Ones and Zeros

The former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil used to say that “All politics is local.”  Why Scott Brown was elected instead of Martha Coakley to replace former Senator Kennedy  has to do partly with the national picture of course.  But it also has a lot to do with the political picture and situation in Massachusetts and people are missing that very important side to the picture.

I don’t live in Massachusetts or even near it.  I don’t know that local picture and neither do the overwhelming majority of the commentators on this election.  There is voter anger against the Dems.  I’ve expressed that here before.  It’s also true that, from my view, Coakely never seemed like a strong candidate.

The economy is seriously down and that always has an effect on the current party in power.  One of the ongoing sources of instability in the US system of government is that the voting cycle and the economic cycles are pretty much the same length.  This encourages short-term bad economic behavior that the next administration has to handle.  The last administration was a very good example of this.

However, the GOP and the Dems either crowing or licking their wounds are wrong.  This local election is the result of forces at the local level.  Some of those forces are also national but taking a lesson from one particular local special election is a strategy fraught with error.

Yet these results are already firming into a concensus of conventional wisdom in the echo-chamber of pudits and politicians in Washington.  They will form their own reality separate from whatever the voters of Massachusetts intended.  This new beltway reality will govern their decisions and actions.  Voting works, but it doesn’t always work well.

Obama appointed former presidents Bush Jr. and Clinton to lead fundraising efforts for Haiti.  I know past presidents are supposed to be above daily politics and to be statesmen.  As they’re not running for anything now it’s easier for them.  The rest of us don’t have the generous pension and governmental support that former presidents have, we have to live in the real world.

So when I see Bush and natural disaster together I think of Katrina and New Orleans and the man-made disaster that Bush and his appointees perpetuated in the aftermath of that storm.  His history does not speak well for his ability to raise funds for this kind of crisis.

I don’t feel the same need to be bipartisan that Obama apparently feels.  With the GOP as the party of “NO!” and some of the recent comments about Haiti from the GOP and its media supporters,  I don’t see much help for Haiti coming from the right wing.

Nor do I see much help for the USA coming from the GOP on other issues either.

Well, I may not have my rocket car yet, but maybe soon.  The British government did a study of jobs in the future and says that spaceship pilot will be a regular job in 20 years.

But, I’m probably going to need a multiengine certificate.  Or at least a high-altitude endorsement.

I remember estimates I’ve heard before.  None of them turned out very well.  But only general trends were accurate.  This should be read in the same way. Forecasting is a risky business.  It’s just unusual to see it done at this range by a government.

I like to fly over WV, so this headline caught my eye: ‘General Aviation Appreciation Month’ opens 2010 in W.Va.

Turns out January is GA appreciation month in WV.  Well, that’s a nice idea, but not well executed perhaps.  A lot of smaller GA planes don’t fly much in the winter.  Some are basically mothballed till spring.

Maybe May or June would have been better?