Political sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

The Republicans are up in arms because Sen. Al Franken, MN-Dem has put a hold on the nomination of Judge David Stras to the Eighth Circuit Court because he considers him "too conservative".  See Star Tribune, 2017-09-06 for more details.

I don't know what the beef the Republicans have with Franken.  After all, they held up Obama's nominee for months in the hope of a Republican president appointing a Justice of the Supreme Court more to their liking.  They held up Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court from March until Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Ode to Obama

"Great ode! It's too bad that the Dixiecrats couldn't tolerate a ‘black' man being President. Let's just hope that what goes around comes around and that Trump is soon replaced by an articulate president who considers all legitimate views."

Comment to Charles M. Blow, "Ode to Obama", New York Times, 2017-01-11

What I didn’t explain to younger readers was that Dixiecrats were Southern politicians who were in the Democratic Party because that was not the party of Lincoln.  They hobbled the Democrats on many issues.  Then Richard Nixon played his Southern Strategy and its been into the swamp for Republicans ever since. 

I thought  the last sitting great Republican was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.  But alas, she is far from being an independent thinker.

See “Susan Collins Just Disgraced Herself at Jess Sessions’s Confirmation Hearing: The senator proved once and for all that she’s no moderate.”

- John Nichols, The Nation, 2017-01-10

Quote of the Day: TV viewers vs. newspaper readers

"Yes, I know, people should be paying more attention [to candidates climate change plans or lack thereof]— but this nonetheless tells us how easy it is for voters who rely on TV news or don’t read stories deep inside the paper to miss what should be a central issue in this campaign."

- Paul Krugman, "What About the Planet", New York Times, 2016-10-07, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/opinion/what-about-the-planet.html

Islam prohibits music?

My wife has been visiting her sister outside Bradford, Ontario this past week.  They often gathered around the TV to watch the news.  But at home we don’t even have a TV, we get most of our news by reading three or more newspapers online.

I kidded her that every minute she watches TV news her IQ goes down one point.  It would take her three minutes of reading a newspaper to gain it back.  We went back and forth with text messages about what she found interesting and I countered with stories she probably wouldn’t see on TV.

To prove my point, I visited the Toronto Globe and Mail website to get a sample of news she probably wouldn’t see on TV.  One story that jumped out at me was “Mandatory music classes hit a bad note with some Muslim parents” by Colin Freeze and Mahnoor Yawar.  Strange, I didn’t know that Islam forbade music to its followers.  After all there is “Ey Iran”, a patriotic Iranian song.  And don’t most Islamic countries have military bands?

See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/mandatory-music-classes-strike-sour-note-with-muslim-parents/article31716832/.

I emailed a Muslim friend about this article.  His response included that “music is not forbidden in Islam if the additional message (oral or video) in the music is not against any other principle of Islam.”

I looked up military bands and found that even the Saudis have one.  The Saudis promote a very rigid form of Islam called Wahhabism.  You would think if anybody would prohibit music, it would be the Saudis.  The Saudi military band played the “Star Spangled Banner” for President Obama as well as playing the Saudi national anthem.  I found a picture of Iranian military trombonists marching past then President Ahmadinejab.  If Islam prohibited music, you would think the Ayatollahs would prohibit a military band.

I searched Talal Itary’s translation of the Qu’ran and found no mention of music.

Ah ha! it must be in the Hadith: a collection of commentaries that followed the writing of the Qu’ran.  A Google search for “hadith" and “music” turned up some very strong admonitions about any music.  For example, http://www.islamiq.sg/2011/04/hadith-evidence-music-haram.html.  This article gives a very strong prohibition against music of any kind.

Other articles give a more generous interpretation of hadith: https://controversialislam.wordpress.com/music-banned-in-islam/.  Supposedly other hadith have Muhammad suggesting sending a singer to a wedding: “The Ansar are a people who love poetry. You should have sent along someone who would sing, ‘here we come, to you we come, greet us as we greet you.’”

To think that all hadith apply to all Muslims is like thinking that all the Pope’s encyclicals or all the doctrines of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod apply to all Christians.

What should apply to all believers, Muslim or otherwise, is the equivalent of “...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” _ Qur’an (Surah 24, “The Light”, v. 22)

Writing to editors, authors, and other public figures

This article was "triggered" in part because of a letter I recently received and in part by the email conversation I mentioned last week with Michael Mann, author of "The Hockey Stick".

I have an unopened letter sitting on my desk.  It has no return address and the envelope is covered with a diatribe against Obama.  I generally put these unopened into the recycle bin.  Maybe I kept it as a fodder for this column.  I assure you that I will eventually put it unopened into the recycle bin.

My brief conversation with Michael Mann began with appreciation for his book and a quote that Adam Smith warned about "the denial machine" Mann mentioned.  I was surprised that the conversation went on so long; I should consider that he has many more things to think about than the wandering thoughts of an old man in Duluth.

After I finished a series of fantasy novels, I sent the author a letter of appreciation through her website.  She emailed a nice reply, but I didn’t follow up except possibly with a thank you.  I think these were all through her website because I have no copy in my mail box.

I had read a book or two by an author of military-political affairs, and I sent him an email thanking him for them.  He replied with a thank you and a suggestion for another of his books.  Then he came to Duluth and I got to meet him briefly.  I didn’t say anything significant; I’m a writer not a speaker.

And sometimes an email to an author leads to a long-standing friendship.  Some time ago I sent an appreciative email to a regular "Local View" contributor to the Duluth News Tribune.  We have some major differences of opinion, but our common ground is a basis for lunch every month or so.

Another local writer had a website that invited conversation.  I had had many email or face to face conversations with this writer.  I was surprised when he cut me off that he had more to do than have email conversations with me.  I wonder if I had written something he found offensive or if he really was very busy.  I hope he is very busy with many lucrative projects.

Over the years I've submitted many a letter to the editor or even an opinion piece.  Some of them were published; probably many more were assigned to the circular file.  But basically your letter or article should be timely, concise, and based on "facts".  I put "facts" in quotes because “facts” are too often some group's talking points rather than some observable set of information.  The hard part is that a fact in one situation is not a fact in a similar situation.  But be forewarned, many editors rewrite letters to conform to the publication's guidelines.  In doing so, they can "flip" your meaning to just the opposite from what you intended.  It has happened to me at least twice in two different publications.  If you are lucky, the editor will send you a copy of his or her revision for your approval.

I have all but stopped writing to politicians.  Almost all of them have staff send a position paper.  Too often these position papers are barely related to the subject of the letter or website comment.

Probably with electronic communication, even their staffs are overwhelmed.  Count opinion for or against.  Find position paper that seems to address issue.  Send it out with politician's automatic signature.

I miss Rudy Boschwitz's replies.  Whether he agreed with my letter or not, he would send it back with a one-sentence germane comment and a smily face.  I wonder if I have any of these in my very disorganized files.

Two letters from famous people that I thought I had kept I have not been able to find in several years of trying.

One was to Alex Haley, author of Roots.  I was sysop of the Genealogy Roundtable on GEnie, GE's competitor to CompuServe.  I invited him to attend one of our weekly online chat sessions.  He responded with a kind letter declining the invitation.  I think his reason was that he was a typewriter guy and hadn't really moved to use of computers.

The other was to a well-known movie actor.  I was going to write that you should note my middle initial.  But it isn't in my byline.  It is "D".  If you are under sixty I'm sure you will have no clue to what D stands for.  Your clue is the movie Being There Shirley McLaine, Peter Sellers, and ...

I wrote to this actor posing this same question.  He wrote a delightful reply.  Again, I can't find it in my messed up files.

What’s the point of all this bragging of hobnobbing with famous people?  Well, my original title was How to write to editors, authors, and other public figures.  With my catalog of correspondents this article became longer and longer, and it had only a nod about how to write a letter to the editor or an opinion piece.

So, here is my brief advice on corresponding with a famous person.

If you have something important or interesting to write, don’t hesitate to do so.  Many appreciate comments from their readers, customers, or constituents.  For many famous people, you can easily find an email address or website that takes comments. You only need three guidelines: be polite, be factual, and be brief.

Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-07-23 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/07/23/5661_writing_to_editors_authors_and_other_public

Divided we are conquered

We have not been conquered by an external force but by an internal force, namely “The Funders”.  Laws are made more for the benefit of the donors from large corporations than for the benefit of the people.

From one of my Outlook attic messages:

“Like a fever, revolutions come in waves. And if this is a revolution, then it broke first on November 4, 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, second, on February 19, 2009, with the explosion of anger by Rick Santelli, giving birth to the Tea Party, and third, on September 10, 2011 with the #Occupy movements that are now spreading across the United States.

“The souls in these movements must now decide whether this third peak will have any meaningful effect -- whether it will unite a radically divided America, and bring about real change, or whether it will be boxed up by a polarized media, labeled in predictable ways, and sent off to the dust bins of cultural history.”

This is the opening to “A Letter to the #Occup(iers): The Principal of Non-Contradiction”, Lawrence Lessig, Huffington Post, 2011-10-13.

Lessig calls on people to stop opposing each other and look for common ground, laws to benefit people rather than laws to benefit corporations.

Lies, damn lies, and misstatements

Much political hay is being made about President Obama saying that people could keep their current insurance.  As thousands find that their current insurance is being cancelled, there is a clamor that Obama lied.

Did he really lie?  That is, did he make a statement that he knew with certainty to be untrue?  Or did he make a statement that he believed to be true given the information that he had?

Consider that any leader has to rely on the advice and information provided by hundreds of people.  If that leader had to verify every piece of information he or she was given, would anything ever get done in government or business?

What Obama and his staff had no control over was all the insurance companies deciding it was not in their best interest to have people keep those older policies.  I’ll leave that to historians to figure out who was right or wrong, truthful or deceitful.

Now the shoe is on “the other foot”.  Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is accused of lying about the deliberate traffic jams caused around Fort Lee by his staff and associates.  He had directly asked some of them if they had any involvement in the situation.  They all said no.

Christie has worked with some of these people for years and has relied on them for good advice.  Should he believe anything differently?  If he was suspicious, how much time should he spend finding out more?  If he did so, how many other things that he should attend to would be ignored.

If Christie was not actively involved in the traffic jams, he did make the mistake of being gleeful about Fort Lee’s problems.  After all, the Democratic mayor did not support him in his reelection.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is probably one of the most infamous lie and even damnedest lie ever made by a U.S. President.  Bill Clinton later backed off that strong denial, but the Republicans jumped with joy over his predicament.  Lots of federal money was spent on this investigation and that investigation and an impeachment.

But the whole mess rings hollow when Republicans have done similar acts and made similar denials.  I wish politicians would spend more time on thoughtful evaluation of laws and policies and less on personal attacks.  What a way to run a country!

Many have criticized President George W. Bush for a long string of lies about Iraq, for example Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction”. Now, was he just parroting what his advisors were telling him because of their own agendas or was he directly involved in creating these falsehoods?  We may never know.

But I can guess about one misstatement that he made that has become infamous – his advice that in response to the World Trade Center attacks Americans should go shopping. It was a stupid remark, but consider its underlying meaning.  The attacks were meant to disrupt the United States.  If people went about their ordinary business, then the planners of the attack would have failed in their attempt to disrupt the country.  In other words, if we shopped as we normally did, then the country would not have been disrupted as much as planned.

We probably all have experiences of sales people telling us what they think we want to hear, not what we need to know.  Sometimes they withhold details; sometimes they really do lie; and sometimes they divert us.  How often have you heard, “It’s a standard contract”?  In other words, just sign, don’t bother reading it.  Do you wonder why we had a mortgage crisis?

My favorite misdirection was decades ago when we bought a TV in a big box store.  We told the salesman that we liked a particular model, and he replied that he had one in the back room.  Only later did we see that as a ploy to get us to buy on the spot.  Of course he had one in the backroom; he may have also had one dozen.

This whole column is a misdirection to write about an irate phone message I had last week.  The caller was upset that I had spoken badly about Gannucci’s in my column of January 2.  I was flabbergasted!  I meant no such thing!

OK, let’s parse what I wrote to find the irritant.  Remember that I was writing about going to a plant-based diet and doing my best to stick to it.

“Just my luck that every item on the menu had cheese and/or meat.”  Many restaurants have meat, dairy, or eggs in most if not all of their menu choices.

“So I went with a turkey sandwich, figuring that was the leanest meat that I could get.”  I thought that was a neutral statement.  Maybe I should have said the turkey sandwich was delicious.  It was, but is that relevant to that fact that I made a choice?

“The organizers of the monthly social plan to go back in January.  I think I better call ahead to Gannucci’s.”  If I want to join the group and would like to avoid meat, dairy, and eggs, I should ask the restaurant in advance if they have any alternatives.  If not, maybe I’ll have a turkey sandwich again.  I am a vegan not because I object to turkeys having their heads cut off but because I don’t like what the turkeys might do to me.

This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2013-01-16 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/01/16/2766_lies_damn_lies_and_misstatements

Politics can change

If you really want to be informed, you have to have multiple news sources.  I have a lot of news sites on my devices, but I don’t access many of them very often.  Gosh, when was the last time I accessed The Daily Star of Lebanon?  That probably has a lot more news on Syria than we get in Minnesota.

I often access the Huffington Post and get some different views.  But the HuffPost often borders on the sensational.  I accessed Al Jazeera a lot during the Arab Spring and watched more online TV than I had in the previous two years.

In a moment of not knowing what I wanted to do, I accessed Al Jazeera again.  One of the headlines was “Socialist in Seattle: City councilor expects not to be a rarity for long” at http://alj.am/1aLZUlH.  What was interesting was how an “outsider” gained a seat on the city council.
Kshama Sawant, an immigrant from Mumbai and an economics professor, overturned many of the expectations of the establishment.  She did it mostly with individual donations and an organization of people hungering for something different.  Are voters who normally don’t show up desperately seeking candidates who are not the same old, same old?  Apparently so, one of her volunteers said, "People who have never voted before not only voted but also volunteered for this campaign."

I have been unable to easily find final results, but what I’ve been able to figure out, Sawant’s win was extraordinary in that her party is Socialist Alternative.  Otherwise, it was not really a spectacular win.  Turnout was less than sixty percent and she won by about one thousand votes of the less than 170,000 votes cast for that seat.

She and her campaign project a Tea Party attitude with a different agenda, that is, we’re right and everyone else is wrong.  It will be interesting to find out if she works with the other eight councilors to get things done or if she is marginalized or disruptive.

If you read only local papers you probably missed the story.  The Star Tribune had two stories in mid-November.  The Duluth News Tribune had no stories.  And even that liberal rag, the Reader Weekly has no finds for Sawant.  Oh, well, I do like writing “scoops”.

You can find two different editorial views of her in the Seattle Times and TruthDigger.

Thanh Tan of the Seattle Times asks “Can Kshama Sawant move past rhetoric, work with City Council?”  See http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2013/11/22/kshama-sawant-seattle-city-council/.  She thinks having “an immigrant woman of color join the Seattle City Council is a powerful, symbolic feat.”  But she warns that Sawant’s partisanship may get in the way of making “policies work for Seattle.”

Alexander Reed Kelly of Truthdigger writes about Sawant as the “Truth digger of the week”.  See
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_kshama_sawant_20131123.  He writes, “Sawant’s victory over a 16-year Democratic incumbent by a difference of more than 1,000 votes provides evidence that their abandonment of common people has created opportunities for different political ideas to take hold.”

I am of two minds about this.  One, it is about time that some change come to our “two-party system”.  Two, will this election only be a minor disturbance of the status quo?  Think back to Jesse Ventura’s upset for Minnesota governor in 1998.  He made speeches that resonated with many who felt the state government wasn’t working in their interest.  And the polls completed missed his appeal, predicting that he would come in last in a three-way race.  Remember though, he did not get a majority of voters supporting him.  Once he left the governorship, we went back to the “flip-flop” status quo.

Lori Sturdevant wonders pessimistically if “America’s alienated apoliticos, disgusted pragmatists and people-without-a-party moderates will find each other and turn themselves into a political force potent enough to compel politicians to compromise.”  See “New politics won’t come easily, but come it must”, Star Tribune, 2013-12-08 at http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/234823611.html.  She highlights the “No Labels” group whose issue is “make government work again.”  I wonder if that slogan will catch on and get some candidates elected.  All the anti-government slogans in the blather-o-sphere seem to have gotten more people to stay away from elections, leaving the field wide open to anti-government politicians.

I am reading a pessimistic book, “The PARTY Is OVER: How Republicans Went CRAZY, Democrats Became USELESS, and the Middle Class Got SHAFTED” by Mike Lofgren, a former Republican Party congressional staffer.  An example of how the Republicans manipulate the voters that he points out is that Republicans know how to use emotional words, Democrats use bureaucratese.  Think of PATRIOT Act versus Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Skipping ahead to the end of his book I found that he is optimistic that the Millennials will turn to a politics of “what will work.”

Maybe the next book on my list, “Electoral Dysfunction: a Survival Manual for American Voters” by Victoria Bassetti has some good ideas of getting “We, the People” to take our country back.  She does have an afterword by Heather Smith, President of Rock the Vote.

BTW, you did vote in the last city election, didn’t you?  And all the elections before that?  If not, please don’t complain about the results.  Who knows, if more people who shared your views showed up, the results might have been very different.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.  We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  We are the change that we seek.”
- Barack Obama

Well, maybe next time.

Also posted on the Reader Weekly website at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/12/12/2595_party_of_one-8.

Am I a descendant of illegal immigrants?

My great-grandfather, John J. R. Magree, was supposedly born in Brooklyn, New York, at least according to all the census records from 1870 on, his obituary, and other records.  Brooklyn has no record of his birth.

Because John C. Magree was a mate in New York harbor in the 1850 census and master of the Ship Ivanhoe in Jan. 1851, I assumed that John C. Magree was his father.  The Brooklyn city directories of the 1850s list a Margaret Magree, widow.  Was she the abandoned wife of John C. Magree?  John C. Magree was still alive during the Civil War.

However I did find records of the marriage in Liverpool, England, of John C. Magree and Margaret Pope, and then of the birth to this couple of John James Richard Magree.  Given the rarity of the name Magree, isn't the probability rather strong that this is the John James Richard Magree who became known as John J. R. Magree as an adult?

But I can find no record of Margaret Magree and John J. R. Magree traveling on John C. Magree's ship or any other ship.  Did John C. bring them as unlisted passengers?  Did they not need to be on the manifest because they were the master's family?  As far as I can tell, the same manifest did not list any of the crew, either.

So, do we follow the rule that Barack Obama, born in Hawaii of an American mother and a Kenyan father, is not born in America?  Or do we follow the rule that Ted Cruz and John McCain, born in Canada and the Panama Canal Zone, respectively, of at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen, are born in America?  I guess, sarcastically, since I am white we follow the Cruz/McCain rules.

However, if we follow the "Obama" rule, then I am the descendant of illegal immigrants.  Not only was my great-great grandmother presumably born in England, but we have have no birth certificate to prove that John C. Magree was born in the United States.  The only "proof " is that on his marriage application in England, John Cornelius Magree gave his father's name as Vinsent Magree.  There was a Vincent Magree in the 1840 census with at least one male around 12 years old.

That's all rather slim evidence that my paternal line has been born of legal immigrants.

If that makes me an illegal immigrant too, where should I be deported to?  England, Germany, Poland?  I have traced ancestors to all three of those countries.

President Obama calls U.S. a terrorist nation

Well, he didn't directly say that the U.S. is a terrorist nation, but he didn't choose his words carefully in response to the Boston Marathon terrorism.

First, let me back up to my first knowledge of this meaningless act.

One of my earliest reactions was when Rep. John Boehner called it a terrorist act.  I read the subtext as an "Islamist terrorist act."  I don't know if that was his intention or not, but he certainly gave me the impression that was what he meant.

Some authorities were reluctant at first to call the bombing a terrorist attack, but I don't think there is any other definition for it.  Sandy Hook was a terrorist attack; the Boston Marathon was a terrorist attack.  The whole object of these and many others is to frighten, maim, and kill a large number of people.

Given that nobody has claimed any responsibility, my guess is that someone who was disqualified from the Marathon might have done this out of spite.  Whoever it was and for whatever reason, I hope the authorities can track that person down, for no other reason than some sense of closure for the victims who lost their lives or who have had their lives drastically altered.

President Obama said the right words under the circumstances, but some of them may haunt him and other politicians later:

 “This was a heinous and cowardly act, and given what we know about what took place, the F.B.I. is investigating it as an act of terrorism.”  “Anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terror.”

“What we don’t yet know, however, is who carried out this attack or why,” the president said, “whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual. That’s what we don’t yet know.”

- "Obama Calls Blasts an 'Act of Terrorism'", Mark Landler, New York Times, 2013-04-16

So, Mr. President, if bombs targeting innocent civilians are acts of terror, what are missiles shot by drones into occupied dwellings?  What are missiles shot from ships into cities?  What are atomic bombs dropped from planes or sent by guided or ballistic missiles?  Are these weapons only taking out "bad guys" or are a lot of people who have no control over the bad guys just going to be "collateral damage"?  We certainly don't want to think of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombs as being "collateral damage" for somebody's grudge against Boston or against the United States.

The idiocy of race and nationality

Several weeks ago a Duluth Fox news director caused quite a stir when he put on Facebook a derogatory, racist remark about somebody that was near his house.  I don't remember if he resigned or was fired.  He then said that his great-grandfather's great-grandfather was Indian or some such chain, and he claims he is Indian too.  He even was admitted into an Indian journalists' group.

Come on!  Just because you had an ancestor of a certain origin doesn't make you one of the group the ancestor belonged to.  Many people even one generation removed from some place have none of the language or culture of where their parents came from.

My surname is Irish, but I can find no ancestor that lived in Ireland.  The best I can tell is that my great-great-great grandfather, Vincent Magree, was probably born in Maryland.  I am assuming that Magree is Irish because several Australians named Magree trace their ancestry back to Kilkenny.

I have great-grandparents who were born in England and Germany.  I consider myself neither English or German.  When I was in England and Ireland, I was called a Yank.  When I was in Germany, I was called Amerikaner.  Some of my ancestors born in what was then Germany may have had Polish ancestors.  I do not consider myself Polish.

I consider myself an American because I was born in the U.S., had almost all of my education in the U.S., and except for some trips to Canada, never went outside the U.S. until I was 30.

So, if some ancestor long, long ago was from a certain group and some of that person's descendants claim they belong to that group, shouldn't we consider President Barack Obama a white man.  His mother was a white American and a long list of her ancestors were white.  Given the reasoning for people to claim Indian inheritance, then we can also say that Obama is white.

We're born here; we're Americans.  End of story.

Winning candidates, be humble!

Most of the election results are in, and once again the "largest party" came in first.  The "largest party" is the party of no-shows, the eligible voters who chose to stay away.  The turn out figures are estimated to be around 60 percent.  In order to come in "first", a candidate would have to have about two-thirds of the votes cast.  Few, if any, have received this level of support.

Well, maybe in pockets here and there.  For example, Obama may have received 75 percent of the votes in Boston, but throughout the country, he received just over half the votes.

Some claim can be made that the Hurricane Sandy lowered the vote in New York and New Jersey, but  Sandy can't account for 19 percent fewer votes in Arizona and 25 percent fewer in Alaska.  Voter ID laws may have had some effect, but not that big in Alaska.

What would be interesting to know is how many 2008 Obama supporters stayed away because Obama didn't do all they wanted and how many Tea Partiers stayed away because Romney wasn't "pure" enough.

At least at the top of ballot, both Romney and Obama are acting humble.  Their speeches this morning were filled with gracious remarks.  Let's hope that these attitudes are shown by those down the ranks.

More "real" names of political parties

Given Romney's false statements, maybe he's a Republicon.  Given that Democrats often don't seem to be what many vote for, maybe they should be called Lemoncrats.

Pessimistic quote of the day: responsibility for business success or failure

A small BBQ chain in Richmond went out of business.  Mitt Romney used it as an example of how the Obama administration is bad for business.  He ignores that another BBQ in Richmond is quite successful, but Romney won't give the Obama credit for its success.

"Mr. Romney’s take on Bill’s seems perfectly representative of his general outlook. If a business succeeds, the government can’t share the credit. If it fails, it’s the government’s fault."

See "Bad Barbecue? Blame Obama", Juliet Lapados, New York Times, 2012-11-02.

I still don't believe the polls

… and I don't really have any well-based predictions of my own.

Consider that our phone rings several times a day.  We don't answer and very few leave a message on the answering machine.  Those who do leave a message have some meaningful connection to us.  Given the approaching election, these "empty" calls are

1) Robo-calls for a candidate or a party
2) Person calls for a candidate or a party
3) Poll calls

Also consider that many people have cell phones but no land line.  Although some pollsters say they are calling both land lines and cell phones, many cell phone numbers are not in any directory.  My cell phone has few calls and the two recent unknown calls may have been misdials or random spamming.  Besides, I generally have it off.

Which way will those who are not reached by a poll lean?  I can't really say.  Will too many younger voters stay away because they didn't think Obama didn't do enough?  Are those who don't answer more likely to lean toward Obama?  As I write this yet another call came in that stopped after three rings.

How likely are those who respond to actually vote?  One of the questions is if the respondent is a likely voter.  Many people say they are likely voters because they are embarrassed to admit that they don't plan on voting.

I think the election will be determined by the balance of unhappy people, which group will stay away in larger numbers - Tea Party types who don't think Romney is "conservative" enough or "liberals" who don't think Obama did enough.  My inclination is that the latter will be the larger group.

I hope you, dear reader, will not be a stay-away on election day.  Please remind your friends to vote.

If you're not scared this Hallowe'en, you should be

According to Frank Rich, win or lose, the Republicans are going to be very detrimental to our future.  And these pseudo-conservatives won't be going away.  See "Right will rage if Obama wins", David Daley, Salon, 2012-10-27.

The second American Revolution has started, and it ain't pretty

The Republican Party has become a revolutionary party, one that tolerates no opposition.

Consider that if a Republican politician doesn't follow party doctrine then he or she is is sidelined as soon as possible.  Why do you think there are so many ex-Republicans?  See Jim Ramstad's praise of Wellstone, "Remembering Paul Wellstone", Star Tribune 2012-10-19.

Consider that Republicans keep insisting that their solutions will solve certain problems even when experts point out historic facts that show similar policies have not worked in the past.

Consider that Republicans' stated goal at the start of Obama's presidency was to ensure he did not have a second term.  Some commentators think this is barely concealed racism.  This may be true, but it is also an effective smokescreen.  Their true motive may be to destroy the Democratic Party and to become the only party.

Consider the Republican claims of voter fraud. Are not voter ID requirements a thinly disguised attempt to reduce the number of Democratic voters?

Consider that the Republicans may have already started a civil war.  As they give more power to corporations, are they transforming our government from "by the people" to "by the corporations"?  Once corporations were tools of the people to be dissolved when their purpose was fulfilled.  Now people seem to be the tools of corporations to be discarded when no longer economically useful.

See "The Great Unraveling" by Paul Krugman.  He saw this revolution in 2003!

Consider that the Republicans call themselves "conservatives" but they are nowhere near being classical conservatives as defined by Edmund Burke in the Eighteenth Century.  In fact, many of the so-called liberals in the Democratic Party may be closer to the Burkian model of Conservative than the Republicans.  For more details, see "Why Voters Should Turn From the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession, Part I", Louis M. Guenin, Huffington Post, 2012-10-24.  It is quite an indictment of the hodgepodge of conflicting ideas of the Republican Party.  Watch for Part II in the Huffington Post tomorrow (2012-10-25).

Debates? What debates?

According to the newspapers, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama had their third and final debate last night, supposedly on foreign policy.  As with the previous two, I didn't bother watching.  What for?  See What do the debates prove?
http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-do-debates-prove.html and Netflix disappointed me
http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/netflix-disappointed-me.html

From what little I read in newspapers, I didn't think it was worth watching.  I think the debates were summed up by two snippets from "Sparring Over Foreign Policy, Obama Goes on the Offense
", Peter Baker and Helene Cooper, New York Times, 2012-10-22.

"For all its fireworks, the debate broke little new ground and underscored that the differences between the two men on foreign policy rest more on tone, style and their sense of leadership than on particular policies. Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney seemed to align on matters like withdrawal from Afghanistan, the perils of intervening in Syria and the use of drones to battle terrorists."

"Mr. Romney pinned the cascading crises around the world on Mr. Obama’s shoulders, saying the president had failed to live up to his promises from his 2008 campaign and left the country in a weaker position."

Baker and Cooper seem to say that whoever wins the election will follow essentially the same policies.  Maybe, maybe not.  However, I think the second quote is quite telling of Romney's attitude that the President of the U.S. should be emperor of the world and bring all these hot spots in line with U.S. "interests".  My usual question is who elected the President as "the leader of the free world"?  It certainly wasn't the people of Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.  How can you claim to be for freedom and democracy if you anoint yourself as "the leader of the free world"?  Napoleon crowned himself as Emperor of France, and look what happened to him.  Look what's happening to our economy as we spend all this money on weapons and war without raising the taxes to pay for them.

Who creates jobs? Government or Corporations?

According to "The Myth of Job Creation", Editorial, New York Times, 2012-10-21, Obama and Romney agree that "government does not create jobs".  The New York Times disagrees, "Except that it does, millions of them — including teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, sailors, astronauts, epidemiologists, antiterrorism agents, park rangers, diplomats, governors (Mr. Romney’s old job) and congressmen (like Paul Ryan)."

It is so hard to break the Norquist attitude that government is useless.  If government was so useless, why do so many corporations spend fortunes to get a government that will pass laws they favor?  If government was so useless, why do so many corporations seek government contracts?  If government was so useless, who would give corporations patents?  If government was so useless, who would adjudicate corporations billion-dollar suits against each other?

Who controls gasoline prices

As I watch the gasoline prices drop, I wonder if those who blamed Obama for an increase in prices are  giving him credit for the drop.  I doubt it, because the latter is just as unrealistic as the former.

"In the end, supply and demand is causing prices to moderate once again."
Sharon Epperson, CNBC, 2012-10-18 via Yahoo Finance.

In other words, free market proponents are all for free markets when markets work to their benefit, but they blame someone else when markets work to their detriment.