42 Reasons Why: Liberal Policy for a Real World

Moving

2010-12-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

When I set this up a year ago, I didn't know how long it would last, and Blogger was easy. But I'm pretty unhappy with the whole platform so I'm moving. I thought I'd already done this post honestly. But so you know, you can get all your 42 Reasons goodness at www.42liberal.zubon.org now. Check it out. I've got a great new post up!

I Went Done Gone and Lost My (Blue) Dog Again...

2010-11-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

It's three days after midterms! I could (and might still) spend a post (or two, or three) talking about all of the things everyone else is talking about since the elections. Mainly that's the Republican take over of the house, John Boehner crying, how Nancy Pelosi's suddenly a loser, how Obama doesn't get "it", etc. But not for now. I'm going to attempt to talk about something a little more niche, and a whole lot less talked about. The Democrats lost a lot of seats. It's true. But where did they lose them exactly, and how does that affect party unity and message in Washington? I suspect you'll find that most of the losses came from the Blue Dog Caucus and that it might have the effect of a more unified (if less powerful) Democratic Caucus.

The Blue Dog Caucus in the 111th Congress has 53 members. They're geographically diverse, ranging from West Coast to East and urban districts to rural ones. Just as examples you have members like Loretta Sanchez of the California 47th, Southern Los Angeles. It's a very urban district with a high population density and a very small area. In contrast there's Chris Carney of the Pennsylvania 10th who's largest city is Carbondale. It's Pennsylvania's third largest house district by area. So I think we can rule out that Blue Dogs suffered in this election because they all represent the same type of voter and that voter type was especially swayed by Republicans.

In looking at the data from Tuesday, of the 53 members of the Blue Dog Caucus, only 24 of them won re-election. This number includes one race the New York Times hasn't called yet but is leaning toward the incumbent and two that haven't been called but look to be losses. It also includes six members who retired resulting in the seat switching parties, and one member who himself switched parties only to lose in the primary. That seat is also in Republican hands for the 112th Congress. With only 24 members winning re-election, the Blue Dogs had a success rate of 45.28% for the 2010 Midterms. Meanwhile, of all Democrats in the 111th Congress (255 of them) 191 seats (including three still out leaning Dem.) stayed in the Party. That's a 74.90% success rate.

Obviously averages aren't everything. Blue Dogs are more likely than your average Democrat to come from districts that could be described as "purple" or indeed, given the landslide of the 2008 election, districts that are generally described as Republican. So you wouldn't expect the success rate of the Blue Dogs to match that of the Democratic Party as a whole. Still, I think the number speak for themselves. Democrats held on to 3/4 of all their house seats this cycle (really bad, in the grand scheme) but the Blue Dogs held less than half.

Blue Dog Seats Held	Blue Dog Seats Lost
Jason Altmire (PA-4) Joe Baca (CA-43) John Barrow (GA-12) Sanford Bishop (GA-2) Dan Boren (OK-2) Leonard Boswell (IA-3) Dennis Cardoza (CA-18) Ben Chandler (KY-6) NYT hasn’t called. Probable hold. Jim Cooper (TN-5) Henry Cuellar (TX-28) Joe Donnelly (IN-2) Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8) VERY narrow margin. Jane Harman (CA-36) Tim Holden (PA-17) Jim Matheson (UT-2) Mike McIntyre (NC-7) Mike Michaud (ME-2) Collin Peterson (MN-7) Mike Ross (AR-4) Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) Adam Schiff (CA-29) David Scott (GA-13) Heath Shuler (NC-11) Mike Thompson (CA-1)	Mike Arcuri (NY-24) Melissa Bean (IL-8) NYT hasn’t called. Probable loss. Marion Berry (AR-1) Retired, Dems lost seat. Allen Boyd (FL-2) Bobby Bright (AL-2) Christopher Carney (PA-10) Travis Childers (MS-1) Jim Costa (CA-20) NYT Hasn’t called. Probable loss. Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3) Lincoln Davis (TN-4) Brad Ellsworth (IN-8) Ran for Sen. Bayh’s seat. Lost to Dan Coats. Bill Foster (IL-14) Bart Gordon (TN-6) Retired. Dems lost seat. Parker Griffith (AL-5) Switched Parties 2009. Lost primary. Republicans hold seat. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL), Blue Dog Co-Chair, Administration Baron Hill (IN-9), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy Frank Kratovil (MD-1) Jim Marshall (GA-8) Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications; Ran for Sen. Vitter’s Seat. Lost. Seat goes to Republicans. Walt Minnick (ID-1) Dennis Moore (KS-3) Retired. Wife lost race to Republican. Patrick Murphy (PA-8) Glenn Nye (VA-2) Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL) John Salazar (CO-3) Zack Space (OH-18) John Tanner (TN-8) Retired. Dems lost seat. Large margin. Gene Taylor (MS-4) Charlie Wilson (OH-6)
Total: 24	Total: 29

At a glance, a few things about who won and who didn't in the Blue Dog Caucus do stand out to me. The first is that, like every other Democrat in California, they did just fine. Plenty has been made of the virtual sweep the Democrats pulled off in California while everyone else was trending to the right. Every Blue Dog hailing from a California House District won, with the exception of Jim Costa in the California 20th. And that race was so close it hasn't actually been called yet. With a sufficiently motivated Democratic base, Blue Dogs win, even in this red election cycle. The other major thing I noticed was all three of the Blue Dogs' leaders lost. Stephanie Sandlin of the South Dakota At-Large District lost by 3%. She was the Blue Dogs' Co-Chair for Administration. The Co-Chair for Policy, Baron Hill of the Indiana 9th lost by 10%. And Charlie Melancon, the Co-Chair for Communications vacated his seat to run against Louisiana Senator David Vitter. He lost, and the party lost his Louisiana 3rd by more than 25%. Ouch. So not only is the Blue Dog Caucus of the 112th Congress much smaller, they'll need new people to step into leadership positions.

Let's look at some policy stuff then. It's fairly clear that for a Democrat (even a Blue Dog) to hold their own in a district that's purple or red they need waves of support from enthused Democratic voters. That enthusiasm was in short supply all around the country this year to be sure. But I suspect that it had an effect on the outcome in races like Rep. Bobby Bright's in the Alabama 2nd where he lost by 2% and 5,000 votes in a way that it didn't in a race like Rep. Earl Blumenauer's in the Oregon 3rd where he won by 45% and 120,000 votes. What I'm arguing is, if the Blue Dog's had spent more time sticking to the Democratic plan, working with the Obama Administration, and passing progressive legislation then Bobby Bright might have found the 5,001 votes he needed to win in the Alabama 2nd. Or Charlie Wilson might have found the 10,000 votes he needed to win in the Ohio 6th.

The people are dissatisfied with the Health Care Reform. That's just one piece of legislation, but let's run with it. The final legislation is deeply unpopular. Republicans ran against it during the election and even some Democrats did. Just ask Joe Manchin. On the other hand, polls have consistently shown the Public Option to be very popular. The Public Option didn't pass in the Senate, and only a very weak version passed in the house. In short, if the Democrats had had more votes then a bill containing a strong Public Option (which the general public supports) could have been possible. Where were these votes missing from? Not the Republican Party. You guessed it. The conservative Blue Dog Caucus is full of House members (and their friends on the Senate side) who opposed a strong Public Option. This is about division within the Democratic party as much as it is about the two parties not getting along and agreeing.

The same rings true for Financial Reform. The Blue Dogs specifically label themselves as the "fiscally conservative" wing of the Democratic party. These guys are, in many ways, socially liberal Republicans. They couldn't bring themselves to vote on things like ending Too Big to Failm reigning in Wall Street, or demanding that derivatives be traded on the open market like everything else. They're the Democratic friends of the Big Banks that means the Party has no muscle and no guts for doing the dirty work that needs to be done. Consequently, as they tracked ever to the right in an attempt to appear palatable to the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in their districts, they ensured that the Democrats they did have, would be so uninterested in backing them up that they were virtually guaranteed to lose close elections in a Republican leaning midterm year.

Pre-Mortem

2010-11-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

I've fallen down on my responsibilities recently. The elections are (coming) up and so I thought I'd take a few moments and add in my own thoughts. I'm going out on a limb and broadly going to suggest that things won't be as ugly for Democrats as all the writing around the blogosphere suggests it will. Check out this piece from Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight. That's a hypothetical, and yes, he did write it as a devil's advocate. Yes, there is another piece from a few days earlier, written in the same style, about how Republicans could pick up 70 or 80 seats in the House rather than the widely predicted 50 or 55. As Nate has talked about a lot recently, the actual margin (statistically speaking) is really wide this year. Polls suggest anything from a Republican gain in the mid 20s up to the low 80s as possible. But I'm a liberal blogger and so what am I going to do but come down on the side of Democrats? I'm inclined to believe that it won't be any worse than 55, and could very well be much better than that. But that's not statistical, that's my gut feeling. Let's examine the issues.

The Enthusiasm Gap
Much political hay has been made out of the so-called "Enthusiasm Gap" this cycle. Republicans and Tea Partiers are fired up and Democrats have just stopped caring. My evidence against this is anecdotal, yes. But I've spent some time actually making phone calls and knocking on doors this cycle for state and national Democrats and have seen plenty of Dems who are ready and eager to go to the polls and make clear that, even if we aren't 100% happy with the work the Obama White House and the Pelosi/Reid Congress has done, we don't think a Congress lead by Mitch McConnell and John Boehner will be doing us any favors. Democrats view this contest as the lesser of two evils, yes. But the current Congress is clearly the lesser. The devil you know, as they say.

Voter Turnout
Voter Turnout is really closely linked to the Enthusiasm Gap. If you're not enthused, you don't turn out, right? But there are other issues to bring to bear here. Democrats still have a registration advantage over Republicans, thanks in large part to the Obama Campaign and it's post inauguration sibling Organizing for America. Democrats nationally have a better turnout machine than Republicans. I'm counting on that machine to counter and Enthusiasm Gap that might present its ugly head tomorrow.

The Democratic Record
It's become obvious over the last six months that most national and even state level Dems are attempting to run campaigns that, to put it kindly, don't talk about their accomplishments in Washington since the beginning of the 111th Congress. Nowhere has this been taken to such a visible extreme as Joe Manchin's ad in which he shoots the Cap and Trade Bill. That's an extreme example, and Manchin is clearly anti-Cap and Trade because West Virginia relies so heavily on it's coal industry. But there are Democrats all over the place talking about killing "ObamaCare", keeping the Bush Tax Cuts, and generally trying to run away from what Congress has done. Call me crazy, but I think the Democrats would be having a better year if they ran actively and forcefully on their record.

Let's get more specific. As we've covered, the Dems are losing the House. This is essentially a foregone conclusion and all the quibbling has been over how many seats we can expect the Republicans to pick up. My bet, 35. This is quite low and I could be totally off.

The Senate is a bit easier. I'd bet money that the Dems keep the Senate even if only by a slim margin. Here, I'm in complete agreement with Five Thirty Eight. The Republicans look to pick up 4 to 9 seats depending on what kind of night they have. Their chances at picking up the Senate went down the drain when Christine O'Donnell won the nomination in Delaware. If that didn't seal the deal then the increasing leads that Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray have over their opponents in California and Washington definitely will.

I'm going to take a moment to look at some individual races now. Some I'm pretty bullish on, others not so much. Starting in no particular order we have...Nevada.

Nevada
Before the primaries were done in Nevada, Harry Reid was sunk. He was down 20 points versus the generic Republican candidate. He's not charismatic, and not many people in Nevada like him all that much. Then the GOP nominated Sharron Angle. She thinks Flouride is a communist plot, Social Security should be ~~personal~~privatized, and refuses to answer questions from reporters. In fact, Mrs. Angle's craziness is the ONLY thing keeping Mr. Reid in the race. That said, Mr. Reid has about as finely tuned a turnout machine as has ever existed. Numbers from early voting suggest that registered Dems are turning out at a little under 3% more than registered Republicans. Couple that with Mrs. Angle's clearly racist, anti-Latino ads and I call this one for Mr. Reid by a hair.

California
Barbara Boxer has made some serious inroads into the numbers that Carly Fiorina has been putting up. She's showing a solid lead of 2 to 3 points now. Couple that with the momentum that Jerry Brown has made against Meg Whitman and I suggest that California will stay blue this year.

Washington
This could be the race to watch as far as the Senate this year. Republican Dino Rossi has been giving Democrat Patty Murray a run for her money all year and it could come down to some seriously late night (early morning) counting before this one is called. Murray has been pulling away just a little bit as of late so this one could really be indicative of how the Republicans do over all. If they have a wave night, count on seeing Senator Rossi in Washington. If the Democrats outperform their number, Murray will hold on.

Alaska
The three way race in Alaska has only gotten more interesting in the last week. Republican (and Tea Party fav) Joe Miller has appeared to be losing ground to incumbent and Write-In candidate Lisa Murkowski. What makes this that much more interesting is that the way Write-In votes are counted could end up handing the election to Democrat Scott McAdams if he can top Mr. Miller. Expect this one to run long (as in days and weeks after tomorrow). Alaska is one of the last states to close the polls and counting all those Write-Ins is technically challenging. I'm less bullish on this one. I'll give it to Mrs. Murkowski, though I'd love to see McAdams pull an upset.

Florida
Finally, we have the other three way this year between Marko Rubio, Charlie Crist, and Kendrick Meek. This is one where I have no faith in the Democratic nominee. Mr. Meek has denied that Democrats as high up as President Clinton have asked him to drop out and endorse Mr. Crist. Essentially, Mr. Rubio (who the Tea Party loves) is running away with this one. Having everyone who's against him splitting their vote between Governor Crist and Mr. Meek will give this seat away. Say hello to Senator Rubio.

I could write about a lot of other races, but these are by far the closest and most interesting. I have skipped West Virginia because I don't feel as qualified to talk about it, but in fact, it may be the first bellwether you get along with some of the races in Ohio.

If you Build it, They will Come

2010-10-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

Please forgive me, both for the cliche title and the attempt to blog away my insomnia. I promise I do have an excellent (if long) post for you if you keep reading. You might want to grab a chair.

I want to take a moment to talk about something that has been both derided as a waste of public money and hyped as the sexiest word in American Politics. I'm talking of course about Infrastructure. My education is in a design field that is allied with fields like Architecture, Art, and Engineering. I'm going to try to both make the case for infrastructure as well as talk about what people mean when they use that word. When we talk about spending on infrastructure, what sorts of projects are we discussing? When the President, the other week, announced $50 billion for the jump starting of a National Infrastructure Bank (known from here on out as the NIB) what sorts of things did he have (or should have) in mind?

Let's look at things as they now stand first. America's infrastructure is old. How old? It varies to be sure. But suffice it to say that many important projects in this country were built in the 1950s with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act under President Eisenhower. Yes. A Republican. Infrastructure investment shouldn't be an anathema to Republican and Republican leaning lawmakers. Much of the infrastructure is even older than that. Much of it is in dire need of servicing as well. States have been putting off maintenance on important bits of this mystical infrastructure for years, citing a lack of money. In reality it's usually more a lack of will, though the country's general blindness to the state of it's infrastructure is certainly not making money for that sort of work easy to come by.

And now I've said another magic word! Work! That's right. Pretty much anything that falls under the definition of infrastructure needs to be built and maintained. And what is one thing this country has in abundance right now? That's right. Unemployed people. Especially unemployed people in the construction industry. This link to a press release from the Associated General Contractors of America (who I suspect know a thing or two about building) cited the unemployment rate in the construction industry as 27.1%. I'm fairly certain the number has changed little in the six months since that report was released. This is point number one. We have lots of unemployed people that could be put back to work through public and private investment in infrastructure right now. The housing market is flooded with houses that no one is buying and it's going to be a long time before all of these unemployed construction workers are putting up suburbs again. I'd wager it'll be never for the suburbs, but that that's a different post. This brings me to point number two. Investment.

Check out this Op-Ed Paul Krugman wrote for the New York Times earlier this month. It does deal with a specific project (the Arc Tunnel under the Hudson from New Jersey to Manhattan) but he hits on points that are relevant to all sorts of infrastructure spending right now. Specifically, I want to highlight this:

the price is right: with interest rates on federal debt at near-record lows, there has never been a better time to borrow for long-term investment.

That's the main point of his Op-Ed besides the unemployed construction workers which we've now covered as well. Borrowing money when the National Debt is approaching $14 Trillion may not look appealing. But if we're borrowing for tangible things that are going to make our country more productive in the long run it's worth it. If we can increase GDP we both get out of this recession and make the job of paying down the National Debt that much easier. And infrastructure of almost all types will increase GDP beyond just the people working and getting paid to build it. That tunnel that Governor Christie has killed would ensure the smooth flow of traffic from New Jersey to Manhattan, one of the largest financial and business centers in the world. And just check out what's doing the job right now. One tunnel, two tracks, built almost a hundred years ago. If that's not word for word a description of the state of our infrastructure as it stands now, I don't know what is.

So now that we've talked about why infrastructure spending (and by extension the NIB) is a good thing let's take a minute to look at what kind of projects we're talking about. In my view, infrastructure can be part of three broad groups (though many projects overlap, and a few will defy definition). In general you're looking at projects that deal with Building and Space, Transportation, or Energy and Communications. All of these areas are sadly not up to snuff currently in America. In addition I would describe each project regardless of which group it's in as also being either Monumental or Diffuse. Let's take a look at each category and then some real life projects that would be part of that group.

Building and Space
These projects are, as you might imagine, either buildings, public open spaces, or a combination of the two. This is often the area where it's easiest to convince private money to take part or fund something entirely. Sure, plenty of buildings are nondescript, but some would also be classified as Monumental. When I say Monumental, I mean that the work exists in a specific place, is well constructed and designed, and either is or has the potential to be a monument. We're talking tourists here. For constructed works I'm thinking, the Space Needle, the Flat Iron Building, Sears Tower and the like as well as Central Park, The Presidio, and other famous open spaces. Under way already? Try the construction under way for both buildings and open space in Lower Manhattan at Ground Zero. That link is worth it just for the photos and architectural renderings by the way. That's just a taste.

Transportation
Transportation projects are fairly obviously about moving people or goods from place to place. In that sense, many of them are going to be Diffuse as opposed to Monumental, but not all. These projects could range from the already discussed Arc Tunnel from New Jersey to New York, to construction and additions to subways, busses, and light rail like the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan or the planned Orange Line addition to Portland's MAX Light Rail. These are all Diffuse or otherwise unviewable (meaning under the Hudson) by the public. In this section though you can also include projects like the new bridge near Hoover Dam that Rachel Maddow covered it last night. I'd call that Monumental. Wouldn't you agree?

This section would be remiss to leave out the continuing discussion about High Speed Rail (HSR) that has started in this country. This article at Infrastructurist (a fabulous blog) makes it clear why this is a liberal issue. Republicans view all this infrastructure spending as borrowing that the government can't sustain. There's also this post which highlights all the HSR lines that are receiving federal funding as of January. That map is pretty spectacular to me. And you can see where building even further in the future would go. An HSR backbone down the Pacific Coast from Vancouver, BC to Los Angeles? Who wouldn't want to make that trip in a matter of hours? Also, a connection through the heart of the country making Coast to Coast HSR travel possible isn't out of the long term question. They did it in the 1800s, why not now? I think we could find another Golden Spike.

Energy and Communications
Finally we have Energy and Communications which are, almost by definition, Diffuse. They're networks of transmission lines, computers, and the like. While they may not be as flashy as Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere, they're very important. In this section we not only have the opportunity to update our aging electrical and communications grids, we have the opportunity to build them afresh with technologies in mind like the Internet, mobile web surfing, and green energy production. If you think the electrical grid is fine the way it is, check out this piece from Joel Achenbach at National Geographic. It's fabulous. Not only do we need to update the transmission wires themselves though, we also have an opportunity to update how we get the electrons that run though those wires. That's where projects which the likes of Google have been supporting come in. In specific we have suggestions for an East Coast Wind Backbone, placing very large wind turbines off the coast and out of sight, as well as Geothermal in West Virginia Coal Country. Now if that can't break West Virginia's (and indeed the whole country's) dirty habit, I don't know what will.

Almost as an aside, I think there is room here too for collaboration on something with a little less function like Mount Rushmore between the future NIB and the National Endowment for the Arts. That's right, I said the NEA.

So what's the big picture? Most of the projects I've linked to have price tags running into the billions. But investment now, when we have every resource and financing trick on our side, can make the cost a bit less. Construction materials haven't been as cheap in decades. In closing, we, as America, have a choice. We can stand up and fix what is very rapidly breaking in this country and invest in the future. Or we can stand aside and let other countries (chief among them China) do what we are known for doing for over a century. If we do not choose to step up now, we can later. But it's going to be harder and come at a higher cost. If we make the investment now, we set the stage for another century of American greatness as well as begin to solve our problems right here, right now. Ranging from current unemployment and economic malaise to the desperate need to transition to energy sources other than oil and coal, the opportunity is now. I'll leave you with this scary chart from the Washington Post to think about.

Age in the Age of the Tea Party

2010-10-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

We all have opinions and ideas about the Tea Party by now. Some of us think we know what they stand for. We've seen who they nominate for elections of all stripes and we've seen how they run those elections. So, my question at this point is this.

Does the Tea Party care what happens to young people long term?

I think they don't. I don't believe that the Tea Party as an entity cares one bit about what the country will look like for those of us in our 20s and 30s when we're in our 50s and 60s. You want proof, right? Okay. Let's look at the facts.

The Huffington Post has an article up here that suggests that the Tea Party is disproportionately elderly. The relevant section says this.

the demographics of the movement seemingly align with those who traditionally vote for the conservative candidate as well. Fifty-six percent of Tea Party respondents are male; 22 percent are over the age of 65 (compared with just 14 percent who are between the ages of 18 and 34)

Compare that to 12% (as of 2004) and rising for the whole country. There's no doubt that the Tea Party is more elderly than the country on average. The Huffington Post article also notes that 14% of the Tea Party is 18-34. Compare that to roughly the same number for all Americans who are in that same age bracket. So that's the Tea Party. But what about their candidates and positions. Do they espouse positions that benefit older Americans at the expense of those of us who've lived less? Check out what Rand Paul, Tea Party candidate for Senate in Kentucky has to say. That's from the conservative Washington Post. Rand Paul wants to raise the retirement age for "younger workers" (he's not specific on who that is) in order to pay for things like an extension of the Bush tax cuts on those making $250,000 or more per year. And we all know that those of us in the 18-34 bracket are much less likely to be in that group. That's how the corporate ladder works. You hit the jackpot once you've been on the job for a long time and proved your worth. And it probably should work that way. But, the point here is that we're not getting bonuses now for a raised retirement age. We're getting screwed in order to pay for bonuses for old corporate VPs like the guys at Goldman Sachs. To be fair, that WaPo article suggests that the Democratic nominee in Kentucky also wants to extend all the tax cuts. Good job there Mr. Conway.

Then there's Sharron Angle. Check out how she feels about Healthcare Reform. Just the other week on September 23rd it banned denying children coverage because of pre-existing conditions. This bill is good for young people. It's good for young people because the jobs that we increasingly hold, hourly jobs with no benefits, allow us to stay on our parents healthcare until the age of 26. That also went into effect on the 23rd. And it creates a system where healthcare may just become affordable one day. Most older people have healthcare though their work. We aren't like that. Just check it out here. She says there is "nothing good in this law." Also, for nerds out there like me, they set that ad to the theme music for Battlestar Galactica. Win.

Those are just two of a litany of examples, but I think my point is proven when I say that the Tea Party has no interest in protecting younger people in America. Vote at your own risk.

Republicans have a Tea Problem

2010-09-17T15:44:00.001-07:00

This isn't new news. But it is important news. It's been ramping up for quite a while now as we move through the Primary season. It started with Sharron Angle. It continued with Joe Miller's defeat of Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. And now, we're looking at Carl Paladino and Christine O'Donnell. Those are the highlights, but you can bet that there are others out there who are a little less wackadoodle but no less unelectable. The Tea Party may yet play Ralph Nader to the Republican Party's Al Gore. Weird analogy, I know. To be sure, as a liberal commentator one of the things I'm going to do is try to be optimistic about Democratic chances in ANY upcoming election. Check out Nate Silver's Five Thirty Eight for the statistics. He still gives the Republicans a 2 to 1 shot at winning the House. Get ready for Speaker Boehner, but cross your fingers you won't ever see it.

The Senate looked much better last week. But, in a rare bright spot, in the last week, Democratic chances of holding at least 51 seats there have gone up. Again, Nate hits the nail on the head when checking out the statistics in this article about the primaries in Deleware the other evening. But in short, we can thank Christine O'Donnell. For those of you who haven't gotten the memo about her yet, here's the short version. She just defeated nine time Congressman Mike Castle for the Republican nomination in Deleware. She now faces Chris Coons. Coons is a strong pick. There are only three counties in Delaware (I know, right?) and as a leader in one of them he has made tough choices to balance their budget and pay back their debt. The have a AAA financial rating. He's honest and upstanding and really about as squeeky clean as you can ask a candidate to be. That said, he had been written off as having little chance while everyone assumed he'd be challenging Mike Castle. But he's not. His challenger is Christine O'Donnell. She has run for several times before, with the most recent instance in 2008 when she tried to upset VP Joe Biden. Even while spending almost all of his energy helping the President with that race, Biden defeated Mrs. O'Donnell soundly. Her 2008 Campaign manager ran robocalls against her candidacy before the primary on tuesday, and though they did not work, to me that says something about how badly the Republican Party doesn't want to have to deal with her. Among other things, this Campaign manager has accused Mrs. O'Donnell of using campaign money to pay personal expenses including rent. She has touted herself as a college graduate for a long time, but only recently received her degree after having finally paid her school what she owed them. And this is one of the people the Tea Party wants to send to the Senate to fix our financial troubles?

Mrs. O'Donnell has spent most of her pre-campaign days as the founder and organizer of SALT, or Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth. A creepy name for an organization if there ever was one, it gives you no idea what the organization's main goal is. Video exists of Mrs. O'Donnell explaining this so it's not just me making things up.

YouTube doesn't want to embed, but you can check out the video here.

Yes, that was the theme song from Joan of Arcadia, and yes, aside from the 90s hair we all had, that is Christine O'Donnell really telling you you can't masturbate because of the bible. Really. And now she wants to be the senator from Delaware.

In short, many of these candidates including Mrs. O'Donnell and Mrs. Angle may prove to be short lived victories. Yes, the Tea Party got them nominated. But can they actually put them into Congress, or will they do poorly in the general election because of the far right wing values they espouse? I imagine the latter is the answer and Chris Coons and Harry Reid are all to glad for that to be the case.

Don't Remember

2010-09-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

This might get kinda long. I had something I wanted to say and now I have more after being out all day.

I spent all day at work today. I guess I haven't gone into much detail about myself on this thing yet so here it is. I work at an amusement park for an unamusing amount of money per hour. I've just graduated and moved to a liberal city on the west coast. I'm about as far from ground zero right now as you can get and still be in the Lower 48.

I regularly see people at work that I assume are Muslim. Mostly women wearing the hijab (headscarves). Sometimes a bit more covered up than that. Nothing too out of the ordinary. It's not often that I see as many presumed Muslims as I did at work today. I have no problem with this. In fact, I saw women wearing the full burqa/niqab combo along with the hijab for the first time today. Still no problem. One of the (many) points of America is that people are allowed to practice all their freedoms here including speech, religion, and right to assembly. It's fabulous really.

I heard the most disgusting things coming out of the mouths of some of my fellow Americans today. Mostly out of my fellow white Americans. I've never been so ashamed of people of my race in general. Some of the things I heard shouldn't be typed or repeated. But of some of the milder there were many scoffs of "foreigners" and a lot of talk about how we could "let them into the park on 9/11". Because clearly, since 19 men none of these people knew or agreed with doing horrible things on the other side of the continent nine years ago is a good reason to bar an entire class of people from freely going about their business.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let me talk about what I wanted to touch on originally. Segue!

Many of the kids I was helping amuse today weren't alive in 2001. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was in school. Some business class that didn't do me any good. At the time I didn't even know what the World Trade Center looked like. Sheltered southern girl. I suspect that this is very similar to people talking about how they remember what they were doing when they found out that the Challenger blew up, or Kennedy was assassinated, or Pearl Harbor was attacked. The world has changed so much in the last nine years. Much of it for the worse. I and grew up in those nine years. I came of age, started driving, voting, and drinking in those nine years. (I just got really close to telling you how old I am.) In essence, who I am as an adult has been changed by the events on 9/11/2001. I would not be the same sort of political thinker if I had come of age under an inept and awkward Bush Administration who was not armed with the political power gifted it by the events of that day. I would not be a liberal in all probability. And there are people who have never known anything else!

I know this isn't groundbreaking. I imagine the same can be said by older people than about me and the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration, or (again) the Kennedy Assassination. But knowing how our country and our world have changed since then, I cry for the children of the post-9/11 era. Don't get me wrong, I know the world wasn't all sunshine and daisies before then. But these children are growing up in a world where the First Amendment isn't a given. You're only allowed free speech and free exercise of your religious liberties if you don't look like you might be a terrorist. They have a world where anyone who says the wrong things is looked at suspiciously by their government. Where the economic stability of the now as well as their own futures are not too high a price to pay for two ill-advised wars. And lets look at these wars for a moment.

First is the joint invasion of Afghanistan by the US, UK, and the "coalition of the willing" shortly following 9/11 in 2001. We're still there. We've been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for nine years now. That's longer than any other war America has ever fought aside from Vietnam. And we're on the way to passing that one. Believe me. Second is the even more ill-advised invasion of Iraq originally to be termed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some genius at the Pentagon realized that spelled OIL. Known as Operation Iraqi Freedom, we've been fighting there since 2003. "Combat Operations" are over now. Twice. Once for each President, natch, and we only have 50,000 more fighting men and women there.

But you all know this. In short, these kids don't remember. They have never experienced a world without these problems. And unless we get our house in order and start framing our policy around something other than a regrettable tragedy of nearly ten years they won't ever know anything else.

Getting Personal

2010-09-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

This post is going to be a lot more personal and a lot less political than usual. Feel free to skip it. I'll try not to do this too often. Then again, as the feminists taught us, the personal is political.

I have lots of things I'm good at. Unfortunately, right now they feel like they're none of the things I NEED to be good at. I just graduated college in what has to be the crappiest job market since the early Eighties (see, this IS political) and now I've moved all the way across the country to live where I want to. I have my Bachelors in Landscape Architecture (really, politics is just a hobby). So, I'm good at all sorts of things. Staying amused through the internet, video games, riding my bike, blogging, photography, bonsai, fishtanks, all sorts of things. But I'm not good at things like this. Applying for real jobs, interviews, treading the fine line of honest but not too honest during interviews, paying bills consistently, finding a job that pays more than minimum wage, seeming like I can actually do what I went to school for, and generally acting like an adult.

Unfortunately, those are the things I need to be good at right now. In another time, in another economy I could get an entry level job at some firm somewhere where no one expects me to be good at anything particularly other than learning to be good at things. Which is something I'm good at. But in this economy all the jobs I'm finding are jobs that require experience or being able to feign experience. Which I'm bad at. In short, to get the job I've been told I need I need to be good already at all the things I'd just pick up along the way in an entry level job.

This is all due to the economy. Since there are no entry level jobs I have two options. I can fight it out in the viper pit for something minimum wage at the nearest grocery store or whatnot which seems to be what most people with an education below PhD are doing. Which is why I'm having no luck there. Why hire someone with a Bachelors when you can hire someone who has a Masters to stock shelves at Safeway or Kroger? Our economy is so week right now that people with Masters Degrees are looking for part-time, minimum wage work. How am I supposed to compete? Or for that matter people who dropped out of high school or have GEDs? Geez. They're really screwed. My other option is to apply for all those jobs I feel totally unqualified for. And even if I am, and even if I get hired, I'll be scared to death to even go to work. I mean, really? Putting me in charge of things?

2010 Overview

2010-09-05T01:45:00.000-07:00

On September 4th I think it's about time to take a minute to talk about the election coming up in November. Overall the narrative coming out of the 24/7 news machine is that it's an anti-incumbent, anti-democratic year. That's only partly true. It is an anti-Democratic year insofar as every midterm after a new president is elected is an anti-enter President's party here year. It isn't as much an anti-incumbent year as has been harped on by that same news machine. Only a couple handfuls of incumbents have lost so far; Arlen Specter, Bob Bennett, and Lisa Murkowski coming to mind. If this were truly as anti-incumbent a year as the media wants to claim it is you'd have seen upsets of other candidates like Blanche Lincoln and John McCain from the determined challengers they faced. But lets look more broadly at what we can expect.

For breakdowns of individual races, and all the statistics you could ever want check out Five Thirty Eight, which recently moved to a shiny new NY Times page. You'll find Nate Silver and his team's regressions predicting what will happen come November based on polling data. I'm going to go with something close to an educated guess using what I know (which includes Nate's regressions). All of what I said is true above. It's still a nasty year for Democrats. We can talk about why that is for hours. Some of it is the Bush Economy that we're still reeling from, some of it from simple electoral functions, and some of it from how badly the Democrats have dropped the ball on their messaging. Despite the Party of No, the DNC has plenty to run on including Health Care Reform, Credit Card Regulation, changes in the Student Loan department, and much more. And they're doing a terrible job messaging. This whole summer has been about nothing but how crazy the right is now. And even if they're scary, if that's all we're talking about, somebody at the DNC isn't doing their job. Scratch that. Everybody at the DNC isn't doing their job.

I expect the Democrats to hang onto control of both the House and the Senate this year. There. I've said it flat out. I don't expect it to be pretty and I don't expect their majorities to be described in terms besides words like small, pitiful, and ineffective, once the voting is done though. On the ugly side, that means we're likely to end up at 112th Congress that's even less effective and even more gridlocked than the 111th. On the good side, if the Democrats can maintain control of Congress, then they get to do the redrawing of the House District lines. That is something that we simply can't afford to have Republicans doing. Redistricting occurs only every ten years to match up with newly updated data from the Census. It has a much more far reaching effect on the country than having the Democrats receiving the blame for a highly divided and ineffective 112th Congress. As not fun as that will be. I'll be this up front about it. It is imperative that men like Jim DeMint and Chuck Grassley do not get to redraw the House Districts. Not that I expect the Dems to be wholly non-partisan if they get the opportunity, but because when Republicans do it, the do it for keeps. They use (dare I say abuse) the power to disenfranchise large groups of people of color and other maligned minorities. They manage, in essence, to mathematically for stall the day when conservative, white, fundamentalist Christians don't rule the roost. That day is coming, and having house lines drawn to represent the new makeup of America rather than fight it can make it arrive sooner.

And if I'm wrong? I expect the House to fall before the Senate. And while the idea of "Speaker Boehner" scares me to death (for the record, I'm not a massive fan of Speaker Pelosi either), it's better in the long run than having the Senate full of Republicans again. Not to be forgotten is the tiny (teeny tiny teeny teeny tiny) advantage of having the President of the Senate on our side. Who's the President of the Senate? Why, the Vice President of course, Joe Biden. In cases where the Senate ends in a tied vote, the Vice President casts the tie breaker. One of the many rewards for winning the Executive two years ago.

So in short, get on message, get out the vote, cross your fingers.

Mission Accomplished! Again!

2010-08-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Having just finished watching President Obama's prime time address on the end of the Iraq War, I thought I'd put my thoughts to digital paper. A simple list of "pros and cons" if you will, seems a good place to start.

Cons:
As the title suggests, this felt, to me, very much like President Bush's "Aircraft Carrier, Mission Accomplished" speech. The fact is that, whether the mission title has changed or not, whether the troops left are classified as "combat troops" or not, we still have 50,000 American warriors stationed in this country.

I saw very little discussion of what we've actually accomplished. This was very much more a "we're done" speech than a "we've won" speech. Trying to point to tangible things that have spelled a US victory in Iraq is hard. And Americans, more than any other country in the world, don't like losing wars. Or even ending wars on an ambiguous note. We tend to accept as the American public, nothing short of full blown victory. And that's hard when you can't define victory.

This speech was INCREDIBLY kind to the Bush Administration. So kind I don't even know how to talk about it. If we track back, the first reason we invaded was because Iraq was in bed with al Qaeda. That didn't hold up. And so, the justification for war became Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We launched our invasion under those premises. When it became clear that there were no WMDs in Iraq the reasoning morphed again. And ever since, we've been in Iraq in order to bring "freedom and democracy" to "that region of the world". Which is really just a nice metaphor for we're already there and would look foolish if we left now. I understand that President Obama doesn't want to dwell on the Bush Administration. He doesn't want to dwell so much that his administration refuses to haul anyone of any importance up on charges. Fine. We'll just let our own government break the law. It doesn't matter.

Pros:
Well, there aren't many. It's true that this is a step (a baby step) toward ending this unjust and prolonged war. It's also true that this is sticking to the time table that President Obama set up for leaving Iraq after entering office. Maybe that means we can believe him when he says the 50,000 men and women who are still there will come home next year. And finally, it means that the President is fulfilling a campaign promise.

Those lists are a bit lopsided. I'm reporting. You decide.

Dirty Politicians

2010-08-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

Its long been no secret to progressives that one of the most important things a politician can do is put their money where their mouth is. No. Let me rephrase. Where a politician gets there money becomes their mouth. Or what comes out of it. Something like that. You know what I mean. I personally feel like Republicans (especially those on the far-right) don't care so much about where you funding comes from if you vote the right way. But that's another post.

One of a number of key planks of the progressive agenda is tackling climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, getting anyone in Washington to move on this subject seems to require Herculean efforts. And for every dollar in a politician's war chest that comes from a group who is into climate change denial or just doesn't want to do anything about climate change, the less likely that politician is to want to be part of the solution. Without further adeu I present the top 10 Democratic and Republican incumbent Senators in terms of campaign contributions from the oil and coal industries. Let's take a look at this list and break it down a bit. The first couple of things I notice are these:

Fully 1/5 of all Senators owe the Oil and Coal industries at least $10,000 in campaign funds
17 of the 20 that make up that 1/5 owe at least $30,000
Republicans usually owe considerably more than Democrats
The number one benefactor is Democrat from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln (ahead of Lisa Murkowski from Alaska!)
The list of "honorees" don't call any one region of the country home
Russ Feingold is now the senator from the great new state of Wisconscion (probably a new, weird scion of Wisconsin)

It's important to know where your elected representatives get their contributions from. It's important to know because these contributions don't come free. They come with the expectation that these senators will do favors for the industries who did the giving usually worth many times the amount donated. Recent examples include Ben Nelson and the teat of the healthcare industry as he fought valiantly for his insurance buddies to eliminate the popular Public Option from the Health Reform Bill and Blanche Lincoln and the epic job she's doing for the Oil industry in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Spill. That first link for Lincoln also has a drop down for different years. 2008 tells us that John McCain received more than double the donations that the President did from the Oil and Gas industry during the 2008 campaign.

The fact is, our political system rewards politicians for diving into the very bottoms of lobbyists pockets and coming up with as much cash as they can. Winning a race for House or Senate is expensive. That's why decisions like the recent Citizens United v. FEC case so directly effect who represents us and what kind of government we can have. Before the Citizens United case there were caps on how much money a corporation could give to a candidate. Now, there are none, so you can expect to see those numbers go up in the next few election cycles. This sort of buying and selling of elected representatives has been going on a long time, but it has gotten much worse in the last few decades. We need to put a stop to this in the only ways we know how. We have to give our time and our money to candidates who really deserve it. Who aren't in some industry's pocket before the ever step foot in the Capital Building. And even more important that our time and our money is our votes. Research the people who are on your ballots. Especially for high federal positions like House, Senate, and the Presidency. Statistics show that once you get to Washington, you usually leave by choice. The incumbency effect is a powerful thing. Let's use it to our advantage and get people who answer to us and not to industry elected to the 112th Congress.

Afghan Update

2010-08-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

This one's gonna be short and sweet folks.

This story originally posted in the New York Observer is making the internet rounds, including Huff Po and boingboing.net. It posits that the reporter who wrote the story accompanying the photo of the Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban (that I posted and linked to here) has a conflict of interest because her husband is involved in the Afghan occupation. While I agree that the article in Time was pretty pro continued war, my post was not. But I do think that since I linked to the story and it is still evolving in significant ways that you should be made aware. If it's important to you, go ahead and read John Gorenfeld's article that I linked to above.

Just so you know.

I've remembered!

2010-08-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

If you read my previous post on SB 1070, the for-profit prison system, and marriage equality you will remember that I said I had another issue that I thought important to discuss but had forgotten it at the time I sat down to write. Well....I've remembered!

It's this "Ground Zero Mosque" business. Everyone's freaking out. The President has weighed in on the topic during the annual Iftar dinner (did Bush do that too? Would that make him a closet Muslim?) at the White House. Polls have been taken every which way with (surprisingly) Fox News' being the best. And news and opinion people of all stripes have had their say. So now I'm going to have mine.

Firstly, check out the map at the top of the 538.com post I linked to. It's the second link down in the above paragraph. That's what people mean by "at Ground Zero". They actually mean not at Ground Zero. The proposed location is some 5 blocks from Ground Zero in a closed Burlington Coat Factory. So important fact number one is that when someone says, "They're going to build a Mosque at Ground Zero! That's so wrong!" they have their facts wrong.

Important point number two, more widely disseminated by the media, is the fact that this is really a community center. It will have worship spaces. But it'll also have a swimming pool and art rooms and all sorts of stuff. It's a sort of Islamic YMCA as this sketch from Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes clear.

Important point number three, which should be noted to be the most important, is that Amendment One to the Constitution states in part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

That's the first part of the very short, very explicit First Amendment. Our country doesn't have an official religion. Congress can't make an official religion. And people are free to practice their religion how, when, and where they want provided that it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights; which Islam doesn't.

President Obama had a moment at the Iftar that I think reminds me of the way he talked on the campaign trail. It's very moving. In part, this is what he had to say.

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.
But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

You're free to make the argument that a mosque or Islamic cultural center that close to Ground Zero is in poor taste. I don't think it is. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who want to actually stop the construction/move in. They want to use eminent domain and other governmental powers to keep this from happening. And that's unconstitutional. In short, I don't care if you think muslims are the spawn of satan. In this country they're free to worship. And I'll fight for that right. Me. The damned atheist. Freedom of Religion, as it's enshrined in the Constitution doesn't just mean Protestant versions of Christianity that you're okay with. You don't get to pick and choose. The freedoms granted American citizens by the Constitution come free to everyone regardless of race, color, creed, sex, religion, ability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, pregnancy, how many piercings they have, whether they like oranges or not, or any other status that you can thing of to use to discriminate against people.

Let's be honest. This is just intolerance and muslim bashing. Just like the rest of the last ten years. I'm pretty thoroughly ashamed of my country and how it has reacted to the events of 9/11. It could have been a turning point for us and for the world. Instead it's just another excuse for war and division.

EDIT: They have a wonderful post with a couple of points I didn't even think of over at Feministe. Take a look.

Mashup

2010-08-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Today's going to be a bit of a mashup because I have several things I want to talk about. Marriage equality and a bit of SB 1070 related news out of Arizona. I had one other thing but it's escaped me. Let's start with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, SB 1070 (the Papers Please Law), and the Corrections Corporation of America.

First, the facts. It is not actually against the law to be in America without documentation. From the way the media talks about undocumented immigrants I know that that may surprise some of you. So that means that Paper Please isn't just some new law seeking to crack down on illegal behavior, it's seeking to make a behavior that isn't against the law now illegal. And what usually happens when you break the law? You go to jail. Here's where this article comes in from Phoenix's CBS 5 news. That article is really ancillary to the one I was searching for but can't find. It contains the most important bits though. Here's the quote.

A recent CBS 5 News investigation found that two of Brewer's top advisers have ties to the private prison industry. One is a current lobbyist for Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA. The second is a former lobbyist for the same company.

The second one mentioned also has a wife who is still lobbying for CCA. In short, by passing SB 1070 and making being in Arizona without documentation (or, honestly, looking like you might need documentation that you don't have on you right now) illegal you would be sending thousands of prisoners into the heavily used private prison system in Arizona which is not exactly run by, but certainly dominated by CCA. It's all a big corporate scheme to net her friends in the private prison-industrial complex as much money as possible at the expense of all those nasty brown people she doesn't care about. When asked about the lobbying connections by two of her senior advisors Governor Brewer consistently refuses to answer and even pulls a Sharron Angle and runs away. She knows what she's doing, she's been caught, and she doesn't want to admit it to the people of Arizona. Because she wants her own term as their Governor one day (she was elevated to the top spot when Janet Napolitano, a democrat, accepted the directorship of the Department of Homeland Security from then newly elected President Obama). That's about all on 1070. On to Marriage Equality.

You know what I hate about the fight for Gay Marriage? That it's called Gay Marriage. And that it's viewed as the most important fucking thing on the "gay agenda". You know, right there at the top of the list in big bold letters. Everything else is secondary.

Queer people are fighting for the right to get married. Not the right to get "gay married" and as long as we, straight people, and the media keep talking about "Gay Marriage" it's going to be viewed as something separate and different from the institution of marriage that straight people are used to. When you're married you do all those things that married people do. When you're gay married somehow being tied to the bed doing it up the ass while wearing skin-tight leather outfits becomes mandatory in peoples minds. It's just another way to make those of us who are restricted from marriage currently seem weird, alien, and not at all deserving or the right to get married. It's just damned othering!

Let's not even talk about how all the energy put into marriage equality by organizations like the Human Rights Campaign is that much less energy that is used to work on issues that affect all queer people regardless of whether they're partnered, poly, or ever interested in marriage at all like ENDA, housing issues, and general acceptance. I would be much more supported right now if we were to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA than if Congress were to make marriage equality a reality as much as I might cheer for it. And what about those of us who are romantically involved with more than one person. Oh damn! That's right, I said it. Some of us crazy queer liberals might actually WANT to be married to more than one person. We might want all our relationships sanctioned. I know that's one of the BIG SCARY things that conservatives continue to talk about. That if we make gay marriage legal suddenly people will want to marry more than one person. And that would affect you in what ways that letting just two strangers you've never met be married doesn't?

So in short, my rant is that we're viewing this as a Big Freaking Deal when it really shouldn't be, we're talking about it in ways that are unproductive, and we aren't thinking about everyone. Still!

Sorry for all that.

Marriage Issues

2010-08-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit behind the times as far as reporting on the Proposition 8 ruling in California. I've been at work, so forgive me. I'd skip it, but I'm queer and so this is sort of a big deal. More than just break down the ruling, which I'll be doing a bit of, I hope to talk about this issue more broadly.

So, yes, Wednesday afternoon Judge Walker in California District Court ruled that Proposition 8 which passed in California on the same night as President Obama's election in 2008 is unconstitutional. He ruled that it violates both the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Section 1 reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [bolding mine]

The bold section there is the particularly important part. States, like California, cannot make laws that violated that bolded section. By saying that straight couples (and individuals by extension) are able to marry and gay couples cannot it sets up two unequal groups in direct violation of that last section about "equal protection of the laws". Less talked about, but I think no less important is Section 5:

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Seems to me that Congress should be getting along about now to make sure our equality is protected by law. Good luck getting them to do that one.

Now I'm going to dissect the ruling for a bit. It's downloadable online but it's 136 pages so this is by no means a thorough job.

Reading through, the first bit of text that really strikes my fancy is this.

...proponents in their trial brief promised to “demonstrate that redefining marriage to encompass same-sex relationships” would effect some twenty-three specific harmful consequences. At trial, however, proponents presented only one witness, David Blankenhorn, to address the government interest in marriage. Blankenhorn’s testimony is addressed at length hereafter; suffice it to say that he provided no credible evidence to support any of the claimed adverse effects proponents promised to demonstrate.

Mr. Blankenhorn was, in fact viewed by the judge as pretty much non-important. He has no credentials to suggest that he's an actual expert on relationships, marriage, or the government. All the things he was claiming to be an "expert witness" on. Continuing. In a section entitled "Credibility Determinations" the judge had this to say about Mr. Blankenhorn.

David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, testified on marriage, fatherhood and family structure. Plaintiffs objected to Blankenhorn’s qualification
as an expert. For the reasons explained hereafter, Blankenhorn lacks the qualifications to offer opinion testimony and, in any event, failed to provide cogent testimony in support of proponents’ factual assertions.

I think that speaks for itself. But it continues.

The court permitted Blankenhorn to testify but reserved the question of the appropriate weight to give to Blankenhorn’s opinions. Tr 2741:24-2742:3. The court now determines that Blankenhorn’s testimony constitutes inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight. [bolding mine]

Moving on. Later in the document come what is referred to as "findings of fact". As it has been explained to me, these facts must be considered by any appeals court and the Supreme Court should the case be appealed that far. Among these findings are tidbits such as these.

19. Marriage in the United States has always been a civil matter. Civil authorities may permit religious leaders to solemnize marriages but not to determine who may enter or leave a civil marriage. Religious leaders may determine independently whether to recognize a civil marriage or divorce but that recognition or lack thereof has no effect on the relationship under state law.

21. California, like every other state, has never required that individuals entering a marriage be willing or able to procreate.

There are quite a few interesting findings of fact included in the ruling so I suggest you download it if you want to read up on a few more of them. I'm going to stretch this out into two posts so look for a broader discussion of the topic sometime soon!

Exit Strategy

2010-08-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

That is the current cover for Tiime Magazine and it's causing quite a stir. While I don't necessarily support using women like this to sell magazines, the image tells a powerful story about our presence in Afghanistan and our exit strategy. The abridged story is here but you have to actually buy a copy to read the whole thing. Or sneak into your local Barnes & Noble and just sit down. Either way.

This is an excellent illustration of my larger issue with a simple withdrawal from either Iraq or Afghanistan since my conversion from blind Republicanism several years ago. Sure, upwards of 90% of the country can now agree that if we could go back in time and not elect George Bush/not invade Iraq and Afghanistan it would be a good thing. But we can't. We've been in Afghanistan for nine years now and Iraq for six. We've spent unimaginable resources and the lives of some 5,000 US service members not to mention a number of Iraqi and Afghan deaths that is almost impossible to calculate and the total hours and manpower spent discussing and debating the topic here in America. We ARE there. Sure, from our side of the fight it seems to be a great idea to get out while the getting's good. This is why President Obama ran on a platform of rapid and responsible withdrawal from both conflicts. The wars aren't popular at home. But have we taken a look at what withdrawal will mean to the countries we will be leaving our mess to? This is by no means an endorsement of continued fighting. What I'm saying is that the answer is far more nuanced that just a simple call to "bring them home" as we liberals are used to crying.

I believe (don't quote me) that we have been asked at least once by the Iraqi Provisional Government to go ahead and leave. If that's the wish of the Iraqi people I'll be the first to say we should comply. But I don't think we've had anything that specific out of Afghanistan. And that's where the woman pictured up top comes into play. There has been an increasing call/realization that any sort of meaningful withdrawal from Afghanistan will mean negotiations with the Taliban. In fact President Hamid Karzai has gone so far as to invite the Taliban to run for Parliament. This strikes me as frighteningly similar to the Hamas government that was legitimately elected in Gaza and Hezbollah's governmental aspirations in Lebanon. Legitimate, yes, good for the country as a whole though, probably not. The woman featured on the Time cover ran away from an abusive husband. When the husband found her at her family's house he went to the Taliban for a judgement. Her punishment was to have her nose and ears cut off with a knife. This was a little more than a year ago, eight years after the US entered Afghanistan. This is the sort of thing that may return in full force if the US leaves and the Taliban participates in and especially gains a majority in the Afghan government.

Many are hopeful that Afghanistan's Constitution will provide some protection from these sorts of abuses as the US leaves. Currently it does provide for women's rights as well as a mandatory female representation in Parliament of at least 25%. I think these things are good for Afghanistan. But what do I know, I'm just an American with a vastly foreign view on a place I've never been.

I'm not proposing to have the answers in this post. What I am suggesting is that the situation is much more complicated than even the best reporting we've seen in the United States would suggest. I think that much of what we ought to do will depend on what the Afghans themselves say they want. But in basing our reactions on that we have to understand just WHO it is that is doing the asking and whether they represent the whole population or not.

Discuss?

Here we go again.

2010-07-29T04:04:00.000-07:00

My friend E who has his blog over at www.impossibletospell.com has an older post that I just now got around to reading that I think might be worth taking a look at. You can find it here. In it he posits essentially that there will be a "bubble" that is created around "green" jobs (specifically biofuel) much in the same way there was the .com bubble that was created and then wreaked havoc when it burst in the late 1990s. I think the theory is sound and want to play around with this idea a bit. Forgive me.

He starts by addressing the economics of the issue, talking about supply vs. demand and the Peak Oil phenomenon. All right on the mark.

I know environmentalists have been going on about peak oil since the 70′s, but it is bound to happen sooner or later. Note that doesn’t mean we’ll wake up one day to find the wells all dry. Just that we’ve drilled the most convenient wells first, and the price of oil will go up as the petroleum industry has to move on to lower grade wells, in less convenient places (ahem, Gulf of Mexico, ahem), at greater cost.

He wrote this fairly early into what is now the Deepwater Horizon Saga but you can see what he's getting at. In fact, I would argue that unless government regulations about where and how we drill for oil change, especially in very deep waters we're going to have more Deepwater Horizons in our future and it's because we've already hit peak oil and are beginning to feel it. The Deepwater Horizon well is in 5000 feet of water. That's a mile under the surface of the ocean essentially. Do you think it was cheap for BP to drill that well? And do you think if there were easier wells for them to drill they'd drill them? Yeah. We've already tapped the easy stuff. Now it's just a question of watching as quality goes down and price goes up. We've already had a little taste when gas was $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008 and a simple google search of the terms "$4 a gallon gas" produce a number of predictions that we'll see it again before the summer is gone. In milder terms, we've already mentally adjusted to a shift. I paid $3.13/gallon yesterday on the West Coast and I know that $2.50 is pretty normal in places where the prices trend lower than the national average. I can remember when gas was $0.99/gallon as a kid and how everyone started freaking out when it was suddenly $1.05. Welcome to the soft slide into the long fall that is peak oil.

Anyway, back to the biofuels. Simple high school economics explains why, as gas gets more expensive and it's quality goes down, alternatives that we now consider a tad too expensive will increase their market share. In fact, they already are in a tangential sort of way with the popularity of the Toyota Prius and new entries into America's fleet of vehicles coming soon like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt (just priced at $41,000!) A number of different competitors exist including biodiesel, wind, solar, hell even nuclear is on the table. Suddenly that giant pile of radioactive goo left over doesn't look so bad.

Moreover, many of those technologies are expensive for ‘fixable’ reasons–there’s room for more R&D to make them cheaper or more efficient, they haven’t had the chance to get good economies-of-scale going (look at the price on electric cars). Oil and coal companies have benefited disproportionately from having the living shit subsidized out of them, but that could change. Not that I expect the US will stop kissing oil company ass any time soon, but if Monsanto or the Iowa Corn Growers Association decide they want to be move into the energy market, they may get the way paved for them.

Yet another way to use the insane amount of corn grown in the midwest under federal subsidy. But farm subsidy reform and the food system are topics for another post.

He goes on to say, as I covered earlier up top, that the bust comes in if the economy does the same thing with new fuel sources that it did with the internet in the late 1990s. There IS an uncertainty about which of these new technologies will be what drives human power and innovation into the future. I'll grant that. I will however step aside for one moment and try and highlight one major difference between this and the .com bubble. While starting up an internet company requires capital it isn't physical in the way creating a company that builds thin-film solar cells or blades for an off-shore wind turbine are. I think that the physicality and the financial demands that are required to get in my be a hurdle that will help screen out all the "comp-sci dropouts with witty webaddresses", or at least a good number of them. Are their going to be businesses that fail as this industry emerges into its own, sure. But I'd like to think (and maybe I'm naive) that we'll figure this one out, if for no other reason than because we have to.

The real trick is that we an opportunity to set up a whole new industry here. Will we do it right, or will Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (metaphorically speaking) run the whole industry? We can just look at our government and see what happens when industry condenses to one or two major companies in an industry. You get crappy service and a high bill from AT&T and Verizon, it's all semantics which one you pick. You get screwed by the oil and gas industry no matter where the gas in your tank right now is BP or ExxonMobil. This is an opportunity we can't pass up. We MUST demand that this industry be built sustainably to create energy for us all instead of to create wealth for the very few.

And now we hit the crux of the matter.

...when I talk to non-scientists, including some really smart people about this issue, I hear a lot of variations on ‘Ok, so which one will it be? When the oil runs out, will we switch to ethanol? Will everything be solar powered? Who’s gonna win?’ The answer is, no one technology will replace the oil industry, ever. There’s no magic bullet. If oil and coal go way up in price, if consumers even ever start having to pay the full price of the mess they make, we’re not just going to swap one energy source for another and go on like nothing happened.

We need to get ready. Our lives are going to change whether we like it or not. If we don't prepare for it it just means that when they do, it'll be that much uglier. It means changing where and how we live, what sort of density we think is appropriate (hint: think Europe or China, not rural Idaho or suburban California), what, how, and how often we use our vehicles, where and how we buy our food, and what we do to make a living. The era of cheap, easy energy is over. We've used up what's on our planet. Now we get to figure it out.

Who's on cleanup duty?

2010-07-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

I was going to write an economic article tonight for you, but Mia Mingus, fabulous activist that she is, tweeted this story from AlterNet this afternoon and I have to write about it. There's a similar article up at thenation.com. The other post will be up soon.

In short, BP, who since capping the gushing well in the Gulf early this week has been a bit more off the radar than they should be, has been using local prison labor to clean up Gulf beaches. I'm a southerner born and raised. I don't know why I didn't think to write about this before. When I initially saw photos of the cleanup crews working on the beaches I noticed that they were pretty much all African-American men. That should have been all the tip off I needed to start digging and see where BP's labor force is coming from. I didn't. But thankfully several other people are on top of the issue. Although it's been WAY underreported in my opinion if it's only being mentioned now. This was also a topic for discussion for Mike Malloy on my way home from work tonight. It seems he was keyed in from The Nation article.

So, lets take a look at this situation critically. BP is a foreign corporation. The US has higher incarceration rates than most industrialized nations and the inmate population is heavily skewed toward men and racial minorities. Inmates have few recognized rights when it comes to work including little to no pay. BP gets a tax write-off for every inmate they employ in the clean up effort. And every employed inmate is one less Gulf Coast resident who isn't being hired in an economy where jobs are already scarce.

According to the Pew Center on the States 1 in 31 US adults are either in prison or on parole. Men are five times more likely to be imprisoned than women and African-Americans are four times more likely to be imprisoned than white Americans. Is it any wonder that BP is using our prison population to do this dirty and dangerous work? And then denying them the rights to talk to the public and the press as well as the right to wear protective gear and respirators? No one else in society seems to care about these people, their welfare, or their rights. So BP is just following our lead. They found a cheap, disposable work force to clean up their mess for them. They don't have to pay anyone to do the clean up and they get a tax break for doing it to boot! BP has been all about saving money here from the beginning. In fact, the drive to save/make as much money as possible is why we have this problem. Just days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig as they were finishing the drilling a BP employee made the decision to use six pins to keep the riser pipe in line rather than the recommended twenty-one. That's #2 on this list published on BP's own website for reasons the well failed.

This is about BP and their behavior, make no mistake. But it's about much more than that. We (that is Americans) have been using free or nearly free prison labor for years. Starting with the mental image of prisoners stamping license plates we now uses these people to clean up highways, mow public right-of-ways, make goods for government usage including basic protective gear for the military, and the list goes on. This is about race relations in America. When African-American men are over-represented in the prison population, and we willingly employ prisoners to do dirty, dangerous, and difficult labor for little or no pay, that's called slavery. We simply find different ways to justify it in our modern era. This Prison-Industrial Complex is the true reason for such harsh sentencing in non-violent drug offender cases that pass though the US Justice System. An excellent example is the 100 to 1 ratio for mandatory minimum sentencing for cocaine and crack as outlined below from www.drugwarfacts.org:

As a result of the 1986 Act, federal law10 requires a five-year mandatory minimum penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving five grams or more of crack cocaine, or 500 grams or more of powder cocaine, and a ten-year mandatory minimum penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 50 grams or more of crack cocaine, or 5,000 grams or more of powder cocaine. Because it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the same mandatory minimum penalty, this penalty structure is commonly referred to as the '100-to-1 drug quantity ratio.'"

What is not explained here is that many many times more African-Americans are arrested in possession of crack than white Americans. It's important that we keep feeding the system after all.

So, we feed the system and BP makes use of it. And the end result is that when BP makes an error and releases millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and then makes only a half-hearted attempt to keep it off the area's beaches, they call in the free labor to clean it all up later. Nobody will care.

Debt Hawkishness

2010-07-22T14:34:00.001-07:00

Lets take an overview for a moment. Republicans far and wide are making the argument that we need to pay attention to and take care of the debt and deficit and as such, many of the Obama spending programs are completely unaffordable. Leaving aside for a moment how this worry over the debt was nowhere to be seen during the duration of the most recent Bush Administration while the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Act and other laws like it as well as two off the record wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were put into effect, this is a very convenient argument.

Republicans say they are worried about the deficit to the point that any action on the part of the President to continue and expand the current, shaky recovery is unacceptable. They stop short however, at any action that affects Republican pet projects that might make an actual impact on America's debt.

Simply by allowing the 2001 and 2003 Bush Tax Cuts to expire along with his hold on the Estate Tax and allowing the Capital Gains and Dividends taxes to revert to the levels they were during President Clinton's administration as proposed in S. 722 in the 111th Congress as well as H.R. 470 and other similar bills we could save $3.5 Trillion through fiscal year 2017. That's simply by letting all of these tax advantage for the rich put in place by the Bush Administration to lapse. For those of you who are unaware, $3.5 Trillion is actually a dent in the federal debt of about $13.5 Trillion currently. Allowing any of these provision to be extended, as Republicans at large are running on, ADDS $3.5 Trillion to the federal debt over the next 7 years. Check out Florida Senate Candidate Marco Rubio's own website. He details his 12 ideas for helping the economy. Extending the Bush Tax Cuts permanently is his first plank! Remember that's $3.5 Trillion dollars through 2017. But the deficit and debt are just too much! Or watch this clip from Rachel Maddow. She covers all the salient facts. Carly Fiorina's discussion about how the tax cuts "pay for themselves" as well as each president's total debt increase running back to the Carter Administration. Spoiler, every Republican runs up the debt more than any Democrat.

Now that I've beaten that dead horse for a while, lets take a look at actual changes to the budget. I've written before about American defense spending and its relationship to our budget as a whole. But let me go over it again. We spend roughly $600 billion annually through the Department of Defense. That's more than the rest of the world combined. I'll advocate cutting the defense budget by half to $300 billion. If we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan that should be doable. All of this is with the understanding that such a cut would be implemented after going over the defense budget line by line with people who understand it better than I do, that is any such cuts would need military input.

The Federal Highway Administration got a budget of $40.1 billion in FY 2009. I understand that much of this goes to maintain existing roadways and that is a good thing. But we are still building new highways. The era of the car is over. Gas prices will only continue to climb as we move past peak oil. We need to look at ways to save in the FHWA and if not save, at least to redirect much of the funds dedicated to new road construction to other projects including intra-city light rail and HSR lines between cities. The administration has started doing this with the bailout funds but the percentages were far from adequate.

This post could go on and on. But it's intended to point out the pure hypocrisy of the GOP talking points as of late. If you are going to harp on the debt and deficit you can't keep advocating tax cuts for the rich and a 100% opposition to raising rates ever. The simple fact is that if the American people desire the continuation of services they have come to expect from their government including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare programs, and federal funding of Schools and Transportation along with a capable military and a growing middle class, the cash will have to come from somewhere. Because it sure isn't coming from anywhere now.

This just in!

2010-07-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

This just in! Some level of federal court has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. I don't have more details right now though I will soon and most certainly will do a post. The Rachel Maddow Show has some coverage that I'm off to watch hosted by Chris Hayes of The Nation while Rachel is doing her planned reporting from Afghanistan.

I'll have more, I promise.

Thurgood Marshall Take 2

2010-07-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

Let's take a look at this Thurgood Marshall as judicial activist meme that's coming out of the Kagan nomination a little closer. As has been noted, Marshall was a Supreme Court Justice for twenty-four years so he has no dearth of opinions to be looked at. First, a little Marshall history.

Marshall began arguing before the Supreme Court in 1940, the same year he became the Chief Council of the NAACP. During this part of Marshall's life he argued numerous cases including Chambers v. Florida that upheld confessions obtained under torture violate the 14th Amendment in an 8-0 decision, Smith v. Allwright that ruled that segregated political primaries were illegal in an 8-1 decision, and of course Brown v. Board of Education that struck down separate but equal as established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). That was a 7-1 decision. These are all race based cases and all of them are nowhere near split courts.

After Justice Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court in 1967 he sat for many other important cases and expanded his reach outside of the race based cases he mainly worked with while with the NAACP. In Furman v. Georgia, a 5-4 decision, Justice Marshall sided with the court that the death penalty was cruel and unusual and when, four years later, the court reversed itself in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was acceptable under the constitution he dissented in every other death penalty case he heard. In Teamsters v. Terry he held union members seeking backpay have a right to a jury trial.

If this case history describes an "activist judge" so be it. But if that's the case then Justices Brown, Fuller, Field, Gray, Shiras, White, Peckham, Brennan, Douglas, Stewart, Blackmun, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, etc. are all activist judges too. Clearly, Justice Marshall has a liberal judicial record. That isn't under dispute. He's viewed by pretty much everyone in that context. But I think this simple overview shows that there was nothing activisty about Justice Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was an Activist Loser!

2010-06-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

At least according to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. He's the leading Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee that is currently holding hearings for Elena Kagan's nomination to the SCOTUS. Since Senator Sessions is the leading Republican it's important to note that he's both heading up the Republican opposition to Kagan's nomination (psst, it's all for show) and would be the chair of the Judiciary Committee if the Republicans do the unlikely and wrest control of the Senate from Democrats in November. And he thinks that Thurgood Marshall was bad for the country. As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night on her show he is one of a very small group of people who are pretty universally considered to be the gods of the Civil Rights Movement in this country. Though I guess that should come as no surprise for the man who has, among other gems, called a white civil rights attorney a traitor to his race.

To more important topics at hand, the Kagan nomination. I think I've already mentioned earlier that I don't like her as the nominee. I'm sure she's great as Solicitor General and an all around nice person. She even got good reviews from the campus veterans groups while she was the Dean at Harvard Law. But she has the (in my opinion fatal) flaw that all nominees have for the last twenty years or so. She's more conservative than the justice she's been nominated to replace! We've gone way downhill as far as SCOTUS is concerned since the Warren and Burger courts. Also worth noting, the last four Chief Justices have been chosen by Republican presidents. And we won't get to pick another one for years because Chief Justice Roberts is only 55. In short, Democratic presidents in general need to show some backbone and nominate some true liberals for the court. Yes, doing this means being willing to spend some political capital on the nomination fight rather than some pet legislation. But there is hardly a more important responsibility granted to the Executive. Most justices serve for twenty years or more. The choice of who a president nominates can have lasting effects on the country for years after a president has served their term and indeed beyond their lifetimes. As an example, Ronald Reagan nominated still serving Justices Kennedy and Scalia as well as recent retiree Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice Stevens is being replaced only now and he was nominated by President Ford. Chief Justice Rehnquist was a Nixon nomination from 1971!

In short, is Elena Kagan qualified? Totally. More than qualified. Is she the right choice for the country right now when we already have a court handing down 5-4 decisions like Citizens United v. FEC? Definitely not.

Outmoded

2010-06-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

An important man once said, "The most frightening nine words in the english language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" That man was of course former President Ronald Reagan. It is, of course, this President than Republicans and conservatives have lauded since he left office in 1988 as THE American President. His ideas that government wasn't just a problem, but that it was THE problem have resounded throughout American politics and continue to this day.

Aside from my feeling that if you think government is such a problem, perhaps you shouldn't be in the business of governing I take other issues with this. But I'm going to borrow from President Reagan today and say that the most frightening eight words in the english language today are, "I'm from BP and I'm here to help."

Beyond any discussion of the Deepwater Horizon Spill as an environmental disaster or as something we can use to spur, as the President said last night a "clean energy future for America" I feel like we are seeing first hand the ways the deregulation beginning in the Reagan era from that deep-seated mistrust of government have left us as a people helpless. Sure, this has been the theme on the issue of Wall Street reform for a while now, but I don't think many Americans understand how deeply this deregulation has seeped into our corporate culture. Not only have the banks been freed to do what they please, but so have other major corporations, specifically in the energy industry. We saw it with the way Massey Energy was handling the Upper Big Branch Mine and we are seeing it, and reaping the rewards all along the Gulf Coast, in the response from BP, or lack thereof, to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Mother Jones magazine has an article up right now that talks about the campaign BP is waging to make sure the public doesn't understand how poor a job they are doing. You can check the article here. Make sure you at least scroll through the whole thing. The bottom section has photos of what appear to be simple paper towels that they're placing on top of the oil. As if Brawny is going to get the job done! "It's super absorbant! Why not?" BP's board says. In general I've found very few national media outlets that are covering this in the way it should be. Rachel Maddow has been right on the ball. Most of her coverage has been of the lame ass job BP is doing of keeping oil already out of the riser pipe off shores and out of sensitive marshlands instead of focusing on "capping the well" like everybody else seems worried about. Mother Jones is the other outlet that seems to be on top of things. All the other good reporting is coming from local Gulf Coast TV and radio stations as well as newspapers! Those silly things printed on paper that no one reads anymore. Remember them? Publications like the Times Picayune. Congrats to you guys. We're all paying the price though for the poor reporting.

Signs of the Times

2010-06-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

I've got two people that are new in the news that I want to go ahead and talk about for just a moment. They're names that you may have heard if you keep up with some political stuff on a daily basis. If not, they might be new to you. The first is Sharon Angle, the now GOP Senate candidate who is running against Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. She has a pretty cooky resume that we'll get into in a second. The second person is Alvin Greene, the Democratic Senate candidate who is running against GOP Senator Jim DeMint. He has his own special story as well.

First up we have the esteemed Mrs. Angle. She has routinely supported and espoused what could be generously called crazy ideas. She's of the mind that flouride is an international commie plot, we should pull out of the UN, and that privatizing Social Security is the best plan ever. Since she won her primary her website has been gussied up so that it looks better and some of the craziness has been removed. Cached images are available however. Check out motherjones.com Watching as the more mainstream (I use that word loosely) of the GOP try and put a shine on Mrs. Angle's website and try to play down her statements by putting her in front of cameras on Fox and Friends and letting her interviews go to Rush Limbaugh.

On the other side of the aisle, we have Alvin Greene. He is a veteran and former service member in both the Army and Air Force who is now unemployed and living with his elderly father. There has been a lot of discussion about where Mr. Greene got the $10,400 filing fee for the primary. Personally, I believe that a filing fee that is so high is pretty un-American. Both parties have huge filing fees as standard although the GOP's is higher still than that of the Democrats. I share some of the general public skepticism that has been explained by several different people including fivethirtyeight.com in the previous link as well as Countdown and Rachel Maddow. At the same time, I want to show some caution. I'm afraid that we're all way to willing to assume that Mr. Greene has done something against the rules because he is a southern black man and, by the display of poor speaking skills on his Countdown interview from the other evening. It's true that the situation is fishy, but I feel like the truth will come out and the question really is how shocked people are once the investigation comes to its conclusion.

Wait Just a Minute!

2010-06-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

There are a few things that have floated across my internets that I want to make sure you see and one big point I want to make.

First off, check out this post by Matt Davis, former Portland Mercury editor who's now living in New Orleans, on his personal blog. They held a mock funeral for the Gulf of Mexico. If the people who are at ground zero for this disaster are holding a funeral already, what do you think the odds of this turning out well are?

Second, the jobs numbers for May have come out and it's not too good. Five thirty eight has this post up explaining in great detail. But essentially, about 90% of the jobs added in May were temporary census worker jobs. The good news, even when you subtract the census workers at least we didn't LOSE jobs...

But the big point I really want to make here is that we're overlooking an opportunity. This is a horrible issue that's going on in the Gulf. It has business and environmental impacts. But we aren't using this (black) golden opportunity to push for true policy changes in our country! If there has ever been a better example of why we need to push, both as citizens, and as government policy, for a sustainable energy future with renewable sources of energy then I don't know what it is. This is it people!

I'm Back!

2010-06-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for being so quiet as things have continued happening around the world. I have been moving. Across the country if you must know. And it takes a bit to get plugged back into the world. Let along knowing enough to begin making commentary again. Just as a summary:

The BP Oil Spill is continuing after more than a month. We've tried the containment dome, the cut and cap, the junk shot, the top kill, booms of all kinds, fire, and what I'm calling the Pull and Pray (which is just what it sounds like). Now it looks like we're just waiting until the relief wells can be finished. Near the end of August. And this is all as we are heading into what looks to be a very dangerous 2010 Hurricane Season.

Thailand has been facing civil unrest for several months which culminated in a shoot to kill order from the military government in Thailand and the deaths of several of the redshirt protesters. See here.

We are still moving forward with the primaries in many states in preparation for the November elections. Now former Pennsylvania Senator and former Republican Arlen Specter is over and done with. Elections took place in Alabama today as well as Mississippi and New Mexico with South Carolina and some others coming in next week.

Also, at the beginning of my move the President nominated Elena Kagan to fill Justice John Paul Stevens' seat on the court. She is the current US Solicitor General. Some of you probably want to know what I think of her and the truth is that I haven't had the time to do a thorough search and read up enough. But my gut instinct from what I've heard from national media sources is that she isn't liberal enough. She doesn't come close to the "liberal lion" that some have called Stevens. And anything less than Stevens moves the court to the right which is as unacceptable now under the Obama Administration as it was when he nominated Justice Sotomayor. I'm not saying she's not qualified although some have quibbled over her lack of time on the bench. Just that she's to middle of the road for my (admittedly lefty) tastes.

So. Let's start with BP and the oil spill. I shouldn't really call it a spill. I should be calling it a geyser, or a volcano, or a gush, or a spilling. Or something to indicate that there's really no end to this thing. But leaving that aside, it's a wonder to me that we've done as little as we have to try and head off another problem like this at the pass. The President has put 33 exploratory rigs on hold and we're no longer issuing new leases. We've discovered the amazing lack of sense in what is laughably called the Mineral Management Service or MMS. But there are still literally thousands of other rigs in the Gulf and all of the United States pumping away. I understand that taking America's oil production to zero barrels a day may potentially increase the price of gas at the pump. That's a price I am willing, and I hope you are willing, to pay to protect America's environmental treasures. We've already destroyed the Louisiana Marshlands. Do we want to kill the California Kelp Forests and other such aquamarine jewels as well?

BP has made it as clear as any multi-national corporation can (which is not very) that they are willing to pay. While trying to get off the hook for paying. But still. Even if they were willing to write a big, fat, multi-trillion dollar check to pay for everything that doesn't fix it. Everyone is acting like, as long as BP pays then it's fine. Eh. Who cares! And oil spill here or there. No biggie. They could write a check for the US GDP and it wouldn't automagically clean up the environmentally sensitive areas that have already been or will be destroyed. Nothing but time can undo that. And a lot of times even time can't. Just take a look at Prince William Sound 20+ years after the Exxon Valdez. This subject has been beat to death. And so I will stop now with full knowledge that I will be back on this horse sooner rather than later. The only thing we, the people, can do is to keep ourselves informed and pressure our elected government to do right by us, and take care of BP.

And Now, A Post You Should Read.

2010-05-08T22:17:00.001-07:00

Just to get this out there, I'm white. I'm really white. I'm never sure if I'm doing what I should be be an ally to people of color. But I know good writing about race and whiteness when I see it. Read this story.

Womanist Musings

Republican Primaries

2010-05-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

So, in political news this bit about the Republican Primaries in Utah says a lot to me. The current incumbent, Bob Bennett, who is a three term Senator in a state that is by all real measures very red has come in a distant third to two different challengers for the Republican nomination. This is only really news in that it says to me that the upcoming 2010 midterms aren't inherently and anti-Democratic year. What they really are is an anti-Incumbent year. While this may not seem like a huge revelation it's important to note that we may lose a lot of seats on the blue side of the aisle, but we may get a whole new set of Republican senators and congress people who are less willing to be simply the voice of "No". While we may lose seats, we may, in the long run have a congress that is more capable of legislating. And that, in short, is a good thing.

2010-05-03T01:03:00.003-07:00

This is how the fight against Obama is being characterized. With Fawkesian subtitles, clever editing, and a sound track more fit to an end of the world/disaster movie than a political campaign. Obama isn't perfect. Not by a long shot. But this is why we need to support him in 2010 and 2012.

If you go to their website two things will happen. One, you'll think it's funny that only 113,000 people have taken their "pledge" so far as of the beginning of May and two, you'll notice that, way down at the bottom, it says, "Paid for by the Republican Governors Association". Just saying.

She's at it Again

2010-05-02T12:33:00.001-07:00

Friday saw another post by our beloved former governor of Alaska on her Facebook page in response to the Horizon Oil Spill. I thought about not linking it in order to not give her the traffic, but as I'm going to quote some of the post here I want it to be available to readers in full so as not to take the Governor out of context. Her note is here. As you might expect the core of her response is still "Drill, Baby, Drill", now wrapped in a shell of concern for the environment.

As an Alaskan, I can speak from the heart about the tragedy of an oil spill. For as long as I live, I will never forget the day the Exxon-Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and millions of gallons of North Slope crude poured into the waters of our beautiful Prince William Sound.

To be honest, I'm tired of this idea that only Alaskans understand the oil and gas industry for what it really is. We all buy their products, refineries are everywhere, and there are (as has been horribly demonstrated) other places where extraction is happening inside the US other than the North Slope and Prudhoe Bay.

Alaskans understand the tragedy of an oil spill, and we’ve taken steps to do all we can to prevent another Exxon tragedy, but we are still pro-development. We still believe in responsible development, which includes drilling to extract energy sources, because we know that there is an inherent link between energy and security, energy and prosperity, and energy and freedom.

I think it's safe to say that Americans understand the tragedy of an oil spill. But leaving that aside, if Alaska has done all it can, how come twenty years later the majority of tankers operating out of the Port of Valdez in Prince William Sound are still single hulled tankers? Could it be that replacing those tankers might cost Exxon and BP money that they don't want to spend and so they haven't been pushed to make necessary changes?

She does get one thing right. And I want to give credit where it's due. There is a link between energy and security, energy and prosperity, and energy and freedom. So why is it then, as a major news contributor and a political figure of some serious heft, Governor Palin hasn't used any of her significant power to push for more money for R&D on renewable energy generation, or more money toward the technologies that we already have? After all, we just approved the new wind farm off of Cape Cod. I agree that it was a tough decision but it comes down to whether you're willing to make the sacrifices to break America's dependency on foreign oil or not. Clearly the Governor and her friends in the Tea Party and the GOP aren't willing to make that sacrifice. For them, truly, national security always comes down to who to kill, what war to start, or what to blow up in that country several thousand miles from here. Even though their rhetoric says that they get it, they never seem to make the easy choices that will advance our national security and safeguard the lives of all Americans including those in the military.

The Governor also pushes the idea in her post that she (and by extension the GOP) has been tough on Big Oil.

This was the position I took as an oil and gas regulator and as Governor of Alaska when my administration ramped up oversight of the oil industry and created a petroleum-systems-integrity office to monitor our oil and gas infrastructure for potential environmental risks. I took a lot of heat for the stand I took “against the oil industry” (which is how political adversaries labeled my actions). But we took tough action because there was proof of some improper maintenance of oil infrastructure which I believed was unacceptable. We instituted new oversight and held British Petroleum (BP) financially accountable for poor maintenance practices.

If that is true, why is it that profits for Petroleum companies went through the roof during the Bush Administration? Well, besides the fact that two unnecessary wars opened up a big new market for them. Granted, the Obama Administration doesn't get off the hook. After all they just a few weeks ago lifted a ban on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that they are only now, in the light of a national disaster, walking back. The Obama Administration is, just like the Bush Administration, far to loyal to big business interests. We've seen this time and again from the deep water drilling, to the weak stance on Health Care Reform when Big Pharma got involved and now we're seeing it in Wall Street Reform. Everyone is to blame here. Every administration since the early 1900s, the Democrats, the GOP, the Tea Party, and yes, you and me. We take for granted that our choices at the pump and at the ballot box have no effect on these big companies and we're wrong. It's time, well past time, to make a conscious effort to drive less, take public transit, walk, and bike more, vote for representatives who legitimately want to control big business, and get America off our Oil Addiction, foreign or otherwise.

Copy and Paste

2010-05-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

This article over at Pandagon was excellent. It goes in depth on several other laws coming down the pipe in Arizona following Papers Please. I'm gonna talk about a couple of sections but you really ought to read the whole thing. All bolding is mine.

English-only is classic wingnuttery, right down to the bad faith. The stated intentions are to help kids, but the reality is that the initiatives are about making sure students don’t learn any other skills while learning English. It’s a racist program that aims to make sure the children of immigrants have just enough skills to do manual and service labor, but no skills that would make middle class aspirations a possibility.

This is the issue right here. Whenever right wingers have the "gall" to talk about immigration reform (and fewer and fewer of them are) it's always in the context of letting people into the country to do jobs that Americans refuse to do. They just want to gain the political points with the independents for doing immigration reform and ensure they're strawberries keep getting picked and their chickens keep getting plucked. These people are getting paid but usually minimum wage or lower to do these sorts of jobs. At the risk of sounding pretty strong language wise here, this looks like modern day, legal slavery to me. It's all about making sure that we have a poor class of people who have little choice than to do our dirty work. By keeping important skills from immigrants and children of immigrants we ensure that there isn't and there won't ever be a large, vibrant hispanic middle class. And that, ostensibly, is the American Dream. Which is bullshit itself, but that's another post.

Proponents really do believe that Latinos have nothing to offer, and they often treat them like they’re not even human beings. Immigrants especially get this kind of treatment. Having grown up in the Southwest, I can tell you that a lot of the racism that white people express has an undercurrent of insecurity to it.

I didn't grow up in the Southwest. I grew up in the Southeast and 100% of this is still the case. People get pissed when they can't understand what the people ahead of them in line are saying etc. This is, in my experience, a large part of the racism that still pervades the Old South in regards to African-Americans too. White supremacists seem to be deathly afraid that white culture, anglo culture, won't be able to survive unless it's enforced upon everyone. I haven't heard anything so silly in a long time. By that logic white people aren't as good. If our culture would die unless it's dominant than clearly people of color (who's many cultures continue to thrive while assaulted by white racism every day) are better than we are. You can twist this argument around all you want.

I Must Admit....

2010-04-30T18:28:00.001-07:00

I must admit to being pretty depressed with the state of the world right now. On top of the ongoing grievances of Iraq and Afghanistan, Darfur, Somalia, the near total collapse of the Greek economy, the total collapse of the Icelandic economy, that Icelandic volcano that's still causing some travel problems for Europe, watching the Parliamentary Elections in Britain get uglier, and I'm sure a thousand other things I could mention we have three issues just in the US that make me so frustrated.

So, if you were a bit too happy today here's your bit of sad.

First and oldest bit, the FBI is now probing Massey Energy to see if there was possible bribery involved in the flagrant violation of safety rules in the Upper Big Branch Mine that claimed the lives of 29 miners in West Virginia a few weeks ago. Since then there has been a much smaller problem with a collapse in a mine in Utah I believe where a handful of miners were also injured or killed. Both of these mines are non-union mines. American corporations have done such a good job over the last thirty years or so convincing the public that unions are bad news. It's starting to come back to haunt us.

In slightly fresher news, the Goldman Sachs case has gone a step up from unethical and wrong to possibly illegal. Now not only is the SEC charging Goldman with fraud in a civil suit, but the case has now been handed over to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. It looks like this is gonna get even uglier than it already was. You thought the language on CSPAN was bad the other day? Let's get ready to rumble.

And in developing news the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is now the size of Deleware. To make matters worse, the containment measures don't seem to be working, and we are now finding out that the slick is growing at five times the rate we thought it was. Whether that is something we didn't know, or was being kept from us is up for debate. As an aside to this story, the Administration is pretty much turning a blind eye. President Obama announced today that he would hold off on authorizing any more off shore drilling, but none was immediately in the works anyway. It's looking like the plan is to come up with some hand-waving in the form on "new safety regulations" before they go ahead and give projects the green light again. How hard is it to understand that the gains to be made from domestic drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (and ANWAR) are too little to make up for these sorts of disasters? It is time for Americans to do everything we can to end our abusive relationship with fossil fuels for the sake of our health, the health of our environment, and our national security. If nothing else, think if it as a war we can win without ever having to fire a shot. The best kind.

Edit: The slick is now, according to the Rachel Maddow Show, bigger than the state of West Virginia.

Florida Senate Take Two

2010-04-29T01:56:00.000-07:00

I want to do an update on the Florida Senate race as it looks like things will be shaking up a bit in a few hours. What has been talked about as a possibility up until now looks like it's going to come to pass, namely, as the St. Petersburg Times is reporting, Charlie Christ should be announcing his run as an independent in the race for the open Florida Senate seat. He's been trailing Marco Rubio in the GOP Primary polling for quite some time and doesn't seem to be fond of the idea of losing out before the general election. Historically the game plan for federal elections in Florida has been to run to your base through the primary and then scramble back to the middle to get as many moderates as possible by the general. This is mainly because Florida is a wild state from the conservative panhandle and northern area along the Alabama and Georgia state lines down to the cosmopolitan city of Miami with its large block of hispanic voters and more liberal heads.

A three way race shakes this dynamic up considerably. With three candidates you only need a plurality under Florida election law to win. As best I know there are no runoffs or tie-brakers. This can be a huge advantage for Christ but also for Rubio and Kendrick Meek the likely Democratic challenger. In this instance there will be much more running to the base for Rubio and Meek because both sides can at least hypothetically get their candidates 34% of the vote where 51% was impossible. What this also does though is give Christ wide latitude to sweep up an odd man out coalition of moderate Republicans, true Independents, and Democrats disaffected by things that the Obama Administration has or hasn't done that they disapprove of. His main issues are going to be fundraising and creating a viable infrastructure to run on without the help of the GOP.

I think this is going to turn out to be an infinitely interesting race between now and November. I think it could tell us just how many moderate Republicans are out there, being drowned out by the Tea Party right now. And it could also give us a shot at a Democratic Senator from Florida.

New Post: Arizona's "Papers Please" Law

2010-04-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

So this has been bandied about the internet for several days now and coverage has ranged from blogs to the mainstream media like Olbermann and Maddow. People have dissected this bill, sorry law, in every way they know how. Even the President has weighed in. But I feel compelled both by the gross nature of this unconstitutional bid to enshrine racial profiling into our country and my sheer boredom as I wait for my semester to end to say something myself.

This whole thing is so out of left....wait. Scratch that. This is right where our country has been headed. This is the logical conclusion to things that we've been dealing with and not objecting loudly to for several years if not decades by now. Like this or this. In a country where a sitting senator can say that he "supports racial and ethnic profiling" even when such things have proven to be both wrong and ineffective we shouldn't be a surprise. In a country where, 15 years ago, a horrible terrorist attack was carried out in that Oklahoma senator's home state by a white man who was a citizen of this country and yet we continue to view terrorists and immigrants as something foreign or other or different, we shouldn't be surprised.

This sort of bad mouthing of immigrants, and this sort of government endorsed hatred towards immigrants has a long and well documented history from the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to the No Irish Need Apply situation on the East Coast especially following the Potato Famine all the way up to the present day. The only thing that has changed is who we've decided is not as good as us. Now it's this Papers Please law and guys like Tom Tancredo (who thought he could be President!) standing up and saying we should make English the national language and require literacy tests before voting. Really? Literacy tests? I don't know how much you remember about domestic US history from...ohh...about 1875 until the 1960s. America has a history of using such tests and ideas to limit who gets to vote. They were applied in no uniform manner (only to people we wanted to discriminate against) and asked questions that most US citizens, white or otherwise don't know the answers to.

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement has PDFs of one such literacy test in Alabama from the early 1960s. It asks questions like, "If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?" Know the answer? I didn't either.

The point to be made here is that this kind of bunk has been an ugly part of our history for longer than we should care to remember. And it will continue to be a part of our history until we stand up and say that it's not okay. Remember, you can tell if someone's an illegal just by looking at their shoes!

More on Senate Races

2010-02-15T09:12:00.001-08:00

I read this today on Firedoglake and it got me thinking. Reid was/is looking at a very very difficult race for his own seat in Nevada. That's a big deal, even in a year that is as anti-incumbent as this one. But all of this is still up in the air. Will the Tea Party candidate run, my gut says yes. What we're essentially looking at here is the Tea Party serving as the Ralph Nader of the Nevada senate race. Only this time the Dems may come out on top.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I don't think I've said so before, but I don't like Harry Reid much. I think he's an ineffective party leader and he doesn't have enough spine to get the things done that need to be taken care of. But if I compare that to putting a Republican in that seat, I have to say I'm torn. On the one hand, if Reid loses, we get a new (hopefully more effective) party leader. Names like Dick Durbin have been thrown around. But, this scenario also means one less seat in the Senate for Democrats to be able to do the things we need them to do. I don't care what kind of reform you're pulling for most be it healthcare, the banking system, or something else; your best bet is to have as many Democrats in Congress as possible.

And One More Thing...

2010-02-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

I just got wind of this set of polling data from ABC News/Washington Post and Quinnipiac. Taking the two polls together it suggests that somewhere between 52 and 61 percent of the American Public supports trying terror suspects like the Underpants Bomber Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab in military tribunals instead of civilians courts. In this case the ABC News poll was of "adults" by phone; a very amorphous group, and the Quinnipiac poll was of registered voters. I won't pretend to be a polling expert. If you're looking for that then head over to 538.com to get all you ever wanted to know and more about evaluating polls.

In any case, I feel that even if these numbers were 30-40% instead of the 50-60% that they are, they would be too high. The Bush Administration tried terror suspects in criminal courts including Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber. Especially in the Reid case, which almost exactly parallels the attempted underpants attack, it has been shown that criminal prosecutions of these sort are usually successful (especially with an airplane load of witnesses). In fact, I think the biggest issue with this sort of trial is finding an unbiased jury. That, I think is also the biggest problem in the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial. Where are you going to find 12 unbiased people within 100 miles of NYC? Or anywhere in the United States for that matter?

In any case, the arguements that have been made against civilian trials stem from the position that most of the "enemy combatants" that we're dealing with are not American citizens and so have no Miranda rights and so forth. I would argue that while this may be technically true, the rights afforded Americans under the Constitution and annunciated in the Declaration of Independence are there because they were viewed by the founders as basic human rights.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

It is our duty as Americans to be better than those we oppose. Trying these men in civilian courts upholds the impartiality of our justice system as many on both sides of the aisle have noted. It also shows that we truly value that which is written into our basic founding documents. I don't see that we have any other choice unless we wish to return to the Bush era of being viewed as hypocrites by most of the free world.

Nominations get Nom'd!

2010-02-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

Today I want to take a second to talk about a back burner issue that most people don't think too much about. It's one that, never the less, can affect policy and real people's lives and can cause a lot of consternation in the Senate. If you guessed Nominations (judicial and otherwise) you guessed right!

Really the only time Senate nomination hearings get any kind of real press coverage is when we're in the market for a new Supreme Court Justice. And rightfully so. If we're only going to pay attention to this important part of the Senate's job occasionally, that is certainly the occasion to pay attention. But I'm going to make the arguement that these sorts of nomination hearings are much more important than that.

Currently, the GOP caucus in the Senate is holding up a number of nomination hearings. The most recent to make any kind of news is that of Craig Baker for a position on the National Labor Relations Board. His nomination failed with 52 yea votes. Take a minute and look at that. The Senate has 100 members. So if Mr. Baker got 52, why did his nomination fail you ask? Because of the ever present Filibuster. In the world of the Senate right now, the GOP is threatening filibuster on every issue. Every nomination, piece of legislation, and every other bit of Senate business. Even that which they themselves propose. It's a tactic to make the Democrats look like they're weak and can't get anything done. Other recent examples are Erroll Southers and the Shelby snafu from the New York Times and Talking Points Memo respectively. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby blocked every nominee waiting for Senate hearings. He's effectively holding up the funcitoning of government all by himself. In fact, the only thing more effective at that right now is the Mid-Atlantic Snowpocalypse. This is the problem.

I am realizing now that this is more of a filibuster post than a nominee post, but forgive me for positing that the two issues are hopelessly tangled up.

There are several options for solving our filibuster problem and getting the country back to doing business. Honestly, I'd rather get rid of it. This allows the checks and balances of the system to work best. In that sort of system any percieved overreach by one party will be checked, eventually by the other when they come back into power. The good stuff will remain however. Things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which the GOP was against initially (and still are) will stay because they recognize the political popularity of these programs. As it currently stands it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass a cloture motion. This is down from from the 67 originally mandated after 1975. I would argue that it needs to come down further if it should remain at all. Perhaps 55 or 53 votes would be better. But then again, at that point we're rapidly approaching cloture invocation at a simple majority of 50 which makes the provision essentially dead anyway.

I am sure I'll wax about this more later. It's an ongoing issue that will generate it's own news one way or the other. Likewise, I see it as an important question our Democracy is facing right now. I promise more coverage.

Senate Races

2010-02-09T05:45:00.000-08:00

It's taking a lot to get used to forming my own ideas to put on this blog. Give me a while to get into gear. In any case, I want to take a moment to talk about the Florida Senate race today. Or more specifically, the Republican primary between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio. This is an issue that has been brewing for a while, and in some contexts can be seen as representative of the larger issue in the Republican Party right now. A lot of talking heads have been saying that this race is a metaphor for the larger divide between the mainstream Republican Party and the Tea Party movement. While I would contend that the "mainstream" of the GOP is not that far to the left of the Tea Partiers anymore, how they view themselves within the party is really the important part here. Anyway, this article is what got me thinking about this issue this morning.

First off, the simple fact that there are outside influences like Mike Pence all the way from Indiana dipping their fingers into this race already is a statement on how big this is going to get. Believe me, this is Daschle/Thune territory that we're working toward. And it's just a GOP primary. Secondly, this race says loads about our political climate. By all accounts Charlie Crist is an excellent governor in both the big and little "G" senses. He's well liked in Florida. To see him slipping so majorly this early to someone like Marco Rubio says a lot about how the country, and really more specifically the GOP is going these days. That said, a moment ago I said, "this early". It is still early. The primary isn't until August 24th. Any manner of things could happen to turn Crist's chances around beginning with a fizzle in the popularity of the Tea Party. Stuff like this, especially Tancredo's comments could very well do that. Rachel Maddow's excellent coverage is here. Likewise, as strange as it sounds, President Obama could be Crist's biggest ally right now. If the momentum the President has been building since his Question Time with Congressional Republicans continues into the summer, the Tea Party could look very bad and a moderate seem the more reasonable choice to Florida GOP voters.

State of the Union 2010

2010-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about the State of the Union address last night. Some of those come from getting a bit more drunk than I ought to have. But many of them came from what the President said and how he said it. While the fundamentals of the President's speech were strong, to borrow a phrase, some of the content bothered me. I've already told you about why I don't hold with the spending freeze. Some of the other programs and policies that were outlined in the speech were, in my view, too conservative as well. We'll talk about them in the moment. Let's start with the good.

This was another address that the President delivered with style, gusto, and that Obama flair that we've all come to know and recognize. After eight years of a President who could barely speak the English language this still makes me feel good.

I'm obviously way behind. So I'll leave my thoughts at this.

Let Me Begin...

2010-01-27T05:35:00.002-08:00

Let me begin by saying that I intend to start all this off on the right foot. I'm going to do a big "Inaugural Post" following the State of the Union speech this evening. I will not, however be live blogging it, or micro blogging it or any sort of such thing, mostly because I will be at work. I work an hourly wage job part time in addition to going to school and so, this blog, as excited as I am about it, comes after those responsibilties. I ask that all of you out there on the internets bear with me. This is an ongoing project and I will try to be as prompt with discussions as possible. So at least let me tell you where else you can go to get the political discourse you so thoroughly desire. Let me, for the record say that I would try The Rachel Maddow Show or Nate Silver's 538 for discussions on big national issues. Both do an excellent job of analysis. The former of those resources is, as I am, an entity with a leftward spin to it, the latter tries to be objective and, I believe, does a fair job of it. I will most certainly link to both of these sites as well as many others regularly to help make my points, but I will also strive to add my own bit to the discussion as well.

Before we do anything of any real depth (which I will save for the breakdown of the State of the Union Address) I will say that the things that are coming out of the White House before the speech don't encourage me. The President is, as many of you probably already know, proposing a "Spending Freeze" for all discretionary spending exclusive of Defense, Intelligence, State and the like. I think this is a terrible plan. First, it is purely reactionary when the President needs to be proactive. He is seeing his numbers slide, as one would and should expect with an economy as it is, and is trying to do something to create a turnaround. However, adopting the economic strategy of the opponent you soundly defeated 14 months earlier is just poor policy. If the idea is to make Republicans, and possibly more importantly Tea Baggers, like him because he's suddently being mindful of the deficit, the idea is poorly thought out. When the deficit is brought up as it is regularly by the President's political opponents, the answer is to remind them of the deficits that they irresponsibly (and against their "Small Government" cries) ran up fighting two unnecessary and reactionary wars. And then to point out that the Federal Government is one of the only entities capable of spending currently, and that spending is exactly what is needed to keep this Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression.

Secondly, I want to challenge the wisdom of excluding the Pentagon from this spending freeze. If it really IS the right thing to do, why not include one of the biggest budgets in Washington? It looks to me like the President is trying to avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" and "not giving the troops the backing they need" when the Republicans in Congress are always going to accuse him of this anyway. I think it is high time that the Defense Department budget was looked at as a main contributor to our debt and deficit problem. Looking at American defense spending versus the Entire rest of the world would seem to support that we are spending way too much on defense. When there is so much talk in Washington about "trimming the fat" why is it that the DoD budget is viewed as 100% lean? The pie graph on the privious link would seem to support that we very nearly spend more on defense than the rest of the world put together. If we can't defend ourselves with, say, half that, or $300 billion dollars, it's time to ask what we are doing wrong.

More is to come after the State of the Union this evening. I think I've soapboxed enough for now.