Monday Reads: We’re going to the Dogs!!!

Good Morning!

I’m hoping for some sunshine today so Dad and I can walk over to the Bellevue Library and check out the periodicals and some books. I got to push up the thermostat on the heater since I’m here now on my own and the dog doesn’t complain,  My sister’s house is a blend of oddly familiar family items and the typical northwest American view of pine trees, lakes, and hills.  It’s so different from the bayous, palm trees, and 200 year old houses normally around me. I feel a little bit like I am visiting an alien zombie land.  Well, the zombie metaphor comes from the yuppies, the late model upscale cars and busy, self-occupied looks of the crowds of people here zooming around inadequate infrastructure.  New Orleans infrastructure is inadequate due to age and abuse. The infrastructure here is overwhelmed by over use and population. Everything here is new. I long to drive to the part of the city with the folks that wear black, sport tattoos, and celebrate outward and socially questionable sexuality. Unlike my sister, I ran from my socioeconomic upbringing. Strip malls and SUVS just creep me out. I’m hoping to head more west and north for a dose of urban Seattle and respite some time this week.

My sister and I have always been really really different but I can’t imagine doing what Liz Cheney did publicly to sister Mary. I just know my sister and I are different and that our lives are ours to make.  Love and life should not be defined by the whims and proclivities of others.  You shouldn’t shame your family in front of TV pundits and folks’ Sunday Brunch. It takes a special kind of sister to put politics and a shot at elected office before their sister’s significant relationship and selfhood. It also takes  a lot of gall to go on TV and say that in a way that will one day cause one’s nieces and nephews grief. It appears that Liz Cheney has her priorities on holding elected office over her sister and her family. Kind’ve weird given that the evil old Dad won’t even throw Mary under the bus. What does that say about Liz?

“We were as close as sisters can be,” recalled Mary Cheney of her relationship with her older sister, Liz.

But now, a feud between the two has spilled into public view, involving social media, an angry same-sex spouse, a high-profile election and a father who feels uncomfortably caught between his two children.

The situation has deteriorated so much that the two sisters have not spoken since the summer, and the quarrel threatens to get in the way of something former Vice President Dick Cheney desperately wants — a United States Senate seat for Liz.

Things erupted on Sunday when Mary Cheney, a lesbian, and her wife were at home watching “Fox News Sunday” — their usual weekend ritual. Liz Cheney appeared on the show and said that she opposed same-sex marriage, describing it as “just an area where we disagree,” referring to her sister. Taken aback and hurt, Mary Cheney took to her Facebook page to blast back: “Liz — this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree you’re just wrong — and on the wrong side of history.”

But then Mary Cheney’s wife, Heather Poe, went further, touching on Liz Cheney’s relocation from Northern Virginia to Wyoming to seek office. (Liz Cheney is already battling accusations of carpetbagging in the race.)

“I can’t help but wonder how Liz would feel if as she moved from state to state, she discovered that her family was protected in one but not the other,” Ms. Poe wrote on her Facebook page. “Yes, Liz,” she added, “in fifteen states and the District of Columbia you are my sister-in-law.”

The feud reveals tensions not just within the family but in the Republican Party more broadly as it seeks to respond to both a changing America and an energized, fervently conservative base.

How is making family life difficult for a loving couple and their children a conservative value?  Why should civil marriage laws be bound by religious views anyway?  I just don’t get it at all.

I’m not sure you heard this news yesterday, but wonderful author Doris Lessing has passed at the age of 94.

As a writer, from colonial Africa to modern London, Ms. Lessing scrutinized relationships between men and women, social inequities and racial divisions. As a woman, she pursued her own interests and desires, professional, political and sexual. Seeking what she considered a free life, she abandoned two young children. Still, Salon, in an interview with Ms. Lessing in 1997, said that “with her center-parted hair that’s pulled back into a bun and her steely eyes, she seems like a tightly wound earth mother.”

It was this figure, 10 years later, who arrived at her house in sensible shoes to find journalists gathered at her door waiting to tell her that she had won the Nobel Prize for literature. “Oh, Christ!” she said upon hearing the news, adding, “I couldn’t care less.”

The Nobel announcement called her “the epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.”

And in the presentation speech at the Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm, Ms. Lessing was described as having “personified the woman’s role in the 20th century.” (She accepted the prize at a ceremony in London.)

The New Yorker has reprinted “The Stare” to celebrate the life and writing of Lessing.

The two women spend mornings together, gossiping or shopping, but now Helen has a baby and they often go to Primrose Hill and sit on a bench with the pram pushed into some shade. There are other wives, Greek and Cypriot, and some mornings it is quite a little female community, but Helen and Mary are recognized as special friends. Some evenings the two couples make a foursome in one of the pubs, cafés, or restaurants, and on these evenings Mary often congratulates herself that she made all the right choices that brought her away from boring Croydon, to be here among people who laugh easily, or start singing, and who might end an evening with impromptu dancing, even on the tables. She might not have gone to Greece that summer, might have said no to Demetrios when her parents put pressure on.

On this day Mary goes home excited and restless and sits in front of her looking glass and examines herself. She often does this. She is plump, pretty, with ruddy cheeks, black curls, and a lot of well-placed dimples, and Dmitri calls her his little blackberry. But she has gray eyes, and he says that if it weren’t for those cool English eyes he could believe she has Greek blood. His black eyes easily smolder, or burn, or reproach. Mary leans her forearms among the little bottles of scent, the lipsticks, the eye paint, and tries out expressions. She puts a long unsmiling unblinking stare on her face and frightens herself with it. She shuts her eyes, so as to see that stare on Helen’s face, but fails, because Helen only smiles. Mary admires Helen. That is putting it mildly. Because of something Dmitri said, Mary actually went to the library and found a book called “Greek Myths for Children,” and there she read that a Helen once, thousands of years ago, was a beauty, and men started a war because of her. In Greece parents called their little girls Helen, as if the name were just Betty or Joan. Helen told Mary that Mary was the Mother of God, but Mary said she wasn’t really into religion.

A series of freakish late fall tornadoes hit the midwest yesterday and killed 5 people in Illinois. Global warming any one?

A string of tornadoes and severe storms left a trail of damage and flooding through the Midwest Sunday, leveling parts of a town near Peoria, knocking down buildings in Grundy County and prompting Bears fans to scatter for cover as the game at Soldier Field was postponed.

In Washington, in Tazewell County, one person was reported killed, two were killed in Massac County and in Nashville east of St. Louis, two elderly siblings were reported killed . Dozens of others were reported injured including at least six who were seriously injured as the tornado spawned warnings through much of Illinois and northern Indiana.

Need a good laugh?  Wisconsin’s freakish governor Scott Walker believes he’s the best man for a 2016 Republican run.  WTF is wrong with these people?

Walker offered who he think would be a good contender saying, “I think it’s got to be an outsider. I think both the presidential and the vice presidential nominee should either be a former or current governor, people who have done successful things in their states, who have taken on big reforms, who are ready to move America forward.”

Walker did not offer his definition of ‘forward’ however. And you can bet he just chose himself as the best candidate.

ABC reports, “In terms of his own future, Walker — who seemed to closely fit his own definition of the ideal GOP nominee — told ABC News he would not rule out a presidential run in 2016.”

Walker said, “I don’t rule anything out.”

Here’s a few good hypotheses to answer the question of why we don’t see a set of perp marches with bankers over their horrid actions that brought on a great recession and a huge financial crisis that cost us billions of dollars.

Theory 1: U.S. attorneys and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have other priorities, whether it’s antiterror cases after the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting frauds after Enron’s bankruptcy, or Ponzi rip-offs after Bernard Madoff’s huge scam. Financial frauds are particularly tough to crack, and many of the prosecutors with the requisite knowledge have been moved to other areas.

Theory 2: Law enforcement agencies have had to compete for a shrinking pot of money from Congress, and the best way to do that is by beefing up their statistics with smaller, easier cases and avoiding the years-long financial fraud probes that may turn up nothing. The Manhattan U.S. attorney, moreover, has been preoccupied with the sprawling insider-trading case against hedge-fund owner Raj Rajaratnam. Tapes of his conversations have been a gold mine — resulting in slam-dunk cases that have led to numerous convictions — for Manhattan prosecutors who previously would have focused on bank fraud.

Theory 3: The federal government’s involvement in the mid-2000s bubble — encouraging more people to buy homes, deregulating the financial industry, keeping interest rates low and giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac way too much leeway — may also have given prosecutors pause.

Theory 4: The U.S. has shifted over the last 30 years from prosecuting high-level individuals to using delayed-prosecution agreements to settle cases against entire companies. That shift “has led to some lax and dubious behavior on the part of prosecutors,” Rakoff said, including allowing managers to sweep crimes under the rug.

How about they give lots and lots and lots of money to politicians in both parties and at all levels?

Watch out! Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt” is out on a rampage again! Astroturf any one? Why is Ed Rendell a shill for this asshole?  Better yet, why does MSNBC let him do it?  The best place to get a handle on wtf is going on with these obvious debt lies is here at The Nation.

Mary Bottari’s exposé names the ‘puppet populists’:

Behind this strategy are no fewer than 127 CEOs and even more “statesmen” pushing for a “grand bargain” to draw up an austerity budget by July 4. With many firms kicking in
 $1 million each on top of Peterson’s $5 million in seed money, this latest incarnation of the Peterson message machine must be taken seriously.

Fix the Debt has hired such powerful PR firms and lobby shops as the DCI Group, the Glover Park Group, the Dewey Square Group and Proof Integrated Communications, a unit of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which was the go-to firm for Big Tobacco. In the run-up to the “fiscal cliff,” these firms launched a flashy $3 million media campaign, blanketing Capitol Hill with TV, Internet, Metro and newspaper ads featuring slogans like “Got Debt?” and “Just Fix It.”

Fix the Debt’s stable of CEOs are a PR flack’s dream. Not only are they able to get meetings with everyone from John Boehner to President Obama; they can flood cable news with laughable messages of “shared sacrifice” and be treated with fawning respect. Fix the Debt’s David Cote, CEO of Honeywell, “brings serious financial muscle to the table” when he pushes “market credible solutions,” chirps The Wall Street Journal. There is no mention that Cote is a tax-dodging, pension-skimping hypocrite: Honeywell has a negative average tax rate of -0.7 percent and underfunds its employee pensions by -$2.8 billion, making Cote’s workers even more reliant on Social Security.

Creating a crisis is key. “America is more than $16 trillion in debt,” Fix the Debt’s website warns, calling it “a catastrophic threat to our security and economy.” The CEOs echo this warning, writing to Congress of the “serious threat to the economic well-being and security of the United States.”

It is so clear that we’re being overwhelmed with billionaires that throw money at politicians to influence government that any one who doesn’t see it must be living on a desert island called Delusion.

JJ pointed out that yet another child rapist has gotten away with it in Alabama.  The DA, however, is not taking this lax sentence lightly.

An Alabama district attorney filed a motion today seeking prison time for Austin Smith Clem, who was convicted of repeatedly raping a teenager—twice when she was 14—but was given only probation and a stint in community corrections as punishment.

Brian Jones, the Limehouse County district attorney, told Mother Jones on Friday that his office was reviewing its options to “achieve a sentence that gives justice to our victim.” This afternoon, Jones emailed reporters a copy of a motion he filed to stay Clem’s sentence and incarcerate him.

Jones has also filed a petition for a writ of mandamus for the Alabama Criminal Court of Appeals. The petition argues that Clem’s current sentence is illegal, and it asks the appeals court to order the presiding judge in Clem’s case, Circuit Court Judge James Woodroof, to “vacate his sentencing order…and re-sentence the defendant according to the provisions of Alabama law.”

In September, a jury convicted Clem of two counts of second-degree rape and one count of first-degree rape. Woodroof sentenced Clem to 10 years in prison for each of the second-degree rape charges and 20 years for first-degree rape. But Woodroof “split” the sentence so that Clem would serve two years in Limestone County community corrections program, a program aimed at nonviolent criminals, and three years of probation.

Jones’ petition asks the appeals court to consider whether Woodroof, in doing so, violated the Alabama split-sentence statute and the Alabama Community Punishment and Corrections Act. The petition argues that Alabama law prohibits a sentence for a felony—such as forcible rape—from being served in a community corrections program. “Rape by force or compulsion must be treated by the criminal justice system as a violent offense,” the petition states. “To suggest otherwise runs afoul of thousands of years of both sound jurisprudence and experience.”

On Friday, in response to his punishment, Clem’s victim said she was “livid.”

So, that’s about it from me today.  I’ll try to pop on during the day and add some more tidbits. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to name the celebs or the kind of dog breeds they preferred but kudos if you can find the names of these pampered Hollywood pooches!  What’s on your reading and blogging?

Sunday Reads: All Politics are Still Local

Good Morning!

We traded up mornings the last few days so I could get situated with family for awhile.  Dr. Daughter took me out to get my hair cut and we picked up sushi on the way home.  We’re now watching lots of episodes of Walking Dead.  So, I’m settled in for a week of Dad and dog.

This is a little provincial bit of local politics that I found very interesting.  Up in the Northeast corner of Louisiana is the city of Monroe and the fifth district congressional seat.  It’s a very safe Republican seat in a very redneck throwback part of the state.  There were two Republican candidates.  One was the Jindal blessed and sanctified candidate.  The other was backed by the Duck Dynasty family.  The unJindal candidate won Saturday with a very healthy margin and he supports improving the ACA unlike the Jindal candidate who rode him hard and wet in political ads.

Vance McAllister, a political newcomer with the backing of the popular “Duck Dynasty” TV family, was elected Saturday as Louisiana’s newest member of Congress.

McAllister, who largely self-funded his campaign, beat establishment candidate Neil Riser, a state senator, in a special runoff election for the vacant 5th District seat.

Both men are Republicans.

McAllister, a businessman with multiple companies, ran as a political outsider, capitalizing on frustration with politicians and Congress. As a point of pride during the campaign, he said he’d never been to Washington.

Riser, a funeral home owner in the Senate since 2008, campaigned on his experience in the Legislature and with the support of tea party groups.

“Plain and simple, this was Riser’s election to lose. Riser was the favorite going into the evening. He had the dollars. He had the endorsement of the Republican establishment. He had a strong showing in the primary. Yet, he lost it,” said Joshua Stockley, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Riser and McAllister are both conservatives and largely agreed on many issues. Both oppose abortion, favor strong gun rights and criticize the levels of federal spending and debt.

Their sharpest distinction rested with President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Both opposed the health overhaul, but Riser wanted only repeal, saying the law will harm businesses and families and can’t be fixed.

McAllister said repeal had no chance with Democrats leading the Senate and White House, so he said Congress should work to improve the law. He also wants Louisiana to expand its Medicaid program to give insurance to the working poor, an expansion that Riser opposes.

Perhaps even more interesting is the kind of backing Riser got.

Riser is heavily relying on the backing of the GOP establishment – he’s won endorsements from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Alexander, and much of the state’s GOP congressional delegation. He also has the support of FreedomWorks and the Tea Party of Louisiana.

The candidates’ ads didn’t air as far south as New Orleans but an interesting contrast was drawn in the Baton Rouge/New Orleans daily The Advocate. The Duck Dynasty guys vs. a typical Tea Party attack ad about sums it up.

“Vote for my good buddy, Vance McAllister,” Robertson says in the ad. “Let’s send somebody from the 5th district who speaks for us to help turn Washington around.”

McAllister’s campaign is spending tens of thousands of dollars to air the commerical in 5th District television markets.

McAllister already was being support by Robertson’s father, Duck Commander Phil Robertson, but Willie Robertson’s assist puts more of the Robertson clan in McAllister’s corner.

Riser is spending the final days of the campaign attacking McAllister in television ads for supporting the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana to insure about 265,000 more state residents under a provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has refused to adopt the expansion, contending it will prove too costly long term.

Riser sent a new campaign mailer that features the faces of McAllister and President Barack Obama and accuses his opponent of having “liberal views.”

“On the major issues … Vance McAllister agrees with Obama,” the mailer states.

McAllister opposes “Obamacare,” but he has argued that as long as it is law the state should take advantage of helping lower income people get health care.

“Hold on, Vance. You support Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion,” Riser’s ad states. “A vote for Vance McAllister is a vote for Obamacare.”

As of Wednesday, Riser has raised more than $950,000 in campaign funds, including recent $5,000 contributions by U.S. Reps. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Mike Conaway, R-Texas, according to Federal Election Commission records.

McAllister has taken in about $920,000, but roughly $825,000 of the total comes out of his pockets. McAllister has said he may end up personally investing close to $1 million.

Something tells me the good old boys in NE Louisiana went rogue on Jindal and the Republican party apparatchik.  Basically, these guys beat the tea party in what should be a genuinely friendly locale.  Here’s an article that suggests the stagnant economy is probably the reason. It hurts the very constituency most likely to appeal to Tea Party antics.

What he found was that people in those districts tended to be poorer and have a higher rate of unemployment than the country as a whole. “The median income in those districts last year was 7 percent lower than the national median, according to the Census Bureau. The unemployment rate averaged 10 percent. That was almost two percentage points higher than the national rate, and two percentage points higher than the overall rate in the states that contain each district.”

In other words, these are not the people are worried about the stock market or the GDP growth in the 4th quarter. They haven’t seen an economy recovery. They are worried about making it through the month, or the rest of the year with enough food on the table for their families.

While those of us inside-the-Beltway bemoan the rabble-rousers who are undermining the established order, folks in these struggling communities want to see the established order shaken up. After all, why should they believe that those with a vested interest in helping Wall Street or Washington succeed are at all interested in helping them get ahead? They don’t see anyone fighting for them. And, they are angry about it.

This chart from Gallup should remind every politician just how pessimistic most Americans are about their ability to get ahead.

From 1952-1998, more than 80 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “there’s plenty of opportunity” to get ahead economically in this country “and anyone who works hard can go as far as they want.” Today, just 52 percent of Americans agree with that statement, while forty-three percent concur that “the average person doesn’t have much chance to really get ahead.”

So, from my standpoint, the best thing about this is the total humiliation to Bobby Jindal; governor from hell. Did I mention  he actually hornswaggled the current congressman to retire early?

The results of the 5^th District congressional race are in and the message has been sent loud and clear—surely loud enough to be heard in Baton Rouge.

With political newcomer Vance McAllister walloping State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), the heir-apparent to Rodney Alexander’s 5^th District seat by not a comfortable but by an astounding and resounding 60-40 margin (okay, it was 59.65-40.35—an actual vote count of 54,449 to 36,837), the Louisiana Tea Party and Bobby Jindal have to be reeling and wondering what the hell happened. And Riser especially has to be feeling quite flummoxed and embarrassed at this juncture—particularly given the fact that he could muster only 3,800 more votes than he got in the Oct. 19 primary while McAllister pulled in an additional 36,000 votes, a margin of nearly 10-1 in the number of votes gained.

Actually, when you break it all down, there was more than one message sent in this election that Riser entered as the odds-on favorite to walk into office on the strength of the fast one that the Jindalites tried to pull off. The governor vastly overplayed his hand when he maneuvered Alexander into “retiring” halfway into this two-year term of office so that he could take a cushy state job as head of the Louisiana Office of Veterans Affairs at $130,000 per year, a job that stands to boost his state pension (he was a state legislator before being elected to Congress) from about $7,500 per year to something north of $80,000 per annum.

Speaking of more local politics,  Seattle just elected a socialist to its city council.

Seattle voters have elected a socialist to city council for the first time in modern history.

Kshama Sawant’s lead continued to grow on Friday, prompting 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin to concede.

Even in this liberal city, Sawant’s win has surprised many here. Conlin was backed by the city’s political establishment. On election night, she trailed by four percentage points. She wasn’t a veteran politician, having only run in one previous campaign.

But in the days following election night, Sawant’s share of the votes outgrew Conlin’s.

“I don’t think socialism makes most people in Seattle afraid,” Conlin said Friday.

While city council races are technically non-partisan, Sawant made sure people knew she was running as a socialist — a label that would be politically poisonous in many parts of the country.

Sawant, a 41-year-old college economics professor, first drew attention as part of local Occupy Wall Street protests that included taking over a downtown park and a junior college campus in late 2011. She then ran for legislative office in 2012, challenging the powerful speaker of the state House, a Democrat. She was easily defeated.

Here’s an unedited local TV news interview with the future Council woman.

So, I promise that I’ll try to take on more in the future.  Meanwhile, what’s on your blogging and reading list today?