Political Bad Lip Reading

Due to connectivity issues arising from the recent October snowstorm, I haven't really composed deep thoughts on the past few days' political goings on.

So I'm presenting two politically-oriented Bad Lip Reading clips.

Obviously, I find this first one more humorous. It's Wonderboy.

The second one is of Rick Perry. Not as funny, in my opinion.



Bill Cosby Would Be a Better President

I've contended in prior posts that our current president is extremely dangerous because he has no significant life experience with which to have become prepared for the office.

Yes, he's old enough. He might have been born in the US, but we're still not sure, because he's never released a certified copy of a state birth certificate from a US state.

I've also contended, not alone, that Wonderboy was elected primarily by a margin of guilty, wealthy white voters who didn't take his campaign promises of wealth redistribution seriously, but felt good voting for a respectable, educated and well-spoken black.

As I watch our First Rookie mess up energy, the auto sector, health care, the value of the dollar and our deficit, I can't help thinking that there was a much, much better black man for the job.

Bill Cosby.

Yes, I really mean it. Bill Cosby.

There are many reasons why I honestly would have seriously considered voting for Cosby, rather than even McCain last fall.

First, Cosby has had nothing, if not plenty of real world experience and accomplishments. He was a hugely successful standup comic before the color line was dissolved. Everyone loved Cosby. He was brilliant.

He went on to co-star in "I Spy," in the mid-1960s. His was probably the first network television series to so feature a black. Later, he spun off his "Fat Albert" character into a children's cartoon program.

Cosby did various movie roles, but really became mainstream in the 1980s when he conceived of the "The Cosby Show" featuring himself as Dr. Heathcliffe Huxtable.

Even that, however, wasn't his zenith, in my opinion. It was in 1992 that Cosby tried to buy NBC. At about that time, Cosby began to speak out more forcefully against 'ebonics,' the so-called 'black english,' and for blacks to be responsible for behaving not as victims in society.

I can't conceive of Cosby engaging in such empty, meaningless rhetoric while ramming society-changing legislation through Congress.

Cosby, far more than Wonderboy, has relevant life experience in areas that connect him to the electorate. He's been a creative entertainer and businessman. He's excelled in many pursuits and crossed/broke the race barrier long ago.

Does Cosby have conservative values and principles? Probably the former, but less so the latter. Still, as a black liberal, he'd be a much better choice than our current failure in the Oval Office.

If we were going to elect a celebrity black president, why shouldn't we have gone for the real thing? Someone who accomplished so much on his own, rather than as a privileged, coddled minority?

Our country would be so much better off with a president, irrespective of color, who had a visceral appreciation for hard work, self-made, honest success, and a proven ability to understand and connect with the American populace.

Steve Landsburg On 'A Brief History of Economic Time'

Steve Landsburg , Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester, wrote a fun piece in the weekend Wall Street Journal on economic expectations throughout time, and the sources of economic prosperity and wealth.

Described as a libertarian who voted against Kerry in 2004, because Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, was, in Landsburg's words, a "xenophobe," probably tells you all you need to know. He allegedly compared Edwards' opposition to free trade to David Duke's racism.

Landsburg's article is priceless, so I've included much of it below,

"Modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago. For the next 99,800 years or so, nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing. There were wars, political intrigue, the invention of agriculture -- but none of that stuff had much effect on the quality of people's lives. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 a year, just above the subsistence level. True, there were always tiny aristocracies who lived far better, but numerically they were quite insignificant.

Then -- just a couple of hundred years ago, maybe 10 generations -- people started getting richer. And richer and richer still. Per capita income, at least in the West, began to grow at the unprecedented rate of about three quarters of a percent per year. A couple of decades later, the same thing was happening around the world.

Then it got even better. By the 20th century, per capita real incomes, that is, incomes adjusted for inflation, were growing at 1.5% per year, on average, and for the past half century they've been growing at about 2.3%. If you're earning a modest middle-class income of $50,000 a year, and if you expect your children, 25 years from now, to occupy that same modest rung on the economic ladder, then with a 2.3% growth rate, they'll be earning the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $89,000 a year. Their children, another 25 years down the line, will earn $158,000 a year.

Against a backdrop like that, the temporary ups and downs of the business cycle seem fantastically minor. In the 1930s, we had a Great Depression, when income levels fell back to where they had been 20 years earlier. For a few years, people had to live the way their parents had always lived, and they found it almost intolerable. The underlying expectation -- that the present is supposed to be better than the past -- is a new phenomenon in history. No 18th-century politician would have asked "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" because it never would have occurred to anyone that they ought to be better off than they were four years ago.

Rising income is only part of the story. One hundred years ago the average American workweek was over 60 hours; today it's under 35. One hundred years ago 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations; today it's over 90%. One hundred years ago the average housekeeper spent 12 hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning and sewing; today it's about three hours.

The average middle-class American might have a smaller measured income than the European monarchs of the Middle Ages, but I suspect that Tudor King Henry VIII would have traded half his kingdom for modern plumbing, a lifetime supply of antibiotics and access to the Internet.

The source of this wealth -- the engine of prosperity -- is technological progress. And the engine of technological progress is ideas -- not just the ideas from engineering laboratories, but also ideas like new methods of crop rotation, or just-in-time inventory management. You can fly from New York to Tokyo partly because someone figured out how to build an airplane and partly because someone figured out how to insure it. I'm writing this on a personal computer instead of an electric typewriter partly because someone said, "Hey! I wonder if we can make computer chips out of silicon!" and partly because someone said "Hey! I wonder if we can finance startups with junk bonds!"

Which contribution is more important? By one rough measure -- the profits earned by the innovator -- they're about equal. In the late 1980s, Microsoft earned economic profits of about $600 million a year, while Michael Milken, the inventor of the junk bond, earned an annual income that was just about the same.

Engineers figure out how to harness the power of technology; economists figure out how to harness the power of incentives. Our prosperity relies on both."

I love Landsburg's opening paragraphs. Who can be a unionist and economic protectionist in the face of such evidence? Our own lack of a sense of history, both political and economic, seems to leave people to whine that they have it so tough. In reality, life today is much better, even at low income levels, than it ever was even just decades ago.

Landsburg doesn't mention the availability of: pre-loaded debit cards, cell phones, inexpensive computers, or their availability at free libraries, and the internet. Not to mention simply the existence of the now commonly-held notion that your economic expectations should, and can, exceed those of your parents.