The More Things Change

Have you heard what the GOP is saying about ObamaCare?

Via Dana Milbank

"This is the largest tax bill in history," the Republican leader fumed. The reform "is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

And that wasn't all. This "cruel hoax," he said, this "folly" of "bungling and waste," compared poorly to the "much less expensive" and "practical measures" favored by the Republicans.

"We must repeal," the GOP leader argued. "The Republican Party is pledged to do this."

Wait, no that was about Social Security in the 1930s.

If we pass this, "one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

Wait, no that was Ronald Reagan talking about Medicare.

Here’s what they’re saying about the Immigration.

We have in the United States today hardcore, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of [Mexico] will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States.

No, I’m sorry, actually that was Senator Pat McCarran talking about Eastern European immigrants.

All I’m saying is Republicans need some new material. Or, if they are correct, and Big Government and Immigrants are destroying America, at least be consistent and say this has been happening for 70 years, with FDR’s Social Security and Truman’s veto of the McCarran Act, and LBJ’s Medicare. Either way, Obama has not orchestrated a sudden Socialist takeover.

T.E.A. Party like it’s 1799

Thursday was Tax Day, the day when we are all TEA partiers. But Friday I went back to thinking the tea partiers are crazy. Why?

They are the hippies of our time, except they are Right Wing hippies.

They are a Silent Majority that is neither silent nor a majority.

It stands for Taxed Enough Already. They must have come here in a DeLorean.

Back in the good ol' days, Ronald Reagan would never have raised taxes, right?

If taxes are too high for you here, move to a country with lower taxes. For lower personal and corporate taxes, your choices are Iceland, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, Korea, or a third-world country. I’m guessing you want to avoid learning a new language and you’re looking for somewhere sunny like Cost Rica, that narrows it down to Australia. Bon voyage, mate!

These people believe health care reform that lacks even a Public Option is a “government takeover.” If they have a problem with it, they should move with Rush Limbaugh to Costa Rica, where they can see what a government takeover of health care really looks like.

These people decided to show their concern about sky-rocketing spending and deficits after George W. Bush left office. Probably because the new president happens to be a Democrat, or maybe because he is black or has a funny name like Barack Obama, but for some reason, they suddenly decided their country was falling apart. I never thought I’d say this, but give Lou Dobbs credit. He was harassing Bush on these issues as well, so at least he is consistent.

Why don’t you write a letter to the editor stating exactly why Obama’s policies will be ineffective, rather than drawing Hitler mustaches on him or praying that the Ghost of Reagan will smite him?

It’s fine to criticize the president. I could write an entire post about things he has done wrong (I just haven't thought of a way to make it funny, and my posts have been humorless enough lately). But you have two choices, Tea Party.

Option A: Stop being ridiculously nostalgic about the past. The time’s they are a-changin’ so too bad. Whether you’re upset that the president has a funny name, or that he’s black, or simply that he’s changing things, get over it. 53% of the country voted for a president who said “Change” more than Giuliani said 9/11. You can say individual changes are bad, but you seem to be simply against Change. The whole Tea Party image is about romanticizing the past. You think you’re all little Paul Reveres, saving the country from King George (you missed your chance, that was the last president). Don’t tell me what the Founding Fathers would do. Like they would understand the internet or al Qaeda or derivatives. Don’t tell me what Reagan would do (you already guessed Never Raise Taxes and you got that wrong, folks, thanks for playing). Stop living in the past (one that you remember inaccurately). Let it go.

Option B: Get back in your DeLorean and travel back to the past. Say hi to the Gipper for me!

We Live in a Moment that Doesn’t Exist

Welcome to the J.J. Abrams presidency. That insane ‘08 campaign was only the beginning. Does anyone know what is going on? The nation’s fate is utterly uncertain, like the folks running around on that island. Obama exudes a feeling of wonder, a sense that he could save the day at any second but strings you along like mid-season episodes of Lost.

The ambiguous tension, wandering, yelling, and constant twists yield no real game changes. No sense of resolution. (Health care reform passed, but doesn’t take effect for years, and the GOP is vowing to Repeal and Replace it.) Now we seem to have traveled back in time to 1994 (GOP poised to take back congress). The Others are running around swearing the end is near if we don’t change course (angry mobs and TEA Partiers).

So what now? The only way to top all this insanity would be a tie in 2012 presidential election…which would be a disaster. Imagine the 2000 Election mess, but amidst a gigantic recession. Imagine those Florida mobs, but the size of TEA Party mobs: Democrats being accused of a Nazi Socialist takeover, Republicans being called racists of a second confederacy. The entire country would start coming apart at the seams and descend into a civil war. Man, this always happens when elect skinny Illinois lawyers to the presidency!

Plus, we should note that congress decides a tie. So a Democratic congress would pick Obama. But if the GOP takes over congress, they could Repeal and Replace him with their candidate, who we’ll call Mitt McPalin Huckalenty, from Grand Old Tea Party Ticket. Madness…

Still, there are countless other possibilities, which brings me to the point of this meandering post. We live a moment that doesn’t exist. Day after day, America toils aimless through a 24-hour news cycle of hopeless absurdity. Democratic and Republican favorability shoots up and down in the polls like the stock market, while snake oil salesmen try desperately to make sense of it all and sell the story to you, usually hyper-analyzing fleeting fads and trends until something important (or at least scandalous) comes up.


None of it matters. An entire year of angry mobs berating congressmen about hypothetical health care bills felt like an eternity, but it will all be a footnote in history. And the public sees each footnote documented in detail on cable news and the internet. As we are flooded with information, we depend on the Mainstream Media to filter it for us, but they’re the ones saturating our brains with distractions and disinformation. Year and year, emotions build daily as partisan anchors educate their side on every piece of dirt they have on the other side, and non-partisan anchors stand back spinelessly, eager to split the difference. Viewers are then turned loose to have ill-informed debates with each other, or to cast ill-informed votes.

The point is that emotions are running high over things that hardly matter or are hardly understood. We are extremely informed yet essentially ignorant. I don’t know what the solution is. All I can say is take a deep breath and remember that, much like Lost, most of this madness is a mere interlude before we find out what really happens. The signing of the health care bill may turn out to be landmark event, but most of the time we live in a moment that doesn’t exist.

The Prayerbook, Reinvented

A Different kind of review of the iPad

The iPad is to technology what the prayerbook is to religion. It may not be the entire bible but it sure does quote it, and includes quite a few original verses as well. Can religion exist without prayerbooks? Absolutely. Is it better off because of them? Many would argue yes. Apple is occasionally viewed as a religion or a cult due to the zealous nature of its fans and its us or nothing approach to its ecosystem. However, you don't have to be a Catholic to appreciate the prayerbook they've created and you may even find something in it for you that you didn't expect.

Most reviews of the iPad all go the same way. It's an amazing piece of technology and engineering but it doesn't do Flash, has no USB ports and is basically a large iPod touch. They might spend time telling you that it has an Apple branded A4 processor and has 512 Megs of RAM. You may then, as others have, compare it to a computer you own and say that you'd never buy the iPad because 512 Megs of RAM isn't enough to do the things you do with a computer. I admit, I first thought back to my old IBM Thinkpad 600e with a 400 Meg PII and 512 megs of RAM from 1998 when I heard the specs. The hardest thing for technical people to do in this day and age is separate the specs from the actual experience.

For the past twenty-five years or so, we have used specs of this nature to define the computing experience. I personally remember when we made the switch from measuring processor speed from MHz to GHz. It meant we were going to enter a new age of computing performance. Everything is going to run lightning fast and we will have as many programs as we want up at once. But something rather interesting occurred. We realized that most of the things we did on the computer didn't change at all. Word processing, web browsing, IM didn't appear to run any faster and we stopped caring that it could run more apps at once because we already had the six or so ones we cared about open.

Then came the evolution of the display. Displays started to become much larger and resolutions became much greater. We noticed this, cause we could now see two documents on the screen, side by side. Aspect ratios changed from 4:3 to 16:9. But again, the experience remained static.

You simply can't compare the experience of using the iPad to other computers you've used before. You might then say, it uses the iPhone OS and I've used an iPhone before so it's the same thing except larger. This too is simply untrue. Perhaps my favorite, are the talking heads who state, never having used the device mind you, that while the device may be good at consuming content, it's terrible at creating it. We will deal with that one a bit later. Now that we've mentioned the common fallacies, what makes the iPad different? Why should I care? To get to the root of what makes the iPad a game changer, we have to start with the word I.

The iPad is a deeply personal experience. It is easily tailored to your needs and desires. Despite what people say about all the apps and the iWork suite, the iPad will be defined by what you decide to do with it. Yes, it is an ebook reader and an iPod and a word processor. However, like the preverbal tree in the woods, if you don't set it up that way, no one will hear it. In the end, it is very much like a computer in this regard.

Going back to the specs for a moment, the one stat that certainly matters is the battery life. Apple rated it at ten hours. I used my iPad nonstop for almost fourteen hours and still, had twenty-two percent left. You will easily be able to get a few real days of use out of it on a single change. A quick note on speed. Despite the specs mentioned earlier, the iPad is lightning fast. It performs all tasks with ease and never feels "bogged down" as computers sometimes feel. The other big knock is on multitasking. This unfortunately is rather true to an extent. You can have email fetching and music playing while performing any other task. In fact I have Bon Jovi blaring as I write this. However it would be nice to have IM running in the background while doing something different or streaming music while reading a magazine.

One minor issue with the word processor. There is no tab button on the keyboard. You need to turn the iPad vertically and pull tab out of a menu. It is surprisingly annoying. This issue can be mitigated with any Bluetooth keyboard. In general there are good work arounds for most issues and the issues it has can all be addressed later with software updates.

Almost ten years ago when wifi was becoming available to the general public, I boldly predicted that computers were going to be moving away from self contained modules and would become thin clients. This has basically come true. Our content is now stored in the "cloud" and we can now access it from multiple devices from anywhere. The iPad isn't the first device to do this but is the first device to take on the traditional PC. To address the content creation issue, this entire review was written on the iPad's virtual keyboard at roughly the same pace as a normal one. There are also apps that mimic a piano or give you an entire sketchbook. One last thing, the iPad can actually be used as a prayerbook and it may surprise you to learn that the most popular type of app in the store continues to be the Bible.

-Lance Murdock