Sense from Seattle

Later

2009-07-08T08:20:00.001-07:00

It has been over a month since the last posting here, and my muse has been telling me to put this blog on hold, probably long term and maybe permanently. There are other directions I am heading, some by choice and some of necessity. The urge to write is still in me, but, at least for now, this does not seem to be the forum.

Peace, harmony, love and happiness to all.

Reagan's the Problem

2009-06-03T16:07:00.001-07:00

To paraphrase our so-called "great communicator" President, Ronald Reagan, "here I go again". And to quote the joke line from the Sopranos, "Just when I thought I was getting out, they pull me back in".

The economy is so deeply fouled up, it is hard not to write about it. Two disparate individuals, one I greatly admire and one I mostly deplore, have induced me to publish this post.

I first became aware of Paul Krugman when he did guest appearances on the Keith Olbermann show. Krugman talked like a rare two-handed economist, giving clear and straightforward answers and never hedging them with "on the other hand". When he won the Nobel for economics, that confirmed my opinion.

Ronald Reagan, so unjustifiably praised by some people, did terrible things to America. In an excellent column in the New York Times, Krugman pins the blame for our current economic woes on Reaganomics. Lincoln eloquently stated our government is "of the people, by the people and for the people". Reagan shamefully said "government is the problem". As on most things, Reagan was wrong. Government was not the problem - Reagan was.

The Help

2009-05-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

[This article was submitted by John from Phoenix as a comment to a recent article, but since it addressed a new topic, I have chosen to feature it as the first guest commentator article here at Sense. I may select future comments for use as separate articles, and encourage any readers to send other article ideas to me by E-mail.]

I am currently reading (listening to an audio book) "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. My wife put me on to it. Her story takes place in Jackson Mississippi in the early 60's at the time Medgar Evers was murdered. Although she lived in Jackson, her picture makes her too young to have been alive at the time Edgars was killed.

Nevertheless, I am captivated by her story. Her main character is a white woman only 23 years old, possibly modeled on herself. Her character convinces a few black maids to tell her stories of their experiences that she hopes to publish. She describes the pressure that the "help" feel in doing this which could cause physical harm and certainly economic harm if found out. She also describes the fear the protagonist feels in losing the esteem of her society and the romantic interest of a budding politician she has fallen in love with.

Her story seems a fantasy. What black woman at that time would risk her economic and physical life to a 23 year old idealist? But that is the story of the civil rights movement: many blacks risked everything. After all, Martin Luther King was a martyr.

Changing Course

2009-05-20T08:57:00.001-07:00

This blog was started near the end of the 2004 Presidential campaign. Since then, I have spent four years following and commenting on the disgrace that was the Bush/Cheney regime. Now that Barack Obama has taken over, I do not feel the need to follow his administration closely or to comment here on developments. President Obama is someone I believe and trust and I have confidence in his intelligence, judgment and demeanor. Any disagreements I may have with him are not likely to spur me to comment here, as I felt compelled to do by the continuing Bush/Cheney outrages. I have embarked on a much needed break from intensely following and commenting on political news.

I considered taking this blog in other directions, to reflect on interests and pursuits beyond politics, as I have occasionally done in these pages, but I feel no urge to take this blog in any specific other direction at this time. I have seriously considered taking a break from blog publishing - something beyond a vacation, more akin to a sabbatical. In fact I wrote an article a couple weeks ago proclaiming such a sabbatical, but I have held it back.

John from Phoenix has been on vacation for a month, hiking in the Grand Canyon and then visiting our nation's capital and some American heritage sites. With his return he has posted two comments to the last article written here. I have chosen to make his second comment, about the new Novel, "The Help", into an article, as part of exploring some course changes here at Sense. I am open to other submissions from John or anyone else.

Some people use their blogs as a sort of daily Christmas letter, those infamous annual updates on family accomplishments and milestones, many of which are poorly written and of no general interest. I have no interest in embarking on such public journaling, but I am not opposed to sometimes sharing at Sense what I am up to, if I think it can be of some general interest and if my experience and thinking gel into some sense I want to share.

To those few who keep checking in here to see what I have to say, I thank you for your attention. To those fewer who posted comments, I say thank you for sharing your thoughts. And to John, who told me to write what and when my muse prompts me, thanks for the advice and thanks for your example.

Notes on Economics - Unions

2009-04-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here (thankfully, since I am ready to move on) are the last unpublished economic notes, on the subject of unions, about which John in Phoenix and I dialogued in the comments following the recent posting on globalization.

Civil rights came to American unions in the 60s and 70s, helping raise the economic prospects of African Americans, but labor leaders do not seem to be emphasizing this group in their new organizing efforts.

The NFL effectively busted the players union in 1987, but this last season had all the players wearing the initials of the deceased union president on their helmets.

The AFL-CIO chooses to function more as a lobby group, while splinter unions believe organizing more workers is a better approach.

France changed the law to allow more hire/fire power over young workers to solve a problem of "bad hires". What really was needed was better training for students to be better workers and better training for managers to be better managers.

Another problem with retirement based on private investment by the retirees rather than on the guaranteed benefit plans the unions used to negotiate is that those near retirement, when the market drops, decide they cannot retire, which keeps a job away from someone who needs it, which in turn hurts the economy and adds to the downward spiral.

Today, the NY Times had an interesting article about the many year struggle of nurses in Kentucky to form a union in spite of ongoing illegal intimidation by the corporate employer.

Before leaving the subject of economics for this round, I highly recommend this excellent PDF format article by Joe Keefe the head of the sustainable investing based Pax Funds. It is a well reasoned view on the wisdom of adopting a long range approach to economic viability, factoring in social and environmental concerns. The article includes some historical context and proposes some meaningful changes.

Notes on Economics - Taxes

2009-04-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

More from the unused note files:

Before the economy disintegrated, Fed Chair Bernacke, like Greenspan before him, favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent, though he would not tie that to budget cuts.

Progressive taxation is a more just way to meet social needs that relying on philanthropy alone.

When Exxon profits increased 40%, their tax bill went up only 14%.

Teddy Roosevelt inaugurated the estate tax to strike at the "aristocracy of wealth". While the tax only applies to the richest 1 or 2% of the population, 40% of the people think it may apply to them also. Attacks on the tax typically use an apocryphal small business that is destroyed by the tax after the death of the owner. Repealing death taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthy could cost $300 billion to one trillion in lost taxes over 10 years. One change to the tax that makes sense though is that the exemption allowed should be adjusted for inflation.

Many years ago my brother and I came up with an income tax idea I still find intriguing. Establish a minimum income figure below which no tax is due, the idea being that these low income workers pay their dues by the fact they work at low income jobs. Above the minimum, the tax rate would be 50%. The income tax could also be tied to the federal budget, with the minimum taxable income figure for the next tax year being determined by the size of the budget for the current year.

Notes on Economics - Politics, Privatization and De-Regulation

2009-04-05T17:37:00.001-07:00

Continuing to exhaust the supply of unused notes, here are a few more:

Chris Mathews points out the middle class American voter goes conservative in a good economy in the belief he will be the next millionaire, but when the economy sours he goes liberal, seeing himself as the next guy in the bread line.

Under Bush, the use of private contractors by the Federal Government doubled. Obama is embarking on a review program to eliminate or tighten up such contracts.

Bush pushed privatization of public highways, taking advantage of cash strapped local governments and allowing the Federal Highway Trust Fund to border on bankruptcy.

From 1995 to 2005, public utility ownership of power plants fell from 90% to 63%, supposedly to stimulate competition and bring down rates, but the rates did not fall. De-regulation did bring lower fares for airlines, resulting in lousy service and multiple bankruptcies. Long distance de-regulation brought lower rates, but competing technologies was also a big factor.

Greenspan, under Clinton, unwisely removed the barriers between investment and commercial banks that had been set up during the Depression.

On better FNMA and FHMC oversight, Chuck Hagel proposed legislation in 2005. A year later, after a critical Federal report, John McCain signed on as a co-sponsor. Democrats favored oversight, but not a provision in the bill that limited the size of the portfolios. Builders and realtors opposed the bill and it did not make it out of the Republican controlled Senate committee considering it.

Notes on Economics - Globalization

2009-03-27T15:41:00.001-07:00

Going back to the undeveloped note file, here are a few more, about the economy and globalization:

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says the key to countering globalization is to create jobs in which workers add value to products that make them more competitive. He says technology, not necessarily outsourcing, is what is displacing American workers.

Fed Chair Ben Bernacke says American workers can upgrade technological skills to compete and be paid more to keep up with inflation, but he does not mention the role unions could play in helping workers negotiate this.

American workers have been the most productive in the world for decades. Higher productivity means growth without inflation, but that can be overcome in global competition if the worker pays too much tax to support war costs.

Globalization in the financial world has resulted in new speed records for spreading financial meltdown.

Goodbye to the P-I

2009-03-18T10:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last paper issue. With a skeleton staff, the Hearst owned paper now will be exclusively on line. Last week I spoke at length with my son Chris, who works for the Associated Press in Bangkok, about the economic problems newspapers face and about the dangers to society from the demise of traditional newspaper journalism. Local NPR station KPLU did a good three part series on the subject. The third part of their story sounds a lot like the conversation Chris and I had.

The news areas that suffer most from these changes are investigative and beat reporting. Investigative stories newspapers used to cover will now have to be handled more by unpaid bloggers with passion or by hired Internet guns funded by special interest groups, and in each case, professional journalistic standards may fall by the wayside. But newspapers were not always professional, and many times investigative reporting was done with a biased vengeance. Friend Joe says when one Seattle paper was on an investigative streak, he looked to the reaction of the other paper to keep things balanced, and now that will be lost. I think the Net and the cable news continuous cycle will fill the investigative void, with varying degrees of professionalism. Lest we give print media too much credit, check the scandal sheet rack next time you check out at the supermarket.

Beat reporting is trickier. These were the people who trudged through the mundane of a specialized environment, cultivating sources and amassing a specialized expertise. There is not much financial incentive to pay for this type of reporting. Public broadcasting, PBS and NPR, provide beat type coverage for national and international news and for some regional stories. Very localized newspapers, supported solely by local advertising, provide the neighborhood news. But the demise of big city newspapers will leave a void of in depth beat reporting. Only specialized blogs can fill the void, but they are a hit or miss proposition.

Underlying this whole matter is technology, and history shows technological advances have always resulted in greater dissemination. But as volume and coverage increase, audiences have more choices, and it can be more work to sort through and find ones that are desirable. Who pays for gathering and disseminating content is something that changes with technology. Radio programming was at first paid for by the sale of radios, then after the sales market was saturated, by advertising. TV was advertising supported from the start, then augmented by cable broadcasts to increase choice and reception quality. Pay satellite radio does not seem to have caught on very well.

Most newspapers gave up charging for Internet news, relying on advertising instead. But many of us use ad blockers, so advertising revenue must be coming from the type of readers who don't know or care about eliminating ads. As long as there are enough of those, the advertising supported model will work. But if ad revenue slips, it is quite a challenge to go back to charging readers who have been getting it for free.

The Associated Press is a news business model that has been around for over 150 years and still seems viable. It works sort of like the Internet, in that it provides content for other providers to use. It is a non-profit co-op, supported by fees paid by its members, who have exclusive legal access to the copyrighted stories. Once the AP news is published, non-members have access to its content and some of them might use it without permission. The AP has right to legal recourse, but probably would not pursue it unless it was extensive and continuous. Consumers of news want new news, not old news, so AP members are the source for the earliest news and the most complete. Maybe the AP model will be one that is successfully used by other networks of bloggers, investigate reporters, beat reporters and local news gatherers to fill the void left by papers like the P-I.

AIG Bonuses?

2009-03-17T08:46:00.001-07:00

The prospect of paying multi-million dollar bonuses to the very executives at AIG who were lynch pins in the collapse of the economy is outrageous. Everyone from the President on down to the man on the street seems to agree -with a few exceptions. A New York Times writer yesterday argued that contracts need to be honored and that these bright executives need to be kept around because only they can straighten out the mess and we don't want them to be hired away. Over 400 comments in response were posted by this morning, apparently overwhelmingly outraged.

These bonuses may be a drop in the bucket compared to the sea of economic problems overwhelming the economy, but the principle of who deserves the be rewarded goes to the heart of the American dream and paying bonuses to AIG people seems more like a nightmare.

There are thousands of litigating attorneys in America who would love to show how these contracts can be avoided by hardball tactics. Refuse to pay and force the executives to sue, then counter sue for fraud and damages and bring third parties in, like the board of directors and those who advised AIG on contract matters, such as law firms and consultants, to be on the hook for their negligence and incompetence in allowing these contracts to be approved.

Why should these despicable executives have sacred contracts when unionized autoworkers apparently don't? What kind of a company would be interested in hiring these scoundrels away from AIG? Such a company would be asking to become the next AIG.

Getting these jerks to help untangle their mess with the giant carrot of bonuses is a terrible precedent. Better to use the stick of hardball civil litigation and possible criminal prosecution.

The Bankruptcy Court process has a long track record of accomplishment, which perhaps should have been called upon in the case of AIG. Bonus claims against a bankrupt company would be about as worthless as these executives who are claiming them.

Notes on Economics - Families

2009-03-16T09:27:00.001-07:00

From the undeveloped note file, here are a few more, about the economy and families:

From 2001-2004, American house hold net worth was flat; as savings dropped 23%, house equities inflated 22%. The Census Bureau pointed out in 2006 that too many Americans were spending too much of their budget for housing. Nine out of ten house refinances involve taking out extra cash, usually at a higher interest rate. Now that home equities have popped, people are in a hole. Reverse mortgages are now being used six times as often to help fund retirement, depleting estates to the detriment of adult children.

In considering relief for families facing foreclosure, those pushed into sub prime loans who were actually qualified for good loans should now be allowed to refinance with credit given them for the unfair charges they paid. Truly sub prime borrowers should be allowed to refinance if their loan can be adjusted to something feasible. Speculators should lose and not be allowed to skim rent during foreclosure, under threat of seeking personal judgment for any shortfall. Special relief may be needed for VA loans to Veterans.

The top 20% of King County [Seattle and environs] households earn almost half the total income in the County, while the bottom 20% earn less than 4%. The home ownership rate in Seattle is only 48%, compared to 66% nationally.

Instead of looking at average hourly wages for American workers, we should look at the median, and factor in shrinking benefits and reduced hours. After 10 years of "welfare reform", 10 million American women have entered the work force and feel better about being workers, but financially they are not doing well after job related expenses.

Notes on Economics - Education

2009-03-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

From the undeveloped note file, here are a few more, about education, with some current thoughts added:

We need smarter managers, smarter workers and a smarter society in general to have a dependably sustainable economy in the future. We have now gone from one of the stupidest Presidents to one of the smartest. As a people, Americans need to follow the example of our new President and make education a true priority.

Raleigh, NC schools allow no more than 40% low income students in any one school, and their test scores for reading and math are up. Disparity between the haves and the have nots has too often been enabled by the school system. My first lawyer job was with an African American attorney in the Seattle Central Area. Many of our African American clients, who were undereducated due to lack of opportunity, displayed a remarkable street savvy, prompting my employer to remark, "If they gave them an education, they would rule the world". Barack Obama, recipient of a world class education, now President of the USA, is about as close as we get to a world ruler.

From 1995 to 2005, in the US, rising tuition and diminishing government aid led to a ten fold increase in student loans. Our financial institutions, abetted by Republican ideology, taught our college students that debt is a good means to economic betterment. It would have been better for our society, using tuition easing measures and financial subsidies, to place inherent value on a college education and enable as many as possible to achieve it without having to become indebted to the financial have class.

Anti-affirmative action laws reduce minority enrollment at public universities, but using test scores and grades in a total context of evaluating the individual can improve the numbers. The best solution to improving minority enrollment numbers at the university level is to improve the eduction minority students receive in earlier years. In fact, improving the quality of education for all students, beginning with Head Start, could one day erase any race based disparities.

Notes on Economics - Economists and Entrepreneurship

2009-03-02T10:40:00.001-08:00

From the undeveloped note file, here are a few more, about the supposed experts on this subject and about entrepreneurship:

The inherent nature of economists to be "cautiously optimistic" is lamentable, but perhaps understandable. Too bad the jargon and models they use are so confusing. For one example, it would help if economists could tell us what the rates and balance should be for inflation and unemployment. An ideal might be prices that never increased and full employment, but what is realistically hopeful?

Fed Chair Greenspan, a libertarian, praised "derivatives" and said they should not be regulated, because they freely result in risk being transferred to those best able to handle it, but now says that greed of the people using derivatives is what caused the crisis. Greed will always be with us, and so should regulation of it. Warren Buffet warned about derivatives in 1993, the GAO predicted a derivative led financial crisis in 1994, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said more regulation was needed in 1997.

I think the entrepreneurial nature of mankind is it based on desire for financial gain and enhancement of self-esteem, coupled with a desire to benefit others. I think most people have an entrepreneurial inclination, which society should encourage by cushioning the effects of failure and de-emphasizing the financial rewards. Entrepreneurship based on monopolizing, speculating, insuring, brokering and other such "paper" activities should be highly regulated.

President Obama Addresses Congress and the Nation

2009-02-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

Once again Barack Obama brought tears to my eyes as I listened to him speak. This time he was addressing the Congress and the nation, explaining what he is proposing to do to handle the current financial shambles and how he intends to work with Congress and the American people to lead us back to economic growth and into a better future. From the Republican created ash pile the Democrats now have the best chance in decades of taking us where we need to go in regards to health care, energy usage, educational needs, updates to infrastructure and revising our overall domestic and foreign policies.

As the President spoke, it was interesting to watch the Congressional Republicans. They have become such knee jerk reactionaries, opposing anything that does not especially benefit the rich and lambasting everything our government does that is not fully in line with their narrow minded ideology. So their initial reaction to the speech was to sit on their hands. But gradually, as the common sense inevitability, wisdom and traditional American spirit of what the President was envisioning became clear, more and more Republicans had to join in the applause, at first because they remembered that this is what got Obama so convincingly elected, and then because they started to realize they actually do agree with a lot of what he is saying, once they stop their knees from jerking.

My tears were of joy and appreciation. The President himself wrote what he said, which is why he delivers it with such honest conviction. He is so comfortable with his role and so good at it that it is inspiring to watch him, especially after the monumental embarrassment that was George W. Bush. Obama is wise beyond his years. He has the long range vision not only to see where his programs will lead us, but also to combine wisdom with patience in reaching out to Republicans to start to create a long term sense of civil bi-partisanship. Some groups are organizing to put pressure on Obama and the Democrats to move to the left, and I agree with them that is where we ultimately belong. But for now, I believe the Obama approach of some moderation and effort to consider Republican viewpoints is more worthwhile.

Part of my tears for Obama come from my roots in the African-American neighborhoods of Seattle. When I see him, I think of kids I knew growing up and how if they had come along twenty years later, they might be President. Watching the President enthusiastically greet the members of Congress as he entered the chamber was joyous. When he kissed the cheeks of white women, the part of me that goes back to the days before civil rights was saying that was a no-no back then, but the part of me that read his autobiographical "Dreams from My Father" knew that kissing white women is what Barack did every time he kissed the women who raised him, his mother and grandmother.

The Republican response was given by Governor Jindal of Louisiana, and was my first viewing of him. This "fresh face" may be a different colored Republican, but the talk he gave was the same old pablum. While Obama seemed to strike the perfect balance between not talking down to Congress and not talking over the head of the average American, Jindal seemed to be talking down to everyone with more than a second grade education. His story about the redneck Sheriff rescuing Louisiana from the flood, in spite of the government bureaucrat was ironically irrelevant and misguided. The Government failure in Katrina was largely due to the Bush Administration philosophy of keeping the government out of the way. And as David Gergen pointed out, it is hard to say the government has not been involved in Katrina recovery efforts when it has spent about 175 billion dollars so far.

Notes on Economics - Corporations

2009-02-19T08:04:00.001-08:00

Per reader suggestion, from the unwritten Sense note folder I have gathered some thoughts and observations on economic matters, divided into nine subcategories, one of which I will publish every day or so. Remember, these are not developed or researched ideas, just notes for something to consider developing.

The Federal Pension Guaranty Fund is actually welfare for incompetently managed corporations and their shareholders, the cost of which, when it tumbles, will fall on ordinary taxpayers, including the workers. Workers who accept 401k plans instead of guaranteed benefit plans better negotiate higher wages for giving up the guarantee, and better put some of that extra pay aside to cover future taxes.

An established company with high rated products and services should have no problem maintaining it's employee pension plan in the face of low price competition.

Proxy voting in corporate elections seems unamerican. Imagine if we allowed incumbent candidates to use taxpayer money to solicit voter proxies for re-election.

Corporate officers are not the only ones who should be held accountable for corporate failures. The Boards of Directors should also be held to task. Boards are usually dominated by insiders with interlocking connections, and padded by a few look good political appointees and civic arts types. Not welcome to membership, but definitely needed, are consumer and labor representatives.

At least some of the money being used for enabling corporate financial giants to survive and consolidate their dominance should have been given to local community banks to loan to small businesses in their own communities to help those businesses with payrolls, inventory financing and debt servicing.

Best of What I Read in 2008

2009-02-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

My reading list is harder to compile than my movie list, partly because I did not read that many non-political books, and partly because I just activated the feature at my library account that maintains my checkout history (though the FBI probably has full checkout histories on everyone).

Much of what I read was political, mentioned here at Sense, and no longer of as much interest. The LBJ tape transcription book, "Taking Charge", was interesting for its hair down capture of the man and how he dealt with people and the issues of his time - civil rights, re-election, the Kenndy people and Vietnam. The second volume of transcriptions should be worth a read. After Watergate, Presidents supposedly stopped making tapes, which is a real loss to history. "Nixon and Mao" which I am just finishing, is well written by Margaret MacMillan, whose prize winning "1919" about the post WWI treaties is on my future list.

I have been picking up library sale books and spot reading them, which I have also been doing with some others I own, in diverse categories such as politics, zen, simple living. As a change, I enjoyed "The World in a Phrase", a short history of the aphorism, which was really a good short history of philosophy, "That Devil Forrest" an account of the Confederate Cavalry General whose battles I was studying because an ancestor fought in some, and "Truck: a Love Story", a memoir in which I read of the rare eye occlusion experience of the author just one week after I had the same misfortune.

My 2009 resolutions include, "Do more relaxing reading and less political." I am open to suggestions.

Best of What I Watched in 2008

2009-02-07T10:23:00.001-08:00

Part of my ode to retirement is to report that I watched over 400 movies and TV shows on DVD in 2008, 60% from our King County Library and 40% from Netflix. My viewing choices were determined by mood, availability, variety and curiosity.

I keep a personal rating system for what I watch, which I use for rating every movie, regardless of source. Netflix uses a 5 star rating system, with 3 or more stars being considered positive ratings. This is good for their marketing, because it skews users toward more favorable ratings, and hence more recommendations from Netflix. Netflix does not let users rate with half stars or decimals. But Netflix does report the results of their recommendation algorithm as a decimal, and my personal rating system also uses a decimal. What is frustrating is that a movie I might personally rate 2.6, marginal, I have to give either 2 stars for "dislike" or 3 stars for "like" at Netflix, and so I incline to give it 3 stars. And a movie that I personally rate 3.4, I cannot bring myself to give a Netflix 4 star rating of "really liked", so it also gets 3 stars. Thus both 2.6 and a 3.4 movies, though almost one full star apart, are rated the same by me at Netflix. But happily, the Netflix algorithm seems to be able to figure me out, because the decimal recommendations Netflix reports as their best guess for how I will like a video are very close to my own decimal ratings.

My personal rating system is actually more like a four star one, with only a handful of movies earning a four and rarely one getting a five (usually when I rate it based on memory of having seen it in the past). I try not to pick movies to watch unless I think I might actually like them, but a few clinkers still slip in. Overall though, most of what I watch falls in the 2.8 to 3.4 range. Bear in mind that I am rating movies for my own taste, not as a critic advising a wider audience. I gave 34 videos 3.5 stars or more in 2008, 9 from the library and 25 from Netflix. Below is a breakdown of the 34.

Only 2 were from 2008, because the newest ones are harder to get sometimes, so I usually wait to see them later. From 2007 came 12, from 2000 to 2006 came 10, from the 1990s came 5, one each from the 80s, 60s and 40s, and 2 from the 1930s. Dramas accounted for 15, documentaries 8, romance and musicals 3 each, and one each animated, western and what Netflix calls gay. There are only 4 foreign films, 2 French, a German and a Zulu.

Top rated for me was Anne of Green Gables: the Sequel; I just really like the characters and subject matter, the portrayal by the cast and especially by the lead, and the overall production look. Runners up were three of different genres from 2007, the musical Across the Universe, the documentary Body of War, and the TV drama Brothers & Sisters. The follow up group includes: Spitfire Grill, 1996 drama; Return to Lonesome Dove, 1993 western; Cranford, 2007 PBS drama; Alive Day Memories, 2007 documentary; The Jane Austen Book Club, 2007 drama; Warm Springs, 2005 drama; and Sense and Sensibility, from 2008.

Rounding out my list are: the partially animated Enchanted from 2007; French comedy The Closet from 2000; political comedy Bill Maher: the Decider from 2007; six documentaries, For the Bible Tells Me So, No End in Sight and Taxi to the Dark Side, all from 2007, After Innocence from 2006, The God Who Wasn't There from 2005 and Memphis Belle from 1944; eight dramas, Recount from 2008, Mom at Sixteen from 2005, Gracie's Choice and the Zulu film Yesterday from 2004, The German film The Tunnel from 2001, the French Le Haine from 1995, Nothing But a Man from 1964 and Dead End from 1937; gay film And the Band Played On from 2001; the musical documentary Broadway the Golden Age from 2000 and the Astaire and Rogers Swing Time from 1936; and three romances, August Rush from 2007, the French film Nellie & Monsieur Arnaud from 1995, and the dancing film Strictly Ballroom from 1992.

I like character driven dramas, some period pieces and road quests, message pictures and political documentaries. I avoid horror, thriller, sci-fi and most action films. I expect to follow the same general approach to movie viewing for 2009, though political documentaries may be fewer. As for recommendations beyond the above listings, I would tailor them to the individual, based on their personal genre and sub-genre preferences.

Sleeping Better

2009-02-04T17:36:00.001-08:00

In a recent conversation, daughter Anna and I agreed that it was really nice now going to bed and waking up knowing that Barack Obama and not George Bush is the President. Under Bush we constantly fumed over what the scoundrel had done today and fretted over what he might do tomorrow. Hardly a day went by without some disclosure of another horror, and the realization that there were probably other terrors not yet disclosed.

With Obama in the White House, we are confident that he is acting openly and honestly in our best interest. I do not feel the need to monitor the news as closely now. I still follow political developments, most of which are much improved, with good legislation now being passed by Congress and signed by the President. There are still Republican obstructionists, but their numbers have shrunk and their influence is quite diminished. There have been snags in a few confirmation hearings, but they have either been overcome, as with the new Attorney General, or the nominee has quickly withdrawn, as with Tom Daschle.

I have folders full of notes for possible Sense articles, which will probably now never be written, though I may go through them once more before discarding. As with recent postings, Sense articles for a while will probably focus more on personal memories, with some tie in to current events. In another blog change, the visit count meter at Sense has been eliminated. It always recorded ever single page visit, rather than just each overall new visit to the site, so when it started acting up, I scrapped it.

President Obama

2009-01-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

At the dawn of Inauguration Day, watching TV coverage I got emotional. The peaceful transition of power under the American Constitutional system is almost always inspiring [the Supreme Court election of George W. Bush being a glaring exception]. But this time there was the thrill of seeing an African-American coming into the highest office, overwhelmingly chosen by the American people accepting his message of hope and change for the better, and what this meant especially to Americans of color. And there was the inspired encouragement being expressed by so many people, not just in America but world wide, at the reality of the disgraced George W. Bush leaving town and the chosen Barack Obama taking over.

I watched the swearing in as the invited breakfast guest of my long time friends Joe and Georgia, who are always good company, and were especially fun to be with to witness this enormous step in the racial maturing of America. Joe has long roots in America leading back to some African ancestry, so his family has experienced racial prejudice first hand. Georgia, though an American citizen by birth, was sent to a "relocation camp" during World War II, because her grandparents were born in Japan.

Eight years, or even four, is a long time for a young person to wait to see a new President, and at first look the new person may look out of place. Seeing Ike replace Truman is not much of a memory to me, but seeing Kennedy replace Ike is quite vivid. I liked that the new man was younger, a Democrat and a Catholic. I did not like him being rich, but I liked seeing him as President. When Kennedy was killed and Johnson took over, I did not like seeing Johnson as President. Though he did not come from money and he was a Democrat, he was from the South which turned me off. He did do things for civil rights and poor people, but his escalation of the Vietnam War repulsed me.

I grew up seeing Nixon as Vice-President and that was bad enough. But when he became President, it was almost unbearable. I was overjoyed when he resigned and was willing to see just about anybody take over. Ford was a bumbler and I always just looked on him as a caretaker until the next election. Carter came from nowhere. Another southerner was another turn off. He only seemed Presidential when meeting with foreign heads of state. Reagan always looked like the B grade actor he was and his years in office were as bad as Nixon's. Bush I seemed a weak and aloof President and like he was not sure he wanted the job. Then along came another southern unknown, Clinton, who began to look Presidential just about the time his libido undermined him, leaving him to look a bit pathetic. Bush II, the usurping fraud, at first looked like a deer frozen in headlights, and then like the pompous dork he is, but never anything even remotely Presidential.

Obama is the President who I am most comfortable seeing in the job of any President during my lifetime. The two year campaign about which there was so much complaint, actually gave America the opportunity to see Obama in action through a long process. The man we saw lead that campaign was exceptionally impressive and the obvious choice for us to make to lead America out of our troubles and into a new future. As he said in his Inaugural address, we face big problems and the solutions are not easy, but working together, we can begin to solve them. Polls show the American people are in great support of Obama and willing to give him time to work. If there is to be a fly in the ointment, it will come from Senate Republicans. One early contender is Cornyn from Texas, who is holding up the Clinton confirmation to ask more about donors to the Clinton Library.

Bushed

2009-01-15T09:04:00.001-08:00

My Mom used to say she was ''bushed" when she was exhausted. After eight years of George W., we are all bushed. Since Obama was elected, Bush has gone from lame duck to last year's turkey - no longer of any interest. His much belated attempt to publicly discuss his feelings about his occupation of the Presidency has generated about as much interest as the screen on a dead TV. Johnny Carson as Carnac used to hold up to his forehead what was announced as the last envelope, while the audience professed bemused relief. Your computer screen now holds the last Sense article about Bush during his usurpation of the Presidency, and we should all express profound relief.

Speaking of turkeys, I love the picture of the turkey and Bush. So do a lot of people - it is the number two hit on a Google image search for "Bush". Consider that if the turkey was named "Bush", the caption "Bush and Turkey" would work both ways.

More seriously, Frank Rich wrote an excellent column about the Bush Presidency a couple weeks ago, which contained this succinctly profound sentence: "The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement." I highly recommend you read the column.

An early article I intended to write for Sense was literally on Presidential stature - the height of our Presidents. After the continuing debacles of the Bush Administration, the subject seems trivial, but this link to a list of US Presidents in order of descending height is still interesting to see.

One of my professed interests in the Bush exit is to see who he pardons. After he is gone and the information on pardons becomes known, I may write about that. Investigations into Bush Administration abuses may get some future play at Sense, but the attitude here toward Bush is going to be mostly "good riddance".

2708 Is Gone

2009-01-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, while browsing around with Google Earth, I decided to take a look at my childhood home, 2708 East Denny Way, in Seattle. To my surprise, it was not there. The house and its sibling on the corner at 2702 had been built to meet the post war desire for new home ownership around 1946. These were the only two houses on the north side of Denny Way between 27th and what was then Empire Way.

My mom and step-dad bought the house from the builder for $7,900, with a small down payment and monthly payments of $50. No banks or mortgage companies were involved in the financing, because the builder sold it on a contract and payments were made directly to him. This basic method of financing has long ago fallen out of use, supposedly because it is impractical for a builder to build on his own money and then carry the paper himself. It is supposed to work better if the builder borrows the money for a construction loan and then the buyer borrows the money for a purchase loan which pays off the construction loan. In fact, it is supposed to work even better if the purchase loan is then sold by the lender to some investor, perhaps as part of a package of such loans. The investor can then sell shares in the package... and on it goes.

I always envisioned some older builder with a little money of his own had decided to build a few houses after the War to help out some returning soldiers who were starting their families. The builder met them personally and sized them up and made his decision on that personal basis. For 2708 he met a somewhat different family, an older man from Ohio, newly discharged from the Army who had met a recently divorced Seattle woman with two small sons. She and her ex had sold their older Seattle home as part of the divorce, which may have given her enough for a little down payment on the new house. All parties were anxious enough that the contract was made with the couple before they got married.

Denny Way is the first house I remember. It was a quite small two bedroom house with an unfinished basement. The front door opened into the living room which included a tight dining area to the right, from which the kitchen was accessed. The kitchen also had a door to what was called the hallway, although it was actually about a six foot square central area giving access to the two bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen and the only bathroom. Crammed into the corner of the hall was a telephone table. I knew the floor plan well, because within a few years I began to put its circuitous route to use in avoiding capture and beating by my step-dad. I got very good at reversing direction and confusing him on which way to chase me. Since I could not stand up to him physically, I developed a technique of delivering verbal shots on the run. Eventually I would quit while I was ahead, by darting out either the front door or the back, which exited from the kitchen.

Our house was a place to eat, sleep, and do chores. Chores included household tasks assigned by Mom and too many outside chores from our step-dad. He pridefully accepted compliments for his manicured Kentucky Blue Grass lawn, while my brother and I continually hand clipped the seemingly miles of edges without acknowledgment. Then there were infrastructure projects, like the six foot cube of old bricks from which we had to chip mortar with an axe and regularly un-stack and re-stack elsewhere. Whenever our step-dad was around it meant likely chores, so we usually took off to avoid him.

My main destination was around the corner on 27th, where various friends lived. Their houses were always welcoming and the level street was our playground. Sometimes we wandered down to Washington Park and the Arboretum for larger turf. In the earliest days, the house at 2702 was owned by a red headed man with blonde daughters and a wife who said "again" with a long "ay" sound. They soon moved and were replaced by the Lewises, a black childless couple who became best friends of our family and mentors to my brother and me. I did not understand at the time that the Lewises were part of a swift demographic change in our neighborhood, which turned it into a defacto racial ghetto. We neighborhood kids did not concern ourselves with anything beyond our personal relationships, in which race was not a factor.

My brother and I slept in twin beds with a narrow four shelf stand between. I have that shelf stand in my home office today as a reminder of that house, that small bedroom and the relationship it signified between my brother and me - both separating us and joining us. Three years apart in age, sometimes we seemed close and sometimes a little distant. Sibling relationships, unlike being an only child, come in numerous combinations. Two brothers is one of the simplest. In larger families, sometimes the oldest child barely knows the youngest. I never longed for lots of siblings, though I always thought it would be nice to have a sister, and when I thought about having children of my own, I wanted five, though the four I ended up with turned out to be fine. My birth dad and his family did not stay involved in our life and our step-dad, who had been long orphaned, had no connections with his family back in Ohio. Once in a while I used to wonder what it would be like if my Mom had a child with my step-dad, though it quickly became obvious that was not going to happen.

Two additions were made to the house in the 1950s. An extension was built onto the kitchen, providing an eating space with a view into the back yard flower garden, and a carport was built downhill from the house, with a sitting space on top where a covered swing bench was placed to enjoy the view of the valley. This small view was apparently enough of an amenity to help attract whoever tore the house down and replaced it with five separately addressed units. It does seem fitting that none of the new homes is numbered 2708, so the one I grew up in is probably the only house to ever bear that address.

My brother lived in the house only as long as he had to and he left after high school graduation in 1956. I decided to go onto college and then law school and to take advantage of the free board and room program at home. After finishing school, I had to go for my Basic Training in the Air Force in Texas, and shortly after I returned in 1966, I left the Denny Way nest. Often adult children return to the family home for various reasons, often economic. When my brother returned from his military service, he briefly slept on the living room couch at 2708 before setting out on his own again with a new career in real estate.

When my brother married and became a step-dad, his wonderful "instant" family brought an uplifting dynamic to 2708. The folks, step-dad soon to retire and Mom sort of, now became instant grandparents, a role they both relished. The house had always had its holiday parties with whatever of my mom's family could attend, along with a fair amount of friends, but aside from parties, the atmosphere was usually tense. But now a new era in family was at hand, with unpleasant memories put aside to appreciate the here and now.

White friends of my parents often wondered why we continued to live in the ghetto. Inertia and convenience were part of the reason, but a big factor was that we knew all of our neighbors and were friendly and comfortable with them. One advantage of being kept in a ghetto is that the neighborhood has a certain stability. But as housing opened up more in the late 1960s and as the neighborhood population aged and children started moving, things changed. Working in real estate my brother was able to find a bigger and better home for my parents in the south end. After they bought that house, they put 2708 up for sale. Somewhat fittingly, it was bought by a young interracial couple. During their housing transition, my parents had me housesit, first in their newer house and then for a couple months at 2708. Living in my childhood home again, this time as a newlywed, was so surreal that I barely remember it.

I lived at 2708 for about 20 years, the longest ever in one house. The 20 plus years of my marriage were divided between two houses. The first house we bought, where we lived when my kids were born, is my happiest house memory. Our next house, though bigger as we needed, never felt the same. I have been in my present house about 13 years, with some ambivalence as to satisfaction. I am not quite sure how I feel about the demise of 2708. I will never be able to drive by and see it again, but I cannot even remember the last time I did that. I have pictures and memories and that should be enough.

Today, as so many families are losing their homes to foreclosure, I can only imagine what that must feel like, especially if the home being lost has been a happy one. Maybe the best way to think about 2708 is to pray that the homes that replaced it are being lived in by happy families who will be able to live there as long as they want.

What If?

2008-12-30T14:29:00.001-08:00

Some people actually get married between Christmas and the New Years. Forty one years ago today, I was one of them. I stayed married for a little over half that time. Divorce is a time of examination, and of philosophizing about mistakes and regrets and wondering why and what if. So is the end of a calendar year. Sometimes we look back one year and sometimes many more.

I recently came across my college grade prediction scores. My strong suits were foreign language at 3.7 and botany at 3.6. At O’Dea High I was required to take Latin for four years, which explains the high language score but does not predict my failure to comprehend more than 5% of the dialogue in the foreign movies I have been watching for almost fifty years. The botany score reflects my interest in propagating plants from seed. My parents raised dahlias for competition and from their literature I learned about propagation. I was fascinated by the skin color variations of the multiracial friends in my neighborhood and wanted to learn how traits were passed from parents to children, so I chose dahlia parents of different colors to see what their children would look like.

Math and English were the two majors I considered on entering college. My predicted grade for math was 3.3, and for English 2.9. As it turned out, I chose to "pre-major" and then gravitated into pre-law, concentrating on political science, for which the grade prediction was 3.2. Looking at the predictions again, I was surprised to see music at 3.3, and art and drama at 3.2, since I cannot play a note or draw a lick and I have terrible stage fright. Pursuit of either of those majors might have turned "Sense" into "Sounds", "Sketches" or "Scenes" from Seattle.

At the low end of the grade predictions was engineering at 2.3, which makes sense, since I am good at taking things apart, but terrible at putting them back together. The 2.4 in economics also makes sense now, because I have learned that economics is basically double talk, smoke and mirrors. The smartest economists got us into the current financial chaos and they do not really know how to get us out. The most successful economic idea of recent years, micro credit, was not awarded the Nobel for economics, but won the 2006 Peace Prize instead. Economics was a late comer to the Nobels and arguably is such a vague field that it should never have been included.

My shelf of books purchased but unread books includes "What If?", edited by Robert Crowley, in which various military historians speculate how history would have been changed if battles had ended differently. The book, published in 1999, does not discuss anything more recent than the communist takeover of China. More recent military what ifs could include changes such as Russia vetoing the Korean War, Soviet missiles staying in Cuba, the US not getting involved in Vietnam, coalition forces removing Saddam from power in the Gulf War and the US Congress not being fooled into authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

Prediction, actuality and reflection is the sequence. Education, marriage, career, investment and wars all are subject to prediction, sometimes inaccurate and sometimes dishonest. War and investment seem the most likely victims of bad predictions. Predictions of marriage should be fairly accurate, but the uniqueness and intensity of the relationship varies the results, sometimes for the better and sometime for the worse. Educational and career predications may be more accurate, but are underused and over-ignored.

In their later years, people often look back on their life with a mixture of nostalgia and regret. For me, not being a believer in re-incarnation means we don't get do-overs. We play the hand we are dealt as best we can, making changes along the way based on what we have learned. Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison in an AARP interview said it is bad to have regret as we age and then admitted that she is full of it and that "everything I did right, I didn't do well enough. I'm not morbid at all. It's just that I would like to do it again." Like most people, I wish I had been dealt a better hand in life, and I wish I had played the one I was dealt better than I did. But I don't think I played it that bad. Bluffing works sometimes in cards, but in life it usually just causes problems. I try not to bluff, though sometimes an honest effort to change feels uncomfortable.

I bid good riddance to the political stress of 2008 and look forward to Bush being replaced by Obama. Our country has learned from the enormous mistake of letting Bush take our Presidency. The economic losses of the year may start being repaired in the new year. Unread and new books are waiting to be digested, as are lists of movies old and new. My New years wish for us all is that our "what ifs" regarding the past be replaced with our "what ifs" for the future.

Shoeing Bush

2008-12-17T11:00:00.001-08:00

The young Iraqi journalist who, sickened by what George W. Bush has done to Iraq and its people, hurled his ultimate cultural insult at Bush, has expressed the feelings not just of Iraqis, but of people worldwide. He has become a hero for his courageous act, and though he faces serious criminal charges, his defense fund will be enormous.

Bush was surprisingly quick in ducking the missiles, perhaps indicating he has been expecting to be a target for some time. His verbal reactions were typically Bush, giving no thought or attention to the motivation or reasoning of the launcher, but instinctively turning the incident into another ludicrous propaganda irony about bringing democracy to Iraq, and dismissing it with his sophomoric humor, "it was a size ten".

Reaction in the US seems to be amused satisfaction. This Iraqi did something many of us wish we could do, tell Bush by an insulting cultural gesture what we think of him. Some of us would do it because he has embroiled us in a needless and incompetent war. Some would do it because he has ruined our economy. Some would cite the damage he has done to our Constitutional system of government. Many of us would do it for all three reasons.

Bush deserves to be greeted with flung shoes wherever he goes from now to the time he is out of office. But if that is not done, at least we know we are near the final month of enduring him and are in the process of telling him "Shoo!"

When Bush pardons the huge groups of people who broke our laws under the direction of his Administration, as I expect he will be doing, he should simultaneously ask the Iraqi government to pardon the shoe thrower. It's the least he can do. And when it comes to doing the right thing, Bush has always done the least.

What Should We Do about the Economy?

2008-12-09T14:54:00.001-08:00

People of my generation grew up hearing stories from our parents about how bad things were during the Depression, and also about how poor their family was when they were kids and how hard they had to work for very little pay. I never doubted their stories. I knew they were true because I had seen the old movies on TV showing the same.

There were lots of poor people living in my Central Area neighborhood where I grew up in Seattle. But the years of my childhood were relatively good ones in our economy and I don't remember any bleak times of recession or depression. Boeing was the big employer and it's workforce size varied dramatically, but that never affected me directly since I never worked for Boeing and neither did my parents.

I remember the Boeing Bust [the Boeing workforce was cut from 80,400 to 37,200 between early 1970 and October 1971] with the billboard about the last person leaving Seattle making sure to turn off the light, but I was not directly affected. I was working for a real estate title insurance company as an attorney and my job was secure no matter what - title insurance is needed for home sales and mortgages, and title reports are needed for mortgage foreclosures.

The gas crisis in 1973 and 1974 was not an economic challenge for me. The problem was not the price of gas, but rather the availability, with gas being rationed on an every other day basis dependent on the last license plate digit. I ran dry a few times and had to walk. The associated decline in the stock market did not affect me, nor did the ones in 1976, 1981, 1987 and 1990, because in all those years I had a low overhead private law practice and a wife and four kids to support and did not have enough money to have any stock market investments.

The more recent downturns have been during my retirement years. I knew the post 9/11 slowdown was only going to be temporary, but the current problems are different and much deeper, and they have impacted me directly via my mutual fund values declining significantly. Like many investors, I am just riding it out. But many younger, working people cannot just wait around. They need work and money to make house payments and they are concerned about their economic future. People want to know what we should do about the economy.

We need to get things moving now, put people to work and restore confidence that our government is working to get us back on track. Infrastructure projects that are ready to go but need funding are a good place to start. The Depression stories I heard as a child included stories about people going to work through government programs, doing things they believed were worthwhile and that made them feel good about themselves again.

Longer term, we need technical training programs to enable people to acquire skills that can be employed locally and not outsourced, jobs that are good for people and for our economy and environment. Computer and appliance repair and home energy efficiency improvement installation are examples. We also need to encourage innovation and invention, to enable individuals to build the proverbial better mousetrap - something that could be jump started by a Federal program administered locally.

Extending unemployment benefits and increasing grants and loans for education should be a first priority. Loss of talent to school drop out syndromes should be attacked by incentives and other programs. New efforts to early match young people to a career course should be made, kindling excitement in young people as they learn what skills they possess and how they want to develop and use them.

We need to look back at the crooks and scoundrels who exacerbated this mess. Crooks should be vigorously prosecuted with the criminal system as a deterrent to future offenses, giving long terms to white collar criminals rather than soft time and wrist slaps. Scoundrels should be aggressively sued in the civil courts to go after their ill-gotten gains. Make these high-rollers pay the price in terms of legal fees, settlements and judgments. Shame the shameful, those who took the pay and assumed the responsibility but were too lazy or uninterested to actually do the job. This latter group includes many civic leaders who accept positions on corporate boards to pad their own resumes and lend civic credibility to corporate predators.

The whole concept of corporations needs to be re-examined and reformed. In theory they are limited entities subject to marketplace democracy. But in fact they are eternal monoliths run by oligarchies using money of under-informed private persons and abetted by public subsidies.

Presidential Transition Memories

2008-12-02T16:06:00.001-08:00

As we transition from the nightmare of Bush to the hope of Obama, I recall past Presidential transitions in my lifetime, as felt then and as viewed from time.

Roosevelt to Truman
Roosevelt died when I was too young to understand. History has shown that our only fourth term President had done practically nothing to prepare Truman for the possibility he would have to take over the Presidency, and that Truman rose to the occasion, a fact more recognized in later years than it was during his Presidency. His unexpected election in 1948 ushered in a rough ride that sent him into retirement with a very low public opinion, but again time has salvaged his reputation. I remember the newsreels at the movie theaters showing a feisty little old man walking fast with reporters in pursuit, and I understood he was President Truman.

Truman to Ike
I remember being in downtown Seattle for a dental appointment when General MacArthur was being given a hero's parade. As kids, we played Army a lot, but we were always the guys in foxholes, not the Generals, so I was not sure I knew which was MacArthur and which was Eisenhower. As MacArthur faded from the news, Eisenhower rose so high that it was apparent he would win election regardless of what party he chose. "I Like Ike" was the slogan and he did seem likeable, but by then I understood I was a Democrat like my Mom, and Ike was a Republican, so we had to be for the less appealing Stevenson. Ike's years seemed pleasant enough, with the Korean War fighting stopped and relative prosperity. The Democrats seemed to throw in the towel in 1956, by putting Stevenson up again. I remember the air raid sirens and drills and the talk of hidden communists. I could understand the danger of a bomb being dropped on us, but I never did get the connection between somebody in America with unpopular ideas they tried to keep secret and the dropping of the bombs.

Ike to Kennedy
By the end of Ike's years, I had come to understand how Republicans were for business and Democrats were for workers, and I was glad Ike was leaving. Vice -President Nixon seemed unlikeable and had a reputation as a two-faced scoundrel, which seemed to fit his physical appearance also. Enter Jack Kennedy, who at first I confused with his brother Bobby, who got more TV time as counsel on the Senate Kefauver hearings. JFK was incredibly handsome, heroic and for the working man. He had a beautiful, cultured wife, though personally I was not drawn either to her looks or her country club background. As a Catholic, it was exciting to think of a Catholic President, and after a bunch of grandfatherly types, it was really exciting to see more of a handsome uncle type running. The fun of boyish war games had given way to a young college student's appreciation of peace, so the Peace Corps proposal was thrilling. My 21st birthday fell a few days after the election, so I was extremely disappointed not to be able to vote. Though the Peace Corps sounded exciting, I was too much of a home comfort lover to seriously consider joining.

Kennedy to Johnson
No adult American at the time can ever forget the assassination of John Kennedy. It was the most terrible of terribles. Then the shooting of Oswald, the Kennedy funeral, the numbness of it all. I could not avoid the suspicion of Lyndon Johnson involvement. I was prejudiced against Southerners anyway, and LBJ was not really a Kennedy man, and the shooting just happened to occur in his home State. Many people were wary of Johnson, but it soon seemed he was trying to get civil rights legislation passed in honor of Kennedy. Then he actually accomplished it. And there was more, the Great Society with Medicare and Medicaid. Kennedy had the charm and popularity, but did not actually accomplish much in his short time in office, but LBJ did great things. Unfortunately, our domino theory thinking had sucked us into the spot previously filled by the French in Vietnam, and Johnson and most of his advisors failed to see the stupidity of it, though privately they recognized the ultimate futility. As potential cannon fodder, I educated myself quickly and opposed our involvement early. Vietnam escalation put an end to Johnson's social progressive agenda, and took such a personal toll on him that he declined to run in 1968. If not for Vietnam, LBJ would have carried his Great Society agenda forward, much to the betterment of America.

Johnson to Nixon
I cannot remember who I voted for in 1968. I had been a Eugene McCarthy supporter from day one. When Bobby Kennedy entered the arena I got excited for him. I have a letter from him agreing with my opposition to the Vietnam War, written about a month before his assassination. I beat the draft by enlisting in the Reserves under Johnson. Then as the Congress began to tighten the purse strings on the War, the sneaky Johnson did an end run by calling up the Reserves, so I was on active duty during the 1968 campaign, driving around McChord Air Force Base with my McCarthy for President bumper sticker, when most of the "lifer" sergeants had George Wallace signs. I think I did vote for Hubert Humphrey, in spite of his support for the War, because he was a true labor backed Democrat and I did not want to see Nixon win. Nixon was a crook and a phoney and it was depressing to envision him as President. My active duty time expired on his watch and my disappointment continued as he won in 1972 over McGovern, who was my kind of progressive. I followed Watergate closely, believing that Nixon had finally gotten caught and would have to pay the price, I was parked on Mount Rainier, getting ready for a hike, when I heard Nixon resign. If Nixon did a few worthwhile things while President, they are more than buried by his continuation and expansion of the War in Southeast Asia and his fundamental disgracing of the office of the Presidency.

Nixon to Ford
Gerald Ford was a decent man, though I completely disagreed with his politics. Why he pardoned Nixon we will never know for sure, but it undermined his credibility and prevented him from rising above caretaker status. We could have done a lot worse than this caretaker, so he deserves credit.

Ford to Carter
Carter came in as an unknown outsider. I was nervous about anther Southerner, but I voted for him. Carter inherited an inflationary economy he was unable to rein in, and also got caught in the Iranian revolutionary overthrow of an ineffectual Western imposed Shah. History has shown Carter's greatest skills are as a diplomat, and it was only in that area that he had some lasting Presidential accomplishments. His work after the Presidency is easily the most impressive of any American President.

Carter to Reagan
To me, Ronald Reagan as a President was a bad joke. I could not believe it. The scoundrel actually undercut President Carter, by dealing under the table with the Iranians, an ethically challenged tactic he used again in the Iran-Contra matter. Reagan is the most overrated President of modern times, when he in fact should be considered one of the worst. His trickle down economics and destruction of our governmental work force have proved devastating through the years. He was in the right place at the right time for the collapse of Soviet communism, but he grandstanded and postured instead of doing the important work of controlling nuclear arsenals and preparing for a better post-Soviet world.

Reagan to Bush I
This was the Reagan third term, except Bush does get credit for finally realizing Reaganomics had created such a mess that Bush had to renege on his "no new taxes" pledge and agree to a tax increase to prevent an even bigger mess.

Bush I to Clinton
Bush was not a good sport loser. Clinton thought he had all the answers, but his transition was not that successful. His accomplishments are actually incremental, some undoing Bush-Reagan errors, and some toning them down, but nothing of progressive significance. In fact, many of his more far reaching programs, like welfare changes, free trade agreements and sale of the public spectrum are more regressive. I have written here several times that the good economy of the Clinton years is more illusory than legitimately progressive. Granted his successor has taken us to new lows, history will show Clinton should get his share of the blame. I have also written here about the sexual failings of Clinton, which will be forever chronicled in history as part of his being only the second President ever to have been tried on impeachment charges. A less ego driven man would be sensitive enough to spare us the continuing sight of his face at political events. He supposedly wants to pattern his post-Presidency after Jimmy Carter, but seems to have forgotten that Rosalyn Carter never ran for President.

Clinton to Bush II
The only President ever elected by the Supreme Court, this squatter, as I have written here, deserves to go down as the worst in history. Under the illegitimate circumstances, this transition was quite awkward and Bush came in with the attitude that Clinton had been an interloper in the dynastic reign. Hopefully we have learned from this never to let the Supreme Court elect our President again.

Bush II to Obama
Bush is so unpopular that even he is eager to get himself off the stage. About the only thing Bush has left not to screw up is the hand off of the baton. He seems to have just dropped it on the ground and told Obama that he won't touch it again, which is probably about the best way for it to pass. As Bush stumbles to the wayside, Obama is quickly getting up to speed and is poised to grab the stick on January 20th.

Thanks for Obama

2008-11-26T12:29:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving we can add the election of Barack Obama to our list of items for which we give thanks. Two years ago on Sense I wrote my view of a vision for what would be "The Best Thanksgiving Ever". With Bush in the White House, nothing has been done by our country to move in the direction of my vision. At Thanksgiving dinner George Bush would have totally disagreed with every hope I expressed. This Thanksgiving, I think President-elect Obama would be in complete agreement with the views I expressed and for that wonderful change I am truly grateful.

Where to?

2008-11-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

The last time I rode in a taxi was 1969 in London, but I think taxi drivers still ask the entering passenger, "Where to?" As the driver of this blog and of my own daily activities, I am now asking myself, "Where to?"

During the long Presidential campaign, I concentrated my Sense postings on the political process. Now that the Democrats will be taking over the White House and working with even greater control of Congress, I expect my Sense postings will not be as intensely political. The passage of significant pieces of legislation may prompt Sense postings, but preliminary skirmishes may not be chronicled here. Between now and the Inauguration, there may be a farewell or two to Bush.

Our country needs to head out of Iraq, go after bin Laden and then head out of Afghanistan. On the home front, we need to navigate out of the current economic crisis and set a long range fiscal course of sophisticated nuance to replace the disastrous total free market approach that set the taxi on cruise control and allowed it to careen into a very deep ditch.

To go somewhere, we have to know where we are now and where we want to end up, in order to determine the route to follow. Our country did an excellent job of plotting its course at the time it was established. We have not had to alter the course very often through the years. The most important alterations have been in the direction of greater inclusiveness, ending slavery and adopting civil and voting rights protections for all races and genders. We have allowed some administrations to drive off course, usually in times of war, but we eventually get back on track, as I expect we will do now with President Obama.

On the personal side, I am continuing to work on my own navigation. The preamble of this blog begins with, "Common sense thoughts on life and current affairs". After emphasizing current affairs at Sense for the last two years, thoughts on life deserve equal time. Amateur blogs are narcissistic. I write for myself. My "wider" audience is extremely narrow and spotty, one or two contemporaries, and my children and maybe one or two of their contemporaries.

This challenging but hopeful time for our country is an opportunity to reflect personally on where we are in our lives and to ask ourselves, "Where to?" That's the next ride I expect to be taking with Sense.

President-Elect Obama

2008-11-05T09:26:00.001-08:00

Barach Obama has been convincingly elected President of the United States. His margin of 52.3 to 46.4 confirms the polls and dispels any concern about the accuracy of polls in a race involving an African American. Most significantly, the electoral vote map has been re-written, with the Democrat winning several states previously considered Republican and garnering an electoral vote lead of over 100, 79 more than needed for victory. (My prediction of 52-46 Obama with a 50-100 electoral vote margin was happily accurate).

This election was the first of a new era for America, as the Democrats have built a growing coalition of African Americans, Hispanics and young voters. Blacks have always supported Democrats, often asking themselves to what advantage in the years since passage of civil rights forty years ago. Now that question has been answered in the person of Barack Obama, the ultimate fruition of civil rights and equal opportunity.

As blacks helped swing some states to Democrats, motivated by the candidacy of Obama, Hispanics assisted them, and in some Rocky Mountain states, Hispanics definitely supplied the margin of Democratic victory. Any concern about Hispanics not voting for a black were overcome by the overall qualities of Obama himself and by his background as a child of a foreign born parent.

Young people identified with Obama and his message of change, hope and inclusiveness and hugely embraced the opportunity to be part of this historic change by participating in his election. Son Chris in Bangkok talked to me yesterday about his satisfaction in receiving his absentee ballot in time to put his Obama vote in the mail, and he told me about the excitement in the international community over the prospect of an Obama election, which they were expecting to celebrate at victory parties last night. Daughter Anna in Florida also spoke to me about what she was seeing there and about the heroic effort to get her absentee Obama vote postmarked before the post office closure at 6:00 PM.

As the victory was proclaimed, the TV images of celebrations throughout America, some organized and some spontaneous, carried tremendous emotional impact. Americans have taken our country back from the Bush-Cheney Republican travesty and have entered the 21st Century with a newly hopeful feeling that together we can put our country back on track and start to undo all the damage that has been done. Daunting though the task may be, the majority of Americans are ready to help President Obama as he takes it on. As President Obama takes office and shows how we can all work together, many who did not vote for him out of concern for his lack of experience or out of fear about his agenda will be reassured, and his support will grow.

As TV commentators remarked on the contrast between the peaceful and uplifting pictures of the crowd in the Chicago Park waiting to hear Obama and the memory of the violence perpetrated on anti -war protestors there in 1968, my mind went back to that time also. Hubert Humphrey, an old war horse liberal turned war hawk, a precursor to Joe Lieberman, had just been nominated for President by the Democrats, even as public opinion was starting to turn against the Vietnam War. The year before, my good friend Joe and I had worn tuxedos in each other's wedding, and in 1968 we were both wearing Air Force uniforms as recalled reservists. Last night Joe, of African-American heritage, called to share with me the excitement that he and his family were feeling at this historic moment. The racially inclusive nature of our wedding parties had been unusual back in the 1960s, and the racially mixed marriage of Barack Obama's parents around the same time would have been illegal in many places in this country. How far we have come is a reminder of the great distance we needed to go.

After the defeated Humphrey became old school, Democrats had very limited success with an old new southerner, Carter, and then some success with a young new southerner, Clinton. But Obama transcends all that. His roots are African and Midwestern, his early life environs include Asia and multi-cultural Hawaii, his education is Ivy League, his on-the-job training was in the hard knock school of Chicago community organizing and rough and tumble politicking, followed by the years of apprenticeship in bi-partisan State legislating and an introductory course in the workings of the US senate.

While America has overcome a great racial barrier, we may also have put the Vietnam era behind us. The last three Presidential losers all served honorably in Vietnam. McCain was a hawkish hero, Kerry a dovish hero and Gore a quiet non-heroic type. Future Presidents, like Obama, will all be post-Vietnam. Ironically, the two Vietnam War age men who made it to the Presidency never served in Vietnam. Clinton avoided service completely by legitimate deferments. Bush avoided service in Vietnam by illegal maneuvering into and within the Air National Guard.

McCain gave a gracious concession speech before an ungracious gathering at a ritzy hotel. His personal mission now will be to regain the honor he lost by his shabby campaign. He will be cooperative with Democrats going forward, but he has no Republican Congressional allies to bring along. That is one of the disadvantages of Maverickdom.

As expected, Obama gave a stirring speech about the historic significance of this election and about the great tasks we face and the need to work together for the good of all Americans, which he pledged to do. His tone was fittingly sober and Presidential, continuing to instill the hope and encouragement we need.

This new First Family is the most exciting since the Kennedys. Michelle Obama is a woman with classic middle American values, informed by her experience as an African American. She has a quiet charm that will endear her to Americans, and her appearances on the world stage will help restore America's image as the world leader on inclusiveness and opportunity for all. The Obama daughters are going to delight America, in stark contrast to the embarrassment the Bush twins generated, which required them to be closeted. Once again, a Democrat in the White House brings young daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, following in the footsteps of Chelsea Clinton, Amy Carter and Caroline Kennedy. Someday maybe another Democratic President will bring a son who can play in the Oval office as Caroline's brother did.

As Barack Obama builds his transition team and contemplates appointments, many eyes will be on an early choice. But this one will probably be made by the Obama daughters, subject to parental oversight. Dad and Mom promised a Presidential puppy if he was elected, a fact the President-elect confirmed last night.

My Prediction on the Election

2008-11-03T10:21:00.001-08:00

The Sense article of this same name from a few days before the 2004 election retains much relevancy for this 2008 election, but there are important differences between the two contests.

In the 2004 election, Bush was given credit for 50.7% of the popular vote (he called it a mandate) to 48.3% for Kerry. But the electoral vote total of 286 to 251 could have been reversed by a change in the 20 electoral votes from Ohio, which Bush was credited with winning by 2%. I am not saying Bush won, because I believe Republican voter suppression of primarily black voters in Ohio reversed what should have been the true outcome. Consider that one black voter out of one hundred who gave up standing in line or who otherwise was prevented from having a validated vote, and one white voter out of a hundred who was "facilitated" by a short line or was otherwise aided could have made the difference.

This year the most objective polls all agree Obama has the edge nationally and in particular has convincing leads in the battleground states. He is projected to win the popular vote by maybe five points, and the electoral vote is expected to go his way quite handily. However, with a black candidate for the first time in history, pollsters agree they are not sure of the undisclosed racial attitudes of voters.

I predict the polls will be fairly accurate and there will be no empirical confirmation of any racial aspect lowering the actual votes for Obama. This may be a case of two inaccuracies making a correct answer, because silent affirmative action voters may cancel out silent anti-black voters. Most people who would not vote for a black probably vote Republican anyway. There are certainly some senior citizen white Democrats who have trouble voting for a black, but many will end up doing so because of the economy, and some may just sit this one out. Hispanics and Asians may harbor some prejudice against blacks or some backlash fear of black affirmative action under a black President, but most Hispanic values are consistent with Democratic values and the Asian vote does not seem to be significantly large enough in any strategic geographic area and the Obama connection with Indnesia could have appeal to some Asian voters.

Some silent voter factors should work in the favor of Obama. Some voters do worry about the age and health of McCain and about his mentality and temperament. The lack of Palin qualifications and the emphasis on her looks probably affects many more voters than say so, particularly women.

As in 2004, turnout is all important, particularly with new and young voters. Early voting is setting records and is heavily Democratic, especially blacks and young people. Young voters faded in 2004, but Obama is much more appealing to them than was Kerry, particularly given the stark contrast of the elderly McCain. Demographics favor Democrats, as the country grows less white and people of color take up residence in new areas. The Republican Party is relatively shrinking with the white population and the Republican exclusive mentality of rural and small town white America.

Even Republicans seem to agree Congress will gain more Democrats. It is not likely the Democrats will get the 60 needed in the Senate to block filibuters, but in 2006 it did not seem likely they would get a Senate majority, which they did. Republican moderates are losing, just as Democratic moderates are gaining numbers. This moves Congress toward the progressive end and leaves many of the remaining Republicans marginalized, since they are more interested in obstructing than in working with moderates and progressives. Even with 40 plus Republicans in the Senate, there may be hope to peel one or two away to avoid filibuster on any given issue.

To put numbers on it, I'll say 52-46 Obama on the popular vote and Obama wins the electoral vote with a 50 to 100 edge.

Uniting the Democrats

2008-10-28T10:47:00.001-07:00

With the political wind in its sails, the Democratic Party seems quite united. If the election next week brings major success to the Democrats, they need to recognize how they got here and plan effectively how and where to go forward as a party. The last Sense post mentioned the Democrats looking ahead may need to subdivide, but it would have been more correct to say they need to perfect their new union.

George Lakoff in "The Political Mind" argues for abandoning the concept of a left to right political spectrum, with moderates in the middle. He points out that conservatives and progressives do not have different values, but they do have different modes of thought. Progressives think of government as a nurturing entity which protects and empowers people and fosters community responsibility. Conservatives think of government as an authoritarian entity which emphasizes force and power and unregulated economic privatization and clebrates individual responsibility.

Lakoff maintains that we all possess the capability for both modes of political thought, and that some of us use one mode of thought on some issues and the other mode of thought on the remaining ones. He cites as examples Joe Lieberman, who is conservative on Iraq and school vouchers, but progressive otherwise, and Chuck Hagel, who is progressive on Iraq but otherwise conservative. To Lakoff, a so-called "moderate" is not someone with moderate views on all subjects, but rather someone with conservative views on some and progressive views on others.

After the Civil War, the Republican Party was seen as the party of northern big business which had defeated the South and abolished slavery. White Southerners embraced the Democratic party during Reconstruction and continued through the Jim Crow decades, forming a strange bedfellows alliance with northern progressives and labor groups. The Republicans kept the big business interests and blended it with an appeal to the rugged individualism of the western states. The uneasy Democratic marriage finally dissolved as civil rights laws were passed, and the south changed to Republican. Republicans used white backlash in the north to peel off labor votes, while at the same time undermining unionism itself. The Vietnam War had also turned many young people away from the Democrats.

Democrats tried to adjust to changing times by opening the party up and encouraging conspicuous inclusiveness. This played right into the Republican appeal to backlash and the Democrats hit a low point in the 1972 Nixon re-election. Nixon turned the public against him by expanding the Vietnam War and undermining the Constitution with Watergate, lacking only a ruining of the economy to have beaten George W. to the terrible trifecta. In reaction, voters elected Carter and gave him a Democratic Congress. But analogous to the George W. fiasco in Iraq, Democrats won the 1976 election War but lost the occupation of the government by not having a unified plan of how to proceed.

As Reagan took over the Republican Party, the Democrats were pushed out of power and have been floundering ever since. Bill Clinton came along at the right time for Bill Clinton. Bush I was a weak candidate facing an economy weakened by the bogus Reagonomics of trickle down. The populist third party appeal of Perot split the vote and Clinton was a supposed new Democrat centralist. Clinton was more of a conservative on economic issues, favoring free trade instead of working for fair trade, having no policy to support American workers in general and working single mothers and workers who lost jobs to globalization in particular. As we can see now, the Clinton years of prosperity were built on their own bubble and house of cards. The same lack of a Democratic master plan led to the loss of Congress after two years of Clinton. Monicagate played into Republican mythology, but also affected the attitudes of many progressives who are somewhat conservative on personal sexual morality. Al Gore was no better campaigner than Bush I, and Joe Lieberman did not inspire any progressives, many of whom sensed his conservative views on religion and war.

By 2004, the public mood was starting to go against Republicans, but the Democrats were not quite ready to seize the opportunity. The fresh appeal of Howard Dean brought activism back to the party, but Dean did not have the gravitas to run for President. John Kerry had the gravitas but seemed to be from the same school of campaigning as Bush I and Gore. Running mate Edwards had charm and labor appeal but not enough gravitas to make it on his own and not enough chemistry with Kerry. They came close, but the Republican vote suppression program that stole Florida in 2000 did the same in Ohio in 2004.

After the close loss in 2004, the Democrats finally started to get their act together, deciding they should be the party of all America, viable in every state of the Union. For 2006, they recruited appealing candidates in some fairly conservative states, people who had a mix of progressive and conservative views, but whose conservative views were traditional ones rather than of the culture wars variety, and all of whom agreed the occupation of Iraq should be ended as soon as possible. Democrats even rejected Joe Lieberman, though his new designation as Independent still got him back into the Senate and he now parades around in support of McCain.

Barack Obama had been a sensation at the 2004 Democratic Convention, most importantly to party insiders who recognized his unique set of talents. But Hillary Clinton seemed the heir apparent. As a testimony to the sincerity of Democratic inclusiveness, in a year that the right white male could have walked away with the election, the Democrats fought it out for 2008 between a white woman and a black man. The other white contenders, and the one Hispanic, over the long primary season enabled Clinton and Obama to rise above the pack and demonstrate their excellent abilities. Clinton fought hard and fairly dirty, which enabled Obama to show he could handle it and seasoned him for the general campaign.

Coming out of the primaries, the Democrats were actually quite unified on the issues. Some unhappy Hillaryites are still bitter that Obama won, but there have been no Democratic defections to McCain. McCain can only cite Lieberman as a Democratic supporter, conveniently ignoring the fact Lieberman has been an Independent since 2006. Almost daily, Republicans have been coming out in support of Obama, some citing various lacks in McCain, most notably his lack of judgment in choosing Palin, and all of them pointing to the obvious and unique ability of Obama to lead the country at this time.

The Democrats seem to be on the verge of a new era for the party and for our country. The two headed donkey is not pulling against itself, but is actually seeing both legitimate points of view, the need to protect and empower all Americans, while at the same time staying true to real economic and individual values. In that sense, it is reflective of the majority of Americans, who are overwhelmingly rejecting the Republican elephant which has been wearing blinders as it has stampeded us into War and trampled our Constitution and our economy.

State of the Republican Party

2008-10-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

[WARNING: If you are superstitious, do not read this, as it might be considered pre-hatch chicken counting].

With the election less than two weeks away and with it appearing that the Democrats will take the Presidency back and win big in Congressional races, this final stage of the campaign is a good time to look at the state of our two major political parties, beginning with a brief history of how we got here and then offering thoughts today on the what is happening to the Republican Party.

The Republican Party was debilitated by the Depression and buried by the success of the FDR New Deal. Ike was a moderate and the Dems controlled Congress during his time, so not much Republican policy got adopted. LBJ continued what JFK started, with the Great Society bringing civil rights and medicare, but being pushed out by the Vietnam War. Nixon devised the wedge issue strategy, playing to those who objected to war protestors and who were scared that civil rights threatened white privilege. He lied about having a plan to end the war, and escalated it instead. Paranoia drove him to Constitutional violations which led to his downfall.

Carter was a fluke, the outside breath of fresh air after the stench of Watergate. He had no inside help in facing an inflationary economy and a high profile terrorist kidnaping. He had no particular Democratic policies, just a hodge podge of well-meaning but uncoordinated proposals.

Reagan took the Nixon wedge issue approach to new levels, expanding them from just racial and crime related to include religion, nationalistic imperialism, rural versus urban, elites versus the majority, entrepreneurs versus entitlement takers, strict constructionists versus legislating judges, and many others, all rolled into a frame of quintessentially American conservatives versus un-American liberals.

Bush I was not enough of a people person to carry on the Reagan mess more than one term. And in fairness to Bush, he recognized that Reaganomics had failed to the point where some taxes had to be reinstated to bring balance. His heresy made Bush a victim of what Reagan had sown, and the Perot third party effort made Clinton President. After two years of Republican Congressional stonewalling, Newt Gingrich led the fraudulent Contract with America takeover of Congress. But the Greenspan bubble was starting to grow, enabled by Clinton's soft core Republican economic policies and a willing Congress on both sides of the aisle taking contributions from corporate fat cats.

Clinton's libido, Gore's flatness, Lieberman's fizzle, and Republican thievery let Bush steal the White House in 2000. The Compassionate Conservatism scam was dropped even before Bush took over. History will put a name on the Bush-Cheney administration, and my nomination is The Terrible Trifecta. Bush should get his place in history as the worst President because he has done the three worst things a President can do: ruin our international reputation with incompetent imperialistic war; allow our economy to completely destruct; and undermine our Constitutional framework of separation of powers.

History will say the Republicans never had a chance in 2008. They let McCain run because they knew they were going to lose. All the McCain rivals were inherent losers too - a fear mongering prosecutor, a fundamentalist preacher, a Mormon financial manipulator and another second rate actor. McCain made it close for a while, because the Democrats concentrated on two very capable people who had political handicaps, one was a woman married to Bill Clinton and the other was a young black man. The extent of Republican desperation and devastation was shown by the Palin pick. McCain had enough sense to know Palin was a wrong choice, but he did not have the courage and integrity to reject her, and by now the majority of voters recognize that.

Those who vote primarily on religious grounds, homophobia, racial prejudice and gun rights should not be pandered to by a major party, but since Nixon and Reagan started that process, Republicans have no choice if they want to win. They have to appeal to these fringe groups in order to overcome the greater appeal of the Democratic Party position on the issues that really matter to mainstream Americans. True fiscal conservatives and those who prefer more state control and less Federal involvement have now been revealed as falling into two camps, one legitimately focused on these issues and believing they can be the basis for a viable Republican Party, and one willing to keep pandering to the fringe groups because they do not believe they can elect Republicans without them. How self-identified conservatives react to the Palin pick is the way to tell to which camp they belong.

This informative article from the New Yorker tells the story of how Palin charmed two contingents of conservative supposed intelligentsia into getting her the VP slot. They figured she would appeal to the fringes and also pay lip service to fiscal and states rights issues. And, all of them being males, and apparently without any good looking women in their lives, they also thought she was "hot" in her heels. (There seems little doubt Palin would have had a political career had she been homely.) These men, and all those who agree with them, fall into the one camp.

The second camp, those who do not embrace Palin, has been growing as more has become known about her astounding lack of qualifications, manifest hypocrisy, shameless demagoguery and fundamental shallowness. Particularly as the public has wisely dismissed her and as the Republican prospects have waned, more conservative intelligentsia have joined this camp, which includes many more females than the first group.

Pundits are now asking who will be the new leaders of the Republican Party. McCain is going out in defeat, disarray and dishonor for the way he conducted his campaign. Palin is a puff that will continue to self-destruct. Joe the Plumber is a fraudulent fantasy. The camp one Republicans are obvious fools. Camp two is peopled by legitimate people who do not want to be associated with the fringe groups.

It would be best for America if the fringe groups formed third parties and the true conservatives of the second camp led the Republican party into becoming a loyal opposition, reminding us to watch our finances and respect state and individual rights. Real political power belongs in the Democratic camp, which needs to lead us forward and may need to subdivide, a subject for a further Sense article.

Presidential Debate Number Three

2008-10-15T09:05:00.001-07:00

Our long national ordeal is coming to an end with tonight's final Presidential debate. But it is these last debates, between two candidates, one of whom will be the next President, that really matter. This year, the head to head match ups have turned on imagery, which candidate looks like the President we want next - the old, white man with the awkward mannerisms, or the skinny black kid with the funny name. In the first TV debates in 1960, Nixon, the sitting VP, looked greasy and uncomfortable, while JFK, his challenger with the previously non-Presidential Catholicism, looked handsome and poised. Victorious JFK carried that winning debate image into his Presidency and it was well received, only to be tragically ended. In 1968, Nixon wriggled his way into the White House, though he still looked wrong, only to end up resigning in disgrace.

Bob Schieffer will moderate this sit down discussion. McCain is losing and flailing erratically in both tactics and strategy, a point that does not help him appear Presidential. His attacks on Obama over past associations have backfired, but he may still take a direct shot at them tonight. Repeating the same mistakes and hoping for a different result is a sign of mental illness, so McCain proceeds at his peril. When Obama says Ayers did some very terrible things "when I was eight years old", that quite simply shows the stupidity of the McCain attack. The fact Ayers has reformed and redeemed himself and become a productive member of society, seems irrelevent to the evangelical hypocrites McCain is wooing.

Domestic matters and the economy are the subject tonight. McCain, who has admitted to not being big on economics, keeps pulling ad hoc remedies out of a hat, adding to his image as a crap-shooting, flip-flopping maverick. The fact his remedies all bear the brand of Republican trickle down, confirms he would just be four more years of the same.

The previous two debates have answered the rhetorical McCain question of who Barack Obama is. America has seen that he is intelligent, knowledgeable, poised, calm, respectful and forceful when need be, just what we need in our President. Put side by side with McCain, the contrast has been stark and quite advantageous to Obama.

The backgrounds, biographies and personalities of these two men are quite different. By now, most attentive voters know the back stories of these two men. But I just learned something new about the McCain legacy two days ago. His paternal line of Admirals came out of a Mississippi slave plantation, with 2000 acres and 52 slaves on the last slave census. His grandfather was born on the plantation, which remained in the family until 1952. While his father was in the Navy during WWII, John McCain lived on the plantation. Senator McCain wrote in a memoir that his family never owned slaves. When questioned about this in the 2000 campaign, McCain said he was not aware of the slave ownership and had never really thought about it. To me a slave history researcher, this lack of interest is a window into McCain's soul, perhaps related to his "that one" comment in the last debate.

John McCain's political career has been all about John McCain. His tactics and strategy have always been to do what is best for McCain. He is the kind of sailor who just goes where the wind blows, hoping that somehow it will take him to the White House. He likes the high life he was born to and into which he married up, the second time. Belief in conservative trickle down benefits to those higher up and conservative social prejudices come natural to him, though some of his prejudices are not strong enough for social arch conservatives. If he loses this election, he will probably just stay in the Senate and act up for the fun of it. If he wins, he is very likely to crash us on a rocky shore.

Barack Obama's political career has been about all Americans. His very soul and being are rooted in inclusiveness. He understands inherently we are all in this together and that trickle down is unfair, unjust and unsuccessful. He knows his strengths and weaknesses, when to decide himself and when to seek advice. His tactics and strategy are all about making America the fair and just country it was founded to be and the shining example of those values for the rest of the world. Obama is a pragmatic idealist. He has faith in the judgment of the American people in this election, and believes they will elect the President they deserve. If he loses this election, he will probably not run again. He will likely stay in the Senate and rise in the leadership. He also would make an excellent Supreme Court Justice. If Obama is elected President, America will have the best opportunity we are likely to have in our lifetimes to progress toward realizing fairness and justice for all, here at home and throughout the world.

Presidential Town Hall

2008-10-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night is the Presidential Town Hall style debate, moderated by Tom Brokaw. Questions will come from the audience, both in person and pre-submitted via e-mail. Brokaw will select the mail queries he wants to submit.

This is the format John McCain prefers, supposedly because he does best in dealing with voters face to face. But I don't know how long it has been since McCain was asked a good question by someone not pre-screened by his campaign. He has been a little testy lately, as his campaign is stalling like the two Navy planes he crashed stateside [see this interesting McCain fantasy popper from Rolling Stone, link sent by Chris in Bangkok]. I sure would like to see an audience member, perhaps a soft spoken middle age woman, ask McCain a legitimate question that gets his goat and stirs his sarcasm, leading to him blowing a fuse. I suppose it is wishful thinking, like maybe that Palin would do a Couric flop at her debate, but then Palin got a lot more debate prep than McCain has been getting.

McCain has nothing positive to offer. He can only do like Palin, offering trite slogans and attacks on Obama. Attacking the voting record of an opponent, or criticizing his policies is one thing, but the McCain campaign has now sunk to the low level of the smear. Maybe a critical question about his smear tactics, implying hypocrisy, will be what launches a tirade. He is overdue for a temper tantrum.

Obama has a simpler job, just to be himself. He will have to avoid getting too professorial, which he seems to be much better at now. If he gets a touchy question, like on a hot button issue such as abortion, he needs to give it a quick, political answer and move it along. Voters have come to recognize Obama as a very intelligent and well informed candidate, with a positive vision of the changes he would like to help bring about. He has always seemed calm, almost to a fault, but the contrast between his demeanor and McCain's, at the first debate and during the Congressional consideration of the financial bailout, has been stark. McCain, like his campaign, is an erratic impulsive. Obama is under control and sensible. McCain is a high stakes casino crap shooter. He gets a thrill out of betting a bundle on the roll of the dice - think Palin and "canceling the debate". Obama took up poker playing with members of both parties in the Illinois State Legislature, at the recommendation of an old pol, to be sociable and strengthen friendships and to learn how to play the hand that is dealt.

McCain the gambler may decide to do something dramatic, hoping to shake Obama. At the first debate McCain tried to appear superior by not even looking at Obama. That only made McCain look discourteous and odd. McCain doesn't have many dramatic options left. He has tried attacking Obama's experience, judgment, knowledge, patriotism and religion, all without success. About all he has left is the race card - maybe disguised as an attack on Obama's "difference" and how Obama "has a hidden agenda to work for people who are different from most Americans, like when he worked to force lenders to make loans to unqualified people, people who are different [especially their color]from the rest of us, the kind of people who were given the sub-prime loans that caused our financial system to crash".

Whether or not McCain attempts a gamble, I expect Obama will come across as the steady winner.

Vice Presidential Debate

2008-10-01T11:21:00.001-07:00

Thursday night's Vice Presidential Debate may break the audience record of 80 million for the Carter-Reagan debate in 1980. The first McCain-Obama debate only attracted 52 million. Sarah Palin is the reason why the record might fall.

The Palin choice was quite a surprise. Many Republicans treated it like a breath of fresh air in a fart factory. Many women wanted to embrace her gender. Many men just wanted to embrace her [McCain quickly abandoned the Mondale Ferraro "no touching" rule, to allow hugs]. Many Democrats were dumbfounded. The media was ecstatic - a Gubernatorial beauty queen in glasses and an updo who dukes it out with the good ole boys and can field dress a moose [city slicker that I am, I confess I did not even know moose (plural Meese?) wore clothes].

Questions of "vetting" [a fabricated word of unknown origin, arguably overused, but quite widely understood] were raised. Was this a political trick showing poor McCain judgment and that he places "County second"? Initial responses from the McCain campaign were so weak that people quickly turned to Palin herself for the answers. But already the campaign was hiding her from the media, thereby increasing concern. Information was sought without going through the campaign, and every day new material popped out, all of it negative and raising questions not only about the vetting process but also about Palin's qualifications.

People said Palin gave a great Convention speech and was doing well with McCain on the stump. But then they were reminded she was just reading from the Teleprompter what had been written for her and she was repeating it on the campaign trail. It started to sound too familiar - especially "I told Congress thanks but no thanks" and " I put it on e-bay", both of which turned out not to be true. They also noticed that she was not taking questions or giving interviews, and rarely attended events without McCain. Pressure was mounting for her to give an interview and answer the questions that were being raised about her.

Her first interview, with ABC, was not reassuring. Her second, with Fox [Fixed News per Keith Olbermann] was an infomercial. Her recent talk with Katie Couric was devastating. Palin appeared to be a person of very shallow knowledge, disguised by confident bravado and recitation of slogans and catch phrases in lieu of substantive information [sound Presidentially familiar?]. Her sequestration and training by the McCain campaign seemed to be backfiring, undermining her confidence and taking away her fresh naturalness. But is her fresh naturalness limited to just that - with little else to back it up? From what is known and has been seen so far, Sarah Palin appears to be almost totally unqualified to hold national office. Thursday is her opportunity to show America that the picture of her as unqualified is not really who she is.

Thursday Republicans will be watching and praying that Palin comes across better than she has in previous unscripted appearances. Women will be watching and cringing, in spite of their political views, knowing that a Palin fall will not so much be an indictment of women candidates, but rather another example of mistreatment of women at the hands of men, this time by John McCain and his male cohorts who put Palin in this spot. Men, depending on their chauvinism level, will either be checking out her bod or cringing with the women. Democrats will be hoping that Palin shows that what we have been seeing is what we would be getting. However it goes, the media will be delighted with the high interest level and the numerous possible outcomes and opportunities for Monday morning quarterbacking [in fairness to Sarah Barracuda, that should be point guarding].

Advice to Biden has been consistent - put a cork in it. Do not condescend or attack Palin. Attack McCain quickly and defend Obama as needed, then stop and let Palin talk. The more she repeats her canned comments the more spurious they will sound. Silence is her enemy; she tries to fill it, often with bad results, so Biden should give her the time. The McCain campaign is aware of this and negotiated to reduce the five minute exchange periods of the Presidential debate to two minutes. Biden needs to have Palin talk as much as possible. He should do things like graciously say that America knows what he thinks, but wants to hear more from Governor Palin, so he would like her to take more time to expound on her answers. But he has to do it in a way that does not sound like a put down. He can do it in the form of a short question to her.

Expectations for Palin are not high, so she just has to get out of the evening without damaging herself by spouting nonsense like "you can see Russia from Alaska" being a credential for foreign policy experience. She has been force fed so much information that she has to boil it down to a few sound bites for each general topic area. She is good at doing that - it is kind of like reading a Teleprompter from memory. Where she gets into trouble is with follow up questions asking her to explain further, in which case she is inclined to repeat her canned answer (which makes her sound like a robot) or to use generic double talking non-sequitors (which make her sound like a babbler).

The moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, should be excellent. The audience can identify her with both candidates, since Gwen is an African-American woman. Like Jim Lehrer at the Presidential debate, Gwen will not make herself a point of focus. She will ask fair questions and try to administer the time properly. If Biden decides to let Palin have more time, Gwen may try to come back to him for more response, but if she does, he needs to politely stick to his guns. Gwen will very likely need to request follow up from Palin, but will have to do it in a way that does not sound like she is targeting her.

This debate should be fascinating. Biden is too much of a gentleman to be rough on Palin. He could sound condescending, but he is smart enough to avoid that. He could make a small gaffe, but not of importance. But he might have trouble cutting himself off to let Palin have more time. Geraldine Ferraro held her own with Bush I in their debate, but then Sarah Palin is no Geraldine Ferraro. Palin should do OK on the Obama attacks and pat answers, but the follow ups are where all the risk is at with her. I think the real danger is that, if Palin lets herself be the real Sarah, fresh and natural and talkin' [she likes the folksiness of g dropping] straight to the American people, she will reveal herself as a stereotypical Miss Congeniality - a nice enough woman, but running for an elective office that is way over her head. Undecided voters are the key to the election, and they will be watching Thursday to see if Sarah Palin appears capable of being President if she had to. Even if Palin gets through the evening without error, I do not see how that will be persuasive to these key voters.

A Bad Bailout

2008-09-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

Pending a more in depth analysis here, my sense of the economic bailout idea being considered in Congress is that it is a bad idea. Haste makes waste. Problems cannot be solved properly without being first understood. Instead of understanding, this bailout is being pushed with speculative hyperbole playing on fear. Consider the sources. Treasury Secretary Paulson is a Wall Street Investment Banker, which is totally skewing his view. Fed Chairman Bernanke is an academic, specializing in the study of the Depression, who lives in fear of being part of a repeat.

What is the hurry? Supposedly those of us on "Main Street" cannot get needed loans for our businesses and for our personal needs. Also, we have to act to protect the markets from lack of confidence. My sense is that we should have been lacking confidence in the inflated markets for some time and we also should not have been buying into the hype of being joyful that "the Dow was up today". Main Street concerns are more legitimate, but I think they can be met immediately at the local level. The first move should be to encourage people to put their savings in local banks and to encourage local banks to make local loans.

For the time being, let the sharks feed on one another. Some banks have been acquiring others, with little or no government assistance. With all the cash deposits they are acquiring, they should not have a problem loaning some of that back on good loans for immediate needs. The current crisis has been caused by mega banks gone wild and under regulated. We need to work back toward the micro finance model from Asia that won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Once the new administration and Congress start up in January, thorough investigations and hearings should be held to help us all learn what the problem is and how we got into it. Then proposals for getting us out can be more intelligently considered.

First Presidential Debate

2008-09-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Last night, as a climax to the McCain soap opera farce about having to cancel the First Presidential Debate, so McCain could solve the financial crisis, the event took place. I watched the debate and also watched various post debate commentaries and focus group presentations. I will present here two of my senses, the first formed as I was watching and the second after absorbing commentaries, viewing repeats and focus group presentations, and reflecting further. I consider the second sense more valuable.

The format of the debate actually was fairly good and the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, was excellent as expected. Lehrer tried early to get the candidates to take advantage of the format's five minute sessions to directly engage each other, but the candidates never did fully warm up to the opportunity, especially McCain, as I will discuss later.

This was supposed to be a debate on foreign policy, on which McCain is supposedly seen as more experienced and knowledgeable. The McCain campaign has been slipping in the polls since the Palin related convention bounce, so McCain needed to do well at the debate to make a climb in the polls. He needed to verify he was a knowledgeable leader, and also to show Obama lacks knowledge and leadership. Obama needed to show his own knowledge and leadership strength, and also to show McCain has poor judgement and a defective leadership style.

Because of the economic crisis, the first 39 minutes of the 90 minute debate, were directed to how the candidates viewed the crisis, how they would solve it and how the solution would affect their plans if they become President. Not surprisingly, since the public is overwhelmingly outraged with the crisis and with the possibility of having to pay as taxpayers to bail it out, both candidates were reluctant to fully respond to the questions. McCain blamed greed of a few high ranking people on Wall Street [the Republicans always like to blame the collapse of their ill-conceived management of our institutions on "a few bad apples"]. Obama blamed the Bush-McCain program of de-regulation. Both admitted the government bailout was needed, McCain more grudgingly than Obama. Both avoided acknowledging the bailout would have any significant impact on their Presidency.

McCain cleverly turned the economic discussion to his pet topic of earmarks, which have absolutely nothing to do with the crisis. He immediately started attacking Obama for requesting earmarks and put Obama on the defensive about that, when Obama should have been on the offense about McCain the de-regulator being a big part of the problem, and McCain the soap opera economy rescuer being a sideshow distraction of those working on a solution. I was upset that Obama was not more on the attack, but later reflection encouraged me that he actually handled himself well, in the overall strategic context, as opposed to the tactical opportunities of the present.

Strategically, Obama must show that his youth and inexperience relative to McCain are not really liabilities, and that his better temperament, judgment and grasp of the future far outweigh any experience advantage of McCain. In addition, Obama carries the extra burden, as Eugene Robinson, an African American Washington Post writer and MSNBC commentator points out, of having to be the least angry African American male in America. Gene is right, that many whites live in fear of angry black people. Part of the wonderful appeal of Obama is that he may actually be able to carry that burden. He certainly did a good job with it last night. Though there were many times a white Democrat in his place could have angrily counter-punched McCain, Obama had to hold his punches until later, when he had earned enough audience respect and had endured enough cheap and irrelevant shots to be able to defend and attack without feuling prejudice.

Once the campaign turned to foreign affairs, I was actually surprised to see how much McCain knows and how few mistakes he made, like his mispronunciation of a tough name and mistaken designation of the new President of Pakistan. McCain also referred to Pakistan as a failed state before Musharraf staged a coup and became dictator and Bush ally, though in fact Pakistan was a democracy before the takeover. Obama made no such mistakes and most impressively displayed a knowledge of world affairs and history at least equal to McCain and in fact surpassing that of McCain in some areas. One particular area where Obama excelled in the opinion of the focus groups was his identification of the need to restore America's credibility and standing with other nations in the world.

McCain made one laudatory passing reference to Sarah Palin, which only served to remind people what a totally inadequate candidate she is, what a poor choice McCain made (particularly in the night's context of foreign policy needs), and how scary it would be if she should have to take over for a dead or disabled President McCain [McCain did appear physically strong and capable last night, however]. Obama made a reference to Joe Biden's vast experience being available in an Obama Presidency , and nothing else needed to be said; a Presidential succession by Biden would, if ever necessary, obviously be quite reassuring.

Two McCain tactics backfired on him. One I noticed immediately. The other I did not realize until commentators pointed it out. Most noticeably McCain continually dismissed what Obama was saying as demonstrating "Obama just does not understand". This condescension was quite misplaced. Nobody seriously doubts Obama's intelligence, and his grasp of all the issues was quite evident last night. For McCain to try to put Obama down so readily made McCain look like the close minded pontificator he is, exactly the opposite of the false image he tries to create of himself as an open minded proponent of bi-partisan co-operation. By contrast, Obama often readily agreed with parts what McCain said and then went on to point out where they disagreed and why Obama believed his approach was the correct one and McCain's was not. Republican spinners are trying to portray Obama's expressions of agreement as bows to McCain's better knowledge, and at first I did not like Obama leaving that opening. But after reflection, I see Obama was right to show that there is no reason to disagree just to be disagreeable, and that a good negotiator can accomplish a lot more by not creating disagreements where they do not exist.

The failed McCain debate tactics and the smooth effectiveness of the Obama strategy was a clear demonstration of the difference between the styles and temperaments of the two men. If you want to get into a needless brawl like sailors in a bar, then McCain is your man. If you want someone who can listen to all the bar sailors and keep them from brawling and get them to work together, Obama is the one. And by the way, if some sailor executes a terrorist sucker punch and needs to be arrested or taken out, Obama is the one to handle that too, as was clearly shown by his statement that we took our eye off the ball by invading Iraq and we need to go after bin Laden and if he is in Pakistan and they will not cooperate, we need to go get him anyway. McCain expressed his belief Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism and demonstrated timid reluctance to upset our allies in Pakistan, even if that meant bin Laden might escape again.

A discussion of when and how to talk to unfriendly nations worked to the benefit of Obama, particularly with the focus groups. McCain tried to speak against "legitimizing" unfriendly leaders by talking to them, but Obama was able to point out how even the Bush administration and McCain's own adviser, Henry Kissinger, have now come to agree with Obama about the wisdom of such talks.

Obama showed an important understanding that McCain does not seem to grasp, in the area of nuclear weapons. McCain, the self-proclaimed cost cutter wants to fund unproven missile defense systems and gear up for potentially more military "victories" in the future, but rarely speaks of the inherent danger of nuclear proliferation. Last night Obama pointed out that the greatest threat to the United States is that a suitcase type nuclear weapon, from any of way too many possible sources, would fall into the hands of a terrorist. He pointed to his bi-partisan work with Senator Lugar to try to stop the spread and reduce the number and control over nuclear weapons.

McCain is fond of including personal anecdotes as to how he acquired his wisdom. The facts of the anecdotes change from time to time and sometimes are obviously not true, but they do personalize him to audiences. Obama is more private and more respecting of the privacy of others. A case in point last night was McCain again using the bracelet story about the mother of a dead soldier who gave him a bracelet to remember her son and work for victory in Iraq so her son would not have died in vain [under this argument, once a soldier of each side is killed in a war, both sides should pursue the war as fully as possible, as long as possible, without regard to the number of lives lost or the cost of the damage done, and regardless of whether the war turns out to have been based on lies or mistakes or reasons which no longer exist]. Obama, somewhat uncomfortable about using the name of a deceased soldier, even at the request of his mother, countered with his bracelet, given with the hope of the mother that more American children would not die in needless wars. McCain did not make any reference to his POW status until the very end but it had no impact as it came at a time when he ridiculously tried to portray Obama as being a stubborn man like George Bush, which prompted a spontaneous smile from Obama , who appreciated the irony of such an inapt comparison being made by McCain, who had just finished showing America how much he is just a stubborn, angry old man in maverick clothing.

Near the end of the evening, Obama had come to the time when he could take his strongest shot at McCain, which he did by pointing out that McCain talks like the war in Iraq started with the surge in 2007, while in fact it started with the invasion in 2002, and repeating to him all the things McCain had said would happen after that invasion and how McCain had been wrong on every single one of them. A little earlier, Obama had some fun at McCain's expense by saying McCain was so unwilling to use diplomacy that he had even expressed reluctance to talk with the leader of Spain, one of our NATO allies. McCain had actually spoken in mistake when he made that comment about Spain, getting his world leaders confused and trying to gloss over his confusion. Now Obama was putting him back in that bind, out of which McCain could only escape by admitting to confusion.

The most significant observation that I failed to notice, but was picked up by some commentators was that, in spite of the engagement purpose of the format, McCain never made eye contact with Obama all night. Obama tried to talk to McCain directly, turning toward him and addressing him in a respectful personal manner, but McCain always responded in the third person, never talking directly to him. Those who know McCain said this was probably a mental device McCain invoked to envision Obama as a faceless enemy who deserved only contempt and annihilation. I suppose that may be an effective approach for some fighter pilots, but it is not one that is well received by the independent and undecided voters, who are looking for a change for this Bush type attitude. Treating the duly chosen candidate of the Democratic Party as some sort of an evil enemy to be trashed is not the way to convince Americans you are the agent of the change we need.

Commentators were somewhat split, predictably along party lines, as to who won. Focus groups gave the nod to Obama. Since McCain seems to be slightly behind and foreign policy was supposed to be his strong suit, he needed a consensus victory, which he did not get. All in all, Obama comes out better than McCain in my opinion. Next Thursday is the VP debate. In her recent interview with Katie Couric, Palin did a very poor job, and it now appears she is not really such a quick study after all and even her marginal intellectual credentials were vastly overrated. McCain twice last night used his stale joke about not being elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate, which fell flat with the focus groups who could see why and did not think it so funny, and which reminded them that Palin's Miss Congeniality prize as a beauty queen is about all that is left on the positive side of her resume.

Campaign Update

2008-09-19T08:03:00.001-07:00

The Republican post-convention bounce is falling back and the Palin appeal is diminishing as people learn more about her. Since she first appeared with her unique but canned biography, the only news to come out about Palin has been negative. She used all her good shots at the beginning and now some of them have turned out be blanks and some are ricocheting and some people who she shot in the back are taking shots at her. After first saying she welcomed the troopergate inquiry, Palin now has been given a huge team of top Republican lawyers doing everything they can to stop the investigation or at least delay it until after the election. It appears they will win this battle and block the inquiry, but the cost may be that they lose the election war, partly because voters see that in stonewalling the inquiry Palin is as big a fraud as George W. Bush.

Obama and Biden are making twice as many appearances as McCain and Palin, since the GOP handlers are nervous about separating the Republicans - Palin being an untested neophyte and McCain being too boring alone to draw crowds. This advantage could pay dividends for the Democrats in working the close Counties in the crucial States. Let's look at four battleground States to see how Obama and McCain did there in the primaries. In the New Hampshire election in January, Both Clinton and Obama got more votes than McCain. In the Colorado caucuses on Super Tuesday, February 5, Romney beat McCain 3 to 1, while Obama beat Clinton 2 to 1 and Obama got eight times as many votes as McCain. On February 12, in the Virginia election, McCain got 50% of the Republican vote and Obama got 64% of the Democratic, out polling McCain by 380,000. In Ohio on March 4, McCain topped Republicans with 60% while Obama finished as the second Democrat with 44%, but Obama still got almost 1,000,000 votes compared to 636,000 for McCain.

McCain better be careful of Palin, as she seems to know how to take advantage of older men. She has had a brief political career as Mayor and as Governor, and she got both those jobs by turning against the man who helped her climb the political ladder. When a position came open on the Wasilla City Council, the Mayor helped recruit Palin for the job. She thanked him a few years later by blitzing him at the polls. The Governor put her in charge of a State Commission as a rising Republican star and she thanked him by piling on as his troubles came to a head and she knocked him off in the primary. Yesterday she made a Freudian slip at a campaign speech, saying the Republican ticket, when elected, will be the Palin-McCain Administration.

Palin plays her capably coy act by saying she is working to change McCain to her point of view on issues on which they disagree- most notably on drilling in ANWR. She does not defer to him or even consider that he might change her to his point of view. Of course nowadays McCain seems to have two kinds of positions, those which have changed to more Bushian, and those which were always Bushian and which he now claims have always been different. I am sure Palin sees the Cheney model as ideal for a VP, even one as obviously unqualified as she is.

The campaign advertising has turned quite negative. McCain's has also turned quite false. Obama seems to be making up for the McCain falsehood advantage by running a greater volume of negative ads. This is not the campaign voters say they want, but the experts tell us negative ads work. Obama probably does not have to worry about having been pulled down from the clean pedestal, since voters now seem to be more concerned whether he is tough enough to fight back, and negative ads are seen as being tough.

The terrible financial events of this week should be a Democratic campaign advantage. Despite portraying themselves as the fiscal conservative pro-business party, Republicans have a knack for screwing up the economy in a big way. Voters seem to figure that out, once the bottom has fallen out, but then the Republicans come along later with their same shams, and too many voters fall for it again. There is a simplistic appeal in the Republican blaming the government for screwing everything up while robbing you with taxes. Never mind that the government has been run by Republicans who work to make government a failure in order to prove their point, or that Republicans actually make the middle class pay a disproportionate share of taxes, while tax breaks for the rich throw the country into record levels of debt. Democrat Jimmy Carter inherited financial troubles from Nixon and unsuccessfully tried a Republican idea, de-regulation, as part of a fix. Bill Clinton presided over eight years of apparent successful growth, though in the long term that may be found to have been somewhat of an overrated bubble. LBJ was the last true Democrat President and his economic legacy regarding the War on Poverty and the Medicare program has been admirable.

I would like to see the Obamas and the Bidens appear at events together a couple times. I think seeing the two couples together shows how the Obamas really are not that different from the classic idea of a male politician and his wife. Also, as recommended by Democratic pundit Mark Shields, I think Obama needs to start making his appeal to the voters more personal, especially to new young ones, by including a specific request for their vote. People need to be asked and to feel personally important and empowered. A candidate needs to let the people know, not only that he cares about their needs, but that he needs them to care about voting for him. Young people failed to turn out in sufficient numbers to vote for Kerry. Admittedly, Kerry was much older than Obama, but young voter turnout will still be a key this time around.

Pundits seem to agree the debates will be crucial determiners this year, but I have doubts about that. The polls show the contest is close, so I think the candidates will play debate defense. Biden could be good on offense, but having a woman opponent might make him ease up. McCain likes to ad lib, but his new trainers have been keeping a tight rein on him. Obama could gain strength points by going on the offense, but he has to be careful not to appear as an "angry black man", though his image is so easy going and congenial, it is hard to imagine any intelligent voter being turned off by Obama adding a touch of strength.

The VP debate and two of the Presidential matches will consist of eight ten minute issue segments, supervised by a moderator, with give and take between the candidates. The first Presidential debate will cover domestic issues and the last will cover foreign policy. The VP debate, scheduled second, will cover both. The third debate, a Presidential town hall with questions from the audience, has the most potential for surprise. The short amount of time for each candidate on each issue means Obama has to avoid giving too scholarly and all considerate answers. He needs to start on each issue with a short statement to grab audience attention and make them prone to agree, then follow with a quick enumeration of major policy points and how they differ from McCain, and then close with a return to the opening grabber.

Barring a major gaffe or an absolute zinger, I think the debates will only move a few swing or undecided voters, and the only ones of those voters that really matter are the ones in the battleground Counties, which are already being targeted with lots of ads and appearances. I suppose if there is a consensus debate winner, that buzz can be part of a sense of momentum shift that could have some bandwagon effect, but we are so overloaded with campaign media by this point that people are glutted. Ironically, elections are a high point of democracy, but campaigns seem to be a low point.

Queen Sarah?

2008-09-11T14:44:00.001-07:00

It is hard not to fall into the "Sarah soap opera" trap the Republicans have laid to get us away from discussing the important issues. She is quite unique for a VP nominee and so little is known about her that curiosity is at an all time high, aided by the fact that every day something new and a little strange is learned about her.

Here are a few recent things I have learned about Sarah. Instead of working at the State Capital in Juneau, she works from an office in Anchorage, so she can live in her own home. But, waste cutter though she claims to be, Governor Palin charges the taxpayers per diem for not staying in the Governor's mansion, nearly $17,000 in 19 months for 312 nights spent in her own bed. And she also charges them for transporting her family to State events, about $45,000 so far Though Alaska has the highest rape rate in the nation, Wasilla under Mayor Palin was one of a minority of cities in Alaska that charged rape victims for the cost of rape kits to collect evidence [though the Police Chief said they would try to get reimbursement from the criminal]. As Governor, Palin has spoken at the Assembly of God where she used to attend, and told them to pray that God's will be done that a pipeline be built and that the US be victorious in Iraq. Her Dad sounds interesting too. For some reason, a few months after Sarah was born in 1964, the third of four children, her science teacher father moved the family from Idaho to Alaska to take a teaching job, and then when she was about 12, the family converted from Catholicism to the Assembly of God. I wonder what her Dad thinks about global warming and evolution.

Since Palin was introduced to Americans a couple weeks ago, all she has done is give the same speech over and over - you know the one where she lies, "On that bridge to nowhere, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks" and where she falsely implies she sold the State jet on E-Bay. It is unprecedented for a nominee for VP to be sequestered from questions for so long. They are not only afraid of the media, but also of the public; Palin does not take questions from the audience at her speeches.

Scheduling her first interview for 9/11 was a ploy. Palin's son is leaving for military service, so she has to be in Alaska for that. The solemnity of the day and the departure of her son give heroic overtones and demand attention from the interviewer, cutting into time for issue questions. The chosen interviewer, Charles Gibson of ABC will be sitting down with her Thursday and Friday and broadcasting portions on each of those days. Gibson has a reputation as a knowledgeable political reporter who is a nice guy and somewhat of a softball thrower.

Palin's handlers say other media opportunities will depend on whether she is treated with "respect and deference". Respect should come with any civil discussion, but deference presupposes superiority. Palin may have over-esteem problems. Her hard line demand for staff loyalty when she assumed the high office of Wasilla Mayor caused a local paper to remind her that she was elected, not coronated. The paper might also have been subtly reminding readers Palin finished second in the contest for the Miss Alaska crown. Her animosity to the media may trace to that Mayoral time, when she manifested it by ordering that no city employee should talk to any member of the media without first obtaining Palin's specific consent.

I don't know how Palin will do with Gibson. She is smart and has honed her political skills, especially with all the top level Rovian style coaching she has been getting. I think she will just try to follow her own script, regardless of the questions and count on the fact that Gibson will not press her. If he does press her, then they will try to use that as an excuse for not doing further interviews, claiming that as a woman she is being treated in a sexist way.

All the hoopla over Sarah has been distracting, as planned. Joe Biden gets no air time at all. Obama is trying to keep his eye on McCain and the real issues and not fall for the bait to get involved in Sarah Soap. Democrats are still trying to figure out how to deal with Sarah, including how to use women like Hillary as surrogates. Unfortunately, after a way too long primary process, this general election campaign is comparatively quite short.

Mavericks?

2008-09-09T13:38:00.001-07:00

Samuel Maverick was a slave owning entrepreneur descended from a long line of Southerners. He became a Texas land baron, politician and cattleman before he died in 1970. When cattlemen adopted branding to avoid confusion over cattle ownership and to eliminate the violent confrontations that sometimes resulted from such confusion, Samuel was the only one who stubbornly refused to brand his cattle. When stampedes or wanderings mingled herds, the animals were separated by brands and the those with no brand, "Mavericks", were given back to Samuel. The name then started to be applied to a person with a streak of stubborn single-mindedness and apparent unwillingness to work cooperatively. Over time, perhaps aided 50 years ago by the James Garner western TV series, "Maverick", the name has acquired a more admirable association, as an individual who courageously stands up to abusive power.

John McCain has been a Republican all his life. Early in his long tenure as a U.S. Senator, McCain got into serious conflict of interest trouble involving campaign contributions. He was so scared by the experience that he turned in the other direction, proposing campaign finance limits, much to the chagrin of the Republican power holders who became annoyed at McCain and kept him out of the power loop in retaliation. McCain paid them back by once in a while bucking them on a vote and by cultivating good will with the press who liked his poking at Republican power. The Maverick label was applied, even though there was no question he belonged to the Republican herd. He was like a branded calf who occasionally strays for a little run and but always skedaddles back where he knows he belongs.

McCain has long had Presidential aspirations. For the 2000 election, he made his run. After a quick start, he was cut off at the ankles by Bush/Rove. He fumed about that for a while, but then as the very long 2008 campaigning was coming on, he thrust his sometime arguably marginal Maverick rump into the hot iron and became 90% Bush/Cheney branded.

Sarah Palin bears the brand of a Republican of extreme right wing views. She was hand picked for Republican boot camp, to learn how to work the culture wars and how to avoid giving honest answers on the issues. She played the Alaska Republican game and then, while serving as a commission appointee, she seized an opportunity to jump ahead by joining in condemnation of wrongdoing by fellow Republican commissioners and resigning the little time left in her appointment. Next, seeing the crooked incumbent Republican Governor was vulnerable, Palin claimed courageous reformer credentials as a result of her commission experience and entered a congested primary and won. For these actions, she is now claiming to be a fellow Maverick with John.

After eight years of Bush/Cheney, America is in terrible shape and headed in the wrong direction, as over 80% of Americans honestly admit. The branding iron shows McCain and Palin belong to the same Republican herd as Bush/Cheney. That is why they are claiming to be Mavericks. They don't want to be sent back where they belong, with the rest of the Republicans, to that bogus ranch in Crawford. Democrats need to keep riding herd to make sure everyone knows where these two head belong.

Republican Convention

2008-09-03T11:13:00.001-07:00

If you ever attend a gathering of Republicans, be sure to wear sunglasses. The reflection of light off all those white faces is hard on the eyes. When John McCain introduced Sarah Palin to a Republican crowd last week, the day after he met her for the second time and picked her to run with him, I counted four black faces in the crowd. One was a secret service agent. One was a face back in the crowd who must have done something to disqualify him from a more visible spot. The third was a somewhat dorky looking chap in a "Leave it to Beaver" striped polo shirt who was prominently placed in second row central. The fourth was a young girl with number three, who was picked up and put down by him several times to alleviate her boredom. When Beaver got a chance to take Sarah's picture up close, he could not get his camera to work.

Last night at the Republican Convention, the whiteness was overwhelming, with a few Spanish brown overtones, a periodic Asian face and an extremely light peppering of black. From the late 1960s, the GOP has cultivated and embraced white people who resent the disassembling of America's historical white privilege. Southern segregationists, the Dixiecrats, converted to Republicans, as did northerner white flighters, who ran to suburbia to be more distant from inner city blacks.

Adding to the injury of this racial prejudice was the vilification of our American government. Republicans turned whites against our own government, making it the villain that was supposedly taking their money and rights away and giving them to non-whites. A thin disguise of legitimate conservatism has been maintained in claims of fiscal restraint and individual rights. But in fact, the GOP has been fiscally irresponsible, running record deficits with tax breaks for the rich, corporate welfare and imperialism for the benefit of war profiteers. For Republicans, individual rights does not mean protecting civil liberties, but rather protecting white privilege and its spinoffs, homophobia, evangelical Christianity and the right to bear arms to shoot anyone seen as a threat.

This week's Republican production had all the potential to be a classic dud. Bush and Cheney speeches would remind America that the hugely unpopular Bush administration was a Republican creation. On the big stage, McCain would be playing to his weak suit. Some of the losers from the primaries would bore us again. Only turncoat Lieberman would offer a spark, particularly if McCain bucked tradition and chose him for VP. Hurricane Gustav threatened to be a reminder of Bush eating McCain birthday cake in Arizona while Katrina ravaged New Orleans, but the Republicans were able to use supposed storm care duty as an excuse to dump out on the first day's schedule, thereby eliminating Cheney and reducing Bush to a brief video appearance.

Last night, ho-hum Fred Thompson relived the McCain POW horrors for us, in an evening celebrating military service in general and McCain heroism in particular. McCain's heroism is all about his imprisonment, nothing about his actual combat missions, except about being shot down. Thompson did say being a POW does not automatically qualify one for the Presidency, but the whole evening seemed to be intended to send the opposite message. Also speaking was turncoat Joe Lieberman. Every time I see Lieberman, I wonder why Gore picked him in 2000. I also wonder why Connecticut Democrats did not stick to their guns after voting him out in the primary. I guess they figured his seniority was good for getting earmarks, which offers another reason why earmarks should be eliminated - getting rid of earmarks might get rid of some senior dead weight politicians.

Tonight's menu includes Rudy Giuliani, whose $50,000,000 primary campaign did not net one delegate. His nouns, verbs and 9/11s will be sales pitches to expand his extremely lucrative security business, especially overseas. Then comes the star of the evening, Sarah Palin. I started writing about Sarah in Sense comments on the Democratic Convention. Stories continue to pop up daily confirming what an untested choice she is. Her 17 year old daughter is pregnant due to lack of the abstinence her mother advocates in lieu of sex education about birth control. Sarah's first child was born early following an elopement, and around the same time her husband had a DUI arrest. The daughter will marry the young putative father, whose now privatized My Space pages said he is a "f__king redneck" and did not want to have a child. Sarah's husband, who at first was referred to as a commercial fisherman, now is reported to get his primary income as an employee of BP oil company. Compounding concerns about Sarah's priorities as a mother is the word Sarah went back to work only three days after the birth of the child with Down's. One does wonder who takes care of this special needs child and why Sarah accepted the VP nod, knowing the story of her daughter's pregnancy would subject the girl to international embarrassment.

John McCain is a solid 95% Bush Republican, which should make him a loser in itself. He is supposedly a maverick who will stand up to power. But many people wonder whether he is actually a man of bad temperament and poor judgment. His pugnacious saber rattling over the Russia-Georgia conflict, even jumping the gun on George Bush, shows how eager he is to get into a fight, as if he needs to make up for all those years of being tortured without being able to strike back. The Palin pick shows how poor his judgment can be, shooting from the hip and taking a gamble on an unknown. And it also is apparently an example of him not standing up to power in his own organization, because he actually wanted to pick Lieberman, but backed down when Republican powers rejected that idea.

In picking Palin, McCain may have been persuaded as much by her good looks as by anything else. Republicans like former beauty queens. At least two of their U.S. Senators are in that category, Dole and Hutchinson, and McCain even volunteered his wife for the Miss Buffalo Chip contest at Sturgis, apparently unaware it is an uncouth pageant that includes a topless segment and is sponsored by a beer company competitor of Cindy's.

Democratic Convention

2008-08-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is the week of the Democratic Convention, a time for Democrats to come together and present Barack Obama and his family to the American people. It is a time for Barack Obama to take his appeal to a higher level, by getting more specific about where he wants to lead America, in contrast to where George Bush has taken us and where John McCain will follow.

The Obama campaign recognizes his greatest vulnerability with undecided voters is his "otherness", the perception that he is different. Tonight Michelle Obama's brother will introduce her and she will have the task of showing the American people how much her family, Barack's family and their own family have in common with the rest of us. Mrs. Obama rose from the working class roots of an intact family to earn college scholarships, which combined with student loans, resulted in her becoming a successful attorney. She and Barack have two young daughters. Her story is the embodiment of the American dream and should be an inspiration to all of us, yet some people see her accomplishments as a threat - because she is a woman, because she has self-confidence and because she is black.

If all Democrats vote for Obama, he should be able to get elected. Possible defectors are disgruntled Hillaryites and some white Catholics. Hill and Bill will be blabbing on two successive nights. As if the drawn out primary process was not enough, now we have to go through some sort of placing of Hillary's name in nomination and maybe even a roll call vote. This is supposed to be a simple process. The loser announces intent to vote for the winner and urges all supporters to do the same. But the Clintons seem to be able to make a soap opera out of everything. The farther they are from the Obama White House, the better for America.

Joe Biden was a good choice for VP. He should be able to connect with white working class Catholics and he will be an effective, pleasant attacker of McCain. He already scored a nice shot when he talked about Americans sitting down at the kitchen table to figure out how they were going to be able to pay their bills, and how John McCain first has to figure out which one of his seven kitchens to sit in.

Barack's acceptance speech will be outdoors, in the stadium in Denver. It will likely be an excellent speech, but it needs to convince listeners that this great speaker can also be a great leader and can take us where we want to go. In the Twentieth Century, Democrat and Republican nominees for President and Vice President delivered 100 acceptance speeches. According to the opinion of scholars reported at the very interesting Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th century, only three of those speeches made the list, Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. You may have noticed all three of those candidates lost the election.

Nine other Twentieth Century convention speeches made the top 100 list, eight of them Democrat. Three keynoters scored, Barbara Jordan in 1976 [she also delivered the 1996 keynote], Mario Cuomo in 1984 and Ann Richards in 1988. Top non-keynote speeches were delivered by Jesse Jackson twice (1984 and 1988), Elizabeth Glaser in 1992, Teddy Kennedy in 1980 [Teddy has 4 of the top 100, brother John 6 and brother Robert another one], and Hubert Humphrey back in 1948. The sole speech from a Republican convention was not by a politician, but by AIDS activist Mary Fisher, who in 1992 broke the Republican silence on that subject.

Barack Obama will be accepting the nomination on the anniversary of the number one speech of the Twentieth Century, the "I Have A Dream Speech" by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. John from Phoenix and I ended a visit to Washington, DC the day before the King speech, moving on to New York City. As we drove through the Holland Tunnel into the city, we were flagged over by a greeter working for the city. His job was to spot out of state license plates and offer logistical help to tourists. He noticed our plate said Washington and told us he would be going down there "tomorrow for the big march". I vaguely knew there was to be some sort of civil rights demonstration, but had not given any thought to participating or observing. As they say, "If I had known then what I know now". But actually, I might not have put up with the crowd to hear Dr. King, since I had heard him speak the year before at an appearance at the University of Washington. I attended that speech as an assignment for a speech class I was taking, and my interest was in studying his impressive style of speech rather than the content. I hope Barack is able to impress America with his speech, both on style and on content. I won't be in Denver, but I will be watching it live.

Race in the Race

2008-08-10T15:36:00.001-07:00

I have been dragging my feet for days on writing a piece about the role race is playing in the campaign between McCain and Obama, using the above title. Now I just finished reading an op ed piece in the NY Times online, by Charles M. Blow, entitled "Racism and the Race". Mr. Blow refers to polling on the disinclination of white voters to vote for a black candidate and on how many people those same white voters know who would not vote for a black candidate. The results reported are quite disturbing.

My prompting to write was spawned by the McCain ad with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, dismissing Obama as a similar celebrity phenomenon of no substance. To me the ad contained an appeal to white prejudice against black men in relationships with white blonde women. Race is a political card and so it will be played. But it was the McCain campaign that accused the Obama campaign of playing the race card when Obama said that some people are concerned about voting for a candidate who does not look like the face on the dollar bill. Technically that may have been a playing of the race card, but if so, it was a defensive play, attempting to address the attitude found on the polls referred to in the NYT op ed piece.

Whites are defensive, insecure and scared by discussions of race. A minority race candidate in a majority white electorate makes a mistake if he initiates a racial discussion. Obama has not made that mistake. Race will be brought up increasingly and more abusively as the election draws nearer, financed by disgusting mongers like those behind the Swift Boat disgraces aimed at John Kerry.

Racial code words like "arrogant" and "kid" [substituting for "boy"] have already been used against Obama, the latter by Bill Clinton. Obama has to be careful about not defending himself too aggressively, lest he be portrayed as another "angry black man", as his former pastor was. Surrogates could be employed to make defenses against racial attacks, but that has a triple negative effect, reminding voters of the racial difference of the black candidate, distracting attention from other important issues and reinforcing the inner racial apprehensions of white voters.

This election should easily go to Obama. Democrats are in demand. Change is in the wind. Obama is eloquent, McCain clumsy. Obama and the Democrats have progressive plans, McCain and the Republicans offer only more of the same failures. The race is Obama's to lose, and if he does lose it, it will probably be because of race.

Obama Overseas

2008-07-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

All eyes are on Barack Obama as he has traveled to Afghanistan, Iraq and now elsewhere in the middle east. This is not a campaign tour; Senator Obama is traveling with Senators Hagel and Reed on a fact finding mission, as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Their job is to meet with US officials overseas and also with representatives of the nations they are visiting, to gather information for the Committee to use in its deliberations as part of the process of establishing and executing America's foreign policy.

But the attention of everyone is clearly focused on Senator Obama, who has a good chance of becoming the next American President. His opponent for the office, Senator John McSame is rightly viewed as the Bush third term candidate, especially in matters of foreign policy. The Obama hope for change is most strongly felt in how the United States views the rest of the world, and in how they view us.

If Obama is the next American President, two immediate facts will be striking. First, he will be the only American President other than George Washington with a father born outside America. Second, he will be the first American President who shares with the majority of the people on earth the fact that he is not entirely Caucasian. If little else is known about him by people in foreign nations, these two facts will be known and will give President Obama an unprecedented opportunity to change the fundamental dynamics of America's role in the world.

The international potential of an Obama Presidency is hard to over estimate. Just getting rid of Bush will send a refreshing breeze around the world, a sigh of relief that can only be stifled if McSame is the successor. Obama feels the world view. It is his birthright, given by an International student father and an international worker mother. The McSame birthright is War, given by a paternal line of Admirals.

Obama is reputedly an excellent listener, an apropos skill on display during this current mission. What a contrast to George W., a man who changed religions to get shorter sermons to suffer through. Obama writes books; Bush doesn't even read. Bush gets his facts from two places, his imagination and his direct line to God. McSame distorts facts to fit his current tactics, as when he toured the Iraqi market in a flak vest under heavy ground and air guard and said it was perfectly safe. Obama knows from his legal background that the only facts that should count are the ones that can be proven by substantial evidence.

The differences between Democrats and Republicans are most apparent on domestic issues. Foreign relations matters sometimes blur the party lines, though the Bush/Cheney regime has been so blatantly imperialistic that the historical nuances between the Parties on foreign relations became a great divide. Partisan politics is supposed to stop at our borders, and on the great issues of War and Diplomacy it should. The Secretary of State will be a key player in the Obama administration. Maybe Colin Powell would like another run at it.

So Far, So Boring

2008-07-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

After an extra long primary season wound down to a triumvirate of the Courageous Maverick, the Charismatic Change Agent and the Great Female Hope, the Lady was edged out, but left the stage reluctantly and ungracefully.

Since then, the two survivors have been waging a disappointingly dull war of words, innuendoes, accusations, denials and counter-charges, without yet engaging on their respective ideas for addressing the important issues we face.

Probably the most we can do for now is watch how both men conduct themselves through this stage of the ordeal, in order to learn more about them personally. McCain is a political dinosaur. Obama is a political phenomenon. In spite of the difference in age and experience of the candidates, most Americans who care enough to vote are now looking with fresh eyes equally at both of them.

McCain has managed to show his true colors. He has flipped and flopped so much already, in pandering to the right wing base, that voters can see his supposed independence is actually an absence of basic philosophy on many issues. His most consistent position is war hawk, not surprising for the son and grandson of Admirals, whose very career is founded on having been a downed aviator war prisoner, as he constantly reminds us. When General Wes Clark accurately responded that being shot down and imprisoned is not a per se qualification for President, outrage ensued, which is what McCain wants, since talk of his naval service plays to his strong suit and distracts the conversation from the real issues.

Obama has tried to put forth some new ideas, but they seem to be more designed to appeal to the middle and to refute the lie that he is the most liberal member of the Senate. Perhaps because of the realities of what it takes nowadays for a Democrat, particularly one of color, to be elected President, Obama has to move to the middle, and if elected he will probably have to govern from the middle, and if elected to a second term, then maybe he can bring the country to a more progressive position. He is showing himself to be a realist, which is a good quality for a President.

The polls seem to agree Obama has a slight lead, but that the country favors a generic Democrat over Obama. As he begins to get his personal story known to more voters, concerns about his background and experience should diminish. His advantage in campaign finances should help get the story out.

How the respective Vice Presidential choices are made will help shape voters images of the decision making skill of the Presidential candidates. Whatever debates actually take place will also be very important, a chance for voters to compare the candidates side by side. Clever advertising, especially from the Obama side, can also enhance the differences by showing comparison clips of the candidates to the advantage of Obama.

We need to hang in and be patient. This most wide open Presidential race in decades, coming at a time of so many challenges to our nation, has to get more interesting. Hopefully, the interest will come in the form of more voters learning who both men really are, making the comparisons, and deciding that we really do need a change toward freshness, youth, new ideas, more diversity and openness and renewed progress toward restoring the American dream at home and the American image abroad.

Learning about the Candidates

2008-06-19T14:28:00.001-07:00

As the general Presidential election campaign proceeds, voters, especially young ones, are going to be learning more about who the two candidates are. John McCain has been around for a long time, but his positions and record are actually not that well known outside of Arizona, particularly among young voters. Barack Obama is so new on the scene that everyone has much to learn about him. Both campaigns, and their surrogates, are working to make the candidates better known to the voters, painting a positive picture of their own man and a negative picture of the other.

The McCain camp portrays their man as a Vietnam War hero who is tough on national security and long on international experience, with a history of reaching across the aisle and being independent of party domination. The most noted aspect of McCain's heroism is his defiant survival during five years of North Vietnamese imprisonment. But quietly in the background, there have always been those who question the affect his imprisonment has had on his psychological makeup. Coming from a family with several generations of naval officers makes it easier to understand why McCain's concept of national security includes the perpetual military occupation of any nation we subdue for whatever reason.

McCain's bi-partisanship has been limited to only a few areas, while his overall voting record is essentially quite conservative, with occasional eccentric lapses that have garnered him the maverick label he relishes. The Obama campaign has done a good job of boxing McCain into the frame of running for the third term of George Bush, on whose side he has voted 95% of the time. To young voters, it is obvious from the start that in McCain they would be getting an old, awkward white man who has been around Congress forever and who does seem to represent more of the same failed Bush style Republicanism.

Barack Obama continues to be of more interest to voters, because he is fresh, young and not just another white man. He is a central casting gem for the role of a legitimate change agent. His personal story is fascinating in its diversity of experience. His intelligence, understanding, eloquence and dedication to progressive ideals is inspiring. But the full reality of his story is not known by most voters. The Obama campaign must get his personal story across to voters in the next few months, while also stifling the many false rumors that are being spread against him and his wife.

The anti-progressive right has falsely labeled Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate, but if the majority of voters actually compared the positions of Obama and McCain on the issues, without letting anyone label the positions as liberal or conservative, they would see they are actually more in agreement with Obama.

The Obama campaign has started a web site, FightTheSmears.com, to correct false stories being disseminated about the Obamas. Chris in Bangkok has sent me an interesting piece from Christopher Beam, a political reporter at Slate, who does not think the rumor squelching site is a good idea and suggests instead a satirical treatment. I don't agree with Beam, because voters sophisticated enough to appreciate the satire don't fall for stupid rumors. But the humor is great and my reader [s?] are sophisticated enough to get it, so below is what Beam wrote.

The Barack Obama presidential campaign introduced a new site last week, FightTheSmears.com, that it hopes will debunk persistent myths about the senator: that he's a Muslim, that he won't say the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. As we have argued before, restating the myths often reinforces them, no matter how persuasively they've been refuted.

Rather than restate untruths about Obama, the campaign would do better to start some rumors of its own. Here's a template e-mail the Obama campaign might consider disseminating.

From: [Redacted]
To: [Redacted]
Subject: WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.

There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

What Does Hillary Want?

2008-06-04T10:39:00.001-07:00

Now that Barack Obama has amassed the requisite number of delegates to be the Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton still refuses to go away. Everyone is speculating about what she wants. Her ultimate desire has been clear all along; she wants to be President. But now that she has failed to win this nomination, what are her immediate goals?

Hillary wants money, power and prestige. She has huge campaign debts she wants someone else to pay. She wants to parlay the votes she got into political power. And she wants the prestige of being considered an indispensable asset because she came so close to winning the nomination.

The money issue should be easy to solve, since so many people are anxious to part with their cash to help elect a Democrat President, even if it means helping pay the second place Democrat finisher.

Hillary has power, based on the fact she has high roller contributors and some fiercely loyal voters - loyal that is to Hillary, not necessarily to the Democratic Party, the need of the country to have a Democrat President, or the career of any other Democrat woman politician. Her claims of greater electability are not borne out by the polls. Her contention she won the most popular vote is contrived. After Super Tuesday burst her balloon, she was trounced in the contest for super delegates.

The fact that Hillary is her own number one cheerleader shows how far her prestige has fallen. Going into the primary campaign she was a 30 point favorite. After Super Tuesday, it seemed quite likely she was going to lose. The fact she survived and continued to battle and win some electoral contests did not help her prestige. Her initial appeal of invincible inevitability ended up becoming the appeal of a person claiming to be falsely labeled a loser. Granted, she does have her base, mostly older women,less educated white males and Hispanics, but the image she played on in the last half of the campaign was of the downtrodden. Many Americans root for the underdog and bet on losers they hope will turn out to be the next Seabiscuit. Hillary ended up tapping into those sentiments when it was clear she was on the ropes. At the same time, some support for Obama eased up so as not to alienate Hillary supporters by running up the score on her. If the primary season could be replayed, with voters knowing what they know now, I think Obama would beat Clinton by a greater margin.

Hillary cannot be President in 2009, barring the horror she managed to work in to the mix by her reference to Bobby Kennedy in 1968. If McCain wins or if Obama in any way tanks in his first term, Hillary will run again in four years. If Obama has a good eight year run, Hillary will be there in 2016. So is she using her power and prestige to try for the VP spot? Sure she is. As VP, if Obama loses or falters in his term, she will be saying I told you so and offering herself as the savior. And if he makes eight, she will be the heir apparent. Will she be able to finagle Obama into giving her the spot? Not unless he is a fraud, a nut or a masochist.

Hillary has a tricky hand to play now. She has to shift from candidate to supporter, offering to deliver her donors and voters, while holding on to some of her cards and trying to play some of Obama's. She'll want him to let her appear to be a significant player, even though she doesn't get the VP nod. This will probably mean letting her have input on the VP choice and maybe accepting one of her supporters for the spot. It won't be a woman, because Hillary doesn't want any challengers for her monopoly, having been careful throughout her career not to mentor any women who could rise to become competitors.

Remembering Number Two

2008-05-22T10:09:00.001-07:00

On this Memorial Day weekend, let us remember some of our too often forgotten past number twos [snickering potty mouths should sober up in embarrassment as they read on]: Elbridge Gerry, Daniel Tompkins, Richard Johnson, George Dallas, Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, William Wheeler, Thomas Hendricks, Levi Morton, Garret Hobart, Charles Fairbanks, James Sherman, Thomas Marshall and Charles Curtis. These distinguished Americans were among those who had the honor of serving as Vice President of the United States.

This weekend, John McCain is hosting some of his potential running mates at his ranch. I guess having a ranch is now a pre-requisite for a Republican who would like to be President, which is probably why Rudy's campaign never got off the ground. And as Barack Obama wraps up the Democratic nomination, talk of his possible running mate is warming up, with Hillary's name unfortunately still popping up. I suspect the number of Hillary supporters who claim they will not vote for Obama is equaled or exceeded by the number of Obama supporters (like me) who regurgitate at the thought of Billary back in the White House.

The VP spot originally went to the number two vote getter in the race for President, but as political parties developed, that concept was dropped and the VP became a running mate perceived as no more than a second fiddle. Indeed, since VP Van Buren won promotion to President in 1836, nobody was able to do it again for 152 years, with Bush I winning the job in 1988 only to be voted out four years later.

Eight Vice Presidents have risen to the Presidency on the death of the President, and one took over when a President resigned in spite of protesting "I am not a crook". Seven Vice Presidents have died in office (the last one in 1912) and two resigned, John Calhoun to run for the Senate and Spiro Agnew who beat his non-crook President through the door marked resignation. That non-crook Nixon is the only VP who was elected President after having been out of the White House for at least four years.

Conventional wisdom nowadays says the VP choice is not crucial, and it is more important that it not detract from the ticket. A favorite son (or daughter) from a big battleground state is considered a strong possibility, so Ohio and Pennsylvania come to mind. Some say the VP candidate should balance and complement the Presidential nominee. For McCain that sounds like a young, black, religious, right wing ideologue - someone like the goofy Alan Keyes. For Obama it might be an older white conservative with Jewish appeal - oh no, not Lieberman again.

Seriously, Obama could be helped by a running mate who is a bit feisty and seems to enjoy sparring with opponents - someone like Hillary if she did not come with all the Clinton baggage. Maybe Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Clinton supporter, could do the job and bring more Clinton supporters to the polls. McCain could benefit from someone who is a solid, knowledgeable conservative who gets the facts straight and is consistent. I don't want to give the Republicans any help, so I'll stick with my recommendation above. John McCain, Alan Keyes is your man.

Time to Get off the Stage

2008-05-07T10:17:00.001-07:00

A little trouble with my eye has slowed me down on writing for Sense, but I am continuing to follow the campaign for the Democratic nomination and to sing with the ever increasing "chorista punditi". I would not be so demeaning to Hillary as to say she will be the singing fat lady that ends the opera, but I suppose that role could be credited to the voters in North Carolina and Indiana yesterday. Hillary was waxed in North Carolina and survived by the skin of her teeth in Indiana.

Hillary is going deeper into debt to keep her ineffective machine rolling. Undeclared super delegates are waiting for her collapse, while those that have declared since February heavily favor Obama. Her rapid moving of the goal posts after each setback has become ludicrous. Her pathetic pandering by joining McCain in the gas tax holiday farce has amplified the distrust most voters have of her.

The handful of States left to vote are now almost irrelevant, with their outcomes essentially predetermined, and with Obama to achieve his electoral delegate majority in the next couple weeks. Realistically Hillary can now only try to salvage some of these items: look magnanimous by quitting after a victorious night at the polls, like maybe when she wins in West Virginia; get the Obama campaign to pay her campaign debts; try to look like a principled fighter by negotiating some deal about counting Florida and Michigan; have some say in the process of choosing the Obama running mate; avoid being marginalized by the Obama administration and the Democratic power wielders; and keep open her option to run next time if Obama loses this year.

Focus is now seriously shifting to the candidates for running mate. One thing for sure in my mind is that it should not be Hillary. Obama is a move to the future, and Clinton back to the past. Choosing Clinton would conflict the Obama message. As a VP candidate, Hillary might have more to gain by losing than by winning. She was willing to play second fiddle to Bill, at least in public, while sometimes acting as a power sharer behind the scenes, all the while expecting to have her own shot at the first spot down the line. If she became VP under Obama, I think she would always resent him as a usurper. Her very presence in the executive branch would result in constant attacks by the myriad of Clinton haters, continuing a process of distraction and polarization that Obama himself offers us hope of escaping.

Once Hillary leaves the stage, excitement will shift to the VP choices. McCain may have to pick someone from the right wing, further showing him as more of a flipper than a maverick. Obama will have a greater choice of compatible mates to consider. I hope Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri gets on the list of VP possibilities. Since coming out in support of Obama, she has been making some favorable TV appearances on his behalf. She might be able to keep older women voters from defecting, and being from a swing, border State, bring that aspect to the ticket. She has experience in the State Legislature, as State Auditor and as an elected prosecuting attorney.

Final Democrat Debate

2008-04-19T13:06:00.001-07:00

Along with about ten million viewers I watched what hopefully will be the final debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I agree with the media critics who are saying this was the worst Presidential debate production ever. ABC seemed more interested in trying to boost its ratings than in trying to help voters understand the positions of the candidates on the issues of importance. The debate was interrupted numerous times to run promotions for ABC entertainment shows, and the first 45 minutes of questions were all about extraneous matters which have already been overplayed in the media and have no actual importance to the understanding of the positions of the candidates on the top issues. More than enough has been said about Jeremiah Wright, bitter American comments, flag lapel pins, radicals from 40 years ago, Hillary's pretend heroism in Bosnia and questions of whether she can be trusted. We did not need 45 minutes more of it at the outset of what will probably be the last head to head go around between these two Democrats.

In that first 45 minutes the two questioners, the usually pleasant Charles Gibson, who seemed like an old bumbler trying to act like a charming youth, and diminutive George Stephanopoulos, a former PR man for Hillary, who should have declined to participate because of appearances of conflict of interest, acted like they were auditioning for some sleazy pseudo-journalism show entitled "Gotcha". George even sunk so low as to submit a question from Fox News farce Sean Hannity, about Barack serving on a charity board on which a Weatherman radical from 40 years ago also served. Barack pointed out that if limited association with an aged radical is of interest, then President Clinton having pardoned two former Weathermen might be of greater interest.

The debate was the first in seven weeks and just a few days before the important Pennsylvania primary. The interest that led to the high number of viewers was pre-existing and rather than being stimulated by the way ABC conducted the program, the audience was insulted and discouraged. Two thirds of the 45 minutes was spent attacking Obama, giving him reason to be perturbed, but I think he connected best with frustrated voters when he expressed his disappointment that we were not getting to hear about the issues that really matter in this country and that the approach reflected in the first 45 minutes is just what needs to be changed in this country because it turns so many people off.

There were some specifics in the last, more substantive part of the debate, that have not received as much attention as they would have without the first 45 minutes of throw aways. On taxes, both candidates may have gone a little too far in pledging to not raise taxes on incomes under $200-250,000. On the middle east, Hillary seemed to be going way too far in saying we should try to deter wars there by announcing we will intervene in any conflicts that take place in the region.

Negative campaigning hurts the target, but it also hurts the attacker. As long as Hillary keeps it up, and the media play into it, the Democrats are being hurt. Pennsylvania should have been an easy win for Hillary. It has the third oldest population in the country and working people there are suffering more than in most other states. She is expected to win, but her margin of victory may not be very high, which should increase the pressure on super delegates to endorse Obama and on Hillary to get out of the way.

Bitter Speech and Annie Oakley

2008-04-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

John from Phoenix, in a comment posted to the Sense piece, "Race and Religion on the Campaign Trail", has written, "I read that now we have a new Obama speech to discuss, the 'Bitter Speech', and I hope to read your views on it. Here's my take: I was delighted with what he said. What he said is true, and I liked the way he said it the first time better that his rewriting of it after he received so much criticism. Still, I liked that he did not retract the essence of the statement, just tried to take the edges off it. We all know there is a lot of hate out there, and it is not all in small towns. Whole neighborhoods of Phoenix could be described by Obama's words. And in the more enlightened neighborhoods of Phoenix, there are a lot of people who are reluctant to express their hatred, but seethe quietly." John ended his comment, "And now Obama has spoken. I may vote for him after all."

Speaking at a closed door fund raiser in California, Obama said many people are bitter over the economic situation and cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them. As John points out, Obama has stood by what he said, though he has been explaining that he could have said it more clearly. Some conservatives, and the Clinton campaign, have been saying this shows Obama is an elitist knocker of religion and an opponent of gun ownership. Hillary has pathetically been sanctimoniously recalling in public a wonderful time her Dad took her out to show her how to shoot a rifle. Her expedient embrace of gun ownership as if she were a charter NRA member has led Obama to chuckle that she is now talking like she is some kind of Annie Oakley who in addition to strapping on her six shooter also spends her weekends in the duck blinds.

It is pretty hard to miss the irony in the two most recent attacks on Obama. First he was criticized for staying in church rather than walking out on his pastor, and now he is accused of being anti-religious. What Obama meant in the "bitter" comment was that it is understandable people seek support from their religious views in times of economic trouble. Religious people who are struggling financially understand what he was saying.

Obama was being honest when he linked guns and xenophobia. Americans whose jobs are in jeopardy or already lost are even more likely to be hostile to immigrants and foreigners who they see as taking away the jobs of Americans. In "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore's interview with Charlton Heston showed that Heston's idea of the ultimate need for gun ownership rights is as protection against African-Americans. America's slave holders relied on their guns to protect themselves and their property (the slaves themselves whom the holders claimed to own). Now, as Obama was pointing out, those who feel threatened by immigrants are turning to their guns for protection. Obama has often before warned us about the mistake of blaming immigrants for our economic troubles, while reminding us we are all in the economy together and must work together to make it better. This time, in linking guns to xenophobia, he tapped into one of the conservative hot button issues.

Most interesting to me about this whole flap is how readily Hillary tried to make herself into the non-elitist gun lover. All this farce does is show her to be even more duplicitous and untrustworthy. Her lead in Pennsylvania has been shrinking and those bitter people of whom Obama was speaking may actually respect him enough for speaking the truth to consider voting for him.

By the way, the real Annie Oakley had a fascinating and quite admirable life, particularly for a woman of her times, as told in this Wikipedia article.

Understanding Hillary

2008-04-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

In spite of not writing here recently, I am still tracking the campaign closely, and even though it seems apparent Hillary has lost the nomination, I am still trying to figure her out as a person. I am reading last year's "A Woman in Charge", by Carl Bernstein, and am up to the point where Bill has decided to go ahead with his 1992 run for the White House, and he and Hillary go on "60 Minutes" to address questions of his sexual wanderings.

John from Phoenix has just posted a response to my February 28 posting of "The Fleeting Audacity of Inevitability", wherein I addressed the apparent failure of the Hillary Clinton campaign. His thoughtful comments always stimulate me to respond. Because our current exchange is appended to an article from over a month ago and is likely to be overlooked, I have decided to reproduce it here.

Tom,
I did not respond to this because it annoyed me so much. But since you haven't posted anything for a while, I'll make a couple of comments:

1. Do you not feel comfortable with Hillary because she is cuckold? Or do you not feel comfortable with her because she made a rational assessment of her life and career and decided she would do better by standing by her man? I would like to put Bill's puerile indiscretions outside of rational political discourse, but that appears not to be possible. Who cares if Hillary stayed with Bill because she loves him? That question makes me gag and is appropriate only for soap opera viewers. What is important for Hillary and what is important to the citizens of this country is how she handled a crisis in her life. That reflects on how she would handle national and international crises. I think she did very well.

2. Because we all agreed that a black man would be chosen before a white woman does not imply that that is the correct moral choice. It merely reflects the perceived male bias of the American electorate by the three people who responded. Personally I identify with the women suffragists who were outraged that former male slaves got the right to vote long before women of all color who helped create this country did.

3. To suggest that Bill Clinton would deliberately undermine his wife's campaign is silly. Of course he wants her to succeed. The battle you suggest will come later after she is elected. Will she or Bill rule? I bet on her ruling.

4. The wishful thinking about change without substance is pathetic. The elections of John Kenney and Ronald Reagan come to mind. The former was neutral and the latter harmful to the US. Let's give professionals the job that they are trained for. Obama is not trained and Clinton is. It is simple as that.

John from Phoenix

My response:

1. Hillary married Bill for love and for the power she expected him to make available to them through politics. She knew he had a wayward libido, but she calculated that into her decision to marry him. Apparently she miscalculated the extent of his wandering urge, but when it threatened to derail the power train, she vigorously joined in the war against the derailers, which included personal attacks on the various women with whom he dallied. Staying in the marriage through his various affairs was her business, but purposely misleading the voters, when Bill was running for President, about the extent of his problem and the possibility it would come up again was unfair to the electorate. I share the view of the majority of voters, that Hillary is calculating and not quite trustworthy. How one handles the foolish sexual affair of a spouse pales by comparison with how one would handle an international crisis. Rather than giving Hillary credit for handling Monicagate, I fault her for fooling us (and herself) into ignoring the warning signs.

2. American voters seem more prejudiced against African Americans than against women. At the highest elected level next to the Presidency, the US Senate, there are several women, but Barack Obama is only the third African American Senator since Reconstruction. The Presidency may be different in the eyes of some Americans, because of the Commander-in-Chief role. Having some women rise in the military and serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff would help overcome that. African Americans and women were both denied the vote until the US Constitution was amended, first for African American male voters following the Civil War, and then finally for all women in 1920. Both amendments came in their time, after long struggles to obtain them. Victims of unfair discrimination succeed best when they unite, even if it means recognizing that the time to end one form of discrimination may come before another. We may soon elect an African American President, and in time we will elect a woman.

3. Bill and Hillary are a team, and electing her brings him along. That is bothersome to many voters, like me, who do not want Bill back in the White House, even if he is just the spouse and she is the one with the final say.

4. I am not sure how one trains to be a professional President of the United States. We do not have such a program. We also do not seem to agree on who were our best Presidents, at least among the more recent ones. Presidents seem to spend much of their time in office reacting to developments, sometimes rather unexpected, sometimes perhaps partially fabricated. The agenda proclaimed on the stump often morphs into a more ideologically driven wielding of power and then settles in to become a combination of practical politics and siege mentality. There is no other job in the country that comes even close in preparing one for the Presidency. Sometimes, like now, voters want a change, and they look for a candidate who appears more trustworthy and less likely to morph into a power hungry ideologue, one who will be guided by practicality and cooperation, rather than by obstinacy and defensiveness. That is the longing into which Barack Obama has tapped.

Race and Religion on the Campaign Trail

2008-03-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

A few days ago in Philadelphia, Barack Obama gave a major speech explaining his views on the status of race relations in the United States and the relevance of race in the Presidential campaign. The speech was prompted in part by continuing public discussion of some incendiary statements on racial matters that have been made by his long time pastor and friend, Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama has distanced himself from the remarks, but has not rejected the preacher personally. Wright, who retired from his pastorate last month, had a position on the Obama African American Religious Leadership Committee, but has now resigned.

Obama's race has continuously been referred to during the campaign in term's of "first viable African American Presidential candidate", just as Hillary has been similarly referred to as the first such woman. The 1984 Democrat V-P candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, while serving on the Clinton fund raising committee, took the discourse in another direction when she said Obama would not be where he is in the campaign today if he were not black. She inferred black men have a special advantage and implied that Obama was a sort of token. After her remarks were widely criticized, when given a chance to back off, Ferraro shot back that she was just exercising her free speech right and being honest, and she then said she was wrongfully being attacked as a racist, which she claimed was a tactic to intimidate white people from speaking out. Ferraro eventually resigned from the Clinton team, and Hillary handled her remarks about like Barack has handled the intemperate remarks of Wright.

The Obama speech has been well received from diverse quarters. He spoke of his personal experience as an African-American being raised by his white family. He referred to the sad racial history of America, but his focus was on the need to go forward to address and improve race relations as part of making progress on all the other issues we face as a nation.

That we have made great improvements in race relations in this country is apparent from the fact Barack Obama has a significant lead over Hillary Clinton. For historical perspective, consider that when John McCain's father was serving as a Navy Officer in WWII, the armed forces of the United States were still racially segregated, and non-whites were not even allowed to become commissioned officers in the Navy. The civil rights and "Great Society" programs of the 1960s helped many African-Americans achieve a piece of the American dream, but a disproportionate number of African-Americans today are still not realizing that dream. Until all Americans, regardless of color, more fairly share the economic benefits of living in this country, racial tensions will persist, particularly in hard financial times.

Polling to determine racial bias, and to a lesser extent gender bias, is subject to a unique factor of politically correct responses not accurately reflecting inner feelings that may be acted upon in the voting booth. In the past, pollsters estimated the size of the factor and adjusted the results for a black candidate accordingly. At best, the estimate was just a guess. If Barack Obama is the nominee of the Democrats, pollsters will have the opportunity to estimate or guess the racial factor on a national basis. Books will be written for years on the impact race played in the 2008 Presidential election, but I doubt we will ever have a definitive answer, unless all the polls show Obama favored by a decent margin and then McCain wins.

I think Obama's race will work against him with some Hispanics, Asians and blue collar and older whites. It will work in his favor with some of the small number of African-Americans who might otherwise vote Republican or not vote, and with some independents and normally uninvolved voters who see him as someone obviously different from the "typical" older white male candidate.

Particularly after the last two Presidents, a man with libido trouble and a stone throwing hypocrite, some Americans are concerned about the religious values of the next President. Those on the religious right, who normally embrace Republicans, are trying to close their eyes and hold their nose as they consider a tepid kiss on the McCain cheek. Hillary Clinton, correctly or not, is not seen as a religious person. The perception of her as a calculating decision maker does not endear her to those who believe decisions should be based on a strict moral compass.

I doubt one out of a thousand Americans can tell you who Hillary's pastor is, or John McCain's. Reverend Wright brought Barack to Christ, officiated at the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama and baptized their children. I wonder who ministers to the Clintons and McCain and who officiated at their weddings and baptized their children. Ironically, this flap over the words of pastor Wright may actually work in Obama's favor, by planting the reality that he is a church going Christian, by reminding African-American church goers who have drifted Republican that he is one of them, and by laying to rest the false seed some have been trying to plant that he is a Muslim.

The Obama speech has now brought him another benefit. Bill Richardson was so impressed with it that he has announced his endorsement of Obama for President. I really like the idea of an Obama/Richardson ticket. Richardson has diverse experience which can be of great help to Obama, and being half Hispanic, he will have great appeal to Hispanic voters.

Hillary Reality Check

2008-03-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

In her speech last night Hillary Clinton touted her electoral victory in Ohio, pointing out that in recent history no President has been elected who did not win the Ohio primary. She also mentioned her victory in Rhode Island. She said Texas was close but was hopeful she would win the vote, which it looks like she has by a small margin. She did not mention her defeat in Vermont. She said her campaign would continue, apparently all the way to the Convention. Let's look at the reality of what happened in the four primary elections yesterday and where the process now stands.

Clinton had a huge early lead in the polls for Ohio. That lead shrunk over time as Obama became more known to voters. It is interesting that Clinton saved the line about Ohio primary victory as a Presidential pre-requisite until she actually won. Even she apparently was concerned she might lose the Ohio vote. Her peer group, older white women, delivered the victory, apparently somehow questionably identifying with the campaign struggle of a multi millionaire, high-powered attorney from middle class middle America who accompanied her husband on a political career in Arkansas that surprisingly led to eight years for her as First Lady, after which she relocated to New York in order to take a seat in the United States Senate. I suppose the secrecy of her income tax returns and of her White House records is intended to protect her voter base from realizing she is not really that much like them. According to the delegate selection formula, though Clinton had a fairly substantial electoral lead in Ohio, her delegate total will be only marginally larger than Obama's.

Rhode Island and Vermont are small states, but the electoral vote from either of them could be enough one year to decide a close election (though not in 2008, which I expect to be quite favorable to the Democrats). It was not nice of Hillary to snub Vermont in her comments, just because voters there rejected her readily. Fact is, the two states are a wash.

In Texas, where at one time she had a comfortable lead in the polls, Hillary prevailed due to the Hispanic vote, supposedly in part because she and Bill spent a time registering Hispanic voters there one summer back in their school days. But, because of the formula for allocation of delegates and because Texas also was choosing some by caucus, at which Obama does better, the expectancy is that the slim electoral lead of Clinton will be reversed into a delegate lead for Obama.

So Clinton will continue her campaign. But of the remaining states, it appears Obama will do better than Clinton, and it is highly unlikely Clinton will able to surpass him in delegate count. The best she can hope for is to win the Pennsylvania primary fairly convincingly. It is a closed primary and supposedly Obama has not won one of those, at least one that counted for delegates [he won the beauty contest closed primary here in Washington State]. To me that confirms that Obama has broader appeal, attracting support of independents that Clinton cannot.

Recently Clinton has run negative ads attacking the ability of Obama to handle a security crisis. Never mind that the biggest crisis Hillary has had to deal with was the improper placement of the sex organ of her husband. The Clinton campaign will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of what it does to the Democratic Party or to the country. Obama will defend, but not stoop to the Clinton attack level. That is the fundamental character difference between the two and that is a large part of the appeal of Obama. Now that McCain has locked up the GOP nomination, all attention will be on the Democrats, but Clinton will not use the free attention to put the Democrats ahead of McCain. Instead she will use it to sow doubts about the suitability of Obama. It is one thing to say she is better than him, but quite different to say he is not up to the task.

The Clinton approach is divisive. She clearly thinks in terms of red states and blue states, playing right into the hands of Republican long term strategy. Obama thinks in terms of one America, offering the genuine hope for change for the better that has attracted so many young people to his brand of Democratic politics.

One thing clear is that the Democratic Party process for selecting its nominee is not truly democratic. The super delegates represent the hypocritical compromise too often made in democracies, giving inside elites a power to override the voice of the people. The Republican approach of winner take all mirrors the electoral college process, so is more predictive of Presidential election prospects. As an advocate for the elimination of the electoral college, I would like to see the Democrats go to a process where the candidate who amasses the greatest popular vote in the primaries becomes the nominee. That leaves open the question of how to schedule the primaries, one time of national voting or a series of regional or State votes.

In scheduling sequential primary voting, conflicts between the national and state parties need to be avoided, to prevent rogue primaries like those in Florida and Michigan. In order not to disenfranchise voters in those two states and because the contest between Clinton and Obama is fairly close, elections will probably be rescheduled in both. Ironically, the two states who jumped the gun to be able to play a decisive role before Super Tuesday, may now be placed at the end of the sequence and play a decisive role from that position.

The fact is neither candidate can win without the super delegates. By convention time Obama will have the lead in popular vote, delegates and number of states won, all of which he will argue mean the super delegates should confirm him. Clinton will argue the supers should consider the big states that she won as more important and anoint her. Each will argue that they are a better match up against McCain, Obama because of his appeal to independents, new voters and anti-Clinton moderates, and Clinton because of her appeal to older white women who are faithful voters, Hispanics reluctant to vote for an African-American and those who see Obama as inexperienced.

In spite of talk of friendship between Hillary and Barack, I do not see either being the running mate of the other. I think Barack should choose Bill Richardson, who would provide the Hispanic and experience factors to the ticket. Since the only way I see Hillary getting nominated is if the super delegates override the vote of the people, I don't even want to consider who she might choose for a running mate.

The Fleeting Audacity of Inevitability

2008-02-28T11:57:00.001-08:00

I admit I have never been drawn to Hillary Clinton. So when it appeared inevitable that she would be the Democratic Presidential nominee, I tried to talk myself into liking her. I knew she was very intelligent and had lots of experience, and I generally agreed with her ideology and policy positions, but I just did not feel comfortable with her. She seemed more calculating than genuine. When Bill was caught in the Monica mess, a lawyer friend of mine predicted Hillary would divorce him after his Presidential term expired. I did not agree with that prediction, but I do wonder how her career would be different if she had dumped him. Did she stay with Bill in spite of all his marital wanderings mostly because she loved him, or was it more for what he could do for her ambitions?

The plan of the Democrats was to have their candidate chosen on Super Tuesday in early February, confirming what the polls were showing, that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable choice. But here at Sense a year ago, our poll predicted unanimously [all three of us agreeing] that a black would be elected President before a woman. Let us remember from American history that black men got the right to vote more than fifty years before white women. White men, who have always held the reins of American power, in many ways identify more with black men than they do with white women. Black men were lynched for alleged crimes against white women not so much to protect the women as to protect the property rights of the white men.

Barack Obama has sent the audacious Clinton inevitability into free fall. Bill Clinton accelerated the fall with his campaign antics on behalf of his wife. Better amateur psychologists than me might be able to detect an element of intention on the part of the ex-President, based on some need to be one up on his wife, so that she will continue to feel she needs him. Imagine if Hillary had won, and then at the end of her Presidency she divorced Bill.

The Obama appeal starts from the overwhelming desire for change from Bush. His charisma, intelligence, oratorical skills and personal history all add to his appeal. His mixed ethnicity is the marble frosting. But he has made his campaign work by doing just what Hillary says she would do as President but has failed to do in her campaign. He has been following a well thought out plan, efficiently executed, disciplined and maintained. Through a glut of twenty debates, Barack has performed with acumen, which increased as the number of participants dwindled, culminating in his excellent showing on the last two against Hillary alone.

Hillary still gets sympathy from older white women who are upset to see yet another up and coming young man usurp what should have gone to the experienced woman with seniority. Hillary was supposed to be the admirable pioneering woman who would break through the ultimate glass ceiling. But as one young female black commentator said, it is hard to think of a white multi millionairess U.S. Senator whose husband was President for eight years, as an admirable underdog. And now that Hillary has in fact become the underdog, she has not only failed to gain any "root for the under dog" votes, but some of her long time supporters are turning away from her.

Next Tuesday, the Texas and Ohio primaries could be the final blow to Hillary. She had been hoping to win them big, but now is realistically hoping just to win both by even small margins, or maybe to win one, or maybe to come close in both. Barack has been winning the super delegate PR war as well as the battle over whether to count the boycotted Florida and Michigan results. The Clinton people have started talking about Pennsylvania in April as a firewall, but unless Hillary surprises everyone with strong victories in Texas and Ohio, the only wall that matters will be the one with the writing on it, "Barack Obama is the candidate of the Democrats".

Going with the Flow

2008-02-19T14:01:00.001-08:00

The flow continues to run in the favor of Barack Obama. Momentum is on his side. Hillary Clinton has had to shake up her campaign staff and is struggling to find a more appealing message. I don't think she is going to be able to do it.

Obama has taken the delegate lead and more super delegates are starting to announce for him. His campaign is flush with money from many small contributors, while Clinton had to personally loan money to her campaign to keep it going. John McCain is so concerned about the Obama fund raising momentum that he is already trying to maneuver Obama into agreeing to limit the general election contest to just public financing.

The exact role of the Democratic super delegates has come into question. I understood they were a somewhat undemocratic hedge against the masses choosing an unelectable candidate (like McGovern in 1972) or an un-re-electable President (like Carter in 1976). Since both Democratic candidates by consensus are considered excellent, the pressure is on the super delegates to go with the flow and accept the candidate who prevails through the caucuses and primaries. If the super delegates keep the nomination away from the voter favorite, the Democratic Party will pay a high price, and I think they are too sensible to make that mistake.

The Right is labeling Obama as the "most liberal Senator", a phrase which combined with his surname gets 38,100 Google hits. The label apparently originates with a survey by The National Journal, based on 99 votes in 2007 that the Journal selected, rated and weighed. Their criteria were somewhat complex, but the bottom line with any such subjective rating is to consider the source. That the conservative Journal would consider Obama quite liberal was a foregone conclusion.

Some Clinton inclined Democrats have implied Obama has ducked votes on some key issues. The 99 votes selected by the Journal were important to conservatives, and therefore should have been of concern to Democrats. Looking at how often either Clinton or Obama failed to vote on any of the 99 votes when the other one did vote, the result is quite interesting. Obama failed to vote one time when Clinton did vote. Clinton skipped 17 votes when Obama did vote. On the 99 votes important to conservatives, Obama won the "courage to stand up and be counted" prize by a vote of 17 to 1.

I Caucused

2008-02-10T07:31:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I attended my precinct Democratic caucus, one of eleven being held in the local high school cafeteria. Attendance was about three times what it was four years ago. We had 37 voting in our precinct. After an initial tally, we opened the floor to discussion, with one minute speeches of support, alternating between the candidates. Then we continued with some back and forth until everybody was finished. Our chosen chair facilitated an intelligent, civil and focused group dialog.

Our group had only one non-white, a slight majority of women, more older voters, some middle aged and a few younger, including about a half dozen that looked to be voting for the first time. The older women favored Clinton, the younger people Obama and the men generally split about even. While we were waiting for the caucus to start, I spoke with a woman who was undecided and told her why I changed from Clinton to Obama. When we signed in, she decided to go for Obama. We had only one undecided voter, a Kucinich supporter. After the discussion, he switched to Obama and there may have been one other who changed to Obama. Our second and final tally was 23 to 14 for Obama. We chose five delegates (three Obama and two Clinton) to send to district. A few people turned in written platform proposals to be presented at district. The entire process lasted about two hours.

The arguments in favor of Clinton all boiled down to believing she has more experience than Obama. The arguments for Obama were: he energizes and gives hope to the young; represents hopeful change for the future; has more experience than people may realize; was correct about not authorizing Bush to invade Iraq; will draw more young and independent voters than Clinton and will not energize Republican Right voters as much as Clinton, so will be a better match up to McCain; and will be more effective in trying to break Republican obstructionism in Congress. We all agreed both are excellent candidates and would each make a good President and that we would vote for either one if nominated. Two young people warned that some young voters are turned off by Clinton and will either vote against her or not vote if she is the nominee.

Last night CNN reported about 20,000 Democrats caucused in Washington and we chose Obama 68% to 32%. The Republicans had about 8,000 caucus and split fairly even among their three candidates. The Nebraska Democratic caucus was also 68-32 Obama. The Louisiana primary went 57% for Obama. CNN said 2,025 delegates are needed for the Democratic nomination and Clinton has 1100 and Obama 1039.

[Check out the comments to "Fast Campaign Developments" for some ongoing dialog comments about the caucus process, stimulated by John from Phoenix.]

Fast Campaign Developments

2008-02-07T11:36:00.001-08:00

Things are happening fast. Super Tuesday voting sent a message to Romney and he has now decided to drop out, confirming McCain will be the Republican nominee. Whether Huckabee is making a sufficient showing to get a VP nod remains to be seen.

For the Democrats, Super Tuesday showed the race is close with Obama having gained much ground. I just realized Washington State will actually be picking Democratic delegates by the caucuses this Saturday, rather than by the primary election on the 19th, so I will be going to my caucus and supporting Obama. Obama will be in Seattle for an appearance tomorrow. It would be exciting to see him, but I have a schedule conflict.

The primary election on the 19th may in some ways be just a popularity contest, but it also has more relevant aspects. Popularity can equate with electability and thereby help with fund raising. It can also help influence the votes of the super delegates at the national convention. It will be interesting to make comparisons between the caucus and election results, both on turnout and on results. The primary ballots include some new and interesting aspects. For the first time. Washington State voters will have to take an oath of political party affiliation in order to vote. The affiliation will not be kept private. The Democratic party oath says, "I consider myself to be a Democrat", while the Republican one says, "I am a member of the Republican Party". I wonder how many voters will decide not to vote, rather than taking either oath. Also, there is no mail service the Monday before the election and I wonder how many absentee ballots deposited in mailboxes on Monday will not be counted.

Final Four

2008-01-31T14:47:00.000-08:00

It looks like we are down to the final four, Hillary, Barack, McCain and Romney. Never mind Ron Paul, the libertarian, and Preacher Huckabee. Libertarian views attract few voters. Huckabee draws the shrinking evangelical vote. The winner take all nature of the Republican race makes it unlikely Huckabee can actually play a role in the selection process, but a strong showing on Super Tuesday could put him on the list of possible running mates or cabinet appointees.

Giuliani's failure was predictable. Mayors do not become President. The man is a personal mess who is shamelessly cashing in on 9/11. It didn't work for political offfice, but it has brought him tons of money in his security related business ventures. The over $50 million people gave Rudy resulted in one committed delegate. His endorsement of McCain is generally viewed as not significant.

Edwards had the sense to get out of the way and let the voters more clearly choose between Hillary and Barack. His message was sounding too repetitious and he lacked the star power of the two front runners. I doubt he would be a running mate again, but maybe a cabinet position would interest him, perhaps Secretary of Labor. I don't know that he has judicial ambitions.

McCain is edging away from Romney. They obviously despise each other. Huckabee nailed Romney as looking, not like the guy you work with, but rather like the guy who laid you off. Romney loses the likeability race to McCain. McCain benefits from the emeritus and sympathy vote, as well as the anti-Mormon sentiment.

Doris Kearns Goodwin nailed Bill Clinton when she said he is like former President Teddy Roosevelt, who ran as a third party candidate in the 1912 race. They both have a need to be center stage, and Doris reminded us of what Alice Roosevelt said about her father, that he has a need to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral and the child at every christening. Bill's grandstanding with gleeful joy while taking shots at Barack has repulsed a lot of people, most notably Ted Kennedy who has now loudly endorsed Barack. Seeing Bill Clinton disrespect the status of former President reminds us how he disrespected the office of the Presidency by his adolescent-like sexual dalliance, thereby squandering the power we had given him by our votes. We are getting rid of one shadow President, Dick Cheney, and we don't need to have another one in Bill Clinton.

I have not taken the time to try to understand the extensive demographic breakdown of the voting that has been taking place. Black voters largely go for Democrats and are now going for Obama. Older white women are going for Hillary. Most interesting to me is how young voters feel. We older people who grew up in the pre-civil rights era are dying off, and many of our prejudices with us. Young people don't carry the burden of those memories. The same is true of the Vietnam War, though it is being replaced with the similar mess in Iraq. I suppose the old racial and gender prejudices are now in some ways being replaced with immigrant and homosexual bashing, but those attacks are being made more to attract older voters than young. The young are more open and accepting of diversity. Their discontent is with the old white folks who have been doing such a poor job of running the show.

In 2004, here on Sense, I predicted young voters would be motivated to dump Bush and would vote for Kerry as an agent of change. Sadly that did not happen, as young voters did not turn out in large numbers to vote. But Barack Obama is seen by the young as a genuine change agent. He is a youthful 47, African-American, charismatic and preaches pragmatic hopefulness. I remember the feeling my young friends and I had when JFK ran against Nixon in 1960, proposing inspiring programs like a Peace Corps. That seems to be what many young people are feeling now about Barack. Caroline Kennedy and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri were encouraged to endorse Obama by their children. There is so much to be discouraged about by American politics, which is all part of a plan by the rich Republican establishment to disenfranchise the majority of voters who are sincerely interested in seeing American politics return to a genuine concern for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful. Obama's message of hope is the only one addressed to those who truly want change for the better.

We'll see what happens Tuesday. McCain might end up with enough victories to be the Republican nominee. The Democrat vote may be close enough to make later contests, like here in Washington State February 19th, more interesting. In fact, considering the non-committal of the unelected super delegates, the battle between Hillary and Barack may come down to the Convention. I think Hillary still has the edge at this point, but it could be turning against her. If Barack can get it to the convention, those super delegates may realize that Barack is the better choice and that he will offer a better match to the Republican. I would really like to see a surprisingly big swing toward Barack on Tuesday.

Campaign Update

2008-01-22T09:57:00.000-08:00

The field of Presidential aspirants is thinning. For the Democrats, Edwards faded in New Hampshire and Nevada, and no longer seems viable. With Clinton and Obama running so close, they have unfortunately embarked on attacking each other personally. Such sniping is bad for the Democratic Party and for the American people. Whether it is good for the candidates is arguable; some say negative attacks work, while others say they backfire. Whether or not Bill Clinton is an asset or liability to the Hillary campaign is also arguable; he remains popular with many voters, but the sight of a former President acting as a campaign cheerleader and hit man does not sit well with many Americans.

Results so far are not surprising in showing women going for Hillary and African-Americans for Barack. Hispanics in Nevada went for Hillary, which may indicate a negative racial attitude toward Barack, but it might also be due to resentment over the Culinary Union pushing so hard for him. Polls show Barack with a bit of a lead in South Carolina, but Hillary with a much larger lead in Florida. This one may go on a while, though there is only one Democrat debate left. With McCain having crept back in on the Republican side, I would like to see the Democrats jointly use some of their campaign energy to point out how unsatisfactory his voting record is on many important issues that separate Democrats from Republicans.

McCain does seem to have staged a surprising comeback on the Republican side. I think that is mainly because their field is so weak. Romney spends huge fortunes with disproportionately low results. His Mormonism and flip-flop record won't do well with traditional Southern voters. Huckabee appeals to the Evangelicals, but has exposed himself as a man who has no concept of the separation of church and state, thereby limiting his appeal to all but the most religious minded. Giuilani has a one note campaign which has been scoring only one digit votes. He expects to do well in Florida, yet the polls do not bear that out. It is beginning to look like McCain first and Romney second.

Democrats may be focusing on electability issues more than Republicans are, probably because Democrats want to think any Democrat should be able to beat any Republican this time around, but are concerned about the possibility of missing the opportunity by nominating the wrong candidate. This leaves the Democrats wondering about Hillary's high negative number with many voters, as well as her gender, and Barack's perceived lack of experience, as well as his race. An experienced white male candidate would seem to have been an easy choice, but two men who qualified that way, Senators Biden and Dodd, barely got any votes and dropped out. Republicans realize they have an uphill battle and may choose their candidate more on principle, or on what John from Phoenix seems to be registering as an emeritus vote for McCain.

Head to head against McCain, I think Barack would do better than Hillary. For those who want change to happen, youth and color will be more appealing than gender, especially when gender comes coupled with the Clinton name. If Hillary had made it on her own, rather than by way of First Lady, she would have much greater appeal as a female candidate. Many traditional voters of both genders will be more concerned about a woman President being weaker, than an African-American President being _____ [they will supply their own stereotype]. African-Americans will go for Barack in droves. Women who preferred Hillary will still choose Barack over McCain. Some who would not vote for another Clinton might vote for Barack. Some who would be inclined to vote Green Party (like maybe a couple of my sons), might be willing to vote for Barack, but not for Hillary. Libertarians, who have been giving Ron Paul better numbers than Giuliani in some states, are not too likely to vote for McCain, and will probably not vote in the Presidential election or else they may vote for the official Libertarian candidate.

More Fundamental Change

2008-01-10T13:13:00.001-08:00

Even normally good pundits seem to be going bonkers while over-analyzing the New Hampshire primary results and trying to reconcile the different outcome in the Iowa caucuses. It should not be that difficult to discern the main messages from the composite American voter. Here is what they are saying. "We want a Democrat for President. Hillary and Barack seem the most viable choices. We like the fact that each would also be a first, either a woman or an African-American. It is a close call. She is experienced but calculating and a bit of a throw back. He is charismatic and fresh, but lacks much experience on the national stage. We're watching them closely and will make our decision shortly before we vote. We don't much care who the Republican candidate is, since we will be voting for the Democrat."

As pointed out many times here on Sense, there are significant differences between Democrats and Republicans, particularly on domestic issues. But those two parties have an unhealthy monopoly on our political process. Occasionally a third party emerges to play a disruptive role in our Presidential elections, usually for just one or two times in a row. The Republican party arose about 150 years ago as a third party alternative to the Democrats and Whigs. The 1860 three way split election put Republican Lincoln in the White House and buried the Whig party. Now would be a great time to replace the Republican party; but who should be the replacement?

The Republican Party traditionally was based on supporting business and ending racial oppression in the South. Business interests quickly prevailed and the party allowed Reconstruction in the South to fall by the wayside. Teddy Roosevelt fought within the party for progressive reforms to stop the corporate robber barons, but ultimately was forced out of the party. His attempt to form a viable third party was unsuccessful. The Depression relegated the Republicans to minority status until Nixon and Reagan were able to harness the white backlash against civil rights and turn it into Republican votes. As the backlash diminished, Republicans wooed voters with hypocritical talk of "tax reform" and "getting the government off our backs", then with Bush II, turned into a religious party, courting evangelical Christians. Republicans have solicited Libertarian voters with support for gun rights, and less successfully with appeals for limited government. Lately, the tactic of cultivating racial backlash has been resurrected in the form of an immigration policy targeting Hispanics.

The Libertarian Party has an attraction for a limited number of people, as Ron Paul's candidacy has shown. To most people it seems impractical, somewhat of a limited anarchy. Fiscal conservatism is not a wide enough philosophy on which to build a party. Fiscal soundness can and should be embraced by all parties, including somewhat progressives, as Bill Clinton demonstrated. In fact the Clintons, and the Democratic party in many ways, is not really very progressive. True progressives, like Kucinich, garner little party support. Obama may in fact be even less progressive than the Clintons.

The gap left by a demise or demotion of the Republican party would be best filled by a more progressive voice than that of the Democrats, at least if the long range good of the country is considered. That voice does exist in the Green party, but it is not being well heard in the country. Look at the Green party platform for 2004, and the vision it has for America will impress you. But the Greens have not done a good job of positioning themselves to take advantage of an opportunity like the current disabling of the Republicans. Their focus has been on getting Greens elected to local offices, and working from the grass roots up, but that takes too long. Their website is staid looking. Ralph Nader continues to be the only Green member widely known, and resented by many over the 2000 election. The party needs a make over and a new face. Young people should be drawn to it. It should be dynamic. But look at its web site, how staid and unattractive, with the lackluster logo. It should be popping with streaming video, flashes and shockwaves, photo shows, news scrolls and feedback intense forums. The Greens should target one state, say Vermont, with a well financed campaign for a Senate seat, with a charismatic Obama type candidate. Once gaining that office, the Green Senator will have a national stage and play an important Congressional role, and can then become a Presidential candidate to spread the party message.

But meanwhile, we are faced with the current campaign. The caucus in Nevada, to be a rubber match between Hillary and Barack, will be attended by my sister-in-law,who has not told me who she leans toward [if you read this before January 19th Shirley, maybe you will post some thoughts here]. These two candidates are close enough where the Democratic race will be continuing for a while, maybe still being alive by the time we vote in our February 19th primary here in Washington. I will post my vote here and encourage any other readers who are Washington State voters to do the same. As for the Republicans, Michigan is next and if Romney does not win there, his goose is probably cooked. So far, the Republican race is just Huckabee and McCain, with the preacher expected to win in South Carolina. Giuilani is hoping to get into the voting action on the big Tuesday in February. Let's hope whoever the Republicans nominate ends up a footnote in history as the last time a Republican candidate for the Presidency ever made a viable showing, with 2008 having been a Democratic landslide.

Change Is on the Way

2008-01-07T11:27:00.001-08:00

Last year, all the political talk was just that - talk. With the arrival of 2008, the talk has turned to action, first with the Iowa caucuses and tomorrow with the New Hampshire Primary. Change seems to be the buzzword - out with the old and in with the new. By this time next year Bush will be heading out the door - and setting an all time record for Presidential pardons. Most voters want to turn the reins over to a Democrat. Hillary was the front runner for the past year, but the Iowa results confirmed that voter reluctance over Hillary personally and over the deja vu feeling of having another Clinton Presidency can translate into a win for Obama. Polls show he may win in New Hampshire also.

On the personal level, after a Christmas break from blogging, but not from following the campaigns, I think I feel like a lot of the Democratic faithful. There is an excitement of hopefulness about seeing an up and comer defeat an established power holder (reminiscent of JFK beating LBJ in 1960). But there is also a tinge of concern about the electability of Obama, because of his lack of experience on the big stage. Obama's African-American heritage pulls diversely. Will voters consider his racial heritage in making their decisions, and if so, will it be considered a positive or a negative? Having a father from Africa makes Barack's story different from that of most African-Americans, but his life experiences as an American of mixed race are relevant to all Americans of color, and the absence of his father from his upbringing is a familiar experience to many people regardless of color. His story of rising from a childhood of confusion and little promise to a real possibility of becoming President is as idealistically American as it gets.

Hillary suddenly has found herself running from behind. The perception of inevitability has been shattered and her tactics now are changing to more negative, which is exactly what voters are trying to put in the past. Obama's positive message of hope and change sounds especially good coming from the position of front runner. The Iowa caucuses may not be demographically representative of America, but they definitely affect campaign bubbles, popping some, deflating others and raising a few to new heights.

Using electability as a criterion for nomination is risky, especially when it is not clear who the opponent will be. The Republicans are in shambles. Iowa chose the likeable preacher. New Hampshire may go for the old maverick. The handsome Mormon spent the most by far but doesn't have much to show for it. Mayor 9/11 is waiting like a snake in the grass for Super Tuesday. Voters don't seem to care much who the Republicans choose. Attendance at the Iowa Democratic caucuses was overwhelming, while Republican attendance was mediocre. Against any of the Republicans, Obama should be seen as the most hopeful agent of change and bi-partisanship. On the issues, his positions are actually fairly mainstream, so the change would be to go away from the greedy, dictatorial aberrations of the Bush administration. Bush fraudulently ran as a "uniter, not a divider", all the while engaging in divisive rhetoric. By contrast, Obama speaks in terms of inclusion and projects a genuine willingness to work not only with those who agree with him but also with those of opposing views.

When this blog started during the 2004 campaign, there was a fair amount of reader input on the election prospects. It would be interesting during this 2008 campaign to hear from you few remaining readers. What are your thoughts on the candidates?

Candidate Update

2007-12-12T12:59:00.001-08:00

Holiday visits and other activities have kept me from publishing here lately, but I have continued to follow the progress toward choosing candidates to contend for the Presidency.

Only compulsive Republicans and naive non-politicals fail to realize the country needs a Democrat back in the White House. The Democrat candidates are consistently aligned with this national longing, with only minor variations from the candidates on the central themes. The Republicans are out of step, both with the electorate and with each other, their views widely diverging on many issues.

For the Democrats, it is still between Clinton and Obama. She is obviously the best prepared and most immediately capable, but some voters confess to a reluctance to elect a woman, and still more are concerned that another Clinton is not the ideal way to move forward. Obama has failed to capitalize on the charisma factor to convince voters he is ready now to lead us. It still looks like his best chance is if voters act on their Hillary reluctance. Hillary is not going to change her tune the rest of the way to the nomination. If Obama wants to beat her, he has to project more leadership capability to the voters, while playing on their uncertainty over Hillary. Nowadays only overt racists admit to voting just for all-whites, but America has too negative a record on race to rule such prejudice out as a factor in some voters decision on Obama. [Race is a mostly unspoken concern in the current frenzy to stop brown skinned "illegals" from entering the US from Mexico].

The Republican race is more amusing, but also more scary if somehow one of these pretenders were to actually get elected [a circumstance which would make me seriously consider the sanity of the American electorate]. Romney has the money and the looks, but his Mormonism finally forced him to give a speech intended to downplay its role in his potential Presidency. In that speech Romney tried to align Mormonism with Judeo-Christian religion, but then went overboard by making such religion a virtual pre-requisite for being a true American. Giuiliani has played the fear card so much that it has become a joke. Plus he has had as many wives as Romney's great-grandfather probably had, only just not all at the same time [mistresses in waiting are not yet counted as wives, though they may be entitled to taxpayer paid police protection, as Rudy's current wife received when she was only the Mayoral mistress]. Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas Governor, has shot up in the polls, a sign of disenchantment with Mitt and Rudy. Huckabee is genuinely nice and compassionate, but his evangelical credentials are starting to bump into reality as people pay more attention to him, such as his prior advocacy for quarantining HIV positive people.

The busy holiday season flies by and then the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries become the preliminary bouts on the way to the main event. Following all the primaries in February, including one here in Washington State which I only recently realized is scheduled, the candidates will in all likelihood have been chosen. Then the main event will start. My current sense is the contender in the blue trunks will be Hillary Clinton. Who wears the red is more uncertain, but it could be the surprising Huckabee. Regardless of who wears red, I expect Hillary to win by a TKO.

Round 12

2007-11-16T13:35:00.001-08:00

Last night in Las Vegas the Democrat Presidential candidates squared off again. This is round 12 of a 16 round Democrat debate schedule. The format was loose and the moderator slow to take control, so the first few minutes were ragged. Edwards and Obama took their opening shots at Hillary and she was getting vexed, but she hung in there and gave them back, eventually calling Edwards a mudslinger. In the course of this opening flurry, there were some boos from the audience for Obama and Edwards, and the attack then slowed down and the moderator took better control.

Hillary was back in stride, easily holding her own. When asked about her feelings as a woman being attacked by men, she scored well, especially in front of a Vegas crowd, by answering that they were not attacking her because she is a woman, but because she is winning. When the subject came up again about being in favor of drivers licenses for undocumented aliens, the issue she faltered on at the last debate, Hillary answered with a one word "no" and the other candidates split their votes, all of which showed it is a tricky area. Bill Richardson seemed to simplify it though when he said that as Governor of New Mexico he signed a bill allowing such licenses four years ago, because the police told him these drivers should be licensed as a matter of public safety.

With so many debates, it would have been better to limit each one to a single subject area, instead of jumping around to cover so many topics. Despite efforts to show their differences from each other, the candidates in fact continue to present a fairly unified picture of a Democrat vision for a better America, in contrast to the mess the Bush Administration has made of our country. The Democrats stand for security through diplomacy with support for world wide human rights. They are for preserving traditional social security, developing technology to move us away from fossil fuels, protecting the environment, workers rights, better support of teachers and re-invigorating our educational system.

Hillary, as the likely nominee, has to run a little more to the middle, but like her husband, I think that is where she naturally stands. One exchange that I found significant was on eliminating or raising the ceiling on income subject to social security tax. Hillary said we need to be careful about increasing taxes on the middle class, and when Obama pointed out that only 6% of Americans have income high enough to be affected by such a change, Hillary did not readily join in his willingness to tax these very highest earners. She spoke of working people she knows personally who would be affected by such an increase, a clear indication that she identifies with and is concerned about those people - more like a Republican.

Obama got the biggest welcoming applause, with Hillary second. Obama also got charmed audience looks from African Americans and young people. He still has the charisma factor, but is not doing much to capitalize on it in these debates. The attack mode does not fit well with his style, which probably raises a concern about his ability to be tough when needed. Half the questions last night came from the audience. A university student said the country needs to be brought back together and he asked how the candidates would do that. Biden, Dodd and Richardson cited their history of dealing well with Republicans. Kucinich, the only candidate who has voted unquestionably Democrat on all the issues and who has never had to apologize for a vote turning out wrong, showed why House members don't become President - they operate in a chamber where majority power trumps everything else, so they don't project bi-partisanism. Obama's legislative experience in Illinois and his personal philosophy of governance would seem to indicate a willingness and ability to work with Republicans, certainly more so than Edwards. Hillary and her husband are still hated by most Republicans, but she has shown an ability to work with Republican Senators.

The Bush Administration went six years with a rubber stamp Republican Congress. Bush refuses now to work with a Democrat Congress. On most all issues, Republican Senators filibuster Democrat positions, and Bush offers no compromises. The few that have gotten by the filibuster, like CHIPS, Bush vetoes. Approval ratings for Congress are quite low, especially for Republican members. Hopefully this will be reflected in some of the 2008 Senate races. Kucinich wants to start impeachment proceedings on Bush/Cheney, but that will not get off the ground. The House does have the power of the purse, but trying to use it to negotiate a compromise with Bush on pulling out of Iraq won't work - Bush does not compromise, because his ego is too high and his intelligence too low. What the House Democrats should do is refuse to pass any more funding for the Department of Defense and the War until all US forces have been withdrawn from Iraq, telling Bush he will have to figure out how to most safely remove the troops with the money previously authorized.

Comments I hear now about Hillary seem to assume she will be the nominee, but question her electability. Attacks on her in the debates have been based on her calculated positions, but people seem to realize that calculating is what politicians have to do in order to get elected and then to get things done. The matter of her being a Clinton seems to have faded, but it will be brought up by the Republican nominee. However, I think Hillary can effectively dismiss that by saying, "better a Clinton type than a Bush type", and then pointing out how good things were under Bill and how much the Republican nominee has in common with Bush. Some are concerned whether Americans are ready for a woman President, a concern which shows little respect for Americans or for women. Women deserve the respect to be considered Presidentially qualified. Any American who would not vote for a Presidential candidate because she is a woman, is not deserving of our respect.

Taking off the Gloves

2007-10-31T12:22:00.001-07:00

I watched the Democrats debate last night, particularly to see what Obama and whoever else might do about attacking Hillary Clinton. Obama recently said it was time to take the gloves off, though others have said it is too late because Hillary has the nomination well in hand. Here is how it looked to me.

The debate moderators from NBC quickly established that shots at front-runner Clinton would be welcome. Edwards was the chief puncher, accusing Hillary of being of questionable trustworthiness because of her defensively changing or waffling positions. Obama got his blows in over her political calculations, contributions from special interests and unwillingness to encourage publication by the National Archives of her written communications to President Clinton from the time she served in his administration. A few of the minor candidates echoed some Clinton criticism, including concerns that her high negative poll numbers show she is unelectable.

The most interesting thing to me about the Democratic males joining the all male Republican club in the attacks on the only woman in the race, was that none of the attacks are based on her gender. This is not due to any gentlemanly code, or political correctness, but rather to the fact Hillary seems to have no gender related weakness. The attacks last night were literally to her face and understandably disturbed her, but she handled them admirably, in fact, "like a man".

At this stage of the game, there are two kinds of candidates - top tier and also rans. Also rans can give definite, cut and dried answers and never have to worry about being stuck with what they said, because they are not going to get nominated or elected. Top tier people may get nominated and then in the general election campaign be stuck with what they said on the way to the nomination. There are two general ways to handle that dilemma, speak lies and platitudes all the way through, as George W. Bush did, or project a general spirit and direction while pointing out the necessity for pragmatism, nuance and compromise, as Hillary is doing. The three out of four voters who are anxious for Bush to leave want to replace his devious obstinance with a style more like Hillary has.

Voters know any candidate who is going to be viable for the nomination and electable thereafter has to take special interest money, so that shot did not score on Hillary any more than on Obama and Edwards. I doubt voters are interested in knowing what Hillary wrote to Bill during the failed effort to get health insurance coverage for us all. I think they would be more interested in seeing what she wrote to him about his dalliance with Monica.

The most serious substance based attack was over the vote Hillary cast to condemn the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Though the Democratic nominating electorate is very anti-war, Hillary stood behind her vote, pointing out that three quarters of the Senate voted as she did, including some Democrats who had opposed the Iraq War resolution. She showed she understands the conflicting pressures a President must weigh from the Commander-in chief position when she pointed out Iran is a potential threat to the US and we need to keep open the option to use forceful diplomacy. Her Iraq War vote is more open to questioning as politically calculated. Her Iran vote and her defense of it last night seems to indicate Hillary cast this one not out of a possibility of becoming President some day but rather out of the reality she may actually win the Presidency next year.

Near the end of the debate, Hillary came the closest to stumbling. A question of position about a NY state proposal to issue drivers licenses to illegal/undocumented aliens drew her into that most genuinely splintering issue. First she said she supported the licenses as a public safety issue to bring these unlicensed drivers out of the shadows. As a show of hands revealed the panel of candidates split on the issue, Hillary then tried to provide nuance and a bigger picture view, but did so in a somewhat confusing manner, which Edwards and Obama quickly pointed out. This should not actually hurt her, since the actual question was just about the attempt by one state to resolve a problem of unlicensed drivers who fail to get licensed because of their illegal/undocumented status. As she correctly pointed out, comprehensive immigration reform is needed. The public realizes we have a lot of dialog ahead of us before we come to a national consensus on the issues.

I am not sure what should be made of polls where voters say they would never vote for a particular candidate. Some who say that about Hillary, mostly Republicans, obviously mean it. But some Democrats also may be saying it in an attempt to derail her in favor of their preferred nominee. And some Republicans who certainly would not vote for Hillary, may also refuse to vote for a particular Republican nominee for a specific reason, such as Romney being Mormon or Giuliani pro-choice, and thus not vote or vote third party.

Biden and Richardson did not take specific shots at Hillary. Richardson criticized the "holier than thou" personal nature of the attacks. Biden was refreshingly succinct and, though he strongly disagreed with Hillary on the Iran vote, was very diplomatic sounding, perhaps part of a strategy to move his Senate foreign relations experience into the Secretary of State seat, one which he might fill rather well. Some think Richardson, with his Hispanic heritage, diverse background and Gubernatorial experience may be vying for a VP nod. At this point it seems more likely, if Hillary is doing the choosing, Richardson would be her choice, rather than Obama or Edwards.

Don't forget to hand lots of candy out to the trick or treaters tonight. Remember, Congress extended daylight savings time an extra week in part to please candy makers who wanted more time for the annual extortion. And don't forget to change your smoke alarm batteries, as the fire chiefs, encouraged by the battery makers, recommend. You can read all about these two matters in the NY Times.

A Better Way to Choose Our President

2007-10-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

The current method of nominating candidates for the US Presidency is a disgrace. States leap frogging to be first choosers, too many debates with too many participants, and overall chaos mired in huge sums of money all bespeak the need for improvement. Most of us have no opportunity to vote in the primary process until it has already been decided, and if we live in a State that always votes for a particular party which we do not favor, the electoral college makes our vote meaningless. I have a proposal for a better way.

I have previously written about real campaign financing limitations, but what I most strongly advocate is public financing of campaigns, based on a formula tied in to the number of votes cast for a particular political party in the last primary election. Basing the financing on past party votes will also serve as a deterrent to crossover voting in party primaries. The President and Vice-President are the only offices we elect nationally, so the Federal Government should supervise those elections, including at the primary stage. But beyond changing the financing method and supervisory authority, we also need to regulate the actual voting process.

Our choice of President should start from the State level, with a national day of State Presidential Primaries in which voters in each State will be given a separate primary ballot for each political party, with all the candidates being State residents. Voters will then choose one ballot to submit, marking on it the candidate of choice. The top vote getter in each political party will be the party nominee from that State. Each State can set its own rules for financing and debate, but the ballot and election will be according to national standards. This method of State voters nominating State residents respects one of the concepts behind the electoral college, that electors can do a better job if they are more personally aware of the candidates. Indeed, some candidates in this election may actually campaign as endorsers of candidates from other States. This national election day eliminates the nonsense of leapfrogging caucuses and primaries. Each State, regardless of population size, is also given an equal right to nominate one of its own citizens to be President.

The federal government will then produce and distribute DVDs for each political party, in numbers proportionate to the total votes that party received in the State level primaries. The DVDs will contain 5 minute speeches for each candidate indexed alpha by State. From this point on, all financing will be federally regulated. At this stage, there will be no official debates. Most of the action at this time will involve State favorite sons and daughters who are not viable candidates and who have not already endorsed someone else being politicked to endorse someone else, akin to the role supposedly played by the electors of the electoral college.

Two months after the previous election, a National Top Three Primary election will be held, in which voters again select the party ballot of choice, but this time vote in no order of preference for up to three of the fifty candidates, listed alpha by State. This allows a voter to nominate the local favorite, as well as a more viable candidate for now and a hopeful one for the future. The top three vote getters for each party will be their finalists. The results of this election will also be fertile ground for farming VP nominees. After the unaccountable Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney, we should expect our holders of that office to be legitimate Presidential hopefuls and therefore answerable to the American people, and this new process should give us some input in that direction. Over the two months following the Top Three Primary, the federal government will sponsor three official debates for each party’s three finalists, with party expenditure commensurate with votes received by the party in the that election.

After this second two month period, the National Presidential Primary will be held, at which a voter will again choose a party ballot and this time vote for one of the three finalists to be the party nominee. The prevailing nominees will then choose their running mates and a final four month campaign will begin. Four official federally sponsored debates will be held during this time, with the first and third debate including the top two vote getters as well as the third party candidate who received the highest primary vote, but the second and fourth only including the top two. There will also be two debates between the VP candidates, the first including the top three and the second including the top two.

Four elections in eight months may be expecting a lot from an electorate with shamefully low voter turnout, but starting the nominating process in the home State and then giving the opportunity to consider candidates from every State should make voters feel more empowered. Two months into the voting, after the second election, the field for each party will be reduced to three, so there will never be more than three candidates in a debate, yet the third party candidates will play a role by participating in half the debates. Voters will be able to spend the first four months narrowing the field and the last four months focusing on the finalists. State and local governments could coordinate their elections with the national voting days. All four Presidential elections could be conducted efficiently by mail.

The electoral college would have to be abolished as part of this new approach. The smaller States might agree with abolition, since the new process preserves some of their equality, regardless of population.

Cheaters Never Win

2007-10-11T13:57:00.001-07:00

Hang on. My muse has amused me and pointed me in many directions with this theme.

Kids (and grownups) have two ways to play - co-operatively and competitively. The ways can combine, as when team members co-operate to compete with an opposing team. The ways can also conflict, as when a team member is more interested in personal triumph than the good of the team. Kids hear early that “cheaters never win”. It is usually first heard from the mouth of some righteous kid who has just been walloped by a rule breaker. That the rule breaker did in fact win the game of the day is rationalized by the righteous one, who believes if he follows the rules, he will be victorious - some day. Enter religion or Karma or whatever leads one to believe in an afterlife, and today’s loser can be mollified by the thought of the cheater perpetually burning in hell or being re-born as a turd blossom [hmm, so that’s how Karl Rove came to be].

Put the title of this piece in quotes and do a Google search and you get over 60,000 hits. The first is an interesting blog entry from a thoughtful teenager, Megan in Massachusetts, who readily captures the adolescent frustration of bringing childhood idealism into the reality of adulthood. Shakespeare helped me make that transition. In high school, as my Christian beliefs waned, I heard Polonius tell Hamlet, “This above all, to thine own self be true”. To me that meant that the most important rules to follow were those felt in one’s own heart. That worked for me. A good God would not let our hearts mislead us. A rule against the heart is a bad rule and should not be followed, and if that conflicts with the rules made by those in power, then follow the heart and take the consequences. It is better to win in your heart and lose on the field than to win on the field and lose in your heart.

Bartlett’s has surprisingly little cheat quotes to offer.
A pessimistic Dryden in 1676 wrote:
“When I consider life, ‘tis all a cheat;
Yet, fool’d with hope, men favor the deceit;
Trust on and think tomorrow will repay.
Tomorrow’s falser than the former day.”

Cornelius Vanderbilt, in the essential attitude of the robber baron, wrote in 1853 to former business associates, “You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.”

In a somewhat gentler vein, in the early 20th century, Marcel Proust wrote of grief and oblivion in “The Sweet Cheat Gone”, about how people are bound together in the mind, allowing our memories gladly to cheat us into an illusory connection, in spite of the fact that “Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.”

The word cheat comes from the Latin word meaning to fall upon. Our English based legal system early on coined “escheat”, the concept that in the absence of a Will or of heirs, the property of a decedent had to go to someone as a last resort. That “someone” was the King or the Lord of the Manor. Resentment of such Regal or Lordly taking probably led our peasant ancestors to apply the shortened word “cheat” to the taking of anything by unfair advantage. In modern democracies, escheat property goes to everyone, via the government for the benefit of the taxpayers. I had a couple escheat cases in my days of law practice and found the government attorneys to be very receptive to continuing attempts to locate heirs without rushing to declare there were none.

Does the government ever cheat us? Many Republicans today talk like the very concept of government, particularly in the regulation of business and collection of taxes, is a cheat. Many Democrats, and an growing number of Republicans, believe the Bush Administration is cheating people out of our Constitutionally protected rights and liberties. Cheating by Bush should not be a surprise, given his life record of cheating, such as how he jumped ahead on the Air National Guard list, sold his oil stock before the business collapsed and stole the Presidency.

Do we ever cheat our government? Our Federal government estimates we cheat it out of about $350 billion dollars of taxes every year. Many tax cheats wear American flag lapel pins, drive cars with “Support Our Troops” ribbons, and are livid over “illegal aliens” consuming the benefits for which our taxes pay. They secretly rationalize tax cheating by their belief that government taxes and regulations are cheating them. Sound familiar? It should, they are called Republicans. But Republicans have no monopoly on tax fraud. Like young Megan said, “Everybody’s doing it”. Tax cheats seem to be saying that because so many people are cheating, those who pay their taxes in full are really paying extra to make up for the cheaters.

How do you beat a system that is rigged against you? Frustrated computer gamers know that games cheat. The algorithms are stacked against you. To “level the playing field” [1,270,000 Goggle hits], you need a “cheat”. Google for “game cheats” and you’ll get over 4.5 million hits. Cheats seems to trump leveling. In competition you need an “edge”. When you go over the edge, you are cheating. The current sports world is full of stories of cheaters. So is our White House. The current occupant tells us we are in a war against terrorists who want to destroy us, and so we must let our commander-in-chief cheat to protect us. He needs to be able to spy on us, “render” people without warrants or hearings, torture detainees. John McCain does not usually inspire me, but he did when spoke out against America embracing torture, by saying that the knowledge America did not torture was what sustained him during his prisoner of war ordeal.

The credit and insurance industries have been using algorithms that “score” us as a basis for deciding how much to charge us. The validity of these practices has been called into question. I just spent an hour on the phone with my own auto insurer of 40 years, questioning why my perfect driving scores did not prevent a 40% liability premium increase under their new formula. These algorithms may be a form of cheating, or just fuzzy math. In either case, government regulation is starting to address them. In the meantime, certain behavioral modifications can be made to improve a score, without cheating. In a similar vein, the book whose picture adorns this article purports to advise how to honestly break all the dishonest rules to get ahead in business, which two reader/reviewers found helpful, though there are over a quarter of a million books at Amazon which are better sellers.

I do like the idea of paying back an individual cheater, by cheating him, as when a student athlete in college tried to copy my test answer and I purposely wrote the wrong one down and showed him, before I replaced it with the correct answer. As an Air Force paper pusher, I was required to pass a multiple choice test on computer knowledge or else be re-assigned to more physical or dangerous duty. Copies of stolen test answers circulated, but I chose not to avail myself, in part wondering if they were as bogus as the ones I offered the college athlete. Cleverly, the Air Force graded the test on the curve, and whenever the curve started getting quite high, they knew cheating was taking place and would design a new test. So I waited for the new test and took it, giving my best guess answers based on whatever made the high priced computer system sound wonderful. I passed, without studying and without cheating. Those who tested after studying the stolen scores failed.

The trigger for this article was my car trip home from the library on Tuesday morning. As I coasted down the big hill toward home, first one, then a second driver flashed high beam headlights at me. My car has daytime running lights so I thought maybe I had them on bright. As I fiddled with the light lever, I slowed down to examine it more closely. Then when I looked up I saw the motorcycle cop waiting at the next intersection. The hill is a natural speed trap, but my hesitant lever checking, and the warning flashes, saved me from a ticket. Were the other drivers cheating the traffic cop? I’ll choose to say they were just warning me to slow down for safety. In my heart, I know I am a safe driver who does not speed and would not have deserved a ticket, but rather a warning from the officer. I will watch my speed on that hill from now on. I don’t want to skew my score and turn the insurance algorithm against me. I also don’t want an accident to happen.

I saved love for last. Cheating on one’s spouse or lover is the cause of much grief, sometimes not just for the spouse and the cheaters, but also for the whole world. Think Bill and Monica. Unheralded by Bartlett’s, Hank Williams wrote and sung a summary of my feelings on cheating, “Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you”.

Insurance 101

2007-10-03T13:06:00.001-07:00

Today, without his usual egotistical photo op, George W. Bush vetoed a rare bipartisan Congressional bill that would have extended health care benefits to millions of children in America. Bush easily realized that posing for pictures with a sick child without medical coverage and with the parents who will be bankrupted by having to pay the medical expenses would not be good for the Bush “legacy”.

Drawing on the cold war era specter of the communist menace, Bush called the measure another step toward “socialized medicine”. Bush also said the government should not extend to middle class children health care protections intended only for poor children. This is the same middle class that Bush fooled into supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthy, by telling them they too would receive a tax break. Now the middle class realizes the annual tax break they got is not enough to pay for even one month’s medical insurance, and Bush is protecting the wealth of the rich from the menace of "socialism" at the expense of middle class families.

In the first year of law school I learned how the medieval legal system saw that risks such as a house fire could result in a loss not only for the initial victim, but also for the neighbors to whose homes the fire spread. Suing the initial victim was ineffective, since the losses to all the neighbors would exceed the ability of the first homeowner to pay. Legal minds then realized that the solution to this problem was to spread the risk of fire loss throughout the community - and thus the concept insurance was born.

Everyone agrees the solution to paying for health care is insurance. Health problems,like fire, can strike anyone. Insurance spreads the risk of paying for individual health problems among the greater population. All insureds are protected against medical expense and are pleased to know we are all helping each other by pooling our resources. In virtually all the rest of the world, this most fundamental risk, the expense of a health problem, is efficiently insured against through a universal single payer system, provided by the best manifestation of the community will, the national government. But in America, because of the outdated red scare, and because of the political money spent by special interests who make huge sums on the present system, our simple attempt to spread the risk like the rest of the world, is blocked.

Congress can override a Bush veto if 15 more House Republicans change their vote. If not,once a Democrat is in the White House, this legislation can be passed again and signed by the new President, much like Bill Clinton did for the family medical leave act that the first Bush had vetoed. To the Bush family, protecting family values means protecting the valuable wealth of their rich crony families, but does not mean helping all the rest of the American families meet their health care needs.

September Miscellany

2007-09-25T11:47:00.001-07:00

Here are some thoughts at the end of September.

Most Americans wish someone would push the fast forward button to January, 2009, so we can see George W. Bush kicked back to Texas. Pundits agree Hillary has been running a flawless campaign and will likely be the Democratic nominee. She has been impressively competent. Once her nomination becomes reality, the selection of her running mate will be the hot topic. Obama would be an exciting choice for his freshness and a wise one to enable his seasoning and preparation to be the successor.

Today Bush is threatening a veto of a bi-partisan act to expand the federal subsidy of health insurance coverage for children. Even the insurance industry favors the expansion, but Bush says he will stick to his mission to stop government spending. The expanded coverage would cost $35 billion over five years, the same amount of our tax money Bush is spending every six months in Iraq. I think the nation is finally realizing that the “free market” has never been able to provide universal health care and that a Medicare type program is needed to provide insurance coverage for everyone.

Also today, the Iranian President and Bush both address the UN General Assembly. Reminds me of the movie, “Dumb and Dumber”. The UN will keep Iran in check, because the Security Council members with veto power all want that. The US makes the most noise, but China’s position is the key to getting things done.

At the UN, Bush verbally attacks the military junta which has ruled Myanmar for 19 years. Like the Iranian President, Bush likes to hear himself talk. But China is the major player in what is happening in Myanmar. The military government of that country is being restrained by Chinese pressure from cracking down on the protestors who are now emboldened. Maybe some progress will be made on starting to free that nation from the hold of its oppressive regime.

The new PBS series on WWII documents the overwhelming magnitude of the death and devastation of that War, particularly as it fell on civilians, starting with the blitz of London, progressing through the fire bombing of Germany and ending with the Atomic bombing of Japan. The axis powers had delusions of grand imperial expansion and the vast majority of their civilian populations, with the possible exception of Italy, were wildly supportive. Think of the Bush program pushed in 2003 to spread democracy to the world and of all the cars driving around with American flags and yellow ribbons and you begin to get the idea.

In many invaded and occupied countries during WWII, civilian patriots fought the invaders and resisted the occupiers by whatever means available. We rightly celebrate their bravery and heroism. Yet in our own time, the Bush administrations has been striving for years to get our courts to adopt the concept that such civilians who oppose our actions should be called “enemy combatants” and forfeit all legal rights to fair treatment under either agreed military conventions or civilian constitutional protections. This effort is correctly seen worldwide as a shame on America.

We learned a lot from WWII. Ken Burns, the producer of the PBS series, was rightly concerned that we may have forgotten those lessons and that we have failed to teach them to our younger generations. The UN, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, bona fide international legal tribunals, international regulation of atomic energy and the peaceful resolution of disputes between nations were all needs that were addressed and met after the end of the War. America, the chief advocate for world peace following WWII, has sadly in the last couple decades, through the Republican Party and especially under George W. Bush, seemed to be working to undermine institutions of international peace.

Back on the home front, a somewhat unexpected strike by the United Auto Workers has once again put needed attention on our beleaguered auto industry and the insecurity of employer provided pension benefits. Our auto maker corporations ignore the simple fact that they make crappy cars and instead blame their financial woes on being saddled with retiree pension costs. The union wants to take the pension responsibility off the auto maker hands, which makes a lot of sense to me. The auto makers should just turn the pension funds over to the union to manage and then stop whining about the cost. Whatever it costs them they can write off, let the stockholders eat any loss, and then move on to 401k type plans with no guarantees. Of course, this would mean giving up the option of escaping current pension promises by filing bankruptcy. Moving the pensions to union control, forgetting about bankruptcy tricks and focusing on building better cars is what needs to be done to keep American cars competitive. We should build American cars so good the Chinese people will want to buy them instead of waiting for their government to enable the building of good Chinese cars. We could follow the example of the deal Japan and the US made, and build a negotiated number of American cars in China as a condition to be allowed to sell even more of our cars over there.

What to Read in Jail

2007-09-14T10:20:00.001-07:00

There is no need for a comment here on the Congressional testimony of the General and the Ambassador and the Bush speech about the war in Iraq. All this dog and pony show was quite easy to predict, as I did here in July in “Filibustering Iraq”.

What caught my attention this week was an interesting article in the NY Times about the Standardized Chapel Library Project, a program under which the Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons decides what religious books make it into prison libraries. Concerned that some religious books might incite violence, this censorship project took the unusual approach of not just banning books deemed dangerous, but instead banning all religious books except for those on an approved list. Apparently the secret experts identified twenty religions or religious categories and then arbitrarily chose particular books and other media to represent each category.

Typical of the Bush Administration in general and the Justice Department in particular, the approved list has not been publicized, and the standards used for selection as well as the names of the persons who adopted the standards have been kept secret. This calls to mind the self-censorship used by the Motion Picture Association of America, whose ubiquitous film ratings, in what would be a total surprise to most Americans, are also made by secret panels applying non-published standards. An excellent documentary about the MPAA ratings sham, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”, is definitely worth watching.

The Times article mentions the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There is also a subsequently passed Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. As the previous Wikipedia links to these articles indicate, the Acts were passed in 1993 and 2000, in an attempt to clarify or modify Court rulings on conflicts between religious rights and general societal interests. I don’t recall any public dialog at the time these laws were passed. Particularly now, after the 9/11 religious fanatic attacks, with America embroiled in the middle of a religious was in Iraq and with a disastrous Presidency enabled by a religiously motivated voter base which disregards our Constitution, we need to have a significant dialog about the place of religion in our own lives, in our country and in the world. The next Democratic Presidential administration could play a significant role in encouraging such discussions, publicly and with all views welcome.

The trampling of prisoner religious reading rights has prompted the expected class action lawsuit, succinctly covered in this blog entry from Melissa Rogers. I expect the prison censorship project to be ruled unconstitutional. As in the film on the MPAA ratings, a major point of interest is who are the people on the secret panel. The assumption regarding the movie raters, since the ratings supposedly exist to guide parents, is that the raters would be concerned parents. But it turns out the panelists were mostly people involved in the film distribution business, using the ratings system to assist distribution of their own films while encumbering distribution of independent films. Perhaps the same will be revealed about the Standardized Chapel Library Project - the secret panel may be composed of religious book publishers and distributors.

Wars and Presidents

2007-09-05T13:08:00.001-07:00

Wars make Presidents and Presidents make wars.

Our first American President was the general who led us to Revolutionary War victory. Service in the War of 1812 helped Andrew Jackson win the 1820 election. The War with Mexico was Zachary Taylor’s ticket to the White House. U.S. Grant led the Union Army to victory and rode that to the Presidency. Teddy Roosevelt led the charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, which added a military credential to his Presidential campaigns. After the first World War, General Pershing hinted he might be willing to become President, but his close wartime alignment with President Wilson made Republicans wary of him, and Democrats knew Pershing was a Republican at heart - as are most Generals. General MacArthur had Presidential aspirations following WWII, but Truman firing him during the Korean War confirmed MacArthur’s time had passed and Eisenhower was the heir apparent to be anointed President.

War time Presidents get re-elected, but there are fewer of them than one might expect, only four, of whom three did not get over 55% of the popular vote. Lincoln got 55%, Roosevelt 53.4%, Lyndon Johnson 61% (by convincing voters his opponent, Goldwater, was trigger happy with nukes), and Bush II got a very marginal 50.7%. [If you are into numerology, maybe you can make something of the fact these re-election years all ended in a 4, 1864, 1944, 1964 and 2004]. The first two re-electees “won” their wars, while the last two could not deliver the victory they promised. Woodrow Wilson has the distinction of getting re-elected on a campaign slogan of having kept us out of the World War, while then getting us into it after his electoral victory.

Our Generals in the Vietnam War spent their post-war years defending against the legacy of their blunders, rather than sending out hopeless Presidential feelers. The Gulf War gave some Presidential credence to General Schwartzkopf, who did not pursue it, and then to Colin Powell who settled for Secretary of State. Wes Clark sought a Presidential nomination in 2004, but his military leadership had been in relatively unknown encounters, and he confused everyone by being a rare General running as a Democrat.

With two of our last three significant war adventures being shambles, maybe Americans have learned that wars don’t really make Presidents. Bush II has certainly reminded us that Presidents can make wars on false pretenses. Now we need to learn to how to solve problems without making war.

Bush in Bellevue

2007-08-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

No, not the psychiatric hospital in New York, though a visit there for evaluation would be interesting. Bush flew into Sea-Tac Airport then motorcaded up I-405 to Bellevue, the Seattle suburb, for a quick fund raiser for his local stooge, Congressman Reichert. Air Force One and the costly entourage popped in for a couple hours, with local taxpayers incurring further costs for Presidential security, including 200 officers to block the freeway ramps.

Bush is so unpopular and so intent on immunity from criticism that much of his security protection is actually designed to protect him from having to see any protestors. Wherever Bush goes, huge areas of insulation are maintained for lengthy periods of time. With typical Republican insensitivity for the average citizen, the event was scheduled during the afternoon commute and I-405 was totally closed for two forty-five minute blocks of time. The dinner could have been held at one of the many available locations near Sea-Tac airport, or at a time outside the commute hours, but the Republican attitude about what stalled commuters should do seems to echo Marie Antoinette - “let them eat cake”.

The Bellevue event was a $1,000 per plate dinner attended by 300 Republican fat cats, 20 of whom paid an additional $10,000 to have a personal picture taken with Bush [there’s 20 more candidates for psychiatric evaluation]. Reichert decided a quick half a million was worth it, even though his smiling picture with Bush was effectively used against him last time around.

Bye Bye Berto

2007-08-28T20:31:00.001-07:00

Good riddance Alberto Gonzales. Your story of rising from humble beginnings is as American as apple pie. But when you absolutely attached yourself to George W. Bush, you sold your soul, your integrity, your competence and most disastrously, you sold out America and the American Constitution. You exit saying your worst day as Attorney General was better than your father’s best day, invoking the memory of his immigrant worker struggle. But if your father had lived to see your pathetic disservice to America, he might well have said his worst day was your best day as Attorney General.

Rove Goes Roving

2007-08-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove, known as “Bush’s Brain”, “The Architect” and my favorite, “Turd Blossom”, is going to be leaving the Bush Administration in the next couple weeks. The reasons for his exit have been the subject of much speculation, in which I now join.

Rove is one of those intelligent nerds from a semi-privileged background who follow an all-white life path, without any blue collar life experience, reacting against the politics of other white people who actually care about all people and want to see government work for everybody, not just for the white, privileged rich. The place of natural fit for these reactionaries is the right wing of the Republican party and the associated ultra-conservative think tanks. PBS did an excellent Frontline show, which is viewable on line, covering Rove’s background and history of activities.

Rove rose to prominence by developing his skill at campaign dirty tricks and at misdirecting attention from the true issues and keeping opponents from discussing them. After riding into the White House with George Bush, Rove became a major center of attention, in spite of his preference for secrecy. By the 2006 election, the majority of the public was on to Rove, and after Democrats took control of Congress, the investigatory heat was turned on high.

Rove is leaving because of the heat and because of his failure to deliver in 2006, but in spite of the fact no Republicans have embraced him since his exit announcement, he will remain active in politics. Obviously he will write one or more garbage books and he will deliver loads of hogwash speeches to organizations stupid enough to pay his fee. But his immediate mission will most likely be to lead a major attack on Hillary Clinton, especially once she becomes the Presidential nominee of the Democrats as Rove expects. Rove will be funded, not by the Republican nominee or even by the Republican party, but by soft reactionary front money, such as was used in the Swift Boat ads against Kerry. Putting one of his cronies in the US attorney chair in Little Rock was part of the Rove strategy against Hillary, to start investigative spectacles designed to discourage voters from electing another Clinton and putting America through another Starr like inquisition.

Though Rove is returning to private life, his activities, past and future, will actually become more public. As Democrats gain the White House and as those who embraced Rove are further removed from power, more people will talk about the Rove secrets, more evidence will be discovered about the travesties of Rove and the Bush administration, and more people who barely tolerated Rove will turn against him. Hopefully he will be hounded, harassed, investigated and embroiled in litigation for the rest of his life. He deserves nothing better.

2008 Republican Senatorial Vulnerabilities

2007-08-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

In the 2008 election, 33 U.S. Senate seats will be voted on, plus one special election in Wyoming to replace the incumbent Republican who died earlier this year. One Republican Senator, Allard of CO is not running for re-election; he was elected in 2002 with only 51% of the vote. In all, 22 seats, presently held by Republicans are up for grabs. They are shown in Red on the map above. Which ones are vulnerable, giving hope for Democrats to achieve a filibuster free Congress?

The CO seat is a definite prospect. The special election in WY has no elected incumbent, but the State usually goes Republican. Here are some prospects to keep an eye on, the Republican incumbents who received the smallest winning percentages in their 2002 election:

MN - Coleman -50%
CO - Allard retiring - 51%
NH - Sununu - 51%
OK - Inhofe 52%
GA - Chambliss - 53%
NC - Dole - 54%
SC - Graham - 54%
TN - Alexander - 54%
TX - Cornyn - 55%
OR - Smith - 56%

If the mood of the country still favors the Democrats at election time, and if strong candidates are fielded to challenge for these seats, there is hope. Some of the 12 Democrats up for Senate re-election, shown in blue on the map, also had slim margins in their 2002 wins, but a pro-Democrat mood favors them. Death or retirements before the election could complicate the picture, but for now, these are the contests to watch.

Who Is to Blame?

2007-08-03T15:39:00.001-07:00

The catastrophe known as the Bush administration will continue until the new President and Congress take over in January, 2009. The US Senate does not have the numbers to force anything significant, unless 9 of the 49 Republicans join their votes with the 49 Democrats and 2 Independents.

In the 2004 Presidential election, 31 States enabled Bush to continue his disastrous regime. Only the Northeast, West Coast, Hawaii and parts of the upper Midwest voted to dump him. By the 2006 election, it was clear that change was needed and 6 Republican Senators were dumped, in PA, VA, MT, RI, MO and OH. But 9 Senate seats stayed in Republican hands in the 2006 election, AZ, NV, UT, WY, TX, MS, IN, ME, all re-elected incumbents, and TN replaced the retiring Frist with Republican Corker. Maine is the only one of the 9 States that voted to dump Bush in 2004. So here is my list of who is to blame, in reverse order, for the continuation of the degradation of America:

10. Voters in the 31 Bush States who voted for 3rd party candidates in the 2004 Presidential election.
9. Voters in the 9 States where Republicans held a Senate seat who voted for 3rd party candidates in the 2006 election.
8. Those who fall into both categories 10 and 9.
7. Non-voters in elections in the 9 States where Republicans held a Senate seat in 2006.
6. Non-voters in the elections in the 31 States that went for Bush in 2004.
5. Those who fall into both categories 7 and 6.
4. Voters in CT who returned Lieberman to the Senate in 2006, rather than voting for the Democrat.
3. Voters who voted for a Republican in the 9 States where Republicans held a Senate seat in 2006.
2. Voters who voted for Bush in the 31 States he was awarded in 2004.
And the people most to blame,
1. Voters in AZ, NV, UT, WY, TX, MS, IN and TN, who voted for Bush in 2004 and a Republican for the Senate in 2006.

The above list does not blame those who voted for Democrats. But what of one prominent Democrat who was re-elected to the Senate after voting to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq? Hillary Clinton has her pat answer when she is asked to explain that vote, saying she did not expect Bush would abuse the power. What I would like to ask her is why she did not heed the warning of the prominent Democrats in the Senate who voted against the force authorization. Their reasons for voting no, previously posted here at Sense, showed their foresight, wisdom and courage.

The yes vote of Hillary still causes me to question the motives behind it. I know she is smart enough to see what those who voted no saw, but I think she calculated she had to vote yes in order to keep her Presidential aspirations alive, particularly if somehow Iraq did manage to turn out well. Obviously she would be in better shape on this issue now if she had voted against the authorization. There was also a sort of middle ground. She could have paid respect to the professed views of the naysaying Senators, said it was a very close call for her and that she was reluctantly voting for the authorization and hoping that Bush would rise to the occasion and do the right thing - sort of what she is now saying.

Obama has the advantage of saying he was opposed to the War, without having the burden of actually having been in the Senate at the time of the vote. Edwards has taken a principled position, admitting his vote was wrong, but the fact he did something he now admits was wrong causes concern over his judgment. As to blame for the Iraq fiasco, because they both voted for the authorization, Clinton and Edwards should be put in the equivalent of category 2 above.

But the blame discussed above is of the enabling variety. The personal blame still falls squarely on the Bush administration in general and on “the decider”. George W. Bush, in particular.

Bush Head Located

2007-07-21T10:11:00.001-07:00

This morning, George W. Bush, who has a history of colon polyps, had another colonoscopy done and some more polyps were removed. Under the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, Bush transferred the powers of the Presidency to Dick Cheney for about two hours. Since that Amendment was adopted after the Kennedy assassination, this is the third time it has been used. Bush did it once before during a 2002 colon screening, and Reagan did it once to Bush I during a surgery.

History may eventually reveal secret abuses by Cheney during his brief reigns. But of more current interest are the credible rumors that with this colonoscopy, Bush’s head, the whereabouts of which have long been in question, has been located.

Filibustering Iraq

2007-07-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

The Republican minority blocking Senate voting on Democrat proposals for pulling back American involvement in Iraq is using a filibuster to prevent action being taken. Under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to force a vote on such a proposal, and there may actually be enough Republicans who agree with the Democrats to reach that number. But some of these Republicans, supposedly out of respect for the Senate rules on unlimited “debate” and in loyalty to Senate Republican leaders and to Bush, are not willing to let the proposals come to a vote. It is also possible that some of these Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouth, telling their constituents that they are opposed to this unpopular war, but telling party leaders they actually continue to support it.

Filibusters have no constitutional basis; they are solely a creation of Senate rules. The Senate indulges a fantasy of being a wise deliberative body which makes decisions only after extensive debate. The reality is that Senators all have strong ideological views and there is little Senatorial deliberation or debate. Compromises and vote trading (known as log rolling) are the ways close legislation gets passed. Filibusters can be rationalized in two ways. The first is that a minority position on an issue may be held with such a depth of conviction that the minority could not in good conscience and as a matter of principle ever allow the position to be lost. This rationale implies that today’s majority understands that they might be tomorrow’s minority, and therefore respects the minority filibuster right out of enlightened self-interest.

The number of filibusters (and threats of filibusters, which can be just as effective) has increased because many Senators now claim deep convictions, better consciences and stronger principles - at least as a legislative tool. This points out the second rationale for the filibuster, that it is simply a super-majority requirement that can be employed at will. While the first rationale might arguably have some heroic imagery such as Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, the more accurate picture is of a Southern Senator protecting Jimmy Crow from civil rights legislation. [This short US Senate article notes the historic 1964 vote ending the filibuster of the civil rights bill, the last speaker in opposition to the legislation being Senator Byrd from West Virginia, who is still sitting in the Senate].

The filibuster, like terrorism, is a tactic. In fact the word traces back to the Dutch and basically means piracy. The House of Representatives very early adopted rules limiting debate in order that matters could be brought to a vote. The Senate should do the same. The Constitution has sufficient checks and balances to protect the legislative process including: House member being concerned for re-election every two years; Senators being more insulated from the polls by six year terms; both chambers having to agree on legislation to be sent to the President; Presidential veto power, requiring 2/3 vote of both chambers to overturn; and Supreme Court review to determine constitutionality.

The current debate over the Iraq occupation is being delayed by Senate filibuster, but the real delay on Iraq comes from the White House. Even if the Senate had no filibuster and both chambers agreed on a measure to send the President, he would veto it. Since the Vice-President has no elective aspirations, there is no pressure from him to make the President do what the people want. (One of the many negative lessons from the Bush-Cheney years is the danger of having both a lame duck President and Vice-President; it might be advisable to always have a Vice-President with elective ambitions). There is not going to be a 2/3 majority in either chamber to overturn a Bush veto, because as unpopular as the occupation of Iraq is and as many more of our soldiers die and as much more of our money is wasted on the fiasco, not enough Americans are willing to threaten their Representatives and Senators with voting them out of office. If those being killed included draftees, the threats to Congress might be great enough to bring an overturn and maybe even to prevent a veto in the first place. Another lesson might be that any future Congressional authorization of the use of military force include a requirement that a significant percentage of those in combat must be draftees.

As stated here before, I believe the occupation of Iraq will continue much the same as now, until Bush is out of office. General Petraeus is not going to say his plan is a failure or he failed in executing it. Bush will not become reasonable. Congress will not force change through legislation and veto overturn. The American people have turned their attention to who will be the next President, and are not willing to force Congress to end the occupation, perhaps because they believe that even if Congress joined the people in telling Bush to end the occupation, Bush would continue to defy Congress and the people - and impeachment would take about as long as Bush has left.

Executive Privilege

2007-07-12T16:09:00.001-07:00

There is nothing in the US Constitution specifically giving the President or Vice-President a privilege from having to disclose to Congress information regarding advice received. There has been little claim of such privilege throughout our history and little litigation of the subject resulting in any Court guidance. The most famous case was against Nixon during Watergate, and the Court agreed such a privilege arises inherently from the nature of the executive office, but that the privilege is quite limited. I have not researched the case law or scholarly discussions of the privilege, but I do want to comment on a fundamental premise in the Nixon case and on two examples of claimed executive privilege from the Bush-Cheney administration - the secret Cheney energy task force and the replacement of US Attorneys.

The premise stated by the Court in the Nixon case was, “experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decision making process.” Let’s look at that premise more closely. The Court says that advisers may be more concerned about themselves and how they will look than with giving honest advice to help the decision making process reach the best possible result. Any adviser with such a concern is not a worthwhile adviser in my opinion. One of the many failings of George W. Bush is that he overwhelmingly picks worthless advisers, people who share his self-interests and are loyal to him and who give him the advice he wants to hear. Bush is unwilling to listen to candid advice contrary to what he wants to hear. Bush goes through the charade of getting advice, because he is smart enough to realize people know he is not well informed or particularly bright. Cheney is well-informed and bright, to the point of believing he needs no advice. Part of his self-assigned role is to undermine any candid Bush advisers who disagree with his program of running our government in his own interest, by being the ultimate and final adviser to Bush.

So why did Cheney even have a secret energy task force if he seeks no advice? The Court has not yet required any disclosure, so we can only speculate. My best guess is that the task force was a meeting of energy corporate powers to decide on how our government would be used to allow those powers as many gains as possible at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. They were deciding how to divide the large pie the Bush administration was giving them, and Cheney was in charge and fully expecting to receive his cut.

And what about the replacement of US Attorneys? It is becoming quite obvious the replacement was intended to politicize these positions, effectively having Republican operatives using the Justice Department to protect fellow Republicans and to target Democrats. Most significant is the Karl Rove crony who was slipped into the Arkansas post in order to use that office to investigate Hilary Clinton if she gets the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Congress has the right and duty to keep the executive branch in line. The secret Cheney energy task force apparently served no legitimate advisory function needing to be protected by executive privilege. Maybe some day, unless barred by the statute of limitations, a criminal case will be brought seeking information on that task force, in which case the claim of privilege would be weaker because of the possibility of crimes having been committed.

The Congressional inquiry into the US Attorney replacements has been criticized by Republicans as political, but the underlying matter being investigated appears to have been political, so any investigation of political dealings will of course also seem political. Part of the reason for continuing this inquiry is to bring deserved embarrassment on the Bush Administration. The plot to turn the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party is another example of how much Karl Rove has done to ruin our system of government and how incompetent Alberto Gonzales and his young stable of sycophants were in carrying out this particular scheme.

A considered decision made after receiving candid advice from divergent sources does not need to be shielded from inquiry by a claim of executive privilege. Such a decision and the process leading to it will give it legitimacy. By contrast, decisions made overwhelmingly for the benefit of special interests, like how to deceptively reward corporate energy powers, and decisions made for wrongful political reasons and with incompetent advice, like how to politicize a non-political Department of our government, are the kind for which executive privilege gets claimed but for which it should not be allowed.

Scoot Gets a Commute

2007-07-04T17:20:00.001-07:00

The actual surprises in Bush commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby are subtle. The biggest one is that anyone would be surprised that Libby, a powerful member of the insider club and a loyal sycophant to Cheney-Bush, would be given a get out of jail free card.

An earlier apparent surprise, from back in the trial phase, was that Scooter was claiming he was a fall guy for Cheney, and he would be calling Cheney as a witness. That was his opening pitch to the jury, that he was going to show Cheney was behind the Plame outing and left Scooter holding the bag. But that defense was ignored in the trial itself, Cheney was not called, Scooter's defense was reduced to “I’m a busy guy and can’t remember who I talked to or what I said”, and he was convicted of perjury and obstruction. Some pundits wondered back then whether a deal had been struck by Scooter to drop the Cheney angle in return for a guaranteed pass on jail time. No need to wonder any longer.

Another surprise is that some apparently sincere conservative commentators, who should have enough sense to know better, actually think Scooter got a raw deal and should be pardoned, though they are satisfied with the commutation for now. I suppose this shows these people either are not sincere, or really don’t know better, or both.

The commutation of just the prison time might be considered unexpected, though further reflection shows it is a clever obfuscation of the type the Bush advisors continuously devise. To the less discerning, a commutation seems like a reasoned compromise when compared to a pardon. But unlike a pardon, commutation makes it harder for the prosecutor to force Scooter to testify under immunity if the prosecutor wants to pursue the Plame outing case further. The probation portion of the sentence may fall by the wayside or be converted to a token, since there does not seem to be a recognized federal procedure for handling probation when a sentence is commuted. The fine will be paid or reimbursed by right wing donors.

As for the lasting consequences of not being pardoned, I expect those to last only until the final days Bush is in office. Speaking of pardons, here is the biggest surprise to me. The Libby commutation is being compared by many to the Clinton pardon of international fugitive Marc Rich, for which Clinton continues to receive immense criticism - and the attorney who helped Rich obtain that pardon was none other than “Scooter” Libby.

The Political Pendulum

2007-06-30T11:34:00.001-07:00

The announcement this week of more decisions of the US Supreme Court by its 5-4 conservative majority confirmed that the Chief Justice Roberts has not been able to bring the Justices to a wider consensus. The Court seems to be even more divided than ever in its opinions, with four conservatives and four liberals and one swing man who leans toward conservative. Bush appointee Alito surprised no one with the extent of his conservatism, willingly striking more to the political right than even the late Justice Rehnquist. But Roberts is a true disappointment. Not only has he failed as a consensus builder and voted consistently with the political right wing point of view, but he also has shown a shocking willingness to discard legal precedent, incrementally rather than wholesale, but nevertheless in large increments.

Hope for more sensible majority opinions from the Court now rests on Justice Kennedy, who has taken over the middle role formerly played by Sandra Day O’Connor. But while the Court conservatives are voting to change precedent in large steps, Kennedy only seems willing to reduce the length of their strides rather than change the direction they are taking. Since the conservatives on the Court are also the youngest Justices, liberals who believe in an intervening God may need to pray for intervention. A prayer for change of conservative legal hearts would be nice, but a plea for conservative heart stoppage during the coming Democratic Presidency would be more direct.

Bush has kicked the political pendulum far to the right. The momentum has slowed greatly and now started to turn, most noticeably last fall with the Democrats gaining a slim majority in Congress. Democrat led Congressional oversight hearings have given cover to previously timid journalists, with resulting deeper disclosures of the secrecy, corruption and incompetency of the Bush administration. The American majority has gagged on the Bush effort to undermine Social Security, soured on the Iraq fiasco and been repulsed by the Bush embrace of torture and domestic spying. With a few exceptions, Republicans in Congress, fearing unsuccessful re-election races, are not openly resisting the change of direction, though they still are dragging their feet.

The next measurement of political pendulum movement takes place in November 2008, when Americans are expected to choose a Democrat for President. The movement toward Democrats could include holding onto Congress. It would be great if it went so far as to produce the needed 60 Democrats in the Senate to block Republican filibusters, though that is about as far as the Congressional pendulum ever swings.

But what about the underlying long range American pendulum swing? Unfortunately, in many ways since the 1970s, the movement has been toward the right wing, propelled by corporate funding and religious and racial exploitation. In limited areas, public sentiment has leaned left, but overall right wing momentum has prevailed. Consider this list of subjects.

Abortion - Though public opinion has been more accepting of reproductive rights, political action has not reflected that acceptance.

Capital Punishment - Like abortion, political reality is more to the right of public opinion.

Corporations - In spite of all they bad things they do, their money buys political power and public relations, and much of the voting public has at least token stock ownership through 401k plans, so corporations, quintessentially right wing, continue to enjoy unwarranted favoritism and influence.

Democracy - Money has undermined our democratic foundations. The Bush Administration came to power by trampling on voters rights and has continued the process under the guise of preventing voter fraud. Targeting black voters lower on the socio-economic scale has added insult to the injury, but not particularly in the eyes of white America.

Economics - The economic gap has widened with such debacles as the Bush tax giveaways to the rich and the huge increases in the national debt and trade deficits. Americans have fallen for the overextended credit mirage of wealth, and now the false image is starting to disappear. As more middle Americans fall into the financial hole and get abused by the Bush bankruptcy “reform” thumb screws, the opportunity to move economics back toward justice will improve.

Education - A truly educated electorate is a threat to right wing momentum, which is why the right continues to undercut public education. A credible movement for educational excellence in America has yet to emerge.

Environment - Great hope lies in the strange bedfellows of brilliantly practical environmentalists and sensibly realistic business leaders. Such partnerships, based on mutual acceptance of scientific reality, common appreciation of the wonders of nature and recognition of the economic benefits of wise environmental policies, can be the basis for significant improvement, especially once Bush is gone.

Health - We need better health insurance, and also better health. Partnerships of legitimate stakeholders like unions, employers and health care providers can bring significant improvements. The villainsous insurers, advertisers and drug companies, need to be regulated out of illegitimate influence. Hillary Clinton may have the knowledge and connections to generate movement in the correct direction.

Homosexuality - This hot button issue swings similar to abortion.

Immigration - Our nation of immigrants remains deeply conflicted about how much to close the door in the face of new arrivals, and especially about what to do with the millions that were encouraged to sneak in by employers seeking to cut wages of American workers.

Journalism - Right wing money continues to pervert and pressure the media, but the excesses of the Bush years provide an opportunity for the re-emergence of some respectable journalism.

Labor - Unions continue moribund, except for government employees. Some rumblings of fresh approaches within the labor movement are encouraging. The exit of Bush probably marks the farthest limit of the movement against labor.

Race - The Roberts Court has given new energy to the right wing racially reactive movement. On the personal level, Bush caused Colin Powell to embarrass himself, blinded Condoleezza Rice to reality and proved Alberto Gonzales to be just an empty suit. New Orleans shows just how unimportant the situation of poor black Americans is in the eyes of the rest of the country.
White American concern over the browning of America is a major factor in the immigration debate.

Religion - Republican embrace of evangelicals has at least slowed and maybe even stopped the right wing endorsed merger of church and state, but the Roberts Court will probably prevent any change in direction back to more separation.

Sex - Hypocrisy continues as corporate money exploits sex for profits, while supporting right wing Republicans who use sex as a political wedge issue. Our unhealthy sex obsessions are like the forest which we cannot see because of focusing on one Super Bowl breast.

UN - As the pendulum of the Iraq fiasco in Iraq has flown back to hit Bush in the face, Americans have reason for new respect for the UN.

War - Once again, we have been schooled that war is rarely a valid solution. As Pete Seeger memorably sang, “When will we ever learn?” For a while now, we will be less likely to Sabre rattle.

Women - Hillary’s run confirms the capability of powerful women, but women on the lower end of the economic scale remain largely underpowered.

Patience and Suffering

2007-06-23T09:07:00.001-07:00

I just spent the better part of the week trying to replace our simple home network which attaches two computers to the internet. The old network router broke when Comcast was guiding me over the phone to make a cable service change. Having failed several times to get the router back in service, I did some research and came up with the idea of installing a much simpler switch. After much frustration trying to install it, I learned that simple switches will not work with Comcast cable (something the Comcast people did not seem to know, but the India based support tech for the switch company did).

More research led to the purchase of a different brand of replacement router, which I could not get to work with our system. Comcast and both router companies kept me on a wild goose chase, each blaming the problem on the next company. I’ll skip the agonizing details of the ordeal, since we all have had similar horror stories.

This experience reminded me what is wrong with American business and, in a related way, with America. Minimally regulated monopolies like Comcast try to steal turf from similar monopolies; Comcast is currently trying to steal phone and satellite dish customers. Meanwhile Comcast is ignoring the opportunity to sell home networking services to their existing customers. Their support people quickly tell customers that Comcast is responsible only up to the modem, and that any problem with network routers is “not their problem”. Likely more than half of Comcast customers have a home network or could benefit by having one. Comcast could be providing a worthwhile home networking service and making money in the process, but fails to see the need and opportunity.

Wondering for the umpteenth time why the original router stopped working, I re-installed it again and verified it was defective. Then I called son Anthony for moral support and for encouragement to maybe buy a new computer and start fresh. But “Voila!” - after being on the phone for several minutes, and with the router staying on, the device suddenly figured out what it was supposed to be doing and started doing it correctly. It was not broken; I had just not given it enough time to get back in full operation. The whole ordeal had been caused by my impatience.

The word “patience” comes from the Latin word for suffering, not in the sense of enduring pain, but rather in the sense of allowing things to happen. Think Mark 10:14, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.” Buddha saw suffering, in the painful sense, as the first noble truth, “Life means suffering”.

Impatience sometimes causes needless suffering. My impatient escalation of a minor problem reminded me of the American inclination toward impatience. At the beginning of our nation, the Revolutionary War was started in part due to our impatience with King George. Over two centuries later, George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in part due to his impatience with the UN arms inspection process. The Revolutionary War lasted many years and required patience to endure, which the American colonists had, while King George and his people ran out of patience. The Iraq occupation also requires patience to endure, which most of the American people do not have, but which most of the people in Iraq do. George Bush, so impatient to start the War, has now been preaching patience during the occupation. Fortunately, he is not King George and we will be rid of him in January 2009.

America has spent too much effort in surrogate turf wars supposedly to gain advantage over enemies, like the communists in the cold war and now the terrorists in the so-called war on terror, and too little effort on meeting the needs of our own people, like health care and economic justice. Two notable failures in the 20th Century led to wonderful American initiatives. The economic failure causing the Great Depression prompted the New Deal, and the diplomatic failure causing World War II prompted the U.S. led rebuilding of Europe and Japan and the creation of the UN. The New Deal taught Americans that we need to work together to solve national problems. We then applied that lesson after World War II, working with Europe and Japan on their reconstruction and with the entire world community on establishing the UN. Once we are rid of Bush, America should work to attain the cessation of suffering here at home, and then use that experience to help attain the end of suffering worldwide.

Choices -Finale-People

2007-06-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

We possess varying skills at dealing with people, physical objects and abstract information like data and ideas. My skill with physical objects is quite limited, with abstracts appreciably higher and with people somewhere in the middle. I am on the line between introvert and extrovert, inclining toward the former; or maybe more accurately I can be a people person when I have to. When I make the effort with people, I can really get into it, but after the experience is over, I often welcome solitude.

My Mom was definitely a people person and I liked being around her. Step-dad was a solitary type, one of the few exceptional times being his brief social period of alcoholic intoxication before passing out. I disliked being around him. Like many siblings, my brother and I had enjoyable times together as well as times of conflict. Three years age difference meant different traveling circles. The passing of time sobered and mellowed step-dad and brought brothers closer, but sadly took Mom too soon.

We had only one other relative in the Seattle area, an aunt who was like a big sister. Some vacations and holidays were enjoyed with a sprinkling of out of town relatives, but such visits were infrequent. The neighborhood and school were where our people relationships developed. We lived in the same house and attended the same Catholic grade and high school throughout childhood, so changes were generated by the neighbors, classmates and teachers, not by us.

Some kids have imaginary friends. The closest I got was a baseball game I played with marbles as the players. I gave the marbles names based on their physical appearance and then kept statistics like their batting average. The data compilation was the most satisfying part of the game, relating to the marble people was secondary. I still like to play computer sports games and track the stats on my players. One time when my brother got mad at me, he claimed he had two imaginary friends, Oogoo and Jocko, who were going to pour poison in my ear when I was asleep. I didn’t believe they existed, but I still went to sleep with my ears covered. So it is even now with the unseen God I learned about in school. I do not believe, but still feel a tinge of inclination toward ear protection.

During my first couple years of grade school, our neighborhood, which had been slightly mixed ethically, quickly changed into a de facto racial ghetto. I had not yet formed sufficient friendships to miss the fleeing white children. A large and friendly Filipino family remained, as did one other white family with a boy my age. The new “colored” families, as they were called, actually came in a full spectrum of colors. One of my best friends was “colored”, but could have passed for my brother, another was quite dark and a third was about as dark as could be. When the white boy moved, I remember feeling the loss. My passable brother kept in phone contact with our mutual friend and one day told me that the boy had been paralyzed in a diving accident. That made me even sadder, and I felt like I should be doing something about it, but I had no idea what.

I like the way kids meet and make friends. There is a gravity that draws a new kid in and puts a likely pair together. No introductions or match making - it just happens. I have always lacked a natural sense of direction, so am easily lost. Somehow, in first grade I got matched with a class mate who lived only two blocks from me. He had an excellent directional sense, which was great for me, since I lived 16 blocks from school and could walk with him to his house and then manage to find my way home from there. One day I had a problem and Sister made me stay after school. My navigator was hanging out in the doorway and Sister told him he could go home. Fortunately, he understood his role and told Sister that I could not find my way home without him, so she ended my detention. That may be my earliest memory of the value of friendship.

Maybe due to lack of open housing for persons of color, there was very little turnover in our neighborhood after the white flight. I spent much time in neighbor homes and had long childhood friendships with the kids and their parents. But as we kids finished school and started our own jobs and families, we moved away and did not stay in touch, something which has always bothered me. It is one of the dismays of life that those with whom circumstances put us in close association for a period of time (neighbors, classmates, military cohorts, co-workers, clients), usually do not stay in touch once the association ends. Our mothers had Christmas card lists filled with such names. Many mothers of my childhood friends became my legal clients in later years, but the friends rarely did. With bittersweet memories, I wish that I had been enough of a people person to keep in friendly touch with all the close associates I have had at different stages of my life.

Friends sharing joint interests can be called partners, but I think of partnerships more in regard to romantic or business relationships. Privacy and modesty (and at least as much humility) limit my sharing about romantic partners. Like many things in life, concepts of romance differ among individuals, between men and women, and as we age. The thrill of the chase and of the catch sometimes ends in the pain of the miss and of the release. Nothing ventured, nothing gained definitely applies to romantic partnering; never to have tried and therefore never to have lost seems a waste of a significant part of human life.

One wonderful benefit of romantic partnering can be children, a reward I received four times. The parent-child relationship is like no other. The roles of each are so different, as children have the opportunity to more profoundly realize when they become parents. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if it existed one advantage would be to live as a young child with the knowledge of what it is like to be a parent.

Business partnerships supposedly work best if each partner goes into it with the idea,“This is going to be a better deal for my partner than for me, but being in partnership is going to be a better deal for me than being in business alone”. Lawyers have the highest percentage of sole practitioners among learned professionals. The nature of the work and the type of people drawn to it make this so. Too many law practice partnerships end bitterly, perhaps for the same reasons. With all this in mind, I never seriously considered seeking a lawyer partnership, and I was never sought out for one. Hiring young associates is supposed to provide retirement income, but I never seriously considered that either. I suppose I mostly looked at it negatively, that the young person might do something wrong which would reflect on me, or might work behind my back to poach my clients.

I don’t think I have any enemies, or at least none that know they are. There are plenty of public figures I despise, but they don’t even know I exist. Maybe a good side of not being a strong people person is that it also makes you a not strong enemy person. There are people I know whom I don’t regard very highly. I am sure there are people who know me and don’t think highly of me either. But we are not enemies. Like Anne Frank, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Choices - Part 5 (Work -conclusion)

2007-06-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

That job interview 40 years ago was the last one I ever had. I took the job because I was desperate, and the employer hired me because they were getting a lawyer for what they paid clerks. They told me they did not have any need to hire, but wanted to give me the opportunity - you know, I could work into a job in the legal department and maybe some day even become company President. Employers like to make new hires feel like the boss is doing them a special favor in hiring them, even for the most lowly jobs, whereas the truth is usually that each needs the other.

I had never heard of the title insurance business, but starting like I did at the bottom, I got the opportunity to learn firsthand what everyone at the company actually did. I also worked as a peer with workers at those lower levels, forming the basis for good working relationships when I later did get promoted. I learned that the title business, like many enterprises, is a perfect fit for some workers and a miss for others. Talented ability for a particular job is only marginally related to educational level - for some people it is inherent. Our society needs to do a better job of determining what individual talents and abilities young people have and then guide them in that direction. Job dissatisfaction prevails in large part because people choose jobs for reasons other than talent and ability.

An opportunity in the legal department opened up sooner than I expected. I appeared to be the obvious person to fill the position - except to the head of personnel, who gave the job to an attorney who had left the legal department for private practice some time ago and then decided to come back. I told the personnel chief that I could understand why they gave the legal opening to the more experienced attorney, but I had a problem with not being told ahead of time, before I was embarrassed by being introduced to him in front of my co-workers, who like me thought the position was mine. A perfunctory apology confirmed what I had already been gathering, this employer did not really care about its employees.

A short time later, another legal opening occurred [which should have told me something], and this time I got it. With a new position and a new wife, things looked set, but Lyndon Johnson had just figured how to get a troop surge for the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War, by using the seizure of the USS Pueblo as a pretext to call up the reserves, and I was yanked from my job and into Air Force service for what turned out to be 18 months. Remember in life, stuff [euphemism] happens.

What I did in the Air Force for those 18 months is a story for another time [did I hear a “whew” of relief?]. Federal law guaranteed my rehiring within a few months of return from active duty. A couple of those months got used for a European tour before settling back to work and starting a family. Traveling when young is so much more beneficial than waiting for retirement years. The young are more adventuresome and physically capable, and enthusiastically open to seeing life in new ways. A lot of George W. Bush’s failure on the international scene is rooted in the defect of his personality that caused him to shun such travel during his privileged youth.

The title company did not want to take me back. They had hired an older attorney to take my place and they tried to discourage me by relegating me to a semi-clerical job examining court files at the courthouse. [I suspect this story is being repeated today in the lives of many reservists returning from service in Iraq, but is not being reported in the media. Employers are patriotic when it comes to getting defense contracts, but not when it comes to re-hiring reservists they have already replaced.] Valuable learning sometimes comes from unexpected places, and the file examining job was one of these. In a few short months at that job, I was able to see the paperwork involved from start to finish in many hundreds of cases of great variety. This was experience that would have taken me twenty years to acquire in a law office. The main thing I learned from the files was that lawyers and judges were very often quite unconcerned about fastidious paperwork, and just did what needed to be done in whatever way worked. I no longer had the fear of a need for perfectionism that had driven me from the practice of law.

Workplace mentors may have mixed motivation. In the law office, Mr. Greenlee taught me about practicing law, not just to be of help in his business, but also because he wanted me to learn from his experience. The older lawyer who had taken my place at the title company also mentored me in a way. He taught me that taking on new challenges is essential to a career, like learning to swim - if you don’t get in over your head, you’ll always just be treading water. Good advice, but since he was sort of burned out and had no particular talent or interest in the title business, his encouragement for me to take on more tasks might have had a selfish motive. Anyway, I took his advice and accepted every challenge the job had to offer, quickly becoming Mr. Indispensable. [I still haven’t learned to swim though - maybe later]. Buddha correctly said everyone is a teacher. We should be able to learn something from everyone we encounter. The motivation of a teacher is not as important as the subject matter of a lesson, and perhaps as the talent of the teacher, if that talent is being used. Sometimes what we learn from a teacher is not what the teacher thinks is being taught.

George Bush could have handled employee relations for the title company, because they operated on loyalty and fear. Loyal employees did what they were told and were too afraid to ask for raises. I was loyal enough, but not fearful. My supervisor, the head lawyer, loved having me do everything and was actually a pretty easy touch for raises, which I persistently pursued. I was on friendly terms with everyone in the company, and especially with some of the better workers. I started hearing stories from some more senior workers about how junior ones were being underpaid, even in the face of raise recommendations from the seniors. Employers often try to drive a wedge between senior workers and junior ones, as a tactic to undermine collective bargaining, but they fail to appreciate the genuine bond between good workers of all ages. Eventually a group of senior and junior workers, including me, met to consider organizing a union. I was designated to talk to the National Labor Relations Board to determine what our rights were, and was told by the attorneys at the Board that this was not the 1930's and we had every legal right to do what we were doing, so we decided to proceed to organize our fellow employees.

My supervisor was a nice enough man, and he had just got a raise approved for me. It had been especially hard to work on him this time, even though he highly praised my work, but I worked especially hard in getting this one, because I figured once the union drive was above ground, I would not be getting any more. So as a courtesy, I gave him a heads up on what we were doing and told him a letter announcing the campaign had just been deposited in the mail. Operating out of the loyalty and fear conditioned by over 20 years employment, he ran down to the company President with the news and within half an hour, Mr. Indispensable had been fired for lousy work [ignoring the fact the President had just approved my raise based on excellent work].

The amazed lawyers at the NLRB quickly got my job back for me with a written apology from the company President. The company fought the union campaign like George Bush runs his campaigns and administration. Fearful loyalists were turned on the messengers. Promises were made but never kept. Threats, some more veiled, were made. Pay raises to women as a result of a sex discrimination case were portrayed as magnanimous gestures by the company. Ultimately, the company chose to irreparably damage itself rather than fairly bargain with the union that eventually did get certified. Good workers gradually left, replaced by mediocre ones. The company eventually was sold and the employer got out of the title business. “In order to save the title company, it became necessary to destroy the title company”, they seem to have said.

I considered seeking labor law work with the government, but Nixon becoming President nixed those thoughts. I did not like the idea of working for someone else, so I decided to give law practice another chance, this time doing it on my own, applying what I had learned at the title company. Tightening my belt and taking advantage of a generous offer from my brother for initial free space in his real estate office helped me get started, and I spent the next 25 years in solo law practice.

Choices - Part 4 (Work)

2007-06-02T11:50:00.001-07:00

For most of human history, and still today in many parts of the world, people have had little choice about the work they do to earn a living. Socio-economic level and the prevailing economy made the choices extremely limited. Those born to the silver spoon could choose not to work, or to pretend to be working at whatever strikes their fancy - the most egregious example being the man currently pretending to be the US President.

Women traditionally had little choice but to work as homemakers, or be more adventurous and become a teacher, nurse or nun. Domestic service, sewing, and later, cooking and waitress jobs in restaurants opened up new choices. My mother had to quit school to help her mom do laundry and ironing my grandmother took in for extra household income. Mom graduated into restaurant work and got interested in the union that was bargaining for the contract that affected her job. She entered union politics and was elected to the executive board of the Cooks and Assistants local in Seattle, where she participated in numerous grievance hearings involving employer mistreatment of workers. She often told me about the grievances, which introduced me to the first principle of labor-management relations, a principle that my subsequent experiences, personally and as an attorney, has strongly confirmed - “start with the strong presumption that the employer, however nice as a person, is an a__hole as a boss”.

Mom got active in unionism at a most interesting time, the 1950s, when American unions were at the peak of their political power and when unions were recognizing the importance of women’s rights, though like the rest of America, they were slow to champion racial justice. Volunteer political work through the union led Mom into a job as office manager in charge of the women’s branch of organized labor’s Committee on Political Education (COPE), the lobbying and campaigning arm of the union movement. Through that position Mom became friends with many local politicians, mostly Democrats like Senator Henry Jackson. Democrats overwhelmingly supported the goals of workers, whereas Republicans considered the desires of business more important than those of employees.

COPE published many excellent educational materials on the labor laws in America, for distribution to workers, who were encouraged to register, inform themselves and vote. I devoured these easy to read publications and followed along with Mom on the political developments of the day. All was well here in Washington State, with Democrats as Governor (Rosellini) and US Senator (Jackson and Magnuson), but at the Presidential level our Adlai Stevenson lost twice to Eisenhower. [“non-political” Generals like Ike and Colin Powell almost always reveal themselves as Republicans when they retire their military uniforms - Wes Clark being an interesting exception].

My early exposure to work was to help Mom do housework (I had no sisters), and to slave at endless yard chores for our step-dad [I often wish I could have time traveled and brought a weed whacker back to the 1950s ]. Those two experiences led to my first jobs away from home, yard work for neighbors and then dishwashing jobs in a couple restaurants where Mom worked , in the Pike Place Market and in Pioneer Square. With two friends, I organized a yard work business one summer, and liked the experience of being my own boss, or at least one of three self bosses. I got along fine with my partners, but they had friction with each other, which probably helps explain why I ended up practicing law solo rather than in partnership.

To earn more serious money for school, I worked at the post office terminal annex as a mail handler during Christmas vacations and then for a six month stint right before law school. Because the post office did not discriminate racially, it was one of the better jobs available to racial minorities, so I worked with a diverse group of people. I remember working with two older men who were bosom buddies on the job, one white and one black. One day, out of earshot of the black, the white man launched into a racial diatribe typical of that era, denouncing black people. When a white woman asked him if that applied to his black friend, the white man stopped and looked stunned as he realized that he seemed to have forgotten the man’s skin color and that the diatribe could not possibly apply to him. The people I worked with in the post office were some of the hardest working people I have known. To this day, the US Postal Service does a fantastic job and does not deserve the negative comments too often heard about the postal work ethic. I think some of those comments come from latent racial discrimination.

I can’t resist telling another post office story, about the time I had the most cash I have ever had in my life. As mail handler for the small air mail section, I was once entrusted with a large handcart piled high with neatly stacked postal sacks. I was to sign for the cart and then deliver it to the loading dock, where a truck driver would sign it away from me and drive it to the airport. Two police cars were waiting to escort the truck, because I had just temporarily been in possession of the entire monthly payroll for Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, all of which was paid in cash back in those days.

Between the second and third (final) year of law school, many students were taking jobs in the legal field. They seemed to have connections I did not have, since many had fathers who were lawyers. I did not say mothers, because the overwhelming majority of lawyers back then were white and male. My first year law class had almost 200 students, including about 6 or 7 women, and 2 minority men, one black [I am using “black” in this article for brevity -the common term back then was “Negro” or “colored”; today I usually use “African-American”]and one Asian. The two men dropped out after the first year, but 3 or 4of the women went the full three years. Lacking connections, I opted to knock on the door of the only lawyer in the Central Area, Archie M. Greenlee, whose office was right around the corner from my bus stop for the UW. I was pleasantly surprised to find the legal secretary was a friendly and very professional black woman, and even more pleased to find the attorney was not white, as I at least slightly assumed he would be, but also black. Most pleasing of all was that he gave me a job and mentored me on the practice of law and the running of a law office and opened himself to me on what life was like for him.

I stayed at the law office for my final year of school and returned after my time away for military training. I was too young and too intimidated by a legal field where all the authority figures, except for my employer, were old white males. Being one of only a small hand full of black attorneys in Seattle, Mr. Greenlee correctly surmised that the quality of his work would be especially scrutinized by white lawyers and judges, so he was very perfectionist in what his office produced. He and his secretary were up to the task, but I was becoming frustrated by the need for perfectionism when the laws and rules we worked with were so imperfectly drawn. At 23, I lacked the poise and self-confidence an attorney needs. I struggled with my concerns and analyzed them and then decided to talk to Mr. G. About my feelings. He seemed impressed by the thoroughness of my analysis and presentation and then gave me a simple solution I had not expected. If it bothered me that much, I should quit right then, and that is what I did.

By the time I quit working at the law office, I was living on my own for the first time in my life, except for boot camp. What had I just done? I guess I had just edged myself into quitting. I did feel relieved about leaving my frustrations behind, and I enjoyed the extra time I had to think and read. I decided I should get a job with the State and did the paperwork, took the tests and had the interviews, but before anything came through, I was broke and my rent was due. So I turned to the State Employment office to see what they had in private sector job postings. The older lady who helped me was quite experienced and turned immediately to her contact file. I had done some personal injury work at the law office, so she figured I could work as an insurance adjuster, and she called her contact at Safeco. Ouch, I might have to take a job for “the enemy” - but the rent was due. The contact was not hiring, but said Safeco had just purchased some kind of “title insurance” company and the nice lady set me up with an interview.

[to be continued in part 5]