2012 Movies I've Seen

I did pretty well getting to watch most of the 2012 movies that I wanted to see.
Here is my list of movies I watched from the past year, followed by my list of movies I still want to see.

Movies I've seen:

Marvels The Avengers
The Dark Knight Rises
Skyfall
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Amazing Spider Man
Brave
Madagascar 3
Dr Seuss' The Lorax
Wreck It Ralph
Men In Black 3
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Hotel Transylvania
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
Dark Shadows
John Carter
Mirror, Mirror

Lincoln

Argo

Django Unchained

Snow White and The Huntsman

The Bourne Legacy

Rise of the Guardians

Jack Reacher

Looper

Total Recall

ParaNorman

The Pirates: Band of Misfits

Movies I still want to see:

Les Miserables
Life of Pi
The Hunger Games
Wrath of the Titans
Frankenweenie
Chimpanzee
Cloud Atlas
Rock of Ages

The sordid history of VP picks

All that is left now in the presidential race is for Mitt Romney to pick his vice presidential candidate. That an a lot of polling and horserace reporting.

But while VP picks tend not to have a significant impact on an election outcome, I still find it intriguing how we seem recently to have had a whole string of really wretched and horrific VP picks by both parties - Dan Quayle, Joe Lieberman, Sarah Palin, John Edwards....

But it didn’t used to be that way. The VP slot used to be considered the on deck circle for the presidency with Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all being prime examples. During modern times, you might turn back to Richard Nixon’s first VP choice of Spiro Agnew as an example of a bad choice. But I don’t think it was considered a bad pick at first, but only after the scandals that came in Nixon’s second term that led to Gerald Ford becoming the first person to ever assume the presidency without ever having been voted on by the electorate.

There were not a lot of problems with VP choices back then - George McGovern’s choice of Thomas Eagleton being a rare exception. Walter Mondale, tapped by Jimmy Carter, went on to win his party’s nomination for president. Reagan’s choice of George Bush launched a political dynasty. Even Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro was seen as a politically smart move at the time.

So the real trouble seems to have started with Dan Quayle who was instantly panned the moment he stepped into the limelight. And even though Bush won anyway, Quayle was not able to build up any political capital out of his tenure as VP and saw his post-VP presidential campaign flameout almost unnoticed by the political mainstream.

However, Mike Dukakis’ choice of Lloyd Bentsen was almost universally praised, even though it did not help him win the election. And the next set of VP candidates - Al Gore and Jack Kemp - were considered good choices all around.

Then in 2000 we had Al Gore choosing the conservative Joe Lieberman while Dick Cheney chose himself to be VP for George W. Bush. In retrospect, Lieberman was a lousy choice for Gore and may have cost him the election. Cheney, on the other hand, while considered to be one of the worst VPs of all time by most liberals, proved to be highly influential and powerful in office as opposed to the hapless and largely ineffectual Quayle.

And even though Lieberman did everything he could afterwards to stab his party in the back, he was not as bad of a choice in retrospect as John Edwards was for John Kerry. We now know that Edwards was carrying on an affair at the time that has since landed him in court facing felony counts of misuse of campaign funds.

Not to be outdone, however, Republicans turned around the next election and chose Sarah Palin, who managed to turn herself into a political celebrity even as the presidential ticket she was on crashed and burned.

Presently, despite the best efforts of Republicans to characterize Barack Obama’s VP as a loose cannon, Joe Biden has proved to be a pretty steady and reliable asset to the campaign.

So now all eyes will be on Romney as he weeds through a long list of potential VP picks looking for one that could satisfy the Tea Party base without scaring away even more moderates - assuming there are any left at this point.

Little League Baseball

My son's Little League Baseball team is doing terrific this year. They currently have the best record in the Machine Pitch division of North Side Little League.
Until last night they were undefeated after 8 games, but they finally had an off-night. The first run through the batting order everyone struck out and the team fell behind 4-0. And yet, they still managed to nearly come back in the last inning and ended up only losing by one run.
Nathan got a hit his second time up that scored a runner from third, however he got sloppy running the bases and ended up getting picked off at second.
But tonight's game was completely different. Tonight they played the second best team in the league and walked away with it. The final score was 17-8, but only because we gave away 4 runs in the last inning.
Nathan got a hit every time up to bat, but only scored once. In his last at bat he hit a clear double - not a single where he advances to second on a throwing error which is very common at this age - but a solid hit that went all the way into the outfield and allowed him to run to second before they got it back in. I only hit one double the entire time I played Little League and I played all through junior high school. Nathan is only in the third grade.
Nathan's team is the Nationals, which ironically is one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. The second best team is the Cubs.
Machine Pitch ball can be rough. The machine pitches the ball hard and fast every time. You have five chances to hit the ball and there are no walks. The only way to get on base is to hit the ball. But tonight, everyone was hitting the ball. We had a small team - 8 kids, just enough to field a team without being disqualified - because three kids were gone for Easter Break. That meant that they went through the batting order quicker. I think Nathan got to bat four or five times, whereas the night before he only batted twice.
The first time up, Nathan was able to drive in a run even though they got him out at first. Later on in the game, however, he kept coming up to bat with the bases empty because the kid in front of him kept hitting home runs. That was Andrew, the team slugger and the coach's son. Andrew had a fantastic night hitting three back-to-back-to-back home runs over the fence.
Isabel has been having a good time playing baseball too. She is in her third year of T-Ball and is enjoying it. In T-Ball they don't keep score and everyone gets to bat and play in the field each inning. Isabel can hit the ball pretty solidly every time off the tee and get on base. I've been pitching to her in the batting cages lately and am impressed with how well she can swing the bat and hit the ball. I think she will do fine moving up to machine pitch next year if she wants to keep going.

John Wayne films

I’ve been watching John Wayne movies lately. Just watched the Howard Hawks-directed trio of Rio Bravo and its two variations - El Dorado and Rio Lobo - in sequential order. 

They are all good in their own way. If I had to combine them, I would take the Dean Martin character from Rio Bravo; the James Caan character from El Dorado and the Jack Elam character from Rio Lobo.

Maybe because Deano is more believable as a recovering alcoholic, but I think he bests Robert Mitchum in the role as the down-and-out lawman who the Duke helps out. But then the young James Caan as the knife-wielding "Mississippi" out does the guitar-strumming Ricky Nelson as "Colorado" in Rio Bravo. And the wild-eyed Jack Elam is in top form as the crusty old guy with the itchy trigger finger who helps to guard the prisoner.

That got me to thinking about my John Wayne movie collection which is substantial but nowhere near complete. I own the following John Wayne movies on DVD:

Rooster Cogburn (‘75)

Big Jake (‘71)

Rio Lobo (‘70)

True Grit (‘69)

The Undefeated (‘69)

The War Wagon (‘67)

El Dorado (‘66)

In Harm’s Way (‘65)

The Sons of Katie Elder (‘65)

McLintock (‘63)

Donovan’s Reef (‘63)

Hatari! (‘62)

How the West Was Won (‘62)

Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (‘62)

The Comancheros (‘61)

The Alamo (‘60)

North to Alaska (‘60)

Rio Bravo (‘59)

The Searchers (‘56)

The Sea Chase (‘55)

Blood Alley (‘55)

The High and the Mighty (‘54)

Island in the Sky (‘53)

Hondo (‘53)

The Quiet Man (‘52)

Rio Grande (‘50)

Angel and the Badman (‘47)

Plus the following movies in a 4-disc collection:

Hell Town (‘37)

Winds of the Wasteland (‘36)

Paradise Canyon (‘35)

Rainbow Valley (‘35)

Texas Terror (‘35)

The Dawn Rider (‘35)

The Desert Trail (‘35)

Blue Steel (‘34)

‘Neath the Arizona Skies (‘34)

The Lawless Frontier (‘34)

The Lucky Texan (‘34)

The Man From Utah (‘34)

The Star Packer (‘34)

The Trail Beyond (‘34)

Randy Rides Alone (‘34)

West of the Divide (‘34)

Riders of Destiny (‘33)

Sagebrush Trail (‘33) 

Desert Command (‘33) (‘46)

His Private Secretary (‘33)

Shadow of the Eagle (‘32)

The Hurricane Express (‘32)

There are many more Wayne movies.

The ones at the top of my want list include:

Red River (‘48)

Stagecoach (‘39)

They Were Expendable (‘45)

Fort Apache (‘48)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (‘49)

Sands of Iwo Jima (‘49)

The Horse Soldiers (‘59)

Flying Leathernecks (‘51)

The Fighting Seabees (‘44)

Back to Bataan (‘45)

Operation Pacific (‘51)

The Shootist (‘76)

Brannigan (‘75)

McQ (‘74)

Cahill: U.S. Marshall (‘73)

The Cowboys (‘72)

Green Berets (‘68)

Chisum (‘70)

Hellfighters (‘68)

The Train Robbers (‘73)

Legend of the Lost (‘57)

The Fighting Kentuckian (‘49)

Wake of the Red Witch (‘48)

Flames of the Barbary Coast (‘44)

Dakota (‘45)

Tall in the Saddle (‘44)

A Lady Takes a Chance (‘43)

The Spoilers (‘42)

In Old California (‘42)

Flying Tigers (‘42)

The Dark Command (‘40)

The Three Godfathers (‘48)

Movie List 2011

I'm late getting my year end movie list up.
 Here are the 2011 movies I have seen so far:
 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
 Cars 2
Thor
 Captain America: The First Avenger
Kung Fu Panda 2
Rio
The Smurfs
Super 8
Rango
Hugo
Winnie the Pooh

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

 Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Puss in Boots

X-Men First Class

 Cowboys and Aliens

 The Muppets

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Adventures of Tintin

War Horse

We Bought a Zoo

Arthur Christmas

 And here are the movies I expect that I will see eventually:

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
 The Help
 Moneyball
Midnight in Paris
 J. Edgar

Election analysis Dec. 2011

It would seem to me that there were only ever two candidates in the Republican presidential race who got in with any serious expectations of actually winning. That would be Mitt Romney, who never stopped running for president since 2008, and Rick Perry, who came into the race with strong poll numbers and truckloads of campaign cash. The others had entirely different motivations for getting in the race. Some, like Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann hoped to further their political careers down the road and saw raising their profiles though a presidentail campaign as the way to do it. Others, like Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich saw it as a way to boost and/or develop their name brand and increase their personal worth in the form of increased speaking fees and book sales. And then there is Ron Paul who is an old-fashioned perennial candidate representing a small but devoted minority faction. But now, due to the stubborn resistance to Romney and Perry’s spectacular flameout, less-than-serious candidates have been allowed to rise to the surface rather unexpectedly. I’m sure no one was more surprised than Herman Cain when he became the frontrunner and suddenly was expected to know things like where Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan is and what U.S. policy in Libya has been. And the “9-9-9” plan was never meant to be anything more than a soundbite to drum up interest in his books and pump up his future lecture fees. And, of course, the fact that his personal life had never been fully vetted out is the biggest clue that he was never intending to be anything more than a novelty candidate so that he could cash in on the free and initially benign media exposure of a national campaign. Gingrich too was just looking to maintain his brand name and keep his foot in the ring so that he could continue to play the role of “seasoned political insider” which is what fuels his private enterprises. That was apparent when his campaign staff abandoned ship halfway into the race. But Gingrich is also just enough of an egomaniac that he will probably continue the charade, pretending that he is a serious candidate right up until the bitter end. Now, to be fair, one could say that Barack Obama would have probably fit into the category of someone just trying to advance their political career and build name recognition for a future race back in 2008. But he ended up winning the primary and had to ramp up quickly to show that he could be a serious and substantive candidate. I think Tim Pawlenty could have done something similar if his campaign had caught fire early on, and maybe even Rick Santorum (who might have fared better had he not lost his last election). But Bachmann, I believe, was never more than just a fringe candidate, not unlike Dennis Kucinich was for the Democrats in 2008. So what happens now? If Gingrich actually wins this thing then Republicans can kiss their chances of victory in November goodbye. There is no way someone with as much baggage as Gingrich could survive a national race that is not dominated by Tea Partiers the way the Republican primary is. Perhaps if by some miracle the entire nation suffers mass amnesia and forgets the past three months, then maybe Rick Perry could come back and win the nomination. Maybe. But most likely it will be up to Mitt Romney to carry the Republican banner next year and his best chance of winning will depend on circumstances largely beyond his control. Only if the economy starts to tank again and/or shows no signs of improvement before the election will Republicans have a chance. That is why they are so adamant about refusing to support recovery efforts today. Anything that boosts the economy between now and next November will also serve to boost Obama’s re-election chances.

My new iPod

I saved up my birthday money from the past two years and bought myself a new iPod. My old iPod, which I treasured, was an iPod mini and had just 4GB of space. That is about 1,000 songs worth and when I got it, it seemed like plenty. But after awhile I began to want more. I created a Great Songs list that had a broad mix of rock, country and jazz with lots of Beatles, Bob Dylan and Bing Crosby as well as the Ken Burns Jazz collection. But then I began to get into classical music and the more classical pieces I would add to the iPod, the more of the other songs I would have to pull off. Before long I had nothing but classical music on my iPod and even then not enough room for all that I wanted to put on it. Plus, I should note, my iPod mini did not have video capability, not that I would have had room for any videos anyway.
So I solved all those problems with my new iPod which has 160GB. Let me repeat that.... 160 GB. Wow! Now I have all my music on my iPod, and I do mean ALL of my music - or at least all that I want to put on it. ALL of my classical music - and I've got a lot of classical music after spending the past year raiding the San Antonio Public Library for everything it has to offer. I've got all my Ken Burns Jazz collection plus lots more jazz music to boot; I've got all of my Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bing Crosby and the Police. I've got almost my entire rock collection, most of my country and folk collection, even my collection of Broadway musicals. I may eventually put my Christmas music on there too as the holiday gets closer. So far I have more than 10,000 "songs" on the iPod.
And then there are the videos. I have two movies which came with digital copies that I had no use for previously and now I have loaded on my iPod - Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and the 2010 version of Karate Kid, both of which are pretty good movies. And I have downloaded half a dozen free TV episodes off of iTunes mostly to entertain my kids - several cartoon shows, a National Geographic special and an episode of Top Gear. And I have a whole mess of Podcasts that update everyday including NPR news updates, lots of old time radio shows and the entire Rachel Maddow show downloaded everyday. On top of all that I have downloaded all the digital pictures from my computer at work - mostly pictures of my kids.
But the best part is that even after all of that, I still have more than 67 GB of free space on my iPod.
I agree completely with this article in the Economist.
The iPod is definitely the best thing Steve Jobs ever did. While it would be nice to access the Internet or make phone calls, I would never give up my iPod for an iPhone or an iPad. Having all my music in one place, easily accessible by searing or playing randomly is just too much fun.

Failed monetary policy

Disagreeing with Paul

"I disagree with that. I think Paul is wrong on this point."
It was a shocking thing to say in a Sunday school class. Especially one led by a group of people who fervently believe the Bible is the infallible word of God. But I couldn't keep quiet and concede the point. Besides, they brought it up and asked my opinion. So I hope nobody was too terribly shocked and offended. I'm pretty sure they already see me as the token liberal in the class and they haven't run me off yet.
The topic today was about gays in the church. Methodist doctrine currently forbids gays from taking any kind of leadership role in the church. A person in the class who sits on a committee that will represent our church at a conference where they will discuss making changes to the church bylaws brought up a proposed amendment that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. She asked what we all thought. The class quickly divided into two groups - one that wants to keep the doctrine the way it is and says the amendment is not needed, and one that believes the doctrine is already too tolerant of gays in the church.
Then I spoke up and said I support the amendment and furthermore, I did not believe that being gay was a sin. This caused a flurry of page flipping as people dove into their Bibles to call up Leveticus and First Corinthians to "prove" to me that being gay most certainly is a sin. Our class leader found it first and proceeded to read the entire section in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians where he condemns homosexuality in no uncertain terms.
That is when I interjected my shocking statement. "I disagree with that. I think Paul was wrong."
Gasp!
I didn't get a chance to say much more because the class time was over so I thought I would elaborate here on my blog.
Paul was clearly influenced by the Old Testament writings in Leveticus. What's more, he had no knowledge or conception about biology. Sexual orientation is a biological function, not unlike being left or right-handed. A person can choose to suppress it or ignore it, but they cannot change it.
But back in Biblical times they had no idea about this and just assumed that people were choosing to do "unnatural" and thus sinful things. But note that God never directly addresses this as a problem - it is not part of his Ten Commandments and he never mentions it as a problem to any of the prophets. Instead, he seems to be much more concerned with idolatry and other forms of wickedness.
Likewise, Jesus never broaches the topic in any of his stories or sermons. One would think that if it was such a heinous sin meriting death and isolation from the church that they might have made some effort to mention it rather than leaving it to be addressed in the multitude of laws listed in Leveticus most of which we ignore today. But for some reason, this particular "sin" is given a higher status among believers. They are not so much concerned about other forms of adultery and have pretty much forgotten about the bromides against eating pork, shellfish or of touching women when they are menustrating.
No, gays are definitely singled out for special mistreatment. And yet, despite all of this condemnation we find that roughly 5 to 7 percent of the population in every community throughout time "chooses" to be gay. A most remarkable persistence and amazingly consistent as well.
So I disagree with Saint Paul and instead agree with Lady GaGa in my belief that gay people were "Born That Way." I think I have more scientific evidence on my side than Paul did and I dare say if he were still around today he might even change his mind.
But the more distrubing thing I think for my Sunday school classmates is my clear rejection of Biblical authority. When they show me a quote in the Bible I am only allowed one of two options: I can claim that the quote is misinterpreted or taken out of context, or I can prostrate myself before the Good Book and swear allegiance to whatever it says. Instead, I chose a third option. I disagreed. I don't think we are misinterpreting Paul, I just think he is wrong on this point. I agree with him on most everything else he has to say, but on this one point I think he was off base. But, if I'm correct and Paul is wrong, that would mean that the Bible is not 100 percent true and correct. And if we can't trust the Bible, what can we trust? Are we just going to pick and choose what we believe in the Bible???
Yes and yes. The Bible is not 100 percent true and correct. It has lots of factual errors and contradictions. It reflects many of the prejudices and biases of the times that it was written. So what can we trust? Trust your God-given brain and think things through. That's what you do.
My faith is with God. I do not rely on any intermediaries between me and God. I do not confess my sins to a priest. I do not look the the Vatican or the Pope for spiritual guidance. The Bible most certainly guides my faith, but it does not dictate my faith. My faith is with God directly.
I believe God made the entire Earth and all the people in it. I believe he cares for and loves ALL the people and not just some lucky few. I believe he accepts us the way we are and wants us to do the same. We constantly fall short in our love. God does not fall short in his.

Tea Party vs. al-Qaeda

Q: What is the difference between the Tea Party and al-Qaeda?

A: One hates the United States government with a white-hot, purple passion .... and the other is a group of international terrorists.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn gets to say “I told you so”

Interesting story in the Express-News over the weekend.
It turns out that this $20-plus billion deficit that the state is facing should not have been a surprise to anyone, least of all Gov. Perry and Lt. Gov. Dewhurst. The two individuals most responsible for our current predicament were warned that this would happen more than five years ago. Yet they did nothing.

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn didn’t win friends five years ago when she warned Gov. Rick Perry and state lawmakers they were writing the “largest hot check in Texas history” during a tax overhaul that resulted in lower property taxes and a revised business tax.
Strayhorn told them their plan would fall about $23 billion short over a five-year period. Five years later, state leaders are staring at an estimated budget shortfall of nearly $27 billion.

Yeah, Perry and Dewhurst didn’t care because they knew that cutting taxes would make them popular, consequences be damned. But now that the time has come to pay the piper, Perry is pretending like it’s no big deal and all we have to do is trim a little here and cut a little there.
At least Dewhurst is acknowledging the problem while trying to blame it all on Bush....

At the time, Dewhurst called huge budget shortfall projections “hypothetical and speculative.”
He now says he knew that revenue projections from the revised business franchise tax “were inflated” and told Senate members in closed door caucus meetings at the time that the business tax would not perform as advertised “and that we were going to create a structural funding deficit in state government.” But Dewhurst said he also believed at the time that “we would grow out of it by now.”
He blames the nation’s economic collapse in 2008 for contributing to the state’s projected budget shortfall today.

Strayhorn acknowledges that Bush is partly blame, but shouldn’t get all the blame:

The nation’s economic collapse three years ago contributed to some of the state’s revenue troubles, but the biggest problem is that the new business tax did not generate enough money to pay for the school property tax cut, Strayhorn said Friday.

Don’t blame us!

That’s the message we are getting today from leaders of the Tea Party movement in the wake of the mass shooting in Arizona over the weekend that killed six people and critically injured a Democratic Congresswoman.
After a particularly vicious and nasty (and largely successful) campaign to defeat Democratic lawmakers across the country in which violent imagery and slogans were constantly referenced, should we be surprised that a deranged individual decided to take matters into his own hands and carry out a “Second Amendment remedy” against one of the Tea Party’s top targets who barely managed to hang onto her seat?
Certainly it is unfair to spread blame to everyone involved with or connected to the Tea Party movement. Most, I’m sure, are gentle, peace-loving folks who wouldn’t harm a fly, much less shoot a moose. And only a handful would be radical enough to purchase and wear a provocative t-shirt like the one shown above.
But is it too much to ask that this tragedy at least serve as a wake up call to those out there who have been far too willing to tolerate hateful, violent, anti-government rhetoric in order to advance their political causes? Can we quit referring to the federal government as “the enemy”? Can we quit with the paranoid, alarmist crys that THEY are “out to take your guns”? Can we quit scaring people with hyped-up fantasies about “death panels” and “terror babies”?
Sadly, I am afraid that it IS too much to ask. The initial response from folks on the right has been angry denunciations of those on the left for having even dared suggest such a thing. Their immediate response was to deny any connection whatsoever with the deranged shooter and claim he is some kind of left-wing anarchist who was never influenced by their campaign against the congresswoman.
And, I am afraid, that there will be continued resistance to restoring common sense gun laws such as the Clinton-era Assault Weapons Ban that Republicans allowed to lapse in 2004. If that law had been in place, the deranged gunman would not have been able to buy a brand new extended clip with 30-rounds for his Glock 19 which he purchased without any need for a license or a waiting period or a background check.
What exactly does anyone outside of the military or law enforcement need with an extended clip for a Glock 19 other than to make it easier to commit mass murder?
But getting common sense gun laws through this current Congress is now likely impossible since voters, in their inestimable wisdom, decided to reward the Tea Partiers big victories in the last election and hand control of the House back to the Republicans again.

My basketball obsession

I’ve always considered myself to be a big fan of baseball above any and all other sports. Ever since I was a kid starting out in Little League, collecting baseball cards and rooting for my beloved Cincinnatti Reds of the Big Red Machine era, my enthusiasm for baseball has been very high. But recently it has become apparent to me that while my love of baseball has not abated, it has been eclipsed by a fresh new enthusiasm for basketball.
Perhaps it is due to living for the past 10 years in the largest U.S. city without a Major League Baseball team (or NFL team, for that matter). But I have simply been completely won over by the local pro basketball team, the San Antonio Spurs. I find myself following the Spurs much closer than I have followed any baseball team at least since the 1998-03 Yankees, if not the ‘73-’76 Reds.
I was happy when first the Houston Astros and then the Texas Rangers made their first ever appearances in a World Series these past few years. But I had not really followed either team that closely and couldn’t name most of the players beyond the few standout stars. With the Spurs, however, I find myself following every player, game-by-game, down to the lowliest bench warmer.
Now I’m keenly interested in any news of personnel shifts or trade talks. I look forward to the sports news after the weather and get irritated when the local station leads with news about the Cowboys before getting to the Spurs. I will sometimes read the sports section in the local paper before I turn to the editorial page or even the comics (Gasp!). I try to watch every game I can and record those I can’t for later viewing. I even find myself following all of the other NBA teams and not just the Spurs, rooting for certain teams to lose so that the Spurs will advance further.
It’s clear that I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Spurs Fever, though I’m still not as bad as some. I don’t own a Spurs jersey (though I do have a couple of t-shirts). I don’t drive around with a Spurs flag flying on my car. I don’t wallpaper my cubicle at work with posters and newspaper clippings of the Spurs. I will actually talk about and pay attention to other things that are non-Spurs related. And I won’t be going downtown to celebrate in a mass frenzy should the Spurs win their fifth championship this year.
But still, I’ve got it pretty bad and I suppose that admitting to the problem is the first step in the long road to recovery.

2010 Year End movie post

2010 movies I've seen

Toy Story 3
Alice in Wonderland
How to Train Your Dragon
Tangled
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Yogi Bear

2010 movies I own and will see eventually

Iron Man 2
The Karate Kid
Robin Hood
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Inception

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Despicable Me

Megamind

Shutter Island

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Knight & Day

True Grit

Secretariat

The King's Speech

2010 movies I still want to see

Tron Legacy
The Social Network

God Bless America

Healthcare is too damn high

Midterm results

Well the midterm election was every bit as bad as I had feared.
There were only a few bright spots to cheer me up such as the losses by Tea Party stalwarts Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Joe Miller and Sharron Angle.
There were the heart-wrenchingly close losses by Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Alexi Ginniaoulis in Illinois; Alex Sink in Florida and Ted Strickland in Ohio.
And there were those who just squeaked by such as Michael Bennett in Colorado, Patty Murray in Washington and Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
Harry Reid held on in Nevada while Russ Feingold was toppled in Wisconsin.
Some Democrats weathered the storm with little problem. Richard Blumenthal easily held on to Chris Dodd’s seat in Connecticut. He had been the state’s attorney general when I lived there in the early ‘90s and was being touted even then for higher office. Glad he finally made it.
Chuck Shumer and Kristin Gillibrand had little trouble keeping their New York Senate seats and Andrew Cuomo steamrolled over the obnoxious extremist Carl Paladino. Vermont elected a Democratic governor for the first time since Howard Dean. And Connecticut elected a Democratic governor for the first time since I don’t know when. Since I lived there the state house has either been held by an Independent or a Republican.
Jerry Brown easily reclaimed the governors office in California that he held 20 years ago despite a mountain of money spent by his Republican opponent Meg Whitman. And Barbara Boxer withstood a multi-million dollar campaign by former HP CEO Carly Firorina.
But elsewhere the tidalwave of corporate cash was too much for Democrats to withstand. The U.S. Chamber of Republicans spent millions of dollars to defeat Democrats all across the country dipping into a big pool of corporate cash that was supplemented by donations from foreign entities. And it was all carefully orchestrated by Rupert Murdoch’s Faux News and the rightwing radio jocks who instructed their brainwashed minions that voting for Democrats was unpatriotic and unAmerican.
Republicans picked up more than 60 seats in the House giving them control again after just four years out of power. During that time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accomplished a tremendous amount - only to have the bulk of her legislative achievements watered down or buried in the Senate where Republicans took obstructionism to new heights by misusing and abusing that institution’s archaic filibuster and hold rules. But even with all the obstructionism, Democrats somehow still managed to pass major pieces of legislation such as health care reform and banking/finance reform.
But ultimately by abusing Senate rules the way they did, Republicans have set the new standard that Democrats will follow meaning that no partisan legislation will pass without a 60-vote supermajority. Even relatively benign, non-partisan legislation will have to meet the 60-vote threshhold each time because in essense every piece of legislation and, indeed, every action the Senate takes is now dictated by an unspoken filibuster rule.
So what that means is that the Republican takeover of the House will result in near total gridlock. The Republicans have swelled their ranks with radical Tea Party extremists who have some seriously flawed and absurd views of the government and who will insist on stopping even the most basic functions of government on the grounds that it doesn’t pass muster with their fundamentalist reading of the Constitution. As such, there will be little room for compromise as Republicans continue to adopt the “My way or the highway” attitude. They will insist that Democrats kowtow to their demands and be submissive in light of the fact that “the people have spoken!” Nevermind the fact that Republicans themselves did nothing of the sort during their time in the minority, which, by the way, was an even tinier minority than Democrats have now.
And will Obama now be a “lame duck” president and cast aside his agenda in deference to the newly empowered House Republicans? Was Ronald Reagan a lame duck in 1982 after his party shrank down to just 166 seats in the House? Of course not. As everyone well knows, Reagan went on to win a landslide re-election two years later and reshaped the political landscape for the forseeable future. So people who want to count Obama out at this point need a serious history lesson.
I think the thing that was the most disheartening about the election was the Republican onslaught in local races. I really hated losing my local congressman Ciro Rodriguez. After spending most of my adult life being represented by Republicans like Joe Barton, Lamar Smith, Larry Combest and Henry Bonilla, I was thrilled four years ago to finally get someone to represent me who I could relate to. But now I will be stuck once again with someone who will automatically vote against everything I deem to be important. It is very depressing.
But, alas, the tide will turn again at some point and in the meantime I will just have more things that I can gripe about on my blog. So if there is any silver lining in this election it is the endless fodder of blog material that it will bring for the next two years.

Vote, Vote, Vote

I cast my vote today for Bill White for governor and Ciro Rodriguez for Congress. Those were the two “big” races I had a say in.
In addition, I supported mostly Democrats all the way down the ballot with the exception of Susan Combs, the Republican comptroller, who did not have a Democratic opponent but was facing candidates from the Libertarian and Green parties. Since I think most Libertarian candidates are a bit nutty and because all (Get Republicans Elected Every November) GREEN Party candidates are dupes and imbeciles, I cast my vote for Combs. Besides that, I’ve always thought she was a nice person and she seems to have done a decent job in a relatively non-partisan office.
Beyond that, I voted for Carlos Uresti for state senate, Massarat Ali for state representative and Rebecca Bell-Metterau for state board of education.
After that, I had little interest in the remaining races and feel that most of them should be appointed or hired positions anyway.

Republicans benefiting from mass confusion and ignorance

I guess it is appropriate that the election falls so close to Halloween this year because it promises to be a real horror show. Even though a few of the Tea Party’s scariest candidates don’t have a chance of winning – like Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell and Carl “I’ll Take You Out” Paladino — there are plenty of others like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska and Ken Buck in Colorado who have a very good chance of winning. And then there are the ones who are already shoo-ins for election like John Boozman in Arkansas and Mike Lee in Utah.
Suffice to say that the Senate is going to get a lot crazier even if it stays majority Democratic. But the really sad news is what is likely to happen to the House. A Republican takeover in the House, which seems all but assured, pretty much guarantees legislative gridlock for the next two years. What this means is that any kind of progress on legislative issues will be stymied and, worse, there will most likely be a number of confrontations over the debt ceiling and threats to shut down the government. At the same time, we can all enjoy the spectacle of partisan witchhunts as Republican lawmakers use their new powers to pursue vendettas against the Obama administration.
What is hard to understand is why people would want to choose this course. I chalk it up to flat-out ignorance mixed with a good deal of Faux News/Wingnut Radio brainwashing.
‘Unfair,’ you say! Perhaps in some cases there are people who have thought these things through and believe for their own reasons that it would be best to return to the policies of the previous 10 years. But some recent studies have revealed that too many people seem to be seriously confused about some of the key issues.
Steve Benen addresses those studies here and here.

In a democracy, the system breaks down and produces counter-productive results when those in charge -- the voters -- are uninformed. And the fact is, a whole lot of Americans are deeply confused about the facts.
The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters.
Most voters don’t believe it.
A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered.
Public perceptions aren’t even close to reality -- by a 52% to 19% margin, for example, likely voters think their federal tax burden has gone up over the last couple of years, even though it hasn’t. Indeed, Democrats approved one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in American history, and the public has no idea that it even happened.
The same is true of the strength of the economy in general -- the economy stopped shrinking and started growing more than a year ago, but 61% of respondents in this poll said the economy continued to shrink in 2010, even though it hasn’t.

Needless to say, it is hard to win an election when people are this confused about things.
And then there is this...

After a historic legislative session that saw the passage of health care and Wall Street reform bills, most Americans think Congress accomplished less than or the same amount as usual.
In a new Gallup Poll, 37 percent said Congress did less than what is accomplished in a typical session, while 35 percent said it did the same amount.
Only 23 percent said Congress accomplished more than usual.

So people think taxes have gone up when they have not. They think the economy is worse than it really is. And they think Congress has done very little when it has actually accomplished more than any other Congress before it.
When people go to the polls holding such backwards and upside down assumptions, it is no wonder that they end up voting against their interests.
All I can say is that the rightwing campaign to keep people ignorant and misinformed has been highly effective. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, et al. are very, very good at their jobs. That is why they get the big bucks, no doubt.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to end up with a country that is hamstrung and dysfunctional for the next two years, if not longer. It is highly depressing especially after the promise of what could have been after the big blowout Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008.
But Republicans managed to hold fast even with one of the smallest minorities in history and by massively abusing Senate rules on filibusters and secret holds. Thus they were able to stall, stymie and kill large numbers of bills and change others far beyond what would have easily passed on a straight-up, majority vote.
So the new standard now is that 59 votes in the Senate is not enough to do anything, therefore nothing will get done until we actually get a party with a lopsided majority in Congress or until reason and rationality breaks out and we finally reform the Senate’s antiquated and undemocratic (not to mention unconstitutional) filibuster rules.
Alas, the former is much more likely to happen in my opinion before the latter.
Good luck, my fellow Americans. We are all going to need it.

Too many have apparently forgot....