Who Knew Diplomacy Could Work With Iran? Oh, Right. Obama Did.

This had been an eventual week on the political stage, with Obama performing his last State of the Union, the Republican Presidential candidates going feral at each other at yet another horrific primary debate, and a series of international incidents involving the "rogue nation" of Iran.

The earlier incident involved two Navy patrol boats in the Persian Gulf performing maneuvers: somehow one of the boats suffered a failure and both boats ended up drifting into Iranian waters off Farsi Island. As the Washington Post reports:

...A senior defense official, speaking in Washington, said the sailors were not harmed but would undergo medical evaluation and a debriefing in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Meanwhile, their vessels were taken by another American crew to Bahrain, their original destination and home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

The release appeared to end a potential flash point as Iran and world powers move toward the possible next steps in a landmark nuclear deal that limits Tehran’s atomic program in exchange for the easing of international economic sanctions.

The detention also added to tensions in the Persian Gulf region amid the worst diplomatic unraveling in decades between Shiite power Iran and Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies. The feud — opened by Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric earlier this month — has put Washington in the middle as it seeks to implement the nuclear deal while also backing its key regional partner, Saudi Arabia...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in a statement, expressed his “gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation in quickly resolving this matter…. That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong.”

The incident, meanwhile, offered a test of new high-level channels opened during the nuclear talks between the two nations. Diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran soured after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, and they were formally severed in April 1980, five months after militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took Americans hostage.

For hours — even as President Obama gave his annual State of the Union address — messages passed directly between Iran and Washington instead of the intermediary nations used for decades. The exchanges included Kerry reaching out to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was Iran’s point man during the nuclear talks...

What's important to note that this is all happening in the background of a more pressing concern: the phased slowdown on Iran's attempts at a nuclear weapons program, along with promised lifting of international sanctions that forced Iran to negotiate. From the BBC news:

As part of the deal, Iran had to drastically reduce its number of centrifuges and dismantle a heavy-water reactor near the town of Arak, both of which could be used in creating nuclear weapons...

Iran has always maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful, but opponents of the deal - such as some US Republicans - say it does not do enough to ensure the country cannot develop a nuclear bomb.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry has ordered that US nuclear-related economic sanctions against Iran be lifted.

Speaking in Vienna where he had been holding talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mr Kerry said Iran had "undertaken significant steps" which many people "doubted would ever come to pass"...

And along with this, the United States secured the release - via prisoner exchange - of five of our citizens some of whom have been held in Iran since November.

This works a little bit better than labeling Iran part of an "Axis of Evil". Remember that? How three nations with absolutely nothing to do with each other - Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ayatollah's Iran, and the Il Jong North Korea Crime Family - all got bunched together as a collective bogeyman Legion of Doom? All part of the Bush the Lesser administration's attempt to invoke an updated version of the World War II Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Bush's people did that at a time we were starting to work with Iran especially with efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan, with a reasonably moderate elected government. By 2003, the Iranians were miffed enough at the roughshod treatment that they voted the moderates out and by 2006 went their version of wingnut, which hurt our efforts to resolve the painful occupations of Afghanistan AND Iraq. It made it rougher in their own nation when the moderate-leaning populace tried going back to a responsible government only to have the hardline Ayatollah forces crackdown on them. Neither the U.S. nor Iran enjoyed the consequences of that diplomatic snafu.

But now with a President in Obama who takes foreign policy serious, as a collective effort between nations to resolve matters before they escalate and to fight back against the darker forces like ISIL, we have better results. We're getting Iran to deal with us, not against us. We're recognizing their ability to play as a Rational Actor on the global stage.

So of course the Republican Party and their 2016 headline candidates are throwing conniptions about it. Per the Washington Monthly:

...But yesterday, in the mere 24 hours surrounding the SOTU, we were able to see a situation unfold in a way that demonstrates how quick Republicans have been to jump on the anti-Obama bandwagon - no matter what that means - and just how wrong that leads them to be.

Of course I’m talking about the two naval vessels and 10 U.S. sailors that were taken into custody by Iran yesterday. As soon as the news broke, Republicans were ON IT. Here’s just a sample from twitter:

If our sailors aren’t coming home yet, they need to be now. No more bargaining. Obama’s humiliatingly weak Iran policy is exposed again.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) January 12, 2016

.@POTUS should nullify the nuclear deal if Iran doesn’t release U.S. sailors immediately. https://t.co/DsOVESyj13

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 13, 2016

It's hard to overstate how foolish Iran keeps making our president look.https://t.co/4uHX37L1CT

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) January 12, 2016

On several occasions recently President Obama has suggested that perhaps Republicans should aim before they shoot. This situation was a perfect example of why that might be a good idea. Because less than 24 hours after these boats and sailors were taken into custody by Iran, they were released...

The Republican debates were not much better. Even with the news that the sailors were already freed and the incident over, the candidates on-stage tried to use it to justify their calls to bomb Iran (via Vox):

...Rather, they fumed over the Iran incident as if it had been a particularly notable segment of reality TV, in which their favorite character had suffered a moment of awkward embarrassment at the hands of their least favorite. It was like watching a recap of MTV's Real World, in which everyone is fuming about how that Obama guy just won't pull his weight around the house, and did you see how he totally let that awful Ayatollah Khamenei jerk get away with dissing him?

If it sounds silly, that's because it is. But it's a kind of silliness with real and potentially dire consequences, as the candidates, one by one, promised militarism and an official policy of belligerence, speaking to a world that remembers the last time America tried that and earnestly fears the consequences should it happen again.

"I want to get to the substance of the question on jobs," Sen. Ted Cruz said in response to his very first question of the night. "But I want to start with something, today many of us picked up our newspapers to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees with their hands on their head. ... I will tell you, it was heartbreaking."

Just note that the question Cruz got was on jobs, and he STILL needed to go out of his way to bluster on this incident so he could get out there first before the other candidates. The others weren't any better.

Christie: We are not the world's policeman but we need to stand up and be ready. The problem, Maria, is the military is not ready either. We need to rebuild the military. This president let it diminish to a point where tin pot dictators like the mullahs in Iran are taking our Navy ships. It is disgraceful, and in a Christie administration, they would know much, much better than to do that.

Rubio: Barack Obama believes America is an arrogant global power that needs to be cut down to size... That is how you get a foreign policy where we cut deals with our enemies like Iran and we betray our allies like Israel and we gut our military and we go around the world like he has done on 10 separate occasions and apologized for America.

It's as though the candidates all wanted to pose as Badasses, as manly men able to enforce their American Exceptionalism upon a cowering planet. Little recognizing that for centuries and through 40-odd Presidencies, we have had to deal with other nations and not shell/invade/bomb all of them to get our way. As Max Fisher noted in his Vox article:

...As I have written previously about this worldview, which is also shared by a number of media figures, it is a world in which high-stakes geopolitical events do not matter for the actual content of those events or for their concrete consequences, but rather primarily for their quality as theater. Foreign policy is not the conduct of relations between states but rather a locker room competition of displays of toughness. The only appropriate posture is thus one of constant and maximal belligerence.

All the stuff about lives at stake, risks of war, and complex diplomatic issues are just window dressing for what really matters: the zero-sum competition for maintaining national pride or imposing national humiliation...

This isn't just campaign silliness. It has consequences. As the Washington Post's Dan Drezner shows, "toughness" as a foreign policy strategy isn't just ridiculous. It's dangerous:

All of these guys think that they’ll sound at least as tough as George W. Bush. The thing is, we already know how that movie played out. While Bush ostensibly demonstrated American resolve by invading and then surging in Iraq, North Korea developed a nuclear weapons capability, Iran accelerated its nuclear program, Russia invaded Georgia, China built up its soft power across the Pacific Rim, and Hugo Chavez expanded the Bolivarian bloc in Latin America. As a theory, the notion that any of these guys would deter Iran from doing what it did this week seems pretty laughable.

This is a movie we've seen before, and that the world has seen before. Even if Americans have short memories and are tempted back into a vision of reality TV–style foreign policy where it's all about imposing machismo and cost-benefit is for wimps, I have found, anecdotally but consistently, that no one outside of America has forgotten how it went last time. I don't know that they're going to have an easy time dismissing all this as empty campaign rhetoric, and I don't know that we should, either.

This is why fearmongering that the Republicans are selling us this year needs to get ignored by the voters. We are running the risk of voting into office someone who will treat international relations like a Game of Chicken. Using tanks instead of cars, using bombs instead of dueling pistols. It is the mindset of a Bully.

It is not the mindset of a professional adult, Something we need from the Someone who will sit in that Oval Office. It is not the mindset we've gotten out of President Obama the last seven years.

I worried before when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize so early in his administration, that the world was merely honoring him because he wasn't Bush the Lesser. Now we see why. Where Dubya and his administration bullied, Obama led with outreach and dialogue and respect among our allies as well as opponents. This is how a President should act upon the global stage.

And of course the Republicans will blind themselves to that reality before they ever admit to it.

They're trying to blind the rest of us from that. Don't let them.

Need to Think Up a Book Title for Writing a Pro-Obama Reminiscing

I was thinking of calling it "Snark in the Age of Obama" but some anti-Obama jerk already used it for a Smashwords epub. Please don't go looking for it.

If I use my Shoelace Hypothesis/Theory in the title, people will think I'm the one criticizing Obama's method of tying his own shoes. Also, if I did that I'd need to get a photo shoot of Obama tying his shoes in a manly fashion.

Book titles need to be reasonably unique. You wanna know how many books use the title No Way Out? We're talking thousands involving different authors. It's a bit of a gag that Fifty Shades of Grey clashes with another book discussing interior design colors. There's a reason why I made my self-published short story collection titled Last of the Grapefruit Wars (although I pay for that sin by making people think it's a book about fresh fruit, and I should have put the word "Battle" behind "Last" so people could figure that bit out as well). I lucked out with my superhero novella getting the title Body Armor Blues because few books - haven't found any yet, really - went with that.

I can make the SUBTITLE something like "Witness To The Good Times, the Crazy Times, and Proving the Obama Shoelace Theory" but the banner title, the eye-catcher, has to be something else: short and sweet and to the point.

So I gotta think of something else.

Hmm, trying to find words best associated to Obama's character (remember, he's Active-Positive), so anything along the lines of "confident," "competent," "driven," "game-player," and related thesauri results.

Possibilities:
The Upbeat Era
The Long Game of Obama
Press On (comes from a quote)
? Any suggestions...

What I Want To Hear From President Obama's Final SOTU Speech

Update: Thanks again to Tengrain and the crew at Crooks & Liars for adding me to the Mike's Blog Round-Up today. How did I do with predicting the SOTU speech? Well, Obama didn't use the word "energetic" to describe the nation, did he? No, he did not. (openly cries). Also I missed the Dozens he dropped on Trump. Otherwise... Please do take the time to view the rest of the blog and see the other articles I've written, thank ye.

Tuesday night (tomorrow) will be Obama's last appearance before the whole floor of Congress - barring any special session - as President of the United States.

As such, I have high hopes - like before - for what we will likely get from a President who has demonstrated the last eight months he has no more f-cks to give.

1) "The state of our American union is ENERGETIC." I'm sick of using the word 'strong' every speech. It's called a thesaurus people, and they have them online and YOU STILL need to diversify your word usage, a'right? Yeah.

2) "To the National Shoot-Everybody Association, you know what? I'm going to play into your conspiracy bullsh-t about me coming to take all your guns. You terified about that? Fine. I AM GONNA COME TAKE YOUR GUNS. So there. I swear right here and now before 240 million American who wants universal background checks and stronger gun safety laws, that I will personally come and take all assault rifles and sidearms owned by all 4.5 million members of the NRA. And I will come and do this, you gun-worshiping death dealers, between the hours of 3:47 PM to 10:18 AM, just so that you paranoid f-ckers will miss half your work day, stay up all afternoon and all night long defending your metal gods of death and NEVER get any sleep in. So SUCK IT, Wayne LaPierre, you will never know the comfort of your own bed again."

3) "To the idiots holed up in a federal wildlife park in Oregon, did you think that thing through? You're doing it in winter, without fresh socks for God's sake, out in the middle of nowhere where I can get that secret Clinton death squad that owes me a few more favors to make it look like you all froze to death during a blizzard. All we gotta do is wait, suckers, and you will never know what hit you."

4) "To anybody who thinks that Trump's Wall isn't going to end up costing the United States TRILLIONS of dollars and ruin MILLIONS of American lives, you are getting conned by the biggest scam since Bernie Madoff."

5) "That said, you got a Powerball ticket for this Wednesday? Damn, the jackpot is gonna be up to 1.5 Billion for certain, even when you get only half of that in the lump sum payment that's a lot of money to spend on Lego Star Wars sets."

6) "It's been confirmed that there is NOT a special clause in the sales contract for the Wu-Tang's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album that allows Wu-Tang and Bill Murray to steal it back within an 8-year time frame. However, if the Wu and Bill want to pull that heist, I will have pardons ready for them if they reclaim that vinyl disc and bring it safely to the Oval Office in person so we can party to it."

7) "I want to announce it here first that Cuba has agreed to full and open elections with a multi-party race, partial reparations to private property owners from the 1950s to help resolve that issue, and allowing Disney to build a Star Wars themed park in Gitmo. One of the last vestiges of the Cold War will end. That does mean we are going to need to move the remaining Gitmo prisoners to federal prisons here in the U.S. right away. We will do this, because man, when Disney wants a park built, they will get it. YOU DO NOT WANT TO F-CK WITH DISNEY. YOU DO NOT F-CK WITH DISNEY. They go after day care centers, for God's sake..."

8) "What's this I'm hearing about you Republicans wanting YET ANOTHER government shutdown? How many times you gonna break Congress with these shutdowns that cost MORE MONEY than what you're claiming to save before American voters realize that's ALL YOU DO up here is break sh-t?"

9) "If you crazies want some new Constitutional amendments up here, why not an amendment for universal voter registration so you all can't lie about voter fraud being a problem? Why not an amendment making it so that elections are required to stay open for voters until a confirmed super-majority of voters have done so, in order to combat terrible turnout for half our elections? Why not an amendment for better financial and banking regulation so we can reduce the threat of personal debt and financial instability? These are amendment ideas worth passing for the common good."

42) "What did I tell you last State of the Union about 2015? WE HAD SOME AWESOME MOVIES LAST YEAR! Age of Ultron, loved it. J.J.? That work you did on The Force Awakens, damn dawg you got mad skills, you made us love the series again. Daisy Ridley, you stole our hearts, all of America loves you and wishes you were the cool sister we deserved growing up. Okay, Jurassic World, at least you had dinosaurs fighting and that Star-Lord guy leading a pack of raptors. And, above all, I wasn't expecting Fury Road to be THAT EXCELLENT! That was... sniff... George Miller, my man, you are a visionary GOD carrying each and every one of us to the gates of Valhalla. And so here we are, we got Captain America Civil War coming, we got another X-Men, we got a sick Deadpool coming out, we got a female Ghostbusters, we got a Trek movie for the 50th anniversary of the whole thing, we got Batman and Superman and I gotta say it looks like Gal Gadot is gonna kick ass as Wonder Woman. I will say it again, this is a great time to be alive as a geek! GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES, AND LIVE LONG AND PROSPER! (sprays mouth with silver food coloring) WITNESS IT!"

You think we can at least get one Force Awakens shout-out? I'm hoping.

Another Update on Florida Gerrymandering January 2016

I've been keeping up with the redistricting issues here in the Sunshine State, and while the map for Congressional districts had been settled awhile back the Florida Senate redistricting was still up for grabs.

(I'm thinking the redistricting for the Florida House is harder to argue against due to how many districts exist, about 120 right? I haven't seen any court cases involving it, if there is please let me know)

The previous noise was how the state legislature couldn't handle redrawing its own map because it meant newer districts forced overlaps for sitting state senators. And nobody - even a few Democrats from what I heard - wanted to give up their safe seats.

Before New Year's Eve in 2015, the court approved the map proposed by the voting rights groups that challenged the 2012 map - as the Lege's proposal had conflict issues - which is supposed to reflect a more compact population-based sorting. There's no image file for me to include so you're going to need to click that link to view the PDF file instead.

Seeing that map, I'm conflicted. There are still unusual shapes in that plan, and if you look closely you'll see South St. Petersburg splits across the bay to East Tampa to form District 19, which is something I don't think the fair districts are supposed to allow. It looks like they ignored to make the districts to conform to county lines as best as possible, with some counties like Pasco and Polk and Orange carved out between different Districts unable to form their own. They couldn't make one district for all of Pinellas, or Pasco, or Orange?

I know there's a need to create minority-majority districts, but the map-makers should be smart enough to figure out how to reach those numbers without splitting counties and cities apart like that.

Maybe it's me being too obsessive-compulsive.

Maybe it's the need to add a few more senate seats for the growing population this state's had over the decades. The modern state constitution was passed in 1968, back when the population (just above 6 million) wasn't anywhere near 18 million people: while 120 House seats seem proper (we can live with that number going up to maybe 160, but 200 seems too many), 40 Senate seats does not (bumping it to an even 50 might help).

In the meanwhile, gotta live with the maps we get. With this resolved the county Elections offices should be issuing new Voter ID cards with new district information. And here's hoping the Democrats decide to challenge every seat this year instead of letting half of them go free of charge to a state Republican party that can't even gerrymander properly.

The Nightmare Scenarios of the 2016 Election Cycle

Here are the thoughts that ought to bother you at 3 AM in the morning.

Trump Wins Republican Nomination

We're now into January of the actual year of election, and Trump is STILL leading in too many early state polls to dismiss this possibility outright.

For all the talk about Trump's supporters are LIKELY Far Right voters rather than ACTUAL overall Republican voters, one has to remember that previous turnout by likely voters weren't that high because they - the Far Right base - didn't have anyone they felt like backing. This cycle, they do (not just Trump but also Carson and Cruz). That may well mean those LIKELY voters WILL become ACTUAL voters this February / March to the detriment of the rest of the GOP.

Even if voter turnout is meager or average for the Primaries, the odds are good the Actual voter turnout will scale accordingly to the Likely polling numbers (the turnout in 2012 in New Hampshire for example played out like that). So if Trump is leading in New Hampshire - I don't count Iowa, the caucusing system is questionable IMHO and rarely predicts the final winner - throughout January and February, he's getting the Actual voters he needs.

This is a nightmare for the party Establishment, and you can tell by the number of alarmist articles coming from the conservative talking heads having emotional breakdowns on their editorial columns.

This is because Trump is winning over the Republican base with open xenophobia, racism, and hostile ignorance. And his success is making it easier for other candidates - Ted Cruz for example - to play that card as well. This makes it harder for the party as a whole to pivot away from this open display of hatred when it comes time post-convention to pander to the more moderate/centrist voters the GOP needs to win the general election in November.

By the by: Anyone who thinks Trump can "tone it down" when it comes time for the general election has not been watching this spotlight hog these last 30 years. And anyone who thinks Trump can win over general voters is overlooking how negative too many people view Trump: his Unfavorable numbers are THE worst of any candidate.

Back to the topic about a toxic platform. Past experience about reaction against this xenophobia is our guide: At the state level, California was a reliably Conservative state that had a steady, well-backed Republican Party in the 1990s. Then the governor Pete Wilson ran a harsh anti-immigrant campaign that backfired, as Digby points out in that Salon article linked earlier:

But California Republicans in 1994 were a lot like Trump voters all over the country are today. That is: They were utterly convinced that a vast wave of immigrants from Mexico were pouring over the border to obtain free medical care, welfare benefits and schooling, even as they stole all the good paying jobs from real Americans. They allegedly did all this while stubbornly refusing to learn English.

The Republicans were so worked up, they put an initiative on the ballot now known as the notorious Proposition 187... But while Republicans were high-fiving each other over their great victory, the court issued an immediate stay of the proposition and the Latino community in California began to protest and organize. And they also began, in great numbers, to vote Democratic. The fallout from Prop 187 and a few subsequent anti-immigrant proposals decimated the Republican Party in California. In 1994 the GOP held 26 of 52 (50 percent) U.S. House seats in the California delegation. Today they hold just 15 of 53 (28 percent). The Republican nominee has not won California in the last 6 presidential elections.

I'd also add at the state level, the California Legislature is now decisively Democratic and is projected to stay safely Dem into the next decade. All because the state-level Republicans pissed off the Hispanic voting base and lost that bloc for at least two - now maybe three - generations.

And now with Trump (and others), the national-level Republicans are poised to piss off the Hispanic voting bloc that can well keep Blue (Dem) leaning states with significant Hispanic populations (California, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico) fully aligned to Democratic turnout, and maybe switch Red (GOP) leaning states with significant Hispanic or pro-immigrant populations (Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, maybe even Texas) to Blue in a big way.

If Trump is the candidate for the GOP after the Cleveland convention, the Republicans could lose Texas in the general election this November 2016. If they lose Texas - currently the largest populated state that the Republicans can count on (having lost California and New York and barely any hope for Florida, Ohio, or Illinois) - the GOP is done as a national party.

The other thing causing night-time jitters for the Republican leadership is how a Trump campaign could affect the down-ticket campaigns for the Senate. A high number of vulnerable seats for Republicans - those who won in 2010 over the Tea Party backlash during a low turnout midterm - are up for grabs in too many Democrat-friendly states in likely-high turnout Presidential cycle. The predictors are currently thinking the Republicans can maintain a narrow hold on the Senate: however, Trump Primary voters may well vote for Far Right xenophobic Senate candidates as well, ones that can turn off certain states' more moderate voters in the general elections.

Just think of John McCain in Arizona: he may make it seem as though that state's seat is safely R, but he's getting challenged in the Primary by a Tea Party Trump-lite candidate and is already losing in the polls (something incumbents rarely do).  A more extremist candidate even in Arizona could hurt: unlike House campaigns where gerrymandered districts are safe no matter how extremist a candidate could get, the Senate voting is across a state that has more varied voters able to vote outside the party lines. Just think of the damage Todd Akin and other ignorant candidates in 2012 did to Republican chances then, and change out ignorance over rape and replace it with hostility towards Latinos. That's what Trump can bring to the entire GOP platform.

And yet - despite the likelihood that Trump's race-baiting can turn off voters - if Trump wins the nomination he STILL stands a decent chance of winning the Presidency anyway. Let's be blunt: it's a Two-Party nation and whomever is running for D or R is gonna win the White House. I won't say it's a 50-50 chance Trump wins, but if he's on the ballot in November and enough Republicans stay true to their school and show up to vote the party line while the Democrats don't then Trump wins.

This becomes a national nightmare. Trump will be the least-qualified inexperienced President in recent memory if not ever. Having won entirely on bombast and bullying, that will set the tone of how his administration will behave. The few policy positions he did run on - an insanely expensive border wall, a trade war with China - could be implemented while the Republican agenda - mass deregulation, mass tax cuts, repealing Obamacare - will bring back most of the worst excesses of the Dubya administration.

This is worst-case scenario. Please pray this never happens.

Jeb Wins Republican Nomination

This is a nightmare scenario for a variety of reasons.

For starters, his current polling just don't add up. He's mostly in FOURTH place behind Trump, Carson, Cruz, and/or Rubio (and in one or two places behind Christie). Again, while polling of Likely doesn't translate into Actual voter support, that lack of love among Likely voters is bound to translate into low turnout among the Actual ones.

Another item of note is Jeb's Unfavorables: He's got one of the highest negatives among Republican voters towards a Republican candidate. If he wins enough Primaries it's going to come against the fact too many of his own party's voters just don't like him.

So for Jeb to win the nomination, it's going to have to happen one way: a contested "brokered" convention in July. That means no one got the 50-percent-plus-one delegate count to win outright, or worse someone *cough* Trump *cough* did get enough delegates but somehow they refuse to cast their votes for him, leaving that convention in chaos.

For all of Jeb's failures as a candidate so far, he has one advantage the other candidates don't: that damn Bush family of his happens to maintain a lot of political pull within the Republican ranks. The voters may not like him but the deep-pocket owners of the GOP do.

This becomes a nightmare because the odds are high Jeb won't be anywhere near enough delegates to position himself as the obvious Establishment candidate for the convention to back. He's FOURTH PLACE with no sign he's secretly getting enough Actual voters to win Primaries. He would NOT be the clear choice of the party's faithful, and yet the Establishment will ignore that voter base to appease themselves. The only way this works is if Jeb is in Second: If Jeb gets the nomination while candidates with more delegates are locked out - the way polls are going that would be Trump, Cruz, Rubio and/or Christie (I doubt Carson will stick the whole run) - there will be hell on the convention floor. It will be open civil war between the voters and the party leaders.

Jeb's win would likely come at the expense of Trump, whose threat to leave and run a Third Party campaign is still there and viable an option if he does lead with more delegates (meaning a sizable support base) and still loses the convention. Trump's separate run would break the Republican Party in two and divide enough popular votes to prevent the GOP from winning enough Electoral votes. Any effect Trump would have pulling Dems to him would be less than his effect among Republicans (think Perot's campaigns hurting the GOP in 1992).

And Trump will do that if the convention is rigged against him: his Id (more than his Ego) would compel him to run even if he doesn't win. All he has to do is win Second place in the November election over Jeb and the Republican Party, an act that would embarrass the party Establishment for decades. That does beg the question, why WOULD the Establishment risk alienating their own like that if they rig the convention to favor Jeb? Because if the Bushes - and yes, they are this obsessed with winning - want it, they'll take it. And convince themselves and their backers it was for the greater good. Even if it wrecks the Republican party for another decade.

The other way this is a nightmare is if Jeb wins the nomination AND wins the Presidency despite being a terrible campaigner. Because it will be the Dubya mess all over again.

Cruz Wins Republican Nomination

So let's say Trump fizzles out as the pundits and pollsters predict. We're still talking about someone campaigning with over 30 percent support among the Republican base. Where will all those voters go when they no longer have Trump to lead them and when Jeb is such a wuss?

This is why the chatter about Cruz is dead serious about him likely winning the nomination. He's playing to the same crowds as Trump with essentially the same anti-immigrant racist talking points, doing it with more style and panache avoiding most of the criticisms hitting Trump.

This becomes a nightmare for the Republicans because 1) a Cruz nomination means the party will be stuck with that anti-immigration stance as a platform no matter how hard they try to pander back to the middle. It will be a rehash of why a Trump nomination is troubling; 2) Cruz is one of the least-liked candidates among his own party's elites in ages. He's burned so many bridges in Congress pushing a selfish agenda clearly aimed at his Presidential run that there's chatter the party leadership won't support Cruz if he gains that nomination.

The odds that Cruz can win over the independent or moderate voters needed in the general are not high: his grandstanding in Congress does not play well to those types of voters who prefer "bipartisan" congeniality at that level. The Republicans may think his nomination over Trump would be a dream, but the likely result - losing the White House bid - would still be a nightmare. Not as destructive to the party's overall future, but close.

Rubio Wins Republican Nomination

How does this turn into a nightmare scenario? If Rubio does win the nomination via Primary voters (currently not working), that's a good sign for the Establishment types that one of "their" guys was acceptable to their voter base, and the mainstream media is keen enough on Rubio happening that they will gleefully fall in line to whatever platform he's shilling.

This turns into a nightmare scenario in two ways. First much like the Jeb nightmare, if this happens via that contested convention: despite any Primary wins Trump can claim, a rigged convention (where the Establishment goes with Rubio instead of Jeb due to Jeb's terrible Unfavorables) would cause a similar civil war. The nightmare kicks in when (not if) Trump storms off to run as a Third Party candidate in response to that rigged convention.

Second, Rubio is just not the "safe" candidate his media cheerleading squad thinks he is. He panders to and works with the Far Right as much as Cruz and Trump does, only from the direction of the evangelical rather than open race-baiting (even then he's gone way too quiet on immigration). He's not going to be safe on a lot of the issues moderate/centrist/independent voters look after. And his lack of performance in the Senate will become a fatal flaw: those moderate/centrist voters prefer a candidate who shows up for the job he's been hired to do.

Granted, among the nightmare scenarios this is the one to least bother the Republican party as a whole. But it can happen...

Christie Wins Republican Nomination, Gets Arrested on Corruption Charges Afterward

This has been the only real surprise for me this campaigning preseason, how Christie has stayed in the race as a viable candidate even with all the marks - BridgeGate - against him. The polls are starting to favor him, and the conservative media is at least speaking about him with pleasing tones. If Jeb and Rubio are not the Establishment's preferred choices, Christie will be.

Problem is, Christie is under investigation for a few things not just BridgeGate. There's a series of investigations into how the relief aid for Hurricane Sandy funds had been handled since 2014, and the possibility of either of those inquiries turning into indictments / arrests are plausible enough to create concern. While enough about BridgeGate is out and most of that doesn't touch Christie, there's enough smoke surrounding the Sandy relief aid to consider the possibility of a real fire to this story.

It would be a nightmare to nominate Christie - either with a genuine delegate count or a "broken" convention - only to have the New Jersey legislature or the federal Department of Justice to file criminal charges the next day. Granted the Republicans would raise a stink about it being a "Librul Conspiracy" aimed at "rigging" the general election, but criminal charges are a serious matter and voters won't ignore that.

Of course, Republicans aren't the only ones having nightmares this Primary season.

Hillary Wins Democratic Nomination

The likeliest scenario among all candidates, the one the party leadership can live with - because a lot of them are in her pocket - and yet still one fraught with peril for the Democratic Party.

For all the positives that Hillary can bring to the table, she brings far too many negatives. She has Unfavorable polling numbers equal to either Trump or Jeb. There are enough Far Left voters among Democrats who have grievances with her - that she's too cozy to Wall Street and Big Business, that she's ignored liberal issues for too long - that they can refuse to turn for the general election the way they refuse to turn out for midterms.

Hillary also comes with a big bulls-eye on her back for the Far Right Noise Machine media will aim at 24/7 with a wave of mudslinging unparalleled, likely far worse than anything they've slung at her husband Bill in the 1990s and at Obama in 2008 and 2012. You think the vitriol for Obama was bad among Birthers? Hillary's going to get hit with every conceivable insult and conspiracy accusation dreamed up the last twenty years. Granted, the way the Republicans are today with their Politics of Personal Destruction any Democratic candidate is going to get slimed, but Hillary... hoo boy. The Benghazi hearing was just a taste of what's to come. There are still people accusing her of murdering Vince Foster, and THAT was twenty years and three separate investigations that disproved every conspiracy theory.

The reason mudslinging is damaging to a general election is because it drives down voter turnout - especially among independent voters - to some degree. No matter if people believe the accusations or not: They tune out and decide the entire process isn't worth the hassle. It leaves the voting to the extremists who vote no matter what, and that can be risky to the Democrats if their extremist Far Left refuses to come out in sufficient numbers for Hillary.

If the general election comes down to it being a choice between Trump - with his high Unfavorables - and Hillary - with her high Unfavorables - we could witness one of the lowest voter turnouts for a Presidential election in history. And that does not favor the Democrats - Dems outnumber GOP voters when they show up to vote, the cowards - and can hurt their down-ticket chances with Senate campaigns much the same way Trump could hurt the Republicans.

Bernie wins Democratic Nomination

This becomes a nightmare for the Democratic Party on several levels.

It would come at the expense of THEIR Establishment candidate in Hillary Clinton, which would cause some disarray and chaos within the party apparatus. While they can rally behind Bernie Sanders if he wins a clean fight, it's an outcome that would cause dread over whether Bernie can win the general election.

Bernie is running as one of the more Far Left candidates this nation has seen since George McGovern or Walter Mondale. And THOSE were experiences the Democrats do not want to experience again (granted, Nixon won in 1972 because of dirty tricks, but still...). Despite evidence that the American electorate is swinging Left again after three decades of the Reagan Era, this is still a relatively conservative nation. There are still moderate/centrist voters who do not think along the lines of socialism that Bernie does. His unflinching stance on Universal Health Care is a tough sell to a nation that's only just starting to like (barely) ObamaCare. While Bernie is showing strength in campaign contributions outside of Big Business, if the pro-business players in the Democratic ranks decide to withhold funds it can hurt the party's ability to keep up with the Republicans concerning ads, staffing, expenditures, etc. These are factors that would give the DNC severe migraines.

The only way Bernie can win in the general election is against a clear Far Right candidate - Trump or Cruz - who can't appeal to those moderate/independent voters. Or against Jeb, because seriously Jeb sucks (and Bernie would break the dynastic struggle between Bush vs. Clinton).

I Win The General Election

If I can get 60 million write-in votes, that would cause nightmares for the Republicans and Democrats. Still, it's doable, right people? Yes? Hello?

Gun Safety Will Not Happen In the US Until There Is a Tragedy Far More Powerful Than The NRA Fearmongering

This week, President Obama is trying to do what he can about reducing the horrifying number of gun deaths we have in this nation. But it won't be enough.

For all of Obama's efforts to use Executive Orders to tighten regulations on gun sales, it won't be enough.

There are still too many ways for angry, frustrated people (mostly men) to purchase firearms at will, too many ways for them to express that rage in the worst ways with guns in hand and souls long gone.

Minor tweaks in how those guns get into people's hands - force all licensed gun sellers to perform background checks on all purchasers (trying to close the "hobbyist" loophole), add more staff to the FBI and ATF to monitor gun sales and traffic (trying to reduce the black market practice of buying guns cheap in a loose-restriction state and shipping them to places like Chicago where sales are tightly restricted), and have states submit mental-health records to the background system (to reduce the risk of angered, unstable people from having guns) - will still carry enough wriggle room for gun nuts to slip through the net and proceed to their targets (families, ex-lovers, those they hate) with the lethal power to end lives.

It's been noted before, by too many others. After the Newtown Massacre, when we had a school devastated and classrooms wiped out by a single gunman, when it seemed most likely the nation was poised to enact stronger regulations like they do in every other First World nation... we did nothing.

The NRA set their Fear Machine in motion and scared Congress into doing nothing. The NRA set their worshipers in motion to buy up even more guns and start strutting in public to intimidate entire communities into silence.

The results have been the increasing awareness that the United States suffers from a wave of mass shootings that happen on a daily basis... and an increasing despair that this is the New Normal, that the body count is The Price We Pay For Our Freedoms The NRA's Profit Margin.

That power of the NRA extends to the gun manufacturers themselves, to the point the two groups are intertwined now. As pointed out by Adam L over on Balloon Juice:

Your idea will not happen. Not because its not a good idea, but because the gun manufacturers have been punished for previous baby steps. Bill Ruger, the eponymous head of Ruger firearms, made some overtures about banning high capacity magazines. Twelve years after his death and there are commenters all over the firearms websites that won’t buy a Ruger - one of the few companies where all of their guns are made in the US - because of this betrayal...

...Smith and Wesson leadership was briefly aligned with the Clinton Administration on gun control and safety measures. The backlash almost put them out of business. They had badly misread what the response would be. Those in support of the Clinton Administration’s efforts and Smith and Wesson’s willingness to go along don’t buy guns. Those that do almost drove the company into bankruptcy by boycotting their products...

No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished...

As long as the NRA gets their money, they will feed that Fear. That Fear Machine will trump every law, every form of common sense and common decency in our nation. We've allowed that fear to excuse away shooting politicians, and churches, and movie theaters, and shopping malls, and schools. All our schools.

This form of absolutism in the real world is unsustainable. The pressure by the pro-gun crowd to keep buying more, keep exposing more people to the risks of gun violence, is going to build because no one will put the brakes on it lest the NRA throw a conniption. The odds of another Newtown, another Virginia Tech, another San Bernardino (where the threat of Islamic terrorism got trumped by the NRA Fear Machine, for God's sake) keeps going up with the likelihood of ever greater body counts occurring.

Until the undeniable happens, a tragedy so large that the blood spilled from it drowns us in horror. But by then it will be too late for those killed, for those who have been killed the last 10 20 40 years we've let the gun nuts reign over all.

We are not safe at all.

The Revolution of 2016 Will Not Be Organized

Who planned this thing?

Reports are coming out now that the armed thugs seizing control of a national park building in Eastern Oregon are sending out Facebook and Twitter requests to fellow "militias" to ship them snacks and cold weather supplies like socks.

Ignoring the irony of having anti-government gunmen call on their allies to use the US postal service to ship them supplies, the sheer ineptitude of mismanagement is on full display here.

It's like, "Hey Blaine, it's cold where's the socks?" "Uhhhhhh, back at the hotel?" "DAMMIT BLAINE YOU HAD ONE JOB."

This is the one thing you never wanna do to a revolution: You NEVER set yourself up for immediate mockery on social media.

I didn't make this: I need to cite the person who did

What was it Eisenhower said about how the military operates? "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." That means the plan you have to attack can fall apart when the operation goes live - your enemies respond in ways you didn't expect, or external forces and accidents interrupt key steps - but if you think ahead on your supplies and support and contingencies (the planning) you can survive the confusing fog of war and win the battle.

There's a reason why the best armies throughout history are the best-supplied ones.

When the US armed forces go out into war, you're damn well certain we are going with enough socks to last the winter.

Bill Mauldin

If you revolutionary wannabes were serious about this "protest" to seize a federal building in a seditious act, you'd have planned it out better. For starters, NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER WHEN IT'S FREAKING COLD IN THE MOUNTAINS FOR GOD'S SAKE.

It's like they'll want to blitz the Russian steppes next February for sh-ts and giggles.

Here's the deal, you militia morans, you Y'allQaeda insurgents, next time someone offers to organize an armed uprising somewhere, you should ask that person three things:

1) Will there be drinks and Doritos?
2) Will there be pleasant distractions such as a month's supply of DVDs of our favorite shows?
3) Do we need to pack extra underwear and wool socks for, oh I dunno, FREAKING WINTER WEATHER?
4) Will you actually plan this sh-t out? Wait, this is four. FOUR Questions you need to be asking, plus if there's working bathroom facilities on the premises and... FIVE... FIVE QUESTIONS that needs be asked, plus whether or not we need to bring our own trash bags to pick up after ourselves and... ah dammit.

Woodstock 1969 was better organized than this. I'm not saying that in a good way.

Well, 2016 Escalated Quickly

You'd think in the post-holiday down-time that is the month of January there'd be a slowdown in the wingnut craziness of this nation. You know, the calm before the storm that's going to be the 2016 primary season unlocking its ballot boxes starting this February.

Nope.

An armed militia took over a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon late Saturday and vows to occupy the outpost for years to protest the federal government’s treatment of a pair of ranchers facing prison time.

The occupation of a portion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 30 miles southeast of Burns, Ore., followed a peaceful march for ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, who are scheduled to report to federal prison in San Pedro, Calif., on Monday after being convicted of arson, according to the Oregonian.

Sigh. I'll go get a new desk panel for my IKEA workstand so I can /headdesk with a fresh pressed-wood sheet.

Thing is, the Hammonds are already planning to turn themselves in to authorities to serve out their sentences, and that they were part of a peaceful protest that happened earlier in the day, and so far don't seem to have anything to do with this seizure of federal parkland going on in their community's back yard. The Hammonds just issued a statement to the local media that basically said in one sentence "WTF you all doing, we don't want you doing this."

What's happening here is outside agitators showing up with their own anti-government greivances, and unable to garner a violent response from authorities so they can play the martyr they all decided to go pro-active and instigate a more direct means of confrontation to ensure they get that martyrdom.

The angry guys leading this terrorist act are all familiar anti-government faces: three of them are from the Bundy clan out in Nevada who started an armed confrontation with authorities over unpaid fees for using federal grazing lands. Like Coates noted back in 2014 these clowns are a perfect example of privileged whites armed to the teeth to defend their criminal acts, who are then let off the hook because the government fears instigating another Waco (because THAT led to a lot of innocent people dying in terror acts like Oklahoma City).

So far, the response has been minimal by authorities, mostly local cops and national park workers monitoring from a distance. However, the lack of a more urgent response - the unusual lack of locking down the surroundings to prevent people going in or out, no barricading efforts, no word about the National Guard getting called in - is telling in its under-reaction. We've got the local communities shutting down their schools in panic, but that's been about it.

Twitter is heating up with observations about how Black protests over police shootings (Black Lives Matter) get immediate SWAT response with tear-gas and rubber bullets and batons, but a bunch of armed white guys illegal seize federal property - it falls under Seditious Conspiracy (18 US Code s2384) and carries 20 years as a felony - and everyone in a position of authority are moving like they're swimming in molasses.

Right now, there's no shooting or deaths reported. But what happens when this carries onward, from days into weeks? We've got a company of armed angry white guys, calling out to their fellow angry white guys to rally to their banner, and the ever-increasing likelihood that this is going to turn into a shootout with a body count and the Far Right enraged to the point of open warfare.

Just how far into the madness are the political and media elites who can do something about this to tone it down and lessen the anger - the Far Right Noise Machine - willing to let this all fall?

Thoughts on Numbers and Maps 2016 Edition

(Update: Hello again and Happy New Year to the Crooks & Liars readers. Thanks again to Mike's Blog Round-Up and to BlueGal in particular for linking this article there. Please take some time to visit the rest of the blog, especially the current stuff tracking the crazy situation in Oregon. If anyone can tell me where the "Please Send Snacks" Gadsden flag came from, please let me know via Twitter @PaulWartenberg or here in comments. Danke.)

I'm just gonna start throwing numbers out here for the 2016 election:

Census numbers as of 2014 (click on the XLS file links to open spreadsheets) tells us there's about 142 million registered voters. Out of a citizenry over 18 years of age - minimum age to vote - of 219 million, that about 64 percent of the population able to vote.

It is more difficult to determine actual voter registration by party because only 28 states (and DC) allow people to register a party preference. If we go by national polling self-identification - for Gallup in July 2015 it was 46 Democrat 41 Republican - and put that as a percentage to 142 million, you get 65 million Dems and 58 million GOP.

But that's not including NPA/Third party, so we need to include that... gotta find the chart for that ah here it is... this is weird in that it says 43 percent identify as Independent while 30 percent are Democrat and 26 percent are Republican. But that normally doesn't mesh with real-world numbers: actual voter registration in Florida for example has the party identification about 38 D- 34 R - 27 N. It's possible that due to the states that DO NOT require voters to identify to a party, most registered voters would think themselves independent, but that may not reflect on their direct enrollment to either major party at the state level.

If we take the Gallup poll that includes Indy voters at face value: that would be 61 million Indy/Third party voters, 42 million Democratic voters, 37 million Republican voters. That doesn't entirely reflect actual voter turnout...

If we go by the 2012 voter turnout demographics for the Presidential election by Party, it looks like this (via that Wiki article):

Party
Democrats	92	7	1	38
Republicans	6	93	1	32
Independents	45	50	5	29

That table demographic if applied to the 2012 voter turnout - 126 million give or take a Cook County gravesite - 48 million Democrats voted, 40 million Republicans voted, 36 million Indy/Third voted. THAT seems more realistic (and more shocking, that so few Indy voters at 61 million self-identified as such and only 36 million showed... tsk).

Make it a given (axiom) that the party members will vote heavily for their own party (which we see in that table) regardless of the year/candidate, it comes down to how the Independents/NPAs are going to vote. If the Democrats can keep (or even improve on) their 45-50 percentage to Republicans - close split of the non-aligned voters - they can pretty much keep their overall advantage of 38-to-32 percent total voters.

The trick then for both major parties in 2016 is to not only appeal to their base - as always - but to get enough of the Independents to swing to their side. The Republicans did get 50 percent of the Indy vote but it wasn't enough to win enough states or the popular vote overall. The Democrats just have to keep the 45 percent of Indy votes they appeased last cycle while keeping their own base appeased as well.

By that logic, the Democrats have the easier path. The Republicans have to do a better job of appealing to NPA/Indy voters... which is next-to-impossible if their party platform is an extremist one. By an October 2015 WSJ/NBC News poll, self-identified Independent voters viewed Republicans as "out-of-mainstream" on five (finance, abortion, gay marriage, immigration, climate change) of six issues (the only mainstream view being about guns). If that view remains fixed by October 2016, there's little to shift Indy voters more to the GOP to change those 2012 numbers.

If we go by map it looked like this:

from the 270towin.com site

This is why the Democrats are focusing on repeating 2012 turnout as best as possible: it not only guarantees the popular vote win but also the Electoral College win. As long as the states that voted for Obama still vote for Hillary/Bernie, the Democrats keep control of the White House. Link to an interactive map to make your own prediction, by the by.

If there are any numbers that should bother both major parties, it's this: that same October 2015 poll I listed earlier also charted the Unfavorable numbers for the major candidates in both primaries.

from Wall Street Journal/NBC News Oct. 2015 polling

It's interesting that poll did not include Bernie Sanders' favorables as a contrast to Hillary, then again the media elites are taking it as a given Hillary will win the Democratic nomination. Still, it shows the two leading names - Clinton and Trump - at near-majority hatedoms. Apply the Machiavellian maxim of "whether it is better to be loved or feared, the real trick is to avoid being hated", those unfavorable numbers bode ill for voter turnout. People won't show if their choices are between those they hate. Republican alternatives don't fare much better as Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz are both over 30 percent unfavorables - that's a solid no-vote cutoff line IMHO - while Carson and Rubio are at least under 20 percent hater status (which does explain why the media keeps thinking Rubio's gonna happen).

So what we're going to see in the 2016 election cycle is this: massive pandering by the Republican candidates to win their voting base, and then utter failure to swing back to the Moderate/Centrist facade because they caved too far Right Wing; utter silence by the Democratic Party as they try to keep a low profile, keep their far Left Wing happy with table scraps, and play to that Moderate/Centrist location to win over enough Indy voters to secure enough states for Electoral College wins.

Expect a lot of despair and frustration over the national ticket well into March when the Primaries actually kick in.

Thank GOD there's the NFL Rookie Draft in April to keep me distracted.  Tampa Bay needs a lot of help at Defensive End and Cornerback this off-season, and Free Agency moves at DE have not panned out...

How 2016 Is Gonna Be a Weight On The Soul

Charles Pierce at Esquire pretty much sums up in one sentence how this year is gonna roll, son:

For the very first time that I can remember, I am completely revolted by the prospect of covering a presidential campaign.

I feel ya.

There is going to be a lot of storm and fury signifying nothing but desperately stirring up voter anger as though that is the only motivator for people to vote. The emotional relevance of voting has overwhelmed common sense and common decency. We're going to hear and see a lot of offensive ads and tweets and spam mails from a lot of Active-Negative types campaigning for the Presidency... on BOTH sides of the ballot (I've made my evaluations of the Republicans - Nixonian A-Ns - and Hillary Clinton - LBJ style A-N - already).

The only way this ends well is with massive voter turnout, which draws in a lot of moderate voters who can affect the down-ballot votes in Senate and House (and State lege) campaigns. So even with the noise of hell and horror buzzing in our ears, we Americans need to remind ourselves that, and get the damn vote out, okay people?

There's more to be said today on other issues. Stay tuned.

Okay, So I've Been Thinking About This New Year's Project

First off: HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone this 2016 and OH GOD IT'S AN ELECTION YEAR THE MADNESS IS GONNA GET WORSE. There, got that out of the way. I can write about that in greater detail as the chaos deepens.

Moving on...

One idea that's gotten into my head is putting together a set of the blog articles I've written on this site and getting it published in print form.

The practical reasons aren't entirely there, if I have to argue against this idea. I've developed a bit of a readership - Hi, everybody! - but it's not like there's a clamor for me to get something wrapped up in a book with a nice hardcover and a fresh off-the-press scent.

In terms of marketability, I'm not entirely credible as an expert on some of the political and social issues I discuss here. It's not like I'm a PhD in Public Administration or a constant presence on a cable channel talk show. Anything I have as 'experience' is a degree in Journalism (just not a career in it), and eight years worth of ranting on a blog with about 1500 views a month on average (unless Crooks and Liars promotes an article on the Mike's Blog Round-Up, which bumps up the monthly stats to about 3500, which is why I'm always ever so grateful). It's not exactly something to burnish as credentials to get a book like this on a Barnes & Noble store shelf.

One idea I've been having is taking the articles I've written about Obama's tenure as President - during which most of my blogging's been done - and putting them together as a sort of pro-Obama critique of his administration. One of the things that keeps bothering me at the library are all these anti-Obama diatribes getting shelved and checked out. I can count on one hand the number of pro-Obama books I've come across. I just feel there's a need for a book that would point out the positives of the presidency and the follies/fallacies - my Shoelace Hypothesis - of the haters.

I could focus on just the overall craziness of the American political landscape. One of those "this is what the nation was like, future generations" diaries that were so popular in the 19th Century. Only with more profanity.

(The real reason I'm thinking of this is because I overpurchased a Print-on-Demand book service about 10 years ago, it's still sitting there, and I really want to get that taken care of as quickly and without consuming any more time away from other projects as possible)

I dunno. To the seven regular readers of this blog, is any of this a good idea? You think this has merit? Leave a comment please.

What to Expect in 2016

This IS after all A Year of Election, this coming 2016.

Predicting how it will all play out is ridiculous, because the future isn't set yet from our perspective and anything can change everything else. The best we can say for certain is that the Tampa Bay Bucs are going to draft in the top ten spots of the April rookie draft.

What I can say about 2016 with regards to politics is that:

• This is a year we'll find out of the polling numbers for the Republicans truly match the actual voter turnout results. They have before - within the margins of error - but this year the polls may be over-inflating Trump's numbers. Despite the facts that multiple polls show him leading by comfortable margins, and there's no real sign of him slipping out of First in the states that really matter (Trump can lose Iowa because that state is so skewed into social conservative thought it regularly votes the best Bible Thumper who ends up losing everywhere else), the pollsters are still thinking Trump really isn't going to get 30 or even 20 percent of the real votes.
• If the Republican primaries retain at least six candidates all the way through to the July convention in Cleveland, it will likely mean enough of them earned enough delegates to force it as a brokered convention... which will likely mean Jeb? wins the rigged nomination with the fewest ever delegates in political history.
• Republicans are going to go so overboard in voter suppression efforts that the federal courts may have to charge the whole party with civil rights violations.
• Marco Rubio is not going to happen.
• Hillary Clinton - despite the best efforts of Republicans to BENGHAZI her - will win enough state primaries by comfortable margins to secure the Democratic nomination. Sorry, Bernie, the numbers just aren't there for you. The question then becomes how to get enough Democrats eager and active enough to actually show up to goddamn vote.

What I can say about 2016 itself is that:

• Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice better NOT SUCK.
• Also, I really think the NFL is making a big mistake forcing - and they are - the San Diego Chargers to relocate to LA. Let the Raiders have that market, okay? Sheesh.
• Also, I need to market my ebooks better. 

Happy New Year to ye, and hope to see you in 2016.

A Tale Of Two Books (2015)

I need to get this review done before the year does.

I bought these two books at the same time.

This was back in July, when they were released to the public at roughly the same time.

Harper Lee's book was the more promoted and anticipated work. If you lived through high school American Lit, you read To Kill A Mockingbird. It was unavoidable: Lee's magnum opus about growing up in 1930s Deep South, a searing indictment of racism and cultural violence. It'd been rumored for decades that Lee wrote a follow-up book - it was in fact her original work, but her publisher talked her into re-writing with a focus on her main character's childhood and on father Atticus Finch - that had disappeared. It had actually been misplaced, and when it popped up there had been a bit of a legal and public scuffle over whether or not to publish Go Set a Watchman at all. Once the crying and the thou-shall-nots subsided, it went to market and broke several sales records... and quickly stirred up a whole new hornet's nest of trouble, which I shall discuss in short order.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' book had received some fanfare before release, due to Coates' growing reputation in the political punditry circles from his years of writing for The Atlantic and other publications, but his fame was nowhere near Lee's and his book Between the World and Me was a modest success compared to Watchman. But it received near-universal acclaim, won awards, and became the most-talked-about political essay - with people praising it or debunking it - of the year.

I bought both, and wanted to read both, and want to discuss both at the same time because both works deal with perhaps the key issue of the American idea of itself: the issue of racism, observed from differing points of view. From Lee's perspective as a liberal southern White of the then-Civil Rights struggle of the Fifties, and from Coates' perspective as an urban Black of the post-Civil Rights / Reagan era enduring the realities of a still-racist socio-political system.

Go Set A Watchman opens on the return of an adult Scout (aka Jean Louise) to the backwoods home town of Maycomb, Alabama. On a visit to see her aging father Atticus, Jean Louise confronts some of the still-standing cultural norms - the Jim Crow segregation - of the Deep South in the mid-1950s.

Watchman turns on a pivotal moment - Chapter 8 in fact - where Jean Louise discovers a shocking truth about her own father, someone she had viewed as a paragon among lesser mortals. Page 100 (of the hardcover) in fact, and Lee even gives us the time of hour when all illusions are shattered:

...Jean Louise was snatched from her quiet realm and left alone to protect her sensitive epidermis as best she could, on a humid Sunday afternoon at precisely 2:28 PM...

She discovers a pamphlet hidden among Atticus' reading materials. It's titled the Black Plague, and she takes some time to read it:

When she had finished, she took the pamphlet by one of its corners, held it like she would hold a dead rat by the tail, and walked into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet in front of her aunt.
"What is this thing?" she said.
Alexandra looked over her glasses at it. "Something of your father's."
Jean Louise stepped on the garbage can trigger and threw the pamphlet in.
"Don't do that," said Alexandra, "They're hard to come by these days."
(p.102)

That sound you heard when 500,000 readers got to those pages were a lot of hearts and souls getting broken all at the same time finding out that Atticus, dear old Atticus of To Kill A Mockingbird who stood up against the injustice of racism, was really racist all along.

It gets worse for Jean Louise as she hurries off to sneak into the meeting Atticus and his law partner Henry - and would-be suitor for Jean Louise - had scheduled that afternoon. She discovers it's a Citizen's Council meeting, and they're listening to a racist preacher espouse hatred to a nodding crowd. Confronting both Atticus and Henry about it, her outrage grows to the point where she plans on leaving the small town - and her family - forever.

Watchman has its flaws as a novel. You'd expect that from a publication that went to print without any editorial controls - we're essentially reading a rough draft because Lee's legal guardians were likely wary of having anyone "tweak" the novel and face accusations it wasn't really Lee's work - and with little realization how Watchman has continuity errors with Mockingbird. For starters, the centerpiece of Mockingbird - the rape trial involving Tom Robinson - turned out differently in Watchman where Atticus won the case - in 1930s Alabama?!?! - by arguing the "rape" was consensual. Someone with an eye towards making both novels fit their same histories would have fixed that to fit the more tragic ending in Mockingbird.

Where Watchman has a strength is its frank revelation of how pervasive racism was - still is - in the American Deep South.

One of the darker parts of the book is the final confrontation Jean Louise has, this time with her uncle - a doctor no less - who physically slaps her and then chews HER out for being prejudiced and narrow-minded judging her father. Domestic violence issue aside, a modern reader would notice the practice of "blaming the victim" here as Dr. Finch points out how Jean Louise has her own biases blinding her to how everyone has their own watchman, their own conscience, and that despite her realizations that Atticus is racist he still raised her to "set her own watchman" (hence the book title). The book ends with that tone, with Jean Louise reaching some kind of rapprochement with her father - Atticus expressing that's proud of her for standing her ground, Jean Louise admitting that Atticus has a point about the civil rights movement "moving too fast" and that she still loves him - although the events of the weekend have changed warmth to wariness.

It's a weak ending, but it's one that fits within the context of the 1950s when it was written. Racism was so ingrained into the cultural norms not only of the Deep South but across much of the nation. And it's not the blatant racism - the burning crosses, the hanging nooses - that Harper Lee is focusing on in this novel, it's the unthinking and reflexive kind that she brings up: the sharing of racist literature among the community, the public meetings of "councils" to discuss how to keep "outside" agitators like the NAACP from disrupting their segregated towns, the small-town mindset to "keep it in the community" and do things the way they've always been done.

To the modern reader, one who's lived through - been born after in a lot of cases - the civil rights movement of the 1960s and into the post-Jim Crow world of the late 20th Century, Watchman has a nostalgic aura but one that shines a light on the hypocrisy of that era. But it's also a light that shines on the hypocrisy of our own modern decade of the 21st Century... because Ta-Nehisi Coates' book highlights how all those sins Harper Lee wrote about back in the 1950s are still with us.

Between the World and Me is slightly misleading in that while the book is written in the style of letters from a father to his young son, BtWaM it's really Coates writing to the rest of us about how it was - how it still is - for a young Black child to grow up a Black man (or woman) in a United States where nearly every institution - the schools, the police, the law, the government, the businesses, the communities - viewed Black Americans as "property"... and how that property can be destroyed by the whims and needs of those institutions:

The new people are not original in this. Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies... But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal, America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist... I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American Exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much... (p. 8)

Coates' work is coming at a pivotal time in modern America, as awareness to how Black lives are suffering at this very moment:

I write you in your fifteenth year. I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help; that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store.  And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect. And you have seen men in the same uniforms pummel Marlene Pinnock, someone's grandmother, on the side of a road. And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction... Resent the body trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed... And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible. (p. 9)

Coates details for his teen son his own horrors of growing up, his own childhood fears, fully aware of the psychological breakdown that haunted his black community then and since. One incident in particular haunts Coates and appears often in BtWaM: the death of fellow Howard student Prince Jones, whose only crime was to drive through an affluent neighborhood in the DC metro and ended up shot to death by a county policeman (and outside of his jurisdiction). Angered by the injustice, Coates then had to come to terms with the facts that the cop who shot Jones was black, worked for a county government and chain of command with black leadership, and yet it all still marginalized and destroyed black lives. To this Coates sees a nation and a world of rules designed to take rather than liberate or restore:

This need to be always on guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of the essence... So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason... this is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile... It struck me that perhaps the defining feature of being drafted into the black race was the inescapable robbery of time, because the moments we spent readying the mask, or readying ourselves to accept half as much, could not be recovered... (p.90-91)

Where Lee's two books provided the view of America from the White perspective - where the American Dream of quiet neighborhoods with picket fences and happy singing birds, no matter how benign the intentions are to make this so - Coates' book provides the view from the Black perspective where the American Dream was founded, funded and built upon the destruction of black neighborhoods where intent does not matter, only the destruction does.

This is where racism becomes and remains the great original sin of the United States. Willing to divide ourselves, by those who profit and achieve power by those institutions that enforce such divisions, the United States cannot claim the purity of exceptionalism the nation claims as its identity.

Halfway through Watchman, Atticus takes on a case for a young black man charged with vehicular manslaughter who turns out to be Calpurnia's - the housekeeper for the Finches in Mockingbird - great-grandson. However, Jean Louise finds out he's only doing so to stop the NAACP from coming in and taking over the defense. Dismayed, she visits Calpurnia's family on her own to offer some form of condolences and try to put a positive spin on her father's taking the case, but the meeting becomes strained because Calpurnia knows why Atticus is doing what he's doing:

She looked into the old woman's face and she knew it was hopeless. Calpurnia was watching her, and in Calpurnia's eyes was no hint of compassion.
Jean Louise rose to go. "Tell me one thing, Cal," she said, "just one thing before I go -- please, I've got to know. Did you hate us?"
The old woman sat silent, bearing the burden of her years. Jean Louise waited.
Finally, Calpurnia shook her head. (p.160)

Calpurnia has to think it over before giving her answer. SHE HAS TO THINK ABOUT IT.

That's what racism does to this nation. It makes people like Jean Louise have to ask if she and fellow whites were/are hated, it makes Calpurnia have to sit there and think through the slights and wounds she had endured because of it, it's left Prince Jones and Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin dead before their times, it's put a warning sign on Ta-Nehisi's son that all of this will happen to him.

This is a tale of two books. It is a tale of one nation divided into pieces over our nation's deadly sin.
 

Things We Learned in 2015

As the year comes to a close, these lessons:

• There is no such thing as Peak Wingnut. The Republican Party has gone so far Right Wing that there's no sign they can ever move back to any moderate stance on any issue.
• Any act of effective government actually angers the Far Right. They're already turning on the once-fair-haired-golden-boy Paul Ryan because as Speaker he actually avoided a government shutdown and passed a workable budget.
• Having the Presidential campaigns start in 2015 rather than its actual election year of 2016 gave us a whole year of sound and fury. On the one hand, all that fury has exposed the Republican voting base and the candidates they support as two separate yet equal groups of ill-informed hate-filled sociopaths. On the other hand, all this exposure is making them - both candidates and followers - act worse.
• Gun violence has become so ingrained into our culture that most Americans are resigned to the body count. This is horrifying.
• As of this last week of 2015, Obamacare works. So of course Republican governors are gonna keep trying to kill it.
• Mad Max Fury Road deserves to win every Best Picture award out there. Also Best Director, Best Actress, Best Fight Scene, and Best Catering.
• Canadians have declared war on my librarian blog. I'm not even a Royals fan, people.
• Florida politics are still screwed up.

Oh, and I'm thinking of putting some of the blog articles I've written into print format as a book. Think there'd be a market for it?