Federal Budget (and Obamacare) In Critical Condition

Here we are again, folks.  Another showdown over the federal budget in Congress, threatening to harm the American economy if they don't pass some kind of short-term fix before the end of September.

This time around, it's the debt ceiling--currently at $16.7 trillion--that needs raising again because, as everyone knows, government tends to spend more money than it takes in.  But it's being held hostage by a group of Republicans who see this as one last chance to gut the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, which is due to begin on the first of October.  They're even willing to shut down the government over this.

One version which has already passed the GOP-controlled House couples the debt limit with the defunding.  The Democratic-controlled Senate's version keeps the new debt limit, but loses the defunding.because President Barack Obama won't sign anything that renders the biggest accomplishment of his administration useless.

This has led to the spectacle of Republican Ted Cruz of Texas commandeering the Senate floor for over 21 hours, making it the fourth-longest filibuster in history.  (Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina had the longest at around 25 hours in 1957, when he railed against the Civil Rights Act.)  In it, Cruz talked--and talked--about how ACA would cost too much money, discussed the Revolutionary War, and quoted from Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham.  Anything to fill time, right?

So what did this stalling tactic accomplish for Senator Cruz?  Kudos from the Tea Party, and not much else.

As open enrollment under ACA gets underway, all the noise in Washington points up a basic problem:  The reason the GOP has been successful in casting doubts about Obamacare is that it has been poorly understood by most of the general public.  Yes, it will lower your rates.  No, companies can't deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.  Yes, you need to get coverage or you will face a penalty.  Other than that, the Obama administration has not done a good job in educating the public.

Even state-run exchanges like Minnesota's MN Sure has been having their problems.  Despite being cited for having the lowest premiums in the country, all the TV ads featuring Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox can't explain how MN Sure works, either.  It also doesn't help that there have been glitches that might compromise people's privacy.

And the Republicans want to replace Obamacare with what, exactly?  They haven't done a good job of explaining that one, either.  Or maybe they don't have to.  They seem to want to go back to the way things were, when Big Medicine ran things.

Unless something resembling a compromise (rare in Washington these days) can be reached by Monday, the federal government will be unable to pay its bills.  Government buildings and parks will close.  Employees, military personnel and others will either be paid less or laid off.  Is this what the Republicans want?  Starving the country while feeding their egos over a president and a health care bill they don't like?

And you wonder why Congress has a 14 percent approval rating.  Oh, that's right.  We elected these guys.  Shame on us.

Emmys 2013: Night of the Living Dead

65th Primetime Emmy Awards – Show (Photo credit: samsungtomorrow)

Leave it to the Television Academy to screw up their biggest night, the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards.  But then again, when haven't they? Whether it's undeserving actors or TV shows winning awards, or a telecast that makes you feel as if you wasted half your life just watching it, that deserves a special Emmy of its own.

Still, this year's Emmy telecast on CBS did have its moments:

• Will Ferrell drags three bored kids from soccer practice to the ceremony to watch him announce the awards for Best Comedy and Drama shows, which were won by ABC 's "Modern Family" (for the fourth consecutive year) and AMC's "Breaking Bad", in that order.
• "The Ryan Seacrest Center for Excessive Hosting" skit was all too true, in the case of host Neil Patrick Harris.  By now, you expect him to host every awards show there is.
• Merritt Wever of Showtime's "Nurse Jackie", surprise winner for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy, said it best:  "Thank you so much.  Um, I gotta go.  Bye!"
• Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" breaks the decade-long dominance of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in the category of Best Variety Show.
• Jeff Daniels of HBO's "The Newsroom", not Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm, wins for Best Actor in a Drama.

If there was one overriding theme for this year's Emmys, given Hollywood's current obsession with zombies and vampires, it was death.  It would have been understandable had there been a recent national tragedy, or if a major star had passed away shortly before the ceremony.  Neither happened this time.

Instead of the typical "In Memorium" segment, where images of deceased performers fly by like spirits across our TV screens while someone like Sarah McLachlan croons "I Will Remember You", we got the spread-out approach.  During the course of the Emmy telecast, five people were singled out for tributes--Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker on "All In The Family"), Jonathan Winters, James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano on "The Sopranos"), Corey Monteith (TV's "Glee") and Gary David Goldberg (produced the 80's sitcom "Family Ties").  All the tributes were tastefully done by the people who knew them.

But Andy Griffith, Jack Klugman, Larry Hagman and Andy Williams also died in the past year.  Where were their stand-alone tributes?  Instead, they were all lumped into a separate "In Memoriam" segment with other notables and TV industry folk, deserving of nothing more than black-and-white head shots and mournful cello music.

You'll also notice that there were no clips of the deceased's performances during any of the tributes.  Is it because the Emmy producers couldn't afford the rights to the clips?  Or did they think the show had gone on long enough?

Other segments of the Emmy telecast also reminded us of people who are no longer here.  They even gave an award to a writer from "Homeland" who had passed a few months ago, which his widow accepted on his behalf.

Michael Douglass, Matt Damon and Elton John paid tribute to Liberace, the subject of the HBO movie "Behind the Candelabra" (which won for best TV movie).  Liberace died in 1987.

Don Cheadle hosted a segment on how TV covered the major events 50 years ago:  The March on Washington, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show".  Then you remember that not only is JFK dead, but so are Martin Luther King, Walter Cronkite, Ed Sullivan, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Then there were the musical numbers, where Harris sang and danced, and a group of dancers interpreted the nominated shows.  If Harris had been born 20 years earlier, he might have had his own TV variety show.  As it is, song-and-dance men went the way of the old Hollywood musical.

Come to think of it, TV as we knew it is also pretty much dead or dying.  The broadcast networks are struggling for survival.  Cable is being threatened by Internet streaming.  The nomination of "House of Cards" means that a show doesn't have to be on TV to be successful.  Most of us are no longer stuck watching a show at the same time on the same station, thanks to smartphones and tablets.

As the Emmys spent three-plus hours on broadcast TV congratulating themselves, they were also tolling the bell for the way TV was.  The future is literally in the palm of our hands.

Just Another Day In America

Here's what you really need to know about the latest mass shooting, which occurred Monday in Washington, D.C. at the Navy Yard:

Thirteen people are dead including the alleged shooter, who police have identified as Aaron Alexis.  Media and police reports tell us that Alexis was allegedly having some kind of mental problem that no one took seriously.  They also tell us that Alexis allegedly bought his weapon in Virginia, whose gun laws are much less strict than in the District of Columbia.

Shootings like this one have become all too common in the past few years.  It's not like the assassinations of the 1960s, when everyone grieved over the man and what he represented.  It's ordinary people whose names we will never know, who were just living their lives until someone with a gun ended it for them.  And that someone is usually either dead or mentally incompetent to stand trial, denying us a clearer picture of why they did what they did.

In times like these, we've learned to expect less from our elected officials because groups like the National Rifle Association own them lock, stock and gun barrel.  Two sitting legislators in Colorado were defeated in a recall election because they dared to vote for gun reforms, in a state where high school students and moviegoers were murdered.  Not even the killing of elementary students in Connecticut was enough for Congress to pass meaningful gun legislation.  The Second Amendment conquers all.

So we lock down our buildings, public and private, employing armed guards and metal detectors to search us for weapons.  Others institute the "no-gun zone" in the hope that whoever brings one of those can read signs.  Starbucks now says that guns are neither welcome in their restaurants, nor are they banned.

We used to have mental institutions to warehouse the people who had conditions deemed threatening to the general public.  They were shut down because, thanks to modern medicine and those who thought they were doing the right thing, many of these cases can now be treated and lead normal lives.  What about those who couldn't be rehabilitated?  That's where prison comes in, used only as a last resort (unless you live in a state where the death penalty exists) after a crime had been committed.  We could bring back the mental institutions (or whatever they're called these days) if we really thought that public safety was being endangered.  But that ship has already sailed.

Unless we get serious about reforming existing gun laws and the people who shouldn't have access to them, expect more mass shootings such as the one at Washington's Navy Yard.  By then, it will no longer be breaking news.  It'll be just another day in America.

Syria: Holding Off The Missiles of September

A Russian proposal currently being negotiated to let an international team dismantle all the chemical weapons Syria supposedly has in stock has succeeded in cooling, at least temporarily, threats by the United States to reduce parts of the country to cinders.

This development has left President Barack Obama without a leg to stand on as he tries to avenge a poison gas attack near Damascus that killed nearly 1400 people, which was allegedly attributed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose country is in the midst of a civil war that has so far taken at least 100,000 lives.

Obama's efforts to mount airstrikes on Damascus and thereabouts have been met with resistance from Congress and most of the American public, who are sick to death of ten years of wars in the Middle East.  On the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, there's no point in creating another Middle Eastern enemy.  As it was, the Russian proposal forced the President to tone down his prime-time speech Tuesday night, asking Congress to postpone a vote on approving the missile strike, but leaving open the possibility of firing away if diplomacy fails.

There was one part of Obama's speech that was disturbing.  On the basis of the video of the chemical attack's aftermath (which we have no way of knowing if it was staged or not), the President noted that 400 of the victims happened to be children.  He seemed to suggest that if the video wasn't enough to convince folks that limited airstrikes are needed to teach Assad a lesson, then we should think of The Children as a reason to stop chemical weapons.  That is the worst reason in the world for going to war, as well as the worst excuse to justify anything.  No one, let alone the President of the United States, should be putting The Children up on pedestals.  They're human beings, not property or objects of sympathy and sentimentality.

As for the removal of weapons, the U.S. is taking a skeptical eye over the proposed deal.  It's one thing to say that you're getting rid of the chemical stockpile.  It's quite another to actually do it.  According to one report, the U.S. and the Russians have vast amounts of experience in handling the removal of chemical materials.  Syria does not.  So this could mean that there could be those so-called "boots on the ground", which Obama has promised would not happen, landing in Syria.

Don't think for a moment that anyone holds the moral high ground as far as chemical weapons are concerned.  Mustard gas was used in World War I.  Hitler used chemicals to kill six million Jews during World War II.  Even the good old U.S.A. used napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam war on Communists, civilians and soldiers alike.  And let's not forget that America used two atom bombs to help end their war with Japan.

None of this, of course, is going to end the fighting in Syria's two-year old civil war.  The Assad regime is as dug in about staying in power as their enemies are about driving him out.  The major objective right now is to keep the conflict from spreading to other Middle Eastern countries.  Taking chemical weapons out of the equation might go a long way toward accomplishing that.  And President Obama can keep his powder dry.

Getting Serious About Syria

To date, more than 100,000 people have been killed in Syria's two-year old civil war.  More than two million have fled the country as Syrian rebels of various stripes battle for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has controlled the country for over four decades.  Outside of arming some of the rebels, the United States has kept its nose out of the war.  Until now.

Reports of a chemical weapons attack a couple of weeks ago that killed more than 1400 civilians, allegedly instigated by Assad, has caused President Barack Obama to seriously consider ordering airstrikes against Syria.  He would have done so by now, had it not been for his late decision to step back and run it by Congress first.

For the past week, Obama and other government officials--most notably Secretary of State John Kerry--have been telling us that they have "overwhelming evidence" that there's more chemical weapons being stockpiled by Assad.  And if we don't do something about it, by golly, bad things are gonna happen in the Middle East.  Like the price of gasoline would go up a zillion percent.

Doesn't this remind you of President George W. Bush and his cronies, successfully conning Congress, the United Nations and the American People into believing that Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq?  They never were found, but it was already too late.  The U.S. found itself stuck in a war they couldn't get out of (to paraphrase the great philosopher Bono), until they finally did.

Obama has promised that Syria would be different.  Airstrikes would be limited, just enough to send a message to Assad that he shouldn't be gassing his own people.  No American soldiers would be sent to fight in Damascus, after having just fought in Kabul and Kandahar.  But no effort would be made to remove Assad from power.  That one the Syrians have to figure out on their own.

However, this approach might create more problems than it solves.  Russian President Vladimir Putin is Assad's BFF.  Most of the world is not siding with the U.S. on this issue, with the notable exception of France.  There are no 'good guys' among the rebels in Syria, some of whom happen to be aligned with Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.  And what if Assad retaliates with a chemical attack on Israel, or sends one of his agents onto American soil?

You might remember that President Obama once won the Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of winning the 2008 election as an African-American.  He hasn't done much to earn it since:  Heating up, then simmering down, two wars.  Drone attacks.  The killing of Osama bin Laden.  Alleged spying of American citizens, etc.  Maybe the Nobel committee should call the White House and ask for its Peace Prize back?

Right now Congress, returning early from their Labor Day break, is looking at the evidence the White House is showing them, then debating the wisdom of shooting missiles at Syria.  Well, they can debate all they want.  The Obama administration is going to go ahead and bomb anyway, whether Congress approves or not.  Because who are you gonna believe?  The President or a murderous dictator?

Since 1945, the United States has involved itself in wars where fighting the Communists or the terrorists somewhere else somehow translated into fighting for freedom and democracy at home.  Syria is not a national security risk now.  But it could become one if President Obama orders the airstrikes.  Why create a new enemy when you don't have to?  And why can't you leave well enough alone?  Because this is America., where any excuse to save the world from evil, even if it's a dictator in a small country that's no threat to this one, is greatly appreciated.  And you wonder why America's reputation around the world has declined.

The Dream, 50 Years Later

Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool, during the 1963 March on Washington. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On a late August day in 1963, an estimated 200,000 came from all over to gather at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington after marching to support the equal rights that had been denied African Americans for so long.  There were many speeches and songs that day, but we remember it half a century later because of a man who said he had a dream.  A dream that one day America would be free from divisiveness, hatred and injustice.

At this point the civil rights movement, led by this man with a dream, was midway between sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters and troops being sent to enforce Federal school desegregation laws in the American South to President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  After that, things went sour.  There was rioting in major cities.  Some African Americans did not think change had come quickly enough.  And the man with the dream paid the price on a Memphis hotel balcony.

So what has become of the dream this man spoke about 50 years ago?  As we have said countless times before, most of it came true, but there's still a lot of work left.  It's even possible that we're backsliding.

Beyond athletes and entertainers, there is a lot more opportunity for African Americans to succeed than there was 50 years ago.  While we thankfully don't hear much any more about the First Black This-or-That, it's no longer a surprise to see some that have climbed the corporate ladder or the annals of political power.  Need we mention that there is now a President of the United States who is African American?  What would the man who said he had a dream have thought of that?

Divisiveness and injustice?  Sure, there's still plenty of that.  The Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because they thought there was no longer a need for certain states to be held to a higher standard when it came to allowing African Americans to vote.  This includes the many states that now require voters to provide a picture ID at the polls, which is a big problem for those whose records were lost or destroyed.

African Americans, statistically speaking, are more likely to be unemployed, prison-bound and dead of gun violence than whites.  They're also more likely to be stopped by police for some dubious traffic violation.

There may be no Jim Crow laws, separate facilities or demonstrators attacked by fire hoses and snarling dogs.  But discrimination for African Americans still exists at more subtler levels, and will continue to be that way as long as people keep electing politicians who go against their interests.

By 2063, the 100th anniversary of the March on Washington, America will become a country where the majority population are minorities.  Will we be any closer to fulfilling the man's dream he spoke of a century earlier?  Or will it be a case of the more things change, the more things remain the same?

Three New Channels With Something On

Cable channels are more numerous than they used to be, which makes it harder for a new one to stand out from the crowd.  So if you can break away long enough from "Duck Dynasty", "Breaking Bad" and preseason football (and if your provider offers it), you might want to seek these new channels out.

Al Jazeera America is the new domestic face of the worldwide Qatar-owned news channel, praised around the world for its commitment to quality journalism.  In America, however, Al Jazeera is best known for being an anti-Israeli channel that gave Osama bin Laden and his ilk a forum, which is why half of the cable providers have so far refused to carry AJA.  Image problems aside, what we're seeing so far of AJA is a major step up from its predecessor Current TV, with its news coverage resembling "PBS News Hour" with a bigger budget.  They strive to look homegrown with the presence of several minor-league former network correspondents filling out the roster.  AJA is promising no sensationalism, no celebrities and no shouting matches--you know, the kind of stuff that dominates the other news channels.  Let's see how long that lasts.

Fox Sports One has been hyped to the heavens by Rupert Murdoch's other platforms for months, and now it's finally here, replacing the Speed channel.  As America's new alternative to behemoth ESPN, FS1 has been promising its viewers coverage of Major League Baseball, NASCAR and college sports.  That's later on.  Right now it's mostly coverage of UFC matches and soccer, followed by talk shows starring blonde women and analysts who used to be athletes yukking it up.  Oh, and did we forget Regis Philbin?  Meanwhile, ESPN has responded by bringing back its prodigal sons, Jason Whitlock (who they poached from Fox) and Keith Olbermann (we assume he'll stick to sports).

NBC Sports Network has actually been around for over a year, having previously been known as Versus.  In recent developments, the channel is being renamed NBCSN, which makes sense when you consider that "NBC Sports Network" is a mouthful.  They're also making hay out of the fact that they now have the exclusive American TV rights to English Premier League soccer, as well as taking over the second half of the NASCAR schedule from ESPN in 2015.  That's added to NBCSN's current portfolio of NHL hockey, MLS soccer and the Canadian Football League--the kind FS1 currently lacks.

Both FS1 and NBCSN (as well as CBS Sports Network) face an uphill climb against ESPN, which has had a thirty-year head start on the consciences of the American sports public.  They can be found on several channels (with the occasional use of ABC), a magazine and a radio network to spread its brand.  And having the National Football League doesn't hurt either.

Fox News also faced an uphill climb before it supplanted CNN as the dominant cable news channel within a 10-year period.  So for the new cable channels, there's hope that enough viewers will come their way if they get tired of the same old stuff.  If not, there's still "Duck Dynasty".