Original Article

One of the questions facing members of the GLBT community and supporters of civil rights in Iowa is; Who will appoint three judges to the now vacant seats on the Iowa Supreme Court Bench? Governor Chet Culver? Or Governor Elect Terry Branstad?

I spoke with David Boyd, Board Administrator for the Iowa Judicial Nominating Commission about the likelyhood of Governor Culver being able to appoint judges to the Iowa Supreme Court before he leaves office. He admits that it is conceivable but probably not likely.

Mr. Boyd was kind enough to fill in some of the details regarding the process going forward;

One hurdle that must be passed prior to the commission sending nominations to the Governor is the election certification. The Judicial Nominating Commission can’t move forward without that. Once the commission’s work has begun, applications will be collected for a period of approximately one month. Followed by a period of about two weeks to allow public comment. Nominees can then be sent to the Governors office for appointment.

To recap:

• Election must be certified first (may be several weeks away)
• Approx. One month to collect applications
• Two week public vetting period (public is encouraged to comment)

Will Governor Culver have the month that is typical to mull over these nominees? No. He will need to make his decision within a matter of days. Not that this should matter at all since that is the whole purpose of sending nominees, each and every one of them is vetted and would not be a nominee if they weren’t fully qualified for the job.

One interesting side-show is the currently circulating conspiracy theory that Governor Culver will simply re-appoint the ousted judges. Mr Boyd suggests that while this is legally remotely possible, and the commission is in fact free to solicit anyone they feel is qualified for the position, the three un-retained judges themselves would not be applying and therefore could not be on the list for consideration.

While many members of the GLBT community are concerned that this will mean three new conservative appointments to the Iowa Supreme Court bench by incoming republican Governor Terry Branstad, Mr. Boyd pointed out that the Judicial Nominating Commission will be submitting the exact same list of nominees to the Governor of Iowa whether he happens to be Chet Culver or Terry Branstad.

It is not clear how this electoral climate in which we find ourselves is going to effect the nominating process itself. The pool of likely applicants is already very small and any appointments that are made will be up for a vote in two years.

In the end, the real question isn’t whether Chet Culver or Terry Branstad ultimately makes these judicial appointments, they are going to be submitted by the overwhelmingly democratic Iowa State Judicial Nominating Commission who I have no doubt will recommend the best possible nominees to the Governors office based upon the rule of law rather than political ideology. Who will appoint them is still just about anybody’s guess. The question remains; How much hate money from the right will invade and confuse Iowa’s electorate in 2012 when one more judge comes up for retention?

According to Todd Pettys, a law professor at the University of Iowa, regarding whether or not the other justices careers were also in jeopardy in 2012.

“Well, another one comes up for retention election in 2012, and the other three come up in 2016. They could face some resistance, though I think it’s doubtful that the justices’ opponents will be able to mobilize a successful opposition campaign the next time around.”

Conservative strategists would like to push the narrative that these “activist” judges are not bending to the will of the people. The truth is that the Iowa Supreme Court really made a constitutionally sound decision to rule in favor of allowing what should have been a given; A persons sexual orientation is a protected “behaviour” no less than that of speech or religious preference or of race and so it logically follows that gays and lesbians are entitled to marry as much as heterosexual couples. It seems that while conservatives have vociferously suggested that they are not racists it is only because they’ve traded overt racism for bigotry. Not allowing members of the GLBT community the god given right to marry via a supreme court stacked with conservative judges does not make marriage righteous at all, it merely entrenches institutionalized hetero-sexist bigotry.

Professor Pettys points out that the Varnum ruling still stands and that based upon the doctrine of standing, the only path to contest the ruling through the Iowa Supreme Court would be for someone to claim that by allowing gays to marry, injury to their heterosexual marriage occurred. Professor Pettys believes, as do most civil rights advocates, that this argument is a non-starter and could never lead to a legitimate challenge of the Varnum ruling.

The only other way for this to happen is via constitutional amendment. Which, according to Current Governor Chet Culver he would be “reluctant to support amending the Iowa Constitution to add a provision that our Supreme Court has said is unlawful and discriminatory.” It is unclear how this will play out under Governor Terry Branstad over the next few years. An amendment preventing gays from marrying would only re-open the possibility of bringing a suit similar to the one that recently prevailed and again, the state would be in a position of liability which was already proven once to be indefensible. Not a strong conservative position if you ask me.

The sense of this I believe is that the tendency of Iowa to support civil rights is stronger than the inclination of conservatives to repeal the twentieth century. Iowa has a long and illustrious history of going against the national grain in favor of strong civil rights.

• The Governor of Iowa blocked the removal of Sac and Fox Indians holding lands in public trust for more than fifty years until the federal government recanted the decree that they move to Oklahoma.
• Seventeen years before Dred Scott was deemed merely property of his owner, the Iowa Supreme Court “refused to treat a human being as property to enforce a contract for slavery and held our laws must extend equal protection to persons of all races and conditions.”
• Eighty-six years before “separate but equal” was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled such practices unconstitutional in Iowa.
• In 1869, Iowa was also the first state in the union to admit women to the bar and allow them to practice law. Three years later the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the State of Illinois’ decision to deny women admission to the bar.

Taken partially from wikipedia; /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varnum_v._Brien

On the Varnum ruling the court reached this conclusion;

“We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this determination.”

My personal belief is that this (nearly) million dollars the American Family Association spent on punishing a supreme court which unanimously agreed that gays should have the right to marry and should not exist as second class citizens, at least in Iowa, was mostly about sowing a climate of fear and hate. The radical right sees Iowa as a major battleground that they must win in their greater war to institutionalize bigotry. One problem with all that is of course the long history that Iowa has protecting the rights of all citizens. Something we can all ultimately be proud of. The other problem they may have is that the Varnum ruling is widely regarded as being unusually sound and likely to influence other courts in the future. Not surprising as Iowa has for many years led the nation in protection of civil rights.

In the Varnum case the State of Iowa’s long standing dedication to the civil rights of its citizens has been upheld and it will take more than slinging a million dollars worth of mud on the Iowa Supreme courts recent ruling regarding the rights of GLBT citizens to change that.

gagged by greed

Original Article

As I sit here listening to the talking heads on MSNBC of all places (day time seems to be conservative but that’s for another post), currently a (night time only?) liberal bastion of media hope and even they seem to be letting the useful fiscal idiots have control of the conversation (with the exception of Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews of course). The republicans, trying to be our strong daddy figure are now telling us the 2010 election is a clear mandate by the American people to reduce deficits and that the people want more than anything else in the whole wide world, the deficit to be cut. This is patently false and in fact I should shout it out right now; “ITS JOBS, JOBS, JOBS STUPID!!!

Republicans will however continue to attempt to rape the future of America’s children for their rich friends. This is easily my favorite bumper sticker and I just want to ask America; “There are two kinds of republicans, millionaires and suckers…. you must be a millionaire!?!?!”

The problem in America is absolutely the money. It’s in all the wrong places! While the voice of we the people have been drowning in a sea of political money every election with 2010 being the worst in history, we have already been for many years frozen into financial disenfranchisement by a complete lack of funding for all the right things. More and more two income households were born as women have been forced into the work place by the slim economics of the 80’s, 90’s and 10’s. Bringing more women into the workplace is a good thing unless they’re forced there because they have to feed their children. And if it’s just in the interests of saving corporate cash, since women make on average 25% less than men do in the very same jobs, then I don’t think it was really a win for women’s rights either. Instead of women’s enfranchisement over the last thirty years we’ve seen neighborhood after neighborhood locked out of decision making processes, economic development, and barred from full enfranchisement in American society. I’ve watched this death by a thousand cuts for the American dream over the last thirty years like some creeping malaise brought upon us by greed and the worship of the greedy bastards on wall street. This is not the America I was taught about in school. We’re did our spirit go?

The very idea that the American public hasn’t already been on an austerity budget for at least the last two or three decades is conspicuously missing from this current financial conversation. We as a nation have allowed the love of the idea that we might get rich someday and then we’ll want these protections for our money to dominate our conversation and our policies. We believe this idea that we could someday become rich and so we all worship at the alter of greed this great god “capitalism”. Now I may be a lefty but I’m all for bringing your products to market and letting the market for the most part do its thing. We can’t manage everything after all. Regulation however must be done because in the words of one CEO to Hank Paulson; “You have to stop us… regulate us… because we can’t stop ourselves.” This was from the movie; “Inside Job” which was about the shakedown of America by Wall street in 2008. I have argued that in that year wall street sociopaths looted the American dream and stole the equity that represented virtually the blood, sweat, and tears of 40 or 50 years of hard American work in one single popping of OUR real-estate bubble. And all our money just rained down into their pockets. And then we gave them more. And more. And now they just think we’re stupid not generous. Bastards. To be honest, words foul enough to truly represent how I feel about that haven’t even been invented yet. I’m working on it. Till then, that’s all I have to say. Bastards.

Drowning in Grover Norquist’s Stupid Tiny Bathtub

According to Adam Green of boldprogressive.org, 40% of Americans support taxing the wealthy to close the deficits, 20% support cuts to military spending, only 12% support cuts to social security. This is no mandate for austerity. This is robbery. This is more money going the wrong direction. This is American democracy drowning in a sea of political money while we watch the future of all our children drowning in Grover Norquists stupid tiny bathtub again.

This current harping upon the deficit is the same old rich forked tongue devil speaking. Let’s be perfectly clear here; when they say austerity they mean for the poor not the rich. Those same silver tongued devils will say that my speech is the coarse speech of the peasantry and thus to be ignored but I’m actually correct. What we need now more than anything is JOBS! And not just any jobs but Green Jobs that we desperately need to create now. This is pretty nearly America’s last chance at getting this right. If we don’t, the costs of our inaction will protract out into the future and cost America billions in lost profit and a serious reduction in prosperity.

Specifically we must spend our money more wisely than we ever have before on things like renewable energy infrastructure, green jobs, retro fitting our homes into the 21st century etc. not the same old bridges and roads talk, we need light rail and 300 mile per hour bullet trains! Things that get our youth excited about where America is going to be in this world in 2050 or 2060 when they are supposed to have their grandchildren on their knees.

Instead, Republicans are leading us straight into corporate feudal serfdom (wage slavery)

Here’s why that’s true. Every other economic downturn in history has eventually had an upturn following it that pretty much fixed everything. I would currently argue that we don’t have any such upturn around the corner that don’t require massive R&D costs. That means, I believe, we have no easy eventual recovery. No technology coming to save us, just the wealthy few will benefit in the future. No guaranteed education, no guaranteed jobs. Only a lost decade that will stretch out into nearly infinity if the David Koch’s of the world have their way. Why? Because the end of cheap democracy also coincides with the end of cheap oil. The recovery from the last depression actually was fueled by you guessed it, Oil! Cheap oil! So going forward there are really going to be this series of recessions that are never really fully recovered from over the next several decades that will put America on track to be a third world country by somewhere around 2050 or so. I know these are loose numbers but this is the landscape going forward if we allow this talk of austerity for the poor and no haircut at all for the wealthy. Our choice is crystal clear. We can spend like crazy on all the EXACTLY (this particular exactly can not be overstated!) the right things like mass transit, renewable energy, local food networks, free education models, steady state economy, etc. or we can allow the rich to tighten our belts for us in the interest of continuing the wholesale rape of our children’s future for the enrichment of the few.

FDR knew that the choke hold the wealthy had at the time upon American prosperity was unacceptable. He was was bold enough to act upon those convictions for the greater good of America. Today, the Obama administration is a mere shadow of what is needed in these trying times. This is the worst possible moment to introduce austerity measures and will do more to unravel our culture and the middle class and our political dialogue as the wealthy continue to enrich themselves upon the blood of our children and starve our future.

They say we all need to take a haircut!

Down here on main street America we had our haircut in 2008, it’s time for the rich to have their haircut now. Let the bush tax cuts expire because we the people can’t afford it. We need those green jobs NOW! Not a decade from now.

I’m ok with fiscal austerity as long as we all really take that haircut rich and poor alike and we can look forward to a bright future for everyone in America not just the rich overlords of corporate feudal America. We demand 300 mile per hour bullet trains, renewable energy, affordable education, affordable health-care, and green jobs that really are doing the work of healing this earth and becoming its stewards rather than continuing this treatment of the future of our children as some sort of cash cow for the wealthy and connected sociopathic wall street class and their lackeys the republicans.

Blue Dogs Feel The Pain

Original Article

Naturally the tea party and the GOP both are seizing upon this “historic” election as a political mandate. I would argue that they wouldn’t know a political mandate if it hit them in the head. Which happened in 2008. The very fact that the Democrat “Blue Dogs” paid the highest price while we only lost four staunchly liberal democrats clearly shows that this was not the mandate Rand Paul thinks he has.

Karen Dolan argues that rather than a real trouncing, what Dems got was a purging of those too conservative. Be ye hot or be ye cold, but none of this lukewarm BS is what the people said November 2nd.

Most of the good news comes from California, Delaware, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont and Nevada where hate seems to have been momentarily defeated, albeit narrowly in most places but defeated nevertheless. Particularly interesting is Nevada where Latino voters are credited with pulling Harry Reid’s chess-nuts from the tea party’s bonfire. Latino’s voted for Harry Reid at a rate of 68% as opposed to 30% for Sharon Angle. It is uncertain whether the tea party is even capable of learning this lesson.

California

In California, Dems won big time. You should ask your republican friends (if you still have any) how that happened in this “historic” election. This is a midterm and traditionally they don’t do as well on the turnout dept. However, one can see what happens when the youth vote does turn out. In proposition 19 going to the vote, we see that 46% of Californians support legalization of Marijuana (53% said no to 19). Youth came out to vote in this particular California election cycle partially because of this historic vote on the legalization of Marijuana. Historic because for the first time, people are talking about this issue properly, as a civil rights issue.

Though there are people that suggest that pot smoking moms and dads that already feel safe enough and would rather not have their children exposed to a “seedy” subculture of drug use actually voted against prop 19. We shall see. In 2012 the dynamics of the election will be such that youth may have more to do with Marijuana being legalized than their parents. Not surprising at all actually. They are dead wrong since the only way you’re safe is if you’re white. Again, not so surprising that Yuppie moms and dads don’t get it. Latino’s and Blacks do however, and next cycle our message will be tighter and more youth as well as Latino’s and Blacks will be getting to the polls in 2012.

Marijuana prohibition is only now beginning to be recognized among progressives (at least in California) as a civil rights issue since blacks and latino’s pay disproportionately high prices for marijuana “crimes”. Supporters of Proposition 19 include the ACLU, NAACP, the National Black Police Association, the Teamsters, SEIU and many more. Norm Stamper, former police chief of Seattle became a marijuana reformer and was asked to write the forward of a book called “Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving Our Young People To Drink?”. He says that he likes to ask other law enforcement personnel when the last time it was they had to subdue a violent marijuana user. They usually answer never. He then asks them when was the last time you had to subdue a violent alcohol user and they’re looking at their watches.

The Proposition 19 ballot initiative has placed this issue in the mainstream permanently. Nate Silver of fivethiryeight.com said at one time that he predicts the nation could legalize marijuana by 2016. Critics said that Richard Lee and George Soros were jumping the gun and taking this to the voters too early on this issue. To some progressives this was perhaps the biggest gain of 2010 and even in it’s loss the bright light of election 2010. The youth vote will be out in strength in 2012 and if 2010 is any indication of how they’ll vote, they went against the GOP at a rate of 58 to 39 percent, we will be winning in a wave of Democrats next cycle.

Finally, Paul Armentano provides a good post election analysis of Prop 19’s narrow failure here

For those interested in following this particular issue there are a number of reputable web sites to choose your news.

saferchoice.org

womensmarijuanamovement.org

justsaynow

drugpolicy.org

legalizationofmarijuana.com

norml.org

Just five years ago more than half these sites didn’t exist.

Proposition 23 was perhaps the brightest light by showing that Texas billionaires couldn’t buy California elections. Perhaps the biggest win was proving that cynical politics won’t be tolerated and that unlimited money might actually have a downside. People in California can see the real impending costs that not dealing with the coming changes to the climate will impose upon our children and us in the coming years. no one wants to continue giving billionaires their free lunch it seems! For now I’m sticking to that narrative.

Jerry Brown defeated Meg Whitman who poured 140 million dollars of her own money into a losing proposition. Even after an associate of Jerry Brown called Meg Whitman a whore which got caught on the police union stewards voicemail. Perhaps the voters agreed with that idea. At any rate, pretty nearly unprecedented massive outside campaign cash was defeated by progressive grassroots action. Democrats are alive and kicking but we absolutely must continue to work the ground game in the upcoming two years. Conservatives for billionaires will not stop and neither can we!

Illinois

We unfortunately had to say goodbye to Phil Hare who took Lane Evans place in the 17th Congressional District in 2006. I had the pleasure of working with Lane Evans through Illinois Public Action Council for many years. I will sincerely miss Phil who I believe carried on the principals the made Lane a popular guy in the Quad Cities. It’s hard to know what will happen with Bobby Schilling, we aren’t known for our radical republicans in Illinois, they tend to be a bit more moderate. We’ll see about that.

Pat Quinn beat Bill Brady by a slim margin. On thursday the AP called the race for Pat Quinn. At the time he was leading by 19,400 votes with every precinct reporting in. AP said that the outstanding ballots weren’t enough to make up the difference. Bill Brady put to rest speculations that there would be a nasty post election fight over the vote count by conceding that he had lost the Governors race to Pat Quinn.

Bill Brady said; “After days of counting ballots, we came to the conclusion that Gov. Quinn won the race.”

Bill Brady had been consistently leading in the polls and in fact was (troublingly) picked as the winner of that race by even my favorite pollster Nate Silver with an 87% chance of a favorable outcome for Bill Brady and Republicans. Big upset there.

This is clearly a huge win for workers in Illinois as it is widely believed among labor that one of the first acts of a Republican Governor in Illinois would be to kill the unions ability to raise and spend political money. Right, they’re ok with mega corporations blowing cash in the billions into our political process but it’s not ok for organized workers to collectively bargain or donate money to candidates. Seems a little one-sided if you ask me.

Iowa

In a radical upset of the Iowa supreme court three “activist” judges were cut loose for their constitutionally sound ruling on the civil rights of gay people. In April 2009, Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing gay couples to marry which is widely regarded as a sound decision carried out by a necessarily independent judiciary. Conservatives argue that in fact the people have spoken and are sending a message to other “activist” judges for the upcoming 2012 election cycle.

The new (old) governor elect Terry Branstad (53%) was re-instated over Chet Culver (43%). Bruce Brailey hung on to his seat and Chuck Grassley of course held on to his post. Not a big change at all for Iowa it seems.

Kentucky

Rand Paul just says were all one big happy family now! and that there aren’t really any rich, middle class or poor in America! Wow is all I can say about this guy. Clearly the most nutty of the nutty Senators.

Rand Paul says; “We all either work for rich people or sell stuff to rich people so lets not hurt rich people ok?”

Oregon

I know there are so many but Peter DeFazio defeating Republican climate change denier Art Robinson was a real serious win for sanity in congress. The fact that Art Robinson deny’s that climate change is caused by mankind is nothing compared to his belief that we should also just grind up all our nuclear waste and distribute it throughout the oceans and the land and that this would only result in a slight increase in the background radiation. He actually believes this stuff.

Vermont

Another interesting development is the Governor elect of Vermont, Democrat Peter Shumlin, has pledged to shut down the states leaking nuclear reactor. In making that promise to voters he cinched his win with a full 14% of the vote being attributed to that pledge in exit polls. The town closest to the reactor, Brattleboro, has voted 2,387 to 1,826 to take the plant by eminent domain to guarantee its shut-down.

Entergy, the owner of the reactor has put it up for sale in an attempt to subvert the will of the people.

Minnesota

In an incredible development Minnesota has done what they’ve never done before. When Mark Dayton was elected the first DFL governor in 24 years, it was by a slim enough margin to trigger an automatic recount. Interestingly, Governor Pawlenty though on his way out will be staying through some of the changeover and will because of the time it will take to accomplish the recount, will actually be able to pass legislations with complete republican control of both Minnesota State Senate and the State House. This is as I said unprecedented. I’m not sure what doom this brings down upon us but it can’t be good.

The Myth of the Liberal Media

While Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay for donating $7,200 to three democratic candidates, which is in violation of NBC’s standards barring employees from making political donations. Never mind about the $2 million that GE, NBC’s parent company donated during the very same election cycle. Or that in previous elections MSNBC host Joe Scarborough donated $4,200 to a republican candidate in 2006. MSNBC however said that wasn’t a problem as Scarborough “hosts an opinion program and is not a news reporter.” Keith Olbermann is clearly an opinion journalist as well but is obviously held to a different set of standards. Behind the scenes, MSNBC’s parent corp has put $2 million into political contributions and spent $32 million on lobbying and contributed over $1 million into the the “No on 24″ campaign against a California ballot initiative that would have closed tax loopholes for major corporations. So, what is really happening is MSNBC has a policy constructed to allow the owners to throw whatever money they want into any campaign but the employees can’t, unless they are contributing to Republicans. Then I guess it’s ok.

Olbermann Suspension Is Lunacy

Did Keith Olbermann even violate NBC policy?

ACTION: Ask NBC and MSNBC to explain their inconsistent standards regarding political donations.

CONTACT:

MSNBC President Phil Griffin phil.griffin@nbcuni.com

NBC News President Steve Capus steve.capus@nbcuni.com

Phone: (212) 664-4444

The Pollsters

Nate Silver talks about the pollsters and how far off they were and in some cases were falsely favorable to republicans (bias). Rasmussen’s polls have come under the most scrutiny for being extremely biased and in Hawaii missing the call by the largest margin in fivethirtyeights database. Thanks Nate for helping us hone our polling skills.

Nate said;

“The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.”

Taken from: Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight blog Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly

When ‘House Effects’ Become ‘Bias’

The Supreme Court

The real spoilers of the 2010 election were the supreme court justices that voted to give the corporations their voice. President Obama called this supreme court ruling a victory for Big Oil. I would argue that Justice Kennedy reversed his entire career’s worth of liberal leaning decisions and will go down in history as the great destroyer of American Democracy. Justice Kennedy, though appointed by Ronald Reagan was actually the more even handed tie breaker on the court but in one single decision was able to negate all that goodness in a single horrible ruling. Justice Kennedy’s affirming the concept of corporations as people has seriously taken us further down the road to fascism to be absolutely sure. He will perhaps be remembered now as the single most important person regarding the death of democracy in America.

The Senate

With Patty Murray winning in Washington state Dems held on to one more seat and prevented a particularly nutty Senator, Republican Dino Rossi, who would like to reduce the minimum wage it seems, from gaining a seat in the Senate. Rossi conceded defeat late Thursday when the vote tally was 51% to 49% in favor of Murray. Overall Dems lost six seats and their ability to stop a filibuster but will maintain control of the chamber with 53 of the 100 seats. Additionally there are two independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut that both caucus with Democrats. There is still one race the results of which are unknown. We believe that Lisa Murkowski is going to win the first write in candidacy since Democrat Strom Thurmond won his South Carolina Senate seat as a write in in 1954. Another bright moment was the defeat of the worst of the right wing “tea party” candidates such as Ken Buck who was trying to convince people that having a program that put bicycles all over Denver was a conspiracy by the U.N. to take over America. Michael Bennet narrowly defeated Ken Buck in his Colorado Senate race.

House of Representatives

The Republicans are of course touting this as a trouncing for the Democrats but trounced we do not completely feel! Republicans took 61 seats previously held by Dems and took control of the chamber. Now they can own their obstructionism too! As I mentioned earlier, this was really a big loss for those Dems not progressive enough. The blue dogs dems are licking their wounds this week.

The Governors

This was a pretty big win for the Republicans and will play out well for them in 2012 by all accounts. This is certainly going to help with Republican campaigning in the next cycle. There will be much more on this later but to sum it up, Pat Quinn and John Hickenlooper are big upsets for the GOP. They really were very close races in both states.

The Colorado Governors race is notable for several reasons the most important being his choosing Joseph Garcia as his running mate and his refusal to run a single negative ad. That I believe cinched this race up for him. It may have been close, but it was nearly a certainty. Colorado has one of the largest Hispanic populations (20.3%) in the U.S. (15.8%) according to the Census Bureau. Hispanics as a voting block are famously turned off by negative attack ads. Something the tea party will continue dashing it’s hate-filled hopes upon perhaps. Again, it may not be possible for them to learn this lesson.

Pat Quinn winning in Illinois is a pretty important moment for Dems actually. If Bill Brady had been elected one of the first things he would have done would have been to defund labor in Illinois. That’s practically every municipal job becoming potentially non-union positions if Illinois would ever become a “right to work” state. Currently it is a “right to collectively bargian” state and if people only knew how important that was we’d all be a lot better off. For instance, I like to ask the question of people that hate unions if they like things like weekends, and forty hour work weeks ’cause you can blame both of those things on those damned unions. Political money in 2012 will continue to come from the Unions of Illinois

The Youth Vote

It appears that in the midterms the youth vote was significantly reduced this year. 9% or so final exit poll data from CBS showed for the 201 election. That was down sharply from 18% in 2008. No big surprise there really, all voting blocks were reduced for a variety of reasons. I know this is short and sweet but I’ve got some ground to cover here so onward we go!

What Our Message Must Be About Going Forward

Note: this section will be a work in progress and will be updated periodically

Jonathan Zimmerman points out in the Christian Science Monitor that we should; “Give Beck and the GOP their due: This fall, more than any time since the Progressive Era itself, they succeeded in discrediting the very concept of the federal government.”

As much as right wingers want this election to be a verdict on “big government” if that were so, there would have been bigger wins for them in the house and they should have taken the Senate. Instead, Candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Paladino and Rand Paul either lost to a Democrat or nearly lost to a Democrat. However, as Werner Herzog has advised, Dems need to; “Stop brining a knife to a gun fight”

The only entity that can possibly get us out of this economic slump is the federal government. If the private sector is in the middle of a decades long wage freeze and hiring isn’t happening, private citizens are unable to spend, the only thing left is the fed. FDR was a bold individual. He was able to take wall street to task over the greatest of the sins of the robber barons for the mess they had created. We need to regain that frame in this conversation.

Diversity is our Strength!

The Tea party’s legacy isn’t the Boston Tea Party at all, it’s the same old power grab by the wealthy that has been attempted every single election cycle. We need to brand the tea party as just another soiree for the mad hatter and his rich friends the Koch Brothers. They will continue to have the same old narrative that Reagan tried selling us. As I said then, I don’t know what that is trickling down their legs but I don’t think it’s economics. Besides, what does it mean when a bunch of grumpy old white men say things like; “they’re gong to take back the civil rights movement?”. What’s that mean? Bottom line here? The Boston Tea Party was an act of anti-corporate activism! So the current astro-turfing called “tea party” are really reverse tea parties. Like I said before; “What David koch and his cronies have done is forced that weak, salty, nasty, improperly taxed, artificially colored, pesticide ridden, genetically modified, oil polluted, tea (that they must’ve fished out of the harbor) down our collective throats whether we liked it or not!”

This is regarded as the third wave election. The pendulum is swinging more quickly these days between powers that be. We need to make another wave in 2012 and we can do this. We do have to pay attention to why we lost this time though. At the risk of seeming like a socialist, I’ll include the following from Phillip Locker who wrote this for socialistalternative.org and insists that this is not at all a mandate for Republican right wing policies:

Phillip Locker said;

“The 2010 elections demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of the strategy that Democratic leaders argued for over the past two years in response to any demands from the left. We were told that bold pro-worker policies such as single-payer healthcare or public works jobs programs were “unrealistic” because they would alienate moderate swing voters and Republicans. Yet what results do they have to show for their two years of “realism?”"

I believe quite simply President Obama needs to stop playing to the “middle” and start remembering his base. We need him to channel FDR now.

So there is a huge amount of work ahead but it will not be impossible to turn this thing around in 2012. We’re already seeing polls that show Obama fairing better than any Republican candidate they could currently field.

We will win in 2012!

By David VanThournout
October 24th 2010

With the release of yet more secret documents by wikileaks.org, reputedly the largest in history, it is becoming even harder to deny the bloody handed nature of empire and it’s very serious impact upon “This Non-Negotiable American Way of Life”. I’m not really in particular slamming Hilary Clinton on this one because she’s not the only one that is guilty of believing that we Americans have the right to use the bulk of the worlds resources to sit on our butt’s and do worse than nothing. We watch Television on average 7 hours a day and we have been thoroughly divided and conquered by the David Koch’s of the world. Now we (as a nation) sling the equivalent of political dung on the “enemies of capitalism” and carry “dirty tea” for our puppet masters.

Not that this image of dung slinging monkeys carrying dirty tea for their rich “friends” isn’t funny, it’s just not going to be too funny when these angry hordes of useful idiot proto brownshirts actually gain enough traction to repeal the 21st century.

Unfortunately, with the recent release of many new secret documents, pentagon and white house officials are no doubt scrambling to find a thread of hope that they can have a position of power from which to speak on this subject. However, any moral high ground that “America the Empire” had, was gone mostly when George W. Bush snubbed the civilized world in favor of a “kick their ass and take their gas” foreign policy. Well, now the entire world has the proof that American Peace activists have spoken the truth from day one. War is hell. But Illegal wars are a hell all their own. And make no mistake, the war on Iraq was an illegal war, as the british courts may be about to decide. It seems that some of the deaths resulting from torture may have actually happened “technically” on the brits watch, and so Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister of the UK is calling for an investigation of these allegations of abuse. “Any suggestions that the rules of war have been broken or torture condoned are ‘extremely serious’, says deputy PM”. It appears that secret US Army field reports reveal two cases of alleged involvement of British Troops in the abuse of Iraqi detainees.

As [Julian] Assange [of wikileaks.org] defended the decision to disclose the documents – saying it was of “immense importance” to reveal the truth about the conflict – the UN warned that if the logs pointed to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama’s administration had a clear obligation to investigate them.

Manfred Novak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: “President Obama came to power with a moral agenda, saying we don’t want to be seen to be a nation responsible for major human rights violations.” A failure to investigate credible claims of complicity in torture, Novak suggested, would be a failure of the Obama government to recognize US obligations under international law.

Taken from: WikiLeaks Iraq war logs: Nick Clegg calls for investigation of abuse claims

While I do understand that the American People have an unprecedented ability to ignore facts, the world has no such problem. This is of course going to be fuel for the fire that the radical right is building upon which they intend to burn anything and everything that stands in the way of an American theocratic dictatorship.

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch

In California Marijuana may be about to be legalized. Why is this important? Because the rise of the new left depends upon healing the rift created when the Nixon administration pursued the drug war as a way for the right to permanently divide the left. This was the big right wing plan, funded by corporate money, to guarantee that the left will never again have anything to say about America’s going to war. I know, I paid the price of going to prison for my beliefs regarding Marijuana. It was not a small amount of time either, I spent 5 years and 8 months behind bars for Marijuana and LSD. Two of the safest drugs ever discovered by man. Well, that is unless you’re rich and own a slice of the American Military Industrial complex. Or even if you’re poor and you’ve been carrying water for the people that sent your sons and daughters off to be killed for corporate profit. So I see that there are a number of forces at play, unfortunately, the left doesn’t recognize this, nor do they realize the rise of the immigrant hate balloon in AZ (known as S.B. 1070) was all in the interest of countering what was going on the ballot in California for this November.

It’s not entirely surprising that the Obama administration isn’t going along with prop 19. To date, I believe that not one single iota of the power that George W grabbed for the Imperial White House has been returned to it’s rightful owners, the people. We on the left had hoped that the Obama administration would for the most part do the right thing and reduce the tendency of the POTUS to disregard domestic and international law and consensus when forging our country’s policies. However it appears that it will remain business as usual when it comes to war. It is clearly in the vested interests of the military industrial complex to stop the passage of proposition 19 since this will potentially heal the rift in the left and allow people to recapture that which made the left a vibrant, active, compassionate, force to be reckoned with in the 1960’s.

I’m always amazed at how simple this has always been. I’ve known for so long that the alternative to an alcohol soaked public discussion was to legalize Marijuana. As soon as you do this, we can start healing as a nation from the nearly the worst recreational drug ever discovered; Alcohol. There are few drugs as toxic as alcohol. Marijuana on the other hand is actually the least toxic substance ever discovered. LSD is the second least toxic drug discovered. They are only toxic to the status quo.

So, perhaps it’s time for America to really wake up and take back our freedoms. Freedom to choose what medicine we use, and freedom to choose a safer drug for our recreation. The legalization of Marijuana represents our best chance as a nation to come to grips with the rise of fascism in America. It is exactly a civil rights issue that would go a long way to restoring real freedom in America.

On The Wings of Hate

In 1913 California became the first state to pass a law against Marijuana. State after state followed suite and in 1937 the federal government stepped in and made it illegal nationwide. This was sold to the public as a drug which made normally lazy Mexicans go crazy and rape white women. Ditto for African Americans, lazy until stoned then crazed white women raping machines. We have long said on the deeply marginalized side of the Marijuana subculture that the only real difference between alcohol and marijuana prohibition was the number people effected. If like alcohol marijuana was used as the drug of choice by the dominant culture it would have been legalized a long time ago. Instead, as a nation, we engaged in a systematic assassination of the truly good character of the cannabis plant and of the diversity of the people who depended upon it for their medicine, their recreation, their clothing and in many cases even their food. It occurred immediately to the military industrial complex that they’d better do something about this wave of awareness of the realities of war and they identified marijuana, the drug that turned our youth from good all American boys and girls into pot smoking, draft dodging hippies bent on a world at peace. This sparked a resurgence of the war on drugs in 1968, particularly marijuana, as a way to divide the left. It has worked famously.

Decades of Misinformation Ensue

In 1974 I distinctly recall hearing that smoking Marijuana caused head and neck cancer. Many years later I find out that in fact the exact opposite is true. People in charge at the time decided that it would send the wrong message to our youth (yes they justified lying to save the children). Recently we’ve discovered that marijuana may be the most potent anti-cancer drug ever discovered. Two effects were discovered on tumors. One was that programmed cell death was facilitated by cannabinoids. The second effect observed was that the growth of blood vessels to the tumors was suppressed. These are exactly the two things that are the very hallmarks of cancer. Unregulated growth and the ability to coerce our bodies into growing blood vessels to the tumors. Now clinical studies have shown that there is a significant health benefit to smoking marijuana. In fact, it has been suggested that people that smoke both cigarettes and marijuana have about the same (or perhaps even lower) risk of getting lung cancer as a non-smoker.

I realize that people reading this article might think that I’ve been scattered all over the place but really, there are major forces crashing together this November 2nd and when the dust settles we will either be firmly on the pathway to either recovery of our democracy embodied in the passage of proposition 19 and the denouncing of politicians that push (hate) bills like S.B. 1070, or we will take one more step to the right down the slippery slope of fascism. Trust me, I’ve been the proverbial canary in the coal mine on this one, and my time in prison helped me recognize when I’m in one. We are headed for fascism if the tea party loony tunes takes over in November.

I’ve said that It’s no surprise that Obama isn’t backing legalization of pot but he and all the Dems running for office should have. Nothing would speak to young people more than the idea that our president not only got the point of inhaling, but the whole point of an alternative to the hate and fear mongering of the right.

Cannabis is strong medicine for an ailing democracy.

Sources;

Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ‘74

YesOn19.com

WikiLeaks Iraq war logs: Nick Clegg calls for investigation of abuse claims

Marijuana as Medicine

By David VanThournout

Original Article

This conversation might be done in the style of a screaming match between myself and a soon to be dinosaur SUV driver who became indignant because my bicycle was in his way.

“Give me convenience, or give me death” – Dead Kennedys

Convenience = Planetary Suicide

The more convenient a thing is, the less likely we are paying the true cost of using it. Future generations will pay your way for you. Our free lunch comes at the expense of children not yet even born. Put that in your right-wing evangelical pipes and smoke it.

Death by Convenience!

I say; “Change Or Die Humans!” or more often; “I can’t wait until 7 dollar a gallon gas takes your silly SUV driven’ ass of the road!”

It seems to me with all the pontification that goes on around here about drugs and the negative effects of addiction, that people when they get freaked out by my assertion that we will be as a species, using mass transit by 2030 to go everywhere… well, are we just a little bit addicted to our cars? I’m willing to take the plunge into the future, but all these oil junkies, all of which think they’re better than me (a bicyclist… on the road size does seem to matter!). I like to call them the zombie hordes, all they want to do is eat my brain! Just for suggesting people walk more and drive less, eating less meat, oh and hugging a tree or two! (Yes, plants are my secret little friends.)

I used to think it was a small thing. But clearly, my riding a bicycle most of my life instead of driving a car is threatening!. I’ve been riding my bicycle seriously since I was 15. In my 33 years of bicycling I estimate I’ve ridden about 45,000 miles. Most of these miles were done going to or from work. At 28 mpg that is 1607 gallons of gas saved and 31,178 tons of carbon I didn’t dump into the atmosphere. Additionally I saved $2,410.00 (assuming a price of $1.50) during that period and got the exercise so many of us would benefit from.

I used to think this was small contribution. Easily laughed at by those that demand that life be convenient. Well think about it this way; if we enjoy extra convenience, our children and their children will experience less and less convenience. So no matter how you look at it, we’re stealing from future generations knowingly and willfully. Think about that. The gallon of gas you don’t use is like 999,998 dollars saved for future generations.

And so you continue shouting; “b-b-but give me convenience, or give me death!?!?!?!

Buckminster Fuller calculated the true value of a gallon of gasoline to be one million dollars. This was based upon its scarcity and the long process that it took to create it spread across the human population over time factoring the capacity of the earth to reproduce more. We’ve used up roughly half the oil on earth in a mere hundred years. It took hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years to produce the co2 (via volcanic activity) and millions and millions of years for the oceans (primarily) and the forests (secondarily) to scrub out of the atmosphere. If we were to share it fairly among all humans including future generations (since we’ve burned up most of theirs already our contribution must necessarily be to find alternatives) the real cost might just really be a million dollars. Possibly even more!

True cost is a concept that is still coming around to the public consciousness. I have a theory that Buckminster Fuller in estimating the value of gasoline wasn’t far off in calculating the true cost of gasoline. If this is true, then my saving 464 gallons of gas during the last 12 years comes to $463,999,072.00 that future generations won’t have to pay in mitigation of, or adapting to global warming. You know what they say; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

I’ve been riding my bicycle for my entire life. I’ve been saving that same yearly 38 gallons of gas or more since I was 15 years old. I’m 48 now, that’s 33 years of serious bicycling. Assuming I’ve ridden my bike 1083 miles every year, I’ve prevented at least (1276 gallons) 24,762 tons of co2 from entering the atmosphere. And if my true cost theory is correct, I’ve saved future generations 1 billion, 275 million, 997 thousand, 448 dollars. I think I should get a tax break for that. I should at least get a little respect for it. It is no small thing. Remember that next time you’re inconvenienced by a bicyclist while driving your SUV.

I’m tired of arguing with these people but I keep riding my bicycle up 30th street hill in Rock Island. I guess people feel threatened by my quite literally spiritual devotion to saving my little piece of the environment for those that will come after me. They have a hard road ahead and I feel it’s my responsibility to do what I can to save what I can. That includes a dedication to talking about what I know to be true. This I think is as important as walking the talk. Talking the walk.

As a species, humans have a choice: become stewards of the earth or remain parasitic and continue to suck this place dry at the expense of our children whom we love dearly. I suppose I shouldn’t expect much in the way of compassion for people in other parts of the world when we can’t even give up a little convenience for a more certain future for those we love the most. Pretty goddamn sad though if you ask me. Yes it makes me curse to think that convenience (or the love of it) is killing our planet and dooming our children to what fate we do not know.

So, right about now, according to climate scientists, we have used up half of the carbon dioxide we are allowed to emit (going out to 2050) if we are to expect to be able to keep the average temp increase for earth below the two degree Celsius mark (highly recommended by climate scientists). If we continue using as much fuel as we have we will have used all that allotment by 2020 and we’ll be faced with using zero gasoline for 30 years or we’ll just keep right on dumping carbon into the air and bump the planetary thermostat up 4 degrees Celsius. The climate models predict that this will very likely result in carrying capacity of the earth being significantly reduced. In fact, it is estimated that under this scenario the ability of the earth to support humans will be limited to about 1 billion people who will live at the arctic and antarctic circles. Now I don’t know how many of you have looked at a map and thought about living at the arctic circle ( I have) and there is not much land there. Inuit Indians live there and it is reputedly the most alive place on the planet which is why whales like it there…. but we’re not whales. I know that we are perhaps sea apes and on our way back to the ocean but I think this will be way more abrupt than most organisms can generally handle when it comes to adapting.

Regarding our legendary ability to adapt to change

Working us to death. Hunter gatherers work an average of 18 to 26 hours per week gathering the necessities of life according to anthropologists. We’ve grown up believing that the modern world is better and easier than we’ve ever had it. I believe this is a lie. I think that indigenous man in his mere 40 years of life has more moments of pure joy than industrial man could have in two lifetimes at the grindstone. Ever since I heard that statistic about hunter gatherer tribes I’ve been building to a critical mass of ideas that cut at the very root of what is wrong with things in our oh so interesting times.

Quite a few years back I decided that if my heart wasn’t in it, that I shouldn’t do it. You can call it amotivational syndrome if you like, lots of people do. Never mind that they’re idiots, they’re in charge. It is widely known among psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners that the validity of amotivational syndrome as a condition is questionable at best.

I would argue that even outside “cannabis induced amotivational syndrome”, that amotivational syndrome is the invention of an industrial workaholic society. We laid back hunter gatherer types don’t always fit well within the framework that we are born into when it happens to be an industrial society. We currently view these “conditions” (ADD, ADHD, etc.) as aberrations when they are very likely adaptive behaviors established long before the 40 hour work week. Yes, we are a nation of workaholics and if you don’t have that disease you’re a loser, lazy or possibly have amotivational syndrome. So please give me a break, I love working when I love what I’m doing and what I’m doing is good for the world rather than just an abuse of mother nature. It is necessary, if one is to live life mindfully, to think about the impact of our actions upon the world around us. The less I need, the more simply I live my life, the less damage I do. I’m happy with a good conversation. So I agree with the hunter gatherers of the world and I don’t want to feed the machine any more than I absolutely have to in order to live. More importantly, I feel a deep need to do it in a way that will leave a lasting legacy rather than live life on the deck of the Titanic. I am goaded into action and I have come to the conclusion that everything comes down to conservation. We need less not more. The machine has us trapped and it’s broken and we know it.

If people think I don’t want to work they are wrong. What I want is something more than a job… I want a life! A meaningful life. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less.

We on the left have long argued that we as a society have been duped into mindless wage slavery for corporate profit. A tiny handful on Wall street and in Washington have profited. The collapsed economy and the bailout represents the theft of most of the wealth hardworking Americans have accumulated over the last 30 or 40 years. Really! The numbers don’t lie. What they have done would take thousands of years of petty thievery to accomplish. Or perhaps the equivalent of ten thousand years of welfare moms churning out babies for profit. These bankers are giving out million dollar bonuses for a (heck of a) job well done! Why do they think they did a good job? Because the whole game was to move as much real wealth out of as many hands as possible into as few hands as possible. They did this by stripping value which to the wealthy is nearly as good as having more of it. To the little guy this means 5 dollar a gallon gas or a wage and hiring freeze, or a bailout for the bankers who did this (at our expense) but nothing for us.

So for a long time, I’ve been on a kind of deep strike. I’ve been looking for a way to get around money or the lack thereof to the state of being that I want and need. My problems are many. I have several nearly debilitating diseases and no health care plan. I have 12 years to go before I get social security. I don’t even believe that it will exist when I get to that age. I believe it is possible that life in America will have changed radically by then. We are clearly at a very interesting juncture as historians will likely look back and say. Either we will meet with great success or great failure and there is no middle road here. It is do or die. We change or die.

To get your mind around it, think of this: We humans have taken something (Co2) which took hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of volcanic activity to produce, millions and millions of years for the oceans and forests to scrub out of the atmosphere back into the atmosphere in a mere 100 years. We’ll actually, we’ve put about half of that back in. The other half is guaranteed to become insanely expensive to extract in increasingly hostile places. It is likely that at some point there will be rationing of gas. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you! My point is this: We have really deeply changed things on earth and put things in motion that we might not be able to stop. Even more interesting is that we’ve changed the rate of change that you might normally experience here on earth. This change in the rate of change probably exceeds the rate of change that we are capable of adapting to either biologically or institutionally. Which I think is simply amazing to think about since humans are, after being pushed out of niche after niche during our evolution, adepts of change itself. We truly are the undisputed masters of change. Let no man suggest that we don’t like it, lets just say that we like it to continue at a precise pace. Not too fast, not too slow.

So apparently we’ve secretly orchestrated a major test for ourselves. Just how adept at change are we? People want to know. To me it makes perfect sense that we would come to this juncture. That becoming the dominant species would ultimately lead us to the ultimate self sabotage of extinction. Or soylent green. Reading the news these days (Seafood Threat 2048), particularly if you pay attention to the environmental (tree hugging) news, thoughts of that scene where they’re talking about the soylent corporations study on the oceans which pronounced them dead and led them to find the mortuary / meat processing plant come to mind. In reality, the oceans are acidifying and we have used half the oil allotted us going out to 2050. That is if we expect to keep the earth from warming up past the 2 degree centigrade mark which scientists that know, highly recommend. If we continue doing as we have done, then by 2099 the earth will have warmed on average 4 degrees centigrade which will probably reduce the worlds carrying capacity to a mere 1 billion human beings. That’s a pretty steep die-off I’d imagine. The oceans at that stage would amount to algal blooms rather than the great repository of life that they should be. Algal blooms and the great garbage vortex twice the size of Texas(s). Algae will most likely benefit from the increase in co2 but as we’ve seen in the Gulf of Mexico, algal blooms due to too much fertilizer generally upset the natural balance of things or worse.

Interestingly, the worst case scenarios that climate scientists are coming up with in their computer models are actually coming true or in many cases being exceeded! In other words, the computer models have come closer than was expected to being accurate. We’ve had a few years to use the models to predict things. Now we can see that the predicted rate of change according to the models corroborated in the field.

Another dust bowl in the Midwest is a common feature of the climate prediction model. It is already prone to several 10 year droughts and one 30 year drought every 100 years or so, according to climate scientists, this will change for the worse. What’s that mean? That perhaps many of us will have to leave our homes in the Midwest as the American Empire falls into its decline and find our way to fresh water and game.

We’re just now getting to the half way mark on the earths big tank. Right now is the only other chance we have to act. We are now at the point at which conservation strategies are like money in the bank.

The future money and energy is in that which we do not use. And it is past time we act on behalf of those unborn children of ours that will be paying the price of our inaction.

Besides, how just how convenient do people think it will be to relocate 90% of humanity?

With that in mind, a million dollars per gallon doesn’t seem at all out of pace with the true cost of a single gallon of this most addictive of substances.