To Slay the Mighty Gerrymander

It is the eve of election day, and I'm putting up a post I wrote three weeks ago.  It's about as good a way to defibrillate my blog as any.

Actually, it isn't.  Practically nobody would seem to give a bat's ass about Proposition 20.  I would probably do better to talk about Proposition 19, the most newsworthy and groundbreaking ballot measure up for California in November.  And rest assured, I have opinions on that.  But they are neither inventive or interesting.  Truth be told, I'm most excited about Proposition 21, which would give me a great excuse to spend more time on Mount Diablo.  But again, that's about the depth of my interest there.  I doubt I could go on at great length on that subject.

No, instead I suppose I'll prattle on about Proposition 20.  Which, to a more casual observer, holds little interest save possibly for odd timing which places it on the same ballot as Proposition 27.  Both measures seek to enact mutually exclusive provisions; only one can pass.  And in the event that both are approved by voters, only the one with the most votes will become law.

It's a fun twist, but even this isn't what I'm interested in here.

The Lieberman/Crist Dilemma

Partisanship is a very, very unusual thing.  Not an uncommon thing, alas, but an unusual thing.  When you stop to think about it.  Most people don't.

It seems like every night, Jon Stewart is railing against Fox News concerning their massive narrative shift after Obama's Inauguration.  You juxtapose a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling the Tea Party protestors patriots with a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling anti-war protestors unpatriotic.  Laughs ensue.  Etc.  While I may lean left, I do think it is a shame that we don't have somebody comparing quotes from insurgent Democrats in 2004 to quotes from entrenched Democrats in 2010.  Perhaps they are doing that sort of thing on Fox News.  I wouldn't know anything about that.

But what is one to do when one finds that same narrative switch in themselves?  This is the question I hope to touch on here.  I am having some trouble wrapping my head around it.  I do not think I could possibly do it full justice.  This is only my best, first attempt.  A scratching of the surface.

I would like to do this by focusing on two senate candidates, four years apart, shunned by their respective political parties and forced to go it alone.

Progressive? Pissed off? Want to send a message?

Progressives are mopey, and for good reason.  Health care has been downgraded from single payer to public option to none of the above to what looks like none at all.  The democratic president is now advocating a rash spending freeze similar to the one proposed by his opponent on the campaign trail.  A republican has just been seated in Ted Kennedy's uber-safe Massachusetts senate seat.

I have seen some talk about voting Republican to punish the democrats for being a bunch of wimps, in a proposition which should sound familiar to anybody who remembers PUMA.  For any progressive seriously considering voting for a conservative republican candidate, there is a proverb about nose amputation that would seem to apply.

Make no mistake; this is the end of America's Manned Space Program

The announcement came as expected and of course they are trying to spin this as a new beginning for NASA. And while there are some good investments being made here, there's shockingly very little focus on the present. Let me tackle a few of the biggest issues I see with this new plan.

Why the Moon Matters

Tonight is the biggest, brightest full moon of the year. And while that might be bad news for astronomers, with it blotting out most everything else in the heavens, it will certainly be a sight worth seeing. And you'd better soak it up while you can, because if rumors are to be believed, 221,557 miles is the closest we'll be getting to the moon any time soon.

Now in a period of global recession, where everyone is tightening their belts including the US government, it's important to ask what the big deal is. Why do we want to go to the moon anyway? We've been there already, half a dozen times. It's just a big ball of rock, right? Why should we spend money on space when there are so many problems right here on Earth? And why send a man or a woman when you can send a robot for a fraction of the price?

The Tonight Show, and Lessons Unlearned

I am working on a more political post than this, but the drama unfolding in the world of late night comedy seems oddly more pressing at the moment. Because it seems oh so familiar somehow.

Johnny Carson aired his last episode of The Tonight Show on May 22nd 1992. The studio announced Jay Leno as his successor, who aired his first episode three days later on May 25th. As the story goes, Johnny Carson was not too happy about this pick, nor was his intended successor David Letterman. At the time, Letterman was on Late Night on NBC in the timeslot after Carson. The same show Conan O'Brien would inherit a year later and the same show the painfully unfunny Jimmy Fallon hosts today. Letterman, rightly furious with NBC, promptly jumped ship and signed a contract with CBS for a show to compete with Leno's Tonight Show, called Late Show with David Letterman.

Hindsight, Hiroshima, and a Hypothetical Hot War

I've been reading a lot about nuclear weapons. I have since had a very scary thought. We'll turn that very scary thought to a very brief thought experiment.

Let's suppose for a moment a single, seemingly slight alteration to our own history. Let us imagine a scenario where we, the United States of America, won the war in the Pacific without resorting to nuclear weapons. Pretend that Harry Truman went the other way and chose to win the war the old fashioned way, a la Operation Downfall. Or alternately, pretend that the Manhattan Project was unable to complete its aims until after the end of the war. Or imagine a successful assassination plot against Emperor Hirohito. Or a seemingly implausible scenario where Japan surrenders of its own accord for a reason of your choice.

We have of course been told countless times about the Japanese bushido code and their supposed reluctance to surrender even in the face of inevitable defeat. I am not going to debate this here as it is beyond the scope of this thought experiment. Whatever rationalizations you decide to employ are up to you -- all I ask is that you attempt to imagine an end to the Second World War that does not involve the deployment of nukes. The details of that end are not terribly important to my argument here.