Historic Day! First Retraction at Almost Blue!

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to establish that I liked and could say nice things about some Republicans in Iowa. I wrote this post about Rep. Kraig Paulsen of Hiawatha upon his election to run the Iowa House GOP caucus by his dwindling number of peers.

One of the things I said was:

If he's smart enough to pick two or three victories he wants for his caucus in this next legislative session and stick to them over all the other crap his members and constituency groups will want him to do, he could have some success.

Well it turns out if you are a Republican in Iowa these days you have a need to show toughness, take the gloves off, hit the Democrats hard, blah blah blah. Its all the old political nonsense people just got sick of and voted out.

Today, Paulsen indicates he has concerns First Lady Mari Culver is misusing her state patrol protection privileges. He has offered no authority to support his position, nor demonstrated an understanding of the purpose and function of the Executive Protection Unit. These patrol officers are dedicated people in a coveted position who operate for long hours every day to avoid threats, whether from crazy people or terrorists, on the First Family.

Paulsen's position, apparently, is if one of the First Kids is sick, hurt or the victim of, God forbid, an act of foul play, and their mother is away from Terrace Hill at the time, she should have to fend for herself to get back to them.

Phooey. The EPU is there to protect this family . . . and get used to it, there's a young family in the White House now too. Why do the Republicans glorify the nuclear family and then take potshots at any professional who's serious about both career and family? Why do we let them get away with it? Why is Kraig Paulsen jumping into that camp with both feet?

Disappointing doesnt begin to describe it. This is over the line and I dont care if he did have a point, which he doesnt, you dont come out of the box taking on the Governor's family. He just took himself out of meaningful budget negotiations in 2009 and showed himself to be in the pocket of the worst elements of his caucus.

Oh, Kraig, we hardly knew ye!

Ten Years up in Smoke

The Robert Wood Johnson foundation reminds us of the tenth anniversary this week of the Master Settlement Agreement in which state attorneys general (including Iowa's) agreed to settle pending lawsuits with the tobacco companies in exchange for significant payments into perpetuity.

Most of those payments were securitized, meaning the state took a "lump sum" up front to represent the future value of payments from the MSA.

Check out the results:

In the last 10 years, the states have spent just 3.2 percent of their total tobacco-generated revenue on tobacco prevention and cessation programs. From Fiscal Year 2000 to the current Fiscal Year 2009, the states have received $203.5 billion in tobacco revenue – $79.2 billion from the tobacco settlement and $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes. During this time, the states have allocated $6.5 billion to tobacco prevention and cessation programs (states have utilized both tobacco settlement and tobacco tax revenues to fund tobacco prevention programs, and this report includes both sources of funding).

Kinda makes you wonder who won in this deal. Its still a huge amount of money paid out by the tobacco companies, but the vast majority are still in business, and the states are finding themselves with no money left and still having an obligation to treat sick smokers.

Policymakers in Iowa made the decision to securitize with open eyes in a tough budget cycle in the early part of this decade. It was a conservative Republican legislature that made the decision. For those new to politics, those used to be the ones who would watch taxpayer dollars closely. I wonder if anyone will have the guts now to tell people all the money's gone and we need more for cessation and treatment.

Sunday Sermon: The Mark of Cain

This post kicks off a weekly series of ruminations on spirituality and theology, with an emphasis on their impact on modern politics in the United States.

President-Elect Obama's transition to power seems like a good time to reflect and remember a long Biblical tradition. First, a good recitation of the basics of the story:

The Bible refers to the curse of Cain in the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis. This passage describes two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain, the older, "was a tiller of the ground", while Abel "was a keeper of sheep" (Gen. 4:2). Eventually, each of the brothers performed a sacrifice to God; Cain sacrificed some of his crops to God, while Abel sacrificed "of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof" (Gen. 4:3–4). When God accepted Abel's offering, but not Cain's, Cain's "countenance fell" (Gen. 4:5), and he "rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him" (Gen. 4:8).

When God confronted Cain about Abel's death, God cursed him, saying:

"What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." (Gen. 4:10–12)

When Cain complained that the curse was too strong, and that anyone who found him would kill him, God responded, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over",[3] and God "set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him" (Gen. 4:15).

Now to the history and interpretation:

The modern take in Christian Bible study seems to be that the Mark of Cain is actually the prohpetic foreshadowing of the Mark of the Beast from Revelation that the Antichrist will use to control most of humanity.

But historically, some Christians have interpreted the Biblical passages so that the "mark" is thought to be part of the "curse". In 18th century America and Europe, it was commonly assumed that Cain's "mark" was black skin, and that Cain's descendants were black and still under Cain's curse.

These racial and ethnic interpretations of the curse and the mark have been largely abandoned even by the most conservative theologians since the mid-20th century, although the theory still has some following among white supremacists and an older generation of whites, as well as a very small minority of Christian churches.

The Mormon church has really struggled with the passage, having elevated it to something like church doctrine at one point.

But even in Christian churches the intellectual debate about this passage pre-civil war was robust. From Josiah Priest's "Bible Defence of Salvery" published in 1852:

"Thus has God seen fit to do in the creation of the two races of men, the negroes and the whites; one is degraded by natural tendencies by a curse, or a judicial decree to announce it, and the other with a blessing equally judicial, being dictated by the Holy Ghost from the lips of Noah."

I will not suggest this doctrine is preached anywhere in 2008, though I suspect it may have remnants handed down quietly in front rooms over holiday dinners for many decades since the civil war.

I raise the Mark of Cain doctrine because it demonstrates how, in the span of only 150 years, less than a tenth of the time Christianity has been on the earth, this doctrine went from being part of common parlance to being repugnant in the extreme.

What happened? Did the Bible change? I dont believe that, I dont believe scripture is subject to alteration to suit the cultural or political times in which we live. Did some great new revelation of meaning come to a new generation of Christian scholars? I dont believe that either. The Bible has but one meaning and is not of private interpretation.

The answer? THEY WERE WRONG. Christians for centuries used valid Old Testament stories to justify subjugation and murder (ironic given the origin of the Mark, no?)for their own economic gain. Does any other answer stand up? The preachers of the time knew that slavery was an underpinning of the economic and cultural order of their part of the country. They knew what their parishioners were predisposed to believe, and they played to it. They used the media of communication of their time - sermons, books, newspapers, to propagate a heinous lie.

Imagine that -- whole generations of Christians right here in the United States led astray by their collective greed and fear of the status quo changing.

Are you certain it couldn't happen today? Pious-looking, perhaps even well intentioned Christians being influenced by the loudest voices among them in the most popular media to support lies that serve their short term economic and cultural interests?

Palin and the Women in Power Problem

You really must read this triumph of a post over at Essential Estrogen, which lays out the splitting headache the Palin phenomenon poses for the "Christian" Right. She goes on SNL, does the book deal, buys lacy undergarments with the hard earned dimes of the parishoners of the RNC. And still she's supposed to be the Anita Bryant of our age, the paragon of all that is virtuous and lens-craftery.

And yet, isnt there something about women being at home when they have children, the helpmeet argument about the woman's role? And what about submission? The Bible is clear on this, that the wife is to submit to the husband. Has there ever been a more overshadowed spouse than Todd Palin? He gets the Denis Thatcher award for standing awkwardly in the background.

So, as the ongoing circus that is Gov. Palin continues to march forth into our living rooms, it is worth pausing to consider the following potential realities:

1. Palin is useful to the "Christian" Right because she spouts a kind of soft, warmed-over theology in her quest for the highest office of power in this democracy. Traditionally, the way this has been preached from the pulpit is that she's "taking the message of Christ to the unwashed masses of America." And in some ways it worked. I have to say, after that Katie Couric interview, I prayed more.

2. Palin doesnt believe a word of the nonsense the now-neutered movement known as the "Christian Coalition" uses in its political indoctrination. But she can read a poll and knows full well that issues like debunking evolution, promoting private schools and no-exception-abortion-criminalization will get you 30 to 35 percent of the vote in a GOP primary. I actually believe the social conservative base of the Republican Party is the easiest "get" in all of American politics. Its like a GOP State Senator once said to me about a mutual acquaintance of ours: "Oh him? There's only a couple things you have to say to get him on board." Remember the Rev. Pat Robertson finished Second in the Iowa Caucuses in 1988, and beat the candidate who would go on to be President. Its not a bad base to manipulate, if that's what you're up to.

3. Palin speaks in the broad themes about values and family because she knows that any thorough exploration or her actual beliefs would freak out mainstream America and send her freezing little tushie right back to the oil subsidy capital of the country. She is a member of an Assembly of God Church that believes in the laying on of hands, the anointment of the Holy Spirit, and the movement of the spirit over believers that sometimes results in the speaking of tongues. (Dont say that explains her speeches. Dont say it, Dont say it . . . D'oh!)

So, reality is actually some combination of these three scenarios. Appealing, right? Oh, and she plays the flute.

Kicking off the Revival in Kansas

The headline "What's the matter with Kansas" was too obvious. I know many of you saw this story, but I am compelled to rise nonetheless, Madame Speaker. Turns out some right-wing preacher has decided the occasion of the election of the 44th President of the United States marks a turn of the country away from God.

I am not going to bother asking where this guy has been (or what kind of gooey pseudo-Christian nonsense has been coming from his pulpit) for the last eight years as we marched headlong into government sanctioned bearing of false witness against our neighbors, coveting of our neighbors' house (or at least one we couldnt afford) and even violations of "thou shalt not kill," depending on how you view the line between just and unjust war. But enough Old Testament.

We are in the age of Grace, in which each of us has an individual witness for the Gospel based on how we represent ourselves to others. And while none of us has achieved any kind of perfection, this jackelope is waaay off the mark.

Due to space constraints I'm giving you the cliff's notes (we call them "W Textbooks" but that's kind of an inside joke) version of my grievances with the sign depicted above.

1. You must respect the office. Barack Hussein Obama was elected the President of this, the greatest nation on Earth, by 63 million of your fellow citizens in a fair process that resulted in a blowout. Neither of W's "victories" was anything like it. If you can't appreciate the legitimacy of a duly elected President, well, what was the 60s saying? "Love it or leave it?" Too charitable for this Wichita Whineman. You have to at least respect the Office, and get on board when we are fighting two wars overseas and facing the greatest economic challenge since Kansas got electricity.

2. You dont get to call President-Elect Obama a Muslim. In this country we take people's representations about their faith at face value. You dont see me attacking Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich as agnostic egomaniacs just because they've been divorced 6 times between them do you? You could run a traditional Iowa girl's basketball team with just the spouses of these two guys, but I'm sure the Lord is okay with them!

So, when Obama says he attends a mainline Christian church in Chicago, reads the Bible and is motivated by Christian principles in his work, what kind of hardboiled, twisted notion of Christian discernment would make anyone think they had the right to re-brand him a Muslim? The only people I know who would do something like that are rudderless political opportunists who will lie to reach their own political ends. I'm just saying.

3. You might have to live with a Muslim President someday, numbskull. Did you not learn anything from this election? Hey genius: This is America, where anything is possible, any dream attainable and any child, literally any one born this day, can grow up to be President. Or is there something that bothers you about that, Wichita?

Grand Jury Indicts Cheney

Just writing that headline dropped my blood pressure a bit.

Turns out a county grand jury in south Texas has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney for alleged mistreatment of prisoners in federal custody. The basis of the indictment is Cheney's role as a member of the board of the Vanguard Group, which has a contract related to the alleged mistreatment.

Where to start? Acknowledging up front that this stunt by a crusading prosecutor is not likely to go anywhere, you have to give the guy, Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra, big style points. The guy has, well, cojones.

Cheney has what could be most charitably described as a well-developed worldview. If you want to get something done, and there are pieces of paper around that would appear to prohibit you from acting (you know, the U.S. Constitution, the Uniform Code of Military Justice) then find a way around them.

Now, this is something a talented corporate lawyer can do every day before lunch without loosening his tie (or her . . . whatever, you get the point). But Cheney is not the CEO of just another tanking wall street Ponzi scheme. He's a holder of the public trust, a sacred trust that calls for people to do things at a higher ethical and moral standard than they would if they were simply trying to run the competition out of business.

This is the guy who had energy lobbyists into the White House to write energy policy. The guy who pushed for military tribunals (if you're lucky) at Guantanamo Bay. The guy who said we risked a mushroom cloud over an American city if we didnt attack Iraq, and the guy who walked onto the Senate floor to tell a senior colleague to "Go F**k Yourself."

When he didnt like the outcome, he set about changing the rules. He was "tough enough" to do the things normal human beings in a democracy find despicable.

The really fun and pretty part of this indictment is it basically accuses Vanguard of the mistreatment, meaning the federal government outsourced prisoner abuse. Is there anything more Cheneyan?

So, I say good for the Texas D.A. for turning the tables on this guy. Justice for him would be us stretching the judicial system to its very limits to indict, try and convict him for the remainder of his chest-pained existence.

We don't indict sitting Vice Presidents? Now we do. We don't try former elected officials for their conduct while in office? Now we do. We don't force our way into the realm of executive privilege as defined by those officeholders? Now we do. We don't pull their secret service protection, their federal pension and their congressional floor privileges forever? Now we do.

That would be a fitting start anyway.

Senate Politics . . . Why Georgia Why?

Looks like Ted Stevens will have a lot more time to look at Russia from the wrap-around deck installed at his house by an oil company in violation of several federal laws.

Politico is reporting Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D-AK) has won the wild and wooly Senate sweepstakes way up north, and wont be able to see Russia anymore, as he'll be joining the largest pack of Senate Democrats since the Watergate era.

That win coupled with Sen. Lieberman's slap on the wrist in the caucus today, leaves the Democrats at 58 seats with two outstanding and within striking distance of the magic 60 that would make President-Elect Obama into an unstoppable legislative force.

It really is a moment to stop and take inventory. After the 2002 elections, only 6 years ago right now, the GOP controlled the Presidency, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and a majority of the nation's governorships.

You could not destroy a party in power more thoroughly and more quickly than the Democrats have done to the 'pubs in the past 6 years. There have been only a handful of these realignment periods in American history, the most recent of which took place in 1978-80 with the Reagan Revolution.

The truth is most of the times a party has been washed out to this degree, another party has stepped in to reset the bipartisan balance we have traditionally enjoyed. I'm not predicting disbandment, but I will predict the GOP that rises out of this disaster will be different in some significant way from the one we know now. Exactly what that change will be, we have yet to see.

The big loser in the Stevens race? Gov. Sarah Palin, who wont be coming to Washington at all unless she can take on and beat the incumbent Begich. Possible? Sure, anything's possible. But for now she's got a budget hurting bad from declining oil revenues and a government in D.C. that doesnt take her calls. Incidentally, Dick Cavett, of all people, has a grea blog post today about the Wild Wordsmith of Wasila that's funnier than anything you or I have ever written.

But, alas all dreams result in waking. The fact is, even if we pick up the less than 200 votes needed for Franken to win MN, there is the Georgia runoff in December that pits incumbent Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) versus newcomer Jim Martin. A third party candidate forced the runoff. Even though Obama has sent a ton of staffers in, the question is whose voters will come out? The answer could determine the fate of the Senate. Something tells me if the MN race gives us 59, and the focus of the country turns to GA, participation will go up and we stand a better chance of getting 60.

My bet? I don't think we pull the inside straight and get both seats. Even in that case there are GOP Senators who will play ball, like Collins and Snowe of ME and on some issues - gasp! - McCain of AZ.

Should be a fun few weeks.

Krusty has Company

I couldn't resist.

Mad Max? Or the Second Coming of Hillary?

Apparently Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) will run a major health care reform bill whose terms are being built and discussed for an unveiling in the 2009 session. The good news is Sen. Kennedy and staffers are involved in the planning process. He's in the best position to understand the history of the fight over national health care, and also best positioned to arm-twist the myriad constituency groups that would need to be on board early in any kind of effort.

Any whiff that such a bill represents Sen. Hillary Clinton's revenge for the underhanded, corrupt and morally bankrupt spiking of her 1993 plan would grind the process to an early halt.

I can't believe there's someone who would read this blog who hasn't heard me say this, but extending health care to every American is the paramount issue of our time. It impacts our economic competitiveness, the education of our kids and the well being of our seniors. It eats something like a third of our domestic budget in its various forms and it literally determines the quality of our lives.

(Spoiler Alert: The title of this blog refers to the condition of the United States, in the two dimensions I care about, Democratic politics and health care policy. In one way I am obviously excited to see Democrats in charge. In another, the condition of the patient is something to be concerned about, where health care is concerned.)

There's no one who wants to see a health care bill succeed more than I do. But, to give away my view on the still-open poll here, I dont think this is the right time, and I think the bill should wait.

1. We're out of money. Any solution to the 47 million uninsured not to mention the laundry list of other issues that would need to be addressed, not hte least of which is the terrible rate of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement in the Midwest including Iowa, requires real dollars. We face the biggest deficit ever, a debt we cant service, and the largest economic investment by government in the history of the free world. We need to right the ship before we take on health care, as much as it hurts to say.

2. 'Health Care Stimulus' is a non-sequitur. Lets say part of the economic stimulus (the next one, not the business bailout but the consumer one thats coming) involved an effort to invest in health care in order to crank up the economy. To do this in a meaningful way would mean putting more health care providers to work in more places in the country. Think rural Iowa, which is desperate for dentists and psychiatrists not to mention direct care workers. Getting these folks enrolled in school, educated, placed and profitable will take years. Any attempt to sell this process as short-term stimulus is bad policy and will set the system up for failure.

3. The recession will stretch resources as they are. Government is really good at robbing Peter to pay Paul. My biggest fear about a massive health care bill is that the money will come out of the existing system. With the economic downturn will come seniors losing health benefits from private pensions when their companies can no longer afford them; substance abuse issues on a scale we only see in these conditions (smoking, drinking and gambling are up in Iowa already); and tight state budgets that I fear will require cutbacks in state services like Medicaid for the poor. None of this is good for anyone.

In short, this is a trauma situation, and we have to stabilize the patient first before we can operate.

Is Google Faster than a Speeding Flu?

I'll do something really annoying and reproduce the whole news piece I found on this:

Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has launched a new tool designed to identify and track influenza outbreaks, Reuters reports. Google Flu Trends will monitor the number of queries for influenza and influenza-like symptoms entered into its popular search engine to determine the geographical location and nature of seasonal flu activity. The system will provide near real-time updates of flu activity to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency, in turn, will use the information to issue alerts to hospitals, clinics and physician offices in affected regions, enabling providers to stock up on influenza tests; antiviral drugs; and antibiotics for people who develop bacterial co-infections, which can worsen the severity of the flu. Currently, the CDC relies on reports from health centers that submit data on the volume of patients reporting flu-like symptoms and lab tests that confirm the presence of influenza, but that data typically involves a two-week lag time. Google will not charge the CDC for the reports and will keep the individual search data confidential to preserve patient anonymity. The Times notes that, while the service currently applies only to influenza-based queries in the United States, Google hopes to eventually expand the service to include other geographical regions and a wide range of diseases (Helft, New York Times, 11/12/08 [registration required]; Fox, Reuters, 11/11/08).

Hard to get a handle on this. Seems unscientific at first blush, but anything that speeds data gathering in the face of a pandemic could end up buying hours or days that mean many tens of thousands of lives saved. To the extent hotspots could be located and acted upon, that would be a real boon to frontline health workers in affected areas.

The flip side of this, of course, is the threat to personal privacy. Google says such a system of collective information tracking would never be used to breach an individual's personal privacy, that they will "preserve patient anonymity." Are you buying? At what point does this inquiry become a federal HIPAA violation and if it does and the information slows an epidemic, isnt the sacrifice of the few a net positive because it preserves society for the many? (Yeah I watch NBC's "Heroes." What are you driving at?)

The other flip side - wait how many sides is that? - is that once Google or another health information tracking source becomes the holder of this kind of information gathering capacity, it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for any single government to shut the information down once a pandemic started. This would prevent misinformation, and perhaps even cut down on the kinds of rumors and apocalyptic speculation that could accompany a pandemic.

Something I know for sure: The general area of health information privacy, and the ethical decisions that accompany it, is one of the key emerging questions this generation of policymakers will be facing, one way or the other.

How's that for an uplifting post? It's Monday night and the wind chill is 17 degrees, what do you want?

One Week to Chinese Democracy

W. Axl Rose has spent fourteen years on the “madness” side of the line between genius and madness. After countless delays, lineup changes, legal challenges and astrological misfortunes, the Guns N’ Roses brand is back with “Chinese Democracy.” (Release Date 11/23). Here’s the link to the website for GN’R, and here’s the SPIN review of the single . The iTunes download of the eponymous single apparently is number one in the world.

Whether this record ends up being a footnote in the history of the amazing cultural phenomenon that was Guns N’ Roses, or some kind of commercially creative return for Rose, it serves as a welcome reminder of the ethos that pervaded music right before grunge. The moment when Bon Jovi could be the opener for Ratt, and a dried-out made-over Aerosmith pulled off an unlikely but creatively healthy comeback.

That ethos owed a lot to 1970s rock and roll: huge, thrashing bombastic stadium anthems featuring multiple guitar tracks and crashing 2-4 beats from drum kits that resembled UFOs. No costume was too outlandish, no note too high, no guitar solo too long.

Watching Rose in his early years was like watching a kid move from the wading pool to the big kids’ pool for the first time. He paid homage directly and indirectly to his influences, as diverse as Thin Lizzy and Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult and McCartney & Wings.

I’ll admit it, I loved the grinding endless overbearing guitar and lyrical work on Use Your Illusion II. Songs like “Estranged,” “Breakdown” and “Shotgun Blues” stretched out into infinity in part because Axl had more to say, which was rare among the big hair guys that dominated the radio at the time.

Axl embodied it all. He had to be Elton/Bowie/Morrison/Vegas Elvis all rolled up into one for his audience, and he knew it. Who else was gonna do it? The head kerchief, oversize sunglasses, the catcher’s breastplate, the kilt . . . it was all there in one glorious cultural sendup . . . anything was possible, and the man in the middle of it all was having the time of his life. Did I mention he is completely out of his mind?

And you know what? The 14-year hiatus has a certain authenticity to it. It means there was no GN’R grunge record, no boy band pop phase, no electronica, no “Rave Axl.” Just good old fashioned straight up Rock and Roll, now back in fashion.
Whatever the reception to this record, it could not have come out at a better time.

Chinese Democracy reminds us who we have been. It makes us focus on the fact that one of the things that makes us unique as Americans is the sheer SIZE and SCOPE of the challenges we take on and the results we produce. It is an artifact of the “audacity” Obama wrote about.

Guns N’ Roses is as American as Monday Night Football and the Dodge Charger.
Welcome back Axl. Here, you’re gonna need a flag pin.

Detroit Medley

So, the fate of GM and the other Detroit automakers has to be item #1 on McCain’s very lengthy list of things that make him glad he didn’t win the election. The issue of a big-three bailout is actually a nexus of a whole bunch of economic issues, and for that reason will tell us a great deal about where the country is going next, how much of the “change” Obama was selling will actually come to pass.

My observations:

Any bailout package had better demand fuel efficiency to the Nth degree, like 80 mpg in three years. I’m being serious. We should subsidize innovation only. The only thing worse than the federal government allowing gas guzzlers to be produced by American car companies would be the federal government subsidizing that production.

If GM hadn’t put so much health care into each vehicle, prices could have come down, or better yet stayed the same but made room for new fuel efficiency technologies. A huge chunk of the input cost of a Detroit vehicle today is in health care for employees, to say nothing of the 600,000 pensions being funded. Decoupling health care coverage from the employer-employee relationship is a global competitiveness imperative. In the end, national health care will not come because we think it delivers a better system of health management (and I think there is the potential for that to happen) but because we were forced by economic reality to compete with countries that provide health care for their citizens separate and apart from the employment relationship.

Good for the GOP sticking to their small-government guns on this one. Sen. Jim Shelby (R-AL) showed up on Meet the Press this morning to make the case for letting the patient die. This is a tough call for conservatives. If they stick to this position it will cost them in the industrial Midwest, in places like MI, OH, PA, IN, places they already had a tough time with in 2008. Their economic philosophy will be a ticket to them being a regional (South, interior West) party for the short term. But the only way you can really believe someone about their philosophy is when they stick to it in the face of crushing electoral failure.

I am really struggling with the economics of this one myself. We are supposed to be a free market country. So much of what went wrong in the Bush era was related to the favorable treatment of specific companies or industry sectors at the expense of the overall economy. I would hate to see the Obama administration start off on the same foot. I know we need cars. Is the “big three” model still a relevant answer? What if we let them fall apart and then a thousand little “Tuckers” were to rise in their place? Guys in their garages coming up with the next exciting thing in automotive, advertising it on the web, selling them via custom order and locating financing to get larger as the demand grew? That would be free market innovation and I’ll bet it would produce lighter, more fuel efficient, longer lasting cars.

Somewhere Dick Gephardt is shaking his head slowly and saying “I told them so.”

How proud would you be?

. . . If this were your political base for a national election?

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

Or this englightened American voter:

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

This is all real stuff from an Msnbc.com story today I really hope you will read.

We all know this stuff is out there, we saw it in our inboxes and on texts as the election heated up this fall. But what if you were going out there every day with your flag pin on, trying to get people to vote you into office, in a system in which you KNEW that some percentage of your vote (maybe as high as 30? I'll take arguments on this) was coming to you primarily becuase you were NOT in the party that was perceived as being more welcoming to African-Americans, Latinos and gays and lesbians.

Wouldnt you want to cringe, or puke, or say something really specific about how these are not your beliefs, such as Bob Dole did to the Pat Buchanan wing of the party in 1996:

''The Republican Party is broad and inclusive,'' Mr. Dole declared as he summoned the hall to a frenzy of flag-waving. ''It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view. But if there is anyone who has mistakenly attached himself to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you: Tonight this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln, and the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.''

Courage is courage. And going along to get along, when the moral stakes are this high, is just smelly.

This Week’s Open Letter: Steve King

Dear Rep. King:

I am writing as a loyal member of the Iowa Democratic Party to ask you to run for Governor of Iowa in 2010. This is your patriotic imperative as an Iowan. I know you have only been in Congress since 2002. I know you have never run in a competitive district. I know you have never run statewide where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 60,000 and Independents are the key to elections regardless.

I know you are from Kiron, which is a western Iowa town of 273. A blip on Highway 39 in Crawford County. But you have come a long way, baby. You are a national figure with all upside and you owe it to your fellow citizens to take your message wide.

Here’s what you have on your side:

1. The scorn of the liberal media. Olbermann hates you, put you on top of the program at one point! What was it Quayle said about their scorn as a badge of honor? Yeah! That!

2. The biggest, baddest wall. You have these pikers in Congress beat. You want an impenetrable, electrified, deep-foundation border wall that will keep even stray armadillos out!

3. A national fundraising base. There are minutemen everywhere ready to load up the trucks and haul gas and guns to Sioux City to crank up this campaign! Just keep the chew in stock at the local Casey’s.

4. Tom Tancredo. We’re talking candidate for President here! This dude competed in the Iowa Caucuses and had a campaign for, like, a couple months!! He will rally the forces of the Real America to Iowa, and show them we still have common sense! This guy will explain “anchor babies” for you in Johnson County – he doesn’t give a crap!

5. The English Only Law. This was your real coup. You got Gov. Vilsack to sign a bill making Iowa’s “official language” English. This bill has vexed Democrats including Vilsack since then, and is that rare combination of bad policy (has holes in it that trucks are driven through daily) and bad politics (heats the culture war pot, sewing fear and division.) Nicely done!

Look, I know your seat was supposed to go to Brent Segrist, and that there were even some Democrats who thought that would be okay. I know there is a farce element to your mere presence in Congress because of that three-way convention, but hardly anyone even remembers that’s how you got to Washington, and fewer still know what happened behind the scenes at that convention.

This is a moment. Don’t let it go to waste. Within a few years, Iowa may be the very last haven for WASPs. There are very few counties left in the nation with the homogenous demographic numbers of Sioux and Lyon counties in northwest Iowa. Combat all this mash-up of cultures that Obama and his minions are going to promote with massive infusions of federal money.

This multiculturalism thing, where people of different backgrounds share tolerance, respect and mutual understanding as they work toward the common goal of a better America for their kids, is just a flash in the pan. Trust me, It's a fad.

Its just something concocted by Paris Hilton in a coke-fueled YouTube video that some kid in Newark uploaded in a vain secular humanist attempt to destabilize the minds of impressionable young midwestern American boys and girls who would rather just stay home and watch "It's a Wonderful Life" after the football game this Friday night.

I know you can do this!! Iowa for Iowans!! Say it with me!!

Sincerely,

John Hedgecoth

The Revolution Starts Now.

I am name-checking a great Steve Earle record from 2003
railing against all things Bush, and calling for a back-yard revolution that pretty much happened in 2008. Great record. My fave is the lusty, testosterone dripping “Condi, Condi.” But I digress.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan got his “Revolution” with a complete realignment of government and the perception of the appropriate role of government. That frame or lens for viewing the political world, I would argue, was alive and well until this political cycle. It needs an AED at a minimum, at the moment.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich got his Revolution, by reversing a 40 year hold on the U.S. House of Representatives and ushering in “new management” at the Congress.

Its always seemed odd, and I would love it if someone would explain it to me, why the GOP always wants its’ realignment victories described as “revolutions.” The reality is most of the actual revolutions of the 20th century moved countries to the left: the Bolsheviks, Che and Castro, the Czechs ‘velvet’ and Mao in China. No one on that list Newt wants to be associated with.

But we’ll take that word!! Its our turn!! November 4, 2008 was a bloodless but massive revolution in this country, a day on which everything changed and anything seemed possible. The very foundations of the Republic were strengthened as the people stood up to take their government back. Hell, some stood up for the very first time.

The Obama Revolution starts now. You heard it here first. Okay fine, Politico.com beat me to it right after the election with a well-thought-out piece. Still. When is the rest of the MSM going to get on board and acknowledge what happened? We could use a little of that alleged liberal bias right about now. Somebody go tell the people a revolution has taken place!

Looks like we might be on our own for that job too.

Landslide Got you Down?

We're getting far enough away from the election that we are starting to see reporters frame it as a past event, for example this story in the Boston Globe about the Republican Governors' Association meeting which is filled with backward looking references to the "Obama Landslide."

Of course there are news outlets and 'pub bloggers arguing the landslide is pure fiction, because the popular vote was 52-46, and that's reasonably close. It is interesting, after the politics of a "deeply divided country" over the past ten years (how many times did we have to sit through anchors telling us with great portent how divided we were?)

But the reality is, as the GOP could not wait to remind America in 2000, we elect the president not through one-person-one-vote, but through 50 separate statewide elections, most of which are winner-take-all, for selection of a slate of electors from that state. And in 2008, there was an electoral college landslide. The current tally is 365-162 with the single Nebraska electoral vote going to Obama. (Was really just a case of free association in which Omaha and Obama looked too much alike to be a coincidence.) MO is the only state still not called.

So, Obama pulled more than 67 percent of the electoral votes, leaving McCain with a maximum of 33 percent in the only tally that matters. Okay fine it doesnt look as impressive as the butt-waxings issued to Democrats by the unindicted co-conspirator Nixon and the Gipper:

In 1972, Republican Richard Nixon raked in 520 votes compared with 17 for George McGovern, who won Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts, and lost even his home state, South Dakota.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral votes to incumbent President Jimmy Carter’s 49. Carter, a Democrat, pulled out wins in D.C., Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota.
Four years later, Reagan, won re-election with 525 votes, leaving Walter Mondale with only 13. Mondale won his home state, Minnesota, and reliaby blue Washington, D.C.

Still, the AP did a nice piece before the election setting the table for what a landslide would be. Obama met EVERY ONE of the tests: over 320 electoral votes, and "overwhelming" win, a distinct shift in electoral behavior of states.

It is a loose concept, but the definition of "landslide" I had walking out of college with a B.A. in Political Science was anytime one candidate is above 60 percent of the vote. In the electoral college, Obama hit that mark too.

So, when you're in those tricky holiday table conversations and the know-it-all conservatives come with their downplaying of the Obama landslide, consider yourself armed.

Hail to the Boss

Billboard Magazine is among the sources reporting that Bruce Springsteen will have a new record ready to go for President-Elect Obama's inauguration event. Unclear whether The Boss would actually perform in some capacity in connection with the festivities. Apparently a new song, titled "Workin' on a Dream" will be part of the NBC Sunday Night Football halftime show on Nov. 16.

The Bard of Asbury Park has had an remarkably productive couple of years, with his last album coming out in October 2007 and now another in January 2009. When not in the studio he has campaigned for Obama/Biden including at a rally in Cleveland at which the pic above was taken. Is that not the pic of the year? Springsteen wrote a long time ago "I'm not a boy / no I'm a man / and I believe in the promised land."

Indeed.

Oxymoron Alert: “False Hope”

I first heard this one during the 2006 campaign cycle, when the ‘pubs were fighting stem cell research with all they had. By the way, where was that moral indignation this cycle? Prediction: within two years of this date, Republicans will have gone from Position A: opposing embryonic stem cell research as an immoral end to human life, to Position B: bragging about how much federal funding they have gotten for embryonic stem cell research.

This is an example of what I like to call the CPC, or "conservative policy cycle," where they resist progress for as long as they can, and then when an idea gains widespread public acceptance, they switch to being supporters and pray no one notices. See no-fault divorce, Medicare, Medicaid and the U.S. Department of Education, inter alia. I’ll do a whole post on this eventually. But I digress.

In 2006, the line the GOP used to attack people like television star Michael J. Fox, who filled an auditorium at Drake University for Democrats, and could not have been a more gracious and serious-minded human being, was that they were spreading something called “false hope.”

I think this means that because cures for illnesses like Parkinson’s may be 15 years off, current sufferers and their families shouldn’t vote for the Democrats, because there was no short term gain for those people. I know that’s hard to get your mind around, but its really just the me-first attitude of the folks who want their taxes cut applied to life threatening illnesses. Needless to say, it made no sense and the GOP got crushed in that election.

Undeterred, the ‘pubs saw the Obama signs that read “Hope” earlier this year and lost their ever-loving minds. Obama himself made jokes about being a “hopemonger.” But these folks started accusing Obama of spreading “false hope.” (This was post-“he’s a Muslim” and pre-“He’s a Socialist.” Try to keep up.)

So, here’s a little fortune cookie of wisdom for my ‘pub friends. Here, sir, the people rule. If the people hope for something, and then get together to vote for it, and then their representatives make it happen, there is nothing “false” about that process.

In America, there are no false hopes.

Do I need to post a pic of the American flag on the moon or do you think they will get the concept?

Update on AB Weekly Features

A note to my reader(s): I hope to feature four weekly features here, and just you know what you are gonna get, here they are:

Open Letter – One day each week I will address the blog to one specific person, in the spirit of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. I think the most mischief could be had if you write a reply to me in the comments. Just an idea.

Recommended Reading – I will promote at least one book a week, hopefully one I have read. This will quickly outstrip my ability to keep up, so I will rely on others emailing me their recent good reads so that I can pass them on. (You wont find them highfalutin “books” on sites dedicated to the GOP’s Real America, now will ya?) Fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, have at it.

Blue Flicks – Movie reviews by an anonymous reviewer who will sound off on movies of all kinds – Hollywood, Bollywood, art house stuff, chick flicks, whatever.

Sunday Sermon – Im going to do a little theology and a little history here, so buckle up. I am a protestant Christian recipient of the Meritorious Award from the Awana Clubs, a Christian youth group. There’s no joke in there, I really am. I at one point had more than 1,000 verses from the King James Version memorized. (I lost most of them during prep for the bar exam.) I often tell people the thing that really messed me up in life was reading the New Testament at age 13, before I had the chance to learn how holy tax cuts and smaller government are. Oops.

That’s it. That’s the list.

Hey could we have our name back? Thanks.

I do not generally subscribe to the notion that re-framing is a solution for any policy issue on which a particular party is failing, as was put forth in George Lakoff’s book “Don’t Think of an Elephant.” But I do think that words matter in politics.

Our goal should be, at minimum, to own the words that describe who we are. In an earlier life, as a journalism student covering a summer of sometimes racially-charged violence in Columbia, Mo. In 1989, I remember trying to step through the minefield of racial identification brought on by the political correctness movement at the moment when “black” gave way to “African-American” in newspaper descriptions.

There were strong opinions on both sides about whether the hyphenated construction really described many of the people who would end up being described by it.

I worked for the first black (his preferred term) editor of the Missourian, and he taught us something very valuable. He asked us to get involved with the community we were covering, listen to the descriptions they used, and when appropriate actually ask people how they would like to be described. He told us to “call people what they want to be called.” I think he believed there was a certain empowerment reflected in the paper’s willingness to let the labeling happen from the bottom up.

So, that admonition always has stuck with me as I moved into political and public policy work. If the description is coming from outside the group of people being described . . . look out. In that sense, all of our policy development and rhetorical work involves politics – reaching out to people to figure out how they talk about the things that matter most to them.

It is in that spirit, then, that I want to respectfully ask for the name of my party back.

I am a member of the longest continuously existing political party in the world. The name of the party is the “Democratic Party.” You may notice that conservatives, in the media, on blogs, and with increasing frequency from the stump, refer to the party as the “Democrat Party.” They have dropped the “ic” from common parlance.

Why did they do this? What is important about this? Well, presumably, they don’t want to acknowledge that one party is more democratic, more of the people, more suited to the needs, interests, wants and desires of the American people than the other. I don’t blame them. If I lived in a democracy and had to run against a party that called itself “democratic” I would be freaking out.

This would be especially applicable if my party were advancing the interests of corporations, the top 1 percent of income earners, and the military. Not a lot of democracy on any of those fronts. (You say shareholders make corporations democratic? Another post for another time.) Further, I would be freaking out if a whole lot of people in my party held as a value the fact that the country is NOT a democracy, but a Republic in which individuals elect leaders to speak for them. (Which it is.)

These circumstances would make me want to say the word “Democratic” as infrequently as I could afford to.

So, my Blue Warriors, get out there and challenge this construction! When you see it or hear it, correct the source. Tell them to get it right. Make them squirm. And if this usage doesn’t go away soon, I am going to launch a campaign to lop off two letters from the Republican Party, and we’ll just start calling them “publicans,” as in the licentious immoral scum of the New Testament.

Turnabout is fair play.

Iowa House GOP stops the bleeding

A sign that a healthy loyal opposition is always right around the corner emerged from the Iowa House GOP caucus Monday, six days after the party lost seats for the fourth consecutive biennial.

After roaring to power in 1992 on the strength of the Democrats' unbelievably stupid decision to raise the sales tax in an election year, the House GOP clung to a narrow margin in 02 and 04 and then got washed out in the last two elections. They are down to fewer than 45 seats with a couple of results still undecided (including one in Cedar Rapids, which as of this writing may be decided by fewer than 10 votes. Dont tell me every little thing doesnt matter in a campaign.)

Anyhoo, the 'pubs selected Rep. Kraig Paulsen of Hiawatha as the new minority leader. This is something to pay attention to. Paulsen presents well on camera, is plain spoken, even soft-spoken, and can raise money. He's a likeable person, even for Democrats, and has a lot of local media experience sparring with, and sometimes holding his own against, one of the Iowa House's smartest-ever legislators in former Rep. Ro Foege (D-Mt. Vernon), who retired this year. Paulsen has come to the middle on some issues - he's anti-tobacco, for example. And he's reliably conservative on all the social issue litmus tests, with his wife promoting submission to husbands on the web on behalf of their church organization.

He also was a manager at Cryovac (now Evergreen) in Cedar Rapids. This is about as close to understanding Iowa's traditional manufacturing base that gave rise to labor unions in this state as you can be and still be a 'pub.

This guy gets it, has lived it, and is prepared to deliver. If he's smart enough to pick two or three victories he wants for his caucus in this next legislative session and stick to them over all the other crap his members and constituency groups will want him to do, he could have some success.

I am telling you, watch the rookie. You guys dont have Christopher Rants to kick around anymore.

Eleven Eleven

Some guys I knew in college had a band with that name, and i thought it was pretty cool. Two of them were Army, one was a kicker on the football team. I always thought it was a subtle hat-tip to veterans, and I thought that was classy. And this was the 90s when it may not have been all that cool.

I like that we have a Veterans Day, but have always been confused about why we dont do more in an organized fashion to celebrate it. There are ceremonies here and there, but nothing to draw in all of us who dont have a veteran in the immediate family. There is a ceremony at dawn in one of the cemeteries in Cedar Rapids with the guys on their bikes and in their VFW jackets that's pretty cool and that I always think of . . . just a dawn flag raising but still.

The other thing I love about Veterans Day are its populist origins. A guy in Emporia, KS in 1953 pushed for Armistice day, which was an outgrowth of WWI, to be applied to all veterans, and campaigned for it to happen, and eventually it did. Eleven eleven has been a federal holiday since 1978, when that big-time loser Jimmy Carter had the audacity to make it so. Lovin that. Can you imagine? Veterans as a little-d democratic cause? You won't see this on Fox News. Stick with me, you'll go far.

I actually worry that in recent years, Republicans and right-leaning military support organizations have tried to elevate 9/11 to the status of a de facto Veterans holiday. Obviously there is room and a need to observe both, but I cant help pointing out that one happens before Election Day and the other after. That has to be my liberal paranoia creeping out, right? No American would exploit the flag and the soldiers who have fallen beneath it for their own political gain.

A final Veterans Day note. I was home in Cedar Rapids this last weekend, post-election, and as I got out of my car at my parents' Obama-promotion-center of a home, the woman who lives katty-corner to them across the street was getting out of her car that featured a single bumper sticker reminding me her husband had been protecting my freedom. This is a guy who, when he first got back from Iraq last year, went for a lot of walks up and down the street. I dont really have a reference point for that experience. It had to be life-changing.

But this woman, as I got out to go into my parents' house, gave me a really long dirty look. Now this would not be the first dirty look I have received, and some of them were earned. But I can't get her face out of my mind and I can't help but believe she might be thinking that those of us who worked so hard to change the incompetent civilian leadership of this country that wrecked our best efforts in the war on terror with the Iraq blunder, somehow don't have the appropriate level of respect for the men and women who gave part or all of their lives in that effort.

I can only speak for me, and I wish I had felt like I could tell her: Those soldiers have done their jobs, and done them well, and that benefits us all, and we are a better country for it no matter the outcome. The greatness of this country is its people, and the best of the best have worn the uniform.

Some Early Demographic Thoughts

I get that its pretty passe to link to the New York Times, and I am going to do it anyway, particularly because I think the stable of columnists there represents an excellent cross section of styles and outlooks at the moment, probably better than at any time in the past 20 years. This morning Frank Rich nails the "Real America" argument used by the best surrogate the McCain campaign could locate in our nation of 300 million, that would be Gov. Palin. She gave a speech in North Carolina in which she said she was "happy to be in the Real America." And then that county voted by 18 points for Obama.

Oops. For this reason and many others I love having Gov. Palin on the scene as she and those who are part of the just-eviscerated conservative movement of the last 30 years are our ticket to a permanent Democratic majority.

Growing up and through most of the 90s I thought the Democrats had a common sense problem, in that many of the party's positions took longer than 30 seconds to explain and would not fit on a bumper sticker, so therefore any platitudes the conservatives could invent, like for instance "no nation has ever taxed its way to prosperity" which is one of my favorite pieces of conservative nonsense that I will hopefully treat at length at some other point, would strike the working middle class voters they needed to peel off from the Democrats, as common sense.

Its tough to sell progress in 30-second segments. We Democrats are, as is so often the case (see the Clinton impeachment debacle) the beneficiaries of wonderful political enemies.

Palin took the conservative common sense playbook and stretched it till it popped. This anti-intellectual thing (and there is much, much more to say about it) is the central argument of American conservatism right now, and we just watched it fizzle like a warm Diet Dr. Pepper. Part of the reason is that we are in tough times, out of which we will need smart, careful leadership to remain the strongest nation on the planet. And part of it is we just had eight years of from-the-hip governance that resulted in some jaw-droppingly bad strategery.

So, this is a moment. As Rich notes, the GOP lost every growing demographic in the country, AND lost white men by a bigger percentage than anytime since LBJ.

How to make it stick?

More Mindless Blather on the Web? You Betcha.

Welcome to a new little corner of the blogosphere, if there's not some cooler, more recent nickname for the incessant meanderings of the now millions of incessant meanderings of those of us too greedy to put our formal writing training to work daily, or too frustrated at our lack of outlets for our surely brilliant morsels, or too lazy to just go hang that picture shelf or finish that novel. Turns out I dont even have the energy to construct a thoughtful thesis for this blog, but will concern itself, in no order of importance, with policy and politics with an emphasis on my home state of Iowa, health care, music, the ridiculous and the sublime in pop culture, and "journalism" in the USA, whatever that is. All forms of human expression have a psychological purpose, a driver, and mine is to try and sort out the reality in which we find ourselves after November 4, 2008. Beware, you may find yourself agreeing with some of this stuff. But, as Kurt Vonnegut liked to remind us, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."