The effect of her red meat

In 2018 the residents of Florida voted to permit felons to vote once they had served their sentence. This, of course, didn’t please the GOP in control of the legislature. They passed a law that says all fines, fees, and court costs must be repaid before voting rights will be restored.

Hunter of Daily Kos reported federal judge Robert Hinkle struck down the law.

Hinkle based much of the ruling on the “staggering inability” of the Florida government to administer their own requirements, noting in blistering language that due to inadequate records it had proved impossible for both the state and outside researchers to even identify the precise amounts most of the plaintiffs and other state felons were supposed to pay before their voting rights were restored; it also could not identify which penalties were assessed for felonies, for misdemeanors, or in absence of a guilty verdict at all.

In summary: Released felon: “How much do I owe?” State: “Um, we can’t figure it out.”

Hinkle also ruled if the state could figure it out it would be an unconstitutional poll tax.



A few days ago I had pondered when conservatives and the GOP started heading down the road that gave us the nasty guy who delights in seeing American citizens die from a virus. David Neiwert doesn’t talk of the starting point, but does discuss an important step along the way.

He was prompted by Meghan McCain, part of the never-Trump wing of the GOP, who said don’t like Trump? Blame Obama. Neiwert reminded her (and us) that the important step I mentioned was her father John choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. Palin was tied with right extremists and brought the red meat to the campaign. She also made the word-salad famous, a style the nasty guy also tends to use. Though Palin lost others in the GOP noticed the effect her red meat had on voters.



Matthew Sittman of The New Republic discussed RR Reno, editor of First Things, (and quoted in Kos). Reno said that masks are cowardly. “It’s a regime dominate by fear of infection and fear of causing of infection. Both are species of cowardice.”

That is the kind of strange thinking we’re up against. We wear masks not out of cowardice, but out of love. We don’t want the other person to get infected and perhaps die.



In another post Hunter reported that cell phone location data shows that many protesters against stay at home orders drove a long way, sometimes across state lines, to attend those protests. Which is a great way to spread the virus.



Ida Bae Wells of the 1619 project tweeted:

Really unbelievable that as we approach 100,000 deaths *with* social distancing measures and shutdowns, now millions of Americans are deciding that they’re tired of the pandemic so more deaths is a sacrifice they are willing to make. This is American exceptionalism as death cult.

Tevye of the Kos community recently discovered a story from last Thanksgiving and wanted to highlight and praise people were didn’t get enough attention the first time around.

Daniel van Amstel was in the process of being adopted by a gay couple. So when the substitute teacher of his fifth grade class were asked what he was most thankful for it was obvious – getting his forever family of two dads.

The teacher didn’t like that answer and berated Daniel. Three of Daniel’s classmates, Sophie, Demi, and a third girl not named, stepped in as much as they could. Sophie kept trying to engage the teacher to deflect what was being directed at Daniel. Demi and the other girl headed to the principal’s office, in spite of threats from the teacher. The principal acted quickly and school security ushered the teacher out, with a clear statement she would never work in that school or district again.

One could forgive Daniel for remaining silent during his ordeal. He didn’t want to jeopardize his adoption. A big thank you to the girls for a demonstration of advocacy and solidarity.



What to do if you have a baby to be baptized in this time of personal distancing? Priests with water pistols!

On top of Ohio

Yeah, the stubborn county clerk, Kim Davis, is still in jail. Allen Clifton asks her the important question. With this question he sidesteps Davis' statement that her three divorces don't matter to this debate because they happened before she became Christian.

I wonder how Kim Davis would have felt when she filed for her first of multiple divorces the judge refused to grant her that divorce, citing that doing so went against biblical law.

Over many decades Alaskans have been trying to officially change the tallest mountain in North America from Mt. McKinley to Denali, the name the natives had long used. Denali is also the name of the national park around the mountain. But each time the issue comes before Congress a senator from Ohio blocked the move because President McKinley was from Ohio. Now Obama has used an obscure rule and issued an executive order to make the name change. Ohioans are predictably outraged.

There is now a petition on the White House website that hopes to switch the issue around. If Ohio insists on the name of a mountain in Alaska, then perhaps Alaska gets to name a mountain in Ohio. Well, yeah, the highest point in Ohio, currently named Campbell Hill, is only 1550 feet. But that's about the right height to become Mount Sarah Palin.



John Oliver of Last Week Tonight spent 14 minutes tackling a huge misconception – because of the legalization of same-sex marriage nearly 70% of Americans believe it is illegal to discriminate against gay people. But there are no non-discrimination laws in 31 states and a federal bill to ban discrimination has no GOP supporters.

Equality is a family value

While my dad was in the rehab center and when my conservative brother came to visit I thought it prudent to borrow Dad's copy of the March/April/May issue of Washington Monthly to get it out of the house (hmm... named "Monthly" and printed quarterly). The reason: the cover article is Can Gay Wedlock Break Political Gridlock? The illustration showed a happy donkey and elephant in a red convertible with a "Just Married" sign on the back and heading into the sunset. Even my 16 year old niece had learned there are some issues we simply do not discuss with this brother.

Of course, with a title like that I just had to actually read it. And then I read a couple more articles.

This cover article is by David Blankenhorn, William Galston, Jonathan Rauch, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. I've read stuff by Rauch before and was quite impressed with his understanding. The article in the magazine is six good-sized pages, so my summary will be leaving lots of it out.

With same-sex marriage soon legal nationally the political landscape for marriage has changed. For about 50 years both parties have lamented the decline of marriage. A big part of that has been marriage becoming a class-based institution. Middle and upper class people get married, poor people don't. A big chunk of the article goes into this in detail. This marriage gap harms children because it deprives them of a parent's support. It harms adults by reducing their chance of economic success. It harms communities because the young aren't guided into stable relationships. It harms the country by fueling inequality.

Lots of research went into the importance of families during the 1970s and '80s along with much discussion of what to do about it. But the debate was sidetracked in the 1990s by women's equality and gay rights. The discussion of marriage became a pitched battle with equality on one side and family values on the other. Pro-equality meant anti-family (sound familiar?).

But the ideas have shifted. Progressives have realized that family structure and social justice are related. Conservatives are beginning to realize that a man's marriageability is dependent on his prospects in the job market. Gays and lesbians have realized that they have a stake in the health of marriages. That has prompted progressives to see that social equality of both gays and the poor is impossible without access to marriage. Conservatives are realizing that antagonism to same-sex marriage turns off the younger voters and it is better to support gay and lesbian couples.

The authors make some recommendations. Make a public argument for marriage opportunity; explain why it is important. Increase marriageability by helping the poor join the workforce and handle life in the middle class and by providing community support of marriage. Change public policy, such things as not reducing benefits upon marriage, offer counseling to those considering divorce, support public education of life and financial literacy, and reduce incarceration which removes men from families. Include sexual minorities in all that family support. Do research on gay families, including why marriage matters and cultural factors that support marriage.

Equality is becoming a family value.



Another article in Washington Monthly that caught my attention is A New Agenda for Political Reform by Lee Drutman and Steven Teles. Most of this nine page article describes how Congress made itself stupid by cutting a big chunk of its support staff. That included staff that knew institutional history, how things got done, and could offer independent analysis of what was in various bills, and guide legislators in writing bills. Only in America are the ranks of advisers to lawmakers filled with twentysomethings, even if they are bright and eager. That means Congress must rely on industry lobbyists to explain what is going on in the world, and to write the bills that Congress passes. Naturally, those lobbyists are highly biased. I knew the situation was bad, but I didn't know how bad and precisely why.

All through the article I was thinking this is the situation the Congressional corporate masters want. How would we convince Congress to defy their masters? What reasons could we give? Thankfully, the authors have some, though they know it will be an uphill fight.

The Tea Party may realize that a stronger Congressional staff is necessary to effectively oversee the rest of government and root out waste. The GOP may realize that while they wail about executive overreach they are cutting their power to do anything about it. Both parties complain about out-of-control and do-nothing bureaucrats and may soon realize they need staff to identify and fix abuses. The cost for an expert support staff? Less than the typical Pentagon project overrun, which legislative oversight, made possible by an expert support staff, could reduce.



A third article has only a morsel to share. The title is How Mike Huckabee Became the New Sarah Palin, and is by Ed Kilgore. In 2008 Palin turned resentment of the "liberal elites" who supposedly run the country into victimization, self-pity, and vengeance. Democrats didn't just do bad things, they looked down their noses a "real" Americans. Since then many Republicans, especially Huckabee through his new book, have adopted Palin's line of attack.

The Christian Right, Tea Party members, and conservatives in general have added this general indictment of the liberal elites and their underclass clients:

an unpatriotic determination to undermine rights and overthrow governing norms set down eternally by the Founders of this exceptional nation under the direct inspiration of Almighty God. So liberals were not only mocking the religion and culture of good white middle-class folk, and stealing their hard-earned money (and richly earned government benefits) to buy votes from the lower orders – they were also spitting on the foundational principles of America and defying God.

Yeah, that's what we're facing.

Chewing on the legs of conservatism

Yesterday, I looked at the college website and saw it was closed due to the snowstorm. The roads were clear yesterday afternoon so I knew there would be no driving issues today. But when I got to the college I found it closed (though there was a guard in the entrance shack) because of no power. Yup, when I got home and looked at the college website there was a closed message. That got me wondering where the college server is located.

But that means my classes are short two lectures this semester, a polar vortex being the cause of the first missed day. So a bit of a scramble to decide what gets left out.



I wrote yesterday about the GOP Dorchester Conference in Oregon that approved support for same-sex marriage. It didn't take long for the state GOP to issue a statement to remind everyone that the Dorchester Conference was not an official Republican Party event.

That statement reminds us all that the GOP is the party of freedom (especially from gov't interference), and religious liberty. They are against the redefinition of marriage. I'm not the only one to notice their definition of freedom and their definition of religious liberty are in conflict.



Michelangelo Signorile, writing in Huffington Post, noted a big change at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In previous years, Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage used to walk the halls as religious-right royalty for her work fighting against marriage equality. This year NOM has a small card table in the basement amongst all the other right-wing causes. The reason for the downfall is that those under 25 (half the crowd) aren't interested in what NOM has to say.

That does not mean conservatives are done trying to attack us. As the "religious liberty" battle shows they are merely trying to rework the message to be palatable to the younger crowd.

Signorlie's article commented about Ronald Reagan and his "three legged stool" of conservatism. I had to look that one up, but carefully because I didn't want to link to a conservative site. I found an explanation on Time.com. According to Reagan conservatism has three parts -- economic, defense, and social. Signorile mentioned it by showing a rainbow colored beaver, representing the conservative gay group GOProud, gnawing at the social leg. And that Time article, from a year ago, shows the defense leg losing to the economic leg. Holding the line on taxes and deficit is more important than defense. So, one conservative leg being chewed, the other two in conflict. What fun!



It seems the GOP is now starting to take notice of the poor. Why be so generous? They've noticed that two-thirds of those falling into poverty are white.



The GOP wants to cut $40 billion from the food stamp program to reduce the deficit. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 (and indexing it to the Consumer Price Index the same way the food stamp program is) will reduce the deficit by $46 billion. Strange that the GOP isn't jumping at this opportunity. Oh, right -- their real goal is to channel more money to the already wealthy.



Another conservative battleground appears to be school lunches, in particular subsidized or lunches. Some states trying to attach as much stigma to those lunches as they can. Others are supplying free lunch to all students to avoid any hint of stigma. Paul Ryan accused progressives of having "a full stomach and an empty soul." Hmm. That seems to describe Wall Street. So conservatives want full stomachs in corporate boardrooms but not in classrooms. That sounds like an "empty soul."



With Sarah Palin spouting off again about how horrible the Affordable Care Act is, Terrence Heath reminds us of what the ACA has been doing for us. Some of what it has done:

* Lowered the number of uninsured Americans.

* Given Americans more freedom by preventing "job lock" or staying in a terrible job simply for the health benefits.

* Reduce medical bankruptcy.

What conservatives can't or won't do:

* Repeal the ACA.

* Replace the ACA. They would rather the poor not be insured.

* Find any ACA horror stories.

Conservatives can't come up with an alternative to the ACA because they don't want either the ACA or an alternative.

Making the Democratic cause easier?

Is this the formation of a new political party? Sarah Palin will headline a Tea Party Convention in Nashville next month. All the luminaries of the extreme Right will be there. The question, which can't be answered yet, is whether they are going to remain in the GOP or will they decide the Old Guard is too stodgy?

Goodbye? We can hope

Sarah Palin announced today she is stepping down from her job as governor of Alaska, effective late July. She says she wants out of politics. Hard to tell exactly because reports of the press conference say she meandered more than usual. There is, naturally, a great deal of speculation of her real motive. Impending scandal? Wanting a head start on the 2012 presidential election? Those who aren't speculating are (like me) just glad to see her go.

You want a do-over, huh?

Alaska senator Ted Stevens was accused of nasty things just before the election and lost. The Obama Justice Department has withdrawn their claims due to prosecutor misconduct. That overturns the conviction. Sarah Palin is mad and wants a do-over election. Get in line honey, there's a bunch of other elections in need of a do-over that are more important. Starting with:
Gore-Bush in 2000.
Kerry-Bush in 2004.

You can go home to your iceberg now

Sarah Palin actually had some good things going for her says Katha Pollitt in the Chicago Tribune:
* She was a gift to Barack Obama, Katie Couric, and Tina Fey.
* She helped define feminism by clarifying what it isn't -- voting for a woman just because she's female or exhibiting female moxie (which Palin has) or being a frilly doormat.
* Her presence on the GOP ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, and pregnant teens making it harder for them to spout their antagonism to these ideas in the future (though they will try).
* She, with Hillary, normalized the idea of a woman in the White House.
The whole article is worth a read for the snarky attitude.


Who would have guessed? We now hear the Secret Service warned the Obama family of a dramatic rise in the number of threats against the candidate at the same time that Palin was promoting a lynch-mob atmosphere during her rallies.


"Obama Talks with Unpopular World Leader Without Preconditions" screams the headlines. Below that is a photo of the Obamas and the Bushes.

Almost time to head to the polls

A timely cartoon to tide us over until the results are in.

One last massive commentary before the election

Is there a difference between racism, thinking blacks are inferior, and racialism, thinking that blacks are different? A blogger who calls himself Radical Russ thinks so. You're choosing sides for a pickup game of basketball and the two guys left appear the same in height, strength, and ability though one is white and the other black. Which to choose? Probably black because you figure his street basketball games were tougher. What about two Harvard Law School valedictorians, one white another black? Probably black because you know he had to overcome a lot more and thus worked harder to make it on top. Now consider Obama, who not only aced Harvard Law, but has managed to campaign for president without a credible scandal dogging his heels. If preferring a guy like that is racism, I'll gladly wear the title.


The Los Angeles Times urges a no vote on Proposition 8, the Calif. marriage protection amendment:

Clever magicians practice the art of misdirection -- distracting the eyes of the audience to something attention-grabbing but irrelevant so that no one notices what the magician is really doing. Look over at that fuchsia scarf, up this sleeve, at anything besides the actual trick.

The campaign promoting Proposition 8, which proposes to amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriages, has masterfully misdirected its audience, California voters. Look at the first-graders in San Francisco, attending their lesbian teacher's wedding! Look at Catholic Charities, halting its adoption services in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal! Look at the church that lost its tax exemption over gay marriage! Look at anything except what Proposition 8 is actually about: a group of people who are trying to impose on the state their belief that homosexuality is immoral and that gays and lesbians are not entitled to be treated equally under the law.

That truth would never sell in tolerant, live-and-let-live California, and so it has been hidden behind a series of misleading half-truths. Once the sleight of hand is revealed, though, the campaign's illusions fall away.

The article proceeds to list the illusions:
Catholic Charities in Mass. halted adoption because of a gay-friendly law passed many years earlier that included the charities because they took state money. Those kids attending their teacher's lesbian wedding had their parent's permission and that permission could have been given for a domestic partner ceremony. The case about forcing churches to marry gays was about a NJ Methodist resort that got a tax exemption on the grounds that it is open to the public and therefore must be open to the entire public but doesn't affect what is done on private church property. The "traditional" definition of marriage has already changed radically over the years.



Here's a new blog that I've enjoyed reading for a couple days now. Most of the posts are by Helen, who is 82, lives in Texas, and is quite feisty and eloquent. She started blogging after her grandson set things up to help her keep in contact with her best friend Margaret, who is of similar age and lives in Maine. And, no, it isn't that kind of best friend -- both have husbands. I love the banner photo of the two friends on scooters on the deck of some military ship.

Helen was asked by an undecided voter how to help make a decision. Here's a summary of what she said (though she says it with much humor).

McCain blew his first big decision in choosing Palin. She is way out of her league. He is scaring people on taxes -- most won't make enough money to be affected. This is an ongoing GOP hoax. McCain has flipped on many issues and no longer has a spine and is no longer a maverick.

Which party has been screaming about bogeymen coming to get you and which has talked about hope? Which has been talking about Real America and which about the United States of America. Which thinks war is a good solution and which prefers diplomacy? Which has been a documented liar?

Are you still undecided because the terrorists are going to get us? Let's try hope instead of fear.

Thanks, Helen, for saying it so well.

So vote.



There has been a lot of news about long lines and multi-hour waits to vote in early voting states and predicted for many places tomorrow. Some are beginning to wonder if that wait amounts to a poll tax, something banned by the 24th amendment to the Constitution. Why is it so hard to have enough voting stations?


The remaining classical music station around here has decided that Sunday at 7:00 is the right time for the Gospel Hour. That's the time for me to wake up and this isn't my style of music. Sigh. So after my shower yesterday I caught the last half of Speaking of Faith, on NPR. The topic of discussion was what is the right amount of religion in political life? Yes, religion influences our morals and that is important when debating candidates and policies. Journalist Steven Waldman of Beliefnet put it this way. When a religion ties itself closely to a political cause or party they run a big risk. As people sour on the cause or party they also sour on the religion. This activity of the Religious Right over the last 25 years has turned an entire generation away from Christianity. The Evangelicals at the time of the presidency of Thomas Jefferson thanked him for his strong support of the separation of Church and State. They were pleased to be free of political control of religion. The whole program is 53 minutes.

In this past weekend's Prairie Home Companion Garrison Keillor started with a heartfelt song about Studs Terkel, who died the day before, then did a fun song for Todd Palin, describing how much he, an Alaskan outdoorsman, will hate living in Washington.
You can listen to segments of the show (all the above in the 1st 17 minutes) or read the scripts and lyrics.

God ordained trickle up economics

Where do they come up with such nonsense? I thought the Prosperity Gospel was unsupported by the Bible, but that's rather tame. I've also been reading that while Trickle Down Economics has been shown to be a hoax, Trickle Up Economics is doing quite well, thank you, and lives on in the government bailout (where rich people are scrambling to get their slice while Bush is still in office. But now we see some religious justification for it. C. Peter Wagner declared, "God has declared through His prophets that the wealth of the wicked will be released to the Kingdom of God," and, "the enemies' camp will be plundered." Bishop Thomas Murthee, a Wagner colleague, adds, "The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous." He said this just before anointing Saran Palin for governor.

Now I went looking into a searchable online Bible database (bible.com) and went looking just for "wealth" and "wicked." There was no match in the King James Version and in newer translations the only passage that came close was Job 27, where the wicked are described with, "They go to bed wealthy and wake up poor."

Wagner is calling on God's Kingdom to infiltrate "Seven Mountains" of society: business, education, media, and government being four of them. The takeover of business includes permission to plunder the wealth of the wicked so that it can be used to implement a theocracy and wield spiritual warfare. No wonder McCain decries Obama's tax plans as "socialism." This spiritual warfare is supposedly done by:

…mapping strongholds of demons, witches and "spirits of witchcraft", and through driving those out through "spiritual warfare". The result will be the almost complete cessation of crime and addiction, almost 100% Christian church membership, the growth of farm vegetables to enormous size, and a miraculous reversal of environmental degradation.

It is amazing how easily and how completely the Bible can be twisted from its original message of love, grace, and forgiveness. Sheesh.

Getting in the way of a good scapegoat

So what just happened with the world-wide financial system? According to blogger Alex Blaze (whose credentials are unknown), perhaps it was because:

Massive deregulation caused an explosion in the buying and selling of arcane and opaque securities, creating a huge bubble (bigger than all the money in the whole world put together!) that burst as real wages dropped, bad loans stopped being paid, and investors started to ask for real money on their investments.

But that explanation is woefully inadequate to a certain segment of Americans for several reasons:
1. It finds fault with free market fundamentalism, the foundation of conservatism
2. It places the blame on Republicans and a smaller group of "fiscally conservative" Democrats
3. It might usher in an era of increased regulation and raise class consciousness to where Americans are less willing to accept income inequality

So conservatives have started a counternarrative, blaming the current housing crisis on any of a number of factors, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, and poor people who couldn't repay their loans. By extension, the assault is on Democrats, social justice, and racial minorities.

The Community Reinvestment Act was designed to end "red-lining," where banks discriminated because of where the borrower lived. It requires banks to give money to low-income borrowers. And, of course, "low-income" borrowers are really people who are so messed up they can't hold a job and can't afford a house and are certainly incapable of repaying a mortgage. Which means the mess was caused by Democrats and affirmative action for mortgages. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good scapegoat.

And those facts?

Only a quarter of the faulty subprime mortgages came from institutions subject to the CRA. And those that were under the law made fewer dangerous loans.

Fannie and Freddie weren't allowed to take part in subprime mortgages. They can only work with loans with down payments and documented income.

If a bank makes a loan to a borrower they know cannot repay the loan, why does the borrower get the blame and not the bank? Doesn't that prove the bank's incompetence? For the record, the bank makes the loan because they get a fee for creating the loan. The loan is sold to someone else so the bank doesn't care whether the loan is repaid or not because they already have their fee.

While bad loans are at the heart of the problem there were other things that magnified it: deregulation and credit default swaps that hid the value of loans.

So why is that other story being pushed? The pushers can claim (other than "It's the Democrat's fault") such things as the problem isn't deregulation, but over-regulation, or the problem is dangerous minorities.

That last bit resonates when we might be electing our first black president while Palin stokes the fires of racism. Those pushing this particular story can claim the country will be screwed if Obama is elected (meaning we're not now?).

Stir that brew and add a bit more seasoning: McCain, the war hero, is being humiliated -- by black man -- and some people are taking that humiliation personally. As Obama pulls us out of Iraq (and a conservative goal of using Iraq as an American base to subdue the rest of the region is discarded) there will be calls that America was stabbed in the back by liberals (a claim that was made in Germany at the end of WWI and set the groundwork for WWII). The coming recession will be long and hard. All that means the racial hatred will bubble for most of the first term of an Obama presidency.

America used to be above such things. But the temptation to abuse racism to advance politics may be too strong to resist. In the second debate McCain hit most of the counternarrative points mentioned above. Will he do it in the third? (I'm not going to watch and will only hear about it in tomorrow's news).

Winning strategy?

I'm not the only one who thinks it likely Obama will be assassinated. There are those who are outright saying that if Obama is killed his blood will be on McCain's and Palin's hands. And, as that link and news organizations note, McCain understands it himself. He contradicted a few of his supporters at a recent rally (to a chorus of boos), trying to tell them that Obama is honorable, there are just disagreements between them on how to run the country. However, it seems Palin hasn't gotten the memo. It leads to the question why McCain started down the road of stirring up the crazies in his base at the expense of losing the independents. Some possible reasons:
* McCain has lost it.
* He actually thinks it is a winning strategy.
* He hopes some violence will change everything, perhaps stop the election.
* He hopes this will sabotage an Obama presidency.
* Palin is running the show.
Whatever it is, those running the campaign thinks the crazies don't need to be stopped. That's scary.

Stirring up the crazies

Simply because Obama is black, from the time he secured the nomination I've been thinking he has the highest chance of any modern president of being assassinated. That was about the time I saw a photo of a t-shirt of a machine gun toting man. The back of the shirt said something like, "If your vote from the ballot box doesn't work it is time to vote from the rooftop." As the election gets closer all sorts of hidden bigotry bubbles to the surface.

Since McCain and Palin don't have any new ideas on the economy (and McCain has said that if he focuses on the economy he'll lose) they are aiming for dragging Obama through the mud. This includes calling Obama a terrorist. They are stirring up the base quite well, including those who are willing to take their own kind of action. A man even shouted out "Kill him!" at a Palin rally and the candidate said nothing. Is she purposely inciting violence? At the very least McCain and Palin are condoning it.

Blacks and gays know what happens when certain people are stirred up as Palin seems to be doing. Blacks and gays usually end up dead with the perpetrator describing how he was inspired to make America safer.

At what point does this talk require an investigation by the Secret Service?

Obama assassinated? The odds are not in his favor.

Surprise! its October

Lots of odds and ends:

Though her approval rating is dropping, might Palin pull off an October surprise? No, nothing involving the military (whew!). But she could accomplish much of the same thing with a big splashy wedding of her pregnant daughter and the girl's boyfriend. Shotgun weddings back in fashion? And Palin does know how to wield a gun.

When I've done training for programs that try to influence change (such as making my church denomination more gay friendly) the emphasis is on personal stories -- how a particular event made me feel, what I learned from it, and how it changed what I did. I can't say the training made me a spokesman for much of anything, but the premise is sound. People connect to stories. Sharon Begley of Newsweek says that people connect with Palin's story quite easily (or, given her dropping approval rating, did). There has always been a balance between voting your issues and voting your emotions with emotions usually winning. This year the emotional side is even stronger because with 24 hours news sources on TV and web we are bombarded with emotions and aren't able to take time to reflect on the issues. Enjoy this season of storytelling. The print edition of Newsweek has a drawing of Palin in a cluster of 10 eager listeners reading from the book "The Adventures of Sarah the Moose-Skinning Hockey Mom."

Sharon Begley has an article about the reliability of polls. At a time when one could say "another day, another 37 state polls" yet polls got some primary races quite wrong, there is a lot of discussion of poll methodology. Polls of "likely" voters tend to be more accurate, but to determine the likelihood of a voter are new voters, who tend to be for Obama, being excluded? Since it is illegal to do random-digit dialing to cell phones, are younger voters without landlines being undercounted? And back to the issue of balance between Dem and GOP respondents -- If your public is 30% GOP and your random-digit dialing gets you 45% GOP responses, a pollster might weight the GOP replies. But how stable is party identification? Do voters shift party allegiance when they switch candidates?

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has written with a great deal of passion that if one gets a start through Affirmative Action (as he did) one must always live with the shame and stigma that success, no matter how great, will always be suspect. Some people (including himself) say he got where he is only because he is black. The world mistrusts him and he mistrusts the world. The same stigma now seems to be at work in Palin. She got to be VP candidate because she is a woman, not because of her qualifications. The same mistrust appears to be playing out with Palin who sees everyone as a supporter or a hater.

Lionel Trilling was a English professor, literary critic, essayist and author who died in 1975. On the occasion of new publications of a few of his books, Jeremy McCarter of Newsweek took a look at some of Trilling's ideas. One of his books is "The Liberal Imagination" in which he shows fellow liberals a few blind spots. The problem is that liberalism, in explaining its goals, tends to simplify, producing lots of unintended consequences. To get the full story one should study liberal ideas through literature, because fiction doesn't (or doesn't have to) present the world in black and white, can present ideas in careful nuance with moral realism, and can teach sympathy and respect for variety. These ideas tend to get lost today because of our high-speed, always on media that tends to thwart imagination, attention span, and the willingness to read something with depth (gee, where have I heard that before?). Trilling highly recommends losing yourself in "The Princess Casamassima" by Henry James.

A new startup company is inverting the recycling equation. RecycleBank has trucks that rumble through suburban Boston, weighing and scanning the barcodes of recycling bins as they are dumped into the trucks. The weight and ID are sent to a website, where residents are given credit of 25 cents a pound which can be redeemed at area stores. Isn't recycling worth a latte? Offering a bit of incentive has shown recycle rates jump from 3% to 32% in Wilmington, Del. The company hopes to serve a million homes by the end of 2009. The Midwest might be hard for it to crack into because landfill fees are so cheap compared to the coasts.

If you allow me to be greedy, surely some of that money will trickle down to you. The last couple weeks showed up that lie. Greed does not get us to compassion, kindness, or social justice. It is time to eliminate it from economic policy.

The Mormon Church has a doctrine of Free Agency. An individual must determine the difference between good and evil and reap the benefits or consequences of those choices. This cycle of choice and consequence is the individual's own trial of faith, a piece of their plan of salvation. Amy Cox, the wife of the first counselor to a Mormon bishop condemns the church's meddling in the marriage protection amendments in Calif. and Arizona because such amendments restrict free agency. The church is meddling where it shouldn't. Mrs. Cox also says the Mormon Church has renounced its old belief that people with darker skins were cursed until they turned from their sinful ways, at which point their skin would supposedly lighten. Hmm. That never happened. The church should also renounce its belief that gays will become straight when they turn from their sinful ways. Perhaps all that Mormon sponsorship will mean those amendments will be linked closely with that church, causing a backlash and their defeat.

Bush reincarnated (ugh!)

Gary Kamiya of Salon sees Palin as a reincarnation of Bush -- especially Bush's ability to play the culture wars to get what he wants (about the only thing he was good at). Along the way he wonders what we look for in a president. That choice seems to be driven by resentment -- my world is changing and I don't have a say in how -- which is the source of the elitist charge. It is also driven by identification of candidates "just like me" though it is only in politics we want someone like ourselves. How narcissistic is that (and how elitist of me to say so)? In other areas we want someone with competence. One idea not mentioned that I've heard recently (alas, I don't remember where) is that the more government is in the business of helping people the more the voter wants someone like themselves to make sure policy treats them properly. The way out of this mess? Don't fight the culture war. Remind voters of the issues.

Still 8 weeks to go and I've had enough!

It is 8 weeks to the election. McCain and Obama are tied. I've had more than 8 years experience to know that when at GOP politician opens his/her mouth what comes out is very likely a lie. A lot of the Dems are the same, though in Obama's case he is more likely to say things politicians don't say. So I'm more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Both sides are going to open their mouths a *lot* over the next 8 weeks and I've already heard enough. I’m not even going to share the latest joke about "The difference between Palin and …? Lipstick."

My TV will remain unplugged (I've watched some Olympics and a few Dem convention speeches but very little else since last November). I'll be inclined to turn off the news when the focus is on politics. I may not read all of my Newsweek (big article on McCain last week and a big one on Palin and her beliefs this week). And I'll not write about any of it unless there is a really compelling idea floating out there. If you're a political junkie, there are a lot of other sources.

With all that said, two last things to talk about:
A few weeks ago Newsweek had a cover article about "What Bush Got Right," warning the next prez not to dismantle a policy simply because Bush signed it. The few letters to the editor about it (alas, I’m not searching for the link) are variations on: So when is Newsweek going to publish the phone book size issue listing what Bush did wrong?


I've mentioned before that whoever wins this election the American voter gets the prez and veep they deserve. However, I'm not sure that is true if we get a GOP prez due to vote fraud. Then again, if we're not willing to stand up for honest elections…

Project Vote is on the case and will investigate and report on voting issues over the next two months. This posting is about how difficult and confusing we've made the voting process and how much misinformation is being tossed around. Such things as:

* Telling Virginia Tech students that if the register to vote at the school they change their permanent address and that could affect their scholarship and their drivers license.
* The precinct containing VT is not prepared to handle the influx of new voters. Virginia precincts are to be split when the exceed 5000 voters (and it didn't take many students to reach that number) and there isn't time before the election to do so. Expect really long lines.
* The polling places for that precinct are 4 miles from the VT campus with no public transport between the two.
* Former inmates are told they've lost their right to vote, even in states where that isn't true for their crimes. These laws vary by state.

A solution is get rid of the patchwork of voting laws and communize them in the US Constitution. At least we could ask the United Nations to monitor our elections as we ask them to monitor elections in other countries.
At least the Ohio Secretary of State has ruled that returned mail is not a sufficient reason to remove a person from the voting rolls.

No, we don't want people to think

This is change? Palen is understandably weak in foreign policy (in spite of how close her state is to Russia), so she has tutors to help prepare her for her big debate against Biden. Her tutors? A team of Bush aides, including Steve Biegun who served under Condi Rice in the National Security Council and staff director for Jesse Helms at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Perhaps Palin and McCain were trivializing Obama's history of community organizing not just to highlight Palin's (lack of) experience. Perhaps that attack was because they don't want any community to be organized against them. They don't want citizen leaders, people who will think and act contrary to the government's wishes.

Walking that scary walk

Sarah Palin got big applause when she dismissed Obama's community organizing while saying at least as mayor she had executive experience. Here's a breakdown (much too long and thorough for me to repeat) of how a South Chicago community organizer compares against mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. This commentary ends by saying whoever wins America will get the prez. and veep we deserve.

The Center for Community Change and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had a few things to say about Palin's comparison.


Bush may talk like a Fundie, but he'll only act like one (bleat about a marriage protection amendment) when politics says he has to. The same seems to be true of McCain. In contrast, and much to the delight of Fundies, there is growing evidence that Palin not only talks like a Fundie, she walks like one too. If she becomes prez (McCain is 72 and has had cancer), she'll put the force of conviction into demands for Fundie friendly legislation and judges.

She has described oil pipelines in Alaska as "God's will." She describes the war in Iraq as "a task that is from God." She tried censoring books in the Wasilla library. She gets high ratings for pro-life and creationism views. And, from the beliefs of her church and views she has stated, one wonders if she would use her power as commander in chief to do what she could to usher in the End Times as described in Revelations, claiming it a plan from God (similar to the Apocalypse Directive I recently wrote about) and that she's doing you a favor. Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign is trying to cover up her church ties and Palen has refused to identify where her church membership is now.

A Fundie bumble

With the news about Sarah Palin's unwed pregnant daughter and a growing scandal about state troopers (details elsewhere) on top of her seeming inexperience one wonders if she was properly vetted for the job of VP. Now it appears she wasn't. The Fundies threw a hissy fit when it appeared McCain was about to select either Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, both pro-choice. A convention floor fight was promised. So McCain capitulated and scrambled to pick Palin. Which means he's not the maverick he claims and is beholden to the Fundies. It also means he bumbled his first major presidential decision.