Whither the Electoral Scenarios?

My previous post may have been about the results - what to expect should Romney win, what to expect when Obama wins (pleaseGodpleaseGodPLEASEGOD) - but as I fell asleep a thought came into my head "Well, you didn't point to how they could actually get to the win via the Electoral College."

So here's this little side-post...

For those of you who slept through ninth grade Civics & Government class, the Electoral College was the system the Founders put into place for electing the President and Vice President: using electors from states equivalent to the number of Senators and Congressmen per state rather than a direct popular vote.

This was for several reasons: the Founders didn't trust the mass of voters (which even back then wasn't EVERY American); and they feared the possibility that Presidents would come to represent the largest population states and ignore the smaller ones.  The Electoral College was set up to reduce the large population counts per state to a more manageable system and make it so that candidates had to woo the states and not the large mobs.  The Founders also wanted to set up the Electoral College so that no one really won it and the results sent to the House of Representatives to have Congress choose their President (sadly, the times that DID happen - 1800, 1828, 1876, almost 2000 - the system didn't work).

Anyway, the race to the White House today is the race to get to 270 Electoral votes.  Out of 50 states, that means getting a couple of large Electoral States - California and New York have been solids for Democrats, Texas for Republicans (Ohio usually, but the dynamics of voter interests in the 21st Century are making Ohio a toss-up) - as well as getting enough of the mid-sized swing states (Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado... with large state Florida a major swing state because of major internal voter differences) to tally up to 270.  While the small states obviously suffer more today as the Electoral numbers create a massive difference between large (California is 55 Electoral) and small (Wyoming smallest is 3), small states tend to be static for prolonged periods and are counted on by either party to not switch much (except New Hampshire, the Florida of New England).

For Obama (much like any incumbent) the solution should be simple: get all the states he already won the first time in 2008 (image map from Wikipedia).  Some states he did win that had normally voted Republican over the past 20 years - Florida especially, North Carolina and Virginia, Ohio (major loss for the GOP), some of the other Midwest/Great Lakes states - are toss-ups again this election cycle.  The good news for Obama is that he could lose one or even two of those states (Florida and North Carolina in particular) and still clear the 270 bar with room to spare.  But if he loses Virginia, Ohio, maybe Pennsylvania or Colorado along with FL and NC then he loses the election.  So he really can't relax on ANY of those states (DAMMIT FLORIDA, you voters are already on my Sh-t List for voting Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott as Governor, hasn't his screw-ups waken you up to the fact you SHOULD NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN?!  Stop buying the GOP Snake Oil!  Redeem yourselves, VOTE OBAMA!  Sheesh...).

Romney has the tougher path: He has to win back the toss-up states the Republicans lost in 2008.  While most of the Red States will be counted on to stay Red (Texas, most of the Deep South states, Missouri, rancher states from Idaho to the Dakotas), he's not likely to flip any existing solid Blue states his way (even his home state of Massachusetts: for a candidate to lose his state is harsh under any circumstances win or lose).  So Romney HAS TO WIN Ohio... AND Florida... AND Virginia... AND North Carolina... AND Colorado...

This is why this election is such a nail-biter.  Florida and Colorado keep switching colors on the maps every two weeks (although it's looking like Florida has settled for Romney DAMMIT FLORIDA WAKE UP VOTE OBAMA).  Virginia is hovering just over the Leans Obama line.  Ohio may look like it's Leaning Obama but you can't take that for granted.

Making it wackier is that we're facing an election result where the popular vote and the Electoral vote might not match: Obama winning popular/Romney winning Electoral, or Obama winning Electoral/Romney winning popular (how THIS happens I've no idea: Romney is the LEAST LIKED candidate in modern history).  The resulting civil war should probably last a few years... /facepalm

There's been calls to eliminate the Electoral College over the decades, especially after 2000 when its flaws became oh so apparent.  Problem is, the Electoral system has one virtue: it forces candidates to campaign in more states than they would have under a Popular Vote system.  With just a Popular Vote, all the campaigning will be in California and Texas, maybe New York and Florida, as the candidates go after the largest states only.

The Electoral College doesn't have to die: it just needs to be tweaked to more reflect the popular vote within each state already.  Getting rid of the Winner Takes All per state is the way to go.  Nebraska has it so that their Electors are divided up by their districts and by state (for the Senate seats).  Of course, they've gerrymandered the congressional districts so it's kind of broken still, but the basic idea has merit.

A revised Electoral College would have the overall winner of a state garner the two Electoral votes reflecting the Senate.  The remaining Electoral votes (for the congressional seats) will be divided up by percentage of popular votes (different from Nebraska, which still forces the results by gerrymandered district).  If there's two congressional districts and Candidate A gets over 60 percent of the popular vote in that state, Candidate A gets those two Electorals: if Candidate A wins but is below 60 percent, Candidate A gets one Electoral and Candidate B gets the second.  In a state like California with a ton of Electoral votes, the percentage division suddenly gives Candidate B more to smile about.

What this would do is give the candidates more incentive to campaign through more states to win over more voters in each state.  Rather than rely on the base to keep that one state to their one party, the candidates will need to reach into those states to keep their group of voters intent and driven to get the vote out.  Even the smaller states will come into play as getting even one or two Electorals out of those states can go towards building up your count to 270: Especially since a Democratic candidate can no longer count on ALL of California's Electoral votes and a Republican candidate can no longer count on ALL of Texas.

This makes the system more responsive to the actual voters.  Voters will come to see that their vote DOES count as it could help their candidate win enough Electoral votes to matter, even though their residing state may go overall for the other candidate.

Today, however, we've got the nail-biter.  With any luck, the Electoral College and popular vote will reflect each other, the vote counts will work, the election will run smooth as possible.  With any luck... /stresses out

The Scenarios

It's almost over except for the shouting and more than likely a large segment of the population convinced the election results "stolen" no matter how it turns out for either Obama or Romney.  But it's basically down to these five scenarios:

Romney wins the Presidency, Republicans keep control of House, Democrats keep control of the Senate

If Romney wins, it will most likely be due to a strong Republican voter turnout (and an effective suppression / machine-rigging effort) which means the House elections will overall favor the GOP.  Certain candidates - the wackier ones like Allan West and Michele Bachmann - may lose out, but thanks to the age-old tested system of gerrymandering the Republicans can guarantee themselves two more cozy years of doing almost nothing in the House.
The Democratic Party keeping control of the Senate is looking to be a more likely thing regardless of the Presidential votes: Senate seats aren't gerrymandered - so far - and the odds of most of the Democratic incumbents returning are right now pretty solid.  The Republicans may yet take Missouri's Senate seat - to a candidate Todd Akin who out of all the Senate candidates out there LEAST deserves to win, will you WAKE UP MISSOURI DO YOU WANT AN IDIOT REPRESENTING YOUR STATE? - but may lose Massachusetts' seat as Elizabeth Warren now has a slight lead on Scott "Oh God Please Massachusetts Buy My BS About Being a Moderate" Brown.  Since the Democrats already have a 5-seat lead, switching seats or even losing one or two won't switch the Senate to the GOP.  That would take a huge upset of most the Senate elections, and in states where the GOP can't guarantee to suppress the vote or rig the machines...
What this means: does the phrase "We f-cking went back to the George W. Bush years?" mean anything to you.  Romney's platform may have flip-flopped all over the place, but his one constant has been that massive tax cut favoring the upper incomes, meaning that a majority of voters have once again ignored the consequences of Dubya's tax cuts of 2001-2003: cuts that led to nothing but massive deficits, and had no effect on job growth or economic stimulus but great effect on income inequality.  With a House willing to vote his way, all Romney needs is to get them to pass a version of his tax plan through the Reconciliation process requiring only a simple majority vote in the Senate... and then twist enough Democratic Senators' votes to get the 51 (or 50, as VP Paul Ryan can cast the tie-breaker) to pass it.  And then our economy will go into the crapper, the deficits will get worse, and you can expect Romney to blame Obama's term for the woes during his 2016 campaign, because after all tax cuts can never fail...
And that's the economic woes.  On another domestic front, Romney and the Republicans made such an effort calling for the repeal of RomneyCare ObamaCare that once in office Jan. 2013 they are going to be expected by their tea-partier wingnut base to actually repeal the whole thing.  Romney may yet weasel out of that, but like Molly Ivins said you gotta dance with what brung ya, and with a wingnut-inspired House egging him on we're bound to see portions of ObamaCare get cut... most likely bringing an end to efforts to cap escalating health care costs, which *is* something that can kill our economy right quick.  Not to mention the Medicare/Medicaid "reforms" that will turn Medicare into a voucher program that WON'T keep up with costs and Medicaid into a sorely underfunded block grant to states trying to keep the elderly and children pretty much alive.  This is where the Senate may prove a block to the repeal efforts, but one thing that has to happen is that ObamaCare is going to need funding, and all the House has to do is refuse to compromise on what gets spent and still be able to kill off those parts of ObamaCare they want dead.
And that's not even touching on the women's health issues.  The push by the pro-fetus crowd has never been more severe than this election cycle.  At least in previous cycles the major candidates favored exceptions for abortion such as rape/incest and the health of the mother.  But more and more Republican leaders - Akin and Ryan the more dangerous ones - refuse to even accept those concepts as "legitimate" and are ready and eager to ban abortion altogether (with vague "personhood" laws that would make even natural miscarriages equal to murder). Combine this with their push to deny cheaper health care coverage for birth control pills and other contraceptives, and you've got the makings of a society where women have no choices or means of taking care of their own bodies, and worse yet vulnerable to the whims of any rapist and stuck with pregnancies they morally do not accept.
And as for foreign policy... hoo boy.  When you've got a candidate in Romney who CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER maps showing how Iran has its own access to the sea without bothering with Syria which doesn't even border Iran, you've got a potential President whose grasp of foreign affairs isn't tenuous it's non-existent.  Romney does not impress our allies, this is a given.  Most of those nations' leaders were in power or close to during the Bush the Lesser years and they do NOT have fond memories of him.  Putting into the White House a man they are ALREADY viewing as WORSE THAN Dubya and you've got a recipe for disaster.  And speaking of disaster: A Romney administration is going to rely on the dregs of the Dubya years, a collection of Cheney-inspired neoconservatives obsessed with proving their manhood by sending other men off to die in mismanaged wars.  While a Democratic Senate may temper some of the foreign policy miscues that are bound to happen, the fact is most foreign affairs are handled by the Executive Branch, and it's up to them in the State Dept. and the White House to make treaties, maintain foreign ties, and represent us overseas.  Meaning the Romney crew can do whatever they like within the constraints of the Constitution.  Meaning, we're screwed...

Romney wins the Presidency, Republicans retain control of the House, Republican gain control of the Senate.

Very unlikely, but possible if the voter turnout is that good for Romney to win, it may trickle down to enough of the Senate races to give the Republicans the edge, or at least a 50-50 tie where Paul Ryan becomes the tie-breaker vote every time.
Under this scenario, everything mentioned above WILL happen, only more worse.  The Republicans will go into power under the delusion that their agenda won them control (when in fact it's going to be their fear-mongering and voter suppression efforts).  There won't be any Democrats in the Senate able to temper a full-bore tax-cut abortion-banning healthcare-killing war-hungry GOP agenda.  The Republicans will even pursue their "voter fraud" obsessions by passing tougher registration and ID laws for the whole nation (Republicans abandon states' rights within a heartbeat if it means completing their wingnut agenda).  It would be much like what we had between 2001 to 2006, only abortion WILL be on the table and most likely banned entirely, along with birth control.  We'll be Ireland, without the advantages of having England nearby for a gray market means of access (Canada, maybe, but most of our liberal states already border our cousins to the north eh?  It'll be the Red States down south - ironically where birth control and women's health are needed the most - that will suffer...). 

Obama wins the Presidency, Republicans retain the House, Republicans win narrow control of the Senate.

This is a very unlikely scenario under the Obama Wins multiverse branches.  While an Obama win is the statistical likelihood and the Republicans keeping the House also a statistical likelihood... as I mentioned earlier most of the Senate races seem set with only two possible up-for-grab seats at play, meaning the Democrats at least keep an advantage (as the Independents in the Senate caucus with the Dems).
But if the Republicans DO gain control of the Senate...
Just remember the level of obstruction the Republicans were able to perform with just the House under their control during the 112th Congress.  Combined with their Senate colleagues invoking cloture votes at twice the previous record total, and almost nothing got done.  Under this scenario of winning the Senate, the Republicans will hold Congress entirely under their control... and this will be a Senate that most likely includes the aforementioned moran Todd Akin.  Prepare for political war.
The Republican agenda of obstructing Obama at all costs will not abate under the general public expectations for bipartisan work.  Remember, the Far Right concept of bipartisanship is that "Democrats fold to us on everything".  They are going to want to force Obama to play their game their way, pushing for their tax cuts and spending cuts at the same time.  Refusing to fill any if all executive and judicial nominations that the government needs filled to operate effectively.  The push to investigate the Obama administration for every slight, every error, every possibility of an offense they can use as an excuse to impeach... I am not making this up.  We've seen this before during the Clinton administration, where they started off investigating Clinton's land deals and ended up impeaching him for lying about blow jobs.  Any excuse to impeach...
The only reason why the Republicans never followed through on their attempts to impeach Obama (and yes, they have filed such attempts for example over Obama's use of force in Libya without Congressional approval even though previous Presidents used such levels of force without so much as a hiccup from Congress...) during this congressional term is the obvious fact that an actual crime has to be found for the general public to even pretend it's needed, and it didn't help that a Democratic Senate would never follow through.  But with a Senate that will at least present an impeachment proceeding on the floor (even though the Republicans will NEVER get a 2/3rd majority needed to successfully impeach), the Congressional Republicans can use the impeachment proceedings to weaken, de-legitimatize, and embarrass Obama before the world and for history.  And they can do that over and over to their hearts content for at least 2 years while nothing else gets done.

Obama wins the Presidency, Republicans retain control of the House, Democrats retain control of the Senate.

Under the Obama Wins scenarios this is the most likely result.  This is how the stats and numbers are looking at the moment for the polling experts (pretty much Nate Silver).  It will pretty much be a status quo result bringing us back to what we've had the last two years.
And even then, this isn't a good scenario because the Republican agenda of obstructing Obama will not abate.
Whether this Congressional term (113th) gets anything done will depend on the Democratic leadership in the Senate (Harry Reid) agreeing to do what most of the Democratic base begged the Senate to do back in 2011: drop the cloture vote to a simple majority or even get rid of the filibuster rule altogether.  While the Republicans will scream bloody murder, the filibuster is NOT a requirement for the Senate to operate.  It's only been part of the parliamentary order voted on at the beginning of each term, and can always be voted out.  While there may be a need for a filibuster, its' abuse over the last 20 years have made it impossible to get much of anything done, and especially hampered our Judiciary by failing to fill posts, forcing fewer judges to handle greater caseloads.  If anything, dropping the Cloture requirement from a 60-vote to a simple majority will make it harder for the Republicans to even threaten a filibuster: they can still try, but all that will do is make for partisan theater.  With that done, the nomination processes should be smoother and more government positions filled.
The only problem then will be dealing with a Republican House standing as the "last bastion" against an Obama-dominated regime.  If it was a job herding cats before, this will be like working as an alligator teeth puller operating without pliers and standing waist-deep in a swamp.  The fight to get anything resembling a budget will be close to impossible without the wingnut faction in the House getting everything they want (which in a sane world won't happen).  Obama may yet want to finish out a second term where SOMETHING got done for job growth and economic stimulus, but the House will fight that every inch of the way.  And some legislation HAS to start in the House, not the Senate.  Meaning something approaching compromise has to be done... and Lord knows what Obama may have to give up in order to get a jobs bill passed...

Obama wins the Presidency, Democrats gain control of the House, Democrats retain control of the Senate.

If this election was a complete blowout for Obama, this might be plausible.  If the voter turnout among Democrats and moderates voting that way really did reach the levels required to win over enough House districts to reclaim the House after two years, this might be plausible.  But let's face facts: enough gerrymandered districts still exist in enough states to ensure enough Republican incumbents will stay, and in some redrawn districts the Republicans could gain a few more.  It's possible that in the process of gerrymandering, the Republicans spread themselves too thin to where enough Democrats and independent voters can sway the turnout their way (much like what happened in Texas when they made a ton of Republican-friendly districts but at a +1 or +2 advantage, very narrow odds of success there, and ended up losing an incumbent or two while the Dems cruised to +10 friendly districts).  But unlikely.
There's a 240 R - 190 D count at the moment.  For the Democrats to regain the House, they need to flip 26 of those seats, plus 3 of the current vacancies, to reach 219 seats over the Republicans' 218.  Historically, that percentage of flipped seats (five percent) has been hard to reach, especially in an era when entrenched Congressional incumbents have a 98 percent success rate (it'd be 99 percent, but there's that margin for error to consider).
But under the What If rules, this IS possible, so it needs consideration.
There will be a brief period of Democratic jubilation and relief.  The most likely opening moves would be to get a budget out that covers most of what Obama pledged: a tax hike on only the upper incomes (those in the 2 percent bracket) as well as a stimulus package combining job bills alongside spending programs on infrastructure to boost the construction industry.
The biggest struggles Obama had his first term during the 111th Congress where he had both Houses was due to the Senate blocking him with Cloture and Secret Holds (it didn't help that there were enough conservative Democrats to force Obama to wrangle out deals he otherwise didn't need to make).  As mentioned before in another scenario, if Reid follows through in dropping the Cloture requirement to simple majority it should free up that particular logjam.
The biggest problem will be legitimacy.  The current Republican leadership - Limbaugh, Norquist, Fox Not-News talking heads - have proven before to be sore losers.  No matter what for an Obama win, the cries of "voter fraud" and the Birther effort to deny Obama his own citizenship will merge into a huge hatefest that will be worse than we've already seen.  And what we've already been through since 2009 has been scary enough.  But under this scenario, where even the safety of retaining the House of Representatives doesn't happen, the screams WILL get worse, the agenda to obstruct WILL go into areas of madness that could border on open revolt...  The telling sign will be what the lame-duck session of the 112th House will do: if they lost the House with Obama winning, expect them impeaching Obama as first order of business.
No matter what, folks, do not expect the noise to die off after November 6th.  It's not over until common sense prevails...

These are the scenarios as I see 'em.  Still and all, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET THE VOTE OUT AND VOTE OBAMA.  Thank you.

Romney's Ever Fixed Mark

Gen. Chang - I AM AS CONSTANT AS THE NORTHERN STAR!
Dr. McCoy - I'd give real money if he'd shut up...
- Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country

It's not enough to point how just how often and how severe that Mitt Romney changes his story, changes his opinion, changes his political stance: how he, in fact, LIES on nearly every issue.

It's not enough to pile on to the observation of how Romney's currently best-known nickname got to be "Mr. Etch-A-Sketch".

It needs to be pointed out as often as possible how Mitt Romney is the LEAST-LIKED Presidential candidate in AGES, but that's not the point of this blog entry here.

The point of this article is to focus on what Mitt Romney REALLY WANTS if he becomes President.  It's kind of hard to do when he's got this well-deserved reputation for flip-flopping and pandering in such a way it's made other panderers - both Clintons come to mind - look like sagacious pillars of consistency.  But beneath all the bluster, behind all the constant "re-inventing" and "re-branding", at the base of EVERYTHING on Mitt's clouded and passed-over agenda (the one where he keeps saying "Trust me" as though that's always a good-enough answer): there is one consistent item on the agenda Mitt has NEVER renounced and ALWAYS persisted.

A massive tax cut.

Everything else on the table - abortion, foreign policy, Medicare/Medicaid and health care reform in general, education costs, energy needs - Romney has flipped on at least once this year.

But the tax cut plan, despite the occasional "tweaks" to how it's presented, has pretty much remained the same.  And it's remained the core element of Romney's economic package, as though the massive tax cut will solve all woes, create all jobs, save all mankind.

Even though a majority of Americans ought to f-cking know better by now.  Considering we've had a Republican President pass a massive tax cut plan roughly 11 years ago, and we've had all this time to see what the results have been (first chart from Ezra Klein, second chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) :

The Tax Rate of the cuts for upper income clearly get bigger, doubling and tripling in size for the top three brackets.  What does this say about the tax burden for upper income Americans?  How regressive have these Bush tax cuts really been?

Note how most of the deficit causes shrink eventually: The Bush Tax Cuts NEVER SHRINK AND IN FACT GET BIGGER

And consider this: Romney wants his tax cut plan to go DEEPER than the Bush tax cuts ever went.  He's asking for a $5 TRILLION cut, ostensibly across the board except for the fact that he's scaling it more for upper income over middle-and-lower incomes.  Because hidden in his tax proposal, Mitt wants to kill off the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Earned Income Tax Credit (both of which benefit middle and lower class taxpayers).  Check this chart (from Klein's guest-blogger Dylan Matthews):

Everyone under $25,000 income has to pay MORE taxes by 1 to 2 percent, while the jump from $147,000 to $150,000 income from a 2 percent cut straight up to a 6 percent cut.

This is what Mitt Romney wants.  This is his obsession, his passion, his ever-fixed mark.  Everything else on his platform changes from day-to-day like the Etch A Sketch candidate he is.  He wants this massive tax cut.

Even though FOR THE LOVE OF GOD we have all seen that tax cuts - especially cuts that are NOT PAID FOR by targeted spending cuts to balance it out - DO NOT WORK.  Even though we've got economic experts - from the usual suspects like Krugman to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to serious fiscal Republicans like David Frum - screaming how Romney's tax plan is IMPOSSIBLE.  Romney is insisting on this tax cut plan, claiming it will "create jobs," "create growth," "fix government."

Tax cuts are not job creators : direct investment into business expansion and start-ups are.  Tax cuts do not stimulate the economy.  Tax cuts do not help curb spending: not only did spending get out of control during the GOP-led Bush era by so-called fiscal conservatives, but even hardcore fiscal conservative Ben Stein is now noting that at the current tax rates - "they're too low" - there aren't enough spending cuts to flatten out the deficit.

And Romney wants to make the tax rates LOWER.  No matter the excuse or justification.  He just does.

This alone should be disqualifying Mitt Romney from even being a Presidential candidate, for God's sake.  But he's up there on the ballot, and GOD HELP US the polls are getting too close for comfort.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY.

The Failures of Barack Obama

This has been coming up as a talking point for the wingnuts in the social media: that President Obama is a failure; that his policies are failing; that he's an embarrassment to our foreign allies, etc.

Here's a post this morning from a colleague of mine from TNC's Lost Battalion Horde, Geoffrey:

Random right winger I have been jawing with for a week.

I know, listen to the ProTips.

"Anyone supporting Obama is doing so because of ignorance or pure ideology. By any rational measure he has simply been a terrible president. The economy is terrible, the country is more divided than ever, and our foreign policy is in shambles."

This has been floating out there for awhile, and it angers me up every time I see it, because it's clear the person writing this has not really paid attention to what's really going on.  The willful ignorance, it burns...

So here, for all the Fox Not-News viewers who need a boot to the head to let them know just exactly what's going on in the Real World, I present to you the Failures of Barack Obama.

• Obama failed to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.  Oh, wait...
• Obama failed to save the auto industry.  Except that he pushed for the policies that did stave off bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler and kept linking industries such as the parts-makers dependent on the automakers going, essentially re-starting the entire automobile market and presiding long enough for both GM and Chrysler to pay back their loans.
• Obama failed to end military operations in Iraq.  Except that Obama upheld the existing treaty we had with the Iraqi government to exit all combat troops in 2010, to where our small presence in that war-stricken nation is for ongoing rebuilding efforts (the least we could do considering we invaded in 2003 under false excuses by the liars in Cheney's office).
• Obama failed to bring harmonious relations back among our major allies - especially our allies in NATO such as England, France and Germany - after the foreign relations miscues of the Bush the Lesser administration.  Just don't pay attention to the fact that Obama gets thousands if not millions to turn out at rallies when he goes overseas, that our political allies in Europe and Asia work well with Obama, that a majority of our allied nations would like to see Obama get re-elected... and that our allies and their citizenry are kinda horrified by the idea of a foreign policy fool like Romney getting anywhere near the White House...
• Obama failed in Libya.  As long as you think a simple enforcement of a no-fly-zone (which is as much as our NATO allies closer to the ground would have accepted) to give the Libyan rebels breathing room to free their own nation - brothers doin' it for themselves, bro - from a violent dictator was a bad idea.
• Obama is currently failing to act in Syria.  Considering that a THIRD invasion of a Middle Eastern Islamic nation would be a foreign policy debacle, that we don't honestly have the manpower to open another battlefront while Afghanistan is still a major military operation, that something of this scope requires our nearby allies like Turkey and other NATO nations to make direct efforts even they can't afford to make at the moment...  Expecting someone to just "bomb bomb bomb" everything and call it a win is not sensible foreign policy.
• Obama is failing to stop Iran's nuclear program or overthrow it's brutal theocratic regime.  Except that Obama's economic sanctions are kinda working to where the Iranian economy is in worse shape than Greece's.  And again, is opening a THIRD invasion of a Middle Eastern a good idea?  Because simply bombing Iranian sites will most likely escalate into a ground war...
• Obama failed to create jobs.  Considering every jobs bill proposal he brought to Congress was shot down by obstructionist Republican congressional leaders, then yeah it's totally Obama's fault for sticking to the system of checks and balances in the Constitution requiring such bills be left to the Legislative Branch.
• Specifically, Obama's unemployment numbers during his first term NEVER got under 8 percent, the fiend.  Except that recent numbers adjustments for September 2012's reports found the official unemployment rate - the same rate George W. Bush went by - dropped to 7.8 percent.  As long as we also don't overlook that Obama's tenure saw consistent and large-enough private sector job growth that recouped all the jobs lost under Bush the Lesser's tenure, and as long as we don't note the fact that the public sector job losses - thanks to Republican-led efforts to cut back on social services and government offices - is keeping our unemployment rate an extra 1 percent higher than it would be...
• Obama failed to fix our broken health care system.  Simply by getting passed in the 111th Congressional Session a major health care overhaul called ObamaCare that is based on REPUBLICAN reform proposals of the 1990s.  An ObamaCare package that for the most part stood up to Supreme Court scrutiny and is already showing positive effects on our nation's health care coverage.
• Obama failed on gay rights.  Which is a shame because repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell has proven one year later after Obama's efforts that having Gays in the military does not harm morale or service one whit, and it was a real shame when Obama spoke out this May that he now supports gay marriage because it showed how pro-people he is...
• Obama failed to do much of anything for women's rights.  Except pass the Lily Ledbetter Act enforcing equal pay in the workplace, promoting two women to the Supreme Court making that august body more reflective of the gender population of our nation, stood in defense of Planned Parenthood when the House Republicans sought to nuke it, argued for affordable access to birth control, and openly spoke about how "women are not an interest group: they're half the country and its workforce."
• Obama failed to make the 2011-2012 Congress do much of anything, which led to the 112th Congressional Session to be the WORST EVER CONGRESS.  Except it's not the President's job to make Congress work: it's the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader's job.  And there's not much Majority Leader Harry Reid could do with a cloture/filibuster system being abused like Punch-and-Judy dolls by obstructionist Republican Senators (Cloture motions have DOUBLED since Obama took office).  Here's a graph by the way of the number of bills passed by the 112th.  Every other Congress since 1947 passed at least 300 bills: the 112th Congress never even came close.

So you see, that's a lot of Failures on Obama's part.  As long as that's how you ignorant morans define Failure, you think?


What I said in the comments to Geoffrey's post:

By any rational measure we would recognize that our allies respect us more with Obama than during the Dubya regime: by any rational measure we would be celebrating Obama's decision to bring Bin Laden to justice the way millions of Americans wanted since even before 9/11: by any rational measure we would be celebrating our ending a military occupation of Iraq as a success: by any rational measure we would note that the economic woes are due to a Congress that is literally THE WORST EVER, failing to consider even ONE JOBS BILL even one that would help get veterans of our current wars off unemployment: by any rational measure we would recognize the country's divisiveness is due to unelected blowhards like Limbaugh, Beck, and the Birthers whose rage against Obama is based purely on emotion and willful ignorance. If Obama is a failure, then by GOD let us fail with him for FOUR MORE YEARS. 

GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS.  GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT, INDEPENDENTS.  AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.  DO NOT VOTE FOR ROMNEY.  DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY GOP CONGRESSPERSON UP FOR RE-ELECTION, BECAUSE IT IS CONGRESS' FAULT OUR ECONOMY SUCKS, NOT OBAMA'S.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD...

All comments welcome as long as you can use curse words as effective as BRIAN BLESSED.

Florida Ballot Amendments 2012: The Big No

Welcome back to yet another installment - it's 2012 last I checked the calendar - of "We're Voting For WHAT This November?"

You might notice at the title of this blog entry that the subtitle is "The Big No".  That's because, up front, I wanna say that all eleven proposed amendments (minus an 12th that got kicked off the ballot by the state Supreme Court) on the Florida ballot this election are ones pushed by Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott and his GOP brethren in the state legislature.  They're known as "Legislatively Referred Constitutional Amendments" as different from advocacy-based ones (called "Initiated Constitutional Amendments"), just so you know.

All of these proposed amendments are what the wingnut-led Republican legislature and fraudster governor want.  If they want them, WE NEED TO SAY NO TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.  Very simple this year.  JUST SAY NO to the 2012 state amendments. 

That said, here they are (link to Ballotpedia which provides the references):

Amendment One: Health Care Amendment

This is the same one that was meant to be Amendment Nine back in 2010, but got kicked by the courts for being poorly worded and confusing.  This time they brought it back, but the intent is the same: the GOP are trying to nullify the ObamaCare requirements to mandate that people and/or businesses to purchase some form of health care insurance as a means of reducing overall health care costs.  Which is something even the United States Supreme Court upheld this summer.  Trying to put this into the state constitution is useless: the Supremacy Clause would immediate cancel this.  This is more a publicity stunt, and worse yet an attempt to bring back nullification (John C. Calhoun continues to rot in the deepest pit of Hell for this, among other sins) as a political issue.  As said before, VOTE NO.

Amendment Two: Veterans Property Tax

This is similar to a tax-break amendment offered up in 2010, but whereas that law was for veterans who were residents of Florida when they served this one covers all disabled veterans currently living here regardless if they were citizens of other states during their military careers.
This is arguably a sensible bill: it's a benefit for veterans who served this nation, and especially for those disabled and needing less taxes to burden them.  Unfortunately, this doesn't really benefit a whole of people at the moment, the amendment is being offered at a time where every county is struggling to generate enough tax revenue to pay for ANYTHING, and this is yet another bill being offered by Scott and the wingnut crowd meaning there is something rotten in here somewhere, I know it.  As said before, VOTE NO.

Amendment Three: State Revenue Limitation Changes

This amendment is designed to change the current method of capping state revenues: instead of capping based on personal income growth, this will cap it based on inflation and population changes.  Excess revenues will remain being placed in the "rainy day fund" until it reaches its excess at which point the state uses that money to spend on projects and/or reduce tax rates.
This is based on something called TABOR or "TAxpayer Bill Of Rights": a movement at the state level to change how states garner their tax revenues.  It's telling to note that 20 other states rejected this TABOR amendment: the one state that did - Colorado in 1992 - still had to revise this amendment later in order to pay for education needs by 2001 and had another ballot resolution in 2005 relaxing the harsher TABOR restrictions.  In short, it doesn't work very well.  And again, as the wingnut legislature is keen on this ballot, this reeks.  As said before, VOTE NO.


Amendment Four: Property Tax Caps

The proposed amendment would prohibit increases in the assessed value of homestead property if the fair market value of the property decreases; reduces the limitation on annual assessment increases to non-homestead property; and provides an additional homestead exemption of up to 50 percent of the home's median value to first-time home buyers.  It caps commercial and non-homestead (that is, second or more homes owned by a person/family, not the primary residence) tax appraisal rates at 5 percent a year.
The first part - prohibiting tax increases in assessed value if the fair market value decreases - makes sense: the rest of this ballot is inexcusable.  This is basically an attempt to kill the counties' abilities to raise any revenue at all through property taxes: the Far Right obsession against taxes is getting to the point where honest government services - schools, road repairs, public safety, etc - are going to suffer HARD.  Estimates are that the tax base will get eroded by $1 BILLION over three years.  Considering the state is suffering through a recession, this is the WORST TIME to be cutting off public revenues at all.
Of the ballot amendments on this list, this one clearly and most decisively needs to be VOTE NO.

Amendment Five: Breaking the State Courts

The ballot has an official title, but the one I've given it is more accurate.
This ballot adds to the current system of how State Supreme Court Justices are picked - the governor fills a vacancy based on a recommendations list by an independent judiciary nominations/qualifications board, and the voters later vote to retain or remove, more on that below by the by - by having the Senate vote on confirmation beforehand.  This brings this more into line with how the United States Supreme Court gets filled, but it brings to it the risk of making judicial selections more partisan.  Also, this ballot would change how the courts rules can be overruled by the state legislature.  It would also drop the two-thirds majority vote requirement to a simple majority vote in the legislature to override a judicial ruling.  This ballot also grants the State House Speaker full access to all information from the currently-independent judiciary nominating committee to determine if a judge could be impeached even before that potential judge gets placed on the bench: basically, it allows the state legislature a means of intimidating anyone up for a judicial opening beforehand.
And this also would create TWO separate state Supreme Courts - one for Civil Appeals, one for Criminal Appeals (to my knowledge, no other state has separate high courts like this).  If it happens right now under the current political landscape, this would give Rick "I Mock Your Civil Action" Scott incredible power to nominate a whole slate of vacancies that could tilt both proposed Courts into partisan waters.
In short: this amendment kills the independent, balancing nature of the state's judicial system.  The entire concept of "checks and balances" between government and the courts will be crushed.  Nothing - outside of the federal government and federal courts - will keep the corrupted nature of the state legislature in check.
The state Chamber of Commerce supports this - mostly because it would give them a Civil Court packed with Scott's pro-business buddies.  A good number of state judges, plus the Florida Bar of lawyers, oppose this ballot: I honestly do not recall the last time our judges ever spoke out on any ballot before an election.  That should really tell us how wrong - how partisan - this ballot is.  VOTE NO. 

Amendment Six: Abortion

This proposed ballot would prohibit the use of public funds - except for federal funds, which are hard to come by in the first place - for abortions except as required by federal law and to save the mother's life.  Notice, no exceptions for victims of rape/incest.
This is basically making Florida one of the hardest states for women to be able to make their own medical health AND their own moral decisions. 
The wingnuts are all for this, even though this will make things WORSE for women who have legitimate needs - especially in cases of rape/incest - to get an abortion.  For the Love of a Benevolent and Tolerant God Who Respects A Woman's Right To Choose, VOTE NO.

Amendment Seven: Got booted.  However, thanks to a wrinkle in the law, the state Attorney General could rewrite this proposal and resubmit it once it fills the court's legal requirements, so it came back as Amendment Eight.  See next.

Amendment Eight: Religious B-llshit Amendment

Yes, once again I rewrote the ballot's title in order to make it more accurate.  There is nothing about "Religious Freedom" in this thing.  It's about giving religious groups greater access to public funding, in violation of the basic tenets of the Separation of Church and State.  (It's not about Freedom: It's about Teh MONEY)
The ballot says: Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution providing that no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding, or other support, except as required by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and deleting the prohibition against using revenues from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.  What it means is that churches, religiously-based private schools, and/or religiously-run programs can get state money without ensuring that those programs remain secular in nature.
Proponents argue that they need to remove the current restrictions in order to allow church-led social programs more funding to help others.  Opponents point out this will open the floodgates to allowing religious groups unfettered access to public money, and pave the way to yet another push for the Far Right's "school voucher" agenda that would waste education funding on private schools at the expense of public schools.  Considering that churches and other religious organizations are tax-exempt thanks to the Separation of Church and State clause, this would mean those religious group will not have to put any money INTO state funds and yet be able to TAKE as much money as they can petition for: that is, they get OUR money for nothing.
VOTE NO.


Amendment Nine: Tax Exemption For Surviving Spouses of Veterans/First Responders

This is slightly different than the earlier proposed ballot in that this is a FULL exemption - not a Homestead Exemption which provides a percentage - from any surviving spouse of a soldier or first responder (police, firefighter, I think also EMT) to pay ANY property taxes at all.
This doesn't sound too bad on paper: but remember again, this is coming from a state legislature and state governor obsessed with the idea of killing off EVERY means of government revenue they can think of in order to demolish the entire public sector.  Any hit to tax revenue hurts our ability to pay for those first responders in the FIRST PLACE.  Consider the source of this ballot, and yet again, VOTE NO.

Amendment Ten: Tangible Personal Property Tax

This amendment is meant to strike down the ad valorum taxes levied by local governments - county and city - on any tangible property valued between $25,000 to $50,000.
On the face of it, my biggest concern is "what the HELL gets valued at such a narrow range as $25,000 to $50,000?"  Are we talking about items like cars and yachts or something?  The very nature of this ballot - its strict limitation on anything JUST WITHIN that price range, its focus on capping local governments' ability to raise revenue - makes me think this is a very bad ballot in a list of bad ballots.
VOTE NO.

Amendment Eleven: Senior Homestead Tax Exemption

The purpose of this ballot is to provide what looks to be a full tax exemption on any senior-owned property valued less than $250,000 where the resident is over 65 and had lived at the property over 25 years, and where the resident is determined by other laws as low-income.
This is, once again, an attempt by the wingnuts to kill of the counties' abilities to raise tax revenues.  It looks nice, and it may help those seniors who are on fixed retirement-based incomes.  But it's the Far Right, wanting to kill off another means of revenue: whack this one, and they'll go whack more.  It's also not certain to affect a lot of people, as there are very few elderly people here who have resided at the same place over 25 years.  This is Florida: most of our residents are transplants.
VOTE NO.

Amendment Twelve: State Student Council Association Seating On Board of Governors

Gonna try to explain this one as easy as possible.  The current student representation on the state university system's Board of Governors is filled by the President of the Florida Student Association.  This ballot would drop this in exchange for the current Chair of the council of State University Student Bodies, which would be created by the Board of Governors for each state university.  It's basically changing who gets to sit in the big kid's seat at the grown-ups table.  There may be politics involved here: the potential Chair being more favorable to the Far Right than the current make-up of the Florida Student Association.  In the long term, this doesn't improve a thing.  VOTE NO.

There's one other thing I want to add: the state Republicans - led by Scott - are pushing to have the Supreme Court Justices up for retention voted out. Justices are nominated by the governor to fill a vacancy when one occurs, but they all undergo periodic retention vote as a means of accountability to voters: the Justices can be voted out if there are clearly abusing their authority, but more often than not voters check off the vote and move on (I've never seen a judge voted out to my knowledge, please refresh my memory if this has happened in Florida since 1988 my first voting year).  Neither party - until now, which should be telling you something - has pushed for having all Justices up for retention be voted out: this had always been a non-partisan issue.  But now, Scott and his ilk clearly want to clear out a state Court that does not buckle under to his bullying, forcing out otherwise good judges so that Scott can fill those vacancies with his lackeys and stooges who will then bring a partisan taint to a judiciary that is supposed to be above such pettiness.

With regards to the retention of Justices, for the first time ever, I encourage and IMPLORE the voters of Florida TO RETAIN all three - R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente, and Peggy Quince - up for vote.  If only to tell Rick "F-ck You" Scott and his buddies that they will NOT win this fight, that they will NOT corrupt our state courts with their partisan bullsh-t.

Save our State.  Vote NO on Rick Scott and his misdeeds.  And let's get ready to toss his corrupt ass out the door in 2014.

Also, it would really be swell for everyone in Florida to Stay Sane And Vote Obama.  :-)

Also wik, I once met Senator Bill Nelson en route to a Florida Gators game a few years back, and I also approve of his overall job performance (and again, Go Gators) so yeah Vote Bill Nelson for U.S. Senate.

Not a huge fan of the Bilirakis political machine, so definitely Vote Jonathan Snow for Congress 12th District.

As for the Pasco County Mosquito Control... well, the Mosquitoes were REALLY out of control this year, I think the whole board didn't do a thing to teach them skeeters how to behave in polite society, so shame on...  what, I'm misreading the constitutional authority of the county mosquito control?  Well, okay, that's up in the air still for me...

Did I miss anything?

Secret Holds Need To Go

This has got me - and about every veteran and soldiers' widows - a tad upset:

In what appears to be an election-year stunt that quickly backfired, an unidentified Republican senator on Thursday briefly blocked disabled veterans and their survivors from getting a cost-of-living adjustment to their benefits, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

The Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) increase for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits, which typically passes the House and Senate without opposition, was cleared by Senate Democrats but placed on a “secret hold” Thursday by an unidentified Republican senator, Murray says.

Under Senate rules, a single senator is allowed to anonymously keep a bill from advancing toward a vote with what is called a “secret hold.” The senator in this case has not been identified.

The measure, HR 4114, which passed the House on July 9, provides a 1.9 percent increase in disability benefits for veterans and surviving spouses, matching the planned increase in Social Security benefits...

The Republicans in the Senate suddenly realized after the fact that they've just committed a massive screw-up and walked back the "secret hold."  But the damage has been done: the delay put on the bill keeps it from getting a vote done until after the general election on just that one day, meaning that the Senate has a very short window to get the bill before the President for signature and to get the checks going out to veterans and widows in time for the COLAs to kick in Jan 1, 2013.

I've raged before about Secret Holds and how destructive they are to the natural workings of democratic representation.  This is just one more piece of evidence: a much-needed bill getting out aid to those Americans who most need it and who have sacrificed most for it is now screwed up thanks to one Jerk-Ass Senator.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says a Senator or a group of Senators have this kind of power: even the filibuster system - itself a broken mess screwing up our ability to get things done - is codified and is governed by rules and checks.  The Secret Hold is a non-binding "gentleman's agreement" where the Senate Majority Leader agrees to a demand for a Hold on a bill or appointment for the sake of bipartisan comity.  Problem is, the holds are so clearly PARTISAN anymore that the whole idea of it being a bipartisan agreement is a joke, a parody of bipartisanship, and one that's not at all funny.

I hope to God someday someone files a lawsuit against Secret Holds.  They are clearly unconstitutional, they clearly invade the constitutional requirement of bicameral legislation (that means the two-house method of passing laws), and they are clearly wrong.

Amendment Idea Number 7815

1) Whenever Congress closes its door to take either a vacation or leave to go on fund-raising campaigns, each member of Congress has to pay back to government the daily wages they earned when Congress was in session for each day that Congress is now not in session.
2) Any member of Congress pays back double if that member f-cking complains in public about "lazy" poor people living off the government dole.

Seriously.  We've had lazy Congresses before, but this session was downright obscene.  Gen-X Slackers could only aspire to the lackadaisical attitude of the 112th Congress.  Truman's nemesis Do-Nothing Congress of 1948 actually clocked in to do work compared to these snore-feasters.

And yet you get a good number of them - from a certain political side of the aisle that begins with R and ends in Can('t) - that rails against poor people living off of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, college grants and loans, etc.  Not just poor people but their kids, the elderly, the unemployed, the underemployed, veterans... sheesh.

Time for Congress and all our political leaders to remember just who really is on the political dole.  THEY ARE.  GET TO WORK YOU BUMS.

Convention Is Over. Now Get Out There And REGISTER TO VOTE

GET TO WORK PEOPLE!  There's 330 million Americans out there and we need to get EVERY SINGLE U.S. CITIZEN who is over the age of 18 and not a convicted felon REGISTERED TO VOTE!

WE NEED EVERY AMERICAN VOTING!  You know why?  BECAUSE WE'RE AMERICANS GODDAMMIT THIS IS OUR COUNTRY AND OUR VOTE IS OUR POWER!

Let's GET THE VOTE OUT PEOPLE! November is only X number of days away!

What To Expect From Obama's Convention Speech 2012

I didn't come up with a "What To Expect" for the Democrats' convention in Charlotte, mostly because I really did not know which approach they would take: offense (going after Romney/Ryan for being one-percenters obsessed with harsh tax cuts and even harsher spending cuts) or defense (trying to explain all the things Obama did do during his 3 1/2 years of being in the White House).

The possibility they would do both was there, but unlikely in my mind.  And it turns out I was well off-target.  For the most part it has been a healthy (or unhealthy depending on your POV) mix of speakers hitting at Romney's weak job-creation record and weak record supporting minorities and women, alongside speakers highlighting the accomplishments of Obama's administration on the steady economic rebuilding efforts.

Topped off by what has become an instant classic of a speech from former President Bill Clinton that both slammed Romney and the Republicans as well as promote Obama at the same time.

There's still a little time left here before Obama should be performing his acceptance speech at the convention, though, so I could take a moment here to take a few wild guesses to what Obama will say:

• An obvious thank-you to Bill Clinton;
• An obvious I-love-you to Michelle and the kids;
• A long and focused description of a jobs-stimulus program Obama hopes to get done if re-elected;
• A short quip-worthy attempt to mock Republican inability offer any substantive proposals outside of "trust us";
• An avoidance of Eastwooding: dude, it should be about class, and digging in that direction wouldn't be worth it;
• A tribute to the soldiers (a theme in the DNC convention, something that the Republicans for all their flag-waving patriotism refused to do);
• A call to action!  Thrilling exhortation!  ...oh wait, I'm channeling a pretty funny Doonesbury parody of your standard graduation valedictions...  my bad.

So, anybody ready for a DNC bounce of more than 5 points?

Things To Expect From The Republicans In Tampa 2012

Just not today, with Tropical Storm Isaac having canceled most of Monday's public activities (the private fund-raisers, I'm certain, are still on.  Money = Time = Money).

• Expect half of the public speakers to refer to Obama as a "failed" presidency.  With no mention at how an obstructionist GOP Congress went out of their way to make it look as though Obama failed.  And no mention of how Obama's actually kept a majority of his 2008 campaign promises.
• Expect at least one public speaker to rail against gun control.  With no evidence proving that there's been any persecution of gun owners by Obama's administration.
• Expect at least three public speakers to claim that Obama is an embarrassment on the international stage.  Ignoring the Nobel Peace Prize (granted, it was only due to Obama not being George W. Bush, who WAS an embarrassment on the international stage), the effective work coordinating with NATO re: helping Libyans free themselves, the overall improved goodwill with nations under Obama's tenure compared to his predecessor, and the fact that Romney's attempt to wow our international allies ended up with egg on his face.
• Expect at least one public speaker to hint (not directly claim, but just blow the dog-whistle) that Obama sides with the terrorists.  With absolutely no mention at all at how Obama's agenda against Al Qaeda has reportedly broken that organization into almost nothing.  And definitely no mention of Bin Laden getting hunted down and killed on Obama's orders.
• Expect every speaker to invoke the name and spirit of Sainted Ronald Reagan.  Because Reagan is basically the ONLY Republican President since Coolidge - this is counting Eisenhower (too moderate), Nixon (too crooked), Ford (too moderate), Bush the Elder (tax traitor), and above all the last GOP President Bush the Lesser (too much of a disaster) - that the current Republican Party can dare invoke to reflect their ideals.  And even then, Reagan wasn't as hardcore as the party is now...
• Expect every speaker to claim that tax cuts and massive deregulation will do wonders for "job creators".  Even though the entire Bush the Lesser administration proved both points wrong: tax cuts lead to DEFICITS and massive deregulation leads to ECONOMIC COLLAPSE.
• Expect one speaker - someone is bound to go off-script - to make reference to Obama's birth certificate.  Dog-whistle goes loud...
• Expect one speaker to claim yet again that Obama is killing the work requirement for welfare.  Lies!
• Expect one speaker to bring up "death panels" and how Obamacare will kill us all.  Le Sigh...
• Expect one speaker to be a boring stiff mannequin during his acceptance speech.  Hi, Mitt...

Just don't expect any fun.  Unless a VIP gets caught at one of the Dale Mabry strip clubs wearing nothing but a dog collar and covered in maple syrup.  Which, given that this IS Florida, the crazy is possible...

For Republicans It Wasn't Any Sin

Over the weekend we had a Republican candidate for Missouri Senator, Todd Akin, make some damn idiotic statements about "legitimate rape" and general failure remembering any high school biology he apparently slept through:

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Let's get the problem he has with biology out of the way first.

Human women do NOT have a hormone or secretion that stops an unwanted pregnancy from happening.  Not from a forced rape.  Not under any circumstances.  If women DID have that ability, then abortion itself as a medical practice would never have been developed.  The birth control pill would cease to be.

Akin is basically repeating a sick old meme among anti-abortion Republican politicians dating back to 1988.  If not earlier.  These guys - and it's mostly idiot guys saying it - simply do not know human biology.  Worse, they prefer to live with their ignorance because it fits their worldview.

The other, more unsettling thing that Akin stated was that "legitimate rape" phrase.  Like as though there is a distinction between any kind of rape.  There may be stranger rape, date rape, statutory rape, but they all boil down to the same thing: RAPE.  And rape is a hideously vicious crime.  But Akin and his ilk want to make that distinction between what they consider "legitimate rape" (what they tried calling "forcible rape") and what they would consider "she was asking for it" sex.  Basically, their attempt at blaming the rape victims if those victims have the misfortune of "dressing inappropriately" or "being in a bad environment" or "getting pregnant when they should have used their hormones to protect their virginal selves."

But those two tidbits pale in comparison to the biggest problem of all.

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW REPUBLICANS THINK ABOUT RAPE AND PREGNANCY.

From an article in Slate:

The statement was actually intended to soften Akin’s absolute opposition to abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Why bother to have loopholes for such conditions when they’re going to be so rare, goes his thinking? As Talking Points Memo notes, the Congressman has long suspected that rape and abortion laws are less likely to protect women from abuse than to allow them to be abusive:

Akin’s past includes praising a militia group linked to anti-abortion extremism in the 1990s and voting against creating a sex-offender registry in 2005. Back in 1991, as a state legislator, Akin voted for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via LexisNexis).

From an article in Balloon Juice:

The Republican party officially takes the same position he has:

The Republican Party is once again set to enshrine into its official platform support for “a human life amendment” to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday. “Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft platform declares. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

Akin’s real sin is letting people really understand how truly insane the Republican party is.

Just try to remember this: Akin is currently in the House, and alongside current wingnut heartthrob Paul Ryan they co-sponsored a 2011 bill called "The No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act".  This was a major bill the Republican House wanted on the floor in a big hurry.  This is the same bill that attempted to redefine rape as "forcible rape", which would have narrowed down to exclude rape victims who simply didn't have a knife to their throats.  It wasn't that Ryan and Akin and the rest of the House GOP wanted to tighten the definition: they wanted to cut back the number of women who could get medical help and get abortions.

That's what's really important to these ignorant clueless guys.  The fetus.  They don't care about women who are raped, who suffer from incest, who may have a medical emergency of any kind that would force the painful choice.  They just don't want those fetuses aborted.  And you can't call these guys "pro-life" like they want to because if they really were pro-life, these guys would be the first to vote for more financial aid for poor families to raise all these extra newborns, they'd be funding more pre-school and public school programs to get those newborns educated.  But the GOP wants to cut back on all that kind of social community spending just so they can give billionaires more tax cuts.  They only care about the fetus: once you're out, they don't give a sh-t.  Unless you promise to vote for them, probably.

Like John Cole said, the biggest sin Akin committed was highlighting just how truly insane the Republicans are right now: how scientifically ignorant they are, how blase they are about the complexity of living in the real world, how vicious they aim to be in making people who don't travel within their circles suffer just so the elite can enjoy themselves.

For the LOVE OF GOD.  Do NOT vote Republican.

Lest We Forget: WOODSTOCK

Not about to let another year go by without a Woodstock reference!




The song ends just as the sun rises on the Sunday morning of the festival. After this, The Who would stage it during concerts to have a sunrise effect as they finish this song.

Three Problems With Paul Ryan As GOP Veep

Lo and behold, post about veep selections and ye shall receive.

Mitt Romney goes and selects Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to be his Vice Presidential ticket balance.

Why this is a problem for the Republicans in three easy observations:

1) Ryan is coming from a state that is currently polling well for Obama, with no guarantee that Ryan's selection will turn the tide.  Not to mention that Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes isn't much of a prize compared to larger electoral states like Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania which are considered toss-up states (although currently polling well for Obama again) and from which Romney could have tabbed more voter-friendly partners.
2) Ryan is coming from a U.S. Congress (112th on record) that is generally recognized as one of the worst Congresses in American history.  It is certainly the least popular Congress ever.  Everything people hate about Congress will reflect on the people who lead it.  And Ryan is one of the key leaders of the Republican party leadership in charge of the 112th Congress: He is chair of the House Budget Committee, responsible for pushing annual budget plans that hew closely to the party ideology (tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to social programs and education, and vague unprovable justifications that it will all create budget-balancing revenues which ten years of Bush the Lesser Economics have proven impossible).  He's been touted since 2004 as the Idea Wonk Guy for the House GOP.  You can't separate him from the Republicans' economic platform.  To put him on the main ticket this election cycle - rather than keep him in a safe Congressional seat run (which he can still do under election laws) - puts him and his economic ideas front and center for the whole party.  Which leads to...
3) Ryan's budget proposals - especially his proposals to turn Medicare into a voucher program, privatize Social Security, and cut Medicaid into little pieces - are massively unpopular, and nearly everybody who pays attention knows it.  Obama's campaign is already on the attack, and the evidence is pretty solid that a lot of populations that rely on all three major social safety net programs - the elderly, the poor, the middle class families struggling to care for their own - are going to turn against such ideas and the party backing them in a big damn hurry.  There's a reason why Romney's campaign was quick to claim that Ryan's budget plan will NOT be Romney's budget plan...  But Ryan's budget plan - and the slavish worship the wingnut base had towards both the person and the plan - was what made him Romney's pick for the Veep spot!  You can't have it both ways, people.

I'd throw in the fourth reason why Ryan is a problem pick - he's a fanboy of Ayn Rand - but that's more of a personal peeve I have towards Objectivist utopian hacks.  But you never know, a majority of Americans can come to feel the same way about Objectivism being a destructive political-economic ideology...

I'd like to think this will make it easier for voters nationwide to reject the Republicans and their tax-cut, kill-government ways.  But then there's the problem of voter suppression efforts in key swing states, and the fact that in our Citizens United world of unlimited campaign money the wealthy wingnut crowd can possibly buy this election cycle outright...  I'm still worried that Romney/Ryan could win.  And then it will be the Bush the Lesser years all over again.

For the Love of God, people.  Don't Vote Republican.

At What Point Can We Have an Honest Debate About Guns?

There has been another mass shooting, this time at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.  Seven dead reported for now.

Can we finally, please for the Love of God, discuss the possibility that the Second Amendment - written in an era when there was no standing army, when it took days to travel from one end of a state to another, when the frontier was open and the need for immediate local responses were higher, when state-formed militias made sense - is an outdated amendment that needs revision and recognize that the need for civilian-owned firearms isn't there anymore?

We've got closed borders now.  We've got 24/7 police and law enforcement service.  If we're gonna get invaded by Aruba our military response will be in minutes, not weeks.  The need for "well-regulated militias" isn't there anymore.  The fantasy of needing civilian soldiers against some nefarious government plot of epic doom is just that: a FUCKING fantasy.  The right of an individual to own a firearm needs to be balanced with everyone else's right TO NOT GET SHOT AT.

The NRA and gun nuts out there are gonna scream and kick and throw tantrums and whatnot to make sure we don't even have a goddamn discussion about this.  And even though we're not in a warzone, we're gonna have a body count in the United States about as bad as some war-torn Third World nation.  All because a small, very vocal minority of citizens worship some hunks of metals more than they care about peoples' lives.

We have sensible restrictions on a lot of things that can hurt people.  We restrict car ownership and driver's licenses with regard to public safety.  But the automobile came after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, so the car doesn't have an amendment allowing its free open use for any drunken incompetent who could plow into a school bus full of kids.  Yes, that still happens anyway with car accidents, but at least we have laws and a method of enforcement to reduce such a deadly risk.  We can't for guns.

And innocent people get shot because we DARE NOT consider even the slight possibility that we don't need a Second Amendment to protect the frontier anymore.

Madness.

Probably Should Get The Veep Distraction Out of the Way

There's a couple of things I want to write about Romney's floundering Presidential campaign, the one of least value ought to go first and be done with it.  Romney's quest for a Vice Presidential co-campaigner.

My earlier viewpoint about the unnecessary Veep selection process - the need of a Vice President really isn't there anymore - still stands: we have a succession process in place if anything should happen, and the Vice President in theory/practice - save for the anomaly that was the Dick Cheney regime - is pretty much a useless cog in the Executive Branch's system.  The only value of a Vice President - tie-breaker vote in the Senate - could be altered with a simple Constitutional amendment re-working the makeup of the Senate (different blog post to go in greater detail later).

But for now we're stuck with it, and so the media speculation about whom Romney should pick for "balancing the ticket" is getting into a fever pitch with the Tampa convention mere weeks away.

So who's on the short list for Romney's ticket?  And how much trouble is each possible choice?

For starters, there are a few people - Jeb Bush and Condi Rice are the most mentioned - who have very direct ties to the George W. Bush administration: Jeb as Dubya's brother, and Condi as one of Dubya's biggest personal allies.  Here's the problem: George W. Bush is still a very unpopular ex-President, and a solid majority of voters still blame Bush the Lesser for the weak economy.  If Romney picks anyone from Bush the Lesser's administration or anyone from the Bush clan, he is directly linking himself to that previous ruined regime.  Not a good idea, ergo don't expect it to happen.

Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida, gets name-dropped on a regular basis for a lot of reasons: the hope he can flip Florida from "Leans Obama" to "Leans Romney"; as a prominent Hispanic Republican, he could keep enough conservative Hispanic voters from fleeing an otherwise hostile party towards "illegals" (which keeps coming across as anti-Hispanic ranting); he's popular with the Far Right base, which doesn't like Romney (still); and he's young for a party whose leadership is visibly aging and needs someone like him to be a standard bearer by 2016.  But even Rubio has problems: he's not as popular in Florida as the GOP would hope - polling on the possibility shows no change in voter trends, so he's not going to swing this state to Mitt - and Rubio's lack of national political experience makes it harder for the Republicans to argue about Obama being "inexperienced" and "not properly vetted yet".

There's been arguments made that Romney wants to do the exact opposite of what McCain did back in 2008 when Sarah Palin was selected as Veep.  Which means two things: not taking a woman, but taking a staid white guy who is not a major boat-rocker.  Which pretty much covers a lot of Republican elected officials at the moment but pretty much narrowed down to the likes of Tim Pawlenty, Senator Rob Portman, Senator Jon Kyl, Senator John Thune, Gov. Bob McConnell, and (insert bland Congressperson from key swing state here).  Big problems with any of these choices: they won't boost the ticket with any enthusiasm, and they represent either small electoral states or states already heavily favoring Republicans (save for Portman from the key state of Ohio, which is why he's got a better chance than most).

Alternatively, there's the argument that Romney HAS to take a woman candidate to blunt the trend of women voting for Obama and the Democrats (as well as change the image of the Republicans as a bunch of stuffy old white men eager to make contraception/birth control illegal, pushing female income inequality, destroying cheaper access to health care, and other well-documented sexist actions).  That brings to the list the likes of Michele Bachmann (crazy evangelical currently spewing anti-Arab sentiment) or Jan Brewer (crazy anti-immigrant from Arizona that's giving whacked-out wingnut places like Florida and Texas a run for Teh Craziest State In America title).

Which brings up the other list of potentials: the wingnut celebrities of the GOP.  While Romney has the Republican nomination locked up, his unfavorables even within the GOP itself are too high.  That has to do with the fact that most of the Teabagger Far Right wingnuts still do not trust Romney (being a habitual flip-flopping liar is a big reason why).  The odds that Romney will have to add to his ticket someone pleasing to the Far Right - which goes against common sense as Romney NEEDS moderate/independent voters in November - are pretty high.  Which is why Bachmann, Brewer, budget-killer Paul Ryan, Rick "Do Not Google" Santorum, Herman "Mike Tyson Did a Damn Good Impersonation" Cain, Nikki "Does the GOP Really Want to Run a Candidate From an Openly Pro-Confederate State" Haley, and Chris "Anger Management" Christie are on the list.  Hell, even Donald "Bankruptcy Court" Trump and Newt "Divorce" Gingrich are possibilities at this point.

To be honest, this might be a good time for the Republican Party to start arguing the need to trade out the Vice President spot for changing the Senate make-up to have the tie-breaker vote handled by a separately elected National Senator.  Ah, SPOILERS for that constitutional amendment idea (TBD), retroactively...

Seriously, I expect Portman to be the sensible common-sense pick.  However, VP selections RARELY go the way people predict (did anyone have Dan Quayle on their radars back in 1988?  Geraldine Ferraro in 1984?  Or Spiro Agnew in 1968?) so don't be surprised if a completely-out-of-the-blue name gets selected (if it's a wingnut celebrity, start laughing and vote Democrat).