If Rick "No Ethics" Scott wins this November, and if prominent Republican governors like Scott "John Doe Investigation" Walker and Chris "BridgeGate" Christie either lose this November or end up indicted... then Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott becomes a front-runner for the GOP nomination for the Presidency in 2016.
Think I'm joking? If Scott wins, it will be even against all evidence that Scott has run a mismanaged and corrupt governor's office. It'll be in a state where the enthusiasm for Scott isn't even all that great among the average Republican voters (and where the Far Right are more fixated on just winning at all costs against the dreaded Obama). He would win in a state that voted for Obama twice and has a 500,000 voter advantage for Democrats over Republicans (if you're thinking "oh well maybe the 3 million NPA voters will all go for Scott," no f-cking way). And winning in a state where the libertarian candidate (who would traditionally pull away votes from right-leaning candidates) is seemingly getting enough votes (8 percent, maybe?) to prevent anyone from getting a solid 50 percent or more turnout.
If Scott wins it will be due to his getting the wingnut factions of the state to turn out in enough numbers to overwhelm what should be, what has been a vociferous and angry left-centrist faction (the hostility I've seen on the anti-Scott webpages is on par to the hostility I've seen directed at Obama: I've never seen other former governors like Jeb Bush mocked and despised at such a level...). While Scott's victory may be blamed on the Dems stumbling (oh GOD I hope not) over another centrist candidate, that won't matter to the Far Right. They'll see a Republican governor who won re-election in a state Obama won. They'll think he won on "the issues" of tax cuts, refusing Obamacare Medicaid funding, and being a swell example of a Randian "make the poor piss for their food stamps" CEO-turned-elected official.
Personally, hopefully, PRAYING that the voters of Florida are angry enough at a bad governor like Rick "Fraud Up The Wazoo" Scott to turn up in droves to drown out the Far Right voters, that Crist is good enough a campaigner to ensure that turnout for him and for the Democrats as a whole. I am hopeful that we'll see Rick "WHAT PART OF MEDICARE FRAUD DID YOU KEEP OVERLOOKING REPUBLICANS?" Scott running in shame from the cameras after a decisive electoral loss on the night of November 4th. But hope is one thing, reality another. The polling has been up and down too much this year to feel comfortable about Crist winning. WE NEED VOTER TURNOUT PLEASE GOD. We need 4.5 million registered Democrats AND enough of the 3 million NPA to get out the vote saying "Go to Hell you Medicare Fraud" kicking Scott out the door.
None of us ought to wake up to seeing Rick Scott trolling Iowa for voters in Winter 2015. /shudder
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
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:
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:
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.
...(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.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Early Voting In Florida 2014, October to November. GET OUT THE VOTE, PEOPLE
Early voting for the General Election (Nov. 4th) begins today here in Florida. Polk County (the state officially begins Oct. 25th, but some counties can go earlier if they want).
This is it.
This is the election to get Rick "No Ethics" Scott out of office, and to vote Charlie Crist back as a Governor we can trust.
This is the election to vote against every Republican on the ballot to break the corrupt power this party has inflicted on our state the last 15-20 years.
This is the election to vote FOR our state's environment in Amendment One and to vote FOR our state to begin medicinal marijuana in Amendment Two and to vote AGAINST the rigged court-packing disaster in Amendment Three.
Early voting is simple. It's for people who can't get off work or know they won't be available to vote on Election Day itself. Voting hours (in Polk County at least) are 9 AM to 6 PM Monday through Saturday (yes! You can vote on Saturday in case you're working Mon-Fri always and forever), and 10 AM to 6 PM on the one Sunday October 26th. Each county will list locations where they will have polling places that allow anyone from any part of the county to show up to vote (it does not require a specific precinct for you to use). Last day of Early Voting in Florida will be November 1st (Saturday).
Bring every possible form of ID with you that shows a photo of you with Elvis shaking your hand, your primary address, blood type, birth origin, dog license cat license fish license, anything and everything in case you run into some a-hole trying to deny your RIGHT to vote.
Turnout for voting is key, people. Small turnouts mean only the extremist candidates and extremist parties win. The more voters, the more likely the common-ground common-sense votes carry the day.
GET THE VOTE OUT, PEOPLE.
And for the Love of God DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
Danke.
This is it.
This is the election to get Rick "No Ethics" Scott out of office, and to vote Charlie Crist back as a Governor we can trust.
This is the election to vote against every Republican on the ballot to break the corrupt power this party has inflicted on our state the last 15-20 years.
This is the election to vote FOR our state's environment in Amendment One and to vote FOR our state to begin medicinal marijuana in Amendment Two and to vote AGAINST the rigged court-packing disaster in Amendment Three.
Early voting is simple. It's for people who can't get off work or know they won't be available to vote on Election Day itself. Voting hours (in Polk County at least) are 9 AM to 6 PM Monday through Saturday (yes! You can vote on Saturday in case you're working Mon-Fri always and forever), and 10 AM to 6 PM on the one Sunday October 26th. Each county will list locations where they will have polling places that allow anyone from any part of the county to show up to vote (it does not require a specific precinct for you to use). Last day of Early Voting in Florida will be November 1st (Saturday).
Bring every possible form of ID with you that shows a photo of you with Elvis shaking your hand, your primary address, blood type, birth origin, dog license cat license fish license, anything and everything in case you run into some a-hole trying to deny your RIGHT to vote.
Turnout for voting is key, people. Small turnouts mean only the extremist candidates and extremist parties win. The more voters, the more likely the common-ground common-sense votes carry the day.
GET THE VOTE OUT, PEOPLE.
And for the Love of God DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
Danke.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
First Rule Of Public Debates: Never Do Anything Stupid or Petty. Or Throw A Hissy Fit.
(UDPATE: hello to all Crooks & Liars visitors! Just remember these three things: please comment if you want, although I ask you not use 'anonymous' as an ID; please prepare for NaNoWriMo this November; and when you speak of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Horde, speak well. You can find me Tweeting away on #fantrum to my heart's content... P.S. GET THE VOTE OUT PEOPLE)
So there was supposed to be a Governor's debate here in Florida tonight between Charlie Crist and Rick Scott.
So before the debate begins, there's a bit of confusion going on, and then finally the debate moderators had to note conflict brewing backstage.
So what happens is that Crist has a floor fan he takes everywhere. Every public speech or gathering he's got a a small floor fan that can fit under a podium or chair and uses it for cooling down.
This is old news. It's been reported on as recently as this August. There's a fake Twitter account for Charlie Crist's Fan that's been around since 2009. (UPDATE: It turns out Crist had one as far back as 2006 when he campaigned for Governor then... the debate promoter ended up providing a fan to the opponent Tom Gallagher...) I'm willing to bet Crist had a fan like that at last week's Hispanic Debate. Another thing to point out: This is Florida. Nearly everybody in the state has a floor fan like that, or a ceiling fan, or an oscillating fan. IT'S FLORIDA: IT GETS HOT DOWN HERE. Even in October.
But somehow Scott and/or his campaign handlers didn't like Crist having that floor fan around and argued to have it against the rules at this debate for Crist to have it there.
So, the fan is there under Crist's podium and Scott decides to refuse to take the stage. For seven minutes, Crist's pretty much the only one up there, cracking at least one awkward joke at Scott's expense before Scott finally came out to begin the debate proper.
Why Scott has to throw a hissy fit over a fan makes little or no sense. It's not like the fan is a f-cking teleprompter or Blackberry giving Crist an edge. See above: THIS IS FLORIDA. There are fans everywhere. As Crist says towards the end of the debate when the fan issue became the question, "What's wrong with being comfortable?"
As Michael Mayo at the Sun-Sentinel notes:
It's already made the national media sites. I won't doubt that the Republican partisan sites will talk up Crist's evilness in bringing an EVIL DEMONIC floor fan onto the stage like that. But what does it say about Scott's demeanor that he threw the adult equivalent of a child's tantrum?
Look, like it or not that is a state-wide - and tonight of all nights a NATIONAL - stage upon which to present yourself as a cool, capable, level-headed politician. There are several rules about debating (one them is literally "don't let them see you sweat!"), and one of the top rules is "Never act stupid or petty at the podium."
Look to Rick Perry back in 2011-12 for God's sake. He came in late to the GOP primaries as a "white knight" figure - a Far Right governor of a Far Right state popular with the GOP wingnuts - only to blow it on the debate stage when he couldn't remember the three federal agencies he'd close down as President. The stupidity was so painful that moment that his fellow debaters jumped in to remind him.
In terms of pettiness, bad debate performances turn on how one of the debaters would get stuck on some minor detail or annoyance and flare it up into a useless argument. This is where Scott screwed up. Where Crist came out to the stage to begin the debate, Scott refused. A smart debater would have come out, pointed out the rule, asked Crist directly to work that debate without the fan, shift the burden completely onto Crist, and proceed with the event. Instead, Scott came across acting like a spoiled child who wasn't getting his way and was going to take his toys and go home.
So who had the Oops Moment here? Crist may have brought out a floor fan against Scott's wishes but he was the one who came out prepared to actually debate. Scott was fighting an argument over a floor fan that Crist has used almost his entire political career with no scandal, and was "standing up" for his argument by throwing a tantrum. Over a fan. IN FLORIDA.
Our state's entire existence depended on air conditioning, and Scott is throwing a hissy fit over a fan. How many Floridians are sitting at home watching this debate thinking "why the hell doesn't Scott have a floor fan?"
If our governor's election turns entirely on how the average Floridian thinks about the use of floor fans during a debate, AND STILL VOTES FOR RICK "NO COOL" SCOTT, we deserve to sink into the rising climate change waters.
Going to bed now. When I wake up tomorrow morning I wanna see at least 60 percent of my fellow Floridians claiming they're fans of Charlie Crist.
So there was supposed to be a Governor's debate here in Florida tonight between Charlie Crist and Rick Scott.
So before the debate begins, there's a bit of confusion going on, and then finally the debate moderators had to note conflict brewing backstage.
This is old news. It's been reported on as recently as this August. There's a fake Twitter account for Charlie Crist's Fan that's been around since 2009. (UPDATE: It turns out Crist had one as far back as 2006 when he campaigned for Governor then... the debate promoter ended up providing a fan to the opponent Tom Gallagher...) I'm willing to bet Crist had a fan like that at last week's Hispanic Debate. Another thing to point out: This is Florida. Nearly everybody in the state has a floor fan like that, or a ceiling fan, or an oscillating fan. IT'S FLORIDA: IT GETS HOT DOWN HERE. Even in October.
But somehow Scott and/or his campaign handlers didn't like Crist having that floor fan around and argued to have it against the rules at this debate for Crist to have it there.
So, the fan is there under Crist's podium and Scott decides to refuse to take the stage. For seven minutes, Crist's pretty much the only one up there, cracking at least one awkward joke at Scott's expense before Scott finally came out to begin the debate proper.
Why Scott has to throw a hissy fit over a fan makes little or no sense. It's not like the fan is a f-cking teleprompter or Blackberry giving Crist an edge. See above: THIS IS FLORIDA. There are fans everywhere. As Crist says towards the end of the debate when the fan issue became the question, "What's wrong with being comfortable?"
As Michael Mayo at the Sun-Sentinel notes:
...that Crist, our former governor, looked bad for so desperately clinging to his trusty sweat protector. And Scott, our current governor, looked worse for almost scuttling the debate over something so silly.
It's already made the national media sites. I won't doubt that the Republican partisan sites will talk up Crist's evilness in bringing an EVIL DEMONIC floor fan onto the stage like that. But what does it say about Scott's demeanor that he threw the adult equivalent of a child's tantrum?
Look, like it or not that is a state-wide - and tonight of all nights a NATIONAL - stage upon which to present yourself as a cool, capable, level-headed politician. There are several rules about debating (one them is literally "don't let them see you sweat!"), and one of the top rules is "Never act stupid or petty at the podium."
Look to Rick Perry back in 2011-12 for God's sake. He came in late to the GOP primaries as a "white knight" figure - a Far Right governor of a Far Right state popular with the GOP wingnuts - only to blow it on the debate stage when he couldn't remember the three federal agencies he'd close down as President. The stupidity was so painful that moment that his fellow debaters jumped in to remind him.
In terms of pettiness, bad debate performances turn on how one of the debaters would get stuck on some minor detail or annoyance and flare it up into a useless argument. This is where Scott screwed up. Where Crist came out to the stage to begin the debate, Scott refused. A smart debater would have come out, pointed out the rule, asked Crist directly to work that debate without the fan, shift the burden completely onto Crist, and proceed with the event. Instead, Scott came across acting like a spoiled child who wasn't getting his way and was going to take his toys and go home.
So who had the Oops Moment here? Crist may have brought out a floor fan against Scott's wishes but he was the one who came out prepared to actually debate. Scott was fighting an argument over a floor fan that Crist has used almost his entire political career with no scandal, and was "standing up" for his argument by throwing a tantrum. Over a fan. IN FLORIDA.
Our state's entire existence depended on air conditioning, and Scott is throwing a hissy fit over a fan. How many Floridians are sitting at home watching this debate thinking "why the hell doesn't Scott have a floor fan?"
If our governor's election turns entirely on how the average Floridian thinks about the use of floor fans during a debate, AND STILL VOTES FOR RICK "NO COOL" SCOTT, we deserve to sink into the rising climate change waters.
Going to bed now. When I wake up tomorrow morning I wanna see at least 60 percent of my fellow Floridians claiming they're fans of Charlie Crist.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Florida 2014 Election: Sample Ballots and Reminder (UPDATE)
Just got mine in the mail from the County Elections office. (UPDATE) If you need a Sample Ballot for your county, PLEASE visit the state map listing the county Elections' offices. Each site should have a ballot on display for you to view.
Some of you may be voting by mail. Some of you should plan ahead and vote during the EARLY VOTING cycle between October 20th to November 1st. Some may be traditionalists and wait until the Day itself, first Tuesday in November which is November 4th.
The key thing is to VOTE. GET THE VOTE OUT FLORIDA! I don't wanna see 39 percent or 42 percent turnout this midterms. I wanna see 76 percent! I WANNA SEE 90 PERCENT TURNOUT PEOPLE. Your vote, your voice, your POWER. VOTE DAMMIT.
But, you might say to the computer screen, I don't know what to vote on!
Well, then, glad you asked, lemme help you out here. Two basic rules:
1) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN and
2) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE FOR THAT DAMN CROOK RICK SCOTT.
That doesn't help us much, Mr. Blogger you say can you speel it out for us?
Sigh. Fine. Let's go through the ballot topics. Federal first:
1) There is no Senate seat contested (per the 2/3 cycle), so wait until 2016 to vote Marco Rubio out.
2) Any Congressional district you are in that has a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate, VOTE DEMOCRAT. Any district you are in that has a Republican candidate and a Libertarian candidate, vote for a valid Write-In Candidate. Any district where there's a Republican and a No-Party-Affiliate candidate only, vote for the NPA (unless you know the NPA personally as an -sshole, in which case sue the state for emotional damages). Any district where there's a Republican candidate unchallenged, curse the Old Gods and The New and volunteer to campaign next election on the ballot because dammit you gotta vote that crooked Bent-For-Destruction GOP out of power.
If you're in District 9, vote Alan Grayson. District 10, vote Alan Cohn. District 17, vote Will Bronson. District 3, vote Marihelen Wheeler. District 12... District 12... BILIRAKIS IS RUNNING UNOPPOSED?!?! DAMMIT DEMOCRATS, YOU COWARDS. Whadda ya gonna do, let Bilirakis sit there in office until he retires to let his son inherit the seat the same way Gus inherited it from Mike?! 30-plus years of the same family running a little fiefdom in North Pinellas/West Pasco?! DAMMIT.
Anyway, any seat where there's a Democrat and a Republican, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE DEMOCRAT. Let Gus represent the GOP all on his loneso... whadda ya mean there's other unchallenged Republican seats?! /headdesk
Grrrr.
Next up, the Governor and state official races:
1) VOTE CHARLIE CRIST for governor. He did a decent job as governor before (made efforts to protect the environment, played fair with the electorate, vetoed a bad and unpopular education bill), not a partisan hack like Scott nor a pocket-lining greedhead like Scott.
2) For Attorney General, vote George Sheldon. Bondi has been a disaster as AG for Florida: pursuing bad anti-gay and anti-voter court rulings, failing to go after utilities for unfair price hikes, and refusing to pursue many of the conflicts-of-interest cases floating around our state government. She's been Scott's partner in crime than representing the people's interests. Sheldon can and should go after the utilities above anything else and will protect the rights of voters and the citizenry over the needs of any partisan in office.
3) For Chief Financial Officer... aaaaaaaauuugggggghhhhhh. There's a Republican and a Democrat on the ballot, but the papers are complaining about the Democratic Will Rankin's lackluster campaigning and are noting that the Republican Jeff Atwater has actually done an honest job of things in Tallahassee. Don't do this to me, Florida Dems...
4) For Agricultural Commissioner (which also covers consumer services for some reason)... dammit. Democrats have another lackluster guy in Thad Hamilton running against Republican Adam Putnam who again has a solid record per the local papers. Thing is... dammit dammit dammit, cannot vote for ANY Republican at any level of office, it just encourages the party wingnuts to be worse... On the bright side, the Agriculture slot has a Write-In ballot space. Find a viable write-in candidate and file a protest vote!
Now for the State legislative offices, both Senate and House:
1) What part of FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN have you not noticed yet?
2) For the Senate seats, there are almost no challenged seats, so there's few if any choices. Of the 20 seats for election, there are only 5 challenges, meaning two Democrats and 13 Republicans are returning to Tall Hassle unopposed (!). If there are ANY of those seats with a Write-In ballot choice, I recommend you fill in that Write-In as a protest vote against this ridiculous incumbency.
3) For the House seats, again there are few (less than 30 percent of them) if any challenged seats. Again this is an insult to the voters that our state-level parties (especially the Democrats) are COWARDS when it comes to forcing incumbents to answer for their legislative sins. Again, if there are ANY seats with a Write-In ballot choice, fill in the Write-In ballot as a protest vote and slap some fear into both parties.
For the Judicial Retention votes:
Remember last election, Rick "No Ethics" Scott and his buddies tried to actively vote out judges in order to fill those vacancies with his pro-Scott cronies. It was the first time ever there was a partisan effort against the judges. As long as Scott is in office, VOTE TO KEEP THE JUDGES (It helps that none of them up for vote have been embarrassments or crooked on the bench).
For the State Amendments on the ballot:
As I wrote earlier, we're down to three so it keeps it short and simple.
VOTE YES ON 1 to protect our wetlands and environment and water supply.
VOTE YES ON 2 to allow for medicinal marijuana and provide an end to the disastrous War on Drugs.
VOTE NO ON 3 to stop Rick Scott from preemptively packing the state courts with his cronies.
For any county-level or city-level tax referendums (referenda? damn my Latin which plural form fits...):
Vote YES on any tax hike program because F-CK YOU Grover Norquist. Granted, this is more a knee-jerk reaction to the tax-cutting frauds dominating our discourse, but dammit too many of our public services at the county level are getting slashed and burnt here. Okay, I'll relent: if the tax hike in question is a blatant attempt at lining someone's (a rich corporation) pockets, then don't vote for it. But if it's for needed social services, please vote YES.
I think there's a rail funding program for Pinellas County on the ballot. DEFINITELY VOTE YES on Greenlight, Pinellas County: our metro areas need alternative transit options.
Also, for the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board? Seat Two has four candidates and I don't know a single one of 'em. You're gonna have to vote for who you know, Pasco County. (Update 10/25/14: there have been two people commenting that they found my article trying to figure out who to vote to be their Mosquito Hunter Expert, upset I didn't make a recommendation. So I did some research to dig up any kind of newspaper list, and so far the Tampa Bay Times Recommends list... doesn't make one either! Sorry, folks, you're gonna have to ask around about which of the four - Matthew "Skeeter" (?) Abbott, Bill Law, Niko Tzoumas, or Jerry Wells - to pick...)
Okay, voters reading this blog, that should help you make your informed decisions on Election Day/Early Voting/Mail-in Balloting.
GO VOTE. Tell your friends to vote. Tell your family to vote. Tell your co-workers to vote. If your co-workers say they can't vote during the workday, encourage your co-workers to vote on the weekend (including a Sunday October 26th!) during the Early Voting period.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
The key thing is to VOTE. GET THE VOTE OUT FLORIDA! I don't wanna see 39 percent or 42 percent turnout this midterms. I wanna see 76 percent! I WANNA SEE 90 PERCENT TURNOUT PEOPLE. Your vote, your voice, your POWER. VOTE DAMMIT.
But, you might say to the computer screen, I don't know what to vote on!
Well, then, glad you asked, lemme help you out here. Two basic rules:
1) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN and
2) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE FOR THAT DAMN CROOK RICK SCOTT.
That doesn't help us much, Mr. Blogger you say can you speel it out for us?
Sigh. Fine. Let's go through the ballot topics. Federal first:
1) There is no Senate seat contested (per the 2/3 cycle), so wait until 2016 to vote Marco Rubio out.
2) Any Congressional district you are in that has a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate, VOTE DEMOCRAT. Any district you are in that has a Republican candidate and a Libertarian candidate, vote for a valid Write-In Candidate. Any district where there's a Republican and a No-Party-Affiliate candidate only, vote for the NPA (unless you know the NPA personally as an -sshole, in which case sue the state for emotional damages). Any district where there's a Republican candidate unchallenged, curse the Old Gods and The New and volunteer to campaign next election on the ballot because dammit you gotta vote that crooked Bent-For-Destruction GOP out of power.
If you're in District 9, vote Alan Grayson. District 10, vote Alan Cohn. District 17, vote Will Bronson. District 3, vote Marihelen Wheeler. District 12... District 12... BILIRAKIS IS RUNNING UNOPPOSED?!?! DAMMIT DEMOCRATS, YOU COWARDS. Whadda ya gonna do, let Bilirakis sit there in office until he retires to let his son inherit the seat the same way Gus inherited it from Mike?! 30-plus years of the same family running a little fiefdom in North Pinellas/West Pasco?! DAMMIT.
Anyway, any seat where there's a Democrat and a Republican, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE DEMOCRAT. Let Gus represent the GOP all on his loneso... whadda ya mean there's other unchallenged Republican seats?! /headdesk
Grrrr.
Next up, the Governor and state official races:
1) VOTE CHARLIE CRIST for governor. He did a decent job as governor before (made efforts to protect the environment, played fair with the electorate, vetoed a bad and unpopular education bill), not a partisan hack like Scott nor a pocket-lining greedhead like Scott.
2) For Attorney General, vote George Sheldon. Bondi has been a disaster as AG for Florida: pursuing bad anti-gay and anti-voter court rulings, failing to go after utilities for unfair price hikes, and refusing to pursue many of the conflicts-of-interest cases floating around our state government. She's been Scott's partner in crime than representing the people's interests. Sheldon can and should go after the utilities above anything else and will protect the rights of voters and the citizenry over the needs of any partisan in office.
3) For Chief Financial Officer... aaaaaaaauuugggggghhhhhh. There's a Republican and a Democrat on the ballot, but the papers are complaining about the Democratic Will Rankin's lackluster campaigning and are noting that the Republican Jeff Atwater has actually done an honest job of things in Tallahassee. Don't do this to me, Florida Dems...
4) For Agricultural Commissioner (which also covers consumer services for some reason)... dammit. Democrats have another lackluster guy in Thad Hamilton running against Republican Adam Putnam who again has a solid record per the local papers. Thing is... dammit dammit dammit, cannot vote for ANY Republican at any level of office, it just encourages the party wingnuts to be worse... On the bright side, the Agriculture slot has a Write-In ballot space. Find a viable write-in candidate and file a protest vote!
Now for the State legislative offices, both Senate and House:
1) What part of FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN have you not noticed yet?
2) For the Senate seats, there are almost no challenged seats, so there's few if any choices. Of the 20 seats for election, there are only 5 challenges, meaning two Democrats and 13 Republicans are returning to Tall Hassle unopposed (!). If there are ANY of those seats with a Write-In ballot choice, I recommend you fill in that Write-In as a protest vote against this ridiculous incumbency.
3) For the House seats, again there are few (less than 30 percent of them) if any challenged seats. Again this is an insult to the voters that our state-level parties (especially the Democrats) are COWARDS when it comes to forcing incumbents to answer for their legislative sins. Again, if there are ANY seats with a Write-In ballot choice, fill in the Write-In ballot as a protest vote and slap some fear into both parties.
For the Judicial Retention votes:
Remember last election, Rick "No Ethics" Scott and his buddies tried to actively vote out judges in order to fill those vacancies with his pro-Scott cronies. It was the first time ever there was a partisan effort against the judges. As long as Scott is in office, VOTE TO KEEP THE JUDGES (It helps that none of them up for vote have been embarrassments or crooked on the bench).
For the State Amendments on the ballot:
As I wrote earlier, we're down to three so it keeps it short and simple.
VOTE YES ON 1 to protect our wetlands and environment and water supply.
VOTE YES ON 2 to allow for medicinal marijuana and provide an end to the disastrous War on Drugs.
VOTE NO ON 3 to stop Rick Scott from preemptively packing the state courts with his cronies.
For any county-level or city-level tax referendums (referenda? damn my Latin which plural form fits...):
Vote YES on any tax hike program because F-CK YOU Grover Norquist. Granted, this is more a knee-jerk reaction to the tax-cutting frauds dominating our discourse, but dammit too many of our public services at the county level are getting slashed and burnt here. Okay, I'll relent: if the tax hike in question is a blatant attempt at lining someone's (a rich corporation) pockets, then don't vote for it. But if it's for needed social services, please vote YES.
I think there's a rail funding program for Pinellas County on the ballot. DEFINITELY VOTE YES on Greenlight, Pinellas County: our metro areas need alternative transit options.
Also, for the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board? Seat Two has four candidates and I don't know a single one of 'em. You're gonna have to vote for who you know, Pasco County. (Update 10/25/14: there have been two people commenting that they found my article trying to figure out who to vote to be their Mosquito Hunter Expert, upset I didn't make a recommendation. So I did some research to dig up any kind of newspaper list, and so far the Tampa Bay Times Recommends list... doesn't make one either! Sorry, folks, you're gonna have to ask around about which of the four - Matthew "Skeeter" (?) Abbott, Bill Law, Niko Tzoumas, or Jerry Wells - to pick...)
Okay, voters reading this blog, that should help you make your informed decisions on Election Day/Early Voting/Mail-in Balloting.
GO VOTE. Tell your friends to vote. Tell your family to vote. Tell your co-workers to vote. If your co-workers say they can't vote during the workday, encourage your co-workers to vote on the weekend (including a Sunday October 26th!) during the Early Voting period.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Job Hunting In Florida 2014: Still A Nightmare
Remember the noise over Obamacare's website woes?
At least Healthcare.gov eventually got fixed within two months. We've got a situation here in Florida where the state's unemployment benefit claims site has been broken for a full year since it got revamped (via Tampa Bay Times):
Meanwhile, the county's employment offices - renamed CareerSource Polk - are still packed and overwhelmed with people needing help with filing claims and job-hunting. I try to help as much as possible at the library, but since I'm not fully tied into the employment system there's only so much I can do, and I'm forced to refer our library users to those career offices where they'd have to wait for hours to get any help. We had a mobile bus service that stopped by once a month (it'd be nice if CareerSource could set up offices in more cities around here) but the manager for that changed jobs two months ago and they haven't found a replacement yet (if ever).
And these people need help. They are not for the most part tech-savvy. I've had two of them confused by odd wording on their options. They end up clicking menu choices that detour them from where they need to go. We need a cleaner, more concise website. Hell, we need more people to help out navigate these sites: we need to recognize that not everything can or should be all self-serve online, that our job-seekers need help.
And for all of this, the fact that the government is delaying their payments must be maddening. No wonder that Times article notes that our real unemployment numbers - where work-capable people simply opt out - are worse than the official 6.2 percent in-state.
What's maddening for me is how this isn't a bigger story. We're talking about a system's state-wide failure that's been going on for a full year now, and yet it's barely made a beep on the radar until now. Here's hoping this story gets picked up and promoted as we head into the election, because this needs to be one more nail in Rick "What Part of FRAUD Did You Republican Voters Keep Overlooking" Scott's electoral coffin. One big reason the CONNECT system hasn't been fixed is that the damn company paid to implement it is still getting money they haven't earned:
Want a better working system, Florida? Vote for Crist. If Scott is in office by Nov. 20th, I guarantee you he'll sign Deloitte to a contract extension that will screw us Florida residents for even more money for bad service.
At least Healthcare.gov eventually got fixed within two months. We've got a situation here in Florida where the state's unemployment benefit claims site has been broken for a full year since it got revamped (via Tampa Bay Times):
Despite promises from Gov. Rick Scott's administration that the state's new online unemployment system is fixed, unpaid claims keep mounting and Florida now ranks last in the nation at providing timely relief for jobless workers...
...Complaints like that are nothing new for CONNECT, the state's online filing system for unemployment benefits that 1.1 million workers rely on every year. Upon its launch — one year ago — it wrongly withheld payments from thousands of job seekers because of more than 100 technical defects. But after a series of emergency measures, a Scott appointee in March vowed that problems had been fixed.
"The bottom line is that we have resolved the delays caused by CONNECT's launch," Jesse Panuccio, the executive director of the Department of Economic Opportunity, told state senators in late March. "Service is now better than it was prior to CONNECT."
Federal labor statistics say otherwise.
In the year before CONNECT launched, Florida paid 78 percent of initial claims of up to $275 within two to three weeks, a federal benchmark that measures timeliness, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The claims Florida paid on time dropped to 48 percent, however, in the year since CONNECT launched, making it last in the nation.
And it could be getting worse. Based on preliminary data, only 27 percent were paid on time over the last three months...I can tell you from my own perspective at the library where I work the CONNECT system is still a major headache. There's been a good number - about six or seven new people in the last two weeks - of people trying to get into CONNECT only to run into roadblocks such as the database not confirming data or having their determination still on hold because a certain form hasn't been faxed or emailed to the main office.
Meanwhile, the county's employment offices - renamed CareerSource Polk - are still packed and overwhelmed with people needing help with filing claims and job-hunting. I try to help as much as possible at the library, but since I'm not fully tied into the employment system there's only so much I can do, and I'm forced to refer our library users to those career offices where they'd have to wait for hours to get any help. We had a mobile bus service that stopped by once a month (it'd be nice if CareerSource could set up offices in more cities around here) but the manager for that changed jobs two months ago and they haven't found a replacement yet (if ever).
And these people need help. They are not for the most part tech-savvy. I've had two of them confused by odd wording on their options. They end up clicking menu choices that detour them from where they need to go. We need a cleaner, more concise website. Hell, we need more people to help out navigate these sites: we need to recognize that not everything can or should be all self-serve online, that our job-seekers need help.
And for all of this, the fact that the government is delaying their payments must be maddening. No wonder that Times article notes that our real unemployment numbers - where work-capable people simply opt out - are worse than the official 6.2 percent in-state.
What's maddening for me is how this isn't a bigger story. We're talking about a system's state-wide failure that's been going on for a full year now, and yet it's barely made a beep on the radar until now. Here's hoping this story gets picked up and promoted as we head into the election, because this needs to be one more nail in Rick "What Part of FRAUD Did You Republican Voters Keep Overlooking" Scott's electoral coffin. One big reason the CONNECT system hasn't been fixed is that the damn company paid to implement it is still getting money they haven't earned:
Despite the growing backlog, Deloitte's relationship with Florida did improve. In June, it negotiated a contract extension that pays the company another $1.5 million to fix its own errors.
Deloitte's contract extension ends Nov. 20, but gives the company the option to remain on the project another six months for up to $2.4 million... In all, Deloitte's total payday could be $49.6 million for the CONNECT job, 30 percent more than the contract's 2011 price...
Want a better working system, Florida? Vote for Crist. If Scott is in office by Nov. 20th, I guarantee you he'll sign Deloitte to a contract extension that will screw us Florida residents for even more money for bad service.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
What The Hell Is He Hiding?
This is a thing. Rick Scott is "shielding" about $200 million in assets from required state disclosure forms that he had to report to the federal oversight (Securities and Exchange Commission (the OTHER Sec)) people (via the Tampa Bay Times):
Remember what I said before kids: Rick "No Ethics" Scott is only in this for Rick Scott. He's not interested in serving the public trust: he's interested in taking as much money from the public for himself and his cronies as he can get away with.
For the LOVE OF GOD VOTE THIS CROOK OUT OF OFFICE.
Gov. Rick Scott has failed to report more than $200 million in assets on his state financial disclosure form in violation of the Florida Constitution, Democratic attorney general candidate George Sheldon alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday...
...Sheldon is asking a judge to order Scott, Florida's wealthiest governor, to "immediately and accurately disclose all assets he owns or controls," and to declare the governor's "blind trust" in violation of the blind trust law he signed.
"The lawsuit asks the court to remove the blindfold that Rick Scott has put on the people of Florida so that they cannot see what is going on with his personal assets,'' Sheldon said at a press conference. "The governor likes to talk about how much he has disclosed. The lawsuit is about how much he has not disclosed."
The Florida Constitution requires elected officials every year to make a "full and public disclosure" of their assets and liabilities "in excess of $1,000" so that the public can monitor any potential conflicts of interest...
The complaint follows a Times/Herald story published Sunday that raised questions about the completeness of the governor's financial disclosure in light of the blind trust he created, numerous trust accounts he has established, and the differences in which he reports his finances to the federal government and the public...
...Sheldon's suit argues that a lawsuit is necessary because the Florida Ethics Commission, which oversees the financial disclosure law, does not have the power to compel the governor to file a complete return, only to fine him after the fact. By contrast, he notes, failure to accurately report financial information to the federal SEC or IRS could result in jail time.Four things:
- Let's be fair and note that Sheldon - the plaintiff - is a major Democratic candidate for office this year, going against Scott's major political ally Pam Bondi (for state AG). Let us also note that the only ones who would notice Scott was BS'ing his disclosure statements would be his political opponents (one of the advantages of a multi-party government system over a single-party authoritarian regime: there's someone in a position to actually complain about the high-powered corruption).
- This isn't some minor blip on an Excel spreadsheet, where someone types in the wrong digit and OOPSIES 200 million bucks just disappears. It takes effort to ignore all that money in one report filing and then remember it for another report filing.
- This is money tied into - directly or with his so-called "blind trusts" - corporations doing business here in Florida and doing business with Scott's office and governor's departments.
- This has got to be f-cking against the law. (Oh, it is!)
Remember what I said before kids: Rick "No Ethics" Scott is only in this for Rick Scott. He's not interested in serving the public trust: he's interested in taking as much money from the public for himself and his cronies as he can get away with.
For the LOVE OF GOD VOTE THIS CROOK OUT OF OFFICE.
Monday, October 06, 2014
Prepping for NaNoWriMo 2014
Being October means one other thing: getting prepared for National Novel Writing Month!
This year I've already got a plot idea - a quirky take on an alien invasion - so in that regards I'm ready to roll.
What's different this year is that I'm volunteering to serve as a Municipal Liaison (ML) for the Florida: Elsewhere region (Polk County despite it being the 5th largest metro population in the state doesn't have its own Region). This brings with it some responsibilities.
I have to organize and host various Write-Ins in the area (getting those organized as we speak for local city libraries and writers' groups). I have to manage a calendar (although this might conflict with other MLs in other parts of Florida: Elsewhere, as it's a catch-all for a lot of places that are hours apart).
There's several other things I'll need to do during November, but with luck/skill/mostly luck we'll have a solid turnout of NaNo-ing among the writers of Central Florida. Expect a wave of self-published ebooks out of Lakeland by the end of February!
Get NaNo-ing people. Well, also get the damn vote out, but if I can juggle between those priorities you can too!
What's different this year is that I'm volunteering to serve as a Municipal Liaison (ML) for the Florida: Elsewhere region (Polk County despite it being the 5th largest metro population in the state doesn't have its own Region). This brings with it some responsibilities.
I have to organize and host various Write-Ins in the area (getting those organized as we speak for local city libraries and writers' groups). I have to manage a calendar (although this might conflict with other MLs in other parts of Florida: Elsewhere, as it's a catch-all for a lot of places that are hours apart).
There's several other things I'll need to do during November, but with luck/skill/mostly luck we'll have a solid turnout of NaNo-ing among the writers of Central Florida. Expect a wave of self-published ebooks out of Lakeland by the end of February!
Get NaNo-ing people. Well, also get the damn vote out, but if I can juggle between those priorities you can too!
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Forget It Jake It's Florida
So there's kinda four things going on here in Florida to pass along, some of which you seven blog followers might have seen already...
So, there's that today. Gotta get some writing done on this day off...
- In the good news category, the second trial over Michael Dunn's shooting of Jordan Davis ended with Dunn found guilty of first-degree murder.
- In the bad news category, a grandmother checking on her daughter and grandkids getting arrested - for a minor probation violation - ends up getting tasered in the back by the arresting officer. Who then handcuffs the unconscious woman for "resisting arrest" because apparently after nearly killing someone with 50,000 volts the cop is required to be a total dick. "Resisting arrest" has become, has always been really, a lousy excuse by cops to arrest anybody...
- In the Finally Happened category, the city of Waldo finally did something about the nationally-infamous speed trap by voting to close down the city's police department altogether. The official reason is that the city could no longer afford the costs - there's a current investigation into the outdated equipment and reckless poor storage of documents and evidence - but let's be blunt: the Waldo police has been a long-term embarrassment to the area due to that speed trap they enforce (there's a second investigation into the department using an illegal ticket quota).
Ever driven through there (between Gainesville and Jacksonville)? You're driving at a decent 55 MPH on County Rd 24 heading north until you get about three feet inside Waldo city limits. All of a sudden the traffic sign says 35 MPH and then fifty feet later just as the road's turning you get a 15 MPH sign and when the road turns further into this little township you're facing a School Zone crossing that's "strictly enforced." Guess how many people get tagged for speeding? Lemme tell ya, the ability to slow down from 55 MPH to 15 MPH within a 1/10 of a mile's distance is harder than it looks without killing your brakes. Heading south on US 301 to get to CR 24 for Gainesville is just as bad.
I've known people living in Gainesville who go out of the way to take I-75 to I-10 in order to get to Jacksonville just to avoid this. AAA Road service listed Waldo as one of only two speed traps in the whole nation (another Florida city just up US 301 was the other)!
If you're wondering, the Alachua County sheriff's office will take over in Waldo. There's a rather pleasant flea market there. Might drive back there some day... - In the INDUCING RAGE category, the College Republicans came out with a pro-Rick Scott ad (yes, inducing Level 1 Rage right there) that tries to sell to young women voters (a major problem for the GOP has been the loss of women voters) by comparing the candidates like wedding dresses (da fuq?) with "The Rick Scott brand" (That's that standard GOP problem of thinking it's all "branding", here's me at Level 2 Rage now) being the prettiest of them all (Level 3 Rage now and spitting out my morning tea).
The amount of stupid in this ad boggles the mind. It seems to take for granted that women are impressed by "pretty" images, that a pretty young woman so entranced by the "Rick Scott brand" means other young women should be entranced as well. It attacks the "Crist brand" as frumpier and more expensive using the same un-researched attacks the Republicans always aim at Democratic opponents. This ad seems to take the whole "Disney Princesses Are Popular With Girls" idea and runs with it in the worst way possible.
It's already been tagged as the "most sexist ad" of the 2014 midterms.
So, there's that today. Gotta get some writing done on this day off...
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
October Notes from Florida 2014
It's a busy month but let's make a few things clear:
1) Here in Florida this is a huge election. We've got three key state amendments to vote on: voting FOR Amendment One to protect our ecosystems, voting FOR Amendment Two to legalize medical marijuana, voting AGAINST Amendment Three to stop governors from packing the state courts even years before there's any vacancies.
2) We've also got key elections in the state executive branch, especially Attorney General (vote FOR George Sheldon) and Governor (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR CHARLIE CRIST! Get Rick "No Ethics" Scott out of there!)
3) We need massive voter turnout in EVERY part of the state to overcome the hideous distortions of gerrymandering that has rigged our electoral system to favor the cheaters.
4) I just want to repeat this: GET RICK "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT OUT OF THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE BEFORE HE CAUSES MORE DAMAGE.
5) That all said, the deadline to register to vote in Florida is October 6th, this Tuesday. If you have changed your address since you last registered, or you need to make sure you are registered, get a form filled out - most county and city offices such as your local library should have forms - and sent it before this Tuesday! It is vital and important we get as many people registered as possible.
6) And then it is VERY VITAL AND IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO VOTE.
We WILL have Early Election Balloting available. Early voting should run from October 20th to November 1st. AND voting is available on Saturdays and Sunday of those weeks. Early voting can happen in any designated place in your residing county.
The set Election Day is always the first Tuesday of November: this year it's November 4th. Voting starts at 7:00 AM in Florida and are set to close at 7:00 PM (FACT: if you are in line to vote before 7:00 PM occurs, the precinct must remain open to allow you the right to vote. PLEASE STAY IN LINE WHEN YOU GET THERE). For the general election, you MUST go to the exact precinct where you live (your Voter ID card MUST give you the street address where that precinct is).
If you know you are going to be out of town during the Early election and General election days, you CAN sign up for a mail-in Absentee ballot. Follow the Supervisor of Elections link to your county office to register for the form. It's gotta be done before October 6th.
The ballot will likely be multiple pages. Polk County's Sample Ballot is 2 pages.
Every election counts. Every vote matters. If you have questions about the candidates running for each office, the local newspapers - Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Trib, Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, (Jacksonville) Times-Union, so many others - will have website information on each, and the League of Women Voters has a guide for the statewide offices and candidates.
If you want a general rule of thumb to go by: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN. The party as a whole has been in charge of this state for 15-20 years, and they have made a goddamn mess of things.
And let's get the DAMN VOTE OUT. I am sick of seeing a state with 11.5 million registered voters show up with a measly 4-5 million (under 50 percent! damn us all!).
And to hell with the polling. One week it's one thing, next week it's another. JUST VOTE FOR CRIST, PEOPLE. RICK SCOTT IS A CROOK.
Keep in touch. I will have more to rage on as the month progresses.
Just remember, YOUR VOTE IS YOUR POWER.
1) Here in Florida this is a huge election. We've got three key state amendments to vote on: voting FOR Amendment One to protect our ecosystems, voting FOR Amendment Two to legalize medical marijuana, voting AGAINST Amendment Three to stop governors from packing the state courts even years before there's any vacancies.
2) We've also got key elections in the state executive branch, especially Attorney General (vote FOR George Sheldon) and Governor (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR CHARLIE CRIST! Get Rick "No Ethics" Scott out of there!)
3) We need massive voter turnout in EVERY part of the state to overcome the hideous distortions of gerrymandering that has rigged our electoral system to favor the cheaters.
4) I just want to repeat this: GET RICK "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT OUT OF THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE BEFORE HE CAUSES MORE DAMAGE.
5) That all said, the deadline to register to vote in Florida is October 6th, this Tuesday. If you have changed your address since you last registered, or you need to make sure you are registered, get a form filled out - most county and city offices such as your local library should have forms - and sent it before this Tuesday! It is vital and important we get as many people registered as possible.
6) And then it is VERY VITAL AND IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO VOTE.
We WILL have Early Election Balloting available. Early voting should run from October 20th to November 1st. AND voting is available on Saturdays and Sunday of those weeks. Early voting can happen in any designated place in your residing county.
The set Election Day is always the first Tuesday of November: this year it's November 4th. Voting starts at 7:00 AM in Florida and are set to close at 7:00 PM (FACT: if you are in line to vote before 7:00 PM occurs, the precinct must remain open to allow you the right to vote. PLEASE STAY IN LINE WHEN YOU GET THERE). For the general election, you MUST go to the exact precinct where you live (your Voter ID card MUST give you the street address where that precinct is).
If you know you are going to be out of town during the Early election and General election days, you CAN sign up for a mail-in Absentee ballot. Follow the Supervisor of Elections link to your county office to register for the form. It's gotta be done before October 6th.
The ballot will likely be multiple pages. Polk County's Sample Ballot is 2 pages.
Every election counts. Every vote matters. If you have questions about the candidates running for each office, the local newspapers - Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Trib, Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, (Jacksonville) Times-Union, so many others - will have website information on each, and the League of Women Voters has a guide for the statewide offices and candidates.
If you want a general rule of thumb to go by: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN. The party as a whole has been in charge of this state for 15-20 years, and they have made a goddamn mess of things.
And let's get the DAMN VOTE OUT. I am sick of seeing a state with 11.5 million registered voters show up with a measly 4-5 million (under 50 percent! damn us all!).
And to hell with the polling. One week it's one thing, next week it's another. JUST VOTE FOR CRIST, PEOPLE. RICK SCOTT IS A CROOK.
Keep in touch. I will have more to rage on as the month progresses.
Just remember, YOUR VOTE IS YOUR POWER.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Okay, Seriously, I Need a Little Help with Google Analytics
How the hell do I set it up for this Blogger account? The internal stat counter is buggy.
Give me a heads up on Twitter to @PaulWartenberg or else email p.warten AT gmail. Do not send spam or Chinese spam or spam spam baked beans and spam. Please and thank you.
Give me a heads up on Twitter to @PaulWartenberg or else email p.warten AT gmail. Do not send spam or Chinese spam or spam spam baked beans and spam. Please and thank you.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Hong Kong Up In Protest, Showing How It's Done
Holy sh-t dudes:
As part of the reunification of China and Hong Kong when Great Britain's lease was up in 1997 was that Hong Kong would retain some political independence:
Uh, pardon my American ignorance of math or calendar-reading, but 2014 subtracting 1997 is nowhere near 50 years.
Great. The Chinese politburo couldn't contain themselves for 50 years, they just had to go messing with Hong Kong in 20. You'd think the Chinese reputation for Zen-like patience would stick here, but noooooo.
Didn't some of the Tienanmen protesters end up in Hong Kong and stay there even after 1997 (I know a lot fled further to Taiwan and the US just to be certain they were safe)? For what I know, Hong Kong is one of those places in China where freedom of expression and freedom to think was still taught and encouraged.
It's a good thing the Hong Kong residents grew up with an idea of the necessity of civil protest against some of the more negative things their home nation has done and can do. None of that blind obedience to authority and their corporate overlords like they teach here in America, right Jefferson County School Board? Yeah... right.
Hong Kong police fired tear gas and pepper spray on pro-democracy protesters on Sunday, after a sit-in that began Friday escalated into demonstrations involving as many as tens of thousands of people over the weekend. Holding signs saying “Disperse or We Fire,” cops threw cans of tear gas into the crows in the Admiralty district near the main government offices. The police struggled at times to contain protesters, failing to keep them from blocking traffic on a six-lane highway. Students and the Occupy Central movement have been leading pro-democracy demonstrations after China announced Hong Kong's 2017 leadership election candidates would have to be screened by a separate committee.
As part of the reunification of China and Hong Kong when Great Britain's lease was up in 1997 was that Hong Kong would retain some political independence:
In accordance with the One Country, Two Systems principle agreed between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China, the socialist system of People's Republic of China would not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years.
Uh, pardon my American ignorance of math or calendar-reading, but 2014 subtracting 1997 is nowhere near 50 years.
Great. The Chinese politburo couldn't contain themselves for 50 years, they just had to go messing with Hong Kong in 20. You'd think the Chinese reputation for Zen-like patience would stick here, but noooooo.
Didn't some of the Tienanmen protesters end up in Hong Kong and stay there even after 1997 (I know a lot fled further to Taiwan and the US just to be certain they were safe)? For what I know, Hong Kong is one of those places in China where freedom of expression and freedom to think was still taught and encouraged.
It's a good thing the Hong Kong residents grew up with an idea of the necessity of civil protest against some of the more negative things their home nation has done and can do. None of that blind obedience to authority and their corporate overlords like they teach here in America, right Jefferson County School Board? Yeah... right.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Be True - And Fact-Based - To Your School
I mentioned once that I took AP American History back in the day. It was one of the various classes that helped towards earning college credits - studying for the Advanced Placement exams, where if you scored 3 to 5 on the exam(s) you garnered those credits on that topic - while surviving high school.
It's a big deal for any high schooler aiming to get a college degree. Get a lot of AP credits through a national program, look good to potential universities while doing it, find yourself earning a way to a major institution - in this case William and Mary WILL do, thank you Steely Dan - that can open doors when you hit the job market.
So what happens when a county school board decides to mess with the Advanced Placement program? When a school board controlled by a Far Right contingent obsessed with re-writing history - of white-washing it - decides to edit the books and the exam materials to remove any history of civil protest and questioning of authority?
You get Jefferson County (Colorado) School Board, where a thousand students marched in protest - I think this counts as irony, teacher - against the school board trying to remove the very concept of protests from the history books (via Digby):
Any honest American might spot the problem right away: the editing of texts to define what citizenship and patriotism are, the editing of texts to "don't encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." So who gets to define citizenship? Who gets to define patriotism? Who says what encourages or condones civil disorder or disregard of the law? Hint: the Conservatives (the same Conservatives who'll tell their own gun-toting followers to prepare for secession and Second Amendment remedies) will tell you that only Conservatives should...
It's heartening to see the students rise up: they understand full well that an ideological re-write of their curriculum can well kill off their hopes of getting into good colleges. It's also good news that the College Board - the organization overseeing the AP exam system - is telling Jefferson's School Board that if they mess with the AP materials by "censor(ing) essential concepts from an Advanced Placement course, that course can no longer bear the 'AP' designation." Meaning no accredited university will accept it.
With luck, all this uproar will convince the conservative board members to back down (they've already delayed the vote). But this is not the end of it.
We are under attack in this nation. There is a movement among the conservatives to demolish the public education system. Our schools, which have operated like this for decades if not centuries, are facing massive defunding efforts: the slashing of budgets, the wrecking of programs. Our schools, once places meant to share a means of teaching our kids now getting revamped into privatized profit machines. Our schools, which try to teach our children how the world is - our science, our math, our language, our literature, our history - are being forced to push political propaganda and religious nuttery.
This is a call to all Americans, all registered voters this midterm cycle: a lot of us are going to have school board elections and county board elections and state legislature elections and gubernatorial elections. NOW is the time to look, really look, at the candidates for each office that will have a major impact on our communities and our schools. NOW is the time to vote out every Far Right wingnut who wants to rewrite our history and shred our studies of fact-based sciences. NOW is the time to clean out the greedheads trying to push vouchers and charter schools down our throats.
NOW is the time to save our schools. Before the damage gets worse, before we lose our public schools to privatized money-grubbers who'll chew up all our taxpayer dollars while under-educating our kids into idiocy. Before our kids get taught in biology that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, that the Earth is still flat and the center of the universe, and that it's all just 6,000 years old despite the record of human history going back further.
Time to get politics, greed, and fallacy out of our schools.
It's a big deal for any high schooler aiming to get a college degree. Get a lot of AP credits through a national program, look good to potential universities while doing it, find yourself earning a way to a major institution - in this case William and Mary WILL do, thank you Steely Dan - that can open doors when you hit the job market.
So what happens when a county school board decides to mess with the Advanced Placement program? When a school board controlled by a Far Right contingent obsessed with re-writing history - of white-washing it - decides to edit the books and the exam materials to remove any history of civil protest and questioning of authority?
You get Jefferson County (Colorado) School Board, where a thousand students marched in protest - I think this counts as irony, teacher - against the school board trying to remove the very concept of protests from the history books (via Digby):
Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay...
...Student participants said their demonstration was organized by word of mouth and social media. Many waved American flags and carried signs, including messages that read “There is nothing more patriotic than protest.”
“I don’t think my education should be censored. We should be able to know what happened in our past,” said Tori Leu, a 17-year-old student who protested at Ralston Valley High School in Arvada.
The school board proposal that triggered the walkouts in Jefferson County calls for instructional materials that present positive aspects of the nation and its heritage. It would establish a committee to regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights” and don’t “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law...”
Any honest American might spot the problem right away: the editing of texts to define what citizenship and patriotism are, the editing of texts to "don't encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." So who gets to define citizenship? Who gets to define patriotism? Who says what encourages or condones civil disorder or disregard of the law? Hint: the Conservatives (the same Conservatives who'll tell their own gun-toting followers to prepare for secession and Second Amendment remedies) will tell you that only Conservatives should...
The proposal from Julie Williams, part of the board’s conservative majority, has not been voted on and was put on hold last week. She didn’t return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday, but previously told Chalkbeat Colorado, a school news website, that she recognizes there are negative events that are part of U.S. history that need to be taught.
“There are things we may not be proud of as Americans,” she said. “But we shouldn’t be encouraging our kids to think that America is a bad place...”Williams is one of those conservatives who thinks that because Jim Crow is no more that racism is a thing of the past (when it's clearly not), who thinks that we shouldn't consider the darker ramifications of Manifest Destiny, who probably prefers we never even remember things like the Sand Creek Massacre or the Tulsa Riots.
A student demonstrator, Tyrone G. Parks, a senior at Arvada High School, said Tuesday that the nation’s foundation was built on civil protests, “and everything that we’ve done is what allowed us to be at this point today. And if you take that from us, you take away everything that America was built off of...”
It's heartening to see the students rise up: they understand full well that an ideological re-write of their curriculum can well kill off their hopes of getting into good colleges. It's also good news that the College Board - the organization overseeing the AP exam system - is telling Jefferson's School Board that if they mess with the AP materials by "censor(ing) essential concepts from an Advanced Placement course, that course can no longer bear the 'AP' designation." Meaning no accredited university will accept it.
With luck, all this uproar will convince the conservative board members to back down (they've already delayed the vote). But this is not the end of it.
We are under attack in this nation. There is a movement among the conservatives to demolish the public education system. Our schools, which have operated like this for decades if not centuries, are facing massive defunding efforts: the slashing of budgets, the wrecking of programs. Our schools, once places meant to share a means of teaching our kids now getting revamped into privatized profit machines. Our schools, which try to teach our children how the world is - our science, our math, our language, our literature, our history - are being forced to push political propaganda and religious nuttery.
This is a call to all Americans, all registered voters this midterm cycle: a lot of us are going to have school board elections and county board elections and state legislature elections and gubernatorial elections. NOW is the time to look, really look, at the candidates for each office that will have a major impact on our communities and our schools. NOW is the time to vote out every Far Right wingnut who wants to rewrite our history and shred our studies of fact-based sciences. NOW is the time to clean out the greedheads trying to push vouchers and charter schools down our throats.
NOW is the time to save our schools. Before the damage gets worse, before we lose our public schools to privatized money-grubbers who'll chew up all our taxpayer dollars while under-educating our kids into idiocy. Before our kids get taught in biology that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, that the Earth is still flat and the center of the universe, and that it's all just 6,000 years old despite the record of human history going back further.
Time to get politics, greed, and fallacy out of our schools.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Hark! A Ranking of U2 Albums!
The recent release of U2's latest Songs of Innocence had been a quick topic upon the Intertubes a few weeks back. A lot of "what the hell" mostly due to how it came out - Apple paid the band $100 million to set up 500 million free downloads that automatically loaded onto people's iTunes accounts (even when they didn't want it) - and a lot of "does anybody even listen to U2 anymore" blowback.
Well, as a U2 fan since the days of War, I wasn't angry about the forced free download so those issues didn't bother me as much. My biggest concern was "was the new album any good?"
Along with my fellow U2 fans in the world - okay, the Horde of the Lost Battalion - there came a quick Facebook discussion which quickly faded because other issues - and the homework assignment of reading The New Jim Crow - had to be addressed. But for meself, well hey, this is Serious Business being a U2 fan. So I had to rank the new album among the others. As a result, I had to go back and rank all of them (the official ones and not the EPs or Greatest Hits).
As such, it's taken me awhile - and a couple of nights re-listening to half the albums to confirm my bias - to bring to you this list of relevant "Yes U2 Is Still a Band Worth Listening To" albums. Ranked by weakest (oh dear God, Pop) to best (no-brainer JOSHUA TREE, DUH!)... with Songs of Innocence stuck in the middle of a ranking it can't get out of. Yeah, I went there.
Ranking U2 Albums - Weak to Epic
Title: Pop
Reasons: Whatever self-indulgences cursed the band with their first big misfire Rattle and Hum came back with a vengeance on this atrocity. Delving ever further into their techno phase starting under Achtung Baby and continued over from Zooropa, Pop is exactly what it says on the box: songs with the “pop” flavor of European dance music, holdovers from the disco era of the late 70s. Having a rock band go disco is not only disorienting, it's horrifying. I honestly cannot recall a single song off this album other than the opening tidbits from “Discotheque”. It's telling that when the band released their Greatest Hits album covering this era, they had every song off Pop remixed as though the original released tunes were bad. Well, they were.
Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): Discotheque, Gone (the remixed version off the Hits album)
Good Song(s): Last Night On Earth
Title: October
Reasons: Sophomore albums rarely do well, for several reasons: they're rushed out to capitalize on the band's fame, it's relying on weak songs culled from the debut album, the band is trying to repeat the same songs that were successful on the first album, but comes across as stale, etc. This one's no exception, falling under the “band seems repeating themselves” problem in terms of the music. Lyrics-wise, the album goes deep into the band's Christian background, essentially the most overt religious album they'll ever make (other songs will go into faith well up to now, but not as blatant). There's still a couple good songs here – I have a personal liking for “Tomorrow” – but the album as a whole isn't required for any collection or casual listener.
Epic Song(s): Gloria
Great Song(s): Tomorrow, October
Good Song(s): I Fall Down, Rejoice, Fire
Title: How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Reasons: Admit it, you can't get that opening bit from “Vertigo” out – UNOS – of your head. DOS And yeah, I just put it – TRES – there on you like the evil earworm that it is. CATORCE! Bwhaha. While it's anchored by arguably the hardest-rocking song the band ever made, the rest of the album comes across as... disposable. You can live without having heard any of the other songs off this album, and probably will get into arguments with even hardcore fans about which ones are Great or merely Good. I had to re-listen to this album just to get a refresher on what's on here.
Epic Song(s): Vertigo, City of Blinding Lights
Great Song(s): Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, All Because of You
Good Song(s): Miracle Drug, A Man And A Woman, Yahweh
Title: Zooropa
Reasons: This got a hate-on pretty early in its existence, partly because it carried over the techno stuff from its great predecessor Achtung Baby but also because it foreshadowed some of the overindulgence that would kill the next album Pop. It didn't help that even the great songs on this album had an overproduced, throw-everything-at-the-wall feel to them (because the album ended up being rushed out the studio). Thing is, in hindsight and re-listening, this album isn't that bad. There's some great songs on here – “Lemon” in particular is very underrated – that can mesh well with the great songs from other U2 eras. I'd love to get a remixed “Zooropa” song that takes out that overlong instrumental bit in the opening (what worked great with “Where the Streets...” didn't work great here) and compresses into a more coherent mood-setter.
Epic Song(s): Lemon, First Time
Great Song(s): Stay (Faraway So Close), Dirty Day
Good Song(s): Zooropa, Numb, The Wanderer (with Johnny Cash)
Title: Rattle and Hum
Reasons: The first real Stumble and Miscue the band had. Pumped up by Joshua Tree and continuing their obsessions with American politics and culture, they jumped into this project looking to mingle live music with studio recordings in an attempt to capture the Joshua Tree roller coaster ride. Instead they created a muddled mess: the movie that came with this album did little as advertised, the live songs didn't jell with the studio songs, and the studio songs came across as the band trying to pat themselves on the backs for being so earnest. Yes, there are some decent songs on here, some of them must-haves, but I'm of the opinion they should have separated this into a studio album and a live album, that the live stuff should have been original tunes instead of covers, and that they should have done a better job with the studio stuff.
Epic Song(s): Desire, Bullet the Blue Sky, All I Want Is You
Great Song(s): All Along the Watchtower, Silver and Gold, When Love Comes To Town
Good Song(s): Heartland, God Part II
Title: Songs of Innocence
Reasons: The yelling and screaming over this album has more to do with how it was released – via a promotional binge by Apple, where they had iTunes automatically upload it for free (well, Apple paid $100 million for it) to 500 million accounts whether they wanted it or not – than what's actually on the album. Aside from a terrible cover photo (very understated but bleh), what else was there to hate about this? Probably because at first listen, and even second listen, there's no automatic hit here: no “Vertigo” or “Desire” to anchor the album. There's an attempt to make “The Miracle” (the Ramones tribute song) that hit, but seems forced. “Iris” and “Volcano” are more sincere songs deserving hit status, while “Raised By Wolves” can become a long-term classic. This ends up neither a great album nor the disaster the haters are crowing about.
Epic Song(s): Volcano, Raised By Wolves
Great Song(s): The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), Iris (Hold Me Close), This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now
Good Song(s): Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone
Title: No Line On the Horizon
Reasons: Of the albums in the U2 roster, this is the one that comes closest to having a dark side, an anger to it not heard since War. But where War had a hopeful, We Shall Overcome protest vibe to it, No Line has a more jaded We're Stuck In Purgatory feel, making it Darkest Album. On the bright side it gives us some of the hard-rocking songs I tend to enjoy, but on the other hand it makes it hard to break out for repeat listens, and after awhile some of these songs like “Get On Your Boots” lose their appeal. Still, it's turning out to be a better album out of their most recent works. It'd be ranked higher if it had a more endearing rock song like “Beautiful Day” or “Vertigo” to it.
Epic Song(s): Magnificent, I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Great Song(s): No Line On the Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Breathe
Good Song(s): Unknown Caller
Title: Under a Blood Red Sky
Reasons: Coming off the success of the War tour and off the insanely popular Red Rocks live concert looped endlessly on MTV, this presents the strengths of U2 as a live band like few other albums (and I'm surprised they don't release the exclusive live albums they've issued for the premium fanbase go to broader audiences). If this album has problems, it's due to the fact it's a hodge-podge of concerts across the whole tour instead of the epic Red Rocks performance: as though the songs from that one show had problems that the other recorded performances improved upon. I'd love to see a full album from that one show released some day...
Epic Song(s): Electric Co., 40
Great Song(s): Gloria, I Will Follow, Party Girl, Sunday Bloody Sunday
Good Song(s): New Year's Day
Title: Boy
Reasons: As first albums go this had enough good songs to get off on a great footing with audiences. Moody as all hell, thematically looking at the hazy yearnings of troubled youth, but impressive with Edge's haunting guitar work that would be a signature style well up into Achtung Baby. If this album looks higher-ranking than the other albums that have more Epic/Great songs, it's because the particular songs here are better, and this album (as the debut work) has more importance.
Epic Song(s): I Will Follow, A Day Without Me
Great Song(s): Twilight, Out of Control, Electric Co.,
Good Song(s): An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart, Ocean
Title: Unforgettable Fire
Reasons: After War, the band needed an album of hits to get a Number One song on the books. The result was this: using a sound that pulled away from the punk rawness of the first three albums but trying to keep that punk sentiment in the lyrics to generate crossover appeal. It ends up being a weaker album than War, but with at least one real epic must-hear song in “Pride”. It also has a set of songs that have a softer sound in the studio but which did so much better when done live. I have “Wire” listed as an epic song but it's noticeably one of their least-known songs from this album, kinda deserves more love in the world all I'm saying.
Epic Song(s): Sort of Homecoming, Pride (In the Name of Love), Wire
Great Song(s): Unforgettable Fire, Bad (the Live version off Wide Awake is SO MUCH BETTER), Indian Summer Sky
Good Song(s): MLK
Title: All That You Can't Leave Behind
Reasons: I remember some reviewer saying “This is U2's Greatest Hits album of fresh stuff.” Meaning it came across as a hodge-podge of all the previous stuff – the punk rock phase (“Beautiful Day”), the blues ethereal phase (“Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of”), the techno-industrial phase (“Elevation”), the Euro-Pop nightmare (“Kite”) – but with new tunes. Kinda what the album title implies, this was all of the baggage the band brought with them and needed to get out of their system before moving on. It also became known as their “third Great Album,” something I nitpick against but would accept in casual conversation. It does have a couple of epic songs to it, and great songs that lift it well above the questionable / disastrous efforts of the 1990s, but it's not a must-have album like the top three I got listed.
This was also one of the albums we – and I mean we by the American nation – listened to in tears and rage after the attacks on September 11. It'd been out for all of 2001 by then, but it had songs on there we needed to listen to, songs that echoed about what happened then and haunt us still. Dear God, I can't listen to “New York” without bursting into tears even now... damn them, U2 had a 9/11 song before 9/11 even happened...
Epic Song(s): Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On
Great Song(s): New York
Good Song(s): Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, In a Little While, When I Look At the World
Title: War
Reasons: I'm stunned that this one keeps getting overlooked in the Great Album discussion that has All That, Achtung Baby, and Joshua Tree. It was this album that got U2 from small punk band to major airplay on radio stations across the US, that got them on the map (which also provided the basis for their well-received US tour in 1983). Not only does it have a couple of epic songs that keep getting airplay to this day – “New Year's Day” in particular – but it has a lot of great songs that seem to fly under people's radar. It might be due to this being their last true punk album of the early years, with a lot of rawness to the songs. But this also includes one of my personal favorites, “Drowning Man”. If you gotta listen to Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, you gotta listen to this one too.
Epic Song(s): Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year's Day
Great Song(s): Like a Song, Drowning Man, Two Hearts Beat As One, Surrender, 40
Good Song(s): Seconds, Red Light
Title: Achtung Baby
Reasons: This one came out at the end of the Cold War, with the Berlin Wall gone, the US flattening Iraq in the desert, and the Soviet Union primed to collapse. Where all the punk earnestness had been burned out by Joshua Tree, and the obsession with Americana crushed by the flat Rattle and Hum, there was now this jaded “what's next” mindset that was settling in for the 1990s. Into this, U2 came out with a new sound more European/techno than American Rock... and proved they were capable of making more than one great album, putting them in the rarefied air of the great acts like the Beatles. Topped off by arguably the greatest song they ever made – “One,” which itself happened on the eve the band nearly broke up – alongside other hits like “Mysterious Ways” and “The Fly.” Christ, is this album more than 20 years old? It still seems fresher than that.
Epic Song(s): One, Until the End of the World, Mysterious Ways
Great Song(s): Even Better Than the Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, The Fly, Ultraviolet
Good Song(s): Zoo Station, Tryin to Throw Your Arms Around the World
Title: Joshua Tree
Reasons: Can I explain to you what it sounded like when I got the vinyl album (CD was still new and very expensive) and put needle to disc on the first song “Where the Streets Have No Name”? Can I explain what it sounded like when that ethereal opening instrumental poured out of the speakers, an approaching wave of sound that echoed like sunrise into the room? And that was the opening song blowing my mind. God. It sounded even better when I finally got the CD version. This is the album that tops everyone's list, the one even U2 haters would admit having in their collection. If there's a weak song on this album, it's probably either “Red Hill Mining Town” or “Trip Through Your Wires”, maybe “One Tree Hill” depending on who's answering. Every other song is in the Great Song category at the very least however people argue which one's better than the others.
This is U2's Revolver, their Bringing It All Back Home, their Born
To Run.
Epic Song(s): Where the Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You, Bullet the Blue Sky, Running to Stand Still, In God's Country, Exit
Great Song(s): Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Red Hill Mining Town, One Tree Hill, Mothers of the Disappeared
Good Song(s): Trip Through Your Wires
I wanna see comments. It can't be that hard to login and leave one... if not, then tweet me at @PaulWartenberg.
Well, as a U2 fan since the days of War, I wasn't angry about the forced free download so those issues didn't bother me as much. My biggest concern was "was the new album any good?"
Along with my fellow U2 fans in the world - okay, the Horde of the Lost Battalion - there came a quick Facebook discussion which quickly faded because other issues - and the homework assignment of reading The New Jim Crow - had to be addressed. But for meself, well hey, this is Serious Business being a U2 fan. So I had to rank the new album among the others. As a result, I had to go back and rank all of them (the official ones and not the EPs or Greatest Hits).
As such, it's taken me awhile - and a couple of nights re-listening to half the albums to confirm my bias - to bring to you this list of relevant "Yes U2 Is Still a Band Worth Listening To" albums. Ranked by weakest (oh dear God, Pop) to best (no-brainer JOSHUA TREE, DUH!)... with Songs of Innocence stuck in the middle of a ranking it can't get out of. Yeah, I went there.
Ranking U2 Albums - Weak to Epic
Title: Pop
Reasons: Whatever self-indulgences cursed the band with their first big misfire Rattle and Hum came back with a vengeance on this atrocity. Delving ever further into their techno phase starting under Achtung Baby and continued over from Zooropa, Pop is exactly what it says on the box: songs with the “pop” flavor of European dance music, holdovers from the disco era of the late 70s. Having a rock band go disco is not only disorienting, it's horrifying. I honestly cannot recall a single song off this album other than the opening tidbits from “Discotheque”. It's telling that when the band released their Greatest Hits album covering this era, they had every song off Pop remixed as though the original released tunes were bad. Well, they were.
Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): Discotheque, Gone (the remixed version off the Hits album)
Good Song(s): Last Night On Earth
Title: October
Reasons: Sophomore albums rarely do well, for several reasons: they're rushed out to capitalize on the band's fame, it's relying on weak songs culled from the debut album, the band is trying to repeat the same songs that were successful on the first album, but comes across as stale, etc. This one's no exception, falling under the “band seems repeating themselves” problem in terms of the music. Lyrics-wise, the album goes deep into the band's Christian background, essentially the most overt religious album they'll ever make (other songs will go into faith well up to now, but not as blatant). There's still a couple good songs here – I have a personal liking for “Tomorrow” – but the album as a whole isn't required for any collection or casual listener.
Epic Song(s): Gloria
Great Song(s): Tomorrow, October
Good Song(s): I Fall Down, Rejoice, Fire
Title: How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Reasons: Admit it, you can't get that opening bit from “Vertigo” out – UNOS – of your head. DOS And yeah, I just put it – TRES – there on you like the evil earworm that it is. CATORCE! Bwhaha. While it's anchored by arguably the hardest-rocking song the band ever made, the rest of the album comes across as... disposable. You can live without having heard any of the other songs off this album, and probably will get into arguments with even hardcore fans about which ones are Great or merely Good. I had to re-listen to this album just to get a refresher on what's on here.
Epic Song(s): Vertigo, City of Blinding Lights
Great Song(s): Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, All Because of You
Good Song(s): Miracle Drug, A Man And A Woman, Yahweh
Title: Zooropa
Reasons: This got a hate-on pretty early in its existence, partly because it carried over the techno stuff from its great predecessor Achtung Baby but also because it foreshadowed some of the overindulgence that would kill the next album Pop. It didn't help that even the great songs on this album had an overproduced, throw-everything-at-the-wall feel to them (because the album ended up being rushed out the studio). Thing is, in hindsight and re-listening, this album isn't that bad. There's some great songs on here – “Lemon” in particular is very underrated – that can mesh well with the great songs from other U2 eras. I'd love to get a remixed “Zooropa” song that takes out that overlong instrumental bit in the opening (what worked great with “Where the Streets...” didn't work great here) and compresses into a more coherent mood-setter.
Epic Song(s): Lemon, First Time
Great Song(s): Stay (Faraway So Close), Dirty Day
Good Song(s): Zooropa, Numb, The Wanderer (with Johnny Cash)
Title: Rattle and Hum
Reasons: The first real Stumble and Miscue the band had. Pumped up by Joshua Tree and continuing their obsessions with American politics and culture, they jumped into this project looking to mingle live music with studio recordings in an attempt to capture the Joshua Tree roller coaster ride. Instead they created a muddled mess: the movie that came with this album did little as advertised, the live songs didn't jell with the studio songs, and the studio songs came across as the band trying to pat themselves on the backs for being so earnest. Yes, there are some decent songs on here, some of them must-haves, but I'm of the opinion they should have separated this into a studio album and a live album, that the live stuff should have been original tunes instead of covers, and that they should have done a better job with the studio stuff.
Epic Song(s): Desire, Bullet the Blue Sky, All I Want Is You
Great Song(s): All Along the Watchtower, Silver and Gold, When Love Comes To Town
Good Song(s): Heartland, God Part II
Title: Songs of Innocence
Reasons: The yelling and screaming over this album has more to do with how it was released – via a promotional binge by Apple, where they had iTunes automatically upload it for free (well, Apple paid $100 million for it) to 500 million accounts whether they wanted it or not – than what's actually on the album. Aside from a terrible cover photo (very understated but bleh), what else was there to hate about this? Probably because at first listen, and even second listen, there's no automatic hit here: no “Vertigo” or “Desire” to anchor the album. There's an attempt to make “The Miracle” (the Ramones tribute song) that hit, but seems forced. “Iris” and “Volcano” are more sincere songs deserving hit status, while “Raised By Wolves” can become a long-term classic. This ends up neither a great album nor the disaster the haters are crowing about.
Epic Song(s): Volcano, Raised By Wolves
Great Song(s): The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), Iris (Hold Me Close), This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now
Good Song(s): Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone
Title: No Line On the Horizon
Reasons: Of the albums in the U2 roster, this is the one that comes closest to having a dark side, an anger to it not heard since War. But where War had a hopeful, We Shall Overcome protest vibe to it, No Line has a more jaded We're Stuck In Purgatory feel, making it Darkest Album. On the bright side it gives us some of the hard-rocking songs I tend to enjoy, but on the other hand it makes it hard to break out for repeat listens, and after awhile some of these songs like “Get On Your Boots” lose their appeal. Still, it's turning out to be a better album out of their most recent works. It'd be ranked higher if it had a more endearing rock song like “Beautiful Day” or “Vertigo” to it.
Epic Song(s): Magnificent, I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Great Song(s): No Line On the Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Breathe
Good Song(s): Unknown Caller
Title: Under a Blood Red Sky
Reasons: Coming off the success of the War tour and off the insanely popular Red Rocks live concert looped endlessly on MTV, this presents the strengths of U2 as a live band like few other albums (and I'm surprised they don't release the exclusive live albums they've issued for the premium fanbase go to broader audiences). If this album has problems, it's due to the fact it's a hodge-podge of concerts across the whole tour instead of the epic Red Rocks performance: as though the songs from that one show had problems that the other recorded performances improved upon. I'd love to see a full album from that one show released some day...
Great Song(s): Gloria, I Will Follow, Party Girl, Sunday Bloody Sunday
Good Song(s): New Year's Day
Title: Boy
Reasons: As first albums go this had enough good songs to get off on a great footing with audiences. Moody as all hell, thematically looking at the hazy yearnings of troubled youth, but impressive with Edge's haunting guitar work that would be a signature style well up into Achtung Baby. If this album looks higher-ranking than the other albums that have more Epic/Great songs, it's because the particular songs here are better, and this album (as the debut work) has more importance.
Epic Song(s): I Will Follow, A Day Without Me
Great Song(s): Twilight, Out of Control, Electric Co.,
Good Song(s): An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart, Ocean
Title: Unforgettable Fire
Reasons: After War, the band needed an album of hits to get a Number One song on the books. The result was this: using a sound that pulled away from the punk rawness of the first three albums but trying to keep that punk sentiment in the lyrics to generate crossover appeal. It ends up being a weaker album than War, but with at least one real epic must-hear song in “Pride”. It also has a set of songs that have a softer sound in the studio but which did so much better when done live. I have “Wire” listed as an epic song but it's noticeably one of their least-known songs from this album, kinda deserves more love in the world all I'm saying.
Epic Song(s): Sort of Homecoming, Pride (In the Name of Love), Wire
Great Song(s): Unforgettable Fire, Bad (the Live version off Wide Awake is SO MUCH BETTER), Indian Summer Sky
Good Song(s): MLK
Title: All That You Can't Leave Behind
Reasons: I remember some reviewer saying “This is U2's Greatest Hits album of fresh stuff.” Meaning it came across as a hodge-podge of all the previous stuff – the punk rock phase (“Beautiful Day”), the blues ethereal phase (“Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of”), the techno-industrial phase (“Elevation”), the Euro-Pop nightmare (“Kite”) – but with new tunes. Kinda what the album title implies, this was all of the baggage the band brought with them and needed to get out of their system before moving on. It also became known as their “third Great Album,” something I nitpick against but would accept in casual conversation. It does have a couple of epic songs to it, and great songs that lift it well above the questionable / disastrous efforts of the 1990s, but it's not a must-have album like the top three I got listed.
This was also one of the albums we – and I mean we by the American nation – listened to in tears and rage after the attacks on September 11. It'd been out for all of 2001 by then, but it had songs on there we needed to listen to, songs that echoed about what happened then and haunt us still. Dear God, I can't listen to “New York” without bursting into tears even now... damn them, U2 had a 9/11 song before 9/11 even happened...
Epic Song(s): Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On
Great Song(s): New York
Good Song(s): Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, In a Little While, When I Look At the World
Title: War
Reasons: I'm stunned that this one keeps getting overlooked in the Great Album discussion that has All That, Achtung Baby, and Joshua Tree. It was this album that got U2 from small punk band to major airplay on radio stations across the US, that got them on the map (which also provided the basis for their well-received US tour in 1983). Not only does it have a couple of epic songs that keep getting airplay to this day – “New Year's Day” in particular – but it has a lot of great songs that seem to fly under people's radar. It might be due to this being their last true punk album of the early years, with a lot of rawness to the songs. But this also includes one of my personal favorites, “Drowning Man”. If you gotta listen to Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, you gotta listen to this one too.
Epic Song(s): Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year's Day
Great Song(s): Like a Song, Drowning Man, Two Hearts Beat As One, Surrender, 40
Good Song(s): Seconds, Red Light
Title: Achtung Baby
Reasons: This one came out at the end of the Cold War, with the Berlin Wall gone, the US flattening Iraq in the desert, and the Soviet Union primed to collapse. Where all the punk earnestness had been burned out by Joshua Tree, and the obsession with Americana crushed by the flat Rattle and Hum, there was now this jaded “what's next” mindset that was settling in for the 1990s. Into this, U2 came out with a new sound more European/techno than American Rock... and proved they were capable of making more than one great album, putting them in the rarefied air of the great acts like the Beatles. Topped off by arguably the greatest song they ever made – “One,” which itself happened on the eve the band nearly broke up – alongside other hits like “Mysterious Ways” and “The Fly.” Christ, is this album more than 20 years old? It still seems fresher than that.
Epic Song(s): One, Until the End of the World, Mysterious Ways
Great Song(s): Even Better Than the Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, The Fly, Ultraviolet
Good Song(s): Zoo Station, Tryin to Throw Your Arms Around the World
Title: Joshua Tree
Reasons: Can I explain to you what it sounded like when I got the vinyl album (CD was still new and very expensive) and put needle to disc on the first song “Where the Streets Have No Name”? Can I explain what it sounded like when that ethereal opening instrumental poured out of the speakers, an approaching wave of sound that echoed like sunrise into the room? And that was the opening song blowing my mind. God. It sounded even better when I finally got the CD version. This is the album that tops everyone's list, the one even U2 haters would admit having in their collection. If there's a weak song on this album, it's probably either “Red Hill Mining Town” or “Trip Through Your Wires”, maybe “One Tree Hill” depending on who's answering. Every other song is in the Great Song category at the very least however people argue which one's better than the others.
Epic Song(s): Where the Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You, Bullet the Blue Sky, Running to Stand Still, In God's Country, Exit
Great Song(s): Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Red Hill Mining Town, One Tree Hill, Mothers of the Disappeared
Good Song(s): Trip Through Your Wires
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Sunday, September 21, 2014
There Is No Accountability For Being Wrong
I have to admit it was the headline that grabbed me.
Washington Is a Cesspool of Faux-Experts Who Do Bad Research.
As a librarian, this kinda pisses me off (per Conor, who's standing on the sidelines chewing the popcorn):
They're basically talking about the same set of experts who circle about the DC Beltway getting on the talk shows and getting into the think tank meetings. They're the same idiots fear-mongering about foreign policy woes and the threats of inflation and wage increases would have against our austerity measures. Klein and Conor are talking about the same idiots who get proven wrong - constantly, hi there Mr. Kristol - and yet even with a clear track record of failure keep getting invited back by the power elites and the media chains to sell even more faulty intel and questionable opinions.
Paul Krugman - Nobel Prize economist and someone who tends to do the research we librarians like - has been railing against the same faux-experts in the economic circles who keep obsessing over an inflationary threat that never comes: "The predicted surge in inflation has never arrived, but despite being wrong year after year, hardly any of the critics have admitted being wrong, or even changed their tune."
While Krugman worries about the effects that collective ignorance has on our economic recovery (or lack thereof), the thing he hints at but never openly states in that article is how those false predictors are allowed to keep shilling their bad advice. It's because those bad advisors have been in the Inner Circle of power in DC, and once you've been there your advice is always welcome, whether it's factual or not.
There is no accountability for being wrong. The First Amendment as currently interpreted does not require fact-checkers and enforcement of sticking to the facts. Whatever Fairness Doctrine we had as oversight for our media gave way to Anything Goes As Long As It's Not Libel (and even then libel is horribly under-enforced). Journalism as a profession does not require much in the way of certification outside of a bachelors degree and even then it's not a requirement to get hired - just look at Sean Hannity, he doesn't even have a college degree in anything - and there's no association or bar or board of authority to govern how journalists or media outlets can behave.
Your plumber is better vetted than your TV news host. And if your plumber does something wrong, he/she can lose his/her license. If your TV news host does something wrong, he/she gets a freaking book deal. If your TV news host keeps inviting a know-nothing or naysayer talking head who keeps getting the facts spectacularly wrong, that news host will get a contract extension because "it's good for ratings!" /headdesk
As Raptavio notes on his Daily Kos blog:
Dear Beltway Media: stop interviewing (k)no(w)-nothing Senators and billionaire campaign blowhards, and start interviewing librarians and people who are, you know, ACTUAL EXPERTS on the topics being discussed. You're not doing this nation any favors in your pursuit for ratings over BS.
Washington Is a Cesspool of Faux-Experts Who Do Bad Research.
As a librarian, this kinda pisses me off (per Conor, who's standing on the sidelines chewing the popcorn):
Drawing on nine years in the nation's capitol, Klein acknowledges one class of obstacles. "Washington is a cesspool of faux-experts who do bad research (or no research)," he explained, "but retain their standing by dint of affiliations, connections, or charisma." Sweet validation! I've often suspected that official Washington is populated by enough disingenuous, misinformation-spreading hucksters to fill an underground container of organic waste. No one has better standing to render this judgment than Klein, whose earnest, tireless embrace of deep-in-the-weeds wonkery is unsurpassed in his generation. He wouldn't assert a whole cesspool of intellectual waste product without having seen plenty of specific examples...
They're basically talking about the same set of experts who circle about the DC Beltway getting on the talk shows and getting into the think tank meetings. They're the same idiots fear-mongering about foreign policy woes and the threats of inflation and wage increases would have against our austerity measures. Klein and Conor are talking about the same idiots who get proven wrong - constantly, hi there Mr. Kristol - and yet even with a clear track record of failure keep getting invited back by the power elites and the media chains to sell even more faulty intel and questionable opinions.
Paul Krugman - Nobel Prize economist and someone who tends to do the research we librarians like - has been railing against the same faux-experts in the economic circles who keep obsessing over an inflationary threat that never comes: "The predicted surge in inflation has never arrived, but despite being wrong year after year, hardly any of the critics have admitted being wrong, or even changed their tune."
While Krugman worries about the effects that collective ignorance has on our economic recovery (or lack thereof), the thing he hints at but never openly states in that article is how those false predictors are allowed to keep shilling their bad advice. It's because those bad advisors have been in the Inner Circle of power in DC, and once you've been there your advice is always welcome, whether it's factual or not.
There is no accountability for being wrong. The First Amendment as currently interpreted does not require fact-checkers and enforcement of sticking to the facts. Whatever Fairness Doctrine we had as oversight for our media gave way to Anything Goes As Long As It's Not Libel (and even then libel is horribly under-enforced). Journalism as a profession does not require much in the way of certification outside of a bachelors degree and even then it's not a requirement to get hired - just look at Sean Hannity, he doesn't even have a college degree in anything - and there's no association or bar or board of authority to govern how journalists or media outlets can behave.
Your plumber is better vetted than your TV news host. And if your plumber does something wrong, he/she can lose his/her license. If your TV news host does something wrong, he/she gets a freaking book deal. If your TV news host keeps inviting a know-nothing or naysayer talking head who keeps getting the facts spectacularly wrong, that news host will get a contract extension because "it's good for ratings!" /headdesk
As Raptavio notes on his Daily Kos blog:
With any semblance of real consequence for being so wrong (even willfully wrong) so consistently, there's little incentive for media outlets to pursue accuracy or integrity in their journalism -- and with the phenomenon of market share going to news outlets who present stories and analysis that reflect their audience's biases, this gives the media strong pecuniary disincentives to promote the values of fact-based reporting and instead to pander, irrespective of whether that pandering is grounded in reality.
Dear Beltway Media: stop interviewing (k)no(w)-nothing Senators and billionaire campaign blowhards, and start interviewing librarians and people who are, you know, ACTUAL EXPERTS on the topics being discussed. You're not doing this nation any favors in your pursuit for ratings over BS.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Why Do Scandals Get Worse
The thing that always surprises me is how a bad story - someone being violent, someone being inept, someone being greedy - goes from minor league to nuclear catastrophe within a heartbeat of the story getting out.
It's not even when a revelation about a minor crime turns into an expose of a major conspiracy, like Watergate. It's just in any situation where there's a powerful person or an organization suddenly confronted with a problem he/she/they just doesn't know how to handle it, and then BOOM the entire structure of that person's powerbase implodes or that organization's impressive administrative order collapses.
I'm bringing this up in the wake of the NFL's (and commissioner Goodell's) Very Bad PR Week of mishandling the Ray Rice incident. What went from a horrifying interpersonal assault in an Atlantic City casino back in February - that could have been calmly handled in the courts and through massive amounts of counseling - instead degraded into a months-long argument over how poorly the NFL handles domestic violence cases overall (in short: not well).
When Goodell handed down a mere (!) two-game suspension on Rice in July, it opened up the arguments about how tone-deaf the sports league was towards how domestic violence literally destroys women. That the punishment for assaulting a women was less than a punishment doled out to a player caught with marijuana in his possession or his biosystem (and while pot is illegal, so is assault: and you can forge a strong argument that assault is a more serious crime than pot). You could see in real-time the scrambling and back-pedaling that the NFL Front Office went through looking to come up with a stronger punishment code...
And then this past Monday just as Week One of the regular season kicked in, the media got ahold of the full video of what Ray Rice really did to his fiancee-now-wife Janay.
By that afternoon Ray Rice had been kicked off his Ravens team and the NFL had banned him indefinitely (although he could always get re-instated).
But this was getting worse and not better for the NFL and Goodell. Because it begged the question: how the hell could a powerful organization like the NFL - an organization known to have its own army of investigators, and had months to get it - fail to see this video?
Each explanation - each excuse - that Goodell tried to offer came up more hopeless and inept and ill-advised than any of the earlier ones. Reports kept cropping up that the NFL did get a copy of the video, that at least one executive did see the video, that all the league had to do was ask the casino for it and not the police or prosecutors' offices. It wasn't helping that other players in the league facing the same legal issues as Rice - Greg Hardy, Ray MacDonald are two - are still playing without suspension... even though Hardy especially has been convicted in court of assaulting and threatening his ex-girlfriend.
The hypocrisy. The sloppiness. The willful ignorance of a powerful, money-driven organization.
How could the NFL - an organization that can successfully bully communities into building multi-billion-dollar jeweled stadiums for them even while generating profits from massive TV and marketing deals - be so clumsy, stupid and tone-deaf now over something like this?
Because of one simple, universal constant that happens to those in power: they lose any perspective about things like accountability and honesty.
It's not so much that power corrupts, it's that power puts people on a different level of authority and responsibility. It's at a level where things like accountability - where you answer to a higher power than yourself - fade away, because you no longer have as many bosses or overseers watching your mistakes and correcting what you did wrong (either through training or dismissal).
That lack of accountability in high places creates a void of sorts: it creates an environment where the people in power believe themselves infallible, untouchable. All because they rose to a level of prominence that makes them seemingly superior to all other mere mortals.
That's what happened, is happening here. Goodell and the NFL - the owners, the players' union, the networks and corporations co-thriving with it all - view themselves akin to Gods On Earth: rich and powerful men (it's mostly men) who make life-and-death decisions about a money-generating sport/entertainment that enough people can't look away from. Why should their judgment be questioned or their values argued? Why are we blowing something like this out of proportion? Don't we know who they are?
It's the same in politics and their media bubble, it's the same in any church of size and power, it's the same in any organization with money in its coffers and power to its name. They simply can't comprehend why we'd raise a fuss over something they think they've already solved.
So they do the next step in the process of self-immolation. The person/organization of power begins to lie about what they did. He/She/They begin to claim "oh well we did X so therefore we're blameless", or "well it was someone else's fault". They make up a half-truth story that slides into flat-out lying as the need to shift the blame elsewhere grows.
This is from the knee-jerk reaction: the self-defense. The refusal to admit wrong-doing as that somehow looks worse than the growing web of lies to cover up the earlier mistake(s). The person of power, the organization of power dare not consider the slight possibility of "OOPS that's on me," because such sloppiness and failure does not belong in "my" world.
And then those in power wonder why they fall. They're compounding earlier mistakes with fresh ones. Because lying at that level of responsibility and power is reckless: because there's bound to be someone out there with the evidence to prove you are lying. Because the more you try to cover it up, the more people and resources you are dragging into the mess: people who may not want to lie to cover your ass; resources that may not fit the gaping holes in your faltering stories.
That's why scandals get worse. The people in power refuse to hold themselves accountable and refuse to make genuine efforts to fix the problems that arise. They'd rather lie, blame someone else, and let the problem fade away.
What's sad is why those in power already think that way: because that's how they acted on their way up the chain of command to the high seat they now hold... because they made all that money and gained all that influence through lying and blaming others in the first place. Because there's a broken system of accountability in place already: they're merely profiting from the status quo.
We are as a nation and as a culture in dire need of reform. Of bringing accountability and truth-telling back, of ending the fraud and spiritual wickedness in high places.
It's not even when a revelation about a minor crime turns into an expose of a major conspiracy, like Watergate. It's just in any situation where there's a powerful person or an organization suddenly confronted with a problem he/she/they just doesn't know how to handle it, and then BOOM the entire structure of that person's powerbase implodes or that organization's impressive administrative order collapses.
I'm bringing this up in the wake of the NFL's (and commissioner Goodell's) Very Bad PR Week of mishandling the Ray Rice incident. What went from a horrifying interpersonal assault in an Atlantic City casino back in February - that could have been calmly handled in the courts and through massive amounts of counseling - instead degraded into a months-long argument over how poorly the NFL handles domestic violence cases overall (in short: not well).
When Goodell handed down a mere (!) two-game suspension on Rice in July, it opened up the arguments about how tone-deaf the sports league was towards how domestic violence literally destroys women. That the punishment for assaulting a women was less than a punishment doled out to a player caught with marijuana in his possession or his biosystem (and while pot is illegal, so is assault: and you can forge a strong argument that assault is a more serious crime than pot). You could see in real-time the scrambling and back-pedaling that the NFL Front Office went through looking to come up with a stronger punishment code...
And then this past Monday just as Week One of the regular season kicked in, the media got ahold of the full video of what Ray Rice really did to his fiancee-now-wife Janay.
By that afternoon Ray Rice had been kicked off his Ravens team and the NFL had banned him indefinitely (although he could always get re-instated).
But this was getting worse and not better for the NFL and Goodell. Because it begged the question: how the hell could a powerful organization like the NFL - an organization known to have its own army of investigators, and had months to get it - fail to see this video?
Each explanation - each excuse - that Goodell tried to offer came up more hopeless and inept and ill-advised than any of the earlier ones. Reports kept cropping up that the NFL did get a copy of the video, that at least one executive did see the video, that all the league had to do was ask the casino for it and not the police or prosecutors' offices. It wasn't helping that other players in the league facing the same legal issues as Rice - Greg Hardy, Ray MacDonald are two - are still playing without suspension... even though Hardy especially has been convicted in court of assaulting and threatening his ex-girlfriend.
The hypocrisy. The sloppiness. The willful ignorance of a powerful, money-driven organization.
How could the NFL - an organization that can successfully bully communities into building multi-billion-dollar jeweled stadiums for them even while generating profits from massive TV and marketing deals - be so clumsy, stupid and tone-deaf now over something like this?
Because of one simple, universal constant that happens to those in power: they lose any perspective about things like accountability and honesty.
It's not so much that power corrupts, it's that power puts people on a different level of authority and responsibility. It's at a level where things like accountability - where you answer to a higher power than yourself - fade away, because you no longer have as many bosses or overseers watching your mistakes and correcting what you did wrong (either through training or dismissal).
That lack of accountability in high places creates a void of sorts: it creates an environment where the people in power believe themselves infallible, untouchable. All because they rose to a level of prominence that makes them seemingly superior to all other mere mortals.
That's what happened, is happening here. Goodell and the NFL - the owners, the players' union, the networks and corporations co-thriving with it all - view themselves akin to Gods On Earth: rich and powerful men (it's mostly men) who make life-and-death decisions about a money-generating sport/entertainment that enough people can't look away from. Why should their judgment be questioned or their values argued? Why are we blowing something like this out of proportion? Don't we know who they are?
It's the same in politics and their media bubble, it's the same in any church of size and power, it's the same in any organization with money in its coffers and power to its name. They simply can't comprehend why we'd raise a fuss over something they think they've already solved.
So they do the next step in the process of self-immolation. The person/organization of power begins to lie about what they did. He/She/They begin to claim "oh well we did X so therefore we're blameless", or "well it was someone else's fault". They make up a half-truth story that slides into flat-out lying as the need to shift the blame elsewhere grows.
This is from the knee-jerk reaction: the self-defense. The refusal to admit wrong-doing as that somehow looks worse than the growing web of lies to cover up the earlier mistake(s). The person of power, the organization of power dare not consider the slight possibility of "OOPS that's on me," because such sloppiness and failure does not belong in "my" world.
And then those in power wonder why they fall. They're compounding earlier mistakes with fresh ones. Because lying at that level of responsibility and power is reckless: because there's bound to be someone out there with the evidence to prove you are lying. Because the more you try to cover it up, the more people and resources you are dragging into the mess: people who may not want to lie to cover your ass; resources that may not fit the gaping holes in your faltering stories.
That's why scandals get worse. The people in power refuse to hold themselves accountable and refuse to make genuine efforts to fix the problems that arise. They'd rather lie, blame someone else, and let the problem fade away.
What's sad is why those in power already think that way: because that's how they acted on their way up the chain of command to the high seat they now hold... because they made all that money and gained all that influence through lying and blaming others in the first place. Because there's a broken system of accountability in place already: they're merely profiting from the status quo.
We are as a nation and as a culture in dire need of reform. Of bringing accountability and truth-telling back, of ending the fraud and spiritual wickedness in high places.
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