You know why there's no good restaurants around here? No atmosphere.

the troops home – I can’t see myself ever becoming a supporter.

Amazingly, though, it was Newt Gingrich who said something recently that I agreed with, and he’s drawing a lot of ridicule over it.  He said we should have a permanently  manned moon base.  Mind you, Newt deserves the ridicule.  He wants the moon base for the wrong (military) reasons, he hasn’t outlined how he plans to pay for it or explained how this is consistent with shrinking the government and cutting government expenditures (because it’s not) and, basically, he’s just spouting bullshit because he’s Newt Gingrich and has no intention of ever increasing the size of the  space program.

Granted, my  reasons for wanting a moon base are also not that substantial.  Mostly, I just think it would be cool.  If we are talking about scientific value, robots can probably  do anything we want on the moon and there are several space projects which should take priority, e.g. a space elevator, space stations used for industry and tourism, space based solar panels beaming cheap energy back to earth and next-generation space telescopes because Hubbell has been amazing but, come on, it’s been up there since 1990.  Remember 1990?  Cameras were cameras and phones were phones.

But also, I think that the solutions to the problems we have on this earth will not be political, because democracy is only as good as the demos, and unfortunately we’re not all that great, as a whole.   When the solutions to all  the world’s problems are found, they will be technological.

So, I like the idea of a permanently manned moon base.  But Newt Gingrich is still a putrid old windbag.

But, it's a dry crazy...

I was thinking about this the other day while reading about the Navy Seals rescuing the two hostages – an American woman and a Danish man – in Somalia the other day.  They’d been kidnapped by Somali “pirates” (who can’t be called pirates any more since they got kicked off the ocean, basically, in another one of Obama’s understated military actions).

Of course, it was the Navy Seals who actually carried out this American Entebbe.  One can’t expect the president to actually parachute into hostile territory in the middle of the night in a real life version of Call of Duty, and Barry’s not the type to strut across an aircraft carrier wearing a codpiece below a huge banner saying “Mission Accomplished,” but he made the call, after months of quiet, behind the scenes negotiations had failed.

I was reminded of the slogan of Theodore Roosevelt: speak softly and carry a big stick.

I was reminded of that again in the incident with Jan Brewer, Arizona’s governor.  They had a little chat yesterday at Phoenix airport.  Nobody was close enough to hear the actual conversation, and only Brewer is talking about it.  It’s the finger wagging picture that’s got everybody talking.

Brewer wrote in her absurdly titled book, “Scorpions for Breakfast” that Obama, during a meeting at the White House, was condescending.  That he’d lectured her like a schoolgirl. Well, what did she expect?  He’s the president.  She’s a governor.  He’s younger, smarter, more eloquent and better looking than she is.  It would be condescending if he weren’t condescending.

Obama told her (according to her) that he wasn’t happy with her characterization of the meeting.  She said he was thin-skinned.

After watching him for over 3 years now, I must say I have never seen anybody with a thicker skin.  He takes nonsense like this from a leather faced, bigoted old crone like Brewer and just moves on.

Speaking softly.  He’ll bring down the  big stick in November.

As he was speaking, more or less, Navy Seals were pulling off an American Entebbe, killing 9 Somali pirates (who aren’t really pirates any  more since they’ve been kicked off the ocean and now they’re just kidnappers) and freeing two hostages, which is all to the good, of course, but you wouldn’t know it from the teabagger naysayers on the comment boards.

But, that’s about it.  So, let me just bitch about my 5th grade class today.  I often start my lessons

Just 3 years after the 1st Moon Landing

with the 6 question words:  Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, because my opinion is that once you’ve mastered those, you can find out whatever you need, you can teach yourself the language the rest of the way.   Today I added “which” and asked them which of those words they would like to focus on today.  Nobody wanted to commit but finally somebody said “when”, which allowed me to go into a history lesson.  They are a bright bunch of kids, they really are, but…I was shocked to realize how little they know about history.  The first moon landing was not in 1924.   Columbus did not discover America in 16something.  That’s pretty bad although, as my wife just pointed out to me,  American space achievements did not get a lot of press in Czechoslovakia in 1969 and, of course, none of these kids were even born.  But none of them knew when the Velvet Revolution was or when WWI ended, both seriously major turning points in Czech history.

Oh, well.  At least they all learned the phrase “a long time ago.”  I gave them 1 point for that, because at least it was an answer.  It’s the blank looks I can’t deal with.

These Two are Still in the Race

Predictably, Romney was happy with the new rule, and Gingrich was not.   Stuart Stevens, Romney’s top adviser, said “It is not the LSU-Alabama game.”

R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for Gingrich, said “The prohibition for no clapping was kind of un-American. What if you went to a baseball game and they were like, ‘No cheering after a big play.’”

It struck me as humorous that they both used sports metaphors.

I can see both sides.  Audience participation favors Gingrich because Gingrich is basically a rabble rouser.  When the rabble is force to remain unaroused, he doesn’t do as well.  Of course, the vast majority of the people watching the debates are watching them at home on television, but how are the people watching at home supposed to know when to cheer if they don’t see people in the audience cheering?  Imagine watching TV sit-coms without the laugh track.  Not only wouldn’t you know when to laugh, but very few of them would seem funny at all.

And that’s why the network did it.  If that had been the rule from the beginning, fair enough.  To institute it at this point is the same as saying “We want Romney to win.  Newt is messing up our story line.  We’d better get things back on track.”

It reminds me of the New York Times withholding the story on warrantless wiretapping until after the 2004 election, on the grounds that “it might have negatively impacted the election.”  In other words, Kerry might have won, which wasn’t what the New York Times wanted.

The silent format, favoring Romney, is no better.   It’s more dignified (i.e. more boring), but no more revealing.

And, in either case, the moderators are trying hard to pretend that Ron Paul and Rick Santorum aren’t there.

Future First Lady Callista Gingrich?

Actually, I think Somebody Else has the best odds because by the time the Tardapalooza that is the Republican National Convention rolls around, the fearsome foursome will be so damaged that nominating any one of them will be tantamount to conceding the election.  But I thought Ron Paul was going to win Iowa,  so what do I know?

Just in case one of the current contenders walks away with the prize, here is how I think we should react, FWIW.

If Romney is the nominee, we should remind people of his record at Bain Capital, the dog tied to the roof of the car incident, his Cayman Island bank accounts and the clearing of the hard drives when he moved out of the Governor’s mansion.

Let his fellow Republicans attack him over Romneycare, which is the only decent thing he’s ever done, and his whacky religion, which is none of anybody’s business.  We’re above all that.

If Gingrich is the nominee, we can of course remind people that he was a lobbyist for the hated Freddie Mac and that he was kicked out of the House of Representatives and forced to pay a $300,000 fine for being a big crook.  We can also hit him on the “family values” front.   He led the attack on Bill Clinton even though he was having an affair with a staffer himself.  She wound up being wife number 3.   It would be wrong of us to say “Callista Gingrich is a homewrecking slut with fakey blonde hair, an insatiable desire for expensive jewelry and a weird square head.”  True, but not very nice.  Let’s keep this campaign civilized.

If Santorum gets the nomination, we do not need to mention what the word santorum means, or show creepy pictures of his family.  Those children have suffered enough.  We just need to focus the conversation on jobs, the environment, the economy and foreign affairs, and watch while he screams, in ever increasing frustration, about how the gays are marrying all the men and how abortion is exactly the same thing as genocide.  That plays well on the Republican side, but most normal people are  more worried about jobs.

If Paul gets the nomination, we should politely refrain from saying he’s  a crazy old man with a bizarrely racist history.  Unfortunately, a lot of Americans fall into that category.  We should, calmly and logically, point out how disastrous his financial policies would be for poor and working class people.  And his Supreme Court appointments, hoo boy, we’d be screwed for the next 50 years.

If the nomination goes to Somebody Else, not to worry.  As long as it’s a Republican, they have serious flaws.