Lance Armstrong retires, hold on to your wallet

Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France Champion, and suspected PED user is calling it quits to his bike career. Armstrong, 39, was clearly done at last year's Tour where he finished just three spots ahead of two French kids riding their bikes to school. He's going to retire and raise more money for cancer, um, awareness I guess?

Armstrong says he wants to work with California lawmakers to create a cigarette tax to fund more research on cancer. He did similar work in Texas and we're going to be paying for it here for the next decade. In 2007 Armstrong shepherded a bill authorizing $3 billion in bonds to fund research here. As testimony showed, the money would do little to nothing to advance a cure. What it would do is allow Texas to pay higher salaries to researchers and attract them. That's right, the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for $3 billion to increase the odds that a cure for cancer is found here. As if a cure found in California wouldn't be available everywhere. That's less than 10 percent of what the NCI alone spends each year. I can't find the numbers from CDI, states and other nations, but it's clear that Texas' $300 million a year is a drop in the bucket.

Now Armstrong is going to push his shell game to the Golden State. I guess we'll have a bidding war, but other than enriching the researchers, it's hard to see the benefit to cancer patients or their families. But Armstrong, who was a mediocre biker until he contracted a disease linked to PED's, has never been shy about pushing himself to the front. Whether it's dumping the wife who stood by him through his cancer, or dumping the fiance who contracted cancer herself, the Armstrong behind the headlines has never been worthy of the Armstrong the media created.

Armstrong will continue to push to keep his name out there. But it will be at the expense of the cause he claims to care about. Texas agreed to borrow the money before there was a $27 billion deficit. California's woes are already legendary. How much meaningless money will taxpayers want to spend while schools are being closed?

Wail of a tale

Anyone else sick of Yankee media ripping Dallas for the weather? Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN has been the worst of the bunch, though Bill Simmons has made a strong run at biggest whiner. Simmons even ripped Dallas for not having enough strippers. Of course, when the Super Bowl was in Houston, the best stripper town in America, the luckiest writer in the business didn't like that either.

Let me explain it to y'all. I'll type slowly so you can understand. Dallas gets three or four snows a year on average. We don't buy snow tires. We don't use chains and we don't salt the roads. Those things cost money and the snow will be gone in three days. What are we supposed to do with them the other 355 days of the year? I'm sorry you're stuck in your hotel, having to live off an obscene expense account while you write for four hours a week to promote the most over-hyped, overrated, corporate whoring convention in the world. But that is the career path you chose.

Let me explain the facts of life. We have a $27 billion budget deficit here. We don't get much snow or ice. When we do, we're perfectly content to stay home until it melts. We're not going to go spend a bunch of money on snow plows so the idiots who bought hotel rooms in Dallas can have an easy trip when they learn the game isn't being played in Dallas, or that the strippers are on the other side of town. We don't do winter here. We do summer. It starts about April 23rd and goes through Halloween. We're going to spend our money on freon. The next time I read about people dying in Boston because the temperature hits 90 and they don't have air conditioning, I'll try to stifle a laugh.

Meanwhile, real reporters are doing great work

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has slipped past the barricades and his tweets alone are quite moving. He's told us of an 80-year-old woman prepared to sleep in Tahrir Square. The Great Christiane Amanpour has interviewed Mubarak.

Meanwhile, Anderson tells his van got attacked again and as I write this CNN is reporting on Charlie Sheen. But Anderson also tells us everything is okay. Might be time for him to take a step back and look beyond himself.

Where is Buzz Bissinger when you need him?

Anderson Cooper is an idiot

CNN's top throat got beat up yesterday. No word on whether the blows to his face will cost him his job, but if they don't heal, Cooper certainly doesn't have any journalistic acumen to rely on. His beating brings journalism's main problem to the fore.

Cooper might or might not be a good anchor. I don't watch television news unless there is something live happening, because I can read. Thanks to the Internet, I've been watching Al-Jazeera's outstanding coverage of Egypt. Cooper's trip to Egypt isn't unusual. Rather, Brokaw and the boys were all at Tienanmen Square and we all remember Bernard Shaw's wonderful reporting from Baghdad when the first Gulf War started.

But all those men had extensive experience reporting. Not just reporting, but reporting from war zones. Cooper is a news reader. His performance in New Orleans during Katrina showed how bad he is at collecting information. And reporting a hurricane is fairly simple. Reporting a revolution from the ground, I would guess, is next to impossible. There would be nothing wrong with Cooper sitting above it all and bringing all the reports together. It's not something he can do from the middle of a riot.

The reason Al-Jazeera is killing CNN is they have people on the ground. CNN seems to have three reporting teams there. Al-Jazeera is everywhere. CNN has a talking head (a throat in print speak). AJ has a team of hardened reporters. And this begs the point. Cooper is making $7 million a year. He's grossly overpaid. What if CNN paid him $2 million a year and used that other $5 million to hire 25 more reporters. I'm guessing on the market value, but for six figures and a good benefits package, I'd take the job. We'd all be better off and poor Anderson wouldn't have to risk having his only asset smacked with a stick.

Live blogging the SOTU

10:20 Wrap up:

Good speech. Not on the level of his Philadelphia speech, but a solid effort that sets the stage for the months to come. It will be interesting to see what the GOP says about the investment. The problem with all our overspending the last 30 years is that most of it's been wasted. The roads, the bridges the rails have been falling apart.

I’m not all that thrilled by cuts in discretionary domestic spending, but Obama met the GOP on that one, but the pointed out that’s just 12 percent of the budget and will not get us anywhere near the goal.

Obama did not go into detail, but he did offer specific plans. Most importantly, he endorsed the debt commission's approach. The GOP cannot get away with shouting from the rooftops that things need to be cut, but fail to offer any specifics or offer the Ryan plan that will balance the budget by 2069. Obama is following the same model he did with health care. He's setting the target. How we hit that target is going to be up to Congress.

Will the GOP take that bait? They can either rise to the challenge and genuinely work with him to reach these goals, or they will refuse to work with him. If they choose the former, they're going to have a hard time running against Obama in two years. How can they do that if they've worked with him? If they choose the later then they are going to have to explain why they've pissed away another two years, when they had one house. Will voters continue to support a party that offers nothing but criticism?

Obama's approach of leaving the detail work to others has several advantages. One is that it gets everyone involved. The door is open for the GOP, just as it was for health care. If they refuse to walk through the door this time, they are going to have to explain it. The other advantage is that Obama maintains his leverage. By setting the target he becomes the parent. If things bog down he can step in if the opportunity is there. If not, the blame doesn't fall on him.

Bachmann gave him a huge boost. She offered nothing but cheerleading, a word I choose after giving careful though to the potential for sexist connotation. But Bachmann’s speech was nothing but “Yay America, Boo Obama.” She can’t even do basic math. She pointed out that Obama promised (he actually predicted, but let’s not get bogged down in facts, right Michelle?) unemployment would be capped at 8 percent by the stimulus. Then she claims that Obama said unemployment would actually go down from 2006 levels. Which is it?

Bachmann simply isn’t serious about governing, and neither is the tea party. Obama on the other hand has made the necessary pivot from staving off economic collapse to dealing with the issues that he ran for, namely the deficit. Tonight’s endorsement of the debt commission’s approach and his reach across the aisle on tort reform and spending freezes is a good start.

9:57 We had 110,000 Marines on Iwo. The Japanese had 23,000. Against all odds?

9:55 Did you know that Iwo Jima was a battle Americans won against all odds? Do these people have the first freaking clue about history? Are you kidding me?

9:54 Michelle Bachmann, who can't take her eyes off the teleprompter believes in American exceptionalism. So does Obama.

9:53 How is medical malpractice reform a free market solution?

9:51 Obama's added less to the deficit than Bush. She did say that Bush's spending was unacceptable. Don't recall her saying that at the time. I could be wrong. Continues to repeat the lie about health care reform increasing the deficit. Cap and trade? Isn't that dead?

9:49 Bachmann starts. Deficit was 10.6 trillion. How much lower would unemployment be without the stimulus? She doesn't mention that. Then she says Obama promised lower unemployment after saying he promised 8 percent. Which is it?

9:38 Thank God. A poll. I was worried we'd have to wait. CBS isn't running Bachmann.

9:36 Ryan is saying we want to work with the president. But he's pointing out that the GOP has cut the House budget is restoring "spending discipline" to the way it was in 2006. Great, more Bush spending. Ryan is doing a good job of explaining why the debt is a problem and framing it as a children's issue "no one person or party is to blame. Then goes right on attacking Obama on spending increases during a recession.

Ryan is blaming healthcare costs on a law that hasn't taken effect yet. Saying people are losing coverage under a plan that mandates coverage. Now I'm waiting to see what the GOP plan is to reduce health care costs and insure the uninsured. Nope he just repeats the lie that health care reform will increase the deficit. He ignores the fact that repeal will add to the deficit. Ryan offers no specifics whatsoever. So far, more of the same from the GOP.

Ryan: "We need to chart a new course." That's conservative? Is he promising that we won't have to impose painful austerity measures? He's calling for us to avoid the fate of Greece. How exactly can we avoid tax increases and painful austerity measures. He also bemoans the actions that broke our economy, just minutes after bemoaning the fixes that were required.

Now Bachmann. This should be fun.

9.18 SHELIA JUST GOT TOTALLY DISSED!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

9:15 I love Bob Schieffer and he's the reason why I'm on CBS. But he's gone a little soft on the reconciliation.

9:14 Before I forget. Shelia Jackson-Lee is a aisle hog and a camera whore (hat tip to Banjo Jones) and I love it that Obama blew her off on the way in. Now if he would just slap her on the way out, he'll lock up my vote. Katie Couric is calling him Reaganesque, that will be tomorrow's blog. Beaumont folks need to know that Ted Poe is kissing up to the president. Jeff Greenwald is saying Reagan was non-partisan. More on that in tomorrow's post as well.

9:13 "The state of our union is strong." Love it, from a style standpoint that he held that to the end.

9:07 "It will be harder, because we will argue about everything." Let's face it, we don't want to hear that. But he turns it into a national strength, which it should be, of course, then panders to American exceptionalism for some cheap applause. "We all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution." He is arguing that we all agree on the goals, just differ on the means. I'm not sure that's true anymore. (Boehner is about to cry). If we haven't crossed the Rubicon, there is a large faction of the body politic looking for a place to ford.

9:04 We stand with Tunisia and support hopes of democracy from all people. Egypt? Egypt? Anyone? Egypt?

8:59 Respect for the rule of law might carry more weight if he would not attempt to assassinate U.S. citizens with no judicial or congressional check. And actually use our Constitution to fight terror instead of trying to get around it.

8:56 Wants meetings with lobbyists on line. I'm laughing my ass off. Everyone in that room just shat themselves.

8:47 The debt. Deficit is "not sustainable." Freeze domestic spending for next five years. Gets a bogey clap. Reduction of 400 billion and lowers deficit to Ike levels in relation to GDP. Cuts to community action programs. 10s of billions in spending from defense. "I'm willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. Let's make sure we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens." Decries any plan to cut deficit by cutting investments in education and innovation. Admits cuts are in 12 percent of our budget and here we go. "We have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending will be enough. It won't."

He just put the GOP in the corner. He has endorsed the methods of the debt commission and points out that repealing health care will add $250 million (or billion missed that). He is taking the first step across the aisle by offering to work on tort reform.

The GOP simply cannot brand him a tax and spender in response to this. He is willing to cut. But he also says it's more important to educate our kids than to give millionaires tax breaks. How, exactly, is one going to argue against this? He again comes back to tax code reform. This is the candidate who ran for president, who befuddled Hillary and destroyed McCain. Government must be more affordable and efficient. He's now listing inefficiencies in government, giving salmon as an example. Pretty good line.

8:44 So Boehner doesn't clap when the president talks about preventing insurance companies from exploiting patients. Is he pro-patient exploitation? Can't wait for Jon Stewart's take on this.

8:41 Tax code reform. Yes! He's calling for a simplified system that will lower the corporate rate without adding to deficit. Again, no specifics.

8:37 Immigration. Willing to take it on after a call for allowing children raised to be safe from deportation and pointing out it's idiotic to educate foreign students then kick them out to compete against us. But again, I have to point out there are no specifics. This is along the same lines as health care. He's setting the goal and leaving the means to reach that goal open.

Now he's on to infrastructure. This is an issue on which the GOP is vulnerable if it gets pressed. Private firms aren't going to build the new rail and new roads that we need.

8:31 Interesting note about Race to the Top. Texas is one of the 10 states that refused the money, citing the strings that would be attached. The strings, of course, are higher achievement standards. At least one school board and superintendent in my area asked that they be allowed to compete. Their explained to their (Republican) reps that they had no problem meeting the standards. They felt that they should have the option to go after the money, and that doing so would be consistent with Republican rhetoric about local control. They were turned down cold. There was no interest in leveraging federal money to help schools in Texas, even when it cost nothing because of the fear that it would help the other side. That it would help the children and the state was irrelevant.

8:29 Talking about importance of education. Wonder if Perry is listening? Points out that families and communities are responsible for their children's education. Gets standing O on science fair line. Wonder if those are the same folks ripping him for being an Ivy League elitist? No specific proposals at this point.

8:27 Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. Calls for ending subsidies to oil companies. Got claps from the audience. Not sure they meant it. But that's one point for a specific proposal. Or semi-specific anyway.

8:24 "This is our sputnik moment." Calls for investments in things we desperately need. But no word on how we pay for them while heeding his call to reign in the deficit.

8:23 Nice golf clap. GOP seems to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think they like what they hear so far, and that scares them.

8:16 America is a "light to the world." So much for the lie that Obama rejects American exceptionalism.

Indications are the president will call for a five year freeze on discretionary spending. I don't see how that is possible with the infrastructure challenges that are facing us unless we're going to seriously rethink our military presence in the world.

He's starting out where he left off in Tuscon. I'm waiting to find out what's going to happen with the deficit. I'm hoping he'll take the commission's recommendations as a starting point. Let's see, shall we?

Boomer bust

It might help to read William Strauss and Neil Howe's book Generations: The History of America's Future, but it takes a while, so slog on.

Our political discourse is uglier than it has been in my memory (which stretches back to Watergate as a young lad). I don't know why it's popped up in the blogsphere today, but here is Glenn Beck's exhortation for the tea baggers to shoot in the head, anyone with whom they disagree because they are the enemy and trying to destroy this nation. Of course Palin claims that liberals are trying to bring this country to its knees.

So what the fuck is happening here? How did we get so far apart? Growing up in a Goldwater household I always thought that liberals were folks who wanted this country to be great, but were silly and ignorant about how to make it happen. I never realized they were bent on the destruction of everything we hold dear.

But now, I'm not so sure. Not about liberals, but about what Andrew Sullivan defines as the Christianist right. You have to ask yourself, which party has decided it's okay for the president to do as he damn well pleases, regardless of constitutional checks? Which party has run on a platform of imminent danger to this nation? Which party has decided it's okay to spy on citizens without a warrant? Which party has decided it's okay to torture? And most importantly, which party automatically vilifies as weak, dumb and un-American, anyone who dares oppose those positions.

But this isn't a left/right issue. The left is just as immobile, if not as dangerous at the moment. This is a generational thing. With credit to Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, let me explain. The boomers are an idealistic generation (much as FDR's generation, or Ben Franklin's generation was). Fueled by the type of religious awakening that occurs every 80 years or so in this country, they have come of age believe with religious fervor that they are right.

When we 13 genners were coming up (GenX is a term hung on us by a boomer that we learned to despise 25 years ago) we thought of our parents' generation as a bunch of hippies, weird, but harmless. Well, not harmless, but well meaning. They had Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. We got AIDS, crack and Madonna. We resigned ourselves early to cleaning up their mess. But we assumed the Boomers' dominant trait was a leftist outlook toward politics and society. That turned out to be a crucial mistake.

Boomers dominant trait (other than group narcissism) is idealism. They simply take it as an article of faith that they are correct. This explains the how rise in fundamentalism that started in religion 25 years ago has spilled over into politics, as Sullivan so eloquently explains. And if you believe you are right based on faith (and from Todd Willingham to global warming to levitating the Pentagon, we've seen Boomers constantly ignore empirical evidence in favor of what feels right), then any disagreement isn't opposition, it's heresy and must be destroyed.

So it doesn't matter if death panels or a lie or not. It doesn't matter that there is no government takeover of healthcare. It doesn't matter that they impeached a president for lying about a blow job. "We're right Goddamnit, it doesn't matter if we lie to save they country from evil."

Boomers cannot compromise. Look at health care. You've seen the extreme right and the extreme left go absolutely batshit over the bill that came out. Have you seen any room for compromise? Here in Texas, look at Voter ID, which the state senate is debating today. Every senator has seen the estimates of zero impact on turnout for either party, but it's a matter of life and death for both sides.

I think we are going to see something different tonight. President Obama is on the cusp of the Boomer/13Gen divide. In temperament he is certainly one of us. If you step back and look at what he's done, not what its said he's done, he's shown the ability to compromise over and over. He's been painted as a hardcore liberal (or sellout) by people who simply cannot understand any narrative but the one that's been going on for 40 years. The boomers got control of the media early and they continue to hold it. Obama isn't one of them. He understands the Boomers, but they don't understand him. And that's why I think he'll prevail in the end. That's why I think Gary Johnson is the GOP's best hope.

The Boomers are too old to change, and — as Strauss and Howe point out — they don't have the numbers every one assumes. They have become monolithic and predictable. Flexibility and pragmatism will always win that battle. We got a president long before anyone thought we would. That doesn't mean we won't bear the brunt of whatever cuts and reforms are necessary to fix things, just as The Lost Generation went and voted for medicaid and medicare even though they would never get it. It certainly doesn't mean the Boomers won't overtake the so-called Greatest Generation in enriching themselves off the public teat. But it does mean that doctrinaire solutions that place more value on orthodoxy than effectiveness will lose out to things that really work.

And we can go on to the next crisis.

Texas' war on science has a victim

Cameron Todd Willingham is dead and I doubt anybody misses him much. He was, by all accounts, a genuine piece of shit who beat his wife, ran around, used drugs and got tatted up. If Willingham had been shot in the street, it’s likely his assailant would have gotten off on the old Texas defense of “he needed shootin’.”

But Todd Willingham wasn’t killed by somebody in street. The State of Texas killed him, despite having no significant evidence he was guilty. In fact there is no significant evidence that a crime even occurred.

The short version is this. Willingham’s three children died Dec. 23, 1991 in a house fire at the Corsicana home he shared with them and his wife. A jury convicted him of killing them by arson based on testimony from the fire inspector — who had little formal training — that there was evidence of accelerants present and a burn trail that followed the path Willingham took out the door.

Prior to his execution numerous arson specialists, men with PhD’s who had actually done experiments, came forward and said there was no evidence of accelerants, no evidence, even, of arson. But the appeals court and our fine governors have all ignored the science and Willingham lies buried far from his children, his last wish — to have been buried next to them — denied by an ex-wife who first defended him, then claimed he confessed.

For the best account of the case, read David Grann’s piece in the New Yorker. I’m not here to debate guilt or innocence of Willingham. There is a darker force at work than just a bad verdict. Even after the New Yorker police brought the science to national attention, folks worked diligently to suppress it. Our fine governor applied a little extra mousse to his coif and pronounced Willingham a monster, as if he’d ever met the man. Then Governor Fonzerelli fired the head of the commission appointed to investigate forensic science in order to push back hearings till after the election, as though the news that Bush killed an innocent man would impact Fonzie’s re-election chances. Or surprise anyone. The commission did meet, the man sent to defend the science was a lawyer, a sure sign that you haven't a leg on which to stand. (
Correction. Willingham was executed in 2004, under Perry's governorship).

Now I’m against the death penalty. Forget all the arguments about how it fails to deter and is more expensive than life in prison and is racistly applied. Bottom line is this: State doesn’t give life. State shouldn’t take it.

But Willingham shouldn’t threaten death penalty supporters. Because the biggest threat to the death penalty in Texas isn’t my view. There are only about six of us in the state against the thing and we ain’t casting our votes on it. The biggest threat, the only threat is if the state executes innocent people, then turns around and says, so fucking what?

No, the darker side to this is the rejection of science. Texans, when confronted with a conflict between what we know and what the evidence shows, have long disregarded the evidence. When faced with 7,000 professional soldiers in San Antonio, the 187 volunteers said, “Fuck it. We can take them.” Faced with the chance to fill state coffers at the expense of 49 other states by taxing all oil that crosses the Sabine, Red or Rio Grande, Texans said, “Fuck it, we don’t need the money.”

And faced with evidence that what had traditionally been regarded as signs of arson, was in fact evidence of a flashover, evidence that had been demonstrated in actual fires designed to test the science, the state of Texas and most Texans said, “Fuck it.”

It was painful to watch the Frontline piece on Willingham. The investigators convicted him immediately. The lead investigator decided he was a loser. Who gives a shit what happens to a loser? They could tell he was guilty by the way he acted. Guilty, not of being a damn coward who let his children burn, but of setting the fire. So anything that didn’t fit with that theory was rejected. The prosecutor followed suit. Even his defense attorney piled on. It’s a sorry Cover Your Ass spectacle by all involved.

And where does that leave us? It leaves us with two public Tier One universities when California has nine. It leaves us with a woefully underfunded public school system that faces $5 billion more in cuts this session because lawmakers, evidently products of that failed system, couldn't do basic math when they were designing a new tax system and ignored those who could add and subtract. It leaves us with a school board that believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that brown people had no impact on the history of this state or this nation. It leaves us with a Legislature that thinks dropping Medicare might be a good idea.

We, as a state and as a people simply reject whatever facts don’t fit our prejudices. If we don’t learn to respect science and to respect intelligence, it’s not just Todd Willingham that will get tossed into an early grave. It’s the future of the state of Texas.