Michele Bachmann (AP, Charlie Riedel)

At the C-PAC revival meeting today, Rep. Michele Bachmann told the audience that “Until Barack Obama, no American President had ever told the world that the United States was not a Judeo-Christian nation.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and dead wrong.

Two of them did, George Washington in approving the draft version and John Adams in signing the treaty. Authored by diplomat Joel Barlow, a protégé of Thomas Jefferson, approved in draft by President George Washington, read to the United States Senate on June 7, 1797, and unanimously approved, signed and proclaimed to the nation by President John Adams, from the Annals of Congress, 5^th Congress:

“Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States

and the Bey and Subject of Tripoli of Barbary.

Article 11: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States have never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinion, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

And this lady claims that she is a great reader of history? Really? Or is she just another conservative who only reads the historical mythology that suits her version of what America has been and ought to be? After all, this is the woman who ignored the fact that one of the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima was not allowed to vote in the nation he was defending because he was a Native American, just so she could wrap her little Tea Party laughable rebuttal to the State of the Union address in that Iwo Jima flag.

This is why states like Texas and Arizona don’t want so-called “revisionist history” taught in their schools. It’s also why Bachmann home-taught her own kids.  Historical facts would rob conservatives of the justification for their propaganda.

Elizabeth Warren

The Service Employees International Union (the conservative-demonized SEIU), which represents 75,000 healthcare workers, social workers, security officers, janitors, retail and hospitality workers in Massachusetts, has announced its endorsement of Elizabeth Warren for Senator.

Margarita Restrepo, a cleaner at Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett, Mass., explained the endorsement, “Scott Brown went to Washington and in the blink of an eye broke his pledge to put aside party differences and be a champion for workers like me. Elizabeth Warren is different. She understands people like me because she has been fighting for middle class families, taking on big banks and working to save the American Dream her whole life. She never backs down and will never stop fighting for us.”

Wow. Ms. Restrepo’s talents are being wasted in her job. She really ought to be writing political speeches.

The SEIU held a candidate forum on Saturday, with hundreds of members from across the state. Senator Brown was invited, but his campaign didn’t even respect the union enough to respond to repeated requests for his presence. That was a supremely stupid move.

The Executive Vice-President of SEIU Local 1199, Veronica Turner, said, “It is time to reclaim the people’s seat. SEIU members, like hardworking voters across the state, want a senator who will put the 99% first, believes every American deserves a good job to support their family and shares our vision that our country is better when we all do better. Elizabeth Warren will be that senator.” It has always been the basic contradiction of Massachusetts that they have a political culture that creates very wealthy people with a deep-rooted belief in the middle class and working families, people who are never ignorant of their own working class roots. The Kennedys have been those kind of people, as is John Kerry. The 1% like to call them “traitors to their class.”  It is also a culture in which a Harvard professor can be seen as one of the working class.

Warren, graciously accepted the endorsement, which covers both the primary and general elections. “I am delighted to receive the endorsement of SEIU’s 75,000 members. I’ve worked closely with SEIU for years now – advocating for working families and fighting to get a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created. I look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the lives of working men and women here in the Commonwealth and across the country.”

The SEIU may only represent 0.015% of the voting age population of Massachusetts, but each member has friends and family that increase that percentage. Massachusetts is an old union state, which suffered badly when companies started moving first to the American South and then to Central America to cut labor costs. The manufacturing belt that stretched from Boston into southern New Hampshire and Maine was devastated. Massachusetts and Connecticut started to recover from the loss of basic manufacturing with the tech boom, only to have that collapse and tech jobs go overseas as well.

Massachusetts’ unemployment rate is 7% as of last November, the most recent figure posted by the state. By the end of 2012, 121,153 homes are expected to have been foreclosed. Home equity has been reduced by an average of $16,722 per home due to neighborhood foreclosures, with a statewide total loss of equity at $37.8 billion. With the shift from manufacturing to a service economy, the strong middle class of Massachusetts has seen their incomes shrink precipitously. The state suffered unprecedented infrastructure and home damages because of multiple tornados this past summer and the sideswipe of Tropical Storm Irene. The only bright spot in Massachusetts right now is the universal health care plan that the Republicans are using to beat former Governor Mitt Romney with in the primaries.

Scott Brown doesn’t get it. He blocked passage of the Dowd-Frank financial reform bill until certain portions were loosened up to take the bite out of it. He voted to cut off extended unemployment benefits and voted for the Tea Party budget that would have cost Massachusetts 17,000 jobs and cut Pell grants to 135,000 students in the state. He was elected by the Tea Party and now says he rejects their extremism.

And the Republican Party, which has gone out of its way in the past year to break the public sector unions doesn’t get it either. If you attack one set of unions, you attack them all because you are attacking the basic right of workers to join together to fight for their own safety and economy security. They believe that if you break the unions, you cut off money to the Democratic Party, but it isn’t about the money. The power of unions is in their people, in their ability to organize their members to man phone banks and go door-to-door to do the one thing that works better than TV ads – make personal contact with voters.

The SEIU has been thoroughly demonized by the right wing media in the past few years. Glenn Beck treated them the way Joe McCarthy treated suspected communists. The reason for the animosity is very clear. The SEIU is the fastest growing union in America. By representing service employees, they cross dozens of industries from your local supermarket to the casinos of Las Vegas to nursing homes and in-home health care companies. In the medical field, there are unions for nurses, but not for the aides and the rising number of unskilled, unlicensed workers in the field. The SEIU even includes interns and residents, future doctors who have never had any kind of protection and worked 24-hour shifts in the past. In retail and hospitality settings, workers are limited to part-time to avoid providing any kind of benefits. Companies are notorious for cutting hours on those workers who have been with a company long enough to rate a few cents an hour increase in pay, just to save those few cents. The SEIU is a serious threat to the power structure of the service industry.

The SEIU characterizes itself thusly: “With 2.1 million members in Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico, SEIU is the fastest growing union in the Americas. Focused on uniting workers in healthcare, public services and property services, SEIU members are winning better wages, healthcare and more secure jobs for our communities, while uniting their strength with their counterparts around the world to ensure that workers – not just corporations and CEOs – benefit from today’s global economy.” They are the reason why, in every employees break room in every retail establishment that has successfully kept their workers from unionizing you will find posters telling the workers what wonderfully paternal corporations they work for and how employees can always find all the help and understanding they need just by talking to their personnel directors.

Related articles

• SEIU Tweets Support For MD Marriage Equality (lezgetreal.com)
• Leader of Largest Healthcare Union in the Nation to Join NAACP at HKonJ People’s Assembly this Saturday (curmilus.wordpress.com)
• Malcolm Baldwin proud of SEIU endorsement (virginiavirtucon.wordpress.com)
• SEIU Endorses Obama (thepage.time.com)
• 2 .1 mill members in SEIU endorse President Barack Obama for re-election. (magpiegazette.wordpress.com)
• Ohio panel approves labor agreement with SEIU (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Scott Brown Veering Left To Save Job (lezgetreal.com)
• Democrat Money-Laundering Scheme Steals Millions Of Dollars From Disabled To Fund SEIU (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)

Scott Walker recall poster by Teamsternation

It’s not really a big thing, not on the grand scale of corruption. It was just a Milwaukee County employee who was doing fundraising for her boss’ gubernatorial campaign on Milwaukee County’s dime and time. It only resulted in two misdemeanor charges for Darlene Wink, and an other headache for Governor Scott Walker.

Wink pleaded guilty on Tuesday, and faces a maximum of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each count. Maybe Walker can get his good friends the Koch brothers to pay the fines for her. While Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, Wink was his constituent services coordinator being paid $41,000 a year. She was also the Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman. During working hours she worked on fundraising events for Walker’s bid to become governor in the 2010 election. Wink told Judge Daniel Konkol during the elocution part of her plea bargain, “What I was doing was putting together fliers that were for a fundraiser.” As part of her plea bargain, the prosecutors have recommended no jail time in exchange for her co-operation in their 20-month old “John Doe” investigation into a variety of issues stemming from Walker’s term as County Executive. Three other former Walker aides and appointees have been charged. The investigation began while Walker was still employed as Milwaukee County Executive, six months before he was elected governor.

Walker is on the ropes. His opponents needed less than half-a-million signatures to force his recall. They turned in a million. He is running national ads begging for donations to fund his recall election campaign, which is being interpreted as an inability to tap into his former sources for campaign funds. He is spending almost as much time out of the state raising funds for this recall election as he has spent in it being governor.

The Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Foundation, through their 501c3 SuperPac, has purchased $700,000 in ad time for a one-minute spot that praises Walker’s job performance without ever mentioning his name. APF poured money into the senate recall races last summer and was criticized for sending out absentee ballots that mislead voters as to the dates of the elections. We already know, thanks to the efforts of Ian Murphy of The Buffalo (New York) Beast last February, that Walker is not adverse to co-ordinating efforts with the Kochs. For the Kochs, and the Tea Party that they fund so heavily, the Walker recall is extremely important. This election will show if they still have the muscle they flexed in 2010 when they got Walker and so many state representatives and governors, as well as Congressmen, elected.

But an ad touting how Walker’s policies were beneficial to the state because he slashed the power of the public sector unions without massive layoffs will be a hard sell against a jobs report that says Wisconsin has lost jobs every month since Walker’s budget went into effect six months ago. It also will not fly well against the cut backs that have had to be made at the local levels, with a law banning counties and municipalities from raising taxes, because the budget cut $1 billion in local funding while giving $1 billion in tax cuts to the very rich.

Walker justified his anti-union policies with his experiences as Milwaukee County Executive. The more dirt this “John Doe” investigation digs up, the less his justifications for union busting sound valid.

Next up will probably be Kelly Rindfleisch, who was Walker’s deputy chief of staff in Milwaukee County. She is facing four felony misconduct charges for doing campaign fundraising while at her county job. Walker denies any knowledge that his staff was doing this illegal activity right under his nose and says that he had a strict policy forbidding it. He has offered to meet with the prosecutors to tell them his side of the story.

If Walker’s defenders were right in their allegation that this is just a political witch hunt, the investigation would not have begun in May, 2010, and have proceeded with snail speed.

Dates for the recall election for Walker and his lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch have not been set. There are two announced Democratic opponents, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and State Senator Kathleen Vinehout. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost the 2010 election to Walker 52% to 46%, is still mulling a rematch. With Falk and Vinehout in the race, it will be necessary to hold a Democratic primary before the recall election, but if the senatorial recalls were any indication, there would only be weeks between the two elections. Vinehout is not favored by the state’s Democratic establishment because her tenure in the senate has been marked by several high-profile cross-over votes, most notably voting with the Republicans on against a bill requiring pharmacists to fill birth control prescriptions and for one to legalize carrying concealed weapons. Falk has lost two statewide campaigns in the past.

Barrett would probably be the strongest candidate to face Walker. Walker only received 124,628 votes more than Barrett, a lead that would have been cut to 24,441 if not for the three alternate party candidates and write-ins who received 100,187 votes. It’s just a question now of convincing Barrett that he wants to take on the task of undoing the damage Walker has done.

Mother Jones has posted a timeline and full information about the investigation for those who are interested. You can find it at

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/scott-walker-john-doe-investigation-explained

Related articles

• The Scott Walker House of Cards: Campaign Funding Issues Come Back to Haunt Him (unaskedadvice.wordpress.com)
• Kathleen Falk Gets WEAC Endorsement (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Guide to the Main Players in the ever-expanding FBI Walkergate “John Doe” Investigation (themilwaukeedrum.com)
• 3 arrested as part of probe into Walker aides (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Wisconsin’s Government Starting To Stink Like Rotten Fish (angrydd.wordpress.com)

Rick Santorum, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

There are two things I truly do not understand about the primary/caucus process. Why would any state choose to halve their number of convention delegates, thereby sharply reducing their influence on national races? Why does any state have a non-binding primary or caucus?

First of all, none of last night’s results are truly binding. These particular horse races were just straw polls that will hopefully lead to actual delegates when the state parties get around to it. But, tentatively, Mitt Romney has 107 delegates, Rick Santorum 45, Newt Gingrich 32 and Ron Paul 9.

One of them needs 1,144 delegates to win the nomination.

At the rate this is going, the Republicans will be eating each other for a while, which is very good for the Democrats. The more the Republican candidates attack each other, the less the Democrats will have to attack them in the national race.

They really don’t get it. It’s not just Republicans who are seeing these Republican-on-Republican attack ads. And the ads are not really restricted to the states where the primary or caucus is being held. I live in central Vermont. Our cable systems in Vermont, when possible, carry two of each broadcast network. We have only three broadcast stations in our state and one of them is PBS. The other three non-PBS broadcasters are from Albany, New York. We also get New Hampshire’s political ads because our three stations reach into their markets. We just consider ourselves lucky we don’t get Canadian political ads, even though we get their commercial ads. Around 60% of American homes are hooked to cable systems, and 33 million homes have satellite. Television is like water and air – it doesn’t stay in one place.

The other thing the Republicans are not getting is the “wedge issue” nonsense. They are so used to being able to used religious issues like abortion and same sex marriage to turn out the vote that they have spent far too much political capital on those issues in the past year. Like James Carvill famously said in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” They may be able to do anti-abortion laws and anti-same-sex laws in states with Republican majorities in their state legislatures, but on a national level, these issues are unimportant.

Related articles

• Analysis: Santorum gains momentum, if not delegates (boston.com)
• Did Santorum Win Big Or Win Squat? What’s A Nation To Believe? (npr.org)
• Santorum jumps into second place in delegate race (sfgate.com)
• Non-binding primaries and caucuses bring attention to states but cost money (boston.com)

Rick Santorum at the 2011 CPAC (photo by Gage Skidmore)

With 30% of the votes counted, MSNBC has declared Missouri for Rick Santorum. This primary is not the official distribution of delegates for the state. They will hold caucuses on March 17 to assigned their delegates. At 9:50 p.m. Eastern, Santorum leads with 54%, Mitt Romney has 26%, Ron Paul has 12% and “uncommitted” has 5%. Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in Missouri.

Santorum is also leading in Minnesota and Colorado at this time, but not enough votes have been reported for the races to be called.

UPDATE: 10:20 p.m. Eastern.  MSNBC has declared Rick Santorum the winner in Minnesota.  With 23% of the vote reported, Santorum has 44% of the votes, Ron Paul 27%, Mitt Romney 17% and Newt Gingrich 11%. 

FINAL UPDATE:  1 a.m. Eastern, Wednesday, February 8 — The Chairman of the Republican Party in Colorado announced to CNN that Rick Santorum took the state with 40.2% of the vote.  Mitt Romney won 34.9%, Newt Gingrich won 12.8% and Ron Paul won 11.7%. 

Sen. Scott Brown

Two years ago, while campaigning in the special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy as Massachusetts Senator, Scott Brown vowed to be the 41^st vote to stop the health care law. Once in the Senate, he forced deletions of critical portions of the Dodd-Frank Act weakening our oversight of the financial services industry. He was elected with the support of the Tea Party and he was goose stepping in line with their policies.

That was then. This is now. Now Brown is facing the normal cyclical election for his seat and his probable opponent will be the irrepressible, passionate, articulate, down-to-earth, almost irresistible Elizabeth Warren, the woman charged with creating the mechanisms of the financial reform bill and whose appointment to head the new consumer protection bureau was blocked by Brown and his fellow Republicans. Warren is determined to restore the so-called Kennedy Senate seat to the Democratic Party. From December 1960 to November 1962, the seat was held by the appointed Benjamin Atwood Smith II. That two year interval was just a bump in the 54 years that the seat was held by a Kennedy brother.

Now, Brown is facing three problems to get re-elected. The first is the fact that he is part of a Congress that has a 13% approval rating, the lowest in the history of polling. Second is a general sense of buyers’ remorse across America over the Tea Party. It is one thing to espouse an ideology. It is quite another to watch that ideology virtually shut down Congress. Though Brown may be a reasonable man, there were too many crazies who were running as Tea Party candidates in 2010. Lastly, Massachusetts is starting to feel picked-upon. Even Mitt Romney has disavowed RomneyCare. It may not be the perfect health care plan, but 84% of Massachusetts residents are satisfied with it. That is an impressive majority, and one that makes the Republican promise to repeal ObamaCare and the constant harping on Romney for signing their health care system into law very difficult for Brown.

Brown is trying to separate himself from his own party. He is presenting himself to Mass voters as deeply committed to bi-partisanship. The President has called for a bill banning insider trading by members of Congress. Brown has sponsored such a bill, and after the State of the Union Address, urged the President to talk to Majority Leader Harry Reid about bringing the bill to the floor. The exchange was caught on camera and the video is being used in Brown’s campaign. He voted against his party for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and has supported the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the post denied to Elizabeth Warren. Brown said “If we’re going to make progress as a nation, both parties in Washington need to work together to end the procedural gridlock and hyper-partisanship.” Dangerous words for a Republican. His party may want to hold his seat to maintain their ability to filibuster everything that comes from the President, but taking such a bi-partisan line could cost Brown support from the right wing media.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren would be a formidable opponent even in a state less devoutly Democratic than Massachusetts. She has a quick mind, a dry wit and an ability to talk with anyone without talking down to anyone that makes one wish there were more college professors like her. I certainly never had a college professor who could have made Jon Stewart double over laughing. No one can fake the passion Warren brings to her beliefs and her policies. Though there are other Democrats on the March 6 primary ballot, Warren is considered the winner already, and she has the war chest to prove it. She raised most of her $6 million campaign fund in just three months. Brown has $12.8 million in his coffers, but it is a gap Warren should be able to close easily.

Though Massachusetts is considered a Democratic state, the majority of Massachusetts voters are registered independents, something that Brown hopes will work to his favor if he stresses his “independent streak” But in the end, Brown is not running on his record, which is more Republican than independent, but is running against his own party.

Related articles

• In Mass. Senate race, GOP’s Brown embracing Obama (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Scott Brown Embraces Obama (huffingtonpost.com)
• Massachusetts Republicans launch blatantly dishonest video attacking Elizabeth Warren (dailykos.com)
• Washington Is Rigged – by Elizabeth Warren (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• In Op-Ed, Elizabeth Warren Hits Scott Brown and Mitt Romney For Opposing The Buffet Rule (thinkprogress.org)
• Elizabeth Warren shows how elections are won (americablog.com)
• Elizabeth Warren Is No Longer Just A Candidate, She’s A Cause And She’ll Be Almost Impossible To Beat (businessinsider.com)

Mitt Romney

“FoxSpeak” is that peculiar manner in which conservatives managed to twist a liberal’s statements 180° to mean something that was not said, just so the statement can be vilified. Though Repubican presidential nominee candidate Mitt Romney may suffer from too many incidents of letting his mouth get in the way of his political brain, yesterday he proved that he has mastered the art of “FoxSpeak.”

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta laid out for the press on a trip to Brussels the very thing so many have been calling for for the past ten years – an exit strategy for Afghanistan. While campaigning, President Obama had promised us not just an exit strategy, but an exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. When he took up occupancy of the Oval Office, the facts prevented him keeping that promised immediately. We are now out of Iraq, and Panetta told Congress that the administration “hopes” it will be able to withdraw our combat troops from Afghanistan during 2013, and leave a small contingent to continue training the Afghans. The whole exit strategy depends on two things – the situation on the ground and the decisions of the Afghan government, which is very clearly determined to create its own internal peace and get the American troops out quickly.

The key word in Panetta’s presentation was “hope”

Romney used a visit to a Las Vegas factory to criticize Secretary Panetta. He told the factory workers, “The president’s mistakes, some of them are calculated on a philosophy that’s hard to understand, and sometimes, you scratch your head and say, ‘How can he be so misguided and so naive?’ Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. The secretary of defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re goint to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan. He announced that. He announced that. So, the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with a tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense. His naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom. He is wrong. We need new leadership in Washington.” Romney has said that any decision he makes in Afghanistan would be based on the advice of the generals on the ground.

It was perfect “FoxSpeak” – create words that were never said so the administration can be called weak, incapable of defending our country, incompetent, naive. In the thrall of some foreign philosophy. “FoxSpeak” requires their audience to ignore facts like the deaths of Osama bin Laden and most of the top ranks of al Qaida. It requires ignoring the successful end of the war in Iraq. It ignores the way in which the United States is standing toe-to-toe with Iran waiting for them to blink. Like every other criticism of the administration, Romney’s rebuke is dependent upon having listeners who are programmed to believe the worst of any Democrat, Progressive or liberal.

Secreatary Panetta did not say anything new on that flight to Brussels. The 2013-14 timeline has been discussed for a couple of years already. Romney’s remarks can be interpreted as both his own ability to deny the true words of those in the administration and as an indication that the right wing media has managed for two years to never disclose to their viewers and listeners that this timeline existed.

Related articles

• Romney: Panetta’s Withdrawal Announcement ‘Misguided’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Pentagon pushes to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible (rt.com)
• Romney: Afghan troop announcement “naive” (cbsnews.com)
• Plan for early end to US combat role catches Afghan officials by surprise (csmonitor.com)
• Mitt Romney hauls out the weak-on-defense canard over Afghanistan withdrawal plans (dailykos.com)

Newt Gingrich by Gage Skidmore

By his own staff’s admission, if Newt Gingrich had won the Florida primary he would not be questioning the allocation of delegates. But he didn’t win, so he’s pulled out the rule book and is demanding that Florida follow it.

The state’s Republican Party decided that Florida is a winner-take-all-the-delegates primary state. But last year, the Republican National Committee decided that any state that wanted to play jump-the-gun with their primary date, specifically, holding the primary before February 1, would have to allocate their delegates according to the percentage of votes won. That was in addition to forfeiting half their state’s “elected” delegates to the national convention. (States have a certain number of delegates who are elected officials and party leaders, and the “elected” delegates from the primary process.) Florida awarded all fifty delegates to Mitt Romney.

Going into the Florida primary, Gingrich had 27 delegates, Paul 10, Romney 16 and Santorum 7. Romney’s win in Florida brought him up to 66 delegates. But if the delegates are pro rated, Gingrich would have 43, Paul 13, Romney 39 and Santorum 13. There would be one delegate left over from Florida unless the RNC has some provision for half-delegates. The pro rating of Florida’s delegates would turn the primaries upside down again, with Gingrich regaining the lead. Shifting 27 delegates isn’t a big thing, with 1,144 delegates needed to take the nomination, but it would be a huge psychological boost for Gingrich’s campaign and improve his fundraising.

Related articles

• Gingrich to Challenge Florida Results? (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Gingrich May Challenge Florida Delegate Count (tampa.cbslocal.com)
• Gingrich Wants Florida to Change Allocation of GOP Delegates – Wall Street Journal (blog) (blogs.wsj.com)

Mitt Romney

With 56% of the votes counted, Mitt Romney has been declared the winner in Florida at 48% of votes. Newt Gingrich came in second with 31% and Rick Santorum has 13%, Ron Paul 7%. The percentages are not expected to shift by much. Florida is a winner-take-all primary, so the numbers for the other candidates don’t really matter. Romney has taken all 50 Florida delegates.

At the moment, Romney has 70 delegates for the nomination and Gingrich has 23. Santorum has 11 and Paul 6. The magic number is 1,144 delegates of the 2,286 who will be at the convention in August. Saying that anyone has wrapped up the nomination with only 70 delegates is really stretching it. He has 1,074 to go. Gingrich has vowed to continue the fight all the way to the convention.

Next up are the Nevada and Maine caucuses which begin Saturday, February 4. Nevada’s is a single day and Maine’s runs until the 11^th. In the middle of that are the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses on February 7, next Tuesday, and the completely irrelevant Missouri primary which awards no delegates and just sets the stage for the caucuses there in March. It is in the caucuses that Ron Paul is a real threat to the balance, which is why he has concentrated on campaigning in Maine instead of Florida.

Let’s start with the most un-secret Super PAC in this election cycle – Steven Colbert’s “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” The FEC disclosure is anti-climatic for Colbert’s donors. He has run the names of his donors on a ticker during his show. Most were under the disclosure requirement of $200. Among those who topped that number were California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome, and actors Bradley Whitford of The West Wing and Laura Sangiacomo of Hot In Cleveland. Colbert has raised a total of $1.2 million in small donations, all for the purpose of teaching Americans what Super PACs are and how they function. He has spent a small portion of the money on a few select ads and his “Colbert for President of South Carolina” campaign that suggested people who supported him should vote for Herman Cain in the primary there last week. Colbert has not announced any plans for the rest of the money.

Colbert’s Super PAC is an educational tool, the others are tools of manipulation and power.

As Colbert has shown us, Super PACs are not supposed to “co-ordinate” their activities with candidates. At least not directly. What Super PACs do, and do well, is buy advertising time for attack ads. Over 90% of the ads in Florida were Super PAC attack ads. The “don’t co-ordinate” rule allows the candidates to disavow the most heinous of these ads, while benefitting from them.

The Plain bus

A few of the Super PACs filed early, so we already know that the Jon Hunstman-”leaning” Our Destiny group raised $2.7 million in the last quarter of 2011, $1.9 million from Huntsman’s father. Sarah Palin’s isn’t doing too well. SarahPAC only raised $752,000 in the second half of 2011, almost a million short of the $1.7 million it raised in the first half. Guess her donors finally figured out she isn’t running. Or maybe the magical mystery history bus tour finally showed people what an idiot she is. And Gingrich’s Winning Our Future group got $5 million each from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife. Adelson is #13 on the Forbes 400 top billionaires.

Among Romney Restore Our Future Super PAC donors are former Bain executive Edward Conrad ($1 million) and Marriot CEO J. W. Marriot, Jr. (half a million). Restore Our Future spend $14 million on attack ads in the first four primary/caucus states while Romney’s campaign has only spent $12 million.

In addition to advertising, the Super PACs have also paid for direct mailings, phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Not all donors will be disclosed. Super PACs can establish no-profit arms that shield donors and concentrate on issues ads…you know, the kind of scare-the-hell-out-of-voter ads that allege President Obama is coming for our guns ads. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads has a very strong non-profit side.

The FEC filings will also show how much money is being spent on the support structure of the Super PACs and campaigns, on payroll and travel and even wardrobe if they have a candidate or candidate family member with as little personal taste as the Palin family.

The Republicans and their Super PACs claim that the groups are necessary to open the campaigns to a free discussion of ideas and to counteract the money that is being made available to the President and the Democratic Party. All by itself, that says the most about the situation. The Republicans have to rely on millions of dollars donated by a few people while the Democrats are relying on a few dollars donated by millions of people (okay, there are also some big donors and the union PACs in there). The disclosures may give us a solid comparison of the 99% versus the 1%.

There will be some immediate release of names by the press, but it should be a couple of days before the full extent of the disclosure is made public and analyzed.

Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana

It is really discouraging to see how much press is being given to the “retirement” plans of Senators and Congressmen this year. Granted, this is a very important election and it is less about the presidency than about retaking the House and Senate. But, seriously, gushing in any direction about retirements in a census-dictated redistricting year is ludicrous.

Senators, obviously run statewide and are not impacted by redistricting. They are, however, impacted by shifts in demographics and the realities of their own lives. After they pass seventy, retirement is a constant possibility. It all depends on how much of a workaholic the Senator is and how their previous elections have gone. Bernie Sanders is 70, but most Vermonters suspect that he would die if he retired. Besides, he won his Senate seat by a 2 to 1 margin. Pat Leahy is 71 and we thought he might retire two years ago, but with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, Pat is in that rarified air of senior statesman.

It is Congressmen who are most hurt by redistricting. Even states that don’t lose or gain Congressional seats are redistricting to reflect population movement and a change in control of the states’ legislatures. Dan Burton of Indiana is the latest Congressman to say he is retiring, and his campaign two years ago was a vicious one. He has also been redistricted. This would have been his 16^th term of office. At 73 and after 30 years in the House, with an undisclosed health problem in his family, Burton has decided to pack it in.

On the Republican side, seven Congressmen are retiring and seven others are running for higher office. That removes 14 Republican incumbents so far. On the Democratic side, eleven are retiring and eight are running for higher office. The Dems are down 19 incumbents so far.

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Tom Brokaw by David Shankbone

We know that Republicans have a habit of using songs without permission. The “cease and desist” list includes Michele Bachmann and Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” John McCain and John Mellencamp’s “Our Country,” George W. Bush and Sting’s “Brand New Day,” Bob Dole and a parody version of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” George H. W. Bush and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and Bruce Springsteen blasting Ronald Reagan for using “Born In The U.S.A.” It seems their campaigns didn’t understand copyright law. But the Romney campaign has really crossed a line, even if technically what they have done is legal.

They have used footage from NBC News’ 1997 Nightly News report on the ethics committee reprimand of Speaker Newt Gingrich. The ad is running in Florida and is entitled “History Lesson.”

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw is not amused. In a statement released by NBC, Brokaw said that he is “extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.” Republicans wouldn’t know about that aspect of journalistic ethics, since they have Sean Hannity and others out on the campaign trail for them.

NBC’s vice president of media law, David N. Sternlicht wrote to Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, telling him that the footage was used without permission and “inaccurately suggests that NBC News and Mr. Brokaw have consented to the use of this material and agree with the political position espoused by the videos. Aside from the obvious copyright issues, this use of Mr. Brokaw and the NBC News name exploits him and the journalistic credibility of NBC News…As a news organization, NBC News objects to any use of NBC News journalists and our copyrighted material that suggests to the public that we or our journalists are taking sides with any individual or organization involved in a political campaign or dispute, and we request that your organization respect that concern.”

Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign said they are not likely to stop the ad. “We just received the letter. We are reviewing it, but we believe it falls without ‘fair use.’ We didn’t take the entire broadcast. We just took the first 30 seconds….We respect [Brokaw] as a newsman who has a lot of credibility, but we believe this falls within ‘fair use’ standards.” It really doesn’t matter whether it was 30 seconds or 30 minutes, the effect is still the same. It gives people the impression that Tom Brokaw approved of the use of his image in these ads. They “respect” him and so do a lot of other people. That’s why they used his broadcast. It had more impact that having someone else remind people of Gingrich’s ethics problems.

This is not the first time NBC has made this request of a political campaign. They are very jealous of their integrity and image and have disciplined employees who make contributions to political campaigns. Brokaw gave up the anchor desk to Brian Williams in 2004 after 21 years. He has remained as a special correspondent and has been somewhat more visible on the MSNBC/NBC networks lately commenting on the election.

The issue is ethics and integrity, not the legal definition of “fair use” and we already know how little the Republicans hold those two things in esteem.

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• NBC asks Mitt to remove Brokaw ad (politico.com)
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• New Romney Ad Angers News Agency (miami.cbslocal.com)
• Why Is NBC Complaining When Romney Runs a Truthful Ad? (my.firedoglake.com)

Jon Voight

I’m never sure which is worse, being endorsed by Chuck Norris or by Jon Voight, but one would think with all the complaining Republicans do about “Libturd” Hollywood connections to the Democrats, they would avoid Hollywood endorsements themselves.

No surprise, Norris endorsed Newt Gingrich this time. Last time, he endorsed Mick Huckabee. And the winner of Jon Voight’s endorsement is…..Mitt Romney. Voight endorsed Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and is friends with Huckabee. Obviously, politics is another one of those things Voight doesn’t share with his daughter, Angelina Jolie, who had the whole Republican media going nuts when she and Brad Pitt quietly visited the White House last week.

And speaking of Jolie….

Romney was telling the audience that he wasn’t sure how to “chit chat with a famous actor” when he called Voight to ask for his endorsement. Excuse me? He actually sought out this man’s endorsement? Anyway, they got to talking about their kids, and, Romney says, “I started talking about my five boys. I said, you know, it’s easier to raise boys than girls. Well, after a long pause, he says ‘Tell me about it.’” Huge laugh from audience. If Romney had told that joke in front of an audience who knows that Voight was an almost totally absentee father, it might have fallen flat on its face. “Famous actor”? Yeah, thirty years ago he was famous for his acting, now he’s just famous for being such a total jerk towards his kids that they both dropped his name.  Legally.  Permanently.  

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Joshua S. Cosden, Jr., 1966

Romney was stumping with Voight, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and Sen. John McCain. The foursome was apparently trying to do the “White Collar Comedy Tour,” with everyone laying down their share of jokes. McCain looked at the rest of the quartet and quipped, “I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s fifth husband. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know how to make it interesting.” Fifth? Why are we picking on Joshua S. Cosden, Jr.? Whatever did that Oklahoma oil man do to deserve this attention?

And keeping the spirit of this story….do you know the difference between a philandering, deadbeat-dad Republican and a philandering, deadbeat-dad Democrat?  The Democrat never claims to be a “family values” candidate.   Never said it would be funny. 

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• At Romney Rally, Actor Assails Obama’s Path to ‘Socialism’ (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
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Now, we get down to the important primaries and caucuses, where the entire delegation is at stake.

February 4: Nevada caucuses

February 4 through 11: Maine caucuses

February 7: Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and Missouri primary (non-binding for GOP)

February 28: Arizona and Michigan primaries

March 3: Washington caucuses

March 6 (Super Tuesday): Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota caucuses; Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia primaries

March 6 through 10: Wyoming caucuses

March 10: Kansas and Virgin Islands caucuses

March 13: Alabama and Mississippi primary, Hawaii caucuses

March 17: Missouri GOP caucuses

March 20: Illinois primary

March 24: Louisiana primary

Seven weeks, thirteen caucuses, fourteen primaries, thousands of Excedrin and antacids. If we are incredibly lucky or very blessed, the GOP will settle this clusterfudge on March 6 and we will not have to go all the way to the August convention before they stop the Mitt-Newt-Rick-Ron roadshow.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann, by Charlie Riedel for the Associated Press

Former Republican President Candidate Representative Michele Bachmann has announced that she will seek re-election to her seat from the 6^th District of Minnesota. She made the announcement during an interview with the Associated Press and said “I’m looking forward to coming back and bringing a strong, powerful voice to Washington, D.C.”

Representing her constituents hasn’t been her top priority for a long time, but if the 2010 election was any indication, her constituents don’t care.

In the Yahoo News comment streams, one of her constituents explained the problem. His name is Kevin and he lives in St. Joseph, Minnesota. He explained that her district is extremely gerrymandered to avoid any metropolitan areas. Most of her constituents are older and they vote on two issues – gay rights and abortion. She also, in spite of her big talk, pulled in loads of pork for her district for local businesses, construction projects, etc. Kevin predicts that the only way to dislodge her is through voter attrition – when the old folks die, the younger voters will not re-elect her.

However, the state is being redistricted because of the 2010 census. One plan would throw her district in with the one represented by Betty McCollum, a six-term Democrat who represents the St. Paul area. The redistricting panel is expected to issue their proposed map next month.

The single greatest mistake made by the writers of our constitution and those who have amended it was not adequately defining the manner in which Congressional districts would be drawn.

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Jake Burris, campaign manager of Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden, had been out for an evening with his four children. When they arrived home, the first child to reach the front porch found a horrific sight. The family’s mix-breed Siamese cat was lying on the porch, it’s head bashed in so severely its eye was hanging out of the socket. Painted on the side of the cat, in magic marker, was the word “Liberal.”

I debated whether or not I would include the photo of the cat with this story, and then decided I want this thing to go viral. I want our readers to tweet this and facebook this and e-mail this across the net. I want every liberal and progressive to know what the right wing is capable of and I want every conservative to see what their hate speech causes. And I want every one who can to e-mail this picture to their Congresspersons and Senators and flood the e-mail accounts of right wing radio hosts and Fox News personalities with this.

Every serial killer in history started out by hurting animals. What do we need – government employees and campaign staff found hanging from trees? We have already had campaign headquarters vandalized and burned. What’s next? We had a Federal office building bombed and 168 men, women and children crushed to death by a right wing fanatic during the last Democratic administration. Do we need to have another one before the right realizes this is what they have wrought upon our nation?

I think I’m going to go hug my cross-eyed, anti-social, precious, rescued cat and give thanks to God that I live in Vermont.

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Walker poster by teamsternation

It’s just a small note on a re-tweeted blog. “Wisconsin lost 3,900 private-sector jobs in December.” It sent me searching for the full news story.

In July, the Walker administration bragged that “half of the net jobs added in the US in June came from Wisconsin.” Walker himself, said of that report “We have made difficult decisions in our state, but they are beginning to pay off. The national jobs figures remind us that we cannot rest after one month of good news; while there will be ups and downs along the way, we must help lead the nation to recovery.” Yep, Wisconsin added 9,500 jobs in June, 2011, while the nation created 18,000. It was the biggest one-month job gain in Wisconsin since September, 2003. And then, the first of July, Walker’s budget took effect.

In July, August, September, October, November and December, Wisconsin lost private sector jobs. Though the state’s unemployment rate has dropped to 7.1%, from the 7.5% high when Walker took office. That is probably explained by the people who have stopped looking for jobs, not by an increase in jobs. Individual city unemployment rates will not be released until next week. The unemployment rate and the jobs numbers are based on separate surveys.

Surveys? No wonder we don’t know what we’re really doing. To repeat: in Europe, the national governments take the adult population, deduct the number of people who absolutely cannot work (and that does not include most disabilities), deducts the number of people who have had withholding taxes filed for them and that’s the unemployment rate. It is that simple. Adult population minus absolutely disabled minus people with jobs equals unemployment rate. We do it with surveys to avoid the facts, to sweeten the numbers. They are lies. Our unemployment rate is really much higher than the numbers show.

For Scott Walker, who rode to the State House on a promise of jobs, jobs, jobs, and who is still claiming that he’s creating jobs, jobs, jobs, the news about the lost jobs is bad news. Really bad news since the recall effort filed over a million signatures to kick his sorry butt out of office. Six solid months of job losses and a falling unemployment rate reeks of manipulated numbers. It says to ordinary Wisconsinites that they cannot trust the Walker administration to tell them the truth about anything. It screams “You lie!” more than anything else could. And the people of Wisconsin have heard the scream.

It doesn’t really matter how much money Walker raised in New York City this past weekend to fund the ads to keep himself in office. Well, it does matter that he went to New York City to get the money, because that just reinforces the view that he is bought and paid for by the super-rich. But, the ads will not help against the reports coming out of his own government. That is the beauty of a free press. It’s free. Walker’s opponents don’t have to pay for these reports. They are on many street corners, calling out ot Wisconsinites from newspaper vending machines. They are all over the television and internet news sites. It’s all free. No need to pay for ads. Walker’s policies have cost the state tens of thousands of jobs in the past six months.

Now, will someone please, please, pretty please, come forward to run against him? What is the point of a recall election without a candidate? Come on. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett only lost to Walker by 5% of the vote in 2010. Surely, he could easily win this time.

By the way, it seems that Walker was stunned by the success of the recall effort. Now, that’s what’s called being oblivious to the obvious.

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Newt and Callista Gingrich

Older Congressional wives and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin have one major thing in common. They all think Newt Gingrich was one of the worst things to happen to Congress. Oh, not for the obvious reasons, but because he started the trend of Congressmen leaving their families back at home and becoming Congressional “bachelors.” It’s the underlying explanation for what happened to Marianne Gingrich.

When Gingrich became Speaker in 1995, he told the in-coming Republicans that it would be a very good idea if they did not move their families to Washington, as Congressmen had been doing for God knows how long, but lived alone to concentrate on their work. The idea had another benefit, though not for the real estate market in suburban Washington. Congressmen would not have to buy or rent a house near Washington for their families. It was very rare for a Congressman to arrive in Washington alone. Vermont’s James Jeffords was one of the few. When he was elected to Congress in 1974, his wife and children chose to remain in Vermont. He tried to live in his office, but was evicted. It was against Congressional rules at that time. So, he moved into an RV.

Those older Congressional wive and Ms. Goodwin have discussed the fact that having families in Washington made the relationships among Congressmen and Senators more congenial. It’s hard to be hardline the morning after a neighborly barbeque. Gingrich changed all that. By removing the presence of families, he set members of Congress up not just to concentrate on their jobs, but he freed them to spend their spare time raising money, having affairs and contracting prostitutes. He also laid the groundwork for the biggest rip off of the American taxpayer ever directly perpetrated by Congressmen – living in their offices rent-free.

Okay, it doesn’t sound like much when a live-in Congressman says that it saves him $16,000 a year in rent (multiply it by the estimated 45 and you get $720,000). But that’s just the smallest part of what is involved. There are four huge Congressional office buildings. Because they are being lived in, they must have their electricity, heat and air conditioning available 24/7. They must have more security because they are being lived in. The Congressmen have installed refrigerators and small kitchen appliances in their offices and storage cages and we pay for the power to run them. They have access to their office equipment – telephones, computers and cable televisions 24/7. They get nice discounts on meals in the Congressional cafeteria, too. That $16,000 a year rental estimate is poppycock. What they have is a furnished apartment with gym privileges, full utilities, maid service, security, telephone, cable and internet. They also save on the price of transportation to work and renter’s insurance. A full-service apartment, single occupancy, without the telephone-cable-internet hook-ups and discount meals, in walking distance to the Capital runs over $20,000 a year, the add-ons would run them another $4,000 to $5,000 a year. Nice deal, isn’t it?  They could, if they chose to have roommates, bring their costs down to around $12,000 a year for comparable accomodations — and it would be tax deductible from their $174,000 a year salary.

That’s Newt Gingrich’s unspoken legacy. He will tell you how he balanced the budget, that wasn’t balanced until after he left office. He will tell you how he created jobs, when he was just one of 535 Congressmen and Senators. He will not tell you how he is responsible for the American taxpayer shelling out over a million dollars a year so 40 to 50 Congressmen can live in their offices, or how he set us up to pay for almost weekly trips to their home districts for those Congressmen.

And he will not tell you that his “leave the family at home” idea led to David Vitter and the prostitutes, Mike Lee and the internet posting, John Ensign and a score of other adulterers and sexual predators, and, of course, the infamous Callista. The one he’s not responsible for is Anthony Weiner, who actually has a home in Washington.

Marianne Gingrich’s interview revelations do leave one question. How many other Congressmen since 1995 have also asked their wives for “open marriages,” or was Newt the only honest adulterer in the pack?

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Rick Perry, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons (and thank you, Donkey)

Rick Perry finally saw the handwriting on the wall, instead of listening to the voices he hears as he jogs…he has dropped out of the Republican Party race for the nomination. In his withdrawal speech, he endorsed Newt Gingrich. Republicans are now left with perpetual candidate Mitt Romney, perpetually petulant Newt Gingrich, perpetually deconstructional Ron Paul and the man who would be Pope, Rick Santorum.

Perry was polling at the same number as undecideds in South Carolina, just 6%. He had started losing donors after his “Oops” moment in the debate, and they just kept dropping out as it became apparent that he was not ready for a national campaign, or much of anything else outside of Texas.

A long time ago, Molly Ivins wrote that the governor of Texas is less important and has less influence than the state agriculture secretary and lieutenant governor. There may have been another official in there, but those are the two I remember. Perhaps that explains Rick Perry. The governor of Texas doesn’t even have the power to commute a sentence or grant a pardon or a stay of execution, one of the most basic powers of governors in the other 49. The Texas legislature meets for 180 days every other year. That leaves the Texas governor with no legislature to deal with for the other 550 days of a two-year arc. One would have thought that the first fact would make Perry understand that chief executives do no rule alone, while the second would have explained his belief that they do.

The analysts and pundits and the donors who have bailed claim that it was Perry’s lack of debate performance that sank his campaign. I sincerely hope not. I hope his campaign failed because the American voter is not as stupid as the analysts and pundits think we are. We heard a candidate repeatedly claim that as President he would act on his own, issuing policy and law by himself without bothering with the Congress or the Constitution. I hope voters realized that Rick Perry was a dangerously un-American man who probably does believe in Texas seceding from the union. Without that pesky American constitution, he would be able to be what he obviously wants to be – a dictator-in-chief.

Rick Santorum, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

Rick Santorum’s political rallies tend to turn into lectures. He is very big on explaining in depth the historic or research basis for his positions. It is already well documented that he chooses his research studies to match his prejudices, as in his choice of the infamous “Marriage in Scandinavia” study to prove the impact of same-sex marriage on straight marriage. The study used data from before same-sex marriage was instituted in a country that isn’t part of Scandinavia.

But if you really want to see how off-base Santorum can get, try this statement about the French Revolution: “There were no God-given rights because there was no God. What happened? Tyranny and the guillotine.” No God in France? Okay, would someone please remind this man that he’s a Catholic.

First of all, one of the things that the French Revolution was revolting against was the same thing that the British had revolted against in 1649 – the idea that the divine rights of Kings were greater than the rights of free men. God was very much a part of the dynamics of the French Revolution. For centuries, the French monarchs’ prime ministers had been Catholic bishops and cardinals like the famous Richelieu. The monarchy and the church were wrapped up so tightly that they were braided into a single entity. The church literally told the poor that they would get their rewards in heaven, so they must endure the deprivations of earthly life. It still does in third world countries.

What happened in France after the Revolution was the lack of something to replace the bureaucratic structure of the deposed government. People settled scores, they killed for power, they destroyed anything that was in any way associated with a hated government. It was anarchy wrapped in an attempted dictatorship. God had nothing to do with it, one way or the other.

The greatest lie in America is that we had a “revolution.” We freed ourselves from imperial rule, an necessity caused by the Empire’s refusal to allow us representation in the parliament of the nation we considered ourselves part of. As free Englishmen, we resented being treated like Irishmen. The full phrase is “No taxation without representation.” We were originally negotiating for representation, not liberation from England. As for the “revolution” part…we damn near recreated the government system of England. We actually offered a crown to George Washington. Even as president, we surrounded him with an aura of monarchy. We chose our Senators from among the closest thing we had to an aristocracy – the landed gentry. What we did, in writing the Constitution, was an EVOLUTION, not a REVOLUTION. We evolved the British government into its next logical step.

And we completely rejected the idea that God decides the affairs of man. Our founders were not Christians, as the word is used today. They were Anglicans and Puritans and Presbyterians and Calvinists and a dozen other sects and divisions within Christianity. And they had political agendas. For over 200 years, Europe had been at war, a war between Catholicism and Protestantism and skirmishes between the sects of Protestantism. The King James Bible is called “King James” and not “St. James” because it was written under the direction of King James I of England in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the warring factions of Protestantism in his kingdom. Our founders knew all this. The taxes they were protesting were levied to pay for the colonies’ portion of a war, we call it the French and Indian War, that was started in Europe over whether a Protestant or a Catholic would inherit the throne of a country.

What Rick Santorum wants is a Catholic country, the kind of country my grandmother fled, where the church determines secular law. It is one-half of a Christian version of Sharia or Talmudic law. It is in many ways more restrictive than evangelical Protestantism in that it bans divorce and birth control. And he has the gall to wrap his argument in false history.

And then, there’s the rest of the Santorum story….

One of his favorite rhetorical questions at rallies is “How many 62-year-olds do you know who can’t work? Do you know how many people take benefits early?” He then answers his own question with “Seventy percent.”

That position makes one wish his coal-mining grandfather were still alive. His position is very upper-class. People who do manual labor, and that includes working in retail and the medical field, wear themselves out physically at much earlier ages than those who sit at a desk all day and can afford gym memberships and healthy diets. Maybe Mr. Santorum should ask a few coal miners how many 60-year-olds there are in the mines.

Santorum’s position also ignores company policies that gently but legally push people out if they get too much seniority or they could be replaced by two entry-level workers for less money. When 62-year-olds have had their hours cut to 10 a week, they do the only thing they can do – apply for early Social Security. When they can’t find jobs, they apply for early Social Security. Santorum will run this lie as long as no one challenges him. He conveniently ignores the fact that taking Social Security at 62 means life-time benefits at half what they would get if they waited until 66 and someone has to be pretty desperate to accept that.

Santorum delivers his lectures with a demeanor that exudes knowledge without arrogance. That is why people are not challenging his statements. He appears to be a heavy thinker. Anyone can do that if they dazzle a less-educated audience with a glut of quotes and citations. Ann Coulter’s made a career out of it.

But what Santorum’s supporters pulled in Texas at the conference to try to unify the Christian right behind one candidate (and stop dividing the vote) is damaging Santorum’s image. The first vote resulted in none of the candidates getting a clear majority. All but two of the candidates were eliminated, and only Santorum and Gingrich were voted on in the second round, which resulted in Santorum getting 70 votes and Gingrich getting 49. The Gingrich supporters did not know there would be a third round of voting, and many left the event. The third round gave Santorum enough of a majority to “earn” the endorsement.

Nice try, guys. All it accomplished was getting the vote denounced as “rigged” and demands for a new conference.

The Christian right needs to acknowledge something that they want very much to ignore. Though there are issues that the very religious may agree on, like same-sex marriage and abortion, there are many things they do not agree on and very deep levels of distrust among the various Christian faiths. It’s one of the funniest things about right-wing Catholic commentators Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Years ago, Malkin did a newspaper column praising Christian radio, only proving she never listens to it after dark. There are several shows on so-called Christian radio that are vehemently anti-Catholic. O’Reilly and Hannity wrap themselves up in the Christian right positions, also ignorant of how much anti-Catholic sentiment there is among the very people they are catering to. Everyone is trying to step lightly around Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. Just ask anyone in southeastern Georgia about Mormon electibility. There is a state senate district down there that elected an incumbent who had been caught on a sheriff’s dashcam drunk as a skunk, doing his “do you know who I am” routine between racist rants at the African-American deputy. His opponent was a Mormon and this senator used that Mormon faith in his re-election campaign.

Trying to unite the entire conservative social agenda part of the American electorate behind one candidate is a useless exercise. If you put this issue to the actual values voters – “which candidate’s religion do you trust?” – you would come up with Rick Perry leading the pack. He’s the one who represents the religious beliefs of the greatest number of social conservatives. Ron Paul has separated himself from most of the religious debate, Santorum and Gingrich are Catholics and Romney’s a Mormon. But this election isn’t about social conservative issues or the ability of the right to use a backdoor to impose a state religion. It’s about the economy, stupid. All the social issues are just diversions intended as they always are in the Republican party to gather votes to support the economic policies that will most benefit those who are least religious among us – the super-rich and corporations.

Related articles

• SC Religious Leaders- Santorum Supporters Stuffed Ballots, Rigged Vote (lezgetreal.com)
• Maggie Gallagher Endorses Rick Santorum (towleroad.com)
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• Dirty Tricks in Santorum Vote (thedailybeast.com)
• Rick Santorum wants to be God’s chosen one in South Carolina – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
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Attorney Jeremy Levinson and Democratic Party Chair Mike Tate announcing recall signatures.

They only needed a bit over half a million. They wanted three-quarters of a million to be safe in case of challenges. Today, the recall organizers in Wisconsin turned in one million petition signatures to force a recall election of Governor Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

Walker, by the way, was not in Wisconsin today. He was fundraising in New York City. New York City? Just who would he be collecting funds from if he’s in New York City?

Congratulations to all who worked on this effort. Well done. Now, on to the election.

So, who’s running against him?

There are not enough “Hispanic rising stars” in the Republican Party to offset hundreds of thousands of postings on internet comment streams about how all Hispanics are illegals, the Obama administration let the illegals vote in 2008 (totally forgetting that Obama was in no position to do that), that Hispanics are all welfare queens and tax cheats and drug smugglers and rapists and murderers. According to Republican Party supporters and avowed conservatives, Hispanics represent a threat to everything America stands for, will irreparably damage our nation’s character and will turn our country into a communist state like Venezuela. Hispanics are coming into America and signing up for welfare and getting Social Security and every other entitlement possible, meaning they are responsible for the budget deficits in dozens of states. They also take jobs away from hard-working Americans and want to turn America into a Spanish speaking nation. The proof of that is all that product packaging in English and Spanish. They are accused of getting their slutty women across the border just to drop babies so they can claim instant citizenship. And Obama has done nothing to stop the flood of illegals because he wants them to vote for him this year.

Nice batch of distortions, misrepresentations and lies. When you add in the statements made by Republican candidates, from John McCain calling for completion of the border fence to Herman Cain suggesting it should be electrified, you get a distinct impression among Hispanics that they are not welcome here, even if their families were here long before Anglos crossed the Mississippi.

The first big mistake the party is making is thinking that Marco Rubio is of any use to them outside of South Florida. Rubio is Cuban. There are two Spanish-speaking immigrant groups who are disliked (to put it mildly) by Mexicans, Latin and South Americans – Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and not subject to any immigration control and Cubans are “political refugees,” a designation denied to victims of the genocidal regimes of Augusto Pinochet, Raphael Trujillo and a half-dozen other Latin leaders who were “allies” of America. If they can touch land, they not only get to stay, but they have, in the past, been given all sorts of assistance to do so. They are victims in the minds of most Americans, so they are not put through the same kind of discrimination that other Latinos face, even though they have completely changed the nature of South Florida. Worse, Rubio lied about his parents’ immigration. They were not fleeing the atrocities of Castro. They immigrated before the revolution and freely went back to Cuba and then returned to the United States after the revolution. After 60 years, after the giant practical joke of the Mariel boat lift, after the reforms being instituted in Cuba, after the way Cuba has been damaged by the loss of the Soviet Union as its sponsor, it is much harder to play the Cuban-refugee card. It’s not just other immigrants from other Spanish-speaking nations that resent the Cubans.

The biggest inroad that the Republican Party made with Hispanics was ironically with the new immigrants on social issues. It is the new immigrants who are most likely to be converted to evangelical churches and support those very conservative social issues and candidates, because American Catholicism is too “liberal” for them. But that equation only works with those first generation Hispanics. It does not work with the younger Hispanics whose families have been here for two or more generations. They are Americans, and prone to be just as diverse in their views as every other American.

That’s the whole point. When a Hispanic voter gets on-line and reads a post from some Ron Paul or Rick Santorum supporter that says “I won’t shop at Walmart because it’s full of illegals,” and that Hispanic’s family arrived in North America two ships behind Cortez and in Texas before Davy Crockett was born, the resentment level is huge. Too much of the Republican Party follows the line that this is a white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian nation. They are totally ignorant of the fact that there were French and Spanish colonies here before Jamestown. They convince themselves that St. Augustine doesn’t count because Florida wasn’t one of the 13Colonies. The Republican Party’s famous “Southern strategy” has tied them to the one part of the nation that has little or no history of immigration, that has no idea how diverse this nation truly is.

It is not so much the candidates who are the problem, it is the people who support them, and no amount of Hispanic outreach will change that.

Related articles

• Harsh Immigration Tone Pushing Hispanics From GOP (huffingtonpost.com)
• Rubio’s Problems With Facts (lezgetreal.com)
• Mitt Moves To Fix ‘Damage’ With Hispanic Voters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Can Florida Latinos Alter 2012 Elections? (abcnews.go.com)
• Harsh immigration tone pushing Hispanics from GOP (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Gretchen Sierra-Zorita: A Republican Primer on Latino Voters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Latino vote crucial for Republican rivals in Fla. (boston.com)
• Hispanic Stars Of The GOP (huffingtonpost.com)
• Rubio faces Hispanic critics (politico.com)

Governor Romney's Official Portrait

Mitt Romney did that “gold-plated foot in mouth” routine again on Wednesday. When asked about income inequality in America on the Today show, Romney opined, “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare….I believe in a merit nation, an opportunity nation where people by virtue of their education, their hard work and risk taking and their dreams – maybe a little luck – could achieve great things.”

Excuse me? This out of a man who had everything handed to him – a great Ivy League education, companies he could buy himself into, taking risks with everyone else’s jobs and lives – telling us we are suffering from some kind of gilt-penis envy? Seriously?

We didn’t elect Bill Clinton because we wanted some kind of socialist government or because he’s irresistibly charming. We elected him because he knew the price of a gallon of milk and a pound of ground beef. We elected him because Papa Bush didn’t know what a grocery store scanner was and Mama Bush laughed over her mother-in-law’s piano getting sucked out to sea after a nor’easter hit Kennebunkport, just after watching the devastation to ordinary citizens’ lives caused by California wildfires.

All the garbage about where Barack Obama was born and his stepfather in Indonesia was a diversion to make people forget that his life story parallels Bill Clinton’s in many ways – divorced parents, single mother, bad stepfather, moved around from pillar to post. Obama doesn’t talk about it as much as Clinton did, and that may be the mistake he makes. He could also ladle on the problems of being bi-racial, but he has chosen not to. Barack and Michelle Obama have barely touched on the journeys they took from the middle class and lower middle class to law degrees and college professorships. They only briefly talked about making mortgage payments and college loan payments while trying to raise a family. They make it look too easy. They are the merit couple, not the Romneys, and that fact is buried under the right wing propaganda about them. Affirmative action does not guarantee an idiot a place in Harvard. It just guarantees that the best black candidates have an equal shot at getting in to Harvard. It doesn’t guarantee grades good enough to be the editor of the Harvard Law Review. It just guarantees that a person will not be rejected by Harvard because of the color of his skin or the ethnicity of his parents.

Mitt Romney has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money for the past six years in his pursuit of the Presidency. He wants to be President the same way Kim Kardashian wanted to be married before she turned 30. The getting is more important than the being.

And while Romney was passing out the millions to get elected, millions of Americans were digging deep into their pockets and pulling out a five or ten dollar bill with the lint and donating it to hold free clinics that saved the lives of hundreds of people who have no health insurance. One man donated all his overtime pay to a small shellfish company in Louisiana so the employees who were losing their jobs because of the oil spill could have just enough money to get through for a short while. People donated money for the owners of a house that burned down while firefighters watched because the homeowner had forgotten to pay the extra fee for fire protection in his town. Ordinary people donated money for transplants when the Arizona legislature cut off funds for life-saving transplants for people who are on Medicaid because their medical conditions keep them from working.

What has Mitt Romney done for anyone other than himself for the past six years? Well, if he’s a good Mormon, he’s donated 10% of his income to the Church. That’s “income” not “wealth,” and the very rich have ways to limit their income without impacting their wealth. Maybe that’s why he won’t release his tax returns…he doesn’t want us to see his version of doing a “Leona Helsmley” to the IRS.

Watching the political pundits in the past week going insane over South Carolina has been fun. It is supposed to be a Tea Party-values voter state, but their Tea Party governor, Nikki Haley, has endorsed Romney. They are supposed to be dedicated conservatives, but Ron Paul has a strong following. They are supposed to be all kinds of things in South Carolina, but the polls have been all over the place and the people being interviewed are not giving the answers everyone expects. Christian values voters are saying they are more concerned with the economy than abortion. Small business owners are talking about Christian values. The only thing they are being consistent about is their hatred for the Obamas. Fox News and right wing radio are really big in South Carolina, and you can hear the right wing media talking points out of everyone’s mouths.

The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney will be the eventual Republican candidate. That is why the powers behind the Republican Party want the other candidates to ratchet back any talk about Bain Capital. But it is not so much Bain Capital that is Romney’s weak point…it’s what he has spent out of his own fortune to be elected President. Mitt Romney is more than just the living, breathing epitome of the mentality of the 1%. He is the man who wants to buy the Presidency, who believes that his parentage, wealth and position entitles him to add the White House to his roster of homes. Mitt Romney is Bush 3.0.

Related articles

• Barack Obama’s strategists find rich pickings as feuding Republicans attack Mitt Romney (guardian.co.uk)
• Newt Gingrich: I Didn’t Admit Attacking Mitt Romney On Bain Capital Was A Mistake (huffingtonpost.com)
• Santorum: Mitt Romney Is Like ‘Your Boss’ (thinkprogress.org)
• WATCH: DNC Attack Ad Slams Bain Capital (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mitt Romney’s Biggest Donors? Bain Capital (newser.com)
• What does the South Carolina town where Bain cut jobs think of Mitt Romney’s jobs record? (dailykos.com)
• VIDEO: Mitt Romney Vs. The GOP – Bain Capital Edition (thinkprogress.org)

Rep. Ron Paul

The Virginia primary is March 6. Federal law requires that absentee ballots be mailed 45 days before the election. Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich all failed to garner the 10,000 signatures needed to be on the Virginia primary ballot. They filed suit to change Virginia’s rules for qualification.

On Friday, U. S. District Judge John A, Gibney, Jr, ruled in favor of the state. Virginia’s Board of Elections told the judge that they could not possibly reprint all the ballots and get them mailed out in just one week to meet the legal requirement for absentee ballots.

So, only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will be on the Virginia primary ballot.

Mitt Romney

Related articles

• Virginia Ballot Lawsuit: GOP Candidates Likely To Prevail On Issue, Judge Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mitt Romney wins Virginia primary… (dailykos.com)
• Judge rules against Perry’s Va. suit (politico.com)

Rick Santorum, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

Remember the story about Rick Santorum’s Italian grandfather, left Italy in 1925 because the fascists were repressing liberties, became a Pennsylvania coal miner? Santorum couches the whole story in the most “America the Beautiful” terms, replete with escaping totalitarianism and living the American dream. Hang on to that story.

A few years ago, my cousin and I (he’s on my mother’s side) were swapping the deep, dark secrets of our fathers’ families. I had recently acquired a copy of a book written by my paternal grandfather and discovered that Granddad was a Bolshevik. Turns out Jon’s paternal grandfather was a card-carrying Communist. For my grandfather, it was a decision driven by frustration with an oligarchic structure in the Caribbean that was run by inherited position and nouveau riche money. For Jon’s grandfather is was much simpler. Jon’s father’s family is Jewish. The communists were the only people standing up to the Nazi regime in Germany. Our fathers had been devout believers in the Cold War. My Dad was an Eisenhower man through and through. The whole irony of it was ROTFLMAO funny. Neither of us looked at these choices, made back in the 1930s without understanding the historical context of them. We understood that there were greater issues involved than those of today.

It seems that Rick Santorum doesn’t appreciate the humor in having communist relatives, and can’t put the situation in context, so he kind of glosses over an important bit of his family history…the Santorums of Italy are communists and have been since the 1920s. Everyone knows the Martin Niemöller poem about not speaking out, but few remember that it begins with the words “First they came for the communists…” That’s what the Fascists did, both in Italy and Germany. First they came for the communists.

The Italian weekly magazine Oggi, tracked down Santorum’s Italian relatives in the village of Riva del Garda in northern Iraly. Santorum did an internship in Florence in 1985 and met his relatives then. He returned in 1985 and 1989. According to his cousin’s widow, Maria Malacarne Santorum, “He loved our culture and cuisine so much, he brought his wife-to-be, Karen, a massive cookbook of Italian recipes.”

But Signora Santorum doesn’t understand how Rick could have strayed so far from the family political path to hold positions so contrary to theirs. Grandfather Pietro was a “red communist” and, in Signora Santorum’s words, “was a liberal man and he understood right away what was happening in Italy. He was anti-fascist to the extreme and the political climate in 1925 was stifling, so he left for America. After a few years, he returned to Italy with his wife and children, including Aldo, Rick’s father, who passed away late last year. It’s a same he won’t have the job to see his son’s success in his bid for the White House.” She just does not think his ultraconservative ideas are good. “To take a stand against homosexuality or to oppose divorce is harmful. Principles count, but in politics, one must have the capacity to be open-minded.”

Another relative, who preferred to be anonymous, remembered the times when the Santorum household in Riva del Garda was a meeting place for high-ranking members of the communist party. “There are Santorums who would roll over in their graves to hear his [Rick’s] rhetoric. The rest of the family might be willing to forgive him his sins if Santorum wins the White House and would “send the American presidential airplane and take all the Santorums to the White House,” said cousin Bruno.

Rick Santorum’s campaign focuses on his ultra-conservative social agenda – no contraception, no abortion, no gay marriage, no gay rights, no divorce, male parents mandatory – but along he line, he must embrace the Republican fiscal agenda and trickle-down, business-driven, 1% owned economics.

Benito Mussolini invented the political system known as fascism. He wrote, “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” The right wing media has worked very hard to convince their faithful, gullible followers that fascism, socialism and communism are the same thing ever since the heads of energy companies sat down with Dick Cheney to write the Bush administration’s energy policies. They don’t want people to understand the differences between the economic policies of socialism and the totalitarianism of fascism and communism. They don’t want the word “fascism” attached to their corporate-driven, corporate-funded party. They don’t want people to look behind the curtain at the Tea Party Express and find that the source of the money to start the Tea Party movement was a Koch Brothers foundation. The don’t want people to understand what Karl Rove means when he talks about a “permanent majority” – one party rule, totalitarianism. According to Benito Mussolini himself, the Republican Party is fascist.  An eighty-something German immigrant from Occupy Seattle came to the same conclusion, as did my dear friend Barbara, an English WWII survivor.

So, the next time Santorum tells his wonderful immigration story about his grandfather running away from the fascists, try not to rupture something laughing.

Related articles

• A brilliant young historian follows the odyssey of Mussolini’s body in an original exploration of the history and legacy of Italian Fascism. (oldsaltbooks.wordpress.com)
• Rick Santorum Compares ‘Social Welfare Programs’ Like Medicaid To Fascism In Iowa Speech (thinkprogress.org)
• Rick Santorum’s Big Coal Buddies (bfreenews.com)
• Santorum’s Communist Clan (thedailybeast.com)
• Santorum’s ‘Freedom’ is Pretty Much Slavery (crooksandliars.com)
• Rick Santorum’s perverted view of America (conservativenewager.wordpress.com)
• Italy’s fascists stay true to Mussolini’s ideology (dokmz.wordpress.com)
• Mirko Tremaglia: Fiercely nationalist Italian politician (independent.co.uk)
• MONEY BOMB by William J Murray for Rick Santorum for President – GING-PAC (allenwestrepublic.wordpress.com)

Willard "Mitt" Romney

No surprise here. Mitt Romney has been declared the winner in New Hampshire with 37% of the vote. Ron Paul is coming in second with 24% and Jon Huntsman is third at 18%. Newt Gingrich is trailing at 10%, Rick Santorum took 9% and Rick Perry just 1%. Maybe this time, Perry will realize he should get out of this race.

As a reminder, Romney and Santorum tied at 25% in Iowa, with only 8 votes separating them, and Paul was just 2% behind them. Huntsman and Santorum can easily swing primary third places between them, with Huntsman taking the more socially moderate states and Santorum taking the more socially conservative ones. But the race now would appear to be between Romney and Paul.

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu tonight provided a preview of the general election rhetoric. According to Sununu, President Obama collapsed the economy and has done nothing to save jobs. Sununu says that the President will run by attacking Romney and not on his record. All the President has to do is run on the facts, which are the exact opposite of the Republican talking points.

Next up are South Carolina on January 21 and Florida on January 31.

Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, Dixville Notch's polling place

At 11:30 p.m., the nine registered voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, gathered in the Balsam Grand Resort Hotel for coffee, cookies and doughnuts in advance of casting their ballots in the first primary election.  There are 2 registered Democrats in Dixville Notch, 3 registered Republicans and 4 undeclared, who could vote in either primary.  They voted at midnight, and at 12:04, a.m., the votes had been counted

And the results: Republicans: 2 Jon Huntsman, 2 Mitt Romney, 1 Newt Gingrich, 1 Ron Paul, Democrats: 3 Barack Obama

The important thing here is Dixville Notch just blew its reputation.  They consistently pick the eventual nominee, but with a tie, they may or may not have just annointed the nominee with a caveat.  At least they kept their record on the Democrats’ side.

Meanwhile, further south, in Hart’s Location there are 30 registered voters. This town gets far less press coverage, so there are no information on how many registered voters for each party.  It is also not being covered tonight.  Everyone had a reporter in Dixville Notch, but it is now 12:30 and we do not have results from Hart’s Location.   Sorry, folks.  I really, really need to get to bed.

Hart's Location Town Hall, polling place, 12:20 a.m.

Judge J. Mac Davis (left) administering oath of office to Daniel Vrakas, 2007

With complete disdain for state law, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin filed suit to force the state Government Accountability Board to have human beings check every single one of the over half-million signatures on the recall petitions being collected against him.

Judge J. Mac Davis of Waukesha County was a Republican state senator over 20 years ago. Toward the end of the Bush administration, he was nominated for a Federal judgeship, but the nomination was held up by the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. He very carefully crafted his ruling so that it would not be appealed at the Federal level, leaving it completely within the realm of the state’s laws for recall petition. To make their case, the Republicans managed to dredge up a recall petition from last year that contained the signature “Bugs Bunny.” It was on a Republican petition to recall a Democratic state senator. The GAB does verify the petitions, but according to the rules, if a person being recalled wants to check every single signature, they have to pay for it.

The GAB director, Kevin Kennedy, said that buying a computer program that could scan and verify the signatures would cost the state $94,000. Otherwise, it’s going to take up hours of state employees’ time at taxpayers’ expense.

The recall committee will not back down. If Walker hoped to anger the voters in Wisconsin by forcing this to be paid for by the taxpayer, he has miscalculated. With Walker’s budget cutting $1 billion out of local government funds, pushing this cost onto the state was a mistake. The people of Wisconsin know that he could have paid for the verification with all the money he has had donated for SuperPAC ads. When one is known for personally taking calls from the Koch brothers, costing the state unnecessary money is a dumb move.

Related articles

• Scott Walker Wants To Waste Wisconsin’s Money On Himself (lezgetreal.com)
• Wisconsin’s Recall Law Bent By Walker Supporter (lezgetreal.com)
• United Wisconsin Closing In On Recall Signatures (lezgetreal.com)
• The Gifts Keep Coming In Wisconsin (lezgetreal.com)
• Scott Walker Recall Effort Could Add Up (huffingtonpost.com)
• Scott Walker’s Price Tag (huffingtonpost.com)
• Scott Walker Recall Campaign Gets Ugly As Allegations Fly (huffingtonpost.com)

Saint Anselm College, site of the Lesser Known Candidate Forums

We all know how few people managed to get on the Virginia Republican primary ballot, but how about the number who made the cut for New Hampshire? Think it comes down to President Obama and the six Stooges? Think again.

Vermont’s WCAX-TV’s news director emeritus, Marselis Parsons, gave us those of us who are not C-SPAN addicts the heads-up on this last night, in a trailer for his special report during Monday’s evening news show. Marselis was with WCAX for so long, no one can remember when he wasn’t, until he retired. Now, he files stories that interest him. Once a reporter, always a reporter.

The reason New Hampshire has such a large field is because if you have $1,000 and are a registered party member, you can just sign up. It’s that simple…no signatures to collect, no poll threshold to meet, just pay the money and sign an affidavit. New Hampshire is a semi-open primary. If one is a registered party member, one cannot vote in the other party’s primary, but if one is an independent (40% of us nationally say we are) one can choose which party’s primary one will vote in. In a closed primary, independents cannot vote. In a full-open primary, one can cross party lines.

C-SPAN has been showing the “Lesser-Known Candidates Forums” for these people, who never make the list for the major debates.

There are fourteen candidates on the Democratic Primary Ballot. The candidates are listed alphabetically in a way. The first three candidates are “T” and “W”, then it switches to “C” and goes alphabetically to “S” and you will not believe who is at the top – Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry. Yup, that Randall Terry – the homophobic, anti-choice, take-no-prisoners Randall Terry. The rest of the group consists of Aldous C. Tyler, the “pagan” candidate from Madison Wisconsin; John Wolfe, Jr., the self-described “very progressive” of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Ed Cowan of Moretown, Vermont; Bob Ely of Lake Forest, Illinois; Craig “Tax Freeze” Freis of Lake Elsinore, California; Bob Greene of Mountain View, California; John D. Haywood, who advocates nationalized health, of Durham, North Carolina; Robert B. Jordan, the “drill now, drill everywhere” candidate of Garden Grove, California; Cornelius Edward O’Connor of West Palm Beach, Florida; Edward T. O’Donnell, Jr. of Wilmington, Delaware; Darcy G. Richardson of Jacksonville, Florida; Vermin Supreme of Rockport, Massachusetts, who is a perennial runner as the satirical candidate, and, of course, President Obama. Most of the candidates are further to the left than the President and are running because, on their personal issue, he hasn’t lived up to what they wanted from him. The exception is Terry, who believes that President Obama will go down in history as one of our worst presidents. Between his positions and his opinion of the President, it’s hard to explain why Terry thinks he’s a Democrat.

Richardson and Supreme are men, so this is a skirt-free primary. My view is that serious female candidates aren’t going to waste time, money or political clout on a nowhere candidacy.

The Republican field is even more staggering. There are thirty candidates. Also, listed alphabetically, sort of. The list starts with “S”, then “V” and “W” before hitting Michele Bachmann and continuing alphabetically from there down to Rick Santorum. Yes, Bachmann is still on that ballot, as is Herman Cain. That means there are 22 other candidates, only three of whom are nationally recognized – Gary Johnson, Fred Karger and Buddy Roemer.

The nineteen unknowns are Joe Story of Jacksonville, Florida; Linden Swift of Plainfield, Indiana; James A. Verstermark of Taylor Mountain, Kentucky; Vern Wuensche of Houston, Texas; Bear Betzler of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Timothy Brewer of Dayton, Ohio; Mark Callahan of Eugene, Oregon; Hugh Cort of Birmingham, Alabama; Randy Crow of Kelly, North Carolina; L. John Davis, Jr. of Grand Junction, Colorado; Keith Drummond of Katy, Texas; Stewart J. Greenleaf of Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania; Christopher V. Hill of Prospect, Kentucky; Jeff Lawman of Derry, New Hampshire; Benjamin Linn of Milford, New Hampshire; Andy Martin of Chicago, Illinois, Michael J. Meehan of St. Louis, Missouri; Joe Robinson of Newton, Massachusetts; and Kevin Rubash of Wilmette, Illinois.

The most memorable of the pack is Dr. Cort. He believes that Iran will launch a nuclear attack on America in the new future and warns of an Iran-Venezuela-Mexico pipeline” that the Iranians will use to smuggle a few nukes into the country. Dr. Cort also believes that Iran is hoping to bring about the revelation of a messiah by nuking us. That part is really amusing, since in Islam, Christ is the Messiah and they believe that He will return, preceded by the arrival of the al-Mahdi, a variation on the Christian belief in the Second Coming. The rest of the group reflects the divisions within the Republican party. They range from Tea Partiers to fiscal conservatives who are social moderates.

Several of the other primaries will have equally full ballots. None of the marginal candidates, with the possible exception of Buddy Roemer, believes they have a real chance. They want to have their voices heard and their input in the party platform. There is always that remote possibility. Some states allocate their delegates to the convention, and if enough of these marginal candidates can have delegates assigned to them, they might have leverage at the party level, as in “include my issue in the platform and I’ll give you my delegates.”

Given the size of the field, Mitt Romney’s 38% poll number makes more sense. John Huntsman, who totally bypassed Iowa and concentrated on New Hampshire, is polling in the number two slot.

Related articles

• NEW HAMPSHIRE: Randall Terry Gets Glitter-Bombed By Performance Artist (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• Man With Boot On His Head Glitterbombs Anti-Gay Racist Randall Terry (queerty.com)
• Vermin Supreme: When I’m President everyone will get a free pony (dangerousminds.net)
• Republican Candidates Become New Hampshire Tourist Traps (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Most Boring New Hampshire Primary Ever (politicalwire.com)

Bob Kerrey

From 1983 to 1987, Bob Kerrey, Vietnam war veteran, businessman and all around charming fellow, was Governor of Nebraska. In 1988, he ran for the United States Senate and represented Nebraska for 12 years. In both cases, he left office on his own terms. He was not defeated in an election.

For the past ten years, Kerrey and his family have been living in New York, where he was president of The New School, a New York City university that is best known for its performing arts and that little television show Inside the Actors Studio. He left that post in 2010. Now, he is back in Nebraska, talking with friends and colleagues about returning for a run to replace retiring Ben Nelson in the Senate. Kerrey has promised that he will make a decision quickly, which he needs to do to establish legal residency in a timely manner.

The assumption has been that Nelson’s seat would go to a Republican, but the Republican field for the position is divided along the party’s fracture lines and relatively weak. Kerrey, though he was way liberal by Nebraska standards, was relatively well-liked during both his tenures in office. He’s a known factor with very open record. Even bringing up his romantic history would be old news in Nebraska. While governor, he dated actress Debra Winger, who he said “swept me off my feet.” The joke was, Kerrey lost a leg in Vietnam.

At the moment, this is all speculation. But, you can count on Nebraska’s and national Democrats to try to persuade Kerrey to take on the challenge. It would give the party a fighting chance to retain a needed seat.

Related articles

• Kerrey ponders run for Nebraska US Senate seat (sfgate.com)
• Bob Kerrey Considering Run For Nelson’s Nebraska Seat (alan.com)
• Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson announces retirement (cbsnews.com)

Joseph Patrick Kennedy III

When Barney Frank announced his impending retirement, the first thing Democrats said was “Oh, no, say it ain’t so!” The second thing Massachusetts Democrats said was ”Bring us a Kennedy!” Well, the Kennedy has stepped forward.

Joseph P. Kennedy III, son of environmental activist Joseph P. Kennedy II (he’s not a junior) and grandson of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, has resigned his post in the Middlesex District Attorney General’s office to run for Barney’s re-structured district. The 31-year old has served in the Peace Corps and worked as a prosecutor on Cape Cod before joining the Middlesex District Attorney’s office in September.

In his statement Thursday, Kennedy said “I am announcing today my intention to explore a candidacy for the United States Congress in the Fourth District of Massachusetts. My decision to look seriously at elected office is grounded in a deep commitment to public service and my experience – both my own and that of my family in finding just, practical, and bi-partisan solutions to difficult challenges….it is a commitment instilled in me at a young age and one that inspired me to join the Peace Corps after college and to become a prosecutor after law school.”

He also criticized the situation in Washington, saying “fairness, the foundation of American’s social compact, seems to be in short supply these days. We wage war, pass skewed tax breaks, and expand benefits by spendthrift borrowing, saddling the next generation of Americans with unsustainable debt. Then, when it comes time for restoring fiscal sanity to our budget, we see the middle class and the poor take the hit while the weatlthy get more tax breaks. The lack of common sense and fairness in Washington is a byproduct of the partisan gridlock that has turned obstruction into victory. Americans are better than that. Each and every day, we work with people of different backgrounds and political views to achieve a common purpose. Washington can and should do the same.”

The census-driven redistricting in Massachusetts shifted the boundaries of Barney Frank’s district. He felt that he was too old to start learning thousands of new people and their problems. The district is even more Democratic than it was with the previous boundaries. It would be a very difficult district for a Democrat to lose.  In fact, the only way to do it would be the way Martha Coakley lost to Scott Brown, by not taking the election seriously and making people believe he wants the job.

Related articles

• Joseph P. Kennedy III Eyes Barney Frank’s Congressional Seat (inquisitr.com)
• Joseph Kennedy III Considers Bid for Frank Seat (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Joseph P Kennedy III aims to resurrect famous political dynasty (telegraph.co.uk)
• Joseph Kennedy III likely to run for Barney Frank’s seat in Congress (guardian.co.uk)
• Joseph Kennedy III Exploring Run For Congress (boston.cbslocal.com)
• Analysis: Candidacy seems assured (boston.com)
• Joseph P. Kennedy III to launch exploratory committee; Kennedy family scion … – Boston.com (boston.com)

Top: Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman. Bottom: Paul, Perry, Romney, Santorum. By Donkey Hotey

The pollsters were correct. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were almost tied. Jon Huntsman, who did not campaign in Iowa to any great extent, came in last among named candidates. A total of 122,166 Republicans participated in over 90 caucuses around the state, about 30,000 fewer than the organizers had hoped for.

The results are as follows:

Mitt Romney, 30,015 votes, 24.6% – Rick Santorum, 30,007 votes, 24.5% – Ron Paul, 26,219 votes 21.4% – Newt Gingrich, 16,251 votes 13.3% – Rick Perry, 12,604 votes 10.3% – Michele Bachmann, 6,073 votes 5% – Jon Huntsman, 745 votes 0.6% – Herman Cain, 58 votes, 0% – Buddy Roemer, 31 votes 0% – No Preference, 135 votes 0.1% – Other, 117 votes 0.1%.

Roemer, by Donkey Hotey

Michele Bachmann has said she is still in the race in spite of her low vote tally. Huntsman expects to do better in more moderate states, where Santorum will garner fewer votes. Iowa is considered a strong values-voter state, which is the explanation for Santorum’s rise to the tie position with Romney.

Next up is the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday, January 10; then South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, January 21 and finally for this month, Florida’s primary on Tuesday, January 31.

Tim Carpenter, Progressive Democrats of America

President William Jefferson Clinton fulfilled 73% of his campaign promises in the first two years of his eight-year term. He had a Democratic Congress and Senate. Then, Newt Gingrich and his “Contract On America” won the House. It was downhill all the way for Clinton after that. (Just for the record, not one of the things in the “Contract On America” ever made it into law.)

The last president we had before Clinton who got that much out of Congress was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson had been in the House for so long and knew so many secrets about members and others (including J. Edgar’s secret wardrobe) that he could literally blackmail his way into the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and every other great achievement of his term. He also shamelessly took advantage of our national trauma in the first months after the Kennedy assassination to get a lot of stuff done.

When Barack Obama took office he had a Democratic majority in the House. But in the Senate, there were not enough Democrats to end a filibuster and during the last year of the Bush administration, when the Democrats had the majority in the House, the Republicans in the Senate had discovered the power of the filibuster.  All any of them had to say was “I object” and a bill was sent to legislative limbo, never to be seen again. 

During his campaign, Obama made a lot of promises. He promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He promised to close Gitmo. He promised real health care reform and a single-payer plan. He promised new regulations for the financial industry. He promised jobs and economic growth. He promised help for those facing foreclosure. He promised us almost every progressive wet dream we have ever had. And he delivered none of them.

Now, progressives are threatening to punish him for his failures. In Iowa, the group Progressive Democrats of America is organizing people to vote “uncommitted” in the Iowa Democratic caucuses. Tim Carpenter, founder of the group, said “I believe we need an inside outside strategy. We’re not asking everybody in this room to vote for Barack Obama. We’re not voting for Barack Obama. We’re organizing uncommitted slates to go the caucuses on Tuesday to challenge Barack Obama because he gave up on his promise to single payer. He took too long to get troops out of Iraq. There’s still troops in Afghanistan. And we need a financial transaction tax.”

There are days when I really despair of ever finding an educated voter in this nation. This is one of them.

There is no single payer plan or public option because if the Democrats had not given that one up there would be no health care law at all. There are no new regulations on the financial industry because if the Democrats hadn’t given up some provisions there would be no law at all and the Republicans are refusing to finance what was passed. What will it take to get it through progressives’ heads that this is not a dictatorship? The President should not enact laws without Congress. This President is not George W. Bush. He will not, absolutely will not, issue executive orders that violate the division of authority in our Constitution. He absolutely will not exceed his Constitutional powers. That’s one of the reasons we elected him in the first place. To put an end to the de facto dictatorship of the Republican party.

The Progressives can get all stupid and pull a Tea Party revolt on the President or they can learn the meaning of the word FILIBUSTER. It means that the Republicans in the Senate killed almost 300 bills and appointments. We have half a dozen unfilled ambassadorships, a crisis in the Federal judiciary because of unfilled judgeships, openings in the middle management of almost every cabinet department because they will not allow hearings for the approval of appointments. The Republicans blocked important bills and dumb little “pickle week” bills. The Republican filibuster is singularly responsible for the past three years producing the least amount of legislation in our nation’s history.

This is not Obama’s fault. And if the Progressives really want to get all the things that Candidate Obama promised us four years ago, they will do the things that will get results, not screw up the process by dividing the vote.

We need to regain the majority in the House. That means keeping every Democratic seat and taking an additional 25. Thirty would be better. Fifty to sixty would be ideal. We need a strong majority in the House. There are currently 193 Democrats, and 218 is the majority threshold. The Republicans have 242. We would be best served with 250.

We need to control the Senate. No more Conservative Democrats fouling up the works by voting with the Republicans. We technically have 51 Democrats, 2 Independents and 47 Republicans in the Senate. The Democrats can count on one Independent (hell would go sub-zero before Bernie Sanders voted with the Reps.) We need 60 strong Democrats in the Senate to end the tyranny of the filibuster. Ben Nelson is already leaving, so there’s one DINO out the door. If we can’t get rid of the rest of them, we have to compensate. There are only 33 Senate seats up for election next year. We need to take as many as possible.

We need strong candidates for the House and Senate and we need a unified Democratic Party prepared to get down and dirty in this campaign. We need to shout the facts from the rooftops and put down the lies whenever they occur. We have the momentum of the Occupy movement and the frustrations of the 99% if we just tap into it instead of getting divided over something that the President had no control over.

Remember how Kennedy told us to “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”? Well, this is that moment…that time when you really can do something for your country, yourselves, your children and grandchildren. You can come together as a force for change, for the change we hoped for four years ago. You can fight for the power to put this country on the right path to recovery and growth. It will not happen if the Progressive wing of the Democrats divide the base and pull votes away from the candidate we need.

The Progressives need to get over themselves, stop pouting in a corner over what could not be done in the first four years and give the Democrats the power to save our country.

Related articles

• Progressives mount a Challenge to Obama In Iowa (theleagueofaggressiveprogressives.wordpress.com)
• David Coates: Time to Choose, America! (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Schoen/Caddell Calls For Hillary 2012 Are Getting Progressively Dumber (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why Obama’s Second Term Will Be the Best (538refugees.wordpress.com)
• Republicans Block Obama Appellate Court Nominee (abcnews.go.com)
• Speaking of Predictions, Speculation and Resolutions . . . (skydancingblog.com)
• Obama: The Consummate Politician And Very Charming Man (lezgetreal.com)
• Progressive Democrats to Challenge President Barack “Wall Street Drone” Obama in Democratic Caucas in Iowa (johnhively.wordpress.com)

From Donkey Hotey. Top: Bachmann, Cain (suspended), Gingrich, Huntsman; bottom: Paul, Perry, Romney, Santorum.

The weather will be fairly mild by Iowa standards tomorrow. High in the mid-30s, low in the mid-20s. Most of the state will have clear skies. So turnout for the caucuses should be fairly good.

A good turnout in the Iowa Republican caucuses would be around 150,000 Republicans. The state has a population of just over 3 million. Almost 24% of the population is under 18. That leaves approximately 2,450,000 adults in the state. A whole 6% of Iowa’s adult population will participate in the Republican caucuses.

The media is going bananas over 150,000 Republicans putting hand written paper ballots into boxes in little meetings held in everything from living rooms to church halls to hotel conference rooms.

We go through this every four years. Iowa fights for the right to be the first “primary” in the country. But it’s not a primary election with every eligible adult able to cast a vote. It’s a small, select group of people who have to be physically present tomorrow afternoon or evening to be part of this farce. It is irrelevant.

On Wednesday, we’ll tell you the results. Then, we can get around to reporting the real story – the primaries in states that have real primaries.

Did you know that in England, politicians cannot campaign until the Prime Minister adjourns Parliament for an election? Then, they have six weeks. If the PM announces that he is adjourning Parliament at the end of a four-week recess, then they get ten weeks. That’s it. The votes are tallied before midnight in most districts. If there is a clear winner, one party takes a majority of the seats in Parliament, the old PM says good-bye to the Queen at 11 a.m the day after the election and the new one pays his respects at noon. Now, I don’t really want a parliamentary system. I prefer the balance of power our Constitution gives us between the three branches, but that whole ten weeks max with an instant change of administrations sounds really attractive right now.

In other words, I have no intentions of getting hysterical over who is doing what in Iowa for the next 48 hours. The Republicans have seven months of this ahead of them – polls up, polls down, stupid stuff being said, stupid stuff being defended, every fart and wart in everyone’s background being exposed. Seven long months. We can all go stir-crazy trying to make sense of it or we can sit back as good Democrats and Progressives and watch the show. I opt for not going stir-crazy.

Related articles

• Iowa Caucuses Are As Distorted As A Funhouse Mirror (mykeystrokes.com)
• The overhyped, unrepresentative Iowa caucuses – CBS News (cbsnews.com)
• Iowa: Ready, Get Set, It’s Over! (thewesternexperience.com)
• VIDEO: Rep. Steve King weighs in on Iowa caucuses (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Gov. Scott Walker

17 days left to meet the requirement of 540,208 signatures to force the recall election of Governor Scott Walker, the recall activists have ended 2011 with 507,533 signatures already collected. To be safe, the organizers of the recall effort want 720,277 signatures. Since Walker has been whining about people who allegedly signed 80 petitions and the possibility that Mickey Mouse is a signer, the cushion is a really good idea.

Walker is trying to soften his image lately, telling the LaCross Tribune that it wasn’t what he did that infuriated people, but how he did it. He regrets his statements on a phone call with a man pretending to be billionaire David Koch, when he called his actions against collective bargaining “dropping a bomb.” He admits he should have done a better job of selling his ideas to the state, and never should have considered planting troublemakers among the protesters last winter. He did not, however, regret his unwarranted assault on collective bargaining, or his orders to the Capital police to physically bar citizens from entering the Capital or the illegal manner in which his collective bargaining-killing “budget repair”bill was passed. He just regrets not being able to obscure his motives or hide his true agenda. And naturally, he doesn’t regret trying to get the state to pick up the tab for checking every one of those 700,000 signatures because Mickey Mouse may have signed a petition. Nor does he regret cutting one billion dollars from local and county budgets, causing hundreds of state, county and municipal workers to lose their jobs, or having he state suffer job losses instead of creating all those jobs his budget austerity was supposed to create when he handed a billion dollar tax break to the rich.

Wisconsin has turned into the epicenter of the right wing’s war on unions. Only 11% of Americans belong to unions now, down from the over 40% unions membership in the 1950s. Most of those union workers a half-century ago were private sector, but now public sector workers who are the most unionized. The SEIU (Service Employees International Union) has only 2.1 million members, while over 10 million of us work in the service industries – retail, food service, and hospitality. The SEIU is supposed to be this super-scary, super-powerful union that can throw elections and provide unlimited funds to candidates, at least according to Glenn Beck and the rest of the right wing nuts. Unions did do many thing wrong in the past. Contracts that mandated a 17-year-old kid get paid $11 an hour to sweep a floor after school in a Pittsburgh steel mill in the mid-1960s was typical of the mistakes they made. But the unions just inflated the difference between wage scales in America and in third world countries. In the end, it was not union jobs that went to Central America, it was jobs from the Carolinas. The union jobs had already been taken from New England to those “right to work” states. The right wing has demonized unions, blaming them for our job losses. Now, they are being blamed for state budget deficits.

The math is too simple for right wingers to understand. Recession leads to fewer jobs, fewer jobs leads to less income and other taxes being collected, lower revenues lead to budget deficits. But admitting that would mean admitting that the super rich and the major corporations who have benefitted from the tax breaks aren’t returning the money to the communities in the way of either jobs or taxes. So, let’s just blame the few people left in America who have middle class incomes and steady jobs – our public sector.

Poor Scott Walker, he’ll never understand that it wasn’t the messaging that got those three-quarters of a million signatures, it was his actions. When those who languish at the bottom of the effluvial stream lash out at trickle-down economics, the guys at the top of the hill never understand it. That’s why they insanely keep doing it, over and over and over again.

Related articles

• With Over 500K Signatures Already Collected, Recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Appears Inevitable (thinkprogress.org)
• Scott Walker Wants To Waste Wisconsin’s Money On Himself (lezgetreal.com)
• United Wisconsin Closing In On Recall Signatures (lezgetreal.com)
• Al Sharpton Blasts Governor Scott Walker For ‘Bogus Claims’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• “Mickey Mouse” is free to petition for Scott Walker’s recall (hotair.com)

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli

Leave it to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli to find a way to help out the extreme right wing. He is planning to file emergency legislation to open up the Virginia primary ballot to everyone, without meeting any pesky old signature requirements. Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have qualified for the Virginia Republican primary. Newt Gingrich blamed a worker who committed petition fraud, and Rick Perry and the others aren’t blaming anyone in particular. They simply failed to collect the 10,000 signatures needed to be on the ballot.

Cucinelli told Fox News “I think you need to make it relatively easy to get on the ballot. That’s my biggest problem with Virginia right now, is that they have made it just incredibly hard for anyone to get on the ballot.” Yeah, you have to have an organization in the state and that organization has to collect 400 signatures in each of the state’s 11, plus an additional 5,600 signatures and all petition collectors must be state residents. Cucinelli went on, “You know most other states its about making it relatively simple, with some you know good standards in place…Again, that’s that state’s decision. And I may not agree with how they do it, but I’m a big tenth amendment fan and believe that the states have the sovereign right to make the decision for themselves.” Um, did that make any sense to you? Me neither.

In a statement, Cucinelli said “Recent event have underscored that our [system] is deficient. Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly.” He will proposed that the new law allows any candidate who has qualified for federal matching funds to be automatically on the primary ballot.

Now, can someone please explain to the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia that he does not have the power to introduce any law in his state? That power resides solely and exclusively with the members of the State Legislature.

Related articles

• Virginia Attorney General Intervenes in Primary Ballot Dispute (michellemalkin.com)
• Fox: Va. official jumps in ballot tiff (politico.com)
• Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman Off Virginia Primary Ballot (lezgetreal.com)
• Perry ballot petition rejected in Virginia (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• Perry Asks Court to Block Printing of Virginia Primary Ballots (businessweek.com)
• Lawsuit seeks to get Gingrich on Virginia’s primary ballot (cbsnews.com)

Robert Young and Lauren Chapin, "Father Knows Best", 1957

Back when we were actually taught civics, we learned that “conservative” and “liberal” were not political platforms, but positions relative to the status quo. A “radical” sought immediate and extensive change, a “liberal” sought more measured change, a “conservative” wanted to retain the status quo and a “reactionary” wanted to turn back the clock to a real or imagined utopian past. That those words have been misused and abused was rather amusingly shown when a “conservative” newspaper columnist was criticized about twenty years ago for referring to the communists in Russia as “conservatives.” He had almost used the term properly. The communists wanted to return Russia to communism, which had only a short time before been ended. The correct term would have been “reactionary.”

The people who call themselves “conservatives” in this country are not conservatives. They, and especially the Tea Partiers, are reactionaries. They want to restore a past that never really existed, a world that only pretended to be perfect, a fraud perpetuated by a media that hid the truth from most of us. My favorite example of the world they believe we lived in is the old television show Father Knows Best. The very WASP, very middle class family lived in a lovely colonial-type house on a lovely street in a lovely town. Mommy stayed home and took care of her family wearing dresses, heels and pearls. Daddy put on his suit, grabbed his briefcase and went off to sell insurance every day. Three perfect children never did anything really wrong, just briefly mistaken. The reality was Robert Young was an alcoholic, Jane Wyatt was a member of New York/New Jersey’s social elite whose ancestors made the Pilgrims look like slackers, Elinor Donahue has been married three times and never had a childhood, working from the time she was 16 months old, Billy Gray was a drug addict and Lauren Chapin was the victim of childhood sexual abuse. A reality, a hard set of realities, all hiding under the gloss of a perfect fictional world.

The Iowa caucuses are always an exercise in extreme reactionism. Conventional wisdom holds that the most “conservative” Republican candidate will win Iowa, and get a running headstart on the nomination. For that reason, in the past two weeks, the candidates have gotten increasingly extreme in their “positions” on abortion – pledging to pass laws that will kill women to prevent abortions. The conventional wisdom never includes the reality – that the person with those extreme “conservative” positions is the one least likely to get the nomination and would be least likely to defeat a Democratic candidate. The majority of Americans are moderate to progressive, as in a two-thirds majority of Americans not just half plus one. The majority of us don’t believe in that fairy tale of a perfect past America where everyone in their deed-restricted communities said “Merry Christmas”all year round. But, that’s the rest of the country, not Iowa.

Every four years, the majority of us look at Iowa and know that somewhere in that state are normal people with broad ranges of positions and views. We know that the caucuses are an anomaly, a distraction from real life in Iowa.

We only have one question about this quadrennial farce: Why does anyone care any more?

Related articles

• Iowa Social Conservative Leader Touts Gingrich, Trashes Romney (advocate.com)
• Rick Perry Fights Back In GOP Race Ahead Of Iowa Caucus 2012 (huffingtonpost.com)
• Santorum to Iowa diners: ‘We’ve got momentum’ (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• CNN Iowa poll: Romney 25, Paul 22, Santorum 16, Gingrich 14 (hotair.com)
• Mitt Romney In Iowa: ‘Why Don’t We Just Caucus Right Now?’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Despite Surge, Gingrich Faces Hurdles In Key Early State (huffingtonpost.com)

President Obama delivering weekly address, 2-28-09

Even though Hispanic-Americans are not comfortable with the increased efficiency of the Obama administration at preventing illegal entries and deporting illegal immigrants, he still holds a huge advantage with Hispanic voters over the Republican contenders.

A new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center showed the President leading Mitt Romney 68-23 and Rick Perry 69-23 (margin of error, 5.2%). Those numbers are surprising since the administration’s handling of illegals has earned it a 59-27 (m-o-e 3.6%) disapproval rating on that issue among Hispanics. More than one million illegal immigrants have been deported in the President’s three years in office, a record rate. The administration has said that it targets those who commit crimes other than illegal entry for deportation. The Hispanic community wants a major revision of immigration policy.

The President’s job approval rating has dropped 9% since last year, down to 54%, but his national approval rating is 49%, so he remains more popular among Hispanics than the general population. Gallup, on the other hand, showed a 60% approval rating for the President among Hispanics, while Romney and Perry are at 31%, the same percentage as John McCain in 2008 when the President took 67% of the Hispanic vote.

Republican strategists were trying to rise the approval rating for any Republican candidate to around 40% this year, assuming that anything lower would seriously tilt the vote in states with increased Hispanic populations like Texas, Colorado and Florida. A 40% approval rating would mimic George W. Bush’s among Hispanics in 2004. But there is more involved now than just the deportation issue. Every one of the Republican presidential hopefuls has taken positions that are easily interpreted by Hispanics as targeting them, like the border fence debate. The spread of “papers please” laws in Republican states has damaged the Republican brand among Hispanics. There’s an old saying “All politics is local.” We tend to think of people voting from the top of the ticket down, but when local issues impact deeply on a group of people, they can vote upwards. Votes against state legislators who voted for “papers please” laws and officials who supported those laws, can move up the ticket into votes for Congresspersons, Senators and the President.

Related articles

• POLL: Hispanic Voters Favor Obama Over Romney By Nearly 3:1 Margin (thinkprogress.org)
• Survey says Latino voters sticking with Obama, Democrats (cnn.com)
• Obama would trounce Romney, Perry among Latino voters, survey finds (csmonitor.com)
• Latino poll: Obama tops the GOP (politico.com)
• Latinos unhappy with President Obama’s deportation policy, poll finds – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
• Latinos Support Obama, Despite Deportation Policies (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)

Sen. Ben Nelson

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is retiring rather than running for a third term. Though there is a fair amount of hand-wringing over the loss of a Democratic seat in the Senate, the fact is that Nelson was more likely to vote with the Republicans than with his party. He was one of the “conservative” Democrats who were the bane of Harry Reid’s existence.

The immediate reaction is that Nelson’s seat will go to a Republican. I’m not making bets on anything this year. I truly believe that the 2012 election will be decided by the manner in which the Democratic Party conducts their campaigns. The one thing we can be certain of is the probability that there will be nasty primaries in the Republican Party, with Tea Party candidates throwing the whole process into turmoil, just as they did in 2010.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the Chairman of the Democratic Party. If you can think of any thing that the Democrats should be emphasizing during the coming campaign, e-mail her. Don’t wait around for the stupid party survey they mail out “what issues are important to you?” Get really specific. Rep. Steve Israel is the party’s Congressional election chair and Senator Patty Murray is the Senate election chair. Feel free to get on their butts as well. The party has not paid attention to the voters for the past couple of election cycles. We need to push them to concentrate on our Senate and Congressional races, and our local races as well. And we need people willing to run. If you have an outstanding local politician that you believe should be in Washington, go after him or her, please. We need strong candidates.

The Democrats are supposed to be our party – the party of all the people across a broad range of ideologies, moderate, liberal and progressive. We have voices, use them, raise them, be heard.

This may be our last chance to save ourselves and our country.

Related articles

• GOP poised to regain control of the Senate as Democrat Ben Nelson retires – Daily Mail (dailymail.co.uk)
• Democratic Senator Ben Nelson to retire in 2012 (shortformblog.tumblr.com)

"Not parents" Newt and Callista Gingrich

I have a dumb question. Does anyone on the right consider a vasectomy as unacceptable as artificial birth control for women? I’ve always had the impression that the anti-abortion, anti-sex-ed crowd hated the idea of a man not being able to spread his seed at will. So many of the most vocal and visible of that crowd are men, that it’s easy to think they are self-serving and self-protecting.

Newt has signed the “Personhood Pledge.” That one says that he will fight for a law or amendment that declares a “person” has full civil rights from the moment the sperm hits the egg. It would ban most forms of artificial contraception, condemn women to lives of being barefoot and pregnant, and condemn many women to death because they would not be able to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy. It has also been rejected in every state where it has been on the ballot.

Now, Newt signing this should not be a surprise. He will prostitute himself to anyone for a vote. He’s going to get writer’s cramp signing every half-assed pledge out there. And, as a Catholic convert, he is more likely to support the Vatican ban on birth control than a born Catholic. Because Newt got snipped before taking up with Callista, they don’t have to practice the Catholic rhythm method of birth control. That would be the only acceptable form under “Personhood” – no sex for two weeks in the middle of a woman’s cycle.

Of course, when one is a “68-year-old grandfather” and hasn’t been able to procreate for over a decade, there is always a possibility that he has forgotten the rigors of preventing unwanted pregnancies during a marriage. Maybe this is our evidence that he’s getting senile. Or maybe it’s nothing more than political prostitution.

Scott Walker by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

Halfway through the 60 days allowed to collect signatures for a recall election, United Wisconsin has 507,533 of the necessary6 540,208. The need 32,675 verifiable signatures to force a recall of Governor Scott Walker. They have averaged 18,126 signatures a day for the past 28 days.

Republican Party spokesman Ben Sparks says that voters who elected Walker won’t return the state to Democratic control. “We have no doubt the Democrats are rallying their left-wing base around their blatant power grab for the governor’s mansion.”  

The party filed suit on Thursday challenging the methods of the state board overseeing elections. The suit claims the board doesn’t do enough to verify the signatures on a recall petition. United Wisconsin said at the outset of the signature drive that they wanted a cushion of up to 180,000 extra signatures in case of signatures being invalidated. Democrats apparently believe the elections board does its job very well. The Government Accountability Board reviews the petitions to make sure there are enough of them and each signature has a Wisconsin address and is dated within the 60-day time frame. It is up to the Republicans to challenge individual signatures if they choose to. The suit claims that the process, which is set out in Wisconsin law, violates the U. S. Constitution’s equal protection clause because the voices of those who choose not to sign are overwhelmed by the voices of those who sign multiple times. Board director Kevin Kennedy said the rules have been in place since the late 1980s and “Since then, these rules have been used in every state and local recall petition effort against incumbents of both parties.” Ah, yes, the classic Republican blunder – when you don’t think you have a snowball’s chance in a blast furnace legally, prove that to voters by filing lawsuits to challenge the process. Meantime, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, younger brother of the infamous Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, said that the “public” is losing confidence in the GAB and Wisconsin needs a new structure to deal with recalls and ethics investigations, like the two partisan-appointee committees they used to have. Second classic Republican blunder – when you can’t win fair and square, cast aspersions on the ethics of those in charge of monitoring your ethics and really make the voters wonder about your ethics.

Walker has also been whining to whatever news outlet will listen that “the unions” have poured millions in out-of-state money into the effort to remove him from office. A Walker supported filed a purely bogus recall intention with the GAB before the real recall intention was filed, so that Walker could get donations from wealthy supporters at an out-of-state event. Walker has raised $5.1 million since July and spent $3.9 million to keep his job. The Democrats have – thanks to those subversive, deep-pocketed, out-of-state unions – raised $1.1 million and spent $540,000 in the same 5 months. Walker’s math is a little off, since he says he has more than $3 million cash in hand (about $1.8 million more than the math) and the Dems only have $560,000. Walker has been running campaign ads since the night before the recall process began, and Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brother’s personal PAC has been buying ads for Walker.

The petitioners are also collecting signatures to recall Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. They need the same 540,208 to do that, but have not said how many they have collected, other than they mirror Walker’s total.

The GAB plans to ask a court to extend the review period for the signatures from 31 to 60 days. The Republicans would only have 10 days to challenge the signatures, but Walker is planning to request an extension as well. The delays could push a recall election into May.

Democrats are also circulating petitions for the recall of four more incumbent Republican state senators. They managed to get recall elections of six Republicans last fall, but only won two seats. They were one seat short of being able to regain control of the Senate. At the very least, taking back the Senate would prevent the kind of juggernaut tactics that pushed through the anti-union measures last winter.

Wisconsin Democrats would like to see former U. S. Senator Russ Feingold run against Walker in the recall election, but he has said he is not interested in the job.

The desire to kick Walker out of office dates back to his budget. To address a $3.6 billion deficit, Walker shoved through an unnecessary law ending collective bargaining rights for public employees even after they had agreed to pay more for their benefits, got authorization to sell off state-owned power plants and cut $1 billion from county and municipal funding, outlawed county municipal governments raising local taxes and gave a $1 billion tax cut to the state’s wealthiest residents. His explanation for the tax cut was the standard trickle-down bull. He gave the cut, nothing has trickled down except the hardships of more layoffs and severe cut backs in local governments. Walker is in a downhill race with Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich for most unpopular governor in the nation.

Related articles

• Walker recall signatures surge (politico.com)
• Wis. group nears mark for forcing recall election (newsok.com)
• Scott Walker Opponents Reach Big Milestone In Recall Battle (huffingtonpost.com)
• Scott Walker recall special announcement livestream (dailykos.com)
• Gov. Walker sues to require the Government Accountability Board to check for fake/duplicate/illegible signatures on recall petitions. (althouse.blogspot.com)
• Wisconsin’s Recall Law Bent By Walker Supporter (lezgetreal.com)
• Will Walker be Scanned? (itrendmadison.wordpress.com)

Radio host/blogger Michael Savage

Michael Savage isn’t known for being polite, moderate, restrained or anything that resembles low-key. He’s out to out-Rush Rush on talk radio, be more controversial, more inflammatory. But, he’s absolutely dedicated to the Republican goal of “making Obama a one-term president,” so he has put his money behind Mitt Romney, sort of.

Savage wrote on his blog “While it’s true that Romney is not as strong a conservative as many would like him to be, the most pressing issue before America today is defeating Barack Obama. And that is something Newt Gingrich cannot do.” Savage’s laundry list of Newt’s flaws was followed with “he will come off badly compared to Obama and look like nothing more than what he is: a fat, old white man.” Though Savage was referring to how Newt will look on television compared to the President, there are a couple of other comparisons that don’t sit well. The President is not Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann. He doesn’t suffer from a lack of intelligence or facts. Though Newt’s strength is supposed to be his massive intellect, he is not smarter than the President. His more controversial ideas come straight from James Bond movies (EM pulse weapons? Really? – and a thank you to Steven Colbert for pointing this out) And he loses facts in his love of bombast.

And then there’s the First Lady comparison.

On a purely personal level, I have no problem with Callista. (Okay, the hair helmet sort of bothers me.)  She is a rarity in the world of mistresses – she got the guy in the end. Most mistresses don’t. I don’t like the fact that Newt kept his second wife on a leash for seven years and was not honest enough to ask for a divorce before he was leaving office in disgrace anyway, and I hate the hypocrisy of him conducting the witch hunt on Monica Lewinsky while doing his own intern, but that’s not Callista’s fault. The problem is we’re not French. We would not sit back and chuckle affectionately about a presidential cortege being followed by the wife, two sons, the mistress and her daughter, the way the French did when Mitterand was buried. Just how much are conservatives willing to swallow every bit of moral indignation they stood for during the Clinton administration to accept Callista as First Lady?

Yes, Michelle Obama gets a lot of hateful comments in the conservative media and blogosphere. Rush Limbaugh, who should never comment on what other people eat, loves to drag up a single incident years ago when Michelle ordered ribs at a restaurant. If Rush knew anything about healthy eating, he’d know that an occasional step outside the “healthy” range is not unhealthy, it’s a way to give into temptation without totally blowing your overall diet. It’s about balance. But that doesn’t stop Rush.

Rush is pretty much the polite one in the room where Michelle is concerned. At the bottom of the scum pond is a Yahoo commentator screen-named Dark Clown who advocated the gang rape of the Obama/Robinson women – all four of them.

But, on the world stage, which woman is more impressive, more acceptable across the spectrum of morals and mores, Michelle or Callista? Would Callista be any more accepted in a conservative society than Evita Peron was? Sure, the times have changed, except in a whole lot of countries outside “the West.”

Savage ended his all-caps rant with a challenge for Newt. He offered $1 million for Newt to “set his ego aside…take the money…and don’t run.” Savage said he will get specific about the offer in later blogs.

It might not be a bad idea. Newt gets $1.6 million for “historical consultations” and $60,000 a pop for speeches. The Presidential salary is a real step down in income. Unless Newt could line his investments up and steer lucrative contracts to those companies, the way Dick Cheney did with Halliburton, being President is not a great income move for Newt. The President makes less in a year than Newt’s credit line at Tiffany’s, and he’s sort of honor-bound to pay full taxes on it.

I’m hoping Newt doesn’t take the money. I like Barney Frank’s comment “I did not think I lived a good enough life to see Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee. He would be the best thing to happen to Democrats since Barry Goldwater … It’s still unlikely, but I have hopes.” Judging from the poll numbers this week, our chances are increasing all the time.

Related articles

• Conservative Radio Host Offers Newt Gingrich $1 Million To Drop Out (huffingtonpost.com)
• Newt Gingrich on LGBT Issues (lesbianlife.about.com)
• Radio Host Offers Gingrich $1 Million To Drop Out ‘For The Sake Of The Nation’ (businessinsider.com)

Mikhail Prokhorov

I really can’t wait to see what Jon Stewart, who grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, does with this story…..

Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets NBA team has announced he will seek the presidency of Russia in the March elections. Should he win, it would mark the first time a sitting president in any country had owned an American sports team. (George W. Bush was not the sole owner of the Texas Rangers, but was from 1989 to 1994 the Managing General Partner of the group that owned them. He held a minority share.)

The 46-year old Prokhorov is the third richest man in Russia and 39^th richest in the world, according to Fobes, with an estimated $18 billion in assets. That puts him on par with Michael Bloomberg, and behind America’s top 9 – Gates, Buffet, Larry Ellison, two Kochs, and four Waltons.

Prokhorov has kept clear of Putin, avoiding the fate of many other Russian entrepreneurs, who have found themselves arrested, tried and imprisoned for any range of “crimes.” It’s a more subtle way of stealing a billionaire’s assets than the method favored by Hugo Chavez of just seizing them.

Things have been a little disorderly in Russia since the December 4 elections, when Putin’s United Russia party barely squeaked together a majority in the Duma. With widespread reports of fraud, Russia went from a few hundred protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg to tens of thousands in the streets of 60 cities in just a week. The protesters were chanting “Russia Without Putin!” Putin served as President from 2000 to 2007 and has acted as Prime Minister since 2008 for his protégé Dimitry Medvedev. They changed the constitution from 4 year presidential terms to 6 and Putin announced that he would run again in 2012.

Putin was originally hailed as a savior because Russia was in a state of chaos when he first took office. But his form of law and order has come too close to the totalitarianism of the communist era for many people’s liking.

Medvedev has promised an investigation into the “alleged” vote fraud, while Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov was confident that “If you take all the cases of these alleged violations or whatever was published online, the total will be less than 1% of the overall number of votes. And even hypothetically speaking, if they are all appealed in court, it will in no way affect the legitimacy of the election.” Well, Peskov needs to take a refresher course in math. It would not be just 1% of the ballots discounted, it would be the entire results from the impacted precinct. So, you take all those allegations of bundles of ballots with the same signature on them, all of those cases of polling station observers being delayed or stoppped, and the number of discounted ballots starts to add up. And, in the aftermath of the demonstrations, there is a very real possibility that in a re-vote, votes would be changed.

In a news conference in Moscow, Prokhorov said “The society is waking up.” Prokhorov declined to say if he would attend any of the rallies planned for two weeks from now, but agrees with the anti-Putin slogans that were shouted out. Prokhorov will be running as an independent. He had tried to start a liberal political party, but closed down the effort, he says, because of “Kremlin pressure.” As an independent, Prokhorov could draw support from the opposition parties. The largest is the Communists, whose leader, Gennady Zyuganov, is an announced candidate for the presidency.

Meanwhile, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has popped out of the woodwork with his own solution. Kudrin blames the United Russia Party for any fraud that took place. Forced out of office after a dispute with Medvedev, Kudrin says the time is ripe for a liberal party, which he would be happy to lead. Kudrin claims that the time is now for the establishment of a new party to counter United Russia, though he gives Putin full marks for bringing the country through the European financial crisis. It’s hard to take his call for an opposition party seriously when he won’t criticize Putin and Medvedev. Russia has five political parties in addition to United Russia and the Communists. Just Russia and LDPR won 26.6% of the parliamentary vote, and the Communists won 20.4%. The other three parties each won less than 5% of the vote and therefore won no seats in the Duma. Another party would just complicate the situation this close to the presidential elections. As an independent, Prokhorov can draw support from all the opposition parties and pull votes away from United Russia as well. And with a personal fortune equal to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s, Prokhorov can teach the Russians what money can buy for an election.

Related articles

• Is Prokhorov Serious Enough to Dethrone Putin? (ibtimes.com)
• Billionaire New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov to challenge Putin for presidency (news.nationalpost.com)
• NJ Nets owner challenges Putin for presidency (thegrio.com)
• Nets owner Prokhorov challenges Putin for presidency – CNN Sports Illustrated (sportsillustrated.cnn.com)
• Forbes Billionaire & NJ Nets Owner To Challege Putin In 2012 (forbes.com)

The Supreme Court of the United States

Before the end of this term for the United States Supreme Court, the Court will hear cases relating to the health insurance reform act and contested Congressional redistricting plans. To that, they have now added reviewing Arizona’s S. B. 1070, the “papers please” law.

The lawsuit is called Arizona v. United States, though it is an outgrowth of the Federal government’s suits against Arizona for going beyond state jurisdiction in immigration. When Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law in April 2010, she said it was needed to “solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.” In fact, the Republicans in Arizona did create the crisis, by convincing the people of Arizona that a crisis existed including “headless corpses” in the Arizona desert. Eleven million illegal immigrants have not come across our border since 2009, as the Republicans want to pretend. The problem has been going on for decades, became a “national security” issue after 9-11 and was transformed into a political issue in 2008. And the Federal government has done something about the problem, at a much greater rate than under the Bush administration. In fact, the Obama administration is doing such a good job of closing up the border that drug dealers have been reduced to digging tunnels and using small boats on the coast to get their drugs here.

The U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit in San Francisco ruled that Arizona exceeded its constitutional jurisdiction with S. B. 1070. The Constitution places authority over immigration completely in the Federal government’s hands. The right wing has hyped up the issue and scared the public into believing that illegals have taken good American jobs, they are sucking our public coffers dry, they are all drug runners, they use our laws to give birth to future terrorists who will be American citizens and they are voting for President Obama. It’s 99% lies and propaganda with just enough truth to make arguing against their hype very difficult.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan has announced that she will recuse herself from this case because she worked on it while she was Solicitor General. Justice Kagan seems determined to humiliate her fellow justices. She has recused herself from every case that she was in any way involved with before being named to the Court, while Justices Thomas and Scalia have not recused themselves from cases where they had personal or financial interests. Justice Kagan has needed no prompting to recuse herself when there is a valid reason, which makes the Republican determination to force her to recuse herself from the health care case odious.

Related articles

• Kagan recuses herself from Arizona case (thehill.com)
• Supreme Court Will Hear SB1070 Case, Justice Kagan Is Recused (thinkprogress.org)
• More Laws The Republicans Don’t Understand (lezgetreal.com)

The Supremes

The 2010 census resulted in Texas gaining four Congressional seats. Most of the population increase was along the Gulf Coast and Mexican border and is primarily among minorities. So, because the Republican lege (that’s what the late Molly Ivins called them) must by any means retain their majority, they drew a district map that looks like Medusa’s head – snake-shaped districts radiating out from the Coast.

The objectors lined up, the review board that must approve Texas’ districts threw the map out and a panel of Federal judges drew up another one. Texas Republicans are taking the matter to the United States Supreme Court. The Republicans are claiming that the judges should have first determined if the proposed districts violated either the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. They are saying that the judges missed a step – ruling against the redistricting map.

Texas redistricting battles are getting redundant. It’s not just after every census that they go through this. The last time the districts were challenged was in 2006. The Republicans are claiming that this battle is particularly difficult because it might, just might, impact the date for the Texas primaries. Because Texas has a (surprise!) history of racial discrimination, they are required to get pre-approval of their district maps.

The Supreme Court has blocked implementation of the contested maps, but fast tracked the hearings, requesting that briefs be filed on December 21 and January 3.

Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said “I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to halt an activist court’s Texas congressional map drawn to run up the score for Democrats. From day one, our goal has been fair maps through fair processes, and this Supreme Court hearing will determine what role Texans’ voices play in redistricting.” Has anyone checked to see if Sessions’ nose is any longer?

Putting this in front of the Roberts Court is a crap shoot. The so-called conservative majority in the Court have proven repeatedly that they will always side with the Republicans no matter what the Constitution says. The only hope for justice is if the criticisms of the Court’s lack of ethics are starting to resonate, at least with Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Texas Republicans are notorious for using voter registration to determine districts instead of population – not exactly what our Founding Fathers had in mind.

Related articles

• Rick Perry Proudly Ignorant Of Supreme Court (towleroad.com)
• Supreme Court to Hear #TexasRedistricting Case (foleysfolly.com)
• Supreme Court Will Hear Texas Redistricting Case (politicalwire.com)
• Arizona, Texas Redistricting Going To Supreme Court (lezgetreal.com)
• Supreme Court blocks redistricting plan for Texas – Washington Post (washingtonpost.com)
• Supreme Court Will Decide Texas Redistricting Controversy (legaltimes.typepad.com)

Newt Gingrich, photo by Gage Skidmore

Gee, the rest of the world really does pay attention to what comes out of our politicians’ mouths. Prominent Palestinians are complaining loudly about Newt Gingrich’s declaration that they are an “invented people” and “Arabs.” Now would be a good time to add that Gingrich has also insulted one of America’s strongest allies in the region. Her Majesty, Raina, Queen of Jordan, is one of those “invented” Palestinians. Good job, Newt – insulting the King who is busy reforming his nation with minimal pressure from protesters, who is an outspoken advocate of modernization in the Middle East, who appeared on an episode of Star Trek. And then there are the Palestinians in a camp in Latakia, Syria. They were attacked by the forces of Bashar al-Assad, who claims he is protecting pan-Arabism from the perversion of pan-Islam. Now, why would the champion of pan-Arabism attack an Arab people?

Saev Erkat, a close advisor of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Gingrich’s statement, “The most racist remark I have ever seen. This is the lowest point of thinking anyone can reach. Such thinking should be an alarm and concern for the world.” He also told CNN that Gingrich showed “how really despicable things can get” in American politics. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad blasted historian Gingrich’s lack of historical knowledge, saying, “The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history and intend to remain in it until the end times. People like Gingrich must consult history, as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era.” Gingrich doesn’t understand that the 1948 exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel is equivalent to the migration of Native Americans away from the colonists and their forced removal by our government in the 1800s.

Gingrich’s campaign staff were trying to do damage control today. His spokeman, R. C. Hammond told CNN, “Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state.”

Hammond and the rest of the staff, however, failed to stifle their candidate, who today told a veterans’ forum that the burden of a peace accord lies with the Palestinians, before taking a shot at President Obama. “When the president keeps talking about a peace process while Hamas keeps firing missiles into Israel, if we had a country next to us firing missiles, how eager would we be to sit down and negotiate?” Gingrich not only doesn’t understand the history of the region, he doesn’t understand the dynamics of it today. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, not the West Bank.

The Palestinian authority in the West Bank has worked very hard at keeping the peace, even with provocations like the video that is making the rounds in the West Bank right now. It shows an Israeli soldier aiming a cocked rifle at a Palestinian teenager. It’s been the pattern for years now. The Palestinians bring rocks and the Israelis bring guns. The confrontations are intended to inflame the Palestinians, as was shown over a decade ago by BBC reporter Orla Guerin who climbed up on a rooftop to film the Palestinian children with their rocks facing Israeli soldiers, while around the corner were Palestinian adults and an ambulance.

Gingrich refuses to step down from his insulting remarks. Saying “I was wrong” isn’t in Gingrich’s vocabulary any more than “I’m sorry.”

There is a very distinct difference between how Democrats and Republicans interact with the rest of the world. Democrats believe in treating other countries with respect and attempting to use diplomacy to solve conflict. Republicans believe in the big gun approach to international relations. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are respected and welcome anywhere in the world. George W. Bush can’t leave the country because of outstanding war crimes warrants in various countries. What the Republicans call “apologizing” on the part of Democrats is acknowledgment that the big gun approach has done more damage than good, that we have made mistakes. The Cold War cost millions of lives in the countries that acted as the Soviet Union’s and our proxies. The civilian death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the tens of thousands. The Republican candidates are all rattling sabres and threatening military action against any country or people who displease them.

As Pete Seeger wrote, “When will they ever learn?”

Related articles

• Palestinians Outraged At Gingrich’s Remarks (huffingtonpost.com)
• Newt Gingrich: Palestinians Are ‘Invented’ People (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gingrich Tells Jewish Channel Palestinians Are “Invented” People (lezgetreal.com)
• Gingrich clarifies comment on ‘invented’ Palestinian people (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• Palestinians tell Gingrich to learn history after ‘invented people’ claim (guardian.co.uk)

Newt and #3

Gary Gordon, a Sioux City, Iowa, pastor with a large following, has put out a music video about presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Anyone who didn’t see this attack coming has been living in an alternate universe.

The video uses hip-hop music to depict Gingrich as the “Kim Kardashian of the GOP” and was created by independent filmmaker Molotov Mitchell (Don’t you love the name? So leftist.) The video attacks Gingrich for his multiple adulteries and marriages, so very unacceptable for evangelical Christians.

Gordon has endorsed Rick Santorum for the nomination, also not a surprise. Santorum’s campaign has been 90% Christian “values” and only 10% real policy. He’s also drawing crowds of as little as 30 people at his rallies, not exactly a front-runner in this horse race.

Gingrich has refused to sign an evangelical pledge on issues like same-sex marriage, fidelity, health issues and all those other things evangelicals want to impose on the rest of us in defiance of the First Amendment. Being a historian, he probably understands that imposing the tenets of a particular faith through the back door of legislation is just the same as creating a state religion. Too bad more people don’t understand it. Only Bachmann, Santorum and Perry have signed the Family Leader pledge, all of them vehemently anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-non-evangelicals.

It has always been expected that Gingrich’s personal life would impact his campaign. The GOP has spent too many years courting the Christian right, pandering to the evangelicals, putting forth legislation that will draw them to the polls. Gingrich is not their kind of candidate. He has done the requisite “confess and claim God’s forgiveness” thing that sinners are supposed to do, a la Jimmy Swaggert and other pastors, but that’s not enough for this crowd. It only works if you have received the forgiveness of their God, not the Papist God.

The whole “religious right” situation is getting too complex to make any kind of sense anymore. We have had Glenn Beck, a far right Mormon, claiming to have heard a disembodied voice approving his work inside the Vatican. We have evangelicals endorsing a Catholic, while late-night Christian radio personalities attack Catholicism and the Pope as anti-Christ. We have a whole segment of the Christian right who are openly anti-Semitic, while others are so pro-Israel they out-Israel American Jews. We have a rising evangelical form of Catholicism, while so many mainstream Catholics are fighting their disillusion with the Church over the child-abuse scandal. It’s getting damned hard to sort out the players.

The only thing that really makes sense is that no matter what form they take, what type of religion they follow, religious fanatics want to impose religion-based laws on our secular nation. The men who wrote our Constitution knew the price that Europe paid for centuries of, nay millennia of religious warfare. They sought to protect this nation from that. To our everlasting regret, they did not make it clear that the First Amendment was intended to protect us FROM a state religion, not just guarantee that everyone would have the right to follow their own religion.

The religious issues raising their ugly heads within the GOP are just going to get worse. Romney’s and Huntsman’s Mormonism is an issue already. Gingrich’s failure to live a pure, religious life is an issue. Paul’s refusal to support a religious agenda is an issue. Bachmann’s, Santorum’s and Perry’s religion-based positions are an issue. While courting the religious vote, the leaders of the Republican party failed to understand that religion divides. It doesn’t unite. Now, in addition to dealing with the division between the fiscal Republican, the bought-and-paid-for millionaires’ Republican and the Tea Party anti-government crowd, the party has to deal with the divisions that are breaking up their religious base as well. None of it bodes well for the 2012 election, at least for them. These divisions, however, can and should be exploited by the Democrats, if they can ever find their cajones.

Related articles

• Let The Cannibalism Begin! GOP Evangelicals eviscerate Newt Gingrich as ‘The Kim Kardasian of The GOP’ (thedigitalliberalalliance.wordpress.com)
• What’s Behind Newt’s Religious Revival? (huffingtonpost.com)
• In GOP race, candidates woo evangelicals (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Rick Perry Apologizes To Catholics But Not Mormons Over Jeffress (lezgetreal.com)
• Iowa Polls Suggest Race Is Newt’s to Lose (pjmedia.com)
• Robert Scheer: Government-Sponsored Sinner (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why Do Evangelicals Like Cheating Hubby Newt? (newser.com)

Herman Cain by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

No one should be an hour and half late to his own party. Herman Cain was. Scheduled for noon, he finally took the stage at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. Nice shades. Someone in his campaign should have explained to him that if you want to convince people that you are sincere, you don’t wear sunglasses.

Gloria Cain made one of her rare campaign appearances, to stand beside Herman as he appeared at what was supposed to be the opening of the Georgia headquarters of his campaign. Gee, as rich as he is, his wife really ought to own more than one navy blue suit with white piping. Sorry – that was unnecessarily snarky, even for me.

“You all look great. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love y’all too.” The crowd started chanting for Gloria.

Cain led his speech with the reasons he ran for President – the usual “Washington hasn’t done…” list, followed by the usual rallying cries for the American people. He told his supporters – look at the top three candidates for the nomination, look at the man in the White House, I’m in the “Final Four.”

Finally, after seven minutes, he got around to the “false accusations” leveled against him. “These false and unproved allegations…” are causing pain to his family and casting doubt over his campaign. “It hurts my wife, it hurts my family, it hurts me and it hurts the American people because you are being denied solutions to those problems.”

“I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me. I am at peace with my family and I am at peace with myself.”

“With a lot of prayer and soulsearching, I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction because of the continued hurt caused on my family, not because we are not fighters, not because I am not a fighter, but because when I went through this reassessment….We had to come to this conclusion. We had to come to this conclusion that it would be best to suspend this campaign.”

“I am not going to be silenced and I am not going away. Therefore, as of today, plan B – plan B – the Cainsolutions.com.”

Cain will not be a formal contender for the nomination, but he is trying to usurp the Tea Party movement, the “We the People” movement and is launching his website to show that “the people,” through this new organization that the people are still in charge. He will keep pushing the 9-9-9 plan just not within the campaign structure.

In short, he’s going back to being a pundit, a radio personality, a man who can’t see that his business experience is symptomatic of the problem – low wage jobs, part-time jobs, jobs with no benefits and no future pushing an inferior product in franchises.

Cain will eventually endorse a candidate, just not the man currently in the White House.

North Carolina had a Democratic legislature ten years ago, and created allegedly Democratic districts. That didn’t prevent the state’s voters from electing a Republican majority this time around. And the Republicans are trying to extract their pound of flesh vengeance for that last district map. The new map virtually eliminates all Democratic-majority districts and ends the tenure of all of North Carolina’s female Congresspersons. The new districts are also written in such a way that there will be no minority-majority districts. Did that sentence make sense? The very convoluted districts split up neighborhoods, towns and counties to achieve ten districts that have a voting majority of white Republicans and three districts that cluster 50% of the states black population. The Supreme Court decision in Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U. S. 1 (2009), March 9, 2009, pretty much gutted the provisions of the Voting Rights Act that would put North Carolina under pre-clearance status over this new map. The Roberts Court literally ruled that a minority in a voting district has to be a majority for their minority status to be relevant to districting. Gee, and you thought I had a problem with minority/majority language.

In addition to clustering black voters and reducing their impact both in Congress and in the state’s legislature, the new maps eliminate the districts of 40% of the women currently serving in the state’s legislature. About 66% of the women in the North Carolina Assembly are Democrats. Eliminate 40% of them and you reduce the number of Democratic women to less than 40% of the women in the Assembly. That seriously reduces the ability of Democratic women to fight for women’s rights. The attempted cuts are being achieved by a technique called “double bunking.” In a “double bunk” two districts are joined, pitting two incumbents against each other. In the three majority-black districts, there will be black incumbents going against each other and in the female-represented districts, the women will be going against fellow Democrats or against very strong Republican incumbents in newly Republican districts.

The Justice Department pre-cleared the district maps in the 40 counties it has jurisdiction over. That left 60 counties that could be gerrymandered to the Republicans’ hearts’ content.

Voters in North Carolina have filed suit over the new maps. With Bartlett v. Strickland as a legal precedent, it will be very hard for North Carolina’s voters to get any action on these new maps. Women are neither a perceived nor actual minority, even if we are a repressed and oppressed group. We are 50.8% of the American population and the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment means North Carolina’s women cannot sue over the new districts. All they can do is protest, which they are doing with television ads and calls for support from North Carolina’s women. Whether or not Republican women in North Carolina are willing to cross party lines and stand up for women is real iffy.

Related articles

• NAACP prez: GOP-led legislature practices ‘racism and classism’ (goqnotes.com)
• North Carolina Senate Rewrites Racial Justice Act; Gov Urged To Veto Changes (blogs.wsj.com)
• Veto debate follows NC legislature’s vote to repeal state’s capital Racial Justice Act (sentencing.typepad.com)
• Gay candidates win big across North Carolina (goqnotes.com)
• Gerry-rigged: Does your vote matter? (cnn.com)
• Approval of North Carolina Voting Maps Followed by Lawsuits (willetcreek.wordpress.com)

1812 "Gerrymandering" political cartoon

The Republican parties in Texas and Arizona lost the first round of Federal law suits concerning their Congressional redistricting maps. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer was told that she did not have the right or power to dump the state’s Constitution and fire the non-partisan redistricting board. Texas was told that the extreme gerrymandering their redistricting commission put together to prevent the increase in minority voters gaining any seats in the Texas lege was wrong. Both states have filed with the United States Supreme Court to have the local Federal court rulings overturned.

If the SCOTUS were to rule in favor of Governor Brewer, they would be guilty of partisan judicial activism. The Arizona State Constitution is very clear. When the census is done every ten years, there will be a non-partisan commission created to draw new Congressional districts based solely and exclusively on population. The commission cannot, by Constitutional definition, use past voting records to draw the districts. When Gov. Brewer fired the commission and attempted to put in place a new commission that would take voting patterns into consideration, she was violating the Arizona Constitution. The absolute nature of this Constitutional language will hopefully prevent the SCOTUS from overturning the local ruling. But with this SCOTUS, there is no guarantee that they will rule according to the letter of any law. After all, this is the SCOTUS that decided that corporations are people who enjoy the rights and liberties of human beings under our Constitution.

The Texas situation is not as clear cut. The gerrymandering is obvious. The greatest number of new Texans are along the Gulf Coast and the border. They are displaced African-Americans from Louisiana and new naturalized Hispanics. The Texas lege’s redistricting map looks like a gathering of snakes – long districts anchored in the areas with the population increases and stretching back into rural Texas. The Federal District Court in San Antonio ruled that the new districts were unacceptable because they were defined by voting records and not by population. The Court issued a new map that ignored voting patterns and set the new districts by population only, and with Texas gaining 4 new Congressional seats, the population-only maps would probably add up to a dozen Democrats to the lege and tip the balance of Texas’ Congressional delegation. It could also tip the presidential election since Texas is a winner-take-all for electoral votes.

Texas is notorious for its gerrymandered districts, though it isn’t as extreme about it as California has been. We have seen the state’s Democrats run across state lines to block passage of the new districts in the past. But Texas’ Constitution is not as clear about the composition of the redistricting commission or the method by which the districts will be drawn as Arizona’s is. Every state needs a Constitutional amendment to match Arizona’s redistricting procedure if they don’t already have these procedures in place.

It is absolutely necessary that these suits be heard by the SCOTUS during the spring term if the Republicans are going to have any shot at getting the gerrymandered districts they want to further suppress the Democratic vote.. They cannot wait for the October term. The Democratic National Committee needs to do more than assist with the defense of these suits. They need to focus on the redistricting and its place in the overall attempt to create a one-party state our of our Republic during the coming year’s election campaigns. After all, if the Republicans had a viable message and felt they truly represented the people of this nation, represented the 99% instead of the 1% who are funding their campaigns, they wouldn’t need to work so hard to suppress the vote.

Related articles

• Brewer Smacked Down By State Supreme Court (lezgetreal.com)
• Redistricting Panel to Resume Work (myfoxphoenix.com)
• Texas Redistricting Map Headed For Court (lezgetreal.com)
• Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Texas redistricting fallout edition (dailykos.com)
• Texas Redistricting: State Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Block ‘Flawed’ Redistricting Map (ibtimes.com)
• Texas asks high court to temporarily block redistricting map (news.blogs.cnn.com)