Can The Elephant Ever Thread The Eye of the Needle?

(Update: The GOP House is attempting to get something resolved, but it's doubtful the bill - something that would nuke DACA with extreme prejudice -would survive its trip to the Senate, let alone getting to Obama's Oval Office where it'll get vetoed.)
I've mentioned before how this Republican-led House in the U.S. Congress may be one of the most incompetent ever, but today's failure to even get a vote out on an emergency border bill takes the prize (via Washington Monthly):

Despite some nativist tweaks aimed at getting conservatives on board, the House GOP leadership (operating for the first time with Kevin McCarthy instead of Eric Cantor holding the whip) had to pull its much trumpeted border bill this afternoon, apparently abandoning the whole effort while Members head off on their long August recess...

This article quickly links to Talking Points Memo for more:

...Immigration-weary conservatives said the $659 million supplemental, and the subsequent measure to end the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, didn't go far enough in rebuking the president's actions.

It was a remarkable defeat for the new GOP leadership team on the day that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) stepped down as majority leader.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced the decision in a joint statement with his new leadership team, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)...

Why the hair-pulling?

Because of three things of direct concern: 1) there is a major crisis at the moment with an influx of children immigrants flooding across the US-Mexico border, a lot of them fleeing an increase in violence and corruption in places like Honduras and Guatemala, 2) the prolonged failure by Republican Party leadership to address any form of immigration reform was starting to show, and 3) the Republicans were poised to use this bill to force draconian cuts to Obama's planned efforts of immigration reform (he had asked for 3.7 billion in comprehensive funding to which the House slashed it down to barely 659 million for border security only, and the Far Right in the House were aiming to slash at other programs like DACA), positioning themselves to look good to their base while making Obama choke on the sh-t sandwich they were going to serve him.  Now they can't even serve him a sh-t sandwich (even with them trying to blame this all on Obama anyway).

Another problem?  The one thing this House did vote for this final week was a resolution granting Speaker Boehner the power to file a lawsuit against Obama's "unlawful" abuse of Executive Orders.  Like I said before, more a political stunt to appease their base, but now this lawsuit creates a paradox.  Because House Republicans can't pass the legislation needed to get things done, they're forcing Obama into the position of issuing Executive Orders to cover the gaps that failure of legislating is creating.  Per the Washington Post:

...When Obama takes some kind of executive action to address the broader immigration problem, Republican complaints that he’s being tyrannical will be undermined by the GOP’s abysmal failure to offer an alternative. If they had passed a border bill he vetoed, or one that died in the Senate, they could claim they tried to solve the problem. But now all they’ve got to show for the end of the session is a lawsuit — one that will probably offer their own right wing nothing but frustration and disappointment, and will validate everything Obama is saying about them.

This is the best that the Republicans in the House could do this summer?

Some of the other things worth mentioning: we were promised an exclusive special committee getting into the bottom of Benghazi, yet I can't recall a single news report about them since May (turns out they're scheduled to hold hearings this September); Congress has been having problems funding bills for our nation's transportation infrastructure; the only thing that this Congress seems able to pass is a major reform and funding package for the Veterans Affairs department that was facing serious breakdowns in service and management... and that's pretty much because the failures at the VA were so great and so prolonged that both parties had to respond quickly to fix it.

We're discussing one of the least productive Congressional sessions in recent memory (barely doing any better than the previous one of 2011-13, which wasn't all that busy anyway).  Like it or not, we as a nation need a functioning Congress to uphold the legislative duties that keep our government working.  When it doesn't work, very little else can...

There is a possibility that the House will delay their planned August recess - for a few days at least - in order to pass something of a border security bill, and avoid the outright embarrassment of heading off to their fundraiser parties at country clubs.  But given the dysfunction of this party - their obsession to embarrass Obama at all hazards, their failure to keep their more extremist factions in check - I doubt the House Republicans will get anything done before they blame their failures on Obama and move on.

This is not a political party geared towards passing any decent legislation.

Reason #4793178 you shouldn't vote Republican.

Just So You Know, Another Comic Con Is Happening

and this time I threaten to show up cosplaying.

I'll look something like this... only fatter.

Sigh... CRASH DIET!!!

The Ethics Of Rick Scott

Basically, he doesn't have any.

Yes, let's do start off with the fact he ran a corporation that committed billions in Medicare Fraud to where the company had to fire him and pay $1.7 billion total in fines.

He still - God help us - bought his way into the Governor's office in 2010.  So let's look at a lot of the questionable things he's done in office:

His hand-picked Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll had to resign over her own ethics conflicts and criminal investigation involving Internet gambling cafes.

His hand-picked Education Commissioner had to resign over evidence he intervened in falsifying school evaluations owned by a prominent Republican Party fundraiser at his previous employ in Indiana.  So far, Scott isn't showing any skill in hiring the best of the best to work with him.  Speaking of...

He's had a high turnover rate of staff moreso than other governors, either due to scandal (see above) or internal office conflicts that point to a chaotic and mismanaged office.

He had on staff during his transition period one Adam Hollingsworth, who advised against the high-speed rail deal, then promptly went to work for a rail company pushing the All Aboard Florida project that rivaled the high-speed rail plan.  Thing about All Aboard Florida is that its:

...256-mile rail service has been touted from the beginning as a completely privately financed project that will not cost the state a dime, which is the reason Scott said he supports the plan... At this point, though, the project is seeking $1.5 billion in federal loans that could be key to refinancing its existing debt, and more than $230 million in state dollars already have been set aside for projects that either will directly or indirectly benefit All Aboard Florida’s rail line...

Too much of this reeks of inside dealing.  As an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times says:

It's now clear that All Aboard Florida was seeking special treatment from the governor's office as soon as Scott won the 2010 election... Meanwhile, state transportation officials have enabled All Aboard Florida to hide behind exemptions in the public records law to avoid releasing some documents, including a ridership survey that was part of its loan application process. Leaked documents obtained by the Scripps/Tribune Tallahassee bureau show much of the financial plan will rely on land development along the tracks, not ridership per se, just reinforcing that there is more the public deserves to know. Now Scott is asking the company to slow down to hear from concerned citizens, particularly those between Palm Beach County and Orlando, where no stops are scheduled. This is after he signed a budget that would pay for "quiet zones" in those neighborhoods and after his transportation agency had signed off on the project... Scott is all over the map on rail. ...Now he deceives voters by claiming no public money is going toward All Aboard Florida while millions in state dollars will be spent to make it work, his chief of staff has lobbied for it for years and his transportation department refuses to release documents that should be public...

Another questionable policy push Scott has been working on has been to force state employees and residents applying for financial aid of any kind to get drug-tested on a regular basis.  Despite the facts that 1) a majority of workers and benefits seekers ARE NOT DRUG USERS, and 2) the costs to the state to pay for all that testing was ridiculous.  It doesn't make sense until you consider that Rick Scott's pre-governor gig was being CEO for a chain of state-wide health clinics, which would have seen money pouring in from Scott's enforced drug tests.

Then just a few weeks ago, Scott's campaign committed a breach of campaign rules by having on-duty police officers appear at a rally, giving the impression that law enforcement was backing him for re-election.  Psst: you're not supposed to do that:

...Under Florida law, it's a first-degree misdemeanor for a public official to "directly or indirectly coerce" any employee to engage in political activity, and employees are prohibited from doing so while working.

Scott's campaign said it made its intentions clear but a high-ranking member of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office insisted that he believed he was going to a state event to meet the governor and discuss ways to reduce crime, which is why he asked several deputies to come along.

"We obviously didn't know we were going to a campaign event," said Hillsborough Col. Jim Previtera. "Had we known it was a campaign event, we wouldn't have been there."

Previtera said he was working on Friday, the Fourth of July, when Cody Vildostegui, a Scott campaign aide, asked him to attend a press conference Monday about reducing crime. Previtera's boss, Sheriff David Gee, who supports Scott, was unable to attend.

Also in attendance was another Scott supporter, Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who said the same campaign staffer made it clear to him that it was an event promoting Scott's re-election bid.

When asked about it, repeatedly, by reporters at a following event, Rick Scott basically zoned out and refused to directly answer, giving either rote responses or trying to deflect the question.  It made him a punchline for CNN for God's sake.

And now we're getting reports of how his "blind" trust is making money from a pipeline deal one of his staffers promoted while on his payroll:

Upon his election, Gov. Rick Scott’s transition team included a Florida Power & Light executive who pitched his company’s plan to build a major natural gas pipeline in North Florida to fuel a new generation of gas-fired power plants in places like Port Everglades...

...Five months later, the Florida Public Service Commission, whose five members were appointed by Gov. Scott, unanimously approved construction of Sabal Trail as the state’s third major natural gas pipeline. More approvals are needed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which the governor oversees.

What wasn’t publicly known in 2013, however, was that Gov. Scott owned a stake in Spectra Energy, the Houston company chosen by FPL that July to build and operate the $3 billion pipeline. Sabal Trail Transmission LLC is a joint venture of Spectra Energy and FPL’s parent, NextEra Energy.

BrowardBulldog.org’s review of financial records made public last month by Gov. Scott show that as of Dec. 31 his portfolio included several million dollars invested in the securities of more than two-dozen entities that produce and/or transport natural gas – including some, like Spectra, with substantial Florida operations.

His stake in Spectra Energy was reported as being worth $53,000 that day.

Florida’s ethics laws generally prohibit public officials like the governor from owning stock in businesses subject to their regulation, or that do business with state agencies. A similar prohibition exists on owning shares in companies that would “create a continuing or frequently recurring conflict” between an official’s private interests and the “full and faithful discharge” of his public duties...

The problem is that the stock purchase happened while his portfolio was under a "blind trust".  While Scott isn't supposed to have any interaction with his trust, there's no guarantee he didn't get word to his handlers to put a little money in on a company he knew was going to do some profitable business.  Similar to Scott's push to drug-test everybody (okay, I exaggerate, Scott doesn't want to drug-test Florida elected officials), this is where Scott's policy actions are directly affecting his business holdings.

All of these things taken separately, you don't see much: maybe you see an elected official's office in a level of disarray.  But if you put it together... if you see the habits that Scott keeps, and the environment in which he puts himself...

What I see is an ongoing pattern from well before his governorship of running his office with disregard for rules.  A disregard to the point where laws get broken in the pursuit of personal profits.  It's a habit that didn't stop the second he took his oath of office.  An oath he doesn't take seriously.

Rick Scott performs his job as governor to enrich Rick Scott the businessman and no one else.  He holds no ethical values that would conflict with his self-serving wants.  He pursues personal profit at the expense of the public interest.

This is not a man who deserves our vote.  This is not a man to put in a position of public trust.
 

Anniversary: Bravo

Before the day goes by, today is the 45th anniversary of one of mankind's greatest achievements:

With all congratulations to the late Neil Armstrong, to Buzz Aldrin, and to Michael Collins (who had to stay in the Command Module) for their historic flight there and back.

And also, due to their efforts, we were able to contribute to one of the best episodes of the television show Mad Men:

And with that "Bravo," Bert Cooper passes on... and later on that episode, Don Draper witnesses Bert's ghost sing "The Best Things In Life Are Free" in a mind-blowing (there are layers of symbolism behind this that would take a 20-page journal essay to spell out) closer:

The song, the setting, the moment... all because we as the human race achieved the moon.  We haven't really moved on from that moment - the technology can't sustain ourselves for long out there, so we're still on this fragile blue ball - but if anything out of all the wars and madness, we made it.  It may have cost a fortune, but we made it.  And it was a moment everyone back then shared... a moment we all share today, and it was in a way free for all.

In One of Those BREAKING NEWS Moods Here In Florida, A Pro-People Moment

It's bound to get challenged and held pending God knows what other legal complaint, but for now Florida is the newest state to have a court overturn the ban on gay marriage:

Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia overturned Florida's 2008 constitutional gay-marriage ban on Thursday, and ordered that two Key West bartenders and other gay couples seeking to wed be allowed to marry.

"The court is aware that the majority of voters oppose same-sex marriage, but it is our country's proud history to protect the rights of the individual, the rights of the unpopular and rights of the powerless, even at the cost of offending the majority," Garcia wrote in his opinion, released about 1 p.m. Thursday.

The judge gave the Monroe County clerk's office until Tuesday before it can grant licenses for gay weddings, "in consideration of... anticipated rise in activity."

It was unclear early Thursday afternoon whether the state will appeal the ruling. A judge in Miami-Dade County has yet to rule in a similar case...

As noted, if this doesn't get delayed while waiting for the Miami-Dade courts, Monroe County's clerk on Tuesday will become a tidal wave of gay couples getting hitched.  South Florida - Key West included - does have a sizable gay community.

Florida also has a sizable Bible-thumping evangelical community which is bound to set their OUTRAGE meters to 11, so expect a ton of screechy End Of the World over the next few hours, days, weeks, years...

I FINALLY FOUND THAT ARTICLE I WAS LOOKING FOR

Apologies for the All-CAPS headline, but dammit I've been looking for a link to this thing for years.  I've really been trying to find it when I wrote my Presidential Character review of Bill Clinton last year.  As a librarian I revel in the success of finding a research item...

Lemme explain.  I wanted to make a point about Bill Clinton being an Active-Positive based on a character analysis on him talking about "future imperatives" and how America was a nation that looked forward by setting up goals that would benefit future generations and not the current one(s).  The article itself was really going into how the Baby Boomer generation - sans Clinton, who accepted the "future imperative" - was the horrific exception, the generation obsessed with its own needs and doing nothing to set up any "imperatives" for future kin.

Problem was I couldn't find the article, which I knew was at least archived somewhere: it was either an online article I saw in Salon or else in a magazine with political/current cultural focus like Rolling Stone or Esquire.  As a librarian who prides meself on finding anything, being unable to find this was frustrating.

This morning, doing some side work researching another matter, I decided to retry my search terms to focus more on the Baby Boomers and how they were destroying everything on the political landscape.  THAT'S when I got a search result to a New York Times 2012 op-ed called "The Entitled Generation".  And THAT referred to the article I was looking for!

The article by Paul Begala was in Esquire (I knew it was one of those) published April 2000 titled "The Worst Generation".  Finally.  At last.  I'll need to update that Clinton review now.

As for the reason I wasn't finding that article before: well, my bad, I mis-remembered the phrase.  It wasn't "future imperative" it was "future preference":

...It is my contention that the single greatest sin a generation can commit is the sin of selfishness. And it's from this standard that I draw my harsh conclusion. I'm not alone in this view, of course. The Boomer in Chief, my former boss, Bill Clinton, used to tell me about an influential professor he'd had at Georgetown. His name was Carroll Quigley, and he taught young Bill Clinton and hundreds of other Hoyas about something called the Future Preference.

I can still see Clinton doing his Quigley impression, eyes full of mischief, his voice an Arkansas version of a bad Boston accent, as we bounced around in a bus or flew through a thunderstorm on Air Elvis, our campaign plane back in 1992. "Mistah Begahhla," he'd intone as he looked at me through the bifocals perched on the end of his nose. "Why is America the greatest sociiiiiiety in human hist'ree? The Few-chah Pref'rence. At every critical junk-chaah, we have prefuhhed the few-chah to the present. That is why immigrants left the old waaahld for the new. That is why paahrents such as yours sacrifice to send their children to univehhsities like this wan. The American ideal is that the few-chah can be bettah than the paahst, and that each of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so..."

Writing it when he did (2000) Begala was setting up his fears about the OTHER Baby Boomer threatening to become the next President, Bush the Lesser.  Whose administration did ignore the future in the obsessions of satisfying present needs (massive tax cuts even after being warned of the massive deficits that would happen, a bloated Medicare package left unfunded) and in the recklessness of starting fights (a war in Iraq) without a care (there was no Plan B) about how to resolve such fights so that our future (the poor kids sent in to fight that war) wouldn't have to fight it again...

So that's it.  That was the keyword I should have been looking for.  Future Preference.  It's something we should be looking for in our political leaders from now on.  I've added it to my Labels.  Hashtagging it on Twitter asap.

Killing the Florida Gerrymander: Court Ruling Is In

It happened last night, didn't see the news in the Tampa Bay Times until later today:

A judge threw out Florida's congressional map late Thursday, ruling that the Legislature allowed for a "secret, organized campaign" by partisan operatives to subvert the redistricting process in violation of the state Constitution.

In a 41-page ruling, Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis said that two of the state's 27 districts are invalid and must be redrawn, along with any other districts affected by them, to bring the map into compliance with the state's new Fair District amendments.

The case, brought by a coalition led by the League of Women Voters, is expected to be appealed and ultimately decided by the Florida Supreme Court...

Lewis rejected challenges to districts in South Florida and Tampa Bay, but said that District 5, held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown of Jacksonville, and District 10, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Webster of Winter Park "will need to be redrawn, as will any other districts affected thereby."

The judge agreed with the coalition's prime argument: that Republican legislators and staffers collaborated with political consultants to create "a shadow redistricting process" that protected incumbents and the GOP...

While the judge is only ruling on two districts needing to be re-drawn, the effect on the connecting districts will force them to be reshaped to conform to the rules.  I mean, take a look at the 5th District that got struck down:

via the Washington Post 

It goes through five counties, two of them - Duval and Orange - densely populated counties - due to being urban centers Jacksonville (Duval) and Orlando (Orange) - that could have easily formed their own district if said districts were designed by population density alone.  It carves Alachua County in two, splits Putnam County down the middle, and wiggles down along the non-retirement-community part of Lake.  In fact, I see a tiny little foot (that dangly thing sticking out at the bottom half) that is going into a sixth county - Seminole - taking off a northern chunk of a geographically small - but packed - county.  Why the hell is that?

Well, because this district basically takes the minority populations of two urban centers - Jacksonville and Orlando - to shove both into one district so that the surrounding districts will be more White (and in some districts more elderly).  By putting the urban (read: leans Democrat) into one district, the GOP state leaders can carve out friendly (read: leans Republican) out of six districts.

And that is exactly what the judge found: there was evidence that the Republicans in the state legislature along with their allies on the outside consulting intentionally carved the districts to favor their own party.  Consider the 10th District, the other one Judge Lewis ordered to be redrawn (and which is connected to the 5th, highlighting how that district was intentionally skewed), per the ThinkProgress website:

...Though more compact in shape than a purple worm, District 10 has what Judge Lewis describes as “an odd-shaped appendage which wraps under and around District 5, running between District 5 and 9.” As Lewis notes, Districts 5, 7, 9 and 10 are shaped the way they are in part because a Republican political consultant suggested that they be redrawn in a way that transformed them “from being four Democratic performing or leaning seats in early maps . . . to two Democratic and two Republican performing seats in the enacted map.” So Republicans likely picked up two congressional seats because of the odd design of these districts.

Indeed, Lewis discusses significant evidence that Republican lawmakers colluded with Republican operatives regarding the maps. Early in the process, Republican legislative leaders met with a group of GOP political operatives and a top Republican lawyer to discuss redistricting. The deputy chief of staff to Florida’s then-house speaker shared draft maps with a particular Republican consultant at least 24 times. In some cases, he provided this GOP consultant “with draft maps that were never released to the public.”

For all the show-boating the state legislature did with the redistricting efforts in 2012 - I personally attended a mass presentation in east Pasco County, but didn't get a chance to ask a question as I'd hoped due to the huge volume of people who showed up - they never intended for this to be an open or transparent process.  The court hearings revealed a series of secret meetings, destroyed records, reluctant testifiers.  Back to the Tampa Bay Times report:

...Lewis also noted that legislative leaders and the political operatives destroyed almost all of their emails and other documents related to redistricting and concluded that the circumstantial evidence surrounding all of those developments, and the evidence that the consultants attempted to influence the same districts he has found problematic, proved the GOP operatives were trying to influence the process.

"There is no legal duty on the part of the Legislature to preserve these records, but you have to wonder why they didn't,'' he wrote. "Litigation over their plans was 'a moral certainty' as their lawyers put it earlier in the case, and intent would be a key issue in any challenge."

You don't have to wonder: you have to accept the evidence (or lack of it considering how most of it got lost/destroyed).  The people in power - a Republican-controlled legislature - wanted to create a permanent Republican majority by intentionally carving out gerrymandered "safe" districts that proportionally favored Republicans over Democrats nearly 60-40.  And that was just at the federal Congressional level.  It's horrifying that this court case didn't seem to look at the damage done with the state Senate and state House seats.

I doubt we'll see the necessary fixes to the districts in time for the 2014 midterms.  And the court case is bound to drag up to the appellate system well into 2016, unless the plaintiffs get the courts to expedite the matter to get it fixed by that election cycle.  But this is a huge step: it is on record now.  Florida's districts are gerrymandered.  And those gerrymanders gotta go.

Better yet: the Republican crooks who carved out those illegal gerrymanders gotta go as well.  GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS (AND INDEPENDENTS).

Open Primary Petition For Florida

While looking at this year's proposed state amendment items, I looked at the list of Active (those not yet filed) amendments floating out there and came across one that I feel deserves a chance for a vote.

A petition for Open Primaries, which allows non-party voters to participate, and to have the primaries competitive between candidates - rather than candidates within each party - setting up the top two vote-getters regardless of party to run for the general election.  It's similar to the primary system they use in California right now.

There's a lot of reasons to support an primary system like this.  It encourages the moderate elements of a party to run an alternative candidate to the (most likely) hard-value candidate the more extremist elements are pushing for.  It would encourage candidates across the board to appeal to the broad base of voters rather than the specific (usually extremist) base of a specific party.  It encourages opposing parties to at least bring in a challenging candidate for a gerrymandered "safe" district that could appeal to the independent/no-party-affiliate voters stuck in that gerrymander, and who could survive the primary as the second-choice candidate to then campaign more fully for the general (that this could weaken gerrymandering overall is another positive).  It gives an independent or third-party candidate a chance to step up.  This does run the risk of more extremist candidates regardless of party to survive to a general election, but competition in my humble opinion is vastly better than a non-competitive district just sitting there with a safe incumbent coasting along doing nothing to appeal to the people (and the crazy 99 times out of 100 should filter out: I trust the majority of voters to do the right thing).

So I'm all for this petition getting to a ballot as a voter referendum.

Here's the deal: You gotta be a resident of the state of Florida, and must be able to verify your address and stuff.  You can't go signing other people's names to it: you can and should ask your friends to get on board and sign for this amendment proposal so we can have it for a vote for 2016.

Here's the link to the MoveOn petition site.  The group promoting this - Florida Independent Voting - has a printable petition you can submit (which I think is the more legitimate process: paperwork counts).

So... can I get the seven people who visit my blog to get their Florida relatives to sign on? (hopeful grin)

Midterms 2014: Heads Up, Florida

It's after July 4th.  The whole year is downhill from there...

Still, here in Florida we're getting the season kickstarted.  Well, two seasons actually: hurricane season and primary season.  It's a midterm year after all.

The street signs are already dotting the landscape in front of private offices and empty wildgrass fields.

The actual primary voting is set for August 26 - with Early Voting set for just 8 days(!) between August 16 to August 23 - so we're well outside of a month away, but dammit Floridians I want a big voter turnout this midterm so I want you all to PLAN AHEAD and make some time in your personal schedules to GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

I don't wanna see a 39 percent voter turnout.  I don't wanna see a 27 percent voter turnout.  If we get anything under 20 percent I swear to God I'm gonna file criminal charges of sedition on every registered voter who didn't show up to do your DAMN PATRIOTIC DUTY TO VOTE.  You made the effort to get registered, people, MAKE THE EFFORT TO GET ENGAGED WITH THE PROCESS AND VOTE.

And if you've got a problem where your districts are all non-competitive districts, I wanna see some petition drives to force the elections offices to put a NONE OF THE ABOVE option on the ballots.

This has been the real scandal of our electoral process: not the ridiculous and disprovable claims of voter fraud, not the genuine threat of the Republican Party suppressing minority and youth voters, not the massive amounts of megabillion bribery known as SuperPAC campaign Quid Pro Quos.  The simple fact that we honestly do not have enough voters taking the effort to actually vote: that we're being represented by elected officials who only get 30 or 35 percent of the people's approval.  We have an apathetic citizenry, one that's allowing the greedheads, the extremists and the con artists to continue rigging the electoral system simply because they show up and everyone else won't.

C'MON FLORIDA GET THE VOTE OUT!

(forthcoming: a review of the state amendment referendum for 2014.)

For the 4th of July I'll Do My Best To Answer Requests

Per the previous 4th of July post, there was a request to find the clip where John Adams bemoans his fate, that he'll never appear in the history books and that only Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Washington's horse (he rode several, apparently his favorite was named "Old Nelson") will be known for winning the Revolution.

Only problem with that clip is that it cuts off Franklin's response too soon.  It's pretty much the only YouTube clip I can find.  If anyone can find a longer clip that preserves the punchline, pass it on.

It's the 4th of July. You Know What That Means

TONS OF YOUTUBE CLIPS WITH "TEAM AMERICA F-CK YEAH" SONGS PLAYING!

(is warned by lawyers about abuse of copyrighted materials)

(is hit with restraining order from families sick and tired of their 5-year-olds learning how to sing "Team America F-ck Yeah" over and over)

Well, okay then.  How about video clips of "Let It Go" over and over?  I'm sure having the 5-year-olds singing THAT tune over and over has gone well in a lot of households...

(families refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate them in front of their kids)

Well, at least you're teaching them about the Fifth Amendment right protecting against self-incrimination.

How about this?

So... Captain America F-CK YEAH!

(gets hit with restraining order from Marvel Studios) OH CMON...

Fine.  Let's go the non-fiction route:

Oh no, William and Mary won't do for you Harvard grads... sigh.

Anniversary: The First Week of July Is Always Thus

Leading up to the 4th of July itself, we need to remember the great Battle of Gettysburg, of those who fought and died, of the causes won and the nation saved and the memories lost.

Next year.  Next year I plan ahead to be there in Gettysburg for this week.  It's one of those things every American needs to do...

Observations of the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby Ruling

Well, the damage is done for another Supreme Court calendar year, finishing up with a ruling on corporations refusing to provide healthcare coverage to employees with regards to birth control medication and devices...  while I'm not a legal scholar, I've been a witness to history and American politics long enough to understand a few things:

1) The ruling clearly puts the religious beliefs of an owner over that of the employees: rather than try to find a spot between which the owner's beliefs won't conflict with the employees, the Court took a side... which hurts more people (workers and their families) more than it would have hurt the owners.

2) Justice Alito's contention that the ruling specifically affects birth control makes it clear the decision was about abortion and not religious liberty (despite what the fundamentalists think, those issues ARE separate).  The ruling didn't bring into consideration other religious arguments against various medical treatments - for example, some churches object to blood transfusions and others might object to psychiatric meds - which means the Justices were only concerned for the one that mattered to them: the religious argument against abortion.  It didn't help that all five Justices ruling FOR Hobby Lobby are practicing Catholics, whose church decrees that birth control is equal to abortion (there's a sixth Justice who is Catholic, but Sotomayor is female, which brings us to the next point).

3) The ruling was passed due to five Justices all of whom - Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas - were not only Catholics but also all male.  The sixth male Breyer sided with the dissent, which was where the three sitting female Justices all argued against the ruling.

3a) Not to mention that the five Justices in favor are all Republican party appointees, with the four dissenters all Democratic.

If you were a Republican operative working on any outreach programs to young unmarried women (and even married women) who are in dire need of healthcare coverage to pay for medications like birth control (some of the meds are useful outside of birth control, such as reducing risks of ovarian cysts/cancer), all of a sudden you're going to find it VERY hard to find any women with any fondness for the GOP.  The Republicans were already having problems getting young women to support the party, now it's going to get worse...

4) While the Far Right and Pro-Fetus crowd may be celebrating the ruling, it needs to be said it is easier to rally your voters around a grievance than anything else.  Meaning the motivation is now all on the Democratic side of the midterms this year.

Now the Republicans will crow that this ruling hurts dreaded ObamaCare, and that may get the Far Right base out and voting this November.  But now the Democrats have motivation by pointing out to women voters that they need to get out the vote to keep Democrats in control of the Senate this 2014: It's the Senate that approves Supreme Court Justices after all, and the sitting Justices aren't getting any younger.  If Ginsberg - eldest of the left-leaning Justices - dies or retires with a GOP-held Senate (who will press for a Far Right candidate no matter what even with Obama making the nominations), that's a vulnerable vacancy that could secure a solid block for conservative rulings for a long time.  Or if any other conservative Justices dies or retires while the Democrats control the Senate with Obama making the nominations, that could well shift the balance of power in the Court away from the current 5-vote conservative side.

Either way, if women feel threatened by a conservative Supreme Court - and I'm willing to argue a lot of them will be, not just over abortion and access to healthcare but also employment and salary equality, access to education, access to voting (!) - they have a lot of motivation now to vote Democratic for Senate seats this 2014... and to vote Democratic for the Presidency (hi, Hillary!) in 2016.

This is still the key point: despite whatever the Supreme Court rules, it's still up to voters to put into political power in the White House and the Senate (as well as the House in Congress) those elected leaders who will pass the laws and enforce the laws that the Supreme Court rules upon.  It's up to the President and the Senate to put Justices onto the Court bench when the time comes.  It's up to the people - us - to vote the right people into office who will make damn sure the Court is made up of Justices who will follow the law rather than their own biases.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT WOMEN, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

P.S. point 5) This is still a slippery slope where "religious liberty" is going to get pursued in other fields of debate, such as education, social services, what have you.  Relying on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 to make this ruling is going to open up the possibility that questionable law can be argued for other ways the religious extremists can get around the restrictions and limits based on the Separation of Church and State.  This can get scary.

Anniversary: The Fuse

(update: big hello to the Crooks and Liars audience, welcome back)
History teaches us that the War was inevitable.

There was this... understanding across the nations of Europe at the turn of the 20th Century.  The empires of the 19th Century had made treaties and agreements to protect their global power by dividing themselves into two armed camps.  Revolving around the animosities between France and newly-forged Germany, the other nations and empires - Great Britain, Austria-Hungarian Empire, Russia, newly-forged Italy - chose sides to back in case France and Germany decided to start a thing.

It all came from the belief in a Balance of Power working between the nations/empires of Europe: that no one nation would become stronger or more powerful than the others, requiring nations to gang up against the growing "threat" to ensure war wouldn't happen...  Except that, by the 20th Century, various powers wanted war in order to satisfy their needs or avenge some slight.

Or, as Captain Blackadder so rightly put it: "It was bollocks."

The splits had formed over slights and injuries spanning decades: France being humiliated by Prussia/Germany in 1871; Russia being slighted over Austria-Hungary's control over the Balkans; Great Britain threatened by Germany's growing Imperial Navy and open desire for empire-building in places the UK already controlled; Germany's desire to make themselves an economic powerhouse equal to a British Empire the Kaiser Wilhelm II - cousin to the British Royals - so wanted to emulate.  Underneath all of this was a budding sense of Nationalism - a tribal impulse of patriotism - merged with various elements of anarchism and economic malaise.

By the early 1900s, all of Europe was a literal powder-keg: each nation building up arsenals and weapons of increasing technological lethality that few of the generals and men in power even comprehended how dangerous war was becoming.  While the peace held, it was merely over the fact nobody wanted to be the idiot to start the whole thing blowing up.  Nobody wanted the blame once the dust settled...

Except for the ones who didn't care.

For all the politicians and men of power who knew to tread lightly, Europe was also filled with ethnic factions subsumed by the aging Empires affected by the same Nationalist pride.  Except that Nationalist pride drove them - especially the Serbians in the Austrian-held Balkans - towards a desire for self-determination, the right to form their own nation outside of imperial dominance.  They'd seen nations like Greece gain their independence from the Ottoman Empire - a Middle Eastern empire on the edge of the European boiling pot - and they'd seen Italy and Germany form themselves into true nations out of divided squabbling states.  So these smaller states, these ethnic groups, sought their own nations.

This brings us to Serbia.

Serbians had been suffering for centuries, a once proud eastern European culture taken over by the Ottomans in the late 1300s.  By the mid-19th Century they were able to fight back to gain some independence from the Ottomans only to suffer new rule under the Austria-Hungarians as part of a Russo-Turkish treaty.  While Serbia retained some independence as a nation it still had to answer to the Habsburgs in Vienna, and was blocked from expanding further influence in the Balkan region.

The resentments led to various factions in Serbia plotting for action against the Austrians.  Violence and riots were common throughout the region leading up into 1914.  When the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria decided on a visit to the region as part of his military duties to the Navy (Austria-Hungary had access to the Mediterranean through their hold of Bosnia), he also planned on visiting Sarajevo for a museum dedication on the date of his wedding anniversary with his beloved wife Sophie.

That was June 28.

Welcome to the anniversary date of the starting point of World War I: the assassination of the Archduke and his wife.

Done as a protest against Austria-Hungarian hegemony, for Serbian nationalism pushing for a Greater Serbia dominating all of the Balkans, it was the excuse the powers back in Vienna needed to stomp down on a Serbian nation they viewed as a threat.

Problem was, Russia had become allies of Serbia by then.  Russia's interests in eastern Europe had always been there ever since the birth of their own empire.  When Austria-Hungary mobilized for a war on Serbia by July 28, it triggered clauses in treaties Russia had with Serbia and with their Entente with France and UK to mobilize, which triggered Germany's mobilization, which triggered France's...

One trigger unleashed another.  At no point did any national leader "man up" and say "wait, this is stupid, this is a fight between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, it doesn't involve us!"  Germany didn't need to mobilize against Russia... France didn't need to mobilize versus Germany... Germany didn't need to invade Belgium to preemptively fight France, which gave Great Britain the excuse to jump in... except that there were enough people in power in each of those nations who argued that war was war, that it would be quick and easy with everybody's allies lining up to fight it, and now was the time to pitch in.

Like Blackadder said, bollocks.

Whatever ideals or hope there had been in the 19th Century that humanity as a whole was stepping towards a more evolved, artistic, sensible future died in the muddy trenches of the war fronts.  Once started, neither side had little incentive to end it fearing the consequences of national collapse and panic.  For four years, the European powers pummeled each other until they had placed serious strains on their manpower and resources.

None of it ended well.

Germany, trying to destroy Russia from within, unleashed a communist uprising in the heart of a frayed Russia that led to the rise of the Soviet Union and to the horrors of Stalin.  Austria-Hungary fell apart through a prolonged war that drained their resources.  Italy, jumping in late on the side of the French-UK-Russian Entente, found their fortunes ruined in disastrous military campaigns that collapsed their government, leading to the rise of the Fascists under Mussolini.  The Ottoman Empire fell apart through British intervention in the tribal uprisings across the Middle East.  Great Britain and France lost hundreds of thousands of men against the German lines.  Germany used up much of its resources and men as well.  Germany's desperation against the UK led to their attacking American shipping and trade interests, dragging the United States into the war.

When the fighting finally stopped on November 11 1918, it was due more to fatigue on all sides than due to any actual victory.  But Germany's government fell apart as a result of the armistice, and France and Great Britain wielded enough influence on the following peace process that its lopsided punishments on Germany convinced a good number of politicians and historians to note that the peace wouldn't last (and it was because some of them like General Foch believed the treaty was too lenient and would allow Germany to rebuild).  And we all know what that bloody Treaty of Versailles led to...

It didn't help that some of the underlying issues causing the war - the fervent tribalism that masqueraded as nationalism, for example - weren't properly resolved.  France and Great Britain still had their empires to maintain after all, and they exerted their influences into the Middle East by carving up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire into nations that forced the wrong ethnic groups in the region into the wrong states.  While the bloody history of the Middle East has existed long before the European map-makers made their mark in the region, the drawing up of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Palestine (without an Israel at that time), Turkey and other regional nations with reckless disregard for ignored groups like the Kurds and ignorance of the divisions between Shia and Sunni faiths certainly exacerbated tensions to where we've got the bloody chaos the world endures to this day.

It was 100 years ago the modern world was born.  In fire and in blood and in death.  We've been dealing with the consequences ever since, more than any other historical event preceding it.

God help us all today.

In The "You Can't Make This Sh-t Up" Department of Crazy-Ass Primarying

Over at the TNC Horde, we'd save this for a Tuesday, but hell it's Friday and we might as well get this out of the way (link via Talking Points Memo):

On Tuesday, Timothy Ray Murray (pictured) challenged longtime incumbent Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) for the Republican nomination in Oklahoma's 3rd Congressional district. Murray lost, but he did manage to pull in 3,442 votes, good for 5.2 percent of the total. Now Murray says he will contest the outcome of the election. Because, he says, Lucas is dead and has been replaced by a "look alike."

Wasn't this an episode of The X-Files? No, wait, it was Nowhere Man, starring Bruce "Enlist in Starfleet" Greenwood...

"The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma’s 3rd District will be contested by the Candidate, Timothy Ray Murray," Murray wrote in a press release posted on his campaign website. "I will be stating that his votes are switched with Rep. Lucas votes, because it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike."

Widely known? This is the first any of us are hearing about this!

On the website, Murray claims that Lucas and "a few other Oklahoma and other States’ Congressional Members," were executed "on or about" Jan. 11, 2011 in southern Ukraine.

What were Oklahoma politicians doing in southern Ukraine in January 2011?!

"On television they were depicted as being executed by the hanging about the neck until death on a white stage and in front of witnesses," the website claims. "Other now current Members of Congress have shared those facts on television also. We know that it is possible to use look alike artificial or manmade replacements, however Rep. Lucas was not eligible to serve as a Congressional Member after that time."

I dunno, there's been a few Congressmen still serving office well past their zombiefication...

The bizarre charge was first reported by KFOR TV in Oklahoma City. The station reported that while Oklahoma election board officials had also received Murray's press release, Murray had yet to file a formal petition to contest the election. The station also sought comment from Lucas, who said that he had never been to Ukraine.

Well, that's what you'd expect the Life Model Decoy of Congress-Podperson Lucas to say!

“Many things have been said about me, said to me during course of my campaigns," Lucas told KFOR. "This is the first time I’ve ever been accused of being a body double or a robot."

There was that time he was accused of being one of the original singers for Milli Vanilli, but the evidence never panned out...

Murray, who previously challenged Lucas in 2012 while running as a Democrat, ran on a pledge to "help bring U.S. House leadership back to traditional values and defend and serve the voice of The People." Federal Election Commission records show that Murray raised and spent just $50 on his campaign. His campaign website's "issues" page called for balancing the budget, creating incentives for job growth in "all tiers" of the job market, protection for small businesses and banks, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and tax reform. He also pledged to "never use a look alike to replace my (The Office’s) message to you or to anyone else, as both the other Republican Challengers have."

Murray did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TPM on Friday.

Here's the thing that's bothering me: what if Murray is telling the truth, and there's been an elaborate sham perpetrated by the Pentagon and the global media to cover up the shocking assassination of American politicians on foreign soil? What if Lucas is a plant, a stealth agent for HYDRA, just waiting for the opportunity to abuse the 25th Amendment to his own diabolical need?  What if this is some massive conspiracy dating all the way back to Operation: Paperclip to destabilize the U.S. government out of some twisted need for revenge by the still-living brain of Adolf Hitler?! What if, man, what if! YOU GOTTA START THINKING LIKE THE CIA DOES, MAN! ROSWELL! ROSWELL!

...

Just to note, Murray originally ran as the Democrat candidate back in 2012 against Lucas.  Didn't exactly see the reports on this back then, you know...

I'm not going Tag this with a Republicans Are Insane label, since this is pretty much just this one Murray fellah jumping off the cliffs of sanity here, and he's someone party-jumping for some personal need for attention.  But... Seriously, guys?  Both parties - Republican and Democrat - need to do a better job screening their candidates with psych evaluations before letting them do any fundraiser campaigning.  Seriously.

Meanwhile... in an abandoned warehouse outside of Floyd, Texas... (insert ominous musical sting here)

Meanwhile in Florida, Another Gripe About Gerrymanders

(update: hello to the readers visiting via Crooks and Liars.)
I mentioned on my last post I had several things worth blogging, and this was one: a follow-up of sorts from the Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano about the gerrymander trial and a realization he made about how screwed up our electioneering is:

...Nearly one-third of the candidates for 140 Senate and House seats are running unopposed. You think that sounds bad? Pffft, that just scratches the surface.

Dozens of other races offer only the appearance of competition with write-in, third-party and no-party affiliated candidates on board. No disrespect intended to those folks, but it has been decades since anyone booked passage to Tallahassee via that route.

All of which brings us to the bottom line:

There are a grand total of 57 races out of 140 that include both a Republican and a Democrat. Fifty-stinking-seven!

That means nearly 60 percent of the legislative races in November are slam dunks. And only a handful of the other 40 percent will actually turn out to be competitive.

In other words, your American Idol vote will probably carry more weight...

This is what gerrymandering does in the pursuit of creating "safe" districts. Enough of these districts are so skewed to favor one party that the opposing major party doesn't even want to waste the resources to challenge the incumbent that's usually sitting in said district.

More from Romano:

The maps are drawn to have predetermined outcomes in elections. Republicans have given themselves enough safe districts to ensure they will remain in power, and they have given Democrats just enough safe districts to keep them from complaining.

So who loses?

You.

Instead of getting multiple choices of candidates who have a legitimate chance to win, you are stuck with take-it-or-leave-it elections.

The bigger problem is you have already made it clear you were tired of this sham. Florida voters overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendments that forbid the Legislature from just this kind of district stacking when maps were redrawn for 2012.

And yet the problem is only getting worse.

In 2010, the last election under the old maps, 51.7 percent of the races failed to field both a Republican and a Democrat. In 2012, the first year of new maps, that percentage rose to 54.3. Right now, barring anyone dropping out, it's 59.2 percent.

So that means the legislative leaders who were specifically instructed to redraw maps to make them more competitive may have actually made them more lopsided.

Which is easy to believe if you listened to the testimony of deleted emails, consultants being invited to the table and a phantom map falsely submitted under a student's name...

Just on those points alone, the judge overseeing this case ought to dump the GOP's redistricting maps (and for good measure hold each of the con artists responsible for it for contempt).

Romano notes how the general electorate has grown disgusted by the gerrymandering, about how state amendments forcing better redistricting were passed in popular referendum, but that's not the only emotion these gerrymandered maps create.

These maps also create disillusionment and disinterest.  When voters tend to get confronted with elections that have no consequences or value, when voters are pretty much told they have no choices for them to make, they tune out and refuse to show up.  Voter turnout for these mid-term elections - where nothing is at stake in 60 percent of the districts - is hideous, barely topping out over 39 percent and sometimes barely getting over a quarter of all registered voters (when real competitive races take place like the Presidential ones, voter turnout at least breaks over the 55-60 percent mark).

At best 39 percent turnout, people.  That's not a majority of registered voters.  That's not enough residents in this state electing people to office who have the power to dictate business regulations, quality of schools, quality of the local roads and bridges, our environment, any kind of local or national jobs bills that could stimulate the local/national economy... and so on.

We're not ruled by majority vote, we're ruled by the extremists who are the only ones who care enough to vote no matter what.  And those extremists - especially the ones on the Republican side - don't care if government works or not, they just want their special interests protected at all hazards...

This is what gerrymandering creates: lack of honest-to-God representation of the majority's best interests.  It creates disgust in the entire political process.

Gerrymandering has to go if we have any hope of making government at the local, state, and federal levels work again.

That judge better rule against these maps and make certain honest, competitive maps get installed right quick.

Executive's Order, Speaker's Chaos

I had about five other things I wanted to write about - after long weeks of having little to discuss that could be resolved in a simple, "what the hell?" retort - but I spotted this halfway through the day and felt compelled to lead off with this.

Speaker John Boehner is seriously reviewing his options on pursuing a lawsuit against Barack Obama's use of Executive Orders.  To wit (via the Washington Post):

Reports today indicate that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is planning a lawsuit over Barack Obama's use of executive orders. These orders have long been a focal point of right-wing anger, particularly since January of this year when Obama announced he'd be using more of them to bypass a gridlocked and dysfunctional Congress.

After the immediate round of laughing my ass off, I had to consider the actual seriousness of what Boehner's hoping to accomplish.

With regards to EOs (abbrev. Executive Order, natch), there has been a long history of Presidents issuing such things ever since the first one under the Constitution, George Washington himself.  The argument for them stems from the interpretation of Article II, Section 1 Clause 1 that grants Presidents the power to "faithfully execute the laws": in order to execute - or perform duties - under such laws the President has to establish the who, how, where and when those laws have to be enforced (the "why" of the laws fall under judicial review set by the Supreme Court).  The only noticeable time Executive Orders were even considered by SCOTUS, it was when they overturned an EO issued by Truman because it "attempted to make law" rather than enforce one.

Ever since that, Presidents made the effort to relate their EOs to congressional laws.  Legal scholars, however, still consider Executive Orders in a kind of gray zone where their actual constitutionality might or might not exist.  It's in the gray zone that Boehner wants to attack Obama's efforts to use EOs this year to work around GOP Congressional obstruction.

Thing is, Boehner's case is weak to begin with.  Obama's case history of issuing EOs demonstrate he's not the great offender Boehner and the Far Right make him out to be:

That Post chart tells the facts: compared to modern Presidents, Obama's issued the fewest EOs in decades.  For the most part of the 19th Century, you'll note the lack of executive activity... up until Teddy Roosevelt, that bundle of energy who defined the modern Presidency with his progressive activism.  It calmed down by the time of Eisenhower, and even then the EO average hadn't been reached since the days of Jimmy Carter.

And while the modern conservative wingnut faction of the GOP are screaming about Obama's "overreach", his 175 (as of March 2014) EO count in six years comes nowhere near sainted Ronald Reagan's 381 total (Obama would have to double his EO count in the next two years to even come close).

Despite what Boehner claims, this whole thing smells of setting up for cause to impeach.  They couldn't impeach over the birth certificate, they couldn't impeach over Solyndra, they couldn't impeach over ObamaCare, and the Far Right are finding out they don't have much to impeach with over Benghazi, the IRS SuperPAC investigation, Benghazi, the prisoner exchange for the sole POW we had in Afghanistan, Benghazi, Obama's method of shoelace tying, and BENGHAZI.

So they're going after Executive Orders.  The plan looks to be simple:

1) Get the courts to establish that Executive Orders in general are not allowed under the Constitution: that it's executive law-making, conflicting with the Legislative power to make laws.
2) Argue that considering Obama used EOs throughout his tenure, he was committing impeachable acts all along.
3) IMPEACH.

Which brings up the unpleasant reality that EVERY President - save William Henry Harrison (I died in 30 days!) - would have to be retroactively impeached.  Not to mention the fact that any future President coming out of the Republican ranks (if that ever happens again, considering how f-cked the party's becoming at the national level) is suddenly going to have no executive power of his/her own to wield if Boehner and the Far Right succeed at this.

This obsession with stopping Obama at all costs is both ridiculous and dangerous.  Ridiculous in that the GOP's efforts are going against decades if not centuries of effective government traditions.  Dangerous in that if any of these efforts succeed we could see the end of the system of checks and balances that made our federal republic work all those centuries.

The courts already established clear limits on EOs: banning them outright can restrict a President's ability to enact any law not without instructions spelled out by Congress to the letter.  And considering how some laws may conflict with others, it'd end up to the courts clearing that chaos which could take years to resolve, which a smartly-worded EO would otherwise straighten out.  We've been doing this for decades, as history shows us: even during the questionable periods of civil war and world wars, overall this system worked.

Now, just to deny Obama anything, Boehner and his congressional allies want to wipe that all out.

"This is about faithfully executing the laws of our country," says Boehner.

Problem with that, Mr. Boehner, when you were asked which laws weren't being executed, you couldn't provide a single example.

If you were serious about this, Mr. Boehner, you'd have a violation on hand, you'd have an excuse, before coming to the cameras to make your threat known.

The Speaker of the House is inviting chaos into our system of checks and balances.  This is what we've come to.

The Only Thing To Say About Dick Cheney

Considering the former Vice President's recent hypocritical and vile comments about Obama's handling of the Iraqi mess Cheney left behind, about the prolonged history of Cheney's lies and distortions, about the thousands of lives broken and killed under his orders, there is only one thing to say:

Arrest the son of a bitch for war crimes and shove his goddamn criminality back into his goddamn face.

That's all that needs to be said now and forever.  No more television interviews.  No more speaking events.  No more book deals.  Send him to jail, put him on trial.  Make him answer for the torture regime, the lies about WMDs, the war-profiteering, the folly of waging two wars with massive debt and without end.

When Courts Let Lying Prevail

Nothing good can come of it:

...If ever that could be said of a Supreme Court opinion, it would be Monday’s unanimous decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The case seemed, at first glance, to concern the right to lie about politics. As properly decided by the Court, however, it only had to do with the abstruse doctrine of “standing to sue,” which requires a plaintiff challenging a law to show an “actual injury,” not just a political objection to the law.

The plaintiffs want to challenge an Ohio state law that bans “a false statement concerning the voting record of a candidate or public official” within a specified period before a primary or general election “knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (Their petition counted at least 15 other states that have “false statement” laws.) Because there is no action pending against them now, a lower court held they had no standing.

The issue presented to the Court thus was narrow. That may be why the opinion was delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas has idiosyncratic views on free speech, and rarely gets to write a majority opinion on a First Amendment question. His opinion said only that a political group that might be penalized down the road for making “false” statements in future campaigns had standing to go forward now with a lawsuit...

The problem with this decision is subtle but important: while it looks like it gives PACs and candidates the right to fight back against governmental oversight with too broad and vague a reach, it lays the groundwork for elections to be filled with the worst sort of mudslinging and negative campaigning.  While we already have a huge problem with negative campaigning, there is at least a method in place to stop or limit such bad behavior through the threat of sanctions by state-level authorities.  This ruling can be the first step towards eliminating such authority down the road.

The Court doesn't seem to recognize - when you look at other recent rulings making it easier to lie to the public - the implications of lying in the public forum.  They're thinking about the specific harm against an accused or a victim of the lie, or the specific harm against the person or group making that lie.  They're not looking at the effect that lie has on everybody else.

Our voters, our citizenry, rely on being well-informed - informed to the facts, and with accuracy - in order to make decisions when voting for elected officials and voting for public referendums.  When they're being told falsehoods about a candidate - "Oh, that one eats babies!" - or a political issue - "Gay marriage causes hurricanes and earthquakes!" - it confuses the public dialog, making it more difficult for reasonable, common sense political fixes to get made.

We're still dealing with the massive fallout of one of the biggest falsehood campaigns our elected officials pulled: we're still coping with the lies Bush and Cheney and their administration spread across the nation's media outlets about Iraq being a backer of Bin Laden and with Saddam wielding an arsenal of WMDs.  More than 12 years later, we've got a radically divided Iraq on the verge of sectarian collapse because we got lied into an invasion and ill-planned occupation, and as the nation most responsible for the damage Iraq is in now, we're looked at paying the costs of trying to keep that war-torn nation afloat... even as the liars who got us into the mess are making more noise about what to do (bomb 'em some more, for the most part) about it.  All because those liars never got held accountable, because they kept selling their snake oil and their BS to the electorate still voting themselves or their allies back into office giving them political cover to lie some more.

This is the damage lying can cause in politics: lying distorts, lying ill-informs, lying kills.

We need stronger laws in place to stop candidates and campaigns from making false accusations and outright lies.  At some point, the facts have to matter.  The truth has to matter.

They Did WHAT To the House Majority Leader?

I was going to write about the increase in gun violence putting lie to the NRA's obsession to turn the Second Amendment into a License to Kill, but then I got home to the current news coming out of Virginia:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is losing his primary to a virtual unknown Far Right challenger.

This is part Schadenfreude, the part where I laugh my moderate RINO ass off as a solid conservative party leader is getting creamed because he wasn't Far Right enough for his own district.

Cantor's positions are - well were is the operative word now that we're talking past tense - very much anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-gay, anti-matter, anti-ante, auntie-anti, anti-Audi, pretty much anti-Obama across the board.  And he still lost his base.  BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Enjoy the Purity Purge now, boys!

Cantor's the Majority Leader, pretty much the Second-in-Command of the House behind Speaker Boehner, essentially one of the key players who was keeping Boehner's ass protected by the wingnuts decrying Boehner's unwillingness to pursue a more hardened "Impeach Obama With Any Excuse" (for all his opposition and obstruction, Boehner genuinely wanted to get things done: after all, a Speaker's reputation stands on the things done under his/her watch).

That's the public stance, by the way.  Cantor's also one of the backroom players who keeps, uh kept, stoking the grumbling ire of the Far Right back-benchers as part of a long game towards making himself Speaker whenever Boehner falls.  It seems as though Cantor's falling first...

Cantor's losing tonight, by the by, because he wasn't hard enough being anti-immigration.  His opponent Dave Brat (I'm a minor self-published writer, even I don't go out of my way to name my characters so blatantly... somewhere Charles Dickens is spinning in his tomb) went after Cantor's occasional attempts to push an immigration reform bill that included "amnesty" - a wingnut no-no - as a sign of Cantor's failure to represent true Republican dogma.  As Joan Walsh notes:

...In a GOP primary season where the big story had been the GOP establishment beating back the Tea Party, the story turned on a dime with Cantor’s stunning defeat. He is the first majority leader in history to lose in a primary in his own party since 1899...

This is a huge victory for anti-immigration extremists, including Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Laura Ingraham and Mickey Kaus... Brat had accused Cantor of shoving immigration reform down the party’s throat – why is the right obsessed with things being forced down their throats? – and with recent news about children crossing the border from Mexico vainly hoping for congressional sanity in the form of an immigration deal, the issue had new heat...

...But it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Cantor is another conscience-free Republican leader who courted the Tea Party when it seemed politically advantageous and then tried to run from it when it was clear it was going to bite him in the ass...

The chatter about a GOP Civil War is bound to go major coverage on the blogs and political talk shows for the next few days.  Deal is, it's not really much of a Civil War as it is a shift between the Establishment Republicans who want to wield their political might for their own ends and the Radical (Tea Party) Republicans who want to use that political power to truly achieve their destructive "kill the government" agenda.  Either way, the conservatives - and their deep-pocket uber-rich overlords - win because they share the same true agenda - massive tax cuts and the shredding of the social safety net - that remains on the table.

What's really happening here is the increase in the voting base outrage and anger - some of which is expressed through the scary increase in gun violence the last few weeks - which is not getting mollified or controlled by a party leadership starting to show signs of losing touch with its own base.

This is the scary part of tonight's results: the growing possibility that the Republicans are going to not only field more radical candidates coming out of the primaries this midterms, but also the now-certainty that the Republicans are going to pursue a radical Far Right agenda in order to appease that angry base regardless of being Establishment-types or Radicals themselves.  For the voters to willingly turn against an incumbent with massive political power - almost unheard of in this era of incumbency entrenchment - is a huge blow, a terrifying reminder to those other incumbents that their own political survival is at stake.  The talk right now is how the immigration reform efforts are dead in the water (again) and how the existing House leadership is going to outdo each other in the "Wingnut Purity" contests to keep their own asses safe (meaning the likelihood of seeing an Obama impeachment before the 4th of July).  "Bipartisanship" is now going to be a dirtier word than "Twerking".  ...what the hell is "twerking" anyway...

The other scary realization is how more dangerous the election results this November are going to get.  Like it or not, we're in an electoral process of a winner-take-all zero-sum system between two major parties (Rep or Dem).  Given the obscene gerrymandering of "safe" districts, the possibility of a crazed radical candidate - someone spouting a lot of anti-rape rhetoric for example - getting elected to an office where he/she can cause major damage is high.  In a Senate race where a whole state - which diminishes the strength of a radical voting base in a sea of more moderate voters - could get repelled by an uncaring or unthinking candidate (as we've seen with Todd Akin), the risk is less: in a House race where a radical voting base is in the majority, the risk is serious.

The only thing lessening the risk of a wingnut getting elected is the possibility - even in a hard Far Right district - that Brat will do something so offensive during his victory lap between now and November that even the Far Right voters will go "oh God, we voted for THAT idiot?"  Sadly, the only offensive thing I think Brat can do is say something stupid like this portion of the sentence has been filtered by the Decency Board, who would like to point out that what is being described here not only violates the Laws of God but also violates the Laws of Biology, Physics, and Field Hockey.

While there is a Democratic challenger Jack Trammel in that district - someone from the same college where Brat teaches - there is no certainty that Trammel can win over enough voters: the 7th District went heavily for Romney in 2012 and given the rancor the Republican voters are feeling in that district they're bound to keep that enthusiasm well into November.  It wouldn't hurt, and indeed might help, to send Trammel all the support that can get mustered: in some ways, this seat is up for grabs (losing the incumbent weakens the party's hold on it).

There are more primaries on the way: more possible challenges by Tea Party types versus Establishment Republicans now shaking in their faux cowboy boots.  The Peak Wingnut that John Cole worries about has yet to hit its limit.

God help us.

P.S. Don't Vote Republican.