Between The Rock and The Dumb Place

With all of the unsettling things donald trump is doing to our international trade, our global standing, our farmers, and our tourism industry, it's the deeply insane shit he's posting on social media that distracts just a bit. But there may be something darker in trump's latest brain-fart to re-open the infamous Alcatraz prison as a holding place for the worst criminals the most defiant opponents (via Bill Chappell at NPR):

President Trump says he is ordering federal agencies to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz — the notorious maximum security prison that closed more than 60 years ago.

"I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America's most ruthless and violent Offenders," Trump said in a post on Truth Social...

Trump's message suggests he wants to restore Alcatraz to its original dual purpose. The twin goals for building the original prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, were "to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons, and to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious" about stopping rampant crime in the 1920s and 1930s..."

Trump did not provide details about a timeline for reopening the prison. And the National Park Service did not reply to NPR's request for comment about the president's new plan for Alcatraz before this story published.

But enacting Trump's proposal would come with a steep price tag, both for constructing and operating a new prison facility on an island whose most plentiful natural resource is sandstone.

Alcatraz was shuttered "because the institution was too expensive to continue operating," according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It said operating the island prison was nearly three times more expensive than any other federal prison at the time.

"This isolation meant that everything (food, supplies, water, fuel...) had to be brought to Alcatraz by boat," the bureau says. "For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week."

I remembered my travel to San Francisco for a librarian convention in June 2001 (right before 9/11, before air travel required 108 checkpoints and hoops to jump through) and saved the photos here and there on my computers. I made a visit out to the place in-between convention meetings and such.

Welcome to The Rock! - Sean Connery

I'm a librarian. OF COURSE I TOOK A PICTURE OF
ALCATRAZ'S LIBRARY!

I was 31 at the time. I had more hair back then.

(I'm not including the photos of my foray to Colma to pay my respects to Emperor Norton. Then again, Norton would be a far wiser and saner leader for America at this point)

I remember what the tour guide said about Alcatraz as a prison: The costs of shipping everything across the bay made it impractical, they couldn't install pipelines for water or fuel, and they had no way to add facilities like desalination plants. It also didn't help that by sitting in the middle of a saltwater bay, they dealt with serious corrosion of the steel and concrete that made it harder to maintain as a prison (this is what Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers took advantage of). I saw someone post on Bluesky how back in 1963 it cost the government three times what a normal prison cost, and held fewer prisoners. We're making more money out of Alcatraz as a tourist attraction than as a prison.

So why is trump suddenly fixated on converting an abandoned prison that would cost wasteful hundreds of millions of dollars to restore? (Other than trump being a brain-dead idiot that is)

We need to look closely at trump's Truth Social rant (well, to read someone else's screenshot, let's not login to that place shall we). Here's a screenshot from Bluesky via John Brooks  :

Yes, I agree, 8 years of you is indeed far too long

[image or embed]

— John Brooks (@johnbrooks.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 8:42 PM

Beneath the opening rants of using the prison to house "the dregs of society," and threatening to throw "violent offenders" into Alcatraz, trump is including "judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came to our country illegally." One of these things is not like the others... 

Don't forgot, right now trump is locked into a legal fight with federal judges who are refusing to bend to trump's agenda to ship without due process a number of criminal migrants but also too many honest legal migrants that trump's ICE thugs are rounding up under false pretenses and unproven allegations. We're close to the point where these judges are going to hold trump's DOJ lawyers in full contempt of their courts, and we're already in a constitutional crisis over trump's refusal to respect the Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Rule of Law.

Obviously frustrated with these legal barriers to his ambition to rule without restraint, trump is breaking out the bullying threats by telling everyone he's willing to jail these judges if they keep protecting the rights of those trump and his wingnut ilk condemned (without proof) as "criminals". But why threaten to send these judges to places like Leavenworth or Florence Supermax - places most Americans might not recognize - when he can threaten them with Alcatraz, one of the most infamous prisons in modern history (it defines a whole Trope, after all)? Everyone knows Alcatraz, even if they've never been to San Francisco to see it in person (and you can see it - once the bay fog lifts - pretty clearly along the bay shore).

All trump thinks they need to do is splash the prison with a new coat of paint, install some modern cots, put his name in large gold letters outside the main gate, and viola! Instant place of intimidation to his foes and allies alike.

And like all things trump thinks about, he honestly didn't think this through. The judges are going to ignore his threats because they're more concerned about upholding the Rule of Law (without that, judges lose all power and they know it). trump's already threatening migrants - especially the legal residents and their children - so yet another prison threat is no different than threatening them with shipping to El Salvador. And arguing to open such an expensive location for what is clearly an ego-driven fantasy undercuts every claim trump makes that he's "cutting costs" and saving us money.

We could laugh away trump's obsession with re-opening such a relic, but don't laugh away the underlying threat to it all. trump wants to break the judges against him, he wants to destroy every aspect of the Rule of Law.

In this, we need to stand firm. Like a Rock.

(yes, simile intended)

Seven Reasons NOT To Invade Iran (w/ 2020 Update)

(Update: Thanks to Tengrain for promoting this entry on Crooks & Liars and Mike's Blog Round Up! Please do stay awhile and read the latest entries especially today's memorial for the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre)

(Update 06/17/2020: Well, I submitted this article to the Florida Writers Association's 2020 Royal Palm Literary Awards in their Non-Fiction/Blog category, and good news tonight it's received Semi-Finalist status!)


(Update 07/25/2020: Follow-up on the RPLA for 2020, this article is now a FINALIST in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Which comes with another GIF to upload. On a serious note, this qualifies to be a First, Second, or Third Place winner by late October (not guaranteed however, there may be more than three finalists in most Royal Palm categories)).

(Update 10/18/2020: The RPLA awards ceremony was last night, and this article received Silver (Second Place) in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Thank you, judges!) 


Now, back to the article:

So trump - through his war-hungry advisor John Bolton and other proxies - has been saber-rattling towards Iran lately.

This after he and Bolton saber-rattled at Venezuela before backing off, and after saber-rattling at North Korea before Jong Il figured out how to turn trump into a gushing fanboy.

But this is serious. trump's committed harsh acts towards Iran: Dissing the nuclear deal Obama made with them, re-issuing the hard sanctions Obama relaxed, adding more sanctions towards nations still working with Iran on limiting their nuclear program to non-weapon levels, and essentially threatening to turn the whole country into his next parking lot.

And in the past week, trump's people had been laying the groundwork for a full-out invasion, talking up 120,000 troops getting deployed, a carrier fleet heading to the area, everything they can think of to make the Iranian government freak out. There's been sudden and unconfirmed reports of Saudi shipping getting attacked with mines. A ton of "Gulf of Tonkin" style setup.

And while trump is now showing signs of backing off - that he's suddenly aware that throwing a punch in this schoolyard standoff might mean getting punched back - there's just too many reasons in trump's head - and in the heads of all his neocon war-happy lackeys - to avoid the reality that sooner or later trump wants his goddamn war so he can play Commander-in-Chief. And like it or not, Iran remains at the top of the neocon Wish List.

However, for all the fantasy reasons trump (and Bolton) have for invading Iran, there's a lot of reasons in the real world we shouldn't be eager to start yet another land war in the Middle East.

Starting with 1) The United States will be going into a land war with Iran all on its own.

This is the first thing trump needs to understand: Thanks to all his bluster and bullying on the global stage, most of our natural allies (Hi, NATO!) are in no mood to help us anymore. Unlike 1991 in the first Iraqi War where we formed an international coalition over specific goals (end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait), and unlike 2003 in the second Iraqi War where we formed a smaller but dedicated coalition over questionable goals (end Saddam's attempts to gain WMDs that turned out not to exist), we are not going to find a lot of teammates for this one. The United States has no specific causus belli on this. While Iran's got a lot of ties to terror organizations across the Middle East (especially in Lebanon) they're not enough of a threat to U.S. interests to the area. Despite claims, Iran's been keeping up with their end of their nonproliferation deal with the other nations. The majority of nations prefer keeping the peace now, and are coping with their own problems at home (some of them can even profit dealing with Iran if/when trump's sanctions end).

The only nations that could ally with the U.S. in an invasion would be Saudi Arabia - Iran's primary competitor for regional influence - and the United Arab Emirates. Also Israel, which has been in a war of sorts against Iranian-backed terror groups. However, Saudi forces are tied down fighting a war in Yemen, the UAE's not much of a military, and if Israel joins in on any invasion of a Muslim nation we're basically talking World War III involving half a dozen African/Middle Eastern nations attacking Israel. The other nations in the region with U.S. military presence - Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan - are bogged down with their own issues (Iraq in particular is still coping with ISIL and the overflow from the Syrian Civil War) to be of any help. Turkey, our closest NATO ally, is too busy with Syria as well.

We'd be facing a likelihood of nations helping Iran against us. Primarily China, who would have an interest in gaining more Persian/Arabic oil as well as spit in trump's face for his tariffs war. Hilariously enough, Iran is a client nation with Russia - military and regional economic deals - meaning Russia at best will sit on the sidelines eating popcorn while their BFF trump sweats this out alone.

IF the United States enters into a war with Iran, we will be doing so with the fewest number of allies we've ever committed since the Spanish-American War.

2) Rolling Into Iran Will NOT Be Easy.

Unlike Iraq in 2003 - which had been battered not only by international sanctions but by constant military strikes since the First Iraqi War, along with genuine demoralized troops Saddam treated like cannon fodder - going into Iran will not take days, it will take weeks or even months.

Geographically, Iran is bigger than Iraq and with harsher terrain. It'd be similar to fighting in Afghanistan with vast mountainous ranges. A direct strike at the capital - Tehran - would do nothing to quell the rest of the nation, and is far enough inland that supply routes are necessary between any US bases (likely from Iraq) and the front lines, requiring occupation of a lot of major cities between the coast and inland.

Leading up to:

3) We Will NOT Be Greeted As Liberators.

That was one particular fantasy from the 2003-2009 Iraqi occupation that died a quick death. Cheney's assertion back then about Iraqis wanting new leadership was based on genuine hatred of Saddam... but ignored the reality that Iraqis hated getting invaded in the first place. They saw the U.S. trying to impose rule by a hand-picked toady (Hi, Chalabi!) and refused to accept him. Tied into the overall failure of the U.S. occupiers to organize and function to create a new political infrastructure to succeed Saddam's dark rule, and you got a nation full of resentful residents who allowed insurgency and opposition to turn Iraq into another Quagmire for America.

And that was with a nation that wanted independence from a despot. With Iran...?

Granted, the Iranians are oppressed as well - the recent history of uprisings and protests prove that - but they've seen the damage done to Iraq and aren't too impressed with the mess the U.S. is leaving in Afghanistan. The Iranian people know that if the Americans come knocking we aren't going to be all smiles and chocolate bars, we're going to be bombing the shit out of everyone and let God sort em out. They'd rather side with the despots they know than deal with whatever crooked puppet we'd put in office (remember the Shah? That was us putting him on the throne back in the 1950s!)

4) We Do NOT Have the Troops For a Prolonged War Effort.

Especially considering we're STILL active in Afghanistan, with forces in Iraq and Syria coping with ISIL, as well as keeping ourselves deployed in South Korea and Japan to deter North Korea/China, and Gods help us the crap trump is forcing our military to commit to along the Mexican border.

Bolton and others are talking up sending in 120,000 troops if/when we get serious about Iran, which is a smaller number than the 150,000 troops sent into Iraq in 2003... and even then we had retired generals warning us that was half of what was needed to make the occupation work. If trump were serious, he ought to be calling up for volunteers to kick that number into the 300,000 troop range... and the way recruiting is suffering, that's not likely.

We're going into a larger nation, with tougher terrain, more cities to siege. They have roughly 500,000 active service personnel. We may have technological advantages that can shut down things like their own Air Force and communications, but they have advantages of watching us in action the last 15 years and knowing how to counter all that (not to mention getting cyberwar help from Russia).

Remember Millennium Challenge 2002? That war game after 9/11 where the U.S. tried out their game plan against an unnamed country that they later revealed was Iran? The Marine general playing as Iran used crafty asymmetrical methods and "sank" a carrier fleet, and the only way the U.S. side won was by "resetting" the whole thing and ordering that general to not use the methods he deployed. Do you think Iran is going to play by OUR rules if we invade? This is the real world: YOU DO NOT GET TO RESET WARS.

Iran can, arguably, bloody our military's nose early enough in any invasion attempt to make Americans recoil at the losses. And we won't have the troops to recover quick enough.

And it's definitely not going to look good for "the boss" because trump wants his victories pretty like him...

5) We Do NOT Have A Unified And Supportive Home Front.

When 9/11 happened, the entire nation mourned and stood united against a terror threat. When we sent troops into Afghanistan where the threat was, there was near agreement from all Americans that it was the right thing to do.

When Dubya wanted to invade Iraq as part of his Global War on Terror, the unity faded. A lot of Americans argued it was the wrong war at the wrong time (we hadn't captured Bin Laden, we were still nation-building in Afghanistan).

When Obama wanted to do something about Syria or Libya, he was constrained by a GOP-leaning Congress and by general public apathy, and so left it to minimal efforts that left both nations deep into their own civil wars.

So here comes trump, likely claiming (and believing) a majority of Americans want this war in Iran. he probably thinks ANY war effort will force his critics to shut up to avoid getting labeled "unpatriotic" and "treasonous" (which he and his GOP worshipers are doing anyway). he's ignoring the facts that A) he's still unpopular across the general population and B) the likelihood of a bad opening attack wave would make him over-react in public to cause more Americans to distrust his leadership.

6) Don't Forget: Everything trump Touches Turns to Shit.

As a war-time leader, trump will be all over the place. Meddling in military affairs when he shouldn't, ignoring all warning signs when he should. his point men on Iran - Bolton most of all - will only care for the results they want, not what they'll get, meaning worse decisions will follow after bad. Considering how trump may rely on a private merc army - hi Erik! - to beef up his forces could cause confusion and mayhem on the ground in ways our legitimate military won't be able to control.

In short: We're dealing with a White House that won't cope well with any early setbacks, that can well over-react and cause more damage not only in Iran but also here at home.

With the likely bonus of trump selling off billion-dollar contracts to his corporate buddies that can siphon off much needed funding and supplies while the invasion quickly sours. It's Lose-Lose for the nation when this happens.

trump is not serious about going to actual war. Bolton and Sec of State Pompeo and maybe a lot of other neocons are, but trump is going to treat this as a photo op, a chance for him to perform his immigrant-bashing tirades in front of soldiers who won't enjoy being used as props. The whole thing will be over-managed and under-planned, with money going the wrong way while the troops get sent into death traps.

7) Any war is a bad idea when diplomacy is possible and ought to be pursued.

That's just goddamned common sense. trump and the neocons just want this war to prove diplomacy - at least the way it's been done since the Second World War - doesn't work and that they have better ways to resolve everything. It's trump's Id at play again: Every deal he doesn't make is a bad deal, so he'll blow things up and force people to deal his way (where he gets all the credit and probably all the money).

And yet... trump's saber-rattling continues on.

Sorry, Middle East, we're heading into another decade without any goddamn peace again.

Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Stop Sniffing Brexit

So there I was yesterday, promising I was going to cut back on social media and blogging. I am just honestly doing too much of it right now.

So both the Old Gods and the New decided to screw up my blogger vacation with arguably the biggest global crisis since the 2007-08 economic meltdown.

Thursday, the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and various other commonwealth areas tied into it - held a "nonbinding referendum" on an up or down vote: to Leave the European Union - a major economic and trade coalition of European nations - or Remain.

It was also called #Brexit, a melding of "Britain" and "Exit" that worked well as a Twitter hashtag.

It was a serious argument for the UK for decades over joining the Union at all: the debates between joining or standing alone were pretty fierce if I recall my history, up until they actually joined (with restrictions, not full membership) in order to reap certain economic benefits such as making the entire Euro market the largest trading bloc and engine of finance/industry on the planet. Once they were in, the arguments subsided for the most part... except for flaring up last year because of homeland fears over immigration and businesses fleeing to other nations (gee, sounds familiar...)

It was supposed to be a throwaway moment: it was something Prime Minister Cameron promised to do last year during the Parliamentary elections as a way to keep voters from bolting to the anti-EU, anti-immigrant UKIP (aka British Trumpshirts) during a potentially tight run. The expectations - and the polling - kept pointing to a tough but clean win to Remain with the EU, because honestly most of the elites in politics and the media believed the voters wouldn't be stupid enough to commit economic suicide.

And then they counted the votes.

I swear to the Gods - the Old and the New - that the very second the incoming ballots showed Leave was going to eke out a win, the entire global economy melted down faster than a cup of Dipping Dots at an August afternoon preseason football game at Raymond James stadium.

The British Pound dropped to a 30-year low compared to the US dollar. In about an hour it dropped faster than a blue whale without a parachute.

To say that the global markets went into panic mode AT THAT MOMENT and remained so well into today would be an understatement.

And so here I was, sitting at home watching all of this on an Internet I swore I wasn't going to pay attention to, and this was pretty much the one thought bouncing through my head:

YOU TOSSERS! YOU HAD ONE JOB!

You Brits could have retained some stability in all three major areas of public concern: your economy, your culture, your government. All three are now burning in the dumpster fire.

The economic consequences are being felt now... with every likelihood of things getting worse once the mechanics of leaving the EU kick in.

The outrage among younger voters - who overwhelmingly backed Remain - is going to stick with that electorate for a very long time.

Prime Minister David Cameron went in one hour from being one of the most powerful men on the planet - Prime Minister ranks somewhere below President of the United States and slightly above the Actor Currently Playing The Doctor - to resigning from office in utter humiliation. Few Prime Ministers fell so low so fast. The resulting battle among Conservatives for the new leadership spot will likely spill over into a broken government, forcing a new round of elections sooner than the required five-year cycle.

Not to mention the likelihood that the very existence of the United Kingdom - anchored by the British Parliament - won't survive the year. Scotland AND Northern Ireland - both of which rely on the EU economy more than England - are calling for referendums of their own to force independence from Great Britain. The daily reality of everything from Queen Elizabeth's reign - and that has serious repercussions at home and abroad - all the way down to passports and travel rules across Europe are taking a huge hit here.

It's as though - and there's evidence pointing to it - the voters for Leave didn't realize what the hell they were voting for until AFTER THEY FOOKIN VOTED.

Buyer's remorse is reportedly now rampant across the countryside. Cliches are getting thrown out there like there's no tomorrow. Sorry, had to.

This is a cascade of failure across time and space. If the Brits weren't working on a functional TARDIS before all this, they are fookin building one NOW.

This was a spectacular failure of leadership within British government itself. Cameron failed to consider the actual likelihood of a bad result, and didn't create alternatives on the ballot to avoid a catastrophic either-or Sadistic Choice. It didn't help that factions within the Conservative ranks itself sowed chaos. Boris Johnson in particular - as close a clone of Trump we'll ever get: a glory-seeking Upper Class Twit - had pushed publicly for #Brexit as a way to take out Cameron and claim No. 10 Downing for himself, but apparently JUST NOW figured out how costly the bill is going to be. If he gets The Iron Throne to be Prime Minister, it's going to be ruling over a land of ash and White Walkers. All hail Boris, First of His Name... King of Nothing...

The main opposition party - Labour - didn't do any better. Ostensibly campaigning to Remain, they did a very piss-poor job of it. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing a No-Confidence vote: the party itself may lose all of Scotland as a political ally if they split off. Gordon Brown for some godforsaken reason is starting to look good.

And the one who really won this referendum is a son-of-a-bitch. The UKIP leader - Nigel Farage - was one of Leave's biggest proponents: Farage pushed a narrative about the threat of immigrants and lost jobs, as well as making promises that the UK would recover money from the EU that could go back towards paying off their NHS (Health care). And yet not a day passed after his victory that Farage admitted on television that his claim about the NHS was "a mistake." No, it wasn't a mistake, you racist SOB: You lied.

This was a monstrous failure of communication by the media outlets tasked with keeping the electorate educated and informed. It does not surprise me one bit that one of the bigger proponents for Leave was one of Rupert Murdoch's papers The Sun. Decades of pushing populist narratives and bad reporting onto the British population - much like what he's been pushing here in the U.S. with Fox Not-News - has created an electorate that's poorly informed and motivated by flawed opinions masquerading as news.

This was a horrifying failure of civic responsibility by the voters themselves. Too much self-indulgence, too short-sighted and short-term, and too disinterested to take the entire thing serious enough. And now their economy is tanking so fast their personal wealth - any retirement funds, any investment portfolios, the very cash in their pockets - could be gone by Monday.

This is a massive warning sign to the United States electorate. This is it, folks: this is what Nativist Populism looks like. This is what anti-immigrant, anti-Establishment fear-mongering creates. A large enough number of voters bought into the lies and scams of the likes of Farage - who exaggerated fears about immigrants and lied about the benefits of Leaving - into voting against their own self-interest and needs. We've seen it too many times here in the U.S. already, where a solid bloc of voters routinely vote against social aid or improvements to their cities and counties and states all because they buy the Populist snake-oil. And now the Brits are doing it to themselves. And it's frankly getting too scary to see how this is going to be a problem for us here in the U S of A.

Think we critics of Donald Trump are joking about how bad it's going to be for the United States - and the world - if Trump wins? Just look at the UK right now, in the last 24 hours: that will be the US after Election Day this November if Trump gets a majority of the Electoral College. And it will get worse every other day following that.

Speaking of the devil, Trump for some Ungodly reason was in Scotland as the Brexit vote was taking place. He made some insane brain-fart tweets about the referendum, and then today made a public speech about Brexit... and how it was going to be great for that golf course of his that he was there to promote.

There is now a Gallifrey-sized dent in my desk where my head slammed into it.

I remember the terror I felt for my own nation's near-miss with economic meltdown: all the way back during that Long October of 2013. At one point I realized that one of the biggest reasons our Republican overlords in Congress were hell-bent on forcing an economic crisis was because they had no real idea what it would really look like. I mean, they never really believed the underlying causes of the 2007-08 Economic Collapse was due to massive deregulation and greedy banks: the Far Right kept believing it was bad government, high taxes, and Fannie Mae. So in their minds, they could make their own government default on its own and there wouldn't be any major consequences (or at the least blame Obama and the evil hippie libruls).

The British Far Right and their entire Conservative Tory wing apparently viewed their relations to the EU in the same light of ill-informed ignorance. They acted as though cutting ties to every other major economic power on their own continent would be mutual, beneficial, and safe. They are honestly getting sideswiped right now by the economic meltdown they've just caused and are continuing to generate. Here's more evidence: the British economy just slid from fifth to sixth in the world economic leader board behind FRANCE. You think we Yanks joke too much about France? The Brits are now personally humiliated they are doing worse than France. And there's nowhere to go but down...

Other than outright negating the entire referendum and pledging to stay within the EU - which is doable, but would likely cost them their earlier privileges with the EU as a penalty, and would likely break the Tories as a ruling party for the next decade (if not longer, if the youth voters remember this shitshow) - they are now on a terrifying train ride into economic and political isolation.

If not utter ruin.

I never knew the 1960s. I was literally born in its wake - 1970 - and so can only remember it as history.

I am wondering if 1968 was just this maddening, just this chaotic across the board. All this uncertainty and horror and rage and angst and dread.

The dread I felt about the likelihood of Romney beating Obama back in 2012 was nothing like this.

For the first time in my life, I fear the future.

What the hell is wrong with us?

The Danger of Trump's World View

(Update: Oh hey, Crooks and Liars readers linking in from Mike's Blog Round Up! Welcome back. Please check out the latest blog offerings if you can, and by the by I think I got a message from the family of the Port O San guy from Woodstock I blogged about back in 2009 so OMG OMG OMG I am a little distracted at the moment...

Follow-up to the Update: Thank you as well, Infidel753 for the link here!)

Recheck on the Follow-up to the Update: Hello everyone linking from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo! Welcome to my blog, try the veal it's the best in the city...

You seven - I should be saying eight now - regular blog followers know I am a fan of James David Barber's work on Presidential Character. On how it can determine the basic performance of an incoming or sitting or historical President: on if said President was/is/will be Active or Passive in office, and Positive or Negative about the power of the office towards achieving goals.

What he based that Character on were a set of factors, one of the key factors being "World View": how the person running for the Presidency perceives the world based on previous experiences, learning moments, and developing philosophy.

Barber's own definition from his book Presidential Character goes like this:

A President's world view consists of his primary, politically relevant beliefs, particularly his conceptions of social causality, human nature, and the central moral conflicts of the time... these assumptions or conceptions help him make sense of his world, give some semblance of order to the chaos of existence. Perhaps most important, a man's world view affects what he pays attention to... (p.5)

That World View gives us an idea both on how the potential President views his political allies and enemies, and on how he/she will act on the global stage of the world itself.

Well, we've got a really hard case of Presidential Character with Republican front-runner Donald Trump at the moment. My original estimation of Trump being Active-Negative - and in the worst way imaginable - remains intact: he's been the self-centered, boasting, bullying, ill-informed blowhard that one would find at the most extreme edges of being Uncompromising and Self-Serving (two key A-N traits).

One of the things Trump has been avoiding has been explaining or codifying his World-View to the public at large - at most he's made clear signals about degrading Hispanics, Asians, women, and anybody who doesn't genuflect to the Trump (tm) brand - by usually hand-waving off questions regarding foreign policy. Now that he's essentially the lone runner for the delegate majority count, Trump has to establish more specific policy goals to define the upcoming convention's platform, so he and his handlers decided on making a "bold" foreign policy speech.

To say it didn't go over very well is a bit of an understatement.

If we can refer to Adam Silverman's article in Balloon Juice:

...I will leave the fiskings and point by point takedowns of the contradictions, flaws in logic, petty vindictiveness, and inconsistencies to others. I want, instead, to focus in on the core of the address, which could, perhaps, be referred to the Trump Doctrine. The Trump Doctrine, at its core, can be boiled down to America (we) will be treated fairly. As I wrote yesterday in my initial impressions, this is essentially National Security Narcissism...

...More than that, however, is that the Trump Doctrine is really the animating force or theme of the entire Trump campaign. The other candidates had better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican National Committee better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican establishment better treat Donald Trump fairly, the media better treat Donald Trump fairly, the state level parties that handle the primaries and all the delegates chosen better treat Donald Trump fairly. And Donald Trump will make them treat him fairly! And the only candidate, nay the only person in America who can ensure that you are treated fairly is Donald Trump. And if he isn’t treated fairly or the US isn’t treated fairly, then he will get even...!

The average American, in some cases even the above average American, really does not know how policy is formulated or strategy is developed for domestic issues, let alone for foreign or defense issues. Donald Trump’s speech yesterday cut through all of that reality – that how the official business of America at the Federal, state, and municipal levels is done is often arcane and messy – and reached right for his supporter’s guts. Donald Trump has consistently been telling Americans... that they are being taken advantage of and that only Donald Trump can stop this. All he’s now done is formally extend it into the realm of foreign and defense policy and connect the pieces together...

The only people that should be happy with Mr. Trump’s foreign policy remarks are Vladimir Putin, the leadership of the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic extremists running the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Mr. Trump’s doctrine of America will be treated fairly screams a revanchist approach to foreign and defense policy. Should the US not be treated fairly, the US will then retaliate. Maybe that’s taking our things and going home. Maybe that’s getting even. Maybe its something else, but because Donald Trump’s emphasis is on unpredictability there is no way to really know...

Silverman's point is that Trump is projecting his own World View - his narcissistic belief in his own superiority over everyone else - and applying it to foreign relations that cannot and should not kow-tow to such ego-stroking.

The key question about the Trump Doctrine - America should be treated fairly - should be this: What the hell is fair? Who gets to determine what actions are fair or not? Given the person involved, the likeliest answer of Who determines is going to be Trump himself. If it comes down to it, what Trump is advocating is an American foreign policy where all of our dealings ought to go entirely to HIS favor and not even the American citizenry (who will only benefit by proxy in Trump's estimation), which violates a lot of precepts about deal-making and international agreements.

What Trump is pushing is a World View where everyone else HAS to Respect the hell out of US, while our nation won't have any reason to show any Respect to them.

This is troubling on multiple levels.

Our existing alliances would come under scrutiny, and the political situations in Europe and Asia would collapse over the first sign of slight in Trump's view. Which could be over anything that would tick off his ego.

Said allies would rather cut ties up front over coping with any conflicts with Trump's administration down the road. As Silverman pointed out, that would weaken NATO's stance against Putin's Russia, and it would certainly be a death-knell to any NATO attempt to support Ukraine against Putin's border war with them. The Middle East, another flashpoint where NATO and Russia are occasionally at odds, can turn into a greater cauldron of hell than it already is.

As others pointed out, Trump's dealings in Asia would agitate an increasingly dangerous China, and if Trump were to pull out of our alliances with Japan, Taiwan, even the Philippines it would grant China greater control of the water trade routes of the Southeast Pacific at best (at worst, good God, is full out invasions of Taiwan, Japan, and anywhere they like).

It's a variant of the strand of Isolationism that is common to the United States' political discourse. As much as an "America First" mindset - which has some pretty sick associations - as it is a kind of arrogant Nativist stance that places the nation above all mundane concerns to everyone else's destruction (there's a kind of "Let 'Em Crash" smugness to it).

What Trump is selling here is the argument that the United States is unfairly treated by other foreign powers including our allies, and that our national pride is at stake if we do not elect him to make those foreign powers respect us. What he's not seeing - because his willful ignorance of anything that doesn't serve his immediate needs - is that our foreign policies should not be based on PRIDE but on political and economic stability at a global level. We can't gain that stability if we destabilize our own alliances and create more chaos.

How far Trump can go on this message and World View, all depends on how many American voters buy into the same World View. The best we can hope for right now is that those numbers are way below 40 percent of the electorate currently backing his run.

This is not good politics. This is not good foreign policy. This is not good for America. And we're two steps away from being stuck with him.

All that joking about what a Trump Presidency would look like? It's not funny if he gets elected. Not one damn bit funny if that happens.

Jeb? Can't Fix This

So here I am, trying to claim I won't go blogging this month of November because of my NaNoWriMo efforts - P.S. please visit the Writing page on here and support a fellow American by purchasing a few ebooks... ow stop hitting me, what, a guy can't market his ebooks out here? - and while I'm pretty good on my word count so far on the novel effort, I just had to come back and blog about this ridiculous hare-brained marketing idea that the Jeb? Bush people have decided to go with to relaunch their troubled campaign.

(If you're worried about poor sentence structure just now, relax, this happens a lot when you're rushing out a 50,000 writing project)

Anyway.  The Jeb* people have come out with a brand new slogan for their boy to campaign on:

Jeb Can Fix It

Cough.  Heh.  Heeehahaha.  Snerk.  Guffaw.  BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHHHAHAHA gasp wheeze HAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAAAAA.

I am thinking back to that book about campaigning, the classic Selling of the President tome about the 1968 Nixon run for the White House.  Advertising is all about branding, about creating loyalty and love for a product, and intermixing that to political campaigning it means creating an identity for a politician that people can immediately use to picture who that candidate is and what he/she stands for.

Which is part of Jeb?'s problem right now.  His early attempts this 2015 to create an identity - starting off as The Front-Runner Establishment Guy that could not impress anybody, then as The Heir To the Bush Legacy by selling the "my brother Kept Us Safe" lie - have gone nowhere.

So here we are at Attempt Number Three to get Jeb><'s campaign "back on track"... by going with a quickie ebook release of materials - his political emails - already ten years old, and by crafting a slogan that sounds like someone watched Wreck-It Ralph or Bob The Builder too many times.

Just going by Twitter - a method of tracking the current mindset of the public awareness - this relaunch phrase is a disaster.

In a serious examination here: claiming that Jeb "can fix it" in a vague manner opens up that slogan to a myriad of interpretations.  It also allows for his critics to bring forth all the flaws and errors of his previous works - his broken promises as Governor, the sorry shape of the state of Florida as he left it, the terrible education record, his criminal repression of voting rights for minorities, his screwed involvement in the Election 2000 debacle, the Terri Schiavo fiasco...

Claiming Jeb "can fix it" while his poll numbers keep slipping is a joke of a premise, a disaster of a promise.

Trying to change a political persona this late in a campaign cycle after a public slide in voter confidence and support reeks of desperation.

And yet the Jeb? Bush Zombie Campaign slogs on.

Another Florida Folly

Even with all the general weirdness and madness of a last-minute campaign run for a hotly-contested gubertorial race here in the Sunshine State, we've got this going on as a distraction:

This map is from a coalition operating out of the City of South Miami.  City officials want to split off the southern half of the state so they can form their own, one that would do something about the climate change/flooding doom facing the coastline:

...(Vice Mayor) Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn't providing South Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it comes to sea-level rising.

"We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee," Harris said. "I don’t care what people think -- it’s not a matter of electing the right people."

The solution isn't that simple, crew.

I think I've argued in other articles about secession that the logistics of such a move - either to become an independent nation or a separate state - would be self-defeating.  While the move to become a state won't be as risky - the federal government is still there providing a foundation - there are still massive issues over revenue sources, property rights, and bureaucratic snafus.

First off, the existing state government has to sign off on this.  Considering South Florida is a major financial, trade, tourist, entertainment metropolis (Miami is one of the major global cities), Tallahassee may be loathe to give up that tax base.  That this coalition wants to grab the next two major metros in Tampa Bay and Orlando - as well as key metros like Ft. Myers/Naples and Lakeland - is going to leave North Florida with just Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Ocala and Gainesville (with J'Ville the only real metro).  Tampa is another major financial hub and seaport... Orlando has Mickey Mouse and global tourism money... South Florida is going to be taking a lot of money off the table and there's no way our current government will give up all of that.

The first thought I had when I saw the makeshift map up there was "why the hell does Miami-Dade want to include all the redneck counties between there and Tampa/Orlando?"  Reading that article helped spell it out: Orlando/Orange County is where Florida manages the water resources that South Florida needs.  But still, the logic of the map eludes me, because there's another thing that the secession types keep overlooking: even with a single state there are cultural and socio-political rivalries that prevent such clean break-ups ever happening.

Florida is not easily divided into two parts.  At best - at the very least - it can be divided into six territories.  If the state of Florida ever fractures it most likely go like this:

• South Florida (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, the Keys) - Everything from West Palm Beach down to Homestead is one big metro.  If you've ever read the Dredd comics, where they came up with megacities that engulfed entire states, you might get an idea what South Florida looks like: an uninterrupted chain of highways packed with suburbs, slums, business towers, and sports arenas.  The Keys from Largo to West may not be packed, but it's pretty much joined to the hip to Miami-Dade - literally, it's the only way in or out by car - and part of the same tourism appeal and Caribbean culture.  This might include Martin County, maybe even Saint Lucie...
• Southwest Florida (Ft.Myers-Lee, Collier, Charlotte, inner counties south of Polk) - pretty much the last part of Florida to get suburbanized, and one with a lot of political-religious-social cohesion along the coastline.  The inner counties are mostly farmland and some of the least populated counties.  They'd have to choose between Miami-Broward-Palm Beach (an area they share little with), Tampa Bay/Polk County (same issue), or form their own faction (with Martin/St. Lucie/Okechobee Counties) surrounding the key geographic feature of the area, Lake Okechobee.  Taking their chances with Ft. Myers/Naples metro would be the likeliest move...
• Tampa Bay (Pinellas, Tampa-Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Polk, Pasco, maybe Hernando Counties) - Defined by one of the key growth markets of the early 1980s that made Florida the 4th most populous state within a decade, not as big a financial market as South Florida but still a major trading port anchored by a coherent media market, healthcare industry, and sports franchises.  They'd get Sarasota County because the city of Sarasota is too close to the southern reach of the metro to split off with Port Charlotte-Ft. Myers-Naples...
• Greater Orlando (Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Brevard, Indian River, Volusia, Lake, maybe Sumter Counties) - the tourist Mecca.  Orlando brings in the people for the amusement parks, Brevard and Volusia brings in the beach tourists eager to visit Daytona and Cocoa Beach.  The South Florida group foolishly cuts off Seminole from Orange, despite the urban reach of Orlando overlapping Seminole as an outlying suburban circle of Purgatory. This faction could conceivably pick up Polk County if they make the right offer (more condos in Haines City!)...
• Northeast Florida/Jacksonville (Jacksonville/Duval, every County east of the Suwanee River) - Where North Florida kinda becomes indistinguishable from the Deep South, and has more in common with Georgia than the urban centers of Central/South Florida.  Jacksonville would be the major seaport and business center, with Gainesville as the cultural/academic center.  There's little else up here except for horse farms and cattle.
• Northwest Florida (Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City, sparsely populated Counties west of the Suwanee) - the other half of North Florida, the Panhandle.  Tallahassee is the state capitol and home of two universities (Florida St. the big draw), and then you gotta drive three hours and a time zone to get to Pensacola and that's pretty much it.  There's an airbase where they test UFOs and some decent southern-facing beaches, but that's it.  And if the state goes bonkers and splits up like this, there's a good chance Pensacola might just pack up and merge with Alabama, as that region has more in common with Mobile than Tallahassee...

Even the scenario I've painted here is unlikely: the state could easily fracture into ten parts as much as six, and there's little incentive for the sections to split off (yes, even for South Florida) because the costs of forming a new government - new elected officials, new government buildings, new bureaucracies to manage the graft - are just too damn high.  Mind, South Florida (just Miami-to-Palm Beach alone) might have enough financial muscle to pull it off, but barely.  The other parts of Florida would never afford such a move.

The other point of this proposed split is that South Florida residents are increasingly worried about the global climate change - the global warming in particular - that's due to flood out most of Dade and Broward Counties by 2020.  The costs of pumping out rising seawater from the sewers and streets are getting higher by the month: flooding is not happening during hurricanes anymore, it's happening during peak moon tides.  The response from Tallahassee has been to basically handle it as an ongoing crisis kept as far away from the news cameras as possible: but sooner rather than later the beaches that the state prides on won't even be there anymore, and boating won't be done on the Intercoastal, it will be done on Hwy 441.

But if South Miami/Florida thinks splitting itself off to form its own government will help matters, it won't by much.  They'll still have to cope with the costs of pumping and reinforcing flood walls, for one thing.  They'll have to contend with the fact our federal government - cough, oil-and-coal-paid-for pols with both parties, cough - is ignoring the problems of climate change altogether, something that a new state still won't be able to overcome.  And considering the map that the South Miami group is pushing, the new state government they'll form is going to include a lot of Republican-leaning red counties (Ft. Myers and Naples, Lakeland and Orlando and the infamous I-4 Corridor, the suburban outlets of Tampa and Pinellas) that might counter the more urban-leaning Democratic areas of South Florida itself (not to mention the conservative Cuban population in Dade/Broward mucking up matters).

Just chalk this up as another pipe dream by a local group of concerned citizens horrified that the leadership in Tall Hassle (the nickname for the corrupt capitol of the Xanth fantasy series whose map mimics Florida's) isn't working to answer their concerns.  A better alternative than wasting time and effort to forge a new state would be focusing on CLEANING UP the political mess of the existing state by voting out the corrupt Republican bastards who are ignoring climate change in the first place.

Alright, I'm off to bed.  Just remember kids, here in Florida we've got Early Voting going on, and you all need to GET THE VOTE OUT and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.

When Courts Let Lying Prevail

Nothing good can come of it:

...If ever that could be said of a Supreme Court opinion, it would be Monday’s unanimous decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The case seemed, at first glance, to concern the right to lie about politics. As properly decided by the Court, however, it only had to do with the abstruse doctrine of “standing to sue,” which requires a plaintiff challenging a law to show an “actual injury,” not just a political objection to the law.

The plaintiffs want to challenge an Ohio state law that bans “a false statement concerning the voting record of a candidate or public official” within a specified period before a primary or general election “knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (Their petition counted at least 15 other states that have “false statement” laws.) Because there is no action pending against them now, a lower court held they had no standing.

The issue presented to the Court thus was narrow. That may be why the opinion was delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas has idiosyncratic views on free speech, and rarely gets to write a majority opinion on a First Amendment question. His opinion said only that a political group that might be penalized down the road for making “false” statements in future campaigns had standing to go forward now with a lawsuit...

The problem with this decision is subtle but important: while it looks like it gives PACs and candidates the right to fight back against governmental oversight with too broad and vague a reach, it lays the groundwork for elections to be filled with the worst sort of mudslinging and negative campaigning.  While we already have a huge problem with negative campaigning, there is at least a method in place to stop or limit such bad behavior through the threat of sanctions by state-level authorities.  This ruling can be the first step towards eliminating such authority down the road.

The Court doesn't seem to recognize - when you look at other recent rulings making it easier to lie to the public - the implications of lying in the public forum.  They're thinking about the specific harm against an accused or a victim of the lie, or the specific harm against the person or group making that lie.  They're not looking at the effect that lie has on everybody else.

Our voters, our citizenry, rely on being well-informed - informed to the facts, and with accuracy - in order to make decisions when voting for elected officials and voting for public referendums.  When they're being told falsehoods about a candidate - "Oh, that one eats babies!" - or a political issue - "Gay marriage causes hurricanes and earthquakes!" - it confuses the public dialog, making it more difficult for reasonable, common sense political fixes to get made.

We're still dealing with the massive fallout of one of the biggest falsehood campaigns our elected officials pulled: we're still coping with the lies Bush and Cheney and their administration spread across the nation's media outlets about Iraq being a backer of Bin Laden and with Saddam wielding an arsenal of WMDs.  More than 12 years later, we've got a radically divided Iraq on the verge of sectarian collapse because we got lied into an invasion and ill-planned occupation, and as the nation most responsible for the damage Iraq is in now, we're looked at paying the costs of trying to keep that war-torn nation afloat... even as the liars who got us into the mess are making more noise about what to do (bomb 'em some more, for the most part) about it.  All because those liars never got held accountable, because they kept selling their snake oil and their BS to the electorate still voting themselves or their allies back into office giving them political cover to lie some more.

This is the damage lying can cause in politics: lying distorts, lying ill-informs, lying kills.

We need stronger laws in place to stop candidates and campaigns from making false accusations and outright lies.  At some point, the facts have to matter.  The truth has to matter.

The Massive Disconnect Between The Voters And The Elected

Among the many things bothering the hell out of me regarding Syria - the real need to focus first on the refugee crisis, the need to stop Assad's use of chemical weapons versus the inability to really do anything about it other than an outright invasion and all the horrors THAT would entail, the realization that the entire Middle East from Egypt to Libya is in total chaos and we're unable as an international power to focus on any of that - is this simple fact:

A vast majority of Americans are polling as opposed to any military strike or action on Syria... and our elected officials (and their friends in the Beltway media) are still poised to vote in favor of it.

Link to Pew Research Center's results:

Also wik:

Yet just right now, the Senate Foreign Relations committee overseeing such issues just voted 10-7 in favor of a "limited military response" to Syria's use of chemical weapons.  There's still a full Senate vote I believe and also a House resolution, but most of the experts believe that both parties may go along with approval (Dems because they have the need to back their party's nominal leader, Republicans because there's a sizable faction of neocon interventionists seeking to "tame" the Middle East through superior firepower).

Usually elected officials are more aware, more alert to the reality that voting whole-heartedly against their constituents' opinions tends to be a bad idea.  They're at least aware of the risks: even during the health care reform debates a good number of Democrats openly worried they would lose seats over passing any reform despite the fact that everybody knew health care costs needed to be controlled somehow.

Yet with the Syrian military strike as an issue, there's this kind of intellectual if not emotional disconnect to what's happening.  None of the politicians seem to be pointing to the poll numbers or worrying about how this plays "back home" with their voters.  If there are any, I'm not seeing them speak up on the news channels or websites.  (If there's at least one, please pass along the link)

Sullivan points it out clearly:

I cannot remember a war in which the public in the most affected countries is so opposed. And that opposition is not likely to melt in a week or so – certainly not if many people listened to John Kerry yesterday. And that poll is about the abstraction of “strikes” – and not about the open-ended war to depose Assad that the administration actually proposed in its own resolution. Mercifully, Americans are not as dumb as many think...

I don't consider the polling about invading Iraq in 2002 to be of relevance here: considering that Congress and the public were lied to about Saddam's having WMDs as an excuse to go in, the general public support for that invasion/occupation is kind of an illusion.

There's been times that the DC "establishment" were not in tune with the nation as a whole: the obsessive hate-on for Clinton (not just the GOP but the media elites and power-brokers operating in DC) that made many voters side with him when the Lewinsky scandal broke is a recent example.  But this time it's troubling.  This time, lives - ours and Syrians - are at stake.  The chaos of the Middle East may well get worse if military action takes place.  And there's no guarantee that the planned missile strikes will do anything productive.

In a situation where diplomacy makes the most sense - the possibility of getting with Russia and Iran, Syria's primary backers, both of whom are troubled by the gas attacks as well - it's terrifying that nobody in DC wants to argue for this as a sensible alternative.

This isn't Munich.  Like Conor points out - "For Hawks, it is always 1938" - there's no Chamberlain-esque appeasement here other than trying to find something that would stop the damn bloodshed:

Every part of that part of that argument is wrong. The war weariness of post-WWI Britain was very different from the war weariness of present day America, and an unwillingness to strike dictators who kill their own people is not the same as appeasement. By Hirsh's logic, it is imperative that we immediately invade North Korea because otherwise we are appeasing it, and inviting it to begin a blitzkrieg across the Western world, because Hitler. The approach he implies -- intervention wherever there is a dictator or a mass murder -- is a recipe for far more war, and far more misery from war.

One of our nation's biggest problems hasn't been the partisan brinkmanship, the incessant noise machine drowning out policy solutions, the sheer amount of money in the electioneering business (seriously, it's in the billions now), it's been the Lack Of Accountability.  We're having one of those Lack Of Accountability moments.  And everyone's failing the moment.

Balanced Budget Amendment Is a Bad Idea

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.