Month: October 2015

I have trouble thinking of Marco Rubio as a serious candidate, let alone a possible choice for the Republican Establishment, but that’s mainly because I know that Florida politics are a cesspool and that his time in the Florida legislature won’t stand up to national scrutiny. Nominate him at your own risk, but no one in their right mind would pick them as their running mate and that will become clear when they do their vetting.

Nonetheless, Rubio appears to belong in the trio of candidates who are acceptable to the Republican Establishment. And it’s telling that Rubio hates his job in the Senate, and that the other two hate the Republican electorate.

So, what I’ll be looking for in the tonight’s Republican debate is to see if the three Republican “Establishment” candidates are going to use their opportunity to speak about the most pressing issue facing their party. Ohio Governor John Kasich recently put it this way, “What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?”

So, do Jeb!, Rubio and Kasich have an answer for that question? Are they going to try to get the Republican debate audience to wake up to the ridiculousness of telling pollsters that you want Ben Carson or Donald Trump to be the president of the United States?

I think the debate is supposed to be focused on economic policy which means that meta-converations about the state of the Conservative Movement might have to be crowbarred into answers to questions about things like the debt ceiling or Dick Cheney’s observation that St. Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.

That’s fine, I think. I think the debt ceiling is a very appropriate place to begin discussing the Conservative Movement’s detachment from reality. Rand Paul will talk about filibustering the effort to pay our bills on time and Ben Carson will promise to never raise the debt ceiling during his presidency. Those will be prime opportunities for Jeb!, Rubio and Kasich to tell them to stop talking nonsense.

If they aren’t willing to confront the stupid-demons in the debate, then they should shut up about the tone and tenor of the campaign and just drop out.

George Hutchins is a Republican who wants to be the next congressional representative for the people who reside in the 4th District of North Carolina. He’s a veteran and former US Marine who served in the first Gulf War. He’s persistent (he ran in 2010, 2012 and is running again in 2016). And, unlike many of his fellow travelers, his plan to solve the “illegal immigration” issue isn’t solely based on building a giant fence all along the US border and/or deporting millions of people.

No, George Hutchins has a better idea. An idea so obvious its hard to believe the current Republican Presidential candidates haven’t promoted it themselves. I could tell you what he is proposing, but I’ll let this image from his own campaign webpage lay it all out for you, instead.

That’s right. Mr. Hutchin’s solution is prison labor, or if you prefer, slave labor. And guess who just happens to be the single largest group in the US Prison system? Non-Hispanic African Americans at roughly 37 to 38 percent! And guess who comes in second place? White people not considered Hispanic represent between 32 and 33 percent of all prison inmates (sorry, I have no breakdown based on those ethnic groups other than “Hispanic” who fall within the “White category). Hispanics who are also “white” represent around 22 percent, and all other races and ethnic groups account for roughly 8 percent.

Now, I know some of you are going to ask would anyone really go for this idea? Would anyone actually vote to reinstitute legalized slavery in the United States? To which I say, have you seen what’s happening at the Donald’s political rallies lately? Or what happened at Sarah Palin’s rallies in 2008? Of course Republican voters will flock to any candidate who proposes this idea like flies drawn to fresh dog shit!

And if you think the 13th Amendment prohibits this “solution” to the immigration issue, well think again.

Ratified at the end of the Civil War, the amendment abolished slavery, with one critical exception: Slavery and involuntary servitude actually remain lawful “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” In other words, according to this so-called punishment clause, if you get pulled over with the wrong controlled substance in your trunk, there’s nothing in the 13th Amendment to ensure you can’t be considered a slave of the state.

So, which Republican presidential candidate will be the first to support legalized slave labor to eliminate incentives for “illegal immigrants” to some to America? My money is on Trump, but you never know what the wild and crazy Ben Carson might say next. Stay tuned!

Establishment Candidate One:

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then I don’t want any part of it.”

“I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them,” [Jeb Bush] spat. “That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

Establishment Candidate Two:

“Do you know how crazy this election is? Let me tell you something, I’ve about had it with these people,” [John] Kasich said, according to the report. “I want you to know I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired of listening to this nonsense and I’m going to have to call it like it is in this race.”

“What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?” Kasich said to the crowd, according to the publication. “I’m done being polite and listening to this nonsense.”

I’m sensing a theme here.

Soon to be ex-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has cut a deal with the Obama administration to extend the debt ceiling until 2017, eliminating the possibility of the most extreme factions of the Republican House caucus ruining the credit of the country and shutting down the government until after the 2016 Presidential election. The deal is far from perfect. It expands military spending, and some domestic spending for 2 years, but it reportedly imposes cuts on Medicare and Social Security Disability, among other many other things (for example, the ACA requirement that businesses with 200 or more employees must enroll them in an ACA qualified plan would be eliminated). Increased spending for 2016 and 2017 would end in 2018, when the current limits under the sequester would be reinstated.

Boehner hopes to pass this deal with support from Democrats and some members of his own party prior to the election of Paul Ryan as Speaker, currently scheduled for Wednesday. This lets Ryan off the hook from having to deal with a possible debt default by the Federal government that will occur on November 3rd of this year absent an extension of the debt ceiling.

If the ceiling were breached it could entail a debt default, leading to surging interest rates and turmoil in global markets. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan policy organisation, put it in a recent note: “Failing to raise the debt ceiling would be disastrous.”

Ryan, in a classic Washington “Kabuki” theater reaction, expressed his public outrage at Boehner’s actions.

Rep. Paul Ryan blasted Speaker John Boehner, Senate leadership and the White House for cutting a budget deal behind closed doors, saying the “process stinks.”

Ryan said he hasn’t gone through the agreement, which was posted last night.

“This is not the way to do the people’s business,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “And under new management we are not going to do the people’s business this way. We are up against a deadline – that’s unfortunate. But going forward we can’t do the people’s business. As a conference we should’ve been meeting months ago to discuss these things to have a unified strategy going forward.”

Of course, this deal takes any discussion of extending the debt ceiling off the table until October of 2016, a huge benefit to him, and to the country, considering the effects of the Republican refusal to extend the debt ceiling in 2011.

Although the crisis was eventually resolved, it produced a downgrade of the country’s credit rating, and some economists believe that the resulting hit to consumer confidence significantly damaged the economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Not sure I like any deal, and I confess I don’t fully understand all the details that have been reported. Nonetheless, if it passes before Ryan’s election as Speaker, Boehner will have given his replacement a huge political benefit.

What do you think about about Bernie Sanders’ political revolution?

Noted genius, Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post, thinks he has an explanation for why Donald Trump isn’t collapsing the way that the Republican Establishment assumed he would. It comes down to two things. First, the Republican electorate somewhat inexplicably believes (in overwhelming numbers) that Trump has the best prospects in a general election matchup against Hillary Clinton. Second, the GOP electorate also believes strongly that Trump is the most likely to shake up things in Washington DC.

This seems like a decent explanation until you examine it for two seconds.

On the first point, which of the other eleventy billion right-wing prospects is a good general election candidate? Is it Ben Carson? Really?

Surely people don’t think Ted Cruz or Chris Christie or Rand Paul are solid general election candidates. And who is the last person to acknowledge that the Bush Brand is deader than New Coke?

I know the press loves Marco Rubio but does anyone realize what his record down in Florida actually looks like when you scrutinize it? The man’s record makes Sarah Palin look clean. A Rubio candidacy will make the GOP wish they’d hired they guy who closed down the George Washington Bridge for days out of petty political spite. The Clintons would treat Rubio like a chew-toy and make him wish he’d kept the boring job that he hates.

I know no one really serious wants to put their eggs in Carly Fiorina’s basket, and the rest of the candidates are bordering on Alan Keyes-crazy and Gary Bauer-charismatic.

Except for Ohio Governor John Kasich, of course, who is the only guy in the field with the resume and the record and the willingness to pursue the middle to make an actual case for himself. Maybe the GOP base will figure this out in time, but it’s looking unlikely at the moment.

The bottom line is that when people say Trump is the most electable, that’s like saying the guy on the stool at the end of the bar is the most electable. Compared to Bush, Carson, et. al., that’s actually true.

So, it doesn’t explain anything to say that the base thinks Trump is the most electable. The question is why is he the most electable?

On the second point, it’s kind of a no-brainer that the guy famous for firing people is the best bet to shake up things in Washington DC. The question is why is shaking things up the most pressing desire of the Republican electorate?

I mean there’s obviously gridlock in Washington and Democrats are frustrated, too. But Hillary Clinton isn’t stuck at single digits in the polls, trailing a reality-television star. She has a contest on her hands, but she isn’t in free-fall like Jeb Bush.

No, the answer is the Republicans are like the boy who cried wolf. Their base doesn’t believe in them anymore. They were too full of shit for too long.

And it broke the party.

So, whether it’s Trump or a surging Carson, the base is clear that it wants nothing to do with the Republican Establishment or its shitty unelectable candidates.

I don’t know who can really blame them, and I certainly wouldn’t blame Trump.

If you don’t want to go too far back, I think you could start with George W. Bush and move on to Sarah Palin. Maybe the GOP should have shunned Trump when he started the Birther stuff instead of encouraging him and asking for his support.

In any case, Trump isn’t winning because he’s electable or willing to shake things up. He’s winning because none of them are electable and he’s willing to shake things up.

Martin and I have debated the Kinks once or twice, as they are my favorite rock band of all time, whereas he sees them as lightweight and forgettable.

I hope you won’t mind, Martin, but I’m sharing an old Kinks song for you here in hopes that it will touch you in your moment of loss and soften the edges some. From my heart to yours, as it were, offered in the spirit of friendship, here is “Days” as performed by Ray Davies with full choir at Glastonbury in 2010.

Godspeed and RIP, Andrew.

What beyond that oxymoron could anyone possibly need to know about anyone who could utter that phrase (hint: Trump. Duh!).

What could possibly make it more evident that Trump, like Gee Dubya before him, ‘was born on third base and thinks he hit a home run’ (h/t the late, great Molly Ivins, I think).

You know, I’m still not really in blogging mode but I just want to say that I wasn’t quite prepared to read about Ben Carson attacking people with knives, bricks, and baseball bats. I mean, I’m glad he really turned himself around and everything and I doubt he’s one bad afternoon away from braining someone with a brick, but I thought this campaign couldn’t get any weirder and it’s disconcerting to discover that I was wrong about that.

And, yeah, I think we can find someone else to give the nuclear launch codes to, thank you very much.

I set my brother Andrew up with a blog back in the Spring and he wrote quite a bit for a short while, although he stopped abruptly on June 24th. It’s a struggle for me to write about him for so many reasons, and it’s probably best to let him speak for himself whenever that’s possible. I encourage you to take a look at what he was thinking about and struggling with because I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it.

You can never tell a person’s story completely, and you certainly do them a grave injustice to reduce them to simple labels. My brother was many great and admirable things, but he also suffered from depression and he eventually sought solace and comfort in alcohol for problems that he felt he was powerless to overcome. And, one by one, the addiction took from him all the things he loved and cared about, including in himself. He sought treatment many times and waged a battle that lasted, I guess, about eight years.

By the time we got him into treatment for the last time, he had lost everything and had earned the estrangement of the people who cared about him the most. Honestly, at that point, I think he had days if not hours to live. But, where other rehabilitation centers had failed, his last one succeeded. As he explained it to me, the difference was that they gave him unconditional love, and that was the one thing that he needed to believe that redemption was possible and worth seeking.

They patched him together as best as they could. And then he left to live in a recovery house where he spent the last eight months of his life. He came by our house often. Last week, he looked after his nephew while we went to the Memorial Service for our friends’ mother. You can see on his Facebook page that he made a real impact on the folks he lived with at the recovery house. They say he was a “good friend” who “would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.” Sometimes, he’d turn down an invitation to come to dinner because he wanted to make sure a friend had a ride to work.

He spent most of his days at the library looking for the kind of work he needed to meet his obligations to his family, but those kinds of jobs don’t come easily to a 55 year old man who has burned his references and is in ill health. He focused on that and on his recovery and on making a positive difference in the lives of the people he interacted with on a daily basis.

He told me that after a lot of effort he had managed to get on Medicaid, but I don’t think he ever went to a doctor. If he had, he might have known how near to death he was.

There’s a lot more to my brother than his last sad months, but these were the last miles that I walked with him. And, in the end, what mattered to him were the kinds of things he wrote about on his blog.

In one of his posts, he ruminated on a song by Ray LaMontagne that spoke to him for obvious reasons.

Empty
By Ray LaMontagne

She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows
With her bare feet laughing
I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell
In my disasters
I walk on down the hill
Through grass grown tall
And brown and still
It’s hard somehow
To let go of my pain
On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field
Collecting rain
Will I always feel this way
So empty
And estranged?
and of these cut throat busted sunsets
These cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary
If through my cracked and dusty
Dime store lips
I spoke these words out loud
Would no one hear me?
Lay your blouse across the chair
Let fall the flowers
From your hair
And kiss me
With that country mouth
So plain
outside the rain is tapping
On the leaves
To me it sounds like
They’re applauding us
The quiet love
We’ve made
Will it always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?
well I looked my demons in the eyes
Lay bare my chest
Said do your best
To destroy me
I’ve been to hell and back
So many times
I must admit
You kinda bore me
there’s a lot of things
That can kill a man
There’s a lot of ways
To die
Yes, and some already did
And walk beside me
there’s a lot of things
I don’t understand
So many people lie
It’s the hurt I hide that fuels
The fire inside me
Will I always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?

Here’s part of what he had to say about this song.

I believe people will relate who have experienced loss, trauma, profound disappointment, addiction, unrequited love, wear from the windchill of life, or just about anything that throws a person inward with a belief they are alone with their problems, solutions and being. The converse is someone who is continually directed towards relationships with others and outside things and to things greater than themselves. I know that for me, a lifetime of concern over personal and political battles, especially recent ridiculously needless battles, has too often left me weary, hopeless and bored.

I also believe that feeling is not necessary.

Coming up, I will be posting thoughts which may describe a simpler path for staying awake in every moment in an easier state; more pliable but unyielding to life’s hard-edged conflicts. I think I can safely say I have spent many, many of my adult waking hours developing awareness and skills around it. I have in no way been always successful. In fact, I have failed beyond my wildest imagination, tempting total ruin. But having learned and applied a few lessons from my failures, I also have experienced some serene success. Your mileage may vary.

During Andrew’s last full day on Earth, President Obama was in West Virginia talking about addiction. He was primarily concerned with the opioid epidemic, but that was also a concern of Andrew’s because in the circles of recovery we are burying friends and acquaintances on a near-daily basis who are succumbing to opioids. Nearly every time I talked to him over the last few months he began by telling me the story of someone else who had relapsed, overdosed and died. Most of the people he was devoting himself to helping were trying to recover from an opioid addiction. If he’d want anything, he’d want people to understand the severity of the problem our nation has with depression and addiction, and how inadequate our response has been so far.

In fact, this desire of his is the sole reason why I am writing this at all, because at a time like this the inclination is to gloss over the tragic stuff, the embarrassing stuff, and to celebrate the good times and the accomplishments and the best that a person was able to offer.

But, I’ll tell you, Andrew had eight months sober. He was fighting. He was trying to do the right thing every day. And he was giving the best he had to offer. The end of his story is tragic but it should be inspiring, too.

I want people to know that he had recaptured the good in himself and he was applying it to help others.

There are countless people out there right now who are fighting the same fight, behind the same eight ball, at the bottom of the same unscalable pit. And they need your love and a helping hand, and a system that can find a way to give them some support and medical attention.

I’m proud of Andrew. I’m proud and honored to have walked these last miles with him.