Which Fight to Pick

It is always good to see Barack Obama throw a punch in the direction of any Republican, because it is so rare and because it is so necessary.


He has obviously got together with his advisers and decided the Romney as a man who ships jobs overseas is a punch safe to throw.


Any punch will do, but I wish he'd throw more than a jab now and then.


For one thing, all American companies ship jobs overseas--we cannot even make our own Olympic uniforms with American tailors in America. 


I'd rather see the President keep pounding away at the Republican party's attempt to kill Medicare--every Republican in Congress voted for Coupon Care and Romney has endorsed it.  Do you really want all your medical expenses, all your parent's medical expenses to be privatized--i.e., to be your own, minus some paltry "coupon" for $8,000, which would be like pissing into the wind when it comes to the $250,000 bill you are going to get for your coronary bypass procedure?


And what about the Representative from New Hampshire who says he wants to kill Social Security? Mr. Guinta says he dearly hopes his children will never ever have to learn what Social Security ever was. He wants private insurance and retirement funds based on the stock market to "lead the way" toward "personal responsibility" for every citizen's retirement.


Oh, yes, that's the Tea Party and the Republican Party song: No more Social Security. No more Medicare. The twin towers of Democratic Party "state- ism." I think that's how you must spell this new Republican Party word. State-ism by state-tists.


 I infer what they mean by this is people who look to the state, rather than to private enterprise for solving problems like medical care for the elderly or retirement.  Or for building roads, bridges, and maintaining them, for building railroads and airports and maintaining the air traffic system, and for building and staffing prisons and for fighting wars and for safeguarding the environment.  All those things should be done by commercial companies, which are--don't you know--always more efficient and better at everything than the U.S. government, which might have put a man on the moon, created the internet, funded the National Institutes of Health which identified the HIV virus, created the Center for Disease Control which has stifled epidemics, defeated fascism and a variety of other threats to the nation, provided health care for half a century for America's elderly, but cannot be trusted to do anything right, because, well, you know the record.


The record shows how private industry always puts America first, like BP oil did in the Gulf of Mexico, like Wall Street and the private banks did in bundling mortgages into credit default swaps, whatever they were, and nearly pushed the economy off the cliff, before Uncle Sam, otherwise known as the federal government rode to the rescue, for which the Republicans all blamed them viciously as government run amuck, killing the economy with bail outs and over regulation.


But no, to point to instances where private avarice and private enterprise damaged America is to incur the wrath of Wall Streeters, and it might not test well with focus groups. 

Once again, I take my cue from The Wire, when Tommy Carcetti shows up at the funeral of a young woman who has been shot and all the TV cameras and newspaper reporters are waiting to interview him as he walks out of the funeral parlor, but Carcetti over rules his staff and walks right by the media and hops into his car.  How can you leave all those reporters disappointed, in the heat of an election?  Because, Carcetti says, it would be using a private funeral for political theater.  That's a leader, right there.


So, I'm hoping the President will stop listening to his aides and listen to his own interior voice and attack those fat cat, government hating Republicans for what they are.  A few jabs are fine to set them up, but you need to throw flurries.

Obama: Hope? Hope He Can Throw a Punch

Every once in a while I catch a "Classic Boxing" match on TV.  The fights which really amaze me are the ones where the fighters don't seem to be able to do much at all for the first thirteen rounds and then in the last two rounds there are more flurries and, sometimes, out of nowhere a punch seems to land and it's all over.

I'm hoping President Obama is in that mode.

Since the last election, I've been dismayed at his inability to throw a punch. He blocks some punches reasonably well, or he did when his opponents were Sarah Palin and John McCain, but against this Romney cat, who seems to be channeling Reagan, right  down to his voice, the President has been, as he usually is, pretty quiet.

Now his managers seem to have come up with a strategy of attacking the Mitt with the same invective his Republican opponents used: The guy is a vulture capitalist and what that means is "I got mine. You're on your own." So he makes his money in the US of A, using the internet the government gave him, the roads the government built him, flying around at airports safeguarded  courtesy of the FAA, and then he parks all the money he made in Swiss bank accounts and off shore islands, having used the tools his country's government provided but being unwilling to pay the taxes which would repay, in some small measure, the government which made all this possible.

It's the old idea of his having been born on third base, and thinking he hit a triple: He had all the advantages given him and he winds up believing he earned those advantages through his own efforts, without help from anyone else.

It's what the Republicans have to sell. And the Democrats are finally beginning to voice some tepid disapproval.  But the Democrats still can't throw any big blows. They are still satisfied with a few jabs to keep their opponents from launching any big shots of their own.  

Here's what a good right cross would sound like: 
 "You know, I tried  to find common ground with Republicans since I became President, but haven't had much luck. There just isn't much I can find to agree with,  coming from them. But I finally have found something I can agree with at least some Republicans, those Republicans who described Governor Romney as a 'vulture capitalist.' Now, that's not a phrase I originated; that's their phrase. In fact, I can find no definition of it. But if they mean a man who swoops down on a dying company and starts eating away at it, who takes what he can from it while it's struggling to survive and says, 'I got mine. You're on your own,' well then, I can agree that is what we've seen of Governor Romney. He parks his money, made off the suffering of ordinary working Americans, in Swiss bank accounts and then claims he wasn't responsible for how that money was made. It all happened, he doesn't know how, while he was off managing the Olympics. Well, if he didn't know how, he should have.  And you sure should know how. This is not just politics as usual. I am talking about a man and his values. The saddest part is, he cannot even see what is wrong with what he did.  He thinks the right values are, 'I get mine and you ought to go out and get yours, but we owe nothing to each other or to the collective effort we call the government of the United States of America. We can hide our money from the government which nurtured us, and that's just all in the game. Because that's all it is to us.  As Republicans, we don't see any ethical obligation to give back. We just take all we can.'"

Bite or Be Bitten

"American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt...My friends who will not recognize this fact seem to me like a bunch of musicians sitting down to play a symphony concert in a forest where there is a man-eating tiger loose. For my part, much as I enjoy symphony concerts, I want to put my fiddle away in its case and get a rifle and go out and settle with the tiger."

             Upton Sinclair, 1918.

At times like these, when President Obama seems constitutionally incapable of answering the Republican cannonade, it is reassuring to remember this is not a new thing in our history. There have always been men, leaders even, who are not up to the fight, who would fiddle while the republic burns, thinking somehow they are not dealing with predators but rather with nice gentlemen in smoking jackets who will want to retire for cigars and bourbon after the debate. 

President Obama should be saying:  "The Republicans are bought and sold by billionaires like the Koch brothers, and all those who sail with them. They dance on the string manipulated by these rich, shaddowy men, and if you vote Republican, you are on the end of that same string. It is a string which connects the Republican Supreme Court, which has ruled, rather which has created rules which make it legal and Constitutional for rich men to buy and own politicians. This is the difference between me and my opponent and his party. I am owned by no one. I am owned by the American public, and I believe that public without a strong and vibrant middle class is terminally ill."

Dream on, Mad Dog. The vicious will bite and the kind hearted will be bitten.

The Supreme Court Wrecking Ball

It is pretty remarkable, reading reactions to the Supreme court ruling on Obamacare, to see people writing in the New York Times who are supposed to know what they are talking about saying such stupid things:  Thomas Friedman tells us, "I was inspired by a simple noble leadership impulse at a critical juncture in our history--to preserve the legitimacy and integrity of the Supreme Court as being above politics." And Adam Liptak, who is the Times' Supreme Court correspondent, a Yale graduate, seems incapable of the most rudimentary analysis, saying, "In the last term, the Roberts court proved itself resistent to caricature...Roberts recast the legacy of his court."


The fact is, this one decision by Roberts did not undo the radically rightward posture of the court, and in fact, as Pamela Karlan, a Stanford professor of public interest observed, it did just the opposite. By ruling Congress could not pass laws under the commerce clause, but only under its right to tax, Roberts served notice the Congress could do precious little in the future, without his stamp of approval. 

Under the commerce clause and the clauses which allow Congress to provide for the public welfare, and under the enforcement powers of the 14th ammendment the Congress was able to pass the New Deal and to forbid landlords from rejecting tenants on the basis of race or religion; it was able to prohibit development of fragile wetlands; it was able to establish Medicare and to require schools receiving federal aide to give girls equal opportunity to play sports. Under its role in promoting the general welfare, it could fund the National Institutes of Health and under its 14th amendment powers, it could prohibit local laws which discriminate against voters of certain races with bogus voter ID laws. 


All of this is under attack by right wing extremists, and they now know they have a sympathetic court, at least 4 members of that court on whom they can rely.


Adam Liptak tells us the court is no longer a 5 conservative, 4 liberal court of idealogs, and the chart (reproduced from the Times article above) shows, he says how true this is. But if you stop to really look at this chart, it suggests exactly the opposite. In cases where there is a substantial social content, i.e. where it's a powerless individual against an authority, like the strip search case, or the case of 14 year old defendants facing life sentences or the case where a defendant faces a plea bargin, you have the Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts tetrad voting for entrenched power always. The fact that Kennedy sometimes switched to vote with the liberals does not make the court any less predictably conservative. 

Of course, half the cases are decided by 9-0 votes, but those are the cases which have no social/political aspect. When values and politics are at stake, the four horsemen of the radical right are to the right of Rush Limbaugh, and with Justice Scalia channeling Limbaugh, one might think Romney will nominate Limbaugh to the Court, if he gets the chance. Why not? 


The Times editorial board got it right when they said, "They have been radical innovators, aggressively stepping into political issues to empower the court itself."


If Romney wins this election, we are in for decades of conservative ascendancy, through the court. 


If Obama wins, there is at least a chance, if he has enough Congressman winning with him, he could take the advice scholars have given:  Add two new Supreme Court Justices during his term and two new justices for each new presidential term until 19 have been seated and allow only the most recent 9 to vote on decisions. That way the court could be openly political as it now pretends not to be, and it would reflect the trend in electoral politics, as the tide ebbs liberal or conservative. 


But at least we would escape a conservative court dragging us down when the rest of the country has changed its mind--which is just what happened during the Great Depression and which almost sunk us then.

What is a Republican?

I suppose this is an unsophisticated question.  After all, we all know country club Republicans and we know what they think about most things: They are rich and want to stay that way and want to pass all they have on to their children. But then there are the Joe Sixpack Republicans who drive trucks or maybe they own a gas station/garage or maybe they put on siding or do HVAC.  These people are more interesting. These are people who have not made enough money to join a country club and never will, but what are they thinking?

Well, for one thing they think "government" is essentially just another incarnation of the vice principle in charge of discipline they hated in high school. They may like their friend, the cop, but in general they don't like police. They certainly do not like the IRS or the federal government, although they love the Armed Forces and they cross their hearts and take off their hats when the national anthem is played at ball games. They own guns, or at least they like shooting them at gun ranges and it makes them feel as powerful as any black man who might happen to be President. They may harbor the dream of someday moving to Idaho and living off the grid, where no government can find them.  On the other hand, they love the idea of government agents stopping a car of Hispanic looking men and demanding "their papers" and dragging off these criminal invaders to some jail for the crime of   wanting to pick crops or build homes or bus dishes for minimum wages.

They agree with Ron Paul that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, although they make no provision for their own retirement or health insurance and their parents are dependent on both federal programs and if their parents didn't have these programs, then their parents would become dependent on them.

They hate the idea they are not lone gunslingers riding across the endless grassy plains, dependent on no one. They live in fact in a technicolor fantasy world which is deeply contradictory in its beliefs and unconnected to reality.

But they like it. 

Sabotage

Mitch McConnell is a name few of my neighbors here in New Hampshire know.  They know the names of the Boston Red Sox players, but that's about as far from New Hampshire as many of them extend their interests.


Mitch McConnell is a Washington creature. Voters from Kentucky send him to the Senate because he's Southern slick. He can stab you in the back and you think he's just patting you on the back. 


One thing about Mitch though, he occasionally is disarmingly honest: When speaking of some legislation designed to pump federal government money back into the economy, to stimulate, resuscitate and invest he examined the proposal and concluded it might just actually be good for the economy and balked. If he allowed this bill to get through the Senate the economy might recover and he said, "Why would I want to help elect Obama to another term? My first priority is defeating him."


So there you have it, put about as plainly as you will ever get from anyone in Washington. The Republican leadership frankly acknowledges they perceive their job to make the citizens of this country so miserable they will blame the President and throw him out.


Implicit in all this is the conviction the voters are stupid enough to not realize or to not care if they do realize the responsibility for the failure in the "Obama economy" lies with the Republican party and it's refusal to act for the benefit of the country.


I suppose, what they are really saying is: Having Obama is such an evil outcome, it is better to make the people, the economy, the children, the patients, all the nation's  institutions suffer  than it is to keep this horrible person in office. 


I am told this is not a new concept in American history--I am told that opposition parties of the past have thought it their primary job to defeat the devil incarnate in the White House at all costs. I will look into this.  I suppose you might say the election of Lincoln was such a time, but in his case it wasn't just the opposition party hated him--they hated him for a reason, They thought he would end slavery. 


In Obama's case, it's a little like the question we were all asking after the Twin Towers attack--Why do they hate us so?


Of course, the Republicans call him names--a socialist, a radical--but he's a pretty mild mannered guy with a very centrist agenda and he's been willing to compromise more than his own supporters feel comfortable with.  The "reasons" spewing forth from Rush Limbaugh and company are, it must be admitted, pretty lame. It is clear Rush and company are in fact genuinely apoplectic about the simple fact Obama is living in the White House. They do not like the man, or they do not like what he is. 


Looking at President Obama on television, I don't get it. He strikes me as so inoffensive. That's the maddening thing about him, from my point of view: I wish he were more offensive, more like Barney Frank, for example. Someone who can throw a punch, someone who will reply to some Tea Party loonie who calls Obama a Nazi, "On what planet do you spend the majority of your time?"  


So why do they hate this man so? Why would they be willing to bring down World Trade, National Trade, The Entire Economy just to rid the country of this ostensibly inoffensive president? What has been his offense?


You will have to draw your own conclusions. 


My own is GWB, or attempting to.

On the Eve of The Supreme Court Decision

While we await the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, the New Yorker appears with an article by Ezra Klein, "Unpopular Mandate,"  which expands understanding: It begins by summarizing the history of how this law came into existence, and ends with a study of belief systems. 

As for the history of this law, it, oddly enough, originated in ideas which had their gestation in Republican think tank, The Heritage Foundation, in 1989, the idea of a mandate to buy something appealing to conservative thinkers and it was served up as an alternative to what conservatives really feared, the single payer. Years later, Democrats, realizing they could never get a single payer (read government) system like Medicare-for-all through the narrowly divided Congress, picked up this idea. Democrats like Ron Wyden managed to get some Republicans to support the principle and through various iterations it emerged as a compromise from the Democrats. 

But, of course, when the Republicans saw a Democratic success gathering force, they reacted in a great panicked howl and the day after the law passed, Republicans launched their lawsuits to bring it down.  All the authorities said there was absolutely no way this law, this mandate,  could be unconstitutional--all the authorities but the unschooled ignoramuses like Mad Dog, who knows very little, but he does know one big thing--This Supreme Court will always vote for those in power and against those trying to disrupt the status quo. 

Klein ends by reviewing a set of studies in which people who identified themselves as either very liberal or very conservative were presented with two sets of proposals for a welfare policy, one which proposed  more generous welfare benefits than have ever been enacted, but it was labeled as emanating from a very conservative Republican source; the other was a proposal for a meager, scaled back program,  labeled as embraced by Democrats. 


Intriguingly, the conservative readers embraced the generous ultra welfare program, presumably because the label "Republican program" over rode the effect of the actual content of the program. The readers really did not care about the specific content, all they cared about was the "reference group" or, I would argue, they started with the idea of where they wanted to go, and they circled back to that no matter what the "facts" of the program were. (The liberals did the same thing, choosing the decimated program for the poor because it was labeled the Democratic alternative.)


This is sort of the "Only Nixon Could Go to China" syndrome. Well, if Nixon says it's okay to make nice with the Chinese, it must be. We can trust him on this. He's the ultimate cold warrior. If Kennedy had tried to do this, or Clinton, or certainly Obama, well then, it would have been treason.

And that is clearly the way the five member majority of the Supreme Court functions: It considers the source and circles back to where it wants to be. The details, the substance, all principle is over ridden by the ultimate goal--in the case of the court, to thwart the liberal, the Democrat and to support the conservative.

By this reading, had this very same law had been presented to the Court as a Republican  law, challenged by the Democrats, Antonin Scalia would have risen up in righteous indignation over the attack, asking why the Democrats objected to the operation of a market place solution in a capitalist society?

If this election were about something really substantive, for my money, it would be about electing a Democratic president with enough of a Democratic majority in both houses, to push through a reform of the Supreme Court, with three new justices and only the most recent 9 being able to vote on new cases.  Remember the Constitution does not specify how many justices, and no amendment would be necessary.


I would love to see Obama re elected, but truth be told, if he is not given a Congress to support him it would be like pushing the man out of the plane without a parachute--there's no way he can bring you anything if you don't provide him with the means. He'll just wind up flattened on the ground.

It Don't Bother Me

There is a wonderful song which ends a wonderful movie called "Nashville," directed by Robert Altman.  A waif, who has been trying to sing a song through the entire movie, but never gets the stage, or when she does, it's at a motor speedway and her voice is drowned out, finally gets to belt out her song, "It don't bother me." And what she sings is, "You may say, I'm not free, but it don't bother me."
And you realize, having watched the film, having watched the forces of wealth and power, having watched the cynical manipulation of public opinion by the upper 1%, by the smarmy, by the unctuous, by the winners, you realize how un free all those strivers in the seething hoi polloi, all those dreamers, who think they will hit it big some day, who believe they will make it, you realize, it don't bother them to not be free.
My father was very disappointed visiting Spain when Franco was still in power, looking about at all the cafe life on the streets and seeing all the ostensibly happy people living in this dictatorship. "They were all so...happy."   It didn't bother them they were not "free." They could not complain in public about their government. 
So what? 
Are we really any more in control of our society than those Spaniards?
Or, more to the point, are we any more in control of our individual fates in the Live Free or Die state than those Spaniards?
Big money is in control. The Supreme Court is determined to keep it that way. Congress is bought and paid for. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity like it that way. 
Why should you or I care?
Maybe Barack Obama, much as I love him, or the idea of him, is really just another Jimmy Carter--a decent man, but not a strong leader. And maybe, worse yet, his followers really are effete, weak kneed, insufficiently aroused or insufficiently arousable, nice people but, in the end, losers. 
And maybe the future does not belong to losers. Maybe it belongs to the one percenters.
Maybe that's cosmic justice. The way America is supposed to work. Those who want wealth and power go after it,  and the rest of us are content to live our lives without it, because, well, it don't bother me.

As Wisconsin Goes...

During a players' strike against the National Football League, my father remarked, "I'm all for the workers, but these guys are not workers." By which he meant, they were millionaires squabbling with billionaires.


Some of the same lack of sympathy was apparent in Wisconsin, and I hear it right here in New Hampshire. People quote newspaper stories about the lavish pensions retiring police officers in Boston get. They complain about the heavy burden on town budgets for pensions for retired police and firemen. They point out these men and women are getting these pensions at age 50 and going out and getting other jobs. They became police at age 20, retired at 50 and never went to college. 


These same citizens complain about public school teachers who are burnt out, recycling lessons for years, incompetent and destructive to children, and these  public employees in schools cannot be fired because of union contracts. And that particularly burns because non union citizens live with the knowledge that they themselves go to work every day and are just one back talk away, one angry outburst away from being escorted off the premises, carrying  all their stuff in a cardboard box,  escorted by security. The average citizen is non unionized, especially in New Hampshire, and lives at the pleasure not of some royal monarch but at the pleasure of some financial monarch.


And so the average citizen resents the protected job and the security of the unionized public employee. He resents the union worker who works for a non public, private employer, too, because money from the Koch brothers has been used to "educate" him that unions are what have made General Motors unable to compete with Toyota and Volkswagen.  


So unions are bad for the country, and bad for the economy  and only good for the few unionized workers. The sweet deals they've negotiated for themselves show how greedy these workers are. The workers don't deserve these good things. Somehow, the owners and managers and bosses, who also benefit from the profits of the company are not seen to be greedy or to be benefiting unjustly.


The average citizen resents the power the government has over him, but he accepts the power the financial monarchs have over him.  If his boss fires his coworker, well, we all know we have to please the boss. Doesn't matter if the firing was fair or made sense or not. That's the way it is.


You really have to hand it to the Republicans: They have "educated" American citizens to internalize the point of view of the bosses, and to believe what is good for the bosses, and what is bad for the worker is good for the nation. 


Take your hat off to them.  (Just the way you do for the Queen.)

Fearless Leader: Obama and Gay Marriage

Either Barack Obama is a lot smarter than I am or he really does not want to be re elected. 
Not that I disagree with him about gay marriage, but you have to say, "What was he thinking?"
I suppose you might think, well, he was never going to get the vote of any ardent bible thumper anyway.  But he was never going to lose the gay vote, because they have nowhere else to go, if a gay is voting on gay issues.
How many truly "independent" voters there are out there? I do not know.  But there must be some who would have maybe voted for Obama, but now will not because they are offended by the idea of gay marriage. They are offended by the two men, who are standing on the sidelines of the soccer game watching their eight year old daughter playing soccer. They are embarrassed when their own eight year old daughter ask them, "Who are those two men?" And they have to say, "Those are Jennifer's fathers." They do not want to have to accept that family as having any right to exist. It's not actually a problem for the children, who can accept whatever they are told, who are not locked into beliefs yet. The problem is with the squirmy parents.
This is one of those emotional-all-thinking-stops-and-just-emotions-reign things.
When you get people relaxed, in a bar, talking about marriage, the average person is more reasonable about the whole idea of marriage. But when you put people in a group, like at church, they lose all rationality.
For my part, that word marriage is nothing sacred. It is applied to relationships which are so varied and so different from one another the only thing you can say is it has only legal meaning.
How many people really believe a man and woman are chosen for each other by God?
How many people really believe in those vows to be sexually faithful, to stand by your spouse in sickness and in health? Some people do both, but probably the majority do not and that word marriage is an empty promise. 
Men shuck their aging wives for trophy wives. Women have babies and lie about who the father really is. Divorce ends most marriages. 
Really, that sacred institution is anything but.
But humankind cannot stand too much reality.
We get very nasty when you force us to face the fact that a cherished illusion is bunk.
There are magazines about weddings and brides and girls still dream about finding "Mr. Right."
For my money, I'd get the government out of the business of gay marriage because I'd get it out of the business of all marriage. You want a church wedding? Fine. Have a beautiful day. But don't ask the government to sanctify it and don't allow those words,  "By the power invested in me by the state of New Hampshire, I now pronounce you man and wife." 
Yuck!
Marriage ought to be what it is: A contract. Go to city hall and get officially registered and married, heterosexual, homosexual, intra species, whatever.  If you want to marry a frog, fine. But the practical, financial, health insurance, visiting rights aspects can be spelled out in law for any couple who wants to sign on for that contract.
Problem is, I'm unelectable for saying such things. So is President Obama.

Taking Out Osama Bin Laden 

"Oh, I could have hit that one out. That was easy. Anyone could have hit that one out."

Strip Searches and the Republican Soul

E.L. Doctorow, writing in today's Sunday New York Times traces the decline of America,  the slide of this great country from something unique to a nation like so many others. 

But the coup de grace , as he tells the tale, is the decision by the US Supreme Court to protect the nation's jailers from the threat of weapons being smuggled into jails by all those girl jay walkers, those ladies who rolled through stop signs, or the men who were simply arrested for  DWB (Driving While Black) or even RWB (Riding While Black.)

From this day forward, there ought to be no public appearance by any candidate for office, or by any office holder, without that person being asked, directly and immediately: "Do you agree with the strip search decision?"  and then, if the answer is no, or if the answer is a dodge, "Will you work to pass legislation to limit strip searches?"

You might also ask, "What evidence are you aware of which suggests that strip searches protect jailers from hidden weapons? What are the statistics of how many weapons have ever been found by this procedure over the past 10 years?"

The fact is, the heart and soul of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, has dismissed even the Abu Ghraib stripping of prisoner as just "the boys letting off steam," and "no worse than a Skull and Bones" initiation rite. But that's just Mr. Limbaugh's fetid imagination at work again.

The fact is, this is what the Republican heart and soul is all about: The case was about a powerless man who was wronged by those in power, the police and the prison authorities, and the Republicans on the court, and all the Republicans across the land are determined to protect those poor, sensitive, vulnerable jailers, who have guns, from the sixteen year old girl who has just been dragged in in plastic handcuffs.

We have to ask everyone who wants to hold office, Republican and Democrat alike, where they stand on this.

Finally, The Democrats Throw a Punch

Osama is dead and General Motors is alive. If Romney had been President, exactly the opposite would be true.
  --Joe Biden


Okay, finally, a little ditty short enough and punchy enough to appeal to Joe Sixpack.
Now if we can just get one or two a week until November, the Democrats may stand half a chance.

Romney: The Ultimate Empty Suit

Listening to Mitt Romney on the radio this morning I could not help thinking: Is this a real human being I'm listening to, or some radio creation?
He was giving a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire and he sounded as if he were trying out lines on a focus group:
1. Are you better off now than you were 3 years ago when Obama took office?
2. President Obama has done the best he can, but that's not good enough.
3. Let's let somebody try to be President who has some experience in the business world. Obama has none.
4. President Obama may not have caused the financial meltdown crisis but what he did made it worse.
5. My parents never told me we could make our family more successful by taking away something from some other family.
6. Tax the rich? That's class warfare.


Of course, none of these rhetorical flourishes have any real substance. They are all applause lines. They are meant to stir up those who already hate Obama. And there are plenty of those. And some of those, who knows how many hate him because he is a Black man sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom. That's the deep down truth. There are a set of "they" out there who will never accept the stinging defeat this inoffensive Black man handed them in 2008.


But, just for the fun of it let's look at the six empty slogans emanating from that empty man, Mitt Romney:
1. Are you better off now than you were when President Obama was sworn in in January, 2009? Well, if that's the real question, then Obama gets re elected in a landslide. You will remember the economy was in free fall and the government and the nation was not far behind. But that would require a few neurons in the memory part of the brain and nobody from Rush to Mitt wants to have any of those functioning.
2. President Obama isn't good enough. Well, I've argued that at times, but compared to anybody the Republicans have put forward, most especially Mitt, oh, give me the O man.
3. Experience in the business world. Oh, there's a necessary qualification. You notice Mitt doesn't want to mention his own experience in government, which provided the model for Obamacare, and Mitt left as his own administration was presiding over a disintegration in government services in Massachusetts. He could not have got re election based on his performance in government so now he's saying, well, forget that. Elect me because I made vulture capitalism work for Bain Inc.
4. President Obama made the financial crisis worse. Oh, really. He might have done more and he might have done better but he wrested the steering wheel out of the icy grip of every Republican in Congress and in the land just in time to keep the nation from driving off the cliff.
5. No, your parents didn't  tell you not to take things from the rich to improve your lot because you were already rich. That's Rubio's line. It goes to the heart of the Republican problem. The GOP is the party of the haves and they live in fear of the day when Joe Sixpack realizes that some part of his own failure is directly connected to the success of the rich, who have controlled the rules and rigged the game so guys like him cannot succeed.
6. Taxing the rich. Class warfare. Oh, very bad. Well, give me a little class warfare that comes from the bottom 80% and is aimed at the upper 20% who have been reigning down bombs on the have nots for so long the have nots think getting screwed is normal.


But none of this analysis matters. People hate Obama and resent the Democrats because they have come to believe in fantasies about right and wrong. Until Joe Sixpack gets smart, he'll vote for Republicans, he'll love the NRA, and he'll tune into Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and he'll never know what hit him, but that's all right with Joe.

Detoxifying the Supreme Court

Mad Dog has been accused of aimless ranting about the Supreme Court for some years now.
Now, public opinion and informed opinion has caught up with his insights.
It turns out, lo and behold, the Supreme Court, despite the attempts at illusion with the black robes, is nothing more than one more political institution, no more rational than Congress or the executive, and just as captive to political philosophy. The strip search case brought this into bold relief, as did the clarifying experience of listening to the justices pick apart the Obamacare law, and play with it like so many ill bred adolescents, picking at and playing with their food.
It was clear, from a reading of the Constitution, which is, after all a short document, the only description of the Supreme Court is brief and vague. No number of justices is specified and no mechanism for removing justices is specified.Now, a professor of law at Duke, writing in the NY Times observes the Court has had various numbers of judges, from 7 in 1789 (a number set by Congress) to fewer in 1800 to 10 during the Civil War, a number determined by Congress which was worried the Court would sympathize with the Confederacy.
The idea of lifetime terms derived from the experience of the English king removing judges whenever he disagreed with their opinions. But the Constitution says only the justices can be serve as long as they display "good behavior."
A group of law school professors suggest a new law which would allow every President to appoint a new justice to the Court, every two year of his presidency, so by the end of his four years, he's appointed 2 justices. If he serves 8 years, he appoints 4. But only the 9 most recently appointed justices get to vote on cases. The other justices would meet with the newer justices to decide which cases get heard in the first place.
That would work for me. I'd like it even better if he got to appoint one a year.
It would mean if you win the election, you get a court, gradually, which agrees with your philosophy and politics, but the court would change with the changing political environment in the country.
Now, all we have to do is to get President Obama re elected with a large enough majority in House and Senate to pass this thing.

Presidential Politics and the Second Wife Syndrome

When Jimmy Carter emerged to capture the Presidency it happened after Richard M. Nixon had finally, after many years, managed to reveal himself enough to disgust a large enough portion of the electorate that they wanted someone who was not Richard M. Nixon or anything like him.

So, from the cynical, Machiavellian Nixon, we swung to Carter, who looked maybe a bit naive, but fresh and open and not at all a schemer.

After 8 years of George W. Bush, anyone who sounded as if he had two neurons synapsing would have been a breath of fresh air.

John McCain fell into the trap of choosing Sarah Palin, who reminded a lot of people of George W. in her easily apprehended stupidity. She was just dumb as a stick. Aggressive, cocky, self confident and really stupid. Remind you of anyone?

Yep, George W.

So, all Barack Obama had to do was to speak grammatical English and to not come off as a scary Black man.

Now, President Obama has to throw punches, but he has got by his whole life by being non confrontational, and it's just not in him. He just doesn't know how to trade punches with Mitt and Mitch and Rush.

So, his fate appears about as clear as that of the ACA, Obamacare.

Our electorate is just not all that bright.

Just look at the comments you see on the internet.

I'm just hoping what you see in cyberspace is not what goes to the polls in November, but like the fate of the ACA, it doesn't look good.

Men In Black: Your Supreme Court in Action

So here are excerpts from the Supreme Court opinion about strip searches in the case called Florence v Board of Chosen Freeholders.
The complaint came from a man who was riding in a car (not even driving) during a traffic stop and arrested when the police computer (erroneously) said the man had failed to appear for a court appearance. He was taken to two jails.

"At the first jail, petitioner, like every incoming detainee, had to shower with a delousing agent and was checked for scars, marks, gang tatoos, and contraband as he disrobed. Petitioner claims he also had to open his mouth, lift his tongue, hold out his arms, turn around, and lift his genitals. At the second jail, petitioner, like other arriving detainees had to remove his clothing while an officer looked for body markings, wounds, and contraband; had an officer look at his ears, nose, mouth, hair, scalp, fingers, hands, arm pits and other body openings; had a mandatory shower; and had his clothes examined. Petitioner claims that he was also required to lift his genitals, turn around and cough while squatting."
Notice, even in the description, certain inclinations of the justices. The petitioner is a "detainee," which is better of course than being a prisoner, I suppose. And notice the use of the word, petitioner "claims" as if there is reason to doubt what he says. After all, he is a guy who has been doing genital lifts. We have to doubt a guy who would stoop to this. He couldn't be a gentleman, if he is willing to talk about it.
The prisoner had nothing done to him that all the other prisoners hadn't had done to them, which is, I infer, supposed to make us all feel better. He was not abused in any special way; he was abused in the same way everyone else taken into these two jails was abused.
During the arguments, the justices made clear their sympathies were not with the man to whom all this was done, but their sympathies were with the jailers, who were, after all, at great risk from harm from the dangerous people they had arrested. Well, maybe the people they had arrested were not dangerous at all, but the jailers had no way to know that and so, full of fear, the jailers were justified in visiting these deprivations onto whomsoever they found under their full control inside the jail.
It has been noted both in this trial and in a similar case heard before this court some years ago, the data on what has been found from people hauled in off the streets suggests it is a very rare thing, maybe once out of a thousand, that anything which might be harmful to the jailers has ever been found. One of the justices suggested this lack of positive findings might suggest the deterrent efficacy of the strip search procedure--after all, any miscreant on the street who knows he or she might be arrested and stripped searched is sure to not hide a gun up his rectum or her vagina.
In fact, there are still knifings in jails and prisons, and still drug use. Stripping prisoners has not made a dent in any of this. That did not seem to matter to the justices, the fact this practice, put in place to protect jailers and prisoners does not, has never been effective. None of that matters. The point is, the jailers say they want to do it. That's all that matters, what the jailers want. That's all our learned justices need to hear.
This is what this nation has come down to, fellow citizens.
This is what the founding fathers so loathed they wrote it into the constitution there would be no unreasonable searches and seizures. They had had experiences with King George III's soldiers and police. But I bet they weren't doing genital lifts in 1776.

No, we have to wait for Justice Scalia and his crowd for treating citizens, innocent citizens, captured on the streets of our nation like Abu Ghraib prisoners.

When George W. Bush spoke to the nation after the photos of Abu Ghraib appeared on the internet, he said, "This is not who we are." He said a few bad apples at the prison had done this; they were the exception in their sadistic behavior.

Well, folks, Judge Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy have made this exception into who we are.

What is the difference between being jailed in America and being raped? If it happens in jail, it's legal.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
Had enough yet?

Strip Searches: The Republican State of Mind

Nothing draws a brighter line between the Republican Party and the Democrats than the issue of strip searching prisoners.

This is not something that your government will do to you only if you are captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan or if you are caught with a bloody knife outside the home of a murder victim.

This happens to nuns arrested for protesting against a war in Washington, DC or to a man who was stopped by police because his taillight was out and the police computer said (incorrectly) there was a warrant for his arrest. It can happen to your daughter if she is arrested fro speeding and taken to a station house. It can happen if your wife is stopped and she doesn't have her driver's license with her.

The Republican majority just voted again to deny the complaint against unreasonable search and seizure made by the man who was stripped searched after having been arrested, erroneously, because the computer had got it wrong.

The Republican majority on the Court reasoned it was just fine to do a strip search on this innocent man because when you first bring into a police station any person, you have no way of knowing whether he is a mass murderer.

That was Justice Kennedy's argument. Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building was arrested on a traffic violation and brought to the station house and think what a monster he was! Of course, nowhere is it suggested that strip searching this Hannibal the Cannibal in any way protected or could have protected the police who arrested him. He did not have a bomb stowed up his rectum.

And remember, we are talking about people arrested on the street by police, and these people have not been convicted of anything.

As Kayla Williams noted in her memoir, Love My Rifle More than You, the Army stripped anyone they arrested in Iraq simply to humiliate them and to assert control over them.

She was part of that process--they wanted a female present to really humiliate their prisoners.

Sherrif Arpaio in Arizona, another Republican rising star, marches prisoners through the streets in their underwear, before their trials.

For all their talk about liberty and freedom, from the Tea Party to the Free Stater wing of the Republican party, to the main stream justices of the Supreme Court, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy, the Republicans are only indignant about a loss of freedom when it means regulators from the government may impose regulations about how industry can despoil the environment. When it comes to governmental police laying the heavy wood on some powerless citizen--go right ahead. As Rush Limbaugh said of Abu Gharib, well that was only boys blowing off steam, just a fraternity stunt.

Justice Scalia declaims he is only following the original intent of the framers of the constitution. Nowhere were these eighteenth century gentlemen more clear than when they talked about cruel and unusual punishments or unreasonable search and seizure. This is something that goes back to their time. They were very familiar with sadistic police, with bullies in uniforms.

This should be a gift horse to the Democratic party.

Every Republican ought to be asked:

1/ Do you support strip searching arrested citizens?

2/ Would you support a law in New Hampshire to forbid or severely limit the circumstances under which prisoners could be stripped in police stations?

This is a liberty litmus test and Democrats ought to rub the Republican faces in it.

Mr. Obama Predicts

Okay, President Obama said today he thought the Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act.

He said they would look at the role of the court, and the role of the Congress, and they would say, well the elected representatives of the people voted for this, so who are we to over turn it? If voting means anything, then we cannot dismiss that.

Another reason the Court would not overturn the law, he says, is that would mean reversing things which have already gone into place, like forbidding pre existing conditions as a basis for rejecting issuing policies and allowing kids just out of college to remain in their parent's policies.

And the third reason the President thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the law is precedent: other courts have upheld the law as constitutional.

Mad Dog would love to be wrong on this and would love the President to be correct.

Unfortunately, Mad Dog knows the President is wrong: The Court will reverse the individual mandate and will argue it's not their fault if the rest of the law falls apart. All they are talking about is the mandate. Whatever happens after that is up to Congress.

Why?

Well, the simple answer is the court is nothing special, just a collection of nine political appointees doing what they were appointed to do.

In a review of The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, William Saletan noted that authors from George Lakoff to Drew Westen have said that "people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments." David Hume observed reason was the slave of the passions, and you can certainly see that in Justice Scalia. People "reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they've decided," says Saletan. "Reason justifies our acts and judgments to others."

This blog and others have shown how the justices have done this, case after case.

They will say the Constitution is about what you cannot vote on, so the voting the President insists they respect matters not at all. They will say the function of the court is to be sure the other branches do not violate "Original Intent," i.e. the idea of right governance as conceived by the founding fathers, who in Scalia's mind have the same holy status as the twelve apostles.

They will say the argument we'd have to dismantle what has already been put into place, and that lives will be changed by it could have been used in Brown vs. The Board of Education--after all, had the segregated Southern schools not already been built and occupied and did the Supreme Court not cause all those schools and all those children to be disrupted, in the name of principle?

As far as precedent, well several courts on the way to the Supreme Court found the ACA unconstitutional, so there are some opinions concurring.

The really sad thing here is watching the President explain, once again, that his opponents are reasonable people, and he expects they will act in a kind and thoughtful way, not because they like him, but because these are men who want the best for the country, men who will use their faculties of reason to see things the right way.

He just does not seem to be able to learn from experience.

Memo to President Obama: These Republican Justices, these Republicant Congressmen and Senators and radio talk show hosts--they are not nice people. They are not "folks." They are bitter and they are selfish and they are determined to protect their own wealth and power, and damn the rest of the country. And, as they have said so often, Mitch McConnell being the clearest about this, the only thing which matters to him as a Republican or to any true Republican is that you fail, no matter what the price to the country. In fact, the bigger the price to the country, the deeper the hurt, the better, so the country will never again be tempted to vote for another radical socialist like you. That'll learn 'em, your big failure.

Much as I like the guy, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not anyone so starry eyed can actually lead this nation.

The Income Tax as Zen Patriotism

How do I hate the income tax?

Let me count the ways.

When I ran a small business, as I did for 27 years, it took me about 20 years to get organized collecting, keeping track of the multiplicity of sources of income. I had no training as an accountant, and for many of those years there was no software, so I had a system of envelops and I tried to keep tract of 1099 forms, but I was forever chasing down various bank account statements, trying not to miss an interest payment which would mean I'd failed to report income, the big crime in the eyes of the IRS.

I needed several bank accounts: One for the income from my primary business, one for keeping money set aside to pay estimated income taxes, another for my wife's job's income, another for my personal expenses which were unrelated to business expenses. A junior CPA at my accountant's office told me, "Oh, the IRS is going to hang you. It looks like you are shuffling money between accounts to avoid reporting income." But I get statements on all the accounts and they are all in the same bank," I objected. Oh, it looks bad, she said.

Sure enough I got audited many times.

Usually, I got audited because the IRS didn't understand that the 1099 forms were part of what I was reporting as business income, not separate earnings.

I had other sources of income than from my primary business, like from writing articles for magazines or book advances, and I didn't want to mix that income with the income from the primary business income, so there was a separate bank account for that.

The other interesting thing about being self employed is you pay a self employment tax.What is that all about? What it felt like is the IRS and the government saying, "If you are self employed you must be cheating."

I also paid something called the Minimal Alternative Tax.
Ultimately, I got a good accountant, who helped me keep things straight and things settled down.

But every year, I reached April 15th feeling pretty good only to see my accounts wiped clean: Paying estimated income taxes, 1040 taxes and retirement (SEP contributions.)

Decision after decision was based on what it did to my taxes.

Every scrap of receipt got kept, filed to prove I had spent a particular dollar on a legitimate business expense.

And no matter how scrupulously I tried to play the game, I was felt guilty, like some sort of involuntary criminal. I could never keep up with all the rules and with all the changes in the rules.

And I believe paying my taxes is the only meaningful patriotic act left to me as an average citizen.

I hate the income tax.

It feels intrusive. The government looks at all my expenses, all my sources of income. What else is there I can hold private? And they strip all that away.

They know what I pay for my car, what I paid for the hotel at the convention.

Of course, I tell them this because I want them to give me credit for all that as a business expense. I don't have to tell them.

I hate the income tax and all the reporting, and all the record keeping.

I'd much rather pay a big tax when I buy something.

That way, I feel as if I want that new car, well I have to pay for it. I don't have to buy that car. But I have to earn a living.

Rationally, I know a progressive income tax is better social policy. The poor, who are less able to pay, pay way less than the rich.

But I hate the income tax.

Actually, I hate it a lot less now that I'm an employee. I love the W-2. With deductions taken out automatically, the pain is gone.

Having said all this, I still think it's an anathema to allow the Repulbicants blackmail every candidate into pledging never to allow an income tax.

Because it never stops with the income tax. Why not have them pledge to not allow abortions, contraception, gay marriage, increases in property tax? Pretty soon you have a robo candidate, who has signed up for all the pledges, and can only sign ten sorts of bills into law.

And, once you have signed enough pledges, you have given away your ability to negotiate with the legislature, if you are running for governor.

Well, she has signed off on the income tax, and she can't increase property taxes this year. So now we've got her.

Bad idea.