The Obama Haters

I find it ironic that the the far-left and the far-right hate Obama for the same reason. They worry that if Obama is elected president he'll move the country to the left. And he will.

While it's easy to see why this bothers the right, you might think that the far-left would be pleased with the prospect. But many are not because they believe in revolution, not evolution. In their world anybody who makes things better, short of the true revolution, is a threat. A threat because revolution can only occur when the people are made to suffer.

Perhaps the oddest manifestation of this logic is the bizarre love affair some on the far-left suddenly have with Hillary Clinton. You can see this quite clearly on The Proletariat, a Madison area Green/Socialist blog. If you check it out don't bother leaving any critical comments; they'll probably just be deleted.

The Proletariat is a guy who would never vote for Clinton, yet he waxes poetic about what he sees as the unfair way she's been treated by Obama, the media, and the DNC. His real goal, of course, is simply to damage the Democratic nominee, whoever it may be, and Clinton is just a convenient club with which to whack Obama.

Intellectually honest? Not so much. But I guess anything goes in support of the revolution!

Excuse of the Week Award

I've heard some pretty creative excuses for bad behavior from my kids. But our two boys have nothing on California Republican Congressman Dan Lungren, who explained a recent junket to Hawaii this way:

[Lungren] insisted he carried out important discussions with airport executives while at the pool. "I'm a California kid," Rep. Lungren told ABC News. "I grew up around pools. We do a lot of business around pools." Asked if he would have attended if the January conference were held in Pittsburgh, Lungren said, "Do I look like I go to Pittsburgh in January?"

At least you have to give him credit for being honest about Pittsburgh. And the guy looks like he could really use a little R&R

I should point out that the other politician along on the trip was Hawaii Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye. Lobbyists are equal opportunity corrupters.

The Times They Are A-Changin' - Majority of Californians back gay marriage!

I didn't think I'd see this until my kid's generation were adults:

(AP) - More California voters now support allowing same-sex marriage than oppose it, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

The results mark the first time in over three decades of polling that more California voters have approved of extending marriage to gay couples than have disapproved...

The poll found that 51 percent of respondents backed legalizing same-sex marriage and 42 percent opposed it, DiCamillo said.

In 2006, when participants were asked, "Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?" 44 percent said they approved and 50 percent objected. In 1977, the first year Field posted the question to voters, 28 percent approved and 59 percent were opposed.

"The Times They Are A-Changin'", by Bob Dylan. This is the original version from Dylan's 1964 album of the same name. An oldie, but quite appropriate.

WMC Critics Get It Wrong

I think a lot of critics of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) are making a big mistake. There's reasonably broad recognition that WMC's constant harping about Wisconsin's business climate is probably driving business away from the state. Most commentators seem to see this as unintentional, if somewhat ironic, collateral damage from WMC's war on regulation and taxes. But they're wrong.

Many of WMC's largest and most powerful corporate members directly benefit from a weak Wisconsin economy. While their markets are primarily national and international, their labor costs are largely determined by the local job market. It is very clearly in their best interests to make Wisconsin seem as unattractive to business as possible. Which is exactly what WMC is doing.

Of course this is completely counter to the interests of the majority of WMC members who depend on their sales in Wisconsin to make a profit. But, as in all organizations, the big guys at the top set the course, and the little ones at the bottom often get screwed.

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Paul Soglin, on his superb and thoughtful blog Waxing America, has probably done more than anyone else to dig out the truth about WMC's claims. Well worth reading.

McKinney Goes Green

Looks like former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has sown up the Green Party's presidential nomination. While I think McCain is more at risk from third party candidates this fall, McKinney will hurt Obama. McKinney herself has a rather strange take on the the potential impact of her campaign:

"Basically, what you are suggesting is by participating in the Democratic process the Green Party is going to become, quote, 'the spoiler.' "It is impossible to become a spoiler based on past experience when one examines the past.

"In the 2000 election, 6 million votes were not counted," she said. "They were cast but not counted. It is impossible that George W. Bush won the White House on 537 votes. That was constructed. That was contrived, and the Democratic Party failed to fight for the voters who voted it into the White House. In 2004, 3 million votes were cast but not counted."

Her points about election integrity and the Democratic Party's failure to contest undercounted votes are quite valid, but claiming that she can't possibly have any effect on this election because votes weren't counted in past elections is some seriously convoluted logic. Rather self-serving, too.

McKinney had a very progressive voting record in congress, somewhat to the left of both Obama and Clinton. She's a good speaker and a tough campaigner, and will certainly make November's election more interesting.

Time for Hillary to Quit

When Hillary Clinton is reduced to claiming she's still in the race because "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," it's time for her to quit.

I realize that she wasn't saying she hopes Obama will be assassinated, but it sure came out that way. And this wasn't the first time she's invoked RFK. Once could be a mistake, but for a politician of her caliber twice is a campaign strategy.

Out of my belief in the benefits of the primary process, and my respect for friends who are Hillary supporters, I haven't previously called on her to drop out. But now it's time. Hillary Clinton is a great politician with enormous potential, but her ambition has become destructive. She's lost the race, and now she needs to ride off into the sunset while she has some credibility left.

Please call Tammy Baldwin and ask her to switch her support to Obama. I doubt anything short of a massive loss of superdelegate support will force Hillary to do the right thing and concede.

Tammy's numbers are: (608) 258-9800 (Madison), and (608) 362-2800 (Beloit).

Freudian Slip

From the new conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Leadership. See if you can spot it:

"We must fix the Milwaukee Public School system which is not only a black hole for tax dollars..."

The Letter - Alder Eli Judge and the 911 Center Oversight Board

Below is a open letter sent by a group of UW-Madison students to several Madison area news organizations regarding Alder Eli Judge's failure to attend meetings of the 911 Center Oversight Board in the year prior to Brittany Zimmerman's murder. I was given this letter by a local reporter who felt his organization had not appropriately covered it, and who wanted me to post it. Following the letter are related links including Eli Judge's response on his blog.

Before anyone tears into me, be aware that I fully understand the political and personal overtones here. This post is informational; my attempt to create a repository for everything that's been written publicly on the subject. If you know of stories or posts that I've missed, let me know. Also, given the history of some of the folks involved in this issue, please understand that I will delete any inappropriate or off-topic comments.

Open Letter to Alder Eli Judge

As your constituents, we and many other students were delighted that your campaign in 2007 was a positive, issue-oriented contest with your opponent, Lauren Woods, in which each of you testified over and over about your strong commitment to campus safety and women's safety. You each published plans for campus safety, and talked about it on your website and literature. This deep commitment to our safety was reiterated so many times that people truly believed it, voted for you, and gave you the weighty opportunity to put your words into action and fight to improve campus and community safety.

Given this background of your oft-professed passion for public safety, certainly you can understand why we are shocked and outraged at your failure to attend even one meeting of the 911 Center Oversight Board in the entirety of your term of service. This is completely unacceptable and unprecedented. It would be unacceptable if you missed nine consecutive monthly meetings of any committee, but to completely ignore the key issue that you made a centerpiece of your campaign smacks of an arrogance unrivaled even among the haughty club of elected officials you worked so hard to join last year.

Alder Judge, if you had a conflict in your schedule with the meetings of this committee, then you should have resigned your seat as soon as it was apparent so that the City of Madison could have been properly represented on the Board. To hold a seat on an oversight body of such a critical part of our public safety infrastructure, knowing that you were unable to fulfill the most basic of all duties, attendance, is to demonstrate woefully negligent indifference to the needs and safety of your constituents and Dane County as a whole. After the tragic death of Brittany Zimmerman and the galling failure of our 911 operations, many have wondered what role proper oversight could have played in preventing Brittany's unnecessary death. We will never know whether real oversight could have prevented this or other tragedies, because your habitual absences deprived the City of Madison of its role in oversight of the 911 Center operations, a critical inter-governmental public safety function.

We are left comparing your public expressions of condolence and care with your record of inaction, inattention, and indifference. Especially after an election campaign in which you raised and politicized the critical issue of public safety, as well as had surrogates criticize your opponent for missing far less important meetings, we are left with no other choice than to find your service unacceptable, and demand your immediate resignation from the 911 Center Oversight Board and the Common Council. The students of UW-Madison deserve better in a representative, and the City of Madison deserves better in its public safety efforts.

We understand that the Mayor is already taking long-overdue steps to remove you from the 911 Center Oversight Board, and we hope that you will do the honorable thing and resign your seat in order to allow service from a student who will not just talk about public safety, but who will actually show up and make a difference on behalf of the UW campus. As constituents on this campus, we deserve no less.

Sincerely,

Lydia Barbash-(I deleted the contact info originally here)
Mingwei Huang
Karren Lawson
Kari Muldore
Kelly Rentscher
Mathew Maus
Donald Spann
Brian Febbo
John Cokins
J. Aaron Blecher
Alex Ippolito
Nicholas McCann
Zachary Hirschtritt
Jake Guyette
Josh Guyette
Katherine Baeten
Alicia Abercrombie
Darin Gaffield
Anna Hundt-Golden

Eli Judge's response.

Original Channel 27 news article.

Second Channel 27 article.

Third Channel 27 article.

Critical Badger blog post 1.

Critical Badger blog post 2.

Critical Badger blog post 3.

Something Verbose blog post.

Isthmus forum thread.

Charter Cable Becomes Big Brother

Looks like Charter Communications has decided that it can make more money by spying on its customers when they use the internet. Charter is going to record the web sites you visit and sell that information to advertising companies. Of course, they don't call it spying, they call it an "enhanced on-line experience".

I guess what makes it "enhanced" is that your loss of privacy enhances Charter's bottom line. Isn't the free market wonderful!

Might just be a good time to reconsider your choice of internet service providers if you're a Charter customer.

West Virginia

I used to do a lot of windsurfing in the Outer Banks, and to get there from Wisconsin I would drive south to Louisville Kentucky, take Route 64 east across Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, then cut south into North Carolina. West Virginia is a gorgeous state, and it was always my favorite part of the long and often boring trip.

But West Virginia is also very poor (4th lowest household income in the US), uneducated (lowest college graduation rate), and extraordinarily white (96%). As a result Hillary Clinton is going to crush Obama in the West Virginia primary tomorrow, and McCain will almost certainly win the general election there in November.

It's a real shame because West Virginia had the potential to be a swing state. But, like most of Appalachia, West Virginia simply isn't going to support a black candidate with a funny name. Call it racism, or xenophobia, or ignorance, but that's the way it is.

Beautiful state. Wonderful people. But if you don't look and talk like them they tend not to like you.

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Update - Here's someone who explains this far better than I ever could:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/12/114237/630/544/513035

Expecting to be Reincarnated? Better Get Your Permit First!

I'm a big believer in separation of church and state. Thank God our founding fathers included the establishment clause in the US Constitution! But China has no such restrictions, and this is one of the more bizarre results:

"On August 3, 2007, the [Chinese government's] State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued a set of regulations, effective September 1, 2007, that require all Tibetan lamas wishing to reincarnate to obtain prior government approval through the submission of a “reincarnation application.” In a statement accompanying the regulations, SARA called the step “an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas." - from "Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy", Congressional Research Service report RL34445, April 10, 2008

While this might seem rather silly, it's actually part of China's attempt to control Tibet by controlling Tibetan Buddhism. China has done a similar thing with Catholicism, creating a tightly controlled "fake" Catholic church structure independent of Rome and the Pope. If you can't beat them, subvert them.

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The image above is a Tibetan Thangka (painted banner) of the wheel of life, depicting the Six States of Existence of Tantric Buddhism. Image from this site, and a brief explanation of the wheel of life here. Click on the image for a larger version.

Electing Obama Delegates - First Thoughts

Yesterday I attended the 2nd Congressional District delegate caucus to elect pledged Obama delegates to the DNC convention in Denver. If I have time I'll do a detailed post about the process, but I came away from the caucus somewhat disappointed and dejected, so wanted to get these thoughts out first.

It seems to me that pledged delegates should be chosen based in large part on how much work they do for a campaign. Extraordinary efforts should be recognized and rewarded, and becoming a national delegate is a traditional means of doing so. In addition, the amount of work a volunteer does is a strong indication of how committed and loyal to the campaign he or she is, which is a real concern given the possibility of a fight at the convention this year.

Despite this, several people were elected delegates who, as far as I can tell, have done little or nothing to support the Obama campaign. They defeated superb and deserving candidates who have donated hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to Obama.

The delegate caucus was stacked. Quite legally, but stacked none the less. It looks like all of the Obama delegates who were elected yesterday were political insiders with ties to the Doyle administration. And while some clearly deserved to become delegates, others did not. They won because they had the support of the roughly thirty Doyle folks who were at the caucus.

Unfortunately this is par for the course. Not all all unusual when the grassroots gets rolled by political professionals. But I had some conversations at the caucus that prompted me to think about what happened, and to realize that there's a cost here that tends to get overlooked. A cost to the Democratic Party, and to our candidates.

The Party needs committed campaign volunteers to succeed. But yesterday some of our most active and successful volunteers were kicked out of the way so that politically connected insiders could grab the perks of a successful campaign. We failed to recognize and reward some truly extraordinary efforts, and by doing so we discourage such efforts in the future. Cutting our own throats. It's what Democrats do best.