August 24, 2014

The inevitable Hillary will lead to President Rand Paul.

Everyday we get at least two posts, and often more, telling us how Hillary is inevitable, the best choice, and the only choice for Democrats. We get polling that nobody has the name recognition. We get polling about how Democratic Insiders and strategists are so excited about a Hillary Nomination that they are changing their underwear hourly. We had the campaign against Rick Perry pretty much mapped out and plotted. We could beat him with Hillary, no problem.

Then Rick Perry was indicted, and the game changed out of our favor. With Christy out, Perry was the presumptive nominee for the Rethugs. He had suffered from the image of being a blithering dumbass in the debates of the 2012 nomination. The man couldn't string a sentence together on TV to save his life. So he added glasses, because everyone knows Glasses make you look smart.

Now, Rick Perry is out, Christy is out. Who does that leave? Bush White House take three? No way that people get behind Jeb. Too much of one family. That my friends leaves the policy wonk Paul Ryan, or Rand Paul. The old boys network would prefer Paul Ryan, but they will figure out pretty quickly that they'll have more luck trying to moderate Rand than get Ryan elected at all.

Paul will win the early contests, and have momentum going into the rest of the states. His message is pretty simple, and worse, it feeds on and is encouraged by recent events. In other words, the Republican Candidate is on the Populist side of the issues. The populist side that could very well indicate the voters desires.

While Hillary is running to the right of McCain on foreign issues, Paul is going a different direction. Worse his ideas are going to resonate with the electorate. We've been at war with Terror since 9-11-2001 and people are sick of it. That's why there was no support for going into Syria. That's why President Obama suffered another drop in public approval when he started bombing ISIS. People are getting sick of it. After twelve years of bombing, and casualties, and diplomatic efforts, we're no closer to an end game than we were on 9-12-2001. Rand Paul's arguments that we need a policy of non intervention and allow people to sort out their own problems is liable to find a receptive audience. Military families tired of watching Mom or Dad or the Son or Daughter go off to fight and possibly not come home are liable to get on board. The argument Hillary will put forth that we must do this for security has been heard so often that nobody is going to buy into it. None of that has worked, so let's try something new will be the thoughts a lot of people will have.

Let me explain. Rand has a libertarian view on the drug war. He'll start with Legalizing Marijuana. People in Colorado will be interviewed and talk about all the tax revenue collected from the legalized sale of Marijuana. The public is generally pretty split on the issue, but they will probably fall on the legalize side of the issue, especially when there are a flood of drug war ruined my life over a joint news stories. So Rand will pick up support there, while Hillary will be going conservative to get the law and order vote.

Militarization of the Police. Rand has opposed it for a while, and Hillary has been silent. So the best case is she can say during the debates that she agrees with Rand Paul and his long held beliefs that she was late coming to the party about militarization of the police. Worst Case she takes the attitude that cops need that crap to protect us, or something, in an effort to shore up the law and order and conservative votes.

Either way, the Base of the Democratic Party will find themselves agreeing with Paul, and either arguing that the Conservative path is the right one to get the Democrat in the White House, thus selling out their core beliefs, or will argue that Paul is wrong about how he's doing it but right about what he wants to do. That last one loses us the White House by the way.

So let's look at the Economy. Paul has been a vocal opponent of bailing out wall street. Guess what, Occupy Wall Street was a vocal opponent. So who hasn't been a vocal opponent? Hillary because that would lose her the corporate sponsors she needs to stuff the war chest full of cash for the run.

Well, there's the NSA, which Paul has been a vocal opponent of, and Hillary has been supporting.

So to summarize. The Republican candidate will be on the Progressive side of many issues, while the Democratic Candidate will be on the regressive side of the issues. Now you're going to scream that Paul will destroy the Department of Education, slash Welfare, social security, and destroy a woman's right to choose.

The problem is that people will be willing to risk those issues to get action on the other ones. The message is going to be nothing else has worked, two administrations of bombing suspected terrorists and five thousand American Service members are dead and nothing has changed to make us more secure. Anyone want to bet that Paul doesn't use the phrase whack a mole to describe the effort against ISIS/ISIL?

So if we run the inevitable Hillary, we cede the White House to Rand Paul. Because there is no way we can out Conservative the Republicans. The Conservatives will either vote Republican, or stay home. The Liberals will vote Democratic, or stay home. It's the moderates, the folks in the middle. They'll be choosing between more of the same, and something new. What do you think they will choose?

So what do we need to do? We need to nominate a true Progressive. I'm talking Bernie Sanders, I'm talking Elizabeth Warren for the top job. I'm talking Grayson for the top job, not some sop to the LW by giving them a high position. Because nominating Hillary is giving away all the issues that are in the news. Anyone think there will be no more pictures of militarized police between now and November 2016? Anyone think that there will be no more revelations about the NSA between now and November 2016? How about stories about tax revenue in Colorado from the legalized Marijuana sales. Anyone think that we won't see any of those? Or lets talk about the war on Terror, anyone think that ISIS is going to give up and surrender because a few bombs were dropped?

How does Hillary support the attacking of ISIS which inadvertently helps Assad of Syria, you remember him the evil dictator of just last year, who will end up being our ally next year as we push intelligence and special operations types forward to identify the ISIS bases to bomb? When that happens, and it will, the press will revel in playing all the Democratic politicians who wanted to bomb the crap out of Syria to drive Assad into exile or prison day and night for days. The good news is that Hillary had said that Assad was a Reformer. Then a couple years later, that he had to go. So the good news is that we can say we were on the he's a reformer bandwagon before we were on the bomb the crap out of him bandwagon. We've just returned to our earlier position.

How did our election strategy become to be the nominee of the Defense Contractors, the Military Industrial Intelligence Conspiracy, the pro war on drugs team? Who decided that the key to getting elected was to become more interventionist than the Kaiser?

Nominate Hillary, and you hand the White House to Rand Paul. You can blame the voters for being stupid as they vote for the candidate that supports the issues that Liberals used to, but you will be doing it from outside the fenced yard of the White House.

August 16, 2014

FIghting to win? No, we're busy fighting not to lose.

I originally wrote the following just before Michael Brown was killed by Police. I've been thinking about it now and then since then. I've decided to post it now, so it can rapidly drop to the bottom of the posts with the other dead letters.

Vietnam was lost in 1968 for all intents and purposes. It was announced on the news by Walter Cronkite. The problem is, we didn’t want to lose. But we never had a plan for victory. The plan we had was to stabilize the South Vietnamese Government and hope for the best sometime in the future.

Let’s contrast World War 2 shall we? It is just days after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Churchill traveled to Washington DC to meet with President Roosevelt to discuss the war, the future, and how the war could be won. Churchill believed that Japan would fall when isolated, the first and most deadly peril to the world was Hitler. Roosevelt agreed, but knew he could not turn his back on the Pacific, the Japanese had started the war. However they agreed that the largest share of American Material would be sent to the European Theaters of the war to fight the Nazi’s.

In December 1941 with the smell of death and smoke still clinging to Pearl Harbor the general plan to win the war was being worked on by the allies. We knew what we would accept, Unconditional Surrender of the Axis powers. We knew basically how, the outline if not the general details of the path to Victory. As early as the Tehran Conference in 1943, we were looking at the post war, post victory actions in Europe and Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference
We were fighting for Victory. Victory was easy to define, the destruction of Nazism. The destruction of Fascist Italy. The destruction of Imperial Japan.

How about earlier. World War I. President Wilson kept trying to get peace discussions going. He refused to believe that all the combatants would demand victory or death. To oversimplify it a bit, no one could afford to lose, and remain in power. Everyone had planned on the losing side paying for the war under the term Reparations, a common bribe paid to end hostilities by the losing side for centuries. Russia, Germany, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire proved that to be true.

Wilson finally learned in 1917 that the combatants were determined to fight, and the last choice he had was to pick sides. Germany had already taken hostile action against the United States, so the decision was academic.

We fought to victory in conflicts. Historically Peace treaties were rarely the final word on the issues. The perpetual state of war between England and Spain went on for centuries. The same with France that lasted until the beginning of the 20th Century. Peace treaties were a way to back away, gather strength, and start again in a few years, perhaps a generation would pass in relative peace, then the hostilities would recommence.

So the war on drugs has been going on since the 1970’s with no end in sight. We arrest the dealers, the users, and the drug smugglers. We get a kingpin, and announce a major victory in the war on drugs. But there is no real victory in sight. We don’t address the core issue, the desire of people to use, that drives demand for drugs. We aren't fighting to win. We are fighting because the alternative scares us more, the idea of drug addled people all over the place. The truth is, legalization would pretty much end drug availability. Liability laws would make production of drugs stronger than Marijuana problematic. Personal Injury lawyers would go up and talk about how Gasoline was used in the production of Cocaine and huge settlements that would finally make the tobacco awards look puny by comparison would wipe out the drug producers.

The war on Terror. Since World War II we have been reluctant to declare war on anything but vague ill-defined terms. We had war on Poverty. We had war on intolerance, war on war. We like ill-defined wars though, because that way we can get involved without doing what FDR did in December 1941. We can fight without declaring what victory will be. We do this because the reality is we know that victory over these things is a virtual impossibility.

How do you win a war on Terrorism? Terrorism by definition is always small cells that have been preparing for an attack that is nearly suicidal at best, outright suicide at worst. How do you win that?

I had a discussion with a friend who is black at work the other day. We were talking about Iraq, and we both agreed that racism didn’t end because of a court decision to integrate schools. Racism ends when people decide to live together. Live and let live. There are whites who won’t do that, and there are blacks who won’t do it. But generally speaking, most of us have decided to live, and let live.
Iraq, the disparate groups show little interest in living together. ISIS/ISIL or whatever you are calling them today have little tolerance for anyone who does not join them. It is a join us or die movement that may consist of hundreds of thousands of followers who are dedicated to some extent or another. So what are we doing? We deploy troops to secure our Embassy and the American Compounds. Then we deploy bombs to protect the troops protecting the compounds.

We are fighting not to lose. We don’t know how to win, and we are unwilling to lose. This is not a foreign policy, this is a we don’t have a better idea at the moment, maybe tomorrow will bring something that we can use plan.

My Father told me that if I was going to fight other schoolboys, I had to know what I was fighting for, and when I would stop. He told me that I could fight as long as the other boy was standing, but once he was on the ground I was to stop, because that was defined by him, and me, as the end of the fight. That was victory, when the other boy would not get up. Later, I defined it as preventing him from hurting me anymore. For two boys in the school yard using fists and feet to settle their issues, this isn't a bad plan. Eventually that other boy would get up, or I would, and go home to lick our wounds. Perhaps the issue was settled, perhaps it was like one of those peace treaties mentioned above, a temporary cessation of hostility. The point is that there was a clearly defined point of victory, or defeat. This point was generally speaking pretty universally accepted.

We identify people with hostile intent. We bomb them and destroy them. Then another four pop up, and we start hunting for the four, then the twelve, then the fifty. We are applying the schoolyard principle to the world at large, and nobody we are at war with is playing by those rules.

Now, some will insist that I come up with an answer. I've identified a problem, we’re fighting not to lose instead of fighting to win. So what is the solution? That’s the problem. I don’t have one. OK, there are some obvious ones that are inconceivable.
We could wipe out anyone who believes in a specific religion. Besides being infamous that is the definition of Genocide, which is prohibited by international law with good reason.

We could station our troops on our borders and build a wall to prevent anyone coming in and hurting us. Obviously besides being impossible, that is stupid and wouldn't work.

We need to learn to live together. Jew and Gentile. Muslim and Hindu. Brown, Black, White, Red, Yellow, and Turquoise. But we don’t do that. Even as political parties, we define ourselves by being different than the others, and superior because of those differences. Every Religion is convinced that they are the ones who are right, and everyone thinks the others are going to suffer for eternity because they are wrong. I've read the Bible, and I've read about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Wicca. I've never found a book anywhere that says I have any say in what happens to anyone else in the hereafter. Nowhere in any of those books does it say SavannahMann will decide what reward or punishment you shall receive. Believe me, no one is more glad of that than I, because I don’t have the wisdom to make those determinations.

If we are going to fight these wars. Poverty, Drugs, Intolerance, and even Terrorism. We need to decide what victory is, and how we reach it. Because without knowing what the win is, there is no way to figure out how to reach it. Berlin was easy, we knew where it was. Tokyo was easy, we knew where it was. But where can we find victory as long as we are fighting to keep from losing. In that instance, victory is defined by surviving to fight another day.

We view elections much the same way. Many of our battle cries here on DU and out there in the real world of media resonate with the idea that we can’t let them win. We aren't fighting for anything. We are fighting to keep from losing. We have no strategic plan, nor any short term plan. We argue endlessly about how much worse things would be with “them” in charge. So what are we going to GOTV for? Why we have to do it to keep them from winning. We have to do it to keep from losing.

I know this rambled a bit, but I see a lot of intertwined threads that I wanted to briefly touch as I explained what I was thinking. Please feel free to tell me how wrong I am, or what you think we can or should do for victory on any of these wars. Because I’m getting a little tired of the plan to fight just to keep from losing.

August 15, 2014

Now Fraternal order of Police try and blame Obama.

I honestly wish I could say check out this link to the Onion. Or perhaps I could say that I was just joking. No, I'm afraid I'm actually serious.

Talk about being tone deaf. Hey the cops are pretty much viewed by the public at large as jackbooted gestapo, but hey let's not let that slow us down from further militarization right? The cops are just doing their jobs. Right now, I'm watching the news, and there is nothing about riots or tear gas or all that nonsense in Ferguson. Why? Because someone finally showed up with a brain between his ears. MSNBC says that the case if it happened according to the witnesses, was first degree murder.

But there is no way that the President of the United States, who has access to the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Governor of the State might have some information. But for the sake of argument. Let's pretend that President Obama is half as ignorant as you seem to be Chief of the Fraternal Order of Police, perhaps you could turn on the news and see the brutal responses.

I say that the Chief of the Fraternal Order of Police is ignorant because apparently he hasn't heard about the press being arrested. I say that because the rest of us are sickened, infuriated, and disgusted by what we are seeing. He seems to be one of the few people who hasn't managed to see any of the video, or pictures of dolts in uniform pointing rifles at people who are holding their hands up and saying don't shoot me.

I'm with President Obama. There is no excuse for what we're seeing from the police in Furgeson. Apparently things are improving, now that they have the grown ups in charge.

August 13, 2014

So how did we get here? How can the Police shoot someone who is unarmed?

My wife and I were discussing this last night. She was sickened by the whole thing. This is not quite verbatim of what I told her, perhaps it's better, or worse.

In the 1980's, it began. First the Cop movies showed the buddies standing up against impossible odds to stop the criminal empires. Then the reality came in. A cop in a dark apartment complex, he sees a silhouette of a person holding something that looks like a gun. He sees a gun in other words. The cop draws his pistol and fires. A child playing a game of cops and robbers is killed.

We as a community feel sorrow, and horror. The discussion waffles back and forth. The reasonable argument there is that the cop believed that the person he could barely see was holding a gun, it looked like a gun. Then things converged.

Armed Robbery faced a stiffer penalty that just Robbery. So criminals pretended to have guns, or other weapons, but were not actually armed. The definition was changed, if the victim believed you to be armed, you were to be charged with armed robbery. So a bank robber who passes across a note that says that he has a gun and will shoot the teller if she doesn't give him the money is committing armed robbery even if he doesn't have a gun.

In other words, reasonable belief became the rule. Everyone knew that if you shot someone, you were in trouble. But there was an exception, if you were in fear of your life, you could shoot someone to defend yourself. This was the beginning of the "castle doctrine" that has now been codified into law in many states. Your fear was the defining factor of the event. So everyone told each other that if you had to shoot someone, make sure you tell the cops you were in fear of your life.

The police were aware of all of this, and much like our notional homeowner above, learned that as long as they said they "believed" the suspect was armed, they would be exonerated. From the 1970's, when the police could not fire first, to the present day when they could shoot anyone as long as they say the magic words. "I thought he had a gun."

This like the I was in fear of my life statement above became the routine lie. Whenever force is used, the cops automatically, they are trained to do this mind you, use these routine lies to justify it. It has become so routine that it is taught like wearing gloves at a crime scene. So if it ever gets to the point where it is reviewed by a Prosecutor, he checks the blocks on the report. The officer was in fear of his life, he had a reasonable belief that the suspect was armed.

Automatic routine lies. And a pattern of justifications. Well, the cop was a good guy, and if I was there and I saw a human shape holding a gun, I would think it was a man with a gun too. Well, if I was at home, and someone stormed into my house, I would be in fear of my life too.

The militarization has been going on about as long too. It started thanks to Darrel Gates, yes, that one, who formed the first SWAT team in Los Angeles. Originally intended to respond to hostage situations and terrorist attacks it rapidly became the force de jour. Then the question became one of what about the regular cops? What if they don't have time to wait for SWAT? Then it was we have a SWAT team, why not use them to serve warrants on dangerous drug dealers. Then they became warrant squads, who did nothing but serve search and arrest warrants. Treating every warrant for arrest over traffic violation like they are raiding a compound full of Branch Dividians.

We got here by a whole bunch of little steps, little steps that have each been reasonable when considered by the tiny step before. We couldn't ask cops not to shoot at a person holding what appeared to be a gun could we? We couldn't doubt that someone in fear of their life has the reasonable right to self defense could we? We couldn't do that could we? A lot of little steps, and now we have police that are more heavily armed, and armored than the infantry we send into combat. We have situations where the police are justified by law in shooting unarmed people because the cop says the magic words. He believed the suspect was armed.

Routine lies. I've told this before, but in the 1980's I was working as a Security Guard. I took the class to get my permit for a nightstick which was called a baton under California law. During the class, the instructor, a cop, told the class to make sure if we ever used the baton on someone, to tell any observers that the guy was a child molester. The cop explained that this changed the tone of their testimony when they were called to court. A routine lie, taught to a bunch of mall cops, on how to modify the testimony of witnesses.

Routine lies, which are told with no more thought than the phrases used by the rest of us every day. "Yes, that is a lovely dress."

That my friends, is how we got here. Now the question is, how the hell do we get out of here because it seems that this is a one way street, and the next block looks even worse than this one.