It was Sunday afternoon and I was quietly reading in the Economist about France’s problems. It was in the article about why the French hate capitalism, I saw a shocking statistic. Seventy-one percent of Americans think the market economy is the best system around (vs. 66% of British and 36% of French). We’re supposed to understand 71% is an overwhelming majority and that free market economics is resting on firm bedrock in America. Sorry but that does not ring true to me. If 71% think it’s good, then 29% think otherwise. I suppose there could be some number of “I don’t know” votes, but still then we’re talking about roughly a quarter of the nation that thinks capitalism is wrong.

Did these people miss the lessons of the 20th century? I would love to hear what alternatives they advocate. Could they want a centralized, command economy because they worked so well for the USSR and Maoist China? Maybe they want something less extreme like a 1960s European social welfare state. The Europeans love it. It’s not like those countries have been dismantling their socialist system piece by piece for the last twenty years. Perhaps I’m wrong and instead of leftists, America has a large chunk of fascists silently longing for the government to bark orders to the private sector. Maybe I’m blinded by history because I don’t see what alternatives there are. Either you want more state control or less. Less control makes you a capitalist, and if you want more then you’re somewhere on the blurry line between socialist and communist.

I wonder who makes up this disaffected quarter. On one hand I have to believe many of them are annoying college students trying to find meaning in their unimportant lives. That demographic can’t make up the bulk of this group since only a small portion of the population is in college and only a small slice of college kids fall into the neo-communist fringe. I can only think of one other group who may make up this cohort – blue collar folks. I should probably clarify the definition of this group because I had to go back and correct that previous sentence. Many people, including myself, make the mistake of assuming “blue collar” connotes a redneck. That’s someone who’s white and has a vocational education at best. Originally I had written that blue collar people and blacks probably made up most of these anti-capitalists. That can’t be right though because I have a hard time believing successful blacks would oppose the system that they did so well in. So that only leaves poor blacks and those are people who would only have a vocational education at best.

Now it may be that the different races of blue collar workers have different reasons for distrusting capitalism. I could see white people blaming “unfair” foreign competition while blacks might suspect white people are stacking the economic deck against them and that’s why they can’t succeed. We would need further surveys to find the answers to this. We may need to take different tacks to allay this group’s fears.

I do find it very sad that anyone in the US thinks there’s a better economic system than capitalism. The US tried the regulations and high taxes in the 1950s and the economy then lurched from recession to recession. Once JFK lowered taxes we saw that a looser hand on the economy would have positive results. I hope we don’t end up repeating the struggles of the last century. I don’t want the world to slide back into the populist economics. Sure we may lack the security of a life long job, but who wants to do the same thing day in and day out forever? With a good education you gain a whole new kind of security. No one cares about losing their job when they know they can find a new one easily.

That’s why my dream project is to revamp our unemployment insurance system. That was made for a different era. It’s just a hand out that tides people over until they can find new work. That system is breaking down today because whole industries are drying up. A fired factory worker can’t expect to easily find another factory job within their unemployment insurance allotment. What I want to do is to create a new jobs retraining program for these people. When you apply for benefits, instead of being given a check and then being shown the door, these unemployed people will start a program to train them for a whole new line of work. Job retraining will appease workers because they will know they can find a new job if they’re fired, and it will mean employers can continue to have the flexible job market that allows them to be dynamic.

Cost is a topic that should always come up when we talk about a new government program. Sadly since I can’t order around the Office of Management and Budget I can’t devise an estimate for this program. I can think of at least one way to get new revenue. Today the payroll tax is capped at the first $95,000 of income. If we remove this cap the extra revenue would bring in hundreds of millions, and would not affect the middle class whatsoever because middle class people don’t have $95,000+ salaries. Again I can’t say for sure if this would be enough money for my idea, but it’s at least something worth investigating. Then maybe we can get the percentage that support free markets over 90% in this country.

To paraphrase Mr. Burns, I’m no architecture critic but I know what I hate. And I hate Eichlers. In case you never heard of these houses, Eichlers are modernist homes built in the 1950s. Eichler didn’t create the design principles of these structures, but he was the most prolific builder and his houses became synonymous with modernist homes.

I was first exposed to these structures on the 26th season of This Old House. TOH had never worked on a modernist house before, so they made sure to hammer into their viewers all the design principles that go into these buildings. In a nutshell, the ideas behind all these buildings come from the Bauhaus school. In one episode the host visits the Gropius House to show modernist design in its unadulterated form. This was the home of Walter Gropius, the first director of the Bauhaus.

It’s these people that are responsible for the cold, sterile, industrial buildings that blight our landscape. Just look at these buildings, all examples of Bauhaus teachings.

• In Britain (The Isokon Building)
• In Israel
• In Germany

What monuments to bland! At least now I know who to blame for the monotony of 20th century architecture. But let me bring this back home. Why did I bring this up? CurbedSF mentioned a perfectly preserved Eichler up for sale. Take a look at 375 Devon Drive. It’s a museum dedicated to 1955.

I just can’t stand these buildings. A home should stand tall and proud but these look like they’re slumping into the ground, ashamed to be there. All too often they’re surrounded by vegetation as if the forest is trying to reclaim them. The liberal use of plain gray concrete, the flat roofs, and the never-ending unadorned surfaces all just drive me mad!

This story is huge but I’ve only seen it covered in the Financial Times, so the credit goes to them. It was front page too. Nations maintain militaries to defend themselves. Yet Germany has decided to throw that purpose out the window. In a policy paper to be adopted by the defense ministry, the Bundeswehr will drop its primary mission to defend Germany. It will become an “international intervention force“.

This news totally blindsided me. I had no idea it was being discussed. It’s even more amazing when you consider it was hugely controversial for German troops to serve as peacekeepers in Bosnia, and that was just a couple of years ago. There was so much hand-wringing about that. Now Germany will be focused on doing exactly that all over the world. Since Bosnia they’ve been getting some practice monitoring the peace deal in DR Congo. They’re in the north of Afghanistan serving under NATO. Even though they pussed out about sending ground troops to monitor the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, the German navy is inspecting shipping to the country.

What really gets me wondering is how the German public will feel about this. I doubt they will feel less safe since Germany isn’t facing any threat of invasion. I just wonder if Germans will be angry at having to foot the bill for these peacekeeping missions. At least with a traditional military you can justify the expense because you must defend yourself. This new interventionist force is basically a giant increase to the foreign aid budget. Will Germans be that generous?

One more thing to consider. The day after this policy was announced, Bild (This site has a surprising amount of nude women on it. Is this a real news site in Germany?) first broke the story with photographs of German soldiers in Afghanistan playing around with a skull. The pictures dated from 2003 but the country has gone mad over it. They have even found another set from 2004. The little respect the Bundeswehr had built up in the last few years has just now been flushed away. Who knows for sure if the Germans will have the will for peacekeeping anymore.

Remember the old phrase; you can’t see the forest for the trees? I think we have a case of this at the UN. Over there some committee has voted to work on a new international scheme for conventional arms trades. The idea is that by controlling the sale of weapons, conflict zones won’t become flooded with them. Let’s look at this idea closer.

The assumption is that if you remove weapons from a region, conflicts will stop. As I wrote that sentence, I am stunned anyone could have such a simplistic view of the problem. Yet at least the 139 countries who voted in favor of this new treaty do see it that way. Amnesty International is no better saying, “any credible treaty must outlaw those transfers, which fuel the systematic murder, rape, torture and expulsion of thousands of people”. It’s a noble hope but it won’t work. It’s as if all these people forgot that violence existed in the time before guns. I can only imagine these do-gooders expect that when modern weapons are removed, warring factions will come to the negotiating table. That’s just looking at the world through rose tinted lenses. If neither side has guns, they will just pick up knives and clubs or make homemade bombs from fertilizer and gunpowder. If people still hate each other, they will find a way to kill each other.

I would love to hear the confusion from these agencies when one of these no-name wars ends up turning medieval because they’re starved for modern weapons. I’ll never get to hear that though because this agreement will fail. I know it hasn’t been written yet, but I know it will fail. Weapons sales are already a shady business. Making it more illegal isn’t going to deter would-be arms dealers. This is going to be the same story as drugs. Around the world nations spend billions trying to end the drug trade, but there is still no shortage anywhere. If third-worlders want weapons, someone will find a way to get it to them.

You wouldn’t expect much from a candidate who brings attention to her boobs. So when I was watching Countdown last night I thought about changing the channel. I didn’t want to hear another Mary Carey, although seeing would be fine of course. But the remote was on the table and I was on the bed, so I watched. You can watch it here.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2575342070372301299

I was really taken aback. Actually wait, I’m jumping the gun. My first reaction was “ewww!” Loretta Nall is not a looker. She may have some big boobs but that’s all she has going for her. Once she started to speak I found her articulate and a little witty. I hate it when interviewees get camera struck, but thankfully she was totally unflappable. You would think she’s been giving interviews for years.

She also brought attention to a number of serious issues. Her biggest is the legalization of marijuana and review of drug laws. As she said she wants to examine drug laws from a public health perspective. I was glad to hear that. Our court system is a shambles thanks to drug laws. Something needs to change because longer prison sentences are not getting the job done. Nall also brought up her opposition to the Iraq War. It would be great to have a governor demanding their National Guard contribution be recalled. I’m not happy with her desire to give an amnesty to the illegal immigrants in Alabama. A lot of the anti-immigrant movement may be racists but in the end illegal immigrants are still illegal. We should boot them back to their home country where they can fill out the forms to immigrate legally. If people want more immigrants in the US they should argue for increasing our quotas not forgiving lawbreakers.

She sure as hell won’t win the governor’s race, but I hope she will stay in politics and maybe win a House seat in 2008. I don’t totally agree with her, but I am impressed enough that I would vote for her if I was an Alabamian (thank the IPU, may her hooves never be shod, I am not). And the weirdest thing was at the end of the interview, I actually found her pretty bangable. Good lord, a woman turned decent when I found out she was intelligent. What have I become!?

I find this news completely and utterly bizarre. Remember how Madonna adopted a Malawian baby a few weeks ago? The Superficial reports that the father of that baby did not realize Madonna would be keeping his son permanently.

This whole situation is so fishy. When I first heard of Madonna adopting an African child, it was just a couple of weeks after Angelina Jolie got her own. Did Madonna think she was getting in early on a fad? I’d also like to know why did she (and by she I mean her staff, because I’m positive she didn’t do anything beyond use a cell phone) go out and recruit a child to adopt? This kid had a father and someone had to go and ask him to give up his boy. It’s not as if there is a shortage of orphans. Did she even meet this baby before adopting him? He’s already over a year old so it’s not like she’s getting a blank slate infant. As far as I can tell from media reports, once the papers were signed, the child was shipped to London.

I would like to think this is merely a series of unfortunate events but how could anyone in Madonna’s bureaucracy not realize this was a dumbass plan. I’m pretty sure she didn’t individually pick this child. Why go through the trouble of duping this particular guy? I am stunned at how ham-fisted this act of charity has turned out.

UPDATE: Just found out about an Oprah interview Madonna gave. This shed a little more light on a very sketchy situation. At least Madonna and her husband actually visited Malawi to meet these kids. I still find it disturbing though that they went back to London and had the child escorted to the UK by a security guard later on.

Fortunately it’s been established that the child had already been given to an orphanage by his father. Shopping around Malawi for a baby they liked seemed a little creepy. I’m guessing the father gave up his son because he was too poor to feed him. Orphanages are probably treated like social welfare agencies. When times are bad, parents leave their kids there. Then when they have a good harvest they go to pick them up again. I suppose it’s possible the father didn’t understand his son would be taken permanently if that’s the case.

What did disturb me though is a quote attributed to Madonna. Members of the studio audience for Oprah’s interview claimed that Madonna said Malawi did not have any adoption law so “we made them up as we went along.” That’s just wrong. The Malawians have been quite precise about their regulations. Now I don’t doubt that these laws can be bent or ignored for the right price, but to say rules don’t exist is just a lie.

As I’m sure my FBI file knows, I am a member of the ACLU. Today I received one of their mass mailers. Usually it’s a solicitation for money. Occasionally it will be a notification of a meeting. This time was pretty different. The large postcard told me what should be my positions on the upcoming propositions. Well more accurately the card told me what the ACLU’s Northern California Chapter thinks on these issues. Really though, it’s propaganda to tell the members how they should be voting.

What bothers me are the positions on Prop 89 and Prop 90. Prop 89 is the “Clean Money Initiative”. Basically it creates public financing of political campaigns. I happen to oppose public financing but that’s not my complaint about this. The ACLU of NorCal is “neutral” on Prop 89 because “other provisions in the initiative violate First Amendment rights in ballot-measure campaigns.” If they believe the proposition would violate the Constitution, shouldn’t they be recommending a “no” vote?

ACLU of NorCal also recommends a “no” on Prop 90, the proposition to further restrict the use of eminent domain. They recommend a no because it would “restrict the government’s authority to regulate the use of private property for the public good.” This ballot measure is a response to the Kelo case in Connecticut. I always thought of the ACLU as standing up for individual rights against collective demands. I never looked it up but I expected that the ACLU would oppose eminent domain altogether. I may agree with it but still I am quite surprised at this stance.

I guess it was silly of me but I expected the ACLU to be more ideologically pure. If something violates the Constitution, it should be opposed automatically – no compromises. To stay neutral on Prop 89 because you like the broader idea is disingenuous. Their opposition to Prop 90 seems even worse to me. Their stance is that the public good trumps individual rights. Doesn’t the ACLU exist to fight that sort of thinking? It would be good for the broader public if police used racial profiling but they aren’t shy about opposing that. Why are they waffling on property rights? This saddens me. I always thought these guys were wide-eyed, uncompromising idealists. I guess you just can’t take the socialism out of a California liberal.

I just came back from grocery shopping. I have to remark I am very impressed with the service at the Safeway near my house. I’ve been going to Albertsons since I moved to California and I’ve always found the workers there to be pretty gruff. It’s a rare day when any of them are friendly.

I wanted to get some focaccia so I went to Safeway instead today. After my haircut I drove in and stopped first at the deli counter. The counter person was friendly; they offered to give me some samples to try and suggested a new kind of cheese to go with my roast beef. It was horseradish cheddar. It has a pretty sharp bite to it. Next I headed to the bakery to buy some bread where I saw the counter people hand out cookies to children.

The woman in front of me at the register bought a ton of food. When it was packed away in bags it took up two shopping carts. The baggers practically begged to help her take it to her car. She said no but they must have asked her four times. That was not like Albertsons at all. Over there they’ll ask you once but usually they mumble it like they’re going through the motions because they were told to by their boss. The Safeway employees had a much peppier vibe. One of my bread loaves got squished and the checkout guy offered to wait for me to get a new loaf. I’ve never seen Albertsons employees give a crap about things like that.

As I put my groceries into my trunk, a Safeway employee came by and offered to take away my cart for me. Amazing! Then when I was about to drive away the old guy who parked next to me was approaching with his groceries. The store put me in such a good mood I actually waved goodbye to the guy. What surprised me was how unsurprised he was. He put on a big smile and waved back. It was like a slice from 1930s life.

I had a hard decision today. On Monday I had my phone interview. At the end the interviewer told me someone would call to set up a second interview. I figured the call would come the next day. After all it’s just for scheduling. Why would that take a long time? The call didn’t come on Tuesday or Wednesday so I assumed my interview really did go as bad as I thought and I was out of the running. But then it came on Thursday. I was at work so I didn’t answer but they wanted to schedule a second phone interview. I planned to call them Friday morning.

So Friday comes and I’m sitting in my chair holding my cell phone. I was about to call but I couldn’t bring myself to. I went from the chair, to my bed, to the chair, back to my bed and then back to the chair again. I spent over an hour thinking hard about whether or not I should call. I’ve already decided I didn’t want the job. They couldn’t possibly pay enough to get me to move and work my ass off for eleven hours a day. So why should I go through the stresses of interviewing? I have to confess I am still a little curious. It would feel good to hear they want to hire me.

I nearly called three times. I held the phone ready to dial but I stopped. If I scheduled an interview now it would ruin my weekend. I’d spend my time trying to read more crap about a company I don’t really care about. I would have to come up with more questions for that “Do you have any questions for me” moment. They would have to be good ones too. The two I had on Monday were not enough. I really don’t want to put all that work into a job I won’t be taking.

I didn’t end up calling. Midway though that hour I realized what I was really doing was stalling. I didn’t want to call them back but I was afraid it was for the wrong reason. Quitting is okay when something isn’t worth the bother. It’s not okay if it was for a fear of interviewing. So I thought long and hard about how I felt, and I decided I didn’t want to ruin my weekend preparing for a job interview that didn’t matter. So I went downstairs and cooked some eggs and home fries.

Although it didn’t occur to me until now, maybe I should just do the interview cold. I won’t spend the hours reading up on the company. I still need to think up some questions. I have no hope of getting the job without asking some back to the interviewer, so without them there’s no point in interviewing. Maybe I’ll call them back on Monday with a lame apology for not getting back to them sooner.

I am a little disappointed they didn’t call me back today. I actually rather expected that. What a shoddy administrative system. When I need to contact someone, I call at least twice a day. I definitely wouldn’t skip a phone call on the second day. There must still be a lot of candidates left. How much farther can this interview process go?

Sometimes I do things and I just don’t know why. This week I did two things that are really just reprehensible. Should I really even bring this up? It’s just so horrible. I guess I’ll go with the mild one first.

There I am spending another late night in the office. I’m in the kitchen looking for some snacks. I go to throw a paper towel away and there I spy someone did not finish their Pizza Hut breadsticks. It’s laying in the trash but it is still inside its protective packaging. I stare for a moment. Then look around the kitchen like a cartoon character. So yeah you know where this is headed. I reach in and grab the box, crossing the line between man and bum. It would seem that I am an unlucky bum. The breadstick fell out of the box when I grabbed it and touched real garbage. I wasn’t about to cross that line and I slunk back to my desk.

Yeah that was pretty bad but I think I topped it later in the week. I dropped by the mortgage office to swap out the keyboards with some more comfortable ones. So I walk in and glory be! There are two dozen donuts sitting on the reception desk! I crack open one box and to my horror I see these donuts had been sitting here for a very long time. I had thought maybe there was a meeting there before I came over but no. I can’t guess how long they had sat there but it was long enough for the plain glazed ones to shrivel and the rest to harden into rocks.

But for some reason this didn’t stop me. First I took a tentative bite from a chocolate glazed one. It was hard but still chocolaty. I ate it a little at a time because I was unsure if this stuff was going to make me sick. One donut was down and I felt fine. So I went for a second. Here we are one week later and I finished off the donuts. The plain glazed ones actually held up better than the rest. They’re absolutely fantastic after 20 seconds in the microwave. I threw out all the cream donuts though. I didn’t trust that the cream wouldn’t have turned after all this time.

So why do I do such things? I actually ate garbage. Why am I admitting this? Forget it. This didn’t happen. You never read this post.