TIMES ARE HARD AND YOU'RE NOT

In recent radio advertisements in the Washington, D.C., area, a local erectile dysfunction clinic has found in the troubled financial situation a reason to seek the clinic’s services. The advertisement says that in these difficult times, you need “intimacy” more than ever. The unspoken follow on is that apparently you can’t have “intimacy” without a great big throbbing, well, you get the picture.

So how about some other ad slogans linking the economy and ED:

Times are hard and you’re not.

Need a new stimulus package?

Are you as soft as the economy?

The job market isn’t the only thing shriveling up.

Mortgage loans and you: both subprime.

Shafted: the economy yes, you no.

The economy limps along, and you’re just limp.

The difference between you and the stock market? The stock market occasionally rises.

You and your portfolio, both shrinking.

Interest rates rise, interest rates fall. You just fall.

WORST FLUSH PERCENTAGE

Over the last year and a half, Cranky has had four different jobs. It's not that Cranky can't hold down a position, it's just that. . .well, it's complicated.

Anyway, the four jobs mean that Cranky was in four different workplaces. Being the observant guy he is, Cranky discerned that things were not always the same. One thing that was different among the four workplaces was lavatories.

Lavatories can be measured in various ways. For example, for a given system of commodes over a given period of time, what is the flush percentage? If a system has five commodes and they are all five operable for the whole period of time, the system has a flush percentage of 100 percent. If one commode is out for the whole period, the system has a flush percentage of 80 percent. If three commodes are each out for one-half the period, the system has a flush percentage of 70 percent (Cranky thinks this calculation is correct, but you’d better check the math.)

The last place Cranky worked had one commode for about forty users. One might expect that this many users would result in a significantly low flush percentage (and in forty uncomfortable individuals.)

But such was not the case. This commode took all that was dropped and kept right on flushing.

No, the place with the worst flush percent was an office building of, drum roll please, the United States Senate. In spite of surrounding walls, ceilings, and floors of first rate material—stone, fine tile—and top-of-the-line models, Senate commodes seemed to spend a lot of time just fermenting noxious nastiness.

A wiseacre might be tempted to say that with such a concentration of BS, no wonder the Senate commodes were constantly clogging up. But Cranky is not a wiseacre.

PREACHERS AND POLITICS

One beneficial result of the brouhahas caused by some religious leaders over recent weeks and months just might be a lower role for men (and women) of the cloth in the political arena. For some years now, words from at least a few pulpits have had a decidedly secular tinge. Yes, the ostensible theme may have been how to achieve eternal salvation. But the means have included the proper stances on political issues, and political figures.

Concerning religion, the First Amendment to the Constitution is often described as mandating the separation of church and state. But the specific language is a little more one-sided: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Note that the prohibitions are directed at Congress. Nothing in the First Amendment explicitly prevents religions and their adherents from seeking to impose their views on government. On some questions, the views may coincide with those of many other citizens. On other questions, however, a position pushed by a religion and its adherents may not be much evident in other elements of the population.

Moreover, nothing in the First Amendment explicitly prevents political pronouncements, economic theories, diatribes, rants, absurdities, and whatall from the pulpit. Many citizens, whether church goers or not, may have been unaware that from a few pulpits strange words are heard, and that in a few pulpits are strange individuals, narcissistic, self-absorbed, playing to the crowd.

The exposure of such words and individuals to the judgment of a broader audience could tarnish somewhat the halo that a few religious leaders have attempted over the years to wear around the political arena. To be more explicit, Preachers are like the rest of us: some good, some bad, some rational, some not. If such long time political evangelists as the departed Jerry Falwell and the still with us Pat Robertson are seen not as just a step removed from the mainstream but as just a step removed from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, more people might be less inclined to accord them and their views respect.

JOHN McCAIN, PLEASE STOP TALKING LIKE THAT

John, you have got to stop talking like last century. Most recently, you said something to the effect “I will never surrender in Iraq.”

Hey John, there is nobody to surrender to in Iraq! It is not that kind of war. You and the guy you want to replace keeping talking about victory, surrender, and other things that just don’t apply to the situation. If we left Iraq tomorrow, hook, line, and sinker, not leaving a single American soldier, it would not be surrender. We would just be quitting. Maybe not a good thing to do, but surrendering is not what it would be.

Here’s the problem, John. A good number of Americans, probably at this point most Americans, realize Iraq is not a World War II kind of war. Whatever the ending is, there is not gonna be a peace treaty signed on the battleship Missouri as the Navy stages one humongous flyover. For years, probably decades, and maybe even centuries, Iraq, and indeed the whole Middle East, will continue to be one messy place.

Democracy as we understand it in the U.S.? Forget it. Stability? Precarious at best. Our goal in Iraq and the Middle East should be modest: keeping the lid on as the people, hopefully, mature politically.

John, if you keep talking like a George Bush clone you will get the votes of a certain hardcore constituency. But I would be plenty surprised if the World War II era talk gets you to the White House.

You are a bona fide American hero, John. But being a hero doesn’t mean you have an understanding of what makes the world tick.

CONSERVATIVES & LIBERALS

At their best, conservatives want the status quo.

At their worst, conservatives want yesterday’s status quo.

At their best, liberals want a better tomorrow.

At their worst, liberals want a perfect tomorrow.

TORTURE, PUNISHMENT, AND GUNS

To have a successful blog, the blogger should be up bright and early. She or he should exhaustively peruse news and commentary sources. Then she or he should pound out her or his thoughts, opinions, and whatall.

Cranky is much too lazy for all this. He’s usually up late. He does peruse news and commentary sources, but it takes him most of the day. And only occasionally does he burden you with his thoughts. (Be thankful for small favors.)

All of this is by way of explaining why Cranky is just getting around to commenting on an event that occurred a couple of weeks ago. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Among the subjects that intellectual giant Leslie Stahl discussed with Honorable Antonin was the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Honorable Antonin contended that the Eighth Amendment does not necessarily prohibit torture because torture is not necessarily punishment. Pulling fingernails to make some alleged terrorist spill his guts is apparently just trying to get information; it is not punishment.

Talk about nitpicking on the meaning of words. Honorable Antonin is definitely one heckuva nitpicker.

Okay, but if you’re gonna be a nitpicker, you should nitpick all the way. For example, let’s take another Constitutional Amendment, the Second, you know, the one that says the right to bear arms shall not be abridged. Here's the nitpick. Strictly construed, really strictly construed, “arms” should have the meaning it had at the time the Amendment was adopted. And at that time, the meaning was ye olde musket.

So the Second Amendment permits you to have all the muskets you want. But forget about that AK-47, or even that .22.

Some might contend that Cranky’s reasoning is defective. His Second Amendment interpretation is a time warp thing, which is different that Honorable Antonin’s torture is not punishment thing. But Cranky contends that at the heart of both arguments is nitpicking in the extreme. If you’re gonna pick a nit between torture and punishment, you should be consistent and pick a nit over the meaning of “arms.”

Back to you, Antonin.

PROFOUND QUESTIONS OF LIFE #1

Do women still use bobby pins?

ALBATROSS DEBATE

Hillary Clinton’s call for an unmoderated debate between her and Barack Obama is at least intriguing. And it might really, finally be a debate with substantial substance. We certainly need something better than that last pathetic effort overseen by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. The media have become much too part of the story.

But a much more interesting debate might be between the campaign albatrosses: Hillary’s albatross Bill and Barack’s albatross Jeremiah.

For you people unfamiliar with the albatross thing (asleep in senior English, eh?), the metaphor, allusion, or whatever, refers, according to Wikipedia (yeah, Wikipedia, you got a problem with that) to an encumbrance, or a wearisome burden. The origin of the concept is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the poem, the mariner (refers to a guy on a ship) shoots an albatross with a crossbow. Then all kinds of bad things happen; so the negative concept of having an albatross hanging from one’s neck.

Get it now? Bill is Hillary’s albatross, and Jeremiah is Barack’s albatross.

Wouldn’t that be a heck of a debate? Two more articulate guys are hard to find. And two more perfect albatrosses. Jeremiah could spout his gibberish about religion, his evil homeland, and whatall, and Bill could vent his rage at the fact that he can’t be President anymore.

MILITARY TALKING HEADS

In this past Sunday’s edition of The New York Times (April 20, 2008), the military talking heads that have been clarifying the Iraqi excursion for us for the last five years were taken to task. The Times presented considerable evidence that many of them were not only faithful parrots of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld line but also eager participants in the lucrative business of defense contracting.

Military talking heads, of course, are the retired military generals, colonels, and lesser ranks who are the war “experts” on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and last but certainly not least, FOX.

Now the Cranky Old Guy has always been aware (meaning since he was cognizant of a world beyond his sandbox) of the military-industrial complex thing. He even remembers President Eisenhower’s speech on the subject. Or at least reading of the speech. Recently, he had the opportunity to see again “Why We Fight,” a PBS production of several years ago that, with Eisenhower’s speech as an introduction setting the theme, looked at the supportive, often incestuous relationship between the Pentagon, defense contractors, and Congress.

So Cranky is not naïve. And as a veteran he has even spent some time in the MI complex himself. But the Times article was really pretty startling. Not only did Rumsfled and his flunkies make a substantial, coordinated, and largely successful effort to coop the military talking heads. Many of those heads were receiving big bucks from the defense contracting establishment. Conflicts of interest? Apparently not enough that the TV mucky-mucks thought we should know about the possibility.

Some of the military talking heads allowed to the Times that they didn’t buy all the stuff they were briefed. But they largely kept their doubts out of their public comments.

And speaking of “briefed,” notice how central this concept has become in this PowerPoint age. PowerPoint briefings have become the principal way information is conveyed. A problem might be that PowerPoint simplifies far too much. Our ability to delve deep into complex situations, to grasp pros, cons, nuances, the big picture, and the details may be eroding.

Perhaps nowhere is the PowerPoint culture more deeply embedded than the military establishment. Congressional committees don’t usually permit witnesses to use PowerPoint. But blown up PowerPoint slides can become easel-size charts, and these charts are liberally allowed. In General David Petraeus’ recent appearances before Congress, he had a full bird Colonel putting charts on an easel and pointing out stuff as Petraeus talked (for you non-military types, a full bird Colonel is pretty high on the totem pole). And the Colonel had a Captain to hold the pointer when it wasn’t being used. They were both probably part of the 33rd PowerPoint Platoon (Airborne).

“He [or She] gives good brief” is the sign of an up and comer at the Pentagon. Iraq may be the first PowerPoint war. Helluva precedent.

COMPASSION FORUM

Cranky is reaching the end of his rope with this Presidential campaign. The twenty-four news cycle threatens to make us all imbeciles. Needing something new at the top of every hour, the talking heads hop on every malapropism, slip of the tongue, pick of the nose, scratch of the zit, sideways glance, and what all. A candidate’s every word and action is dissected, resected, and dissected again. A meandering thought becomes occasion for analysis akin to a Phd dissertation.

Occasionally, issues are discussed. Mostly though, the focus is on the superficial.

And it isn’t all the media’s fault. The candidates light into each other’s musings with the intensity and ferociousness a feral cat ripping into a song sparrow. To Hillary and Obama, John McCain’s off-hand comment about the possibility of being in Iraq for one hundred years becomes a major policy announcement. To Obama and John, Hillary’s war story embellishment reveals a fundamental character flaw. To John and Hillary, Obama’s unguarded comment about small-town America exposes a bigot’s inner soul.

Adding to the verbal cauldron is our man Bill. Up until the South Carolina primary, Bill was viewed by friend and foe alike as a political natural. You may not have liked him, you may have thought his morals a bit loose, but most acknowledged that he seemed a political genius.

Well, no more. In two short months Bill has shown that he can put his foot in his mouth with the best of them. If Hillary finds herself not her party’s nominee, she can give Bill much of the credit. Should make for an interesting phase of their unusual marriage.

But all this is prelude to Cranky’s thoughts of the moment. Tonight, CNN had what it called a Compassion Forum. In essence, the candidates were to be grilled on their personal religious beliefs. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Mason, Monroe, and the other Founding Fathers would not have been pleased.

Cranky lasted only a few minutes. CNN’s Campbell Brown, that theological giant, started Hillary off with a question about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Whaa! We’re electing a President, not Medieval Monk of the Year.

So six months still to go before the idiocy is over. This twenty-four news cycle stuff, this interconnectedness that has come to dominate our lives, can’t be for the better. Cranky doesn’t necessarily think the world as a whole is dumbing down. But in this information age, this electronic age, the lowest common denominator has become the standard in the public forum. Is this the future?

WAR STORIES

Okay, so Hillary Clinton told a whopper of a war story. She did not in fact run across the tarmac with her head down to avoid snipers. Her lie was contradicted by the video.

But as many veterans might admit if really pressed, war stories often stray from the basic facts. When described later in a calm setting, the basic facts do not capture the stress, tension, fear, and excitement the individual felt at the time. To convey what the individual felt, it is very tempting to add a few embellishments, and later a few more, and so on.

Put another way, the truth at the core of a war story often becomes obscured by the teller’s need to convey what the event meant to him or her.

The difficulty of sticking to the truth in war stories is a component problem of how we treat war in general. We easily mouth condemnations about the horrors of war, about the need to avoid war if at all possible. But we have considerable difficulty acknowledging the attractions of war and how those attractions can lead us to the very thing we profess to despise.

In his own unique, tactless, chilling way, President George W. Bush recently stumbled on the subject of wars’ attractions. In a call to U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan, the President waxed envious about how romantic it must be to chase bad guys in the mountainous wilds halfway around the world. The President wished he were younger so he could participate, sort of a wannabe war story. (Uh, Mr. President, didn’t you once have a chance for something similar? Okay, won’t go there.)

The presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain, who certainly has earned the right to tell bona fide war stories, indirectly chided the President by noting in a speech that there was nothing romantic about war.

So we have Hillary Clinton telling a whopper of a war story, George Bush with a wannabe war story, and John McCain seemingly contending that wars have no attractions for human beings. Which of the three mouthed the most dangerous words?

Ms. Clinton comes in last, the least dangerous pronouncement. Yes, she told a flagrant lie. The telling of the lie does not reflect well on her overall truthfulness. But her lie would not likely lead to a bad decision on national policy, to the commitment of American flesh and blood to some quixotic adventure.

Mr. McCain comes in second. By implying that war is all horror and no romantic adventure, he dismisses a cause of war: the seeking of that romantic adventure, either by our enemies or by us. This is not to say that war is never justified. It is justified on occasion, at least to most of us, but the justification should be thorough enough to remove the element of frolicking for fun in exotic lands.

In addition, if Mr. McCain is completely dismissing the attractions of war, one has to wonder about the motivation of three generations of McCains, career navy men all. Okay, so a career in the military does not necessarily imply a love of war. But it makes unequivocal expressions about a hatred of war a little hard to take.

Perhaps the ambivalence of the military man toward war was best captured by General Douglas MacArthur in his farewell address at West Point. After paying lip service to the desire for peace, he said:

I listen vainly for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns , the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

We want our military men both to hate war and to acknowledge its attractions.

Which brings us to the winner of the most dangerous words contest. The President’s words carry the opposite import of those of John McCain. The President talked of the romantic nature of war without much convincing talk of war’s horrors and brutality. And his words are not in a vacuum. He and like minded cohorts cavalierly took the nation to war in 2003. There was inadequate planning, inadequate thought about the future, inadequate attention to the consequences. There was just the romantic notion of bringing, by force or arms, freedom and democracy to the Middle East.

Unfortunately about war is the fact that its nastiness, dirtiness, horrors, brutality, and tragedy are partially offset by its romanticism. The nation needs a leader who recognizes and acknowledges the ambivalence and contradictions.

HILLARY'S TRACY FLICK MOMENT

The resemblance between Hillary Clinton and Tracy Flick has not gone unnoticed. Goggle Tracy Flick and various Hillary-related websites pop up. For those who don’t know Tracy Flick, she was the Reese Witherspoon character in the 1999 movie “Election.” And for those not familiar with “Election,” which also starred Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller), only watch it if you want to be reminded of your worst high school nightmares.

Every high school has a Tracy Flick or Flicks. She is the earnest, calculating, striving self-promoter who answers all the questions, dominates class discussions, and participates in more extracurricular activities than you can shake a stick at. She is a perennial mainstay of student government. She knows neither sarcasm nor cynicism. Her senior yearbook entry puts yours to shame. And she can just as well be a he as a she, but in our culture a female Tracy Flick is somehow the more common stereotype.

In the Ohio debate on Tuesday, February 27, Hillary had a Tracy Flick moment. Tim Russert started grilling Barack Obama about his endorsement by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, an individual with a long history of anti-Semitic statements. Obama said he had no contact with Farrakhan, had not solicited the endorsement, certainly did not agree with any of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic remarks, and in fact denounced those remarks.

But Russert was not satisfied. He wanted to know if Barack specifically “rejected” Farrakhan’s endorsement. Barack was obviously having difficulty with the concept of “rejecting” an endorsement. What does “rejecting” something intangible mean? How does one go about it?

At this point, Hillary’s inner Tracy Flick felt compelled to explain the matter to Barack, and to the rest of us. She described at length how in her first Senate campaign in New York she had, at great political risk, “rejected” the support and endorsement of potential backers with anti-Semitic views. It was clear to her that Barack’s denunciation was not enough. An affirmative “rejection” was explicitly called for. The implication was that Barack had been tested and fallen short.

In just a few words, Barack defused the issue, took the wind out of Hillary’s and Tim’s sails, and probably gained the support of many who have bad memories of long ago smug corrections by a Tracy Flick. Barack said that he saw no difference between his denunciation and Hillary’s rejection, but if it made her happy, he would both “reject and denounce.” Too bad he didn’t add a “whatever.”

So there, Tracy, er Hillary.

CONGRESSIONAL CHART DOOFUS

Avid watchers of C-Span—and that would put you amongst a pretty weird group—may have caught a glimpse of the Cranky Old Guy recently. Due to a pretty convoluted set of circumstances, Cranky found himself as a Congressional Chart Doofus.

Now, the world doesn’t have many Chart Doofuses, and Congressional Chart Doofuses are an even rarer species. When members of the House or Senate speak on the floor of Congress, they don’t have any of the technological assistance that speakers in other environments rely upon. There is no PowerPoint, no video, nothing to acknowledge that the world is half a century or more into the information age. What there is, is big physical charts, maybe three feet by four feet. A chart may contain words, pictures, graphs, and the like.

The charts are put on easels as a legislator speaks. C-Span aficionados will have seen these easels and charts behind or to the side of speaking legislators. The individual who puts a chart on an easel at the appropriate moment in a legislator’s speech is known as a Chart Doofus.

Contrary to what one might think, Chart Doofusing is not an easy job.

For one thing, Chart Doofusing is like field goal kicking: you’re only as good as your last effort. Put a chart upside down, put up the wrong chart, not even having the correct chart at hand—such faux paxes can instantly erase the memory of dozens of successful, straight-through-the-uprights shots.

And for anyone other than a member of Congress, the floor of the House or Senate is an extremely authoritarian environment. A whole passel of disciplinarians is on hand to make sure lesser mortals do not walk, sit, whisper, scratch, or whatever in the wrong place. Screw up more than a couple of times and a Congressional Chart Doofus is seeking another line of work.

Cranky survived, barely, his bit of Chart Doofusing. But it’s not something he wants to make a habit of. And indeed it would be unwise to put old antiauthoritarian types like Cranky in such a public position. Cranky’s days of trying to work his way up a career ladder are long past. Right now, he’s just trying to pad his pension. So he wouldn’t have a whole lot to lose if he reacted to one of the disciplinarians by loudly saying, on C-Span, “Bite Me.”

TIME FOR BILL TO GO

Dear Hillary:

If you want to be President of these United States, you need to cut Bill loose. He has become a colossal distraction. His ranting and raving are not being well received. He cost you beaucoup votes in South Carolina. He has people asking, “I want to put up with his enormous ego for the next four years?”

So it’s time to say to him: “Bill, I let you get away with being serviced by the fat intern. But now you are standing between me and the Presidency. It’s splitsville time for us. My lawyers will be contacting your lawyers. It’s been real.”

Sincerely,
The Cranky Old Guy

CRANKY'S CHRISTMAS BLOG

Cranky has had a helluva year, and he thinks you should know about it. He never got into the writing of Christmas Letters, those long meandering tomes about what the family has done the past twelve months, but the internets, with all their interconnected tubes and stuff, give him another avenue of presentation.

Cranky’s year started with open heart surgery, his second such operation. At issue was a bad valve. No sweat for the docs: they opened Cranky up, sliced and diced, and were done by lunch. As for Cranky, he was a hospitalized zombie for close to a week, and then an agitated over-medicated basket case for three months. Restless leg syndrome? Cranky had it day and night. Sleep was an occasional thing.

While Cranky was recuperating, he was fired from his contract job editing stuff for some federal agency. Talk about hard-hearted.

So Cranky ended up training as a Patent Examiner for the U.S. Patent Office. One problem was that Cranky was in a training class whose instructor was an angry little guy from somewhere in Central Asia, which was also where Attila the Hun was from. Cranky hadn’t been yelled at that much since Army basic training some forty years ago.

The second problem was that Cranky’s field of patent applications was something called business methods patents. Talk about garbage. A patent is supposed to be about an invention, but business methods patents are just mostly lengthy wordy descriptions of how to shuffle paper. Many of the so-called inventions are no more than feeding data into a computer, letting the computer massage and manipulate the data, and getting some result.

Six weeks into his career as a Patent Examiner, Cranky, as he was leaving for the day, handed his security badge to the guard, saying, “I ain’t coming back.” The guard commented, “Bad day, huh.” Cranky responded, “Bad month.”

So Cranky was back in the ranks of the unemployed. Weeks of unsuccessful job hunting went by, as did weeks of watching the family’s savings evaporate. Even what Cranky thought of as his ace-in-the-hole job didn’t pan out. Given his outdoor experience and several decades of buying their stuff, Cranky figured he could always get a job selling outdoor gear at REI. But his lack of knowledge about modern fabrics and about how one should dress for looking good in the wilderness apparently were reasons for no second interview. Those plus the fact that when asked how previous employers would characterize him, Cranky responded: “trouble accepting authority.” Anyway, Cranky is transferring his business to Hudson Trail Outfitters or Eastern Mountain Sports.

In the meantime, Cranky’s oldest daughter and her husband quit perfectly respectable jobs and move into Cranky’s basement. Bringing with them two dogs the size of ponies. The dogs are named Biff and Biff.

Cranky’s other daughter gets married in some place on the back side of Idaho. Cranky lets off steam by belting out the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” and Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds” at a local karaoke bar. The daughter moves to Kuwait.

Finally, as the year wound down, Cranky landed a temporary writing job at, of all places, the U.S. Senate. The downside is that Cranky is putting in far too many hours. The upside is that it’s a paycheck.

So from Cranky and his family—Ms. Cranky, daughter #1, husband, and Biff and Biff in the basement, daughter #2 and husband in Kuwait—Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Pleasant Holidays, and all that stuff.

DEMOCRATS TAKE AIM AT FOOT

In their effort to tie Iraqi war funding to a timetable for withdrawal, Congressional Democrats are taking dead aim at their collective foot. Only two outcomes seem possible: the Democrats capitulate ignominiously or are blamed for the disruption of Defense Department operations. If an outcome exists that is more favorable to Democrats and their aspirations regarding the 2008 elections but still compatible with tying funding to a withdrawal timetable, it is not apparent.

Why this need to court disaster? One reason is that since the 2006 elections the left wing base of the Democratic party has been accusing Congressional Democrats of being wimps. The attitude is “Hey, we won the election. We captured both the House and the Senate. How come the war is still going on?” This criticism ignores elementary math, nothing complicated like algebra, trigonometry, or calculus, just your basic math, the type you use to balance your check book.

Yes, Democrats captured the House and the Senate. But not by much, certainly not by enough to impose their will on a stubborn, recalcitrant President who has demonstrated zero ability or desire to compromise. The desire of the left wing base for instant gratification is simply unrealistic.

A second reason for courting disaster is extreme anger at that stubborn, recalcitrant President. Someone so densely assured of his own righteousness is most certainly infuriating. Just once you want to wipe that smirk off his face, to make him cry “uncle.” But blinding anger is a dangerous basis for action.

What should the Democrats’ strategy be? Faced with George Bush’s childish my-way-or-the-highway approach, Democrats should unceasingly preach the need for more Democrats in Congress and for a Democrat in the White House. The elections are less than a year away. Patience and an election strategy emphasizing the rational alternative to a Republican party that has purged its moderates and become captive to its own wacko base constitute a smarter approach.

Democrats should also not ignore that a timetable for withdrawal does exist. It was announced by General David Petraeus when he testified to Congress several months ago. It may not be quick enough for many Americans, but it certainly provides a benchmark that the President, and his successor, ignore at their peril.

What the instant-gratification portion of the Democratic Party ignores is that the United States has strategic interests in the Middle East. This interests will last well beyond George Bush’s debacle. Yes, the maintenance of a large military force in Iraq for the indefinite future is not a realistic strategy. But neither is the immediate withdrawal of all military forces.

CRANKY GETS A BLACKBERRY

The Cranky Old Guy’s first calculator was a slide rule. His first key board was part of a manual typewriter. If either of these things is unfamiliar, you might check Wikipedia.

Anyway, Cranky, unable to function on the modest retirement funds he had accrued over the years, recently found himself back in the workforce. And one of the things he was issued his first day on the job was this Blackberry thing.

Now, from time-to-time Cranky has used cell phones, basic cell phones. And they have been a problem. Turning them on and off, seeing things on the little tiny screens, punching little tiny keys with big arthritic fingers, figuring out how to enter phone numbers, how to answer the things, how to actually get a phone number out into the air, all this stuff Cranky only reached a minimum level of competence regarding.

So now Cranky has something that allegedly is a phone, an emailer, a web browser, a GPS navigator, a music player, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But there’s no manual. Supposedly there’s a help button or menu or something, but no tangible manual that you can hold in your hands and thumb through. For Cranky’s generation, manuals are essential.

If Cranky’s success in this new job is dependent upon getting this Blackberry thing to work, he will be shortly looking again. On the other hand, maybe with all the abilities this Blackberry thing has, it can function as a TV. A couch potato at the office: now that’s cool.

IS THE PATENT SYSTEM BROKEN?

Should the arrangement of furniture and equipment, including the provision for a “kid’s area,” in the branch office of a bank receive patent protection? It did in Patent No. 6,681,985, issued January 27, 2004.

Should a search request in the form of “a string of words” in a computerized investment research delivery system receive patent protection? It did in Patent No. 5,502,637, issued March 26, 1996.

Should a “computer program product storing computer instructions therein for instructing a computer to perform a process of at least one of ranking and indexing enterprises with respect to at least one of each other and predetermined criteria to be used in at least one of investment decision making and enterprise decision making” receive patent protection? Whatever it means, it did in Patent No. 6,154,731, issued November 28, 2000.

Such patents may not be evidence of a broken patent system, but they certainly suggest to some that the system needs overhauling. After a stint of a little more than a month as a patent examiner trainee, the Cranky Old Guy is one of those some.

Cranky is a retired federal government employee who is not ready to leave the workforce completely and who needs to pad his pension to pay those lovely Northern Virginia real estate taxes. To handle an avalanche of new patents, the Patent Office is trying to expand by over 1,000 examiners a year. It seemed a good match. Examining patent applications might prove interesting and challenging, and the Patent Office certainly seems to need warm bodies, ideally warm bodies with a little experience, particularly legal experience.

Why does the patent office need new examiners? Between fiscal years 2000 and 2006, the number of utility patent applications, the most common type, filed each year increased from just under 300,000 to over 400,000. At year end for fiscal years 2000 and 2006, the number of applications pending soared from approximately 485,000 to over 1 million. Some applications have been pending for five years or more.

And what is behind those numbers? Two related factors are among the causes of growth. First, in 1998 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued the State Street decision that significantly bolstered the concept of business methods patents (State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.). The decision led to a substantial increase in applications for this type of patent.

Second, and more far-reaching, computers and the digital age have dramatically lowered the costs of innovation and invention in a number of fields, including the business methods field. Using computers, incremental changes to patented items can be investigated and simulated with relative ease. In addition, many so-called inventions today are little more than data-in, data-out manipulations of data. Some broad ill-defined data inputs are run through some sort of computer program or programs the output of which is some broad ill-defined rating, or score, or advice. This soft, fuzzy center is camouflaged by much description of computer hardware and by detailed diagrams and flow charts, but the essence of the so-called inventions is simply the manipulation of data. In the business methods field, a business or finance student on a slow afternoon at the computer can come up with an “invention,” and maybe eventually a patent.

Why is this bad? Because in the hands of a litigious “inventor,” or more likely a litigious collector of patented incremental alterations in existing processes, a patent becomes a tool of extortion and a burden on legitimate commerce. The desirable public policy of rewarding the efforts of a long-tolling inventor falls flat: the efforts were minimal and the tolling was not long.

Currently, the main tool of patent examiners in the rejection of patent applications is known by the term “prior art.” Prior art refers to an invention identical or similar to the one in the pending application. Most prior art is found in patents that have already been issued. In the business methods area, however, many practices have never been patented, indeed were until recent years never considered the proper subject of a patent. Thus even though a method or something very similar has long been in use, no patent covers it. The search then turns to what is called nonpatent literature, but searching nonpatent literature can be very time-consuming and in some cases unproductive. Many long-established, widely-used practices in business are so commonplace that they are not the subject of much publicly available literature.

What is needed in the business methods field, and in other fields, is a more fundamental look at the patent laws, a look that would take into account the ease with which “inventions” can be made in the digital age. Under current law, a utility patent, the most common type, can be granted for any “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.”

Note there is no specific mention of “product.” Nevertheless, the patent system, which was established in 1793, has long been operated on the premise that a product falls somewhere in the categories of machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Indeed, the Supreme Court has stated the expansive view that the patent system covers “anything under the sun that is made by man.”

Prior to 1952, the list of patentable categories began with the word “art.” In that year, art was replaced by “process.” But process has a rather odd, somewhat redundant, and expansive definition of its own in the statute. Process means “process, art, or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”

Somewhere out of this history, process evolved to cover a lot that was not likely envisioned in 1952, when computers were just massive number crunchers in the hands of a few scientists and engineers. Whether the term as adopted in 1952 was meant to include the largely intangible data-in, data-out situations that are common today, or indeed any methods that did not involve tangible, physical processes to a substantial degree, is certainly arguable. Perhaps it is time for the courts, Congress, or the Patent Office itself to narrow the definition of process.

“New” and “useful” are two other words that should be revisited. Each has come to have very little limitation upon what may be patented. Indeed, the presumption in many corners of the Patent Office is that an application would not have been submitted unless the contents described something new and useful. The current interpretations of new and useful become even less helpful when the so-called invention is just an incremental change to an existing invention.

For example, in a computerized investment advice process, does the addition of one more input variable, such as the size of a chief executive officer’s salary, create something new enough to be awarded a patent over an existing patent for providing investment advice? And from a broader perspective, just how useful is investment advice anyway? Your brother-in-law’s shoot from the hip approach may well be as useful as any fancy computerized investment advice program available through a brokerage firm.

In short, “new” and “useful” currently are of little help in deciding what deserves a patent and what does not. One consequence is that too many marginal improvements may be receiving unwarranted patent protection.

Other provisions of the patent laws could also be revisited to give patent examiners more powerful tools. For example, an invention must be described in sufficient detail to enable others “skilled in the art” not only to understand it but also to make it themselves. The limits of an invention must be clear. Judicial decisions and Patent Office interpretations, however, have diluted much of the power of these requirements. Particularly with regard to “inventions” in business methods and related intangible and semi-tangible fields, precisely defining what has been invented, how it is to be used, and how it could be replicated by others are requirements to which little more than lip service is often paid.

Finally, regarding business methods patents, of the world’s patent systems the United States system goes the furthest in according them legitimacy. They may be found in other patent systems, but not to the extent and not as explicitly as they are found in this country. Maybe the U.S. patent system has something to learn from the rest of the world.

The state of the patent system is not all gloom and doom. Although a thorough overhauling would likely require a reworking of the patent laws by Congress, other adjustments are taking place.

For many decades, the courts took an expansive view of the scope of the patent laws, a view that the Patent Office was more or less forced to adopt. The courts may be rethinking the matter, however. Recently, for example, the Supreme Court issued a decision (KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc.) that in some circumstances will likely make it more difficult to get a patent.

The Patent Office itself has made admirable efforts on several fronts, including the field of business methods patents. The approval rate of those patents is relatively low, probably no higher than 30 percent. Still, examination of business methods applications requires considerable resources, and the danger that an egregiously absurd business method patent will sneak through the examination and review processes is always a threat.

Among other initiatives, the Patent Office is considering limiting the number of claims, or at least major claims, that a patent application may contain. Claims are the heart of a patent, the words that define exactly what the invention is and what is covered by the patent’s legal umbrella. A common practice among patent applicants is to describe the same invention is several different ways.

The invention may be described as a product consisting of a number of components. Then it may be described again as a method of doing something, the method consisting of steps that are just the components of the previously described product. And then it may be described again as a system, and so on. The result is that a patent application, and an allowed patent, may contain numerous claims: 20, 40, 60, even more. Stating the same invention in several different ways increases significantly the time required for a patent examiner to examine the application. A limitation on claims would reduce the examination burden.

These judicial and regulatory initiatives, however, are probably not enough to cure fully what ails the patent system. The fundamental problem is the expansive definitions that terms in the patent laws have acquired over the decades, and Congress is the best fixer of that problem.

As for Cranky's career as a patent examiner? Well, he's always had a problem playing with others. That plus the growing feeling that he was on the bottom rung of a system in need of serious overhaul led him to pull the plug late one afternoon in early June. In fact, he's thinking of applying for a business methods patent for his method of exit. In the peculiar wording and terminology of the patent world, the claimed invention would be as follows:

“A method of resigning from a position comprising the steps of handing one’s security badge to the security guard at the exit with the comment, ‘I ain’t coming back,’ having the security guard respond with a chuckle, ‘Bad day, huh,’ and in turn responding, ‘Bad month.’”

RETURN ON SUCCESS

Okay, so it isn’t the greatest motivating slogan to come down the pike. In fact, it’s really pretty pathetic. Smacks much too much of W’s business antecedents. The folks at W’s alma mater, Harvard Business School, should be proud.

But let’s get to tonight’s speech. The Democrats will most likely go berserk and attack the President’s reasoning and conclusions with considerable vehemence. But they ought to pause. W has served up a pitch just begging to be knocked out of the park.

What W has done is adopt the principal of withdrawal. That is what the Democrats, indeed most of the American people, want. Now all we are doing is quibbling over the details.

The Dems ought to say:

“The President has finally seen the light. He is withdrawing troops from Iraq. We applaud him. We don’t totally agree with him on the details, schedules, but we are now together on the principle that the U.S. footprint must be reduced. So let’s see if we can speed this thing up a little.”

TIME FOR MOVEON TO MOVE ON

The first nail in the possible coffin was pounded Monday, September 10, 2007. The nail was an ad in the New York Times. The pounder was the leftist group Moveon.org. The poundee was the hopes of the Democratic Party for the presidency in 2008.

In a burst of unthinking exuberance, Moveon succumbed to adolescent smart-aleckness by playing upon the name of commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus. The name became BeTray Us. The slander was immediately pounced upon by Republicans and their allies in the land of punditry, enabling them to distract attention from the Congressional hearings on the war in Iraq.

Most Americans are likely offended by the slandering of an honorable four-star general. And most Americans include those in the center of the political spectrum—independents and moderate Republicans and Democrats—who determine the outcome of Presidential elections. But offense is something that those at the extremes of the political spectrum, either on the left or right, have little concern for.

Indeed, a never-ending task facing both political parties is to mesh their extreme with their portion of the center. And a never-ending effort on the part of both political parties is to characterize the other as the captive of its extreme.

Over approximately the last three decades, the Republican Party has probably been the most successful in portraying the opponent as a reflection of its extreme. And the extreme of the Democratic Party is viewed as anti-military, against the use of force, naïve, touchy-feely, and prone to inflammatory language.

Moveon’s ad played into the Republicans’ stereotype of Democrats and served to remind citizens of that stereotype. The ad’s inflammatory nature ensured widespread attention. So how is the ad helpful to Moveon’s political home, the Democratic Party?

It isn’t. And the centrists in the Party, and the Party’s Presidential hopefuls, ought to say so, forcefully. More generally, it’s time that centrists in both parties, assuming there are any left in the Republican Party, start treating their fringes with more firmness. Most Americans are in the center of the political spectrum. As things now stand, they are represented in large part only by the stalemate between the political fringes.