Behind Every Great Fortune is a Crime

There are many issues which animate the passions of the the good citizens of New Hampshire--gun control or the lack of it, a state income tax, or the lack of it, abortion, immigration--but the most fundamental issue of all, and the one on which I suspect President Obama actually won the election, is that of economic distribution of wealth, or, as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and every Republican would say, "Class warfare."

Republicans made great bushels of hay quoting Mr. Obama's remark that he intended to "redistribute" the wealth, which confirmed Rush Limbaugh's deeply held belief that Mr. Obama is Karl Marx, reincarnated.  As self contained and controlled as Mr. Obama is, this was an unfortunate lapse, even if, especially if it reflected his real opinion. It was not politic.

The idea of taking from the rich to give to the poor does not evoke images of Robin Hood in this state, it evokes images of theft from the hard working "successful" and giving to the undeserving poor.

Luckily, for Mr. Obama, the Republicans are so tightly sewn into the pockets of the really, really rich, they could not even bring themselves to answer Mr. Obama's taunts that the Republicans refuse to make billionaires "pay their fair share."  They insisted no share is a fair share to pay in taxes, especially if you are rich and successful, and higher tax rates on the rich was "class warfare" and "punishing success."

You would not catch a Republican quoting Balzac,  "Behind every fortune is a crime."

Mr. Obama will not be able to do anything about Fisher Island in Florida, where the very rich isolate themselves from the hoi polloi, or any of the other similar, if not quite so upscale islands like Bald Head Island, NC, Kiawa Island, Fisher's Island, New York, the Hamptons, Long Island, any of a long list of islands of wealth and privilege where the rich can be rich without feeling guilty.

Here in New England, the high school graduates who worked for decades in the trades, mastered crafts, learned computers on the job still do reasonably well. They consider themselves middle class, have a "camp" on a lake and can afford to go on vacation and eat out in restaurants occasionally. They can splurge on a Red Sox game, where they spend a week's pay paying for the salaries of millionaire ball players and owners. 

As Cesar said, "Give them bread and circus." 

That's what we've got in New Hampshire.  Workers who are only occasionally restive, who are happy to have a job, and who do not believe in unions, who love their guns, their delusion of "freedom" and cannot see the evils in a system which gives the top 1% that 43% of the pie shown above, while the 80% of Americans squeeze into that bottom red slice of the pie.  If I am reading my New Hampshire neighbors correctly, they have worked hard all their lives. They get up in the morning, go to work, solve problems, do no complain about being given more work than they had the day before, and that work ethic is so ingrained in them, they assume if someone is richer, it must be because they worked and are still working harder. Of course, having also been with those rich bosses, my take is they work far less hard than these good New Hampshire folk--the bosses just scheme harder and love the game of intrigue. But in terms of productive work, actually building those built in bookcases, re wiring the kitchen, rebuilding the bathroom, the boss class hasn't a clue. They are at work making deals in rooms with original art on the wall and polished wood desks.  But that all may be just the Phantom's ignorance showing.

Walk around any of the Vanderbilt mansions, whether at Newport, Rhode Island, or in North Carolina or in the Adirondacks, or any of the dozens of places where Vanderbilts built estates which make Downton Abbey look like a tar paper shack.  If your gut reaction is, "Oh, how beautiful," rather than "Oh, how shameful," then you are part of the problem.

Guns for Christmas: Peace and Joy in America

Peace on Earth. Good Will to Men

Oh, Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Under your tree a real gun

The Family That Shoots Together

She knows what guns are for

Mixed Messages?

 “Talk to your parents about how much you like shooting. Who knows?  Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!”
--Advertisement in Junior Shooters magazine

You cannot make this stuff up.    Mad Dog could not find the actual image of the ad in Junior Shooters, to his great regret.  He is sure it looks all Norman Rockwell and the kid in it, whoever it is, has freckles.  And a cow lick. And a smile which could throw a light bright enough to illuminate the road from Hampton Beach to Osh Kosh.

The Road Kill T shirt thing has Mad Dog a little confused. Why this would be in a gun magazine is not clear. And the girl looks happy, positively ecstatic even, to be wearing her Road Kill T shirt. Does she want some man with a gun to make her road kill? There is some psycho dynamic operating here, and Mad Dog knows he is missing it. Someone help Mad Dog here.

Mad Dog loved Kayla Williams's book, and its title. Ms. Williams was in the Army, forward deployed, carried a gun all the time, and knew how to use it and knew what it could do, and would not want to find one under her Christmas tree, Mad Dog would bet.  When you first put on your white uniform or your scrubs in medical school, it's something of a rush. That lasts until you get vomited on, defecated on, urinated on, and soaked with spraying blood. Then you cannot get out of that stuff fast enough. It acquires a different meaning, when reality sets in.

Mad Dog suspects carrying a gun in Iraq was something like that.

An AR-15 under the tree, celebrating the birthday of the Prince of Peace.

Only in America.

Charles M. Blow 

2012 Election map for Obama/Biden

You know how on election night you look at that map of the United States and you think, wow the Republicans have got the whole country wrapped up--there's just so much RED on that screen?  But, of course, most of what the Republicans control is just empty desert, prairie, or swamp--aren't many people actually living in those red states, those massive states like Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and the Dakotas, pretty empty spaces there. 

So, the Republicans must have awaken on November 7 and said the same thing to themselves--if only we could win elections by geography, by land mass rather than by people. 

So, here's what they came up with:  Rather than awarding electoral votes to the presidential candidate who has the most people voting for him, we'll award the state to the candidate with the most Congressional districts voting for him.

That way Mr. Obama would have lost Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. In all those states, Mr. Obama won precious few districts but he won the popular vote.
So, let's just count districts.

The breakdown looks like this:
Michigan:  (16 electoral votes) Obama won only 5/14 districts but won the popular vote by 449,313. 
Ohio:  (18 votes) Obama won 4/16 districts but won the popular vote by 166,241
Virginia:  (13 votes) Obama won 4/11 districts but won the popular vote by 149,298
Wisconsin: (10 votes) Obama won 3/8 districts but won the popular vote by 213,419.

How could he lose so many districts but win each of these states in popular votes actually cast? The districts he did win were heavily populated cities; the districts he lost had mostly cows or birds but few people living there.

So, the Republicans have come up with a new plan. Don't count people any more. Count districts. That's much more fair, don't you think? No, don't think. That's part of the problem, part of why we keep losing these elections.

Charles Blow, who writes a political column for the New York Times, which is very heavy on numbers and charts and graphs lays all this out, and concludes, in his very understated way, the Republicans are trying to "chip away" at democracy by this sort of manipulation of the electoral college.

Chip away? 

Our Constitution, when it apportioned representation for Congressional seats granted so many seats for each voting white male in each state, and also gave credit to each state for 3/5 of a person to account for the "other persons,"  you know, slaves. 

So, there is precedent for this sort of funky counting in our Constitution.

"Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

It is the genius of the Republican party, having failed at voter intimidation, trying to prevent people from casting ballots this last time around--which only got them a legion of really angry people waiting on line for 6 hours in Florida to vote against them--so now they figure, not necessary. We can simply stop counting people and start counting something else. Square miles, maybe.  Land mass. Cows. Sheep. Give us credit for 3/5 of all the sheep owned by Republicans and throw in the Congressional districts we Gerrymandered and, well, why bother to vote at all? Just give us the election from now on. We won't bother you. We'll just go back into our gated communities on off shore islands, not pay taxes but we will buy stocks and just leave us in control of the government so we can cut taxes and keep up defense spending, because, you know, we know what's best for you.

Howard "Buck" McKeon: The Friendly Face of Unending War

Howard "Buck" McKeon, Republican Representative from California has a starring role in Jill LePore's New Yorker article about how the United States got itself into a state of unending war.

This is a very lucid article, which uses publicly available information to reveal just how our system works.

But first, a word about Buck. Mad Dog does not know how he came by that name. It wasn't because he was a Buck private, because he never served in the military. He did follow do the now familiar road of starting at Brigham Young University, leaving to go on Mormon mission, then marrying and starting his family which grew to six children, started a business, went back to college and got his degree, started a business which went bankrupt, which in Republican circles seems to be a rite of passage to the next inevitable step in life--bank president. 

I suppose banks must like to appoint people who have gone through bankruptcy to be their presidents, because, well, they've been there; they have all the experience they'll ever need.

And then, from bank president to nominee of the Republican Party to go to Washington to fight spending, except defense spending. You wouldn't want to cut defense spending if you represent McKeon's district, which has an Army fort, an Air Force base, a naval weapons station, and a Marine mountain warfare training site. 

McKeon, who is strongly pro life, pro gun is also strongly pro war. His district depends on it. He added language to the 2012 defense authorization act to give the President, even a Democratic president, the right wage little wars or big wars as he sees fit. McKeon has never met a war he did not like.

The rationale for wars is now, "we'd rather fight them in the streets of ...(insert name) than in the streets of New York." Or "deny the terrorists sanctuaries." Which is wonderful for a Congressional district like McKeon's California 25th, because it means anywhere you can find a nest of terrorists, and you can find them in a myriad of places from Afghanistan to North Africa, to sub Saharan Africa to East Africa to West Africa, to Indonesia to Berlin, Germany, well, you can fund a nice war to go flush out those rats.

It's steady work. 

In the 1950's, the rationale for a defense budget which amounted to 50% of government spending was the world wide Communist conspiracy.  It justified hundreds of American military bases all around the world, 55,000 troops in Germany, 35,000 in Japan, 10,000 in Italy, not to mention Korea.  No other country in the world has any bases to speak of outside their own territory. 

Once communism fell, the attack on the World Trade Center was used to justify "rooting out" the terrorists, denying them sanctuaries, i.e., sending American troops and weapons all over the world, because, after all, that's where the terrorists are. They hide out all over the world. Whatever country you feel like invading--terrorists.

Andrew Bacevich has decried this new American mindset of unbridled militarism. We aspire to be the policeman for the world.  The cheering section for this state of perpetual war is comprised of rightwing loudmouths (Limbaugh, Beck--fill in the blank), neo con opinion page columnists--Yes, Dr. Krauthammer, we are talking about you--retired generals who find work in foundations or political office, Jerry Falwell, Tom Clancy and assorted other people who make good money pedaling the idea of killing bad guys.  They speak of honor, glory, duty, God, country, but none of them, except the generals, have ever served in uniform, or experienced a shot fired in anger at them.

In Vietnam, the military industrial complex was sustained by the fantasy that the USA needed to fight communism in the rice paddies. Once Vietnam fell, all the dominoes would fall one after another. We had to stop them there or witness our own collapse. Of course, we lost Vietnam and nothing like that happened. Now, we trade with Vietnam and buy cell phones and clothes made by those rabid commies who threatened to destroy us.

Afghanistan had a certain cachet--there were some nasty fellows who lopped off the heads of teachers who dared teach girls, and Osma Bin Laden, reputed mastermind of  the 9/11 attack, was hanging out there in some cave, or so we were told. Actually, he may have been in Pakistan, our sort of ally.  So, 10 years later we are still trying to deny bad guys sanctuaries. 

But as soon as we wop the ground hog on the head in one part of the lawn, another pops up from another part, and now we've got 'em in Algeria, Malawi, Somalia, who knows where else?

It keeps the men and women who volunteer for the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force employed--and make no mistake about it, we have a mercenary force now. None of those people would be there if they could get  paid better doing any other job they might expect to get. And it's wonderful for business in the 25th district and right here in Portsmouth at the Navy Yard and at a hundred small factories making things for the war machine.

After 9/11 Jim Lehrer asked the salient question: "Why do they hate us so?"

Those wild eyed fanatics from the Middle East simply did not see us the way we see ourselves. Look at Mr. McKeon. Does he not look like a nice man? Father of six, husband, pillar of the church. 

But read Jill LePore's portrait of the war making machine which America has become and you might be able to see us through different eyes.

Pissants Rule

Three Amigos

What? Me Worry?

I am the new Donald

All The Answers Are Written in Stone

We are the piss ants and we rule!

In  Virginia,  Senate Republicans have introduced a bill to award the electoral college votes in the next election to the candidate who wins the most congressional districts. This would mean, in the last election although President Obama won the popular vote in Virginia rather handily, he would have lost the state because the way the Republican legislature divided up the state: there are far more Republican Congressional districts and Romney won more of those. Imagine you draw a single Congressional district which includes all the northern Virginia suburbs and then draw a Gerrymander line to include in that the Navy town of Norfolk (also very blue) and make all of that a single (Democratic) district; now divide the rest of the state into a hundred small Republican districts and, presto, whamo! You've got every presidential election with a Republican lock on the state's electoral votes, no matter how lopsided the Democratic victory in the popular vote. 

There's genius here:  You can simply make every Republican vote count 100 times the vote of every Democratic vote.  Thus do the rich stay rich, the powerful stay powerful, and the Republicans rule with only 10% of the vote.  Winners write the rules so they stay winners. An old Republican way. And, in Virginia, you don't even have to be a winner--you just need to control the state house with the old plantation crowd. What a state, first in slavery, then tobacco, what will they think of next?

As Rand Paul fulminates at Secretary of State Clinton, in his best Donald Trump, announcing, very bravely, "I would have fired you," we sees the piss ants on parade. And Ron Johnson piles on, trying to formulate a question to suggest President Obama and Secretary Clinton colluded to misrepresent the meaning of the deaths of the ambassador and three others at Benghazi, his point flounders and sinks as Ms. Clinton asks, "To what effect?"  The four Americans are dead. How could what we said then or now say about that make any difference to anyone now? The only important things to follow that were to bury the dead, seek out the killers, and learn what we can to prevent a recurrence of this event.

The more we see of the Tea Party Republicans, the smaller they seem and the more the Democrats grow in stature. 

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson Fear and Loathing

Mad Dog has never been a fan of Hillary Clinton, but watching her at the Inquisition today, with the Tea Party half wits interrogating her, trying their hardest to pick nits around the Benghazi killings, made Mad Dog foam at the mouth.

Watching the questions coming from Senator Ron Johnson, who was trying very hard to make a case of Watergate level cover up surrounding the killings of the U.S. ambassador, as if the Obama administration had something to hide concerning the death of the ambassador, you got a good picture of what pure obtuseness looks like. 

Senator Johnson was wishing oh so hard to find something in the deaths of these four Americans he could use to prove perfidy or incompetence on the part of Secretary Clinton, or better yet on the part of her boss, President Obama, but he just is not bright enough to pull it off. Ms. Clinton responded that, actually, in the fog of war,  it  is still difficult to know exactly what happened, especially in the chaos that is Libya, but in the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is: four Americans died.  If you have proof they died because the State Department made unconscionable mistakes, say it now.

The real wonder is there haven't been more diplomats killed in the line of duty, considering where they are posted. Afghanistan, the Balkans, anywhere in Africa. Ye Gads, we've been fortunate.

Of course, there is one Senator who does not need to know anything, other than the deaths occurred under Secretary Clinton's watch. So Senator Rand Paul tried to grab the spotlight from  Mr. Johnson by getting all in your face with Ms. Clinton and told her he would fire her if he were President.
Then again, the man has gone through life with the name "Rand," so we should cut him some slack. That is quite a burden, under which he has clearly not yet managed to emerge into the clear air of lucidity.

These are both Tea Party Republicans. Johnson bought himself the Joseph McCarthy senatorial chair from Wisconsin,  and Mr. Paul, well who knows what state or planet he is from? Oh, that's right, he's from Kentucky,  the same place that sent us  Mitch McConnell. 
Other than Louisville slugger bats,  does Kentucky contribute anything important to American life?

Kentucky is trying very hard to join the confederacy of dunces: Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. But it has always been a border state. Like the other members of this group, borderline personalities.

Both Paul and Johnson love their guns, would outlaw abortion, would kill Medicare and Social Security and consider anyone who partakes of those programs as "takers." Both voted against rescuing the nation from the brink of financial disaster and would rather have seen the nation sink beneath the waves than rescue it by the expedient of government action, which is just the most evil thing you can think of.
Mr. Johnson decries global warning as "crazy"  and "lunacy," which proves he has a broader vocabulary than one might give him credit for just to look at him.
Mr. Johnson struggles with the inferiority complex of any non entity in Washington who has been justly ignored, and this was his moment before the cameras to shine, to display his questionable intellect for all to see. Who said, "Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt?" Whoever said that ought to talk to Mr. Johnson.

Compare his big chance on the Senate's version of American idol to that of Alicia Olatuja of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, in her big moment. Here is a man who made enough money in his father in law's business to buy a Senate seat and here is a woman who joined a choir in Brooklyn, who was known only to her friends, family and fellow choir members until this week, when she sang solo at the Inauguration:  Who inspired the nation most this week?   Which of these two unknowns represents best what you might want to show to a group of sixth graders about the possibilities in American life? Who proved to be the classic example of, "You can dress him up, but you cannot take him anywhere?"

Kentucky, we expect no better of that state, but Wisconsin? What has happened to Wisconsin? First they bash unions and now they give us an unsheathed Johnson?

If the worst thing for a bad product is good advertising, then maybe we ought to demand more Senate hearings with Ron Johnson and Rand Paul starring. 

Are there not certification exams required to become a United States Senator?  Can we at least agree every candidate for the Senate needs an electroencephalogram to insure they have at least two neurons synapsing?

Drivers are asked to walk heel to toe as sobriety checks by police; can we not require the same of our Congressmen?

The 2nd Inaugural Belongs to History

A speech is not a man. It is not even a presidency. It is just a speech.

But listening to the 2nd Inaugural address again, and reading it, Mad Dog wonders how he failed to appreciate it the first time. 

Listening to the assembled pundits on The News Hour today, and listening to the reaction of various right wing mouthpieces, Mitch McConnell, various think tank wimps, and watching all of them miss the point,  the impression took hold: This was a remarkable speech in the way presidents can sometimes rise to transcendence by synthesizing and summarizing.

Mr. Obama use of  the customary rhetorical devices of repetition of key phrases with less success than, say, Martin Luther King--the "We the People" phrase was utilitarian, but the never ending journey was better. His echo of Martin Luther King's magisterial phrasing of "let freedom ring" from the mountains of New Hampshire to the Great fruited plains, Obama invokes the journey from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, all evocative vistas now.

But what was very adroit was the stringing together of significant names: Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall. Even though I had to be told what Seneca Falls was--Frederick Douglass raised the flag of emancipation and abolition there--and Stonewall, the pub where gays were arrested in New York City, for being gay, and the cause of gay rights began.

But most of all, the selection process, by which Mr. Obama returned to the key issues of the campaign which elected him, not because he was trying to win votes but he was saying, this is more than an election slogan, this is an important value: That free markets can only thrive with regulation by government, that people who receive Medicare and Social Security are not takers but rightful beneficiaries, that government safety net programs are necessary to allow ordinary people to take risks to succeed and to benefit us all, that we ought to welcome the immigrants not as freeloaders who we scorn because we must inevitably support them but as strivers who will ultimately enrich us, that no economy or nation can succeed when a shrinking few can do very well but a growing many can barely make it (an echo of FDR there), that government and community effort have always been required to defeat our foes, from fascism to communism, that government programs must be criticized, and bad ones ended and good ones renewed, that we cannot be sold the false choice of caring for ourselves and future generations or caring for the generations that built this nation, that honoring our commitments to Medicare does not sap our strength but frees us, that absolutism is no substitute for principle.

His call on our generation, which is born for this moment,  reverberates with JFK's recognition of the passing of the torch from an older generation to  first president to be born in the 20th century. 

And with that he outlined challenges which remain: to clean up the environment, to clean up the corruption of our voting process, where shenanigans threatened the integrity of the very electoral process, and the veiled reference to the Supreme Court with phrases that said we cannot solve today's problems if we remain constricted by the past--as  Lincoln said the solutions of the past cannot help us past our stormy present--but Obama was subtly digging at the "orginalists" on the Court who claim we cannot move forward because we are stuck with the 18th century parchment which rules us.

And his deep desire to find common ground, which he has learned is not possible among the embittered and mean little men of the current Republican party, comes out as he says "The oath I have sworn before you today...was an oath to God and country, not party or faction," reminding everyone that Mitch McConnell and all those constricted, withered souls who sail with him, have sworn the same oath but they have cleaved to party and class, rather than fulfill the obligation of their oath to country.

It was a statement of first principles and a rejection of the small minded, the small of heart, the mean and nasty and frightened little men--McConnell, Cantor, Boehner the whole Republican Tea Party host--who oppose him, who block up the hall.

Had Mr. Obama asked me, I'd have thrown in the one seminal American mind he omitted--I'd have said, "Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway; don't block up the hall; your old road is rapidly agin'. Please get out a new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times, they are a changing."