The Amendments We Need

Welcome To Florida, 2012 Year Of Election

2012-01-31T20:36:00.002-05:00

Just as the month ends, I get a blog entry in, with a hopefully subtle insert of my estory available for download from BN.com right in the post title... :grin:

As I type this, the Republican primary race is counting up votes for delegates right here in the Sunshine State. Since my last observation about the GOP primaries, there's been a few changes: Perry and Huntsman both dropped out, Newt Gingrich actually won a state that shouldn't have been so surprising (South Carolina...), and even with the state of Florida already projected to go heavily to Romney, there's every sign that Newt is determined to stick in the race well up to the convention. Partly because he thinks he's got a shot at winning the Deep South/Baptist type of voters like he did in SC, but mostly because of that damned ego of his. (NOTE: Ron Paul was obviously in this race to the end, like in 2008. Mostly on principle, but partly because he gets to hang out with libertarian-esque celebrities...)

What's different this year is the money. The sheer amount of it. An insane amount of money that can allow a losing candidate to keep running when in previous election cycles anyone stuck behind third place when Florida's primary kicked in would have dropped out for lack of funds.

Say hello to the world created by the Citizens United ruling. This allowed third parties - deep pocket rich people, corporate lobbyists, unions - to form their own "committee" (PAC) in support or opposition of any candidate. While they could do this before, laws were passed to cap the amount of money raised and donators had to be identified. But Citizens United dumped the cap and the requirement to ID the big donors, meaning an unlimited amount of money can now flow into a third party Super-PAC that could aid a candidate. As long as the Super-PAC and the candidate's official campaign did not coordinate with each other (YEAH RIGHT), it was "perfectly legal".

What this has done has allowed candidates and any campaign for that matter to raise as much money as they can without fear of revealing who is sending in the million-dollar checks. As long as it goes to that Super-PAC, which can then pay for the expensive television ads, campaign gatherings, etc.

Fund-raising for official campaigns seem to be a bit low (UNDERSTATEMENT) compared to the amount of money the Super-PACs flout. But basically the problems are right there for all to see (if they want to see it):

The assumption that candidates will NOT coordinate with their Super-PACs is ludicrous, laughable, or worse (Romney and Gingrich have to know full well what their PAC buddies are doing when creating attack ads against each other);
This allows the richest of the rich who can afford to toss $30 million at a candidate and not even blink to basically buy the favors of that candidate. Anyone thinking there won't be any quid pro quo doesn't understand the concept of a bought politician;
Only the rich can even consider running for office, not because of the seed money to start a campaign but because poor people don't know anyone able to afford $30 million for a Super-PAC;
This is, simply put, legalized bribery.

The only noticeable effect, the one everyone does notice, is that it can prolong a primary season. Where I complained previously about how the state-by-state primary system was broken because most of the choices had dropped out by the third or fourth state, making it unfair that only the early states - Iowa, New Hampshire - got to decide for the rest of us, now the opposite problem arises: the possibility of the primary season turning into one long slug-fest between deep-pocket campaigns that will tear each other down to the point that whoever wins the primary will be too unlikeable to win the general election come November.

The solution I have about a One-Day Primary for all states is still a good idea. But first we gotta get the legalized bribery out of our elections process. We need public financing for elections.

And the Primary results in Florida? I hope the winner is None Of The Above...

Saturnalia Wish List 2011

2011-12-23T11:26:00.004-05:00

Io Saturnalia!

In this time of winter solstice and festive good cheer... I'm still out-of-work, still job-hunting, still coping with writer's block the size of Wisconsin, and coping with the recent loss of a beloved pet cat... Poor Page...

In this grey mood on a grey day, I realize I haven't yet sent Saturn my Saturnalia Wish List. I know this is a tad rushed, but here goes:

Wishing for a full-time job as a librarian assisting people with research needs;
Wishing for an election primary that ends with the Republicans putting up for 2012 the WORST possible Far Right Wingnut candidate... whadda ya mean, Gingrich is slipping in the polls? Anyway, a GOP candidate so reviled by the moderate and independent voters that massive turnout for Democrats overturn the GOP-controlled House and keeps Obama in the White House for another four years;
Wishing that the superhero movies scheduled for 2012 don't suck;
Wishing that Mayans return to our world and carve out a replacement calendar so that the doomsayers ranting about Dec. 22, 2012 being the END OF ALL TIME will shut it (dudes, it's the end of the fourth or fifth Mayan calendar: it just means there's no Mayans left to carve out another one!).

There, I hope this helps, O Saturn, in determining just how wacky the next year is gonna be.

Can I get a Io Saturnalia from you seven readers?

EDIT: I TOTALLY FORGOT THIS! My bad, Saturn, there's one more thing this Unitarian Pagan is hoping fer...

Wishing for the new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic! Oh man, the chance to play a Jedi Knight again... ooooooooooooh yeah...

As Fox-Not-News' War On Saturnalia Continues Unabated

2011-12-15T09:55:00.001-05:00

...I mean, seriously, I can't find any Greco-Roman pagans who even know what Saturnalia is, for Athena's sake...

I just wanted to make this observation about the ongoing disaster that is the GOP 2012 Primary race. All the insane debates, the rise and fall of various wingnut candidates all because Mitt Romney is a flavor most primary voters didn't like the last time he ran in 2008... I mean, we've gone from Trump to Bachmann to Perry to Cain and now Gingrich of all people is in the lead in Iowa and even now Gingrich's lead may be slipping to where Ron Paul is surging... All of this, all of the crazy going on, it made me realize this:

Doesn't the 2012 Republican primary race look and feel EXACTLY like Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year decathlon?

I know, I know. This is awfully Classist of me to wage such bitter, savage rage against a select group of idiots who can't realize their grandstanding on the debate stages highlight exactly how elitist, out-of-touch, and flat-out insane they really are.

And I honestly do not encourage this year's grouping of ~~Upper Class Twits~~ uh Republican Presidential candidates from shooting themselves in order to win the ~~Upper Class Twit award~~ uh the Republican nomination. ~~Mostly because it would be a waste of bullets~~ when a humiliating Electoral College result (I mean, at this rate the Republican candidate will get only South Carolina, Texas, and Idaho this November) would be more satisfying.

Now I understand why Huckabee and Christie and Daniels refused to sign up this round.

Having typed this, I just want to say to all Greco-Roman pagans out there Io Saturnalia!

As the GOP Primaries Race Toward Destruction...

2011-11-06T20:49:00.002-05:00

It's pretty much turned into a two-horse race.

It's a race between Mitt Romney.

And with whomever the Teabagger wingnut division of the GOP likes instead of Romney.

Currently that is, shockingly, Herman Cain. Which kind of caught me off-guard because Cain's resume was one lacking in campaigning history, campaigning skills, campaigning savvy. Something he still demonstrates even today.

But a lot of it had to do with how each of the Far Right wingnut candidates - Santorum, Bachmann, Newt, Paul, and then Perry - just flamed out too quickly or never had a serious chance.

I originally thought Bachmann had the wingnut vote all to herself. But somehow Bachmann failed to win over her own crowd, leaving room for Perry to sneak in and steal her theocon base. When Bachmann tried to sell a plan where as President she'd cut gas prices down to $2, she lost everyone (seriously, if a President had that kind of power, why didn't Dubya use it back in 2007 when the gas prices went to $5-$6?).

And then it was Perry as "the Savior" candidate (saving the Far Right from Mitt, that is). But then Perry faltered when it came time for him to do something he'd NEVER DONE BEFORE: Debate. He came across as more incoherent than Dubya ever did: Considering Perry has to overcome the impression of him being a Dubya clone when a majority of the electorate still hates the Bush The Lesser Years, that was pretty much that.

Newt Gingrich had run a sloppy, lazy campaign from the get-go. Whatever wunderboy qualities he "had" back in the 1990s (which were overinflated anyway), he doesn't have anymore. And on the matter of "Family Values" he's a proven hypocrite: all it will take is Bill Clinton making an ad saying "Hey, this boy was committing adultery when he tried impeaching me for adultery!" and Newt will be finished.

Ron Paul has his devoted followers, sure, but like any libertarian cult idol he's only of interest to fellow libertarians, who by the by ARE NOT THE MAJORITY EVEN IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

And I'm pretty sure Santorum never had a snowball's chance in the Flames of Perdition to begin with.

So why not Romney? Well, I've mentioned it before: Mitt has an electoral history he can't openly support (a health care plan that Obama duplicated for Obamacare); Mitt has a terrible history of flip-flopping so much he could work with Cirque Du Soleil; and Mitt is Mormon in an evangelical-led party that views his religion as a cult.

So it's become a race of Mitt vs. Not-Mitt: simply because Mitt is the party establishment's preferred choice (he's rich, he knows how to campaign, he's not scary to the moderate and independent bases), but he's not the preferred choice for the Far Right voting base that dominates the primary system.

This is where Cain re-enters the stage. Because what happened a few weeks back, when Cain offered up a simplified flat-tax plan he called "9-9-9". While the commentators, economists, and sane people reviewed the plan's basic details, they quickly determined it was a tax plan that would 1) make the federal deficit worse and 2) kill the economy. But for the voting base of the GOP - the Teabagger crowd, the ones who can't cope with concepts larger than what can fit a bumper sticker - that plan struck a chord. Mostly because it was a plan. Who cares if it worked? Cain got his surge by doing something the other candidates hadn't done, and because he was the first to propose a flat-tax plan that could fit a bumper sticker, he's getting all the attention now.

Even though Cain himself has changed the "9-9-9" plan to appease the critics (into something more horrific). Even though Cain doesn't even know how his tax plan really works. And even though Cain is now the subject of an erupting scandal surrounding a past history of sexual harassment when he worked for a lobbying firm.

Just try to remember: the "sane" ones in the GOP - Huckabee, Daniels, Christie - stayed out of this race even though they could knock Mitt off the podium inside of 10 seconds. It's because they know they'd have to cope with the Not-Mitt wingnut candidate as well: and the wingnut base of the GOP is behind the steering wheel, not Karl Rove or the campaign managers.

You know, they say you watch time moving faster as you get older. But I swear these election cycles are putting the brakes on...

Current Political Mood

2011-10-11T21:17:00.001-04:00

I'm just not inclined to think much about politics these days.

Even with the sudden uptick in the Occupy Wall Street news - and the Far Right blowback to something that can successfully counter their Teabagger movement - for some reason I'm neither thrilled nor contemplative.

There's still a lot of protesting and military action going on in the Middle East for example. Meh.

There's the economic meltdown in Europe still happening in slow motion. Meh.

There's the anti-voting BS the Republicans are attempting at the state level to suppress minorities, the poor, and college-age voters. Meh.

Just not feeling connected to the world at the moment, that's all.

Too much outrage burn-out? Too much stress coping with unemployment? Dunno...

A Repost of A Remembrance

2011-09-11T08:54:00.002-04:00

I posted this back in 2009. This is the tenth anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11.

I was at the main library in downtown Ft. Lauderdale meeting with other librarians in the tech lab (computers) departments. The library was switching to a new email system (groupwise) and they wanted us to perform the in-house training. Meeting started at 9 am. One of my coworkers was late, coming in and saying there was news a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers...
...When we finished the meeting, we left the classroom and walked out into the foyer area and up the escalator to the library’s main floor. They had dragged out a TV on a cart and was trying to get a signal. For some reason, TV reception was lousy in that building, and they didn’t have cable connection. I saw an old boss of mine who was also at the library for a meeting and approached her, asking what was going on. “Oh my God,” she told me. “There was another plane hitting the other World Trade Center tower.”
It took a few seconds. It took a few seconds to realize that one plane was an accident. Two planes, one right after the other… hitting each tower…
I knew then it meant war...

Not much has changed since 2009. Except that our fighting in Iraq is lessened now that our military and political presence there has dropped. The fighting in Afghanistan has increased, mostly through an attempt to finish the nine and a half years we've been there trying to keep the allies of Bin Laden from regaining power there.

A lot has changed since 2001, but most of it is due to political partisan BS that isn't appropriate to note during this somber moment. The one thing I can note is that Bin Laden is dead, answering for his part in the attacks ten years ago among some of the other sins he'd committed the years before. It may have been a bloody justice without the courtroom, but this was a man who admitted to his part and sought to commit more acts of war to prove himself mighty rather than decent. It was a bloody justice but it was done.

We are as a nation today opening memorials at the ground of the World Trade Center, and near Shanksville PA. There will be remembrances and muted celebrations across the country today. There isn't much more to do other than mourn the dead and build again...

What I Want To Hear From Obama On His Jobs Speech

2011-09-08T09:41:00.000-04:00

Obama is set to appear tonight before a Joint Session of Congress to present a plan for doing something about the horrendous unemployment numbers that are miring our economy in the most prolonged recession this nation's ever seen (it's getting into Depression-type numbers, which is never good).

These are some of the things I'd like to hear Obama say:

"There is growing evidence that businesses and corporations are intentionally overlooking the long-term unemployed. They are refusing to hire anyone who's been out of work longer than six months. Even if that unemployed candidate has years of relevant experience. This is wrong. This is unacceptable. It is prolonging our nation's economic woes by creating and expanding our unemployed population and putting more of a burden on our nation's social safety net already facing tight budget restrictions. This is creating a self-fulfilling belief that the long-term unemployed are unemployable because, well, you're keeping them that way. We need to look at this as discriminatory hiring practices, and we need to enforce hiring laws to tell corporations they need to hire more people who have been out of work for longer than six months, for longer than a year, for longer than two years. Hire the long-term unemployed first before even thinking about hiring people who already have a job. If we catch you hiring people who already have employment over people who've been begging and praying for work for years, we will fine your sorry corporate HR asses so much you'd think filing for bankruptcy will be cheaper."

"The vast long-term unemployed WANT to work. They want to make something of their lives. They want to earn a paycheck so they can feed their own families and pay for that roof over their heads. There's not a one of them who prefers sitting at home doing nothing and earning unemployment benefits that barely covers the cost of weekly groceries or rent. If any of you politicians even THINK of accusing the long-term unemployed as drug abusers or welfare queens, I will personally escort you to your district's or state's unemployment offices and have you sit there for six months so you can see how hard-pressed and desperate the unemployed REALLY ARE to find any work."

"That said. FUCK YOU JIM DEMINT. FUCK YOU AND YOUR BULLSHIT FANTASIES ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYED BEING LAZY." (NOTE: Yes, I want Obama to say this. After the Joe Wilson "You Lie" crap, why pretend civility is a part of Congress anymore?)

"There is no evidence that cutting taxes creates jobs. There is no evidence that cutting regulations creates jobs. What we do know is that cutting taxes INCREASES the federal deficits to unsustainable levels. What we do know is that cutting regulations or ignoring regulations to make profits leads to increased pollution, unsafe work areas, and people dying. So to my Republicans opponents: STOP SHILLING TAX CUTS AND DEREGULATION AS JOB-CREATORS. You're selling snake oil, you fuckers."

"What we need in this country is another WPA. We need to get construction jobs up and running. We need to repair bridges and roads that haven't been fixed or upgraded in 40 years. We need to repair and upgrade nuclear reactors that are 20 years past their expiration date, and yes while nuclear reactors carry enormous risk our energy needs rely on them right now, so we need to upgrade them to newer safer models than the old-style reactors from 40 years ago that aren't as safe against earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. We need to replace schools older than 20 years, make them compatible with today's technologies, so we can start teaching our children on the tools of today and tomorrow. We need to get people working: for every one person who was hired back during the WPA of the 1930s, that job created two other jobs in response."

"All we need is a construction-jobs program that hires people across this nation. The WPA of the 1930s hired 8 million people. We don't need to go that big. We can hire 4 million people, and if one WPA job creates two more that can translate up to 12 million Americans getting jobs, cutting more than half of our unemployment numbers right there. IT WORKED BEFORE AND IT CAN WORK AGAIN."

"And we can pay for this new WPA. We can look at our budgets and make the adjustments needed to make budget room for this jobs program. We can eliminate some of the tax credits on billionaires that won't hurt their wallets but will pay back into this jobs programs FOR ALL AMERICANS to benefit. IT WORKED BEFORE AND IT CAN WORK AGAIN."

"Our nation's economy is struggling. We can't ignore that. One of the two reasons our economy is struggling is because we lack the jobs to hire the unemployed. We can solve that with a jobs bill. But we can't ignore the other reason our economy is struggling, and that is the household debt our citizens are fighting. And the largest form of household debt are mortgages. Too many families are struggling at too-low incomes paying off mortgages on houses whose values have gone underwater. Our housing industry is facing another series of destructive foreclosures and abandoned properties. Each foreclosure lowers the property values of everyone else's homes surrounding them. This is making it hard for people to sell their homes if they have to move to new jobs. This is making it hard for people to pay off their mortgages, period. And this is shuffling their debts from one thing to another like their overdrawn credit cards or unpaid college loans. Above all, paying off all this debt is making it impossible for our citizens to pay for anything else like products and services that would boost our consumer-driven economy. We need to look into resolving some of these debt issues. Instead of bailing out banks, bail out the mortgage holders. Help them pay off their mortgages to where their homes are no longer underwater. Help pay off their mortgages so none of them fall into foreclosure. By helping them, we free up the banks overwhelmed with foreclosures to begin making safe loans that can stabilize our housing market."

"And again, I cannot stress this enough, FUCK YOU JIM DEMINT. FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS WITH A CHAINSAW."

"Thank you, God Bless to all the families across our nation, God Bless the United States of America."

A Red Letter Day

2011-08-30T17:29:00.000-04:00

August 30, 2011. I just want to make this official.

Getting a haircut this afternoon for a job fair in Tampa tomorrow, and I noticed that the double-crown at the top of my head is showing more skin than hair.

I have every reason to believe I am finally going bald. It may take years to fully see the damage done, but I am officially having a mid-life crisis. Or I would be having one, if I had a life...

Because It's August 20, You Get This

2011-08-20T14:16:00.000-04:00

An update to the Republican Primary field for the 2012 Presidential Run!

(What. I did my homage to Woodstock already. Stop begging for mercy...)

I previously listed what was in April an already crowded field of wanna-bes and coulda-beens. Since then, the marquee name of Donald Trump fell flat on his ass when he obsessed too much with Obama's birth certificate and flamed out after the one-two punch of getting mocked at the Correspondents Dinner and having Bin Laden's death overshadow his shtick. As for Daniels and Huckabee, I was right about Daniels deciding to stay out... and shocked that Huckabee decided to stay out as well (considering the polls had him as the one constant threat to Obama). It seems that both of them are smarter than they look... Palin never announced either, but has developed this annoying habit of showing up at caucuses and announcements in some odd attempt to steal the spotlight.

With regards to the primaries, the only major development since April has been the addition of one more major name to the candidate list, one that had been floated earlier but not taken too seriously... until the last two weeks, during which the new candidate burst onto the scene and taken the early momentum (even away from the current pack leaders Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachmann). So, to update you all to the terrors that await us:

Rick Perry - Governor, Texas
Positives: Has a long political career, and has a national profile of sorts being the governor of one of the largest states in the Union. His political and personal (religious) beliefs are shared by the voting base of the Republicans, and especially the Tea Partier faction. In terms of getting the voting interest of the party base, he outshines the likes of Bachmann and definitely trounces Romney. If he stays on-message and avoids screw-ups, Perry could win the primary portion of the 2012 contest.
Negatives: While his emergence last week for the Ames Iowa Straw Caucus created a lot of positive feedback from the base, most of the party leadership pushed back (especially the likes of Karl Rove, who hit Perry unapologetically in ways he never attacked Bachmann or Palin), and he's not the savior candidate (New Jersey's Christie still has that mojo) the elites were hoping for. In a field crowded with Far Right reactionary religious types, Perry isn't helping in the long term when it will come time to appeal to moderate and independent voters who are turned off by Social Conservatism. Especially considering Perry just finished being the headlining politician at a Prayer Fest. Perry's political ideas - for example, crippling the Supreme Court, eliminating the direct vote for U.S. Senators, and amendments to outlaw gay marriage and abortion - will be toxic come October-November '12. While Perry's a two-term governor, his first election was in a four-way race where he won only 39 percent of the popular vote: not exactly a ringing endorsement from 61 percent of his own state (if Perry won in 2010, it's because he was in Texas and for some godawful reason they stopped voting Democrat in that state). And all of this pales to the biggest problem Perry has: he's a Social Conservative governor from the state of Texas who's primary platform is "faith-based government, tax-cut, and deregulate". Sound familiar? I'll give you a clue: one of Perry's supporters called him "(George W.) Bush On Steroids".
Perry is going to be running with the national perception that he is essentially following in Dubya's footsteps. It doesn't help that Perry (along with the rest of the Republican field) is going to run on the idea that Obama has been worse to America than Bush the Lesser was. And worse, that Bush's agenda - massive tax cuts, massive business deregulation, massive incompetence - was all good.
Chances: Chances of winning the primary cycle? Oddly enough, not so good. While he's got the current vibe of "Savior/White Knight" since he's the latest flavor for the media to drool over, Perry's coming in with some disadvantages: the Party leadership prefers someone else, and all the other candidates - especially Romney and Bachmann, his major opponents - have been getting things in place for months and have a huge head start in fund-raising, ground troops, and political backing. Perry's best chances depend on Romney failing to win over the Deep South and Religious Right (who still have a bias against Mormons), and on Bachmann doing something crazier than usual and flaming out before the primaries hit Florida. But if Perry does win the nomination? ...Remember what I said about "all Obama has to do against Jeb Bush is morph a photo of him into his brother George and Jeb is finished?" Perry is in the same boat because he has the same background as Dubya, and the same disregards...

You might notice that in my April listing of primary candidates, I didn't include two who are in it as of now: Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman (there are others, but these two are honestly the more serious candidates). However, I'm not going into greater detail for either one because:
1) consider "To Google Santorum". Yes, To Google is a verb (can't wait for the Latin translation). And if you Google Santorum as a search term, you may run into something akin to "Two Girls One Cup." And no, I am NOT going into further detail than that. Santorum's been a national joke for years.
2) consider that Huntsman is A) formerly employed by Obama as an Ambassador to China, B) Mormon like Romney, and C) reasonably sane in supporting evolution and climate change science, and you've basically got a candidate who doesn't have a snowball's chance in drought-ravaged Southwest U.S.

As for the Democrats' situation? While Obama has been and still is polling negatively for some time, most of that is due to an upset and unhappy Far Left base that's been abandoned during the struggles over the Debt Ceiling fiasco. Like it or not, the Party will come back to their incumbent... especially if the Republicans succeed in nominating a Social Con like Bachmann or Perry.

As of right now, who's GOP nomination is it to lose? I gotta go with Bachmann: she's got momentum, solid backing by enough in the Far Right base, and is crazy enough to stay with it until the convention. To be honest this is wide open: it all depends on if the remaining moderate base of the GOP turns out to support Romney (who has the best appeal to moderates, if any).

We'll see by South Carolina. That tends to be the breaking point for GOP campaigns.

It's Time For Another Woodstock Post

2011-08-14T15:17:00.000-04:00

For some reason, the YouTube I found for this time doesn't have an embed option. Ah well, here's Country Joe McDonald!

What the hell, here's an embed. It's Not Safe For Families and God-Fearing Baptists. God-Loving Baptists hopefully will have a sense o' humor about it.

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;So</p>

So how was your summer?

Balanced Budget Amendment Is a Bad Idea

2011-07-30T15:52:00.000-04:00

As an amendment-suggesting blog, sooner or later I gotta write about this. Especially since the House Republicans are obsessed with pushing this amendment idea during the recent "Let's Kill The Government And Blame It On Obama" negotiations.

The amendment is their old ideological card, The Balanced Budget Amendment. The title makes it sound so sweet and simple, that the objective is to make the government balance their books every fiscal year. Problem is in the details.

The current form, aka Cut Cap And Balance Act, requires that there be an amendment that spells out requirement of a balanced budget; imposes a spending cap of 18 percent percentage of Gross Domestic Product; and requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress to pass any tax hike.

The first part requiring the balanced budget seems simple but it's not. One of the rules of government spending that was set centuries ago by Alexander Hamilton himself was that government needed to run on a certain level of debt that can be structured to force government to function towards collecting revenue and paying off portions of debt. As long as the government operated with full faith and credit (that at some level it can pay off debts as needed), the system should work. And the deal is, for roughly 200 years that system did work. The problem came when the anti-tax proponents got in charge and started cutting off regular methods of revenue-gathering (i.e., taxes), forcing the government to borrow more than it had ever done before. Under these anti-taxers, who promised that cutting taxes would magically generate more revenue because lesser taxation would create more income (it didn't by the by. It just generated more income that was taxed less if at all), the national debt and massive annual deficits got worse. But the problem still exists: without other revenue, the government is going to have to borrow and operate with unbalanced budgets. Suddenly forcing the government to balance the books is going to create more havoc and chaos than ever before, and force future generations to pay for the damage done by this generation that would pass this amendment and then run for cover.

The second part of the amendment idea is even worse: it places a specific cap number percentage on how much government can work with. GDP is Gross Domestic Product, the market value of all final goods and services produced by a nation... basically how much that nation is worth. The United States is roughly $14.7 TRILLION as of 2010. This amendment would cap government spending to 18 percent of that, which is... (breaks out calculator) ...I get $2.6 Trillion based on the 2010 numbers. Now, the U.S. budget spending for 2010 was... $3.5 Trillion. You get about $900 Billion you gotta shave off the 2010 numbers. That's not something you can sneeze at in one year's budget. And that's the problem you get with a specific cap number like 18 percent. That gets to be a harsh cap, especially when it depends on an outside value (GDP) that doesn't remain constant, and in times of recession does not constantly go up in value.

The third part is the most unfair: it forces a supermajority to vote for any tax increase. Ever. We're talking about government voting habits now. When you make something next to impossible to vote for, you essentially make it meaningless to even try for it. The opposite has its own problem. The amendment does not to make it harder to vote for tax cuts, meaning that in a system where Path Of Least Resistance is the norm you're making it more likely that elected officials will vote for tax cuts more than anything else. This part of the amendment makes it next to impossible for government to create ANY kind of revenue system to keep its coffers even half-full. Considering that government pays for, oh, our national defense, our parks, our national highway and rail and airway networks that businesses use to ship goods and perform services, our farm subsidies, a ton of corporate tax credits and subsidies, money that goes to the STATES to pay for such things as schools, clean water and air, state roads and bridges, and a few other things... well, this is going to force the federal government to borrow even more debt to pay the bills.

Lemme link to Ezra Klein on this one (snippage for space, go read the whole thing):

This isn’t just a Balanced Budget Amendment. It also includes a provision saying that tax increases would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress — so, it includes a provision making it harder to balance the budget — and another saying that total spending couldn’t exceed 18 percent of GDP. No allowances are made for recessions, though allowances are made for wars. Not a single year of the Bush administration would qualify as constitutional under this amendment. Nor would a single year of the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration would’ve had exactly two years in which it wasn’t in violation.
Read that again: Every single Senate Republican has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would’ve made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. That’s how far to the right the modern GOP has swung. But the problem isn’t simply that the proposed amendment is extreme. It’s also unworkable. ...This amendment includes no provisions for recessions, meaning that when the economy contracted, the government would have to contract as well. That is to say, we’re still not out of one of the deepest recessions in American history, and every Senate Republican has co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to make future recessions worse. It’s just breathtaking. A world in which this amendment is added to the Constitution is a world in which America effectively becomes California. It’s a world where the procedural impediments to passing budgets and raising revenues are so immense that effective fiscal management is essentially impossible; it’s a world where we can’t make public investments or sustain the safety net; it’s a world where recessions are much worse than they currently are and the government has to do more of its work off-budget through regulation and gimmickry. I would like to say something positive about this proposal, say there’s some silver lining here. But there isn’t. This is economic demagoguery, and nothing more. It’s so unrealistic that it would’ve ruled all but two of the last 30 years unconstitutional, which means it’s so unrealistic that there has not yet been a Republican president who has proven it can be done.

One more caveat: the Republicans who push this balanced budget proposal never really seem to push for it very hard when their party has control of the White House. And when they've also got Congress under their belt, they spend like drunken teenagers with their parents' credit cards. But when there's a Democrat like Clinton or Obama running the executive branch, all of a sudden a BALANCED BUDGET IS A DAMN NECESSITY.

The Balanced Budget Amendment does nothing but force the federal government to either borrow like mad or drown itself in Grover Norquist's bathtub. Either way, the nation is screwed.

There are better amendment ideas out there. This one is a disaster.

Things May Change

2011-07-14T09:29:00.000-04:00

For starters, my libertarian older brother may have a freak-out in about two weeks...

For another, you people in Maryland may have a crazy Floridian driver on your roadways pretty soon...

And lastly... damn, are ALL apartments in MD this expensive?! I'm calling the Property Appraisers office, the land in Maryland is too rich for my blood. How do you college students cope with off-campus living? I swear...

For Emily! You wanted a t-shirt in favor of Elves using Tools on Disqus...

2011-07-08T13:43:00.000-04:00

Emily L Hauser wants it, she gets it!

I created a Logo for your t-shirt!

I hope you like!

Blog Entry 300. The Amendments We Need. For Real.

2011-06-28T12:15:00.002-04:00

It's taken some time for me to re-post, and a lot of it is due to a few factors - including job hunting - but above all the fact that this is my 300th post on this blog.

And for all the political ranting and raving I do here, I had a purpose for creating this blog in the first place: to promote Constitutional Amendment ideas in the hope that they can be discussed, ragged on, sniped, dismissed, and ultimately ignored by the blogosphere as a whole once the storm died down.

Heh.

So I spent some time thinking over "Well, okay, what are the top Amendment proposals I have that I really want Americans to promote in order to end government gridlock, media stupidity, wingnut madness, and create a Utopian nation that I'd considered hypocritical because I know that Utopias are a collective pipe dream?"

I decided my 300th post should be the Top Ten list of Amendment ideas that I really really REALLY think should get consideration from the Bottom on up to the Top.

I ended up with Twelve. My bad.

And so, Copied/Pastied from my word processor, here is:

The Ten – Make That Eleven, Hold on Twelve – Amendments We Really Seriously Need To Save This Nation

One.

The President of the United States, and the people who serve at the pleasure of the President, are not above the law.

Members of Congress, and the people who serve Congress, are not above the law.

The Justices of the Supreme Court, and the people who serve in the Judiciary, are not above the law.

The system of checks and balances between the three branches of federal government shall be maintained at all times.

NOTE: This is my "Fuck You" to Richard Nixon and to anyone following his dark path by taking the Unitary Executive theory of allowing the President to do whatever the hell he/she wants. But as I thought it over, I felt it constrained the President at the expense of the other two branches of government, so I included them as well.

Two.

Lying is not Protected Speech.

Any elected official, or person working for the federal government, found making false statements regarding laws, policies, government research, public polling, or historical facts will be suspended from duty pending investigation. If found that the person made any false statement while aware of the facts, that person will be removed from public service, and barred from all government employment and election.

NOTE: This is my "Fuck You" to every liar I've railed against on this blog. If you follow the lies tag to this article, you might pull up the other times I've argued how lying in the political forum has poisoned our discourse and is hurting our nation's ability to get the wrong things made right again. Breitbart Delendus Est.

Three.

Federal government shall regulate business and finance to ensure the protection of employees from unsafe or unhealthy workplaces, the protection of customers from fraud, and the protection of the nation's communities from large-scale accidents.

NOTE: Regulations exist for a reason: TO PROTECT PEOPLE. This needs to get spelled out in the Constitution itself.

Four.

The power to wage war or any military action shall be held by the President as Commander-in-Chief. The power to call for war, to fund any war effort, and to oversee any military action shall be held by Congress.

If circumstance requires the President to act immediately on a military action outside of Congressional approval, the President is required to limit such military action to thirty days. The President must appear before a full session of both houses of Congress within three days of initiating the military action to explain to Congress what transpired, why action was needed, and if such action raises to the need for Congress to declare war.

After the required presentation before Congress, the President is required to inform the appropriate Senate committee of the military's assessment for action, and the short-term plans that the military has for carrying out successful operations within another three days. A long-term military plan including any occupation of foreign territory and oversight of any nation-building must be presented to that Senate committee within thirty days only if Congress does vote for war. Any objective that requires occupation and nation-building requires a declaration of war by Congress.

Congress has the right to vote for war which can be deemed ended once established objectives are achieved, or can vote to extend the military action for up to ninety days depending on the military situation. Congress cannot vote for military action extension more than twice: if action must continue Congress should vote for war or not.

The House of Representatives has the right to oversee expenditures committed during the military action or war effort to ensure there is no fraud, embezzlement or theft of funds.

The Senate has the right to oversee military conduct of the military action or war effort, and to receive regular updates from the President on the war's progress and ongoing military assessment.

Congress is require to raise funds through a war tax to pay for the military action or war effort as needed.

NOTE: We have a War Powers Act as law, but people have been noticing the past few wars - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya - that the President hasn't completely asked Congress for full-out War, just military actions. But this has led to horrendous and mismanaged occupations that include massive loss of funds and massive loss of civilian life. Not to mention increased burdens on our military and our overall budget. Obama's failures to fully keep Congress informed or show any sign of accountability over military action in Libya is troubling. Every part of this amendment idea is to reinforce the checks and balances between the Executive and Legislative, to force Congress to take a more proactive role in the oversight of our war efforts.

Five.

The right of any person held by authorities of federal, state, or local jurisdiction to petition for a writ of habeas corpus will not be suspended under any circumstance, even in time of war.

Any person detained by the military can apply for prisoner of war status and receive legal protections as such, and be released from custody once Congress confirms the war has ended. A person not applicable for prisoner of war status must be tried fairly for any criminal acts that made that person a danger to the safety of our nation's citizenry within a court of law and within reasonable time.

The federal government has the right to retain a person they have basic evidence shows to be a clear danger to the safety of our nation's citizenry, until such time as can be proven in open court that person is no longer a threat or has served out the conditions of a prison sentence issued by the Judiciary.

NOTE: The abuses committed under the PATRIOT Act and committed with regards to prisoners taken during the War On Terror led to this amendment. The century-old argument over who has the right to suspend habeas - President or Congress - should be answered by this amendment: None do. This basic legal right is the basis for all legal protection for citizens. Without habeas, any of us could be held without legal reason. Abuse of rights would be rampant. So habeas stays in effect, no matter what.

Six.

If the Senate refuses to advise and consent the President on Executive and Judicial nominations to serve the federal government, the President can fill ALL such vacancies however the President sees fit during that term of office.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to EVERY Senator that has used a Secret Hold to obstruct any nomination before the Senate. Because of this, half the Judicial system is void of judges, our courts are backlogged, and it's becoming enough of a crisis that even the Chief Justice - normally sitting above the fray - is crying out for it to end. Not to mention the number of job vacancies at the Executive office that haven't been filled in the last three years! This is getting out of control. If a Senator doesn't like a nominee, the Senator can always vote NO.

Seven.

All professions of employment are required at the national level to create and oversee a code of ethics for professional behavior of those who work in said profession, and has the ability to decertify anyone in that profession who fails that code of ethics on a repeating basis.

NOTE: While there will be screams and protests that government shouldn't meddle or regulate, the fact of the matter is our entire business and industry system has issues with a lack of accountability and ethical oversight. There ARE organizations at the national level for a lot of professions - usually unions or associations - but few of them have any authority to enforce a code of behavior. Mostly doctors and lawyers and plumbers (I think, I'm not sure about plumbers), but because doctors and lawyers tend to be most vulnerable to liability issues. But I'm thinking it's time every profession has a system of accountability - teachers, librarians, truck drivers, boat builders, food processors, stock brokers, journalists, jugglers, interior designers, bankers, bakers, dog trainers, people trainers, what have you - to try and clean up a lot of the mess that a decade (or three) of unethical behavior by certain groups - bankers, stock brokers and journalists especially - has led us to. But if I go after bankers and journalists, might as well include everyone else. No favors. Gotta be cruel.

Eight.

The States must uphold equal and fair access to public education as a right to the states' residents and their children.

The States cannot endorse one religious belief over another within the states' public education system. And the states cannot endorse religion where it would interfere with the study of the sciences.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every Intelligent Design con artist and Creationist bullshitter out there. Not to mention the Prayer In School crowd who never understood the Founders' intent of Separation of Church And State. There's a place for God: it's called Church. The only praying at school should be the week before final exams. /rimshot
EDIT: This is also a "Fuck You" to every Governor or State lege that's pushing to privatize our school systems. There's no evidence that privatization improves learning experience for kids and teens, and yet these bozos keep pushing things like vouchers and charter schools as miracle cures. This also ties into the Prayer In School crowd because vouchers and privatization helps private religious schools more than existing public schools.

Nine.

All persons petitioning the federal government as representative to a group or corporate entity can only lobby for that group / entity after undergoing a basic background check that can be accessed by the public upon request.

All persons working as a lobbying or petitioning representative must recuse themselves if they have direct personal dealings with any member of the office of government that the group / entity is petitioning.

Any person working for the federal government as elected official, civil servant, employee of elected official, or military service is barred from working as a lobbyist or petitioner equal to the amount of time that person worked for the federal government.

Any person or corporate entity of foreign nationality must petition or lobby the United States government through their nation's embassy. They are barred from any financial contribution to a campaign or attempt to petition government through a third party.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every politician and high-ranking official who exits the public sector to take a lobbyist job ten minutes later at three times the salary and without the ethical oversight (although Amendment Idea Seven. might help with that). Lobbying as a whole has become a multi-billion dollar industry all its own, and because of legal loopholes and First Amendment abuse that industry is rife with corruption. Look, people do have a right to petition government, but not at the expense of pork-barrel waste, lopsided legislation that favors a single issue over all others, or one company or industry at the expense of other companies or industries that just don't have the insider connections to make Congress and President do their dances. Even more terrifying is how foreign governments and foreign-owned companies hire lobbyists to directly petition our government for them: the threat of foreign influence on our government isn't a threat, it's happening on a daily basis.

Ten.

The right of the nation's citizenry to access government documentation at the federal, state and local level shall be maintained. Classification of documents can only apply to matters of national security such as military and defense, treaty negotiations with foreign governments, active criminal investigations that involve undercover work, and any such materials that a court of law determines to be of sensitive issue.

NOTE: It's called Sunshine Laws here in Florida. And even with the Sunshine in place, our state government goes out of its way to hide meetings, cover up documentation, and avoid accountability at all costs. At the federal level, it's worse: anybody with a "Classified" stamp and a black ink marker can hide a document or black out entire pages of information to where even Senators can't read them. The lack of oversight and accountability is shocking. The wake-up call for me was when Cheney held meetings with energy corporation CEOs to plot out energy policy, and when asked about it declared it was all "national security". We still have no idea what was really discussed, except that afterward our nation's energy needs got more expensive... We need to get rid of the excuse of "national security" for nearly everything our government does: our leaders and policy enforcers need to answer for what they do.

Eleven.

Any legislative bill reaching the floor of either the House or the Senate must be certified within three business days by all elected officials that plan on voting for that legislation.

The certification requires the Representative or Senator to sign an oath confirming they have read the legislation up for vote and are aware of the basic elements of that bill. If the Representative or Senator refuses to certify, that person cannot vote Yes or No on the bill, only Present.

The bill cannot be amended nor receive attachments or riders during the certification period. The legislation can only be amended after the vote if there is a need to clean up the language or fix a clerical error within the print. If the bill requires additional work it must be taken off the floor and sent back to the appropriate committee for review and re-work.

If the bill requires more than three days for review, the certification can be extended up to fifteen business days. Any scheduled vacation or recess will be delayed to allow those fifteen business days for Representatives or Senators to review and certify before taking the vote.

NOTE: This is an idea that's been floated before by others more experienced and better-known. Given the size and complexity of some of the bills reaching the floors of Congress, there's been revelations that a good number of our elected officials don't even know what are IN those bills to begin with. Something like this amendment can ensure that our elected officials at least read enough of the bill to know what's in it. And it should prevent a lot of last-minute rider attachments and poison pills that turn some bills into boondoggles and disasters.

Twelve.

If Congress requires a balanced budget, the balancing of the budget shall involve cutting expenditures AND raising revenues through taxation.

All taxes at the federal level must be progressive by design.

Any state requiring that any tax hike or raising of revenue use a supermajority vote to pass, then that state must also require that any tax cut or reduction of revenue require that same supermajority to pass as well.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every tax-cut obsessive out there. TAX CUTS DON'T WORK. And tax cuts to the rich - which is what the tax-cut crowd REALLY wants - REALLY DON'T WORK. And government exists for a reason: to create and uphold laws, and provide government services that will ensure the safety and well-being of the citizenry. This is especially for California that's stuck with that supermajority requirement for raising taxes, while the cutting of taxes can get a simple majority vote. And whenever there is a path of least resistence, our elected officials will take it, which is why California is as screwed as it is. Make tax-cutting as hard as tax-raising, and at least things will be fair.

So. There you have it. Yes. It's that crazy. ;-)

And now, to the future. The purpose of this blog was originally about proposing amendment ideas, but it quickly fell into the trap of "blogging whatever makes me happy or angry at that moment". So the thing I'm thinking about is: changing the title and focus of this political blog. Any suggestions from my seven readers (and to my bro Eric, no snarkery about it. I get enough of that from Phil...).

How The Month Of May Slipped Away, And Other Thoughts

2011-05-23T12:22:00.000-04:00

It seemed like there was one crazy thing after another since the last time I posted. The shooting of Bin Laden. The aftermath of Obama's long form certificate finally getting released. The aftermath of tornadoes in Alabama. Massive flooding on the Mississippi, the worst in 20 years. The ongoing Arab Spring uprisings now embroiling Libya and Syria and Yemen. The ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan. Canada voting Conservatives back into power even though the last Conservative government LIED to everyone. The Republican Party here in the U.S. struggling to find a viable primary candidate while the likes of Romney, Pawlenty, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain make the party leadership weep. The Paul Ryan plan to privatize AND gut Medicare (as well as gut Medicaid) while granting 4 TRILLION in tax cuts to businesses and the rich somehow riling up enough voters to where a special election in New York may get a Democrat elected in a gerrymandered conservative district. Everybody waiting - and laughing - about yet another Rapture claim happening on May 21. Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga shredding SNL for about the first near-perfect night since the "More Cowbell" skit.

And oh, my personal disaster of unemployment and job hunting in a state with double-digit jobless numbers and little growth in the near future.

As you can see, there's been a lot on my mind and regarding my opinions over the past month: I couldn't focus on a single damn thing.

The other thing bothering me was that this was going to be Post 299 of this blog. The next blog entry is Numero 300: a decent anniversary number if ever their was one. And it's coming at a time where I'm mulling over whether or not to keep this going.

Let's be honest: traffic here is minor at best. The responses to my entries are equally meager. The most I ever get are when I blogged specifically about Florida amendment proposals, at which point I got a few interested blog readers. But past that... I think part of it is due to how I've got the Comments section lined up. I have to where you need to login with an ID of some kind: it's this way to reduce Spam traffic (I got so many Chinese spammers on my other blog it got sickening). But that seems to scare off anyone who wants to show up to blog anonymously (cowards, I call you: provide a name or working links and then you'll back the courage of your convictions) or with relative ease.

I've been asking about Wordpress, although the mechanics of that service is way different than blogger.com. I've wondered about options for comments here, but I'm not seeing many alternatives. If there's another online free blog service with easy Comment options, I'm listening. Just post a Comment here... and... and... sigh. Email me at p.warten AT gmail.com and let me know. Cool. Gratz.

Now, for my 300th post: I'm thinking an re-invigorated list of Amendment ideas for people to mock...

What I Hate About Libertarianism (If I Haven't Touched On This Already)

2011-04-25T21:48:00.001-04:00

Yup. That was my older brother commenting on my political blog a few entries back.

I need to mention this to you, bro: posting as Anonymous puts you down amongst the spammer heathens. Put your name to your comments or not at all.

And so, in honor of my older brother finding my political blog, this one goes out to you.

What I Hate About Libertarianism. (NOTE: This was edited the following day for some misspells and grammar, and for additional points to be made. Carry on.).

Primarily: it's an -Ism. With that, I'm on the side of Ferris Bueller:

Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon: "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off of people.

The point being, any -Ism is at face value a risky thing. It's a creed or ideology that requires you to accept its tenets wholeheartedly as absolutes, and views any variation or deviation from those tenets as heresy. And the problem with thinking in absolutes is that not everything fits those absolutes: there are always exceptions, anomalies, people or events that don't fit easily into the hypotheses, axioms and theories that make up an Ism.

There are a slew of Isms in the political ideology spectrum. Liberalism and Conservatism, obviously. Socialism and Communism and Capitalism covering the economic aspects. Variations of religious theocracy. Hell, there's a whole list of Isms in philosophy.

So why does libertarianism get special mention as an Ism I hate?

Because somehow in this nation, there's this whole fetish in the mainstream media of viewing libertarianism as a viable alternative to the existing dominant Isms of conservatism and liberalism. Even though libertarianism hasn't really been fully tested and proven to work - and that the elements of libertarianism (applied by conservatives who simply love the anti-government tenets that underscore libertarianism... and ignore the rest) that have been tried haven't exactly impressed.

Other issues I have with libertarianism is that its obsession with personal liberty and reduction of government bureaucracy end up with the same equation of getting rid of government regulations and laws that were put in place to protect individuals and families in the first place. David Frum, writing about why he figured out that maybe just maybe a welfare state had its reasons for existing, quoted G.K. Chesterton (some snippage for flow of reading):

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that we should never tear down a fence until we knew why it had been built. In the calamity after 2008, we rediscovered why the fences of the old social insurance state had been built... Speaking only personally, I cannot take seriously the idea that the worst thing that has happened in the past three years is that government got bigger. Or that money was borrowed. Or that the number of people on food stamps and unemployment insurance and Medicaid increased. The worst thing was that tens of millions of Americans – and not only Americans – were plunged into unemployment, foreclosure, poverty. If food stamps and unemployment insurance, and Medicaid mitigated those disasters, then two cheers for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid... Which does not mean that I have become suddenly indifferent to the growth of government. Not at all... Yet that same conservative sensibility is also properly distrustful of the fantasy that society can be remade according to a preconceived plan...

Frum writes earlier in that essay about how he viewed his once-hardline stance on what he thought was his conservative-libertarianism: that there would be trade-offs between liberty and social safety, and that the people making the decisions would have some honor in what they did:

Some of the terms of that trade were honored. From 1983 through 2008, the US enjoyed a quarter-century of economic expansion, punctuated by only two relatively mild recessions. In the late 1980s, the country was hit by the savings & loan crisis, the worst financial crisis to that point since the 1930s – and although the S&L crisis did deliver a blow, the country rapidly recovered and came up smiling. New industries were born, new jobs created on an epic scale, incomes did improve, and the urban poor were drawn into the working economy... But of course, other terms of the trade were not honored... Especially after 2000, incomes did not much improve for middle-class Americans. The promise of macroeconomic stability proved a mirage: America and the world were hit in 2008 by the sharpest and widest financial crisis since the 1930s. Conservatives do not like to hear it, but the crisis originated in the malfunctioning of an under-regulated financial sector, not in government overspending or government over-generosity to less affluent homebuyers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bad actors, yes, but they could not have capsized the world economy by themselves. It took Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and — maybe above all — Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s to do that.

Frum's article, and other articles he'd written over the past few years, highlight a person who's spent long hours thinking and writing his political beliefs into a coherent philosophy... only to find that the absolutes he counted on fell apart once the complexities and harshness of the real world intervened.

Earlier I wrote about how libertarianism's focus on gutting regulations and laws was a reason I'm not a fan of this Ism. That's because as a student of history I can recall eras of human history where we didn't have many rules or regulations that protected workers and consumers and other individuals from harm. Has no one read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair? Anyone ever read up the reasons why Teddy Roosevelt went after the trusts? Can I just point out that this is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

Regulations exist for a reason: TO PROTECT PEOPLE. To make sure that the innocent are not harmed or made sick or forced to work to death or driven into poverty because of other people's greed and mismanagement of our markets. There's a reason these fences were built, and libertarians don't seem to notice or care. Because their Ism insists that personal freedom supersedes the community's need for safety and common service.

Without government regulations we'd have airplanes crashing every other week instead of every other year. Without government regulations we'd have salmonella in all the food, just not from a peanut corporation with a horrible health record. Without OSHA we'd have more workplace accidents and deaths.

For all the hassles and complaints about the costs of regulations and the costs of fines and the costs of this and that, they pale in comparison to the costs of businesses destroying themselves by poisoning their customers or burning down their buildings and killing their workers. People seem to forget that 100 years ago your can of meat had a 50/50 chance of killing you, either because the meat was toxic or the label wrapping the can was toxic. Or that the can itself would probably explode. We live in a safer world today... and people forget that it's due to those regulations put in place before we were born. (EDIT: I'd like to add how the libertarian free-market crowd believes that Regulation can be replaced by "Enlightened Self-Interest". I'd also like to highlight that Enlightened Self-Interest means nothing compared to Greed when most of our economic overlords had a choice between either).

I think my rant started at one point, and dove toward another, but both of them cover the same issue at hand: Why I Hate Libertarianism. And I'd like to get back to my earlier argument about how the Ism aspect of libertarianism is that it's an ideology that deals in absolutes. Because my final argument against libertarianism is how it insists that its vision of the world could create a better cleaner happier loving world. In short, libertarians are what I call Utopians (Utopianists is apparently not a word).

I studied literary utopias in my freshman year at University of Florida back in 1988. It was a bit of an eye-opener. Not only covering More's Utopia (the Trope Namer as it were), the class also covered Butler's Erewhon, Bellamy's Looking Backward (a forgotten text today but a major bestseller in the 19th Century: it was so prevalent that its critics wrote "sequels" denouncing the original's themes), and one other that I can't recall (although Bacon's New Atlantis seems familiar). And the one thing I took from the class was: Utopias don't work.

Each Utopia I read about highlighted the writer's already-established biases about human behavior and what could be changed or fixed to make humanity "improve". But as the professor noted with all the "response" books that sprung up after each Utopian novel, each of those Utopian writers would either ignore a human trait - Greed, Arrogance, Ignorance, Ineptitude, Fear, Lust, Wrath, etc. - or underplay how damaging those traits could derail a society. Usually on the hand-wave premise that "well, it will work because people will WANT it to work." Even the "response" books to Looking Backward tried to create their own visions of utopia to counter Bellamy's vision... and those critics created flawed worlds as well.

And it wasn't just novels: the class also examined real-life attempts at creating Utopian communities here in the United States. Places like New Harmony. There was Oneida (yes, the silverware guys). You might have heard of Fruitlands: it's the one founded (and failed) under the leadership of Louisa May Alcott's father. It's why Alcott wrote and published Little Women and its sequels, to regain the family's finances. A lot of these Utopian communities failed because their founders believed they could overcome certain human traits... and couldn't. The attempts at real-life Utopias either fell apart because of the fatal flaw their founders overlooked and wouldn't confront... or because they changed their rules - like the Mormons, for the most part - in order to continue existing.

And so every time I look at Libertarianism - and as much as I see in Communism and Socialism and Liberalism and Conservatism and a ton of other Isms - I see a Utopian ideology, one that's obsessed with its Absolute view of perfecting society that can't really ever be perfected, refusing to compromise on either the big issues or the little details... and expecting to receive adulation and acceptance all because of its' purity of vision.

Even Pragmatism has its flaws. Yeah. Dude. I went there. Deal with it.

I expect a retort from my brother whenever he finds the time. And this time, bro, put your name to it.

The Thing Bothering Me About Job Hunting

2011-04-18T21:11:00.000-04:00

Other than the fact that my librarian background simply doesn't fit in too well with about 78 percent of the job market...

What bothers me is that *I* have to go to the employers for their job openings. Offering my resume, typing in application forms, begging for interviews. The problem is, each employer has their own requirements/requests for resumes... and different means of typing in application forms. It gets frustrating that I gotta waste an hour or two tweaking each resume submission, or typing in a brand new application form.

Why can't we reverse the process? Have all job search engines work the other way? Have the human resources department come looking for US, based on our one standardized resume, no applications to fill, just come to us and take a quick look and see if we pass the preliminary before calling us for an interview?

I mean, THEY know what they're looking for. The HR people can spot and keyword search within reason, and narrow the searches down and get us on the phone pronto. Why have 100,000 unqualified people overwhelm a Human Resources office with half-assed resumes for one job, when the HR people can search a resume database, whittle it down to 5-10 people they like, and go from there?

Better still, at job fairs, sit the unemployed people down at a table, have our resumes displayed in front of us, and have the HR people walk by us and window-shop, pointing out "How much for that librarian in the window?" before taking us home for work and feeding?

Sigh. It's been two years plus doing this. We need a change of employment methods. This current method, it just ain't working for me and 17 million other people...

How Rick Scott Is Faring Among Other Floridians

2011-04-16T22:31:00.000-04:00

I mean, you all have a pretty good idea where I stand considering the MEDICARE FRAUD...

But the media is picking up on other Floridians souring: especially Republicans!

"People are just disgusted with the way that Scott is only advocating for corporations and doing nothing for the people who live here and work hard," said Ricci. "And there are Republicans from all across the state who have decided to drop out of the party, because they can't stay in a party that is Rick Scott's party. From everything from the special deal for corporations to attacking unions, and there are corporations that pay no taxes -- all of this combined has just been too much for many of these lifelong Republicans to stomach."

The article opens with a Republican firefighter posting publicly on Facebook that he'd gone this past Wednesday to the local elections office to switch his party affiliation from Republican to Independent (welcome to the club).

This can actually get to be a big problem. Parties use their voter registration polls to create their mailing lists, phone lists, donations lists, etc. I can confirm as an Independent meself these last six years that I don't get the phone calls and mailbox stuffers that my parents (still registered Republicans) get every election cycle. What this means is that smaller membership leaves fewer people the GOP can count on to 1) give donations (not so bad, considering the Republicans can rely on deep pocket CEOs), and 2) help with campaigns and Get The Vote Out efforts (which actually does hurt: as the crowds get smaller, even the conservative media talking heads are gonna notice).

Worse for the GOP, the people abandoning ship are NOT the so-called RINOs: the old-style Moderates that fled ages ago. And here's the real problem. The ones getting driven out now are guys and gals just like that Orlando firefighter: pro-gun, pro-life, and would otherwise be hating on Democrats like always. But not now. The ones fleeing the Republicans NOW used to be as solid a reliable vote for Republican throughout modern history. But because the current Republican leadership has gotten so batshit crazy, so anti-worker, so anti-Medicare and anti-Medicaid and anti-Social Security, and so pro-corporate tax cut... whatever is left of a sensible base for the party isn't going to be there now.

Voter registration for Republicans are already kind of low: Now the GOP is going to get stuck with just the uber-rich terrified of ZOMG SOCIALISM, and the ignorant dwindling masses obsessing over Obama's birth certificate. I'm trying to find the latest statistics on voter registration nationwide: the last time I checked, there were already MORE registered Independents than Republicans (with Democrats still in the majority: this is why GET THE VOTE OUT EFFORTS ARE SO IMPORTANT, GUYS...). So far I'm finding the 2004 numbers, which has 72 million Democrats, 55 million Republicans, and 42 million Independents. The voter identification in 2009 had it by percentages, with 39 percent ID'ing as Democrats, 35 percent Independent, and 29 percent Republican...

What am I saying here? My point is: the current game-plan of the Republican Party - killing unions at the state level, cutting social safety nets like Medicare and Medicaid at the federal level - is alienating far too many people too quickly. Voter identification with Republicans will suffer, as more registered voters decide being in the party isn't worth the aggravation. Fewer voters mean the only ones left are the obvious nut cases, reveling in the fact they have a fully-funded party (with a media network hard-wired to back them no matter what) of their own to run.

Primaries are clearly going to get worse because the Far Right can win those and then go on to lose the general elections: the relatively sane voters backing relatively sane candidates are disappearing, leaving wingnuts who will back wingnut candidates that will not appeal to the at-large voters (think Sharon Angle, or Christine O'Donnell). And while some of those wingnut candidates won in 2010 (a down-cycle election), the chances of those wingnuts winning in a Presidential election cycle like 2012 - when voter turnout cycles upward - dimishes. Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott only won because 5,000 Democrats and/or Independent voters who would hate fraudsters didn't show up to vote. In 2012, more voters = better odds of saner voter totals.

Because of Rick Scott... because of the severity of Rick Scott's agenda, something even enough Republicans in the state legislature are starting to oppose... there's more and more Republican voters fleeing the party here in Florida. And Florida is a battleground state: the numbers slightly favor the Democrats here even though - thanks to gerrymandering and the 2010 down-cycle election - they don't dominate the state government. I don't see a slew of Democrats heading to the elections office to change party status because of Obama or Sen. Nelson or anything like that. I'm only seeing Republicans leaving because of Rick Scott.

And Rick Scott is exactly who the wingnuts want. While the rest of us don't. Where will that leave the Republicans in 2012... or 2014, if Scott lasts that long...?

Personal Reaction to Obama's Speech

2011-04-14T22:25:00.000-04:00

1) Obama did seem to go out of his way to shred Paul Ryan's tax-cut, social-service-cut budget proposal for 2012. Which in my mind was the right thing to do. Ryan's budget is not brave: it panders HARD to the Far Right's need to destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and it attempts to add even MORE tax breaks to corporations already swimming in massive profit margins (just how much a burden are the taxes on them anymore?).

2) Obama still played the game being played in the Beltway (and owned by the Far Right): the idea that cutting the deficit is paramount, and not the need to focus on job creation (which could add to the deficits in the short term, but should reduce said deficits in the long term). So as a result, the possibility of more austerity measures (which ARE NOT WORKING in the European countries already playing this game) are there.

What the hell happened to discredit Keynesian economic policies at this time? There's no way the Austrian or Chicago schools of thought should remain this dominant, and you'd think after the massive catastrophes of the 2000s that the libertarians would be even more discredited than Keynesians.

3) I was not at all surprised that the Republicans and their media enablers and brown-nosers dismissed Obama's speech, or accused him of making "personal attacks" (which in Ryan's case could be truth). Outside of admitting he was born on Krypton and then resigning the Presidency to return to complete his Jedi training on Dagobah with Master Yoda, there is nothing Obama can do to convince the teabagger Far Right wingnuts (I know, redundancies) of anything.

4) The speech reads well, and Obama did a decent job presenting it. Most important, Obama seems to be drawing a line in the sand here: that he will not accept any further extensions of the Bush tax cuts for the extremely wealthy (the top two percent, the ones earning millions of dollars), for example. For the most part, this is Obama's opening salvo for his re-election campaign. But it's also a promise he made on camera and one he's going to have to stick to for the far left base - and the Democratic Party in general - to hang their hat on. It's kind of his Bush the Elder "Read My Lips" moment: if he fails to live up to the promise, if the Republican House gets him to back down again on what Obama promised this week, then Obama's support (which is decent but not overwhelming) fades.

And there's already two major battles just this year alone: the debt ceiling vote due in May/June and the Paul Ryan budget showdown. The budget issue is the easier of the two: The Democratic-led Senate is in decent position to insist on stopping the more harsh elements of the Ryan plan from passing the whole Congress. But the debt ceiling vote is different altogether: it can fail in the House if enough Republicans (and even some psycho Democrats) vote against raising the ceiling, and the whole system collapses. There's more at stake with the debt ceiling, more possibility that the House GOP will hold it hostage to negotiate for everything they want (including pony rides at the circus!). And even though Obama is calling on Democrats to insist on a "Clean" bill for the debt ceiling (meaning no deals with Republicans who will try to add their pet projects to it), this is too scary a situation to be playing chicken with the global economy.

The trick is making damn sure the Republicans swerve first. It's doable, especially since the latest vote on the overdue 2011 budget still couldn't pass with enough Republican votes (meaning Boehner is facing a sizable faction revolt... the same faction that's eager to vote against that debt ceiling...)

Obama's given his speech. He's made a good number of promises. But now he's got to live up to them...

Things I Want To Hear From Obama During This Afternoon's Speech

2011-04-13T13:06:00.000-04:00

I originally posted this at Ta-Nehisi's house. Hope he doesn't mind.

"If we want to be serious about reducing the deficits and reducing our debt, we NEED to look at how our government gets its revenues."

"We need to raise the taxes on those who can afford it: the millionaires and billionaires who still profited during these last three years of hardship while the middle class struggled to stay out of poverty. Not to raise such taxes as a putative measure, but to ensure that every American is paying their fair share into fixing our financial problems."

"We need to begin closing tax loopholes for corporations. Especially any tax loophole that benefits too few companies at the expense of the nation. And especially any loophole that does not hamper or prevent corporations from generating honest profit."

"Also, you all should really buy a copy of Paul Wartenberg's ebook. He needs the moneys. And some of the stories in that collection are pretty funny. Word."

"Also, I strongly suggest that every American hugs a puppy or kitten today. If you're allergic, perhaps a Pokemon action figure."

"One last thing. I wasn't born in Hawaii. I was born on the planet Krypton, sent here by my true father Marlon Brando to... wait, I already did this joke, didn't I?"

To dream the impossible dream...

As The Post Count Reaches 300, Planning Ahead

2011-04-12T20:30:00.000-04:00

For starters, what to do with the 300th Post...?

Oooh, I know. MORE AMENDMENT IDEAS. :-)

That's one of the reasons I started this blog.

In the meanwhile, we get this.

It's been nearly two weeks since Gov. Rick Scott exploited his vague emergency power to force unconscionable cuts of up to 40 percent in reimbursement rates for those who serve the state's developmentally disabled. The governor claimed Tuesday he had no choice because the Agency for Persons with Disabilities was running a $174 million deficit. But Scott chose to appease his tea party base rather than work with lawmakers to stave off potentially life-altering and debilitating changes in services for up to 33,000 of Florida's most vulnerable citizens. Now Republican legislative leaders should follow through on promises to find a way to cover the deficit and not cut off thousands of Floridians who have nowhere else to turn for help.

I still blame 2.5 million Floridian voters who put Rick "CUT YOU UP" Scott in charge of the state.

Emily L. Hauser Was Impressed

2011-04-11T19:47:00.000-04:00

She had posted an article awhile back about the "disappointed Democratic base" (snippage to provide context: also, go read her blog AND BOOKMARK IT):

AND YET.
The simple truth is that President Obama has advanced more progressive causes than any President since FDR (not least: health care reform). He ran for the job knowing it would be challenging, and then the job got exponentially harder before he even took office. He is genuinely loathed and feared by millions of Americans — whose fears and loathing are daily ginned up and fortified by people who make their living off of making the President’s job as difficult as humanly possible — and the opposition party has not, as far as I can tell, enjoyed a single day of responsible legislative behavior since he stepped into the Oval Office.
In short: Obama is attempting to do an extraordinarily difficult job under even more extraordinarily difficult circumstances...
...And after eight years of the Bush Administration’s scorched earth policies and contempt for both reason and the American people, I remain grateful that we have a President who acts like an adult, and treats the American people as adults. He’s not perfect — but Obama is pretty good...

Well, I had added a response to her comments, throwing out my opinion as a frustrated ex-Republican-turned-Independent voter about how the Democrats need to recognize that while Obama hasn't been perfect (on the issue of torture, he's been dreadful), he's still 50 times better than the Republican alternatives, and that the Democrats should focus less on sniping their own party leaders and focus more on Getting Out The Vote to win elections...

Well, Emily liked my comment. She went and posted it as a blog entry on her main page. And... there's been responses to it too... even on Twitter. Ouch.

So, if there's anyone coming here to this blog to see what Emily sees in me... well, welcome to the Wartenberg madhouse. Say hi to Tehya the Pretty Kitty and Page the Silly Kitty. Cookies are over there, cokes in the fridge, I'll be over in the corner fuming about Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" for another two-three months before the arrest warrants on Scott are due...

Budget Brinkmanship

2011-04-09T18:57:00.000-04:00

While the GOOD news of the government NOT getting shutdown this past Friday evening is that, well, the entire country is not collapsing, it's overshadowing the facts that there are still a lot of BAD news this nation has to deal with. And it's not even about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are gonna get hurt by the fact there's $80 billion of social services and aid no longer out there...

For starters, this game of brinkmanship with the nation's economy is not over. We still have two other key budget issues ahead: the annual (or possibly bi-monthly) need for Congress to vote itself the power to raise the debt ceiling; and the looming fight over Paul Ryan's psychotic budget proposal for 2012 AKA Death To The Social Safety Net And Everlasting Life To Perpetual National Debt.

The immediate crisis is over the debt ceiling. It's ostensibly supposed to mark the amount that the government can't borrow money. In practice it keeps getting raised because the government needs the flexibility of borrowing money in order to pay the bills. A good reason for that is because the government is less eager to find other revenue sources (SUCH AS TAXES) to be able to, you know, PAY FOR SH-T.

The first part of the problem is that the debt ceiling keeps going up. Government can't trust itself to rein in its own spending - even the massive slash of $80 billion from the spending budget won't dent it - and so they keep finding themselves pushing the cap higher. This becomes an even bigger problem because the Small Government Libertarians and (and their Teabagger poseurs who ride on the reputation of "fiscal responsibility") view it as Big Government excess. And they want to vote against raising the debt ceiling again... which has to be done before July of this year.

And here's the biggest problem of all: if the libertarian/Teabagger contingent in Congress has their way - and it's possible - and they vote to stop raising the debt ceiling by July... that next sound you hear will be THE ENTIRE GLOBAL ECONOMY CRASHING TO A HALT.

This is serious. If the debt ceiling is capped, it forces the creditors that have been lending the U.S. any money to start calling in their loans... their ENTIRE loans, not just monthly payments or something. This means multinational banks, foreign governments, and others I haven't thought of for this list can declare the U.S. in default. If that happens, things like Treasury bonds would lose value I think... The next thing that could happen is that the U.S., in order to raise funds to pay those bills, would call in OUR loans to other nations borrowing from us, and cause the same financial crisis in their governments. It would be a cascade effect: every nation scrambling to get their financial houses in order... and a lot of them CAN'T because they've been massively borrowing money as well. And this isn't even going into how this would affect the private sectors: commodities markets will freak out; trade could get affected by sudden tariff increases or with governments unable to purchase goods; and global stock markets would crash as the faith in governments to maintain fiscal stability disappears, as things like government bonds lose value, etc. (NOTE: I am not an economist, I am not entirely sure what WILL happen if this occurs. All I do know is, based on how the economists dread this, it's Explode-The-Planet-BAD).

Now, this is the worst-case-scenario. The good news about this is, even the Republicans are not this batshit crazy to pull that stunt... mostly. The party leadership surely isn't: Boehner openly opposes the cap effort; Republican Senators clearly oppose it, and the Far Right media have mostly spoken against any move to cap the debt ceiling.

The bad news to that is, there may be enough Republican House representatives who ARE batshit crazy enough to go against their own party leadership on this one. Because they are true Teabaggers who are clearly upset with the whole idea of Big Government and who think this is a way to bring it all down. Or worse...

We're now in an era of Budget Brinkmanship: the idea that one side (say, Republicans) has to force things to the edge of a cliff of impending doom in order to get what they want. It works especially well when the opposing party (The Democrats) genuinely believe in compromise in order to get things done, and who also fear being on the wrong side of anything (say, being on the side for tax increases, because Democrats really believe Mondale got creamed in the 1984 elections because of the tax issue... instead of Mondale being a weak campaigner going against a populist President...). You saw it here with the shutdown crisis: rather than risk the calamity of an economic disaster of a gov't shutdown, Obama and Reid were willing to give up tons of spending for social services while the Republicans "promised" not to go after particular hot-topic services like Planned Parenthood.

What could well happen with the debt ceiling debate that's impending is that the Far Right in the House will push for an extremist position in exchange for their vote on letting the debt ceiling go up. The extremist stuff could be another attempt to push a pro-life agenda on a nation that's not even interested in the abortion debate anymore. Or it could be something else that would be disastrous for a majority of Americans, something the Democrats could abide parting with if it meant saving the global economy. The Democrats, after a show in public of being outraged, would well concede the matter in the belief that 1) it will save the world and 2) the voters will forgive the Dems on the matter and blame the Republicans for their bullshit agenda come the next election cycle. And the Far Right could well win another serious conflict, much to the chagrin of the American public.

But there's only so many times you can push someone to the brink. At some point, the Democrats are going to have to wake up to the fact that there's little left they can surrender to the Republicans. The debt ceiling debate could be one bridge too far: Obama, Reid, and the other Democratic leaders may figure to themselves "Screw it. The Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, unless we give them EVERYTHING they want? They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't DARE push the shiny red button of global destruction like that. If the vote came up, there's every chance they'll waver. So let's not give them anything THIS TIME. Let's see if the Republicans REALLY ARE crazy enough to kill the economy..."

On something as deadly serious as the debt ceiling (even considering how singularly small the vote looks on paper), the Democrats could grow a spine. They could say, "Let's vote," and then have the Dems all vote quickly FOR the debt ceiling to go up, and let the Republicans stew as they start realizing that if enough of them vote AGAINST the debt ceiling going up it will be all on the Republicans' heads...

It's a tricky game, isn't it, of "Let's Blow Up The World." At some point, the only winning move is not to play...

Five Things To Remember About the Impending Federal Shutdown

2011-04-07T15:31:00.000-04:00

1) That no matter what Fox-Not-News and the Republican leadership claim, this shutdown is all the fault of Republicans.

Which of the two parties has a wingnut base insisting on a shutdown, just to prove their hatred of "Big Government?" That would be the Republicans. The last two times we had a shutdown, it was because of a Republican Congress at odds with a Democratic President (Bill Clinton) that they just happened to despise on a personal level. Every other time - a Republican President with Republican Congress, and a Republican President with a Democratic Congress, and a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress - we've never had a shutdown. It's only in this combination - Democratic President vs. Republican-controlled Congress (even with half of Congress with the House counts) - that we've had this conflict.

2) This impending shutdown was avoidable IF the Republicans were more willing to compromise, instead of their insisting on all the compromises be done by the Democrats.

The Democrats offered compromises each time this impending shutdown loomed over the last few months, and indeed have been offering compromises to the Republicans ever since the Obama era began. Yet each time, the Republicans refused to budge on any key points that they are so eager to protect: for example, any rollback, even a modest one, on the hard Bush-era tax cuts of 2001-03. One of the biggest causes of the current deficit crisis we've got is that Bush-era Tax Cut. And yet every argument about how to fix the deficit doesn't even go anywhere near discussing a tax hike to, you know, ACTUALLY PAY FOR SH-T that needs to get paid now.

Even now, the Republicans are offering an extension for another week while they "debate" the issue further. But that extension includes more budget cuts that Obama and the Democrats are not entirely willing to discuss yet. Especially as those cuts hit social services like Planned Parenthood that would get a majority of Democratic voters in an uproar. And the extension will certainly not resolve the main sticking point: that the Republicans really want ALL of their budget cuts and even MORE tax cuts, and that the Republicans are trying to demolish the Democrats cut by cut, extension by extension. At some point, even the Democrats can't compromise anymore...

3) The shutdown will make a huge hit on the economy.

Lack of spending money for public workers and for people receiving benefits will affect the private sector, especially places like retail, services and repair, etc. And again, this is what Republicans want. Because the Republicans are convinced they can enrage the public against DEMOCRATS who refused to roll over and beg for mercy to accept the Republicans' killing off half the social services that government provides.

4) Republicans are convinced this fight is Win-Win.

Either they get a government shutdown that cripples the economy and destroys peoples' lives... or they get their massive budget cuts to social services, Medicare and Medicaid, schools and education, which cripples the economy and destroys peoples' lives anyway.

In the possibility that Obama and the Democrats grow a spine, and they decide to hold out on the shutdown to force the Republicans to concede, the Far Right that's pushing for this fight is convinced that will serve their purposes. Because the Republicans are convinced at this moment that they will never concede anything, and that by 2012 if the shutdown lasts that long they can rile up enough anger against Obama (and not on themselves) to win the White House. And then they get everything they want. Like I said, in their minds it's Win-Win.

5) If there's a method of forcing the Republicans to the negotiating tables for good-faith efforts to compromise on a budget bill, I've yet to see it.

Lawsuits could be a means of pushing the matter to a solution... but can the Courts intervene in this matter? What legal action can be taken to compel Congress to do what needs to be done? And who would have standing to force the issue?

As it stands right now, we're screwed. I don't see the Republicans giving an inch to resolve this matter, and they seem eager to fulfill their wingnut agenda of killing of New Deal-era social services once and for all.

The best thing I can hope for now is that enough Americans are aware enough that this is truly all the fault of the Republicans and that the vast majority of this nation rises up to protest what the GOP wingnuts are doing to us.

How To Identify Hate Speech

2011-04-04T16:43:00.001-04:00

It looks a lot like this:

Yet Terry Jones, the pastor who organized a mock trial that ended with the burning of a Koran and led to violence in Afghanistan, remained unrepentant on Saturday. He said that he was “saddened” and “moved” by the deaths (note: as of 20 dead so far), but that given the chance he would do it all over again.

What Jones did was Hate Speech:

Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic. In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.

When Jones burned the Koran, he knew full well the Muslim community across the planet would be outraged. He knew that violence would follow. He may not have known who would get killed in the process, but he had to know there would be at least one death at the hands of an outraged mob.

Jones incited others to acts of violence. And he revels in it now, glorying in the attention we're giving to his sad sorry ass.

What is sad is that there are so many in the media/journalism world - Sullivan, Benen, some of the others I read online - that are rushing to Jones' defense, claiming what he did was "wicked" but that "hey, it's protected by the First Amendment."

I call bullshit.

What Jones did: This is not protected speech under the First Amendment. He intended for an act of violence to follow what he said and did. This is in my mind no different that a Klu Klux Klansman burning a cross on a black family's yard. This is no different than an anti-Semite smearing accusations of blood libel on the wall of a synagogue (using pig's blood, no less). This is no different than some racist bastard saying and doing something that gets a riot going in a street.

And getting a riot going is EXACTLY what Jones did.

Jones may not have pulled a trigger of a gun or swung a machete or committed a direct act of murder on the streets of Afghanistan this weekend. That blame falls directly on the hands of the murderers themselves and the mullahs who incited the mobs to march on the UN office in Mazar-I-Sharif. But Jones gave them the outrage: Jones gave them the motivation.

Jones' action makes it harder for the United States to handle itself on the world stage, especially now as the U.S. is trying to steady the entire Middle East during the uprisings between Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Good Lord, Afghanistan. From the 1800s onward, that place has never known a day of peace, has it? And Jones, reaching out from his pathetic little church building in the woods of Florida, is making it worse:

In speaking with Afghans about the incident, it’s surprised me how many people support the spirit of the protests. No one I’ve talked to supports the killings of the UN workers. But even well-educated, informed Afghans tell me that it’s good that people are speaking out against the desecration of the Quran.
Much of the support stems from the inability of many people here to contextualize the March 20 Quran burning. A translator who works for a fellow journalist here in Kabul did not know that Florida pastor Terry Jones was the same person who threatened to burn the Quran last September.
This led to the perception that many Americans share his beliefs, even if he heads a small church of about 30 people who have so little support that they’ve had to sell their furniture on eBay to stay afloat. Mr. Jones is now trying to sell the church property.
In a place like Afghanistan, where the vast majority of the populace is illiterate and many lack regular access to reliable news outlets, perception and rumors often become more important than facts. Now that the story of the Quran burning has spread, it almost does not matter how strongly US officials – from President Barack Obama to Gen. David Petraeus – condemn Jones’s actions. The damage has been done.
After almost 10 years of foreign troops and international aid groups, the Taliban is still a serious threat and it’s difficult to see what tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid money has bought for the country. Patience is wearing thin among many Afghans, and incidents like the Quran burning provide a vehicle for their growing anger...

Jones and his ilk "accused" the Koran of inciting crimes such as murder and rape during that mock trial of his leading up to the book burning. By his own legal argument, he's as guilty as that Koran he burned.

Jones is trying, through his acts of outrage, to condemn an entire religious belief, to condemn millions of Muslims who really aren't all violent rabble. If they DO get violent, Muslims are no different than Christians and Jews who go rioting in the streets when THEY get offended as well.

If any condemnation of violence and murder should be applied, it should be based on their ACTIONS, not their belief. Jones could have believed in what he thought about Islam and the Koran, and it would have remained an offensive but protected belief under the guideline of the First Amendment. BUT HE ACTED ON THAT BELIEF, and in that action committed an atrocity that drove others to respond with murder. That makes it Hate Speech: His actions a Hate Crime. He's as guilty as the bastards who killed in Mazar.

Jones should go to trial for that Hate Crime. A REAL TRIAL. And found guilty in a court of law governed by Men, as Jones should be found.

The trial awaiting Jones for his sins in Heaven with the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Ishmael, is already a foregone conclusion: the deepest pit of Hell is not enough for Jones...

Caveat Emptor: Florida Has Crooks

2011-04-03T10:31:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest reasons I snarl in the general direction of any self-anointed Libertarian is that Libertarians have this huge desire to deregulate everything in their path.

It's all part of their disdain for bureaucracy, you see. Especially government bureaucracy. Regulation of a business or service means rules. Rules to remember, rules to follow, agencies to oversight you, agencies you answer to. Taxes to pay for agencies and oversight. Fines to pay when the oversight finds something fishy.

Libertarians hate that. All of that. So their big idea of Small Government is that you CAN deregulate. Leave the controls and the decision-making to the masters of industry and the makers of things. They believe that "enlightened-self-interest" will drive the deregulated businesses to behave, lest the free market turn their business to other more honest providers of services and supplies. The "Invisible Hand" of the Free Market will be all the regulation we will need.

There's a huge gaping problem with that. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ENLIGHTENED SELF INTEREST. If people think no one is watching and they think can get away with it, they (at least a solid majority of "They") will doing something we could consider criminal. And the longer they act like that, the more brazen in their behavior they will get. The phrase "everybody does it" will become common and more of those working in that environment will fall sway to that idea. A perfect example is Bernie Madoff: he did what he did for so long and with so many other supposedly enlightened people because most of his victims believed Madoff was openly gaming the system... and they wanted in on his trickery as a means of making easy money.

There is a reason regulations exist in the first place: TO PROTECT PEOPLE. Ever read The Jungle? Anyone clue you in that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? What do you think happened in 1929 to 1933 that forced Congress to pass the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933? And did anyone notice what happened when Glass-Steagall got shredded in 1999, considering the economic catastrophes that followed?

And yet, the Far Right has taken this Libertarian zeal for deregulation for all they can (because such deregulation helps make big businesses get even bigger and wealthier). Especially here in Republican-controlled Florida (article link to Howard Troxler):

In 1995, the operator of a Pasco County dance studio was sentenced to prison after scamming more than $1 million from lonely, confused elderly customers. When he got out... he simply went to a new dance studio...

Investigators found 30 customers who had been talked into signing 328 separate, deliberately confusing contracts worth $3.5 million... A studio operator defended all this by saying customers had voluntarily made "an adult decision." As for any complaints, he said: "Maybe some of the students went on these trips and didn't get laid." He got 30 years in prison.

Why am I dredging up this ancient history? Because dance studios are one of 20 professions about to be deregulated entirely by the state Legislature. Maybe they should be. Maybe there will always be crooks, and victims to give them their money. But the effects of House Bill 5005 will be felt by a lot of Floridians in daily life. Among other things, the bill repeals regulation of:
Auto mechanics.
In-state moving companies.
Charities, real or fake.
And a lot more...

...State law now makes it illegal for a charity to use "deception, false pretense, misrepresentation or false promise" to get a contribution. That will be repealed...

...This is, after all, about "creating jobs." If some of those new "jobs" in Florida involving bilking widows, running shady auto-repair shops or hijacking people's furniture — who cares?

Deregulation facing this state on an epic scale.

There is an aspect of human nature called GREED. Every economic model - Mercantilism, Feudalism, Socialism, Communism and even Capitalism - has that problem of GREED. The trick has been to clamp down on GREED as best as possible.

Florida is home to a truckload of elderly people. Retirees, most of them flush (and not so flush) with retirement money and pensions. One of our biggest problems in this state are the numbers of unlicensed businesses that try to scam or trick their way into getting people to pay for services they don't deliver or provide on the cheap and half-assed.

This effort of deregulation is going to make it a lot easier for these con artists to ply their "trade". To trick residents into coughing up money for services never provided. To trick them into signing up for things they don't need. Even honest businesses may find it more tempting to squeeze more money out of services than usual. Dishonest businesses are going to find it easier, and get worse.

This problem of GREED and its progeny SHODDINESS and RUIN, it's been going on for years, and it's been taking a lot of time and effort by the agencies we did have for consumer protection to keep up with the con artists and shady businesses. But coming soon, without those regulations in place, those protection agencies might as well raise the white flag and go home. The agencies won't have rules to enforce. And the people won't have anyone protecting them or their homes.

Until the next hurricane blows in and all the homes get blown or washed out to sea.

Welcome to Florida. Home of the Con Artist. Keep both hands on your wallet and keys at all times.

Because It's April Fools Day, You Get This

2011-04-01T11:58:00.001-04:00

Because it takes 2 years to really run a Presidential campaign, now is about the time you start seeing the candidates for the President of the United States lining up for the next election. For 2012, it means the Republicans have a serious primary to find some poor sucker to run against Barack Obama (being the current incumbent, will only face meager Democratic opposition from grandstanding idiots who think they can either embarrass Obama or God Help Us actually unseat him).

The list is in alphabetic order, and lists their highest or best-known political position (or job title). It is incomplete as there are some who might put their hat in the ring that haven't done so, and there are some who have been named by others (in a "Draftee" way like Chris Christie) but have publicly refused (so far). This is the list that I know wants to run or could consider a run.

Please do not laugh, cry, or scream in terror until the ride is over.

Michelle Bachmann - Congresswoman, Minnesota
Positives: Has a long career in the House as an incumbent. She speaks to the base of the party and energizes them like few other candidates can. Is openly combative and telegenic. Has an advantage over her immediate rival Sarah Palin as the woman candidate - Bachmann never quit halfway through her job the way Palin did.
Negatives: She's batshit crazy. Even if she believes a tenth of the crap she spews out into the media.
Bachmann represents the Teabagger wing of the GOP as the standard bearer and go-to person for Fox-Not-News when they want a wingnut rebuttal to something that Obama (or worse, that Speaker Boehner) has done. And while Bachmann energizes the base of the GOP, she'll scare off every moderate and sane (there are a few left) Republican over to the Democratic ticket.
Chances: To win the primaries? In a prolonged campaign against other, more reasonable-sounding candidates, Bachmann could flake out early and scare off those who would otherwise worship at her crazy ass. But if she wins big in the early wingnut states (which is possible), she becomes the candidate. But the party backers have to know if she wins, the Republicans lose (because the independent and moderate voters would flee to the more reasonable Obama) and could well drag the whole ticket down.

John Bolton - ex-Ambassador to the U.N., Maryland
Positives: Seriously. None.
Negatives: Is one of the better-known figures from the Bush The Lesser administration... known for his neoconservative extremism, back-stabbing interoffice politicking, and ability to offend everyone who's not a Fox-Not-News Talking Head.
Chances: Laughable. If he thinks he can run on a War On Terror ticket, he's not going to get very far.

Jeb Bush - ex-Governor, Florida
Positives: Has his backers within the national party. Is a major player at both the state and national level. Comes from a large state that could swing to Obama in 2012 unless there's a draw on the ticket. He's an experienced campaigner and fund-raiser. He's considered the "smart one" within his circle of power. He's an instantly recognizable figure with a well-known name. He hasn't put that name out there, but still there's a lot of well-known conservative advocates trying to draft him to run in 2012.
Negatives: That well-known name? HE'S A BUSH. He's Dubya's younger brother. And the last thing the Republicans want is a reminder of how the last Bush in the White House - massive deficits, unfunded payouts to pharm companies, two mismanaged wars, weak job creation, two economic scandals, massive government ineptitude handling major hurricane Katrina, and more - performed. The other factor is that while Bush has his supporters in Florida, that support could well be dead and gone by 2012 thanks to a state government run by a Medicare Fraud and by a Republican-led state legislature shredding every ethics reform on the books. The agenda they're pushing is the one Jeb tried to push as governor 5 years earlier. The anti-teacher bills just signed into law, for example, have his fingerprints all over them. It's doubtful by 2012 Jeb could win his own state...
Chances: Jeb is supposed to be the smart one, right? If so, he has to look at the landscape and see that this nation will not stand to see another Bush within our lifetime serving in the White House. The first attack ad from the Democrats will be morphing a photo of Jeb into a photo of Dubya. That's all. And his campaign is over at that point.

Haley Barbour - Governor, Mississippi
Positives: Is a well-known player within the Republican Party and among their financial backers. Has a solid track record of conservativism.
Negatives: Let's not even consider the possibility of the Republicans putting up a white Southern conservative from a Deep South rebel-flag-waving state against an African-American President (well, maybe just that point alone...). Barbour presides over a state (Mississippi) that's practically dead last in a lot of categories - education, health care, job growth, income equality - and so would have to defend a record where he really didn't improve much of anything. There's also a poor record of handling the post-Katrina crisis in his state: a national campaign would flare that all back to the forefront. And this isn't even touching on Barbour's biggest sin: He worked as a lobbyist.
Chances: Compared to other Southern elected officials like Huckabee, Barbour's got no shot past the primaries and people know it. If he does get the nomination through his campaigning efforts, his record compared to Obama's will hurt.

Herman Cain - CEO, Georgia
Positives: Is a player within the Republican Party, especially against the hated Health Care Reform programs.
Negatives: Has no history of elected office. He's best known running a second-tier pizza chain. The current history of CEOs running for office or running government (Dubya, Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott) is terrifying. And while he's got the extremist political views to entice primary voters, in an open general election he's doomed.
Chances: There is honestly not a lot he brings to a national ticket. He should have considered running at least for Congress to get a political resume going...

Mitch Daniels - Governor, Indiana
Positives: Known among the media elites as "sane" in an increasingly whackjob party. As Governor, pushed for a balanced budget platform that did include some tax increases much to the chagrin of the more tax-cut obsessed crowd. Has some modicum of popularity outside of the GOP. During the current state-level war of GOP Governors against the labor unions, Daniels proposed dropping Indiana's union-killing efforts because "it wasn't what we campaigned on" (I.E., "it's gonna kill us in the polls"), meaning that this guy actually has his eyes open while he's driving (unlike the other Governors who are speeding into a brick wall of recall movements). Daniels does not have his name out there (yet), but there's a Draft movement among the media elites fearful of a Bachmann, Palin, or Other Whackjob Candidate campaign.
Negatives: Worked as the budget guy under the Dubya administration, the stain of which will never wash away. He still prefers cutting state budgets over raising tax revenues, meaning the poor and middle class families aren't going to be too fond of him come 2012.
Chances: He hasn't put his name out there. A good reason is that Daniels, being genuinely sane, knows that the current GOP environment will either kill him in the primaries or else would force him to adopt stances that on a national level would kill him against Obama in 2012. Word is he's smart enough to wait until 2016...

Newt Gingrich - ex-Speaker/Congressman, Georgia
Positives: National figure. Long viewed by the Republican base as one of their big thinkers and policy creators. Can get onto any talking head show for Sundays and get listened to seriously without any criticism.
Negatives: IS A GODDAMN HYPOCRITE. This is a guy twice-divorced who goes up on a platform to preach "Family Values". And the way he divorced - abandoning his first wife in a hospital bed! having an adulterous affair WHILE PURSUING Bill Clinton for his adultery! - each time paints Newt as a disgusting human being. His ambition is so blatant as to be crass: his recent flip-flops on Obama's handling of Libya has already made him a subject of ridicule among the media elites he hangs out with. He's not that well-liked within his own party. And people may remember that he lost his Speakership when his own party turned on him.
Chances: He could get some distance in a primary because he's got a national-level name. But the mudslinging against him will be fierce. If Newt even survives the primaries, Obama's clean-cut persona compared to Newt's will make it Obama's election to win (hell, Obama can recruit Bill Clinton to help campaign for him, and Bill will crush Newt before lunchtime).

Mike Huckabee - ex-Governor, Arkansas
Positives: was the Dark Horse candidate from 2008 whose campaigning will still have its followers. Has a decent governing record (with a few glaring negatives...). Has a charisma few other candidates have in this primary. Can appeal to the social conservatism of the wingnut base without scaring off moderate and independent voters (that much). Unlike Barbour, Huckabee is a Southern governor who could campaign against an African-American President and not make it look like a Civil Rights struggle from the Sixties all over again. Plays well with the media elites he needs to kiss up to if he gets the nomination. Of the candidates currently polling, Huckabee is consistently the only one to ever show that he could beat Obama.
Negatives: During his governorship, he played loose with the paroling process by freeing certain individuals who went on to commit further crimes of rape and murder (the criminals plead Christian conversion or that they were victims of Clinton conspiracies). If Dukakis was ruined by Willie Horton, Huckabee is doomed if Maurice Clemmons becomes more of a household name. Huckabee's other problem with his governorship is that he preached fiscal balance with tax hikes alongside spending cuts: something the Club For Greed and Grover Norquist have never forgiven him for. Huckabee's current job - as Talking Head on Fox-Not-News - is a big negative for those who hate Fox with a passion (and that number is growing).
Chances: Once Huckabee puts his name out there (he's still working for Fox, which is a conflict of interest right now), he's a front-runner. His past history of getting primary wins in the South and other conservative states will draw back his supporters and include new ones (most likely the ones in 2008 who backed McCain) and make him a reliable pick for the party leadership.

Gary Johnson - ex-Governor, New Mexico
Positives: He's one of those little-known elected officials who got things done and has a great resume. Was a low-tax libertarian who walked the walk, slashing thousands of spending projects even from Republican legislators, and left office with a state surplus and a honest rep.
Negatives: He's one of those little-known elected officials who got things done and thus no one thinks he has a snowball's chance in hell. Because getting those things done meant compromise or working against your party's self-serving interests. There's always a guy like this in each primary. It's sad but true. Is also a major marijuana decriminalization advocate, something the anti-drug crowds in the conservative base doesn't agree with. His libertarian positions may work at the state level, but his budget-slashing habits at the federal level might not work (esp. because the President does not have line-item veto powers to cut specific spending projects, and esp. because the U.S. Congress is NEVER serious even under Republican rule to rein in spending). If Johnson is serious about budget deficits, he's going to have to address defense spending (our biggest source of spending... AND waste)... and THAT would put him in opposition to the pro-war crowd. Johnson is also coming from a sparsely populated state with little political influence on the national stage.
Chances: Very low. The Republican base - the Teabaggers - may talk about wanting to cut spending to cut deficits, but they are actually terrified of someone who could actually DO it. Just remember, the Teabagger crowd over the last two years has been genuinely inconsistent about financial issues (they're more consistent on the Social issues like abortion, abortion, and abortion). Someone who could actually do something about the budget is the LAST guy they really want...

Roy Moore - ex-Judge, Alabama

Positives: Absolutely none.
Negatives: Was infamously impeached from the Alabama Supreme Court for his obsession over putting a 50-ton Ten Commandments paperweight in front of every government building ON THE PLANET. Even when he ran for elected office in the state (Governor), he lost by ridiculous numbers. He can't even win his own state! Moore's political position is for a religious conservatism that can even rankle his fellow social conservatives within the GOP. And the party has to know that a guy like that on the national stage is going to scare every moderate and indy voter to the Democrats in a heartbeat.
Chances: Absolutely none at all. He's doing this for the ego, not the Commandments.

Sarah Palin - ex-Mayor, Alaska (I refuse to list her as ex-Governor because she DIDN'T FINISH THE JOB)
Positives: Is one of the biggest names on the national stage. Has a devoted fanbase that will back her no matter what.
Negatives: Is one of the most polarizing political figures in American history. Her unfavorable numbers keep going UP while her popularity goes down. She is currently in no position to impress anybody: either you love her or you HATE her. And in this political environment, you can only lose those who love you: no one who HATES you tends to change their minds... And nearly everyone has an opinion on her now. There are few Undecideds left.
Her track record as an elected official is poor at best. Any reputation she had as a "reformer" went away once people took a good look and found she only ran against the Establishment because that Establishment didn't give her the jobs she wanted. And because she QUIT her governorship before she was even halfway finished with the term, her most complete accomplishment is pretty much her term as Mayor of a small town in Alaska: it's like asking the nation to make the Mayor of Yeehaw Junction the next Leader of the Free World. :shudder:
Palin does not impress as an intellectual at any level. Each interview she gave as a Veep candidate - even with easy-toss questioners - made her look unprepared and ignorant. She now revels in being pridefully ignorant, as though that's a way of sticking it to the Establishment she so desperately wants to lead. And while American voters may recognize political leaders that aren't brainiacs, they at least know their President has to be eloquent and convincing on the global stage: that takes some level of smarts, and Palin doesn't demonstrate that. Ever.
The polling numbers show Obama trouncing Palin by wide margins.
Chances: Maybe back in 2009 she looked like a winner to her fanbase - which included a ton of Talking Heads who were dazzled by her - but in the harsh light of the oncoming election year even her original fanboys are fleeing. Compared to more sensible candidates like Huckabee, Palin has no chance. Even compared to the candidates appealing to her wingnut base - Bachmann, Gingrich in particular - Palin is an unserious choice.

Ron Paul - Congressman, Texas
Positives: Has a huge fanbase among the libertarian wing of the Republicans, especially the Teabaggers who are serious about fiscal matters. Can re-ignite the passions voters had for him back in 2008. Is as anti-Establishment a candidate as you'll get among Republicans that can turn out a crowd and argue effectively for his cause. Is one of the few candidates to argue consistently about out-of-control spending and government size.
Negatives: Dear God. His economic policy (switching back to Gold standards when the rest of the world won't, for example) may look great on paper but could cause such a shock that the entire global economy could crash.
Chances: Still slim. His base isn't big enough to swamp enough primaries to win. The party leadership doesn't like him at all. And not everyone is a libertarian goddammit, no matter how much the libertarians try to convince everyone otherwise.

Tim Pawlenty - ex-Governor, Minnesota
Positives: One of the few Republican governors of recent times to be relatively popular. Has a solid if unspectacular resume. Ran on a consistently conservative platform. The media elites consider him a viable candidate.
Negatives: One thing trumps all: the collapse of the I-35 bridge. The controversy over that tragedy highlighted the problems of a Republican-led state government that was failing to repair and maintain public roads and bridges. All the Democrats have to do is flash that YouTube of it collapsing and Pawlenty's done.
Past that, Pawlenty is notoriously uncharismatic. His record as Minnesota governor may have been consistent but not that impressive.
Chances: Pawlently is currently the front-runner but only because the other big names haven't officially started. Once the actual campaign gets going, Pawlenty has a huge uphill climb. It's doubtful he can impress enough base voters in other states to side with him.

Buddy Roemer - ex-Governor, Louisiana
Positives: Who?
Negatives: Who?
Chances: What?

Mitt Romney - ex-Governor, Massachusetts
Positives: Solid track record as a state Governor. Has major backing within the party at the national level. Can campaign well. Has some charisma.
Negatives: He was the front-runner going into the 2008 election... and lost to McCain. With all the positives he had in 2008, he still lost.
That was because Romney's ambition is so naked it's at Newt/Hilary levels. He flip-flops at a heartbeat to whatever he thinks the base voters support. His biggest success as governor - passage of a state health care program that you know actually works - is a success Romney refuses to acknowledge because Obama and the Democrats used that program to model their national HCR bill. And anything Obama supports, the Teabaggers HATE. And Romney needs those Teabagger votes.
The other thing hurting him is what hurt him most last time: his religion. As a Mormon he may be as socially conservative and family-oriented as the social/religious conservatives, but they don't view his religion favorably (Far Right Christians view Mormonism as a cult). Even his speech to pave over his religious views as equal to other Christians didn't help (it hurt that Obama had to speak about his religious positions as well during the Rev. Wright scandal and did a better job of it). The odds are not good that Romney can win primaries in the Deep South or Appalachian regions.
Chances: If Romney couldn't win over voters in 2008 when it was his primary to lose, how the hell is he going to convince those same voters in 2012? The only slim chance he has now is that more voters may consider him the safest choice among the whackjobs filling the primaries... but that's what Huckabee is going to do too, and in 2008 Huckabee still did better than Romney.

Donald Trump - Celebrity, New York
Positives: He's good for a laugh, innit he?
Negatives: He's clearly hogging for the spotlight. His political positions are non-existent, and his going after Obama for his birth certificate quickly made Trump a national laughingstock.
Chances: He's angling for a reality TV show. Again.

There's your list of madmen and madwomen for the GOP 2012.

Seriously? It's Huckabee's to lose: he's gotten voters before, and he's had 4 more years to impress the base that he's acceptable. Given that Huck has the polling numbers to show he has support among general voters, the savvier wingnuts will back him. Romney is the fall-back option at this point. Any of the others may be amusing at first, but the seriousness of how disastrous their campaigns could be ought to eliminate them from the primaries well before the circus rolls into South Carolina.

And if a Republican wins the Presidency in 2012? At this point, the only way to win is a massive collapse of support for Obama, which creates the odds of a GOP House winning even more seats. And possibly the Senate switching to GOP as well. That would mean the Republicans would regain tight control of all three branches of government again. If that thought doesn't scare enough moderates to vote Democrat, and if that thought doesn't get enough Democrats to get out the damn vote in 2012, then we ARE WELL AND TRULY SCREWED as a nation.

Don't vote Republican. Republicans lie. Republicans deceive. Republicans hate.

Just. Don't. Vote. Republican. This is your 192nd Warning.

Some Days The Schadenfreude Ends

2011-03-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

Just found out about this three days ago.

Remember ole' Florida Speaker Ray Sansom? The guy who got caught sneaking appropriation funds for an airport at a small college that would have benefited one of Sansom's buddies?

Well, the trial finally took place... but at a key moment where the prosecution was about to present a witness that could prove a conspiracy, the defense's argument against that witness was sustained by the judge... meaning the witness couldn't testify until the prosecution could prove through other means that there was a conspiracy afoot.

The prosecution couldn't. The entire case pretty much unraveled and the charges were dropped.

Meanwhile back at the ranch in Tallahassee, our state legislature is passing "reforms" with campaign financing. They just passed a law re-establishing something called "leadership funds":

If you are an interest group in Florida, a corporation, a lobbyist seeking favor, you go to these "leadership" funds run by lawmakers… And you pay them. They will launder the money into local elections around the state, to keep electing more obedient followers.
This is so astonishing a corruption that it defies belief.
The bill in question is House Bill 1207, passed in the 2010 legislative session.
Then-Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed it. Last Thursday the Legislature overrode the veto.
The House vote was 81-39. The Senate vote was 30-9.
The twisted logic used in the Capitol, and what your legislator will try to tell you, is that it's better for the Legislature to be paid off directly.
See, they will write it down in a separate little report. So this is all about "informing the public" and "transparency."
If they try to give you this line, just ask this question: "So, is it legal to make unlimited payoffs to 'leadership funds' that are operated directly by the leaders of the Legislature, or not?"
Yes.
People ask: What can I do?
You can call or e-mail. You can go to the House's website (www.myfloridahouse.com) or the Senate's (www.flsenate.gov) and find contact information for your legislator. (I beg you to be firm but civil, especially to the hard-working staff — the world is rude enough already, isn't it?)
But they (The Republicans) are counting on you not to do anything at all.
Instead, here is what they are counting on you to do:
Re-elect them...

Robert Troxler's article is heart-breaking, but it really shouldn't come as a shock anymore.

The Republican Party goes out of its way to claim that they are "fiscally responsible", that they "know business and how to get things done", that they "can create jobs", that they can destroy "the Liberal Agenda of having lazy unemployed people" feed off "our" hard-earned tax dollars.

And then when in power, the Republicans slash corporate taxes, shift the tax burden ever more onto a middle class that can't handle it, cut social services on families and kids already struggling, spend all the other money on vanity projects that don't serve a majority of people, and sign over public-run services to privatized companies run by their old college buddies that will charge more and increase the odds of waste and corruption. All because they can lie and trick voters into fearing anyone else getting control of the government reins.

And then to make sure their party stays in power they re-write the election laws or pursue questionable practices like twisted gerrymandered districts and voter suppression efforts.

Someone just polled how our nation is becoming "more conservative." With the Far Right conservatives screwing more and more people out of their jobs and homes and private lives, HOW THE HELL IS THAT POSSIBLE?

Policy of Truth Is Very Much Needed In The U.S.

2011-03-27T13:01:00.001-04:00

Lane Wallace, a contributor to The Atlantic, had a recent piece on lying in the media. The article starts off with the revelation that the Canadian law books has a provision that "A Licensee (media outlet) shall not broadcast ... d) false or misleading news". There was a recent effort to revise that provision when a Far Right tabloid sought to begin a new news channel "to challenge the mainstream media" which around here sounds like they were trying to start their own Fox-Not-News channel up there.

Wallace's article then considers the impact of if the United States could or would consider such a law here (some snippage):

But the question remains ... why don't we have a similar requirement here in the U.S.? Traditionally, both broadcast radio and television and cable television stations have been subject to regulation, including content regulation, by the FCC. Although that regulation originated from the fact that airwaves were extremely limited, and not accessible to everyone, the regulation continued even after the birth and expansion of cable television, because courts recognized that television and radio are "uniquely pervasive" in people's lives, in a way print media are not... why can't we have a restriction on broadcasting (or cablecasting) false or misleading news?
One reason is probably the same reason the Fairness Doctrine no longer exists. It's laughable now, with the explosion of narrow-interest fringe websites and narrow-audience, right-wing and left-wing cable shows on Fox News and MSNBC, but in the deregulation atmosphere of the 1980s, the FCC's rationale for getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine was twofold: first, that the Fairness Doctrine inhibited the broadcasters' right to free speech, and second, that the free market was a better regulator of news content on television than the government. Specifically, the FCC said that individual media outlets would compete with each other for viewers, and that competition would necessarily involve establishing the accuracy, credibility, reliability and thoroughness of each story ... and that over time, the public would weed out new providers that proved to be inaccurate, unreliable, one-sided, or incredible.

One wonders, really, if the FCC had ever studied human behavior or the desire of people to have their individual points of view validated. Far from "weeding out" providers of one-sided, or even incredible information, we now revel in... a selection of news outlets that never ever challenge our particular points of view.

Contrary to the FCC's theory, our particular public seems to reward, rather than punish, outrageous or one-sided news providers. And while that may make each of us feel nice and righteous as we pick and choose our news broadcasters and commentators, one would be hard-pressed to argue that it enhances the quality of our public--or even our personal--discourse. Especially given the questionable "truth" of many of the statements or inferences made on those highly targeted outlets. In theory, we could all fact-check everything we hear on the TV or radio, of course. But few people have the time to do that, even if they had the contacts or resources...

...Think about it. We prohibit people from lying in court, because the consequences of those lies are serious. That's a form of censorship of free speech, but one we accept quite willingly. And while the consequences of what we hear on television and radio are not as instantly severe as in a court case, one could argue that the damage widely-disseminated false information does to the goal of a well-informed public and a working, thriving democracy is significant, as well. What's more, if we really thought everyone had the right to say whatever they wanted, regardless of truth or consequences, we wouldn't prohibit anyone from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater that wasn't actually on fire. We wouldn't have slander or libel laws. We wouldn't have laws about hate speech. And we'd allow broadcasters and cablecasters to air all words and all images, no matter how indecent, at all times.

Ah. But what if a broadcaster or cablecaster didn't know the information was false? I suppose you could prohibit only knowingly airing false or misleading information. But on the other hand, if a station were at risk for sanction or a license revocation for getting it wrong (even if the FCC rarely enforced the measure), it might motivate reporters and anchors to do a bit more fact checking--and even, perhaps, a bit more research into alternative viewpoints--before seizing on and running with a hot or juicy scoop or angle.

It's odd, really, that the idea of requiring news broadcasters to be fundamentally honest about the information they project across the nation and into our homes sounds radical. Surely we wouldn't argue that we want to be lied to and misled, would we...?

This is what I wrote in a comment field to Wallace's article.

We make Holocaust denial a criminal offense because it is fraud: historical fraud as well as financial fraud (how much money do those guys make from their followers buying up their books and t-shirts?). We're not making the deniers martyrs: we're identifying them as the criminals they are.

Hate speech is also made up of "false and misleading news." And Hate speech has a tendency to lead into violent action. So we regulate and criminalize Hate speech as well.

Just look at the "debate" over health care. There have been lies aplenty by those opposed to the recent reform act ("Death panels" above all). Check the link to PolitiFact: http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Because of the "false and misleading news" about the Health Care Reform efforts, a majority of Americans are mis-informed about the program, don't know that some of the benefits are available now for use, and a sizable number already believe (WRONGLY) that the Health Care bill signed by Obama is already gone. This the damage lying does through the media and through our elected leaders. What the First Amendment defends - the open marketplace of ideas - cannot operate properly when that marketplace of ideas is swamped by falsehoods and frauds.

Holding our media and our elected officials accountable to the truth - Truth Based On Facts, Not Opinion, And Certainly Not On Lies - should go a long way towards cleaning up the mess we are in now.

I've been arguing on this blog for some time that we need a revision of the law - even in the Constitution itself - to spell out once and for all that Lying (or any other form of falsehood) Is Not Protected Speech. You may get argument about censorship, about the "thought police", stuff like that. But lies have no place in a nation that's supposed to be based on Truth Justice and the American Way.

Breitbart Delendus Est.

Off-Topic: Things I Learned at MegaCon 2011

2011-03-27T12:14:00.000-04:00

I'm posting here because more people follow this blog than my writer/geek blog.

1) The High-Speed Rail between Orlando and Tampa would really help tourism.
Driving on I-4 from the Tampa Bay metro area was stressful and hazardous even in the early morning (before 6 AM). I left that early because previous experience taught me that parking at the Orlando Convention Center for MegaCon is a nightmare if you get there too late in the day (say, before 10 am). So I drove early. And traffic was still bumper-to-bumper the moment I got on I-4. Even taking I-75 down from where I live to get onto I-4 wasn't as bad: and that part of I-75 is 2-lane traffic, not 3-lane like I-4.
If we had high-speed rail in place, I could get to a parking garage along the rail, pay for the day (money to the state or private operator, cha-CHING), get on the rail, and ride into Orlando and then back again without the worries of traffic. And if the rail was planned out smartly, there would have been a stop right near the Convention Center well within walking distance (it's right there on the interstate, where the rail would have co-existed). And if not, then

1a) Orlando (and the whole Tampa metro) would really benefit from a metro-wide light rail system too.
From what I know, most MegaCon attendees are from the Orlando area. Lacking a light-rail (cable car, elevated monorail, I wouldn't suggest subway because the landmass is sediment-based), all attendees have to come by car or metro bus. That means massive traffic tie-ups (buses use the same roads after all). It also means a massive headache trying to find a parking space if you don't get there too early. So everyone gets there too early. For now, getting there before 8 AM is decent enough, but at this rate it'll be 7 AM as the prime arrival time within another three years...
Orlando would benefit incredibly from a light-rail metro. Like most metros that boomed from the Eighties onward, Orlando has huge suburban sprawl. Connecting the suburbs to key areas - business districts, downtown, sports arenas, and above all THE THEME PARKS (where they work as well as visit!) that dominate the landscape - would go a long way. College students in particular (UCF, Rollins, et al) would use such a rail system. Visitors coming in via airport could hop on a rail, circle to a connected hotel, drop off, clean up, and hop back on to ride the rail out to Disney World (which is actually pretty disconnected from Orlando proper. Only car traffic that I know of can get there, and I've seen how congested the roads in and out of the Magic Kingdom can get. You'd think Disney would extend that monorail system of theirs out to International Drive or something...).
And this is just from my visiting Orlando for a day to hang out at a comic-con. The daily use of a metro rail system would be 1) influx of money, 2) jobs, 3) viability of a metropolis to stay connected moreso than with congested car traffic.
I live in the Tampa metro area. Trust me, a light rail system here connecting our colleges (USF, U.Tampa, St. Pete College) to our downtowns (Ybor party district, St. Pete Baywalk) to our beaches (Clearwater Beach to Ft. DeSoto) to our stadiums (Trop, Ray Jay) to our cultural centers (Tarpon Springs, Safety Harbor, the Dali, Ringling Museum in Sarasota) could go a long way too for both tourism and business.
People will still have cars: as a means of variable long-distance commute it has advantages over a fixed-line rail system. But the light rail gives them more options. And again, in a tourist-driven economy like Orlando (and Tampa), it helps business.

Now, onto the business of comicdom.
2) The problem of showing up TOO early for a comic-con? You stand in line for 2-3 hours crowded with 15,000 other early arrivals waiting for the doors to open.
You know, it wouldn't kill you MegaCon guys to have something going on before the doors open to the main showroom floor: like say have a coffee-donut get-together of geeks in one of the smaller side rooms for panels/events, or get a cosplay group enacting Shakespeare whilst in anime costumes on the foyer floor. I mean, sheesh, it gets DULL waiting for the doors to open man!

3) I didn't see any overriding costume theme this year.
Previous visits? In 2009, with Watchmen coming out soon to theaters practically every outfit was Rorshach or Silk Spectre. In 2010, after the release of Cameron's Avatar, you could swing a catgirl by the tail and hit 100 different guys dressed as Na'Vi. This year? Even with the coming of Captain America, X-Men First Class and Thor movies for Marvel, and with Green Lantern for DC (with a Wonder Woman-based TV show in the works, but oh GOD don't get me started on how Hollywood is SCREWING that up), there wasn't one dominant costume. Yes, there were a handful of Lanterns, and a couple of Captain Americas, but not the huge numbers of Rorshachs I saw two years ago, or the Na'Vi of last year. If anything, there were a ton of anime characters (especially for girl cosplay).

4) One of the things you see every year at the con: the same actors from cult shows of the Seventies and Eighties at the autograph section. And that's okay.
Jennie Breeden once wrote it's not an official con until you see Lou Ferrigno there.
Because when you don't see them there, you gotta worry if they're feeling alright... :{
Sometimes there's a lot of fun seeing the recent arrivals you don't normally see, if only because Hollywood made either a sequel or a remake, meaning fan interest will be high on you again. This year I saw Cindy Morgan on the floor, mostly due to TRON: Legacy coming out this past December (there was some fan outrage the sequel didn't find time or space to include either of her characters Yori or Lora.
Sometimes it's weird to be spying on the celebrities you watched growing up as a teenager, or when you were a younger adult clinging to your geeky ways. Kevin Sorbo was there: he looked so much thinner than I was used to seeing him. Gil Gerard from Buck Rogers from the late Seventies was there again. Last time I saw him he didn't look so good - diabetes - but this year he is thinner and more energetic, so it looks like he's doing well. Here's hoping. Erin Grey, I'm convinced, does not age. Jonathan Frakes was there: his beard had gone gray and his hair... it was just... I mean. Let's face it: Our heroes get old... so do we...

5) The MegaCon floor planners still do not carve out enough walkway space between vendor pavilions to allow huge fat geeks like me to maneuver easily through the mobs. It doesn't help that people stop not to shop but to chat with people they've just bumped into. I know the have to fill the floor with as much merchandise as possible to cover the costs of hosting a con in a huge place like the Orlando Center, but they ought to 1) widen the walkways by another 4-5 ft and consider every third island of booths to have one corner left void for standing room / meet-and-greets.

Oh. You're here for the pictures. Okay.

Big pirate boat in the middle of the main hallway leading into the showroom. There is that Pirates of the Caribbean movie coming out, and the MegaCon covers all geekery: comics, SciFi, anime, fantasy, gaming, and pirates.

Scottish Stormtrooper. I had no way to adequately include a photo of his kilt. The camera kept breaking down from the level of awesome.

R2D2 working the showroom floor like a pimp. R2 be comin' yo.

There is something to be said about how nice it is that girls get into geekdom.

Most people would recognize the lady on my left (your right) as Raven: popular character from the Teen Titans comic and animated show. The lady on my right is dressed as Yoko Littner from an anime show called Gurren Lagann: If you hadn't heard of it yet, basically it's Studio Gainax's attempt to create a Saturday morning cartoon show. ...You never heard of Gainax? Um. How about FLCL and Evangelion? ...okay, you need to watch more anime...

This is Deadpool. He kills people. Either for money, or if you said something bad about the TV show The Golden Girls. Or the slash fic he writes for his favorite show The Golden Girls.

The only reason why I'm still alive is because I told him he needed to find a Rorshach and sing the theme song. Good thing his attention span is shorter than a centipede's shoestring.

Jennie. The Devil's Panties. Read it.

The guest speaker for the day was WILLIAM SHATNER and he was there to talk about this self-published book of poetry he wanted to read to us.

This is about as close as I dare get, and the camera I own it's one of those high-end professional cameras with super Zoom and light-source adjustment. Suffice to say, Shatner looked good but ambled during his presentation in a free-form-thought kind of way. Also, he threatened the world with more singing. But it's got ZakK Wylde and Brian May backing him. What could possibly go wrong?

I want to end this blog entry by thanking TNC Lost Battalion member bactrain (AKA Ciruce) showing up for a post-convention get-together at Bahama Breeze. He came with his SO Cecelia, both pictured here.

Sad to say we didn't get more people asking to attend from the OTAN group. I know one Battalioneer unable to attend, but I had thought we had a few more Floridians on the comments than this... :-( Still, anyway the Cuban sandwich at Bahama Breeze was pretty good. Got my Cuban food for the month out of the way. ;-)

I changed shirts - after walking a crowded convention for most of the day, it was the least I could do - and was wearing the tee for the Lost Battalion gear. That is what the logo looks like on a tall fat guy.

So: Final thoughts.

Orlando and Tampa need high-speed rail. Both cities need local metro light rail. MegaCon needs to have pre-door opening activities. And they need to widen the walkways a little more. And you all need to read more webcomics and watch more anime. Tsk.

Now, back to your originally-scheduled political outrage at your state GOP crooks.

The Problem Of The Unemployed, And Why We Need To Get the Long-Term Unemployed Back To Work

2011-03-22T15:22:00.000-04:00

Over on Ta-Nehisi's Open Thread (For The Horde) for the day, commenter JHarper2 wrote an entry about the suffering he's enduring with kidney disease and the long wait he has for surgery and treatment.

Most of his entry borrows the writing of a young Irish woman (Regina H) also suffering while waiting for a replacement kidney, and while the original gist of the article is about enduring an illness, the woman writer compares the wait to being unemployed: (highlights mine)

...This week, I spoke with an academic who has studied the effects of unemployment, psychologically as well as socially.

He talked me through Year One. How the initial stress and nail-biting over bills and mortgages fades into feelings of depression, of failure. The gradual and growing feeling of becoming invisible.

The back-end of Year One is a watershed, for if Year One becomes Year Two, then the unemployed person is statistically unlikely to ever work again. They are then classed as long-term unemployed. Bye-bye fulfillment, farewell dignity, rest in peace all the hopes and dreams of that fragile human being.

It is not that they are suddenly useless. No, it is because over the months of nothingness, they become the disappointed parent to their own situation; they fill their heads and their sleepless nights with criticisms of how they have let themselves and their families down.

Their confidence is an early casualty, they become depressed, they start staying up late and losing the best part of the day to a lethargy that doesn't lift until noon. They falter their way through a calendar's worth of groundhog days, until they sink into dependency, and then, they stay there.

This conversation was of an enormous amount of interest to me, mostly because the feelings described were familiar.

I asked him to differentiate between levels of damage: the impact of being out of work as a result of this blasted recession VS the impact of not working because you are sick.

He told me all his hefty books would say there should be a world of difference. Being able-bodied and idle should have worse consequences than being unwell and unproductive...

The comparison of unemployment to illness is apt: not the physical aspects of illness but the psychological effects. The ennui. The repetition of useless duties about the house. Withdrawal from friends and the world (mostly because you can't afford to). Isolation and regret and doubt and no one else relying on you for good things to happen. Sleepless nights.

And I see all those signs in myself: Unemployed now for two years and counting, unable to wake up early, unmotivated half the time, stuck in minor routines, questioning every action I commit to, staying up past 2 in the morning some nights for no reason but just sitting there both bored and unable to carry myself to bed...

I job interviewed this Monday. The potential employer's stress question was "Why do you think you'll do a great job here?" I answered "Because I've worked public service when I worked with libraries, and... there's that satisfaction of helping someone get that one thing, that one book off the shelf they were looking for. It's like... you know, when you help get a turtle off the road and walk him back to the swamp so he doesn't get hit by a car, and you feel good for the whole day because you saved that turtle, and that really happened to me too when I worked in Broward, I saved a turtle and felt good for the whole day, that's what I get out of doing a great job."

I wanna get back to work. I wanna get back to thinking I can help people, that I can do something, that what I do has value. I wanna get back to saving at least one turtle a day.

Dear Federal Government: WE NEED JOBS. Dear Corrupt Bastard Overlords of Finance: WE NEED JOBS.

Now.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: March 2011 Edition

2011-03-14T15:23:00.000-04:00

There's just been so many things going on that it's hard to get an essay-length discussion going on any of them:

1) In the foreign news: there's the earthquake in Japan. The earthquake alone proved survivable - all those regulations for construction pay off - but nothing seemed to prepare people for the tsunami that followed. What's worse, the tsunami caused damage at two different nuclear reactors (reactors have to be near water sources for coolant), one of which had a hydrogen gas explosion... which kinda leaves one with the feeling of OH F----CCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!

2) In the Middle East: most of the peoples' uprisings have led to what is happening now in Libya. Because Qaddafi was not the kind of dictator to run for it when the going got good, it basically exploded into a civil war... which is going badly for the rebel forces that had existed for some time there because of two things. The rebels were never that well-organized and the pro-Qaddafi forces have airplanes as an advantage. The push to enforce a No-Fly zone as a way for the Western and Arab League nations to level the playing field against a hated dictator (without the loss of our own forces in the deal) has been debated but not resolved. Because enforcing the No-Fly requires risk, and the Western powers that would have to pay that risk are still a bit squeamish about it. No one is going to actually do it until a nation (uh, France? England?) ups and volunteers their own air force to do the job. (Guess what, everyone's waiting on the U.S. to do it... again...)

3) Here at home: the Republican-held state governments are still screwing us over. Going after the unions won't fix state deficits. Cutting our schools' funding won't help families. And gaining the power to take control of city governments you "claim" as "bankrupt" just so you can have privatized forces seize the towns and remove legally elected officials doesn't help the economy, it only destroys our rights as voters and citizens.

4) And the Republicans' budget plans at the federal level? A new study released today from Moody's - not the most reliable source ever since their ratings scandals from a few years back, but trusted when it comes to gauging honest-to-God economic impacts - reveals that the GOP plan of spending cuts would cost this nation about 700,000 jobs. They are the third professional or "qualified" source - including Goldman Sachs (not a librul institution), and the GAO - that has determined the GOP plan as a "job-killer".

Considering our unemployment woes are at CRISIS level in this country - in both depth of unemployment and its' prolonged negative impact - the last thing we need are MORE UNEMPLOYED. Remember how the Republicans campaigned that they were gonna create jobs?! THEY LIED.

5) Also, sports. The NFL players and owners failed to agree on a CBA, so they went into Decertified Union/Lockout mode. Thing is, because of the Lockout the owners can't hire "replacement" players, so both sides have incentive to get a deal done. Let's just hope the third party in all this - the FANS - don't get screwed with higher ticket prices.

6) Oh, and Breitbart and his protegee O'Keefe are total jerks. How bad are they? GLENN BECK's people are calling bullsh-t on O'Keefe's "expose" on NPR. When the batsh-t crazy guy is calling you out for lying... and proving it... you have got serious issues.

Breitbart Delendus Est.

Photos from the Awake The State Rally in Clearwater

2011-03-08T20:08:00.000-05:00

Specifically it was Countryside, but that's not a designated city name or anything, so technically it's Clearwater.

If you know your way around Pinellas County, it's the intersection of 580 and McMullen Booth.

The event was planned for 4 PM. I showed by 3:30 just in case parking was an issue (at that time, it wasn't). No one was there yet so I walked the intersection pedestrian crosswalks awhile until more people showed.

The first photo was taken about 3:40 pm.

This was the first group of sign wavers standing in favor of:
Schools and Teachers
Firefighters
Police
Union workers in general
The Unemployed

This group is standing on the NW corner of the intersection. Behind them is the Countryside High School.

The next set of photos are as the afternoon went on, between 3:45 to 4:45.

You'll notice the crowd getting bigger.

By the by, while the pro-union, pro-schools rally was going on, a counter-protest of Tea Partiers carrying Rick "I DIDN'T CARE HE COMMITTED MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott banners and the "Don't Tread On Me" flags were on the southeast corner of the intersection. The photos of their rally will be toward the end of this entry. I wanna document how the pro-sanity rally was doing first. :-)

The pro-school rally sent a few brave souls across McMullen Booth to wave the banners on the other side of the street. There are these turn lane islands in the intersections that allow for a few gatherers to stand and wave to the cars.

This photo was taken about 4:20. You'll notice the crowd grew from the 3:40 size to something larger. You can see the cameraman for the local Fox News channel (yes, they sent a camera crew to our side. I didn't see them go to the Tea Partier side of the street, oddly enough). Where the cameraman is, that's the far left flank of the line. The crowd is shoulder-to-shoulder and the line circles around the corner to the end of the right turn lane. I'll demonstrate later.

Here's me. Yes. I need to lose weight.

The sign I borrowed from one of the rally organizers who brought extra. I only brought a camera.

The photo was taken by a lady who was also taking pictures of other pro-school attendees. I should have taken my hat off so you could see me squinting more clearly. Heh.

This was the small group standing in the turn lane island at our corner. You can see the McMullen traffic heading north. It's very hard to see but in the distance are the Tea Partiers (look behind the red sign, you'll see two over that guy's shoulder).

Here's the attempt I made at 4:45 to take a series of photos of the line of pro-school pro-union protesters. The far right of that line is where the turn lane merges into 580 traffic. There are few gaps in this line.

Here's the second panning photo. You can see part of the turn lane island over the large brown banner.

I had to move a little bit to the right to take the third panning shot. You can see people are still arriving by 4:45 pm. Some of them were smart enough to bring chairs. My back was killing me at this point. Never bring a backpack to a rally unless it's full of bottled water.

Still panning to the left here. This was the one spot I saw a gap in the line. You could fit about two people there. Pity.

And here's the final panning shot of the far left of the line. It's stretching a bit further down the left, compared to the photo I had earlier at 4:20 pm.

I'd have to say this was a good-sized turnout for the pro-school, pro-union crowd. Most of them showed up in red shirts (it was one of the local union chapters, but I forgot to ask which union). Nearly all of them showed with hand-made signs (and for those of us too lazy to make one, the rally organizers had extras printed out).

Now, you ask. What about that opposing group. What about the Tea Partier group that was on the opposite corner of the intersection with McMullan Booth and 580?

To the right you will see the first two of the Tea Party, pro-Scott crowd. There was another guy to the right off the photo, but this was the best I could with my camera. This was taken about two minutes before I took the first pro-union, pro-school crowd, so this was at 3:40 pm.

This was at the height of the crowd size for the Tea Partiers. Remember, this is the opposite corner of McMullen Booth and 580. It mirrors the opposite corner in terms of roadside length. I took this photo about 4:45 pm, when I finished the long photo pan of the pro-union crowd and then crosswalked over to this side.

There's almost nobody here. I counted about 16 people. Even if I miscounted, there was no way there was more than 20 Tea Partiers here.

I called them the Tea Party crowd because three of them brought those yellow "Don't Tread" flags with them.

I took this photo a few seconds after that second one. I moved further down the line and angled my camera to try and get a better image of their line along the street.

You can see it better here. There are clear gaps between clumps of 2-3 people spread out over less space. The far left of that photo was about the end flank of their line.

Like I said. There's almost nobody here. Compared to the other side of the street, that is. There had to be at least a 4-to-1 advantage to the pro-school, pro-union (and yes, anti-Scott) crowd.

Coming out to this event gave me hope. It gave me the awareness that in truth there are a TON of fellow Floridians who are in favor of doing right by our schools, who are in favor of doing something to fix our unemployment crisis. It gave me hope that there are more Floridians out there angry about how reckless and crooked someone like Rick "JOB KILLER" Scott really is. It makes me hope that others are going to realize that the Tea Partiers are truly FEW in number (and from what my fellow ralliers told me, the Tea Partiers didn't even understand the debate. They were only out here to rally for Scott and against unions. They were really only there because the Awake The State group was there).

It also gave me a backache. Ahhh, I seriously need a back massage.

Thank you to everyone who attended the rally. And let me know what those cops were doing on the Tea Party side of the street with their lights flashing (uh-oh!) when I left at 5:30 pm. What happened over there?

Today's Rally for Awake The State

2011-03-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

I'll be heading out shortly to the Clearwater gathering for Awake The State this afternoon. I think the one scheduled for Tallahassee should be over by now, wonder what the turnout up there was like.

I'll be taking my camera. Will take photos and share when I get back.

Just gotta remember the basic rules of rallying:
1) Don't piss off the cops if there's any there for crowd control
2) Don't jump in front of vehicles. You will lose those battles.
3) Don't use any hand gestures that can be misconstrued as instigating.
4) Don't start a fight you can't finish.
5) Don't screw up.

See ye there.

Before I go: a link to an article highlighting just how terrible Rick "F U" Scott already is. And we've got at least 4 years of this crap to endure unless someone (the state Lege impeaches) or something (business scandal) intervenes between now and then...

Awake The State

2011-03-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

This March 8th, across the state of Florida, there are protests planned to speak out against Rick "JOB KILLER AS WELL AS MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott, and to try and get the GOP-controlled State Legislature to not go as batsh-t crazy as the state leges in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, and Indiana when it comes to f-cking up our state's already wobbly educational system and labor woes.

Yeah, I know. Like Republican politicians listen to anyone who are not Far Right radio blowhards or Teabagger tax-cutters.

Still, if anyone's got the means and the time to drive up to Tallahassee, or to any of the other events listed at the website this Tuesday, do so. It helps to greet and meet with fellow Floridians who are, you know, waking up to the fact that 2.5 million of our fellow residents SCREWED US with a CROOK for a governor.

Been Trying For Days to Think of a Coherent Argument In Defense of Unions, But the Best I Got Is "Damn You To Hell, Koch Brothers"

2011-02-25T15:25:00.000-05:00

The recent fight in Wisconsin (and now other GOP-held states) over Governor Walker's attempt to break the public unions by restricting their rights and basically eliminating unions' right to collectively bargain deserves a ton of commentary, but I can't necessarily come up with anything refined like an essay on the issues. It's mostly sheer rage at the gall of the Republicans that they are so blatant about going after workers' unions during a jobless economic recession.

So here instead are some links:

Huffington Post article about how union members REALLY ARE NOT THAT OVERPAID.

A reporter faking he was "David Koch", one of the deepest pockets among the GOP financial backers, was able to bluff his way past staffers to get a one-on-one with Governor Walker, who amiably chatted about how he was gonna bust the unions and provide a role model for other GOP governors to do the same. Jokes about using violence, and a serious discussion on hiring people to infiltrate the protesters to incite violence were part of the discussion

That Walker was planning to trick the absent Democratic senators back to the state under the pretense of negotiation... and then force a quorum to allow the legislature to push through his anti-union bill... means that if those Democrats had any goddamn brain cells in them they'd best wait on returning until Walker can get recalled out of office. Unfortunately, that's gonna take a year at least...

A review of Walker's planned budget is being labeled a "Bait and Switch". Meaning it's gonna screw honest people the hardest.

The fact that a guy claiming to be a deep-pocket financial backer can get a direct call to the governor, while ordinary citizens and the press get nothing but static, highlights the serious problem of access that the wealthy have to our politicians.

And the legal and ethical ramifications of what Walker said are floating about the intertubes.

One other thing: Unions don't kill state budgets. Weak housing markets (and I can attest to that here in "right to work" non-union Florida with its' collapsed home ownership/property development market) do.

Moderated Thread At 1:10 PM

2011-02-18T13:08:00.002-05:00

I figure if I wanna increase more traffic I need to host more Open Threads.

However...

The blog's not set up for Open Thread. You will need ID.

It's yours.

Damage Done: Rick Scott Kills The Rail

2011-02-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

I'll get straight to the facts: Rick "WHAT PART OF MEDICARE FRAUD DID YOU VOTERS OVERLOOK" Scott killed the $2.4 billion high speed rail project that was set to build between Tampa and Orlando.

How big a deal is this?

This was what was called "shovel-ready": A project that had been in the planning stages long enough that the federal and state governments had set aside land to begin installing the rails. The recent roadwork done to I-4 (the interstate connecting Tampa and Orlando) had space set aside for the trains. It was ready to go. All they needed was to start the bidding between private contractors to start construction.

And Scott killed it.

The high speed rail is part of Obama's push to upgrade our nation's aging infrastructure. We haven't had new rail lines installed in ages, decades, and the old rails use old engine technology. The newer systems are faster, cleaner, updated. Nearly every industrialized nation uses rail, and all of them are upgrading to the high-speed rails. Except here in the United States, where the teabagger reactionaries of the Far Right view high-speed rail as a government boondoggle of wasteful spending. Regardless of the fact the rail projects have been paid for (via creative accounting and shuffling of stimulus funding).

So Scott, who caters to the teabagger crowd, killed it. Because anything Obama wants the teabaggers hate, so Scott killed it.

Scott's reasoning was that the train project would suffer cost overruns. Not true: the contract bids with the private companies insisted up front that the public will not pay for the overruns (meaning the company who gets the bid has to eat it if overruns do happen).

Scott even got it into his head that the money for the rail is now Florida's to control, and had asked the federal agency issuing the funds to see about spending the money on more roads in Florida. And this is where he's really screwing up, because he either didn't know or didn't care to know: The money was earmarked (yes, that word) for the high-speed rail ONLY. That if the state's governor rejected the money for the rail construction, the money gets pulled back into the federal pool and gets shipped off to another state that WILL take that money for their high speed rail plans.

Personally, I didn't care one way or another that we were getting a high speed rail between Orlando and Tampa. I'm not in construction so the job growth potential didn't directly affect me. I would prefer getting funding to create a light rail train system within the Tampa Bay metro to connect all major points between Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. But I understood the value the high speed rail would have for our state's tourism. Connecting Orlando (AKA Mickeytown) and their theme park meccas of Disney, Universal, Sea World and others to the Tampa Bay metro with sports teams and some of the best beaches on the planet made tons of sense to boost our tourism trade. This is Florida. Tourism is our Number Two industry (illegal drug trafficking is sadly Number One). And there was evidence from existing high speed rails that tourism gets boosted by 20 percent.

So Scott said NO to the high speed rail money, and now it's getting sent to other states. Other states with massive unemployment who will take that money in a heartbeat to hire more construction workers and generate more jobs and improve their states economies. States that can boost their own tourism and travel businesses while Florida suffers with traffic jams and car pileups on I-4.

Oh, and to cap this whole thing? Scott made his decision on his own: he did not discuss the matter with legislature leaders, he did not consult the state's Transportation office, he did not set up a committee or open hearing on the matter, he did not wait for a current committee to report their findings (things he promised to do during the election, by the by). Scott basically did this by imperial decree.

How big a deal is this?

Almost the entire state exploded in rage when word got out. The media, already skeptical of Scott's performance his first month in office, dumped on his decision with no one defending him. (If Scott has any defenders in the media, I've yet to find it. Then again, I don't read Weekly Standard or National Review much)

Worse for Scott, his fellow Republicans at the state legislature and federal Congressional level are openly rebelling against his move. Normally the party would back the governor to avoid public rifts that could weaken the party's hold. Not happening this time. Republicans along the I-4 corridor - viewed by political hacks as a key Republican voting bloc - are reaching out to the Transportation Department to convince them to hold onto the money and wait for someone to smack some goddamn sense in Scott's bald noggin (already California and New York are asking after the $2.4 billion. Gee, thanks Scott). How this affects Scott's interaction with the state legislature is still open for debate, but he's got to be losing friends by the hour in Tall Hassle...

To the 2.5 million Floridians who voted Rick "I JUST KILLED JOBS" Scott to run our state. Next time you're stuck in five hours of traffic on sixty miles of highway between Tampa and Orlando, turn your A/C off and roll the windows up and SUFFER. And wonder why all the tourists are flocking to where they have high speed rail. And wonder why our state's economy is still floundering at 12 percent unemployment (or worse).

P.S. Anyone else notice how having a "CEO as President/Governor" doesn't REALLY work too well? A CEO or head of a company may work well in a corporate setting where decisions have to be made top-down and things are viewed as "Zero Sum". But the public sector (government and non-profits) operate toward different objectives and require more collective action. Worse still, the CEOs who DO tend to run for office? Not exactly the "Best of the Best" when it comes to business leadership...

P.S.S. To all fellow Floridians. This might be of interest: Awake the State.

Finally

2011-02-14T18:22:00.000-05:00

Remember Shirley Sherrod, whose NAACP speech got edited by Breitbart to make her appear as a reverse-racist?

She finally filed a lawsuit on his sorry ass.

Prepare to watch as Brietbart tries to twist himself in every direction to make himself the victim of all this. He'll have help, obviously, as his Far Right mongers have to worry that a successful suit against their waves of lie after lie the last twenty years will bring an end to their money-making Machine of Fear.

Breitbart Delendus Est.

Proof Why Rick Scott Is Gonna Be A Terrible Governor

2011-02-12T17:06:00.000-05:00

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's schools. Kinda knew that he was going to destroy public education from Day One.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's environment. A fragile ecosystem like ours - the threat of drought, water toxicity, etc - was never the concern of conservatives obsessed with land development even in a market incapable of selling new (or even existing) properties.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's social net - the cuts to public employee jobs, killing off service departments, forcibly privatizing services that will actually be MORE EXPENSIVE - in order to justify massive tax cuts to corporations that take everything from the state and GIVE NOTHING BACK.

No. The proof that Rick Scott is going to be a terrible Governor is how he's ruining the lives in OTHER STATES by seeking to kill a proposed law that would regulate pharmacies by tracking prescription drugs.

Why is this a big deal?

Something called "pill mills". Thanks to the law, any "pharmacy" in this state can open up to sell medications - pain-killers like Oxycodone - that are perfectly legal but have to be regulated as they are narcotic and deadly when overdosed. These pill mills create a system where people can come in "claiming" they need pain-killers, get a "doctor" to sign off on a high dosage, and buy them by the hundreds. The people can then travel to other states that tightly regulate pain-killers and sell the pills on a street corner. It's hard to arrest a pain-killer seller as the pills ARE legal (you have to prove intent, usually if the dealer is packing tons of the pills).

Florida is currently the nation's primary source of "pill mills". Thanks to one thing: we currently have no means of tracking prescriptions. A law passed in 2009 but not yet implemented would do that. Scott and his pro-business buddies in the State Lege want to kill that law before it even starts, citing it as an "Orwellian" step over our state's medical records.

The problem with allowing these "pill mills" to continue operating is obvious: those pain-killers can be lethal. There's reportedly seven deaths A DAY in Florida alone. People get addicted to them pretty quickly too. And because of their legality (under regulation), pain-killers are easier to get than cocaine and heroin (and maybe even meth).

Scott's excuse that the prescription tracking is "Orwellian" flies in the face of logic. Other medical records and other prescriptions are tracked all the time. Considering the massive War On Drugs (with billions spent going after marijuana, one of the least deadly drugs out there), would Scott consider attempts to regulate medical marijuana usage "Orwellian" as well? Probably not.

Here's Scott's real reason for wanting to kill this regulation: It's a regulation. Period. The Far Right in this country have hate-filled obsessions, one of which is regulations (the others are taxes, Social Security, voting rights, abortion, sex ed, evolution, and freedom marches in other countries). If there's a regulation on how a business operates, even if that regulation is there to SAVE LIVES, the Far Right wants it gone and gone yesterday.

Here's another reason: Scott's background in medical services. Not only was he a MASSIVE MEDICARE FRAUD when he ran an HMO, he went on to establish clinics and pharmacies (like Solantic or Pharmaca) to increase his personal wealth. He's got ties to the state's pharmaceutical industry... an industry that's profiting one way or another from having these "pill mills" stay open. They profit: he profits. It's that simple, and that scary.

Forty-two other states have a similar database system in place. The state office that was supervising it had garnered private grants to begin its funding (it wasn't costing taxpayers much of anything). There is no reason to oppose such a common-sense program that could well help Florida save millions in law enforcement costs and drug abuse treatments.

Except for one reason: Rick Scott is a greedy-ass crook. And a terrible governor.

To the 2.5 million Floridians who voted for Scott: I hope your family members are pain-killer addicts. It's called Karma, enjoy it.

(I know I shouldn't be mean-spirited, but how the hell else you gonna get through to the Far Right how screwed up their priorities and obsessions are?)

Good Work, Egypt. Just Remember, This Is Round One

2011-02-11T16:17:00.000-05:00

President Mubarak of Egypt, after 30 years of authoritarian rule, stepped down from office today. The country's leadership is pretty much been sacked by the military in a de facto coup (not by overt actions by the military, but by the fact the Egyptian army was the only branch of government still working).

This all happened on what was the 18th day of nationwide protests, following in the wake of Tunisia's popular uprising earlier in January. The protest themselves ebbed and flowed but never abated. After Mubarak attempted to send out pro-government thugs into the streets to intimidate both the media and the protesters into fleeing, the protests regained their focus and resolve.

The tipping point had to be last night's speech by Mubarak. The whole world had come to believe it was going to be an official announcement he would resign. Instead, Mubarak went into full "I'm Indispensable" Mode that dictators operate from: he insisted he wouldn't leave until September when elections were scheduled, he offered patronizing words about how he had always been so protective and faithful to Egypt, and blamed "outsider" influences on the chaos now wracking the nation.

It was, basically, the most tone-deaf speech in history (well, other than anything Jefferson Davis ever said as President of the Confederacy. I'd name a few others, but that delves into Godwin territory...).

Mubarak clearly had no grasp of the situation outside his circle of handlers and allies. The mobs in the streets were overwhelming in their desire to have Mubarak leave office (and even further, leave the country). Leave as in right now. Not in September. Not in six months when he could pretend everything this month never happened and then never leave. The people of Egypt by 100-to-1 (rough estimates) wanted Mubarak gone. And he never grasped that basic reality (that link to the New Yorker article highlights how dictators ALWAYS view themselves as so indispensable to nations they forced to love them.) It had to take a public desertion by a key ally (the head of Mubarak's political party) and most likely a ton of behind-the-scenes shouting matches by the generals to get Mubarak to concede and resign.

And so, the good news: we are bearing witness to one of those rare global moments of pure joy. I've seen several in my lifetime: the People Power movement of the Philippines, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the balloting of a post-apartheid South Africa, the crowds at Grant Park as Obama won in 2008. And now this. Tunisia was the first nation in this wave of Arab uprisings, but that had all happened off-camera (almost no coverage by the West outside of the blogs and social networks). Egypt, however, is a key Arab nation, and this had been going on for weeks. Every news channel has a camera on this now, and the images of the joy were a thing of beauty.

Now, here's the rough news. You guys have to rebuild the nation.

There's a reason, well three or four reasons, you Egyptians rose up in protest. Mostly due to a bad economy. High unemployment, high food prices, corrupt business leaders, and additional. The unemployment crisis in Egypt is worse than the United States (!), with 20somethings struggling to find work. Poverty is everywhere.

I don't envy whoever has to take charge of Egypt over the next few years. (I'm thinking the Muslim Brotherhood's promise to not run any candidate for the presidency is a smart, long-term plan. Whoever takes the job now has the thankless task of fixing everything. All the Brotherhood has to do is sit back a few years, wait for the frustration to boil, and THEN make a power grab...). The next President has to get the wealthy of his nation to spread the wealth downward, lessen corruption, increase job growth, lessen poverty conditions, secure more food supplies, and quite possibly guarantee the Egyptian soccer team wins the next World Cup. Like I said, a thankless and borderline impossible job.

The best suggestion I have to the Egyptian people is this: do not lose sight of the goal. The goal is an open and just government. Justice guarantees honest oversight of the economy. Honest oversight leads to a strong economy. A strong economy gets you jobs and food on the tables.

The task of building an open and just government is difficult. And it is ongoing. The United States is a perfect example. For all our belief in American Exceptionalism, ours is still a nation in progress. We only secured the right for women to vote less than 100 years ago. Blacks and other minorities were discriminated into non-citizen status up until 45 years ago. We're currently struggling through a deep recession and a jobless recovery the likes of which is hurting millions of families with a poverty rate that's been the highest in decades.

But we work at it. Every day is a struggle for our political and legal rights. For as much as we think we are free, we still gotta work for it all the time. But we believe in the system, from the Constitution on down, we believe that the system works. It's not a religious belief or a philosophical belief... it just is. We know we can vote every two or four years for new representatives and changes in leadership, and we hope that things can get fixed.

There's this theory of a cycle of revolution: one-man ruler falls before a democratic committee, which collapses under the rule of a purist who purges all enemies by murder, which victimizes itself until a military leader seizes power, which turns into an autocratic one-man rule (and repeat). The trick of breaking the cycle is re-imagining what you are doing. Don't be a revolution (which decays into that cycle of violence). Be a rebellion (which the American Revolution really was, the throwing off the oppressive yolk of what had become a foreign power so that the nation of states we were meant to be could form).

Be a rebellion, Egypt. Rebel against the Middle Eastern mindset of kleptocratic, authoritarian rule. Avoid the mindset of purges: a real democracy respects political opposition as long as all parties have honorable intent.

It's going to be hard work, people. Freedom is worth it:

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."
--Tom Paine, The Crisis

Good luck with your freedom, Egypt. It will be hard work. But it will be worth it.

My Computer Is DEAD and Other Topics

2011-02-02T18:19:00.000-05:00

1) My main box died this morning, and its the motherboard. Might as well get a new computer. This is a laptop I'm currently on but it's not built for gaming and DAMMIT I NEED MY CITY OF HEROES FIX.

2) Egypt is erupting into violence as Mubarak finally rallied enough pro-dictator people to show up with whips and bully clubs. So far, the violence is moderately bad but can get worse. On the good news side of things, the army seems to be siding with the pro-democracy crowds and trying to disperse the violence-bringing pro-Mubarak thugs. And the pro-Mubarak seem to be losing...

3) I filled out unemployment extension paperwork today, hopefully means there's a Tier 5 benefits package out there. The bad news: I'M STILL UNEMPLOYED AND CAN'T AFFORD A NEW COMPUTER.

4) So this means one thing. Two things actually.

BUY MY BOOK!

And, BUY MY NEW ONLINE STORY!

It's going towards a new gaming box, not drugs I swear...

5) This Onion article explains exactly how the GOP opposes Obama on... well, everything. Even common sense things like protecting the planet from getting hit with a freaking asteroid...

If There's One Good Thing About Egypt's Protests

2011-02-01T08:25:00.000-05:00

And it's something that's taken some time to comprehend, but I think this is a key fact and something the U.S. and western allies can base their hopes on:

The Egyptians that are protesting are doing so AGAINST President Mubarak and FOR open elections/government. The one thing they ARE NOT doing is protesting for a mullah-led or theocratic government like what happened in Iran.

They've used prayer as a means of protest, sure. It's Islam: public praying five times a day toward Mecca is a given, and it's a great way to organize and gather. But the protesters are NOT gathering around any particular spiritual leader. There's not a mullah or ayatollah being touted as the Next Great Savior. They're also leaving F-CK MUBARAK graffiti everywhere, in the honored and storied tradition of ancient Roman wall artists.

The biggest concern is that, yes, the Muslim Brotherhood is the group that has the most to gain if Mubarak gets kicked out. And the Brotherhood is fundamentalist and way against women rights. But there are other groups in Egypt, and there is a moderate political opponent (Mohamed ElBaradei) around whom the protesters have rallied (he's a lawyer, international nuclear arms regulator with the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize on his resume). AND the Brotherhood isn't the group that will have a final say... it's actually the military, which profits from U.S. aid and will most likely push for a more moderate government once the revolution ends.

Here's hoping the Egyptian military keeps their word that they will not fire on unarmed and peaceful protesters. Here's hoping the protesters keep the peace as they speak for their nation's reforms. Here's hoping Egypt becomes another Turkey and not an Iran. And here's hoping that when (not if, this isn't North Korea nor China, and the whole world is watching now) Mubarak leaves, the Egyptians' anger towards the U.S. (which has backed Mubarak all these decades in the expediency of international security) abates.

To Tunisa... To Egypt... To Where

2011-01-29T10:31:00.001-05:00

This all started over a fruit cart in Tunisa.

A poor man, struggling to earn some money for his family and for his sisters' educations, unable to get any other work other than selling fruit in the marketplace. Tunisian economy is pretty rough: rampant unemployment, and political corruption from the top on down where only the powerful get jobs.

Like in a lot of places, you need a permit to sell in the marketplace. Mohamed Bouazizi couldn't afford either the permit nor the bribes that corrupt local police wanted, and so they kept shutting him down. On Dec. 17th 2010, they did more than that: they humiliated him. It drove him to an act of self-immolation: burning himself in front of the government offices that denied him any justice or recourse (He died early January). To a nation seething under the 23-year rule of a corrupt President-for-life, it was the final straw.

It took a few days, and almost no international notice (outside of the social media sources Twitter, Facebook and others), but the Tunisians overthrew the dictator and are currently in the throes of rebuilding a nation. God help them and may they succeed in making a more open, less corrupt Tunisa work.

But once President Ben Ali fled to exile, the rest of the Arab world... and the rest of the world period... sat up and took notice. Because if there's one thing about politics in the Middle East... it's that a lot of the nations are one-person, one-party places. Places like Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia... I'd mention Iran, but you might notice they've had their own uprising attempt a few years ago and their government is most likely keeping all this stuff off their news as much as possible...

The American understanding of the Middle East has been "there are guys who side with us and those who don't," with our key allies being Israel (with our alliance part of the political turmoil in the Middle East to begin with, and that would take a whole book to discuss), Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey is democratic and for the most part solid allies (just don't talk about the Kurds or Armenians). But it's the protests in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that are gaining U.S. attention... and our concerns.

Especially as the Egyptian protests ratchet up and as President Mubarak is doing what he can to clamp down.

The problem is Islamic fundamentalism. Primarily the reactionary elements that oppose Westernized culture (the openness of sex, vulgarity, and jazz/blues/rap/country music) and values (gender equality). They also have a few issues with Israel (basically its right to even exist), and a few geopolitical extremists who are still upset about how the spread of Islam stopped at the Spanish and Bosnian borders.

Most of our allies in the Arab world are led by Westernized Muslims (that is, they're willing to do business with us and allow American tourists to take snapshots of everybody). Problem is, those nations have small but very-well-organized extremist terror groups who would love nothing more than to blow everybody up, drive out the non-Muslims, take over their governments, install religious law (based on a twisted reading of the Quran, and not on actual justice or human rights), and pretty much become as corrupt as the one-party rulers they're trying to throw out (SEE Iran 1979 to now). As a result, those American allies tended to rule by fiat, becoming dictators and staging rigging elections to maintain the status quo. You get extremes at both ends, with the majority population screwed by both sides. It's been quiet until now: the global economic meltdown of the last decade has hurt, with a lot of Arab nations suffering high unemployment and food prices inflation. Now, the masses of the Middle East are out of money and beginning to starve: they have nothing to lose if they take to the streets...

In Tunisa, the ruling party was relatively successful in exiling their extremists, which was why U.S. interests in what happened there were meager. And why, even with all the chaos ongoing there, Tunisa is viewed as gaining some moderate stability soon. But Egypt is a different story: they have groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (who openly renounce violence but clearly oppose womens' rights and want to place Egypt under Sharia law), and worse groups like Islamic Jihad with ties to Al-Qaeda. If the protests do succeed in ousting Mubarak, the fear is (SEE AGAIN Iran 1979 to now) that the extremists will be the only organized group to take over Egypt and start their reign of terror.

An Islam extremist Egypt will certainly break all treaties with Israel, their agreements having been the keystone to Middle East peace efforts over the last 30 years. They'd also expel most of the tourists, arrest every Coptic, and place their women in Third-Class status (think Taliban but in hotter climes). What's worse - Iran fell to extremists in 1979 but they were Shiite by faith, and they are a minority of Muslim followers and thus had little influence across the Islam world: Egypt is mostly Sunni, and if they fall to extremists the Sunni extremists in other nations will have a rallying cry and a base of support.

All of the rising protests in the Middle East should bring concerns to the rest of the world. If even one of these nations - Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia - falls to an extremist government, no matter if the others become solid democracies they will still have a poisonous asp sitting in their midst looking to spread their violent jihad everywhere they think their faith should be (which starts with their Sunni neighbors, then every nation ever touched by Muslim rule, then the rest of the world).

There's little the United States can do with regards to these uprisings: like the recent Iranian protests, a heavy U.S. presence will do the exact opposite of what our nation would like. We'd like a pro-Western Iran to have risen from the anger of the Green Revolution of 2009... but any U.S. public support would have been used by the corrupt regime to justify their crackdown of "foreign-influenced rioters". We'd like a pro-Western Egypt (and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and Algeria) to remain ticking along like a reliable clock, but we can neither public upbraid Mubarak to have him open up his government (which would humiliate and weaken him), nor back any violent crackdowns that would keep the extremists from power (but would also harm a ton of honest Egyptians in the process).

The best we can do is hope that saner heads remain in control of the uprisings. That the extremists are viewed as obstacles and not allies by the protesters. That we do get to see genuine democratic nations in the Middle East when this is all over. And that as few people as possible are harmed in the chaos befalling their nations. There's been too many deaths already...

Best we can do is pray.

Here Comes The State of the Union

2011-01-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

"...He shall, from time to time..."

The biggest question about Obama's upcoming SOTU speech among the Talking Heads on television will be if he speaks out against Keith Olbermann's ouster from MSNBC. Kidding. But I wouldn't be surprised if those self-absorbed nabobs went there.

No, the biggest question is if Obama will surrender his forces to the GOP House / Teabagger leadership under threat of government shutdowns and whatnot.

The buzz is that Obama will address the deficit as the primary issue, but how he will address it is the key. Will Obama push for drastic cuts on everything the Republicans hate - Social Security, social safety net spending, education, state funding, etc. - or will he aim for more moderate cuts with a stronger emphasis on spending caps?

For myself, I hope that Obama comes out swinging on the issue that's REALLY the major issue for most Americans: the ongoing unemployment crisis. For every Congressperson obsessed with the deficit (THAT THEY CAUSED) there's about ten Americans obsessed with how bad the job market is and how bad the wage earnings are. Obama's probably unable to push for any government project (the Republicans still hate Obama's stimulus package with a vengeance, and most Americans still aren't aware how effective that stimulus was in keeping us out of a full-blown DEPRESSION), but he's got to do something to address the fact that there's at least 15-20 million Americans who have been unemployed longer than 27 weeks... and that those long-term unemployed are frozen out of the sluggish recovery we've recently been watching on the financial news.

Obama better have something good on the table for the jobs issue. If he doesn't, we're screwed. It's jobs, people, it's JOBS that help keep this economy going...

Because No One Demanded It... A Revised Lost Battalion Logo

2011-01-20T12:35:00.002-05:00

Never heard back from Ta-Nehisi if he was gonna use the logo I crafted to start his own t-shirt line (damn Sully, stealing my ideas!), so out of boredom I went and carved out a variation on the logo.

I changed the fonts around, using Stencil as the primary font and BattleLines for the secondary font.

So who wants this on a t-shirt!

EDIT (1/21): So far I got one vote for, one vote against. The against vote objects to the use of military imagery for what is supposed to be a platonic group. So... I need an image of book readers charging against the defenses at Balaclava?

EDIT PART TWO: Okay. I got the Cafe Press store up. I have no idea if it will work until people attempt to waste their money on it. Address is http://www.cafepress.com/TNCLostBattalion

Words of Wisdom On This Day

2011-01-17T11:13:00.000-05:00

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

--Martin Luther King Jr. from Where Do We Go From Here (1967)

The Chart That Ought To Scare The Crap Out of Politicians... But Doesn't.

2011-01-15T14:09:00.002-05:00

This was actually last week on Sullivan's blog, but there was a distraction or three going on...

This chart points to how long unemployed people are actually staying unemployed.
It shows that recently unemployed people have about double the chances of relocating a new job to get back into the grand economic circle of life. But the second you get over that 27 weeks or more of unemployed... well, you're screwed. That, by the by, is where the real problems of our current unemployment crisis is...

There's a couple of reasons for this:

Those long-term unemployed are from sectors of the economy - construction, public works, finance, manufacturing - that have lost jobs that are NOT coming back any time soon. The housing and foreclosure crisis has put a crimp on new housing and housing repairs, for example. Manufacturing jobs are bleeding to overseas markets with cheaper non-union labor. Public sector jobs - state and county and city - have been hit hard with massive deficits forcing spending cuts. The quick rehiring of those out of work under 26 weeks involve industries that are fluctuating but not losing job openings that can be refilled.
The other reason is psychological on the part of HR departments. They seem reluctant to hire anyone who's been out of service for so long, as though there's a stench of failure all about a candidate who's been out of luck for 27 weeks or more.

The reason the long-term unemployed is a major problem for our government and our economy is that they will sooner rather than later become a burden on society in the worst way. Sooner or later they drop out of the job-hunting and unemployment benefits system. Unemployment really isn't at 9.8 percent: that's just the people still reporting for benefits. REAL Unemployment, including the ones who've given up on benefits or no longer able to garner them (known as the 99ers for the ninty-nine weeks (and counting) they've been out of work), is actually past 10.4 percent (and might even be worse than that). But what happens when the unemployment benefits end or the unemployed move on? They move on over to Food Stamps, or some other form of welfare. The burden merely shifts to another public sector that's facing cutbacks in the wake of statewide and national deficits. Worse, they become a burden to family members or friends who may be employed (or retired living on benefits themselves) but who are incapable of paying for the needs of their out-of-work relative/friend.

Look. Having one-tenth of your employable population out of work is NEVER good. But there's little sign that the federal government is going to do anything about it, which sucks. And the conservatives' solution - tax cuts that DON'T REALLY go to job creation or wage improvements - isn't going to work (all those tax cuts after 2001... and this is the shape of our job market today. Buy a clue, Republicans: TAX CUTS DON'T WORK. Grrrr.)

We need laws in place to force HR departments to look at hiring the long-term unemployed first. We're the ones at greater risk.
We need laws in place to keep international corporations from shipping OUR jobs elsewhere. You wanna get our tax breaks? Give some breaks to the people who live here!
We need a works program similar to the ones that FDR had back in the 1930s that helped us climb out of the Great Depression. Nothing huge like the CCC, but at least something to get people back to work and stimulating the economy with their efforts and their spending. I honestly don't get why there's this huge hate on for Keynesian policies of the 1930s that worked (nations like Japan that quickly adopted Keynesian economic models were the ones that survived the global economic meltdown). I know that Keynesianism was choking on itself by the 1970s, but that was when our government and economy could operate without it... but today, dammit...

So an open call to all unemployed persons across the nation. To all my fellow 99ers, this is pretty much the only solution left to us. Run for office. Run at the county level, state level, federal level, whatever it takes. Go to your party if you've registered with one and sign up to run for any openings in the coming election cycle. Trust me, you gotta start looking into the paperwork on that stuff before it gets too late... and the deadlines come up on the calendar faster than you realize.

Run for office, unemployed people. We need more elected officials who have a damn good idea just how bad the job market is out here in the Real World.

Wartenberg in 2012. I Need The Work.

(this has been edited for some grammar errors and to highlight additional thoughts)

I Link to Things I Like

2011-01-10T13:40:00.000-05:00

Following up on my previous post:

John Cole at Balloon-Juice:

The point we have been trying to make for the last couple of years is that Republicans need to stop whipping up crazy people with violent political rhetoric. This is really not a hard concept to follow. There are crazy people out there. Stop egging them on.

I followed a thread to a place called Driftglass:

In other words, no mention of the fact that Right's interlocking political/media/religious keiretsu has been a massive paint-shaker for Crazy for as long as anyone can remember: when they need a few more votes or a few more dollars, they notch it up; when someone takes them up on their elimination rhetoric and blows up a federal building or flies a plane into an IRS office or murders a doctor, they dial it back a little and pretend they have no idea where anyone could have gotten such ideas... What Mr. Sullivan and his expatriate tribe have never come to terms with is that this problem didn't just precipitate out of the pellucid ether two years ago with the arrival of "The Palin forces". It was right there, in plain sight, during all the many, many years he was cheer-leading for the Right because Palinism is nothing more or less than the latest, mutant manifestation of the violent, paranoid and often-racist rot that has always been at the very heart of Mr. Sullivan's beloved Movement. There was no Palin when McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma to stop the Evil Government whose imaginary treachery had been dinned into his ears for years, or when militias armed themselves against the coming of the Black Helicopters and the U.N. New World Order, or when the Clintons were being gutted in the press every day as a murderers, assassins, depraved monsters and drug dealers... Palin is merely an emergent property of all that preceded her: just the latest inheritor of Conservatism's long and obscene legacy who is using that inheritance exactly as she was taught to use it by her Conservative forebears.

Digby:

There are certainly left wing people who spew incendiary and violent rhetoric. But they are few and far between compared to the drumbeat of hatred and consequential acts of violence we've seen over the past two years and none who make the kind of profit at it that the right wing noise machine does. There is no comparison, it's ridiculous to frame it that way. And it ends up distorting the truth, which is that we have a violent right wing political movement developing in this country with the help and acquiescence of a major political party which refuses to police its own...

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

...As appalled as I've been over the past couple of years by ads like this, veiled allusions to insurrection, and the otherizing of the president, I've found arguments drawing connections between a "climate of hate" and Loughner unpersuasive. Simply put, the case that far-right rhetoric contributed or caused this killing spree strikes me as squishy, and, at the moment, unprovable. In The Times and Post this morning, there are some of the calling-cards of the conspiratorial right. But more relevant, there are hallmarks of severe mental problems, and a troubled home-life...

Sully:

A survey of the bloggy scene suggests a rigid, uniform, passionate position that this assassination has nothing whatsoever to do with violent rhetoric and political polarization. It is as if some loony had just randomly shot some schoolkids or ran into a mall killing strangers. If you are looking for reflectiveness, you won't find it, in what strikes me as an ominous sign of a right-wing movement more willing to see its opponents gunned down than ever engage in introspection... I don't disagree with the sentiment that we should not refrain from robust or colorful or exuberant rhetoric. But constant resort to violent imagery directed at specific and named human targets is not a sign of a lively discourse but of thuggishness... There is the obvious third option that has occurred to almost anyone not ideologically primed to defend anything Republican. That option - voiced even by Palin apologist Howie Kurtz - is that Palin's words were "highly unfortunate" and certainly regrettable. Does Glenn Reynolds believe otherwise? Does he endorse the gun-sights imagery? Does he see nothing wrong with it in retrospect? Would he have attended the Jesse Kelly "Fire an M-16" to show you want to defeat Gabby Giffords? We know the answer...

At Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman:

...In the short term, politicos of both parties are now talking about how perhaps it’s important to adjust the tone of American politics. And that would certainly be a nice, lofty goal: almost day by day, American politics on so many fronts is increasingly personal and toxic, where the operative goal seems to be to paint the other side as evil as possible. You see and hear it in Congress, on the radio, on TV, on the web and (most assuredly) in comments sections on web-logs of all political persuasions. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. You’ll turn blue. Most likely, there will be a period where politicos, talk show hosts, bloggers, talking heads, newspaper columnists and partisan activists from both parties rein in some of the vitriol. But then place money in Vegas that it’ll be business as usual. There is now too much of an institutional and cultural vested interest in American politics in keeping the tone and pundit flow as it now exists: partisans and ideologues on both sides find that pushing “hot buttons” is a way to rally sympathizers to your side and talk radio and cable ideological shows and websites make money throwing red meat to an audience that shows up because they already agree with an opinionated host or info-outlet...

Personally:

Cole's comment nails it. Stop egging the crazies on. That's the one thing we need to take away from this tragic killing spree... Pity is, Sullivan and Gandelman are most likely right that this isn't going to tone down... it's going to get worse...

Blood On The Streets of Tuscon AZ

2011-01-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

Today has been a terrible day for the nation. A gunman opened fire at a public event being held by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Eyewitness reports have the gunman coming right up behind the congresswoman, shouting something and pulling the trigger.

Giffords was shot in the head. Ten others were wounded and along with her taken to hospital for rescue. One of the wounded, a nine-year-old girl, died at the hospital. For hours, word kept getting out that Giffords had died, but surgeons finally came out to report that they were able to save her life and that she will with hope recover. Five others, including a federal judge John Roll attending the public meet-and-greet, were killed on the spot.

It is difficult to explain the rage I have at this moment, for almost the whole day...

Regardless of the political leanings of the shooter - and the Far Right are eager to point out how Loughner is some left-wing hippie, with the Far Left pointing out Loughner's gold-standard obsessions fit right in with Ron Paul's - this horrifying crime underscores a LOT that is f-cking wrong with this country.

In case Giffords was someone you didn't know before today, she was one of 20 Democratic House members targeted - LITERALLY TARGETED - by Sarah Palin's crew during the 2010 midterms. And in case you didn't know this by this evening, but Palin and her supporters had quickly pulled that poster (THAT THEY STILL HAD UP ON THEIR WEBSITES AFTER THE MIDTERMS) from their pages, trying desperately to scrub away the violent rhetoric that they have been pushing on our nation over the ~~last two~~, no ~~eight~~, no eighteen years. That bulls-eye poster reminds me of the John Bircher crap back in the 1960s... for example that infamous WANTED poster of JFK that happened to be in a Dallas newspaper around Nov. 22 1963...

We had violent rhetoric about an abortion doctor in the midwest, and Bill O'Reilly kept talking about him and about how he needed to get taken out... Someone comes along and shoots him AT A CHURCH. The Fox-Not-News crowd of opinionated pundits rail against liberals as socialists and how they're destroying our nation... Someone who listens and reads their crap, writes up his own list of targets to kill before driving out to a Unitarian church to shoot up a recital of Annie. A white supremacist with an obsession about Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate works up the nerve to start a shootout at the Holocaust museum filled with families and kids.

We get political candidates on the Right running for office screaming about "gathering your armies" and relying on "Second Amendment remedies," throwing tantrums for special treatment and privileges and reviling their opponents for un-American actions they can't ever prove in court but are able to convince their teabagger followers as God's honest truth. But then the second any actual violence on a Democrat or Liberal takes place, then by God the same Far Right talking heads come out of the woodwork insisting the violence is all from the Left while quickly scrubbing away the evidence that it was the goddamn Right wingnut lies in the first place.

There is blood on the streets of Tuscon Arizona. There is sorrow within most of our souls tonight as we mourn the dead. But will there ever be any semblance of accountability on the Right for their lying bullshit, for their obsession with violence?

Probably not. Welcome to our Hell.

That Wasn't Me Doing the Heckling

2011-01-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

Someone at Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott's inauguration heckled the proceedings, calling him "a criminal and not a Christian."

Someone at TNC's open threads asked me if I was the heckler. Hell, no. As a Gator alum and an honest man, I tend to avoid Tallahassee as best I can.

I'm innocent on this one. Just don't ask me where I was when I heard about JFK.

NOTE: is it me, or does that photo from the linked article show a sparsely attended inauguration? What was the attendance on that?

Today Is Different, Because Today Really Sucks

2011-01-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

On this day, January 4, 2011, the State of Florida is going to swear in a well-known MEDICARE FRAUD as Governor.

May God Have Mercy On Us All. All because 2.5 million of my fellow Floridians didn't know (which is impossible, because GODDAMMIT WE KEPT SCREAMING ABOUT IT) or didn't care.

From Howard Troxler's article:

He did not mortgage himself for campaign money. He famously (or infamously) spent his own fortune. (PERSONAL EDIT: Do I recall Scott still hosting fund-raisers to get people to cough up even more money to him? I *was* too busy trying to ignore him in the godforsaken hope he'll disappear while I wasn't looking...)

He did not kiss up to interest groups to win. True, he is totally pro-business, but he came that way out of the box — they're kissing up to him.

He does not seem to care about offending, or how he looks in the media (which he largely ignores), or the critics. This is a good thing, since he starts with a 43 percent unfavorable rating.

Troxler's article tries to be fair and balanced... but dammit this is no time for that.

But Question No. 1 is how much his platform of creating jobs and cutting "red tape" will conflict with Florida's environmental and growth laws. At best, he will balance the two; at worst, he will be willing to sacrifice the second for the first — with a Legislature eager to help.

As soon as he gets started, Scott has to figure out how he would close a gap in next year's state budget that is growing toward $4 billion. It will be interesting to see his "business" approach.

If his "business" approach was anything like the business approach he had with Columbia/HCA - where he ran a corporation into BILLIONS of dollars worth of Medicare fraud so heinous that the company had to fire him and pay BILLIONS in records fines - we are... all Floridians are honestly screwed.

I do not trust Rick Scott considering the employment crisis. He and his party are more focused on corporate tax cuts than on job growth: despite their snake oil salesmanship, the truth is that TAX CUTS DO NOT CREATE JOBS (investment in capital and business expansion does), so if they go that route I can guarantee you a flat job growth rate that cannot keep up with job losses. Raising taxes isn't even a fix: there is sizable evidence that businesses and banks (that can loan money to businesses to expand and increase jobs) are just sitting on tons of money that can well be used to boost the economy and get businesses starting and growing again. If Scott makes honest attempts to get private money plugged into the economy to increase jobs (if I were governor, I'd be calling those money hoarders every day to the carpet in front of live cameras and asking each one if they are investing that money into jobs), then and only then will I be impressed...

But I have no hope in his regard. Scott is a crook. His track record points to it, and his lack of accountability for the damage he's done suggests he thinks he'll keep getting away with it. I've got a pool going on how soon Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott gets nailed with felony charges during his governorship. Personally, I got him by July 14 of this year. Any takers? Winner gets first rights to travel cross-state to meet every 2.5 million voters who went with that bastard, and shout in each voter's ear "WE TOLD YOU!"

Oh, One More Thing, 2010 Year End Thingee

2010-12-31T10:26:00.000-05:00

Why our nation is screwed, Evidence #4,718. The media does not have any accountability for their partisan bullshit. From Conor Friedersdorf, covering for Sully:

There's a guy named Juan Carlos Vera. He worked at an ACORN office in San Diego, California. One day, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles walked in with a hidden video camera, and pretended to be a pimp and prostitute. They asked for help smuggling underage girls across the Mexican border so that they could work in a brothel. Confronted with what appeared to be a sex trafficking plot, you'd hope that someone would play along, get as much information as possible, and call the police. And guess what? That's exactly what Mr. Vera did! Unbeknownst to O'Keefe or Giles, he called his cousin, a police officer, shortly after they left his office.
Perhaps you know what happened next. Having cut his teeth editing The Drudge Report and its notoriously misleading headlines, Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart published the ACORN videos, which fooled me at the time – I praised them, and even encouraged Breitbart to pressure attorneys general into investigating the organization. I've never felt like such a fool. Some of the ACORN tapes reflect very badly on that organization, but taken as a whole, they are misleading in a lot of ways...
After publishing videos of Vera that made him look like a sex trafficker and costing the man his job, did Breitbart explain how the mistake happened, apologize and correct the record? Did he alert his readers to the truth? Having expressed outrage at the media on countless occasions for trafficking in serious accusations that weren't grounded in facts, did he behave better after realizing that he'd done exactly the same thing?
Nope. As far as I know, neither an apology nor a correction has ever appeared. The vast majority of his readership remains misinformed. The San Diego videos remain posted at Big Government, misleading as ever. I've attempted to get Breitbart and O'Keefe to address this. No luck...

Brietbart Delendus Est.

So What Will 2011 Hold In Store For Us?

2010-12-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

If 2010 was any indication, the coming year is going to be batshit crazy.

The Republicans' priorities at the federal level - now that they control the House of Representatives, and have demonstrated how they can bully their way about the Senate - are going to be 1) Screw Obama, 2) Demonize Obama, 3) Pillory Obama, 4) Cut Taxes for the Rich, 5) Shovel More Federal Money to the Rich, 6) Impeach Obama, 7) Take As Many Vacation Breaks As Possible While Railing Against the Lazy Poor and Unemployed, 8) Prepare for 2012 Elections, Because Elections are More Important Than Actual Governance.

The Republicans' priorities at the state level - considering they have a majority of state legislatures and governorships to play with, especially here in my home state of Florida - are going to be worse.

Already here in Florida, incoming Governor Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD, YOU IDIOT VOTERS HE COMMITTED MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott has already spoken openly about eliminating corporate taxes altogether, privatizing our entire school system, cutting state jobs which would affect social services at a time of massive unemployment and poverty, arguing against ANY regulations that would, you know, PROTECT PEOPLE FROM INJURY OR CRIMINAL ACTS, and not really offering any kind of works programs or incentives to businesses to grow and add jobs.

"I'm going to run this state like a business," Scott promises. Considering he ran his businesses into law-breaking acts that led to massive fines, THIS IS NOT A GOOD SIGN.

What's worse? I worry for the state of Texas. There, the state legislature has 2/3rds Republican majority in the state legislature, meaning they could pass anything requiring supermajority vote... like amend the entire state constitution to whatever wingnut obsession tickles their fancy. Meaning you Texans are going to say goodbye to whatever abortion rights you have, to whatever rights to privacy you have in your bedrooms and sexual lives, to whatever freedom of religion you thought you had, to any sane fiscal policy, and say hello to a secession amendment contingent on whether or not Obama gets impeached before 2012.

So, yeah, here comes 2011.

My predictions for the coming year?

Obama gets impeached right out the gate. Instead of wasting time investigating Obama for his Hawaiian birth certificate, the House will admit into evidence whatever crazy shit Orly Taitz has and use that as grounds for impeachment. It won't go anywhere in the Senate, as there are enough Republican Senators there with enough sanity to know how insane the House's move will be, but the real purpose - get Obama embarrassed early and often before the State of the Union speech - will be served.

Speaking of the State of the Union, it's already established that Justice Alito would like to excuse himself from appearing. The question will be who among the Republican Far Right will excuse themselves along with him? A half-empty audience will look bad on the television screens, no matter how petulant and childish the Republicans will be pulling this stunt. That's because no one will hold them accountable for their childish stunts. Hell, pulling these stunts was why they won in 2010, right?

Obama will then get impeached for the Health Care Reform bill, as it was an act of treason instituting such an obvious communist plot against America. Never mind the final bill nearly matched the Republicans' proposals from 1994.

The state of Florida will pass legislation firing every state employee and then contracting out to private corporations to cover all services. Never mind the fact that privatizing all state services - including law enforcement - is actually going to ADD another layer of bureaucracy and will most likely make things MORE expensive. But hey, privatizing everything (except corporate welfare) is supposed to be a good thing, right?

Oh, and in Texas, half the population is going to flee for Oklahoma and New Mexico before April because their state lege is going to destroy every sane provision and law in their desire to create a Christianist Old Testament nation/state.

Enjoy.

The Only Good News In a Bleak Winter

2010-12-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

At least Congress was able to get this mess cleaned up before the Republicans got back in charge of things:

This morning, a bipartisan group of 57 Democrats and six Republicans broke a GOP filibuster, allowing the Senate to vote up or down on a standalone bill to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." This afternoon, the Senate finished the deal -- the legislation passed 65 to 31.
The legislation is identical to the one that passed the House a few days ago, so its next stop is the White House, where President Obama will gladly sign it into law, officially removing DADT from the books and relegating the discriminatory policy to the trash heap of history.

For those who don't know, Don't Ask Don't Tell was a compromise plan put into play back in the 1990s to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the military. As long as the gays and lesbians didn't publicly state their orientation, nobody was (supposed to) ask what that orientation was.

Problem was, the opponents to having gays in the military (social conservatives reading a very narrow and inflexible interpretation of the Bible) quickly figured out loopholes to that: for example, having a third party report someone suspected of gay/lesbian leanings. And then using either the soldier's silence on the matter to remove them for insubordinate behavior, or force the soldier to admit their orientation and get drummed out for Telling. What was meant to protect gays had instead been used to push even more of them out of service than before.

It took time - younger and more tolerant generations getting into the military, growing public awareness that a majority of straight soldiers had no problem serving with gays, the problem of pushing out highly qualified officers at a time of war and manpower shortages - but today, after years of conservative obstruction and flat-out fear-mongering (that homosexuality in the armed forces would lead to body art, adultery, bestiality, and waaaaaay too much make-up girlfriend), the Senate voted on the repeal of DADT. Basically, gays and lesbians should be able to serve in the military same as straight people.

The Religious Right are going to have a conniption over this. "Oh noes" they will scream "God will PUNISH us for not adhering to Leviticus! Our military's gonna be filled with flamers and anal rapists and cow lovers! Our nation is DOOMED (unless you buy my book about it, for only 29.99 directly from my website!)"

Problem for those "righteous" screamers is this: the ones yelling about it the most are the most hypocritical of all with their own sins (draft dodging, adultery, war-mongering). So screw them.

The average soldier is not gonna have a problem serving with gays. If there's a hassle, you take it to the MPs. The military can maintain discipline in the face of ANYTHING, dammit (The US Armed Forces are quite possibly the most organized, prepared and adaptive military force since the Romans or the Mongols), and we ought to be able to trust all of them on that.

I have no problems with gays in the military. If an American wants to serve in the armed forces, as long as they are fit and capable, as long as they accept the challenges before them, I don't care of their ethnicity, their religion, their gender, their statehood, their sexual orientation, their foot size, their hat size, their favorite color. I never served, but that's me, and I'm not about to begrudge those who did with honor, and love of home and family.

This is a good day to be an American. One more bigotry defeated. One more right confirmed for those who want to serve this nation.

Tomorrow is gonna feel like a sunny day.

Two Year Anniversary of Unemployment

2010-12-17T15:07:00.000-05:00

Dec. 18, 2008... I lost my full-time job.

It's been two years since then.

During that time I've looked for work. Both full-time and part-time.

The full-time job interviews have been few and far between. Just one in 2009. Just one this year 2010.

The part-time jobs had been more frequent... Two part-time job interviews in 2009 and three in 2010.

Out of... lessee. At least one hundred applications sent in for work through... lessee... twelve different job agencies, four technical corporations, nine colleges and universities, tons of government offices, and seven different job fairs.

I did have part-time employment. One was for an inventory counter position that wasn't getting a lot of business during a recession. Even when I made myself more available for hours, they weren't calling me in for a lot of work. The other job was with the U.S. Census, counting houses and the people who weren't living in them anymore. That lasted a bit more than a month. Nothing since.

Not much out there for a librarian.

Not much out there for someone with computer training, computer troubleshooting, and computer repair skills.

The story is that there's currently five applicants per position in this high-unemployment era. Under normal circumstances it's supposed to be three per position. The truth? I'm hearing stories about 150 to 300 applicants per position. 'Cause it's not just the unemployed competing for work, it's also the employed people too, ones who are looking for better job security in an uncertain market.

But, say the naysayers, there are jobs to be had after all! True. But when you're one out of one-hundred, the odds are AGAINST you being even on a list of five to get through the door for interviews.

But, say the naysayers, you can ALWAYS find work at a retail or fast food business! Not really. I've put in for retail jobs and they never call me back. And the pay these jobs give out WILL NOT COVER MY MORTGAGE, MY HEALTH CARE NEEDS, or anything else a full-time job would. I *am* putting in for the part-time jobs anyway, just to have something, but still... No calls. Nothing.

But, say the naysayers, you're being too picky about what jobs to put in for! You're just being too lazy about your job hunting! Put in for every job and you're bound to get one! Like a librarian will have qualifications to work in sales? And like I mentioned earlier, I've put in for jobs where I'm qualified, and I even follow up on them to show my interest for them... and I still never hear a word back!

I'm at that point my depression is getting the better of me. Convinced that it's not the overwhelmed job market, that it's me. That for all my intellect, skills, work experience, all that... it's ME that people just don't want to hire.

I'm too young to retire, even if I could. I'm too poor to have any investments or capital to afford starting my own business.

And this is, for what I know, the last week I have any unemployment benefits at all. Even all the new benefits extensions that Obama just wrangled out of an obstructionist GOP isn't going to help me. It's going to help the millions after me who have yet to use up their 99 weeks of unemployment. All the ones I'm competing with for a handful of jobs.

Meanwhile, Congress is about to get taken over by a Republican Party whose idea of jobs creation is to cut social benefits, test the unemployed for drug abuse, and cut more corporate taxes that DON'T CREATE JOB GROWTH. The state of Florida is about to get taken over by a MEDICARE FRAUD openly pledging to slash jobs, with a GOP-held state legislature obsessed with cutting state-level taxes to zero while wasting millions on pork-barrel projects.

I am totally serious about running for office. Getting elected may be the only chance I have to ever seeing paid employment ever again. "Vote for Wartenberg. I Need The Work."

Happy New Year.

Damage Done: December 2010 Florida Update

2010-12-14T09:08:00.000-05:00

That Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott and the GOP-majority state lege would go after our state's educational system (all to destroy the teachers' unions, never mind the damage done to our kids) was pretty much a given.

It's how they're going to go about doing it that ought to make state residents regret their votes.

Not ONLY will Scott and the Pork Barrel GOP go after massive property and corporate tax cuts that will hinder school systems' ability to PAY FOR ANYTHING (just remember, parents, this was the year the schools started asking you to provide all supplies for your kids, including toilet paper!), they will pursue the most radical attempt ever on pushing their wingnut obsession with school vouchers. They will make vouchers universal (from the St. Pete Times' opinion section):

It is clearer than ever that Republicans intend to mount a frontal assault next year on Florida's public schools. Legislators show no interest in building consensus on efforts to abolish teacher tenure and create a merit pay system. Gov.-elect Rick Scott also pledges to slash school property taxes even as declining property values and tax revenues have forced deep spending cuts in education. But those misguided approaches are small potatoes compared with their pursuit of a radical plan to give all students tuition vouchers.

The whole thing about vouchers is that it's a feel-good proposal by conservatives: a means of introducing "choice" into a public educational system they despise. Vouchers are meant to give parents money to afford sending their kids to different schools outside of walking distance that can provide better opportunities (say, if your kid is gifted in fine arts but the best art school is on the other side of the county). But vouchers are an illusion of choice: schools are still limited by how many students they can enroll, and there's no guarantee your kids will get into the school they need or you prefer because - guess what - everyone else is trying to enroll there too. The push for Vouchers is also a con game: the proponents want them available for private (read: Christian) schools as well, meaning they want tax-funded moneys to pay for something that violates the rules of Separation of Church And State.

To refer back to the Times' article:

It is unclear how much universal vouchers would cost the state and how they would be financed. Taking a portion of the per student funding for public schools and allowing families to spend that amount as they wish would not leave enough money for public education. And presumably, the hundreds of thousands of students already in private schools would receive public money as well.The state already faces a budget deficit of more than $2.5 billion. On top of that, Scott wants to cut school property taxes 19 percent and eliminate the corporate tax. That would be the same corporate tax that companies can avoid paying now by earmarking the money for vouchers. How does this possibly add up?

Again, take a good look at the con game. The REAL OBJECTIVE here by Scott and the Pork Barrel GOP is to cut corporate taxes ALTOGETHER. Never mind that 19 percent cut to your property tax, citizen: home owners will still be stuck paying a bill with whatever is left of your millage rate, while corporates get to pay NOTHING toward our state and our families. And again, no guarantee that all that money saved to the corporations will go back into their workers, their businesses, or anywhere else that would help our depressed economy.

The Republicans are really only interested in one thing when it comes to fiscal policy: Tax Cuts. Everything else - balancing a budget, paying for social services, KEEPING PEOPLE ALIVE, ALERT AND HEALTHY - is meaningless to them. They want their tax cuts. They don't want to pay for anything, and all the while they'll take all the public money they can in state-level pork barrel projects, corporate payouts, and everything else they can get away with because YOU VOTERS DO NOT PAY F-CKING ATTENTION TO WHAT HAPPENS IN TALLAHASSEE.

Please, Floridians. Please for the LOVE OF GOD. Try to get this into your heads. Tax Cuts is just another phrase for Snake Oil. You are getting conned by political hacks and corporate criminals into buying a product that does not work. Please, please, learn this now.

The Saturnalia Wish List of 2010

2010-12-03T10:09:00.002-05:00

Heya! Once again, dear seven readers from China spawning spam mail in the Comments section, as part of our effort in the WAR ON BILL O'REILLY'S CHRISTMAS we here at this blog celebrate the life-affirming pagan holiday known as Saturnalia! The day where we look for any back issue of Batman comics involving the lame-ass supervillain Calendar Man. Yes, he did exist and yes Calendar Man had one of the WORST costumes in comic book history...

Anywho. As part of tradition, I'm posting my wishlist to The Roman Lord of Time (hi there!) in the mad hopes that the pagan gods will once again after thousands of years notice us tiny insignificant lifeforms and smite our enemies. And hoo boy, has this year produced a sh-tload of enemies for smiting...

The wishlist is as follows:

1) That when - not if - Rick Scott breaks the law while serving as Governor (HOW THE HELL COULD YOU VOTE FOR HIM, FLORIDA?), I be given the power to visit each and every 2.5 million who voted his criminal ass into office so I can tap each one on the shoulder and yell in their ear "WE TOLD YOU!"

2) That I find a full-time job starting right on January 2011. That hopefully the job will be getting hired by Obama to walk up to the doors of the Congress every morning, knocking on said doors, and shouting "HAVE YOU CREATED JOBS FOR 20 MILLION AMERICANS YET?" As long as I've got water and throat lozenges I should do well...

3) That I get this novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo finished for real, edited, and submitted for publication somewhere.

4) That when the House GOP starts their all-too-obvious Impeachment hearings on Obama over his Hawaiian birth certificate, everyone in the nation finally groks just how stupid, insane, and criminal the Republicans they've elected into power actually are.

5) That when the Republican Party at the national level completes their war on social services and the damage starts hitting the Tea Partiers in their own lives, that they fucking wake up to the reality that they just got suckered by the uberwealthy bankers and CEOs... again. And that the Tea Partiers grok just how stupid, insane, and criminal the Republicans still are.

6) That when the Republicans in charge of all these state legislatures mismanage things to hell - creating even more state-level deficits with their obsessive need for tax cuts - while busying themselves with passing anti-health care bills, anti-gay bills, anti-immigrant bills, anti-evolution bills, anti-fetus bills (they claim to be pro-life, but the way they'll enforce it will end up causing MORE damage, not less), anti-teacher and student bills, anti-higher learning bills, anti-everything that's not Rich and White... ahem, what was the point? Oh, right. When the GOP-controlled state leges mismanage things to hell, I hope that the voters try to remember it was the REPUBLICANS who are stupid, insane and criminal, and who deserve to get kicked out of office.

7) I just hope there's still an elective system still in place by 2012... I worry that our elections offices might get slashed in the mad dash for "balancing the budgets" so that billionaires can get million-dollar tax cuts.

8) I hope that there's more than one arrest warrant for Dick Cheney being processed as we speak...

9) That every time the U.S. Senate holds up the unemployment benefits extension, there's another chain forged in Hell for the goddamn soulless bastards who are playing political games with peoples' lives. WE ARE NOT LAZY OR DRUG ABUSERS, YOU SONS OF BITCHES! WE CAN'T FIND FULL-TIME JOBS OUT HERE IN THE REAL WORLD! Gah!

10) The Tampa Bay Bucs NOT make the playoffs this 2010 season. I'm serious. While it's nice the Bucs are winning this year, they are still a team with serious gaps of talent at key positions. The more likely they make the playoffs, the more likely they will drop too low in the rookie draft status to get a half-decent DE, MLB or S/CB to bring the defense back to 1999-2003 dominance. While this isn't a high priority, it would be nice to just have the Bucs go 10-6 and just miss the postseason. It will keep the kids on the team (oh God, I've gotten old, some of these players weren't even born when I got into college...) hungry for next year...

And so to you, Lord Saturn, upon this festive time of Saturnalia, I ask of ye for these small favors. And I just hope that 2011 is a saner, calmer year... (financial institutions collapse again in February 2011) AW GODDAMMIT...

Oh, one more thing. Brietbart Delendus Est.

From Balloon Juice, All You Need To Know About Our Corporate Overlords

2010-11-24T08:31:00.000-05:00

This is from a comment posted on a thread at Balloon Juice. The bold text was my addition:

The last election cycle demonstrated that even if you allow Wall Street and the corporations dictate a large portion of the policy, they will still fund campaigns to destroy you because they don’t want their share or ten times their share, they want it all, all the time.They are never going to stop going after social security. They want every single dollar of the education budgets. They do not want to pay any taxes for anything. They do not want any regulation that ties their hands with respect to their workers, the environment, or any other external costs imposed upon the public by their business activities. Oh yeah, and if they screw up and take the economy down, they want the government to bail them out.

I concur.

Until the Greedheads responsible for all the disasters we've suffered over the last ~~three~~ ~~eight~~ thirty years are held accountable and shipped to jail... until all the goddamn Supply-siders get sued for Fraud and selling snake oil to the nation... we are well and truly fucked as a country.

Screw It. Here's more Lost Battalion Badges

2010-11-22T15:18:00.000-05:00

This day has gone to hell real damn quick and I have no other recourse but to ignore the stress and mess around on my CorelDraw 9 to create more Badges for TNC's Lost Battalion:

Revamped GAMER Badge: for all those who Discuss the Value and High Priority of Video Gaming in these troubled times.

Also known as the Rock of Chickamauga Appreciation Badge. I found a photo of Gen. George "Pap" Thomas and mixed it with a concrete fill pattern available on CorelDraw. What, you think I'm gonna use confederate flags for artwork? HA!

The LIKE Badge. Awarded to those who click at least five LIKES.

The REPLY Badge. Awarded to those who REPLY to at least five Posts. To make it harder to get, the REPLY must be a first-tier Reply, NOT a Reply to a Reply.

What do you think, sirs?

There Are Many Things To Discuss... But Not Today

2010-11-22T09:13:00.000-05:00

I am inconsistent with posting entries to this blog as is. Making it worse is the NaNoWriMo effort this month, the massive depression I have regarding my failing job hunts, and the fact that the political landscape is batshit insane now and will be for the next two years. Even the distraction of making logos for Ta-Nesihi's Lost Battalion will have to wait...

Lost Battalion Gamer Badge

2010-11-18T14:59:00.000-05:00

It's not much to look at:

The artwork software I'm using is 12 years old (CorelDraw 9). If anyone's got a better idea for the badge, and a better means of crafting one, feel free to design your own...

For TNC's Lost Battaltion

2010-11-14T14:41:00.001-05:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates is patient and forgiving enough of us commenters to give us daily space to drop issues and compliments and grievances. He's taken to labeling us as The Lost Battalion (with the added tag of Platonic Conversationalists) and the group of regulars have taken to it.

This past week, however, TNC had taken to calling us Team Commie (there had been trolls going after us using such insults), but it caused some rifts among the chatters (myself included). So when he went back to calling us the Lost Battalion I posted "Does this mean we can break out the t-shirts again?"

After a few LIKES and some LOLs following, I decided to see about creating a logo for a Lost Battalion t-shirt.

This is just a suggestion.

MASSIVE UPDATE (3:26 PM EST 11/15/2010): so far the response to this logo has been overwhelming... but I'll leave it to TNC to place it on Cafe Press or such like, as it's his blog we're just dancing there.

Although the other demand is now for Badges to go along with the t-shirts. The list so far is:

Civil War Badge,
Gaming Badge,
Music Culture Badge,
History Nerd Badge,
Poetry Badge,
Troll Hunter Badge,
Graduate Student Accountability Badge,
and now that I'm thinking about it, LIKE and REPLY Badges.

Any other suggestions before I start messing on CorelDRAW?

For Veterans Day: A Thought On Armistice

2010-11-11T22:19:00.000-05:00

Oh to hell with it, here's the last scene of the BBC Comedy Blackadder Goes Forth:

Everything you need to know about war in 5 minutes.
That this was the closer of a comedy series remains heart-rending, only less so than the real-life madness that World War I really was. England lost over 800,000 of their young men to that war: entire towns wiped out of a generation of sons and husbands. In some ways, this war and not World War II - which in itself was a "Good" or necessary war and thus accepted with some cheer and satisfaction - is the more painfully remembered war in England. Because of the insane loss of life over a war involving treaties and the lust for empire (Britain's to defend, Germany's to win).
As for this show... in England this episode was shown originally on Armistice Day... It's called Remembrance Day there (Veterans Day stateside). They only had one complaint. Everyone else was probably too busy crying as the poppies rise up from the debris of No-Man's Land...

The Damage Done. The Damage To Come.

2010-11-07T12:00:00.001-05:00

Well. Elections 2010 is over.

The damage is done. Republicans reclaimed a majority in the House. More disastrous - for a reason - is that the Republicans gained control of a majority of state legislatures and governors' seats. Worse of all, it's obviously emboldening the teabagger wingnut crowd into thinking the World is Theirs. WORST of all: the state of Florida now has as our governor a well-established, well-known MEDICARE FRAUD CEO in Rick Scott, the one person in the state most likely to crash and burn a financial institution with massive acts of fraud and embezzling. Nice job breaking the state, voters. /fume

So. What is the damage to come?

At the state level for Florida, tons of damage is coming. Remember that "Kill Tenure" bill - SB 6 - the State Lege passed last April that Crist vetoed? With the anti-teachers Republicans still in charge of the state legislature and with a new governor willing to sign such a bill into law, the fear that an even harsher version of SB 6 - which killed tenure and job protection, shortened teachers' contracts, eliminated salaries based on degrees or experience, rewrote evaluations based on standardized testing which by the way isn't helping our students learn, and was basically an attempt to break the teachers' unions - will pass the second everybody gets sworn in at Tallahassee. How quickly it will wreck our already wobble educational system isn't certain, but given the horrified response from a majority of citizens (even Republicans) back in April suggest this isn't a way to go.

There's also the fact that voted back into power was a Republican majority in the state legislature that was led by crooks and pork-barrel spenders, a majority that had little true interest in balancing the budget outside of cutting social programs down to practically nothing. Having a hard core social conservative like Scott with his own history of financial criminal misdeeds holding the veto pen as Governor (and most likely ignore using it to cut wasteful projects) is going to make our budget woes worse. Considering the state of Florida has 1) massive unemployment and 2) massive underemployment, anything that threatens our social safety nets is NOT A GOOD THING.

Looking at the national level, with Congress divided with a GOP-held House and a smaller Democrat-controlled Senate, creates an even bigger headache.

On the national level, the Republicans were elected with one mandate: Get Rid of Obama. Seriously. There is nothing else the Republicans have planned. Anything they've claimed about balancing the budget? When confronted to give specifics - "which programs would you cut first? by how much?" - the party leadership waffled. The ones who DID give any specifics tended to threaten cuts for things like Social Security and Defense that are still Third Rail issues both inside the Beltway and outside it.

So what should we expect from the Republican-led House? We already know Congressman Issa is going to press for hundreds if not thousands of subpoenas to investigate Obama's White House on any useless issue, any hairbrained "scandal" that does not really exist merely for the purposes of embarrassing Obama. And that will be minor league stuff to what Issa and the House are apt to do: Impeach Obama for being born in ~~Kenya~~ Hawaii by going after his Long Form birth certificate. Hell, the Republican Party and their media cohorts with Limbaugh and FOX Not-News have spent the last two years decrying Obama as "illegal" - an illegitimate fraud who doesn't qualify for the Presidency - and getting millions of their Far Right voters to buy into that bullshit. And now that they've got a branch of government that can "investigate" (aka harass) Obama on that "issue", they are going to have to appease a voting base that's been convinced Obama is a Socialist Boy From Kenya threatening our freedoms. The Republican leadership created this fake meme: now they have to live or die by it.

The other campaign "pledges" of the GOP was to balance the budget and reduce the deficit. And guess what? Even this week after their massive win it's showing that the Republicans realize it's going to be harder than their campaigning suggested it would be. There's already a struggle over the issue of the debt ceiling - an artificial cap on the amount our government can officially borrow - and while the Republicans are making noises that they will use the issue to force a deal with the Democrats in the Senate and White House, there's solid evidence that the large number of incoming Republicans (with their Teabagger agenda of "Damn All Hazards") are going to rail against the debt ceiling no matter what. There's a good possibility that the GOP leadership that wants the compromise knowing that hitting the debt ceiling is disastrous is already losing their newcomers who find themselves obligated to defy the "corrupt old ways of bipartisanship"... something the GOP already defied the last two years just to get here...

Not to mention the fact that the Republicans are still stuck in the ideological mode of "Kill All Social Programs", "Kill Social Security", "Kill All Furriners", et al, and you've got a hard two years coming up until the 2012 elections.

Wanna hear something scary? The state of Texas is now so solidly Republican, that they got not only the Governorship but also 2/3s majority in both their state houses, that they could easily pass state amendments all over the place. Get ready to see Texas turn into a Right Wing "Utopia" of anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-workers rights, anti-regulation, anti-human decency inside of 5 minutes... 4... 3... 2...

And you know what? Considering that our electoral system has been industrialized and turned into a $4 billion cash cow, we're never going to see an end to campaigning and calls for fund raising and all that. We've already got jokers lining themselves up (even on the Democratic side, damn them) for the 2012 Presidential primaries. STOP POLLING FOR 2012, GALLUP! We don't need that crap right now...

On second thought, odds are the way our economy's gonna be the next two years - crappy and painful - I might as well get in on that action. I'm gonna go get myself signed up to run for Congress in 2012. I already got my slogans. "Vote for ME. I Need The Work." Plugging away...

Election Day Update 4: Two-Point-Five Million Floridians Just Voted a Crook Into Office

2010-11-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

Sink Concedes To Scott.

The governorship of Florida is now in the hands of a man who committed such outrageous amounts of Medicare Fraud at his HMO business that the company had to force him out and pay $1.7 BILLION in settlements and fines.

The governorship of Florida is now in the hands of a man whose idea for creating jobs is to cut state employees off the payroll, deregulate across the board, and eliminating a corporate income tax that brought $1.8 billion in revenue to the state budget and claiming that will go toward creating jobs (even though history has shown TAX CUTS DON'T CREATE JOBS).

The governorship of Florida is now in the hands of a man with a track record of mismanagement, corruption, obsessive adherence to ideology even in the face of facts.

Considering that an investigation into Solantic's Medicare overbilling (GEE WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THAT BEFORE) is possible, how soon are we going to see policemen knocking at the Governor-Elect's door with a warrant?

To the 2,553,634 registered voters of Florida who went with Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott: this wasn't a secret. This wasn't hidden on the bottom column of page 14 of the newspaper. You saw a crook with the Royal GOP Seal (tm) tattooed on his ass and you still voted for him. Out of some willful ignorance, some blind rage, or other unexplainable excuse. Your neighbors had been screaming for months, hadn't they, about the damage this guy could do in office. And you still voted for him.

I'm making a prediction here: I give it a year. Scott is going to do something monumentally stupid and corrupt while in office. It's gonna cause a massive investigation and there will be recrimination and tears and utter horror. It will most likely damage this state's financial standing the way a sinkhole damages a car dealership. And we are ALL going to get stuck with the bill, you sons of bitches.

Election Day Update 3: The Morning Sun Found Me No More Wise No Less Troubled

2010-11-03T08:22:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning dreading the dawn. Mostly because I went to bed knowing the Florida Governor's race between Alex Sink and A GODDAMN CROOK was not then resolved, but with that GODDAMN CROOK holding a slim lead.

This morning, about the same: GODDAMN CROOK at 2,553,434, Sink at 2,500,510. There's a ton of absentee ballots to count, and right now there's a 53,000 vote difference between sanity and HELL.

I'm staring at that voter count. There is a part of me that absolutely refuses to comprehend how 2,553,434 of my fellow Floridians got suckered in by the GOP BULLSHIT that Rick Scott was qualified and ethical enough to serve as this state's Governor.

This is why you don't let GODDAMN CROOKS win any primaries, people. This is why you don't live or die with a Two-Party system when one of the parties goes BATSHIT INSANE.

I want it noted for the record: If Rick GODDAMN CROOK Scott wins, and the state of Florida does indeed suffer in Hell with his bullshit rule (I will bet you within a year there will be a financial scandal in a Scott administration), I want those 2,553,434 to suffer for it, and not the rest of us.

And as for you GODDAMN DEMOCRATS. There's 4.8 million registered in this state, and only 2.5 million bothered to show up?! There's 2.3 million Democrats who ought to be FUCKING ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. Where the HELL WERE YOU?!

(NOTE: The entry title is a quote from Issue 3, page 22 of Watchmen.)

Election Day Update 2: The Long Night

2010-11-02T22:33:00.000-04:00

I had traveled to St. Pete to attend the Crist rally at the Savoy, took my laptop with me to see if they had free wifi. Yeah, I know, it's a hotel, ain't nothing free, but you never know. And yeah, you were right, it weren't free and besides I had no place to set down with it, so moot point...

Anyway, to report in... the Senate race was called pretty early for Rubio, still currently tracking about 50 percent of the overall vote, with Crist at 29 percent and Meek at 20 percent. That most of the voters of the state went with a Far Right conservative with a history of pork barrel spending and a plan that unmistakably increased the deficit by $3 TRILLION... I cannot understand that.

In fact the whole damn state is disappointing me at the moment. As of 10:20 pm EST, Rick "What Part of MEDICARE FRAUD DID YOU GODDAMN VOTERS OVERLOOK" Scott has a 50 percent to 45 percent lead over Alex Sink for the Governor's office. There are no words for the combined levels of rage and despair I have for my state right now, and can only pray to God that the remaining ballots lean so far in Sink's favor to secure her victory over an OPENLY DOCUMENTED AND WELL-ESTABLISHED FRAUD.

I know my fellow residents of Florida are crazy. We're renowned for it. It's why we got our own FARK tag. But for the love of GOD people, crazy AND ignorant DOES. NOT. HELP.

If there are any bright spots tonight, considering the Republican "Screw Everybody Under $250,000" Party is running rampant across this state and this nation? At least Amendments 5 and 6 - the Fair Districts - are on pace to make over 60 percent of the votes (I hope that's enough, for some reason the news sources have not checked them off as wins and I am afeared these amendments might need 67 percent or 2/3rds to pass. Oh Gods help us...) Also, a good friend from the 1992 campaign, Trish Muscarella, seems to have won the Circuit Judge, 6th Circuit Group 18 election.

I hope the next update has me in a better mood.

Election Day Update 1: I Remember

2010-11-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

This ad just got shown on Sullivan's site. It's a perfect summary of why the Republicans CAN'T be trusted with our budgets, our health, our safety, our need for jobs.

Election Day November 2 2010

2010-11-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

Lemme just say. DOOM?

As of right now, I don't care for poll numbers.

All I care about is getting everybody out to vote.

All I care about is getting people to vote for Charlie Crist.

All I care about is getting people to vote for Amendments 5 and 6 for the state of Florida: we need those Fair Districts and bring an end to the damn gerrymandering.

All I care about is getting people to avoid Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD! HE COMMITS MEDICARE FRAUD! THAT'S PRESENT TENSE, IT'S HAPPENING AT HIS SOLANTIC BUSINESS TOO!" Scott at all costs.

All I care about is that the voters do the right thing and DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN. If the Republicans get control of the US Congress WE ARE SCREWED.

I'll be updating as often as needed. I'm gonna see if I can bring a laptop to the Crist Celebration party tonight.

Wish us luck. May GOD have Mercy on us all!

All I Want This Election Day Nov. 2 2010

2010-10-30T21:25:00.000-04:00

I want everyone who's a registered voter to get up and vote. I despair that the overall voter turnout is always so meager. We're supposed to be a vibrant democracy but barely half the nation even bothers to register to vote...

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote FOR Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate. Of the three major choices, Crist is the one who's had the better, more honorable career. Yes, he's changed his position on certain votes, but that was because a vast majority of Floridians begged him to do so. Changing one's mind when it becomes clear that a political stance is wrong-headed DOES NOT make one a flip-flopper. And getting driven out by the party with all those outside Far Right deep pockets is NOT being a traitor either. A vote for Crist is a vote FOR Florida. I seriously believe that.

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote AGAINST Rick Scott. Scott is a goddamn crook with a history of Medicare Fraud. There's now more evidence that his more recent health care endeavor, Solantic, has the same problem of Medicare overbilling that they had when Scott was CEO of Columbia/HCA. The crook hasn't even stopped his bad habits! What the hell do you think someone like that is gonna do in the Governor's office? Here's a clue: he's gonna take all the money he can grift and make the rest of us suffer for it! For the LOVE OF GOD, FLORIDA, DO NOT VOTE FOR HIM! If you don't want to vote for Sink, fine, there's two other choices on the ballot. Just... NO SCOTT.

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote FOR Amendments 5 and 6. The Fair Districts ballots. Of all the amendments on the ballot, these two are of major import to me: a serious and genuine attempt to stop the political gerrymandering that has favored one party over the rights of the voters, and has allowed incumbents to carve out safe districts to the detriment of honest representation.

I want my fellow Floridians... I want my fellow Americans across this nation to Vote FOR Democrats across the board. All the Republicans will offer between now and 2012 are questionable impeachment investigations, a refusal to be serious with deficit reduction, and an upfront desire to shut down the federal government first chance and every chance they get. I mean, the Republicans are the ones who blocked and obstructed and refused to compromise for the last two years... and THEY'RE the ones the voters want back in power? Don't the voters have kids: any time their kids throw a tantrum and hold their breath and all, do these voters give their unruly kids more toys and candy? Or do they send them to a corner for well-deserved Time Outs? The collective GOP has acted like a spoiled 5-year-old brat... AND THEY ARE GETTING REWARDED FOR THEIR BAD BEHAVIOR. What. The. Hell?!

I want to be able to go to bed Tuesday night in a good mood. I want to be able to post here Wednesday morning that we're going to have responsible, sensible leadership in elected office between now and 2012 that might actually do something about our unemployment and our weak economy.

I want... I want... I want to... Put on my Sunday clothes...
There's lots of world out there
Get out the Brillantine and dime cigars
We're gonna find adventure in the evening air
Girls in white in a perfumed night
Where the lights are bright as the stars!
Put on your Sunday clothes, we're gonna ride through town
In one of those new horsedrawn open cars

We'll see the shows
At Delmonico's
And we'll close the town in a whirl
And we won't come home until we've kissed a girl!

...what?

Oh, right.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR CRIST.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE FOR SCOTT.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR AMENDMENTS 5 AND 6.

One Last Week To Try And Convince Florida That Rick Scott As Governor Is a REALLY BAD IDEA

2010-10-25T11:52:00.002-04:00

Seriously, people. 43 to 46 percent of likely voters WANT to vote for Rick "1.7 BILLION IN MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott? Do you WANT me to go to each and every one of your homes to SLAP SOME GODDAMN SENSE INTO YOU?!

Sigh. I know, I shouldn't resort to physical violence, BUT SERIOUSLY HOW THE HELL ELSE ARE WE SANE PEOPLE GONNA CROWBAR SOME GODDAMN SENSE INTO YOU VOTERS' SKULLS?

Okay. Okay. Calming down a bit. Let's try a little bit of logic here:

Experience as a CEO of a company DOES NOT automatically mean a person will have experience running an elected office. In Rick Scott's case, his experience as a CEO isn't even good: he mismanaged a major Health Care firm - Columbia/HCA - into such a sorry state that the board of directors FORCED HIM OUT and left the health care firm to pay off $1.7 BILLION in fines, court costs, and settlements related to the massive amount of Medicare Fraud the company performed during Scott's tenure.
Let's take a moment to review his work history here: Scott as CEO did massive damage to his own corporation. This happened either because A) the Medicare fraud happened outside of his knowledge (Scott's excuse), which means that Scott was incompetent and incapable of keeping track of his own business, or B) the Medicare fraud happened with Scott's knowledge (the whistleblowers' contention, with some evidence backing that claim), which means that Scott was (and very well IS) a corrupt and greedy bastard. There is no third explanation here. Either way, Scott is an inept manager or a corrupt bastard. This is who you want for our state's Governorship?
Add to this Scott's experiences running businesses after his getting the boot from Columbia/HCA haven't been all sunshine either. Mostly bouncing around as a venture capitalist starting a series of health-related businesses including a planned Health Network that didn't seem to go anywhere after Discovery Channel bought up the rights by 2001. Scott tried another health care business called Solantic, a chain of "urgent care" clinics... and THAT is a source of headaches involving lawsuits covering discriminatory hiring practices among other questions of mismanagement. If Scott's had any success post-HCA, it's been running a lobbyist firm opposed to Obama's Health Care Reform laws: successful in that he's raised tons of cash and getting his name out there for, guess what, running for Governor.

The scary thing for me is how blind the voters seem to be of Scott's actual track record. The voters seem only interested in one thing: that Scott has the Republican(tm) Seal of Approval having won the August primary over McCollum. Pity there is, given the voter turnout (1 million) for the Primary compared to the actual number of registered Republicans (over 3 million) in the state, Scott didn't even really win a majority of the Party. He just won with the more obsessed (Teabagger) and dedicated (Wingnuts) elements of the Party that even tried to show up and vote. Which on its own is a sad state of affairs: did a majority of Republicans just not even care in the end who represents the Party for the Governor's seat?

What is worse is the overall voter turnout: compared to Presidential election cycles, the so-called Midterm elections have fewer voters. Basically, only Teh Crazies come out to vote. Which ought not to be the case here: in Florida at least there is the VERY REAL DANGER that a corrupt bastard like Rick Scott could end up in control of:

Our state's budget: he can veto and line-item veto things at his pleasure. And while the Legislature legally has control of passing the budgets, the Governor would have a lot of influence in pushing which programs to fund or defund. And this is a guy with a history of FRAUD on his resume... Seriously?
How the state's legislative districts and Congressional districts are drawn based on this decade's 2010 Census numbers. While Amendments 5 and 6 to the State Constitution can pass and could well assure that partisanship won't gerrymander everything to hell and back, there's any number of political maneuvers that could delay that effort of fair redistricting... and Rick Scott as Governor will influence the redistricting to his benefit.
Our public and social services. For all the bullshit Scott is saying about "Let's Get To Work," like he has the solutions for curbing the unemployment crisis our state is suffering (12-14 percent Unemployment!), Scott is openly threatening to cut state-employed jobs. And someone like him isn't going to stop at 6,000 jobs... or 60,000 jobs. Any cuts he can find to justify massive tax breaks for his business and corporate buddies will do. Even if it means closing every library, every child care service, every poverty-fighting program that is staving off the disaster this state is currently suffering. Someone like Scott will slash first and never question the consequences: let the poor people worry about that...

Just on those three points alone, the whole of the state's registered Democratic population (over 4 million) ought to be rising up out of their seats to rush to the local early voting polls and putting their vote in AGAINST SCOTT. Alex Sink is a goddamn SAINT compared to Scott... and you Democrats aren't showing up in droves yet?

GET OUT THE GODDAMN VOTE, DEMS!

WAKE UP FLORIDA!

For the LOVE OF GOD, ANYONE BUT RICK SCOTT! Just. DON'T. VOTE. For that crook!

They Took That Sign Down! NOOooooooo

2010-10-20T09:10:00.000-04:00

I mentioned last post that I saw a Rick Scott sign at the West Pasco Government Center that had a "He's a Crook!" anti-fan sign taped to it. After posting, I figured on making an excuse to swing back by with my camera to get a snapshot in case it was still there.

As you can tell by my SPOILER-doomed entry title, someone took that sign down. Sniff whimper.

Anyway, pics of how it looks along the driveway of the WPGC:

I mentioned how half of all those signs are mostly two people fighting for the Mosquito Control position? Take a look at the lower right corner of the second picture: the red sign and the pink sign. Yeah, those two. Just repeat both signs by infinity and you'll get an idea how cluttered that driveway is with their signs.

People! Seriously! All that signage for MOSQUITO CONTROL? And all clumped together in one spot?! Just how much money are you all spending on the MOSQUITO CONTROL Job? What IS the big deal with that job, a springboard to the governorship?

Thing That Made Me Smile

2010-10-19T11:33:00.001-04:00

I went out to the West Pasco Government Center to wave a Vote For Crist sign alongside Little Rd. this morning. There's early voting for the next two weeks so gotta Get Out The Vote.

The whole driveway up to the government building is lined with yard signs. Hundreds of them. And more than half of the signs are for two people running for Mosquito Control. That's right, not for the Senate or the Governorship or County Commissioners... Mosquito Control. That's the big campaign in Pasco County...? Hmm, now that I think about it, we do have a bit of a bug problem in Florida, don't we...

But the thing that made me smile this morning was this:

Seeing a sign for Rick Scott (BOO HISS), but with a hand-made sign taped to it reading "He's A Crook! What the Hell Are You Voting Him For?"

When I head back there next time, ought to take a camera with me... also ought to take a lawn chair, my back is killing me after two hours of sign-waving!

Midterm crunchtime

2010-10-16T11:43:00.000-04:00

We've got basically two weeks to slap sense into a majority of voters to stop them from voting Republican this 2010 Midterms.

Dear America:
The Republicans have nominated psychotics, ill-informed zombies, outright crooks, and stone-cold liars for high office across the land.

The Republicans carried out a massive and unprecedented program of obstruction and blocking at the federal level that has effectively shut down government at one of the worst times in our nation's economy.

The Republicans are bought and backed by deep-pocketed financial institutions and billionaires who have profited from our economic collapse of the last 3 years, and look to continue the same greedy economic policies that nearly wrecked the entire planet's economy in 2008.

For the LOVE OF GOD, AMERICA. Don't. Vote. Republican!

Fool me Thirty-Seven Times, It's Still SHAME ON YOU, You Crooked Bastards

2010-10-15T22:14:00.000-04:00

Pretty much link to Digby about the Foreclosure Crisis (Part Thirty-Seven, Or Didn't We Just Have a Problem With Banks Just Two Years Ago?):

...So I'm listening to Andrea Mitchell and Jim Cramer explain the Foreclosure Fraud Crisis as they wail and rend their garments about how terrible it will be for just everyone if these poor banks are held responsible for this problem because the whole economy will implode.

That's nonsense. People should go to directly jail at this point, do not pass go. The real estate market is still officially fucked and while everyone wants it to "find its bottom" coddling the big financial institutions and their crooked subsidiaries and contractors has not worked all that well for average Americans at any point in this ongoing crisis (or for Democrats for that matter.) The only people who are benefiting from the capitulation to the Big Money Boyz's threats and hoary predictions on this one are the Big Money Boyz and the GOP. The economy still sucks and will continue to suck until the incentives for this criminal behavior and self-destructive malfeasance are stopped...

Even those with good motives among the powers-that-be (and there's reason to be suspicious about many of them) continue to believe they can finesse this problem with band-aids or superficial remedies to keep the rubes quiet until the invisible hand fixes everything. They are petrified in the meantime that unless they give the oligarchs what they want, they will pull the plug and then where will we be?

This is magical thinking. There is not going to be any easy way out of this. The invisible hand may be working but it often works on a very, very long timeline and many bad things can happen to a society while it does its thing. Meanwhile, every incantation and folk medicine they've applied to this problem has resulted in another round of infection. It's time to open up the wound and completely clean it out. The patient will heal much faster and it's far less likely to die in the meantime...

...As I wrote yesterday, these banks are once again holding the country hostage with their threats that if anything should be done about their criminality they'll blow up the whole damned place. Well, they already are ---- in slow motion. If we want to find a "bottom" to this market, they need to institute a serious cram-down program to help real people work out these messed up mortgages instead of allowing the banks fix their balance sheets through fraud and the market to stabilize by throwing people into the streets. It's not working.

And everybody needs to stop worrying about the moral hazard of letting average people off the hook for their mortgages and worry a little bit more about the moral hazard of continually allowing these huge financial institutions to get away with murder...

This is the result of decades of failing to hold people accountable for their actions... the slow, inexorable end to oversight... the unwillingness by those in a position to stop the reckless and criminal all because of the glorified concept of "Free-market"... the foolishness of those who pursued their greed and ambitions without recognizing the damage done the last time we let this happen, and their open disdain of the New Deal policies put in place to make sure those damaging acts never happened again.

That saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" is only partially correct. We've been fooled, again and again by The Geniuses Of Capitalism, the CEOs and Financial "Wizards" of Wall Street, into thinking that they held all the answers and had all the skills to make everyone and everything better by their guiding hands. But we're not the ones who committed the crimes and fooled the people day in and day out: that's still THEIR fault and those CEOs and banking "wizards" need to answer for their crimes. We're only to blame if we let them go. AGAIN.

Burning Down The Housing Industry

2010-10-12T20:35:00.000-04:00

For awhile there, I was thinking about making some comments on the horrifying story about how privatizing the fire departments might not be that good an idea.

But this week, something bigger and nastier that can affect everyone's homes has popped up in the news:

...But oddly, when it's revealed that financial institutions have behaved irresponsibly (and in some cases criminally) casting their own industry into disrepute, ruining countless lives and (further) destroying the economy, we are told that they cannot be held responsible, or even be required to stop their irresponsible and criminal behavior, because it will slow the recovery and the poor average worker will be hurt. We've been told for two years now, as wave after wave of financial wrongdoing and malfeasance has been revealed, that it is in our best interest and the best interest of the country that we allow the big banks and their various affiliates to continue on unmolested lest something even worse happens...

...You have to love the idea that average Americans should stand pat while the mortgage industry continues to defraud them so they can protect their alleged investments in mortgage securities. I guess there's a sucker born every minute.

At some point one would hope that this racket would become obvious to the American people: they are being held hostage by financial elites who insist that they be allowed to get away with murder or they'll blow the whole place up and take everyone down with them...

It seems that over the past two years, the banks had been speeding through the foreclosure paperwork for hundreds of thousands of properties that there has been mass confusion over which properties belong to whom, and even if certain mortgaged homes are even foreclosed. There are reports of people's homes being auctioned off by banks while those same banks are telling the homeowners that they still own their properties. Reports of fraudulent signatures and false papers are rampant. Attorneys General of 40 states are starting investigations and the banks have had to freeze their entire foreclosure processes.

As someone who's unemployed, struggling with the help of his parents to pay off a mortgage while I search for work, the possibility that I may have to sell my townhouse/condo is a primary concern. Problem is, I can't sell in this housing market from Hell. And this foreclosure crisis is making it worse. Freezing the foreclosures makes the market more uncertain. The whole mortgage lending process may be under investigation before too long. And in this environment people are not going to be interested in buying homes.

It'd be nice to think that someone can come along and fix this all: establish some serious oversight, ensure that the paperwork has been resolved, provide stability to the home-selling and mortgage-lending markets. But the banks can't be trusted. The government is tied up right now with partisan bullshit by a Republican Party obsessed with deregulating everything and demonizing any effort to fix our economy (unless it involved cutting more taxes... again... and again. AND FUCKING AGAIN).

The Latin phrase for "We're screwed"? Anyone? The Google Translate isn't all that effective...

Slightly Off-Topic, but Google Translate has English to Latin

2010-10-06T22:47:00.001-04:00

Which, if it has any similarity to other language translators I've found online over the years, will get a good amount of the translation wrong. It's the grammar. Tense (Past, Future, Pluperfect) use. Even word incompatability (what's Latin for "iPod"?).

That said, I've been plugging in a few personal quotes I love to see what the Latin would be:

Es fatear hypocritae honestissimis potestis facere.

Vivimus in gentem sunt iaceat numismate.

Okay... I tried plugging in "Buy my book!" and it's definitely having translator issues. Go figure. :(

For All I Know About How the March For Jobs Turned Out

2010-10-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

It would have been nice if I had gone so I could report in person what the crowds were like, how the scene was set, the mood of others worried for their jobs...

There's not much online I'm finding at the moment other than this article from The Atlantic Wire, which mostly just focuses on the debates on what the turnout meant and what turnout they actually had (and if the turnout was bigger than Beck's).

The problem is that "official" numbers from the National Park Service aren't given out anymore, so it's left to the rally leaders to proclaim GREAT VICTORY in the millions of people who turn out for their shows. For Beck, he was gloating he had 500,000 at his rally (CBS did their evaluation and got it at 87,000. Other observers did their own math and considered numbers between 100,000 to 150,000). The One Nation crew is pushing that they got better numbers than Beck, but on-the-ground reports are suggesting they got a smaller turnout (like 80,000 to Beck 87,000 kind of comparisons).

The one thing that does seem worthy to note: the largest amount of representation - and what was the stronger effort at the local level to organize buses - came from the unions. This pretty much got to be a March for Unions than a March for Jobs by the sound of it. Which makes sense when you think about it. Unions are all about jobs: keeping the union jobs they've got and wanting more jobs created for workers to join unions later on.

The phrase "enthusiasm gap" is going to get played up nowadays: comparing the eagerness of the Far Right to the lackluster responses of the whole Left toward the current political mood and potential results this November. All I want to say on this matter is WAKE THE HELL UP AMERICA. You don't want the Republicans to reclaim control of Congress and drive us back to the economic horrors they created from the 1990s and through the Bush the Lesser years. Okay? Do I need to re-hash what I've said about the damage the Republicans have caused with their insane obsession with tax cuts and deregulation?

One month to go. Please DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.