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March 12, 2006
Begin the Spin
We're heading into Spin Season, as Republicans try their best to distance themselves from Bush in time for the election. One emerging theme can be spotted on the front page of today's SF Chronicle: "GOP is in 'deep funk' over Bush spending".
Conservatives contend Bush has never resisted spending, starting with the gigantic farm bill in 2001 and continuing with his failure to veto a single bill. Bush is the longest-serving president to do so since John Quincy Adams in 1829.
Not mentioned, of course, is legislative role. All spending began in the Republican-dominated Congress and Senate, and only then received approval by the president. How hypocritical is it to send gigantic spending bills to the White House and then complain that he doesn't veto them?
Sorry folks -- it's not Bush spending, it's Republican and Democratic spending, in proportion to the numbers that voted yes on any given spending bill.
So let's go to the numbers. I googled to find the first spending-oriented bill I could dig up at random; it was the voting record for a November 2004 vote to increase the debt limit from $7.3 to $8.1 billion. A lucky strike, really, since it's not just about spending, but about giving yourself the freedom to spend more than before without having to pay for it up front. It's the legislative equivalent of calibrating the bathroom scale to -80 pounds.
Ok, who voted for it? 50 Republicans, 2 Democrats.
Against? 43 Democrats, 1 Republican.
Doing the math, let me see, that's, um... 96% Republican spending!
Let's revisit that headline: GOP is in 'deep funk' over Bush spending. Uh huh. And I'm in a 'deep funk' that my car lets me go way over the speed limit.
March 11, 2006
Mixing it up
I really didn't expect the Battle of the Blog Names to take this long.
Hmm... Well, sorry for the ugly spectacle, but a bear's gotta eat.
March 10, 2006
Hilarious
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair says:
"He speaks to the audience as if they're idiots. I think the reason he does that is because that's the way these issues were explained to him."
Now I obviously would find this hilarious.
But it's also kind of funny that as this quote bounces around Blogistan*, nobody has to ask who it's about.
*Livia's brilliant alternative to the horrible term "blogosphere"
March 5, 2006
Last night's fortune cookie
"In life, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are."
Is this true? Discuss.
(Lucky Numbers 5, 38, 19, 7, 33, 21)
March 3, 2006
Atlas Shrugged, turned off the TV, shambled into the kitchen, popped a frozen waffle into the toaster, thought about the struggle some more.
Happy 50th birthday (very roughly) to Atlas Shrugged.
I read it, and the Fountainhead, when I was 18. Oh yes, even the 100-page speeches at the end of each!
It put hair on my chest, made me realize that I was the master of my own destiny. My intellect, my very will was enough to move me through the world, to strive for perfection and disregard the petty interference of jealous fools. The smallness of my town was behind me, the enormity of the world was barely enough to contain my ambition. I was unstoppable.
Two years later I was pouring the wine and arguing, late into the night, against the Objectivist outlook with my friend Ed, a true convert to the Ayn Rand school. Long before I knew the slightest thing about politics, I had embraced and rejected her philosophy as myopic and internally inconsistent. But it was probably the most potent intellectual ride of my life.
These days, my much more political self thinks Ayn Rand has more in common with Malcolm X than with Bush-era conservatives. But that's probably just me.
At any rate, here's a link to a 1957 review of Atlas Shrugged from the National Review, of all places. Good Lord, just reading the names of the characters -- Cuffy Meigs! -- makes me love that book all over again. God bless Ayn Rand.
March 1, 2006
She's walkin', yes indeed,
She's talkin', like you and me...
A few months ago I sawed a hole into the door between the garage and kitchen -- the cats use it to get to their litter boxes. The other day, I got home from work and came through the garage. There was Genevieve, crawling toward the cat door, looking at me, saying "pa pa..."
Gen's words come in a few categories. First, there are the ones we try to teach her that she picks up on the spot. This was the case with her very first word -- at least the first one we could recognize. I knew that a lot of kids say "Uh-oh" early on, so I looked at her and said "Uh-oh". She looked right back from her high chair and said uh-OHHhhhhh. And boy did she LOVE her first word. She said it over and over all the next day. I love the way she says it too, like the Uh is just a necessary preamble to a long and luxurious OHHHhhhh. Lately she's even begun to use it in context, when she purposefully drops something from her high chair, and then says Uh-OHHhhhhhhh as if to blame it on gravity.
Then there are the words that take a while to catch on. Mama and dada have been part of her babble for a few months, just sounds without meaning. She didn't know how to use P's, but the closest thing, B, was a pretty common sound for her. After a few weeks of me saying "poppa" to her, she one day looked at me, pursed her lips, and started building up some P power back there. She was working really hard to not make a B, and to hold it in until she was good and certain it would be a P: mmmmmmmm-p-f-p-fp-PA-pa!
Then there are the left-field surprises, the words that remind you that there's a searching little brain at work in there, and maybe it's time to start watching what you say. Gen was watching one of her Baby Einstein DVDs one day (don't laugh; they probably don't make her smarter, but she does love 'em). Two of these videos have the "Old McDonald" song on them with a kid chorus. As Livia was washing dishes, she heard Gen sing Ee-i-ee-i-oo!. I think that's my favorite new word yet: five syllables! And it's just charming to listen to her go through the permutations: YYI-yee-ooh, ee-yi-yoohh, etc.
Currently she's still got just a few more words: mama, ball (bowel), hi, possibly dog (daw), which might apply to every animal she looks at. The majority of her language consists of a lot of pointing accompanied by grunts and expletives that are internally consistent enough that, to her, they're probably words.
Then there's the walking.
Gen never really went through a crawling stage. She mostly scoots around, using one foot as a prow and her arms as paddles. They way she shoves her foot out front, it's reminiscent of the way a clam moves through mud, only a little faster. She learned to crawl eventually, but it hasn't really caught on, since the learning stage of crawling is less efficient and holds less apparent promise than the advanced stages of scooting.
But neither of these holds a candle to standing and holding both her hands up; this is a signal to mom and dad to stand behind her and put a finger in each hand. Then she puts her head down and charges after whatever takes her fancy, usually the cats. She can probably spend hours doing this, and only our aching backs are the worse for wear. Lately we're trying to wean her off one finger at a time, and she can usually get about 10 feet by herself before she's plops down on her well-padded butt. If we sit apart from each other, she loves to toddle from one to the other, throw herself forward recklessly the last foot or so (haven't failed to catch her yet!), get smothered with hugs and kisses, and turn around for another lap.
At this point, it actually seems more dangerous for Gen to "cruise" along furniture. If she starts falling, she reflexively holds on tight with one hand, which mostly makes her just twist around and drop in an unpredictable direction. Remember the old reflex test with the yardstick, where you put your fingers around it, someone drops it, and you can "measure" how fast your reflexes are by where you catch it? The test would be a lot more conclusive if conducted on a twisting, falling baby while someone stood nearby with a decibel meter. Gen is the living refutation of Newton's test where the cannonball and the apple achieve equal velocity -- she falls faster than both. It can be pretty tough catching her before she hits the ground. She rarely gets hurt -- her damage abatement skills are fantastic -- but it puts a scare in her and she needs a lot of hugs afterwards.
Her current fascination is with ramps and steps. She'll find a cement pathway raised a couple inches off the ground in the park, step up on it, walk to the other side, step down, turn around, and repeat the process over and over. This almost always requires two-handed help from her hunchback parents. We're expecting maybe 2-3 weeks more for reasonably confident walking, and another 2 months before she can handle steps and ramps with one of us spotting nearby.
So that's the news from Gen's house. I've been wanting to do a "progress" post for a long time, and this one is, of course, far from exhaustive. With the current project wrapping up soon, perhaps I'll have more time for shorter, more frequent updates.
Oh, but wait! I almost forgot to tell you about Gen's Secret Project!
Well, hmm... I guess that'll have to wait for another time...