The Spencerian

Drone War: The Politics of Death and Destruction a World Away... and Close to Home

A man named Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. predator drone strike in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia and Eritrea (where all those pirates have caused so many problems).  He was 40, my age.  That same strike also killed a man named Samir Khan.  The Washington Post piece I'll reference is here, and the U.K. Guardian piece is here.  An overview piece from the New York Times is here.

Both men had been linked closely to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.  Awlaki had a hand in the Fort Hood shootings, and had attempted to coordinate other terrorist attacks.  Khan was the editor of al-Qaeda's English language magazine (who knew they had a freakin' magazine).  Now, it would be real easy to say, Great, a couple more terrorists are dead.  Good work.  

But here's a key fact which may give you pause: both of these men were citizens of the United States of America -- they were born here.  Mr. Awlaki was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, Mr. Khan, 25, lived with his family -- of Pakistani origin -- in North Carolina as recently as four years ago.

Maybe this still doesn't bother you.  Who cares if the guy was from New Mexico?  Who cares if he was a U.S. citizen?  

Maybe you shouldn't care.  After all, he advocated for the killing of Americans in the name of the Islam he knew and understood.  He was a dangerous terrorist.  So was the other guy.  And we kill terrorists, right?   

Sure, maybe you shouldn't care.  

Or maybe you should.

The federal lawsuit, which is being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights at the request of Mr. Awlaki’s father, has set off a broader debate over whether the government should be allowed to assassinate an American in a country the United States is not at war with. The administration maintains that the president has sole authority over such strikes, while the other side is arguing that judicial review is required.

It’s a vexing legal question worthy of debate. But no one should remain under the mistaken assumption that killing Mr. Awlaki will somehow make us safer.

Mind you, that link goes to an opinion piece from November of 2010.  Mr. Awlaki was not yet dead. 

Well, he is now.  And we are left to struggle with some uncomfortable questions.  After all, we still have a Constitution of the United States, with all its various Amendments.  Here's a piece of a really good one, courtesty Kevin at Ghost in the Machine (and on Twitter, @kcm74, where he and I went back and forth a bit on this; so, a very grateful, but serious tip of the hat to Kevin for making me think about this one).  In fact, the content of Kevin's tweet, which inspired my response:

"No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Pretty self-explanatory, people. #awlaki

Well, at the risk of being flip, I'd certainly say that Mr. Awlaki and Mr. Khan were "deprived of life." The real question comes around "due process of law."  Predator drones don't serve papers.

The whole of the 5th Amendment, a little long for Twitter, actually says:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Once again, these are complicated, difficult legal questions, as well as agonizing moral questions.  I am not a lawyer, but I don't wonder if the administration isn't looking at the first three lines, there.  In other words, maybe you don't need that whole Grand Jury deal if we're "in a time of War or public danger." 

Which only leads to more questions about the endless War on Terror.  

On the question of Constitutionality and legalities and the ultimate rights of an American who has renounced their country and countrymen as death-deserving heathens, I really have no easy answer.  I'm not sure a lawyer would, either.  I'm not sure a team of lawyers would.

[As an aside, I did raise with Kevin the notion of a guy presenting a clear and present danger, say, walking down the street with a gun, shooting at people.  The police have the right to shoot him, don't they?  Kevin pointed out that the evidence that Mr. al-Awlaki was a danger to America was all presented by the government, and that a due process was warranted.  Again, complicated answers only raising more complicated questions.]

Here's what I do know.  Sure, as a guy interested in the affairs of the world, in public policy, and in politics, this is a complicated question.  There are no easy answers.

As a father, these questions get easier and easier.  I've had to think about these kind of life-and-death issues with respect to my family a lot lately.  Most recently with the shameful execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, and before that the killing of Osama bin Laden.  

As a person who cares about the Constitution, who cares about politics and policy, does the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki trouble me?  Sure it does.  Yes.

But when he says, as he did in one sermon,  "Don’t consult anyone in killing Americans. Fighting Satan doesn’t require a religious ruling," he's talking about every American.  

He is talking about my daughter.  My wife.  My family.  

I won't mourn the passing of a terrorist who wishes my family ill.  I will mourn the bastardization of justice in the name of vengeful expediency.  

Finally Friday The Hippie to the Hippie Version

A Florida judge has said that prison outsourcing is unconstitutional.

A state judge on Friday declared unconstitutional the Legislature's decision to privatize 30 prisons in 18 counties, saying the action violated existing state laws.

Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford's decision — which is likely to be appealed by the state — brings to a halt, for now, a massive outsourcing venture and is a victory for the Police Benevolent Association, which filed suit to stop the privatization and save thousands of its members' jobs.

This will have legal ramifications for some time to come.  I suspect there will be political implications as well.  We'll be hearing about this one for a good long while.

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This investigation should absolutely happen. 

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Michele Bachmann continues her epic flame-out.

Via Mustang Bobby, the BBWW Quote of the Day:

The Supreme Court should not be deciding our laws. That's the people we elect, that's who should decide our laws.

Indeed.

Indeed.

You know, folks, this is getting hard to watch.

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The wife of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Our thoughts are with them.

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Let's go Rays!

Follow along live...

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Sylvia Robinson was a singer and a songwriter and a producer.  She died this week at the age of 75.  

Ms. Robinson formed the Sugarhill Gang, and was instrumental in the production of "Rapper's Delight."  A lot of people called her the "mother of hip-hop."  

She will be missed.

It's finally Friday.

Almost Friday Livin' It Up Edition

It is, in fact, almost Friday, and I am really whipped.  I don't think I'm going to provide you the kind of post you deserve, so just follow this link to the Frank Deford piece on NPR.

What accounts for the guy-ification of America? Maybe it has to do with the fact that men had to stop calling grown women girls. Gals kind of went out, too, so there wasn't anything else available. In sports, for a long time, even after it was gauche for anyone else to call adult females girls, women athletes still referred to each other as girls, but that just won't do anymore.

Now that guy has been appropriated by women, men have started to use dude a lot more, but that remains mostly in the singular, as a form of address, as sir used to be. Like someone will say: Yo, dude, who are the guys on your team? Still, nobody addresses anybody as guy. We'll say, Dude, you're a good guy, but nobody says, Guy, you're a good dude.

I admit it: I say dude a whole lot.  More than I should.  And I definitely refer to everyone -- regardless of gender -- as "guys".  

He's right: there has been a change -- an evolution, really -- in our language.  I don't think it will ever go back to the way it was.  That's just not the way things work.  

But like Stetson hats, I do sort of miss the old-school way of saying things.  Don't you, guys?

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I've heard this grand idea from more than one source well outside Democratic circles (in fact, well inside Republican circles; don't ask):

President Obama will not be seeking re-election.  Because his poll numbers are so low.  Hillary Clinton will actually be running in 2012.

Okay, go ahead and take a minute to clean up all the milk you just shot out your nose from laughing so hard.  

This line of "logic" is apparently the gospel among the GOP presidential candidates and their staff.  Sounds like someone's been drinking the Dick Cheney Kool-Aid. 

Sure, Obama's poll numbers are low, but so are those of Congress (in fact, they're much, much worse), half of which is run by an apparently inept Speaker John Boehner.  No one is suggesting every single Member of Congress not run for re-election because their collective polling is low.  

What's more, I really feel the Secretary of State -- who had high poll numbers as of last year, it should be noted -- really closed the door on the nonsense speculation of a run pretty firmly. 

Ah, but of course this isn't about Secretary Clinton ginning up talk of a Democratic primary challenge to Obama.  This is about two things.  

The first is former President Clinton, who gave a talk on energy policy (as best I can figure) to something called IHS CERAWeek, run by this place.

I'd give you the link to the transcript, but it was closed to the press and the public.  Here's what was told to a POLITICO reporter:

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it.” 

Hm, yes, I will admit those are harsh words coming from the former President.  Kind of a zinger -- I guess -- in a roundabout way, towards the current administration.  If you assume they were reported accurately to a POLITICO reporter.  

It just begs the question: who was it that quoted Clinton to the reporter?  This guy:

Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition.

Oh!  So interesting.  You don't think Mr. Noe would have any kind of vested interest in causing trouble for President Obama, who hasn't allowed him to drill for his precious oil, do you?  

All of this, of course, is exactly why Hillary Clinton will resign her position as Secretary of State, immediately start fundraising (she's only a few hundred million dollars behind), shred the loyalties of all the Clinton folks who went to work for Obama, implode the national Democratic base, alienate independent voters (because it would be protracted, and it would be ugly), and all for what?

Which leads, finally, to the second thing.  Mr. Noe would do well to look at the sorry lot his side is stuck with and pick one.  Romney?  Perry?  Cain?  Bachmann?  You know, when you're own side is not much to look at, sometimes it's fun to fantastize that maybe something ugly will happen for the other team.   

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I hope you'll take a minute and go help Bill Nobles who is running for State House in District 52.  He's a good guy, will make a great representative -- and he needs your help. 

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This is my official apology to the Tampa Bay Rays, who pulled it out in twelve innings last night.

Way to go, guys!  I am sorry I badmouthed you on the blog before I went to bed (to be fair, Price had a terrible night).  Good luck against Texas.  

Go Rays!

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It's almost Friday.  And I'm a lowlife.  And I'm lovin' it.  Got the whole damn world in the palm of my hand.  

The Kingdom and Our Partners in Peace

While I'm pretending that the Tampa Bay Rays are playing a baseball game tonight, and avoiding looking at the score of the Boston Red Sox who actually are, I realize I have been haunted by this story from NPR: Saudi Woman Sentenced To Lashings After Violating Driving Ban.

A group of activists in Saudi Arabia has launched a campaign to overturn a court ruling against a woman who defied the kingdom's ban on driving by women. The woman was sentenced to 10 lashes with a whip after she defied the ban in her home city on the Red Sea Coast. Melissa Block talks with NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson for the details.

A driving ban... by women.  Women are not allowed to drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  

You know, I spend a fair chunk of my days speeding north-bound on 66th Street, so that I can get to Ulmerton, and then 58th, in large part so that I can do the bidding of my bosses: all women (our board is made up of both women and men, but our Executive Director is a woman, as is our Director of Public Policy, our Programs and Finance Director, and our Program and Community Support Director; indeed our organization is almost entirely women, about one-tenth of it men.).  

More to the point, I think about my daughter, sleeping peacefully now in her room.  10 lashes with a fucking whip?  For driving a goddam car?  

You'd better believe that all the king's men couldn't hold me back.  That would not happen.  

I think about my wife, reading a book in the next room.

I think about my mother, my sister.  My many, many friends who are also sisters, wives, daughters.  

The short answer is, this isn't just un-American -- it's not even human.  A goddam "group of activists" is mobilizing to protest the lashings of this poor woman? 

My god -- every single presidential candidate in the Republican field ought to be denouncing this every single day.  Though all of them should vociferously speak out against this crime against humanity, it ought to resonate especially loudly from the lone woman among the candidates.  

Frankly, we ought to be hearing from the president, too.  This isn't some sort of internal political problem in the Saudi Kingdom -- it's another atrocity representative of the whole reason for the Arab Spring.  This is another Mohammed Bouazizi.

As is often the case, art reflects the better parts of ourselves we'd like to see, and so I offer you one of the classic clips from a great TV show, The West Wing, below.  Don't expect this from Jay Carney tomorrow.

A Dispatch from Our Town

Duncan and I moved back to St. Petersburg in 2006.  We lived at the south end of the city -- and Pinellas County -- in some condos within walking distance of I-275 and the last exit before the Sunshine Skyway.  It was spring to 2007 when we started looking for a house.  This was just before the housing bubble burst, by the way.  Yes, we are aware of our terrible timing.  

We hooked up with a real estate agent, and spent a lot of time looking in a St. Petersburg neighborhood called Old Northeast.  We looked at several houses in that area, and none of them were the right fit -- or the right price (remember: this was before the crash).  

Finally, our agent brought us to Gulfport.  

And we fell in love.  

I don't know how or why.  Maybe it's Beach Drive -- the main drag through downtown -- or the fact that we know our neighbors and think they're all pretty fantastic.  Maybe it's the fact that we're just minutes from downtown St. Petersburg, minutes from some of the best beaches in the nation, minutes from Tampa, even.  I can ride my bike right up the street, taking Emmy along in our little baby trailer, and be on the Pinellas Trail in no time. 

I do know that a lot of it has to do with the fact that it has a small town Florida feel.  Duncan and I like that about Gulfport.

I am embarrassed to tell you that I have yet to go to a Gulfport City Council meeting.  Given that politics is what I enjoy and what I blog about, this is a problem I should really work to fix.  

As it turns out, Gulfpor City Council recently voted to shut down their police dispatch.

At first it's kind of easy to think of outsourcing dispatch -- it would go to the Sherrif's Office -- as a quick and easy money saver.  But the truth of the matter is, it gets complicated real fast.  Our Chief of Police, Robert Vincent, has a couple of good blog posts on this.  Here's his post from May, and here's his post from earlier this month.

From a policing perspective, I'd say that his concerns are probably as valid as you're likely to find (the holding cell will become the County Jail, there will not be anyone in the city building after hours if there's an emergency, and the Gulfport P.D. will become, in his words, "customers" insteaded of the bosses.  You don't like how your call to the police was handled?  Don't take it to Chief Vincent -- take it to the Sherrif.  

I'm also not sure about this from a community point of view.  I liked the fact that Gulfport had it's own dispatch.  We've called the police before, and they responded in timely, professional manner.  I'm not saying we won't get that from dispatch outsourced to the County.  But if we do, suddenly, there's a lot less I can do about it.  The Sherrif has to worry about policing a million people.  Gulfport P.D. can focus on our area, and if I need something, or if I have a complaint, I can take it two minutes down the road and talk to them right there.  

Gulfport is a pretty tight little community.  I'm sorry to see this piece of it break off in tough economic times.

There's been better commentary out there on this issue, by the way, notably from Cathy Salustri at the Gabber.  Read Promises, Promises, and draw your own conlcusions about the whole process.  While you're at it, there was a very informative piece in the Gulfport Patch on this as well.  Of course, the Times has covered this as well. 

Maybe when times get a little better, they'll bring back dispatch.  Then again, maybe whether or not they bring it back is not the question we should be asking.  Maybe the question is, what will we outsource next?

Trading the Screen for Paper

Between the fantastically graphed collapse of the Boston Red Sox from Nate Silver, and the fact that the Rays are down 3-2 to the Yankees right now, I am having a mini-freakout at the computer screen right now.  Doesn't help that the Rays pulled off a triple play.  I mean, following this stuff on Twitter isn't easy.

And so I'm going to shut this thing down and go read an actual book.  

It's Banned Books Week.  You know, this is one of those American things I find fascinating -- that we actually do something so stupid that it requires a full week of recognition to raise awareness.  

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Banned Books Week is coordinated by the American Library Association.  My mother was a librarian (remains so, really; once a librarian, always a librarian, right, Mom?  Kind of like the Marines.).  I love a good book (I'm in the middle of the Mark Twain Autobiography right now, along with a Jack Reacher novel).  It's pretty simple: I owe my love of reading and my love of books to my parents, mostly my mother (no offense, Dad -- you got a mention in the pizza post, okay?).

One of the best things that has happened to us recently as parents is that Emeline has really been in to reading her books.  She's always enjoyed books, but lately -- in the last couple of weeks -- she has really been pulling them out and flipping through them.  With us, on her own.  It's fantastic.

I hope when Emeline gets older that maybe we won't need a Banned Books Week.  Of course, I hope she will always celebrate the freedom to read.

Off the Radar Grand Slam Edition

It may come down to a one-game playoff between the Red Sox and the Rays for the wildcard playoff spot.  Shaping up to be an interesting post-season, for sure.

Let's go Rays! 

Is it me, or has this season seemed a lot shorter?  It's not really, I know.  Maybe it's just that the year has gone by quickly.

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I'll admit it: I've had a grand time slamming the likes of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry (and Herman Cain) in this space.  The current GOP field of folks running for president are not serious about, well, anything.  And to be fair to them, the people they are playing to -- the GOP base -- aren't really very serious, either.  Booing a gay soldier in Iraq?  Hooray-ing the death of fellow Americans who don't happen to have insurance?  Applauding a record number of executions done without conscience?  

Abandoning Governor Rick Perry because a piece of his position on immigration may actually be vaguely compassionate?  

Come on.

Unfortunately for me, the fun probably won't last.  Eugene Robinson is a must-read, and alludes to the maybe-hero for the GOP: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Perry was supposed to be the “Shane”-like Western hero who brought peace to the troubled valley that is the Republican presidential field. A month after he rode into town, however, increasingly frantic GOP insiders are begging New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to saddle up and save the day.

Is Christie the guy?  I don't really know.  Truth is, I don't know that much about him.  Maybe.  

Then again, maybe Robinson is more right than not: 

At this point, you have to wonder if the GOP will fall in love with anybody. I’m trying to imagine the candidate who can maintain credibility with the party’s establishment and Tea Party wings. If the ultra-flexible Romney isn’t enough of a political contortionist to do it, who is?

It's a legitimate question.

And if he gets in, I'm sure I'll find stuff to write about him as well.

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No one tires of the can't-we-all-just-get-along huckstering of Washington, D.C.'s professional class more than me.  I've said before that our political process is fundamentally broken in a number of ways (most notably with respect to the undue influence of money), but I think that having partisan ideas is okay.  That's how it's supposed to work.

We have Democrats, we have Republicans.  We try Democratic ideas of governance for a time.  If something doesn't work, something falls apart, then people elect Republicans, and we try Republican ideas for a little bit (hopefully not for very long, heh).  It's really a pretty simple equation.

Here's the problem, though: this new breed of tea partier Republican doesn't want any sort of government at all.  Government's not the solution, it's the problem.  That's for the Ronald Reagan, a guy who was the head of the Executive Branch of the government for eight years.  Swell.  

We're seeing the realization of that kind of destructive thinking now in things like the debt-ceiling showdown of a few weeks ago, and this most recent near-government shutdown involving federal disaster aid.  And this is why the ongoing narrative about centrist, bi-partisan ideas makes so little sense right now.  The other side stopped making sense.  

Anyway, please read this piece from Frank Rich at New York Magazine in praise of partisanship.

Yet the glorification of bipartisanship as a political steroid is actually gaining favor in the Beltway, especially in liberal quarters, as Election Year approaches. The first trial balloon, all but bursting with hot air, was the announcement of an organization called No Labels last December. Venerating the “vital center” and vilifying “hyperpartisanship,” No Labels was endorsed by Michael Bloomberg, the former George W. Bush operative Mark McKinnon, and MSNBC’s bipartisan-minded morning talk show Morning Joe, which celebrated No Labels’ opening festival of civic-minded treacle as if it were the birth of the United Nations. Among the star attractions was Evan Bayh, the former Democratic senator from Indiana, a Broder-anointed patron saint of bipartisanship who quit the Senate in 2010 after writing a self-martyring Times op-ed whining about congressional dysfunction. (“Why not have a monthly lunch of all 100 senators?” was one of his helpful remedies.) Bayh has since elucidated his definition of bipartisanship by signing on as a talking head at that haven of nonideological civility, Fox News, and by partnering with the former Bush chief of staff Andy Card on a Chamber of Commerce–sponsored “bipartisan” road tour opposing EPA regulations on smog-producing ozone. No Labels, meanwhile, has gone on to create a blog that awards “high-fives” to politicians upholding its content-free ideals. Among the winners have been Boehner (for asking his caucus to show up for Obama’s address to Congress) and Gabrielle Giffords (for showing up to vote for the debt-ceiling bill). While Woody Allen may be right that 80 percent of success is showing up, if that’s now the high bar for a functioning government, America can pack it in.

No Labels has since been joined by two other bipartisan campaigns, both with prominent liberal supporters and both poised to damage Obama in 2012. One is the brainchild of Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, which, in a perhaps unintended bit of cultural synergy, is also the signature sponsor of Morning Joe. Schultz took a full-page ad in the Times this month to nationalize his crusade, first announced in a mass e-mail to his employees, for a moratorium on campaign contributions to protest “irresponsibility among elected officials” who “have put partisan agendas before the people’s agenda.” Exactly which “people” he means isn’t clear—presumably those who share his own largely Democratic orthodoxy—but his scheme was promptly embraced by Times columnists (not Krugman!) and by No Labels, which recruited him for a national teleconference. Schultz boasts of being “overwhelmed” with support and of recruiting some 100 CEOs to sign his no-giving pledge. USA Today, digging deeper, discovered that most of those 100 executives had given less than $5,000 or nothing at all to politicians in recent years. Somewhere the Koch brothers, pouring millions into the tea-party coffers to further the agenda of their own “people,” are laughing at this decaffeinated exercise in unilateral political disarmament.

I guess that, in the end, is what gets me as much as the idea of some sort of unattainable centerist policy heaven -- that these Republican tea partier overlords are laughing all the way to the bank... at the expense of the country.

via The Fix.

 -- More later -- 

Can You Feel the Cainmentum?

I love pizza.  

I have always loved pizza.  It is easily my favorite food.  I have spent a lifetime familiarizing myself with various kinds of pizza, and because of my dedication to this craft (yes, the craft of eating pizza), I know good pizza.  Terrible pizza greatly offends me... but if I'm hungry enough, I'll eat it.  

I appreciate fine food, I really do.  I have eaten in some of the nicest restaurants in the country.  I have even feasted on delicacies in international settings.  These are some of the best meals I've ever had, and I will never forget them.  

But pizza is my go-to food.  I will pack away some pizza, too.  I hate it when there are a bunch of us and people say "we'll order a couple of pizzas, m'kay?  You'll eat a couple of slices, right?"  Really?  A couple?  Because I'll eat a large by myself, walking way.  These people that order pizza and then eat a slice or two with a friggin' salad...  I call them, distastefully, "pizza pussies."

I find Domino's Pizza way too bland, though it got me through several nights early in my college career when the cafeteria food just wouldn't cut it.  Anyone who has ever had Pizza Hut pizza (which is to say, everyone) knows the score on that.  It's not the worst fast-food pizza, but it's nothing special.  My mother and I would sometimes go to Pizza Hut and each get a 'personal pan pizza' when those were fairly new.  The pizza was average, but it's a nice memory of time with my mother.  

As a young person, I do remember thinking that the pizza at Pizza Inn might have been better.  I guess Pizza Inn was around Little Rock for a short time, and though you can still find many locations in Arkansas, there are none in the old home town.  Shakey's Pizza Parlor was another one from my youth.  I remember a lot less about the pizza, and a whole lot more about the video game room.  A more localized pizza joint in Little Rock is U.S. Pizza.

I have always found Papa John's sauce to be way too sweet, to the point I'd just about call it my least favorite fast-food pizza. 

That said, the worst dining experience of my life was at a CiCi's Pizza Buffet.  I had been in Sarasota for just a month or so and still didn't have a place to live.  This was during the Jan Schneider Campaign for Congress in 2002.  

I had nowhere to go, and I didn't really have any money, so Jan was letting me stay at her house.  She lived with her father, and this pissed him off.  I was in the middle of putting together precinct lists when he approached me at the kitchen table and told me to leave.  

So I left.  It was dinner time, and I had nowhere to go.  I had been on the phone to my mother, trying to hide how frantic I was (I'm sure I didn't succeed).  I knew that she and my dad had some great friends who happened to have a house in St. Petersburg.  While she was working out the details of getting me in to this awesome little house -- for which I will eternally owe Marcel and Judy Karklins -- I was making a stop at K-Mart for accommodations (a sleeping bag, mostly; the house was only modestly furnished).  

I also stopped for dinner at CiCi's Pizza Buffet, off 41 North.  

I don't know what was worse: the flies and -- no shit -- the visible larvae on the food, or the kid that walked around the buffet table, licking his palm and touching every single slice of pizza, or just the indignity of having to use the last bit of cash I had to pay for the atrocity of eating that "food".  

I lived in Manhattan for six or so months, and let me tell you -- there are places that have transcended pizza.  There's a joint way down 125th that had utterly mastered the art.  I may have to go back some day, just for that one place. 

Jason, the proud Chicagoan, once sent us some frozen Chicago pizza.  It was a whole new experience for me -- it was all about the crust.  Now, I don't think I'm ever going to be a Chicago-style guy.  But like anyone who has become an expert in the field, I can appreciate different things, if only for the sake of their art.

Here in Gulfport, we patronize the family operation run by Tony over at Fazio's Pizza.  Let me tell you: the guy knows his pizza.  We always get a large cheese pizza and then a large white pizza, which is second-to-none.  The crust is just right -- not overdone like a lot of places.  And with Fazio's, large means large.  Those two pizzas mean lunch for us for at least a couple of days.  You're ever down here to see us, odds are we'll order some pizza from these guys.

When my parents visit, my dad likes going with me to pick it up because it's a little shop front, and the pizza oven is front and center, adorned with the bad-ass "Pizza Pimp" decal right there in your face.  It's just a counter, some Cokes and stuff in a cooler to the right.  Oh, and they do it all without air conditioning.  Dad thinks this is fascinating.  Given that it must get up to a hundred and seventy-five degrees next to that oven in the summer, he's right to be fascinated.  

Unbelievably, this is not a post about pizza.

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Herman Cain won the "Presidency 5" straw poll.  

Which is utterly fascinating, because I have never eaten at Godfather's Pizza.*  

From the bottom of the polls to the top of the pack, businessman Herman Cain won a surprise victory at the Republican Party of Florida's nationally watched presidential straw poll Saturday in a sign that front-runner Rick Perry is in deep trouble.

Cain's landslide victory, with 37 percent of the vote, exceeded the combined total for Perry and Mitt Romney, who only garnered 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

But it was a particularly stinging defeat for Perry, the front-runner in Florida and national polls. He had wooed the nearly 3,000 party faithful with fliers before the Presidency 5 weekend and a free breakfast Saturday.

"Folks, this is what you call momentum," Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, said in a video message from his campaign bus. "The Herman Cain train is picking up steam."

Yes, Mr. Cain is the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, and to my knowledge and remembrance, I have never, ever eaten there.  

Mr. Cain's winning of the straw poll -- by a substantial margin -- almost says more about the meteoric rise, and what will now be a well-chronicled spectacular crash, of Texas Governor Perry than about Mr. Cain himself.  It may say almost as much about the almost-stunning irrelevancy of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who couldn't even edge past Romney, whose get-out-of-jail-free card on this one was his rather lame, finger-wagging claim that he "didn't participate."  He didn't campaign for it, but his name was on the ballot.  In a way, it's as much a win for Romney, coming within one point of Perry, who'd given him such fits lately.  

I'll be honest with you.  I don't know just a ton about Herman Cain, except that he said he wouldn't put a Muslim in his Cabinet, and that he's got a gimmicky economic plan.  

First, the comment about people of the Islamic faith:

"Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim either in your Cabinet or as a federal judge?" the blogger asked.

"No, I will not," Cain replied. "And here’s why. There is this creeping attempt, there’s this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government."

That's going to come back to him at some point, I'd expect.  And if that doesn't, this probably will:

"When Margaret Sanger - check my history - started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world," 

Wow.  Okay...

For whatever it's worth to you, my favorite Cain-ism is the little-reported incidence of his confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution.  You know, Republicans flog the flag, the Constitution, and all things patriot so much, now, I guess it's just not worth it when they mix it all up.  Hey, it's all just one big red, white, and blue deep-dish freedom supreme!

The thing that gets me about novelty candidates like Cain is they have little to no governmental experience (Cain did serve on the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, though funny enough, it's mentioned on his Biography page, but not on the bullet-points about him on the economic plan page.).  I'm so tired of hearing how America should be run like a business... no.  It really, really shouldn't.  It should be run like a government.  

So his gimmick is the 999 Plan: a 9% flat tax for business, a 9% individual flat tax, and a 9% national sales tax.  

That's basically it.  

I could come up with a better plan than that.  And I failed college algebra four times.**

Think about it.  A 9% flat tax for business.  You know, I'm so over these guys claiming to represent the small businessman, those "job creators" they're always talking about.  What in the hell is fair about Tony, running Fazio's Pizza, paying the same exact tax rate as Godfather's Pizza, which made something around $55 million?  

Sure, 9% of $55 million is a lot more than 9% of whatever Tony brings in (I'm assuming it's not $55 million; I hope Tony will forgive me if I'm wrong).  But that's why we have a tax code to begin with.  I assure you, Godfather's likely pays a lot closer to 9% than Tony does for his business.  Does Tony need a tax break?  Maybe.  Does Godfather's?  Maybe, but I seriously doubt it.

Giant corporations paying no taxes is no longer a big shock to anyone, I hope.

Maybe I'm a fool, but I am just not going to take Herman Cain very seriously, mostly because he's clearly not a very serious guy.  As a quick aside, you can learn more about Herman Cain on his website, here.  But what in the hell is T.H.E. New Voice?  Is that just where he sells his stuff?  I dunno.  Seems a little creepy to me.

This is wildly embarrassing for several Florida politicians like State Representative Jeff Brandes, Senator Don Gaetz, Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, who already endorsed Rick Perry.  I think their endorsement of a guy who flamed out so easily is demonstrative of just how politically inept our current crop of "leaders" really is.  

I'll close this out by reminding you that hospital grifter Governor Rick Scott said whoever won the straw poll would be President of the United States.  Well, Mr. Cain, now the obvious nominee, has a general campaign to run, first.  

Cain versus Obama?  I'll take it.

In the meantime, I'm jonesing for some pizza.

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*When I was in grade school, I was made to suffer the indignities of the Little Rock Cotillion, Mrs. Roger G. Butts, presiding.  Now, I don't know how anyone expects a bunch of fifth graders to get dressed up in suits and ties and take orders on manners and dancing from a lady named Mrs. Butts, for God's sake, but damned if we didn't do just that.  My sole memories of the abomination known as Cotillion, aside from profound humiliation and a million internalized butt jokes, are of doing dumb dances (everyone do the "Orang-gay-tang!") and going in groups, chaperoned by a round-robin of fathers who clearly suffered that particular hell on a short-stick drawn basis, to systematically destroy pizza places after the fact.  

I am not so sure that our pizza place of choice wasn't Godfather's Pizza.  I would ask my father now, but it's late.  I'll let you know in the comments.  

** True story for another time.

Finally Friday Bug Out Edition

Is Rick Perry done already?  That'd be kind of a shame.  

There's a pretty good chance he's nuts, and he's clearly incompetent, but as a candidate, it has been a joy watching him make an ass of himself.

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Wait a minute: Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and is doing as crappy as she's doing?  On top of that, she's going to duck the Florida poll, and still expect to be taken seriously?  

I don't see her making it to the Halloween.

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Speaking of Florida: looks like we're going to get an early primary date again.

Scheduling Florida's presidential preference primary became a game of chicken Friday as the committee charged with setting the date decided to wait a week to make a decision, giving it time to see what other states have done.

"Call it what you will, Florida wants to have relevance,'' said Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the non-voting member of the Presidential Preference Primary Committee. The panel of six legislators, former Gov. Bob Martinez and an adviser to Gov. Rick Scott met for 20 minutes Friday but postponed a decision until Sept. 30.

Complicating their decision is the fact that Arizona has broken the primary calendar rules set by the political parties and set its date for Feb. 28, the same day as South Carolina, which is expected to move its date up earlier. Missouri has also broken the calendar rules and set Feb. 7 as its primary. Michigan is poised to move its date into early February as well. All states must report their primary dates to the parties by Oct. 1.

This is a big -- and complicated -- deal.  More on this soon.

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Lot's of cool people won stuff over at Creative Loafing's Best of the Bay.  Check it out. 

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Speaking of recognition, thanks to my friends at Progress Florida for giving me a 'Best of the Blogs' mention for the week!

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It's finally Friday.

Life

In the Sesame Street video, "Kids Favorite Songs 2," the overriding storyline involves Snuffleupagus chasing the meatball he has sneezed off of his luncheon spaghetti (you know the song -- On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed...).  At the end of the video, the elusive meatball makes its way, aggressively, toward Elmo and his friends.  Though the friends manage to duck for cover to avoid the oncoming gigantic meatball, poor Elmo is left all alone to face down the huge, menacing Italian delicacy.

Things go slo-mo, the music gets a little dark, and only at the last minute does Snuffy himself jump in front of Elmo and squashes the meatball with his giant foot, saving Elmo from certain meat-, sauce-, and cheese-covered disaster.  Elmo comes out laughing and all ends well, except for Snuffleupagus's lunch, which is now ruined -- nothing but mush.

It's pretty straightforward Sesame Street fare.  Here's the thing, though: we are pretty sure Emeline is having a hard time coping with it.  She may be having nightmares associated with that scene particularly.  She has woken up, crying, sobbing, "Meatball!  Meatball!"  

Yeah, it's kind of funny, actually.  But I think it's also very illustrative of the mind of an 18, now-19 month-old.  Two theories, here.  One, she has not yet disassociated the qualities of life from animate, living creatures (animals, Elmo, people), versus inanimate objects (cars, trees, meatballs).  The other is that the scene is just too confusing for her to dissect, and she doesn't understand that Snuffy hasn't squashed Elmo, he's squashed the meatball.  Sure, she sees Elmo appear from behind Snuffy laughing, and they all start to sing soon enough.  But if your mind is new to the concept of slow motion, if the scary music throws you off, if you don't understand why the friends took cover but not Elmo, the scene could be overwhelming.  

In either scenario, one thing strikes me as true: there is, in the mind and heart of my daughter, an innate appreciate for what I can only call life.  She doesn't want the meatball to be squished.  She doesn't want Elmo to be squished.  She just wants both of them to be okay.

# # # #

Much has already been said about the execution, after a brief delay, of Troy Davis in Georgia last night.  It's hard for me to add anything to what has already been said.  

In Texas, white supremacist Lawrence Brewer was executed as well.  There was less reporting around his execution, I suppose because his guilt was never called in to question, as it was for Davis.

These are two very different cases.  Davis had seven of nine eye-witnesses recant their testimony, confirming him as the one who killed an off-duty police officer.  One of the other two was understood to be the actual shooter; he'd even talked about it, apparently.  The evidence in the case was thin, at best -- there was no real physical evidence, meaning the eyewitness accounts were key.  

In short, it was a weak case that only grew weaker.  

In the case of Brewer, his guilt was never in doubt.  Brewer and two friends tied James Byrd, Jr., a black man, to the back of their truck with a logging chain and drug him across a bumpy asphalt road, pulling him apart.  Byrd's blood covered the men when they were found.

# # # #

I have no idea how my daughter would react to something as horrific as the dragging death of another human being.  I hope I never have to know, but I also recognize we live in a dangerous, violent world, and most likely that hope will not be realized.

With respect to Brewer, I feel much like I did with the killing of Osama bin Laden -- in my mind, an ongoing, complex worry for the future.  How many more Lawrence Brewer's are out there?  In my heart, a curse on his short, pathetic life.

But that curse occupies the same space with what can only be described as regret for the likely unjust death of Troy Davis.  

Did Troy Davis kill that cop in Georgia?  I really don't know.  But that's the whole argument against the death penalty: doubt.

For me -- for most everyone -- the picture was not clear enough.  Davis was there, according to eyewitnesses.  Then he wasn't.  There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.  He'd committed crimes before.  But does that mean he committed this one?

It's easy to suggest Troy Davis didn't get a fair shake and that the death penalty was misapplied here.  It might be harder for us to admit that our vision is equally blurred in a case like that of Lawrence Brewer.  

And yet, isn't it?  Lawrence Brewer was white supremacist.  Already the issue of race has been introduced into this case (it has been introduced in the Davis case as well -- the dead off-duty police officer was white, Davis was black -- but it is less overt).  While it was alleged that Davis shot the officer, the nature of the crime Brewer and his colleagues committed is infinitely more grotesque, more heinous.  

The hard truth is that people are shot all the time.  We see it on TV.  We see it in the movies.  It happens in real life all too often.  

But even saying the name James Byrd, Jr. brings to mind a man who was literally shredded to death, attached by chain to a pickup truck.  

If we're really honest with ourselves, these crimes -- the killing of a police officer, the dragging death of a black man by white supremacists -- irrevocably cloud our vision and invariably taints our sense of justice.  They are, in a way, hard to see, hard to understand.  Our minds can't quite grasp their nature. 

Kind of like the mind of a 19 month-old and a silly show about a meatball and a furry red monster. 

# # # #

I intend no offense to the family of the fallen officer, the family of Troy Davis, or anyone who stood and advocated on either side, talking about a kids show and the death penalty in one post.  More and more, I find myself examining our politics and our world and wondering how I will ever explain it all to my daughter.  I am grateful that she can't possibly understand the complexities of the man put to death in Georgia last night.  In a way, it's a relief to think that her biggest psychological hurdle right now is a silly TV show.

I want Emeline to have her own beliefs, her own ideas and ideals, her own theories about how the world works and why.  I worry that I won't be able to explain things to her like the death of Troy Davis -- or even the death of Lawrence Brewer, or Osama bin Laden, all by our American hand -- in a way which will allow her to draw her own unbiased conclusions.  Maybe I just can't.

In the meantime, we're going to put away "Kids Favorite Songs 2" for a little bit.  After all, it is a little scary there at the end, and we only have so long before the innocence vanishes, and she understands that although the meatball is nothing but mush, Elmo is really okay.

Almost Friday Reckoning Edition

Big GOP debate over in Orlando.

I generally agree with the Kleefeld and Sarlin piece from TPM, linked above:

Gov. Rick Scott has been talking up the straw poll, seeking to raise the profile of his state party in the nomination fight, and even claiming that the winner of the contest will become president. A bit bold perhaps, but with polling indicating a close race at the moment between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the state, Florida’s importance is growing rapidly in the primaries as well as the general election.

In fact, new polling shows Perry out front of Romney here in the Sunshine State.

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Speaking of Perry, have you seen his new web ad?  I'm embeding it here, even though it's pretty ridiculous:

There's so much going on there, I'm not sure where to start.  "The-stimulus-created-zero-jobs" bit is just not true -- it created more than 3 million.  But we're not dealing with the facts.  We're dealing with liars and intellectual dishonesty on a breathtaking scale.  

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House Speaker John Boehner must be just about the most frustrated man in Washington, DC.  He'll be responsible for a government shut-down if it comes to that (which it may... again).

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It's almost Friday.

R.E.M. has broken up.  

I discovered R.E.M. in high school, and since then, I've never really stopped listening to them.  I'm sorry to see them disband.

Stay Classy! Class Warfare and Other Realities

As President Obama unveiled his deficit reduction plan, he offered a pretty fancy counter to the Republican talking point which was already on the street: "This is not class warfare, it's math."

The administration's deficit plan calls for $1.5 trillion in new taxes, and Obama sees the issue as one of shared sacrifice, arguing that it unreasonable to ask senior citizens and middle-income Americans to absorb cuts to entitlement and related programs while not asking those who reaped the greatest gains from the U.S. economy and society -- those with adjusted gross incomes above $1 million -- to pay slightly more in taxes.

This is a plan that those on the left are calling a "truly progressive approach to deficit reduction."  Those on the right are doing what they do best, which is stick to the script, no matter how effectively their argument has been debunked.  

The script this time around says to call this plan "class warfare."  

It's not going very well.  Florida blogger Joy Ann Reid -- who is also the editor of the Grio, and an MSNBC contributor -- took on this notion of class warfare on Chris Jansing's MSNBC show.  

I'm going to go ahead and tell you that her conservative counterpart, S.E. Cupp, lied about what a Congressman said on the show only moments earlier.  First, the video of Joy Ann, S.E., and Chris Jansing:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When you get to about 2:15, listen close.  Cupp butts in and says this:

But Joy Ann, that is not what he said, he did not say he has to feed his family on four hundred thousand dollars a year.  Don't put words in his mouth.

It's at this point that Joy Ann tries to jump in again:

That's what I heard.

By the way, the look on Joy Ann's face is absolutely priceless.  S.E. continues her festival of diversion and interruption:

Absolutely not!  Abs...

Joy Ann cuts back in to the action:

He said he has to feed his family, he only has four hundred thousand left, after his six million dollar business, well, I've only got four hundred thousand left...  That's what I heard.

You'll hear S.E. fight her way back in, just relentless:

He did not say he could only survive on...

Okay, I'm going to stop right here, just about 2:35 on the video.  And here's why.  Because it's at that exact moment that I think Cupp realized she was wrong -- she was moving away from the real talking point she was supposed to stick to.  

She'll get back to it, and so will I.  But first, let's just check the tape on the Congressman who either did or didn't say he had to feed his family on $400,000 a year.  Helpfully, Joy Ann provided us that content as well:

Jansing helpfully points out that Congressman John Flemming, a Republican from the Louisiana 4th Congressional District, made six million dollars last year from his restaurant frachises.  He readily agreed with that, though he also pointed out:

That's before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment, and food.  The actual net income of that is only a mere fraction of that amount.  

Yes, "a mere fraction."  The Congressman doesn't seem to be aware of the hole he's in.  He keeps digging:

I would say that... I would say that since my net income, and again, that's the individual rate that I told you about, the amount that I have to reinvest in my business, and feed my family is more like six hundred thousand of that six-point-three million.  And so, by the time I feed my family, I have maybe four hundred thousand left over to invest in new locations, upgrade locations, buy more equipment...

Bold and italics are mine.  Well, I see the phrase "feed my family" twice.  

And to be totally fair to Chris Jansing, her follow-up question is pretty good, to the effect of:  You get that the average person making forty or so thousand a year isn't going to have a lot of sympathy for you, right?

His response?  Wait for it...

Well, again, class warfare has never created a job.  And that's people that would not get jobs... this is all about creating jobs, Chris, this is not about attacking people who make certain incomes.  You know, in this country, most people feel that being successful in their businesses is a virtue, not a vice.

Strong finish, Congressman!  I don't know if the Repulican Conference has merit badges or something for staying on-point, but I'm sure you'll get yours soon enough.  

Back to the Reid/Cupp conflagration. 

When last we left, S.E. Cupp said, in aggregate, this:

But Joy Ann, that is not what he said, he did not say he has to feed his family on four hundred thousand dollars a year.  Don't put words in his mouth.

Absolutely not!  Abs...

He did not say he could only survive on...

I left you at a cut-point of about 2:35 on the video.  Here's what S.E. Cupp says after "He did not say he could only survive on..."

...Do not demonize small business owners, Joy Ann Reid.  That is the problem here.  You know, I need to make this really clear: this populism argument that... that.. the president is trying to make and people on the left are trying to make is such a fallacy.  This is not populism of Andrew Jackson, or the Scotch-Irish...

It's at this point that it becomes clear that Joy Ann has had enough.  (Seriously?  The Scotch-Irish?)  Chris Jansing does, too, and the conversation continues, and it's interesting and you should watch it.  Not to keep you in suspense, Joy Ann basically kicks her ass and S.E. Cupp kind of looks like she regretted stepping on to the MSNBC set that day.

Look, I don't want to call out Chris Jansing or the MSNBC producers, but could someone have pulled the tape on that?  

I think it would have been worth stopping S.E. Cupp just before her tirade on Joy Ann "demonizing small business owners" and showing the Congressman say -- twice -- that he "only" has four hundred thousand dollars leftover by the time he feeds his family.

Republicans are the masters of keeping to the script -- and denying the reality before their faces -- and S.E. Cupp is no different.  A millionaire congressman says he only has half a million dollars to feed his family?  Go ahead, deny he ever said it ten minutes later.  Just get in the words "class warfare" and "demonize small business".  Jansing and the MSNBC crew will let it slide, because hey, we wouldn't want a biased media, right?

Here's what I really don't get about the Republican's "class warfare" argument.  The White House says, "let's tax rich folks, make them pay their fair share," and Republicans say, "class warfare" -- and yet it's the current crop of GOP presidential nomination seekers who are all trying to out average-guy one another.  It's revival of Who'd you most like to have a beer with -- that old nonsense which gave us George W. Bush, by the way.  

How can you be a champion of everyday working Americans and still think that having the rich pay their fair share is "class warfare"?  

I know -- the Republican Party stopped making sense a long time ago.  I just thought I'd ask, anyway. 

Know Your Care: Students Get Educated

I was lamenting the Alex Leary and Adam C. Smith piece in the St. Petersburg Times dated today: Florida independent voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 looking for another change.  Maybe you read my post dated September 14 where I discussed concerns about Election 2012 and Florida.

Leary and Smith talked to actual voters, though, as opposed to my cloistered bloviating.  Here was a quote that really got under my skin:

"He's super intelligent, but he's terrible at getting things done," said Greg Peters, 42, a restaurant owner in downtown Orlando and independent voter who said he's already moved off the fence and is hoping a better Republican candidate emerges.

Um, wow.  

Wow.  Please don't think Mr. Peters is alone, either:

"I think the baggage he carries forward, if he gets elected, is another four years of gridlock," said Ryan Deeds, a 35-year-old information technology worker who was taking lunch Monday at a park in Lakeland. "I don't want to throw my vote away."

Here's the deal, though: Obama has done a ton of stuff!  The idea that he's "terrible at getting things done" is some sort of twisted Republican talking point... and it's obviously working.  

Obama equals "gridlock"?  Obama is "terrible at getting things done"?  Jeez:

A week before he was sworn in, Obama jammed part two of the bank bailout down the throat of his own party — a $350 billion accomplishment.

...Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations — saving millions of lives with the stroke of a pen.

Three days after that, Obama gave a green light to the California car-emissions standards that Bush had been blocking for six years — an important step on the road to cleaner air and a cooler planet.

Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment.
Ten days after that, Obama formally announced America's withdrawal from Iraq.

...Obama erased Bush's decision to restrict federal funding for stem-cell research.

...Obama unveiled the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a "socialist" giveaway that reanimated the corpse of our car industry — leading, for example, to the billion-dollar profit that Ford announced...

 That was a modest and partial listing from Esquire in November... of 2009.  In addition to that, Obama has also:

• Signed the "Credit Card Bill of Rights" (really more of a credit card holder bill of rights...)
• Increased funding for National Parks by 10%
• Expanded Pell Grants for students
• Signed significant hate crimes legislation
• Extended benefits for same-sex partners of federal employees
• Appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in history... and repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which was officially lifted this week
• Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restoring workplace protections against pay discrimination for women
• Appointed the first Latina Supreme Court Justice
• Provided travel expenses to families of fallen soldiers to be present when the body of their loved one arrives at Dover Air Force Base.  That this wasn't done under the president who declared the wars we are fighting in the first place is beyond travesty -- it is an enduring American shame.

That's a short list -- a very, very short list -- as well. 

One other accomplishment, and it's a big one: The Affordable Care Act.  This is health care reform, and even the critics have to admit that it is a gigantic piece of legislation and a staggering accomplishment.  

I'm not going to get in to all the positive ways health reform is going to be good for us all.  A good place to start is the Myths & Facts page at the White House website.  The next online stop is Healthcare.gov.  

Enormous social change and excellent legislation notwithstanding, I was still nervous about the independent voters, and, hand in hand, students who were so active for Obama in 2008.  Then I got an email from Darden Rice at Know Your Care.  Turns out they were at USF.  Here's what they were up to:

Tomorrow, as college students across the state head back to campus, Know Your Care, the national campaign to help educate Americans about the Affordable Care Act, announced plans to reach out to students at events in Florida as part of a national effort to address the impact of the Affordable Care Act on students.   Recent Census numbers show that in 2010 alone, 500,000 more young people had insurance than the year before.  

Thank you!

So, USF hosted Natalia Cales, a Regional Outreach Specialist with the Department of Health & Human Services, Dr. Charles Mahan, Professor Emeritus, USF College of Public Health, and other students directly affected by new Affordable Health Care Act.  

This is the kind of campaign we need -- health reform is good for everyone, and students ought to be on the front lines talking about it.  

I hope that the folks in the Leary and Smith piece hear about this great effort.  Maybe the piece they have on small business would be more appropriate.  It debunks a huge GOP-driven myth right out of the gate:

The Affordable Care Act is working to lowers costs for small businesses and gives them more choices. Small businesses are the engine of our economy, and the Affordable Care Act provides the tools necessary to help them succeed. It levels their playing field with larger companies and provides tax breaks to make it possible for them to offer employees’ health care.

So before you let to the big lobbyists and high-power PR firms blow a bunch of smoke up your rear about "regulations" and Obama bullying small businesses, check out Know Your Care.  It's an accomplishment worth talking about.

And With Righteous Indignation, the American People Shall... Oooh, Look, It's 'Dancing With the Stars'!

Quick, Ma!  Go get my riotin' hat an' my lootin' bag!  There's a-gonna be a riot, an' Daddy needs a new tee-vee! 

Okay, fine.  I do not have a "lootin' bag".  I would never loot a store if there were riots.  Looting is an awful thing -- it's un-American, and it's illegal.

I thank you not to comment on my riotin' hat (which looks suspiciously like an Arkansas Traveler's hat).

I shouldn't make light of the serious situations in which so many people find themselves, but I must confess to you that I came upon this notion of civil unrest via Wonkette, which is always funny.  The comments about civil unrest -- rioting, even -- came from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (via the New York Daily News, here)

"We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs," Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show. 

"That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

No.  You don't want those kind of riots here.  

Nor will you get them, for a couple of reasons at least.  Americans are in a tough spot, to be sure.  Unemployment remains stubbornly high, optimism about the country remains depressingly low.  Housing values have yet to rebound.  All kinds of awful indicators are headed in the wrong direction.  

But in the midst of all we must endure, Americans have done one thing right: we have a built in escape mechanism.  I spent thirty minutes watching "Family Guy" last night.  Why? Why did I do that?  It was one I'd seen several times already.  What was I thinking?

That thirty minutes was about the most I'd watched cable TV in several months.  I am an outlier.  Most folks watch a whole lot more. 

That being said, you couldn't have pried my ass off the chair with a crow bar.  I was tired, my brain was fried -- I needed to unplug... and plug into the TV.  That's the thing about our current situation: it's mentally taxing.  It's stressful, because of the remarkable complexity of the issues facing our nation.  

Debt reduction?  Is it as simple as just cutting spending?  Or do you need to raise taxes on the wealthy?  By how much?  When?  What about Social Security?  The president has just unveild an excellent deficit reduction plan, which is getting some high marks from progressives like Kos of DailyKos fame.  

How do you make my house worth more?  According to the excellent book by Richard Florida, The Great Reset, which I highly recommend to you, over the next several decades, America will rebuild itself in new and creative ways.  

That's right: several decades.  Though I again encourage you to check out Mr. Florida's book, you must also know that he makes it plain that this process of renewal takes years and years -- not weeks or days.  There are no easy fixes.

The tough questions persist.

How do you help those kids Mayor Bloomberg is talking about get jobs?

What about these wars we're supposed to be fighting?

All of this stuff is remarkably complex.  There are no easy answers.  Sure, people are hurting, people are suffering.  But our biggest problem is that we no longer have the energy or the stamina to do the work needed to fix everything.  We can barely focus on a thirty minute show filled with fart jokes and cultural references.

A serious take on all of this comes from George Packer in the New Yorker.  It ties up all of these questions through the almost unbearable lens of 9/11 and leaves you with more what ifs than answers.  It's a must-read.

I don't think Americans will riot, and I find this to be an almost quaint mis-step from the multi-billionaire Mayor of New York, who I usually like a lot.  It's hard not to take his comments with a giant container of salt.  After all, this is a guy who flies down to a private resort in Bermuda every weekend via personal jet.  He's really going to offer insight into the subject of what poor college students might or might not do in reaction to the economy?  I'm sure he pondered it over cracked crab and mojitos on the deck of the yacht in the middle of the Atlantic.

With respect to the Civil Rights icons of the Fifties and Sixties, Americans these days aren't really the rioting type.  I mean, this is the populace who let the U.S. Supreme Court stop a legitimate, legal recount in Florida and literally hand the election to a guy who didn't win the popular vote without any civil unrest whatsoever.

This is the same population which allowed itself to be rah! rah!-ed into a completely illegitimate war in Iraq based wholly on lies.  The same population who allowed itself to be spied on, the same population who shrugged at torture, who shrugged at illegal detention.

The same population that let a city drown to death, and held virtually no one accountable, save for the former horse trainer.  Heckuva job, America.     

Which leads me to the last reason I think Americans won't riot in the streets over the state of the economy or the jobs situation: shame.  This one might get me in a bit of hot water, I'll admit it.  But if we're honest about it, it's true.  Shame.  The timeline of when a plurality of Americans understood what what happening in Iraq (and the failures in Afghanistan) may be questionable.  The time frames of when they understood the complexities of the Patriot Act are perhaps fluid, to a degree.  

Even Katrina and the after-effects happened in a kind of slow-motion -- and after the last election of George W. Bush.  

But we've let too much happen to ourselves to really riot in the streets with any degree of honesty about it.  The rioting would ring false, don't you think?  Many of us bought houses just at the edge of the bubble... then it burst.  That's not my fault.  And I still make my mortgage payments.  But what's a riot going to prove?  What is me marching in the streets with a lit torch going to get me?  A lower mortgage payment?  I don't think so.  

The people responsible for this work on Wall Street and in government and in banks around the country and the world.  Or they are out of government.  

We want to get those college kids Mayor Bloomberg is worried about some good jobs?  We want to turn the economy around?  Fix the housing bubble?  Hold Wall Street crooks accountable?  Hold war criminals accountable?  As Mr. Florida says, we have to do it ourselves.  And it'll take years and decades.  Justice won't come at the end of a pitchfork in the street. 

It's a Numbers Game Edition

It's been a few months since I've done one of these.  Since we're all gearing up for Election 2012, I thought I'd reintroduce this occassional series.

Gallup - Obama Job Approval: Approve 40%    Disapprove 53%

Gallup - Congressional Job Approval: Approve 15%    Disapprove 82%

Gallup - Generic Ballot vs. Obama: GOP Candidate 39%    Obama 45%

TPM Polltracker - Obama Job Approval: Approve 42.1%    Disapprove 53.5%

TPM Polltracker - Florida U.S. Senate 2012 (GOP): McCalister 15%    LeMieux 10.8%    Miller 5%    Hasner 4%

TPM Polltracker - Florida GOP Presidential Primary: Romney 22.1%    Perry 18.4%    Bachmann 8.8%    Paul 5.8%    Cain 5.6%    Gingrich 2.6%    Huntsman 1.6%    Santorum 1.5%  

Real Clear Politics - Florida Republic Presidential Primary: RCP Average, Romney +3

Real Clear Politics - 2012 Republican Presidential Nomiation (National): RPC Average, Perry +10.2

Real Clear Politics: Obama Regains Lead Over Perry in Poll

Pew Research Center - Few See Jobs Proposals Having Much Effect

DailyKos: NYT/CBS poll: Economy, jobs seen as a far bigger problem than deficit