Weekend Tids and Bits

Governor Go Go Is Right for a change in a way not connected with the political spectrum. Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin visited New York City and went to a Yankees game with her 14-year-old daughter Willow, prompting CBS Late Show host David Letterman to make a joke about Willow getting “knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” The governor snarled and Letterman offered a half-hearted, half-baked apology that boiled down to saying he meant to insult Bristol, Palin’s 18-year-old single-Mom daughter. That’s supposed to make it better? With Palin herself working so hard to keep comedy writers across the nation busy, her kids should be left alone. Those who want to follow the result of John McCain yielding to the Dementia Side of The Force should bookmark Anchorage Daily News’s politics reporting at http://www.adn.com/politics/ and take a look at http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/.

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Saudi Arabia’s Tentative Steps to the Twelfth Century continued in June with the showing of a movie in Riyadh, the first such wild and crazy behavior in more than three decades. No women allowed of course, and no girls over the age of 10. Still, conservatives in the kingdom demonstrated against the obvious slide to decadence that could lead to –gasp! – mixing of the sexes. Contact between unmarried men and women is very strictly prohibited in the oil-rich kingdom. No wonder those camels always look nervous.

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Newspapers keep “preparedness” obits on hand so that when some notable sounds a final note, the obit is ready for quick updating and publication. Now that newspapers themselves are stumbling towards the Last Checkout counter, whoever will do the obit should ponder this tidbit: only about an average 14 percent of a paper’s operating budget goes to produce content. The rest is gobbled by printing, delivery and the suits who supervise. Look for more and a link at: http://news-cycle.blogspot.com/2009/06/moody-analyst-newspapers-cost-structure.html a page in the News Cycle blog.

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Magazine covers shouting doom are hardly new and not limited to Time Magazine, but the venerable news weekly has had some doozies. They’re neatly presented at Reason Online, the web presence of Reason Magazine. Look at http://reason.com/news/show/134038.html and enjoy the yucks that 20-20 hindsight makes possible. And enjoy it while it lasts, because if daily new publications are keeling over, weekly news publications shouldn’t be making long-term plans.

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Here’s a look at what we discussed this week:

n Monday we talked about child care tips for fathers that are very unlikely to come from mothers (or allowed to continue once discovered). http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/fathering-tips-fathers-day-is-less-than.html

n Tuesday was a ho-hum day talking about Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor’s broken ankle and Alaska’s Governor Go Go being accused of plagiarizing Newt Gingrich. http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/news-is-busting-out-all-over-actually.html

n Wednesday was Federal Follies day as we follow our government’s relentless attempts to drive common sense out of the public arena. http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/federal-follies-current-edition-tuesday.html

n Thursday’s topic explored free speech issues that develop when an employee says unkind things about a customer and an employer raps knuckles, Not a real sexy issue, but an important one if you’ve ever told your Facebook buddies that your boss needs the front half of a horse for a complete life. http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/mind-your-mother-revisited-seems-like.html

n Friday covered the strange turn of events in Washington, where things are actually getting done. http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/strange-washington-signals-things.html

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Strange Washington Signals – Things Getting Done

Something out of the ordinary is almost always a sign that trouble may be afoot. That scratchy feeling in your throat, the car that chugs instead of purrs, the clothes dryer that sounds like The Incredible Hulk – all are signals experience has taught us to handle.

But there’s something extraordinary happening in Washington lately, and it’s so strange that most of us have no idea what to do. Difficult as it is to believe, it must be said in the open:

Washington is getting things done.

Now that’s not supposed to happen, of course. Washington in general and Congress in particular is where good ideas and citizens go to languish and fade. It is supposed to be a place of bitter partisan strife and naked personal ambition where duty and expediency are synonyms.

So how did it happen that the United States Senate passed a bill allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco at last, giving it broad powers over the product that kills 400,000 Americans a year? The bill is expected to be accepted by the House, which passed a similar measure earlier. President Obama, himself a struggling sometimes smoker, is eager to sign it.

This 79-17 Senate vote ends more than four decades of malign neglect after the first warnings that smoking cigarettes could kill you. And it happened in Washington.

That’s the same place where Congress and regulatory agencies nodded complacently while corporations floated all sorts of financial balloons and paid lavishly for the executive hot air that filled them. Or it was until the balloons popped. Now Washington is into regulation, whether by public law or public shame, to curb the worst excesses.

Corporate fat cats coughing up compensation hairballs are only part of the picture. Washington seems determined to do something about the national health system.

Started by employers trying to compete around World War II wage freezes, employer-provided health insurance became an assumption for most Americans – except those who didn’t have it.

As the have-not numbers increased and American health standings fell to a par with former Soviet republics, insurers and doctors wrapped themselves in the banner of free enterprise and fought off all attempts at change with the mighty club of “socialized medicine.”.

Now Washington is not talking about whether we will have health care reform, but what it will look like – an earthquake change in assumptions. “Socialized medicine” is now not so much a club as one of several proposals. That overdue earthquake follows economic legislation and other action that happened with a speed and sense of purpose not seen in Washington in decades.

Since any president’s administration takes lumps for things it couldn’t have controlled and accepts bouquets for being just plain lucky, it’s too soon to hand laurels for this change of tone and pace to an Obama administration yet to celebrate its first anniversary.

But it’s not too soon to say that a Washington where more problems are solved than are caused could get to be a pretty comfortable thing.

Let’s see if it continues.

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