My Latest Pick-Up Line

"Hey, baby, let me introduce you to Time magazine's Person of the Year!"

Time just marginalized the decades it has spent building up journalistic integrity with its coronation of "you" as 2006's Person of the Year. The term "copout" is not nearly forceful enough to describe the creative malpractice Time's editors have humiliated themselves with. I know it's a couple of weeks early for New Year's predictions, but I'll nonetheless go out on a limb and project that at least some of the chuckleheads responsible for this travesty of an annual tradition will not be employed at Time magazine to determine who 2007's Person of the Year is. At least I hope some heads roll for this cheesy attempt to suck up to all of us.

"You're all winners!!!!!" What a frickin' joke.

Annex Mexico? Might As Well

It's too early to speculate on potential fallout from Tim Johnson's serious health ailments. It's possible that Johnson could experience a full recovery within the next few months, much the way Joe Biden did after his 1988 brain surgery. Even so, I'd be incredibly surprised if Johnson is well enough to run for re-election in two years, so even if Johnson's prevails and saves the Democratic Senate majority in 2006, it's probably not likely he'll be ready, willing, and able to save us in 2008.

While Johnson's health is unpredictable, the distressing response from Americans to this week's immigration raids was entirely too predictable. The federal raids, apparently done with the knowledge of the Swift meatpacking company who hired the illegal immigrants, resulted in more than 1,000 arrests. Swift will apparently evade consequences for themselves with the long-standing excuse that the illegal immigrants they hired only managed to get only the payroll due to their false documentation. Many of my fellow liberals now have even more evidence that their pie-in-the-sky of "huge fines against companies that hire illegals" as the only acceptable enforcement solution to illegal immigration will never come to fruition.

Now it's never pretty when heartless federal agents instigate a crackdown on any group, but the media has determinedly raised the sympathy card as high as they can raise it over these raids, making sure to put microphones in front of sobbing spouses and children facing deportation and local ministers (many of whom actively conspire with the meatpacking barons to keep the flow of cheap labor rolling in unabated), all wringing their hands about the merciless thugs separating families and undermining the ability of people who "are just here to work". Perhaps I should be nicknamed Ebenizer this holiday season, but I just can't sympathize with anybody who willfully breaks laws to "just work here", particularly with the sleazy corporate barons who are ultimately empowered as a result.

But then again, I'm the son of a former meatpacker. I've watched how lawless immigration policy has stripped my family and hometown of its livelihood. Not everybody sees things my way, and the fairly substantial display of sympathy coming from a middle-class American public has emerged since the raids, adding renewed acceptance to the ongoing apartheid of undocumented cheap labor that will assuredly condemn whatever remains of the American working class into a financial gas chamber.

The Associated Press fueled the fire with an article today warning consumers of how the price of their meat may end up skyrocketing as a result of these raids. After all, the inability for Swift, et. al. to recruit a pipeline of undocumented labor from the Third World could produce the worst-case scenario of (gasp!) market-driven wages in the meatpacking industry. There goes that "liberal media" again! Keep in mind that inflation-adjusted wages in the meatpacking industry have fallen by 64% since 1983....and every one of us is grateful for the huge reduction in the cost of meat that has paralleled the industry's declining labor costs. Right?

The Washington Post's Tamar Jacoby went even further in breathless defense of the meatpacking barons against those nasty fair-wage advocates with a litany of false statistics, sob stories from industry executives claiming to pay $22.50 an hour (show me a meatpacking plant that pays more than $46,000 per year and I'll show you a plant with far more applicants than open positions), and a general consensus that employers have a birthright entitlement to cheap labor on demand.....and anyone who dares to challenge that birthright is just a swastika-wielding bigot motivated by nothing but ethnic hatred.

This endgame of this dog-and-pony show is in defense of the ruinous "comprehensive immigration plan" supported by robber baron conservatives, who are active players in the cheap-labor apartheid, and "open-minded" limousine liberals who fancy themselves above it. The "comprehensive" strategy is heavy on "paths to citizenship" and "guest-worker programs", but light to non-existent on border security, a toxic brew that ensures we'll have tens of millions more illegal immigrants to grant amnesty to 20 years from now when we next address the issue.

A Daily Kos commenter floated the idea of annexing Mexico amidst a heated illegal immigration debate earlier this week. And why not? More than 15% of Mexico already lives in America (with the remaining 85% expected to be here a week from Tuesday), we have little to no interest in sealing our borders, and the Mexican government is actively encouraging its people to infiltrate America's employment market instead of weeding the endemic corruption out of its own. Do we really have anything to lose by annexing Mexico as America's 51st state? Far as I can tell, the only significant difference would be that working-class Mexican workers would at least have voting rights in the new Amerexican republic. That's more than they'll have under a "guest worker program"

Rodriguez Wins???

Democrat Ciro Rodriguez has apparently unseated incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla by a comfortable and possibly double-digit margin in tonight's TX-23 runoff. I gotta say I didn't see this one coming. I know this is a "majority minority" district, but nonetheless expected the white cowboys to overwhelm Latino voters at the polls. It's too early to tell what specifically happened in this race, but it's amazing news for the future of Texas politics and I can almost hear the echo of Tom DeLay's bawling all the way up here in the Upper Midwest.

It's also a nice capstone to a wildly unpredictable political year where the Republican incumbents considered most vulnerable mostly survived and the Republicans considered shoo-ins three months before the election are now finding themselves moving back to Kansas and New Hampshire with their tails between their legs.

Dems Will Find Libertarian Voters a Hard Sell

Democrats are actively seeking to expand upon the gains they made in last month's Congressional elections, and some high-profile columnists are suggesting that the party court libertarian-leaning voters. Looking at the exit polling data from the last few election cycles, it's easy to understand why strategists would find libertarians to be an enticing demographic. After all, Kerry more than doubled the 16% that Al Gore received from self-identified libertarians back in 2000. Congressional Democrats fared even better in 2006, fighting the GOP to a near 50-50 split among libertarians. Nonetheless, relying on libertarian voters as a long-term strategy towards Democratic Congressional majorities is unlikely to yield the intended results, and may in fact push away elements of the Democratic base. Here are only a few of the reasons why:

1) Libertarians are far from a monolithic group, and the ideology's disparate factions have consistently kept it from being a cohesive force in American elections. Take a look at Bill Maher and Larry Elder, both self-proclaimed libertarians, and see if you can piece together a platform that both men can agree upon. One segment of libertarians is primarily interested in the legalization of narcotics, while another is concerned with protecting civil liberties and property rights at all costs, and another believes the Republican Party is not conservative enough in its defense of the free market religion. My suspicion is that the majority (or plurality) of libertarians fit in the latter category, and they are the least winnable demographic of voters around other than in "teach them a lesson" elections like we saw in 2006.

2) The excesses of George Bush in regards to civil liberties issues have driven many libertarians to the Democratic Party out of protest, but once the bogeyman is no longer a factor in 2008, I'm skeptical that these voters will remain in the Democratic fray. A Republican like Arizonan John McCain is likely to be viewed very favorable by most libertarian voters should he be the GOP Presidential nominee in 2008. On the other hand, if the GOP nominee puts his stamp of approval on Bush's various assaults on the Constitution, Dems have the ability to live on borrowed time with the support of a disproportionately high number of libertarians a little longer. But still, does anybody believe that self-described libertarians would stand by the Democratic Party if Hillary Clinton was President and the Democrats still controlled the Senate? Or, for that matter, a Hillary Clinton candidacy at all, considering she's the public face behind national health care, an idea that is deplored by economic conservatives.

3) The agenda of the Democratic Party is contradicting libertarian dogma on fundamental issues of personal freedoms and property rights. I consider myself something of a libertarian and am appalled and downright frightened over the exponential growth of the authoritarian nanny state pushed primarily by the political left. Nanny-statism has almost become the left's equivalent to conservative wedge issues like gay marriage, with smarmy and self-congratulatory pols (disproportionately Democrat) pushing the envelope on new anti-smoking regulations with each legislative session and directly undermining bellwether libertarian positions on personal freedoms and private property rights in the process. The city councils of New York City and Chicago recently enacting a prohibitions against "transfat" in their cities' restaurants confirms my long-standing fears that the authoritarian left would not long be content with simply pressing their nanny-state bootheels into the necks of smokers, and you can bet libertarians are taking note as well. While the national Democratic Party hasn't been on the forefront in "saving us from ourselves", the Democratic Party at the state and local level has been, and eventually it will catch up to the national party at the current rate that the nanny state is growing.

And on top of all of this, the Democrats will have to climb further into bed with the business community if they want to sell libertarians in large numbers on the premise that Dems are their ideological soulmates. In so doing, labor unions, urban blacks, and other economic populists in key states will no longer have a reason to vote Democratic, much like white working class Southerners left the party in droves in 1993 when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA

None of this is to say that Democrats shouldn't TRY to expand the ranks of libertarians into the party fray, and I wholeheartedly recommend the party abandon its assault on personal freedom and property rights in the name of health-and-wellness purity. But for the most part, Democrats and libertarians are not a natural union, and Democrats are only gonna get so far by pretending that they are.

No Success in Blogrolling Efforts

Some posters have requested that I add a blogroll to link other political blogs from this website. Sara's instructions were very helpful in guiding me through the process, but as per my usual luck with such matters, my template remained unchanged even after applying the changes. I'll make another attempt later this week, but just wanted to give a heads-up why the update hasn't been made.

MacGyver, Season 7 Review: Six Weeks Late

I know everyone has been wringing their hands about my delayed review of MacGyver's final season DVD release, which was officially released on October 24, but lament no more....the review is finally here! Clearly, the election occupied my every thought and moment of free time since October 24, so MacGyver: The Complete Final Season was unusually low on my priority list. It didn't help that the series' final season was the equivalent to a nursing home stay in a television series' lifespan. Watching this DVD set is in many ways tantamount to watching a beloved friend suffering a slow, painful demise. And the pace at which MacGyver lost its quality was astounding, starting late in the sixth season. With only a few notable exceptions, the seventh season of MacGyver was a collection of 14 afterthought episodes conjured up by an exhausted writing staff that seemed to be almost begging viewers to let the tired series go.

You could have never told me this in the fall of 1991, but I'm glad MacGyver was spared any further humiliation by ABC, who thankfully did not extend the series' bleak final act by ordering additional episodes beyond the 13 they signed on for (the remaining episode in this DVD set was a holdover from the sixth season). It was time for the show to go, as evidenced by the weak batch of episodes in this set. Let's take a look at the few winners, and the many losers.

Included in the winner's circle:

"Obsessed"--It was the weakest of the Murdoc episodes, but had a fantastic first half where MacGyver was being taunted by his archnemesis with a series of crank phone calls and coded messages, leading MacGyver to a state of burnout just as the Phoenix Foundation is under a spotlight providing security for a deposed Central American dictator during his trial. The story takes a silly and disappointing during in the second half of the episode, but there are still some satisfying moments between MacGyver and Murdoc. I'm assuming the writers were not planning on the series ending before they were able to make another Murdoc episode, but an open-ended finale where we're led to believe Murdoc is still alive nonetheless disappointed fans after the series ended.

"The Prometheus Syndrome"--There was nothing particularly impressive about the plot in this mad bomber/arsonist episode, but the pyrotechnics in the explosion scenes were pretty impressive for TV circa 1991, the suspenseful cat-and-mouse through the dark tunnels of an abandoned newspaper office, and some attention to detail on the physics of explosive devices made this one worth the time.

"Good Knight, MacGyver, Parts 1 and 2"--MacGyver gets conked on the head and returns to King Arthur's Court in this two-part fantasy episode. I was very skeptical about this premise working, particularly after two disappointing Western dream episodes in seasons 5 and 6, but a clever script and some convincing costume and set design efforts make this episode a pleasant surprise. MacGyver's first name is finally revealed in Part 2.

"Deadly Silents"--MacGyver pays homage to Batman in this installment where he and an elderly silent film star are targeted by a special-effects wizard after the star's fortune. There are several silly moments, but the clever escapes make up for the plot deficiencies.

"The Mountain of Youth"--The return of Jack Dalton and a globe-trotting adventure feel breathe a little bit of life into this episode, where MacGyver finds the fountain of youth in central Asia, only to witness the nation's government divert the water for construction of a hydrogen bomb. The execution of this episode, airing in the summer of 1992 and billed as the series' "lost episode", was imperfect, but is nonetheless one of the few episodes in this set that would appeal to those looking for some good old-fashioned adventure.

"The Stringer"--By the time they get to their series finales, most long-running series are well past prime and manage to end with a whimper. MacGyver was not really an exception to this trend, but the revelation of a long-lost son nonetheless provided some satisfying closure to a character who was running from his own dark past during the series' seven-year run. A few touching moments, without being an hourlong sapfest. Modestly recommended.

Most of the remaining episodes were clunkers to one extent or another, but the worst of the worst include "The Walking Dead", where MacGyver gets kidnapped by a voodoo cult and turned into a zombie; "The Coltons", a yawningly dull episode intended as a spinoff featuring the three bounty hunter brothers from several previous episodes with only two cameo appearances by MacGyver himself; and "Gunz'N'Boyz", an episode about an inner-city gang war that has some powerful and convincing scenes, but ends so preposterously that it obliterates any credibility the episode had scored up to that point.

Without a shadow of a doubt, MacGyver: The Complete Final Season was the series' weakest season and I can only recommend it for the most committed fans. Anyone seeking to purchase only one or two MacGyver DVD sets should consider any season besides this one.

November's GOP Asshat of the Month

It's kind of surprising that it took this long for the Shrub to be awarded this dubious prize, but President George Bush gets the grand prize for costing his party up to a dozen House seats and two or three Senate seats over his absurd and incoherent handling of the Donald Rumsfeld situation. Four days before the midterm elections, and with John Kerry's dopey joke stealing the headlines, Bush decided to put his own back against the wall by declaring "full speed ahead" allegiance to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for the remainder of his term. Not 12 hours after getting a "thumpin'" in the November 7 elections, Bush held a press conference to announce that Rumsfeld would indeed be replaced....and that negotiations had been in place for weeks to decide upon that replacement.

Why would Bush tell Americans exactly what they didn't want to hear four days before an election when it wasn't even true? I still scratch my head over this, and am hopeful it's a sign of such tactical weariness of the part of the administration that the Congressional Democrats are able to use him as a doormat for the next two years.