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The Enthusiasm Gap Mystery

I haven’t said much about the 2014 election. And I’ve said nothing about 2016. I won’t say anything about 2016 until people actually start announcing they’re really running because literally nothing that I can say at this point would be anything other than wild speculation.

I haven’t said much about 2014 for a couple of reasons. First, we’re not really going to get an accurate picture of exactly how it’s going to turn out until September. Most people aren’t paying attention at this point of the year since there’s too much grilling and beaching to be done. And secondly, because it’s not going to produce shocking results. Democrats are definitely not going to do well. I strongly suspect that control of the senate is going to hinge on Kentucky. If Alison Lundergan Grimes can wrestle that seat away from Mitch McConnell, the senate will remain in democratic hands. But I digress.

My point in this post isn’t to look at all of the races across the country. I want to talk about the enthusiasm gap everything is incorrectly analyzing. Democrats have an enthusiasm gap problem. That part is true enough. It’s always true in midterms. But everybody seems to be missing the reason for the lack of enthusiasm on the part of democrats.

It boils down to the inherent difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are inherently blindly loyal and less critical in their thinking. They’re republicans, and they will always show up to vote for the republican. It doesn’t matter who that republican is, and if that candidate has ever done anything for them. That’s not a dig, that’s a fact that has been demonstrated in study after study. I’ve been asking this question for several years now;

Tell me something that republicans have done in the past 30 years that has benefited you personally.

I have literally gotten no answer to that question since I started posing it. Even the trolls go quiet for that post. And yet they vote, oh how they vote. 

Liberals are different. Some (significant) percentage of liberals do assess the democrat put before them. They don’t just show up and check off whichever name appears in the democratic column. And if they deem their democratic choice "unworthy", they just don’t show up at all. Liberals don’t show up to vote against someone in midterms, while republicans show up to vote against someone or something in every election. For about the last 20 years, republicans have been conditioned to believe that voting is an exercise of opposing something. They lost their platform when Poppy Bush lost his shot at a second term. Against is literally all conservatives are for anymore. And since we know that conservatives thoughtlessly do what they’re told by their party to do, they faithfully show up and enthusiastically vote "anti" every single time they get the chance to. 

Liberals generally like to be for things and for people. And liberals have held onto ideas they’re for; access to education for all, fair wages for everyone, equality for all, providing for the most vulnerable among us, and equality of opportunity. When those things are on the ballot, liberals show up in great numbers. The midterm enthusiasm problem that democrats have, is that they’re increasingly not for those things anymore. Since they’re demonstrably not for those things, they’re having a harder and harder time getting a party message together. A Rahm Emanuel type candidate running for congress in DesMoines is not going to inspire liberals to show up and vote. A Bill de Blasio or an Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand will manage to beat the odds and win by a landslide. Why? Because they’re for the things that liberals are for, and that democrats used to be for. Both Warren and de Blasio managed to raise more money than their opponents who were well funded by corporate interests. They did so, despite being perceived as the long shot underdogs. So people gave them money believing they had almost no chance of winning. That’s enthusiasm.

There was nothing wrong with de Blasio’s better known democratic opponents. They were fine in the grand scheme of democrats. But de Blasio ran as a flaming fucking liberal. He ran on a platform of raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for free pre-k education for all New Yorkers. He ran on a platform of ending the racial profiling that the NYPD had been practicing for twenty years. He wants to get rid of the horses in Central Park. For the love of God, is there anything more granola crunching than saving the horses? And you know what? He beat his ‘just fine’ democratic opponents by a big enough margin to avoid a runoff election. And then he went on to just embarrass the republican candidate by kicking his ass to the tune of a 50 point spread.

I started volunteering for his campaign when he was polling in fourth place. And you know what? I knew that he was going to become the next mayor of New York City. I started donating generously to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, when she had no chance of winning because I knew she was going to win.      

The problem democrats have is that they’re trapped between their liberal base and Citizen’s United. You can’t win an election in America unless you have the biggest pile of cash. In 94% of all congressional elections, the candidate with the most money wins. Think about that; ninety-four percent. Democrats can’t be for the people without getting money from the corporations. And that’s why they have been putting forward uninspiring, corporatist ‘lite’ candidates in the midterms.

Republicans walked away from every single tenet of conservatism, and that didn’t matter. Small government? Peh, Reagan and W grew government in ways we had never seen before. Fiscal responsibility? Who fucking cares cause "deficits don’t matter". Not intervening in the world’s problems unless we have to? The Bush doctrine effectively crapped all over that idea. And yet, they still show up. With nothing to show for themselves, they still show up. With no coherent platform, they still show up.

There would be no enthusiasm gap if democrats ran liberal candidates. Why? Because liberals are still passionate about traditionally democratic principles. Democrats need a platform. Liberals are not inspired by the "anti" doctrine. We’re not automatons, and we have principles we hold more dear than we do our party. And therein lies the enthusiasm gap.

Read me now, quote me later; this strategy of "stop the impeachment efforts against President Obama" that democrats have cooked up isn’t going to work. We need something to vote for, not something to vote against.         

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Andrew Sullivan Is A Douche With No Credibility

Credibility is something that we either don’t understand or no longer have any use for. In an effort to explain what credibility is (and to bring it back in style), I will occasionally be highlighting pundits or "journalists" who inexplicably still have a voice, despite the fact that they have no credibility. I say occasionally because exposing media hacks isn’t my mission here, and there are plenty of places you can go for that. But every once in a while, I read something that really steams my beans and I have to write about it. 

Andrew Sullivan is a twat waffle. He has been espousing liberal views since his "awakening", without ever acknowledging that we were right about everything.

This piece showed up in my G+ feed. It was posted by one of my progressive peeps who thought it was worth sharing. I disagreed because this piece embodies everything I despise about Andrew Sullivan, who lost all credibility in the Bush years (it actually started earlier). My problem with Sullivan is that he pretends that he’s invented the less batshit crazy ideas he’s been espousing over the past 7 years (or so) without ever acknowledging that liberals had it right all along. He does this while peddling (and advancing) right wing fallacies.

Let’s unpack this heaping pile of poop so that I can show you where I’m coming from by looking at the paragraph that bitched me out the most;


Like Ricks, I don’t believe my general inclinations politically have changed that much over the years. I prefer smaller government in general; I too believe in a robust defense; I have few issues with the free market; I think marriage and family are critical social institutions; I’m still a believing Christian; I have deep qualms about abortion and abhor affirmative action; I’m a fiscal conservative; want radical tax reform, cuts in unfunded entitlements, and culturally,..

 
Let’s discuss. "I prefer smaller government in general". Are you still being a fucking child and referring to regulating Wall Street as "big government" intrusion into your life? Who the fuck is for "big government"? And why are you caricaturing the liberal position? Asshole.

"I too believe in a robust defense". Again, what the fuck does this mean without clarity? Do you believe in spending twice as much as the next X number of countries combined? You know, the way the Soviet Union used to before it went bankrupt? Are you down with spending billions of dollars on planes that don’t work and tanks that the army doesn’t want? Again, the implication that liberals want to leave the US defenseless is bullshit. Asshole.

"I have few issues with the free market". That’s just fucking stupid, no matter how you look at it. Are actually still humping the free market unicorn that helped itself to 60% of your retirement funds in 2007? I get why Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer still hump that unicorn. They’re getting paid handsomely for their stupid. But you Andrew Sullivan, you’re doing pro bono stupid, you unmitigated, unabashed asshole?

"I think marriage and family are critical social institutions; I’m still a believing Christian". And liberals are what? On the other side? Godless sodomite heathens? I’m sorry, but the implication that the right wing has a monopoly on God or spirituality is total bullshit. Liberals happen to do this whole thing better by not foisting our beliefs on other people, and certainly not legislating based on what we do or do not believe. The implication that conservatives have nailed this down, despite the obvious fact that they’re doing it all wrong makes you (say it with me) an  asshole.

"I’m a fiscal conservative". Guess which party actually reduces deficits? Asshole.

I’m sorry, but I despise Andrew Sullivan, and he gets no credit for being slightly less batshit than he has been in the past.

That’s not to say that credibility can’t be rebuilt. I absolutely believe that it’s possible for someone to have an epiphany and see where they went horribly wrong. But  I need to hear you Andrew Sullivan, break down for me in great detail where you believe you went horribly wrong. Because I need to review that thought process before deciding if you’re worth spending my time on. There is no turn toward credibility without clearly laying out the basis for the "I was wrong" epiphany. You can’t just admit to being wrong about one war or one president and then go about telling me what you think, as if I need to give a flying fuck. You were wrong about everything. The very foundation upon which you built your belief system was wrong. Wanna know how I know? Because the internet archives every piece of steaming shit you foisted upon the world.

You certainly can’t rebuild your credibility while still caricaturing the side that was right all along. You can’t falsely paint me as a big spending, all controlling, spiritually empty wuss who would leave this country defenseless in order to explain your incredibly stupid beliefs about how the world should work. You were wrong about everything. Leave me out of it because it’s all on you. And you certainly don’t get a cookie from me for not being wrong 100% of the time anymore while you’re still calling me an idiot.

I’m sorry, but if you’re a liberal who listens to this jackass because he’s suddenly telling you what you want to hear, you’re the only reason why he still exists. Without you, he disappears because he certainly hasn’t retained his batshit crazy republican audience. He’s calling you an idiot every single day. Stop helping him!

Credibility doesn’t come from telling you what you want to hear. It comes from creating a history of being either correct in analyzing situations, or explaining the reason for an incorrect analysis. I’ve been wrong about stuff. Just go through my archives about health reform. I was not correct in everything I said about the way it was going to turn out. I acknowledged that I was wrong, and proceeded to show you the basis of my ongoing analysis.

Why admit to being wrong? Because I don’t expect you to take me seriously if I don’t. Despite the way that credibility has been disregarded and undervalued in our culture, I still feel it’s important for me to have it.

Liberals and conservatives have both devalued credibility. Conservatives have done it exponentially more, but liberals do it too. Liberals do it when they point to a douche like Andrew Sullivan and say, "he knows what he’s talking about". No he doesn’t. And telling you something you want to hear doesn’t make him right or credible, especially since he’s still calling you an idiot.

Stop it! Stop listening to people who have already shown you they have no credibility, and no regard for their own credibility. If you’re right, you can find plenty of credible people to show you that you’re right.

As for Andrew Sullivan, he’s going to have to go much further in building his credibility now that he’s been playing the stupid game he’s been playing for the past several years. I need to see him crawl on his hands and knees to beg (for example) Robert Reich’s forgiveness for not acknowledging that Reich has been right about everything he’s ever said over the course of thirty years. He needs to apologize to Bill Clinton about every stupid and demonstrably wrong thing he said about him. He needs to apologize for advancing the mythological version of Ronald Reagan in order to claim that there’s value in conservatism. I want to hear Sullivan talk about the eleven-times-tax-raising Reagan that blew up the deficit and sold arms to terrorists. I need for him to acknowledge that every single aspect of FDR’s New Deal were exactly the right policies to create prosperity and growth for America. To summarize, I need him to acknowledge that liberals have been right about just about everything. Okay, we fucked up when we built ghettos in America. I can acknowledge that. It was a mistake. We really should have integrated low income housing into middle class neighborhoods, but at least we tried to do something. Live and learn.

Hindsight should be 20/20. And until Andrew Sullivan’s is, he can kiss my right-all-along liberal ass.           

 

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Otherwise Intelligent People

Here we go again in Gaza. We’ve seen this movie before; hamas does something ineffectual to provoke Israel and Israel responds by slaughtering hundreds of innocent Palestinians. Now right off the bat, I know that smoke is coming out of some of your ears.

First a little background about me. I’m Jewish. Iranian born, raised in California from the age of about 3 1/2 (so the US is really all I know). I come from, what we assume is 1000 generations of Jews. We have to assume because there were name changes on both sides of my family. We think we know the original last name on my mother’s side, but we haven’t made any headway on my father’s side. We know that his family name must have been changed in either his father’s or his grandfather’s generation. His father is more likely, since there is literally no one on this planet with my last name, who isn’t directly related to me. By directly, I mean second cousin. We found that second cousin in Jerusalem when we saw a store called, "[my last name] Souvenirs". I bring up the name changes because it’s kind of a big deal thing that occurred, and it’s mostly unique to Jews. When Hitler was letting his freak flag fly, there were (I’m guessing) millions of name changes in order to sound less Jewy and avoid that whole being tortured and murdered thing. Not knowing who you are is kind of a big deal. I’m not one with an attachment to family or family history. My son is. I gave him up for adoption when he was born (don’t worry Zionisits, I gave him to a nice Jewish family to raise). We reconnected almost five years ago. The being adopted thing has given him an obsession with learning who he is. His obsession made me realize that I am a little bummed that I can’t go to ancestry.com to find out how it all started. I’m pretty sure that my son’s determination will eventually produce a family tree but still, it’s a weird thing that only Jews deal with. I grew up nonreligious, but fairly Jewy nonetheless. I learned about Hitler and Masada, I read both of Leon Uris’ books (my father knew him) and was well versed in the suffering of our people.

When my son moved to Israel, I was excited to visit him. Because I wanted to spend time with him, but also because I wanted to see Israel. He moved there because his parents had taken him when he was a child, and he loved it. He promptly got his Israeli citizenship and prepared for his mandatory military service. He left the US, a complete Israeli AIPAC style hawk. He didn’t come back that way. He was still very pro Israel the first time I visited. He was in Jerusalem so I stayed in Jerusalem. We actually drove all across the country because I wanted to see as much as I could.

The first and most obvious thing I saw was that the Arab neighborhoods were ghettos. Having grown up in America, and seeing ghettos full of brown people, my assumption is that they were created for the Arabs just like our ghettos here were created for everyone darker than dark beige. I don’t believe there’s something inherently inferior about poor people, nor do I believe they’re lazy. I understand the institutional circumstances that were set up to make getting out of those ghettos almost impossible. Here in the US, those ghettos were created by well meaning liberals who horribly miscalculated when they created whole communities for low income housing. You can’t segregate people like that. They have to be intermingled with everyone else. When you segregate them into their own neighborhoods, you create institutional hurdles like inferior schools, mold ridden homes that create a lifetime of debilitating asthma, food deserts, and a whole host of other things we don’t really think about. Everything about our ghettos is true of all ghettos.

So right off the bat, Israel and I aren’t off to an awesome start. I saw massive self segregation that I really didn’t think much of at first. After all, we see this all around the world; people hanging out with their own kind. That’s why every big city has a China Town, Korea Town, and Little Italy. What my brain recorded, but didn’t process until later was how granular that segregation is. Russian Jews separate themselves from Russian gentiles, Ashkenazis hang out with other Ashkenazis, Sephardics hang out with other Sephardics, and Arabs have their own neighborhoods. I didn’t fully process the strict social hierarchy I was looking at. One morning before my son came to meet me at my hotel (still in Jerusalem), I decided to walk around and do a little exploring. I saw a black woman walking toward me. I saw people spitting and yelling at her. She wasn’t doing anything but walking. It was appalling. I didn’t bring it up to my son because I didn’t want to get into a long discussion wherein he tells me how awesome Israel is, and I tell him what I saw with my own lying eyes. I saw xenophobia everywhere. There’s a bizarre and palpable "fear of the other" thing going on there.

My son wanted to show me Tiberias, where he wanted to move. We Google mapped the directions and got back a strange result. Google didn’t lead us directly there. It instead wanted us to do a giant letter "c" excursion. I asked my son why this was, and he looked at the map. He realized that it was because Google didn’t want us to go through the West Bank. Naturally, I wanted to go through the West Bank because I’m inherently curious. We drove past the illegal settlements. They looked like luxury prisons to me. All of the windows were tiny, probably because of the high likelihood that there would be bombing there. I really thought that it took a special kind of asshole to live there. At one point, we pulled over on the side of the road to have a cigarette (yes, I was still a filthy smoker back then). It was June, noon, and really hot. Some farmers next to us were waving us in to sit with them in their shade. They poured us some of their coffee and offered us some of their cigarettes. My son spoke just enough Arabic to communicate with them. They were Bedouins whose family were, for generations from the spot we were standing on. Their family farm now belonged to an Israeli who was paying them a pittance to work the farm. The thing that struck me was how generous these people were, sharing what little they had with us. I understand that this story is anecdotal and I don’t tell it to you to make a statement. I tell it so that you can understand what I saw.

When we were coming back into Israel, we made the mistake of stopping at a security checkpoint, instead of slowly rolling past it (the way my son told me everyone did). They asked for ID. My son pulled out his Israeli ID and I pulled out my passport, knowing it was going to cause me problems because it caused me problems every time I pulled it out. It’s a problem because my United States passport says that I was born in Iran. Not surprisingly, we had to pull over for a security check. We were there for 45 minutes while they combed through every inch of the car. The inside, the trunk, under the hood, and the undercarriage. At one point, my son says, "she’s Jewish". The kid "guarding" us said, "I know. It’s a Jewish name". So at this point, one has to wonder if there have been a rash of attacks against Israel by US citizens from predominantly Muslim countries (where Jews came from), or do we have a serious case of xenophobia going on here?

Anyway, that’s just some of what I saw when I was there. I know that I’m more observant than most people, but I honestly don’t see how anyone can not see the xenophobia.

Now to back to the slaughter of innocent Palestinians. So three Israeli teenagers are killed and the Israeli government concludes that hamas is responsible. There’s no evidence pointing at anyone specific but nonetheless, Israel knows it’s hamas. Hamas denies it (of course they did) and at some point, ISIS says it’s them. There are conspiracy theories floating around that it was Israel, who wanted to start this bombing campaign of Gaza so that they can take the next step toward annexation. Israel is actually responsible for that insane conspiracy theory. They released an emergency call that the teenagers made during the incident. To be more specific, they released an edited version of the tape, where the last 8 – 9 seconds were cut off. That would be the 8 – 9 seconds where you can hear the gunshots. The gunshots on the tape make it pretty likely that those kids had been murdered on the spot and yet, Israel went on a two week search for live people. It was curious. To be clear, I don’t believe that Israelis murdered these kids. I would be more inclined to believe that the whole thing was fabricated, but I don’t really believe that either. I don’t know what happened, and neither does Israel. So then a Palestinian kid is murdered by some Israelis cause, is there a more effective way to display your moral superiority than to behave in the same way the people you refer to as barbarians do? And then hamas does what hamas always does; they start firing their utterly ineffective rockets on Israel. They know that those rockets won’t make it to Israel because they didn’t last time they fired them. Iron dome works, and everyone knows it. But hamas does this because they know what Israel is going to do next; make it rain with bombs in Gaza. Neither hamas nor Israel has any regard for the innocent Palestinians who are being imprisoned in Gaza. Hamas want the civilian death toll will be high, in the hope of winning the PR war. Israel doesn’t give a shit what the civilian death toll is for a couple of reasons. They want to annex Gaza and they don’t care how many innocent Palestinians die. They believe that all Palestinians are responsible for the actions of a radical minority. This is the point at which some people point in one direction and lay all of the blame there. I’m sorry, but Israel and hamas are in an unholy partnership here and if you can’t see that, it’s because you’re being guided by your emotions.  

Gaza is a prison. It’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison. Everyone who has been there and seen it with their own lying eyes said it’s a giant outdoor prison. Now you can refuse to click on any of those links because you don’t want to know what you don’t want to know, but that would make you no different than Louie Gohmert, Michelle Bachmann, or any of the other anti-science members of the republican party. You’re a climate denier, denying the climate in which the Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live.

Or, you can do what I did and objectively read everything you can on the matter. I left a lifetime’s worth of emotion and shared cultural perspective on the table in regard to Israel. I have no motivation to be "anti-Israel. None. I decided to educate myself and objectively assess the situation.               

Do you think that maybe trapping 1.4 million people on just 140 sq miles of land might perhaps produce some extremists? Most liberals and thinkers of other political persuasion understand that our intervention in Iran is "why they hate us". They hate us because we installed the Shah as their leader. We created the theocracy that Iran is today. Iran was on its way to being a fairly secular country until we empowered the mullahs. Some of us understand that Obama’s indiscriminate drone strikes in Pakistan are creating a future generation of terrorists every time they kill an innocent Pakistani. We understand that a straight line can be drawn between our actions in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen thirty years ago, and 9/11. We understand that the way we left Iraq will surely bring more terrorism our way. And yet, when it comes to Israel, some people lose all objectivity. Israel is creating the radicalized members of hamas. To absolve Israel from all of the killing here is ludicrous. Israel is creating its own terrorism, just the way we helped to create ours. Are there batshit crazy terrorists that Israel had nothing to do with creating? Of course. Is Israel creating more of them? Of course. 

I correct the bullshit. I correct right wing bullshit, and democratic bullshit. I don’t plan on stopping at the Israeli border. You can disagree with me, but you can’t accuse me of irrationality here. I have reasons for my conclusions, and they’re based on all of the facts, not just the ones I like.

I want Israel to survive and prosper. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible if they stay on their current course of genocide. Yes, it’s a genocide when you’re slaughtering people that have no planes, no navy, and no military. If Israel cared about minimizing civilian casualties, their bombings wouldn’t have an 80% civilian death rate. They would have sent in ground troops to target the actual terrorists.

I’m not going to defend the indefensible or keep my mouth shut about it. That’s what the good people of Germany did once. I sincerely wish they had spoken up.


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The Hobby Lobby Decision Is Not A Disaster

I’m not going to go over the minutiae of the decision because you can get that everywhere else. I want to go through a few points I find interesting.

As you know, SCOTUS decided that "closely held" (meaning privately owned) for profit corporations don’t have to offer contraception if doing so goes against their "sincerely held beliefs". This actually changes nothing (not even for employees of Hobby Lobby) so if your hair was on fire, you can calm down now. The court specifically referred to the "exception" that HHS gave to certain religious organizations. I had to do some searching to make sure I remembered the outcome of that correctly (I did). Basically, the company is no longer paying for contraceptive care. It is specifically excluded from coverage under the plan documents but the insurance companies have agreed to absorb the costs. Nothing changes and everyone has access to contraception. I found all of this to be boring and of little relevance.

Here’s what I thought was interesting; I didn’t count, but it felt to me that the decision used the words "corporate personhood" more than it did "religious beliefs". Roberts and his cabal had an agenda here. They were really looking to take the next step in cementing corporations into personhood status. They played the religious right for rubes so that they could, once again, advance the interests of their corporate masters.

Why do I say that? Because they explicitly gave the Jahovah’s Witnesses and the Christian Scientists the middle finger in this part of the decision;

This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, e.g., for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs.

They don’t give two shits about anyone’s religious beliefs. If they did care about "sincerely held religious beliefs", they wouldn’t have explicitly crapped on other religions.

This tells me that something bigger, badder, and uglier than what we’ve seen thus far is in the corporate personhood horizon for us.

This was not about religion and it was not about Hobby Lobby. This was about Monsanto, GE, Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Pfizer.

The other part of the decision that I found interesting was this;

The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients.

It’s interesting because it acknowledges that those forms of contraception are not abortifacients. The court basically said that they don’t care about the facts or the science. If an employer is living in a fucking fantasyland where the morning after pill has any effect at all on a fertilized egg, they can do that and the Supreme Court won’t do a damned thing to correct that lie.

Believe it or not, this was exactly what I expected they would do.     

 

     

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Harris v Quinn Is Going To Be A Shitty SCOTUS Decision I Welcome

So unions and many democrats are freaking out about today’s impending Harris v Quinn decision from the Supreme Court. Let me give you a little bit of detail about the case before I get to my point. This case is about public sector unions, which ultimately means it will be about all unions. The plaintiff, Pamela Harris has a son who needs ongoing medical care, which she provides for him. In order for her to be able to do this, she receives Medicaid funds and is therefore considered a home health care worker, employed by the state of Illinois. At some point, home health care workers voted to unionize so they’re represented by SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana. Since the majority of them voted to unionize, they are all members of the union and must therefore pay union dues. Back in 1977, the Supreme Court issued a decision on union dues (I’m not going to do a deep dive into this case, but it’s Abood v Detroit Board of Education is you want to look it up). The court basically said that all public workers who are represented by the union must pay the fees associated with bargaining for them minus the cost of political activity.

So this twit shill Harris sued because she doesn’t want to pay her fair share. Why do I call her a twit? Before the union, wages in IL for a state employed home health care worker was $7.00 per hour. The union negotiated that salary up to $11.65 per hour now, with a scheduled increase to $13.00 per hour in December. Calling her a twit is clearly more flattering than she deserves, but I digress.

So now the court is basically going to redecide union dues. Remember, this was already decided so we’re looking at a major act of judicial activism here. Anyway the unions are freaking out because if the court decides that the twit doesn’t have to pay her fair share, they’re basically only get dues from their members on a voluntary basis. Unions represent both members and nonmembers so if people are allowed to opt out of paying their dues, they basically get all of the work that a union does to negotiate their wages for free. This is referred to as freeloading. I refer to it as twittery because if the union falls apart, the twit’s wages start to go back down immediately. Nonetheless, people are stupid and short sided and significant percentage of them will choose to get something for nothing, until it all falls apart and they’re left with nothing.

Unions are freaking out because this could effectively end unions. Democrats are freaking out because unions are the still biggest known (remember, our elections are mostly funded in the dark now) contributors to the democratic party.

I’m not freaking out. Not because I think the decision will be the right one, and not because I don’t think this will end unions. It will likely be the wrong decision and if it is, it will end unions. I’m not freaking out because when history repeats, the results always come out the way they did the first time around. Since a large percentage of humans are dullards who aren’t interested in history, (cause what could history possibly have to do with them?) we repeat history over and over again. Most people don’t realize that they have weekends off because of unions. They don’t realize that without unions, they would be working fourteen hour days side by side with their kids. Some dipshits believe they’re above exploitation because they’re "educated". Never mind the fact that the libertarian Paypal founder (Peter Thiel) and douchebag is trying to build a slave labor barge full of dirt cheap foreign software developers far enough off the coast of San Francisco, that he’s not subject to compliance with US labor laws. But that’s not going to affect "educated" people cause, free market!

Things are definitely going to go to shit for workers if unions disappear. But they’re slowly going to shit now as unions are shrinking. Disappearing them is just going to bring us to the end game of worker misery a little faster. So here’s how it’s going to go; unions disappear, workers’ already flat wages start to drop precipitously, democrats turn to corporations for money.

Democrats will definitely get that money. They’re getting it now. They’ve been getting it in ever increasing amounts since Bill Clinton put up the "for rent" sign at democratic national headquarters. That’s why it’s been harder and harder to tell democrats apart from republicans over the past couple of decades. Once the democratic party becomes 100% reliant on corporations to fund them (as republicans have been for four decades), their constituency will shrink dramatically to include only; GE, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, and Pfizer. Notice how you’re conspicuously missing from that list? That’s because your only lobbyist, unions will be gone. Unions are your lobbyist whether you belong to one or not. Study after study shows that wages go up across the board in places where unions are strong.

Once they’re dismantled, you go back to being completely powerless. There will be no need for libertarian douchebag billionaires to invest in building slave barges because software developers in San Francisco city limits can look forward to being treated to the same conditions that a Bangladeshi garment workers enjoy now, but with a view of the Golden Gate bridge.

So why am I not worried about this decision going wrong? Because history repeats in the same way over and over again. We the people have been slowly losing our power and our voices since about 1980. It’s clear which way the pendulum of history is headed. We have about the same level of income inequality that we had in the 1920s. Thanks to the Supreme Court and decisions like McCutcheon v FEC and Citizen’s United, the government serves corporations almost exclusively (as they did in the 1920s). We are slowly digressing back to a time when conditions for the average American were miserable. I say we should speed that process up.

Americans are increasingly becoming aware that something is horribly wrong in America. This is why we’re seeing both parties fracture into different factions. Republicans have their teabaggers and their libertarians pushing up against the corporatists. Democrats have their Clinton, Booker corporatists vs the Warren, Grayson, Sanders populists. Right now, we’re at the stage of "horribly wrong" where people can be manipulated to act against their own self interest. Libertarians are clinging on to their unicorns harder than ever, and teabaggers have been duped into becoming foot soldiers for the Koch brothers. Democrats are actually excited about the possibility of Hillary Clinton saving the day, despite the quarter million dollar speaking fees she’s getting from Goldman Sachs.

This shitty decision from the Supreme Court is going to wake up the liberals. More and more of us have moved away from the democratic party and vehemently supported "socialist" candidates like Bill de Blasio and Elizabeth Warren. More and more of us are organizing to amend the constitution, whether it’s with Move To Amend, Wolf PAC, or Rootstrikers.

If you’ve been following me, you know that my opinion is that a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is the only remedy we have left for our ailing government. I don’t know how many Elizabeth Warrens we can afford to support when our wages are going down. Remember that 94% of the time, the congressional candidate with the most money wins. Warren and de Blasio (I know he’s a mayor, but it’s not different) were the candidates with the most money. They weren’t the exceptions to the money statistic, they were the rule. The only amazing thing is that Warren managed to raise enough money from us, to defeat her bank backed opponent (de Blasio was a slightly different scenario that I won’t go into).

More liberals need to wake up and get to the conclusion I came to. The support I’m seeing for Hillary tells me that we still have a way to go on the path to "the awakening". Why do I focus on liberals? Because liberals always have been, and always will be the only ones who affect change. It doesn’t matter where in the world, or what period of history you look at, change is always brought about by liberals. Conservatives, by definition conserve. They don’t like change and they don’t rock the boat. The devil they know is just fine because "that’s just how it is". If conservatives had their way, the United States would be part of the UK. That’s just a fact. Liberals always have been, and always will be the activists. 

The evisceration of unions is going to remove the thin veil that the democratic party still wears. Remember Obama bailed out Wall Street, appointed a Monsanto executive to a high level position at the FDA, and failed to put on his picketing shoes to help labor in Wisconsin. But that’s all okay for some democrats, cause he gave us the Affordable Care Act. Don’t get me wrong, I’m marginally satisfied with the ACA as a stop gap, but I want more. I want food that isn’t going to poison me, water that isn’t flammable, and a bank that doesn’t have its hand in my pocket at all times. As long as money determines our elections, we’re not going to get any better than Obama, and as long as democrats throw us some crumbs every decade or so, liberals aren’t going to wake up to that fact. I’m very clear on the reality that I’m never going to get these things as long as money is the primary driver and motivator for our political system.

I need more liberals to wake the fuck up and join me, because we are our only hope. Because I know that things need to get shitty enough to activate the activists, I’m okay with this incredibly shitty decision from the Supreme Court. We’re already on the road to shitty so let’s get there already so that we can turn this sinking ship around.                     

 


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Again With The Training Of The Iraqi Military?

Yep. We’re going to try this again. President Obama just announced that he’s going to deploy 300 special forces to Iraq. Not to fight, but to train Iraqi troops again.

Here’s the deal; I’m relieved that he’s not talking air strikes or boots on the ground and I sincerely hope he sticks to this position but I don’t see what the point of training the Iraqi military is. The problem isn’t that Iraqi troops are untrainably stupid or cowardly. There’s a reason why they’re not "trained" and more training isn’t the answer. The problem is that a Sunni troop isn’t going to take up arms against a Sunni group. The same is true of the Shia and the Kurdish Muslims. They’re not going to take up arms against their own, no matter how batshit extremist a package "their own" comes in.

The "Iraqi military" is a fiction because Iraq is a fiction. This is a country that literally isn’t a country. These are not a united people with a common vision of governance. Britain arbitrarily drew a border around three vastly different groups of people and said, "Poof! You’re a country". The only way "poof" works, is with a brutal dictator who can effectively keep their boot on the whole country’s throat which is what Saddam did.

Without Saddam, there’s nothing cobbling this not-a-country together. There’s no country for a military to fight for. Iraq needs to have a civil war now, and all we can do is sit back and hope that the group that takes power doesn’t destabilize all of Iraq’s neighbors. The best outcome that we can hope for, is that the Sunni, Shia, and Kurds draw borders they can all live with and split up into three different countries. And they need to get there on their own because anything we do to help will delegitimize the outcome. We’ve seen how this movie turned out when we installed the Shah in Iran.

There’s nothing remotely resembling a guarantee that they will split up the country. In my opinion, it’s actually more likely that batshit radical groups stake out their territories and create mini dictatorships (warlords)  a la Afghanistan. But we can’t do anything. There’s no victory here for the western world (notice that I didn’t limit the situation to the US).

The west was fucked the minute we killed Saddam, and lots of people told you this was going to happen in 2002. Every single expert on the middle east opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The reasons they gave weren’t, "War is bad….oh look, there’s some yummy granola". That wasn’t what they said. They plainly stated that eliminating Saddam would destabilize the region and lead to a civil war between the three flavors of Muslims that make up a made up country. Don’t believe me? Go look for yourself. Limit your searching to a period from September 12, 2001 to March of 2003 (when we went in) so that you don’t get the taint of revisionist history. Do your own research. I’m not going to provide you with links, lest I be accused of selectively dishing up materials that prove my point. But I will give you this little nugget from a peacenick who was right about what would happen until he was wrong;

 

 

The ones that warned us not to do what Bush did were right. And none of them had or have a quick fix now that the damage has been done. I don’t know what the answer is because people who are smarter than me haven’t told me, and I’m not going to come up with a rectally generated solution, just so that I can stake out an opinion. To state it plainly; we’re fucked and there’s nothing we can do that isn’t going to fuck ourselves worse unless we plan on having troops in Iraq until the end of time. And if you think you have a solution, I first want to hear you explain the current situation accurately. Because if you don’t have a grasp on what’s happening right now and how we got here, I’m not going to put much faith in your ill informed hypothesis. I’m pretty well informed, and I don’t have a hypothesis.           

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Hey SCOTUS, We Have The Appearance Of Corruption

Something very interesting, but not at all surprising happened last week that I can’t allow to go unnoticed. It has to do with the sweet, doe eyed belief by the far right wing of the Supreme Court, that money can’t possibly corrupt our political system.

Vance McAllister, the republican who won a congressional seat in special election in Louisiana last November made news last week, for the second time in his short and legislatively empty tenure. You may remember him from a few months ago, when he was caught on tape making out with a married staffer (naturally, he is also married). Being the class act that he is, he decided to finish out his term while at the same time firing the staffer for doing exactly what he did. Remember?

Anyway, he’s back in the news and it’s worse than the last time he was in the news. He made some fascinating admissions during a speech to the Northeast Chapter of Louisiana CPAs when he told a story about a vote he cast. From the article;

McAllister said he voted on legislation related to the Bureau of Land Management though he did not identify the bill. McAllister said a colleague on the House floor told him that he would receive a $1,200 contribution from Heritage Foundation if he voted against the bill.

“I played dumb and asked him, ‘How would you vote?’” McAllister said. “He told me, ‘Vote no and you will get a $1,200 check from the Heritage Foundation. If you vote yes, you will get a $1,000 check from some environmental impact group.’”

McAllister said he voted against the bill but did not receive a $1,200 contribution from Heritage Foundation. Federal law prohibits public officials, including members of Congress, from directly or indirectly seeking, accepting or agreeing to receive anything of value in return for the performance of any official act such as voting.

McAllister said he was not surprised he did not receive a contribution from Heritage Foundation since the group and Gov. Bobby Jindal were “upset with me,” referring to Jindal’s call for McAllister’s resignation. Jindal asked McAllister to resign after The Ouachita Citizen and its sister newspapers exposed McAllister’s extramarital affair with a member of his congressional staff.

Isn’t the lack of corruption and the lack of the appearance of corruption comforting? But don’t get the wrong idea that you may be seeing some corruption here because a spokesman for Heritage stepped up to clear this right up for us (from the article);    

Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. It conducts research of issues and legislation before the Congress. Heritage Foundation does not make political contributions in any manner, according to James Weidman, spokesman for Heritage Foundation.

Weidman said McAllister did not receive a $1,200 contribution from Heritage “because we would never do anything like that.” “If he (McAllister) is wondering why he didn’t receive a check from the Heritage Foundation, which does not make political expenditures of any kind, it is because we do not do it,” Weidman said.


“The Heritage Foundation is a think tank and does research and education, but does not get involved with political bills at all.” “He was just badly misinformed,” Weidman added.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. But don’t you worry because I’m positive that this is all a misunderstanding, and that SCOTUS’s sunny optimism was well founded and not all a product of the perks they themselves get from the very same benefactors who are so generous with congress.

Nope, nothing to see here. Move along.

Or, you can help by joining Wolf PAC and changing the system.    

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Never Served In A War Zone? Then STFU

So the republican ‘shit on anyone you need to in order to fuck Obama’ train just keeps on-a-rollin. It’s not the lunatic fringe that the mainstream republicans can claim isn’t their problem (or creation). No, this time it’s the mainstream republicans. This time, it’s Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl who served in Afghanistan, where he has been held captive in an Afghani prison for the past 5 years. They’re going after him with a vengeance because they’re positive that he’s a deserter whose desertion caused the death of anywhere between six and eight thousand fellow soldiers, depending who you’re talking to, and how high their propensity for hyperbole and straight up bullshit is. I’m not going to get into whether he’s a deserter or not. Why? Because I don’t know, and I’m not a jackass. As a nonjackass, I recognize that we don’t have all of the information we need to make that determination and that there has been no investigation into the matter. 

If he’s guilty of anything, we have military courts for that. And for everyone who is concerned that he may get away with something, let me assure you that we have plenty of prisons here in the US. No need to leave him with the Afghanis. We are the United States of America. We don’t just abandon our own because we think they might be deserters. We have a court system to determine if someone is guilty of anything. That court system is one of the things that separates us from barbaric societies made up of angry lynch mobs. We don’t do honor killings and we don’t stone people to death. We are a civilized society and since I want to keep it that way, I felt compelled to remind some of you of that.

At this point, we don’t know if he deserted or his mental health status at the time. What if he cracked under pressure like the 167 vets that committed suicide last year (by the way, that number is going up by about 15% each year)? Or like the fifty thousand that were homeless for some or all of last year (that number has tripled since 2011)? Does that matter to you at all? Because let me tell you that if it doesn’t, I find you despicable and I don’t ever want to hear you utter anything resembling "support the troops" ever again. If you don’t care that Bergdahl might have cracked under pressure, then you don’t care about any of the soldiers that are suffering as a result of what they did for us. If you have no use or empathy for soldiers that came back broken after volunteering to fight for you, then I have no use for you. I feel dirty just knowing that you people exist.

I have no fucking idea what being in the middle of a combat situation does to a person, and unless you’ve been there, neither do you.

And by the way, for the purposes of this post, I’m giving you your assumption that he did in fact desert even though we simply don’t have enough information to make that determination yet. And I’m giving you that, despite knowing better. Four words; Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch.  

Smart people wait for information. Reasoned people know they can’t possibly judge a person in a traumatic situation they’ve never, ever been in. Only the dim witted and the despicable forge ahead with their judgments because that’s the only time of the day they will ever feel good about themselves.

I just want to throw a little cold water in your face by reminding you that you have nothing to feel good about. You’re disgusting.    

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Registering Jews Again?

There was a lot of reporting yesterday on a story that claims that Jews in Ukraine are being ordered to "register" themselves and all of their property.

Those of you who know I’m Jewish probably wondered why I didn’t post it. I didn’t post it because I don’t entirely believe it. Yes, the flyers ordering the Jews to register are real but I question who the source is. It sounds just a little too crazy, and a lot too reckless because doing something like this opens up a whole new can of global involvement that wouldn’t otherwise be at play.

I thought back to Occupy Wall Street and how in some cities, they were infiltrated by some people who were looking to cause problems and therefore label the whole movement "thuggish".

A writer at The New Republic Wrote a piece echoing my doubts. She seems much more certain than I am that this isn’t really happening. From the article:
 

The Donetsk Jewish community dismissed this as "a provocation," which it clearly is. "It’s an obvious provocation designed to get this exact response, going all the way up to Kerry," says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. "I have no doubt that there is a sizeable community of anti-Semites on both sides of the barricades, but for one of them to do something this stupid—this is done to compromise the pro-Russian groups in the east."

I’m not convinced one way or another, but I am watching it. As I said this sounds like a preposterously stupid move to make before reaching the endgame of taking Ukraine back for Russia. I’m positive that Putin has his eye on Ukraine. I’m positive that both the EU and the US are discussing how to respond when Putin goes into Ukraine with Russian forces. Right now, Angela Merkel is running the show, as she should be. This is much more of an EU problem, than it is a US problem. I know that some people think that the US decides what happens around the world, but I really get the sense that Obama is letting Merkel take point on this one.

I’ve read a lot about the dynamics between Russia and the EU (specifically Germany) that talk about the EU’s dependency on the Russian energy supply. Not that it matters, but I don’t think that energy is the main consideration. I think that Merkel is more concerned about the economic impacts of cutting off the sizeable EU (again, specifically Germany’s) exports to Russia. They would be cutting off a whole lot of Russian consumers from buying their goods at a time when those customers are badly needed. Remember, Spain and Greece are still in big trouble, and they’re not in any position to buy nearly as much stuff as they need to in order to strengthen the EU economy. Cutting off Russia right now would be very bad for Germany.

But whether the issue is energy or other goods, the call on how far to go to stop Putin is largely Merkel’s to make. But if Jews are actually being forced to register themselves and their property, everything changes and Obama will take the lead. The US will take much stronger measures than what are being taken now, and there’s no telling how far this situation will escalate.

That’s why these reports don’t make sense to me. It seems to me that Putin wouldn’t allow something like this to happen because this would seriously jeopardize his already slim chances of taking Ukraine. It makes more sense for Putin to roll out the Doctor Evil routine after he’s secured the country. We’ll see what happens but for the reasons I’ve just shared, I’m really skeptical that this is happening. I’m not prepared to sound the alarms just yet.   


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Your Heros Are The Problem

By now you’ve all heard about the shootings at Jewish community centers in Kansas. The short version is that Frazier Glenn Cross (or Miller, who the fuck knows), a well known and proud anti-semite (he’s actually a racism generalist who hates all races, but seems particularly pissed at the Jews) decided he would do something about the dreaded Jewish scourge in Kansas by shooting up a couple of Jewish centers. Being the genius that he is, he managed to kill three Christians and no Jews before he was arrested. He’s a convicted felon who made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremists to look out for. He was a founder and "grand dragon" of the Klan in Kansas. By the way, what the fuck kind of lame organization has dragons, knights, and wizards? I guess it makes sense, since they’re trying to perpetuate the fantasy of white supremacy. One would think that the fact that Miller couldn’t tell a Christian from a Jew would tell these psychos something about their "supremacy", but I suspect it won’t.

I digress. Peter Bergen and David Sterman wrote a piece for CNN yesterday that is sure to have the right wing up in arms. They found that since 9/11, right wing extremists have murdered 34 Americans while Muslim extremists have killed 21. Left wing extremists do exist, but their death toll remains at zero. Remember when a few years ago when DHS put out a report in which they raised red flags over the growing number of right wing extremists in America and the right wing media lost their shit? DHS has not put out a single report analyzing threats from extremists since. But the numbers here are clear; DHS was right to warn about right wing extremism. And as with climate change, rampant gun ownership and the price we pay, "abstinence only" and the increased number of teen pregnancies it leads to, and a myriad of other topics that the right wing has managed shut out of the discussion, the reality doesn’t change just because you don’t talk about it.

We do have a right wing extremist problem, and it’s getting worse. Notice the emphasis on right wing? That isn’t ideological, it’s empirical. Let’s review the scoreboard again;

Murders by Muslim extremists – 21

Murders by right wing extremists – 34

Murders by left wing extremists – 0

Why is that? Why are there more murders by extremists of the right wing variety, than any other flavor of extremist? It’s the culture, stupid. I’ve spoken to a number of batshit crazy people who call themselves liberals, so why are they not murderous in equal numbers with the batshit on the right? Let’s look at right wing heroes of the recent past. There’s George Zimmerman who murdered an unarmed black kid, Phil Robertson who hates the gays, Sarah Palin of "he pals around with terrorists" fame, Ted Nugent who makes love to his guns every night while regaling in his tales of draft dodging, and now there’s Clive Bundy. These are not far right wing heroes, these are heroes that the mainstream right wing has embraced. Fox news has taken these miscreants into the warm embrace of the mainstream right wing bosom.

What do these heroes all have in common? Hatred. They’re all against something, and exist for the sole purpose of dividing us based on hatred. Remember when Trump was on Fox every hour, demanding to see the birth certificate? Can anyone tell me what Trump is for, and when the last time he did an interview espousing the virtue of what he’s for? How about Palin? What is she for? We know that Nugent is for guns, but that’s for the sole purpose of making the hate more lethal since we know by his draft dodging, pant pooping history, that he’s not for America.

And now we have Clive Bundy. A whacko moocher that doesn’t want to pay for the stuff he uses. He doesn’t own the land he wants to use, never has owned the land he wants to use, and was told in court that he needs to pay for the use of that land. That’s what we do in the first world; we go to court. But this whack job thinks that he can just keep mooching by gathering together an armed militia to help him take what was never his to take. And for this, he’s a right wing hero. I’ve got some news for his insane supporters; I believe there are more than a few native Americans that can come in and seize Bundy’s own ranch by using the same rationale that Bundy is using to mooch from you.

But again, I digress. The heroes of the mainstream right wing embody  and create the culture in the right wing. This is a culture of violence and hatred. And that culture is why their extremists are more dangerous than other extremists. Extremists, by definition are dangerous but right wing extremists are fueled by mainstream right wing culture.

Bill Maher likes to say that there’s something inherently more violent about the Muslim religion, than other religions. He’s dead wrong. It’s the culture, stupid. Muslims in a more violent culture are more violent than Muslims in a less violent culture. Murder is not a socially acceptable remedy in the first world so by and large, Muslims don’t murder in first world countries. Is anyone familiar with the crusades? How about the Spanish Inquisition? Why were Christians so violent back then? Because it was culturally acceptable.

Again, refer to the death toll scoreboard above. Muslim extremists are not extra, super murderous in the first world. If you want to add 9/11 to that scoreboard, that’s totally fair. That puts the Muslim extremist count at 22 because 9/11 was one incident, by one extremist group who got very lucky and racked up a giant death toll. We don’t score differently because Bin Laden was more effective than the anti semitic whacko who couldn’t shoot straight, and killed three Christians.

We have a right wing culture problem and letting the right wing shut us up about it isn’t going to solve the problem. When the Boston Marathon bombing happened, I said that I was hoping that the perpetrator was white. Why? Because we don’t lose our shit when it’s a white guy but when it’s a Muslim, we create a whole new giant government bureaucracy to molest us at the airport. When a Muslim puts a bomb in his shoe, we all have to take off our shoes prior to either having a naked picture taken, or a state sanctioned molestation. But we don’t do anything when a terrorist is white. We don’t even keep score anymore.

Pretending like it doesn’t exist, tacitly fuels the problem. As a nation, we are not outraged by the murder of a physician whose women’s health services happen to include abortion. That lack of outrage is a tacit permission for the anti choice zealots to do it again. When a white guy shoots up a Sikh temple, it’s news for one single day. There’s no national outrage the way there is when a Muslim guy kills no one in Times Square with a sloppily assembled bomb. Moreover, there’s virtually no mention of the fact that the guy who alerted authorities to a potential problem was himself Muslim.

Ignoring the problem is part of the problem. So is creating a false equivalency between the right wing and left wing. They’re not equal, and those of you that want me to call it even can go fuck yourselves. I’m not going to blame both sides equally, just to make you feel better about your shitty choices. You can either make better choices, or embrace your crappy ones but I’m not going to mitigate the hate that your party perpetuates. Left wing heroes include MLK, FDR, Rosa Parks, Che Guevara, Harvey Milk, and Cesar Chavez. These are all people that were for something, and that accomplished something that made the world demonstrably better. It’s true that the left doesn’t have very many recent heroes but not having a hero in the past 30 years is very different than propping up a murderer, a draft dodger, a hater, and a moocher. Both sides are not equal, and the lack of a hero on the left is a function of our broken political system that gives more democracy to those with more money. Elizabeth Warren is my hero because she’s telling the money to go fuck itself every day.

Both sides are not equal, and the mainstream right wing needs to be called out for its murder inspiring culture. When Bill O’Reilly goes on TV and repeats the phrase "Tiller the baby killer", he needs to be called out for fueling the crazy. Hannity needs to be called out for his love of Zimmerman and Bundy because he’s fueling the hate and bubbling the extremists to the surface.

We need to stop being polite or even handed in America. When both sides are equally problematic, I will be even handed. In the meantime, I blame mainstream republicans and the heroes they hold so dear.                     

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