Kneecapping Your Own Quarterback (with update)

(see Update below)
So forty-seven U.S. Senators went and did a thing this weekend, where they sent a rather demeaning and error-filled letter to the Iranian government warning them that any treaty deal over stopping Iran's uranium nuclear-bomb projects will be meaningless:

...What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time...

The Senators are basically telling the Iranians "Screw it.  No matter what deal you make with Obama, we'll just vote it down or ignore it and if we get a Republican in the White House in 2016 you are all bombing targets."

One of the sins that these Senators committed: the whole "advise and consent" element in Article II of the Constitution is that the Senate should be advising OUR PRESIDENT and NOT advising the foreign power.  The Senators are openly influencing - through reckless intimidation - another nation into NOT dealing with our government over a possibly peaceful solution to a serious problem.  This sort of move reeks of war-mongering (the GOP wants a war with Iran, in case you hadn't noticed), this sort of move reeks of treason interfering with our government's ability to work with other nations.

The other sin is that this move reeks of the Senators being total assholes.

The Republicans have taken their 6-years-and-counting obstruction against Barack Obama and turned it into an international scandal.

There are certain things in politics, in the halls of power, you just don't do.  There are written rules of conduct, official checks and balances codified into the Constitution itself.  There are the unwritten rules of decorum and behavior, of ceremony and tradition where certain offices are granted a lot of leeway to get work done.  There's the common sense things where you don't go tugging on Superman's cape or spit into the wind.

It's been an unwritten rule since the days of Washington himself where the President, via his executive offices of the State Department, handles all the heavy lifting and deal-making of treaties with foreign nations.  In this, the Senate only comes in either as individual experts on certain topics or nations to consult with the President directly, and otherwise the Senate waits until a treaty gets signed before it comes to them for 2/3rds vote to ratify.  There was a sense of decorum about it: let the President handle the foreign policies as Head of State.

This letter nukes all of that, metaphorically and literally.  It's an open warning shot across the bow.  It's a blatant show of disrespect towards a President they've accused again and again of being un-American, and it's a disgusting display of obstruction no other President has ever had to cope with in the 220-plus years of our nation's dealings with the world.

I've looked at that Logan Act, the law making it a crime to interfere directly or indirectly with a President's ability to form treaties or deal with foreign powers.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

I swear, that Senate letter reads to me like it's violating the part of the Act I've marked in bold.  The only thing that's keeping me from screaming about these Senators committing outright treason is that bit about "without authority of the United States."  As Senators, they DO have authority... but my question would be "do they have THIS kind of authority to directly parley or communicate with a foreign nation, in direct interference with the State Department which DOES have the authority? And in direct interference with the President of the United States who DOES have the authority?"

At what point did the Senate cross the line on the Logan Act?  They sure as hell crossed the line for decorum and decency with this bullshit stunt.  This is an open act of sabotage against the President of the United States.  A President in Barack Obama who's won two majority elections to serve as President.  A President who's been attacked again and again for no sane reason other than the Republicans being hateful bastards.

UPDATE: I think I found the answer to the question above ("At what point did the Senate cross the line on the Logan Act?").  There was a court ruling back in 1936 - U.S. vs. Curtiss-Wright Export - where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the President using his powers to go after arms dealers selling to foreign nations/powers.  Part 9 of the ruling says "In international relations, the President is the sole organ of the Federal Government." To wit:

...In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it... They think the interference of the Senate in the direction of foreign negotiations calculated to diminish that responsibility, and thereby to impair the best security for the national safety...

I really believe the 47 Senators broke the law: they calculated to diminish President Obama's responsibility to negotiate with the world.  I really believe they should be charged and held accountable.  The Logan Act requires it.  The Supreme Court confirms it.  The only question now should be "who has standing to file the charge?"  If it's Obama, dammit man NOW is the time to fight the fire burning down our political system.  If it's the State Department, your very office DEMANDS you secure your ability to negotiate with foreign powers.  If it can be someone in the Senate, dammit Democrats MAN UP.

Read more ...

The Republicans Are Working EXACTLY As Advertised: Bad And Worse

What did you expect?

Congress managed at the last minute on Friday night to avert a partial shuttering of the Department of Homeland Security, passing a one-week funding measure for the agency. President Obama signed it shortly before the midnight deadline.

The deal came together after a whirlwind day of negotiations in which the House Republican leadership suffered a humiliating defeat when its 20-day funding bill was rejected. The arrangement is expected to prolong talks about longer-term DHS funding until at least early next week.

All this really did was push the argument down the road for another week.  The same problem is there, and the same roadblocks by the extremists are still up.

What did you expect when you put in power a political party whose ideology is that government is either dysfunctional or deserving of shutdown?

When you hire a plumber who believes the piping in your house is the wrong material, what do you expect when that plumber refuses to fix it and allows the house to collapse when the pipes break? When you call Animal Control about the bear in your kitchen, and the Animal Control guy claims the bear is not real because the last reported bear sighting was 12 years ago and besides we're better off leveling the forest next month to make sure there aren't any bears by then, what did you expect when your house got vandalized by that bear and your property value was decimated when the surrounding neighborhood got napalmed? What did you expect when you vote in a politician who believes government is a problem, and then refuses to do the job just to prove that belief?

I'm reminded of what Andrew Sullivan wrote before the 2010 midterms when the GOP threatened to reclaim the House, where he argued that being in a position of authority would force the increasingly partisan Republican Party to pull back and govern responsibly: "If they win back the House, as it seems inevitable they will, they will have to offer something at last instead of criticizing everything in comically tired tropes..." That never happened: the GOP got worse because their own echo chamber convinced them they won power on merit rather than false advertising.  Even Sullivan realized that the month after those midterms.

The results of 2014 proved the same: they barely governed - fewest bills passed in ages - and consistently behaved incompetent, ignorant, and obstructionist, leading up the Long October of a government shutdown that many Americans blamed them for creating.  Even in the face of all that, the Republicans profited from terrible voter turnout and even more partisan campaigning and won control of both houses of Congress as well as more state offices.

Republicans are not learning any lessons of accountability because they're never held accountable at all.  They were blamed for the Long October shutdown: They won more seats and power that following election.  Negative Reinforcement of the worst kind.  Every electoral win convinces them that their "message" is right and true and accepted by all even when polling shows majorities of Americans disagreeing with Republicans on things like taxing the rich and gay marriage, even when a majority of Americans hate the job they're doing, or back Obama's agenda on immigration.  Because they've rigged elections with gerrymandering and purposeful voter suppression, and pretend otherwise.

The Republicans ideology is that "government is bad", full stop.  This defines their push to cut taxes and cut social welfare programs and cut nearly everything that makes the government function to serve the needs of the people.  This defines their push to deregulate and privatize everything on the assumption that the private sector can self-regulate and provide effective services, even though centuries of public sector work and centuries of private-sector graft and corruption have proven otherwise.

This threat of Homeland Security shutdown is all happening as a backdrop to the CPAC gathering, where Presidential wannabes pander to the wingnut factions to curry early momentum.  None of the potential candidates have called on the failures of the Congressional GOP.  None of them are honestly advocating for good governance.

They are all campaigning on killing schools, killing the social safety nets, killing worker rights, killing foreigners, and killing civil liberties.  The final, purest expression of the social conservatism of the Southern Strategy.  The southern conservatives that drove the horrors of human history of the 19th century and perpetuated that horror in the shadows of the 20th century will achieve their victory in the 21st century: a federal government in ruins, the poor shackled and sick, injustice for many except the elite.

This is what you keep voting for, Americans, especially when you refuse to show up and vote for saner alternatives.  This is what you get when you hire people whose pre-ordained mythology drives them to destroy the very institutions you've allowed them to take control of.

And like suckers buying toxic snake-oil, you're going to keep buying this swill until everyone is poisoned, and everything truly collapses.  And by then it will all be over but the tears.

Read more ...

Blame Gaming, Lying, Hypocrisy: The Republicans' Weapons Of Choice

When confronted with uncomfortable truths - for example the benefits of preventative health care, or the reality that most illegal immigrants are NOT a threat to the United States - the Republican establishment has usually gone for this tactic: lie their damn asses off.

For example: the current news trend of a measles epidemic sweeping the United States.  After decades of effective vaccination efforts to reduce the risk of a highly contagious - and lethal-to-kids - illness, we're getting hit with a major outbreak.  While 102 current cases of measles doesn't sound like much, when you consider that's in one month so far where previous annual counts were half that... we're looking at 2015 as a year with measles reaching thousands of victims.

from that Forbes link. Morbidity means infectiousness (Mortality is when it's deadly)

So into this come the anti-vaccination movement - an oddly bipartisan collection of concerned parents, uninformed media celebrities and a handful of quacks - defending their arguments as the nation faces a serious preventable epidemic.  And because this is all news, this topic gets into the political discussions as the cable channels and politicians weigh in.

Where the major Democratic leaders - Obama, Hillary Clinton - are weighing in firmly on the matter to vaccinate, the Republicans are a bit divided.  Ben Carson, an actual physician, went in pro-vaccination, as did Jeb Bush.  Presidential hopefuls Chris Christie and Rand Paul, however, both went for the "let's make it voluntary" waffling, with Paul jumping out with dire "tragedies" about vaccines before walking those comments back.

What's worse for the Republicans have been how some of the fear-mongering members of the party jumped in with a horrifying accusation that the measles epidemic is due to illegal immigrants.  Say hello to Alabama's Mo Brooks, who's been documented as an immigration denier before this, using the measles outbreak as another reason to go hating again.

And then there's Rush Limbaugh.  Ah, Rush, ill-informed blowhard that you are, let us have Politifact trout-slap you for your sins:

...The common thread in these statements is the idea that these children were never examined, that they had measles, and Washington took no precautions before allowing them to stay.

None of that holds up, however.

In fiscal year 2014, over 68,000 unaccompanied minors presented themselves at the border. The crisis spurred a flurry of activity, largely by two government agencies, the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. Homeland Security set up new processing centers and HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement looked after the children until their fates were resolved.

Contrary to Limbaugh’s assertion, the federal government did examine these kids. The protocol, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was to provide "vaccinations to all children who do not have documentation of previous valid doses of vaccine."

Limbaugh also claimed that these children were never quarantined if they had a disease. The reverse is true.

"Children receive additional, more thorough medical screening and vaccinations at ORR shelter facilities," according to the refugee resettlement Web page. "If children are found to have certain communicable diseases, they are separated from other children and treated as needed..."

...Further undermining Limbaugh’s case (we reached out to his show and did not hear back) are the vaccination rates for the key countries involved in the influx of unaccompanied minors -- El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

The latest data from the World Health Organization runs through 2013. As this table shows, over the past four years, the vaccination rates among those countries are on par or exceed the rate in the United States...

What is really happening here: the fear-mongers in the media and in Congress are using a current news trend to attack their preferred targets - immigrants, Obama, libruls, Obama, women, Obama, and Obama - instead of presenting solutions or helpful alternatives.  It's all about the attack, it's all about winning the ratings wars, it's all about the money they make shilling this crap.

And it's hypocritical as hell.  These are the same bastards screaming about Ebola before the election back in November, that it was gonna kill us all, that we gotta quarantine everybody, when in fact Ebola is hard to catch (it's still a scary disease to get).  Meanwhile, we've got an easily communicable disease like measles floating around and half the GOP establishment is talking about "keeping it voluntary" or worse buying into the anti-vaxxers arguments that the vaccines are not worth it (we've even got a Senator talking about basic hand sanitation being voluntary: he needs to have Typhoid Mary cook for him someday).  These vaccines-choicers - promoting a serious health risk that can kill children - tend to be the same SOBs denying choice for women on birth control and abortion.

This is all the Republicans have.  They can't lead on these issues, only attack others over them.  To them it's all about winning the game, not keeping the nation healthy or informed or improving.

If you want solutions, getting families to vaccinate their kids against the lethal and easily-contagious diseases is a first step.  Make it easy, make it informed, make it work.  The next step is to take health care serious, take science and medicine serious, and do your damn jobs Congress...  Third step is chicken soup, hot tea, and lots of rest.

Doubt the Republicans will even follow through on the no-brainer about chicken soup... sigh.

Read more ...

The Eternal Constant of a Negative Platform

If you're wondering why I keep viewing the Presidential Republican candidates as a massive field of wannabe Active-Negatives, let me make a few notes:

• We're talking about a Republican Party whose base economic platform is mass deregulation of everything, including safety regulations, education guidelines, health standards.  Even though there's been consistent evidence that mass deregulation doesn't help and in fact hurts most Americans.  As well as evidence that deregulation of education is rife with fraud and cheating.
• We're talking about a Republican Party whose base government budget platform is tax cuts for corporations and spending cuts for Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and Social Security.  Even though there's been consistent evidence that tax cuts don't work and that cutting social aid doesn't force Americans to "shape up".
• We're talking about a Republican Party whose base foreign policy platform is bomb anyone with a hijab and mock the French for surrendering to Germany one too many times.  And to not say much of anything about a torture regime that violated a ton of American laws and treaties.
• We're talking about a Republican Party whose immigration policy is publicly "voluntary deportations" where we're expecting migrant workers to happily turn about and drive back to Central America where the jobs are bad and the streets are (more) violent, and where the unspoken policy is to deport everyone who's not Anglo-Saxon via two out of four grandparents.
• We're talking about a Republican Party whose religious platform is to denounce Sharia law while insisting public schools teach Creationism and faith-based history, both of which imposes one Christian church's beliefs on everyone else (and not every Christian wants that crap taught).
• We're talking about a Republican Party that would punish women over private decisions on birth control and abortion, yet claim the national health care risks caused by anti-vaccination families (pushed by fraudulent/dubious science) is a "choice".
• We're talking about a Republican Party whose governance methods don't involve deal-making via compromise or shared sacrifices, but through domination, obstruction, and refusal even consider valid arguments against their positions.

It may look like I'm being flippant, but I'm not.  That IS what the modern Republican Party stands for.  And this is a crusade for them: the Far Right is utterly convinced - through a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and fear - that their way, their ideology is the one pure truth.  Over which they lie, fake, and cheat to defend.

It doesn't matter the temperament - Active or Passive, Positive or Negative - of whoever gets tabbed for the 2016 nomination.  A majority of Republican leaders buy into each part of that list - admittedly more on one topic than another - with no qualms about any of it.  Both because their voting base of Far Right wingnuts insist on it, and because their financial billionaire backers insist on it.

And the danger gets worse.  Because we're stuck with a two-party electoral system, with a 50-50 chance the winner in 2016 can be the Republican nominee.  Even with a platform as Negative as what the Republicans are pushing, they can still trick - there will be no other word to describe it - enough voters into backing their candidate.  God help us.

Read more ...

The Primaries GOP Song Remains The Same

Some of the updated news this weekend about the ongoing march towards the 2016 Presidential Election:

• Mitt Romney decided not to run for a third try.  He may have noted two things against him: the establishment wing of the Republicans had their boy Jeb Bush already, and the social conservative wing had their boy Huckabee (who could have pummeled Mitt as THE Not-Mitt candidate in 2012).
• Lindsey Graham decided to put his name out there.  Which elicited about three mild "yays" from his Beltway fanbase and a shrug from everyone else out there.

I was wondering when a politician like Graham was going to make the gesture.  The primary field for the Republicans right now skews to two types of candidate: the economic-minded and the evangelical/social-minded.  Until Graham popped up, they really didn't have anybody covering the third: foreign policy issues.

While the Republican Party as a whole is social conservative, some candidates are more dedicated than others.  Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister, for God's sake.  Santorum campaigns hard on an anti-gay, pro-fetus platform.  Carson pretty much only has his public devotions/social agenda to back his campaign.  Of the remaining professional elected officials, Jindal leans more on the God's Party ideology than on their economic or managerial work as governor.

And while the Republican Party as a whole is totally dedicated to cutting corporate taxes for the uber-rich and deregulating everything into privatized markets, some are more tax-cut and spending-cut than others.  This is where the "establishment" type candidates harken, such as Jeb and Christie and Rand Paul and Perry and Walker.  This is where the likes of Carly Fiorina would run their campaigns, as business-savvy leaders of industry and masters of finance (which, all things considered, they are not).

That leaves out the other foundation of the modern GOP, the foreign policy wonkery.  Ever since the Cold War, there's been a faction of the Republicans obsessed more with international relations (do as we say) and handling foreign threats (nuke 'em from orbit) than with domestic issues.  Ever since Nixon in 1968, there's been at least one candidate who presented themselves as "the serious adult" in the room when it came time to deal with Soviet Russia.  That was Bush the Elder in both 1980 (losing to Reagan's more social-conservative platform) and 1988 (beating out Dukakis who couldn't pull off that idiotic look of him driving a tank) and 1992 (losing to Clinton who ran on the economy).  In 1996, there was Richard Lugar, who lost out to Dole who still commanded some foreign policy cred as a long-standing Senate leader: this was against a field of Social candidates (Buchanan, Dornan) and Economic (Alexander, Gramm, Forbes).  In 2000, Dubya was clearly running on social ("compassionate conservatism") and economic platforms alongside Keyes (he may have been an ambassador as a career but his topics were clearly about God, God, and more God) and Forbes (tax cuts, obviously), leaving the foreign policy issues mostly to McCain.

By 2008, the Republicans had lost their reputation on foreign policy dealings having alienated our allies and wasted lives and money on two unfunded and unpopular wars.  Yet McCain was one of the front-runners that open season exactly because of his foreign policy creds.  Everyone else was either social con (Huckabee, Keyes, Hunter) or the tax-cut business con (Romney, Ron Paul).  Giuliani might have counted as a foreign policy candidate except his experience stopped at being mayor of New York, which left him with domestic policy (law and order) and tax-cutting stances: his only foreign policy stance was "9/11".

To note, 2012 was a screwy election cycle: the real platform for the Republicans that year was "Who was more Anti-Obama"?  That primary was out-of-whack in that nobody could really step up as a foreign policy candidate: nearly everybody tripped over themselves trying to present themselves as the uber-religious candidate (Santorum and Bachmann in particular) or the uber-tax-cut candidate (Romney, Paul, Perry, Cain, Johnson).  The only candidate with any serious foreign creds was Hunstman, and he didn't last long or gained much support.

Lindsey Graham is going to find the same problem.  After the disastrous Bush the Lesser presidency where the dark day of 9/11 led to a prolonged invasion/occupation of Afghanistan and an unnecessary and wasteful invasion/occupation of Iraq, the entire nation seems burned out when it comes to foreign affairs.  Obama's handling of Libya, Syria, Egypt and the rest of the Middle East is a prime example: he's avoided commitment of ground troops or peacekeeper efforts, using diplomatic efforts to try and minimize the ongoing bloodshed of the civil wars dotting that region and relying on local military forces - the Kurds against ISIL, local allies elsewhere - to avoid further entanglements.  It hasn't been pretty - the Syrian war in particular has become a nightmare of refugees, extremist strife, and unending terror - but there's little else the American public will support.

The Republican candidates running on foreign policy as a primary topic will confront the same disconnect from voters.  Most of the party's base is angered up on more localized matters: immigration, abortion, taxes, gutting Obamacare, guns, and hating Obama forever and ever.  Mostly the same agenda the GOP supported in 2012.  If there's any foreign policy issue they'll discuss, it's BENGHAZIGATE, which after three separate congressional investigations is still the same non-scandal it's been since 2012.  Worrying about wars overseas means little to a GOP Tea Party base that wants Obamacare nuked and the Mexican border turned into the barbed-wire trenches of WWI.

Graham's not going to go very far if he thinks he can win on foreign policy.  This isn't 2008 when the legacy of the Bush/Cheney wars was on the line, or 1988 when warming up relations between the US and USSR was a really big deal.  This is 2016, same as 2012 and pretty much the same as 2008 and 2000 and 1996: the primaries platform is Hate Clinton Obama (which in 2016 may well be Hate Clinton again).

If I had to do a brief bio on Graham it'd be this:

Lindsey Graham - Senator, South Carolina
Positives: One of the leaders of the Senate for the Republicans for a long time.  Won in a hard-core conservative state on a regular basis despite the reputation of being a RINO, which proves decent campaign skill.  Has name recognition.  Resides in a key early primary state (South Carolina)
Negatives: He's not considered as far right on a lot of issues as the party base would like.  Has no national warchest to fund a major campaign (unlike Jeb, who's probably getting the keys to the Koch Brothers' billionaire storage closet as I type this).  He's been unusually bipartisan working in the Senate with Democrats, which really angers up the Tea Party base (this would be a Positive under normal circumstances but it's a huge Negative in these partisan primaries).  And just type in a Google search on "Lindsey Graham rumors": anybody who gets to be over 50 without getting married (or even having one questionable child out of wedlock) is gonna get labeled as "gay" whether they are or not.
Chances: Slim. If he's smart he's using this as an opportunity to put him out there as a Veep ticket balancer with the "foreign policy creds" to a candidate who's most likely winning on a social or domestic economic reputation.  As for his personal life - or lack of one - it's going to get investigated in a big way if he heads to a national stage.  Even if the rumors are wrong - it's entirely possible Graham is asexual or disinterested, or else very discreet with the whole hooker/mistress thing - he's not Mr. Popular with the Tea Partiers.
Character Chart: The thing that throws me is Graham's reputation for bipartisan work.  While he's coming to the table with clearly Republican (i.e., bad) positions he's at least trying to get Democrats to bring their ideas (i.e., weak) into the bills (that end up going nowhere).  He's not as pure an Active-Positive as possible - because his foreign policy aims still lean towards aggressive bombing and pray for divine intervention - but in this field of Active-Negatives in the GOP he's the closest they got.
And the voting base doesn't want Active-Positive...

Read more ...

Only Two Things Come From Iowa: Corn and Political Pandering

A large number of potential 2016 primary candidates were in Iowa today to suck up to the Far Right crowd, some of them more obvious than others in their pandering.  A lot of cringe-worthy moments to worry about.  I'm still horrified by how our Presidential campaigning system is so bent that a single small state like Iowa can twist and pervert the national discourse like this.

From the Des Moines Register article, the main attraction names - plus a few late arrivals to the campaign start-ups - give us a good idea who the primary primarying Republicans are.  I can give you a brief summation of the candidates, and their chances this upcoming cycle, and even a quick guess at their Barber-graded Characters.  And so, welcome to the horror show:

Ben Carson - Surgeon, maybe Maryland (I am not certain which state he will represent)
Positives: Among Republicans, he's viewed as a credible anti-Obamacare critic, best-selling Christian spiritual author, anti-gay spokesperson.
Negatives: Has no elected or governing experience to speak of.  While the Constitution doesn't require such experience, any previous elective campaigning would at least provide the needed mindset and endurance to handle a rigorous national campaign.
Chances: His popularity among the Tea Party base is pretty strong.  He hasn't officially announced but there's been a few "Draft Carson" efforts going out there.  He's the "Outsider" candidate who can claim he's not corrupt as the "Insider" candidates on the list.  It all depends on if he can find enough financial deep pockets and how he handles himself in debates.
Character Chart: He's the most difficult to pin down as he doesn't have a track record in office to measure his style.  His world-view is akin to a Far Right religious conservative, and his anti-ACA positions show a hatred for government health-care controls.  He presents himself as a Passive-Positive (he may even harbor Passive-Negative habits) but his statements and actions lean Active-Negative.

Chris Christie - Governor, New Jersey
Positives: Presents himself as a populist elected official as a Republican who won in a heavily-Democratic state.  Can govern.  Can campaign as hard as needed.  Has a high public profile already.
Negatives: Simply put: he's Nixon without the subtlety or charm.  The guy has two modes: Bully and bullying.  While it's part of his appeal to the Far Right that he's such a bully towards "libruls" and critics, it's an abrasive leadership style that alienates real quick.  He's also the focus of an ongoing federal investigation into BridgeGate.  Even if Christie is cleared of direct involvement, his office clearly was behind a vindictive act that hurt the public: a form of "ratf-cking" on par with Nixon-like retributions back in the day.  These are not good signs.
Chances: Once popular, the stigma of BridgeGate and a crowded campaign field of competing "populist" figures has dropped Christie to the middle of the pack.
Character Chart: He's as close to the poster-child model of Active-Negative traits - aggressive, uncompromising, vindictive - any modern candidate can display.

Ted Cruz - Senator, Texas
Positives: Nobody can pander to the Tea Party base like Gatson uh Cruz.
Negatives: Spends much of his political capital showboating in Congress and sabotaging US House legislation, a breach of etiquette having a Senator undercut the House Speaker on a regular basis.  He may be (college-level) intelligent but he's not (street) smart.  The talk has it that he does not play well with others.  His personal hypocrisy - a Latino minority born outside the United States (he's CANADIAN, people!) who attacks Hawaiian-born Obama as illegitimate - makes him something of a joke candidate.  Except he's deadly serious.
Chances: As well as anyone who can pander to the primary voters with the meaty stuff of attacking Obama and Obamacare on a regular basis.  Campaigning and debating on the national stage are different matters, though.  The real GOP power-brokers - the CEOs and SuperPAC controllers - may prefer one of their own (Jeb Bush).
Character Chart: His public and political recklessness makes it hard to view him as an Active-Negative, but his ambitions and uncompromising habits are clearly in that mode.

Carly Fiorina - CEO, California
Positives: One of a handful of women candidates who can broaden the "appeal" of the Republican platform.  Can claim executive experience as a business leader.  She's not as batsh-t crazy as the other prominent woman candidate on the GOP ticket (more on her later).
Negatives: No elective office or political experience.  She ran a poorly managed Senatorial campaign that ended in a bad loss.  Her track record as CEO - the only real thing she's got - isn't good (was forced out at Hewlett-Packard).
Chances: Slim.  She might run on a platform of "we need a CEO as President", but Romney tried that and didn't win over voters.
Character Chart: There's little on her political resume to confirm a style or world-view, but previous experience with CEO Presidents - Hoover, Bush the Lesser - points to either a person with uncompromising (Hoover) habits or a hands-off administrative style (Bush II).  Considering Fiorina's more aggressive management styles, she leans towards Hoover.  That puts her in the Active-Negative camp.

Mike Huckabee - Governor, Arkansas
Positives: Populist political figure from a strongly conservative political region (Southeast).  Can govern.  Knows how to campaign in a congenial style.  Remained a well-known figure on the national stage - by being on Fox Not-News as a pundit - after his failed primary campaigning in 2008.  He polled well as a possible candidate in 2012 (and showed enough awareness to tell it wasn't going to be a good election cycle for Republicans and stayed out of it).  Has legitimate religious conservative cred (ordained Baptist minister).  Can not only pander to the Tea Party base, he can do so without looking like it.
Negatives: Not exactly trusted by the anti-tax crowds still dominant in the backrooms of the GOP leadership (which is ridiculous as GOP dogma is too firmly obsessed with tax-cutting for anyone to violate that rule).  Has been away from elected office long enough for people to forget any good stuff he'd done as governor.  His time as a fear-monger on Fox Not-News will turn away moderate voters.  His early campaigning comments - going after "family values" issues and insulting Beyonce (?!) - are not exactly endearing him to any younger voters.  And that's not even going into legitimate scandals - granting clemencies to violent offenders who promptly killed (again), a son who killed a stray dog under obscure circumstances - that can become millstones in a national campaign.  Worst of all, Huckabee's advocacy of his religious beliefs - his failure to even respect the No Religious Test requirement IN THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF - threatens the sanctity of Separation of Church and State.
Chances: While he won't get the deep-pocket backers the way Jeb Bush (or even Mitt if Romney decides to make one more try) will, Huckabee has a high chance to use his charm and campaign skills to make a serious go at the nomination.
Character Chart: I stated earlier how the Republican Party is dominated by Active-Negatives and has an Active-Negative platform, yet needs a Passive-Positive candidate to appeal to regular voters.  Huckabee can present himself as a Passive-Positive better than any other candidate... but he's so Active-Negative with his strict religious convictions that he'll likely lean that way.

Sarah Palin - Mayor, Alaska (I refuse to list her brief term as Governor: SHE QUIT THE JOB AND NEVER FINISHED IT)
Positives: I'd like to think I'm not being biased against her, but I honestly cannot see anything about her that can be listed as a positive thing.  Maybe the fact she can present herself as a populist figure... except that she's really not that popular anymore.
Negatives: The phrase "batsh-t crazy" applies to Palin.  Has burned so many bridges in public and in private to the point where most of her Republican media fans from 2008 don't seem to want to talk about her eight years later.  She's currently polling near the bottom of the candidate list.  Her track record in elected office hasn't impressed.  The more people got a look at her (lack) of political skills the more they recoiled.
Chances: Next to nil.  She's putting her name out there as a mixture of pride and self-promotion: after all, her political posturing is how she makes her money.
Character Chart: Much of her political career and personal traits lean towards an aggressive, self-serving pattern.  She'd be a good fit in the Active-Negative category, with the only difference between her and previous A-N types is a lack of intelligence or skill (the closest equivalent would be Andrew Johnson... shudder).

Rick Perry - Governor, Texas
Positives: Long-serving governor of a major state.  Can govern.  Can campaign at the state level at least.  Made massive revisions to how the governor's office ran and how the state government functioned.  At least kept Texas voters - which is a sizable voter base - happy.
Negatives: Has a mixed record as governor, including current indictments for extortion and abuse of office.  Hasn't won over Hispanic voters with his very meager pro-immigrant moves as he still campaigns publicly on harsher anti-immigration policies.  The 2012 primary campaign was such a public disaster - he had a brain fart during a debate that was so painful even his opponents tried to help him - that he's got a long way to show he can genuinely campaign at a national level.
Chances: In this crowded primary, he's bumping against better public speakers (Christie) and populist figures (Huckabee) that can steal his thunder.  He may garner some deep pockets from the rich state of Texas but he's competing against the backroom reach of the Bush clan for that as well.
Character Chart: His track record as governor - hard on veto usage, rare to compromise, sticking to the Far Right political dogma on most issues - has him as an Active-Negative.

Rick Santorum - Senator, Pennsylvania
Positives: Actually ran a competitive campaign in the 2012 primaries, coming closest to being the Not-Mitt Romney candidate.  Is consistent on backing major issues dear to the GOP voting base.  Can be the only candidate to seriously challenge Huckabee's religious creds.  Under normal conditions for the Republican primaries, he'd be a front-runner and near-lock.
Negatives: Is a national punchline to a sick joke (do NOT Google his name).  Hasn't held elective office since 2007 (which is actually a serious problem for other front-runner types like Jeb Bush, but it hurts Santorum more as he lacks the broad power base Jeb maintains).  While he's a hard campaigner on social issues - anti-gay, anti-immigration, pro-fetus - his economic/tax stances aren't as well-known.
Chances: Still has some support in Iowa (due to the high count of social conservatives in-state) which can translate to early primary/caucus wins.  But he doesn't have the deep-pocket support the other big name candidates have.
Character Chart: His consistent social conservative stance points to an uncompromising world-view, again this points to an Active-Negative trait.

Scott Walker - Governor, Wisconsin
Positives: Won election in a relatively progressive state, and survived multiple attempts at ousting him from office (including a serious recall effort within his first term), which shows serious campaign skills.  Has imposed a hard governing style on issues, and has supported conservative platform "reforms" popular with the Tea Party base.  While it's bad for the rest of us, it's a positive for Walker in that he's in tight with the powerful and wealthy Koch Brothers.
Negatives: For all his election wins remains one of the more divisive political figures in the Midwest.  Hasn't polled well even in Iowa.  Hasn't officially put his name in, although his ambition for the Presidency is known.  He's currently the focus of a "John Doe" criminal investigation, which may not end any time soon (despite every effort by the GOP powers to kill it).
Chances: While he hasn't made it official, it's merely a question of when at this point.  His polling doesn't look good, but his backing - the Kochs - puts him in play.
Character Chart: Has an aggressive governing style that definitely puts him in the Active column.  His uncompromising stances on most issues makes him a clear Active-Negative type.

Missing from this list: Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio. Either they aren't at Iowa or haven't informally announced (despite signs and statements of interest).  There's a couple of others I haven't even named, but until I see official confirmation they've put in for the effort I won't name them.

Jeb Bush is not listed as a speaker but I've already reviewed him as an Active-Negative.

In recent weeks, Mitt Romney has expressed an interest in running yet again.  Even after the loss to Obama in 2012.  He's either delusional, thinks the current field isn't better than he is, or thinks that in 2016 the Democratic candidate (right now that's Hillary) will be easier to beat.  While this doesn't look like a Passive-Negative trait for Mitt to keep seeking the White House, it does fit if you look at his persistence as a form of Duty to his personal beliefs (also, the Barber charting method is not absolute: Characters can fall right on the line between Active/Passive and Positive/Negative, meaning Mitt can harbor Active-Negative as well as Passive-Negative traits).

It's horrifying to document so many A-N types running for the Presidency: that's because I can't find evidence right now any of the major Republican candidates showing the primary traits of an Active-Positive.  I don't see many candidates who view compromise and deal-making as legitimate power tools (which are part of the Adaptive trait of A-P types) or any candidates who will approach the Presidency with an affirmative, We-Can-Do-This world-view.  Worse, I can't see any Passive-Positives: those with genuine Congenial traits that make them personable and easy-to-work with even political opponents (Huckabee comes closest, but his God-In-Government stance is a key sign he's not).

I'm not about to say which candidate has the best chance.  Personally, I'm terrified any of them have a serious shot at the White House.  None of them (Active-Negatives) are what we need right now - pushing a harsh GOP platform opposed to basic human decency over immigration or gay rights, pushing a harsh tax-cut and social-benefits-cuts platform doomed to cause more deficits and financial hardships - to lead the nation past 2016.

Read more ...

What I'd Like To Hear From Obama's State Of the Union Tonight

I'll be working evening shift so I won't see any of it until I get home.

So here's the list I hope to hear about later.

1) "The state of our union is ROBUST." I am sick and tired of hearing 'strong'.  IT'S CALLED A THESAURUS PEOPLE, THEY HAVE THEM ONLINE NOW.

2) "Thanks to massive gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states and pitiful voter turnout efforts by Democrats that turned into a turnoff, a meager 36 percent of voters this past November put a bunch of batsh-t crazy politicians in charge of Congress.  Yeah, I went there.  Now I gotta manage the crazy 24-7 until 2017.  Like I said, thanks."

3) "I will not make any deals on Social Security or Medicare. You are not going after our social safety nets that do work, that just needs minor and yes I mean minor reforms to make them solvent.  Just don't even try cutting Social Security benefits, Congress.  I will make you eat your own serving if you bring that sh-t to my house."

4) "I will insist on a budget where the nation's entire tax burden will be placed on Grover Norquist.  I'm gonna drown YOU, buddy."

5) "We as a nation thrive on immigration.  It's how we went from some rustic backwater of the 19th Century into a major superpower by the 20th Century.  It's how we keep ourselves innovative and refreshed with talent and drive.  For us to turn our backs on millions of hard-working, intelligent young adults that can become part of this great nation through the DREAM reform efforts is not only offensive, it is short-sighted and harmful.  We are going to reform our immigration policies to make it easier to keep families together, to make it easier for our workforce to stay strong."

6) "We need to do something about reducing college costs.  This is why I'm pushing for local, community college programs to be free to millions of American families.  We need to do more to stop the growing amount of financial debt that millions of families are incurring in order to have their own children achieve success.  What good will all that effort be if entire communities go bankrupt, killing all hope for that success?"

7) "If Congress passes one more self-serving pay raise while doing nothing about the wages of all other workers, I swear to God I will personally bitch-slap each and every one of you.  You're already earning six-figure salaries with this job, that's more than what 95 percent of our nation's workers ever see."

8) "Seriously Hollywood, you pat yourselves on the back for awarding a hokey, poorly-scripted movie on race like Crash and yet you snub the hell out of a historic, well-acted and genuinely impactful film like Selma?  I was already upset with your Oscars voters for how they snubbed TRON for Best Visual Effects - TWICE - but now this sh-t..."

9) "We are this close to letting Disney take over Cuba as the first nation-sized Epcot Center.  Don't ruin the deal, Congress, just let me handle it..."

10) "The real reason this nation's future this year is so incredible, why we've got a good year ahead of us?  Because Age of Ultron AND Episode VII are coming out this year!  YES DAMMIT IT IS GOOD TO BE A GEEK IN THE USA!  GOD BLESS US!  LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!"

Read more ...

The Future 2016 Campaigning: What Matters More, the Party or the Candidate?

Still in the process of typing up Jeb Bush's bio for a prediction of his Presidential Character, but while doing so I have to come to terms with where the political parties are this coming 2016 election cycle, and which candidates are actually going to survive the primaries to stand before the electorate on November 2016.

It's particularly troubling that the Republican Party is getting packed with wannabe candidates lining up already for the campaigning and fund-raising.  Jeb Bush has put his name in, but so have other big names like Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker and a slew of others, with current interest from the last guy Mitt Romney weighing his chances against Jeb!  This is on top of the more fringe names like Ben Carson and Rick Santorum and Carly Fiorina.  There's about thirty-three possible names on the list for the GOP right about now.

Meanwhile for the Democrats, it's pretty much Hillary Clinton and a list of progressive officials that the more liberal party base are praying puts their names in.  Actually there's about twenty-three possible names, but there's not as much eagerness for people to jump in because Hillary's the one big name and few others seem likely challengers (of course, kinda said that back in 2008 too...).

And while I'm struggling over how to classify each possible candidate - the ones who have an honest shot at winning, that is - one stumbling block I'm finding is the power expectations - one of Barber's key points - that the voting party bases will use to judge those candidates.

The sin of the modern primary system is how it's not the party bosses making deals in back rooms that matter: it's how those party bosses motivate their base to show up to vote in the primaries.  The primaries make and break the candidates: whoever can pander best to the base in each state - which doesn't go by population importance, the state order goes by how easy those states are manipulated - gets the early support and the momentum to secure the nom.

Which is why it might not matter if a Republican candidate is Active-Positive or if a Democratic candidate is Passive-Positive or if a Libertarian candidate has a sense of humor.  If the party wants an Active-Negative to represent them, the candidates who don't fit that want won't win.

Here's the problem I'm finding about the Republican Party: the party base - the Tea Partiers, the Second Amendment Fetishers, the small-government-drown-it-in-Grover's-bathtub crowds - seems so eager to want an Active-Negative type serving as their President.  They want someone who will restrict and slash government services, cut taxes on the rich (while raising taxes on the lazy poor), deregulate businesses to run amok in a Free Market free-range, shut down the borders against illegals, and wage war against The Dreaded Other despite the costs.  A lot of behavior that history shows falls to Active-Negatives under what Barber called the "I Must" mindset that drives A-Ns to compulsive, unshakable agendas.

But at the same time, the party base recognizes that such A-N types are difficult to elect to office anymore.  The last official A-N we had in the White House - Richard Nixon - made the personality so toxic that anyone with that overt a trait would be shunned by regular voters (the most recent A-N who wasn't officially in charge - Dick Cheney - reinforced that toxicity).  So the party leadership is trying to manufacture, promote, or encourage the illusion that their "establishment" candidates - the likes of Jeb, or even what they tried with Romney last time - will run "positive" campaigns pursuing "reforms" on topics like education and immigration and job creation.  All the while hiding the facts that their platforms don't have any real solutions for those topics, just decades-old talking points and all pointing towards the same answer (tax cuts and deregulation).

The Republicans have an Active-Negative agenda, yet they need a Passive-Positive - another Reagan with the charm and skill to avoid the issues and project a congenial persona - to sell it.

So I'm watching a Republican Party go schizoid over the possibilities of who they want as their Presidential candidate.  There aren't many Passive-Positives left in the Republican ranks due to the purity purges that left most of the leadership as Active-Negatives.  On that list Wikipedia has, most of the major names lean A-N in terms of adhering to reactionary agendas (hi, Christie!  hi, Scott Walker!  And yes, hi Jeb!).  The more far-out candidates - Bachmann, Santorum, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz - may present themselves as charismatic but they're not impressive with congeniality skills on the level of Reagan.  I'd already tagged Romney as a Passive-Negative, even if he puts back in for another campaign he still fits that trait best.  The only one of the named candidates that could conceivably play Passive-Positive with the populist skill as Saint Ronnie is Mike Huckabee.  And yet even that persona masks a hidden Active-Negative leaning due to Huckabee's religious hardline worldview.  It hadn't helped Huckabee that he's spent years in the echo chamber of the Far Right Noise Machine, which reinforces a negative worldview not only upon its audiences but also on its presenters.

For the Democrats, the madness of the campaigning isn't as severe: the base eagerly wants another Active-Positive, just one that's more active than Bill Clinton and Obama have been.  The only real problem there is that the primary leader - hi, Hillary! - is an unrepentant Active-Negative, which is why a lot of "Draft Elizabeth Warren" efforts are ongoing.  I mean, is Martin O'Malley a bridge too far, or are Democrats wary of having another Irish guy follow right after the Irish Obama?

I keep promising a review of Jeb Bush.  I gave away the Spoiler of how Jeb's an Active-Negative at heart, but I'll try to explain how I got to that as an answer.

Read more ...

Thus Ends 2014

It wasn't the best of times, although there were good moments to enjoy.

2014 was more CRAZY than anything, and tragic with the scale of death and war both here and abroad.

The coming year doesn't hold much promise.  With the Republicans in full control of Congress, there's the dread of them delving further into the wingnut hate against Obama, with all the risks (for them and for our nation) that entails.  We haven't resolved our issue of out-of-control police, and while the fighting has officially ended in Afghanistan it really hasn't, while Syria remains in Year Four (FIVE?) of its civil war with ISIL leveling carnage in there and in Iraq, with Libya's civil war stewing and due to get worse.  There's still the Ukraine/Russia standoff, the Greek debt crisis (alongside the ongoing EU recession), and the ebola crisis in West Africa.

One can hope that sanity for 2015 is on its way, that it can't stay this crazy forever.  But the social and political and natural forces are out of control right now.  Just hang on tight to the roller coaster safety bar and pray for a safe ride.

On a personal note: I am invested in getting a novel written soon soon very soon, to keep up with all the epublishing I've been doing lately.  For this political blog, I am looking at doing something I really shouldn't do: diving into the 2016 primary madness and using Professor James David Barber's Presidential Character traits to map out the major candidates to determine which ones are Active-Positive (yay) and which ones are Active-Negative (ack) and which ones are Passive-Positive (meh).  Passive-Negatives are so rare it's unlikely.  Anyhoo, that's my projects for next year.

See you on the other side of the calendar.

Read more ...

A Winter Grayer Than Before

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
 "For hate is strong,
 And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- "Christmas Bells," Longfellow

Thing about Christmastime, of December and the coming of winter.  It's a season of falling into the Gray Mood.  They call it the Winter Blues but it's really all Gray: the sky is gray, the ground is dead, the people are dour and burdened while the pressure builds to be festive and light-ful.

This year feels grayer than before.

Part of it is due to witnessing yet another disastrous midterm election.  Getting stuck in a state full of partisan morans voting that damn MEDICARE FRAUD back into the governor's office.  Banging my head against the desktop as voter turnout dropped to its lowest level since World War II.

Part of it is watching any semblance of justice in my own nation - land of the free and home of the brave - get flushed down a toilet as violent cops get let off for shooting unarmed teens and using illegal choke holds on guys whose only crime was not submitting to another round of public humiliation.

Part of it is realizing that the current political and economic landscape is about to get darker and nastier.  There's been buzz about a shutdown over Obama's attempts to reform immigration policy via his executive order powers.  There's concerns of a shutdown if there's a fight over a budget proposal that's top-heavy with corporate tax cuts and public sector spending cuts.

There's the growing realization that no matter the injustice of it, the insanity of it, the criminality of it... the Republicans will not rule even if they have the political power, they will ruin all.  They will twist the laws of the states they control to make it harder to vote, harder to complain, harder to stop them commit acts of graft and corruption.  Why listen to the critics or even the experts when there's no accountability for the sins they commit?

It's gray outside right now.  It's going to get darker, and I worry we won't see the sunshine any time soon.

Read more ...

Forget It Jake It's Florida

So there's kinda four things going on here in Florida to pass along, some of which you seven blog followers might have seen already...

• In the good news category, the second trial over Michael Dunn's shooting of Jordan Davis ended with Dunn found guilty of first-degree murder.
• In the bad news category, a grandmother checking on her daughter and grandkids getting arrested - for a minor probation violation -  ends up getting tasered in the back by the arresting officer.  Who then handcuffs the unconscious woman for "resisting arrest" because apparently after nearly killing someone with 50,000 volts the cop is required to be a total dick.  "Resisting arrest" has become, has always been really, a lousy excuse by cops to arrest anybody...
• In the Finally Happened category, the city of Waldo finally did something about the nationally-infamous speed trap by voting to close down the city's police department altogether.  The official reason is that the city could no longer afford the costs - there's a current investigation into the outdated equipment and reckless poor storage of documents and evidence - but let's be blunt: the Waldo police has been a long-term embarrassment to the area due to that speed trap they enforce (there's a second investigation into the department using an illegal ticket quota).
  Ever driven through there (between Gainesville and Jacksonville)?  You're driving at a decent 55 MPH on County Rd 24 heading north until you get about three feet inside Waldo city limits.  All of a sudden the traffic sign says 35 MPH and then fifty feet later just as the road's turning you get a 15 MPH sign and when the road turns further into this little township you're facing a School Zone crossing that's "strictly enforced."  Guess how many people get tagged for speeding?  Lemme tell ya, the ability to slow down from 55 MPH to 15 MPH within a 1/10 of a mile's distance is harder than it looks without killing your brakes.  Heading south on US 301 to get to CR 24 for Gainesville is just as bad.
  I've known people living in Gainesville who go out of the way to take I-75 to I-10 in order to get to Jacksonville just to avoid this.  AAA Road service listed Waldo as one of only two speed traps in the whole nation (another Florida city just up US 301 was the other)!
  If you're wondering, the Alachua County sheriff's office will take over in Waldo.  There's a rather pleasant flea market there.  Might drive back there some day...
• In the INDUCING RAGE category, the College Republicans came out with a pro-Rick Scott ad (yes, inducing Level 1 Rage right there) that tries to sell to young women voters (a major problem for the GOP has been the loss of women voters) by comparing the candidates like wedding dresses (da fuq?) with "The Rick Scott brand" (That's that standard GOP problem of thinking it's all "branding", here's me at Level 2 Rage now) being the prettiest of them all (Level 3 Rage now and spitting out my morning tea).
  The amount of stupid in this ad boggles the mind.  It seems to take for granted that women are impressed by "pretty" images, that a pretty young woman so entranced by the "Rick Scott brand" means other young women should be entranced as well.  It attacks the "Crist brand" as frumpier and more expensive using the same un-researched attacks the Republicans always aim at Democratic opponents.  This ad seems to take the whole "Disney Princesses Are Popular With Girls" idea and runs with it in the worst way possible.
  It's already been tagged as the "most sexist ad" of the 2014 midterms.

So, there's that today.  Gotta get some writing done on this day off...

Read more ...

It's Schadenfreude Time: Crooks In Virginia Edition

Yesterday's post was about a court ruling that angered me: not the ruling itself, but the bastards - BP Corporation - being held to account for their reckless greed and destruction.

There was another ruling that day that amused me: because it was ex-Governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell's jury finding him and his wife guilty on various counts of bribery, corruption, and sheer arrogance.

So now I'm getting around to the schadenfreude portion of this blog.  This is the part of the malicious enjoyment where I lean my head back and guffaw.  A deep, throaty, almost maniacal laugh.  Kinda goes like this:

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

McDonnell is... was... one of those defendants where the sympathy train left the station years ago.  An up-and-coming Republican pol from Virginia, with enough charisma to swoon a room full of fund-raisers and a background catering to the social conservative platform of "family values" (aka Full-Me(n)tal Patriarchy, Pro-Fetus agenda).  He lucked into the national stage as a successful governor of a swing state, able to retain his Far Right credentials yet position himself in public as the "sane and normal" one when compared to his fellow Virginian wingnuts (Hi, Cuccinelli!).  This was a guy getting vetted for being Veep in 2012.  This was a guy who could have parlayed his position into a front-runner for (what is turning out to be wide-open for Republicans) the Presidential ticket in 2016.

This was a guy who couldn't figure out how to keep his corruption on the down-low and in the back rooms.  I mean, corruption is a bad thing no matter which politician is committing it, but there's something to be said about being savvy enough to keep it off the radar...

The feds were able to catch McDonnell's family hanging around with a deep-pocket fund-raising buddy (Jonnie Williams), not only taking money and gifts from him but also turning around and avidly promoting their buddy's diet supplement company.  While Quid Pro Quo is painfully rampant in modern politics, most other politicians tend to be a little more subtle about their deals.

The trial just finished was a soap opera drama worthy of a Lifetime Channel miniseries.  Rather than present a unified defense, Bob and his wife Maureen decided on a finger-pointing approach of accusing each other of being manipulated by a sweet-talking businessman who took advantage of a crumbling, loveless marriage.  Bob especially went with a "crazy wife" defense that essentially threw Maureen under the bus (figuratively, but if someone brought a bus to the front of the courthouse he well could have tried it literally).  For a politician who once stood on the virtue of a husband "defending and providing for his family," this was pretty hypocritical.  It was also pretty tone-deaf.

But the signs were there early: when first charged, McDonnell was offered a plea deal on just one felony charge (meaning minimal jail-time) that would have included all charges on his wife getting dropped (it's a standard practice by prosecutors to pile on charges to make sure a deal can get enforced made).  Even then, McDonnell said no to the deal, figuring he was better off winning over a jury and walking away clean.

Turns out the prosecutors were able to win more than one felony conviction after all.  Hindsight can be a pain, right Gov?

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

As Jim Newell at Salon noted, How could McDonnell be so stupid?:

...In modern politics, corruption charges are usually more tediously complex: Money was wired here and then laundered via a pass-through, which made its way through another pass-through and was distributed through a foundation before ending up at a nonprofit designed to help such and such’s interests with a client trying to change regulations in foreign markets, or whatever. Not in this case. The prosecution just had to show the jury images of the idiot governor showing off his flashy watch that was given to him by the rich businessman for whom he did favors in return. How much simpler could this get? It’s only a degree of reality or two away from an old-timey political cartoon of a tuxedoed plutocrat, smoking a cigar, handing over a big bag marked “$$$,” to a crooked politician slapping his back and cackling.

God, the stupidity...

...Because the defense — the now infamous defense — that they took in court reeked of desperation all the way through. If you’re willing to testify for days about the stunning levels of dysfunction in your marriage, as the best hope for your exoneration, doesn’t that suggest that you may not have the strongest case? Doesn’t that suggest that perhaps you would’ve been better taking a plea deal? It didn’t even cohere...

I would argue it wasn't stupidity.  It was arrogance.  Hubris, the Greek word for Pride: Pride, the highest of the seven deadly Christian sins.  You'd think a rock-solid self-promoting Christian like McDonnell would have learned about the price of Pride in Sunday schools.  That it leads to one hell of a fall.

Read more ...

Florida Ballot Amendments 2014: So Few Yet So Important

Another election cycle here in Florida.  Another round of Florida state amendments on the ballot for 2014 for the voters to decide.

Unlike previous ballots like 2012 and 2010 and 2008, this year we've got only three amendments to consider.  Could make for the smallest ballot sheet in recent history.  Deal is, these three are some of the biggest issues to vote on I've seen in ages.

Amendment One: Land Acquisition Trust Fund

The wording on this makes it so Florida has "to acquire, restore, improve, and manage conservation lands including wetlands and forests; fish and wildlife habitat; lands protecting water resources and drinking water sources, including the Everglades, and the water quality of rivers, lakes, and streams; beaches and shores; outdoor recreational lands; working farms and ranches; and historic or geologic sites, by dedicating 33 percent of net revenues from the existing excise tax on documents for 20 years."

What's at stake is funding for a state-founded land trust dedicated towards overall environmental management and protection.  Funding for that trust had been slashed back in 2009, and it seems the current legislature leadership isn't in the mood to find replacement revenues.

If you've never been to Florida, or just moved here, or if you've lived here for 20-40 years and just plain forgot, this state has a very fragile ecosystem and not a lot of room for growth.  Geographically, we're a mid-sized state but population has us as the fourth-most.  That means a lot of our limited resources are getting pulled in a lot of directions, above all our water.  Drinking water is important, as is our lawn maintenance and agricultural needs for water.  Not to mention our state's reliance on tourism with our impressive chain of beaches, rivers, lakes, and parks.  The risk of pollution to key waterways - especially the Everglades - is always high.

I don't buy what I've seen of the opposition's arguments: that this would force a constitutional solution to what normal legislation ought to handle, that it would cause an unbalanced budget, that it would kill job-creating funds.  On the first point, our current legislature hasn't been in any rush to resolve this matter, so we've got nowhere else to go to resolve it.  On the second, we have other ways of balancing the budget IF said legislature opened their fricking minds to the options available: besides, the Fiscal Impact committee that measures the cost benefits of all amendment proposals can't say if this will hurt or boost revenues.  On the third point, any time a Republican says anything will affect "job creators" I don't believe them, because their idea of "jobs creation" is "more money to the rich".

The overall purpose of this amendment is to protect our state's environment and conserve our resources in a way to ensure ourselves and future generations can LIVE HERE.  With regards to Amendment One, I vote YES.

Amendment Two: Medical Marijuana

This one is the doozy, the headache.  The major bout on the general election card this November (in some ways it's a bigger fight than the hotly contested Governor's race between Crist and Scott).  Just arguing over any kind of decriminalization of a drug... this can get messy.  So I'd like to start off simple.

This amendment sets out to allow "the medical use of marijuana for individuals with debilitating diseases as determined by a licensed Florida physician. Allows caregivers to assist patients’ medical use of marijuana. The Department of Health shall register and regulate centers that produce and distribute marijuana for medical purposes and shall issue identification cards to patients and caregivers. Applies only to Florida law. Does not authorize violations of federal law or any non-medical use, possession or production of marijuana."

What this means: marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes for individuals suffering in such a way that only marijuana's effects - usually pain-killing, appetite stimulus, and specific treatment for illnesses like glaucoma - can help them.  The use can only be signed off by licensed state doctors and caregivers (people who can lose such licenses if they're careless or law-breaking).  Treatment and distribution centers have to register and get managed by a state's oversight office, the Department of Health.  The amendment spells out that federal law, which still classifies marijuana as a major - Class I - narcotic, cannot be violated.  That means recreational possession or use of marijuana is a no-no.

Florida isn't the first state to pursue a medical marijuana protocol: both Colorado and Washington are the more recent states that have even legalized the manufacture and sale of marijuana (in Colorado's case even for recreational use).  There are 17 other states with some level of medical marijuana rights, or a decriminalization of pot use to where those arrested aren't jailed for it (they're fined and/or sent to outpatient treatment).  For what it's worth, the decriminalization efforts in other nations - Portugal for example - demonstrates that decriminalization does not lead to massive drug abuse (most drug abuse dropped in fact).

I do admit this amendment is a slippery slope towards an overall decriminalization of marijuana: if effective in showing the use of pot as a medicinal herb, the next argument is obviously how pot is "safe" as a recreational drug.  This is where the debate get worse.  Because there are a lot of people who fear the potential spread and abuse of marijuana as a recreational drug.  Because the keystone of our nation's massive War On Drugs has been a fight against marijuana use across the board, medicinal or otherwise.

Here's the thing: the War On Drugs has been a disaster.  The government is spending billions every year towards fighting it, it's led to the militarization of our police force to abusive levels, and it's led to the packing of our prison system at the state and federal level with a ton of non-violent drug offenders at a human cost of making them more hardened criminals.

It's been forty-plus years of the official start of the War On Drugs and the amount of drug abuse has not abated.  There is an aspect of human behavior we're just not going to be able to overcome with draconian policing and arrests.  The sad thing is that we've seen this all before: we called it Prohibition.

We tried policing human behavior under the good intentions of ending rampant alcoholism, which was viewed as a blight upon society.  The temperance movement in the United States got to be pretty powerful, and during an era of major social and political reform got the 18th Amendment - basically banning all alcohol - passed by 1920.  Rather than end the consumption of beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic drinks, all this did was drive the manufacture and consumption of alcohol underground, into speakeasies and gambling dens and criminal hideouts (and into country clubs, people's homes, other places where social types gather).  Criminal gangs that lived on the edge of society suddenly ran a profitable black market industry that boosted their financial and political clout.  Street wars erupted between these gangs.  The courts were flooded with Prohibition-related cases that clogged up our legal system for years.  Corruption became rampant.  In less than 14 years, we had to pass the 21st Amendment - and if you understand how hard it is to amend the U.S. Constitution, you'll understand how serious a problem this was - to repeal the 18th - we've never repealed an amendment since - just to do something to combat the violence and corruption.

Since then, our nation's fight against alcohol abuse has been more restrained and focused.  We go after direct risks such as Driving Under the Influence of alcohol (since drunk driving is a severe risk to everyone on the streets).  We place chronic drinking addicts into probationary counseling services - rehab clinics and group therapy - rather than jail.  We teach our kids in schools about the dangers of alcohol, and we have laws banning the sale or sharing of alcoholic beverages to the underage.  It's not perfect - we still have alcoholics, and we always will - but it's a good-faith effort, and it's more an effort to treat and save rather than jail and punish.

Instead of treating drug abuse as a crime, we ought to be treating it as a medical/health care issue.  We ought to focus more energy and funding into treatment and counseling, which have been effective means.  We ought to treat the overuse of drugs the way we treat alcohol addiction: as a medical problem, not a crime.

I'm not a drug user.  I don't use marijuana (although I've known people who have).  I don't smoke nicotine cigarettes (which is more lethal than marijuana yet regulated by the feds).  I don't drink any alcohol, not even wine (again, in excess alcohol can be lethal, yet is still regulated by the feds).  I don't want to see any substance abuse of any kind for kids under 18 (in alcohol's case, the age limit is 21).  These are personal preferences for me.  Yet I don't see the severe harm of marijuana.  The death rate from pot overdose is non-existent: the amount of ingested THC (the chemical that makes marijuana the weed we know today) needed to overdose is thousands of times higher than the regular rate of ingestion.  Nearly every pot smoker just smokes one a day: it would take 20,000 of those rolls in one sitting to kill one smoker.  Even pot brownies - arguably more potent - doesn't have enough THC in it to cause death (diabetes, though...)

I honestly don't see why pot is viewed as a Class I danger drug up there with heroin, which is deadly (along with cocaine and oxy, both of which deserve to be Class I but aren't): if anything marijuana ought to be classified a Class III alongside the synthetic THC drug Marinol.

I'll grant you one thing: The most severe problem with marijuana is psychological, the impact it has on the brain.  It can induce depression and cause memory loss, and it can adversely hinder kids' development during their growth into adulthood.  Any artificial drug/stimulant is going to have its' negative effects.  Alcohol can cause cirrhosis of the liver and affect depressive mood swings.  Alcohol in excess also causes violent mood swings that lead to a lot of other deaths (if anything, marijuana users tend not to trash the bar while high).  Smoking nicotine kills the lungs, causes cancer, and has been a major burden to our health care system.  Yet we regulate those drugs as best as possible to prevent kid and teen abuse: we regulate their sale and manufacture to try and reduce the health risks.  We can do the same with marijuana.

And that's not even getting into the legalization of industrial hemp, a cousin to the marijuana plant that's also been banned because of its' tenuous relationship (even though hemp barely contains any THC worth bothering).  At least our national government is making some sensible strides there.

For all these reasons - above all that this amendment is one more steps towards ending a War On Drugs we've already lost and that we can start treating marijuana use in a sensible productive fashion - I am going to vote YES on Amendment Two.

Amendment Three: Judicial Vacancies

This is the legislative-induced amendment proposal allowing the governor to set nominations for judicial vacancies, based off of a nominating committee list of no less than three names and no more than six.  Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

Hidden in this amendment is the change making it possible for a current sitting governor to nominate a candidate for a judicial vacancy before that vacancy even happens (the "prospective" part of the amendment's wording).

Say Rick "No Ethics" Scott is still the sitting governor if this amendment passes.  And he's there in office 2015 and he's looking at the State Supreme Court and sees there's three judges facing mandatory retirement in 2019, four years away and during the tenure of the next possible governor (due to term limits, Scott can't run for 2019).  Scott can use the power granted by this proposed amendment to nominate in 2015 three people to fill those eventual vacancies in 2019 even though those judges are still sitting there doing their jobs.  Worse, these nominations can't be overturned or blocked by the next governor, who would want to have the right and authority to nominate his/her own candidates for the office.  In fact, all seven seats on the Florida court can have their "vacancies" filled by a governor who'll be long gone from office by the time all of them are retired out (voluntary or not).

To call this "rigging" or packing a court is an understatement.  This amendment can easily grant a governor who'll be long gone from office the power to put people on any judicial seat without repercussion or any input from the future governor(s), even twenty years down the line.  It denies future voters the power to vote into office a governor that can represent their interests in handling of legal matters relevant to the state in those future times: we'd be stuck with a judge nominated ten or fifteen years ago whose political bias - and yes this is a thing to worry about - won't reflect the current mood or needs.  It doesn't matter if this is a power that can go to governors like Lawton Chiles or even Reubin Askew (arguably the greatest, most honest governor the state of Florida ever had): this is a power that can be abused without limit and can create long-standing animosity and acts of retaliation that would cause decades of legal chaos.

This would be like nominating a replacement Library Director for Broward County Libraries, even though that county system just hired a director and isn't due to retire for another 27 years or so.  In the meantime for those 27 years of waiting, the library system can easily change services, require different resources, respond to new needs for the public that calls for a new brand of leadership that the replacement Director just isn't suited to fill.  This denies the library system the chance to hire at the moment of need the best possible candidate, someone who is versed in that future: instead they're stuck with a rigid, outdated Director more than likely to pursue goals and agendas no longer relevant nor working.

This smacks of Rick Scott and his buddies in the state legislature looking to pack the courts with their pro-corporate, anti-government cronies as soon as possible: the potential shifts in population - even in aging old Florida - is making the Sunshine State more Democrat/Blue by 2020, when even gerrymandering can't save the conservative wingnuts.  Fearing the future, they're hoping to use whatever power they have in the present to rig the game their way for the foreseeable future.  This is an amendment that needs to go down in flames.  For the Love of God, VOTE NO on Amendment Three this year.

And, just one more thing: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT PEOPLE.  And for the LOVE OF GOD, please vote for Charlie Crist as Governor... get Rick "He's a Goddamn FRAUD" Scott out of office RIGHT NOW.

I thank you.  Stay focused this November, people.

Read more ...