Meanwhile Back In Florida: The Dog Ate Their Homework Excuse

One of the big news down here in Crazystate has been the recent state Supreme Court decision that state legislators and their staff MUST testify in the court cases filed against them over the (alleged) partisan nature of how the state voting districts were drawn in 2012.

State amendments passed back in 2010 - thank you, voters - required that districts for both state and federal congressional elections had to follow population density and respect city and county borders (and also be "continguous", rather than disconnected which some previous districts were) when forming those voting districts.  In short: no gerrymandering to stretch out districts across counties and dividing up cities to favor one political party over another.

So of course, when 2012 rolled around and new districts were drawn up... the districts still stretched out funny, still divided portions of cities out towards less populated areas to where the city voters were in the minority of those districts, and still favored Republicans (in the state House, 75 Republican to 45 Democrat: in the Senate: 26 Republican to 14 Democrat) by roughly 65 percent to 35 percent.  Even though Democrats outnumber Republicans (as of 2013) 4,660,000-plus to 4,160,000-plus.  The only way the numbers favor the GOP is if they took the No-Party guys at 2,634,000-plus and lumped them all in with the Republicans in order to get a 3-to-2 advantage over Democrats... and that's not right because the No-Party voters shouldn't count that way (what if most of those No-Party registered voters are just Democratic trying to avoid getting purged by the GOP?).

Simple logic would have it the districts even out closer to 51-49 percent, with the No-Party registrants providing variation.  Although to be fair, in the real world it might not line up that way, but at least it ought to be withing a 55-45 range.  But 65 percent?  Favoring the party that's got fewer registered voters?!

Take a look at the state House map.  While a lot of the rural counties tend to be lumped together to fill the population equation, you'll notice the city/urban areas get carved up and portioned out in ways that do not favor city or county lines (what's with Ft. Myers and Naples' coastline all being one district when they've got perfectly good counties in Lee and Collier to earn representation?).

Hence the lawsuit by the League of Women Voters and others that the 2012 districts are violating the constitutional amendments that passed voter approval.

The state legislature, still in charge of the district drawing and thus controlled by the party in power (guess who), tried to avoid testifying under oath what was discussed and planned with the map drawing.  The state Supreme Court said "nah, you still gotta testify."

And now it's coming out that a lot of the documentation, such as memos and e-mails, that went with those meetings and decision-makings had been destroyed.

To refer to columnist Daniel Ruth with the St. Pete sigh Tampa Bay Times:

But any doubts about the legitimacy of the redistricting process could be easily cleared up before you could say "Where do I drop off my campaign check?" if Weatherford and Gaetz and all the other Republicans involved in redrawing districts would simply submit themselves to testifying under oath to sort out any misunderstandings. They could merely hand over all the documents, emails, voice messages and notes created during redistricting to prove once and for all that this effort was so apolitically Simon Pure, it made the Founding Fathers' Constitutional Convention look like a Raccoon Lodge meeting...

...Tragically, a series of unfortunate events happened. In a sort of "my dog ate my evidence" scenario, it seems untold numbers of emails, notes, voice messages and other Republican materials related to what went on behind the scenes in the redistricting toga party have been — alas — destroyed...

...The legislators' legal brain trust argues that such vaunted elected officials and their factotums can't be required to testify about their actions and (egad!) turn over all manner of communications, lest there be a "chilling effect" on the redistricting process.

But that is exactly the point. Lawmakers should know they will be subject to legal review under oath resulting in punitive sanctions if they attempt to finagle legislative districts to protect a disproportionate political advantage.

Federal courts have stipulated that when a party has a reasonable expectation of litigation it has an obligation to preserve any and all relevant records. Since redistricting efforts are almost always subject to legal challenges, Republicans certainly had to know that everything from complex documents to pizza receipts would be sought by various parties who viewed the process as if the Grand Old Partitioners of the Florida House and Senate were divvying up the early Italian city-states.

If Florida's Sunshine Law is supposed to allow the public open access to meetings, legislative bills, financial records and all the other elements of government and governance, then certainly citizens should also have a right to know how a bunch of self-interested partisan pols arrived at the decisions they made to draw squiggles on a map. And they should see the paperwork and digital records to boot...

This reeks to high heaven.  For starters, the state's own Sunshine Laws make it clear documentation from meetings involving state agencies and committees need to be made and held for public record.  For any body of state government to immediately destroy such documentation is telling me - and ought to be telling everyone else - that those officials wanted to hide what they did.

This ought to come to one resolution: hold those officials who destroyed those records accountable for what they did.  Force those officials to testify what those documents pertained to.  Force them to prove they were not colluding to violate the state constitution by gerrymandering those districts for partisan gain.

And re-draw the damn maps so that the Democratic majority in this state has a better chance (not a permanent chance: let the voters - hi, No-Party guys! - decide) of getting majority representation than the pathetic 35 percent that has been allotted to them.  That makes no goddamn sense at all for a voting majority to be so under-represented.  No goddamn sense at all.

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Anniversary: It's Been Five Years...

...and four of them a long long struggle to recover, but still...

Yeah, back on Dec. 17 2008 I lost my employment with Pasco County Libraries.

Between then and now was a long struggle: filing for unemployment, filing for WIA re-training funds, taking more computer classes, job-hunting, tweaking resumes, job-hunting, not getting interviewed, never getting interviewed, not even getting looked at by the retailers for part-time (the sins of getting a Masters degree education, you make yourself overqualified for a sh-tload of part-time jobs) work...

It was hard as hell on my family, especially my parents who helped out financially as best they could, and they couldn't understand why no one would even interview me for office work or anything like that.  My twin brother once chewed me out (on our birthday no less), accusing me of being a lazy-ass living off our parents' largess.  They couldn't understand I was up against 60, 100, 150 (!) applicants for every job opening (it wasn't just the unemployed I was competing with, it was employed people looking for something stable during uncertain times), and that I was going up against HR departments being finicky with who they interviewed (younger and cheaper were better, less educated and less prone to look elsewhere were better, etc.).

I found a part-time job in 2009, but it was will-call... By 2010 I put in for the Census work, but that turned out to be shorter than I expected... 2011, nothing, not a peep.  Things picked up by 2012 with 5 different libraries and computer-oriented workplaces interviewing, but I ended up not making the cut...  I finally got a part-time with a tech firm doing contractual installs for offices, but that was will-call as well... by Christmas 2012 Dad threatened and began plans to ship me up to my older brother's in Maryland (WINTER?!) to look for work in what he felt was a better employment environment.

Thank God this January I had three libraries interview me one right after the other... with Bartow, GOD BLESS THEM, offering me a job as their Reference and Computer training librarian.

I'd like to think I'm doing well here, that I'm fitting in (truth be told, my struggles losing a job and then trying to find one has left me with a bad case of "Oh GOD Don't Let Me Eff Up" that's got me more jumpy about how I'm doing than usual).

But in the meantime, while I've gotten out of unemployment purgatory, there's still Seven percent of Americans (and that's just the official numbers, the real numbers are far worse) stuck in unemployment, with clear evidence that the long-term unemployed (those out of work for more than six months) are really screwed by HR offices and companies who won't take in experienced older workers or anyone viewed as a hire risk.

We need a Jobs bill in this country.  We need to force companies to turn their record profits into more jobs or at least better wages for existing employees.  We need to make the economy based on employment, not stock options.

To everyone out there still looking for work, I hope and pray the best for you.  If you need help looking, check at your libraries for job-hunting help and resume tips.  Stay active in politics to vote the right people - the ones pushing for REAL JOBS, not tax cuts for companies already rolling in profits - into office at the state and federal level.  Hell, GO to the local political (okay, go Democrat, because I honestly think the Republicans would ignore this issue or defame it) offices and sign up to run for state office on a Jobs-Jobs-Jobs platform.  The more candidates we've got out there pushing for real job creation, the better our chances.

Good luck.  Here's hoping your anniversaries for firing fade quick and for hiring come quick.

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Presidential Character: Week Forty-Two, I Survived The Clinton Years (UPDATE)

(UPDATE below)

SO SUCK IT, LIMBAUGH.  You fear-mongering Cubicle Commando.

Ahem.

I really wanted to refer to this article I read ten or twelve years ago about Baby Boomers (those born between 1945 to 1965) that a fellow boomer used to describe his own generation as selfish, destructive, and reactionary.  Except where he made note of THE Boomer President, Bill Clinton, as a notable exception to that destructive impulse because Clinton genuinely believed in "the future imperative".

Clinton was referring to something a college professor had taught him, that the Future Imperative - not the language construct, but a political viewpoint - was an American-based ideology where the players and motivators on the political stage in the Present focused on how their current actions would boost or help Future generations.  The article writer's implication was that, where the Boomers would focus on their own needs at the expense of past generations - their parents - and future generations - their children and grandchildren - the likes of Clinton would focus on taking care of needs so that future generations would have something to work with.

And damn me for a fool, even for five straight days of using my librarian skills to the fullest, I can't find the thing.  I've forgotten if I'd read it in Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, or someplace online like Salon.com.

'Cause that bit about "the future imperative" is what's stuck in my head when it comes to defining Clinton's Presidential Character.  Without Professor James David Barber as a lighthouse guiding me on the matter (I also tried looking for journal or magazine articles by Barber about Clinton, but it seems 1992 was his retirement), this is one of those cases I've got to make using my own evidence.

UPDATE (7/17/14): The article has been found!  The search term should have been "Future Preference", not Imperative.  My bad...

The actual quote about (and from) Bill Clinton provided by Paul Begala in his Esquire article "The Worst Generation":

...I can still see Clinton doing his Quigley impression, eyes full of mischief, his voice an Arkansas version of a bad Boston accent, as we bounced around in a bus or flew through a thunderstorm on Air Elvis, our campaign plane back in 1992. "Mistah Begahhla," he'd intone as he looked at me through the bifocals perched on the end of his nose. "Why is America the greatest sociiiiiiety in human hist'ree? The Few-chah Pref'rence. At every critical junk-chaah, we have prefuhhed the few-chah to the present. That is why immigrants left the old waaahld for the new. That is why paahrents such as yours sacrifice to send their children to univehhsities like this wan. The American ideal is that the few-chah can be bettah than the paahst, and that each of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so."

So there it is.  Now, back to the original essay...

Doing research online, I've come across others referring to Barber's Character charts and applying the Passive-Positive label on Clinton, mostly due to his open desire to be liked and popular - the Congeniality trait - and because Clinton seemed to bend too much in dealing with a Republican Congress, being viewed as a weakness.

But that habit of dealing or working with Congress is a common Adaptive trait, if one noticed how Clinton, despite the expectations of his being a Liberal or Far Left leader, was able to deflect a rebellious GOP Congress from shredding more of the New Deal than they sought to destroy.

One of the big gripes I'd seen against Clinton was how he allowed the existing Welfare program to change from basic financial aid to families into an employment-related "workfare" program that satisfied most voters' concerns about a social aid program that appeared to allow the poor to endlessly live off the government (the reality may have been different, but the conservatives had succeeded in convincing the public that's what Welfare had become by the 1980s).  The thing is, the reform benefited by timely improvements to the economy itself - aided by job-boosting trade deals started under Bush the Elder and carried over by Clinton, and by a technology boom with computers and the Internet that few if any ever predicted - and from changes to the tax code and other social safety nets (food stamps) to cover any consequences of the workfare changes.

Rather than fear the dangers of changing welfare - as the Far Left worried that it would force more families into poverty, not less - Clinton and his administration was able to accept the bigger picture that the reform could work as long as other economic forces aided it.  In this regard, along with other points, I'd put Clinton in the Active-Positive category of Presidential behavior.

If Clinton did fail on some of the big Liberal ideas he was expected to pass/defend - failing to pass a healthcare reform that, let's admit it, was too complicated for its own good - it was because the nation itself was still not ready for most of those ideas (we as a nation are still not prepared for universal healthcare similar to every other major economic power on the globe, so how the f-ck can it be a commie socialist plot to destroy America if it works in England and Japan?).  For example, it had to take another decade of increasing health care costs for the nation to even tolerate a conservative, pro-business plan that became Obamacare.

Other signs of Clinton's A-P traits cover his self-deprecation, an honest desire to genuinely mingle and emotively relate to American voters (his "I feel your pain" was easily mocked, but it was sincere).  He was also able to re-position himself without ever crossing the line into flip-flopping, earning him a moniker "Slick Willie" (among other reasons, such as lying and using lawyer-speak to wriggle out of jams) but also making him adaptable to any political circumstance, including his fights with his opposite number Newt Gingrich, fellow Boomer and then-Speaker for most of Clinton's tenure.

For all of Gingrich's pro-conservative bluster, and for all of Gingrich's ambitions, Clinton could run rings around the guy.  And Bill was never that fast of a runner. /rimshot  Nearly every time Newt tried to confront Bill on a domestic issue - above all the budgets that were held up by Congress-fueled shutdowns - the President would get the nation to see his side of the argument and humble the Speaker and Congress down into accepting deals that may have benefited a conservative agenda but came across as Republican defeats.  Attempts to weaken Clinton during his first term of office with a legislative war didn't work: Clinton cruised to an easy re-election in another threeway race between himself, the Republican Bob Dole, and Ross Perot (whose impact, already meager, was diminished by 1996).

If anything weakened Clinton, it was himself: odd among most Active-Positives in that his personal and business dealings were very self-destructive (another reason some critics viewed him as a Passive-Positive like Harding, who did share those habits).  It could be argued that things like his Whitewater dealings, or his wife Hillary's law firm billing practices, were a mark of the post-Watergate era of unethical behavior by a lot of political figures.  But it left him vulnerable in ways that did limit his decision-making on the Presidential stage and had an adverse effect on his own staff.

Clinton's advantage during all of this was the colossal overreach of his political enemies.  All too eager to think the worst of a "hippie liar", hating on wife Hillary as a prominent feminist figure (the vitriol for her was worse than any bile aimed at him), the Far Right that came to dominate the Republican Party post-Reagan/Bush began an open campaign to discredit, humiliate, and delegitimize the Clinton administration.  Aided by a cable news channel led by a prominent conservative media whiz - Roger Ailes and his Fox News - and by radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh - whose career flourished the more he attacked Hillary - they talked up every potential scandal against Clinton they could find.  Whitewater became the new Watergate.  The firings of the White House travel office staff became headlines.  The suicide of a Clinton personal ally became the focus of three separate Congressional and grand jury investigations.

The overreach achieved peak crazy when it got out that Clinton had a sexual affair with a White House intern.  Immediately convinced she was the keystone to every Clinton scandal ever, the Lewinsky Affair dominated the news.  Long-standing media elites like Sam Donaldson openly predicted Clinton's resignation "within the week."  Clinton was forced under other investigations, including a civil suit by Paula Jones contending he sexually harassed her, to testify about having an affair with Lewinsky (and like any guy who thinks with his d-ck, Clinton did his best to weasel out of it).

But by this point a majority of Americans were jaded and burned out by the constant scandal-mongering by the Far Right.  What had started out as serious-sounding scandals - Corrupt land deals!  Dead lawyers!  A Trail of corruption across Arkansas! - turned up nothing but an intern with a stained dress.  What was promised as "worse than Watergate" ended up as "blowjobs".   Hillary was able to with a straight face go on national television and accuse their accusers of being part of "a vast Right Wing conspiracy".  And a lot of people agreed with her.

By the time the GOP Congress pushed to impeach Clinton for his perjury and obstruction before a grand jury (the BEST they could come up with), the Republicans were embarrassed by a poor 1998 midterms campaign that saw their seat numbers in both houses drop, although they retained majority control in both.  Feeling betrayed that they lost voters against Clinton's moral failings, the House turned against Gingrich as Speaker forcing him to drop the title (he would resign from the House less than a year later), and then coped with the embarrassment of their Speaker-designate Bob Livingston resigning when his sexual scandals came to light.  Meanwhile, with the Senate nowhere near the 2/3rd required to impeach the President, the vote wasn't even near that: the perjury charge went 55 votes against impeaching to 45 for, and the obstruction charge went dead even 50-50.

By 2000, Clinton left office with decent popularity numbers (although rightly hit for his poor honesty) while his opponents were sitting around thinking "what the hell happened?"  Rubbing salt into the wounds was the fact that during the impeachment and after, Clinton (A-P as always) was still able to get bills through Congress, nowhere near lame as most ending two-term Presidents tended to be.

--

It is hard to describe to the children and teens of today what it was like to be a survivor of both The Reagan Years and The Clinton Years.  Both different in terms of tenor and yet both similar in terms of economic booms presided over by highly charismatic and influential figures.

The take-away from the Clinton Era was a feeling of a missed opportunity, that Clinton could have been so much greater if he had reined in his personal appetites and unlocked his personal fears of political overreach.  If he had focused on a more comprehensive agenda that covered more needs rather than the several he prioritized above others.

To be fair, Clinton's Boomer impulses focused inward rather than outward onto his administration or the nation.  His one strength of political character - Adaptability while remaining tasked to a big picture - remains the saving grace of an otherwise bruised administration.

Next Up: If anyone's read this blog since the day I started it, You know how I feel about this one.  I may yet prove charitable regarding his Character...

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Why Every Floridian Needs To Vote In 2014... And Need To Vote Rick Scott OUT

Gosh, Paul, you really feel that way about voting a crook like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott out of office?!

...YES!

(also, I'm real keen on the Bucs firing Schiano.  That's another issue, and better followed on BucsNation.com...)

But here's the thing I want everyone to look at: a graphic map of Florida (via Miami Herald) highlighting all the places where companies with 100+ employees cut jobs from 2011 to now.

For all the bragging Scott's office and campaigners like to say about the jobs created during Scott's tenure, they'll of course never say word one about the jobs lost.  The current total of jobs created related to Scott's efforts: roughly 45,000.  Current total of jobs lost related to said efforts: roughly 49,000.  That's a NEGATIVE value of 4,000 or more LOST JOBS.

He's not exactly creating jobs like he promised (700,000 jobs over 7 years).  Like the voters should have ever trusted him on that... gggggrrrrrrr.

Making it worse has been the overvalued tax incentives, tax credits, and tax cuts Scott and Co. have doled out to corporations on the "promise" that these acts would create jobs.  All it's done was incite national companies to shift jobs from one state to another (causing grief elsewhere), create temporary jobs that didn't last, and basically nothing more.  A lot of that money's gone to waste, floating in the aether.

While the state's employment numbers have improved... it's been due to the overall national economic picture, with little to do with Scott's executive policies or the legislature's actual efforts.

So in terms of improving Florida's employment and economic numbers, Scott hasn't done much of anything.  And thanks to his insistence on tax cuts and benefits to large corporations, it's not helping improve Florida's budgets and public coffers.

Of course, I should also note that Rick Scott and his cronies are back at voter suppression efforts AGAIN in another attempt to make it harder for voters to register and submit ballots.  Such as issuing an "edict" to deny people to drop off absentee ballots at easy-to-visit locations: 

The latest trouble erupted a week ago when Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued an edict, or a "directive" as he called it, that county elections supervisors should not "solicit return" of absentee ballots anywhere other than the supervisor's office. The law is clear, he said.

Yet some counties let voters hand in absentees at early-voting sites, and Pinellas' Deborah Clark has a network of remote dropoff sites, secure and staffed by her employees, where ballots are kept under seal until they are driven to her headquarters. 

Evelyn Balogh, 83, a Tarpon Springs retiree who uses a wheelchair and does not drive, said Clark's system is why she is still voting. "I don't know what this man is thinking," she said of Detzner.

Our counties are not exactly compact and covered with elections offices: You may think Clearwater is a central locale easy to reach in our smallest geographic county (Pinellas), but Tarpon Springs is like freaking Siberia from there and I'm speaking from personal experience. Considering the high count of retirees who won't or can't drive in this state - not to mention the high count of poor people who can't drive, or the high count of people working long hours unable to get away to vote during the day - the county elections officials have to apply common sense and designate alternate locations to help out.

And indeed, the county supervisors for Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco have told Detzner (and Scott) that they will ignore the edict, noting they are in "full compliance with the law," meaning the actual statutes they have to follow and that the courts would go by if this matter ever goes that far.  This is a big thing for Pinellas, where a special election for a now-vacant Congressional seat (with the passing of Rep. Bill Young) covering half that county is going to rely a lot on the voters able to use the absentee ballots and drop-offs to get the votes in. 

In the meantime, this becomes more important.

The damn Democrats, moderates, and sane Republicans still left in that nihilistic radical fringe who are opposed to the bleeping Medicare crook in the governor's office NEED TO GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT IN 2014!

Dear National Democratic committees: instead of constantly emailing us to send in $25 every week driving us crazy with your endless fundraising, can you start emailing us to remind the voters to GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT for state and local elections just as much as you did for the Presidential campaigns.  Democratic turnout for midterms sucks to high heaven, and it's usually because the national-level organization (YOU) decide in some half-assed logic that the states should take care of their own... which they can't because they need a higher-ranking official to come in and knock skulls between the local factions.

The Republicans may have their problems - mostly because A) they are currently ideologically hidebound to a Utopian fantasy, and B) obsessed with thinking it's the "packaging" when in truth it's their policies that scare voters away - but when it comes to organizing at a national, state, and local level they coordinate their funding and support to a competently-good level.  They are focused on both the big picture (of keeping the federal government broken) and the small picture (take over enough state governments to destroy the national social safety net, and take over enough school boards to embezzle privatize schools and promote Creationism).

Democrats, if you want to get Rick "He's a Damn Crook" Scott out of office, organize.  Register the voters.  Stand up to the suppression attempts now and tomorrow.  Put candidates up in ALL the districts at ALL the levels - Congressional, Governor, State Senate, State Lege, County offices, School Boards - that you can.  To hell with the GOP's attempts to gerrymander: this state is more purple and Leans Blue than you realize, AND YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR IT.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.  And GET RICK SCOTT OUT OF OFFICE.

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Presidential Character: Week Forty-One, There Was Competence But Not Confidence

"You gotta dance with who brung ya" - one of Molly Ivins' favorite sayings.

In the first election I ever cast a vote, it was for George H. W. Bush.  For a couple of reasons.  First, I grew up in an old-school Republican house (so old-school my dad still doesn't think Nixon did anything wrong).  Second, I came of age during the Reagan years, and as such had a hazy, complacent view of the political arena despite my years reading Doonesbury and sympathizing with the plight of the proletariat.  Third, seriously Dems?  Dukakis was the best you could do?!  Tsk...

Looking back, I grew into a kind of bemused awareness - this was in college - that while Bush was a competent enough political operative, there was a kind of distance to him, a disconnect that separated him from the immediacies of day-to-day living in America to the high-ended objectives of his administration with regards to economic and international issues.

I couldn't put a label on it then, other than noting that by 1992 during a hard jobless recession that had a direct affect on me - graduating with a bachelors and no job prospects lined up - that President Bush didn't seem focused on fixing the economy that would mean job opportunities for meself and others.  Hindsight can give me now a better understanding.

In hindsight: What happened was that Bush the Elder (as I've taken to calling him) had come to the Presidency as the Heir to Reagan and was stuck dancing to the agenda of a Passive-Positive administration that left him incapable of fulfilling his own more Active instincts.

He had taken on the mantle of a social conservative agenda that he himself wasn't too comfortable with: when you look back, you'll see Bush trying to take a moderate stance on abortion (for cases of rape, incest, and health of the mother) that was counter to the hardline pro-fetus stance (no exemptions, never, and no contraception either, you sluts and whoremongers).

Bush had taken on an economic conservative agenda of mass deregulation and massive tax cuts ("Read My Lips, No New Taxes"), when during his administration he made a bipartisan deal with Congress that included tax increases.

Bush pursued an international relations agenda that relied heavily on diplomacy and personal communication that would have impressed Nixon, with an emphasis on increasing trade to open global markets like never before... but angered up an increasingly isolationist, America-First right wing that abhorred deals like NAFTA and sought U.S. hegemony in the wake of the collapsing Communist opposition.

Things I think Americans take for granted even today, was how Bush was able to build on the trust Reagan engendered with the Soviet Union to further improve international relations.  On the one hand, it proved helpful to keep the USSR on the sidelines when one of their client states - Iraq - went rogue, invading Kuwait, drawing Bush in with a truly international coalition to free Kuwait and weaken (but not topple, which would have busted the coalition) Iraq.  While the neocons of today looked back and considered it a failure that we didn't invade Iraq then and overthrow Saddam, hindsight proved that an occupation would have driven away our allies, depleted our resources fighting an unending insurgency, and given neighboring Iran the opportunity to sway the large Shia Iraqi population to their influence.

Bush, remembered, presided over one of the more peaceful political overthrows our planet's ever seen (with the sad exception of at the time Romania) when the Soviet Union, unable to maintain any economic or military control of Eastern Europe, allowed their satellite allies freedom to self-determine their rules.  The summer and autumn of 1989 witnessed nations like Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and finally East Germany bring an end to one-party rule, open borders, and basically celebrated like free drunken hippies.

I will never forget, sitting at the apartment at Gainesville the whole night of Nov. 9th, watching just hour after hour of people dancing atop the Berlin Wall on the television, tearing at the graffiti-ed concrete with pickaxes and shovels, wanting oh so much to hop onto a plane and just fly out there to join in, although knowing that 1) I had no passport and 2) by the time I got there the party would be over kinda kept me planted in the sofa.  Bush's diplomatic efforts, tied in with political leaders like Gorbachev who sought peaceful reforms, made a lot of that happen.

Part of me wonders to this day if Bush had stayed in office for a second term, if the collapse of Yugoslavia into Balkanized factions driven to civil war would have been curtailed or controlled to a more peaceful ending...

Pity of it was, by 1992 none of that mattered: what mattered was a broken economy that needed an infusion of government investment to boost jobs and wages.  And Bush, sad to say, found himself stuck in a one-note conservative platform ("cut taxes, cut regs") because those were the Republicans that brought him to the Big Dance.

It didn't help that Bush the Elder faced one of the more peculiar third-party attempts in the nation's history: a disgruntled business executive, Ross Perot, decided to muddle into politics on a platform of trade protectionism, balanced budgets, and an idea of "direct democracy" allowing direct input of the electorate through the burgeoning Internet.  Part vanity project, part serious reform movement, Perot became a banner to rally among the far right and/or centrist voting base, which cut more into Bush's political support than the Democratic challenger's.

Bush's final problem was simply an inability to present himself in as confident a manner as possible.  Part of that image had come from his seeming acquiescence to the Vice Presidency under Reagan - at a time when those in the know believed Bush's political views could and did differ from Reagan's - and part of it had come from an increasing vibe of disconnect during his own Presidential tenure.  While he showed confidence in 1988 campaigning as the successor to a popular Reagan, by 1992 he could no longer campaign like that: he had to campaign on his own successes.   Because his domestic success - passing a bipartisan, tax-increased budget - was in opposition to his party's platform, he couldn't.  He had to ignore what he did and campaign on what was expected of him by the base.

As an anecdote, during that tenure Saturday Night Live was at its apex of political satire and commentary (seriously, the 1992 political skits should be bottled and preserved for future generations).  Dana Carvey, doing about as pitch perfect a Bush impersonation (and even a Perot impersonation) ever seen, slowly depicted week by week a desperate, almost pleading Bush trying to figure out what to do to please people (holding up a sign "Message: You're Pissed" at one point).  It's as apt a description of how Bush struggled towards his loss in November to Bill Clinton.

All this talk about Bush the Elder and little yet about his Character.  Mostly because I want to note something else: this is as far into the Presidential Character as Prof. James David Barber took his 4th edition of his textbook.  Bill Clinton will be the second jumping off point into the Unknown where I have to make my own interpretation.  As for Bush, lemme dig up a quote or two on him:

By the summer of that election year, asked "What about George Bush?" I was puzzled that "the basic question about Bush, is not character, but world view.  What is his vision?  What is his direction?"... (p.457)

(from Barber's New York Times 1989 article) ...Those who think he will be simply a steady, middle-of-the-road chairman of the White House team might well be wrong.  There are signs that this Presidency could be far more innovative - for better or for worse - than the last one...  Mr. Bush wants a mission.  It is important that he likes normal, ordinary politics and that he invests much energy in that work.  His character is Active-Positive, a pattern that means he is ready to learn, to change, to develop in office, as distinct from the fixated types, such as Nixon or Johnson... (p.458-9)

That in hindsight was a common part of Bush's style: a negotiator type, someone capable of dealing and Adapting as the circumstances required.

Problem was, the Republican Party that brought him to the dance didn't like changing their tunes.  And Bush didn't have enough confidence to make the Party see that the dance style had changed from Charleston to Rave.

Next Up: There was this article about The Future Imperative relating to this guy.  I gotta go find it.

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Serious Ways To Celebrate Saturnalia (updates)

While the philistines at the FOX Not-News channel wage their ungodly war on the pagan festivities, it might behoove me to pass along some tips on how to honestly and sincerely celebrate the Roman winter solstice holiday known as Saturnalia.

1) Decorate your home with sun and moon iconography.  Apply garland wreaths where appropriate.

2) Hang out with Vestal Virgins.

2a) (update) In the possibility you cannot locate any Vestal Virgins to hang out with, you have a good excuse now to travel over to Rome, Italy and ask around for one.  Hell, this is a good time for Rome to set up a Vestal temple for the tourists...

3) Decorate all trees on your property.  They don't have to be the traditional triangle-shaped fir trees, any trees will do.  For those of us in Florida, we've been decorating palm trees for years...

image from the Minimalist Sweet Home website

Update: that photo isn't showing anymore!  The link might be broken.  Let's try this one...

from the Jen On The Edge blog

4) Drink Roman-styled wine.  There's a version called mulsum which mixes honey into the wine.  Should be interesting around bears...

5) Give small presents.  Nothing large or ostentatious.  Maybe a set of keys to a new electric-powered car.  ...what?

6) GO TO ANY TEMPLE OF THE GOD SATURN AND LIGHT A CANDLE TO EARN HIS FAVOUR.  If you can't find a temple, trick your local churches into funding a charity that you'll secretly use to build one.  That oughta learn 'em, stealing the winter solstice and all...

7) Gamble.  It's allowed during this festive period.  But do it in legally-approved areas like Hard Rock Casinos on local tribal lands or Las Vegas.

7a) Gamble using other people's money.  See 6) for hints.

8) Sing classical Roman ditties.  If you don't know any classical Roman ditties, sing "Louie Louie" off-key and no-one will notice.

9) Greet everyone by saying "Io Saturnalia!"  Now here's the tricky thing about the Latin language: they didn't have a letter J to represent that phonic in the western tongues, so they doubled it to the letter I.  It's really Jo Saturnalia! being said.  And the Romans pronounced the J not like "jay" but like "yo".  So it should sound like YO SATURNALIA (akin to YO ADRIAN).  But type it IO SATURNALIA.

9a) Do this early and often around Bill O'Reilly until he goes batsh-t insane.

10) Enjoy the holiday season no matter how and why you celebrate it.  If you're Christian, Hebrew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Shinto, Pastafarian, what have you.  THIS IS A TIME TO CELEBRATE, TO REFLECT, TO ENJOY FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO THE UPMOST THAT WE CAN.

This message brought to you by a faction of the Unitarian Jihad.

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Calling Out To All Artists: I Need More Saturnalia Desktop Wallpaper

There's really not a lot of Saturnalia-themed wallpapers via the Google search engine.  I'm counting about... four, maybe six Saturnalia themes.

This is sad.

If our so-called War On Christmas is going to live up to Fox Not-News' bizarre standards, we're gonna need more Saturnalia stuff online in order to cheese off the O'Reillys of the world.  We need to rile them up sufficiently so WE can go around and declare those insufferable far right so-called "values" people are waging a War On Saturnalia.  See how they like it when the tables are turned...

Otherwise this will be a relatively sad and quiet holiday season focused on presents shopping, wrapping, getting the halls decorated fa-la-la-la-laaa.

IO SATURNALIA!  It shall be our battle cry this festive month.

Unless you're into that whole Mithras thing.  Yeah, then we're gonna need to coordinate our efforts and such.

Brought to you by the Unitarian Jihad.

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