that those "lucky coins" share a few coins of their own.

Rich

How the Jets Stole Christmas

My immediate reaction to yesterday's Jets debacle was the "The Jets stole Christmas", which led me to fire off the tweet below:

And what happened then...? Well ... in Jets-ville they say, that Mark Sanchez fumbled the football away.#JetsStoleChristmas

There was a time in my life when I would have spent hours fleshing this Grinch/Jets idea into a full-fledged parody poem.  However, those days are gone - my two little guys keep me far too busy.  However, that doesn't mean I can't write a stanza or two ...

Every Jets fans in Jets-ville liked winning a lot ...
But it seems like the Jets,
Who played games in Jets-ville,
Did NOT!


The Jets played like crap!  The whole football season!
Why did they suck?  No one quite knows the reason.
It could be because their O-line wasn't right.
It could be be because their OC wasn't bright.
But I think the most likely reason of all
may have been their QB turning over the ball.

Merry Christmas all!

Rich

P.S. Go Knicks!!!!

Best ... Santa Photo .. Ever!

Yeah, I know it's a bit of a cheat to post a photo on November 30th, just to make sure I don't go a month without a blog post - but hey, that's one great photo.

Scary Snow

  It started to snow this morning.  It started to snow REALLY HARD, with flakes the size of quarters.  It 's just above freezing outside, so the snow is an extremely wet and heavy snow.

   Heavy snow has its good points ( It packs well for snowballs and snowmen! ) and bad points ( It breaks your back when you shovel it. ), but today it's simply dangerous.  Well, I don't know if the snow itself is dangerous, but the trees being covered with it certainly are.

  Most snowstorms arrive when the trees are already bare of leaves.  However, today is only October 29th.  While some leaves have certainly fallen already this Fall, the vast majority of leaves are still on the trees, and about half of those leaves are still green.  These leaves are collecting a huge amount of wet snow, so the branches are bearing far more weigh than they normally would in a snow storm.  You can imagine what that might lead to, but seeing it for yourself can be really scaring, especially if you happen to the close to the trees.

  As soon as it started to snow this morning, the boys were itching to get outside.  However, the last thing I wanted was for them to get soaked in all that wet snow and slush, so I convinced them to stay inside for a while.  However, as it became clear that the snow was sticking and there wasn't much slush, I decided to cede to Peter's request to go outside.  I let him go out in our backyard, while I watched from the glass sliding door that connects our kitchen to our deck ( Michael was still inside, and I wasn't actually looking forward to going outside in this weather ).  As I watched Peter play outside, I began to notice all the snow on the branches.  I also noticed a fairly large branch on the ground in our neighbor's backyard.   I called out to Peter and asked him to come back to the deck.  When he got to the deck, I told him that he was only allowed to play in the part of the yard that was not under the trees.

  A minute or so after that, the first branch came down in our yard.  There was a large cracking sound, and it looked like there was a small avalanche happening in the trees in the back our yard and a relatively small branch hit the ground.  A few minutes later, I head another large crack but I didn't see a branch ( I later noticed a second branch on the ground in our neighbor's yard. ).  While Peter was safe in the treeless part of the yard, I was still relieved when he came in a few minutes later.

  However, as soon as Peter got inside, Michael decided that he wanted to play in the snow.  I decide to let Michael out, but before I sent him outside, I sat him down and set very script parameters for where he could go in the yard.  He would need to stay in one small treeless corner of the yard, and he would have to stay in my sight at all times.

While Michael was having fun, the branches continued to crack.

Crack! A branch fell  in the back left corner of the backyard.
Crack! A branch fell in the right side of the backyard.

Crack! Crack! Crack!  I could hear branches falling all over the neighborhood.

CRACK!  This last crack sounded like a gunshot.  I watched as a HUGE branch fell to the ground in middle of the backyard ( The thing is about 12 feet long and 10 feet wide.  Perhaps I'll post a photo later, but Ruth is out and has our camera with her ).  About a split second after that thing hit the ground, I called out "Michael! Inside Now!"

Anyway, the boys are now both safe inside, as I sit here thinking about how I'm going to manage to dispose of these 4 ( and counting! ) branches in the backyard.

Rich

Sports just saved me $177

Being a sports fan just saved my family $177 bucks, and possibly a lot more.

This morning, our credit card company called to ask us if we had just made a $177 dollar purchase for a World of Warcraft subscription.  We certainly hadn't, so we got our $177 refunded and our credit card number changed.

While we were happy to get the call, I was a bit surprised that a credit card company would even check up on a purchase of only $177.  After all, that's not a huge amount of money, so the purchase was clearly flagged because it was considered  to be an usual purchase for our family. 

That got me thinking about how lucky we were that I don't play games like World of Warcraft.  After all, I kinda fit the profile.  I'm a male computer programmer, and I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school.  I'm good at Math and Physics, studied engineering in college, and didn't even kiss a girl until I was 21. Heck, I bet 90% of guys with that background have made credit card purchases for various types of sword-n-sorcery type games, books, and movies.  If I had been making those kind of purchases regularly, I don't think a $177 credit card charge for World of Warcraft would have raised any eyebrows.

However, I don't purchase that type of stuff, because I'm a huge sports fan, and most of my leisure time is dominated by sports.  If it wasn't for my love of the Mets, Jets, and Knicks, I'd probably be a World of Warcraft player, and I'd be at least $177 poorer right now.

I guess, I also have my kids to thank.  I used to buy lots of video games ( mostly sports video games, but still video games nonetheless ), and if I was still buying video games I guess the World of Warcraft purchase wouldn't have seemed too unusual.  However, I pretty much stopped playing video games after my kids were born.

Anyway, it a scary world out there, and it tends to bite you on the ass more often than not.  It's just nice when you are lucky enough to dodge a bullet every once in a while.

Rich

The Evidence

So, as promised, I did it.  I went to the the most evil place on earth.  As you can see, I wasn't happy about it.

Well, at least the boys seemed happy ( even Michael the Mets fan.  He hasn't learned to really hate the Yankees yet - the little guy doesn't have a mean bone in his body ).

As you can see below, Peter was especially happy.

If you zoom in on the picture below, you'll see that I was actually smiling ( That's because we were leaving. ).

Rich