Save Iran

Right now, all any of us outside that country can is pray. All we can do is sit here and read the Twitter reports coming in. People are dying, they are getting rounded up by the truckload, school dorms shot up, the violence, the madness.

The Iranian people are asking for our help. But what can we do? Any military saber rattling and the Ayatollah and his cronies will be screaming 'imperialism' and 'Death to America', and then claim the protesters are traitors and justify to themselves their 'right' to line 'em all up against the wall. Think the violence is bad now, think how bad Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would get the second the U.S. or any other nation in the region (Turkey or even Syria, for example) makes any noise about all this. Any action we could do would cause an unequal and more violent reaction. So the 40-plus million unarmed Iranians rising up against the crooked election are going in physically alone against their own armed police and armed military. Rest of the world is praying for 'em (other than the usual suspects of idiots like Hezbollah and U.S. Neocons), but prayer can only go so far...

I wish to GOD I could more than sit here and cheerlead. I'm no soldier else I'd be AWOL and parachuting in on my own. I'm no politician else I'd be in ambassadors' faces calling for sanctions and military intervention. I'm no wise man else I'd have found a solution to this whole sorry mess years ago.

Keep watching. Keep praying. Pray to God this will end up like the Philippines in 1986 when People Power worked.

I'm just wondering why Jimmy Carter didn't go in to observe the Iranian 2009 Election...

Well, among other things, that is.

Iran's 2009 Presidential election promised to be interesting for one thing: to see how much cheating the clerics who actually run Iran would commit to block the reform-minded forces from winning.

Let's try to note a few things first:

• The incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been unpopular during his term of office (I'm tempted to use adverbs like "monstrously" or "hideously" before the word "unpopular", but that would be rude). His administration has been dogged by charges of corruption, by inability to deal with the current global recession, and by various controversial statements that - if you're being charitable - bordered on Holocaust Denial and outright elimination of Israel.
• Iran's election isn't as open as they claim: all candidates have to be approved by an oversight committee - The Guardians of the Universe sorry Guardian Council - basically meaning the candidates have to kiss the ring of the Ayatollah just to even get the right to step outside their house. While I can gripe about how candidates have to suck up to our two established parties here in the U.S., at least they aren't forced to suck up to a non-elected dictator who rules for life and answers to no one (and despite the rhetoric, Limbaugh doesn't have *that* much pull).
• For all I'm reading on how Iran holds it's elections, I see no method of independent review and oversight to ensure fair results: all the counting is done by an election commission that answers to - you guessed it - a non-elected dictator who rules for life and answers to no one.

The election's done, and the shouting is just switching to bonfires and street riots. The reform candidate Mousavi is claiming voter fraud: and interestingly there's already a damn good chart on Sullivan's blog showing just how sick the election results are proving. My God. The chart goes in a STRAIGHT LINE. Incoming election results DON'T work like that: they peak and valley, up and down, they fluctuate as the results differ from region to region as they report in. I took classes on statistics and research methods for my journalism and library science degrees: polling results are organic, they ebb and flow. A straight line like that can only occur through direct interference with the numbers: a straight line is a FRAKKING ALGEBRA EQUATION. They're not even trying properly to fake it.

C'mon. They're giving a guy like Ahmadinejad who couldn't consistently break 50 percent in the pre-election polls (the only polling service that gave Ahmad-whateva anything close to that was some outfit called Alef, which I just noticed has ties to Iran's official broadcasting service: nearly every other polling service was showing close wins either way but mostly to Mousavi) a 69 to 28 percent victory? Anything over 52 percent and we're talking fishy numbers here. He's getting 69 percent? Obama didn't get 69 percent. Reagan in 1984 didn't get 69 percent of the popular vote, for God's sake, and that was one of the biggest butt stomping election wins in American history.

I have just one question for the Ayatollah: if everything happens by the Will of Allah... Why did you have to cheat? I just have one other thing to say to the Ayatollah: Congratulations. You are now just like the Shah of Iran that your dad drove out of power. Enjoy.

Sullivan's explanation about why the Ayatollah and his lackeys cheated is the simplest: the clerics panicked. People who enjoy the status quo always do.

And now it's on to an easier bigger, and even nastier, question: does the Iranian military enjoy the status quo enough to roll in the tanks and squash the rioters? Or will enough officers in the military see an opportunity here, to end an unpopular theocracy and broker a peaceful transition of power from the clerics to honestly-elected officials? Because we've seen this film before: that time, it didn't have a happy ending...

UPDATE: Keep reading Sullivan. He's as obsessed about this as I am, and he's got better sources of information.
On the bad news side, there's reports of deaths in the streets now. Mousavi apparently under house arrest. On the good news side, Sullivan's most current update suggests people have been protesting well into 4 a.m. Iran-time. The Iranian people are NOT backing down on this yet. Gods, I hate this waiting. It'd be nice to be able to do something to help, other than just cheerlead from the keyboard. But for all this can affect other nations, this is an internal affair: there's nothing we can do to get our government to anything to help the people of Iran. The best we can hope for is that enough cops, enough soldiers realize the Ayatollah's days are numbered...

UPDATE II: Mousavi not under house arrest (for now), violence has gotten worse for both sides, with reports of college dorms getting shot up and students and professors disappearing. For the most part, the army and official police are staying out of the fight. The real bloodshed is being spilled by some sort of auxiliary security force called Basij, with additional reports that Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon being bussed in for out-of-town muscle (I immediately thought of Hessians when I heard about that). There's still too much unresolved and up in the air. If you're seeing this, Keep reading Sullivan (and yes Cole he's sliding into poetry readings: so what, I'm tempted to break out some e.e. cummings before too long!).

Another Shooting, Another Tragedy

Just as the arguing over the violence inherent among conservatives in the pro-life movement was fading from the big media, we get this: Yesterday a well-established white supremasist who WENT TO JAIL for attempting to "arrest" Alan Greenspan (!!!) back in 1981, and who over the last several months posted online messages warning of violent action, showed up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and opened fire with a rifle, killing one guard before other guards could wound the gunman.

As I said before, in a message to all goddamn Right Wingnuts: who else are you gonna shoot, huh? You're shooting Unitarians, you're shooting doctors, you're shooting police officers, you're shooting up our churches and our schools and our businesses and now our museums. THERE WERE KIDS THERE! My nephew and niece could have been there, my cousins living in that area could have been there. GODDAMN YOU.

I've been to the Holocaust Museum. Visited with my sister more than 12 years ago. Has it been that long? It's a very solemn place to be, humbling as hell to look at mock-ups of the boxcars and the camps, to track the flow of events from a person's ID booklet to see what happened to them from the ghettos to the roundups to the aftermath. And of course the neo-Nazis want to shoot up that place, to blow it up: they deny the Holocaust out of one side of their mouths while out the other side they insist Hitler should have finished the job. Of course that place will be a target. It's a pity that the guards working there are on the front lines of an increasingly violent battle that's honestly moving from the wingnut blogs onto the streets. It's a pity Stephen Tyrone Johns died: all he did was open the door to let the gunman in. Jesus. Johns was my age.

And of course, the big Far Right media is gonna swear off this, that O our constant ranting about socialism and Obama's birth certificate and evil libruls taking your guns away isn't really driving all the gun-and-bomb-happy wingnuts to the brink. Glenn Beck is even trying to dismiss the gunman (and by extension all Nazis) off as a "lefty" and that it's all Obama's fault "for stirring up a boiling pot"! O'Reilly claims this isn't even newsworthy. Hannity never mentioned it last night, focusing instead on the firing of Miss California a D-list type celeb who became the poster girl for the Far Right because of her marriage views. And Limbaugh, ringmaster for this goddamn Far Right Circus of Stupid? He's leading a charge by other conservative media hacks to drive Shep Smith off of Fox Not-News for being the only one on that channel to make direct links between this shooting and a Homeland Security report warning of increased far-right violence... a report the Far Right immediately attacked so viciously that they forced the Homeland Security Secretary to apologize for the report. EVEN THOUGH THAT GODDAMN REPORT IS TURNING OUT TO BE GODDAMN ACCURATE. I don't see anybody apologizing to Napolitano, do you? Of course not. The goddamn Far Right Noise Machine and their gun-toting brownshirts never apologize for a goddamn thing.

It's official. Look at the escalating political violence. Look at the so-called patriotic Right calling for seccession, even elected officials like Texas' governor dropping hints about it. The Far Right has declared war on the United States. It's not a question now about "if". It's now a question of "when" there will be another shooting. It's now a question of "how bad" it's gonna be. But it shouldn't be a question of "who's next" on the hit list. Because that's US. Everyone who's not in their goddamn shrinking purity club. We're next.

Goddamn them.

Now THESE Are Pirates We Can Support

The European Parliament elections just came and went, and yeah it's a really big deal because the EU is primed for WORLD GLOBAL DOMINATION as soon as they defeat the ungodly Snake menace on our airlines, but I digress. The point I want to make is that Sweden voted 7 percent for their very own Pirate Party.

They're actually a political group fighting for file sharing, copyright reform, government transparency (Sunshine Laws of FOIA stuff) and increased right to privacy. But they want to be pirates. In a good way. :)

The Swedish Pirates are a relatively new group (2006?) but are already the third largest party in Sweden... albeit at .63 percent of the vote in 2006. You need 4 percent to secure a seat in Sweden's national government. But today is 2009, and with that 7 percent turnout the Pirates have 2 seats in the EU.

The big news is how the Pirate Party plays for the up-and-coming generation - the 18-to-29 group - and there the Pirates have a decent 21 percent fanbase. Mostly because the issues they support (file sharing above all) are issues directly affecting youths who grew up with music and video downloading.

These Pirates could well surpass the now stodgy Loony Parties for political coolness. Avast!

Wonder if we can start a Pirate Party here in the U.S. We *do* need a viable third party what with the Republicans committing ritual self-immolation...

Angry

Dear Right Wingnuts:

who are you gonna shoot when you run out of doctors?

who are you gonna shoot when you run out of Unitarians?

who are you gonna shoot when you run out of cops?

who are you gonna shoot when you find out that it wasn’t liberals and blacks and Puerto Ricans keeping you down, it was the rich fat white guys sitting in their radio booths urging you to kill other people?

Don’t sit there, Wingnuts, crying like you’re the victims in all this, that it’s not your fault your fellow Wingnuts are going around armed to the elevens, that the big mean libruls are to blame for your violence and hate. It’s not the libruls pulling the trigger. It’s not the Unitarians painting bulls-eyes on their shirts. It’s not the doctors and the cops going about doing their jobs trying to bring order to a chaotic universe. It’s you pulling the trigger. It’s you painting bulls-eyes on everyone. It’s you shooting up schools and clinics and churches and offices and homes.

Goddamn you, Wingnuts. Goddamn you all to Hell.

All Politics Is Madness: The Sotomayor Gambit

It's been a mad week, in more ways than one, with Obama announcing his first Supreme Court Justice nominee with Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican woman with a long career as prosecutor and judge... and with the wingnut talking head faction of the Republican Party responding by going into Crazy-Ass Insane Mode so quickly that forget Light Speed, they've gone to Plaid.

The best I can do right now is throw up a few thoughts:

• Sotomayor isn't Harriet Miers. Miers was at most an office manager throughout her legal career: she had some corporate litigation cases but most of her time was served as head of the Texas Bar Association. Miers lacked courtroom experience, above all the experience of being a judge at any level. Even conservatives were balking at her nomination. Bush the Lesser's administration tried to weaken that argument by pointing out other SCOTUS nominees like Earl Warren never had judicial experience as well: that actually inflamed the Far Right more because conservatives hate hate HATE that Warren as the worst of those detested Activist Judges.
  Before I lose focus on this: By comparison Sotomayor has judicial experience up the wazoo. Placed at a District level by Bush the Elder in 1992, Clinton bumped her up to the Appellate level in 1996 and she's been on the Democrats' SCOTUS short-list since 2005. Toss into that her brief career as a DA prosecutor and that's already a career equal to the likes of Alito, Breyer and Ginsberg (the other Justices have barely a few years of judicial experience but have decades with the Attorney General's office and related federal agencies that handle constitutional issues on a daily basis, giving them quality experience).
• Sotomayor is Puerto Rican, and would be - technically - the first Hispanic SCOTUS Justice ever (there's semantic arguing over how to classify Justice Cardozo: he's Portuguese/Spanish, but he had considered himself of Jewish ethnicity above all, so...)
• I think Obama knew exactly what he was getting himself, his administration, and this nation into when he nominated Sotomayor. I think he knew the Far Right Noise Machine would go straight into Insanity Mode and attack Sotomayor within three seconds of the pre-announcement leak. He knew that the likes of Limbaugh, Gingrich, Fox Not-News, NRO, Weekly Standard, WSJ and other Right-leaning sources would not stand for ANYONE he picked, so he picked the nominee that would cause the Republicans the most self-inflicted damage. I bet Obama even knew that one little paragraph (and it IS little, for God's sake) where Sotomayor said her life experience as a "wise" Latina woman would give her "better" judicial insight than a white male and that it would drive the Limbaugh crowd to crazier heights of shriekitude, that her one statement would make the Republicans overreact to her being a woman and a Hispanic. That the Far Right would even go so far as to charge Sotomayor (and by extension their true target Obama) with "reverse racism" or even outright racism (focusing on the Ricci case, which will most likely be the blunt instrument used against her in the Senate), even when her actual judicial record shows no such evidence. The Far Right is going so far as to bring back retired SOB Tom Tancredo. Remember him? The one idiot who went out of his way to insult Miami Cubans (!!!), and then feigned outrage when they assaulted him when he dared to show up later in Miami for a book signing. There's crazy, and then there's stupid, and then there's Tancredo the one Republican who automatically drives every Hispanic-American into the arms of the Democrats. And so you've got all this overreaction by the wingnut base that would further alienate women and Hispanics against the Republicans. When a Hispanic Republican media adviser openly complains about the flame war - he didn't hide behind the "anonymous source" shield - that's telling you something.
• And all Obama had to do was select a qualified judge. All he has to do now is stoke the Far Right with a few more half-hearted pseudo-apologies, and then sit back and let the GOP eat themselves with their own rage, impotence and racist stupidity. Dear G. Gordon Liddy: don't confuse Puerto Ricans for illegal aliens. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens (since 1917). They may be Hispanics but that is such an over-arching umbrella covering everyone from Mexico to Chile that its' ethnic status is actually rather fluid.
• The current polling numbers show Obama's gamble is playing beautifully: all the polling shows comfortable acceptance margins by the public for Sotomayor and for Obama's handling of the pick. While the poll numbers always fluctuate, there's little the Republicans can say or do that would make things worse for the Sotomayor selection. Unless they get even more racist and misogynistic than they already are. It *would* be nice to see if libel and defamation laws have any teeth left...
  
• The odds of a filibuster are surprisingly low. While it may be the one weapon the Republican Far Right wingnuts will eventually hope (grope?) for, the deal is the Republicans who are actually in office with their own asses on the line aren't about to go nuclear on a pick like this. Having a heavy hitter like Sen. Cornyn openly rebuke Limbaugh is rare: equally rare is that there's no sign Cornyn has back-stepped his statement or apologized to the Grand Overlord Rush (yet, the weekend is still young).
  If a Republican is crazy enough to force a filibuster, or even a cloture vote on the matter, you are gonna see the biggest stampede of Puerto Ricans to the local Elections offices to switch their voter IDs to (D)emocrats in human history (by the by, there's more Puerto Ricans in the U.S. than in Puerto Rico!).

That's all I have for the moment (but not the nonce, by what my dictionary tells me). I'm sure there'll be more batsh-t crazy stuff over this as the days pass.

Unfinished Business

Twenty years this month, Chinese students and workers began a pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square during a similar democracy movement in Eastern Europe.

The protests grew from hundreds of thousands to millions, spreading to other Chinese cities. With the whole world watching, it seemed as though China would enjoy - like the Philippines in 1986 - a People Power moment that would reform the government from one-party authoritarianism to a multi-party government, surely as cumbersome and ineffective as any other parliamentary system but at least an open system.

And then the night of June 3, 1989.

The day after the tanks rolled in and violently quashed (The actual body count may never be known, but nearly everyone eyewitness or researcher on the crackdown notes at least a hundred soldiers and thousands of protesters dead) the student protests, before the Chinese government could completely close off the media and censor anything and everything about Tiananmen, cameramen caught on film a lone protester standing in front of a row of tanks, challenging the horror that the army brought on their own people.


see more Political Pictures

That's my sentiment. It's been twenty years. I hope he's still alive. I hope there's still a chance in my lifetime to see China end its insane and corrupt one-party rule. I hope.

LibraryThing currently down

Somehow, my LibraryThing list got co-opted by a default. It looks as though the LibraryThing site has a new method of plugging widgets in... and I have no frakkin idea how that works just yet.

So, in the meanwhile, just remember that Republicans think that filibustering Supreme Court nominees is wrong, WRONG!... oh wait, they're not in the majority anymore. Nevermind. Prepare for the filibustering of Sotomayor.

UPDATE: Figured out the widget to add LibraryThing's custom HTML code. Go ahead and check out mah readings. Oh, and buy my book!

To reaffirm: Amendment ideas

Noting that I can get sidetracked with political squabbles of the day, I've considered re-printing the core amendment ideas I've been bouncing aboot since Post One (whenever that was...)

The Top Five Amendment Ideas I'm really keen on:

• The President of the United States is NOT above the law. The system of checks and balances between all three branches of government remain in effect AT ALL TIMES (even wartime).
• All campaigning for federal elections (which also should affect state and local elections) CANNOT begin until the actual year of election: no fundraising, no warchests, no organizational or exploratory committees until the actual calendar year. No ifs ands or buts.
• The Presidential primary must be held on the same day in all states (and territories): no more Iowa and New Hampshire going first, no more states fighting over who gets to go first, every American gets to make their choices for candidates at the same time everyone does. And the primary candidates have to spend and advertise and campaign equally in all states.
• Universal Voter Registration.
• Lying is NOT protected speech. Any elected official or government civil servant caught making false statements to be suspended without pay pending investigation into those statements. If it's found the lying SOB knew that he/she was lying, they will be removed from office/impeached and barred from any government interaction forever.

That's it. The five amendments I'd love to see in my lifetime. Now, to actually *DO* something about 'em...

It's Official: the Republicans think it's a marketing problem

From Roger Simon at Politico:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution re-branding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

While I know there's only 4 to 7 people ever viewing this site, meaning no one high up on the Republican food chain would have read what I already wrote about how stupid it is to use 'Socialist' as an insult anymore, I'd have hoped someone else with better connections would have tried to warn the GOP Establishment by now. Seems that hadn't happened.

The Republicans used to use proxies - like their media cohorts, allies like Fox Not-News and their Party Leader Limbaugh - to dish out the insults and name-calling the past 20 years or so. But now, they're making the actual party take over such duties.

Worse, they think that this attempt at name-calling is actual good policy: That instead of thinking up new positions on taxation, or business regulation, or social issues like civil unions and abortion and immigration, all they have to do is come up with better insults and BLAMMO, the Republican Party will be in the majority again.

Guys, I take it none of you watched The West Wing. You missed that episode where C.J.'s backstory had her working as a disillusioned media hack for Hollywood and a media mogul wants her fired for not promoting his crappy movies into more Golden Globe nominations:

"...The movies were bad, Roger, all of them. Even the little kid was bad, but he was a little kid, he had a couple of scenes, big eyeglasses, lisp, he's going to the Golden Globes. You know why the New Coke marketing campaign failed? Because nobody liked New Coke. The movies were bad. If the movies were unknown, I could help you, but they weren't. They were just bad!"

Calling them 'Socialists' isn't going to make the Democrats less popular or less trustworthy, wingnuts. Calling them 'Socialists' isn't going to solve the problems YOU have as Republicans selling a crappy product ("Tax Cuts! No Gays! Bomb Everyone! It's Not Torture Because We Say So!"). If you think it's a marketing issue, wingnuts, you ought to look first at fixing your crappy product instead of mocking your competitor's product.

UPDATE: On May 20th, the RNC changed the proposed insult campaign and decided instead to decry Obama and the Dems' "March towards Socialism". Apparently someone realized directly accusing Lefties of overt "Socialist" attitudes wasn't selling well outside of the 30 percent Rightie base, so they figured making the Democrats look like a bunch of walking ethusiasts would work better. The Republicans still haven't figured out it's not the Democrats' product, it's the GOP Sh-tburgers no one wants to buy anymore that's the problem.

Florida Politics: Crist and the GOP Paradox

I know, I haven't written about amendment ideas for a good while - it's because the ideas already thrown out there like "No More Lying," "Death to Greedheads" and "President Is NOT Above the Law" are kinda it, any other amendment idea comes along as response to a momentary crisis, but I digress - but at least the political scene keeps me motivated in publishing from time to time.

The choice news du jour is local: Florida Governator Charlie Crist will officially thrown his hat into the ring for the open U.S. Senate seat for 2010.

While the polling numbers for the competitive race (both primary and general) are still early they also look pretty good for him. Crist remains popular across the board in Florida, even among Democrats (!!!) at a time any Republican Governor would feel lucky to be polling above 5o percent. Despite the budgetary woes Crist has been able to keep himself away from that mire, leaving it to an increasingly unpopular (thanks for all the corruption, guys!) state Lege.

But as for being a popular - or even a Moderate - Republican, well, a closer look is warranted... and if he truly is a Moderate Republican, closer concerns need to be addressed...

Crist's popularity among moderates (and Democrats) is derived mostly from three things: 1) Sincere attempts to court state Blacks and Hispanics, mostly by improving voter access for minorities and stopping dubious voter roll purges; 2) Presenting himself as eco-friendly regarding carbon emissions and Everglades protection; 3) He's not Jeb Bush, even though their gubernatorial achievements are mostly similar outside of points 1) and 2). Where Jeb had it better over Crist was unshakable support from the Republican ranks... but even there Crist is still popular with rank-and-file GOP voters. It's the local (and federal) Republican leadership that is at odds - rather openly - with Crist.

But in truth Crist is a rather solid conservative: openly pro-life and pro-Jebus for one thing; heavy on the gov't spending cuts and avoidance of tax hikes wherever possible for another (what else to call Amendment One for Super-homesteading he promoted, which evaded the real problem the state has in raising revenue via property taxes?).

The thing that really gets the GOP leadership all hot and bothered is that Crist DOESN'T stick to the script. When he needs to, which has been often, Crist jumps the Republican Reservation fence and goes rogue. The most obvious example is the one the Club for Greed, primary challenger Marco Rubio (a local up-and-comer who DOES toe the party line), Rush Limbaugh, GOP Guvnners like Palin and Jindal and Sanford, and nearly every GOP Congressperson and Senator NOT named Specter, Snowe or Collins will point to:

Crist openly supported Obama's stimulus package.

It's only a really big deal simply because the Republican Party had decided, back in January and February when every economist not on the Club for Greed and CATO Institute payroll were screaming for federal relief from a massive Recession, to simply deny and obstruct the stim package in toto. And that the whole party had to reject the Stim. Simply on principle. Because after 8 years of reckless GOP spending and relaxing of financial and business regulations that helped CAUSE the economic crisis in the first place, the Republicans finally decided they were the Responsible Fiscal Geniuses all along and they all wanted Obama to FAIL and so the Stimulus package had to be opposed even in the face of economic armageddon.

Except for Crist. Crist hosted a rally in Florida, posed with Obama, praised the Stimulus money coming to his states and all the other states. Even as the rest of the Republican Party voted No even with Obama's attempt at bipartisanship and compromise, became the Party of No much to the chagrin of the whole country... and even as the Republican Party kept losing voters across the board (SEE Tedisco's Failure to Win New York District 20 Even Though Its A Solid GOP District) and even as Crist's popularity never wavered (why else is Nate Silver projecting an EASY primary AND general win?).

Because this is really the one thing in Crist's favor: He's not stupid. He may be crazy - as all Floridians tend to be, hi guys! - but he's not stupid.

Because Crist, sitting in the governor's seat, was seeing a looming state budget threatened by a massive financial shortfall. Florida's meager tax system was generated by property sales and millage rates that went into the red as the housing/mortgage bubble went POP; sales taxes from all those tourists we USED to get before 9/11, the gas crisis of 2007-08, AND the unemployment crisis of 2007-Current kept them from enjoying our beaches and crappy Disney rides; and by avoiding any direct taxation on companies to move their corporate HQs here as a means of generating better state-level wealth so that residents wouldn't rely on public resources, only to have said companies ship all their jobs overseas to India and China anyway.

Without that Stimulus funding, Crist was facing something few states want to face: utter bankruptcy. A lot of states, even Republican ones, were facing massive deficits and possible bankruptcies. The typical GOP Governor response was "Not gonna take the Stim money." Palin said it, Sanford said it, Perry said it... until their own State Leges - some of them Republican-led and none of them thinking of running for the White House in 2012 - basically knee-capped them and said "WE NEED THE FRAKKING MONEY!" Except Crist. Like I said, not stupid: Crist saw the mood of the populus, he did the REAL basic math all politicians ought to do, and he full-heartedly applauded Obama and gave the President the bipartisan cover he needed to sell the Stimulus nation-wide. And that Stimulus money - for the most part - saved the state budget (what's gonna save it next year, though...).

So this is the deal: The Republicans as led by Rush, Newt, BillO and Grover are reeling right now, mostly from self-inflicted wounds they won't even admit to, and currently in a serious anger mode not only focused on Obama but anyone who even dares to associate with him. Which means Crist, currently the most prominent Republican caught on film hugging Obama, is also on their "Hate Him" List. Other Rubio allies are gonna have to include Mike Huckabee, who has to be thinking if Crist wins the Senate in 2010 he'll be in a better position to run for President 2012; and Jeb Bush, who has a personal animus against Crist (mostly because Crist has done almost the same things Jeb did but got more praise for it, and when Crist did things Jeb opposed it made Crist even MORE popular). Meaning these prominent Republicans are gonna seriously go out of their way to hurt one of their own. Almost like when the Kos crowd went out of their way to hurt Lieberman in 2006, the only difference being that if the GOP hardliners hurt Crist it's actually going to make things worse for the whole Republican Party.

'Cause here's the Paradox: Crist is running as an extremely popular Republican at a time nearly no other Republican is polling such high numbers, statewide or nationwide. Yet you're going to see a large part of the Republican's political machine turn against him, even though Crist represents the best possible chance the Republicans will have to A) keep a Senate seat (R), and B) prove that the Republicans are not a dying party. 'Cause this is the thing Kos and his krewe want: they WANT Rush and Co. beating up on Crist during the primary, because it'll be just like when the Republican hardliners beat up on Chafee and Gilchrist and ended up losing those incumbants' seats to solid Democrats. Democrats are terrified of Crist: if he survives the primary, even wounded, he'll still be a more attractive candidate than the likely Democratic challenger (Kendrick Meek). And even though Obama won this state in November (and McCain won it in the 2008 primary, even over more 'acceptable' conservative choices like Romney (bleh)), Florida is a solid GOP state: Crist survives the primary and the Democrat might as well concede right then.

So this is the challenge to the GOP. Should the party wake up, accept Crist as a solid candidate, and make it a smooth ride to November 2010 and ensure the Republicans don't lose more footing in the Senate? Or should the party continue its descent into irrational (and it IS irrational) Obama Hate and Tax-Cut Obsessiveness, push hard for a Rubio candidancy, make it more likely the next Senator from Florida is Meek, and make it absolutely certain the Republicans have NO power at the Federal level for the next 2-6 years (or even longer)?

Obama takes over Chrysler

Poor ole Chrysler has to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Something to do with the hedge fund people refusing to make concessions similar to what the workers, managers, government people and other non-greedy people signed off on.

Dear Mr. Obama: could you make sure to save the endangered PT Cruiser for us? I like the Cruiser. Lots of people like the Cruiser. PPPPllllleeeeaaaasssseeee??? (puppy eyes)

Just look at all the sweet pics of nice, pretty, customized PT Cruisers. Do you realize that saving the PT Cruiser can boost the auto customization industry? :)

So much schadenfreude I have to pack some away as leftovers

Oh man, the hits just keep on coming.

Just as we reach Obama's 100th Day of Waking Up Knowing He's P-ssing Off Rush (Since FDR, the First 100 Days of a Presidency carries symbolic value: the more a President gets done the more successful he looks, ergo the harder it gets for his critics to shred him), he gets an anniversary present in the form of Arlen Specter deciding he'd had enough of the Republican Party. Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter is now a Democrat.

This isn't unprecedented to have sitting politicians jump sides: Ben Nighthorse Campbell switched from D to R back in 1995, and Jim Jeffords went Indy when the Bush the Lesser GOP treated him like, well a Dem.

There'd been speculation for a good while (since 2006, actually) that some of the moderate/centrist Republicans might make a move like this, especially as their own party was driving them out of office. Examples include Lincoln Chafee, Wayne Gilchrest, and a few others that have been targeted with harsh primary challenges by the likes of the Club for Greed. What happens is that the Club for Greed notices any Republican refusing to stick to the "Cut Taxes" script, quickly labels them "RINOs" and a threat to party unity, finds a hard-line anti-tax pro-life candidate to challenge in a primary (something few incumbants face), runs a hard-right campaign that forces the incumbant to turn further right on the political spectrum, and because the challenger actually gets more party support (!) the challenger either wins or else loses in a close nailbiter. The GOP candidate then goes on to the general election in a weakened state, because either the far-right candidate is now running and is unpalatable to the general voting public (as what happened to Gilchrest's seat) or the surviving incumbant has been forced to accept an unpalatable platform and faces a greater chance of losing to a Democrat (as what happened to Chafee).

See, the problem is, the Club for Greed doesn't care. They don't care that fixating on an extremist ideology and forcing candidates further right than they should go would actually make their Republican allies LOSE SEATS and thus lose political power and prestige. They only care that they stay on message, and that the GOP stays on THEIR message. And then they think they can bully enough moderates into buy their trick pony show. Which is why every economic platform the Republicans have offered since 1980, 84, 88, 92, 96, 2000, 2004, and 2008 have been tax cuts, tax cuts, relaxed business regulations, and more tax cuts. Any Republican comes out and says "You know, tax cuts hadn't created jobs, and we need to raise funds to build more schools" and inside of ten seconds the Club for Greed will have a primary challenger signing up at the state courthouse.

Let us do be honest: Arlen Specter is only doing this for Arlen Specter. If there's anything an elected incumbant holds sacred, it's their own job security. Specter had already faced a Club-backed primary challenger before and barely held his own. Today, he's facing that same challenger and this time there's 200,000 fewer registered Republicans (those voters mostly switched to Democrats during the Obama-Hillary primary fight) who were the moderates keeping Specter safe. The prelimary polling had Toomey winning the primary (can't currently find the polling numbers, I think it was like 60 to 38 percent) all because the Pennsylvanian GOP was now thoroughly dominated by the Far Right. This is, by the by, a perfect example of what happens when you drive all the RINOs out: You end up losing, because now that Specter's a Democrat he can beat Toomey by a comfortable margin.

This isn't too big a win for Democrats. We're talking about Senators, who thrive on the self-inflated ego that they can be above partisanship and vote however they want. Specter isn't about to go completely DFH and vote liberal on every bill, although he will have to reconsider his stance on the EFCA that happens to be verrrrrrry popular in a blue-collar state like PA. All this talk about the Democrats now having a filibuster-proof majority is overlooking the fact a handful of Democratic (and Republican) centrists can and will vote against a far-left agenda.

This is however a massive loss for Republicans, no matter how they try to brush it off with a "good riddance" sneer. It never looks good for a party to have one of their own so openly and brazenly quit them to go join the other team (it hurt Clinton and the Democrats like hell when Campbell switched, as it made Gingrich's GOP Revolution look more unstoppable: Jeffords' escape so early in Bush the Lesser's term of office had hurt him, and it had to take 9/11 to stop the CW perception that Dubya was going to be a one-termer). It promotes the ever-growing meme that Reagan's Big Tent is shrinking until all that's left in the GOP are the wingnuts. And pretty soon the GOP won't be in a majority of the states, won't be anywhere near holding a congressional majority of any kind within the next 15-20 years. That Rovian dream of making the Republicans the "permanent majority party" will become the nightmare of a permanent Democratic majority instead, all because of the paradoxial acts by Rove to constantly appease the wingnut base above all else. As David Frum notes, it would have been better to have a majority party that appeases 60 percent of the base over a minority party that appeases 100 percent of the base... because that minority party will remain a POWERLESS minority party until scandal or another cultural shift takes place... which might be another 30-40 years the way the young voters are trending...

This is actually going to make it worse for the Republicans, and even moreso for those left in the Party still viewed as RINOs. There's talk now about the remaining two Senators that the Club for Greed mocked back in February for voting for Obama's stimulus bill and what could happen to them (actually, not much: Collins and Snowe are honestly two of the safest moderates in the GOP as there's no viable candidate the greedheads could dig up in their state to challenge them). But Specter's departure as noted earlier is bringing out a lot of the "goodbye so long good riddance and let the door hit your ass on the way out" talk among the wingnuts, and is even sparking dialogue that other so-called RINOs need to leave with Specter. Rush insists Sen. McCain should leave the party and take his pro-gay-marriage daughter with him. (personal note: Ahhh, Meghan, if only you were brunette, I might actually fantasize about you...) There could well be a major "litmus test" event within the GOP ranks to force the issue, where the Far Right will insist on their moderate bretheren to perform some embarrassing stunt that would completely alienate moderates from shore to shore. And to keep at it until the midterms in 2010, at which point they'll make a massive effort during primaries to run the RINOs out as best they can.

As I've said here and before, the wingnuts don't care. They genuinely believe that in order to win they actually have to NARROW their position, make it harsher, make it less moderate, make it less palatable to a majority. They somehow think that their purity of thought/purity of essence will make voters change their minds and agree with the wingnuts. Even though history keeps showing us that moderate/centrist voters don't vote the way the wingnuts (right or left) think. It's never about the 30-33 percent Right/Republican or the 30-33 percent Left/Democrat, it's the 30-33 percent Moderate/Indy that matters most... and the wingnuts never can see that. Those percentages, by the by, are how traditionally Gallup and other pollsters broke down the electorate voting habits. Would it hurt the Republican Party to mention that currently the polling numbers show 21 percent identifying as Republican (with 38 percent Indy and 35 percent Dem)? Hmm 21 + 38 + 35 = 94 so there's 6 percent leeway, but still. Should it shock anyone that it's the most skewed I've ever seen the voting divisions (I did research on voting trends from the 50s on up back at UF in 2004: the voting trends were usually hovering around 30 percent for all three groupings every decade)? Actually it ought to hurt the Republicans a lot: but as always the wingnuts don't care.

I do wonder just how MANY seats in Congress the Republicans have to lose before whatever's left of their leadership sits up and says "Hey guys, remember when there were enough of us to fill a Denny's banquet room? Think we oughta start appealing to more voters instead of fewer voters next term?"

UPDATE: not more than 10 seconds after I post this, I find on Moderate Voice a wonderful essay by Elrod that explains more eloquently the problems facing the GOP being taken over by the Club for Greed wingnuts.

Shep Smith speaks for me

"We are America! We do not f-cking torture!"



While the buzz is mostly going to be focusing on Smith dropping the f-bomb, the real topic should be on what Smith is saying. Smith is saying, in effect: America is supposed to be the Good Guys. We're supposed to be about truth and justice and pursuit of happiness. We're supposed to be about Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill." (Actually, the Shining City metaphor comes from John Winthrop, but Smith is appealing to the image of Ronald Reagan being a benign Pro-American positivist). We're not supposed to torture, that's what the bad guys do, the Commies and the Nazis and the tinpot dictators, not us.

Shep Smith deserves our applause. He might also need a job, because going off the rails like that at FOX Not-News will not go over well with their Overlord (no, not Ailes, I mean Cheney).

More Schadenfreude of 2009 - Florida special

Ahh, it's been such a busy week I almost nearly missed this. Remember back to when I posted comments on a few tidbits of political scandal? Of course not, you probably don't read half my posts anyway. But still, I led off with a local scandal involving a major political player within Florida who lost his position of House Speaker - I don't think he even had it longer than a month, did he? - because he got caught helping out a business buddy and a college that had been doing him some favas (such as line him up for a cozy six-figure salary).

Well, yesterday got to be more fun for State Rep. Ray Sansom because a Grand Jury came back with an indictment on him and his college associate Bob Richburg (Northwest Florida State College):

The charge against Sansom and Richburg is official misconduct. It is a third-degree felony punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine.

The indictment said the men did "unlawfully falsify or cause another person to falsify, an official record — the 2007-08 state budget — with corrupt intent to obtain a benefit" for another person.

Richburg also was indicted on a perjury charge for testifying that there was never discussion to have developer Jay Odom use the building to store aircraft after the college got the $6 million.

Not indicted was the business partner Jay Odom, who stood to profit from that airport. Odom refused to testify to the grand jury and wasn't subponead for it, and because there's no law against a private citizen to seek out public funding he's the one getting off scott-free. I wonder if politicians will remember that the next time these business guys and lobbyists come begging for this and that... nah probably not. Politicians keep thinking they'll never get caught...

Also indicted by the grand jury - but not up for a day in court - was how the State Lege did its business: in shadow and secrecy, even with all the Sunshine Law provisions trying to keep things transparent. From the St. Pete Times article: The 18-member grand jury, however, described the budget process as a secretive one, where the most powerful lawmakers reward themselves. "We ... heard that this $6 million was likened to a gnat hitting a windshield. It is small wonder, with this attitude, that Florida is broke financially."

So the questions become: will the state reform itself further? Will Florida officials do a better job of making themselves accountable to the public in these dark times of recession and growing need for state services? Will I ever get a date with a sexy brunette? Obviously, the answer to all three questions is No. Sigh. :(

Anyways, I wonder if Sansom is gonna team with Blago on that overseas reality TV show thingee...

Okay, let's hold a protest

From Greenwald:

More importantly, Obama can only do so much by himself. The Obama administration should, on its own, initiate criminal proceedings, but the citizenry also has responsibilities here. These acts were carried out by our Government, and if we are really as repulsed by them as we claim, then the burden is on us to demand that something be done.

More than 250,000 Americans attended protests yesterday (ostensibly) over taxes and budget issues. If these torture revelations are met with nothing but apathy, then it will certainly be reasonable to blame Holder and Obama if they fail to act, but the responsibility will also lie with a citizenry that responded with indifference.

He's right. If a handful of Obama-hating wanna-be secessionists can work up the gumption to gather in protest over taxes THAT HAVEN'T EVEN HAPPENED YET IF EVER, then we ought to gather anyone and everyone in the United States who are morally opposed to the use of Torture and other criminal acts THAT HAVE HAPPENED.

So c'mon folks, let's gather round and rally on the National Mall and tell The Justice Department that we want Justice, that we want a Special Prosecutor investigating the criminal misdeeds of these memo-writers (Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury) and their political patrons (Feith and Cheney above all else). Let's do it. Let's rally.

All we need are the permits filled out, 50 bucks paid for the paperwork, and uh oh yeah 200 million of our closest friends. Anyone know a good date to schedule this all for?

You Keep Using That Word...

...it definitely DOESN'T mean what you think it means, Republicans.

The word in question is socialism. And the Republicans are using that word (and it's harsher cousin communism, but in smaller doses) to describe Barack Obama and his Presidential era.

Now, I wanted to add the definition of socialism to this discussion, and I thought about using William Safire's (noted conservative essayist/columnist) Political Dictionary to do so. But he doesn't provide direct definitions: he instead describes 'creeping socialism' as a political code phrase used by Old Guard GOP from the FDR years. All he notes is the word origin coming from the 1850s.

Without Safire for guidance, I went to Webster's:
Socialism. 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. 2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. 3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

Pretty straightforward. What Webster's doesn't explain is the usage of socialism as an insult/mark of intent in American politics. For that you have to examine the whole of 20th Century, the rise of global communism as a threat, and basically the whole Cold War era.

What has to be explained is how 'socialism' became the insult du jour instead of 'communism.' The Cold War era had rampant anti-communist fervor, marked obviously by the McCarthy hearings and constant hunts for hidden Yuris in every branch of government (and Hollywood). While the Republicans were openly waving their anti-commie flags high, the urge to label Democratic opponents as communists (and by extension, traitors) had to be there. Problem was, in that atmosphere of persecution, you had to really PROVE someone was a communist in order to prove your point. You just couldn't point a finger at a Democrat like, say, John Kennedy, and claim he's a Commie. Because he could come right back at you with his War Record (wounded war hero complete with Hollywood film rights) and make you look like a screeching harridan who's just jealous of his good looks... and hell could even take you to court for defamation/libel because back then being labeled a commie was a BIG deal.

So how to insult Democrats as Commies without the need for evidence that they actually were Commies? The trick was to make Dems out as Commie sympathizers... which a good number of them like Veep Henry A Wallace were. Not actual Stalin-worshipping Reds but close on the rainbow scale: Pinko sympathizers (such as Nixon accusing his Senate opponent in 1950 of being "pink down to her underwear."). Thus came the word 'socialist' as the insult to be aimed at Democrats.

On the political scale - Fascism to the far right, Pragmatic Moderatism (usually represented as modern Capitalism) in the middle, Communism to the far left - Socialism is between the Moderate and the Communist. Socialism basically is where the government nationalizes the means of production, and regulates to the point of absolute control nearly every social service ('rationing') available to the nation. It's more open than Communism in that the people retain purchasing power, some level of individual wealth, and access to various means of financing not related to production. Not every business and industry was nationalized. But the point of Socialism is to try and enforce some kind of social equilibrium: everyone get a fair share of the pie, whether they earned it or not. That usually meant a form of "Taking from the rich to give to the poor," creating a welfare state where the state ends up providing the bare minimum of incentive and motivation of using capital... creating a kind of unemployed malaise and cultural stagflation that noticeably hit Western Europe from the 60s until the Thatcherist years of privitization of the 80s re-opened the floodgates of capitalism.
It never got as bad in the United States as it did in Europe, mostly because 'socialism' remained a bad word. LBJ's Great Society was the closest we would come to a welfare state, which didn't even have as high a tax rate as the post-FDR years did to pay for it all. Nixon, Ford, and Carter's terms of the 1970s didn't see much other than a series of massive energy crises and growing inflation, to which I'm not sure if any movement towards socialism had a role. I can be certain the pro-business anti-communist years of Reagan ended that for good. Even Clinton eventually reformed our nation's welfare system (the grand nail tying the Great Society together) into a more work-oriented re-employment system.
Combine that with the collapse of Communism between 1989 to 1991 (leaving pretty much Cuba as the notable openly-Communist state left, unless I'm forgetting someone from Africa or Asia), and socialism (and even communism) came and went in the United States like a brief unwanted fart.

So what does this all have to do with Obama?

To the Republicans, everything. Because the Republicans want to attack Obama non-stop, and they need all the words-as-a-weapon they can get.

It doesn't matter if you look at Obama's actual record of activity since he got into the White House 3 months ago. The fact that Obama's current tax plan actually LOWERED taxes for 95 percent of Americans doesn't concern Republicans. The fact that Obama's next step regarding taxes is to allow Bush's tax rates to expire AS SCHEDULED by 2010-11 doesn't concern Republicans. The fact that a majority of Americans are at the point for the first time in decades thinking their taxes are "fair enough" doesn't concern Republicans. The fact that Obama's current economic plans for bailing out the economy and combatting the recession are so universally acknowledged as needed that even the Republican Governors trying to refuse the stimulus money are being forced by their own state Leges to accept the funding doesn't concern Republicans. They just see a Democrat, and to them a Democrat is a tax-and-spend liberal who threatens to bring about socialism to this country, no matter what he does to improve a shaky economy, no matter how well he actually does his job.

So they toss out that word - "Socialist" - like it means something. Like it's a weapon of lethal efficiency.

But it doesn't mean anything. Not in the way it used to. And especially not to the up-and-coming generations coming into political power of their own. Which is what should be worrying the Republican Party leadership, but isn't.

This is the 20-year mark of 1989: the year people recognized that Communist nations like China and the Soviet Union had redesigned their economic structures closer to capitalism than communism. That year, Eastern Europe fell in its own Domino Effect as one Communist regime after another collapsed, leading up to the Fall of the Berlin Wall itself. Side note: I was nineteen years old at the time, and believe me I never saw a more joyous moment in all my life than watching on TV as everyone who could danced on the Wall that night of November 9th. Personally, I miss the Berlin Wall: it was the one place you could have legally left graffiti, and I never got a chance to do so...

This is the 18-year mark of 1991: the year that saw a post-Cold War struggle in the Persian Gulf akin to the Korean War, an international effort led by the U.S. to stop the Iraqs from seizing Kuwait, in which our old Cold War adversaries the Soviets sat on the sidelines watching a proxy army (Iraqs armed with their gear) get clobbered in under 40 days. And then that August, the last gasp of a Communist regime trying at one more political coup, a half-hearted effort to oust Gorbachev and stop his dismantling of Soviet ideals. It failed, spectacularly. The only thing the coup did achieve was removing Gorbachev... five months later after the coup itself collapsed. By then the Soviet Union had fractured, Russia replacing the behemoth and essentially signaling the end of Communism. We could joke, then and now, that Communism failed "because there was no money in it."

These are key things when considering the massive generational shift going on in American politics, wherein a younger generation of voters are coming in... and are decidedly coming in on the side of the Democrats.

We are getting, right now with this year's set of 18-year-olds, the first generation of college students and the first generation of voting age that DOES NOT KNOW THE COLD WAR on any personal level. When they were born, Gorbachev was on his way out. The United States was the sole superpower on the planet with any conceivable military, economic, political, and cultural mojo. Cuba was this island off of Florida with a constant supply of decent baseball players swimming over, with a graying old man in charge who could be viewed more as a run-of-the-mill dictator than a Communist propangandist. Okay? We're talking about the first generation ever who learned about Communism IN THE PAST TENSE. Trust me, from my memories of high school history studies: Anything older than ten years in the history books is ANCIENT HISTORY. This is a generation of 18-year-olds who grew up learning how COMMUNISM FAILED. To them, it's not a threat. It's not even a joke. It just... is. Like fuedalism, or mercantilism, it's just things to study. How can you terrify a generation with the boogeyman specter of "Socialism" when they've never even experienced it?

And that's the 18-year-olds. The 28-year-olds were all 10 years old when they saw Communism collapse. They grew up with Reagan and Thatcher as paragons of virile capitalism, and even they watched an economic system fail and sputter to death. Think any of them are frightened by Communism? And try my generation: the 38-year-olds. Generation X, that's us. We were in college watching Communism fail, and we even studied and learned the Hows and Whys, and understood what it meant. While a majority of us went conservative in our leanings as we grew up and grew out, we too learned that Communism was a failure. Hell, we even know Socialism - as we were the generation that grew up in the social decay and destruction of a failed Great Society plan - was inconceivable, a joke.

Generation X grew up as the Soviet Union fell, as Communist China changed to capitalism. Yes, we are the generation that grew up with "Rambo," with "Rocky IV," with non-stop replays of "Red Dawn" on HBO. But my generation - well at least the guys I grew up with - didn't take half of that sh-t seriously. I remember a bunch of us catching "Red Dawn" on TV one weekend, and we chortled watching a bunch of fellow "teenagers" (who looked ten years older than us) take on the whole Red Army. And watching C. Thomas Howell turn into a gun-toting, deer-blood-drinking psycho was scary only in that we saw this guy turn into basically a psycho, not someone worth emulating. 'Course, To us it was a movie. Hell, the whole Cold War was a movie, or a video game (and sometimes both): in which detente was preferable to war, in which we still saw the self-destructive impulses of Communism (its inability to stop Greed as an economic drain onr resources) as a failing system, in which the only real difference between Us and Them was that they drank vodka and we drank whiskey (or scotch). My generation may know Socialism, but it doesn't scare us. We know better.

And that leaves the generation above us, the Baby Boomers. The ones now in charge of things, the age of the political leaders of both parties, but in particular the Republican Party. Note: Obama himself, born 1961, is on the tail end of the Boomers for whom the cutoff year is 1965. Those born near the Generational shifts tend to share traits of the preceeding or following generation, so Obama shares some traits with Gen-Xers, noticeably a love of basketball. For the Boomers, and the older Generations (the Silent, ones caught between Boomers and those who won the Great War, and the Greatest Generation who grew up in the Depression and fought the Big Fight That Saved Everybody), Socialism is indeed a Big Deal. They came of age at the start of the Cold War, with Stalin slamming down an Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe and reneging on the power-sharing arrangements in demilitarizing a Post-War Germany. They grew up with a Socialized Western Europe, an increasingly moody and out-of-sorts France and England with large tax systems that drove out wealthy rock stars on an annual basis. To them, Socialism if not Communism is a threat and a problem, and they worry about it like the hybrid navigators on the re-imagined Battlestar "This has all happened before and it can all happen again."

So now we have a very noticeable generation shift: the party elders who knew and fear Socialism; and younger generations coming of age and power who don't know Socialism or else saw Socialism fail and have no fear of it.

And you see the results: younger voters are aligning with Obama by 66 percent, with the 18-29 age group making 18 percent of the voting bloc. And those numbers will go up as they grow older and as more of their generation gets interested in voting. And this generation - the Millenials - are NOT as socially conservative as their elders, not even Gen'Xers who tend to be libertarian-leaning on social issues. To the Millenials, all they've known is a capitalistic system that grew corrupt and corpulent, taking billions in tax cuts during the Bush years and now coming BEGGING to Obama for billions more in bailouts. To the Millenials, they can't comprehend the level of hatred Ayn Rand had for Communism that would have pushed her to create a socio-political movement out of Objectivism: to this generation, "Atlas Shrugged" is a boring book they had to read in AP English.

And all the Republicans do is point at Obama and yell "Socialist!" They can't even effectively describe what it is Obama is doing that's Socialist, other than the massive spending, and as I mentioned earlier this article, THAT'S THE ONLY THING KEEPING OUR CAPITALIST ECONOMY ALIVE. And the younger generations are gonna look at Obama and think "If that's a Socialist, and we like him, then hell we're Socialists too!" Just the word alone - "Socialist" - it doesn't scare people anymore.

So whenever you hear a Republican say it, someone on FOXNews repeating it, someone writing a Beltway screed against Obama, whenever they bring up the word "socialist," you could consider some level of pity, or sympathy, for those guys. They're trying to hurt Obama the best way they can, the only word they and their aging out-of-touch generation knows.

They're just using a word that doesn't mean what it means anymore.

--

Today, by the by, was a big day for the anti-Obama forces because they were pushing a huge Tea Bag Revolt across the nation, all 50 states, trying to rally their massive forces of conservative angst to show how they are opposed to Obama raising taxes and spending like a Democrat (which does, of course, beg the question of WHERE THESE F-CKERS WERE WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH WAS SPENDING LIKE A DEMOCRAT). Did not see much in the way of explanation of the Hows and Wheres and Whys of Obama being an evil overlord of doom. He just is to the Far Right. No one yet complaining about Obama's shoelaces, but the year is still young...

I was going to post about something else, but this blog is concerned about the harsh treatment of pirates

I'm still working on my next thought about how screwy the Republicans are re: Obama, but I couldn't leave this unchallenged.

The past week saw American interests over the rise of Somali piracy heat up when pirates seized an American-manned cargo ship and hold the crew hostage. Normally, the pirates would wait, negotiate for a ransom, take the money and flee back to Somalia. This time, however, the crew fought back, causing enough problems until the ship's captain offered himself up as a hostage to ensure the safety of his crew.

The U.S. Navy was quick enough on the scene, and a tense stand-off over 5 days took place. Meanwhile, the media back home - especially the conservative bloggers and blowhards - were ranting and raving about how Obama was failing his first big test of an international crisis, that oh something's gotta be done, oh we gotta go bomb Somal...

SEALs snipers coordinated with the American captain to where he jumped off the pirate's ship and the snipers shot the three pirates guarding him (the fourth was on the Navy ship trying to negotiate and is now in custody). Done and done. Obama let the Navy do its job, gave out the congrats, made a follow-up speech that the world needs to resolve the piracy issue, and moved on. The conservative critics were left slackjawed and in some cases bitch-slapped.

My problem with the issue is that, while I know Somali piracy is a problem (and it's far worse in Southeast Asian waters), as a Floridian and Tampa Bay Bucs fan and as a Unitarian who recognizes the religious beliefs of Pastafarianism I'm a little concerned about the bad rap pirates are getting in this day and age.

Sure, pirates are robbers, and raiders, and not the kind of guy you'd invite 'round to dinner to meet the folks. But I like to think of the kinder, gentler pirate, the one more interested in rum, buried treasure, rum, women, rum, and maybe a spot of gambling in port. Ah, the fun pirate, the pirate who looks back at 40 and goes, "damn, I should have gone into a Poli Sci career."

The problem is now how the Obama fanatics are drawing up charts highlighting the effectiveness their boy wonder is in killing pirates (not like Obama was one of the damn snipers after all). There's now a chart showing that compared to the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Obama is something of a wuss.

What are we heading for here? Are we as a society going to call on our elected leaders to suddenly with force and without legal niceties to start hunting down poor pirates across the seven seas? Will the 2012 election be decided by who captures Calypso and defeats the undead krewe of the Black Pearl once and for all? To this I say, Parley! Let us not lump all pirates into one dreaded column of evil and bloodlust. Let us calmly and rationally ensure the safe passage of those pirates whose sole interest in this world is rum, women and song. For the sake of the pirate children, I implore you...!

The one thing driving Republicans crazy

You can kinda see it in the blogs, and on the FOX Not-News, and in the pro-Republican papers (the ones still alive that is). This desperation to attack President Obama for every little thing he does. This need by the Far Right Noise Machine to shred and humiliate a President (and political party) they despise to the nth degree.

And you can kinda see how crazy they're all getting when the polls and general public reaction to it all - even two months into Obama's first year in the White House - is a "We Hugz Barack!"

The polls keep showing Obama's approval above 60 percent, even as the economy remains mired and job losses keep increasing. Polls show that a majority of voters are willing to blame a lot of people - Corrupt CEOs, the Bushies, GOP Congress - for the major recession but not Obama. CNN just ran a video on how the public still loves Obama (even comparing him to another Teflon Prez, Reagan) even as the media and political elite with Washington DC continues to act hostile toward him. And while those inside that insular Beltway echo chamber are starting to wake up to the fact that the public aren't buying their anti-Barack angst, the GOP leadership is still convinced they've got a winning strategy of waging a war of personal attacks on a President who's about 50 points more popular than they are.

And why not? That platform - Making the Political Personal - worked before so many wonderful times. Especially on the last Democrat to hold the high office.

With the Clintons, the war of personal destruction - of slander and damaged reputations - could work. For all of Bill Clinton's political skill and savvy, he could never sell sincerity and was too slick even for his own good. Hillary was so clearly ambitious it rubbed people the wrong way. The Republicans could attack them, attack them personally, attack them mercilessly, and simply wait for the right time (Lewinsky) to try and topple them. The only thing that really saved Slick Willie's presidency was a majority of Americans could recognize a screwed-up partisan witch-hunt when they see one: for all the hype about the Clintons' criminal misdeeds the best the GOP could do was blowjobs? It also turned out to be something the Republican leadership could also get caught being hypocritical about: sexual misconduct by GOP leaders quickly popped up and caused a few of Clinton's harshest attackers out of office (Will Ferrell as almost-Speaker Livingston screaming "What the hell happened?" remains the satirical high point of those scandal-ridden days). Even years later, Republican hypocrisy related to that scandal keeps popping up.

And so with that campaign strategy, they kept working that policy of Personal Destruction. They criticized Gore for being stiff, boring, a fibber about "inventing the Internet", a half-crazed hypocrite about environmental issues. They went after Kerry (swift-boating was the term, yet another fancy synonym for mudslinging) for being a soft-on-war paper soldier who didn't deserve his Purple Hearts. Those times, it worked.

But nothing can work on Obama. Labeling him 'liberal' doesn't work as an insult in an era where 'conservative' is the new 4-letter word. Calling him 'Socialist' or even 'Communist' isn't going to work either, and I've got a separate blog thought coming up about that. Going after him for his tax-and-spend policies doesn't work when your own party can't provide any viable alternative (What part of Tax Cuts Don't Work are the Republicans ignoring?). I'm serious, the Republicans' budget proposal from last week was so weak - IT HAD NO NUMBERS outside of a blatant tax-cut-for-the-rich scheme! All it had were fancy flowchart circles promoting vague "underwear gnome" catchphrases - that even their far-right cheerleader blogs couldn't defend it. The GOP leadership's follow-up proposal - the aptly named "April Fools Budget", I swear doesn't the GOP P.R. guys read the calendar and plan for a better release date? - has more numbers but is more laughable. Sullivan, who's looking harder than I am, can't find anyone on the rightie blogs speaking up for it. Like I said earlier, the Republicans can't attack Obama on policy when their own party has trouble defining their own policy. In some respects, it's not that Obama is Teflon: it's that his attackers are toothless.

The problem for the Republican Party is that they've relied on the Politics of Personal Destruction for so long that they can't think of more pragmatic means of promoting policy and organizing followers around coherent theories. All it is for them is ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK, even with growing evidence that a majority of Americans (and a growing majority of their own own GOP base) has grown weary of that crap. It's getting to the point where the GOP leadership - Cantor, Limbaugh and Coulter and their noise-machine wannabes - are gonna confirm my Obama Shoelace Hypothesis: that at some point, the Republican Party and their media allies are gonna wage a full-scale propaganda war against the way Obama ties his shoelaces (even if Barack starts wearing loafers). And Obama's popularity will probably bounce up to 70 percent when they do.

ADDED: One other point to make about Obama's "Teflon" image. One reason why he compares a lot to Ronald Reagan's popularity is due in part to how Washington DC really is disconnected from the rest of the nation. The Beltway mentality truly is about 15-20 years behind the rest of America. The political party leaders are guys and gals who have been long-time incumbents in safe secure districts meaning the ideological beliefs they came into office (say, 1988) are the same ones they have now. The same thing goes for the media elites and political commentators who come into the spotlight at a particular ideological era: for example Ben Bradlee, powerful news editor for the Washington Post in the 60s through the 80s, came into the media upper echelon at the time a close personal friend (John Kennedy) was heading into the White House, and had a career throughout the post-FDR era where even Republicans accepted the New Deal (Hi, Ike!) in some way. For Rush Limbaugh, he came into talk radio at the height of the Reagan Era. Which is why for him every aspect of his worldview is based on that Era... even when it's been 20 years since then and everything else in America has changed.

The thing is, in the 1980s the Washington establishment - both political (and in both parties) and media - were still thinking in terms of FDR/JFK/LBJ where government was the solution and business needed oversight. Meanwhile, a majority of voters - even the now-legendary 'Reagan Democrats' - fell in love with Reagan's cheery pro-business anti-government platforms (even as Reagan turned out to be pragmatic enough to not fully embrace such platforms), because by then all voters could see were the negative consequences of calcified Keynesianism (stagflation, steady job loss, psychological ennui). Reagan caught a lot of flack by the Beltway types, but his popularity never waned (not until the Iran-Contra scandal, but even he bounced back from that).

And now here we are in the 2000s. The Washington establishment is now made up of players (both Republicans and Democrats) and talking head media darlings who came of age during Reagan and still think those heady days of tax-cut mass-deregulation could still sell well to voters. But voters - including enough so-called RINOs - are turned off by the end results of Randian laizze-faire (massive corruption and incompetence in both finance and federal gov't, massive job loss and failing wages). Obama is catching a lot of flack now by the Beltway types, but again don't be surprised that popularity won't wane (well, not until his own Iran-Contra scandal... so whatever happens, Barack, don't make any deals between Iran and Central America, GOT IT???).

And I mentioned before I have some additional thoughts on how the GOP and the Far Right media are trying to attack Obama's ideological core beliefs... but not as well as they hoped. That's for another time.

Amendment proposal on greed

This. Is really. Pissing off more people. Than the Randian con artists thought it would. Kinda figured it was gonna happen back during the meltdown crisis when Bush's economic team (AND STOP BLAMING OBAMA he wasn't in charge back in September 2008!) pretty much doled out bailout money without any common sense restrictions on it all: that the greedheads who incompetantly drove our entire financial/banking industry into the ground would use the bailout to pretty much line their pockets like always. Color me not so shocked.

The one good thing from this AIG bonus fiasco is that it utterly highlights how CORRUPT, STUPID and WRONG the entire concept of laizze-faire, hands-off, greed-is-good capitalism really is. Regulated capitalism, yeah that works well: when the market forces are required to answer to somebody, when the captains of industry are held accountable, when there's a balance between Capital (owners and bankers), Labor (employees), and Consumer (represented by government and advocates), things work. Hence, this amendment proposal to bring some accountability back into our economy:

• Greed is now a capital offense.
• Anyone caught lining his/her own pockets, or the pockets of their business associates, at the expense of the taxpayer or company for which they work especially if said company received a federal bailout geared toward stabilizing the market and not geared toward the greedheads' checking account, shall immediately be tarred and feathered. And then they go to trial looking like that. The person(s) if found guilty of greed will then go to Pound-Me-In-The-Ass federal prison for a set period of time, and then taken from that place to Death Row where he/she/they will then have 50,000 volts shooting out their ass(es).
• Any person charged with a financially-related crime such as fraud, embezzlement, fiscal negligence, or any other element that would have lead to an economic disaster for a company or an entire nation, will have all financial accounts frozen and inaccessible to be able to pay for a legal defense. The damn greedhead will have to rely on a public defender working Pro Bono, no exceptions. You get the same legal protection as poor people, you sons of bitches.
• Anyone in the media attempting to defend greedheads, the greed-is-good snake-oil scam, or any Randian ideology will be immediately forced to "Go Galt" like they want others to: and by "Going Galt" that means leaving their cushy six-figure salary and limo service existence to go work the midnight shift at any 24-hour bowling alley that exists between Toledo, OH and Boise, ID. Minimum wage, no health benefits. See how you enjoy living like the rest of us.

Odds of this amendment even getting looked at: ludicriously low. Odds of people getting pitchforks and rioting in the streets if the greedheads keep up their dumbass "taxpayers are suckers" routine: ludicriously high.