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.