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).

Tragedy July 20 2012

To the families and friends who lost people last night in Aurora, Colorado, my prayers and sympathies are with you.  These are weak words, they always are, compared to the suffering you all are going through right now.

These people went to the movie theater to be entertained.  Instead, they received pain and sorrow because of a sicko with a gun and with hate and fear in his heart.

These Questions Are Retroactive

These are my questions about Mitt Romney's role at Bain Capital, and Bain Capital in general:

1a) If you, Mitt Romney, were not really CEO of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002 as you claim today, then who was CEO during that time?
1b) Can we speak with that person to verify that he or she was CEO of Bain Capital, and/or the person responsible for most business decisions?
1c) Was there a press release given to the business media back in 1999 or between 1999 to 2002 that announced who this replacement CEO is/was?

2) If that other person was CEO during that time, why did the company's SEC filings still list you as CEO?  And why were you still signing that paperwork as well as other business filings?

3) If you had retired from Bain Capital in 1999, why were you still receiving a base salary of at least $100,000 well into 2002?  Most retirement plans I've known do not work that way.  Were you receiving a salary for a no-show job?

4) If you had cut all ties from Bain Capital as you claim on your 2011 campaigning forms by 1999, why did you tell Massachusetts election officials under oath in 2002 that you were still regularly involved in Bain's business dealings to justify your residency requirement to run for Governor?

'Cause I'm with Andrew Sullivan on this one:

But responsibility for Bain? Think about it. No one disputes that Romney co-founded Bain, hired most of its staff, and honed its methods and strategies from 1984 to 2002. No one can dispute that he was paid at least $100,000 from 1999 to 2002 for being CEO. There is no massive difference between the kind of strategies Bain pursued from 1984 to 1999 when Romney was managing full-time and from 1999 to 2002, when he was managing part-time and by his own lawyer's assertion that his Bain activities "continued unabated just as they had." Is Romney saying that nothing that happened at Bain after 1999 is his responsibility but that everything that happened after January 2009 is all Barack Obama's fault?
Yep, that's what he's saying. It's a pathetic double standard argument from a suddenly pathetic and panicking campaign...

Romney's had the image problem already with being a habitual flip-flopper; getting nicknamed as the "Etch-A-Sketch" candidate whose ideology/talking points can change with a shake of a toy; of neither being conservative or liberal or even moderate, that he simply has no core belief and says whatever he needs to say at that moment to get what he wants.  Now he's trying to avoid responsibility for something that he claimed with pride back in 2002 to run for Governor, but now refuses to acknowledge as it's embarrassing as hell in 2012.

Now he's on record as being a liar, either lying in 2002 to get what he wanted (Governor of Massachusetts), or lying now in 2012 to get what he wants (President of the United States).

And making it worse for him is the fact that the campaign forms he signed to run for President in 2011 carry with them a penalty of perjury... which is a felony at the federal level.  How long will it take for someone in a position to do so file a criminal complaint to have his signed statements investigated?

These questions aren't going to go away with the next news cycle, Mitt.  If you don't answer, people will assume the worst.  Unless of course the answers are somehow worse...  In which case, the Republicans need to start looking for another candidate...

All I Remember From High School Band Is That I Have To Roll My Feet

For your consideration on this day of celebration:


And to all Americans I wish you a safe and festive Fourth of July!

Flood

I've been flooded out.

My home sits relatively high to the street and all, but the access roads are definitely rivers by now.  May not get back in until Friday.

Meanwhile I'm reporting in from temporary shelter.  Will let you know what happens.

I blame Romney.

UPDATE: A bit late as this is July 4th I'm reporting back in.  The flooding in my area didn't last too long - was out only a day - but other surrounding neighborhoods had it worse (one mobile home area near Anclote River was underwater for two more days that I know of).  It wasn't so much a powerful storm (Debbie Downer was merely a tropical storm) but a slow-moving one that used the geography to its advantage.

Incumbency

This is something that I've wanted to post for awhile, decided to get around to it today.  I'm not sure if anyone else has ever thought up this observation, but:

A first-term President who's popular with the general voting public tends to get re-elected to a second term.

I mean, when you look back on the history of one-term Presidents, the consistent pattern between most of them is that they were unpopular, at least unpopular enough within their own party to be snubbed by the power-brokers in the backrooms when the next election rolled around.

John Adams?  Wasn't as well-liked as Thomas Jefferson.  John Quincy Adams?  He actually lost the popular vote, but won in the runoff in the House of Representatives... essentially riling up Andrew Jackson and his supporters to turn out in droves the next election.  Van Buren?  First sitting President to suffer a major economic panic, so yeah pretty much unpopular.  The Whigs are especially screwy one-termers: each Whig winner - Harrison and Taylor - DIED in office, leaving their unpopular Veeps - Tyler and Fillmore - serving out those terms.  Both Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were one-termers due to the ongoing slavery issue that made any Democrat sitting in the White House hugely unpopular in the North.  Lincoln won re-election even in a divisive war because he stood on a more popular platform - Finish the War - than his opponent.

The next one-termer was Chester A. Arthur - fitting in for the assassinated James Garfield - who actually was well-liked (and not too bad a President) but wasn't the guy the party bosses wanted anymore.  Grover Cleveland is an interesting case.  He won the popular vote on his re-election effort but lost the Electoral vote, which almost makes his violate this hypothesis: except that he ran again and won a separate second term, the only President to do so.  So he still fits.

Teddy Roosevelt really does prove my case (twice).  Before him, Veeps who assumed the Presidency on the death of the President - poor McKinley, who was popular enough to win two terms - tended to be unpopular with either their party bosses or the electorate.  Roosevelt became so popular with the voters - and so effective in shutting down his bosses - that he won his own term, the first to do so.  The second time he proves my case is with Taft, his successor: not too happy with his administration, Roosevelt ran on a third ticket, effectively splitting the Republican vote... while Taft finished third.

Coolidge was popular enough to win his own term of office replacing Harding.  Herbert Hoover was a one-termer for a very obvious reason: the Great Depression.  FDR basically ran against Hoover three of the four times he ran for office, which should tell you how unpopular poor Herbert was.  FDR's successor Truman ran a surprisingly effective campaign against an unpopular Congress and reticent Dewey, leading to the biggest electoral upset in American politics.  When Truman's own popularity tanked during the Korean War, he quickly figured out he couldn't run for re-election and opted not to.

Eisenhower was the inverse of Hoover: incredibly well-liked, incredibly popular.  Even having Nixon on his ticket didn't put a damper on things.  Kennedy was more likeable than Nixon in 1960.  Johnson was more likeable (believe it or not) than Goldwater and was running off of JFK's legacy.  By 1968, Nixon was more likeable (I know, scary) than LBJ's replacement Humphrey (if the Dems stuck with Eugene McCarthy, they could have eked out a win) and Wallace.  By 1972 it didn't matter who was running as the more popular candidate because Nixon's crew was sabotaging the Democratic primaries (hello, Watergate).

Carter was more likeable than Ford.  Carter's unfavorables by 1980 hurt him compared to the well-liked Reagan.  Reagan was still well-liked in 1984 when Mondale ran against him (which is one of the reasons Mondale only won Minnesota and DC in the Electoral votes).  Bush the Elder's re-election efforts in 1992 were hurt by a hard recession, making him vulnerable to the smooth styling of Clinton (and Perot's third party vote losses).  Bush the Lesser was still riding off of his huge popularity boost after 9/11 to eke out a win in 2004 over the stiff Kerry.

So where is this going?

Well, we're in a re-election year for Obama, coming off a rough first term.  How do his re-election chances stack up?

Pretty good, actually.  More people are hopeful about the economy now than they were in 2008.  A current poll shows Obama with a 13 point lead over Romney, even as that poll shows Obama getting low marks for handling the economy.  One thing to note in that article: Look at Romney's favorable-to-unfavorable numbers.  Romney is 39 percent favorable to 48 percent UNfavorable.  Being that un-liked a candidate bodes ill.

As long as Obama keeps his favorable numbers above Romney's, Obama has a good chance of winning re-election.  Which is probably why we should expect a hurricane Category 5-level amount of mudslinging negative ads from now until DECEMBER 2016 for God's sake by the Republicans in order to drag Obama's favorables down.

So remember, Stay Sane and Vote Obama...

Organizing For America

In my free time I volunteer with the Organizing For America grassroots campaign.

Stay Sane And Vote Obama.  :-)

My Vote My Power

Following up from the last post about Rick Scott and his underlings breaking voter rights' laws, the papers are saying the voter purge is all but over because the county elections supervisors - the ones who have to do the heavy lifting - are united in saying the lists are flawed and illegal:

The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges — are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don't trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state's elections office.
"We're just not going to do this," said Leon County's election supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. "I've talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal."
So far, more than 500 have been identified as citizens and lawful voters on the voter rolls. About 40 people statewide have been identified as noncitizens. At least four might have voted and could be guilty of a third-degree felony.
The eligibility of about 2,000 have not been identified one way or the other..

Just take a look at the numbers: so far 500 that were kicked off the polls didn't deserve to be kicked.  Only 40 were identified as non-citizens.  At least four (!) out of the 2,700 on the original list may have broken the law.

Only 4 possible violators.  Compared to 500 citizens who didn't break the law who still suffered.  And compared to the 11 MILLION registered voters out of 18 MILLION state residents.

If Rick Scott and his buddies think they are fighting some massive criminal conspiracy... THEY ARE CLEARLY NOT.  Four out of 18 Million is... do the math people... my Windows calculator says 2.2222E-007, thanks Rick Scott you BROKE MY CALCULATOR TOO.  (seriously, it's less than a percentage of a percentage of 1 percent!)  This is not worth denying the honest-to-God rights of 500 honest citizens (and even more if those 2000 voters ever check their mailboxes).  If this is crime-fighting, it's akin to stopping drunk drivers by blowing up all the roads!

And despite the optimism of the Tampa Bay Times reporting, I guarantee you Rick Scott and his Sec. of State Ken Detzner are going to figure out a way to press on with their purge.  They have an ideological belief that "voter fraud" is real (it's not: most evidence points to such fraud as basic record errors!  And it's miniscule: less than a percent of a percent of a percent for God's sake!), and that belief cannot be stopped or denied.  They've already tried flipping the argument about by accusing the Dept. of Justice of failing to help them access federal databases - especially Homeland Security's illegal immigrant databases - they need to use to push their purge further.  This is even though the original Sec. of State Browning discovered the purge list is hugely flawed and resigned rather than implement it.  This is even with Attorney General Holder stating publicly that Scott is breaking the law by pushing this voter purge.

Scott and Detzner and the Republican Party as a whole will keep pushing this non-scandal until and unless the handcuffs are clapped on their wrists and they get dragged off for violating voters' rights under both state (Florida Statutes 104, specifically 104.0515 and 104.0616) and federal laws (1965 Voting Rights Act and 2003 Voter Registration Act).

Those 500 Florida residents who got booted off the rolls and had to press to get their rights back - rights that SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE - have a legitimate legal grievance against Rick Scott.  Charge him.  Even just one of you has a case against this bastard.  Protect your rights, people.  MY VOTE is MY POWER.  It's yours too.

Now Available

UPDATE: I realize that trying to figure out the numbers - 4 divided by 18 million - for determining the percentage of people committing actual voter fraud is a bit tricky since every calculator I've tried using can't reduce the decimal count that low.  So I decided on the opposite route: figure out the percentages of people who are honestly voting out of the 11 million registered in Florida.  So basically 11 million minus 4 is 10,999,996 honest voters.  Now THAT I can divide by the total voter count of 11,000,000 and that gives me .99999963 roughly speaking.  Converting that to percentage and that is 99.999963 percent of honest voters out there.  Meaning the amount of fraud is .000037 percent, give or take.  It's nowhere near even a percent of 1 percent (which would be .001 percent).  Basically, it means actual voter fraud is close to ZERO when compared to honest voting.  So why the obsession with voter fraud?  There are ten thousand more serious crimes taking place in Florida and/or the nation on any given day: why voter fraud, when there's practically NO FRAUD taking place?

I Think Rick Scott Is Breaking The Law

UPDATE: see below.
Specifically, I think he's violating people's civil liberties by pushing a purge of eligible voters off the election rolls (copied from ThinkProgress):

Initially, the state created a list of over 180,000 purported “non-citizens” by comparing their list of registered voters to the state motor vehicle database. The state forwarded about 2700 names from that list to local officials to remove from the rolls. Yesterday, in the face of mounting problems with the limited effort, Scott administration officials made it clear they were just getting started:

Chris Cate, a spokesman for the state Division of Elections, defended the state’s actions. “It’s very important we make sure ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot,” he said in an email to the Herald on Tuesday.
He said the state continues to identify ineligible voters, saying the state Division of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has agreed to update information using a federal database that the elections division couldn’t access directly.
“We won’t be sending any new names to supervisors until the information we have is updated, because we always want to make sure we are using the best information available,” Cate wrote. “I don’t have a timetable on when the next list of names will be sent to supervisors, but there will be more names.”

It’s unclear how the new procedures alluded to by Cate will solve the systemic problems with the voter purge list. There have been several individuals targeted by the list that have been citizens their entire lives. Therefore, there seems to be a major problems beyond outdated citizenship information.
Moreover, the entire process of database matching to remove voters is problematic. The Fair Elections Legal Network, which is challenging the purge, noted that database matching is “notoriously unreliable” and “data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches.”
The first list was also created with information accessible to the state motor vehicle administration, which the former Secretary of State Kurt Browning considered so unreliable he refused to release. Browning resigned in February.

Why do I think Scott and his underlings are breaking the law here?

For starters, denying a citizen's right to vote without any kind of judicial review or right of defense is a major problem.  It violates federal constitutional standards in the Fourteenth Amendment, First Section:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Bold highlights mine.  This "voter purge" is depriving eligible honest-to-God citizens their life and liberty, expressly their right to vote that is a key and necessary right.  The right to vote is SERIOUS BUSINESS.  Anyone working in legal guardianship/power of attorney stuff will tell you that determining a person to be "incapacitated" requires a full review by licensed doctors and presided over by judges.  And one of the rights at stake in issuing guardianships is the Right To Vote, alongside the Right To Marry, Right to Form Contracts, etc.  When you lose that Right To Vote, it's viewed as a major loss of self-determination.

Let's be clear: voter fraud may happen, but it is not happening on the scale that the Far Right is screaming about.  Most cases are just regular people failing to update their residency status, or else felons who failed to re-instate their voting rights, or immigrants going through a naturalization process jumping the gun too early.  It's not thousands of zombie "voters" through whom political bosses are faking to stuff ballot boxes.  Out of the MILLIONS who are registered to vote, only tens of cases - not even hundreds of cases - are there any evidence of outright fraud taking place.  This voter purge is over an over-hyped "scandal".  This ain't ACORN, people.  And even ACORN was overblown nonsense.

And the ones getting purged seem to be the minorities and poor people.  Which reeks of the Jim Crow "deny the votes" attitude that harms this nation's reputation as a home of liberty and justice for all.  What's really going on is that the Republicans are going after the voting groups that will tend to vote Democrat, in an effort to reduce the risks of a big turnout this election cycle of angry Democrats pissed off about what's been happening here in Florida (and other states pushing this purge crap) since 2010.

To anyone getting purged by Rick "HaHa I Was Never Convicted" Scott, I think you have a serious case of filing a civil rights charge against him.  I'll leave it to the actual legal experts if there are any reading this blog to suggest which actual statute is being violated: I think it's a federal jurisdiction in terms of the civil right being violated, and I think it's 42 USC s 1983 that is the relevant law, unless there are more specific laws in the US Code.

UPDATE EDIT: This night the Talking Points Memo site is reporting that the Department of Justice has sent a letter to the Florida Secretary of State (the one in direct charge of overseeing elections) demanding that the state stop the voter purge:

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls...

For Everyone Looking to Shop Til They Drop

As mentioned yesterday, Mrs. Coates wanted a t-shirt logo, and what Mrs. Coates wants Mrs. Coates gets.

So now, at Cafe Press, we have the I Heart Metrosexual Black Lincoln store, complete with t-shirts, drinking glasses, tablet covers, one hat, some wall decor, and a keychain.

As a refresher, the front logo is this: 

Additional items to be added in the future.

By the way, I need to add links to the Lost Battalion merch store and maybe my ebook locales...

For the Benefit of Mrs. Coates

Somewhere on the Twitterverse, Ta-Nehisi asked for a t-shirt logo for "I Heart Metrosexual Black Lincoln" in response to the aborted wingnut attempt to insult Barack Obama for being Pro-People.

In response, I crafted both a front design and back design for a t-shirt:

To your left, the logo for the front t-shirt.


















To your right, the message for the back t-shirt.

I need input.  Does this look good?  Readable?

I need suggestions of possible improvements, maybe something more concise to say on the backside of the tee.

I hope to get this up in a new CafePress store by tonight.

Let me know!