Does the Government Just Not Get It?

(As you may have noticed, I'm not a frequent blogger. I'm okay with that. I just wish my own favorite bloggers were a little more regular. Does that make me hypocritical? I hope not.)

Does the government not get it, or do I not get it?

When the government proposed a 7 billion dollar bailout of the banking industry, I was thinking along these lines:

The banks have all these bad debts out there. The causes for the problems are complex, but can be fixed, but that won't fix the actual problems because even if they stop approving high risk loans, if they stop having loan officers work on commission (incentive to approve loans that shouldn't be approved), the bad loans that got us into this mess would still be out there.
Also, while we don't want to reward the bank executives that got us into this mess, we realize that it's our money in those banks that's becoming worth less and less.

So, I was all in favor of the government spending money to buy up some of these bad loans. And by assuming those loans, I thought maybe the government would eventually get at least some of that money back. Of course, that's not what's happening. Instead, Wells Fargo, PNC and other banks that seem to be not in trouble are buying the banks that are in trouble, which does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. It just removes competition. And that money? It will probably wind up going to those executives who sold off their bad banks and those executives who eliminated their competition. It certainly won't wind up repaying that 7 billion dollars. That's going to be our great-great-grandchildren's jobs.

No wonder when the 7-billion-dollar bailout got passed, the stock market actually went down.

So let's move on to health care. I'm in the process of moving to a state that has mandated health care. Now, I checked their web-site and before I found out I had to be a resident to get that mandated health care (what am I supposed to do in the time up until I can establish residency? Stay healthy?) I saw that there was one insurance plan with a reasonable monthly fee, but its deductible was $2000. Now, if you can only afford that low monthly fee, there's no way in hockey-sticks that you can afford $2000 worth of health care to meet that deductible. (Again, what are we supposed to do, stay healthy?)
The next health plan cost about $250 a month. This is the same amount I was paying in a state that did not have mandated health care, so all the mandate is doing is apparently punishing those people who don't get health care. It's not like I don't want health care. But let's say a person is unemployed. Let's say further that this person is unemployed from a good job, so he/she is getting $500 a week in unemployment compensation. And when that person was employed, let's say he/she bought a house, condo, townhome or other place, which costs $1200 a month, which is reasonable for a good-single-income. That means that of the $2000 this person is getting a month, $800 is left after paying the mortgage. If this person gets health insurance, that will leave about $550 a month to pay for everything else, including a phone (that he/she will need for interviewing), Internet access (again, a pretty severe need when looking for a job), heat and electricity, and credit card debts that he/she incurred when he/she was making a decent living and expecting to be able to pay those debts off ... at some point.
So, for this person who can't afford health care, what is a mandated health care state going to do? They're going to fine him or her, of course, for not having health care. Yeah, that's helpful.

Just so you know that I'm not just here complaining, what government health care policies need to do is actually reform health care so that people can actually afford it -- and afford to be sick if they get it (not that we actually want to get sick).

I'm LJ and I am not running for president. But I did approve this message.

just an idea I had.

As we charge head-first into a new fall TV season, I thought I'd pop my thoughts on here. Now, keep in mind, I have not seen a single episode of any of these. I have only seen premises and a few ads and the occasional cast picture.

90210 - It may have a more diverse cast and less dated wardrobe, but it's still a retread.
America's Toughest Jobs - One of the contestants says, "This is not a game show". It's a game show.
Crusoe - Looks splendid, and I personally think you can't go wrong with the Robinson Crusoe theme, but I don't know if network viewers will go for it, so if you want something that's going to make it to a full season, you may want to give it a pass.
Do Not Disturb - I love Niecy Nash. Can't say the same for Jerry O'Connell. And a creative team who calls a Manhattan Hotel "The Inn" can't really be counted on for creativity. Plus it's on FOX. Don't count on it lasting.
Easy Money - A show about a guy running a short-term loan business? At least it's not a comedy. The guy is cute, but these are the only things I know about it.
Eleventh Hour - A government scientist travels the country investigating abuses of science? Didn't this show get canceled three seasons ago? But it's from Jerry Bruckheimer and it follows CSI so it may not be all bad. Features Mark Blucas (at least once).
The Ex-List - Clips look promising, except for one problem: She has one year to go through her list of exes or die. (Can a premise really be a spoiler?) Features Eric Balfour, which is a plus, and quite probably a new hot male guest star every week. But if it makes it through the first season, what's it going to do for a second?
Fringe - I just can't take Joshua Jackson seriously. There. I said it. A mis-matched trio team up to solve crimes involving "fringe science". Wait. Isn't this The Eleventh Hour and didn't it get canceled three seasons ago?
Gary Unmarried - The premise seems to be that some woman (Paula Marshall) picked Ed Begley Jr over Jay Mohr. Sorry. I just can't see that. Maybe 30 years ago when Begley was in his twenties and Mohr was in diapers, but not now. Also, they have kids in the cast, which is never promising.
Hole in the Wall - A game show where people try to arrange their bodies to fit through a hole in a wall. ... Seriously? That's a premise?
In Harm's way - Documentary series featuring America's toughest jobs (see second title on list). If you like shows about heroic men and women risking life and limb just "doing their jobs", I'd probably pick this over ATJ. That doesn't mean I'll actually be watching it, though.
Kath & Kim - My favorite TV critic has already picked this as the first show to die. Can't say I disagree.
Kings - The Book of 1 Kings (from the bible) set in modern times? Given what I remember of that book, this could be excellent. But will they have the guts to include the gay subtext? And a good looking lead doesn't hurt.
Knight Rider - It had a summer pilot movie that I recorded but still haven't seen. If you saw that, you already know whether you'll like the series. I haven't so I can't say much. But it has David Hasselhoff in it, which fans of the original will consider a plus but I'll consider a minus.
Life on Mars - A cop from today wakes up in 1973? Not a bad fish-out-of-water concept, although I'd be wracking my brain trying to remember who won the World Series (as ... investment strategy). He has to solve crimes. Not quite sure what to make of the show, though he does look good in a leisure suit. The 70s were painful for me, but that was the late 70s.
The Mentalist - Zap2it essentially calls it Psych without the jokes. It looks good and I do like Simon Baker, and since he's not trying to pretend to be psychic, it might not wear thin.
My Own Worst Enemy - Christian Slater suffers multiple personality disorder / dissociative identity disorder, and one of them is an assassin? I don't buy it.
Opportunity Knocks - A game show comes to your door. Why do you let them in? You know it can't end well (though reviews say it'll be less humiliating than, say, Moment of Truth).
Privileged - A journalist-wannabe takes a job tutoring a rich woman's "bratty" twin granddaughters. I can't say I'm a fan of the bratty teenager genre.
Secret Millionaire - A group of millionaires (or so) goes undercover in the slums. If this were a drama, it might be slightly offensive. Instead, it's a "reality" show and some lucky poor person is going to get $100,000 (one lucky poor person for each secret "agent"). (I don't know if that's every episode or a grand finale.)
Stylista - Call it America's Next Top Fashion Editor. Then hand me the remote.
Surviving Suburbia - Zap2it calls this one "The hum-drum lives of suburbanites". Don't TV people realize that hum-drum doesn't play well on TV? Okay, actually, they say the hum-drum lives get turned upside down, but that's by a new neighbor who sues them to make them cut down a vine. Still sounds pretty hum-drum.
Valentine - Greek gods enter the contemporary world to play matchmaker. If the casting people found actors who were Greek godly, we would at least have something to look at every week. I'm going to try, but the one picture I've seen doesn't exactly feature Michelangelo's David and the Venus de Milo ... of course, some people might find a girl with arms a plus.
Worst Week - the commercials look horribly, abysmally bad, and since commercials are supposed to make you want to watch a show, I'm going to choose to believe them.

Remember, I am not a professional TV critic, haven't seen any of these shows (and thus don't actually know what I'm talking about. But this is what I'm basing my TV viewing on this fall.
If you're reading this and you're a network executive, instead of typing up that cease-and-desist order, think about how you could maybe try to attract someone like me who admittedly watches way too much television.

Politics

There's a part of me that can't help thinking that John McCain selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in an effort to win over disgruntled supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton. If so, I really hope that the disgruntled supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton aren't stupid enough to find Palin -- a "Social Conservative" card-carrying member of the NRA whose sole foreign affairs experience is having Russia and Canada as next-door neighbors -- a suitable substitute. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of faith in the voting public.

I suppose there is one place where Governor Palin can compare to Senator Clnton: She's currently under an ethics investigation.*

According to On The Issues (http://www.ontheissues.org), Sarah Palin opposes gay rights, opposes abortion, thinks that the drug problem consists of drunk driving, and supports the death penalty.

She suspended the Alaska 8-cent fuel tax for one ear (which may have amounted to a little more than a 2% savings on gas at the time).

She opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies, claiming that "windfall profits taxes alone prevent additional investment in domestic production." Now, I may not have two whole years experience governing the state with on of the smallest populations in the United States (DC is not a state, but apparently North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming each have fewer people), but I thought companies invested in their own growth because it made good business sense, tax or no tax. Then again, oil companies don't really seem to me to be the most forward-thinking of corporations.

She is suing the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as "threatened" because "The Service's analysis failed to adequately consider the polar bears' survival through prior warming periods..." Hey, they survived before! That's good enough for her.

Hillary Clinton, who wants tougher gun control to keep guns out of criminals' hands, supports (same-sex) civil unions with full equality of benefits; "deeply values choice" (in regard to abortion); includes stances on crack, non-violent drug offenders and special drug courts; and -- yes -- she also supports the death penalty.

Clinton supports a windfall profits tax on oil companies and investigating gas price manipulation.

While I did not find her stance on Polar Bears, Senator Clinton is not from Alaska, so that isn't that big of a surprise. Her position on the environment goes a bit beyond Alaskan issues. Look it up at On The Issues (dot) org.

If you think that Sarah Palin is a good choice for Vice President, then so be it (obviously I disagree, but that's what makes this country great), but first find out what her positions actually are. Certainly don't look to her as a Clinton subsitute. Also find out what John McCain's positions are and what Barrack Obama's positions actually are, and Joe Biden's as well. And find out their real histories, not that e-mail rumor cr** that's already been refuted at snopes(dot)com but people keep repeating anyway. Start at OnTheIssues(dot)org, but then go beyond that.

This coming election is too important to vote for someone because your candidate didn't get the nomination or because one candidate is the wrong color, too young, too old, or from the wrong state. Know who you're voting for, but know why.

-------------------------

* From what I've been able to gather, Sarah Palin has been accused of pressuring the state's chief of public safety to fire her sister-in-law's husband. She denies this. According to The Atlantic, "there's mounting evidence that the impetus did indeed come from her." Allegedly, Palin asked the Alaska attorney general to open an investigation when the legislature already had an ongoing investigation. I guess that passes for ethics in politics: once an investigation has started, it's okay to ask for it.

A special ode, if you will, for Alexander (Sasha) Artemev:

The gymnast the coaches dismissed
And the announcers continually dissed
Put forth a good show
They should probably know
He would have been severely missed

The gymnast coaches didn't name
'Cause they thought he would go down in flame
May not have won gold
But I've always been told
It's an honor to perform at the Game

The gymnast the coaches rejected
Could have been feeling dejected
But the man did his best
And he even impressed
I say he should have been selected

I'm just throwing a test up here to see how easy or hard it is to post some of the pictures I've taken on here.


The above is Michael Young, of the Texas Rangers. Next is Mark Teixeira, when he was on the same team.



I'm not real happy with the way the picture browsing software puts pictures at the beginning of the post.
Anyway, the next few are from last year when I went to Carolina Panthers' training camp. Dang, that was hot! ... and not entirely in a good way.






That's enough for today's "test".

Today's Rant: Pizza

I wonder if I should have called this blog LJ's Rants instead of Studies in LJ, because it seems like I'm always whining about this or complaining about that. (Always being, I suppose, three times.)

Today's complaint is brought to you by the creative geniuses behind Frescata Pizza. I saw this thing in the store yesterday, and it promised 10 -- count 'em: 10 -- toppings on its supreme pizza. So, here I was all set for some pepperoni, some sausage, some mushroom and pepper, some who knows what else. But when I read the fine print, where it lists the toppings, they include: Mozzerella, Parmesan, garlic and oregano, green, red and yellow bell peppers. That's right: Peppers counts as three different toppings. Cheese counts as two different toppings, and Italian spices counts as two toppings. Seven of the ten toppings are "plain pizza", and then the eight is red onion, and not nice long strips of red onion, but diced red onion. I'm surprised they didn't count the tomato sauce, because then they could have had eleven toppings (or more likely left off a color of pepper the sausage). I guess I should count myself lucky they didn't count the crust, but then, that would be a bottoming.

And this is LEGAL!!! No false advertising whatsoever. They say they have ten toppings and by God, they have ten toppings. I wonder if they could have called it a ten-topping pizza if they'd put ten slices of pepperoni on it.

It's hell getting old

I'm starting to understand why people get comb-overs. Yes, they look ridiculous and no, the people who have them aren't fooling anyone. But the other day, I was getting my hair cut and the idiot hair-cut-person goes to show me the cut at the back of my neck. She also manages to show me how she's very carefully arranged the hair on the back of my head to make sure none of it goes over this big, round pink spot at the top of the back of my head. I nearly screamed. It's easy when you have a full head of hair to say, "I would never do a comb-over," but when you're faced with this big, pink spot and it's really, really pink -- link sunburn pink -- you just want to hide it.

I'll have to see if I can get a picture posted.

ETA: I tried taking a picture; it wasn't very impressive. I think I'm just too good at hiding the bald patch.

My Industry Sucks

I just spent two hours at a Java User Group function, learning how they've developed this new technology that will allow an idiot off the street to develop a fully functioning web site in 20 minutes. This is not going to help me get a job. I don't need to know that the skills I've spent twenty years trying to develop, some schmuck off the street is going to be able to do with no experience whatsoever. And if you're not using that technology, then there's this laundry list of technologies you're going to need not just to understand, but to have 2 or more years of development experience with.

I could learn any language they throw at me with no problem. I've done it before. But don't expect me to learn seven languages, and also 10 applications that'll cost me $600 or more apiece just to learn them, especially since I'd be competing against people who actually have application development experience because they were working for companies on the cutting edge when I got jobs elsewhere.

That two years of experience means nothing. Really, trust me on this. You can learn a new programming language in a week, including Java. What matters and takes skill and what some people will never develop is the ability to analyze a problem, to develop a design, to work with a customer to reach a desired goal. But those things aren't measurable. So instead, we get laundry lists of languages and you can't tell the HR rep, "Oh, you don't really need that. You just think you do."

Ten Top Ten?

Last week, AFI broadcast what they called the 10 Top 10, the ten best films from ten different genres. I was really looking forward to seeing some movies get some recognition that usually get overlooked. I guess I should have known better. It was mostly the same list of the same movies as always, just reorganized, and they had to get pretty specific with their "genres" to do it.

Courtroom Drama is not a genre. Drama is a genre and Courtroom is a setting. And Gangster is just a sub-category of Drama ... unless the gangster movie happens to be funny or include a smattering of show tunes. Epic is not a genre. Epic is a scale. You can do Science Fiction on an Epic scale, you can do drama on an epic scale. You can even do romantic comedy on an epic scale, and frankly every list AFI puts out has those Epics anyway, so give some other movies a shot.

Sports? Sure, I'd like to give Chariots of Fire a genre ... which brings me to another part of the rant which I'll give you later ... but when you go into the video store and look under "sports", you're going to find Superbowl Highlight videos, wrestling videos, maybe some kind of golf instructional. You'll find Raging Bull and Rocky under Drama.

So, to help AFI out, here's a list of real genres for movies:

Drama, Comedy, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller / Horror, Mystery, Action / Adventure, Musical, Animation, Holiday, and Western. Of course, that's 11 right there, which is a problem for AFI.

I was going to include definitions, but then I came to the definition of Action / Adventure and my brain cramped. (An action movie is a movie that has action?) Maybe somebody who's actually studied film will help me out on this?

I was then going to list some of my choices for the top movies in each category when I realized that i don't watch nearly enough movies. But maybe at some point I'll list my favorite movies in my profile by genre.

Now for my other rant: The ads for AFI's 10 Top 10 included scenes from The Incredibles, music from Chariots of Fire and I'd swear the space ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. NONE of these films were on their lists anywhere.

Welcome ... or are you welcoming me?

For years, friends have been telling me that I had to get an on-line journal. Of course, they would say I had to get one ... at one of those closed pseudo-communities that shall remain nameless, and I didn't want that. Then, through the miracles of the modern Internet (that is to say, somebody posted a picture of a really hot celebrity), I discovered the wonderful world of blogger and blogspot. So, here I am.

This blog is going to record my thoughts, and my thoughts can be pretty eclectic. So if you're looking for thoughts about movies, or thoughts about music, or thoughts about politics ... you might find them here one day and find something completely different another day. I can't promise you an adventure -- or a rose garden for that matter. I can't even promise I'll be able to keep up with this. But for as long as I'm here and you're here, I hope we both enjoy the ride.

So who am I? Metaphysically speaking, that's something I hope you'll discover as I publish. Or what's in a name? I try not to use my real name on line. I'm not sure I'm fooling anyone, but the names I use on line are LJ and Sasha. LJ stands for "Leather Jacket" and folks who know me by that name probably know me pretty well at this point. Sasha stands for ... well, that would be telling. A few people are starting to know Sasha in places where "Leather Jacket" seemed ... inappropriate. Anyway, I was going to call this blog "Sasha's World", but that was already taken (it happens), so by the time I got the name "Studies in LJ", I'd already said my name here would be "Sasha". And, of course, my e-mail address is "David Carr Fan" (heck, somebody has to do it) but no one really knows me as DCF.

Was that an incredibly lame starting point?