Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.

 
Ho Ho Ho

Well the Griswolds have returned to Phoenix after a fascinating trip to New Mexico....

It's funny how a family acquires Christmas traditions. We made the same trip 3 years ago and due to meal time and gas tank requirements, we ended up opening Christmas presents at a truck stop in Winslow. This year I was up for the same modus operandi but I wanted to do it instead at a truck stop by Holbrook where gas was about 18 cents cheaper. Nope, because of tradition it had to be in Winslow in almost in the same spot in the parking lot as 3 years ago.

I should add that the kids wanted to get in a few viewings of a "Christmas Story" on TBS because "it's a Christmas tradition."

Of such traditions memories are made.

Other observations...

What ever happened to shopping mall Christmas trees? Back when I was a wee lad, you could always find Santa in the central meeting spot of the mall under a Christmas tree. Now not only has Santa been shunted over to the side somewhere, usually by a Mervyn's undergoing a liquidation sale (Santa, for Christmas I would like some of those store fixtures at 60% off) but he's no longer under a tree. At the Scottsdale Fashion Square, he's at some sort of "fantasy garden" and I think in Christown he reigns from top of the soft serve machine at the Orange Julius. So what happened to the Christmas tree? Did it go the politically way way of saying "Merry Christmas"?

Speaking of Holidays... I always thought the term "Happy Holidays" was a fairly innocent term. For us, the "Holidays" started with the family trip for Thanksgiving and ended after the Super Bowl when Mom took down the Christmas tree. So there you had it... Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, the Super Bowl... the "Holidays." Little did I know that it was all a plan to eliminate the use of "Merry Christmas" and shunt Santa off to a fantasy garden.

Oh and one more thing...

To the idiot driver in front of me who was going through Flagstaff on Christmas Day in the snow when the visibility was cut to a few hundred feet on I-17. If you decided against the use of any vehicle lights in order to camouflage your vehicle against an air attack or an insurgent ambush your strategy was brilliant. Likewise if you were trying to get me to use as many swear words as possible in front of my children on the day where we celebrate the birth of our Savior, I must say you were incredibly successful. Otherwise... well... I hope you survived to see the New Year.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 10:12 AM

 
Sippin' Whiskey

A wise man once told me that forget barrels and single malts, forget grains and peats; whiskeys are divided into two types, those for fightin' and then there are those for sippin'. I have been too much into the sippin' kind today for much good, in fact based on the lack of posts over the past week, I guess you can say I have been sippin' for a while.

So some thoughts here on Christmas Eve.

I have found the papers to be almost unreadable over the past few months. The TV and the papers tell me that depression and ruin fill the land, every day bringing bad news, every day bleaker than the last. We're all going to die.

I would go into our political leadership. How it has become feckless and corrupt, but now is not the time for doing that... plus if I started writing on that issue I would have to switch to the other type of whiskey, put away the Maker's Mark and bring out the Old Heaven Hill. As I said one whiskey is for sippin' and the other....

The point is that fear and despair seem to have infected the land. Things aren't good right now, but things have been worse in the past. You really wonder how we made it through things like the Great Depression, WW II, the Civil War, the Revolution. Actually what right now sounds like is the 1970s where the theme was civilization decline and demise from rampant crime, stagflation, depletion of resources, bad fashion and too many clothes made out of synthetics.

Gee whatever happened after that? Strangely enough we are still here

A wise man told me once that I would have better days than this and I would have worse days, that man was my boss and he told me that over dinner at a KFC after I gunked a major project. I never forgot that lesson, that you need in life to take the rough with the smooth and most of all not to learn to panic. That was some sound leadership on his part that evening as I stared at my Original Recipe.

So anyway take it easy have a drink this Christmas. If you have the time go over to Sonoran Brewing this Sunday, Vox is having a bloggerama blow-out and Thomas is coming back from North Carolina just for the occasion.

I'll see you early next week.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 3:03 PM

 
The Frogurt is (Still) Cursed

Long ago I wrote that the Arizona Cardinals was a cursed franchise, forever damned to wander the wasteland of disappointment. I warned about getting sucked in to a "rebirth" that we periodically hear about; a new coach, a new stadium, a high draft pick that finally pans out (or at least signs early.)

As a Philadelphia sports fan, I know about long patches of disappointment. I have also learned to hate sports writers with a passion (in the heart of every Dan Bickley there is John Feinstein fighting to get out), so I used to dismiss all the crying about the sad sack nature of the Cards.

That was until 2002. The coach was Dave McGinnis whose rah-rah nature would inspire us all to a fabulous new world where every season would be above .500 and draft picks would be signed before training camp started and not after it ended. I took one look at that and didn't like it, no sir not one bit. When the team started 4-2 that year and everyone was predicting the New Age I predicted disaster, I predicted the team wouldn't win another game.

I was wrong, they won one more game and finished 5-11, right then and there I knew they were cursed.

Now has this year's team sucked you in? The rebirth of Kurt Warner? The winning of a division title? I had to admit I was starting to believe. I like the coaches, I like the draft picks, everything smells right... execpt that it was the Cardinals. Sure enough, on Monday Night Football, a national stage, they struggled to beat the lowly 49ers and right then and there I knew there was trouble.

Quick aside, when have the Cards ever played well on Monday Night at home? In 1995, they got pounded by the Cowboys on Christmas night with Buddy Ryan running off the field before the game was even over. Two years ago they folded like a cheap suit against the Bears in an epic collapse giving us Dennis Green's forever You-Tube moment. In 1999, they ended Steve Young's career. Let's face it, they haven't played well at home since Jerry Maguire.

Then came that pounding by a down-and-out Eagles team on Thanksgiving. Last week they get torched by Tavaris Jackson, that just about it says it all. Today they got crushed by the Patriots in the snow. I think we all know where this is going in two weeks when they end up playing someone like Atlanta in the first round, they best we can hope is that they don't mangle the turf too bad for the Fiesta Bowl that comes a few days later.

This is how a cursed team works. A fan will build up his immune system to certain disappointments, it's only by creating new ways to throttle the emotions of the fans that a cursed team can manintain its evil ways. We've been through pre-season hype that doesn't materialize, new coach that heralds a new era only to spend the remainder of his contract at home (Bugel, Ryan, McGinnis, Green...), a new stadium that allows a revenue stream.... been there done that and we've built up resistance. So what else can the Cards do? Fast start and fall on their face? Nope done that too, see 2002....

Nope the new wrinkle is to get into the playoffs and clinch so early that they have a month to ruin the experience for us. Didn't see that one coming did you? That's what a cursed team does, finds new ways to ruin life for you. After the way the team has played the past 4 weeks, are you looking forward to that home playoff game or are you going to hide behind the couch or do something productive with that day like go out and shoot squirrels or something?

At least we have the Rattlers to look forward to... oh wait, I guess we don't any more.

Sigh
posted by Anonymous Mike at 4:44 PM

 
Best Comment Yet...

... on the possibility of Caroline Kennedy being appointed to the US Senate. In the comments section from a NY Daily News column:

I think it's great that the son of Basil Paterson gets to choose between the daughter of JFK or the son of Mario Cuomo in order to replace the wife of Bill Clinton in the Senate. Thank God for democracy.

(h/t Small Dead Animals)
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:15 PM

 
On a Three Hour Tour

Reading that El Gringo has taken the Carnival Elation cruise down along the Baja brings up memories of my cruise from last year… which just happened to be on the Elation down along the Baja.

Carnival advertises itself as the “fun” cruise line; the current slogan is “Fun for all. All for Fun.” In fact the quest for “fun” permeates everything that happens on board: songs and skits during dinner, bath towels folded up as various animals, the provision of a video arcade with games that date back from the time when Tom Foley was House Speaker. You get the picture. In fact Carnival makes sure that the fun-meter is always turned up to 11; I’m surprised they didn’t carry out regular mockings of sour-pusses on the Lido Deck just to encourage the others.

Leading the fun patrol was our cruise director, Stewart, who would regularly get on the PA system and inform us in his Aussie accent of the next fabulous, fun event for we which we had to get ready. Fun apparently began the moment the life boat drill was over when waiters started to cruise the decks with trays full of cocktails which of course were available at $6.75. In fact the ship was so attuned to fun that if you wanted soda, you had to pay for that as well. Free food 24/7 but if you wanted some carbonated sugar water they were going to pop you.

Our cruise had two full days at sea and two days of shore excursions. The trick to enjoying the shore excursions is to ignore everything the ship’s crew tells you. My wife and I attended the pre-excursion orientation for Cabo led by none other than Mr. Stewart. Maybe he got an employee discount on booze or soda because the man always seemed stoked to the hilt and that morning he seemed especially on as he told of all the “fabulous” finds and deals that were available for in Cabo, in fact I lost count after his 15th use of the word “fabulous.” Needless to say once on the beach in Cabo, we found nothing “fabulous” about Stewart’s recommendations

Nope the trick to enjoying the shore excursions is to go blind into the city and cut your own deals with the locals, not only is it cheaper but is so tinged with the absurd that it proves a far better time than anything than the Carnival people could engender. In Ensenada, we ended up in a tour van with a young couple from Gilbert who were on their honeymoon, luckily the husband had done his mission somewhere in South America and therefore spoke Spanish. Instead of making a simple trip to see the famous “Blowhole” which isn’t very fabulous at low tide, we managed to negotiate a deal with the driver to go horseback riding on a “white sandy beach.” The beach had sand that might have been white at one time and the horses might not have been decrepit beasts for their entire lives; actually the horses had plenty of life in them because the father and son time leading the ride would make all of them run as fast as possible just to see if they could unseat the Americans. Believe me this was a lot more fun than it sounds.

Our cruise occurred over New Year’s so we celebrated New Year’s on board. In typical Stewart fashion, the good man informed us for days ahead of time that we had barely enough time to reserve our own champagne from the ship’s very limited stocks. What we found out that night was that free champagne abounded and believe me a good time was had by all. Having to buy your own champagne ranked right up there with the need to buy Tanzanite

I sound too harsh. I really did enjoy the cruise, though when it came time to disembark I was glad I didn’t have to spend one moment longer on that ship. It really does make for a great trip for kids, I mean nothing lights up a kid’s eyes more than the realization that they have 24/7 access to the free ice cream machine.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 11:56 AM

 
What's Good for the...

With the news that Governor Napolitano intends to sign an executive order allowing state workers to select union representatives to sit at the bargaining table and discuss personnel issues with state officials ("meet and confer"), I have some questions.

First the obvious one everyone is asking... if this was such a good idea why did the Governor wait for 6 years and then try to sign it when she has announced she's leaving?

Then... Democrats are yelping over the fact that the person who will replace Napolitano is coming from a different party and may reverse many of her policies (leave aside the fact that Napolitano will leave the state in a deep fiscal hole), then why should we accept the fact that while she's in her lame duck status that she is making major changes in how the state is run? I mean the state is in one of its fiscal crisis ever thanks in her part to her policies and she just waved good bye to the state and said "smell you later" but only wants to stay around long enough to make sure she's solid enough in her next gig. So while she waits she's going to start gumming up the works? What's next? Removing the letter "J" from the keyboards?

What's the practical benefit to having union representatives sitting at the table? I have always heard, preached, and practiced that good management involves directly listening to what your employees' need and concerns and getting them addressed... is there a problem with agency personnel management that "meet and confer" will solve?

Finally... what's been on the news lately? The auto bailout and how in part the UAW has screwed up the industry, not to mention that they want billions in tax payer money so they can keep some of their sweet contracts until they expire in 2011. Second, if you have been following the budget messes in New York and California over the last several years you realize how much of those states' budgets have been in hock to the public sector unions. Remember in 2003 how Schwarzenegger wanted to reform California until he realized he could either take on the unions or be re-elected but not both?

So why again do you want unions, at a time when there are stories galore about how they are trundling up to the taxpayer teat, sitting at the table when there is going to have be some serious budget cutting? Where's the value-added for the tax payer by allowing clowns like SEIU and AFSCME to be part of the process?
posted by Anonymous Mike at 5:53 PM

 
Belling the Cat

This is a story getting some play on the Internet. The other week Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who won this year's Nobel Prize winner in Literature, stated in his Nobel lecture that:

Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded—ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.

Now I think it would unfair of me to cherry-pick a single sentence from a long lecture given by a man who just won one of the greatest prizes in literature. However as my kids will most certainly attest, I am not a fair person. So here goes.

It may seem unbelievable to 20-somethings, but there was quite a free flow of information and images before the Internet. While done in a more hierarchical fashion and with more filters than you will find today, a person of just modest means but sufficient ambition could be up to speed on the issues and news of the day. Don't think so? Think Somalia in the early 1990s. Images of the famine in that country and the criminal role the various militias played in the tragedy is what drove a lame duck George H.W. Bush to make a major commitment of not only American humanitarian aid but also the military firepower to make sure the chow got into the right hands. Those weren't UN peacekeepers guarding the food convoys, but rather the 7th Marines. People saw the criminal nature of what was happening and applied the pressure to make sure something was done.

The technology at the time was of course television; combined with satellite communications and air travel meant that even events in the farthest corner of the globe could be beamed into your living room.

Now let's go back further in time, to the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s as Hitler began his march to war.

Now of course television hadn't been invented yet, but there was a thriving newspaper industry in France and Britain that could provide plenty of information for the common person in the street. Even more importantly the elites, especially in Britain, who had a much more insulated position in power than today had a very clear view of what was going on. Anybody who paid attention to what Hitler was saying knew exactly what he wanted to do. It wasn't like Mein Kampf was a hard to find book in Europe and Hitler took numerous opportunities to broadcast his intentions.

In short people knew.

What people didn't have was the determination to actually do something about it. Hitler's domestic enemies misunderestimated him; political leaders like Papen and the industrialists thought he could be made a pawn of their interests, the military only saw the glittering opportunity to re-arm. Accordingly, instead of killing Nazism in its cradle, they kept Hitler and his party in play until it was too late.

If you read the history of Britain's interactions with Hitler during the 1930s, you see the problem wasn't one of information but rather of analysis of intent. Figures of appeasement such as Baldwin and Chamberlain looked at the exact same information as Churchill regarding Hitler and his rearmament program but came away very different conclusions of what it actually meant. It was if they were looking at clouds in the sky, trying to ascertain their shape; while Churchill saw a given cloud as being in the shape of a murderous Hun, the appeasers saw the same cloud as being in the shape of a puppy.

That was Churchill's special genius and why he in part occupies his special place in history. Before Hitler even came to power, Churchill had him pegged for what the German truly was and Winston made himself Hitler's nemesis. Churchill paid a tremendous political price for this stance, essentially living in political exile until the start of WW II. That's is why Manchester's famous second volume of Churchill during this time is entitled "Alone."

So let's go back to Mr. Le Clezio's statement.

To act is not just a matter of information, whether in text or images. It is also a matter of analysis and leadership. One of the terrible achievements of the 20th Century was the perfection of propaganda, which is the manipulation of known facts and images to create a picture of reality suitable for political action. A close cousin of propaganda is the natural human tendency to self-manipulate information to meet a preconceived notion; after all we don't necessarily believe what we see as much as we see what we already want to believe.

To know about Hitler's "criminal plot" is necessary to stop it, but it is not only not sufficient but not even the most difficult part. Proper analysis of the information and leadership to act on it is necessary and those factors are rare commodities.

LONG ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. Some said this, and some said that; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case. “You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighbourhood.” This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said: “That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?”
posted by Anonymous Mike at 6:09 PM

 
Blago the Magnificent

Lee asked me why I hadn't commented on Illinois yet, well he's not the only one. So here are some random thoughts...

I wasn't overly shocked or appalled by what Governor Blagojevich did, but that's just me and my upbringing. I grew up in New Jersey where pay-to-play is a fact of life. Not to say if it happened in say, Arizona, I wouldn't be heading down to the Wesley Bolin with pitchforks and torches but I just come to expect to such things about Illinois

Will this hurt Obama? Oh yes if only because this story will follow him around like a leech, sucking the oxygen out of the room from now until Christmas. Do I think Obama was part of any monkey business? No. Do I think his staff was directly involved? No. However in both the president-elect and his staff's contacts with Blagojevich, it seems to be me they had to be aware of what the creep was up to or at least caught wind of it. How much further it goes than is anybody's guess. So I think there are two possible effects.

First the question is going to be raised when did Obama and his staff get an idea of what was happening and what did they do about it. After that glorious first Tuesday in November, the good man Obama ceased to be a Senator and became a Head-of-State-elect which has a very different set of responsibilities. How much did they know? All of it? Were they going to sit back and let a US Senate seat be sold like a high school prom date? Not a good place to be in and I don't envy them, but those are the bresks. You think it's bad now wait until you get blamed for what some deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs writes in a memo.

Second, it just refocuses attention on where Obama came from, the biggest political sewer in the country. Yeah I'll give it a top ranking, right above New Jersey, and light years above number 3 which was Arkansas. Remember Whitewater? Remember the cattle futures? Just a sign of the political mudpit the Clintons spent all those years marinating in while living in Little Rock. My guess is this will end up being just a small chink in Obama's armor but if another like story comes up, like something from the Rezko song sheet, then this will be seen as part of a pattern and then who knows?

As for myself, I hope this all passes and we can move on to more important business, but then again when did anybody listen to me anyway?
posted by Anonymous Mike at 7:00 PM

 
Senator Kennedy... from New York

I am still cleaning up the monitor from reading this, I don't know what drew me to it, but more than 12 hours later I'm still shaking my head about this Ruth Marcus column promoting Caroline Kennedy for the open New York senate seat. Not only I do find the material retching, but I'm a bit dazed from reading how Ms. Marcus talks herself into supporting Ms. Kennedy's candidacy

Now I'm not up to speed on the inside odds regarding who will get picked to replace Hillary Clinton, I guess Andrew Cuomo makes as much sense as anyone considering he may be a rival for Patterson in the 2010 gubernatorial. I also don't have any great insight regarding Ms. Kennedy's political abilities outside of the fact that her anointment of Senator Obama with her father's legacy sure helped.

However let's face it... if her name wasn't Kennedy she wouldn't even be mentioned in all of this. She has no experience in elected office and it appears that her advancement in Democratic politics is based largely on her trading on her father's name.

Okay I'll admit it. I'm just sick of the Kennedys; the soap opera nature of the family, the "martyrdom" of the two brothers, and not to mention the non-stop coverage when JFK Jr. rammed his plane into the ocean. Look I can accept the fact that if you were born into the family then you are already on 3rd base when it comes to the public stage, how else to explain RFK Jr.? However do we have to accept that public office is something a Kennedy is entitled to upon demand? I mean didn't Hillary at least have to run for her seat?

As an aside I find it more than amusing this modern-day Democratic reverence, near-worship in fact, for JFK. After all the man was elected in part on a policy of building more nukes, had a hawkish foreign policy that included the sending of military forces around the globe, and the man cut taxes. Should I also mention JFK's lack of enthusiasm for the civil rights movement? How does all of that square up with the President-elect (pull troops out, no more new nukes, raise taxes) on whom Ms. Kennedy bestowed her father's legacy? Would she today bestow her father's legacy on the man who was truly her father?

So who was JFK closer to? Bush or Obama? Maybe it's the latter but I bet you'll have to think about it for a bit.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 5:16 PM

 
Wesley Bolin Plaza

The other day I had some time to kill between appointments so I did something I hadn't done for a while; I wandered through Wesley Bolin Plaza and looked at the various memorials.

If you haven't been to the Plaza, it's a large open-air public space located just east of the Capitol and surrounded by the state office buildings and has numerous memorials and monuments. So think Washington Mall but a bit less striking.

There are times where I feel like Lileks, getting caught up in the various minutiae of everyday life, and this is one of them. Each of those memorials and monuments represented a significant effort by someone to get it funded, approved, and constructed; someone really had to care to build that police dog memorial, someone had alot of passion and drive in them to get that one for Arizona Confederate Veterans or whatever. I may not care but someone else did.

But why? There's a story behind each of these and whatever I may think of the worthiness of the cause there is that passion behind it and therefore in the hands of a skilled researcher and writer, a nice story could be drawn out. However outside of the 9/11 Memorial and perhaps the Code Talkers, it's hard to find anything about the history of any of those effort.

So here's my suggestion... cost-effective and just a plain win-win for everybody.

Go to ASU (or UA and NAU) and look up the History Department. Stumbling around that department are a bunch of grad students looking for thesis and dissertation topics, put them on the case. Heck throw them a small stipend or some other bennie. Have them research the various memorials, interview the benefactors or supporters, the members of the commission that approved that particular project.

It works for everyone. We get a piece of our history documented, the people behind the projects get recognized, and a bunch of grad students will be rescued from writing their dissertations on socially transgendered relations in 19th Century Yuma.

I mean come on, don't you want to know the history behind the "Arizona Law Enforcement Canine Memorial"?
posted by Anonymous Mike at 8:27 AM

 
Pro-rouge or Prorogue?

If you follow the Canadian Football League , the place where NFL players who are either too short (Flutie) or too high (Ricky Williams) go to make a living, you know all about the rouge... that one point the other teams gets when you cannot run the ball out of the end zone. There are alot of rules like that in the CFL, like 3 downs, the 55-yard line, and once having two teams called the Rough Riders; I think they do it just to make it different from the NFL.

So imagine my surprise when I heard that the great Canadian political crisis that I wrote about earlier this week was solved when the Governor General agreed to prorogue the House of Commons. I mean that was all it took? Who knew this great constitutional crisis could be solved by downing the ball in the end zone?

Oh you mean prorOGUE and not pro-rOUGE, I see now. She basically closed the House of Commons down and told them not to come back until late January.

As an aside... did you know that in the 1990s the CFL expanded to the US with teams in such places as San Antonio, Memphis, and Shreveport? Wow I wonder how that worked out in Louisiana... was there a heated rivalry between Shreveport and say Edmonton.? Also apparently the Baltimore franchise won the Grey Cup, the CFL championship, in 1995 right about the time NHL teams like Quebec and Winnipeg were moving to the US. No wonder they hate us.

Back to politics...

If you remember, the whole constitutional crisis was coming to head this Monday when the Conservative government was going to lose a vote in the House of Commons and then be replaced by a NDP-Liberal-BQ coalition. The problem was that there was an election just 6 weeks ago and the parties that formed the coalition were told by the voters to take a hike, so it didn't seem fair for them to sneak into power through the back door. Another alternative was to dissolve Parliament and hold another election, just weeks after the last one. That didn't seem too bright as well, plus that meant holding an election campaign during Christmas and Boxing Day, apparently there is some Canadian superstition regarding campaigning on Boxing Day.

So the Governor General, who is the Queen's representative in Canada, decided on another alternative- to prorogue. Since the only thing that would come out of Monday's vote in the House of Commons were problems, she decided to lock everyone out of the House of Commons and not have any vote at all. Keep in mind that the Governor General isn't elected, she was appointed by a prime minister who held office like three prime ministers ago, and represents a queen who as any red-blooded American will tell you isn't elected at all.

So an unelected representative of an unelected queen solved a constitutional problem in a democracy by locking the doors of the country's pre-eminent democratic institution and telling the people's elected representatives to go away for a couple of months. Sounds very un-democratic, in fact sounds more like Chicago than Canada.

Did I mention the queen in question is descended from ole George III of American Revolution days? Coincidence? I think not.... hey Canada you should have joined up with us back in 1775 when you had the chance and so instead of still being pushed around by British royalty you could have Nancy Pelosi and President Obama's puppy
posted by Anonymous Mike at 9:11 AM

 
The Napolitano Bubble

Okay I've been through the tech bubble, the real estate bubble, and now the oil price bubble; maybe we can start talking about the Napolitano bubble.

I feel like one of those people who writes a biography of an athlete who is still in mid-career but I'm going to take a crack at trying to write-up the Napolitano legacy as far as Arizona; who knows it could also be her political epitaph. I think you break her career into 3 stages:

Part 1, The Rise: 1998 or so to 2006

Part 2, The Plateau: 2007-2008

Part 3, The Future: November 2008 onward

Let's do the easy part first, The Rise.

Her's was the meteoric rise. We forget with her crushing 2006 gubernatorial victory that she was barely elected for attorney general in 1998 and governor in 2002 winning both by narrow margins. That 2006 election was almost anti-climatic because she was such a dominant figure in Arizona that no one of any significance in the Republican Party wanted to run against her. I mean come one, Don Goldwater was a serious primary candidate and while probably a great guy had as his dominant qualification that he was Barry's nephew. It got to the point that the Republican-dominated Legislature sent her a budget that allowed her to claim during the election that she was both a tax cutter and spender. She was truly the Sun God because the whole of the Arizona political world revolved around her.

The Plateau.

Look you crushed your opponents, winning your election handily and bringing Republican margins down in the Legislature, where do you go from there? I mean you are so far up that you had to come down a bit right? So she didn't lower the sea levels, get us all Google-like jobs, and turn our fine state into the land of milk and honey. On top of that, whether it was too high expectation, staff departures, or just sheer political exhaustion her two main attempts to build a lasting political legacy- TIME and the state trust land ballot initiatives- were horribly bungled not even making it to the ballot. Worst of all, the political agenda of the last 12 months was dominated by the budget deficit, that's no way to generate warm fuzzies.

The Future

She's half-way out the door with her resignation promised as soon as she's confirmed as Homeland Security Secretary, probably as soon as late January. She will leave a state with the worst budget crisis in the country in terms of percentage of deficit and with expected revenues only returning to FY2007 levels in 2011. Her opportunity to run for Senate in 2010 has been dimmed by McCain's decision to run for re-election. Her political coat-tails were shown to be short by the fact that the Democrats lost seats in the Legislature.

So what is her legacy?

I am going to argue that her rise, or "The Rise" from 1998 to 2006, was in part a bubble. I don't think anyone will doubt she is a capable politician but it's a long way from 2-term governor to political collossus and while the former is fact I don't think the latter is necessarily deserved. First because her timing was extremely fortunate. If the Republicans didn't commit fatricide during the AG primary race in 1998, does she squeak through? If the Hull Administration didn't seem so tired, both her and Groscost tainted with the alt-fuel fisaco, and the downturn in the economy does she get by Matt Salmon on the slimmest of margins? If she doesn't win either election, and though she ran smart campaigns both times I think her fate rested on the events I mentioned above, none of the rest matters.

Look at her first term as governor. Her reputation relies on two foundations. First was stewardship, that she brought Arizona from a massive budget deficit to massive budget surpluses. Second was her control of the border. In the first case, the downturn that caused the deficit was short-lived and could be largely managed through one-time measures, the surpluses started rolling in long before the bag of tricks was used up. To top it, it has become clear that the massive increase in revenue that fueled those surpluses was largely one-time monies and not sustainable; however by treating that money as recurring allowed her to be that tax-cutting, high-spending politician running for re-election in 2006. In short a major part of her popularity was not sustainable.

The second part, immigration and border control, is a head scratcher. Over the past 6 years, she has been a true political genius because she has been on the wrong side (in terms of popularity) of the debate; she only sent the National Guard to the border to forestall the Legislature, she was against the successful ballot initiatives on the issue. However she's managed to develop a solid national reputation on the issue by seeing which way the parade was going in Arizona and then jumping to the front in order to claim the credit

I think that probably brings up a possible third part of her popularity; the fact that she was able to portray herself as a moderate and never got pushed against her base. Democrats accepted her relatively strong (for a Democrat) enforcement measures because they understood that she was politically triangulating herself in relation to the likes of Russell Pearce. When she was the height of her political power, they accepted the relatively incrementalist agenda because she spent the surpluses and vetoed symbolic bills such as abortion restriction proposals; in short her centrist measures were seen as stoppoing much worse (for them) initiaitives from the Legislature. I guess that's the other story from the last 6 years, low expectations from Democrat rank-and-file. Well it helped her because I didn't recall her once having to be pulled left to satisfy her base; as long as she was seen as just slightly to the left of the Legislature she was okay and could still operate as a centrist.

So I'll argue, again, that her Rise had to do with being dealt extemely favorable ground, both fiscally and politically, and enough political smarts to capitalize on it. That's not a bad thing and there are alot of people who have had their careers buried in the political graveyard because they lacked her skills, but that's a long way from her being the transformational figure some claim.

I think the Plateau and the Future have to be dealt with together because they are intertwined. Yes, some of the inertia and mistakes could be attributed to the staff departure and mistakes or just the realization that the fun fiscal times were over, but I think a good deal was due to Napolitano looking to her future. The only question was which one? US senator or cabinet officer? Up until the late Spring, it could be either or but I think once she started to stump hard for Obama her heart was set on the cabinet officer job. As the year wore on and she travelled more on the campaign trail, taking her out of the state, you could tell her heart wasn't in it. Here's why...

If she was going to run for senator, say planning for 2010, then she would serve out her term as governor. If she was going to serve her term out as governor, then she would have to solve the budget problem. By late Spring 2008, no one could think that budget was going to be a short-term dip as in 2003; it was going to take time and political capital to solve. However her solution was to scrape some Republican moderates and get a FY2009 budget passed that was based on 6% growth in revenue at a time when revenue was shrinking; it was an extreme act of fiscal dishonesty and everyone knew that it would have to overhauled. However it was to buy her time at the cost of Arizona's fiscal health. Rather than working on ways to get Arizona back on the way to that health, she then committed her Summer and Fall to stumping for Obama.

Let's face it she might not have yet resigned as governor, but she emotionally vacated the position a long time ago. Whether you wanted to trace it to the post-election doldrums, the excitement of possibly going to Washington, or whatever... If she wanted to stay and finish out her term then she would have approached the past 8 months on the budget from a much different standpoint understanding that restoring the state to fiscal health as early as possible was the key to her political future.

Now her legacy in this state and any future she may have here is in the process of being formed right now and this will continue through the Spring as we try to grapple with the deficit. If you think a budget deficit is a short-term phenomena, then you can try and solve it with some gimmerckery like the roll-over and tapping cash funds, however those don't work long term and can only paper over a structural deficit. If you think the deficit is going to be a multi-year mess then you look long and hard at reducing that structural deficit. Governor Napolitano has had two deficit budgets, looked at them as only short-term problems, and right we hava structural deficit of $2 billion which as a percentage of the budget is one of the highest in nation. Her legacy depends on the next several months, as the Republicans work to close that structural deficit, that this is what a Governor Brewer inherited and not made.

In a perfect world, I am sure Governor Napolitano would have wished that all of this came 12 months sooner. If she was going to Washington in December 2007, before the deficits, before the Democrat reverals in the Legislature, she would have a different sheen to her reputation
posted by Anonymous Mike at 7:19 AM

 
Apple delenda est

I am a reasonable man, kind and considerate. I can see you nodding right now and saying to yourself, "Mike, you are the epitome of kindness and understanding." So because of these virtues it is only fair to warn you ahead of time of what about I am about to say, please turn away if you are easily shocked or wish to continue in your innocence.

Okay you had your chance. Here goes...

Apple must be destroyed.

I have not said that about any other bete noire; not Governor Napolitano, not Jon Talton, not my neighbor, not anyone else on my enemies list. Why is Apple different?

A little while ago, a kind and considerate person sent me an iPod for my birthday. The person in question knew I used my Palm Centro as an MP3 player and that while a wonder machine, the Centro is a little unwieldy. So in came a nice shiny, wafer-thin 8GB iPod Nano. Much smaller and 4x the storage space as the Centro. Smooth sailing for you Mike, your life is just now peaches and cream.

One problem.

To sync the iPod you need to use the iTunes management interface. Not just any iTunes for the new Nano but their latest and greatest, iTunes 8, which only works on Windows XP SP2 and above. Sorry I live in a house where we still use Windows 2000, heck my 12-year old still uses NT 4.0 (an OS almost as old as he is.) Why? Because well the crap still works for the limited uses we need it for and if I need serious power I'll just fire up the Linux box.

So basically I have a brick; a nice, shiny, thin brick that I cannot load. I call Apple support, I go down to the Apple Store - several different ones - and beg for help, a work-around, an explanation.

None. Should I add that of all the people I talked to, all the so-called "whizzes" or whatever they call them at these places treated me with contempt? That "You should get with the times", that "We cannot possibly support every operating system, I mean you don't expect us to support DOS" When I mentioned to them that they supported Windows 2000 until recently and then asked what features they gained in the recent version of iTunes that abandoned 2000 I was met with a blank stare.

I know that stare, I know that attitude because that was my modus operandi when I ran tech support, those who didn't want to run the latest and greatest were beneath contempt and just not worth more thought than "upgrade your computer." Oh yeah when I asked if them if they had something that could run under Linux, they had no resposne to that one either. So much for the bleeding edge.

Should I have taken the oh so subtle hint and laid out the relatively moderate amount of cash and buy a new computer that could have run XP? Or perhaps just got a copy of Vista or XP and partitioned the hard drive of my Linux box? I guess but why should I got through all of that so I could run Apple's software to load my Apple brick?

Here's what got me about all of it... besides the fact that Apple treated me more as a tech support supplicant than a paying customer. I found out later, after I gave my buddy a six pack of delicious Sierra Nevada Celebration to use his computer to load my iPod, that I didn't even need to use iTunes. There are plenty of solid 3rd party applications that work just as good if not better than iTunes, I mean even ole Winamp does a better job, and a bunch of them do Linux.

So they lied to me when they said there were no other options... either that or those tech whizzes who held me below contempt and smirked at me didn't know what they were talking about. Hey I'll eat alot of crap if the person who is dishing it out knows what they are talking about and I can learn a thing or two, I will definitly hold General McClellan's horse.

However when you dish it out and you are full of it? Say it with me...

Apple delenda est
posted by Anonymous Mike at 9:12 AM

 
Oh Canada....

Two months ago, Canada had an election. I am sure I told you about it... oh wait I did right here. However I didn't tell you how it ended; the Conservatives were returned to office with a minority government which means with the recent election of Obama and the hammerlock that Pelosi has on the House that Canada may have a more right-wing government than the US. Who would have thunk?

Well then again maybe not...

You think with their election over and it being a nice and peaceful country, that it would be safe to pull your attention away from Canada and focus on more useful things... like the disagreement within the Obama family on what sort of puppy to get. However right when you thought you were out, those Canucks just pull you right back in because by Monday, the Conservatives might be out on their ear a mere two months after they were elected.

Let's see if I got this straight....

The Conservatives have a minority government which means they have less than half the seats in Parliament... almost a majority but about 10 seats short. That means they need to get the votes of somebody else. This they managed to do for their last minortiy government, with fewer seats, for the past 2 1/2 years. Shouldn't be a problem right? Well I need to explain some Canadian political workings first but you can just skip ahead to the end for the punch line if you want.

This all started when the Conservatives attached a provision in a major financial bill that would eliminate public funding for political parties. Instant uproar and just not a smart move. The 3 main opposition parties (Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, and New Democrats) all got together and decided two things. First they would vote down the bill on Monday, supposedly because there wasn't enough fiscal stimulus but in reality because they wanted to keep their public funding; if a major bill goes down so does the government so the Conservatives may fall at tha time. The second thing they decided was after the Conservatives fell to agree to form their own governement with the Liberals and the New Democrats sharing cabinet seats and the Bloc agreeing to help legislation.

So what's the fuss? All normal British parliamentary stuff right?

Uh Uh

First look at the proposed alternative government. The leading party will be the Liberals who lost their majority government in 2006 after 13 years in power and lost even more seats two months ago. Their performance was so dismal that the Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, had to resign because he had no credibility. However since his replacement won't be picked until May, if the alternative government takes power he will be the new Canadian prime minsiter. in the mean time he would be prime minister. The New Democrats have been on the outside of government since forever, they have never tasted power because they just think Canada isn't left wing enough; they are like the Bernie Sanders and Cynthia McKinney of Canadian politics. Then you have the Bloc... these are the guys who want to break up the country by taking Quebec out of Canada.

Whatever you want to say about the Conservatives and a mandate or lack thereof, these guys have that much less. After all just two months they got smacked around hard in the polls, but now they are on the verge of power; their leader just got called from packing his office to picking out drapes for his prime minisieterial office and all thanks to the decision to the throw the keys of power to a bunch of socialists and traitors.

Okay enough of the trivia because right now your head is hurting, here's the key thing to know...

Canada is headed for a constitutional crisis with the likes unseen since... gosh ever. Well maybe up there with the separatist votes in 1980 and 1995. By Monday the Canadian Governor General is going to be faced with a decision on whether to accept the Frankenstein of an alternative government which has no popular support and no reason besides power during perhaps the most critical financial time over the last 75 years. Or she can call another election, two months after the last one and the third in 3 years.

So let's see... governments falling two months after election. Three elections in three years. Frankenstein coalitions that have no popular support cobbled together to take power. What does that sound like to you? Post-war Italy? Third Republic France?

This isn't good.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 5:14 PM

 
A Tale of Two Guns

In reading about New York Giant Plaxico Burress shooting himself with his own handgun, it's hard to feel sympathy for him because:

1) His gun went off accidentally

2) He did it in a night club while carrying a drink

Remember kids, drinking and firearms with the safety off don't mix.

Still the fact that the man faces a mandatory 3 1/2 year prison sentence on each of 2 counts for carrying a handgun without a license seems a bit excessive. 7 years in the slammer for self-defense? It does however show the differences in gun laws across our great land.

I'm a big believer in federalism, different strokes for different folks. If you want to live in an emerging nanny state where the mayor of your largest city bans trans-fats for "your own good," the state government jacks up taxes to pay huge salaries and bennies to unionized state workers, and you have to jump through more hoops than a circus lion to get a gun permit then New York is your cup of tea. If you like living in a state where it's "right to work," the gun laws are shall-issue, and there's an abundance of earth-toned stucco; might I suggest Arizona.

Now once again Mr. Burress is not exactly a sympathetic person and let's face it besides being a candidate for the Darwin Award he broke the law; Ignorantia juris neminem excusat. Amen

However judging from the remarks of Mayor Bloomberg and his almost fanatical glee in pursuing both Mr. Burress and the hospital that treated him, you have to ask from what emotional bearing the city is being run. While New York has improved, the Thin Blue Line has not yet made it a crime-free utopia. Mr. Burress works in a profession that was chronicled in a recent issue of the ESPN The Magazine about how professional football players fear for their safety a year after Sean Taylor's death. New York does not allow non-residents to hold gun permits, Mr. Burress resides in New Jersey, and both the city and state make any gun permit process onerous.

Perhaps the obvious solution is for Mr. Burress to hire an armed security gurard, with proper permits of course, so he wouldn't fear for his safety. You and I get to hope and pray and hope there is a lead pipe laying around.

That reminds me of an amusing story. I used to frequent a sushi place when I lived in Chandler; great place, a dive, where I thought they kept the lights low so you couldn't see how bad the carpeting was. Anyway one night as they were closing, I was watching the local news on TV with some of the staff when one of them recognized an (now ex) Arizona Cardinal player who was in court on a DUI (a number of Cardinal players would go there.) The staff member in question mentioned what a great guy he was, how neat his fiancee was, and how shocked she was to see him in such a situation. Thereafter when the player would go out to this place, he would rent a limo; I on the other hand made sure I stayed within the DUI laws by walking home.

See the ultimate solution for the Plaxicos of the world is to hire the limo, the rest of us have to get by with walking. When it comes to personal safety on the streets, that's what a Mr. Bloomberg run city will get you.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 6:17 PM