Man Shoots First Amendment to Prove Second Amendment Is Flawed

We've bumped into Erick Erickson before. The fear-monger threw a conniption back in 2010 over the "invasive" nature of the U.S. Census - despite the fact we're required to have one every ten years and that it's never destroyed lives before - and threatened back then to greet any Census taker with a loaded firearm.

So here he is this weekend throwing another conniption, this time over the New York Times' front-page editorial over gun safety laws. For the first time in over 90 years, the paper of record put an opinion piece on its front page, highlighting the seriousness of the matter: End the Gun Epidemic In America.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism...

...It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

So what is Erickson's response to this? A blistering counterpoint? A debate on the merits of the Times' position?

Nope. He shoots the newspaper itself as though he's Standing His Ground:

The paranoid gun fetishist seems to be one of the people who SHOULDN’T own a gun. He clearly does not operate it properly with only the righteous intent of protecting himself. Instead, he is using it to shoot up a newspaper, and in essence, trying to silence the freedom of the press and freedom of speech by use of deadly force. Wouldn’t that be considered a terrorist act? After all, terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.”

This seems to be Erickson's standard response: in the face of a moral quandary or something that annoys his political sensibilities, pull out his phallic replacement and act like he's a manly man deploying the most gross exaggeration of manly American stereotype. "If I don't likes it, I shoots it."

In the process he proves Junius correct one more time, and proves himself an Imposter instead of an Honest Man:

An honest man, like the true religion, appeals to the understanding, or modestly confides in the internal evidence of his conscience. The imposter employs force instead of argument, imposes silence where he cannot convince, and propagates his character by the sword.

See how Erickson propagates his (lack of) character by the sword, going for the gun as his answer to every argument he CAN'T win. And look at his audience, the ones who eat this all up like his act is the sweetest of cupcakes instead of the poison to the Body Republic that it is.

This is a major problem out of many that our nation is facing heading into a winter of discontent and divisiveness. Actually, it's reflective of several: not only the need for gun safety laws in the face of increased mass shootings, but also the need to repair the public forum that's fallen into toxic posturing, bullying, outright lies, and epistemic closures.

And Erickson's act proves one other thing: the Second Amendment can no longer co-exist with the rights and protections established by the First Amendment. The NRA's obsession of turning the Second Amendment from "well-regulated militias" into a license to shoot anybody they don't like now conflicts with the First Amendment's protection for Americans to peaceably assemble in public. How can we, when angry (mostly) men are able to legally purchase weapons of war they can then use in our workplaces, our churches, our schools, our shops and movie theaters?

How can we uphold the First Amendment's protections of a free press - where public opinion and reporting can be published - when Erickson seeks to intimidate that free press by using it for target practice, with direct implication to threaten that action on the people expressing that opinion?

The United States is now caught between two constitutional interpretations. We as a nation need to uphold the one that best serves the public trust - our rights to be at peace with each other, to assemble as citizens, to speak our minds without threat - and we need to reform if not remove the second position that seeks to grant the angriest and most violent of ourselves the power to shoot us all.

And to Erick Erickson: your gun does not protect you from your own flaws and failures. Remember that as you cower in fear, because that's all you've proven this day.

Yet Another Shooting Because an Insane Gun-Worship Faction Are Killing Us One Mass Murder At a Time

Yet another shooting.

The facts are these:

Three assholes armed to the teeth and reportedly wearing masks and body armor strolled into a community center in San Bernardino California, opened fire with their guns, killing up to 14 people at the moment with more wounded, and drove off with intent to get away with it. The local police were able to locate where they tried to hide and they were caught in a shootout, with about two of the gunmen dead and one fleeing on foot. This situation is not over.

The location targeted is the Inland Regional Center, a community agency that teaches and cares for people and children with disabilities. This is akin to a school, a college campus, a church, a place of selfless activity filled with people WHO DID NOT DESERVE TO GET SHOT AT.

This is essentially the 355th mass shooting (where four or more people are shot at one time) we've had in the United States. We had another mass shooting in Savannah Georgia and the nation hasn't even paid attention to THAT because the body count's too low.

Our body count from mass shootings rivals that of nations caught in civil wars.

Mass number of guns DO NOT MAKE US SAFER. We've got the highest gun-to-resident ratio on the planet, and having all these guns have not made us safe. All these guns have made us easier targets.

The common links between all these shootings are simple to identify.

We make it too goddamned easy for assholes to buy/procure guns.

Nearly every mass shooting involved at least one man - more often than not white - with anger management issues.

To quote Rude Pundit:

The Rude Pundit has said before and he'll say again: It's never just the assailants. It's always the guns. Already, we're seeing the appalling piglets of the right tell anyone who dares to insist that it's the guns to sit down and shut up and not "politicize" this latest float in our unending parade of horrors. As if silence isn't a political act. As if the very people who called for banning Syrian refugees before the bodies were cold in Paris have any goddamned right to tell anyone to not talk politics. As if the NRA, which makes money on the corpses of the victims of mass shootings, deserves anything more than being spit on. They fear politicizing because policy may come from it...

...This country has allowed ludicrous and evil and demonstrably wrong people and ideas to be passed off as legitimate. We give people a forum to say unbelievable bullshit, like that expanded background checks will lead to tyranny and gun confiscation. At some point, we are allowed to assert that some things are not worthy of discussion and that some people and organizations deserve only contempt, derision, and isolation. We can turn people into pariahs. We are allowed to do that. The CNN anchor, reacting to the shooting a few minutes ago, kept saying, over and over, that it was sad and "ridiculous." She's right. Now, how about the next time some Republican politician talks about how we need to do more about the "mentally-ill" (which is something they won't do) and not limit gun purchases, she shuts them down and throws them off the show? What if she says that it's an unacceptable position to not do anything about guns?

We do not have to tolerate the intolerable. We have chosen to tolerate it. We have chosen to pretend as if the extremists who demand no regulation of guns have a valid point of view. We should be politicizing every shooting even more. We should be asking our politicians how they can dare not do something to help a nation afflicted with bullets.

If there will ever be a tipping point on guns, it will only happen when we say that disgusting acts are aided and abetted by disgusting people with disgusting beliefs. It will only happen when we treat the disgusting people with the disgust they deserve.

He's right.

The NRA should not be treated as a legitimate organization. They are not speaking to the facts NOR the truth. They have a financial incentive - many NRA leaders OWN companies that manufacture firearms - to promote fear-mongering and frenzied ammo stockpiling. The NRA and other gun-worship enablers have a political incentive to "win" the issue on guns otherwise they look weak to their followers.

The NRA are no longer about rifles. They haven't been responsible about firearms for 40 years. They are the National Murder Association now, and have been. Their organization is now about murder, and how THEY can profit from it. They are about the worship of metal pieces of weaponry that stand as their golden calf, which gives them millions of dollars while thousands of US die for their un-Christian sacrifice.

To hell with the NRA and their fear-mongering allies. THEY ARE AT WAR WITH THE REST OF THE UNITED STATES and we need to recognize that fact.

The Pro-Fetus Crowds are Imposters

Nothing about this quote from more than 300 years ago has been proven wrong.

An honest man, like the true religion, appeals to the understanding, or modestly confides in the internal evidence of his conscience. The imposter employs force instead of argument, imposes silence where he cannot convince, and propagates his character by the sword.
- Junius (Letter 41, 1770)

The recent Colorado Springs shooting - where a terrorist (there is no other word to describe him right now) charged into a Planned Parenthood clinic with guns blazing and then shot at cops responding to the emergency - proves Junius correct.

The terrorist - a man with various addresses hailing from North Carolina up to Colorado, with a back history of violent behavior to his exes and neighbors - was someone willing to employ force, someone wanting to impose silence and fear on others, and sure as hell propagated his character by his sword guns.

This is a man who reportedly told the cops who finally arrested him "no more baby parts." This is a reference to accusations by "pro-life" (which aren't, they're more pro-fetus than that) groups that Planned Parenthood was harvesting aborted fetuses for body parts: accusations that had been proved a hoax created by selective editing and baseless speculation.

The entire pro-fetus movement are this: imposters and terrorists. They want an absolute ban on abortion (and contraceptives, which means they're really in opposition to sex they can't control), but they can't convince a majority of Americans who understand there are grey areas - rape, incest, the health of the mother - where abortion is a necessity.

So where they can't convince these pro-fetus wingnuts would impose violence: destroy the abortion providers, kill the doctors, threaten and stalk the women and families. They lie about abortion providers to try and trick the public into hating abortion as an option.

They violate every aspect of Christian grace, forgiveness, and adherence to the Commandments that honest Christians - those who modestly confide to themselves their faith - abide.

They're not even really pro-fetus, these yellers and screamers. If they truly were about protecting the fetus and the birth child, they would be lavishly giving out funds and supporting pre-natal and post-natal health care services to ensure safer births and healthier children, and pushing that agenda over the concerted effort to shut down, burn down, or shoot out clinics to their whims.

They'd be tripping over themselves to vote for food stamps aid for starving families, promoting child care services and pre-education programs that aid children in growing up smart and prepared. They're not: many of these "pro-fetus" leaders fall silent or disparaging towards the poor and hungry the second those fetuses turn into actual living babies.

No, this is what these Imposters are: they are pro-Judgment. This is what they truly love, being able to stand there - Bible in one hand and a pointing index finger with the other - and pass moral judgment on those they deem "inferior" to their morally perfect "superior" selves.

Have you ever been to a clinic protest? I've seen several at the clinic in Gainesville in the years I lived there. The small crowd gathered there weren't about salvation or praying, they are there with signs declaring others to be "murderers and sinners." I recall one sign railing against the "whores" who sin by using birth control pills. Those people weren't there for Jesus, or salvation, or grace: those people were there to show off, and they were there to pass judgment on those they hated.

That's nothing compared to the horror stories you can find online about these Pro-Judging crowds stalking people to their homes and threatening their families. But that's still part of their psyche: their desire to belittle and weaken their "lessers" drives these pro-judgers into bullying people 24/7 regardless of common decency and true grace.

So, no, don't call these pro-fetus people "pro-life" because they are not. Don't call these pro-fetus people Christians because, by their actions of loud denouncements and self-serving hypocrisy and destruction of lives, they are not.

Call these terrorists for what they are.

Call them Imposters.

And deny them any victory they seek, because they seek destruction of all others so they can rule over the ruin.

Yet Another Act of Terror In the USA: Home Grown, Targeted Against Women, And Not At All Surprising

I'm personally busy this weekend coping with getting the 50,000 word count to NaNoWriMo, so all apologies I can't really write more than this, but here goes.

Today, there was YET ANOTHER SHOOTING.

This time at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

This time, there were police present and the gunman still went up and shot them, wounding four (or five) of them. Current reports is that one police officer has died. There are two dead out of eleven wounded.

The gunman was taken alive. Photo evidence is that the gunman is a white middle-aged man.

I file this under "Why I Am Not Surprised" category.

I am not surprised the terrorist is a white man over a certain age who is likely failing at anger management.

I am not surprised the target was a Planned Parenthood clinic. There is a literal war on women being waged by the Religious Right in our United States, and the fight over Planned Parenthood is part of it (you might be surprised to learn there's been arson attacks and other threats to clinics the last three months. The major news outlets don't report them as much nor make the direct connections.)

I am not surprised that the arguments and excuses of the NRA about "oh we need more people with guns to keep us safe" are meaningless. There were armed police there and this gun-wielding terrorist showed up and still opened fire and people still got wounded and killed. How many more "good guys with guns" could have stopped this?

I will not be surprised when the Far Right - the media outlets, the political leaders, their Presidential candidates, all who spent all these months and years attacking Planned Parenthood and pretty much calling on acts of violence like this - turns this around and blames Obama for being evil, or blames women for being baby killers, or blames the cops for defending the clinic instead of arresting those baby killers, or blames libruls for "politicizing" all this. At no time will the Far Right actually stop and go "oh crap, we're promoting violence and killing people in violation of our supposed Christian teachings."

I am not surprised anymore. Because this sh-t will keep happening. Because one side of the political aisle - Republicans and their Far Right members - profits from this violence and madness.

Don't be at all surprised we'll have another mass shooting soon, over something that angers some white guy or group of white guys with guns.

After all, we just had a group of angry white guys attempt a mass shooting over something political that pissed them off just three days ago. THREE DAYS AGO.

So set the clocks. In three days, another mass shooting. Another angry white guy with a gun. Another political argument the haters are resolving through bloodshed and death.

Happy Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day 2015!

And on this day, the Good Lord let us witness this:

There are few other ways to celebrate this day of crazed, bird-carving ritual of dismemberment and consumption.

Well, there's always football.

Never Forget.

Unitarian Support for Syrian Refugees

I added this as an update to an earlier thread but I wanna highlight this for its' own.

The Unitarian Universalist congregation has a charity working for Syrian refugees. If you want to help out, that's a great place to start.

It will also be a nice F-CK YOU to the Republican Party leadership that's been showing themselves as a bunch of cowardly haters. Just look at Texas, where their asshole Governor is telling humanitarian charity groups in the state to stop helping refugees altogether.

Pretty much telling churches and social aid groups to stop clothing and feeding the poor and huddled victims of an ongoing war zone. Pretty much violating the teachings of Jesus to care for the hungry and the poor and those in need.

As Candida Moss points out, The Christian Bible is clear about what to do about refugees: HELP THEM.

...If I sound shrill, it is because this is profoundly obvious. It’s not as if, in pointing out the fundamentally un-Christian nature of this political posturing, anyone is asking for a high level of Biblical literacy: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is a foundational Christian teaching and used in many denominations as a shorthand for the ethical teaching of the Bible as a whole...

...Are there risks involved in accepting large numbers of refugees? I’m not a specialist in this region so let’s for the sake of argument concede that there might be (although as the Economist has shown, none of the 750,000 refugees admitted since 9/11 have planned or committed terrorist acts against the U.S.). I am a specialist in Christianity though, so allow me to say that, biblically speaking, it simply does not matter if there are risks. There are more than 30 Biblical passages encouraging people not to be afraid and to trust in God. Allowing oneself to be terrorized is not the Christian option. Fear does not permit Christians to abandon the modern imperative to help those in need. 

Republicans Are Cowards (update)

Update: Thank you Crooks and Liars audience for checking in from Mike's Blog Round-up. Please take a moment to glance about the blog, leave a comment if you wish, and don't forget this is NaNoWriMo month and I wanna see a word-count on your novel by 50,000 words at the end of November! I'm at 30,000-plus right now... Please check below for updated links especially the second one, thanks.

Update to the Update: Um, hello BoatBits? Getting a bit of traffic from that blog. Nice to see you. Stay for the veal, it's the best in the city.

--

In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris last Friday, our Republican Party leadership has shown its true colors.

Yellow.

From their Presidential hopefuls down to their Congressional leaders to their state governors, each and every Republican leader has shown themselves to be a bunch of selfish, uncharitable, graceless, hateful cowards.

A bunch of goddamn scaredy-cats using their fear, their racism, and their xenophobia to start throwing hissy fits about our nation taking in Syrian refugees. They are attacking and accusing families and children of being monsters, instead of humans trying to survive a four-year-old civil war that's shown no sign of stopping soon because of the political mess the entire Middle East region is.

The hypocrisy is disgusting.

These Republicans scream about Syrian refugees being a threat to our communities, that they are coming to kill us all.  But they don't say a goddamn thing about our communities already under threat by gun-wielding angry guys who keep shooting up our churches and schools and malls. Oh no, they dare not say or do anything about the thousands of dead we are inflicting on ourselves because THAT might upset their Gun-worshiping NRA overlords.

The religious bigotry is shameful.

These Republican leaders go all in describing Islam as a violent, hateful dogma, but these so-called Christians are the ones spewing the hate and promoting the violence.

How telling is it that these so-called Christians are denying even the most basic fundamental human gifts of grace, hope, charity, and aid to those in need?

Here's the teachings of Christ:

Matthew 25:35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’

THAT is the teachings of Christ when it comes to the sick, to the helpless, to families in need. And these Republican leaders are pissing all over that. They are the ones from 25:41-45, the deniers, the liars, the greedy, the abusers, the cursed.

What do you call someone who claims to be a Christian and yet denies the Word of the Son? What do you call someone who is the amoral and spiritless opposite of the Christ? You call them Anti-Christs. The lot of them.

The Syrian refugees are trying to survive, fleeing from a dictator killing his own nation and the terror extremists of ISIL eager to force Muslims into their world-view of Us vs. Them (and to kill the ones who won't).

These fear-monger Republicans, these Pants Wetting Hide-In-Our-Limo Commandos waiting in their media Green Rooms for the next Fox Not-News talk show to shill their hatred. They are playing right into the Absolutist, Us-Or-Them game the terrorists want to play. Because the more we act like xenophobic idiots the more they can sell THEIR fear-mongering to their populations.

All because the Republicans are more about FEAR now than they are about GRACE or HOPE or basic human decency.

The only thing to say about all this is clear:

NO FEAR.

America, we can and should be better than this.

Succumbing to the fear means we succumb to the hate, and from that we begin a whole new cycle of bloodshed that will never end until enough of us say "no more."

Stop listening to the fear-mongers.

Stop believing these Republican cowards.

Start being charitable, and honest, and hopeful, and listen to the Better Angels of Our Nature.

Update: Rude Pundit has a blunt and honest take on the Republican Cowards.

Also Update: On a positive note, Unitarians are offering support to Syrian refugees and can use a little help there, so donate if you can.

Things I Learned From The Democratic November 2015 Debate

1) That while Memphis is an excellent football team this season, Houston is still a dominant power and deserving of its current unbeaten status.

Wait a minute, hold on...

2) The talk about having Alabama in the playoff lineup is too early to confirm because there are still enough deserving unbeaten teams in Clemson, Ohio State / Iowa (one of them is going to win the Big 10), Oklahoma State, and Houston. I mean, there's also good one-loss programs out there like Notre Dame and Florida and Navy and... and... lemme start over.

3) The impressive improvement out of South Florida's program is the simple fact the Bulls have improved, recovering nicely from the debacle that was the Skip Holtz era and getting to where they have a balanced offense and an effective defense with talented players at key positions. Sure, the Bulls are likely going to an early December minor bowl game, but after the long drought of no postseason play we'll take anything and... and...

4) WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO HAVE A POLITICAL DEBATE DURING COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMEDAY???

Paris Tonight, 13 November 2015 (update)

Dear God.

Tonight in Paris, there is blood and pain and sorrow all because of men with rage and murderous intent.

From the BBC:

At least 100 people are reported to have died at the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris.
Gunmen took many hostages there before being overpowered by police.
Others died in a reported suicide blast near the Stade de France and gun attacks on city centre restaurants. Five attackers are reported killed.
Paris residents have been asked to stay indoors and about 1,500 military personnel are being deployed across the city.

The people getting killed are not soldiers, are not fanatics, are not evildoers or cardboard cutouts. They were going out on the town on a Friday night to enjoy the company of families and friends, and Dear God so many of them are dead now.

From Banksy: pardon me, this actually came from artist Jean Jullien.

Peace For Paris

On This Veterans Day 2015

A summation about the War:

Edmund:   Do you mean "Why did the war start?"

Baldrick:   Yeah.

George:   The war started because of the vile Hun and his villainous empire-building.

Edmund:  George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika.    I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front.

George:   Oh, no, sir, absolutely not. [aside, to Baldick]   Mad as a bicycle!

Baldrick:  I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.

Edmund:  I think you mean it started when the Archduke of Austro-Hungary got shot.

Baldrick:  Nah, there was definitely an ostrich involved, sir.

Edmund:  Well, possibly.   But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war.

George:   By Golly, this is interesting; I always loved history...

Edmund:  You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other.   The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent.   That way there could never be a war.

Baldrick:  But this is a sort of a war, isn't it, sir?

Edmund:  Yes, that's right.   You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan.

George:   What was that, sir?

Edmund:  It was bollocks.

There you go, kiddies. Any of you studying for AP European should be set to go. /owstophittingme

When the Legend Becomes A Liability They Keep Printing The Legend

You see, the original line went "When the Legend becomes Fact, you print the Legend."

However, the Facts surrounding Ben Carson's growing pile of "embellishments," "exaggerations," and "misstatements" about his legend - a young black man in poor Detroit with a single mother growing up to become a skilled and respected neurosurgeon and current Presidential candidate - are nowhere near any semblance of Truth.

To Goldie Taylor at The Daily Beast:

...Carson’s exaggerations don’t go that far—his tales are far more pedestrian. But in story after story the iconic physician appears to embellish his life growing up in inner city Detroit. He certainly did not need to spin wild tales about his years as a young, gifted black boy raised by a single mother in urban America. That’s a story millions know and can relate to...

...For his part, Carson is playing along and seemingly has been for decades. He has leaned on (and sometimes added flourishes to) his backstory in order to expand his public platform. The truth is he has been building a personal narrative—whether true or weaved from whole cloth—about himself from the moment he leapt onto the world stage. He wasn’t just poor, in Carson’s telling, he was hard—the kind of hard that can get an otherwise promising young man into trouble. And while it might be customary in hip-hop, engaging in this kind of self “thugification” is new for politics...

Taylor is referring to the stories Carson has been telling about how during his childhood he was a violent fellow: getting into fights at school, pulling a knife on a friend in a disagreement over a radio, other such tales. It all has a happy ending in that Carson "wakes up" after that knife attack and confines himself to a bathroom with a Bible for hours until he finds his salvation through faith.

Problem is, there's currently no record or evidence of any of that. Considering the level of violence Carson is describing - he had bloodied the nose of one schoolmate with a rock on school grounds, for example - it is surprising that there doesn't even seem to be evidence of any kind of scholastic discipline or intervention. Media sources checking with neighbors and friends who grew up with Carson cannot recall a single incident of violent behavior out of him. And none of them seem to be able to point to anyone they would know who would have been Carson's victims.

Either Carson did a great job of hiding that rage and never got caught, or he's making part or most of those stories up.

It's interesting to note he's telling us what he did but he doesn't - and no one else is saying it - want to name the specific people he's supposedly attacked. You would think that one of his goals in coming to terms with his violent youth would be to find and approach his victims and pray for forgiveness and acceptance, and have them on hand as witnesses to his conversion. If anything, he'd be more specific about whom he did threaten with a knife and have that friend available for interviews with the media at some point (or at least have other friends and relatives who knew them both speak to their defense).

Carson's been a motivational speaker for decades now: one of the things these speakers like to do is have a person or three be on hand to testify to such stories and provide moral and narrative support. Other politicians and candidates who run on a "I once was lost but now am found" campaigns tend to have their witnesses on hand as well. But so far the only one verifying these stories first-hand is Carson himself.

What's equally troubling are other elements of Carson's personal narrative. The most current inquiry has been delving into the part of his popular autobiography Gifted Hands where he claims having met with General Westmoreland - freshly recalled from Vietnam - and getting an offer of a scholarship to West Point, which he turned down to accept Yale instead. The story makes it seem like Carson was a youthful talent who could have chosen an "honorable" career in the military, passing it up for a more "humble" and humane career in medicine.

Except for the fact that none of it is verifiable: the military academies do NOT offer scholarships (note: I know this personally because my older brother went Annapolis GO NAVY), and they require a detailed application process that goes through so  many hoops - medical exams, interviews, getting appointments via Congressional/Senatorial offices or special Executive branch lists - that you can write three whole book chapters about it. There are scholarships for ROTC programs to other colleges, but they have a prolonged application process as well (and that I have personal experience with).

West Point has no application process on file for Carson. There doesn't seem to be one for ROTC either.

At best, you could accuse Carson of embellishment, an attempt - and not a very clever one - to make himself seem more important and valuable to others. I've seen Twitter commentators compare it to adding questionable details to one's resume for job-hunting.

To Jamille Bouie at Slate:

...Did Carson “fabricate” his West Point story?

If you judge by the text of his book, as well as other statements about the same story, the answer is not exactly. Carson never claimed that he applied to the school. And while West Point doesn’t give scholarships, it’s not hard to see how encouragement from authority figures—You’re a shoo-in—becomes, after years of telling and retelling, the tale of an offer and a scholarship. It’s just how memory works.

Carson is guilty of run-of-the-mill embellishment. Still, it’s tempting to say that this will harm his campaign. Embellishing about entrance to a military academy doesn’t look good, especially for someone who has built his campaign on honesty and integrity. Some Republicans might just recoil from the former neurosurgeon, in favor of someone else...

But what's happening with Carson is pretty much a perfect example of the Republican Party's overall problem with Facts and Truth.

Ever since the "We Create Our Own Reality" moment in the wake of 9/11, this problem has gone global. The Republicans are so enamored of their self-created Narrative - brave and noble and well-meaning Conservatives caught in a war against Socialist Commie Librul evil-doers threatening us all with damnation and sin - that nothing can break through that insulated bubble of self-serving faith.

As Bouie notes in that article:

...But I doubt (Carson gets hurt). Carson is extraordinarily well-liked among Republican voters—it will take more than an exaggeration to tank his ratings with the grassroots. And indeed, the fact that Politico has had to walk back from its initial claims will work in Carson’s favor. Now this is another case of the “liberal media” on a witch hunt against a strong, conservative Republican.

Far from hurting Ben Carson, this whole flap may strengthen his standing with Republicans, as they rally to defend him. Carson may well stumble in the race for the GOP nomination—I think it’s inevitable—but it won’t be over old memories of college applications...

We are through a looking glass of Faith-Based Narratives that do not rely on a Real World anymore. In fact, that Narrative defies the Real World.

Which is a problem because EVERYONE - including the hypocrites of embellishment - lives in the Real World.  In the Real World embellishments do not last long.

And so the defenders of that Narrative dig deeper, moving from embellishments to avoidance and denial. There are already defenders of Carson's story-telling, going after the media for "racial bias" and "sinister" liberal purpose for even researching his own words and writings.

And the next step past this will be the outright lies. The need not only to keep the Narrative alive but stronger than ever, by adding more and more false details to it in an attempt to convince more and more people.

And lies have consequences. And consequences leave behind victims, usually people who had nothing to do with the Narrative in the first place.

I'm Trying Not to Pay Attention But Attention Must Be Paid

Getting deeper into the weeds with my NaNoWriMo challenge, and yet I can't ignore the current state of affairs in the political arena.

And so, without much comment, I present links to other news and blog articles of particular interest that I wanna share to the seven blog readers I'd like to keep maintaining an interest in this place.

Debate news: in the "finally happening" category, the next GOP debate THIS SATURDAY has weeded down two more names off the main stage - Huckabee and Christie - to the kids' table, and kicked off two other names - Graham and Pataki - from the debates altogether (which is weird because Graham has actually been scoring well in the prelim debate rounds and his polling isn't any worse than the other survivors).

Also: more attention getting paid to the down-ticket woes Democrats are suffering at the state elections level via Blog for Arizona.

Also wik: Pinku-Sensei came up with a debate drink for Lawrence Lessig just as Lessig dropped out of the Democratic primaries because he never had an invite to the debates in the first place.  Ah, well, it's a drink order peoples!

Considering how the Kentucky state election results turned out, Rude Pundit needs those drink orders from Pinku-Sensei...

Gerrymandering in Florida: The state legislature failed YET ANOTHER special session - costing taxpayers another hefty fee for NOTHING - to consider a new district map for the Florida Senate this 2016.  Senators refused to make appropriate changes because not enough of them were willing to relocate their "safe" seats into more challenging open districts. Straight up, Florida: these politicians' refusal to abide by YOUR state amendments for Fair Districts should disqualify ALL of them from any re-election effort. They are not doing ANYTHING to EARN those jobs.

And finally: WHAT THE HELL IS BEN CARSON DOING TALKING ABOUT THE ANCIENT PYRAMIDS?!  I mean, seriously, any X-Phile would tell you ALIENS, bro, ALIENS...

Now, I need to reach 15,000 words by Sunday afternoon or we are all DOOMED!  Well, that and I need to finish editing that superhero novella for pre-Christmas release and this short story for the writers group anthology and...

Jeb? Can't Fix This

So here I am, trying to claim I won't go blogging this month of November because of my NaNoWriMo efforts - P.S. please visit the Writing page on here and support a fellow American by purchasing a few ebooks... ow stop hitting me, what, a guy can't market his ebooks out here? - and while I'm pretty good on my word count so far on the novel effort, I just had to come back and blog about this ridiculous hare-brained marketing idea that the Jeb? Bush people have decided to go with to relaunch their troubled campaign.

(If you're worried about poor sentence structure just now, relax, this happens a lot when you're rushing out a 50,000 writing project)

Anyway.  The Jeb* people have come out with a brand new slogan for their boy to campaign on:

Jeb Can Fix It

Cough.  Heh.  Heeehahaha.  Snerk.  Guffaw.  BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHHHAHAHA gasp wheeze HAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAAAAA.

I am thinking back to that book about campaigning, the classic Selling of the President tome about the 1968 Nixon run for the White House.  Advertising is all about branding, about creating loyalty and love for a product, and intermixing that to political campaigning it means creating an identity for a politician that people can immediately use to picture who that candidate is and what he/she stands for.

Which is part of Jeb?'s problem right now.  His early attempts this 2015 to create an identity - starting off as The Front-Runner Establishment Guy that could not impress anybody, then as The Heir To the Bush Legacy by selling the "my brother Kept Us Safe" lie - have gone nowhere.

So here we are at Attempt Number Three to get Jeb><'s campaign "back on track"... by going with a quickie ebook release of materials - his political emails - already ten years old, and by crafting a slogan that sounds like someone watched Wreck-It Ralph or Bob The Builder too many times.

Just going by Twitter - a method of tracking the current mindset of the public awareness - this relaunch phrase is a disaster.

In a serious examination here: claiming that Jeb "can fix it" in a vague manner opens up that slogan to a myriad of interpretations.  It also allows for his critics to bring forth all the flaws and errors of his previous works - his broken promises as Governor, the sorry shape of the state of Florida as he left it, the terrible education record, his criminal repression of voting rights for minorities, his screwed involvement in the Election 2000 debacle, the Terri Schiavo fiasco...

Claiming Jeb "can fix it" while his poll numbers keep slipping is a joke of a premise, a disaster of a promise.

Trying to change a political persona this late in a campaign cycle after a public slide in voter confidence and support reeks of desperation.

And yet the Jeb? Bush Zombie Campaign slogs on.

When Next I Blog I Will Be Writing A Novel

Well, not on the blog itself, but I will be doing my NaNoWriMo novel attempt again this year.

If I do blog here during the month, it better be after I've earned by word count for the day - 1667 words a day equaling 50,000 words for the month - so you won't be seeing a lot of blogging this month anyway.  I am focused elsewhere.

With luck, this WILL be a novel I can finish all the way to publication, to join the ranks of self-published short stories and anthology collections that have published my works.

I will at least offer a warm Turkey Pagan Sacrifice Day greetings to all when the time is appropriate.

The Three Things You Need To Know About a Republican's Budget Proposal

Aside from all the sound and fury of the Republicans waging war against CNBC, something of actual substance came out from this past week's debate debacle: the Republican candidates were asked to talk about their proposed budget agendas they'd push if they ever made it to the White House.

Just remember: if a Republican does win the Presidency in 2016, the odds favor the party retaining control of the House and most likely the Senate, meaning any budgets on this table are likely to pass that first year in office.

Meaning we're all screwed as a nation, because as pointed out by Simon Maloy at Salon.com:

...the debt alarmism on display at the debate was part of a broader rejection of fiscal reality by pretty much every candidate. The federal deficit is going down thanks to a slowly improving economy and a series of ugly fights over tax hikes and spending cuts...

...But here’s the thing – while the Republican candidates were warning about the nation-ending threat posed by the allegedly out-of-control debt, they were also pushing tax proposals that would (pause for effect) dramatically increase the debt.

Let’s focus first on Marco Rubio, since he came out of the debate looking pretty good and also had a contentious exchange with moderator John Harwood about his tax plan. Rubio’s proposal calls for rate cuts on income and reducing the number of brackets, new tax credits for middle class families, and the complete elimination of taxes on capital gains and estates. Rubio insisted last night that this wildly regressive plan did not favor the wealthy – an assertion that is flatly untrue. With regard to its effect on the debt, the Tax Policy Center examined Rubio’s plan when it was first released earlier this year and it found:

They’ve proposed a tax reform that would add many trillions to the national debt over the next decade (a problem dynamic scoring is not likely to paper over). The Tax Policy Center estimated that an earlier, less ambitious version of the plan’s individual provisions would add $2.4 trillion to the debt. This plan would surely be even more expensive.

This is a common feature of most of the 2016 GOP candidates’ tax plans – they call for massive tax cuts on top earners, and they would (according to conservative estimates) cost more than $1 trillion dollars over the next decade, with some soaring as high as $10 trillion. And that’s just the cost of the tax cuts. Most of the candidates also want to dramatically increase defense spending from its current levels while also pursuing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That means they want to decrease the debt while cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing military spending while balancing the budget. The only way this math could conceivably work is if you put in place deep, ruinous cuts to entitlement programs and the social safety net – something no one endorsed on stage last night because it would be political suicide. None of this works, none of it makes sense, and yet it’s the position of pretty much every candidate for the Republican nomination.

Ergo, the three things you need to know and need to remember about ANY Republican budget proposal:

1) Everything involves cutting taxes.

This is an axiom at this point in GOP ideology.  Every tax proposal has to be a cut (or has to look like a cut), much to the point that even new taxes on new revenue sources cannot be suggested.  Welcome to Grover Norquist's victory.  Even though our nation's federal system relies on - in fact was created on - the ability of government to raise revenues when needed to balance budgets and pay off debts.  The Republicans are convinced utterly that any tax hike is a disaster: not just for them personally as an election issue but that such tax hikes would kill businesses, take away jobs, and destroy planets.

With that mindset, the Republicans are convinced to go the other route, to cut taxes and keep cutting taxes (why they don't just go straight to ZERO taxes is answered by the fact most people understand THAT leads to utter anarchy).  And then they tell themselves that such cuts "pay themselves" by increased private-sector wealth across the board that would replace all lost revenues.  Except...

2) Every Republican tax plan skews to favor the very rich (which are very few), which means a majority of Americans suffer regardless of what the tax plan looks like.

Even the proposed tax plans last night that stick to a scaled/tiered tax rate system have rates on the upper incomes - especially large corporations - slashed at greater percentages than the lower incomes.  And the ones that pushed for a flat tax program - one that removes a ton of exemptions, credits and loopholes - argued for a flat rate that clearly profits the One Percenters at the expense of everyone else.

3) Republicans really don't care about balancing the budget or resolving the massive debt.  In fact, they want it all to fall apart.

Let's repeat what history has taught us: tax cuts don't work.  As I've written elsewhere, I've got anecdotal proof having lived through two massive tax cut plans - Reagan's 1981 budget and Bush the Lesser's 2001-2003 budgets - where the only real results I saw come out of both were massive deficits and massive unemployment.

For all the talk from the Beltway media about how "serious" Republicans are about deficits and debt, in practice these same serious Republicans act very much the way Dick Cheney did in 2003: that "Deficits don't matter."

The current roster of candidates are pushing more tax cut agendas that do nothing to balance a budget and in fact add to the debt.  Slate.com provided a nice little table graph from the Tax Foundation:

When you consider the Tax Foundation is a conservative pro-cut think tank, and even THEY are showing results in the red (except for Rand Paul's dynamic-scored revenue and one should be wary of dynamic scoring), that should be a huge honking clue that the ideology is not matching the reality.

Each plan relies on that GDP growth over ten years to be in double digits, but there's no guarantee of that.  Each plan makes assumptions into capital investments and jobs created that we've never seen in previous tax cut results.

Each plan still removes massive amounts of revenue to the federal government, essentially ensuring that either one of two things happen: the federal government borrows more money - increasing the national debt - to cover lost revenues to pay for sh-t, or else the federal government has to slash spending at the tune of billions of dollars.

If it ever gets to Option B, that's the win-win scenario for the hard-core Far Right.

Try to remember this one other thing about the modern Republican Party: they are anti-government.  They want deregulation across the board to free up private sector profits at the expense of safety and stability.  They want to end any and all civil liberties for minorities, for women, for the young and for the poor.

If they can slash the federal government's agencies to shut down their enforcement powers, the Republicans will view that as a win.  If they can get rid of the social safety net to ruin the lives of millions they view as "lazy rabble", the Republicans will dance in the streets without a care for the potholes they're leaving behind for any surviving generations.

Keep remembering that Grover Norquist is the Republican Overlord in charge of the tax cut agenda.  Keep remembering that Norquist is the one who brags wanting to shrink government down to a size where he can drown it in his bathtub.

Keep remembering that the Republicans keep talking about how bad and destructive government can be, and then wants you to elect them into offices that will let them act bad and destroy government just so they can prove themselves correct.  And leave everyone else holding the shredded remains when it comes time to pay the bills.

This is one of the many reasons why I keep saying here FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN.

I'm Gonna Stop Making Drinking Game Rules For the Republican Debates

Because at this point I think people don't need any motivation to drink while they watch these disasters unfold.

Proof That GOP Polling Respondents Are Just Trolling The Whole Planet

Who knew that when the inevitable end of Trumpmentum - the slide of amateur pol and professional huckster Donald Trump - came about, the replacement candidate for Republican voters would be someone even worse?

The most current poll - as of October 25th - has Ben Carson with 26 percent of the voting base with Trump sliding to a respectable second place at 22 percent.  The Iowa poll - the official starting line of the Republican rat race - has Carson at 32 percent (!) with Trump falling to a sad 18 percent.

Which proves my other argument that we really should NOT have our primaries go state-by-state, because the early states - small-population and slanted to extremist voters - skew to Teh Crazy and it ruins the grading curve.  I'm still all-in for a nationwide One-Day Primary for everyone to vote the party candidates for President.

Ah, let's focus back on Carson.  Because now with him as the statistical front-runner, we have to pay attention.

Previously when I listed him for a Presidential Character review, I didn't even give him a serious look.  Carson was... is a neophyte rookie candidate for office that under normal circumstances of previous elections never deserved a serious look at all.

He still doesn't deserve it.  Carson is a disaster as a political leader, not just because he's brand new to the whole profession - and yes it IS a job - but because the sizable evidence of his ill-informed ignorance of history, politics, and social issues are massive disqualifiers.

And yet it is that very point - his disdain for historical facts, his need to distort reality - that is driving Carson's rising poll numbers.  Much in the same way the numbers went up for Carly Fiorina - another rookie at politics - when she lied and kept lying about her personal work history and about Planned Parenthood.

Are such numbers sustainable?  At some point won't he come down to Earth the same way Fiorina did - she's now back to a tolerable 6 percent or so in polling - and the way blowhard Trump slid to Second Place?

Would it matter?  Because think of it this way: If Carson slides down after this euphoric run ends, who will take his place at the top spot then?  Hint: it won't be Jeb.

We're witnessing not the rise of a particular candidate, we're witnessing the desire of the Republican primary voters to express their hatred of their own party's Establishment and their eagerness to promote dangerous radicals with no governing experience.  For months now - longer than any sane political race needed it to be - the front-runners for the Republican ticket were the likes of Trump, Carson and Fiorina.  Meanwhile, the "sane" Establishment choices like Jeb, Rubio and Kasich sank and currently languish in single-digit purgatory, and the likes of Scott Walker - the preferred Midwest Savior choice of the Beltway elites - dropped out altogether.

The regular dynamics of a Republican primary have changed: the mass of voters having been told for years (decades) that government is bad have turned against the very idea of competency as a political necessity.  When you put Trump and Carson's polling numbers together you get around 48 percent, near half the polling population.  Throw in Fiorina's 7 percent we're now talking 55 percent, a clear majority of voting Republicans.  That's not even including the likes of Huckabee, Cruz and Jindal who would love to take a chainsaw to the Constitution in the name of God and Guns.

That 55 percent of the Republican voting base is what's worrisome: it's large enough to make a dent in the primaries by confirming the likes of Trump or Carson as the winner come convention time.  It's large enough to make the general election against the Democratic candidate a troubling matter.  Despite the potential for a Dem blowout - I would like to think the threat of a disastrous Trump/Carson regime would drive all the Indy and moderate Republican voters over to an energized Democratic bloc - there runs the risk of a close and messy campaign depending entirely on how effective the Democrats could be in GOTV efforts.

Hoping for a campaign collapse among the Republicans isn't going to cut it.  The party itself is now beholden to a radical anti-government agenda regardless of who their main candidate will be.

The Democrats have to work harder than expected to stop that Far Right voting base.  This is not going to be an easy run.

Benghazi Hearing: the Abridged Version

For those who somehow missed ten hours of this mess, here goes:

Chair, Congressman Trey Gowdy: Will you confess at long last to being an evil person, Hillary?
Hillary Clinton: Nope.
Gowdy: Dammit.

Ten hours.  It almost got to be ELEVEN hours of pretty much the same attempt again and again by hard-headed, conspiracy-minded Republicans to make Hillary Clinton trip over her statements or even admit like a stupid comic book villain she had an evil scheme.  The committee leaders obsessed more over Clinton's emails during her tenure as Sec of State than about finding out the security failures during an embassy attack in war-torn Libya that left four Americans dead.

There were more questions about serial e-mailer Sidney Blumenthal (sp?) than about Ambassador Chris Stevens, the top man on the ground who died at Benghazi.

Tennis matches don't go this long.  Well, there was this one a few years back at Wimbledon, but at least it captivated the world.  This gowdy gaudy spectacle bored audiences to tears.

Driftglass wrote a more prolonged mockery of a show trial uh enhanced interrogation ah Congressional inquiry that demonstrated in better detail the utter foolishness of about ninety percent of the entire day.  He did it in separate updates to pace himself.  I'm doing this all in just one so you can all get to your breakfasts before the cereal gets soggy:

Gowdy: Admit that you weigh the same as a duck, meaning you're made of wood, and therefore...?
Hillary: I'm not a witch.
Gowdy: NI!

Most of the drama was between Gowdy and Elijah Cummings, the lead Democrat on the Benghazi Committee to Embarrass Hillary And Obama.  Cummings kept trying to point out that if the Republicans wanted to attack Hillary using Blumenthal, they should include Blumenthal's prior testimony into the record (the Republicans on committee refused).

Hillary pretty much spent the time flicking dandruff off her shoulders and sitting with an almost bemused, annoyed expression.

Here are the facts: there's been EIGHT different committee hearings over the last three years over what happened in Benghazi, and the first SEVEN all essentially found the same thing.  Libya had turned into a massive mess after the fall of Quaddafi (sp?), we didn't have enough security in place (which is more the fault of a fund-cutting Congress), and Stevens (and others) died on the ground trying to wade into an unstable situation to do what he could to calm things down.  Benghazi is a genuine sign of the complex and bloody disaster that has been the Middle East for decades, and yet somehow none of these committee hearings seem to want to focus on that.  These committee hearings keep going into "Let's convince everybody else the Democrats were more obsessed with the optics of the disaster" crap.

Gowdy: Is there anything this Republican-led Congress hasn't asked you yet, Mrs. Evildoer, about your evil deeds that you would care to admit to now while you may yet have the chance to earn our mercy?
Hillary: You haven't asked me which fashion designer I'm going to be wearing at my swearing-in ceremony in January 2017.

Yesterday's hearing will not change many people's minds.  Hillary has been a polarizing figure since before Pat Buchanan's Culture War speech at the 1992 GOP Convention.  If you hate her, this hearing was another moment to point out her evilness and reinforce why you hate her.  If you support her, you're still supporting her after this, doubly so.

However, the hearing will convince people what they already know about the committee: A majority of Americans already believes - by 72 percent - that this setup is politically motivated, and this 10-hour endurance march proved it.  What is going to happen is that a lot of people sitting on the fence about her - especially a lot of Democrats worried that she's going to be another target of divisiveness for another four (to eight) years - are going to be impressed with her patience and bearing during an interrogation session that was clearly designed to break her.

A majority of Americans going to accept the proof of what Democrats have been saying all along about all this Benghazi obsession, and understand what never-Speaker Kevin McCarthy meant when he admitted that the investigations were all about hurting Hillary.

Even Bernie supporters - remember, even Bernie himself said during last week's debates "people are sick of hearing about your emails" - are going to have to admit that Hillary handled herself, and can begrudgingly accept her as a Democratic nominee.

Gowdy: Admit it.  You're a witch.
Hillary: Trick or treat, suckers.  And it's pronounced "Wingardium lev-ee-OH-sah".  Khaleesi, out.

Update: someone shared this image from Lawyers Guns & Money on Facebook just now.  Dude, I tweeted something similar last night during the debacle...

The Failure Yet Again For Our Nation's Media Regarding Accuracy and Facts

As mentioned earlier today, Joe Biden decided not to put his hat in the ring to run for President on the Democratic ticket.

This despite the fact a lot of highly-paid mainstream media pundits from the Beltway (the Washington DC circle of power) were chatting up - with eager grins and happy feet - the FACT - based entirely on unnamed sources running rumor mills non-stop - that everybody was telling everybody else Biden was gonna run.

The most guilty party was Bill "Always Wrong" Kristol, who kept tweeting gems like this:

You might see my reply: "I don't feel any Joementum at all. You might have to get out of the car and push, Bill."

So why?  Why why why did the media elites keep getting this story - out of so many other stories they screw up - wrong?

1. The mainstream media wanted it to be true, rather than factual.

This is the primary sin.  The simplest explanation.  There are several reasons WHY they wanted it to be true, but it all comes down to this.

2. The mainstream media want political horse races because campaigns are easy to cover.

The give-and-take of politicians fighting each other for coveted seats of power - topped by the big chair of the Presidency - provide reporters and editors personal conflict, driving narrative, winners and losers.  There are reasons why we now have constant political campaigns even in off-years - one major reason is the massive cash-flow involved - and the media's desire to keep campaigns going and going and going is the other major reason.

Sober Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight nails that part:

A Biden run would be a great story for the media — it would get to sit back and watch the fisticuffs between Biden and Clinton, who is otherwise something of a dull, predictable story (“inevitability” is boring). That probably biases the media toward reporting on the few Democratic insiders who would have liked to see a Biden bid, and ignoring the large majority who were satisfied with Clinton.

The joker show that is the Republican field of Presidential candidates is chaotic and thus entertaining.  Without Biden in the race, the Democratic field is pretty much Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (Webb dropped out, and O'Malley and Chafee are polling below zero at this point).  Which brings us to the next point:

3. The media does not like trust Hillary and does not know how - or want - to cover Bernie.

Nearly every pro-Joe Biden reporter / pundit cheering Biden to enter the race just happened to be reporters and pundits who despise Hillary at a personal level.

This came in two ways.  You had one group of pundits who feared the possibility that Hillary would flame out somehow.  The fact that Hillary's list of enemies - not the ones she hates but the ones who hate her (from Limbaugh on down) - scared these pundits into fearing that Hillary would get hit with scandal during the campaign and hurt the Democrats' chances to keep the White House (and even win back part of Congress).  That group wanted Biden to run as insurance, to have a solid Democratic leader they trusted to be there up to November 2016.

You had a second group of pundits who hates her.  You know them as the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that's pretty much the whole Far Right media (pretty vast) and openly disdainful of anything Obama Clinton (which isn't much of a conspiracy nowadays).  They wanted Biden to run in order to hit Hillary and wound her during the primaries, so that way she would be bloodied and weak for the general election.  They wanted division within the Democratic campaign the way they are suffering the chaos of their own party's primary cycle.

And as for Bernie Sanders.  The mainstream media has him mostly in "out of sight out of mind" mode.  If they ever think of Bernie, the Left-leaning media views him as too Left and thus unelectable and the Right-leaning media views him as a Stalinist doombringer.  He brings too much of an ideological difference from Hillary that makes the Narrative too easy even for the media to cover.  They'd have preferred a similar-minded Centrist Dem like Biden as a mirror contrast to Hillary.

4. The mainstream media's prized "sources" and insiders did not have the facts, if these insiders even existed.  There's even the likelihood the Biden stories were just the media elites telling each other what they wanted to hear.  And these same media elites do not care if those sources or right or wrong.

Here we get to the nub of the problem I have with these media elites.  There is no accountability in Washington DC for ever being wrong.

It is easy for a pundit to tweet informally or write formally an article full of hearsay based on information passed on by a "reliable" confidant.  Given the nature of politics - and the sometimes sensitive information needed to stay secure within the halls of government - that pundit doesn't have to give a name to the source, and barely even a rank within the bureaucracy.  Just labeling that "source" a "senior advisor" or "high-ranking official" is all they need for cover.

With that power, that pundit can pretty much publish whatever they want within the foggy range of journalistic ethics.  As long as the pundit doesn't publish something demonstrably false, something libelous, or something criminal they're untouchable.  And their source - whoever that may be - remains untouchable as well.

In one regard, this is a necessary part of journalism - and good governance.  Tales of corruption or bad behavior by our elected officials need to be told, and due to the nature of political reprisals and even legal ramifications, those types of sources - whistleblowers - need all the protection they can get.

However, that journalistic cover is more and more abused by savvy politicians and their handlers who use that need for secrecy to spread rumor and questionable data.  More often than not, they tell stories "off the record" as a way of getting their version of the Narrative out there, and then use the media's telling to reinforce that Narrative even further.  The pundits either fail to recognize how they're getting used for that, or else fear the loss of access that would happen if they started fact-checking their "buddies": either way, the media elite lets it happen again and again.

It's a mutually self-indulgent relationship.  The politician leaking his/her false reports gets to shill to the public without getting caught: the pundits shilling these lies get to enjoy "being in the inner circle" of being in the know, and sell their exclusive "access to the powerful" to all outlets who will hire them and invite them to talk shows, even after a pattern of years proving those pundits are constantly ill-informed and incapable of doing an honest job.

There needs to be an ethical system of handling faulty, ill-informed, consistently false sources.  These reporters and pundits do not need to name who these sources are, but they do need to admit when those sources are wrong and above all these reporters and pundits need to STOP LISTENING TO BAD SOURCES.

At some point, you idiots in the Beltway media bubble need to get this through your epistemic closure.  You are being used.  You are getting lied to by self-serving bastards.  Just stop it.  Just stop it.  You don't seem to remember that old saying Scotty told us on Star Trek: "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."  You don't even shame the unreliable sources when they are wrong, and you keep letting them fool you multiple times in a row.

There's supposed to be ethical standards in every profession.  Journalism should have ethical standards towards accuracy, attention to facts, and the necessity of informing the public to the best of your ability.  Right now, the Beltway elites are FAILING at all three standards.  Shame on you.

Predicting Character: The Jocularity of Joe B... Oh Wait, Biden's Not Running

After months of speculation by a mainstream media eager for a blood-filled horse race among Democrats for the 2016 campaign - and his addition to my drinking game rules that now no longer apply to him - Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) has decided NOT to run for President of the United States.  Via the Atlantic:

Biden made his long-awaited announcement in the White House Rose Garden with President Obama standing by his side. Speculation about his decision had reached an almost comical pitch in recent days, as his camp repeatedly left allies and reporters alike with the impression that he would make a dramatic entrance into the race.

As recently as Tuesday, the vice president delivered a speech seen as a none-too-subtle dig at Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner and his former colleague in the Obama Cabinet and before that, in the Senate. He challenged Clinton’s account of the recommendations that the two of them made to Obama before the president ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and he implicitly criticized her remark during the first Democratic debate that Republicans were her “enemies.”

Biden considered running just months after the tragic loss of his eldest son, Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer in the spring and reportedly urged him to make a third and final bid for the presidency. But all along, the vice president acknowledged that with his family grieving, he might not be able to make a decision in time for the 2016 race.

I was at lunch when the announcement came.  My twitter feed went from chiding comic artist Stephan Stjepan Sejic about his well-received series Sunstone (NSFW) to one filled with political commentators waging a snark war against the many pundits out there who pined for a Biden run (for most of those Biden hopeful, for no other reason than to debunk Hillary).  I'll get into the failures of those pundits in another article with the appropriate scorn.

With regards to the political race for the Presidency, this is good news for the lead Democratic candidates.  Hillary is the obvious winner as Biden was the one Establishment candidate who would have pulled away support from the center.  Bernie also wins because Biden would no longer be there as the "respected" alternative, making him the alternate choice for the overall party should Hillary falter.  The other candidates O'Malley and Chafee are still stuck in the shadows.  Jim Webb left after realizing he looks like Alec Baldwin he's too conservative for the Democrats anymore.

As for Biden, I've listed his strengths and weaknesses as a candidate before, which is now an academic "what if" topic.  His strengths this particular election cycle would have been running as the logical successor to the presidency of his boss Barack Obama.  Despite the noise from the Republicans, Obama remains a popular leader: some polls have Obama over 50 percent favorable again, and for a President this late into a second term being in the mid-40s is still a remarkable feat.  Any successor candidate for a popular sitting President tends to get a favorable boost for it - SEE Bush the Elder campaigning in 1988 - which is why some pundits considered it an easy go for Biden if he threw his hat in.

In truth, I didn't see Biden making any impact on the race or even getting a decent shot at winning the nomination.  Partly because he waited too long - giving up too much lead time to Hillary and Bernie - but mostly because previous attempts at running for President - 2008 in particular - went nowhere.

On paper, Biden has the professional resume you want in a President: long-standing elected official with a relatively clean reputation with the halls of power, having worked from the House to the Senate with a track record of legislative work.  His biggest knock was a history of plagiarism, and that blew over years ago.  I originally marked him as someone with a personality flatter than drywall: in reality he's noticeably approachable and slightly off-kilter (he's akin to the wacky uncle your father tolerates at Turkey Day rituals).  But that impression never developed for me - and apparently for most voters - because Biden just ends being unremarkable, kinda easily forgettable.

He lacks that charisma.

In may be that this cycle for 2016 there is no one else as charismatic as Obama running for Dems - Hillary has some charm but is limited to a more determined, competent manager role; Bernie is the eccentric college professor; O'Malley the standard bureaucrat; and Chafee, thanks to SNL, does remind me of Frozen's Olaf, Gods help him - but that wouldn't have helped Biden.  His history of gaffes didn't help: his overall appearance puts him between Sanders and O'Malley.  No, no.  Biden was better off not jumping in.

What Biden gets out of this move - and that move is "not to play" - is subtle but far-reaching.  By not getting into the mudpool that is a Presidential campaign, Biden remains unsullied as a political leader within the Democratic ranks.  He can retain cachet - even former Vice Presidents can maintain reputations - among younger Democratic figures needing a mentor figure or a helpful campaign fund-raiser.  He could conceivably head back to Delaware or the Mid-Atlantic states as a regional power broker aiding the state Democrats to organize and win local races (running for Governor would be an interesting option down the road).

He helps the Democratic race by keeping the fight simple between Hillary Clinton as the Establishment (Centrist) candidate and Bernie Sanders as the Radical (Left) candidate.  This hurts the Republican race because their campaigns are still clogged with like-sounding opponents fighting over personalities, old slights, and damaging actions of the past they'd rather not dredge up.  By staying out, Biden ensures the Far Right and their media allies can't stir up the wrong kind of dissension within the Democratic ranks.

It may not be a good move for Biden's ego to stay out of the race, but it looks a lot like a sound choice for his soul and well-being.