Balls: That's What I'm Talking About

(Double click on cartoon)

A previous post suggested the only Democrat, beyond Elizabeth Warren, who seems to have any real balls is Jackie Cilley.

Mad Dog realizes he offends the delicate sensibilities of the New Hampshire electorate by referring to the a part of the anatomy intimately connected with the male reproductive organs, but the Republicants have been saying for years the basic failing in every Democrat is the absence of same.

Democrats, of course, have done nothing to disabuse the public of this perception--witness their chose leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, who is a cartoon character of wimpiness--whispery voice, narrow shouldered, an apology personified.

President Obama, for all his virtues, is not much better. He refers to his frothing, vituperative adversaries, people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh, people who wish to castrate him and to throw him off a cliff, as "Folks."

Not an accurate or useful image. When Martin Luther King referred to the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, he said the governor had hate dripping from his lips--a more accurate and useful image.

Now, Jackie Cilley has had the temerity to suggest it's not brave or smart or good policy or good for the state of New Hampshire to "take the pledge" to never ask for a state income tax. The granite headed part of the electorate takes this as, "Oh, then she's for an income tax." Which is to say, if she doesn't promise not to ask for an income tax, well then she intends to ask for one. Or, another way of viewing this, "If she's not against it then she might allow it and I don't want anyone who might even consider it."

The third rail of New Hampshire politics, if New Hampshire had public rail transport, which of course, for an agrarian state, is another thing we would never even want to think about.

One of the hallmarks of a parochial, closed mind is the unwillingness to even think about things which might be frightening or distasteful.

Oh, the earth might be round, don't want to think about what that might mean.

So, we have candidates asked to shout, "Zeig, Heil," whenever the question no income tax arises.

Fact is, if the people of New Hampshire don't want one, fine.

But refusing to even consider that as one of a hundred approaches is diagnostic of paralyzing fear. If you are really afraid of something, the best thing is to examine it, dissect it, look at it under the microscope, understand its machinery, its power, its infectious potential and then you can be really protected against it.

But no, not here in the granite state. Here, like so many medieval wretches, we refuse to even look at something we fear and loathe.

What Democrats with real courage and leadership will say is: I'm not afraid to talk about any form of "revenue enhancement," if only to understand why we don't want something. We'll be safer against an income tax, ultimately, if we look at it, and look at all the preferable alternatives and examine why each one is dangerous and each one might be useful.

We sometimes find good uses for snake venom. We sometimes learn how to inoculate ourselves against a dangerous organism by examining it.

The Courage of Their Own Convictions

When the Democrats had a majority in Congress, the did not vote through a bill which included a government option for health insurance; i.e., they did not extend Medicare to everyone.

Presumably, they had counted heads and found not enough Democrats were brave enough to risk the wrath of the insurance companies and the voters back home. Most people believed if you offered Medicare for all, the vast numbers of citizens would vote with their feet and go for Medicare, rather than for commercial, profit-first, listed on the stock exchange insurance companies who don't care about anyone's health but care only about the bottom line: profit. So if you offered the people all the attractions of that bogeyman, government run health insurance, the people would leap at the chance to take it and would forsake the insurance companies which have been screwing them for years.

Actually, it was the insurance companies, those bastions of free enterprise the Republicans love so, which argued, look, if you want us to offer insurance to people with pre existing conditions and to the 24 year old, just out of college who wants to remain on his parents' health insurance, you will bankrupt us, becauase then we'll be paying out more than we take in, with all those sick people with pre existing conditions we can no longer ignore and reject. So give us some people who will do what every insurance company depends upon: Pay in for years and get nothing back, other than peace of mind.

And the Democrats counted up how many people make their living selling health insurance, administering health insurance, and they counted how many dollars those companies contribute to political campaigns and they wilted. They caved. They didn't have the balls to do the right thing.

So now, the Republicans on the Supreme Court can argue they are all for insuring people who want health insurance ,but you cannot force people to buy something they don't want to buy, you cannot take away the liberty of a 25 year old who wants to ride a motorcycle and who will wind up on the ER and on life support and then in the neurology ward, you cannot make a young person, who is, as Justice Scalia noted with great sympathy, "just starting out" pay for health insurance or make him pay a penalty if he refuses to help society assume his risk for him.

Of course, your concern for liberty does not make you liberate the hospitals from the responsibility of taking care of the irresponsible. The kid who loses that bet cannot be turned away from the hospital door, not morally, not even legally. Federal and state law requires the uninsured be treated.

Fair enough.

The Democrats were wimps and fail to pass a single payor plan, did not have the courage of their own convictions.

And now, once again, the Republicans have out maneuvered the whimps, by making the hapless Dems pass a plan which will provide care through commercial providers. Then the Republicans say, but you cannot force a person to engage in commerce!

Gottcha.

Kayla Williams Loves Her Rifle More than You

This is a very good memoir, with quite a lot to say about the Army we now have, the trap America has fallen into by engaging in eternal war, as the world's policeman, the nature of who Americans are and what we have become.

It is well worth reading.

There are some things which you have to get past: Ms. Williams complains about some things I would think few men would complain about: She is a Vegan and she discovered the Army does have vegetarian MRE's (prepackaged meals) but her sergeant would make no effort to supply her with these. (She finally found a cache on her own, and was miffed he would not make the effort for her.) He was likely being passive aggressive, not liking a soldier who had "special needs" on the front lines.

On the other hand, she details the incompetence of many of those who out rank her in convincing detail: One who orders her to stay in her Humvee rather than taking cover in a building during a mortar attack, when commanders had radioed everyone get out of the Humvees and into better protected stone buildings and another (a woman) who retorted that as the sergeant in charge of William's outfit she had no interest in learning the technology or the details of what the unit was doing, so it was up to Williams to know that. This jaw dropper, fortunately was flounced before a lieutenant, so Williams was saved.

There is a wonderful chapter about a woman attached to her company who had been in Iraq only a month and committed suicide, shot herself in the head, and Williams reaction was anger at the dead woman, anger at herself for not seeing it coming and fury at the commander who made the whole company sit through a maudlin, absurd memorial service for this dead woman who nobody knew and who had caused everyone else a lot of trouble by shooting herself, had let down the unit. This sounded completely real and honest to me: It reminded me of how angry interns used to get at alcoholics who would drink themselves into ulcers, come in vomiting blood all over everyone and keeping us up all night. We had lost all capacity for sympathy. We were the ones who dealt with the consequences of their misbehavior.

But most of all, there is the picture of the "mission" in a war where you are trying to win the "hearts and minds" of a people whose language you do not speak, culture you do not respect and who harbor people who are trying to kill you.

We have not studies the history of Vietnam and we are doomed to repeat it.

The sociology of what the Army has become is also clearly presented: As Bob Dylan once said, "Join the Army ,if you fail." The Army is populated by people for whom the Army is the best or only financial option. They are all hired Hessian's now.

Sure, after 9-11, there was an NFL football player who gave up his millions to fight--only to be shot to death by his own troops, but the army now is comprised of people who feel they have no better options, or no other options.

In Vietnam, we were sold the lie we were fighting the relentless march of world communism, when in fact, we were intervening in a local nationalist movement which had no implications beyond that small, agrarian nation, but oh, if we didn't fight them in the Mekong Delta, we'd be fighting them in the streets of San Francisco.

Now we are fighting them in Afghanistan rather than fighting them in the streets of New York. We are fighting the world war on terrorism. We are engaged in endless war. As Carver says, in The Wire, when Kima shakes her head at his war on drugs, "You sad ass losers, fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case after another." And Carver retorts, "Girl, you can't even call this a war." And Kima asks, "Why not?" Carver says simply, "Wars end." That is, wars have defined objectives, you capture the flag, burn the capital city. But these "wars" of occupation never end, and the "War on Terrorism," is so nebuluous we would not even know if we'd "Won." No objectives, no mission.

So we fight to "deny terrorists their training camps."

As if terrorists can only be trained in Afghanistan rather than Somolia or in an apartment in Berlin.

I like Kayla Williams. I might not like her, if I had to live in her neighborhood, but reading the book, she passes the test of Holden Caufield: You know it's a really good book when you finish it and you put it down and you want to call up the author, on the phone, right away.

Finally, A Democrat with Balls

Tonight, I had a glimpse into history. I felt the way I imagine Abraham Lincoln felt when he finally discovered a general who actually could fight.

After years of watching his generals fail through disorganization, incompetence, and mostly, through simple failure of nerve, generals who consistently grasped defeat from the jaws of victory, he found Ulysses S. Grant, a real fighter.

He was told Grant was a risk, a drinker who was often drunk at the height of battle.

"Then I would like to find out what it is he drinks," Lincoln said, "And give it to my other generals. He fights!"

And so it was tonight, when Jackie Cilley, Democratic candidate for Governor of New Hampshire came to a meeting of Hampton Democrats.

She had spoken here before, but she was one of a half dozen Democratic hopefuls, and she was not given much time.

Tonight, she spoke alone.

She began by saying she would not take "The Pledge," to never seek a New Hampshire state income tax. She won't do it on principle, because she says her first priority is not avoiding an income tax for New Hampshire, though she would try her damndest to avoid it. But her first priority is to get New Hampshire the government it needs, and the Pledge is a Republican ruse to divert attention from what they are trying to do, to change the subject from governance and values to taxes.

She spoke for about twenty minutes and the first question came from some old codger up front who said, "So, if I heard you right, you're for a state income tax?"

She took a deep breath. This was obvious not new for her. She likely had been through this before dozens of time. She talks about what the Republicans are doing to dismantle public education, to legalize guns in the state legislature and in school yards, to shut down every government service except for those which protect private property, and all some people hear is, she's going to bring in an income tax for me to pay.

She said she would not apologize for wanting the state to spend money on education. The Republicans and their Tea Party allies and their wacko Free State Project Utopian off the grid crazies want all children, ideally, to be home schooled or sent to private schools, but no public money for schools.

She would not apologize for wanting contraception to be available to New Hampshire women, because it's cheaper to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to deal with all its consequences and because it right for women to have contraception. She noted the Republicans are now saying there is no difference between contraception and abortion and oppose both and clearly oppose spending public money on either.

She would not apologize for wanting to protect collective bargaining and she would not apologize for supporting the unions which help build a middle class, while the Republicans canonize the Republican governor of Wisconsin who has tried to destroy every union in Wisconsin.

She would not apologize for wanting to protect the lakes and seashore which are the basis for the biggest industry in New Hampshire, not to mention the great joy of its citizens, while the Republicans make environmental protection into a public enemy.

She came out swinging because she knew where she came from. Her father worked in a factory, and carried a lunch pail to work and never drove a car. He had too many kids to afford to send any of them to college, but Jackie went to the state university and flourished there and saw the good a public education could do, saw how it could help kids from working class families take a step up in economic status, helped grow the human resources of a nation.

And she talked about the Republicans and their co conspirators, the New Hampshire Free State Project, as pernicious and scary a lunatic fringe as has ever invaded the Granite State. And the Tea Party paranoid schizophrenics who believe the only good government is a dead government.

She is one tough cookie.

She made me believe.

If only we can expose the Republicans, just let everyone know what they are actually saying, what they actually believe in. The worst thing for a really bad product--good advertising.

So there is hope for New Hampshire Democrats.

If we can just figure out how to pin those stars on her collar.

The Attack on Social Security

Walter Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

I watched him interviewed on television.

He started off by saying that the richest segment of our population is the group over 65 years of age--they have the greatest "Net Worth," mainly because so many of them have paid off their mortgages.

And he asks, why should we ask 25 year olds who are struggling to raise their young children to pay into social security to support those rich old people?

At least, this is a new tact for the government is bad and has never had a good idea crowd.

Of course, "Net Worth," is something of an illusion. As so many people discovered recently, the "worth" of your house, and the worth of so many of your holdings (even your annuities) is something of a phantom--your house isn't worth a dollar, until you sell it. It's worth quite a lot in non dollar terms, because you need a place to live, but when you attach a dollar sign to your house and you start adding things up in a column, well, you can't spend your net worth at the grocery store, or at the gas pump.

Used to be, we talked about people over 65 somewhat pityingly, as "pensioners" or people living on "fixed incomes." And we were concerned about how many of them were losing their homes because they couldn't afford local property taxes.

Now, we have quasi T party types, like Professor Williams, trying to re-image this graying crowd as one percenters, the rich, living off the labor of poor younger people, who are under the lash of big government, making them pay their hard earned money into a government run program of welfare for the undeserving rich.

The complaint about Social Security from the right, from the Paul Ryan Republicans and from George Bush and the get the government off my back crowd of all stripes used to be that if you'd just let me invest the money you take out of my paycheck, I could do so much better than what I get back in Social Security.

Of course, that argument totally missed the point of Social Security which is that is was never intended to build wealth; it intended to provide security. And security for the over 65 crowd directly benefits not just the gray headed, but it benefits the 25 year old trying to raise his family because it means he doesn't have to pay his parents' rent right now.

Social Security came in as a result of the depression, to provide that famous safety net so people wouldn't starve and clog up the sidewalks waiting on food lines.

Like so many of the other Depression era safeguards which the Republicans have been trying to dismantle, it has worked so well we take it for granted and we forget what life was like before it was in place.

So, Republicans, fulfilling that old adage, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, Republicans repealed all those safeguards which kept banking from doing really stupid, greedy things like packaging mortgages as stocks and they brought us to the brink of another Depression.

Republicants would repeal penicillin, polio vaccine and antisepsis if you gave them a chance.

For your information, Professor Williams, the greatest concentration of poverty in this country is among the over 65 crowd. Poverty among the elderly is 30% higher than it is among the 25-45 year old segment of the population.

I know that for sure because, like Professor Williams, I just now made those numbers up.

The Republican'ts

One of the thing I liked about Howard Cossell was his reaction to those who continued to call Muhammed Ali Cassius Clay after that fighter decided to change his name.

One thing about this country, Cossell (who had changed his own name) said, is that a man deserves to be called by whatever name he chooses. We are a nation of immigrants and many of us came here to reinvent ourselves. Or we simply wanted a certain name for certain reasons, but the minimum respect we can give another man is to call him by the name he chooses.

So the smug, smirking practice of every Republican from Mitch McConnell to John Boehner to Eric Cantor of calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat" party is especially irritating. It signifies the mindset these partisans have which says there is no such thing as comity or civility when it comes to politics, as far as these politicos are concerned.

It is a sort of gleeful Frat Boy prank, they all do. They say DemocRAT as if it is a party of rats, and they look very pleased with themselves as if they have just now come up with something very clever.

Democrats have chosen to ignore this, like some adult who simply will not rise to the bait, because he has more important things to do.

But that is an error. The Democrats need to throw a counter punch every time the Republicans throw one, not just block the blow, but counter punch, and better yet, throw a flurry.

So, I propose calling it the Republican't party. (Or, if the setting is more formal, the Republicannot Party.)

It is, after all, the party of cannot do. Can't have contraception. Can't bail out the auto companies. Can't pay for unemployment insurance. Can't intervene to save the country from driving off the economic cliff. Cannot find Osama Bin Laden. Can't spend money on roads or bridges. Can't tax billionaires. Can't do anything, except, of course, force vaginal probes up women who are in their own doctor's offices and force doctors to do probes, say words, take positions they do not want to do.

I rather like it. Rolls off the tongue. Republican'ts and the Republican's party. The party of cants. They pick up a cant (as in a recited, pre formulated, repeated party line) and they stick with it.

Ah, Democracy

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
--Constitution of the United States of America




I'm going out to vote this afternoon, after work. I've got a candidate for the school board I'm voting for.


There will also be ballot questions, like: Do we need a skate board park in Hampton and are we willing to float a bond for it?


Some homeowner wants to plant azaleas on the other side of the sidewalk, on town land. Should she be allowed? Stuff like this makes it on the ballot in Hampton, New Hampshire.


This morning, on National Public Radio they were interviewing voters in Alabama. A man earnestly declared President Obama is an unconstitutional president because the Constitution says you have to be a natural born American and he is not, because his father was born in Kenya and to be a natural born American, your parents have to be born in America. Says so, right there in the Constitution.
Now this is not a matter of belief. Nor is this a matter of interpretation. This is something you can look up, right there in the Constitution.


But this Alabama voter, very earnestly, was speaking into a microphone and telling us something.


What he was telling us is that if you wish really, really hard, the world will be the way he wants it to be.


When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, your dreams come true.


Another Alabama voter said she will vote for Rick Santorum because he wants to put God into everything, and she likes that.


Listening to these voices with their Southern accents and Southern rhythms and Southern inflections, I felt so very lucky to live in New Hampshire.


Not that I you never hear this sort of thing up here in the Granite state.


But when I told my coworkers what I had heard this morning they all broke out laughing and asked me to repeat it. When I repeated it, I tried it in my best Southern accent and they loved it even more. They roared with laughter.


It was very un PC. It was like laughing at a Polish joke, about how stupid those Southerners are.


It was a bonding moment.




E Pluribus Unum.