My mother always said that if you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything. So in honor of John Murtha’s passing I will share this:

For the first time since the issue was put on the table I’m actually interested in the healthcare debate. The problem is that it’s mostly for the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) reasons. I love the political chess game that is going on right now. Where we are at on February 08, 2010 is that the GOP has been successful in pretty much setting the game back to the first quarter. The problem is that the Left doesn’t want to admit it.  that in itself is kind of fun to watch as they try to spin the last year into something productive and try to lay blame at the feet of the guys not in power despite the historic evidence that the tactic never really works.

So this is sort of a political goldmine for the Right and it can play out in a few different ways. One is that we stay tough, demand the original bill be scrapped, cooperate on a reasonable compromise and we look like rock stars in November. The second path is to refuse to come to the table, watch Democrats fail to pass a stinker, thus shooting themselves in the foot. Or they pass it without us which is really even better. The last scenario is that this gets dragged out for another 6 months and we clean up in November because the public still wants jobs. Looking at the poll numbers for healthcare and after seeing what happened in Massachusetts, I’m completely comfortable in predicting that no matter what happens, Republicans come out of this better off than Democrats.

Sadly, some of Obama’s most ‘energetic’ supporters still think this is a masterstroke (ahhhh, the ignorance of love).  Others who are a bit less in-the-tank see this for what it is; political theater. From Megan McArdle:

Asking Republicans to be part of a televised forum on health care reform is a clever move: put up or shut up. Nonetheless, I’d guess it probably fails. Republicans are saying what you’d expect them to: we won’t engage in sham negotiations. If you want us to come to the table, shelve this monstrous and unpopular plan and let’s start over.

Democrats should recognize the tactic: they invented it. And used it successfully against Social Security reform in 2005. Sure, they wanted to do Social Security reform, they said. All Republicans had to do to bring them to the table was get rid of the central point of the reform: the private accounts. Astonishingly enough, they did not suffer at the polls, even though the president tried to stir up public discontent with their “obstructionism”. The problem is, the public doesn’t get mad at you for obstructing things the public doesn’t like.

The public has spoken on this one. There is a perception that this is not a bipartisan bill (i.e. conservative concerns not adequately addressed) and they aren’t going to support it until it is. The politician with the most to gain here is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) who is seen as the Republican point-man on healthcare and is a hero of both the conservative Left and the moderate Right (in other words, the mythical Center).  His plan, if properly contrasted to Nancy Pelosi’s version, is sure to win more support. Seriously, Google Paul Ryan+healthcare and count the pundits falling all over themselves to talk him up.

With the jobless rate hovering near 10% I bemoan going down this road again, but it looks like it’s going to happen. Maybe it’s a pride thing for the President. Maybe they think that if they don’t pass something they are doomed. Either way, I wish they would get their priorities straight. I just don’t see it happening.

An update on the housing situation for interested readers…

Tomorrow morning we close on the new house we purchased last month.  Our excitement is in-check at the moment because we don’t get the keys until Friday and we still haven’t gotten a closing date on the old house.  I suspect once we open the front door and it’s all ours we will finally give ourselves permission to go nuts.

Since we did things backwards (bought first, sold after) I think we have had trouble giving ourselves permission to really get excited about things. And that isn’t like us. My wife and I are both the kind of people who want to take out full-page ads in the newspaper when we are excited about something.  This house is pretty-darn close to a ‘dream house’ for us and so the restraint we are trying to show is tough. I don’t know how my wife feels but it is killing  me. For some reason I am dying to start taking all our artwork off the walls and get it ready to move. I don’t know why but I think that will make me feel like we are moving forward. But we wait…

For those un-iniated the process of selling a home is to get an offer, agree on a sale price, have the house inspected, buyers submit a repair request based on the inspection, agree on the terms of the repair request, have the house appraised by buyer’s lender to make sure it’s worth what they are paying for it and then wait for buyer’s loan to be approved and to receive a closing date.  Because the housing market is so weird right now we are terified of the deal falling through at some point. The potential problem there (other than the house going back on the market is that the house would now be empty, thus making it harder to get the price we want because empty houses signal desperation. So that’s why we have been so slow to get the ball rolling on moving.

I’ve decided though that I can’t take the pressure any longer. The house has been appraised. We’ll get that feedback in a day or two. There’s not going to be anymore people wandering in to tell us if it’s worth what we say it is. We can’t keep living in limbo. We’ll all go insane. So tonight I’m taking down the artwork and damn the consequences. The realtor says we’re in the home stretch and we can finally exhale and so that’s what I am going to do.

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens”

- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

It is my sincere belief as a student of American history that a generation from now this quote will be one we remember as a turning point in American culture. The Clinton-era policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was an unfortunate but necessary bridge between old and new attitudes. With the words bravely spoken by Mullens and similar statements by other military commanders as well as the Secretary of Defense, the repeal of this policy and the allowance of openly gay men and women serving in the armed forces seems assured. 

I’ve always used this blog as a touchstone for my own personal beliefs, a public forum where I often have a dialogue with myself more than my readers. I’ve struggled with certain ideas linked to gays in our country and what is best for us as the next step forward. While often I have been reluctant to compare the push for gay marriage to the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s I cannot help but feel the comparison is apt at this moment.  Sensibilities often change when minorities are given a chance to prove themselves. I’m thinking of a quote from General George Patton regarding the first African American armored units to take the field in WWII:

“Men, you’re the first Negro tankers to ever fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren’t good. I have nothing but the best in my Army. I don’t care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sons of bitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all your race is looking forward to you. Don’t let them down and damn you, don’t let me down!”

With a verbal bluntness that could never be used today, Patton accurately summed up the truth behind the inclusion of these troops in American battle plans. Their race was looking forward to them. They were carrying the torch forward in the same way the 7th and 8th Calvary had in the American West and later on San Juan Hill. Maybe this is a stretch with regards to gays in the military, but I cannot help but think this is a turning point.

To my fellow Republicans: Oppose this at your own peril. The military supports it. Trust their judgement.

From Kyle at Vogue Republic:

I hope to follow up on this with some compiled statistics but using some quick estimates, natural phenomenon have caused many times the number of deaths of terrorism in the past decade.

Terrorist attacks in the past 10 years would be somewhere on the order of 4-6,000. When, before factoring in the recent deaths in Port-au-Prince, mother nature’s earthquakes, tsunamis, and heat waves were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Frankly, I think for the coming decade, we should reconfigure our threat assessments based on reality and not what keeps Dick Cheney awake at night.

I have to say I am in agreement here – as much as I also believe we should be pursuing terrorists across the globe. I believe many of our weather-related preparedness needs are linked to infrastructure. The recent disaster in Haiti only confirms what we already know which is that Mother Nature can be a destructive force. Proper planning is necessary to prevent a similar loss of life here in the US.

My wife and I have worked out a new system where Saturdays are hers and Sundays are mine. That means on Saturday we run errands, watch a movie on DVD and maybe go out for dinner. On Sundays I get to lounge around the house, work on a few projects, play some video games and maybe go hunting. We’re flexible if something comes up but we’ve been trying this for a couple of weeks and we kind of like it. So yesterday my plan was to just take it easy, having already decided it was time to take a break from hunting after my success of last week. Murphy had a season-ending bath and no interest in going out into the cold. That was the plan we agreed on.

But then I looked out the window at lunchtime. It was beautiful out there. low 30’s, bluebird sky and a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I knew it would be a wonderful evening with those big purple sunsets you only get in the winter. I weighed my options, thought about the regret I would feel if I didn’t go…and started getting my hunting gear together.

I should mention that I am a cold weather guy. I love winter. I dream about North Dakota-type weather settling on Kentucky. I scoff when folks in more northern locales tell me I would grow tired of it. They just don’t understand the way I am built. The cold weather makes me feel alive. It invigorates me. It’s what nature intended for me. I get absolutely giddy when the weatherman calls for snow and I am genuinely sad when it melts.

So with that attitude I headed out to the farm. I immediately knew I had made the right decision. I was dressed warmly so I could enjoy the scenery. And oh, was it just what I needed.

Here are the decoys, ready to do their job:

So the hunting was sporadic, but fun. The birds weren’t coming in their usual steady patterns but instead all the action was in two big waves. Each time well over 100 geese came over, honking like crazy, flying low and slow and providing great shots. I dropped one, then an hour later I dropped another. Here’s me with my first limit of geese:

When the second goose hit the ground I had an experience that was both unsettling and also very satisfying. Not only was yesterday the last day of goose season, but for me it was the last day of my hunting season. My license expires in February and now almost everything is out-of-season. I won’t be hunting again until turkey season in April. It was a very weird feeling to see that goose fall and realize that I had brought closure to a banner year in the field. I’ve never had a hunting season end like that. Usually they go out with a wimper, not a quite literal bang.

I’m looking forward to the time off which is going to be busy with moving into our new house, closing on the old, etc. I’m also filled with a real contentment after having worked hard to become a better goose hunter this year. I’ve learned a lot about calling, flagging and shooting the big Canadas that come through here. I’ve also learned that Murphy still needs a bit of work. He’s a great hunting dog but there’s always room for improvement. We logged over 40 hours in the field over 10 hunting trips. It was a marathon and there were a lot of days when I was tired of no success. The payoff is in the picture above. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity and grateful for another year afield.

Some bloggers who are more than a little prone to hyperbole are talking about what a terrible thing Justice Alito did last night by mouthing a reply to a negative statement made by the President about the Court. I am in complete disagreement, primarily because I’m kind of sick of the scrutiny given to the crowd at these events. After Joe Wilson’s unfortunate outburst last year, cameras seem to be trained on every member of the audience in hopes of catching another media moment. It’s unfair. The State of the Union is obviously a bully pulpit for the president and we grant him that once per year. But expecting the crowd to take abuse for an hour while remaining emotionless is just unfair.

Megan McArdle has what I think should be the final word on this:

I’m sorry, I’m having a really hard time getting worked up about Alito’s ”breach of protocol”. It’s totally true that justices usually sit there like a stone. On the other hand, president’s don’t usually call out said justices for being too wrapped up in that dumb first amendment–much less call them out with statements that seem to be unequivocally false.

Using the state of the union as an opportunity to call out supreme court justices, who you expect will have to sit there impassively while you rake them over the coals is, well, kind of a jerk move. And I’m pretty sure it’s not exactly traditional presidential protocol. It certainly doesn’t show “all due deference” to the separation of powers, especially when it’s followed by a pledge to pass more of the kinds of laws they’ve just ruled unconstitutional.

A fantastic new blog, Fed Up: School Lunch Project  (h/t IFA). The author is a teacher in public schools and is eating the school-provided lunch every day in 2010. Very scary stuff.

My kids constantly complain about the school lunches. They say the taste is horrible and for my oldest daughter, the vegetarian, the options are limited. On the flip side though, try to get them to pack a lunch and they throw a fit. As often is the case with our kids, their compulsion towards laziness will trump good sense almost every time.

Awhile back I had a post up detailing what kids ate for lunch in other countries. I am the last one to talk about how other countries are so much smarter than us but on this front I think they have us beat.

There are no less than 1.4 million reasons why I love Louisville. They range from the big (Kentucky Derby) to the small (hot browns) and all points in-between. Many of the reasons are a bit absurd to outsiders, like the fact that when anyone in Louisville asks where you went to school they mean high school, not college. For me one of those really weird reasons I love Louisville is the way we spaz out whenever we get winter weather. Today was no exception.

To paint a picture for my readers, Louisville does get cold weather during the winter. This isn’t Florida. Out temps in the winter usually average in the high 30’s with periodic dips into single digits. We get snow, occasionally even getting a real-deal blizzard. We also get ice storms. And tornadoes. And flooding. And a hurricane last year.  And an earthquake. And sweltering heat and humidity. And….  I digress. The point is we should know how to deal with cold weather and to be fair a lot of people here do. They put on warm clothes, put antifreeze in their cars, throw some salt in the trunk, keep the snow shovel handy, etc. But a lot of folks around here don’t really have a clue what to do when winter strikes. If there is a call for 1 inch of snow there will be a run on bread and milk that afternoon. And when the really unexpected occurs, we get a scene like I saw this morning.

Last night we got a bit of snow. It was just a dusting and the stuff that hit the roads immediately turned to water. No big deal. But then around 6am the temps dipped below freezing and that water became something that resembled an ice skating ring. As soon as I pulled out of the driveway I thought, “Going to have to drive careful today,” and that was as bad as I thought it would be. Then I got to the end of my quiet little street and saw two cars that had collided and were waiting for the police (my first gripe of this post – when you get in a fender-bender and nobody is hurt, exchange info and get moving). The I turned and saw another accident. And then I spotted a third at the entrance to my neighborhood. This was insanity! I opted to head out of the neighborhood via the ‘back door’ and then saw 4 cars in various states of distress in people’s yards. After 25 minutes I finally escaped my neighborhood.

My first outside street is a hilly one and I was scared, but had no choice in the matter. I wasn’t scared about my driving, but about what other people were doing. I watched car after car slide off the road or just give up (my next gripe, if you can’t get your car moving and you want to throw in the towel, pull over and walk). I literally passed 4 cars where the driver had stopped in the middle of the road and just decided they had enough for the day. The biggest problem seems to be that the drivers insisted on mashing the gas to gain traction instead of throwing it in L1 and taking it slow.

Needless to say my normal 30-40 minute commute took 2 hours and 40 minutes, most of which was in the 2 miles from my house to the freeway. I got to work 2 hours late and had to burn some vacation time to avoid a short check next week. Craziness. So a week from now I will laugh about this and chalk it up to the wonderful silliness that grips Louisville in the winter. For right now, I’m just a little frazzled and wishing the city would mandate driver’s training for all Louisville residents conducted by folks from Minnesota, New York state and South Dakota. Oh, and mandatory days off for anyone who owns a vehicle with rear-wheel drive only. And a free bag of salt and a tow strap for everyone who pays their taxes.

I’m willing to bet that we handle natural disasters better than a lot of states, having had to deal with a huge variety of them in our lives…so that is our talent. But when it comes to winter driving, the folks in Louisville are still mostly amateurs and it only seems funny in the warm days of summer.

Great stuff  (h/t Megan McArdle)

I took the day off on Friday with plans of spending the morning relaxing, doing some work on the computer and then going hunting in the afternoon. An 8am call from our realtor with a requesting for a showing of our house changed those plans. Dusting, vacuuming, etc for 3 hours and then out the door with the dog to kill an hour. This was our third showing to the same couple so that was a good sign and worth the loss of my free time. They made an offer on Saturday and I am pleased to report we accepted their 2nd counter-offer last night. As long as the inspection doesn’t turn up any unknown problems, we’re free and clear.

As for hunting, we had a lot of fog on Friday which I was excited to hunt in. Fog generally means lower flying birds and also provides some natural cover as they don’t see things on the ground until they are right on top of them. I was able to work some big groups of geese, forcing them to circle the farm several times but unfortunately providing no shots. It was still a heap of fun. Around 6pm, just before the end of shooting light, I heard a group coming right towards the middle of the farm. After quickly re-positioning myself  I was able to get off a great passing shot and put my first goose of the season on the ground. The sight of Murphy trying to drag the 20 pound bird back to the blind was pretty hilarious. He still has some things to learn.

I had also planned on spending another few hours on Sunday going through a slew of articles saved in my favorites and in my Google Reader account. My hope was to put some quality posts in the hopper to use in the coming weeks as the stress of packing and moving ramps up. No luck there as other house-related items crept up. I will try to make some progress there but just a warning that posting will definitely lighten up in the coming weeks and probably through March. I won’t disappear, but my daily weekday posts aren’t a guarantee. As soon as we get the keys to the new house I’ll try to post some pictures. Until then, stay tuned…

There is a good conversation going on over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen regarding problems with healthcare reform and how Democrats could have handled things differently. Commenter Kyle of Vogue Republic made this excellent point:

No the argument I’m making is 20% of something is better than 0% of something and if you care about helping people, aiming for 90% of what you want and getting 0% helps fewer people than aiming for 50% of what you want and getting 20 or 30 percent, given the realities of legislation.

My response:

An old Jonah Goldberg quote is that liberals will always pass a good solution looking for a great one. They have no belief in incremental progress.

This is the real meat of the differences between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are accused of resisting change. This is false. As Disraeli said, “Change is inevitable”. The debate is over the scope and pace of change. Obviously the Right likes change to be slow and small in size. The Left likes big, big change and the faster the better. This leads to a bit of foolhardiness in my humble opinion. On healthcare it meant passing up real solutions that might have actually gotten bipartisan support in favor of big, bold splashes that sounded great in campaign commercials but had a snowball’s chance of making it to the President’s desk.

The story that will be told to voters in the fall is that Democrats wanted to do Great-and-Wonderful Things for healthcare and those mean old Republicans stopped it. The truth is that Democrats wanted greatness and it might be fair to ask them why they weren’t willing to settle for good.

I’m sorry to be hammering this subject today, but Brown’s victory in MA last night is rally fascinating for the way it sets up the midterms this year. Ezra Klein has an excellent analysis Democrats should take note of:

But the reaction congressional Democrats have had to Coakley’s loss has been much more shattering. It has been a betrayal.

The fundamental pact between a political party and its supporters is that the two groups believe the same thing and pledge to work on it together. And the Democratic base feels that it has held to its side of the bargain. It elected a Democratic majority and a Democratic president. It swallowed tough compromises on the issues it cared about most. It swallowed concessions to politicians it didn’t like and industry groups it loathed. But it persisted. Because these things are important. That’s why those voters believe in them. That’s why they’re Democrats.

But the party looks ready to abandon them because Brown won a special election in Massachusetts — even though Democrats can pass the bill after Brown is seated. What that says is crucial: Whereas the base thought it was making these hard compromises and getting up early to knock on doors because these issues are important, the party thought all that was happening because, well, it’s hard to say. It was electorally convenient? People need something to do? Ted Kennedy wanted it done?

If Democrats let go of health care, there is no doubt that a demoralized Democratic base will stay home in November. And that’s as it should be. If the Democratic Party won’t uphold its end of the bargain, there’s no reason its base should pretend the deal is still on.

In thinking about the big win for Republicans I am anticipating some I-told-you-sos from moderate factions within the Party. They will point to Brown’s win as evidence that moderate Republicans can win and suggest we run more of them. I think this may be reaching too far.

If anything, Brown’s win is a sign that there is still potential for a strong  faction of New England Republicans, socially liberal and conservative on fiscal and foreign policy.  I’m happy to see that and think it can certainly be good for the party. What I don’t think we should assume is that these moderates will have success everywhere. There are many Republican-leaning districts where a Scott Brown could not win because there would be more conservative challengers that voters would prefer.

Ultimately what I think this tells us is that we are going to have to fight each race on that battleground and tailor our candidates and messages to the prevailing sentiments of voters in that area. If we’re willing to do that, great things could happen in November.