At Least Government Has To Tell You When They Take Your Money

(4:33:07 PM)

Well, you can't say our home-builders aren't innovative. Faced with the collapse of their market's demand in the face of an over-built supply, they need cash, or at least an asset to leverage. (Don't we all?) The banks got theirs (from us), and ain't lending to no one, no way, no how. So where to get the cash, where to find an asset.

How about making one up out of thin air, or more precisely (and expectedly) out of your pocket or mine?

Developers have started tacking a 'commission' covenant onto the sales contracts for tract homes they've built. A covenant that says that every time that home is sold, for the next 99 years, that developer gets one per cent of the sale price. Nice, huh? Automatic inflation on homes, just to cover, not the builder's cost and profit margin, but his future cash needs, as insurance against another disaster caused by, umm, err, his housing industry.

Not outrageous enough? How's about this one: they don't even have to show you that covenant. Yep, they can write a covenant that says anything, and you won't know about it. Whether it says they get 1% of every sale of that home, or that the broker must always send a dozen roses to their sainted aunt to celebrate the sale, you won't know a thing about it. Isn't it nice to know that you are participating in a sale where you're not allowed to know all the terms. Doesn't that sound Republican?

Well, two can play at this game.

One of the reasons why the housing bubble disaster happened was that no one writing paper, whether the original mortgages or the the AAA ratings on bundles of mortgages, or the insurance on those securitized bundles, no one had to hold onto that paper. But, as the developers' covenant trick proves, we can track sales and corporations for almost a hundred years.

So how about stretching out those commissions over the life of the mortgage too?

Instead of the broker getting his whole commission the day the mortgage is signed, regardless of whether or not the mortgage ever is paid, how about a piece of each mortgage payment going to that broker's bank account? Smooths out his income, and more importantly, keeps the quality of the mortgages up, since the guy dioesn't want to do the work for a mortgage that won't be paying next year because the person goes bankrupt. If the mortgage gets paid off in a sale, he gets fully paid off from that.

Same for the securities that Fitch or Moody's rates. Maybe they should be required to take half of their fee in the offering they're rating. And have to hold those secutities or bonds for, say, two years before they could sell them. They'd be much more likely to be realistic about their ratings.

I can dream, can't I? But we know the house never rigs the game to improve the odds that every one does better, just so that the house does better. Kind of an Ayn Rand thing. Me first, screw everyone else. We can see how well that worked out for America, can't we?

In the meantime, I've moved my mortgage to my credit union. Not because I hate banks. Just because I'd like my mortgage to be held by the institution that wrote it. If that had been the rule across the board, none of this crap would've happened to begin with.

But those financial guys, well, you can't say they're not innovative. You just wish they were a little less gung-ho about it.
(04:55:07 PM)(05:04:18 PM)

A Real Reality Show

(11:38:05 PM)
This one's quick.
I don't watch 'reality TV', mostly because it's less 'real' than anything else on TV. (I do know what's going on in reality, thanks to 'The Soup' on E! channel on Fridays. Funnier than hell !)
They swap wives, swap spit, swap in the dark. They date, they fight, they curse and backbite anddrss badly to cover the disasters of their extreme makeovers. They're reality show contestants, on islands, in the hilss, from Bachelors to Housewives.
And they'll talk about anything, or anyone, as long as it's on camera.
Except one thing.

So let me pitch my new Reality Show: 'GLA$$ HOU$E$' : Real people list the actual value of all their assets and debts , reveal their income amounts and sources and review their last tax return.

What if everyone found out that none of us are making any money?
What if we actually knew how much money the people we look at, on TV or in the movies, in politics or sports, make, and who they're paying?
Wouldn't you watch to see all the expenses of Lady Gaga, and how much she spends to avoid paying her taxes.
Wouldn't you like to see where Limbaugh spends his $400 million multi-year contract?

I don't know where to go with this, but I know this is the only real taboo in America. We'll put snuff porn on the internet, send nude pics of ourselves to our lovers using cell phones, we'll publish video of animals being squashed by feet dressed in fancy shoes. That last was just declared legal under First Amendment rights. I don't know where to go with that, either.

But dare anyone to put their actual tax return up on the web, with their name on it, even if all the other person info is redacted, and you'll see them stare at you as if you'd proposed using their 4-year-old as a food source.

It's said that in France, they will talk about their finances, but never about their sex lives. I know it's just the opposite here in America. Because money is the real porn in America. And how much you really have, and how you really got it, is a secret everyone keeps, and no one wants to tell. Parents hide it from children, spouses hide it from each other, services now investigate it for fiancees before they get married, because 'I love you and trust you' doesn't include money and finances.

And no, if this show gets picked up, I won't tell you how much they pay for it.
Because there's a difference between Honesty and Reality. And there's only so much of either we can handle.
(12:08:24 AM)

My 9-11 Isn't Like Yours

Please indulge me.
My experience of Sept. 11th separates me from my fellows in America, and every 9-11 I want to talk about it.

I was in Naples Italy, vacationing with Dawn, when the planes hit. We toured Pompeii (couldn't get home, after all) while the ash fell on Manhattan. We made it to Paris and stayed with family friends of my father from WWII, while we waited for the flight ban to be lifted, and we attended bi-lingual services at Notre Dame, for all the losses in America, and all the stranded travelers in Paris, while the Mayor went on the radio hourly asking for citizens to call in to volunteer to take in these same travelers that had overwhelmed Paris's hotels.

We came home to zombie-followers of Bush, liberal friends all, who had seen 8(?) days of uncommercial, unplotted TV news, seen the attack played ad infinitum and the speeches of Junior and Rudy run on perpetual loops on TV.

We had seen the true reaction of the world, in Italy, France and England, among locals and immigrants like our taxi driver in Paris, a Muslim who refused to let us pay for our fare.'We're all Americans now.' The old crone from Greece, traveling to her brother's funeral, who patted my hand during the world-wide minute of silence while we were in the air from Rome to Paris, 'So sad. So sad.'  The French Antarctic explorers we stayed with, in their eighties now, who brought their 5-nation reunion to a halt as we entered, and raised their glasses to these two disheveled Americans, "We are all Americans." I damned near cry as I type this, remembering their unanimous pride in America.

But the thing that I remember most is the monument the Parisians have put up, on the far corner of the gardens of Les Invalides, to the victims of the series of bombings in Paris in the mid-90's, bombings most of us never heard about.
It is a fountain of a stylized, single person in a long coat, standing on a small rise. The person's backbone is absolutely straight, a rectangular bar than cannot be bent. The person holds something in the crook of its left arm. And that something explains the rise the statue stands on. Because that something is the person's head, eye-to-eye with the observer, open and unflinching. While the water of the fountain flows slowly out of the severed neck of the person, killed in a terrorist attack, and flows down the coat, the person continues to stand, unbowed, open-eyed, undaunted.

I needed that monument that day, to remind me that people before us have known how to survive, how to continue, how to deal.

And I recall it as a symbol of all the people I met in those two weeks when I couldn't return home, and it counters the hatred my government later ginned up against all those people for not doing what our president wanted in Iraq. It reminds me of the opportunity America and the rest of the world lost by having the government we had that day.

And until I die, I will never forget that, and I doubt I will ever forgive those bureaucrats, Republicans all, for throwing that opportunity away.

Second BP Spill Coats Partners and Contractors

(04:40:03 AM)
I hate that I am not surprised at BP's blackwashing of its responsibility for the Deepwater platform's oil volcano this summer. After sitting through hours of Congressional hearings broadcast on C-SPAN (god help me, I've got it on satellite in my car, even) it was obvious that Hayward and his fellow fuck-ups at BP were doing everything they could to minimize perceptions, of the spill and of their part in causing it. By the time BP's incident report came out Thursday (NYTimes article and BP Report) I don't think anyone was surprised when it basically said, 'Yea, it happened, but it wasn't our fault, so fuck off!'

And the neat thing about that attitude, that corporate stance is...they'll make it stick. Because it's the new American standard, and we're who they're selling on that position. We'll buy it, because, for all the lip-service our culture has given responsibility and accountability, we don't expect anyone to actually own up to it anymore.

I'm not sure when it started to fade away. John Wayne's characters always admitted when they were wrong, whether they liked it or not. President Truman said 'The Buck Stops Here' and became famous for being the little backwoods senator who went from contractor plant to food processor, exposing graft, corruption, and war-profiteering during WWII. President Johnson decided not to run for a second term, because his actions in Viet Nam had become too devisive, and even Nixon acted on the consequences of his crimes in office, the only president to ever resign. But it took him years to come close to admitting his crimes. Carter took responsibility for the Iranian hostage crisis, and lost the presidency partially on the actions he took and didn't take in that event.

But Reagan claimed to not know, or not believe, that crimes were committed in the Iran-Conta debacle, and his VP and successor, George HW Bush, pardoned everyone to avoid anyone contradicting his claim that he 'wasn't in the loop' on those crimes. Clinton admitted mistakes of policy but never those of his peccadillos, and the Republicans who hunted him never saw the destruction of a nation as a bad thing. And since Bush Junior never made any mistakes, he had nothing to take responsibility for.

But at least we can vote on them, and vote them out.

But BP and other corporations seem to have arrived at a wonderful point here in America. With almost no exception, they are never wrong. Their products don't fail, their practices are legal, their motive is always and exclusively to maximize profits for the shareholder this quarter, and that's the only thing a company is supposed to think about, isn't it?

If anything goes wrong, it's not their fault. GM failed, not because it fought against its own lack of modernization and its refusal to see the future, but because employees were paid too much. Lehman Bros. didn't fail because they were leveraged 30 to 1 in a market that relied on a perpetual-motion machine of always-rising home prices, but because the Fed didn't lend them a hand. The collapse of the US economy isn't because of thirty years of steady defunding of regulatory agencies combioned with the denigration of that function in government, combined with a religious aversion to paying the bill for civilization (otherwise known as 'taxes'.) No, it was caused by an out-of-power Congressional fag running interference for Fannie and Freddie. Not one person has been removed from office for starting the longest most expensive war in America's history. Because Saddam attacked us on 9-11.

Don't get me started on Iran and Iraq. See tomorrow's post on 9-11 for that.

The American corporation has become impervious to blame. The corporation is used, not to create something long-lasting and useful, but to shield its owners from responsibility. LLC means exactly that. S Corp is for that specific purpose. To avoid human, personal responsibility for the consequences of human actions. A corporation is a piece of paper that authorizes human action. It does nothing until a human does something in its name. This is why not one single person has gone to jail for destroying the world's largest economy. (Bernie Madoff doesn't count. He wasn't accepting blame, he confessed to avoid being murdered.) Experts and corporate officers can never be wrong because...well, because then no one would hire them as experts and corporate officers any more.

This is a far larger subject than a blog entry can do justice, so thanks for sticking with it this long. A complete rewrite of the corporate contract is in order, from its place in society and its goals, to how it is monitored, fined, jailed (if a corporation is a person, it should be capable of being jailed) and a method of involuntary death, for being a menace to society, should be defined.

But when you look around you, at the 'culture of accountability' that Bush promised, once 'the adults [were] in charge' as Cheney declared, notice that almost no one of any importance takes any responsibility for anything, anymore.

Ever. 
(05:22:13 AM)(05:33:38 AM)

Republican Dream, American Nightmare

Scene: Night. A standard two-story suburban house, on fire, fills the screen.
As the camera pulls back, waist-level close-up of glowing screen of hand-held credit card terminal, held by a work-gloved hand. The other glove holds a credit card.
The screen blinks..."WAITING..."... "WAITING..."
Camera pulls back again, showing two men, the left one in a heavy coat, his gloved hands holding the terminal and the credit card.
The man on the right, disheveled hair, one untucked button-down shirt-tail hanging out over his slacks, looks nervously from the burning house to the terminal screen.
Suddenly the screen brightens. It says "APPROVED."

The gloved hand hands the credit card to the nervous man, and turns offscreen as the camera pulls further back.

"OK, Let's Put It OUT!!!" the gloved man shouts, as camera now cranes back and above, revealing him as the leader of a crew of firemen who've been waiting to see if they'd get paid for their work.
The fire crew leaps into action, hoses bursting into spray over the house, surrounding it, spraying from two or three directions.

Over closing action, screen reads:
"REPUBLICAN DREAM. AMERICAN NIGHTMARE."

Voiceover: If you don't want this to be America's future, Vote Democratic.

-----------
If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention. Read this.

Koran-flavored Burgers...yum!

(01:32:23 PM)(Too many synapses firing today...)
Down in Florida, some clown is planning to celebrate 9-11 by burning the Koran.
And they're already rioting over it in Indonesia and Baghdad.
Out there, they don't understand that in the US, especially in the hinterlands, any boob can slap a cross on his lawn, claim to be a preacher, and collect a few parishioners whose cars can't get them into a real church anymore.
Such is the preacher at the Dove Ministry, whose 80 followers help put the 'duh' in Florida.

But if their religious convictions demand that they burn  Korans, it's their First Amendment right.
And no one can stop them. And every news camera in America will be down there in the boonies of Swampsuck, Florida, to record it.
And broadcast it.
Worldwide.
Regardless of General Petreaus's saying that their doing this will threaten increased hostilities against Americans worldwide, especially our soldiers.
Cause these are good Americans: self-centered, me-first, whatever-it-takes-to-get-on-TV Americans.
And any clown can drag the Weber out of the garage, throw in some Kingsford and a match, and then toss on his kid's Science book, a picture of the president or the religious book of his choice, and grill burgers over the flames.
 
Yes, this is America. And there is only one response.

Collect a gross of King James Bibles, a box of Torahs, a smattering of Book of Mormon, another gross of catholic Bibles, a few Shinto scrolls and a couple of Buddhist prayer wheels (for color).
Hell, maybe even a picture of Madelyn Murray O'Hare.

Drive 'em down to that church at showtime.
And with all those cameras running, toss 'em in with that bozo's Korans, and light 'em all up.
Thus proving that America makes no law respecting the establishment of religion.
By demonstrating a complete absence of respect for all those religions.

Maybe the Muslims that are so threatened by a copy of their sacred book being burned will get over it.
I mean, Allah'll still be there, won't he?

And maybe Americans will see how stupid they look to the rest of the world.
Because, for at least one day, this small-minded yahoo is the world's image of 'American.'
And we should be ashamed.

(01:48:49 PM)(01:52:22 PM)

NRA: Not Real Americans

(07:27:30 PM last night)
Now, I've promised myself to write every day. I let people know, but I don't expect much in the way of readership. And I haven't been disappointed. But I wrote Saturday about the SouthBayOpenCarry card table at the Hermosa Beach Arts Fair. And that brought me readers. Go read the comments. They're fun. I learned several things.

One: Someone is monitoring for this sort of thing. If you Google for any keyword in my post, you will NOT find my post. I looked through 20 pages of Google results for each of about ten terms. Nothing. (Humbling, but part of the scientific method.) Two possibilties are left: I've got more than one Facebook friend who is a Republican, or the NRA is running a spider and has zip-coded rapid response teams. Maybe they even get points at the local gun club. But it was surprising how easy it was to get a response.

Two: Not one of them read what I wrote. I mean, it went in their eyes, and then set off their lower extremities, causing knees to jerk. But that's not reading.

Three: They come in a wide variety of closed minds and jerking knees.

Four: They assume I know nothing of guns, am therefore afraid of them, and in a couple of cases, that a few sessions with one would cure me of said fear.

(07:35:55 PM pause for dinner and a show)
(08:12:12 AM this morning)

The point to my column was something rarely remarked on, that the second amendment was unique in that the authors felt an obvious need to explain why it was included. They explained that a state, in order to remain free, needed a well-regulated militia, because, until WWII, the U.S. didn't see the need to maintain a significant national standing army. It drafted as needed, but only if the volunteer militias of the various states were insufficient to whatever needs the national interest were.

They didn't justify the amendment with a need for personal protection, or a explanation that every other member of 'We The People' should be looked upon with suspicion. In fact, secure in their homes and papers is a completely separate amendment.

Not one of my commentors responded to this.

How they did respond was fun to read. One gave me several Jefferson quotes, all at the ready, pre-fab from his local NRA chapter. One quote says, almost verbatim, that in the range of sports that can keep you in shape, shooting stuff keeps you sharp without taxing you physically (see 'video games') while games played with balls require too much exercise, (and probably bathing, too.) More on this later.

Another was a woman who commented that my blog wouldn't take comments. A dial-tone that can type.
And of course, personal favorite:
"Ah, the problem... A member of the party of treason, hate, and racism complaining about the 2nd Amendment." 

I especially like the "Ah, " at the beginning. As if the author has given this a significant amount of consideration. And this is the great analysis that resulted. At least the one with the list of quotes could keep track of where to cut and paste them from. This one just had to get back from the toilet to watch the second half of Glenn Beck.

Finally, granted, I haven't been shooting...since the Santa Anita Firing Range closed. Always liked that place. Because at a range, just like Jefferson explained, it's a sporting location, like a bowling alley. Bring in the bowling ball/gun, or use one from the house. Ask for a lane, get a scoresheet or 10, maybe you have your own shoes/earcuffs, maybe you use the house's. Don't bowl in the other guy's lane, wait til they roll/shoot before you do. And at the end, you've checked your game, improved on a weakness or developed a new skill, and maybe picked up a twenty betting with someone on who can score best. And you need a shower. Burnt powder stinks worse that cigarettes.

I started shooting when my grandfather let me and my cousin help build a .22 rifle. 'Why does the barrel have eight sides?' I won a few contests with .22s at Boy Scouts when I was living in Wisconsin. My dad was a teacher, not a factory guy, so I was usually one of the boys left in class when the rest went out for deer season or duck season. Ever been to Horicon Marsh? One of my best friends died of a blood disease at twelve. They buried him in his Scout's uniform, with the key's to his new Ski-doo, and his .22LR.

Since then, I've practiced with a little 5-shot S&W Police Chief thumbless revolver, a few automatics from .22 to 9mm, and a 586 S&W which is just dead on the target if I use wadcutters. And that Henry Survival .22 rifle breaks down small for store and carry. (Buy American!) Just needs a little plumbers tape before closing the stock, to keep it watertight.

But my ex-cop and cop friends all recommend 1) don't have a gun at home, because you'll shoot a friend, and 2) if you HAVE to have one at home, have a light action pump shotgun. Because a) you or your wife won't have to aim it well to hit something, b) even if you don't hit anything, you'll scare the crap out of an intruder and alert the neighbors, and c) (and this is a biggie) shot pellets stop somewhere inside the wall, while most penis-replacement bullets with overloads (the usual for macho men) travel through walls, across streets, through furniture, endangering your neighbors several apartments or even houses away.

This last is why open carry is dumb. Because there's just nothing that thrills me more than half a dozen scared, under-experienced, poorly-trained civilians pulling down at the same incident, and starting to fire.

A final note: Women who feel socially inadequate in current American culture get breast implants. Men who feel similarly threatened buy guns. In both cases, I feel sad that you think so little of yourself, and of Americans, that you think this will improve you.

But at least tits won't go off accidentally in the line at Starbucks.

(08:46:46 AM)(09:00:45 AM)

Koch-heads and Koch-Suckers...

(6:11:05 PM)
First, let's be straight about their names. It's spelled K-O-C-H, but it's pronounced 'COKE', like the drink from Atlanta or the drug from Bolivia. It's the first subterfuge in the lives of Charles and David Koch, cause if you hear the name, you don't know how it's spelled, and vice-versa.

I won't go over Jane Mayer's article in the 8/30/10 New Yorker. If you've read it and not been appalled at the Koch brothers and their operations, you're not an American. Why you should care: They own the second largest privately-held corporation in America, and they own the Tea Party operations nationwide. If they weren't funding the Tea party, it wouldn't exist.

But in reviewing the article, a couple of things struck me. One was how much money they have, and how they lie to themselves about it. David Koch jokes that he learned business through buying low, selling high, year after year, until  (punchline:) "Father died and left me three hundred million dollars!" And that was 1967 dollars, when the average annual income was around $7,300, a house ran about $14K and a new car was $2,375. So this wasn't like a measly $300M is today.

 Fred Koch, fresh from MIT, invented a newer way to refine oil to gasoline. But when Big Oil of the time (1930s) shut him out, he went to Soviet Russia and helped them set up refineries based on his technology. It's where he made his early money, until Stalin started confiscating everything and purging his associates. He came back to the states, started an oil company of his own, and in the late 50's, was a founder of the John Birch Society. Apparently, he was unable to tell the difference between a democratic republic and a totalitarian dictatorship. Something else Fred left his sons.

So neither David nor his brother Charles are what you would be called self-made men. Not like their father, who actually invented something after his graduation from MIT. But they like to appear philanthropic. On the first page of Mayer's article, she lists The following donations by David H. Koch:
$  2.5M   - American Ballet Theatre
 100.0M  - Lincoln Center refurb
    20.0M - Am Museum of Natural History
    10.0M - MOMA
    40.0M - Sloan Kettering Cancer Ctr

That's roughly $175 Million. Since 2008. From a guy who, along with his brother, is worth $35 BILLION. And, along with his brother, owns, OWNS, a conglomerate with $100BILLION in annual revenues. This isn't a philanthropist. His total donation, over several years, is one-half of one per cent of their net worth. It's not even a major part of the interest he's earning on his principal.
And what's his brother, Charles, doing with his money. According to interviews, his goal is to tear government "out at the root."

So these are small men, recipients of the luck of which uterus they turned up in.
They keep anyone from looking hard at them, by paying the high and mighty of society to look the other way.

And they have become what their father despised. Corporate squatters who run off anyone who threatens their lazy corporate fortunes.

This was the other thing I realized, reading the article. Remember, dear old dad, Fred Koch, ran off to help the Communists when Big Oil wouldn't let him play, wouldn't try something new. Now that the Koch brothers ARE Big Oil, they will do anything and everything to prevent new technologies from gaining a foothold, or from American citizens from dmanding that they actually pay for what they list as 'externalities' on their books: massive oil spills (convicted), benzene dumps (convicted), deaths from exploding refineries (settled out of court), and massive numbers of cancers from from formaldehyde, of which they produce 2.2 Billion gallons a year.

This last the EPA is trying to finally issue a carcinogen notice on. Which is one of the big reasons why the Koch Bros ginned up Americans For Prosperity, which ginned up the Tea Party, which 'terrorized' Congressmen all last summer, to swing back the few Republicans who'd seen Obama's huge numbers at election time and after, and had become willing to work with him. Anything to stop Democrats from actually holding Big Oil, including the Koch Brothers, accountable. Anything to prevent competition. Anything to be able to destroy the existing government and run it themselves.

Almost as if Stalin had been twins...
(06:54:40 PM)(07:19:07 PM)  

'Nice gun'

(3:31:39 PM)
Ah, election season, and a young, insecure man's fancy turns to open carry laws.

Have you ever read the 'Bill Of Rights', the first ten amendments to the US Constitution? They were demanded by a few of the state delegations in order to get the Constitution signed and ratified to begin with, so these ten are particularly special. And if you read them as a whole, you'll notice that these say what governemnt can and cannot do, with varying degrees of specificity. They don't say why any of these amendments, these rights, are included. They just are. Deal with it.

Except one.

Remember, these were men (yes, only men) were born into a era of western culture when skill and training  rhetoric, debate, argument were required of an educated man. The written word was particularly chosen, a phrase was included in a formal document for a reason, the order of words in a sentence were chosen to underline the thoughts in that sentence. Arguments were built with craft and care.

So why is the second amendment only one that the founders thought needed an explanation, a justification? And that explanation of the need precedes the definition of the right, so the reader has to read 'why' before reading 'what' about the right.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I'm not going to get into all the other discussions, the history, the 'shall not be infringed.' But I always find it interesting that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' isn't explained, nor is 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers...', etc. You get the idea. Read through them all, it only takes a couple of minutes.

So the idea that the right to bear arms is just like all the other rights is, well, wrong. It had a situational restriction on it. And once a state was secure (in that it got to govern itself, and wasn't threatened by , at the time, the French, the Spanish or especially the English) this 'right' was expected to be unnecessary.

This all comes up because the SouthBayOpenCarry group had a table at the Hermosa Beach Art fair today. And the two of them (pathetic, huh?) were packing heat.

I rode my bike down to breakfast in Hermosa this morning, to enjoy its annual Labor Day street festival, without having to deal with parking. Lots of booths, selling jewelry, paintings, lawn furniture, vitamins, pet adoption, you've been to one of these. Roasted corn, tacos, bratwurst, Pink Floyd tribute band, followed by one doing Neil Young's early stuff....and in the strip behing the band's stage, the political booths.

I had friends staffing the South Bay Democratic Clubs' stand. And we reviewed the other operations in that semi-circle. Join me: The John Birch Society (no, I'm not kidding) had a full booth, preprinted vinyl banner, and a foam core sign: 'Stand Up For Freedom. Repeal Obamacare!' Well, at least they're consistent. Like Koch (founding) father, like Koch sons. There was the Southbay Republican Club, a surfing elephant their unlikely logo. They had several 'Meg 2010' signs. That's all there is on the sign. 'Meg' above, '2010' below. Of course, there was a Christian Evagelist booth.

Off across the bike path, some poor kid had apparently driven in from up north, set up a card table, and hung several small hand-made signs, some saying 'Legalize Marijuana' signs, a two saying 'Vote Nov 2nd',  and three clipboards of petitions. Not a single mention of Prop 19. A friend at the Dems booth and I whipped together three 'Vote YES on Prop 19' signs, and I walked them over, along with a roll of tape. The kid was surprised, happy, and promised to return the tape.

When my wife's with me, she lets me chat with friends, but makes me stay away from the other booths. After a few years, a wife's voice stays in a guy's head, even when she's in an all-day class 20 miles away. But not poking a stick at the OpenCarry Clowns was damned hard.

Two guys, both over-built, like the wannabecops you see parodied in movies, were standing in front of a pathetic cardtable, again with a couple of clipboard with petitions. Both were sporting holstered automatics. One wore purple Cons high-tops, I suppose to prove gun nuts are cute, too. The SouthBayOpenCarry 'militia'. Look em up, they do neighborhood clean-up, like Heal the Bay volunteers or the Girl Scouts. They just do it armed for Islamic (or Democratic) assault.

I'm standing there in black and yellow bike clothes, taller than either of these clowns. It was all I could do not to poke them with a stick, the old 'What part of "Well-regulated" don't you understand?' argument, just to see if I could get one to pull down on a longhair in spandex, thus ending their group's effort in the South Bay in one unfortunate photo.

I considered explaining to them the difference of the second amendment, as I did at the opening of this blog. But cowards with guns are not the most educable population.

Son I rode home instead, because my wife wants me at the house, not getting bailed out of jail.
(04:31:17PM)(04:52:03 PM)

The Hand of Sarah Palin

(04:34:38pm)
There it is. Sarah Palin’s hand. The picture that launched a thousand stories. “She can’t remember what she’s talking about,” says the Left. “The poor man’s teleprompter,” Sarah herself calls it in her speeches, according to the latest in Vanity Fair, making indirect fun of Obama’s use of more modern technology. Personally, I enjoyed the word play, that “this was the hand penned by the hand of Sarah Palin.”

But did anyone read the damned thing? I mean, besides Sarah? Because there’s a lot written on that tiny hand.

It starts with the word ‘Energy’. This includes oil, which is taxed in her state to fill the Alaska Permanent Fund, specifically to send a check to every man, woman and child in Alaska, every year. 2009’s payout? $1305 to any resident who’d been there a year. Sweet.

I’ll just leave to the reader the exercise of listing all the ways this contradicts her attitude towards taxation, government support of citizens, government regulation of business…

The hand ends with ‘Lift American Spirit,’ a nice, content-free reminder about her big finish in whatever speech she’s giving.

It’s the three words in the middle that say so much, about her, and about the self-knowledge that the GOP is selling lies. That if they told the truth, they’d be done for.

The line originally reads ‘Budget Cuts’, but then ‘Budget’ is crossed out, and ‘Tax’ is written under it. Now, the message is ‘Tax Cut’. Why?

Because if the Republicans ever actually listed the programs, the volume of cuts, the level of national financial destruction that would be necessary to perform their advertised magic act of tax cuts combined with a balanced budget…well, it’s not that they’d never win another election. It’s that Jan Brewer would finally be proven right, there would be decapitated bodies in the deserts of Arizona…and the forests of Utah, and the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi. Bodies of Republican officeholders and candidates, their FOX pundits, and all their hangers-on. (I’m talking to you, Grover ‘Sign the No New Taxes pledge’ Norquist, you lying, America-hating weasel.)

Did Sarah understand this? Of course not. She’s on the payroll now, she won’t be missing any meals or mortgage payments. She wrote ‘Budget Cuts’ and someone else said, “Are you nuts?!” and crossed it off, and told her ‘Tax Cuts’ is the party line, always.

Because if she stood there and told her adoring flock that Medicare is closed, and the Social Security checks aren’t coming, and the military retirement is cancelled, and so’s the mortgage deduction, they’d get damned grumpy. And if she told them that junior’s school would need to shut, and the playground is closed, and there’s no more unemployment insurance, all just so her new friends could have more tax cuts, and higher interest income from their bonds, well, they might come to their senses, and render her…well, just render her. You farm boys know what I mean.

This is the hand of the Republican Party, with a one-word change demonstrating the sleight-of-hand they pull on their followers every election.
(05:10:07pm)(0527:25pm)

Fetuses, soldiers, and Jews, oh my!

(9:30:47 PM)
Fetuses, soldiers, and Jews: three things Republicans give lip service to. And nothing else.

1) Fetuses: name me a Republican policy ('tax cuts for the rich' and 'deregulation' don't count,) in the last twenty years that did anything to improve a kid's life. Pre-natal care? Headstart expansion? Post-natal healthcare? Improved pre-school access? Quality of air, water, food? Safety of Chinese toys? Prevention of melamine in Chinese baby formula, or lead in Mexican candy?
These fuckers aren't pro-life, they're Pro-Birth. Shout them down: "You're NOT Pro-Life, You're just Pro-Birth!"
Because, kid, according to them, while you're in there, the light of the world shines out your mom's va-jay-jay. (A term that graces this month's Cosmo cover!) Once you're out, though, you're on your own.

2) With few propects, financially, educationally, and now (thanks to 30 years of exporting our industrial base) job-wise, it's almost as if the GOP planned it all to force kids into military service. Voluntary conscription into soldier-hood. And boy, do Republicans sing their praises. Make up reasons to start wars, just to show them off. Hide tax breaks, ear-marks and pay-offs behind the need to service those soldiers. Well, at least until they come home. A blowed-up vet isn't much of a photo op. Reminds folks that it ain't all parades and polished boots. And if they're not much use to the GOP, well, they don't get shit. Walter Reed, the whole damned VA system got left to rot by thirty years of executive mismanagement followed by congressional neglect. Lousy pay, no jobs to come back to. And the evangelical Christians that make up 80% of the officer corps work hard to make sure most disability releases are short, cheap, and barely cover the costs of the rest of a soldier's life. What's being able to see worth to you? To walk? To sleep at night? Apparently, not much to the GOP.

3) And then there's the Jews. The last time you heard the phrase 'New York elite' come out of a politician's mouth or a pundit's radio show, was it a left-winger that used those code words for 'Jews'? Yea, didn't think so. I don't see many Southern Crosses flying over at Temple Beth Israel. Yet a significant percentage of American Jews are starting to vote Republican. Do they really think Democrats won't protect Israel? Do they actually think a party that is joined at the hip to both the racists of the Tea Party and the rabid Evangelicals of the 700 Club and Focus on the Family really has any use for them for a single second? Think reconciliation with the Palestinians is hard? Try squeezing the hatred and suspicion towards Jews out of the GOP and its fellow travelers.
"Well, once you're all home in Israel, (and the hell out of good white Christian America,) then the Jesus'll come back, and burn y'all up as part of the Rapture. Says so right there in Revelations. Oh, that's right. Y'all only read the Old Testament, don'tcha?"

I think John Belushi said it best in his signature on his head shots: "Wise Up!" 
(9:54:46 PM)(10:06:03 PM) 

Who the hell is on the cover of Sports Illustrated?!

(11:38:05 PM)
Joey Votto is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. WTF?, you may ask, wondering either a.) Who the hell is Joey Votto?, or b.) I didn't know you paid any attention to anything besides politics. But Joey Votto is the first basemen for my long-ago-hometown baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds. Legendary in the '70's, almost unheard of since their 1990 'wire-to-wire' domination of all of baseball, 'my' team has been a joke since the mid-'90's.
Suddenly, as of this writing, they are 7 games ahead of the next team in their division. I have no illusions about their chances at getting to, much less winning the World Series, but I can dream.

I started paying attention to the Reds when I was five or six. My hero was Frank Robinson, but my favorite name on the team was Vada Pinson. I loved the way the name sounded, how it came off the tongue. "vay-DUH PIN-sun." It didn't hurt that he was great in the outfield and could really hit. I was already a true Reds fan by the time Pete Rose showed up. I would fall asleep listening to the games, looking at my baseball cards for pictures of each player as he batted.

Frank and Vada were black ball players. Not until years later did I learn that Vada Pinson had started out in the Negro Leagues, and had moved from the Black Barrons of Birmingham to my Reds. I didn't know there was a "Negro League." I just knew about 'baseball.' Pete Rose was, and is, about as white a specimen of homo sapiens as there will ever be. I didn't know that I should care. I just knew their stats, listened to the plays, heard them lose the first World Series I ever listened to. They were my team. They weren't black or white. They were Red.

I understand why Obama is so threatening to so many small people. Their children might grow up with a president on TV, in the web, in the news, that also happens to be black. Their children might not find that to be strange, or amazing, or scary. They might just think that's the way things are. They'll be learning new things every day, every week, about how the world is, at the age of six, seven, eight. They'll see black stars in movies, in video games, in music, in sports. Because they are there, everywhere they look. Even in industry, finance, politics, power.

And if that is allowed to seem normal, how will they be convinced that it is bad?

This year's incoming college freshman was born in 1992. She doesn't remember Clinton's presidency. She didn't watch his impeachment. FOX News is normal. And Nirvana is "classic rock." But a black president is amazing to her, because she's from what is already 'back then,' before there were presidents that were black. But eight-year-olds today? It is what it is. And where's my juice box?, they ask, unimpressed.

It's such a shame that they don't know the genius of Joe Morgan threatening to steal second, dancing miles off first, while George Foster, the home-run king, stood in the box, then stepped out, then stepped back in, the two of them completely destroying the pitcher's concentration, until Foster blasted another one over the fence, and both of them strolled across home plate, game after game.

Both of them were black. Both of them were brilliant, and were heroes, of mine and of thousands of little white boys across ever-so-Republican Ohio. I didn't know who Jackie Robinson was when I was a kid. I didn't care. I'd like to think that that was part of the point to Jackie Robinson coming to the majors.  

Joey Votto, this week's SI cover, is a Canuck who can't (not doesn't, can't) play hockey. But he plays baseball well enough to be threatening to win the batting Triple Crown. It hasn't been done in my memory, since Frank Robinson won it (in the American League) in 1966. Remember he was black? Guess what? Nobody cared then, nobody cares now. What they care about is what he did. Cause in the end, it's what you do that matters. And they can't deny it.

Except on FOX.
(12:16:24 AM)(12:20:53 AM)

Remember when being 'all thumbs' was a BAD thing?

(8:02 am)
Holy crap. I never thought a blank page combined with an obligation to write would present me with a problem. Anyone who knows me knows it's never stopped me from running my mouth. (BTW, there's a term for that: "logorrhea.") When writing an accepted assignment, whether for a class, or for some publication (usually political,) the subject material, and the point of it, has been obvious to me. Usually, the keyboard is my enemy just because I'm a lousy one-to-two finger typist, which is why I've always preferred speaking.

But one of the tenets of writing is "Write what you know." And I know I promised myself that I'd write, and post. So it's the act, not the content, that's the point of sitting here, between the gym and the shower, before going to work (yes, I have a regular job) and banging on this keyboard.

Let's talk about the keyboard, then. The standard terminology for this device is a 'QWERTY' keyboard, named for the six keys in the upper left half-a-row of letter keys. My mother is a past master (mistress?) of the keyboard, being a journalist. She could bang out 85+ words a minute on a mechanical Smith-Corona with hammers that swung up on arms from a central arc of hinge pins. Her earliest predecessors in the world of typing could type far faster. In fact, with a keyboard laid out in alphabetic order, in 3 or 4 rows, those early typists could go so fast that the weak metal available for the arms that hammered the type fonts onto the page would soon give up. The resulting tangle of bent metal, like undercooked spaghetti, confounded engineers. Then one came up with an idea: if we couldn't find a metal strong enough to withstand the use (and of course cheap enough to make typewriters profitable,) we could make the typists slower.

But how? Easy. Rearrange the keyboard so that, in an English-speaking population of 90% right-handed persons, the most frequently-used letters are on the rows away from 'home', under fingers that are the weakest, and usually on the left. The five most frequently-used letters in the English language are E,T,O,A and N. Look at them on your keyboard. The first two are on the upper, LEFT row, the last two are on the upper right or lower off-center. have to reach, using third or fourth fingers. And the A, the only one on the home row, is on the farthest left key, under the weakest finger.

Unfortunately, by the time this layout had become standardized across manufacturers, metallurgy had caught up with need. But it was too late. The intentional crippling of typed communication was permanent. The IBM Selectric made the arms obsolete, and the computer keyboard made the need for moving parts almost moot. (I still have a key that sticks on one of my laptops...)

iPhones and iPads rely on virtual keyboards on touchscreens, and still use this layout. Others have been invented, the Dvorak for one, that are designed to increase typing speed. All are far more functional that the QWERTY keyboard. But you've never seen any of them, have you?

Now, the keyboards on cell phones are so small that they can only be typed on with thumbs, because the rest of the hand is needed to hold the phone. An icebreaker I often use to interrupt people texting in the middle on parties or events is "Remember when being 'all thumbs' was a bad thing?" Yet even here, there are speed contests, and instead of rearranging the keyboard to be more useful, the language is instead rewritten to use fewer keystrokes, or phonic versions of words. BTW, it sux.

So, sometimes it's worth going back and re-examining the original idea, the contraints, and their results, rather than just continuing on.

An exercise for those interested: See those solid-rocket boosters on the side of the Space Shuttle's main booster? The ones that fall off about half-way to orbit. Why are they that diameter? Here's a hint: Roman chariots. I'm not kidding. Look it up.
(8:42 am)(8:49am)

9-11, Katrina, and my birthday

It's my birthday. I'm 55. Weirdly, this birthday seems to matter, while most of the others haven't mattered, at least not since 31.
No, this isn't going to be middle-aged angst, but there is a bit of reflection due on these dates, and this one happens to have a syncronicity with the news, and recent history.
See, my 50th birthday, for which my wife held a surprise, and surprisingly fun party, got upstaged somewhat by Hurricane Katrina. I suppose for the rest of my life, I'll get to hear about that event on my birthday, like folks born on 9/11 or 11/23. Folks born on 8/8 or 8/9 got off easy this year, as no major news outlet commented on that event. Look it up.
Being a political activist, I remember the flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina as the beginning of the end of the Junior Bush mystique. There on television, on every channel, was the incompetence of the omnipotent, unstoppable Republican machine. Just about a year later, the 1000-year Reich of One-Party Rule that Karl Rove had trumpeted came crashing down in the Democratic sweep of majorities in both houses of Congress.
In just a couple of weeks, we'll get the 9-11 remembrances. The other main inflection point in the arch of the Junior Administration. In all the recent polling on Obama's popularity, comparing his to that of other presidents at this point in their first terms. Missing in those analyses is that Junior Bush had the lowest incoming ratings of any president since they started polling. Well below 50%. 'Course, his did start by being appointed over the wishes of a majority of Americans. His actual popularity stayed in the toilet until 9-11. Suddenly, he could do no wrong. Suddenly, even my leftiest friends thought Junior was wonderful. My wife and I were in Europe on 9-11, so we missed the "all 9-11, all the time" media black-out/white-wash. (More about that on that date.)
But the similarity of the two events, 9-11 and Katrina,  each just over eight months from Junior's two presidential inaugurations, and the effect they had on how America viewed him and his, strikes me. The first gave carte-blanche to a perceived incompetent, and the second exposed the incompetence and cronyism of an administration that had seemed capable of doing, or getting away with, anything.

One of the many lessons I draw from this is that old saw, "Success is being ready when luck comes around." The Republicans were ready, with legislation and policy initiatives, especially ones that had nothing to do with national defense or terrorism, and rode America's sympathy for the president to every one of their goals. These included the re-election of the Junior King, a dubious bet even after all this.

Four years later, constant organizing by the other political wing of America made it ready when Katrina hit. Hit not just New Orleans, but the entire Republican apparatus.  Liberals, progressives and independents who'd either never drunk the FOX Kool-Aid or who'd snapped out of it after so many other things had already gone wrong saw an opening in the poll numbers, and ran the table in 2006. If the White House had been on offer in that cycle, they'd have taken that, too.

Since it fell on my birthday, I think a lot a bout Katrina, and New Orleans. I never went there before the levees collapsed. A conference we were supposed to attend ther in Nov of '05 got moved to some other city, naturally. I've been since. Seen the French Quarter. Seen the Ninth Ward. Sent money to various efforts there. I won't make any recommendations, because if you want to, you already have made donations, and will again. But Harry Shearer has a documentary in theatres tomorrow, The Big Uneasy, about how it wasn't Katrina that destroyed New Orleans, it was the poorly designed, badly built, and rarely maintained levee system that did the damage. Go see it.

Ray LaHood: WTF?

Came in late on Sec of Trans Ray LaHood's House testimony. Lots of cordial laughter, apparently over how long he'd been there, and how many times he'd been asked the same questions. Why is it that humor for Republicans like LaHood always includes humiliation or death? What's there in Toyata's cars killing people and his party and department doing nothing about it to laugh about.

As for competence, the last questioner was Rep Jackie Speier of CA. She asked how many software engineers NHTSA has. This is a question that's been asked in several articles over that last few days. How tough would it have been for LaHood to find out before this hearing. Apparently, the over 200 computers under the hood of new every car sold these days are of no concern to mister LaHood, so he doesn't care how many people are on his staff  who are competent to analyze them.

What is it with Republicans? They want the power, but not to do anything except keep it away from the other party.

Republicanism: Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Biology shows that homosexuality is genetic, or at least biological (is there a diff here?).
It is not a lifestyle choice. There is no such thing as a 'conversion' to or from homosexuality.
There is religious conversion, such as to Islam, or to Mormonism, or Scientology. These are psychological positions, and can be changed.
Racism and sexism are psychological also, and as such, can be changed.
As is a political point of view.

So I guess we can accurately view Republicanism as an unfortunate lifestyle choice.
Unfortunate for the holder, unfortunate for America, unfortunate for the world.

Hopefully, some day, instead of homosexuals, Republicanism will be subject to 'DADT.'
Because Republicans DO have a choice. 

STUPID (sp?) Amendment

On the upside of the STUPAK amendment, against any inclusion of pro-choice services in the healthcare bill, will be the death of the 'tort reform' (read 'repeal') movement.

This amendment, if it actually makes it to law, will become the lawsuit bonanza that the Christian right will use to grind most women's services in the US to a halt, through the active civil litigation to prove a 'not-one-federal-dollar' money trail for every instance of every one of those services.

In addition, I think Regents University (look it up) will start a new degree program in 'Forensic Accounting' with a minor in Women's Health Services, the better to harass all providers.

Science is where you find it...

After Columbine, and again especially after the Virginia Tech horror show, a certain group of deep thinkers and social theoreticians posited the proposition that if everyone was trained in the use of arms, both handguns and rifles, AND if everyone was allowed to carry them, openly, then events such as Columbine and Virginia Tech wouldn't happen, or at least would be minimized in scope.

After the experiment that these scientists held yesterday in Texas, at Ft. Hood, can we pronounce that theory dead?

Tomorrow's Headlines

Today, 'bat-shit crazy congresswoman' Michele Bachman led a contingent of DeMint teabaggers from the capitol steps into the halls of Congress. Arrests were made.

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer told the Republicans to suck eggs, and called the vote for the Climate Bill in her committee, with no Republicans present. It passed, 10-1. (Typical Dems)

Today, the Dow gained 200+ poiunts, growing over two percent.

Today, President Obama (love the sound of that still) announced the endorsement of the healthcare bill from the AARP, and the AMA.

None of that will be the headline on your website or newspaper or radio news tomorrow.

It'll be the shootings at Ft Hood.

And on the sites that love 'bat-shit crazy congresswoman' Michele Bachman, it'll be emphasized that the shooter had a foreign, muslim-sounding name. Obama will be blamed.

I'll just remark that this is one of the worst days of Army casualties since the current wars were started. Fortunately, we don't lose 12 in one day very often.

Wherever you are, donate blood.
They need it.

Looking Back, Looking Forward.

Perspective on a year without Republican Rule, and the 2010 Elections.

(This is a long one. It's the first day on the path to the next 'first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.')

One year ago, Obama became president-elect. Republicans for months have been pointing to the 2010 mid-terms and licking their chops, swearing a replay of 1994's Republican sweep of Congress. Yesterday, two states that went for Obama last year elected Republican governors to replace democratic ones. But a congressional district in upstate NY went Democratic for the first time since the Civil War.
What the hell's going on? Should Dems be worried?

Looking Back

1964 will always be remembered as the second-lowest point for Republicans in the 20th century. (The lowest, of course, was Hoover, the Great Depression, and the resulting 4 terms of FDR.) Goldwater, 'AuH2O', had built on the anger and paranoia of the McCarthyites and the John Birchers, and led them off an electoral cliff.

But by 1968, the Republicans had retaken the White hHouse. The death of the Republican Party was announced too soon. But this was the beginning of the end of the GOP as America had known it for a century. In Johnson's first term, from '64 to '68, Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security expansion, Voting Rights, all brought about an uprising among the racists of the south, who'd always voted Democratic. George Wallace became the candidate of the Dixiecrats until he was shot. The GOP saw the opportunity to throw in with the racists to expand their electoral base, and the 'Southern strategy' gave Nixon the bare electoral edge he needed to take the White House. But through it all, Democrats held both houses of Congress. Coalitions often were created across the aisle to work together on particular bills or initiatives. But Dems could take credit for the agenda, and its successful enactment.

From '69 to '74, Clean Air, Clean Water, the EPA, the banning of DDT, all came from the citizens, through this Democratic Congress. Democrats still held both houses of Congress.

By '74, by acting out the new populist GOP foundation of paranoia and hatred of others, Nixon's crew had committed crimes for which they had been indicted and disgraced. Nixon himself ran from the White House rather than face the impeachment charges that even old-school Republicans were supporting in the House and Senate. His apponted beard, Ford, served two years then was rolled out, replaced by Carter. Still the Dems held both Houses of Congress. Still they set the agenda.

1980 Reagan, 1988 Bush I, 1992 Clinton. With one two-year exception, in the Senate at the beginning of Reagan's first term, Democrats still held both houses of Congress. Iran-Contra, Bork, BCCI, Thomas, all these hearing were in front of Democratic Congressional chairmen.

By the time of the the 1994 sweep of both ends of the Capitol by Newt Gingrich's New Republicans, America had seen 40 years of almost solid Democratic Congressional policies and agendas. Blacks could vote. Women couldn't be kept in the kitchen. Air was becoming more breathable, the water drinkable again. America took these things for granted again, and gave no credit to anyone, instead assuming these were manna that fell from heaven. America had also by then heard over ten years of powerless Republicans telling it how much better it would be when the Republicans took over.
America took the chance. It voted for something new, something shiny, something Republican.

In 12 years, America saw exactly what a Republican Revolution would do in Congress. In the last six of those twelve, it how disastrous a lock-step, doctrinaire Republican monolith, owning all three branches of America's government, could be. When they finally had to walk the talk, Republicans were shown to America for hat they were: bait-and-switch hucksters out for nobody but themselves and their owners. Certainly not out for America. So in 2006, America turned them out of the capitol, and two years later, turned them out of the White House.

That's the look back.
Here's the Look Forward

The 2010 midterms aren't anything like the 1994 midterms. The Dems will have had the White House less than two years, Congress less than four. the Republicans will have been successfully crying 'wolf', sure, but also evidently playing sour grapes and stopping all legislative movement, with no agenda but "NO!"

Then the math of the midterms works against the Republicans too. Most of the Senate seats up for election are Republican, which means a lot of party money will be spent defending existing seats, not as much grabbing for new ones (more at a later date,) and 37 governorships up for election, more than in '94.

And with the demented DeMint Teabaggers working the primaries in 2010, expect a lot of hardline Republicans to find themselves suddenly painted as liberals and wimps as the only active part of the GOP pushes the rest of its body politic over the same cliff Goldwater ran his lemmings off 46 years earlier.

But the 2010 elections are doubly important, especially at the state level. because the governors elected in 2010 will be signing off on the redistricting maps that their states legislatures drwa based on the 2010 census. Those governors, as well as their state legislatures, will need to be Democrats to kept the Republicans at bay for enough time for America to heal from the hurt that 30 years of Republicans put on it.

For thirty years, the Republicans had the White House since 1981 (except for Clinton) or had Republicans running the Congress (since 1994, with criminal charges brought up on any Republican who consorted with Dems), with only one brief period, from 1993 to the end of 1995, when Democrats ran both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. And of course, Clinton crashed and burned on Health Care, while the Congressional Dems thought their 40-year reign would last for ever, so they didn't stand up for him.

So now the next elections start. We have to hold the seats we have. We ought to be able to take some more in the Senate, while holding a wide margin in the House. And we have to get Dems elected to state houses across the land, a prospect made more likely in the face of last night's several rejections of spending limits and tax repeals.

If Republican rule did anything for America, it's this: it reminded America that the way of the Republican is the path to disaster, and that when all the companies fail, America is all that's left. It's We The People, using our government to create the bootstraps we pull ourselves up with. Up from the hole the Republicans dug, and which, after we get ourselves out, we should bury the Republican in.
And with any luck, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the DeMint Teabaggers will help us do it.