Not a Potted Plant

Rush Limbaugh apparently thinks it is not a coincidence that the main villain of the new Batman movie will be Bane, homonymous with the name of Mitt Romney’s former company:

So, anyway, this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It’s gonna have a lot of people. This movie, the audience is gonna be huge. A lot of people are gonna see the movie, and it’s a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd, and they’re gonna hear Bane in the movie and they’re gonna associate Bain. The thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie, “Oh, yeah, I know who that is.” (laughing) There are some people who think it’ll work. Others think you’re really underestimating the American people to think that will work.

As others have pointed out, the character predates this election by nearly twenty years. A little more interestingly, there are comparatively few conservative comic book writers out there, but it just so happens that Bane was created by one of them: Chuck Dixon.

Not to defend Limbaugh, because he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about and seems largely uninterested except in the phonetic angle, it’s theoretically possible that that Bane and Bain are connected. They might have, for instance, chosen to use Bane as the villain of the upcoming movie as a partisan potshot. Early on, the villain was actually slated to be a guy named Black Mask. Then it became Bane. Coincidence? To be perfectly honest, I don’t expect much different from Hollywood. The problem is that it falls apart after even a little inspection.

The truth is, if they were willing to sacrifice their art for the sake of partisanship, Black Mask would have been the way to go. Black Mask was born Roman Sionis, the scion of a wealthy Gotham family who could never live up to his family name. He has a fixation with masks. It would be remarkably easy to make a movie featuring Black Mask as a marquee villain and make him look a lot like Mitt Romney. It would require leading the movie to go somewhere other than where it appears to be going (Bane appears to be down with the 99%). But hey, what’s a plot when you can score political potshots? (At least, that’s what Limbaugh is implying.)

The choosing of Bane as a villain isn’t air-tight, though. First, they stripped him of his origin, more or less. One of the few minority villains out there (Bane is Latin American) and they remade him British. That’s a disappointment, not just for the sake of diversity, but because I’m sick of villains with British accents (even muffled ones). The only think that comic book Bane and movie Bane appear to have in common is their name and a propensity for strategic thinking. This is the opposite of Bane from the previous franchise, who had the origin and appearance (more or less), but was disappointingly a drooling idiot. Even with all of this in mind, though, if you need a mastermind with brute force, Bane is a pretty natural selection.

In any event, this turns out not to be the first time that Limbaugh has taken aim at fellow conservative Chuck Dixon. A long while back, Dixon had a character named Link Rambeau that was clearly patterned on Rush. Apparently Rush got wind of it and condemned it, without regard to the context of Rambeau’s appearance. The plotline involved a ridiculously liberal psychologist making the rounds on talk shows. The psychologist was clearly an idiot (he was trying to say that the Joker was merely misunderstood) and Rambeau opposed this train of logic. In other words, Rambeau was right and the characterization not really unflattering in any meaningful sense.

Okay, this is funny:

“It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood,” said Democratic advisor and former Clinton aide Christopher Lehane. “Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society,” he added.

As the Friday release date has neared, liberal blogs were the first to connect Batman’s toughest foe with Romney’s firm. But now even some conservatives, concerned Romney isn’t fighting the Bain attacks hard enough, see a similarity in the epic DC Comics fight and the political campaign.

It’s just as ridiculous when a Democratic strategist says it, but in light of the grief that Limbaugh is (rightfully) getting, funnier.

As I was graduating from college, one thing became apparent: Desktops were going the way of the dinosaur. Laptops were going to replace them. Why shouldn’t they? I mean, you can actually take a laptop places. It can do everything a desktop can do, but in a portable way, right?

Well, laptops have displaced desktops as the most common form of personal computing (at least, I believe so). Yet… desktops are still around. In large numbers. And they aren’t going away. It’s likely that they never will. Why not? Because they serve a valuable purpose as work machines. The work station I have up stairs? Laptops can’t do that. Multi-monitors, large monitors, a more workish environment that requires no set-up. Even if a laptop is more flexible, there are a number of things that are easier to do on a desktop than a laptop. And given how cheap both are, it’s easy to have both. And so while the laptop has thrived, the desktop has remained and appears as though it will remain indefinitely. Why wouldn’t they?

With this in mind, my head boggles any time anyone talks about the post-PC world. A few years ago it was smartphones that were going to replace PCs. Now, tablets. Okay, tablets with keyboards, maybe. So sort of laptops. There’ll be a merger. Something will surely happen to kill off the PC, right?

No. Not at all.

Just as was the case with the smartphone, the notion that we will settle on any single device is very short-sighted. Why should we? Different tasks beg for different tools. Sometimes you need to sit and work. Sometimes you want to sprawl on the sofa and write a blog post. Sometimes you need extra monitors, sometimes you want to be comfortable. Sometimes you want something you can take with you, sometimes you want something that fits in your pocket, and sometimes those things don’t matter and you want performance (and the desktop will always rule over laptops, tablets, and smartphones over performance). This notion that we will end up settling on a single device implies a degree of scarcity that does not actually exist. Now, more than ever, we can afford a desktop and a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet. We can cut out this one or that one, and few will have all four, but there’s not much reason to believe we will all cut out the same ones.

Ironically, the thing that is going to make this easier is actually the thing that leads some to say that the future is going to not be a PC one: cloud computing. I am actually skeptical of the extent to which we will ever move completely to cloud computing, but it does make switching between devices easier. Which not only means that we can do more on our tertiary devices, but also means that we can use these devices in complement with one another.

I was first told about “cloud computing” when I was in college. It wasn’t called that yet, but went by the less marketable name of “Dumb Terminal.” Which was the belief that in the future, computers wouldn’t actually be anything but terminals into larger and more powerful machines. It took fifteen years, and it’s still not happening quite like it was supposed. Why should it happen? Our individual computers now are just as powerful as the mainframe they would have been connected to 15 years ago. Given the constant state of advancement, there’s no reason to outsource what our computer does. At least, not completely. Enough, though, to make owning lots of devices easier. As Americans, we like to own stuff.

Last night Mrs. Likko and I Netflix’ed this charmingly silly creature feature. It was the second highly enjoyable Norwegian movie I’ve seen this year. The film winked along with the audience without being ironic about it. Against initially worrisome opening scenes, this movie turned out not to be the Norwegian Blair Witch Project; it was much better, and better-made, than Blair Witch. It showed some really beautiful scenery in Norway, and it has a cameo from the actual Prime Minister, talking about trolls! If you, like me, have a taste for cheesy low-budget science fiction movies, this is a fine evening’s rental.

Former Iowa resident, and current Canadian resident Ann Bibby has posted a rant (via Abel Keogh) about Canada’s health care system:

Factoring access issues out (because family doctors – who are the gatekeepers to all other doors unless you opt to simply brave the emergency room), the main problem is timeliness coupled with time sucking runaround.

Back in Iowa, I could call my doctor’s office and generally get in to see her the same day. X-ray and lab were on site, so there was never a need to run about the city and diagnosis or action plan was meted out at the same appointment.

If I needed to see another doctor or have additional tests, it happened within a couple of weeks. Only rarely did one wait a month or more during the diagnostic phase. A good thing because though most issues are minor and not life-threatening, one can’t really know this for sure in the initial stages. Timely diagnosis is more than a little bit crucial. And so is treatment – depending.

Here it is a very different story. Nothing is on site at the doctor’s office. Nothing.

Accepting that her experiences in Iowa (same-day visit? Cool!) are not necessarily typical here (though hospitals are working on accepting acute care to keep people out of the ED), I found this significant. In part because Bibby is not a right-winger looking for things to dislike about the Canadian system. In part because it corresponds with what I have heard from others (even among people who like the system in the overall). Mostly, though, because it touches on my fear of what would happen if we tried to adopt Canada’s system.

I assume, to some degree, that Canadian’s love their system. They certainly talk about it enough and I vaguely recall seeing a poll that they are much more satisfied with theirs than we are with ours. Which is fantastic! They should absolutely hold on to the system that they love so much. The pertinent question, however, is not how much Canadians love their system, but whether or not Americans would. My fear, essentially, is that we would hate it and we would shift back to something more like our own system almost immediately.

If you have it, and if you can afford it, and if you don’t need to use it extensively, health insurance in the US isn’t a bad deal in the overall. Granted, those are big stipulations. Most Americans, however, are relatively taken care of with either their insurance plans, Medicare, or Medicaid. There was a reason that President Obama would (disingenuously) say, over and over again, you can keep your current plan if you like it because a non-trivial number of voters have insurance and like it. The catch, of course, is with those that don’t have it and/or cannot afford it. That is where our system – especially compared to Canada’s – fails.

I don’t mean to trivialize the frequency of our system’s failures with regard to the uninsured, but the fact that it’s not a majority of the voting public means quite a bit, electorally speaking. It means that whatever system we devise is going to have to be satisfactory to those who are covered. I am very concerned that the Canadian system will not be so satisfactory. I would further suggest that our hospitals and clinics already deviate so substantially from the Canadian model that we would have different results from Day 1. By Day 730, we’d already be seeing things down here that they aren’t seeing up there – things that would either undermine the cost advantages of the Canadian system or the advantages of universal insurance.

Another phrase for “a 9-week wait to see a specialist” is “cost-containment.” The problem gets better, people forget, things get lost in the shuffle. If that became an average wait-time in the US, we would go apoplectic rather than merely seeing it as a flaw in an otherwise great system. We likely wouldn’t have 9-week wait times, though. Nor would we have the separation-of-service that Bibby refers to. Our lack of separation of service is one of the reasons for our escalating costs (intra-practice referrals, profitable and overutilized testing equipment on site, and so on), and it’s a degree of savings that Canada enjoys that we likely would not.

So what would happen? One way or another, I fear the system would break down. Politicians of both political parties would be on board with ever-more aggressive patients-bills-of-rights. Or alternately, you might start seeing to see a parallel system develop. Government insurance would become like Medicaid. Medicaid is way better than nothing, but they are already put at the back of the line when it comes to getting care, and if enough people aren’t taking advantage of it, it becomes politically vulnerable. The Medicaid patient might have to wait, but the rest would throw more money at the system not to have to. This isn’t the worst possible outcome, by the way, and may still represent an improvement over what we have now. Maybe we’d find a way to deal with it in a satisfactory manner. But what would happen would not, in my view, look all that much like the Canadian system we seek to emulate.

We’ve grown accustomed to a different set of expectations, when we’re insured, and most voters are insured or have Medicare.

It may be selfish, but we’re going to have a hard time getting people to relinquish their expectations so that things can be better for people who are unlike them (and who they are disproportionately less likely to know personally). That, I believe, is the primary obstacle in front of us. On the one hand, we want some semblance of equality in our health care system. On the other hand, we want the best health care possible for us and ours. I don’t know of any system that is going to square this hole. If we can mentally surpass the obstacles (accept the downsides in the name of cost-containment and increased access for others), I’m not sure it matters what system we have.

Does this mean I oppose single-payer? No, actually, it doesn’t. It means that, after having come close to really liking the idea about six months ago, I’ve been moving away from it as a solution for us. At least, so long as I have no idea how it would work in practice and the more I have come to realize it wouldn’t work here the way it has worked elsewhere. I would, however, still very much like to see it tried here. Give Vermont their waiver. First Vermont, then Montana, then maybe Minnesota or some other state that wants to give it a try. If they can find a way that makes it work, then by all means we should adopt it nationally. I have, however, a lot of concerns I need mollified before I start coming back around to the idea again. I want to see what additional demands Americans make, and whether or not those demands can be satisfied.

I sprung the five bucks for Wi-fi access on the plane. Am I the only one who thinks that it’s incredibly cool that I can be connected to the Internet and track my flight progress by it in real time, at 35,000 feet? As I write, I’m about 100 miles west of Sioux City, Iowa. I can check my progress any time.

There may be no President who left a greater visual impact on the United States than Thomas Jefferson. His system of surveying and distributing land is writ large across our national breadbasket.

The guy in the seat in front of me jostled around and irritated me for about ten minutes. Then I noticed the beads of sweat on his forehead — he’s afraid of flying. Then I noticed him holding and comforting his (I assume) wife, who also seemed upset about something. Fear is irrational and uncontrollable. But your response to it can be governed, sometimes. Providing comfort to another when you are afraid yourself seems to me to be the definition of bravery.

I went to my uncle’s funeral after all. I’m very glad I did.

But let the record reflect that my Catholic relatives and their churches throw better funerals than my evangelical relatives and their churches. The evangelicals were friendly and warm and entirely pleasant. The sandwiches were fine and the pastor pleasant, comforting, and likeable. But lemonade at the reception is a poor substitute for wine at the wake.

And frankly, I think a church’s recruitment speech is a little bit tacky incorporated into a eulogy. This is now the third evangelical funeral I’ve been to in which the pastor delivered the final eulogy, not as a memorial to the deceased but rather an exhortation to the non-evangelicals present to convert. In mitigation I know it is a well-intentioned maneuver to help benefit the living. And this pastor was less fire-and-brimstone, do-it-for-the-dead-guy than the previous two times I’ve been to such things.

But it remains the case that I am there to mourn the decedent’s death, and celebrate his life. The preaching and the call to convert didn’t anger me. But it did dry my eyes.

Airbus has announced that it will be building planes in Mobile, Alabama.

Has it really been five years since a Boeing vice president uttered those fateful words?

“It’s like being in the living room on Christmas morning, surrounded by boxes,” he said, “and you’re trying to put a tricycle together for the first time.”

The VP wasn’t reliving fond memories of his own tiny tots tumbling down the stairs to see what Santa had brought them and instead finding Dad with a wrench in one hand, a screwdriver in the other and a Bloody Mary on the coffee table.

Rather, he was predicting the disaster that would ensue if Boeing’s competitor won an Air Force contract to build billions of dollars worth of airplanes at a former military base in Mobile.

The insult stung so deeply and on so many levels that, to this day, if you say “tricycles on Christmas morning,” people throughout the region know you’re talking about the man who said Alabama residents were too dumb to work in an airplane factory.

The funny thing is that Boeing might have even wanted to build planes in Alabama. Boeing, of course, got into a lot of trouble with its union and the National Labor Review Board when they set to build planes in South Carolina. That situation was resolved after sweetening the pot with the union.

This is not quite true, but it still feels a bit truthy to say that it’s kind of funny that it takes a French company to build planes in Alabama and a Japanese company to build cars in Indiana. Which is to say, the American companies are often bound by contracts that make moving to less union-friendly states more problematic. Foreign competitors are not so inhibited. As I said, there’s more to it than that (Boeing will be making planes in South Carolina, after all). But there’s something interesting about the phenomenon nonetheless.

There is a fair amount of resentment in union states towards their non-union counterparts. There are complaints about how they’re driving wages down. They’re breaking the solidarity.

What these criticisms often miss, however, is that the willingness and ability to work cheap are among the South’s competitive advantages. The solidarity that these states are expected to uphold are based on terms that are as likely as not to leave them on the outside looking in. It’s like getting angry at illegal immigrants for not respecting our immigration law. There may be reasons not to like illegal immigrants, believe they are bad for the country, and so on… but to an extent you’re criticizing them for failing to abide by rules that are drafted to exclude them.

Union and wage rules aren’t meant expressly to exclude non-union states, of course. But it does put them at a real competitive disadvantage by stripping them of the advantage that they have. The government infrastructure in the South (among other places) is weaker, but before we say that it’s the South’s fault for it being weaker, we should recall what they are historically and presently up against. Large swaths of the region were burned to the ground while Michigan was left standing. They bet on an agricultural future when they should have bet on an industrial one. Some of this is “Yeah, their fault!” but we’re talking about the mistakes of their ancestors. Whether this is just or not, if we want these places to be able to catch up, stripping them of their price advantage is a rather poor way of doing it.

It creates a nice circular pattern: criticize the South for being behind, criticize it for being mostly full of beneficiary states, but then criticize it for how it attempts to attract industry. The common denominator here is, of course, criticism. Not that there isn’t a lot to criticize about the South, but I for one congratulate Alabama on their new contract and am happy for them.