What Would Jesus Do? True Believers, The Desperation of Belief

In today's New York Times Paul Krugman reacts to an interview in GQ with Marco Rubio, one of the most earnest voices of the Republican Party and Krugman is struck by Mr. Rubio's answer to the question: "How old is the earth?"  Mr. Rubio replied, "I'm not a scientist, man,"  which is manifestly true, but then he goes on to say "it's one of the great mysteries," putting it in a category along with eternal questions like, "why do bad things happen to good people" and "where do we come from and where are we going?"   

In fact, the question of the age of the earth is a question about measurement and we can, in fact, get at least an approximate measurement.

Of course, the reason Mr. Rubio is afraid to answer this question is he is afraid of offending the creationists who deny/doubt evolutionary theory. The vast eons of time required for evolution to explain the almost incomprehensible variety of life forms on earth require vast time. Creationists, for reasons Mad Dog is unfamiliar with, need the earth to be only a few thousand years old to fit with whatever they have found in parts of the King James version of the Bible.

As Mr. Krugman observes:  "What was Mr. Rubio's complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children's faith in what their parent told them to believe."

Mr. Krugman is a numbers man. This is not to say he is a scientist--he is an economist, which may be the  "dismal science" but it is no science, because you cannot do hypothesis-test-measure thing, i.e., you cannot do experiments with sufficiently few variables.  And he is a professor, so he is familiar to with the problem of teaching students, younger people things which may conflict with what their parents taught them.

My own son told me a story about being in a class at Vanderbilt when the professor posed a knotty ethical dilemma for the class and then called on a student for his analysis. How would you solve this problem? How would you weight the competing claims and values here?  The chirpy, bright faced, well scrubbed student replied, without a moment's hesitation:  "I'd just ask myself, 'What would Jesus do?'"

At which point, half the class groaned, slid under their desks, tossed wads of paper at the Jesus disciple, laughed, cried and generally grumbled about transferring to another college.  

Vanderbilt is a very interesting institution, founded by a Vanderbilt (a one percenter) in 1873 to create an atmosphere expressly designed to bring together young people from North and South int he aftermath of the Civil War to reason together, to learn from each other.  The student body, to this day, is about 50% from the South, and Southwest (Texas mostly) and the other half from the Midwest (Chicago mostly) and the Northeast (the Washington to New York corridor.)  The faculty is now predominantly from the North.

The professor smiled and asked, "Well, but how would you know what Jesus would say about this particular question--as far as I know, and I've read the Bible since I was a child, Jesus was never presented with this question,or anything remotely like it.  This woman, who was impregnated by rape, and whose pregnancy threatens her life owing to eclampsia asks for an abortion.  Should she be allowed an abortion? Find the text in the Gospel which addresses these circumstances."

Now, Krugman reports a Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain has reported "the now extensive research linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations."

Ya think?

You need "extensive research" to appreciate this?  

When Mad Dog  was growing up, he found himself attracted primarily to Catholic girls  because Catholic girls had the most to rebel against. It made them more interesting.

Look at the Supreme Court--the four horsemen of the eighteenth century Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas are either Catholic or fundamentalist--grew up hearing "all the answers are in the Good Book." And now they are "originalists" who look to all the answers in that Good Book called Constitution, as if its authors, those  18th century gentlemen, some of whom were slave owners, some of whom were brilliant, but who among them could have anticipated the microphone, television, the internet, public education, the land grant college, automatic weapons, nuclear power plants and all those forces which make the 21st century such a different world from the 18th?

We all want to clutch on to something in the swiftly moving current of life. We want to believe we know things, immutable truths. And we find it hard to give up old beliefs. Mad Dog has occasionally complained that 90% of what he was taught in medical school turned out to be wrong or at least subject to heavy revision. That the heart pumps blood to the brain, that the pituitary gland controls the thyroid gland's release of thyroid hormone (except when it doesn't)  are still verifiably true, but those are the few boulders in the stream, still firmly planted as the roiling currents of change sweep past.

So Republicans refuse to hear new evidence, refuse to believe new things, refuse to give up cherished beliefs.  Don't we all, in some ways? The problem is, the Democrats know we have to be willing to go forth boldly into worlds where man has never gone before. The Republicans would rather curse the darkness than light a candle.

Financial Future of Medicare, Social Security. Glass Half Empty

Report from the New York Times Re: The Financial Future of Medicare and Social Security:

The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, three years sooner than projected last year, the administration said. And Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be depleted in 2024, the same as last year’s estimate, it said.

Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, a trustee of the two programs, said Social Security’s disability insurance program faced the most immediate threat, with its trust fund expected to run out of money in 2016, two years sooner than predicted last year.

For the disability program, as for Social Security over all, tax receipts would be sufficient to pay about 75 percent of promised benefits after the trust fund was exhausted.

In the past, Congress has occasionally shifted revenue from one trust fund to another to avoid any interruption of benefits. But if the disability trust fund borrowed money from Social Security’s old-age trust fund, the loan would have to be repaid, officials said, and the measure would not solve the programs’ problems.

Richard S. Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, said the projections in the report, based on current law, “are probably poor indicators of the future financial status of Medicare.”

 But, the public trustees said, “the reported long-term financial outlook has grown worse,” primarily because the government accepted advice from technical experts suggesting faster growth in Medicare costs.

In explaining changes in their Social Security projections, the trustees cited slower growth in average earnings of workers and the persistence of unemployment in the slow recovery from the recession. They lowered their projection of average real earnings in the future, primarily because of a surge in energy prices and “slower assumed growth in average hours worked per week after the economy has recovered.”

Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the panel’s health subcommittee, said, “Today’s report continues to show Medicare on a sound financial footing,” mainly because of the 2010 health care law. Still, Mr. Stark said, Republicans keep trying to “end Medicare as we know it, not because the program is unsustainable, but because they want government out of the business of guaranteeing health care.”

What Mad Dog infers from this report of various experts, trustees and actuarials is that both Medicare and Social Security would run out of money, unless new money is provided , sometime in the next 20 years.  That is, if things stay static for the next 20 years, and we do not pump any more money into these programs, these programs will start to run out of money. 

That new money could come from an improved economy, with more taxpayers paying more into the programs, or from, Heaven forbid, higher tax rates to support these problems. That is, we might solve the problem of the bank account, by depositing more money into it. What a novel idea!

But, because Republicans have taken a no tax pledge, the option of generating more money for the programs does not exist for them, which means the only thing to do is to cut expenditures.  That means, coupon care, abandoning the promise to pay for your medicare expenses and abandoning the promise to pay out pensions under Social Security. It's the only way, the Republicans say.

And it is, if you vote Republican.

.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2012, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headli

Ms. Maud Instructs

I am working on the cartoon, but until it is done, a few cogitations on Ms. Biddle's salient points.

Let us begin with the most important articles of faith, i.e. #12 (see previous post):  Medicare and Social Security are about to go bankrupt and can only be saved by Paul Ryan, his Coupon Care and the Republicans efforts to slash these programs down to a splintered shadow of their former selves.

There are different ways of knowing, and we can do the citing of references, examination of numbers, but my understanding, which is based on what I have read from the Congressional Budget office and from what Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and virtually all the Democrats (but, significantly, not from a single Republican) is this:  Medicare is actually quite healthy. It is in great shape until at least 2030. The Republicans, Mr. Ryan in particular, have tried to rumor it into a fatal illness, but none of the scientists can find anything to indicate poor health. It seems robust and hale and hearty at nearly 50 years of age.

Social Security has been in similar robust good health, and in fact it's main problem has been it's very prosperity, such that all it's friends, relatives and neighbors have been borrowing from it at a prodigious rate, which has diminished Social Securities own account over the years.

The standard line from the Tea Party Republicans is that the numbers don't lie: There will be fewer and fewer young healthy, working people coming along to pay into the program which supports that big part of the population, the baby boomers now entering retirement. But, contrary to what the Republicans say, the demographic does not mean the Social Security program is or will be in the foreseeable future, in financial  dire straights. Enough people have paid into it for long enough, it's doing just fine.

I did make a cartoon about this, with Paul Ryan pushing the head of the dolphin under water so he can claim it's drowning. 

Oh, we have to save Flipper. He's drowning!

But nobody commented on it, so I guess it didn't make the point.

Mad Dog must admit, he has not gone over the numbers recently. He is guilty of what Rush and Sean and Paul and Glenn are guilty of--simply repeating something heard because you want to believe it--a la Karl Rove--a sort of math that makes you feel better. 

Mad Dog will endeavor to bring some references to bear on this point.

Republicans Explain Their Defeat: Oh, This Is Too Good

Here is a wonderful letter to the Portsmouth Daily Herald,  from a Ms. Sally Biddle of New Castle which says it all, a distillation of Fox News and the Thunder from the Right in nearly pure form, a specimen representative of the species. Ms. Biddle suggests a cartoon be created to run in the Herald elucidating what the Democrats want and what their victory means.

Mad Dog has taken the liberty of adding numbers to the text, so we do not miss anything.

"Let's be fair and picture the Donkey saying 'If You Vote For Us.'

1. We'll pardon the illegals, 
2.  give free condoms and abortions to women, 
3.  a college tuition discount 
4.  and we'll tax the rich so much employers won't be able to afford to hire 
5.  or pay the increase in health insurance, 
6.  employees will have to be laid off or become part -timers. 
7.  We'll make sure unions can't fire you even if you do a poor job, 
8.   and make sure Republican members contribute toward our campaigns so unions can provide perks like free facials etc.  
9.  Companies might go into bankruptcy, maybe no more Twinkies, 
10. but hey, the government will make sure you don't even have to try finding a job. 
11. Oh yes, who cares if most of the doctors leave their profession because of "Obamacare" 
12.  and Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt. 
13. When the government runs out of money, run into streets, protest, riot, fight and scream, just like they are in Greece and other countries. 
14. Remember, the government will take care of you!'"

It's all there, in one letter.

Mad Dog will chew on this for a while. We can all work on deconstructing it, teasing each malevolent little morsel out, masticating, savoring each bitter flavor.

Can you imagine what this woman's living room looks like?

Lincoln, Obama and Stressed Out Presidents

As David von Drehle has noted in Rise To Greatness, Lincoln is our greatest President because he had the greatest challenges to overcome. 

Nobody is seriously moving to leave the Union, taking up arms, firing on Fort Sumter, enslaving a third of the population and insisting this is God's will, appealing to European powers to enter a war against Washington, and for all its faults, Washington, DC is not stinking in pestilence, with typhoid claiming the lives of the Presidential family, , with an armed enemy just across the Potomac, blocking egress along the river, with unpaved streets knee deep in mud and animal droppings, spittoons in the lobbies of hotels, carpets stained with tobacco spit, and a Supreme Court having endorsed slavery.

The one thing Mr. Obama might envy as he casts his eyes back to Mr. Lincoln's circumstances:  By 1862, the disloyal opposition had already left town, and Congress, while still comprised of Democrats and Republicans, was basically of one mind. The only arguments were about how far to go, now that meaningful opposition to abolition of slavery had left town.

While it remains stupefying to listen to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner still singing the Republican chorus-- "We must address our fiscal problems, our deficit by cutting spending.  We will only alienate the job creators if we do not cut taxes for everybody (i.e. including the upper 1%.) and the road to recovery is through cutting spending and taxes"--these oppositional types are only slow learners. They have yet to figure out they lost the election. For them, what is important is that they retained control of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats can, if they choose, focus their fire on individual Republican leaders--McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, Demint--and de legitimize them as they did with Mr. Romney, and eventually they will cave.

The only question now is how long it will take Mr. Obama to learn the lessons of Debate #1--you need to attack when you are blocked by a dug in opposition. And when you attack, you win.  When you listen and try to act all bi partisan, you lose, and you look stupid and ineffectual in the process.

In Lincoln's time, he was more hurt by his friends than by his enemies. His generals simply refused to fight--McClellan, Buell, Halleck all had constant excuses and reasons for their own inaction.  Finally, Lincoln found some generals who worried more about inaction than the risks of action, and that was his path to greatness. Lincoln knew what he wanted, but he dithered about getting there. He was unwilling to  forthrightly break with those who blocked up the hall.  

President Obama has the same proclivity with which his predecessor from Illinois was afflicted--the willingness to tolerate stalling.

Mr. Obama and the Supreme Court

Here is the speech I am looking forward to hearing from President Obama soon.

My fellow Americans, we have just completed an election for national legislative and executive offices, and those elected have serious and urgent business before them. But ours is a system of three distinct branches, and the third branch, the judiciary was conceived as providing balance and thoughtfulness to the actions of the other two. 

Over the course of history, there have been times this branch, and in particular the United States Supreme Court have provided this balance, but there have also been notable failures, and for several generations this un-elected branch has actually become the most radical branch and its excesses the most extreme.

I am sure within milliseconds of finishing my remarks, and even before I finish, across the electronic world wide web the word will go out: President Obama attempts to bash the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, to answer this notion, I will read the only three paragraphs of the Constitution which mention the Supreme Court, its justices and their powers. It won't take long. They are contained in the first two sections of Article III, and this is all the Constitution says, in its entirety, about the Court:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court , and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Minister and Consuls; to all Case of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and the Citizens of another State, between Citizens of different States, between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States and between a State or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Minister and Consuls and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. IN all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to law and Fact, with such Exceptions and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

That is all the Constitution says about the court and its justices and its authority.
Notice, there is only one sentence describing the justices.  It does not set a number. It says only they will serve "during good Behavior" and that nobody can cut their pay.

The court, much as some would like to deny it, is a political institution. We hope the justices form their opinions based only on the law but the cases which reach the Supreme Court often fall into gaps between what the law says explicitly and the details of a particular circumstance.

In the Dred Scott case, a man sued for his freedom from slavery.  The Supreme Court ruled that as a slave, this human being had no rights, because in the eyes of the law, he is not a human being but property and only a human being can sue in the court.  Dred Scott had not "standing" with the court, because he was nothing more than property. The Constitution did not address this principle directly. Nowhere in it is there mention of the word "slave" although it did mention "free persons" and "all other persons."  So the Supreme Court had to draw its own conclusions and these conclusions were based on the sensibilities and experience and philosophy of the justices in nineteenth century America.

In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation had the rights of a human being, the right to free speech. So in the nineteenth century the court ruled  a human being was not a human being because he was property and in the 21st century, the Court ruled a property, that is a corporation, had the rights of a human being. 

The Supreme Court has, occasionally, filled in the gaps between stated law and principle in the direction of progress and moving the nation toward the right side of history: In Brown vs the Board of Education, the Court rejected the idea that schoolchildren in  public schools could be separated by race by state law. It said "separate but equal" was an oxymoron--separate meant inherently unequal.  But this is a case in point--the Supreme Court decides cases where the law ends and philosophy and good sense begins, and that is where the personal history of the justices prevail.  We cannot allow nine entrenched men and women to block the progress of 300 million.

These cases are merely examples of a larger issue:  The Court has evolved by tradition to be nine justices, appointed for life, each appointed by whatever President happens to be in office when one justice departs. This haphazard system has resulted in justices "gaming" the system, hanging on until a President who is not to their political liking leaves office. It has meant that when the country has moved to new understandings and beliefs, as it has in the case of marriage equality, the Court stands as an obstacle to the flow of freedom. It has resulted in absurd rulings, like the one which embraced the idea, "Corporations are people."

I am not the first President to see freedom and prosperity thwarted by a Court which has gripped the choke collar on progress to the point of  asphyxiation.  And I am loathe to change now what we may regret changing later. But I do think it is vital to be on the right side of history and the Supreme Court needs to change, as the executive branch and the legislative branches have changed with the demands of the times.

The Constitution is not a holy book inscribed in stone by God's hand, but a living document, a brilliant and enduring document, and it needs to be interpreted by a living  and responsive court.

I propose Congress enact legislation--no Constitutional amendment is necessary--which would require the President to appoint one Supreme Court justice during each year of his Presidency. The sitting justices should hear cases, argue their merits and render opinions, but only the nine most recently appointed can vote on the verdicts.

In doing this, we will acknowledge what has been evident for generations, that much as they strive to be objective, justices are people and will be influenced by their experience and by their own personal values.  As the nation changes, we cannot allow a static court to thwart its progress. 

I have no illusion the current Congress will enact this legislation. The House of Representatives is in the grip of a fundamentalist faction of the Right Wing. But in two years, all the seats in the House will be up for renewal. It is with 2014 in mind I make this proposal tonight. During by year elections, with no President on the ballot, voter turn out tends to be low. If we can focus now on this upcoming election, I hope we can see a voter turn out which duplicates or exceeds the participation we have just seen in 2012.

Thank you and good night.

Why We Need Texas

Wouldn't you love to have Gail Collins living next door, so you could have coffee with her every morning?

Ms. Collins reports that Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County (Texas) Republican party and a former textbook committee member for the State Board of Education (which screens textbooks for their appropriateness for the tender, impressionable minds of Texas youth) has declared it is time for Texas to secede from the Union. And he anticipates a fight from those nasty carpet bagging Yankees who can be anticipated to swarm down to the Lone Star state, in hordes, the way they did the last time a Southern state tried to walk out. 
 "We must contest every single inch of ground," he said, echoing the famous Churchillian call to fight the Nazis on the beaches and in the fields.  Well, Texas doesn't have all that much in the way of picturesque beach, but you get the idea. 

Resist! "Delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity," he said. "In due time, the maggots will have eaten the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity."  

Apparently Mr. Morrison learned something from reading all those textbooks.

Ms. Collins must have a subscription to a variety of Texas newspapers to find such stuff, and Mad Dog is thinking of paying for a subscription, if he can only find out where the best Texas tirades are printed.

Mad Dog admits he has advocated expelling Texas along with Arizona (or at least Maricopa County) South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi from the Union, but now he has to re think.  Where else can we get such distilled clarity of the thinking (if we can be that generous, to describe it as thinking--frothing might be a better word) of the lunatic right? 

And if we threw out Arizona, we'd lose John McCain, who, as Ms. Collins points out, provides such wonderful comic relief, complaining bitterly the Administration has stone walled and refused to tell him what happened at Benghazi even as the briefing at the White House was going on--the briefing McCain skipped, having been truant so he could hold a press conference at which he could complain nobody tells him anything. Now that is chutzpah! That really is the boy who murders his parents and then pleads for leniency on the grounds he is now an orphan.

No, if we simply kept the Blue States, we would be the poorer, for the loss of all those wonderful clowns who control the Red States. 

It would be like purging the Police Log from the Portsmouth Daily Herald.  There you see people in their most revealing state.  My personal favorite is the report, as always given straight faced and without comment, "Called to home on Islington Street, eleven A.M. Female resident complains her neighbor called her 'Obese.'"

Try To Stop Smiling

Mad Dog has had a very serious talk with himself.  He has pointed out, to himself, that his life has not substantively changed since November 6. He still goes to his day job, every day, still arises at 5 AM, still gets back home at 6 PM. His salary is unchanged. He drives the same car with no prospect for a new one. His house is still the same color. His lawn is unraked, and leaves still need raking.

But, as the song goes, I have often walked down this street before, but the sidewalks always stayed beneath my feet before.

As David Remnick says in this week's New Yorker, the joy of seeing the brothers Koch and Sheldon Adelson failing to buy this election, of knowing that despite the Supreme Court's best efforts to hand the election to the Republicans with their Citizens United ruling, they failed and the delight of seeing  Donald Trump, that epitome of buffoonery,  sputtering impotently, and that wonderful exchange between Megyn Kelly and Karl Rove--"Is this just the math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?"--all that was sooo satisfying. 

To see those haters, like the guy in Albany, New Hampshire who owns the Kawasaki motorcycle dealership, who put up the sign shown above at the gateway to the White Mountains--to see them vanquished is oh, so sweet.

But the really sweet part is not just seeing the scoundrels lose, but to see a really fine man prevail.

But then there is the question of what we are facing now.

For Remnick, the biggest issue is not the fiscal cliff, but global warning.  

As Mark Twain (or possibly it was Charles Dudley Warner) said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." The question remains, not so much whether man has changed the climate but whether or not he can do anything to fix it. 

There is the old saw about throwing a frog into a pot of boiling water--he jumps out. But put him in a pot of cool water and gradually turn up the heat and he stays in and boils--that applies to humanity in a gradually heating planet: It all happens so slowly, we hardly notice and take no action to save ourselves.

Remnick does his cause no service by saying the European heat wave of 2003 left 50,000 people dead.  This is Mad Dog's Law of Big Numbers, as soon as you hear somebody throwing around big numbers, you know he's wrong, or at the very least bogus and doesn't know where those numbers come from.  So we hear this disease costs the American economy $5 billion a year, and so does that one and by the time you add up all the thousands of diseases which cost that much you have a number which exceeds the gross national product.  It's a number, so it must be authoritative and correct. The fact is, few of us really understand the numbers and the evidence which support the idea of global warming--we have read about it and we choose to believe the sources we choose to believe. Mad Dog believes in global warming and believes it is prudent to do what we reasonably can to ameliorate it, especially since we are talking windmills, solar power and stuff that are likely a good idea even if we are wrong about global warning. 

The fact is, Mr. Obama is doing what his constituents will allow--he's investing in green energy and this week NPR informed us the United States is likely to become energy independent within the decade, and we import only 10-20% of our oil from the Middle East today, most of our oil coming now from Canada, Mexico, Brazil and the rest of South America and from our own drilling in the USA. The boom in natural gas production apparently has made a game changing shift. While all the politicians were posturing, some scientists were actually solving the problem of providing sufficient fuel for this nation, at least for the next decade or so. This strikes Mad Dog as under reported good news. 

From Mad Dog's perspective, the big agenda item ought to be health care, which Obamacare began to address, but did not come close to actually solving. We can tweak and try the Massachusetts solution, but if we see it falter, we ought to be ready to offer Medicare for all. Don't have the votes for it yet--but come 2014 there are a lot of seats in the House up for grabs.

But, for now, we can rejoice. There is a season for all things. For crying and for laughing. This is the laughing part.

We must be on guard however--remember it was less than a week after Lee surrendered at Appomattox that an assassin slipped past a drunken guard and shot Lincoln dead. All of our joy could turn on a dime, if we cannot keep Mr. Obama safe. That is the disquieting part. So much of what has brought the joy coalesces around one man. Joe Biden has his virtues, but he is no Barack Obama.

And those haters are still out there. Mad Dog has  not been back to Albany, New Hampshire, but he is willing to bet that banner is still unfurled up there. There are plenty of little men with big guns out there, just looking for their chance to show how important they are.

The Unpatriotic Right

Mitch McConnell  stood on the Senate floor answering a question about his resistance to The American Jobs Act.  "Why would I vote for that? It might help re elect the President. And my first priority is making sure the President is not re elected."  

Here you have a United States Senator, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, saying he would rather see the country flounder than see Mr. Obama re elected. Put another way, he would burn the house down, if it meant Mr. Obama would burn with it.

And, at the time, he saw nothing wrong with that sentiment. Had you asked Mitch McConnell,  just then, if he considered himself a patriot, he would have looked at you bewildered.  

He could see nothing unpatriotic about wishing the nation ill. He would have likely said, "Well, short term pain for long term gain." 

But we all know what he meant, when he said it the first time. He was so focused on getting one man, he did not care about collateral damage. 

Thoreau made the important point: a man serves his country best with his mind. The man who is willing to serve in Congress or to serve as a "wooden soldier, " marching to the orders of others is not a good citizen or a patriot.   Democracy demands thought and critical thinking. The citizen who simply echos catchy one liners, like,  "He's had his chance: Next man up," is not thinking. He's emoting.  A patriot has to stop and analyze what is contained in that sentence. To extend the football analogy contained in that phrase, you have a quarterback who is brought in during the 4th quarter, with his team behind 63 to 0, and he manages to bring his team back to tie the game. You say, "But that is only recovery, not winning.  He's not a winner. Next man up."  

It doesn't take 4 years of college, or even high school, to see the flaw in that analysis. And yet, many people who claimed to be patriots could not think that through. 

Fortunately, just enough people could do it. We had 3 million more patriots, 3 million more solid citizens than the 50 million who were not.

Here is a citizen from Colorado, who saw the problem clearly:

During the campaign, Romney has accused Obama of being responsible for partisan gridlock in Washington. However, in 2010, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Not create jobs. Not balance the budget. Not end the wars. But to make Obama a one-term president.

And Congressional Republicans have been extremely unified in this endeavor.

Take, for instance, the American Jobs Act that President Obama proposed. A majority of the law is tax cuts and support for small business, issues that Republicans normally would strongly support.

But Republicans in both houses filibustered it. They didn’t allow the bill to even come up for debate, let alone come up for a vote.

Even when Obama split the bill into 16 parts, giving Republicans the opportunity to vote for favorable parts and stop parts that were only tax cuts, they still refused to allow a conversation on the bill, passing only the part to help veterans.

Obama urged the Republicans to allow a discussion over “genuine ideas and policies,” convinced that eventually “we will have a vote to decide the issue.” However, the Republicans didn’t allow a debate or a vote on the bill. Even during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans have not been willing to put country over party...

Bill Johnson,

Fort Collins

(From The Phantom Speaks blog)

Jolting the Job Creators

Mad Dog admits to being mystified:  The Republicans keep citing a Congressional Budget Office "study" which estimates we will lose 700,000 jobs ( out of 4 million expected to be created over the next 10 years) if taxes on people making over $250, 000 are raised from 35 to 39%. 

What Mad Dog cannot figure out is why this should happen.

Mad Dog ran his own small business with 2 employees for over two decades and never once did his calculations about how many more employees to hire have anything to do with what his income tax rates were going to be.  

The calculations had to do, primarily, with how much business we could expect to come through the door, projections of income based on insurance company payment levels,  and most importantly, on how we could make the employees we had more efficient.  My partner and I invested $10,000 in a computer system which made hiring another employee unnecessary.  What made employees expensive was: 1. Salary  2. Health Insurance  3. Pension plan payments 4. Unemployment and disability insurance required by the state government 5. Training. 

During years when personal income tax rates were high Mad Dog did not fire employees and when the Bush tax rates cut tax rates, we did not hire employees.  The fact is, we always paid employees far more than Mad Dog's change in tax rates. The difference between the two rates amounted to $10,000, and we typically paid our employees $40,000.  If I hired a new employee it was with the projection she'd bring in an additional net $60,000--if the tax rate was higher then it would be $50,000, still worth it.

And, the fact is, some years, Mad Dog made less than $250,000 and so Mr. Obama's changes this time around would not have affected anything, which is said to be true for over 90% of employers.

What made a significant difference was deductions:  When Mad Dog could deduct the cost of health insurance for his employees, that made a huge difference.

So Mad Dog fails to see why any tax increase on people making over $250,000 would turn them from "job creators" to abstainers. 

Can someone explain this to me? I mean, how does the CBO know what the 4% higher tax rate on income above $250,000 would do to thinking of these taxpaying job creators? How did they do this study? What were the questions asked?  I mean, if you had asked me, "If we made you pay more tax, would you hire fewer employees?"  Would I not say, "Oh, of course. If you do that, I'm firing everyone," knowing what effect that might have on your decision?  I mean, how do you factor out the effect of gaming the system when you ask questions like that?

Just asking.

The President I'd Like to See: Press Conference Blues

Here's the press conference I'd like to see today:

Reporter:  Mr. President what does the Petraeus affair tell us about the culture at the national security institutions of this country?

Mr. Obama: Culture is defined by values, what we hold out as ideal behavior. Behavior often deviates from this, where individuals are concerned. If you mean by that question do we have a culture which allows for powerful men in high positions to trade on that power to intimidate women into sexual relationships, nothing in what I've learned thus far about this particular affair would suggest anything of the sort occurred here or exists as a background in general.  There is no issue of "sexual harassment"  in this case, as far as we know now.  As for values, they are embodied in the military legal code, which forbids married officers from having extra marital affairs and which forbids any officer, married or unmarried from engaging in a sexual relationship with an officer of lower rank.  The fact General Petraeus resigned speaks to his own assessment of his own behavior, that he betrayed a trust, and having done that in his previous job, he apparently concluded he could not command trust in his present job. All of us in highly visible jobs, jobs which command some power are exposed to temptation daily: Power is attractive to many people. Some of us are better than others at resisting temptation. 

Reporter: But are you saying Ms. Broadwell was attracted to General Petraeus because of his power? 

Mr. Obama:  I am saying I feel like the school m'arm who has an important math class to teach and I am confronted by a bunch of giddy teenagers who want to talk about nothing but sex. Now I can dismiss this class if you refuse to talk about the important concerns of this country of 300 million people, who face a fiscal cliff, or we can talk about matters which affect the average citizen.

Reporter: Are you willing for us to go over the cliff?

Mr. Obama:  The Republican Party insisted on this cliff.  And now, because so many Republican Congressmen and Senators have been foolish enough to take some pledge, like a bunch of college sophomores, eager to get into some fraternity, they are steering the country over a cliff.  It's as if we are all in a boat headed toward a waterfall on our right. To the left is a clear and safe line, but the Republican leaders, who are at the stern, with the steering paddle have refused ever to steer the boat left; right is the only direction they will steer us. So they'd rather send us all over the waterfall than ever admit they have taken a foolish pledge.

And Miles To Go, Before We Sleep

Mad Dog awakens smiling. The virtuous have triumphed and the vacuous and mendacious have been vanquished.

But Mad Dog is aware of history.  Lincoln won re election in 1864  and two nights after Lee's surrender, he stepped out on a White House balcony and spoke to a celebrating crowd and said he would leave the question of Negro voting to the states, but he hoped that "very intelligent" colored men who had served the Union as soldiers would be permitted to vote. In the crowd below, John Wilkes Booth said to his companions, "That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through."

So Mad Dog is wary, especially at the moment of joy and victory, and remembers there is work yet to be done.

Mitch McConnell is still the leader of the Republicans in the Senate and still insists there will be no tax hikes for billionaires. John Boehner is still the Speaker of the House and he still says the deficit has to be cut by cutting spending, not by increasing revenue.

The Republicans still control the House and slightly less than half of the country voted for Mitt Romney.

What is joyful is the knowledge there really was a silent majority this time--and it was a liberal, thoughtful majority, not fooled by the prevaricating Republican money machine of super PACs. 

We can hope for a more resolute, less accommodating President, one who has learned from this campaign, and from the first debate: you get nowhere by politeness in Washington. You have to go on the attack. You have to demonize, diminish and throttle McConnell and Boehner, by name and personally, if you want to move forward.  

Mr. Obama has won the election. He now needs to lead.

The First Debate: Maybe A Good Thing

Mad Dog luxuriates in the afterglow of an election rightly won, and well fought.

And one of the many good things to come out of it, Mad Dog dearly hopes is a new, more combative President Obama. 

Many's the time Mad Dog, being a froth at the mouth type himself, howled at the timidity of Mr. Obama when faced with intransigence from Mr. McConnell and Mr. Boehner.  No, we will not raise taxes on the rich.  Oh, okay, well, if you don't like that, maybe we could just let the tax cuts we have expire and then we won't have to call it a tax hike. Would that be all right, Mr. McConnell?  Would that offend you, Mr. Boehner?

Hopefully, Mr. Obama heard from enough of his supporters, after the first debate to drive that point home, not just for the next two debates, when he finally, came out swinging and landed combinations, and showed no fear of appearing like an angry Black man.  

"Well, Mr. Romney, yes we do have fewer ships on the water now, but we also have fewer horses and bayonets because we've got these things called aircraft carriers and  these ships that go under the water."

Mr. President, if you feel the need, come up here to New Hampshire and Mad Dog will give you growling lessons.

Obama Wins: Reaction from the Right

Mad Dog has just returned from a holiday victory tour through New York City and Washington, DC. 
What delights Democrats is, beyond genuinely liking Obama, watching those odious sleaze ball Republicans trying to spin this election.

Karl Rove stayed in form by looking at what the Republicans are most guilty of and attributing that to Democrats: Thus, he says, Democrats won by suppressing the vote,  which is to say, Democrats thwarted the will of the American people, who really loved and preferred Mr. Romney, but Democrats would not allow these real Americans to have what they wanted. 

One thing you can say for Rove, he keeps the most important thing in his sights. Of course, it is Republicans who realize they cannot win if people are simply counted. As Lincoln, a Republican observed, "The Good Lord must have loved the common folk--he made so many of them."  To win, the Republicans have tried poll taxes, restrictions on voting times and days (Florida), reducing the number of polling machines in Democratic strongholds to lengthen lines and waiting times (as Republicans did in the Democratic strong holds in Northern Virginia), all the dirty tricks, to simply deny a voice to the underclass or to urban centers where Democrats live.

Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh got together and decided, actually, even they could not sell that to their audiences, not after that blond bimbo on Fox News asked Karl Rove if he had a different set of math rules than what everyone else uses, a set of rules which is forged by his own desires.  
So what the unholy trinity  is now saying is, yes the people have spoken, but it's the new demographics of our country, all those immigrants the Democrats let in, and you know so many of them wind up on welfare, and so the country has shifted from people with pride, who want to earn their way and work hard to a country comprised of people who don't want to work hard, who want the government to take care of them--Mitt Romney's 47%.  

That 47% remark "resonated" with the true believers of the Republican party. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, who work hard, don't you know? They look at people who want to be given hand outs, the welfare Queens who drive Cadillacs and live on welfare, while Ann and Rush and Sean and Glenn slave away in their TV studios eating brown bag lunches they made at home. 

It's more of the Tea Party, Republican, the undeserving poor vs the rich-who-earned-it. 

This is a very old story, of course. When the grimy peasants looked at Marie Antoinette and the king ride by in their sumptuous carriages and asked, "Why do they have so much and we have so little?" The reply was:  Because it is God's will.  God chose those rich to be rich and He wants you to be poor.

Ayn Rand had much the same answer: The Superman is gifted, driven, superior and will naturally rise to the top. 

Nowhere in any of what you hear from Sean, Rush, Ann or Glenn is there any room for a consideration of the details by which certain citizens among us are placed on third base, and given only fat pitches down the middle to hit when they come up to bat. 

So nowhere in the right wing world view are the Romney bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, the myriad of government provided tax breaks, outright grants and contracts which make whatever welfare remains look like pigeon droppings compared to the tsunami of government benefits given those in power, those in the money.

What we got here is trouble in River City, folks, because the good white folks who have, until now, controlled the game, reworked the rules of the game, fixed the game so they would be sure to win, they can't control it any more, at least not this time around. 

Oh, Happy Day!

Mad Dog has spent days preparing for the worst, a vile outcome with dishonesty enshrined.

But America turned out to be better, smarter than that.

At least on one day.

Feels good to be an American tonight.

Goodnight Maud.  Goodnight Mr. President.  Goodnight Patty McKenzie and all those who sailed with you.  Goodnight moon.

Early Voting, New Hampshire Style

Last week, in an attempt at head clearing, Mad Dog walked through the White Mountains. Happened to walk through Hart's Location, without knowing it. This morning, the good folks of Hart's location cast 23 of 33 votes for President Obama. It's rival for midnight, first- in-the-nation voting, Dixville Notch, cast 5 votes for Mr. Obama and 5 for Mitt Romney.   

So the process here has begun.  

Many have commented that the magic is gone for Mr. Obama. That fresh, dewy thing we called "Hope" has withered on the bloom. 

Mad Dog answers: Of course. 

Getting-to-know-you is always a process of disillusionment. Embodied in that word is the word, "illusion." This is why, in every relationship, there is disappointment. You find out things about your new friend which you do not like. There are the things which attracted you in the first place, but then there are the other things.

And if the connection persists over time, everyone changes. But does the fact you are no longer a cute puppy  mean you ought no longer be valued?  Do we give away our old dogs, when their black noses turn pink, when gray muzzles appear?

Mad dog heard a lecture from a wonderful Harvard researcher on the topic of female libido.  When libido wanes in men, it's usually tied to falling levels of testosterone. Replace testosterone, and men are randy again.  But in women, no such hormone drives sexual interest and attraction. Her Harvard team investigated all the candidate hormones, and combinations of hormones--estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, growth hormone--and none of them, nor any combination, seemed to restore libido in women. "In fact," the researcher said, "The only thing which predictably restored libido in the women who visited our clinic was...a new partner."

Today, Americans will decide whether to toss away yesterday's Hope and Change and to latch on to a new partner.  The triumph of hope over experience, as Oscar Wilde described the man who, once divorced, remarries.

In the end, we see the Heartbreak Kid, having just married his blond, blue eyed fantasy object. He is  sitting at a table at his wedding reception,  looking across the room at  his new wife.  And he is already withdrawing from her.  And we see the dawning of his realization:  the problem with his new choice, as with his former wife,  does not reside in either one of them, but in himself.