Author: oldjeffersonian

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Fear is the mind killer

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It’s a quote from Dune, I highly recommend reading the books or watching the films.  Fear is the name of the game in politics anymore.  See that guy over there, he’s going to take away something valuable to you, and the only way to protect it is to vote for me.  It’s played by both sides of the aisle, and the application of fear in campaigns is well know, well documents, and flat-out nonsensical at times.

Why do I bring this up?  Fear goes both ways.  We’re afraid of the pending failure of our government to be able to pay its bills, so the President and the dutiful denizens of the left in congress roll out additional taxes and new spending to engage the economy in what could be the most over-estimated recovery that has yet to happen.

Meanwhile there is the argument from the President that the Deficit is going down (as a side now, each projected pseudo-budget that has been touted out for the last five years has been a ‘deficit-reducing’ budget) and yet we’ve tacked on $6 trillion to the national debt.  So, there’s our fear.  We’re deep in the hole and we need money.  So, how do we get this money.  We limit how much goes into Roth IRA’s.  It’s a short story put up by The Hill pointing out that the super wealthy have been squirreling away money in Roth IRAs, which they can’t touch until they’re 59 and a half without some heavy penalties, and in a desperate attempt to raise some additional coin, the government thinks that the amount of dough saved in those accounts shouldn’t exceed a specified amount.

I understand the logic.  There’s money there, and, after pouring through more pages of the IRS website than I care to do ever again, it turns out you pay an excise tax of 6% on excessive donations, and early withdrawals are taxed at rate, and then 10% more on top (again if withdrawn before you are 59 and a half).  So, in all that, there’s money.  How much money?  I’m not certain the numbers are solid, but according to the article from The Hill roughly $9 billion over the next decade.  Yup, over the next decade they’d square away 0.005% of last year’s deficit.

Solid plan there.

Nominally, it’s going to take work, and I hope to god they’re working on it because right now I don’t think it’d pay for the paper it’s being printed on.

The other side of the sword is the delivery method.  Like I said, we’re talking about fear here, and the need to make people afraid.  Why are we talking about this?  Because it’s scary.  Because the Government is going after our retirement savings, or so the Drudge Report would have you believe.

If you hit the Drudge Report over the weekend you would have seen the hyperlink to “Obama budget targets retirement accounts…”.  Rolling off the recent move by the EU to soak the owners of money laden accounts in the national bank of Cyprus, there is an expectation of the government in the United States doing something similar to ward off a fiscal boogeyman (don’t get me wrong, we have serious money problems) but to snag 40-60% of the value of all accounts that hold more than $100,000…can’t happen, won’t happen, and will break the financial system faster than the housing bubble of 2008.

Now, rank and file readers aren’t expecting this.  Most folks are pretty certain that their money is safe, and it is.  The Cyprus situation was a state run and controlled bank, we don’t have that in the US. We have a fed that feeds into banks, but those accounts are ours, and the money comes out of the hides of the bank, not out of Uncle Sam.  However, it’s still a scary thought.  It’s in red, of all colors, against all the black text.  It’s important.  It’s also inaccurate based on the text of the article linked.  Not wholly inaccurate, but omits the focus on the wealthy aspect of the donors being targeted.

So, boogeymen abound on both sides, and what do we have.  People worried that their retirement funds are now the target of a government siege on savings to slake their ever-growing thirst for funds to toss at social projects, and politicians who are offering weak tea solutions to monumental budgetary issues.  This is not a good-get.  This isn’t even a good story.  It’s about as bottom of the barrel as you can get when it comes to dialogue.  There is no genuine interest in doing what is right, just in making sure that someone is scare, and what they are hoping is that someone is you.

When the banker wants to pick up the policeman’s gun, no one is safe

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A recent story out of Seattle states that an amendment proposed for a bill that would safeguard employee passwords from being requested during job interviews, however should an internal investigation be started that protection of the employee’s private information goes right out the window.  Thankfully the provision was pulled a day later and the bill protecting potential employees from having to divulge unnecessary private information went to the floor without the excessive intrusion attached.

It’s not the first time an amendment/ provision/bill like this has been introduced, nor will it be the last.  The horrifying part of the story is not so much the provision, but the intention of the representative who added it (quote from The Columbian story linked above):

On Wednesday, House Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair Rep. Mike Sells withdrew the amendment. He had introduced it at the behest of business groups, who say the original bill would open an avenue for possible illegal activity by employees, such as divulging proprietary or consumer information to outsiders.

The fear by business groups who were concerned that this would open up an avenue for possible illegal activity apparently forgot that should illegal activity occur there is a process by which they contact the police and then the proper law enforcement agencies, who are trained and the only bodies by law who can do this, SUBMIT A WARRANT for the personal information directly to the site in question.

I respect a need for businesses to protect their trade secrets, yet it seems that Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t so much show up on an employee’s news feed or blog spot, rather in a bar after they’ve had one too many.  If there is potential theft of intellectual property, embezzlement, or or other such criminal activity going on, my first advice to a business owner would be to get the police involved (i.e. get the folks whose job it is to sort this kind of thing out) rather than trying to play cowboy and find it on their own.  The process, should it have proceeded, would have been, as privacy advocated pointed out, rife for abuse, and could lead to lawsuits from employees should other private information be divulged to a company who has not right or reason for having said information.

Lastly, to the state and federal representatives of the nation.  Take a moment to think on this matter when it comes to you.  Realize that anyone looking to pick up a duty of law enforcement must be addressed with great care and skepticism.  Any effort by a business to take on a responsibility or to take an action that would circumvent the law of due process, those pesky warrants that police need in criminal investigations, needs to be shuffled off, and documented for public consumption.  These business leaders should be named, and their organizations chastised by the public, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the barking voices that decry the vices, real and imaginary, of the government will raise a word against the corporate sector.

Simply because people work for a company does not mean that they are to have access to every nook and cranny of their employees lives.  If we as a political body fear the encroachment of a nebulous, faceless monstrosity trying to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, why should we treat the businesses who are not restrained by the rules of our Constitution with less caution than the government which we can control?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

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A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus.  Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.

Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here.  In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one.  This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is.  The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved.  Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.

A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution.  The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.

The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration.  They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.

The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public.  My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship.  One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.

The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures.  Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly.  Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.

The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do.  The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level.  They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other.  Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.

Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes.  I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.

There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers.  It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.

A moment of reflection

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I heard about the shootings in Connecticut in passing.  I didn’t get the full weight of what had occurred until Patricia called me and asked if I had heard about the hideous body count.  A little research, and quick check of Facebook (which I was not surprised to find quite a few pages for the shooter, and how he was a great guy and a fantastic photographer), and I was up to speed with the rest of America.  What bothered me further was the comment section under every news article, and a few Facebook posts.

In short, I unfriended someone today.  Not a monumental accolade or something that need be noted in the archives of WordPress history, but it was the statement that summed up the illness of it all.  In short, a man I knew some time ago, and considered intelligent, reasonable, and tolerant stated on his page that he was not surprised that this occurred because it happened in a nation without a soul.  He then went on to give a paltry wave of the hand and condolences to the families that lost loved ones, but the first statement.  “A nation without a soul” stuck hard in my craw like a jagged pebble.

There are now millions, if not billions, of condolences of perfect strangers floating across the world-wide web.  Fundraisers are going up by the hour to help with relief efforts, pay for grief counselors, etc.  We, as a nation, are painted in a muddy hue of soullessness because we do not adhere to the tenants of a self-declared ‘militant’ christian.  My only response would be that the longer you look down the irons of the rifle you believe is protecting you, the more everything begins to look like a target or an enemy.  That immediate attachment of this incident as an indictment of our nation as a whole is disgusting, ill reasoned, and ignorant.

Couple that with the almost instantaneous prattling of fear over gun control legislation, and how the President will steal away our automatic weapons before he has even had a chance to speak on this tragedy (which he did eloquently by the way) lends further to the stereotype that the right is so desperately trying to fight.  My only request is that we stop worrying about our own fears for a moment, and think on others.  Know for a moment that your family is safe, and, for those of you who have children, might dote on them a little more this evening; be inclined to hold them a little tighter tonight before they go off to bed.  For those who lost a child or a loved one today, my deepest condolences.

The die has not been cast with regards to why this wretch took those lives, but the evidence piling up appears to indicate that there were issues at home (at last report his brother was found dead at the residence).  In the days and weeks to come we will know everything about the gunman, his name being avoided here as I do not want to recognize the monster outright.  No, we will find out the why, what, where, who, and when of everything in this case, then it will fade.  My only request would be that we allow that process to be completed before we begin the process of trying to address the results.

Access to firearms and mental health are going to take front stage.  Let us, for a change, be informed before we go into political battle and rattle our sabers for our cause, and decry the boogeymen of the opposition.  This is, as has been stated by many public figures today, a time where consensus can be reached with little thought.  The only matter in that case is giving the people time to grieve and learn what happened.  Then, and only then, can we find a true answer that may very well prevent future incidents like this one.

The ever growing elephant in the room

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What is $474.15 Billion dollars?

The fiscal cliff looms in the distance like a funnel cloud on the hard-packed plains of Texas.  The key difference is we can avoid that wicked looking mess coming our way.  Functionally, this is a historic opportunity, wrapped in gilt and handed to the parties with the same bows and trappings of the holiday preceding the impending fluster cluck that is about to go down.  That gift; a moment to finally stop bullshitting and come together to get this nation on a path to a balanced budget, an aim at reducing the national debt, and reigning in the last decade and change of madcap spending that has gone on.

Those hoping for this know better.  The only thing we, the American public, will get out of this deal is coal in our stockings which will be summarily taken away because it is neither green nor ours to use as an energy resource.

The New York Times has a fantastic Infographic available to the public where you can see firsthand what grew, what shrank, and what is owed to who and where.  I will be frank, if the President or Congress is serious about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget then all the programs they swore to protect must share in some of the bloodletting.

Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly one-third of the budget by itself.  Toss Social Security into the mix and over half the budget is consumed by these two programs alone.  Defense spending.  It rings in, for the first time, lower than the cost of Social Security, and is quickly being outpaced by the interest on the national debt.

This brings me to my beginning question; what is $474.15 billion dollars?  That number is what is owed in interest on the national debt.

It is staggering to look at, and,  mind you, that is the interest.  Not some credit card minimum where part of what you pay hits the principle and we will ever so slowly knock it down.  Nay good reader, this is pure interest without a dime set to the principle.  I’ll be honest, that would be the first number I would be set to tackle for that number will be what kills us.

If the President’s moratorium on discretionary spending (which would freeze the large majority of defense spending but leave social security and Medicare/Medicaid alone) goes through then we’ve only slowed the train down, but it will chug along.  Mayhaps you can knock out some of that principle.  Hold back the rising tides, but the moratorium cannot last forever, and if it is not adapted to, the glut of costs that will come cascading down and crush any gains made.

So, while our elected officials piddle away the hours playing games of imaginary chicken and peek-a-boo with the press, handing out reports of  “nothing to see here” we are getting buried.  The interest grows, and will eclipse the costs of social security and Medicare/Medicaid if left untouched, all the while pledges are being made to not raise taxes on anyone and no programs will be cut.  Looking at the reality on paper/webpage and listening to the news brings two conclusions to mind.  Either those in power want this world to burn for the sake of petty feuds and broken ideologies, or they are, much to our chagrin, monumentally clueless as to what they have brought down upon all of us.  It will come to a day when that cost, just to cover the interest being made on the debt, will choke us out, and we will be forced to cut to maintain or default.  Best to do them now, with flexibility and foresight on our side than a later time when we must cut because there is no other option.  When a monthly social security check is short $21 a month for living expenses versus hundreds of dollars short because there isn’t any money left to paid those who are owed.  Petty promises and pledges won’t mean a damn thing then, and, to be frank, shouldn’t mean a damn thing now.

Escalation of force and your friendly neighborhood SWAT team

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Stories like this one are becoming more common in the news.  Swatting, or the act of placing a fake phone call from a VoIP hone or internet server to emergency providers indicating that there is a shooting/violent crime/ general mayhem going down at a particular address. Everyone from Politicians to kids playing video games have been surprised to see teams of fully armored, automatic weapon toting law enforcement officers knocking down their doors, causing thousands of dollars of damage and wasting police time and funds chasing down ghost leads with the most militant branches of their organizations.

I want to make something clear before I continue, I have nothing against SWAT teams.  I respect what they do, and recognize that they should be called into the most dire of situations.  What I do have a problem with is the escalating frequency with which they are being sent out to enforce mundane legal activities.

From serving warrants to handling armed 79-year-old ladies the rank and file police duties are quickly getting picked up by SWAT teams across the country.  The horrify notion that the military is selling off extra hardware to police departments doesn’t bode well.  Especially when those same police departments turn around and sell it off to, as the article from the Sacramento Bee puts it, “pad their budgets”.

There is a need for the SWAT teams in cities across America, but there appear to be a greater need for restraint in their deployment.  If the basic assessments are being accomplished, and it is duly warranted that an escalation to a para-military level is required, then by all means send in the SWAT team.  If the department didn’t bother to check the residence or call the house, and proceeded to break down a door, flash-bang innocent civilians, and then physically treat them like common criminals, then, frankly, someone needs to lose their job.

When a bad idea meets a functional tool, nothing good comes of it

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Last weekend I was having a conversation with a friend and the topic of the recent expansion of government surveilance via drones came up.  There is genuine concern over how the information will be used, and, considering the manuverability of some of the drones being employed, where they go, and what they will be able to see is of extreme concern.

I aruged that the drones will be used, but they will be fairly restricted, and the government is going to find out very, very quickly that they are not the best tools for the job when it comes to law enforcement.  As if on queue The University of Texas, challenged by the Department of Homeland Security, downed a drone in mid flight.

Not to take some shine off of the University of Texas’ achievement, but this is old hat.  Iran dropped a stealth drone, piloted by the best and brightest, and slapped together by DARPA and operated by the DoD.  In terms of intellectual firepower, I imagine that the DHS has quite a few brilliant minds, but the military has an entire organization devoted to development everything from quantum encryption to weapons systems that fire 1.2million rounds a minute.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Stealth drone was harder to drop, but when it was released that they went through the GPS system to bring it down, I fell over laughing.

A paper I wrote in my last year at the Old Dominion University was on robotics on the battlefield, and the number one issue with these devices have is the communication and GPS systems.  Avionic systems have some play, but the real bugs were in terrestrial based sword bots, so named because they have monikers like ‘claymore’ and ‘saber’.  These battle bots were failing remote tests because they could not respond fast enough, did not respond at all, or did things like firing off around 45 seconds after being issued the command to do so.  You could strip away the electronic protection on them, and give the operator faster reaction time, but then there is nothing to stop a local Al Qaeda operative, trained by a technician from a relatively unfriendly state, with a wireless connection and few tools of the electronic warfare trade, to hack in and either disable the robot on the field, or, in the worst case scenario, take remote control of these electronic weapons platforms and turn them on the soldiers standing right next to them.  Granted, that scenario is half a world away, but imagine small drones with live video feed hovering about, each one supposed protected by encryption on par with, say, any of the banks that have recently been hacked, or the police departments that have had their records compromised (and I can guarantee that the LAPD servers are not going to have the same encryption as government security contractor companies, or  international banking systems).

Lastly, the drones offer an odd stretch of police power reaching into the personal domain.  Currently police can fly over your house and if they see pot being grown in the back yard, they can get a warrant and conduct a raid.  It’s legal, there was a supreme court case on it, and it flew.  Drones will be able to do the same, but there is a twist regarding that maneuverability issue. Smaller drones means that they can go places helicopters and larger drones cannot.  So we can’t see anything in your yard, but what about that shed at the corner of your property.  We’re still flying, technically we’re not trespassing (you wait, this will be one of the first legal arguments), and we happened to peek in this window and saw that you had a shotgun.  We checked the state gun registration and you don’t have a shotgun on record with us.  That’s a bust.

Is it a silly scenario, absolutely, but it is completely plausible. Why put a GPS tracker on a criminal’s car when you can just tail him incessantly with a drone?  Easy way to get around that pesky warrant problem:

“no your honor, the drone was not following the individual in question.  It just happened to be everywhere he was going.”

You can see where this is going.

I am all for the thin blue line doing its thing and bringing in the bad guys, but with great power comes great responsibility, and this is another example of military tech rolling down to police departments that don’t need more military tech.  For the price of a drone operation system and related drones you could probably hire another dozen cops.  Humans that need jobs, can form intellectual and emotional bonds with the community, grown and learn, become leaders of the community, and, best of all, can’t be hacked to dive bomb cars on the I-95.

Stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and realize the long game moments

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My stomach fell out when the decision on Thursday rolled down.  I was a staunch believer that any variation of the individual mandate was a legal faux pa and had to be struck down.  Then I read the Roberts decision and was illuminated to an entirely new way of operating in the government.  I was seeing, for the first time, not a decision based on party politics or personal interest.  No, I saw a straight out of myth ruling based on pure constitutional reasoning. Okay, there may have been some political wranglings in there, and I am thrilled that other pundits and writers like Michael Medved and Paul Begala were quick to point out the true victory for Republicans in the bill.

At the root of the Roberts decisions, aside from defining the mandate as a tax and throwing the life of the bill back into the hands of Congress which may very well fall into Republican hands in November, there was this little gem:

2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by
purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. (link)

Roberts effectively stopped the government from mandating that a lack of participation in a specific filed of commerce amounted to having a direct impact on interstate commerce.  In writing the decision this way he took the congressional, and largely Democratic, insistence to tell Americans what to do with their money, even when they are not spending it, and locked it away in that nasty little box known as ‘unconstitutional’.

Labeling the mandate as a tax was something the President was specific about avoiding during the creation and vote on the bill.  Even after it was enacted they President and Democratic members of congress were adamant that it was not a tax, but when they went to the line the only legal way to argue it, and to save any resemblance of the mandate, was to label it just that. However, in doing so it lost that shiny aspect of a social program that could be administered by an Executive Branch organization, and was put back in the hands of Congress.

Lastly, there is the matter of the tax itself.  I’ve seen the posts on social websites and heard my conservative friends gnash their teeth and scream to the heavens about how individual liberty is dead, how freedom is no longer found in the United States, and I chuckle.  The issue will be revised. CNN pointed out, not 30 minutes after the decision was made, that the tax can only be challenged, by law, after it has gone into effect.  That means in January of 2014, the first year the penalties, excuse me, Taxes are in place, there will be another lawsuit, another challenge, and another Supreme Court decision,

Chief Justice Roberts looked to the future on this decision, and he ruled, not as a conservative or a liberal, but as any judge should.  He put the balls back in their respective courts, taking the power to create taxes away from the executive and giving it back to the legislative, and told the nation that the President would not be playing with that ball anymore.  At least, not in that capacity.

UPDATE: A site I frequently visit (www.neveryetmelted.com) has a fantastic article on this and links to several other articles.  I’d strongly recommend bookmarking it if you get a chance.

Well, a decisive and reflexive response to an action by the press…for exactly the wrong reasons

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Today the President rolled out another executive order to circumvent existing laws and moved to grant amnesty to roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants.  During one of his ‘hit-and-run’ speeches the president was interrupted by an overeager reporter.  The president responded succinctly, as he should have considering the crass failure of the offending action, and the press conference (which to be frank is more of an announcement that could be done via text message or twitter for all the validity it held) and the slavering dogs that compose the larger swath of the fourth pillar were loosed like the hounds of war and the word ‘question’ became ‘heckle’, the afternoon topic became, yet again, whether the fictitious boogeyman of ‘inherent racism’ that has so far plagued this President every day of his career had now infiltrated the pure core of the press.

This wasn’t some malicious act.  It was an overeager reporter trying to get the question in before everyone else does.  If you watch the video, the assumption that the speech was over is an obvious one.  And, those of us who have heard the delightful little ditty that “to assume makes an ass of you and me”.  In this case, the President was right in chiding the reporter for speaking before the speech was over, but the press should be analyzing why the President does these little hit-and-run speeches, why there are no questions allowed on topics of national interest.  Why these actions are more dictum from our leader rather than policies to be touted out before the American people

No, we get the sad reflexive gagging media, stunned into stupor that anyone would interrupt, let alone dare ask a question of, and they insist on adding this to the mix, the first black President.  I’d call him a fall guy if I were paranoid. Posit the argument that He interrupted at that specific moment, and made a scene for everyone to jump on so we, and by we I mean the people that need to fill a 24 hour news cycle, could focus on that rather than the announcement that just rolled out of the White House.  Again, not paranoid, but look at Drudge, MSNBC, CNN, etc.  It’s not the announcement they’re talking about, but whether the President is struggling, not because of wildly irrational and short-sighted policies, but because of all those nasty ‘racists’ out there.  The dealer keeps doling out the same card every time, and wonders why we are getting tired of seeing it.

Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?

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I thought the quote from the Avengers was appropriate here.

Two sides in Wisconsin, genuinely believing they are working for the greater good but coming from wildly different directions, engaged in a full scale brouhaha to make their point known.  I’m still not certain as to who would wear the tights, but I call dibs on the Iron Man suit.

Fashion jokes aside, the fight was largely pointless, and  the essence of american voters, played by Captain America in this little production, stopped the fight between two petulant powerhouses.  In the end vox populi spoke loud and clear, and Gov. Walker remains in place for two more years, but has lost his majority in the State Senate.

The day-after recovery is over, the analysis is done, and we found out that 38% of voters who supported Walker came from homes that have at least one member in a union.  We found out that while roughly $75 million was spent on this campaign, walker trudging up $30 million of that on his own through Super PAC donors, the real story remains that the turnout, percentage-wise, was almost identical to the election two years prior, even with a higher voter turnout.

I’m tired of the Citizens United decision being touted as the evil grandaddy and reason everyone is winning.  I call BS.  You can throw millions at a campaign and if the message sucks, or the candidate is less than stellar, looking at you Gingrich and Santorum, you will accomplish next to nothing except transferring wealth from donors to local businesses.

The issue with the Walker recall was that he did exactly what he said he was going to do.  The politically connected unions and loyal opposition were taken aback when an elected official decides to follow through on campaign promises.  Were those promises heavy handed?  Some can argue as much, but these are desperate times, and the voters selected desperate measures, and thus they were delivered after much bally who and childish shenanigans by the State Senators unhappy with the legislation.

So, in response to a governor who did what he swore he would do, despite some of the blatantly childish political behavior I have seen in my life, and the result was a nationally supported recall.  I don’t mean that the entire nation supported the recall, but that interests well outside the borders of Wisconsin became involved.  It was no longer about just about a losing side’s dissatisfaction with being thrown out of office and then having to suffer the political fallout that comes from failing to represent the people rather than representing the interests that fill the campaign coffers.