Arizona GOP meltdown pushing the tide back towards Democrats

Whatever the national environment is, the Arizona GOP is in a meltdown and doing everything they can to help Democrats in the Copper State in 2010.

Exhibit one, of course, is the continual failure of the legislature and Governor to produce a budget. Republicans have controlled the Arizona legislature since 1964, and during most of that time have also run the Governor's office. For most of that time we've had a steady diet of tax cuts, lax regulations on business (and of course right-to-work and the worst workers comp rules in the nation) and well below the national average in per capita state spending. And even when the Governor has been a Democrat Arizona has either had gridlock or compromise. The decades long Republican domination of the legislature has guaranteed that liberalism has never had its day in Arizona, certainly not since Barry Goldwater swept the GOP into control of the legislature when he carried the state against LBJ in 1964. So if conservatism was the panacea, Arizona would be about the most prosperous state in the nation right now. Only it's not, because conservatism doesn't work.

Remember too that Jan Brewer has now been Governor since the day after President Obama was inaugurated and Janet Napolitano was confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security, and it's not surprising that her record of failed leadership (including leaving the state as a special session she had called collapsed into chaos) has caused her standing even in her own party to fall into the cellar. Say what you want to about Janet, but she always managed to work with the Republican legislature to get a budget done. Things got so bad between Brewer and her own party leadership in the legislature this year that it featured bizarre lowlights like the Governor going to court to get the legislature to send her the budget so she could veto it, and the leadership turning off the clocks on the last night of the regular session so they could claim that it had not yet struck midnight until well after the sun was up the next morning.

Remember in June Arizona voters gave the legislature lower marks than even Congress (notoriously unpopular) was drawing. And that was before the end of the regular session. Four special sessions later and the year has been marked by complete failure as the majority party could not get their own members together to put together a budget. Remember that in the Arizona legislature there is no filibuster so the Democrats have been irrelevant (particularly since the GOP leadership has not bothered to actually negotiate with them, with house speaker Kirk Adams just telling them to vote for what he worked out.) The biggest hangup has been GOP members of the legislature who are so ideologically rigid that even after making enormous cuts in schools and services in the face of a huge budget hole, they have refused to refer a proposed temporary sales tax to voters unless it is coupled with permanent tax cuts. In some cases they have refused to refer the sales tax even with the tax cuts (though it is amazing that they tried to cut taxes at all given the present fiscal reality-- largely caused by years of huge GOP-backed tax cuts that kept state budgets on a shoestring even in times of relative plenty.)

More recently we've seen the most popular Republican in the state, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his best buddy, county attorney Andrew Thomas (a.k.a. the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John) openly flouting the law, arresting and filing spurious charges against political opponents, including the majority of the county Board of Supervisors and a judge who had issued some rulings they didn't like and was scheduled the next day to hear the case of Adam Stoddard, one of Sheriff Joe's Henchmen who was shown on national media openly and brazenly taking documents out of a defense attorney's file during a court hearing (if you haven't seen the video by now you should-- it's truly bizarre.) In fact, the charges that Sheriff Joe had chief Supervisor Don Stapley arrested and taken to jail for were so flimsy and contrived that they couldn't even find an attorney in Arizona willing to prosecute it and had to hire someone from outside the state. And after that fell through it appears that Thomas will try and get Stapley himself. And just to protect himself, he's filed a pre-emptive ethics complaint against Attorney General Terry Goddard (the most powerful political opponent he has in the state) to ensure that Goddard will be hamstrung in any attempt to prosecute this obvious and illegal power play by Arpaio and Thomas due to a 'conflict of interest.' Even conservative columnist Robert Robb, who rarely criticizes Republican officeholders, took issue with the way the duo are engineering what is effectively a coup against county government:

What's happening in Maricopa County government isn't a circus. And it's not a joke.

Not anymore. It's now a deadly serious business.

County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio are alleging that there is a massive corrupt conspiracy involving at least four Superior Court judges, the entire Board of Supervisors and senior county management.

If Thomas and Arpaio are wrong about the existence of such a massive conspiracy, they are themselves guilty of an assault on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Maricopa County.

I'm glad I don't live in Phoenix, but if this stands it could endanger everyone in the state (especially with Thomas mulling a run for Attorney General.) Arpaio may get most of the press but Thomas is the more dangerous of the two.

And a lot of people are realizing how dangerous they are, and that the term, 'loose cannon' may not even describe a cannon which is deliberately being aimed directly at the main masts of government.

Of course in addition to that Sheriff Joe is still running saturation patrols which may be popular with the nativist crowd (who will turn out and vote anyway if predictions for next year are right since most of them are also 'tea partiers') but by arresting dozens of American citizens simply because they are Hispanic and forcing them to prove their citizenship before being released he's certainly guaranteed that even if Hispanic turnout next year lags last year's total everyplace else, that probably won't be the case in Arizona because they will have at least one really good reason to come to the polls and vote Democratic.

Now, we learn that Brett Mecum, the Executive Director of the Arizona Republican Party, who has in the past been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior towards women, is facing felony charges for misusing information in voter registration files to stalk a woman and show up at a party at her home without being invited or told otherwise where she lived. I've been a precinct committeeman for years and I know exactly what the law is regarding voter files and who can access them and for what purposes, and it is incomprehensible that the executive director of the state Republican Party didn't know what the restrictions were (I mean, even common sense dictates that his personal life isn't an authorized use of the file!) Further she has said that she didn't tell him where she lived precisely because she found Mecum to be creepy and didn't want his advances.

Remember that earlier this year Mecum was clocked driving 109 mph on an urban freeway in metro Phoenix. Yes, folks, this is the executive director of the Arizona GOP.

Maybe the national climate is shifting to favor Republicans (though it may be radically different by next November) but here in Arizona it's hard to imagine voters wanting more of this next year.

New study suggests marijuana is the drug of choice among teens

A new study out shows that the old news is now still the new news: marijuana the choice drug among American teenagers.

Back a couple of years ago there was a story out in the Flagstaff Daily Sun about how more kids smoked marijuana than smoked cigarettes. The new study seems to suggest that is part of a national trend, and also that marijuana and prescription drug abuse are the biggest drug issues among today's teens. They have cut down on smoking, drinking and methamphetamine use (not coincidentally the drugs they get the most information about while they are in school.)

I've long supported legalization of marijuana for adults, and one reason is precisely because it would make it harder for kids to obtain (the Circle K clerk checks your ID, or is supposed to, but the drug dealer doesn't care how old you are if you have the money.) The counterargument, that drug dealers might still buy pot to sell to kids, is unlikely to hold water if it is legal for adults because the relative size of the clientele would be small and temporary (only until they became legal) which is one reason why drug dealers in general don't sell booze to kids, for example (though on occasion they do sell them cigarettes, mainly so they can reach more kids and try to get them to buy into harder drugs.)

The fact of the matter is, that drugs which are legal for adults only (i.e. cigarettes) are now being used less by kids. One can argue there are a lot of reasons for this, such as the fact that a kid hardly gets out of the second grade before being told by at least a dozen different people that cigarettes are bad for them but nevertheless it is worth noting that we are having more success at keeping cigarettes out of the hands of youth than marijuana. So maybe it is time to ask whether legalization for adults might help protect our kids.

Why should we assume that because someone is a great athlete they are also a great person?

I guess that Barack and Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey and a whole lot of Hollywood celebrities owe a lot to Tiger Woods right now. Mainly, that he's hogging the whole front page of the tabloids (and therefore keeping them off the cover.)

After two weeks of almost continuous scandal coverage that began with a minor car crash the day after Thanksgiving and quickly ballooned into allegations that he is a serial womanizer, complete with mother-in-law in and out of the hospital, Woods today announced that he is suspending his professional golf career indefinitely to work on healing his family.

Mind you, I'm not defending Tiger or any of his alleged behavior here. But I think it's fair to ask what a role model is, anyway. We routinely put sports and entertainment figures on a pedestal and forget that they are human beings, subject to human foibles, and if someone seems too good to be human, well caveat emptor.

For example, Babe Ruth was some sort of a baseball God but he was an alcoholic and hardly someone you'd want your son to grow up to be like. I still remember Mickey Mantle (another alcoholic Yankee) giving his fans his last piece of advice, "Don't be like me." There was a time when Pete Rose, the guy who didn't have the talent but through hard work made himself one of the greatest of ballplayers was considered a hero by a lot of people. But don't go visit Rose in the Hall of Fame, because he's been banned for life for gambling on the game and then has years of whining and lying about it. A whole lot of ballplayers will not be going in there because of steroid scandals, and that's just one kind of drug.

On the other hand, you will find O.J. Simpson in the football Hall of Fame. True, he was acquitted, but I doubt if anyone considers O.J. a role model anymore. He was once though. Former Panthers receiver Rae Carruth wasn't as fortunate with the jury as Simpson was. He's in a North Carolina prison serving time for conspiracy to commit murder.

Meanwhile we seem to hear all the time about another suspension for drug abuse, in just about every sport. Olympic Champion Marion Jones even went to the extent of crusading against steroid abuse, even while (as we know now) she was virtually awash in steroids herself.

The old joke about a Hollywood marriage lasting about as long as the movie is in theaters is often true (though not always, there are some that have endured.) Drugs are as rampant in the entertainment industry as they are in sports. My kids, who grew up watching Mary Kate and Ashley movies, were disappointed to hear that Mary Kate had had some issues with drugs. But I explained to them that some people do. She's human, and they realize that she's not the best role model.

Now, I'm not just trashing athletes and entertainers because all of the evils I've just described are found in all walks of life. But that's exactly the point. We seem to think as a society that because someone can hit a golf ball accurately, run well with a football or belt out a song on stage or play a part in a movie that somehow that skill also makes them a better person.

But they are not better people. They are still the same as anyone else. True that there are still people to admire both in sports (i.e. Cal Ripken Jr.), entertainment (i.e. Patrick Stewart) and in may other areas and it's great to admire them. But here too, you can look around your neighborhood and find people you can admire just as much.

Really, the only difference is that if an athlete or an entertainer does something like this, you will read about it. And the bigger they are, the harder they will fall. But to err is still human and that's worth remembering.

When someone does a great thing in an athletic contest or turns in a great performance on stage, appreciate it for what it is. But not for what it is not.

I hope for his sake and for the sake of his family that Tiger gets things in order. Call him a cad if you like, but don't be shocked. Because the world is full of cads.

Former legislator who was removed for violating clean elections law seeking comeback

Apparently in LD-7, David Burnell Smith is running again for the legislature.

If you don't remember, Burnell Smith was the guy who knowingly violated Arizona's clean election law in 2004 just so he could take it to court. Eventually the courts backed the clean elections board and he was removed from office.

Besides making it clear just what he thinks about following a law he might not agree with (awwww....) Burnell Smith was part of the legislature when the seeds of the present fiscal mess were being sown, and as a member of the majority party (Republicans have been the majority party in the Arizona legislature since 1964) he bears part of the responsibility for the fact that our taxes are so low that even with some of the lowest per-capita state spending in the country we still don't have enough money to fund state government.

Hopefully the voters in district 7 will realize that voting a guy who was part of creating the problem back into office isn't the way to fix the problem.

TCU-Boise bowl matchup shows the cowardice of the BCS

Certainly a lot of college football fans are looking at the major bowl matchups with more than a bit of disbelief, and it's not about the championship matchup, nor about which schools got in ahead of which other schools.

Certainly it is true that after Texas' lackluster, last second win yesterday against Nebraska one could make the case that Texas Christian is a better team and deserves to play Alabama for the national title, but that's debatable.

What is not debatable is that the BCS took a mulligan when they announced their bowl pairings Sunday night.

Their argument has been in the past that top schools from non-BCS conferences aren't competitive with the top schools from the six 'power conferences' that make up the BCS. Only over the past few years, non-BCS 'bowl busters' have made mincemeat out of that argument by going 3-1 vs. BCS competition in the major bowls. Clearly, that qualifies as 'competitive.' This wouldn't be such a big deal except that tens of millions of dollars are involved, money the six BCS conferences want to keep exclusively for themselves (or at least as close to exclusively as they can get away with) and the non-BCS conferences want a share of so they can use it to benefit schools in their conferences (and more importantly students who attend those schools.)

This year is the first year in which two non-BCS schools, Boise State (from the WAC) and TCU (from the Mountain West) both forced their way into the BCS bowl series. Not only were they undefeated but there were no one-loss teams available to sneak in ahead of one of them (as happened last year when Boise State was undefeated but couldn't get a break since Utah was also undefeated and ranked ahead of Boise State in the computer rankings.)

It would be great to see both of them play conference champions from the BCS conferences (or for that matter to play Florida, which was ranked number 1 before losing to Alabama.)

So what did the BCS do? They sent Boise State to the Fiesta Bowl (not that I blame the Fiesta for wanting the Broncos back after they played probably the most exciting and fun game in BCS history against Oklahoma three years ago in the Fiesta.) Then they also sent TCU to the Fiesta Bowl.

That's right, they play each other.

Not only is the game a rematch of last year's Poinsettia Bowl (won by TCU, 17-16) but it suggests that the BCS is afraid of being embarrassed again by one or both of these teams if they were to beat a BCS conference champion (maybe the memory of last year's domination by Utah of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl is still too fresh.) Both Boise and TCU deserve to play a top BCS school from a BCS conference, and that's what the fans would rather see, too!

It's hard to escape at least the passing thought that the movers and shakers in the BCS were afraid that if they let Boise State and TCU both play high level BCS competition, it is possible that could result in two BCS losses and certainly that outcome would ratchet up the pressure to overhaul the system.

Come on, BCS! You still claim we don't need a playoff and yet you continue to defend a system that locks non-BCS schools out of any kind of contention for a national title? Then PROVE YOUR CONFERENCES ARE BETTER!! In the first year when two non-BCS schools force their way into your party, making them play each other isn't the way to convince anyone. Well, maybe it's a way to convince some people that the BCS really is afraid of the Mountain West and the WAC. But that's about all this pairing will convince anyone of.

On a lighter note, I happen to be a fan of the Montana Grizzlies (the only college I've attended that had a football team.) Montana beat Stephen F. Austin yesterday in the first round of the Division I playoffs. Yes, read it again. The Division I PLAYOFFS. Something the BCS is deathly afraid of, because it would force them to decide the whole thing on the field, instead of their pre-stacked computer ratings (hey, the computers even start out with pre-season rankings, though most aren't published. What could possibly go into a 'preseason ranking' besides last year's statistics and/or the bias of the programmers?)

Obama is making a big mistake in Afghanistan

As I've written before (President Obama is making a big mistake in Afghanistan.)

His commitment to send 30,000 more American troops will succeed only in more Americans coming home in coffins.

I will say that in October 2001 when the Afghan was began, I was fully in support of the mission. And I was among those who argued in 2002 (and since then as well) that it was a mistake to not finish the job in Afghanistan and instead be detoured into a costly and time- and resource- consuming war in Iraq.

So why not go back and finish the job now? Well, for starters it's not the same job. Back then it was pretty clear that we were fighting the people who attacked New York City and their patrons. But by now things have become considerably more muddled and it's hard to know who the good guys are, or even if there are any good guys.

Once again we are stuck in the middle of a civil war, this time between a corrupt and despotic government and the previous government which was run by fanatics. This has strong ethnic, regional, religious and tribal overtones as well as blood feuds that go back to the beginning of time.

There are, as General McCrystal himself said, very few members of Al-Qaeda even in Afghanistan right now, so in effect we are fighting the Taliban. Yes, the Taliban are terrible masters, fundamentalists who stone women to death just for speaking to a man and who kill barbers who shave off beards. But the truth is there are many terrible masters in the world, ranging from some of our 'allies' in the arab world to the North Korean regime to Robert Mugabe to the Chinese leaders who the President was just hob-nobbing with a couple of weeks ago. The decision about whether to commit American forces should be made using one metric and one metric alone, which is what is in the best interest of the United States? And I don't see how fighting the Taliban (a local Afghan movement, which thanks to our bumbling intervention over the past several years spilled over the border into Pakistan) solves anything.

Further, there is a definite risk that we could lose. In Iraq it was relatively easy to seal most of the borders when we ran the 'surge' (though I still contend that the best we can claim in Iraq is a pyrrhic victory.) The only mountainous borders Iraq has are with Turkey in the north and parts of the border with Iran to the east. But the Kurds who control northern Iraq and the Shi'ite government of Iran which controls Iran are both hostile to the Sunni Wahabbi sect that Al-Qaeda subscribes to and so won't tolerate Sunni fighters seeking refuge (even from us) on their soil. In contrast, it is well known that the weak Pakistani government has little or no control over areas along the border and the terrain is such that it is virtually impossible to prevent the movement of fighters across the border. Unless we are willing to remain there indefinitely with enough troops to squelch the insurgents it's safe to say they will simply hang out in Pakistan until they outlast us. Remember the Soviet Union tried doing this with half a million troops, five times what we will have, and they also came up short. It's easy to say that the Soviet military was overrated (though doing so just points out the scare tactics we had to live through to justify enormous military budgets in the 1980's) but by the same token it seems that the Mujahedeen who fought them (the direct precursor to the Taliban) were underrated.

What about the argument that if we just let the Taliban take over they will invite AQ back in and we will be back to a pre-September 11 world, waiting for the next horrific terrorist act?

First, I'm not sure how having our army there prevents terrorist attacks from taking place (since AQ can just as easily plan them when they are in Pakistan, as it is believed their senior leadership is.) But beyond that, we have been successful in attacking AQ in Pakistan without a massive commitment of American troops, even in areas where the Pakistani army has little presence. We've done it through the collection of intelligence, predator drone and other kinds of missile strikes, special forces operations and covert operations. I have no problem with these kinds of things (and have advocated for them in the past--- there are after all bad people in the world and if you don't advocate for war then you have to have a workable alternative for dealing with people who simply want to kill you if you don't kill them first.)

Second, if the hangup is AQ, why not see if we can negotiate a deal with the Taliban in which we won't fight them if they don't let AQ back in? Why would they honor the deal? Because we'd pay them to, of course. What? throw money at them? Well, the war is costing us a heck of a lot to fight, and one thing we've learned in the middle east is that allies can be bought. AQ needs the cover of the Taliban (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan) to have a place to operate. Why not just deny them that? Yes, that's a radical idea but as far as I know it hasn't even been tried yet. Let's see what their price is before we massively escalate a war which may in the end be unwinnable.

In defense of Mike Huckabee (a title I never thought I'd write.)

Occasionally I make a post in which I take a very unpopular position because I believe it is right.

Also occasionally I end up having to defend a conservative Republican because they were right about something.

And both of those are the case in this post.

A lot is being made in the media about the murder of four police officers in Washington State by Maurice Clemmons, an ex-con from Arkansas who was sentenced there to 95 years for a series of violent offenses but who subsequently had his sentence commuted by then-Governor Mike Huckabee (who ran for President in 2008 and may run again in 2012.) It's not the first time that Huckabee has been criticized for a pardon or sentence commutation; during last year's campaign he was criticized for letting a man go who later killed a woman in Missouri.

Certainly the families of the victims have a point that had Huckabee not commuted Clemmons' sentence to time served then the tragic events of this week would never have happened and four parents (and all four of the murdered officers were parents) would have tucked their children into bed last night instead of a grieving spouse having to explain to those children why daddy (or mommy, as one of the murdered officers was a woman) won't be there to tuck them in ever again.

And you can be sure that people working for Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and any other potential 2012 Republican nominee is filing every story about this for use later (and yes, I'm sure that David Axelrod has been putting together a file on this story too, in case Huckabee gets far enough to be running against Obama in 2012.)

However, Huckabee is correct when he points out that the board which makes recommendations made this recommendation and he acted on it. Further the whole affair highlights a broader issue.

Governors have the right to make pardons and commute sentences. But (Huckabee apparently being an exception) most make very few or none. The reason why is obvious: Even if 999 out of a thousand pardons or commutations go on and live productive, meaningful lives (meaning among other things that we as taxpayers are no longer paying to keep them locked up) it is the one out of a thousand who does something like murder four police officers in cold blood that you will keep hearing about. Nowhere is the old adage "nobody remembers what you've done right but everyone remembers your mistakes" more apropos than in politics. So most Governors simply don't want to take the electoral risk, and often refuse to even go along with the recommendations of a pardons board that in may cases they hand-picked themselves. Many never issue a single pardon or sentence commutation the entire time when they are Governor. True that pardons boards are far from infallible but when the system gets to the point where the final arbiter (a state Governor) because of fear of being attacked in some future election automatically refuses to consider a pardon or commutation request when one comes up, then the system has defeated itself. Why even have a way on the books to get a commutation or pardon if the answer even before reading the application is "NO?"

The truth is, most people who receive a commutation prove the people who gave it to them right (it's not like it's easy to even get a recommendation from the appropriate board in the first place,) and don't go on and re-offend. And at that, there are many who might not even need to be there in the first place: Millions incarcerated. But do they all need to be? I have a friend who is a convicted felon. He's made some mistakes and paid for them but he's not dangerous or evil, and he just wants to live his life (despite all the hurdles that are in the way every time he applies for a job or tries to get anything else done.) That Governor Huckabee had the decency when he was Governor to recognize that there was some hope for those felons who had been cleared by the pardons board (and knowing that he was putting his political career at some risk but taking it anyway) is commendable and should be applauded.

I wrote several years ago about the tough life that people have when they leave prison anyway (the prison that follows prison.) It's almost like we want them to fail. This isn't about revenge or about wanting to save a few dollars on rehab or job placement programs. It's about what we can do to prevent the return to prison by people who could be doing something with their lives besides eating food and sleeping in guarded institutions (very expensive guarded institutions) that the rest of us pay for.

Clearly in the case of Maurice Clemmons, Mike Huckabee turned out to be wrong. But it was no mistake to (in the broader scheme) be willing to take seriously his role as arbiter of these kinds of decisions and make the best decision he could, even knowing that it could hurt his political career someday.

Media narrative wrong; Obama China trip a success.

Last week, President Obama returned from his trip to China.

Many media outlets, including not just the usual right wing echo boxes like FAUX News, but even relatively respected outlets like the Guardian were quick to point to the fact that the Chinese had made no open concessions and pronounce the trip a failure. The naysayers basically said that Obama had gone all that way just to take a walk on the Great Wall.

It is true that the Chinese did not come out and say that they were making concessions, because to them the way that things are presented is a big deal and they don't want to look like they are giving in to the United States. But in the week since then they have made two huge moves, on items that were at or near the top of the agenda when President Obama met his Chinese counterparts.

The first occurred two days ago, when China unilaterally announced a plan to cut carbon emissions by as much as 45% from the level that they would be projected to be at in 2020 if no action were taken. Because of robust projected growth in the Chinese economy the overall emissions will still increase, but by far less than they would have.

China in the past has claimed that they are a 'developing' nation and therefore should be exempt from any carbon emissions standards. During the Bush administration the issue of carbon emissions wasn't even on the agenda during these kinds of meetings but the timing of this announcement within a week after Obama left China makes it pretty obvious that he scored a success on the topic of carbon emissions, even though his hosts waited for a couple of days to announce it so it wouldn't look like a concession.

An even more dramatic shift came yesterday, and on an issue where the Bush administration had no success with the Chinese. China went along with tough language targeting Iran's nuclear program. In the past the Chinese, who have no particular quarrel with the Iranians and prefer to do business with them, have resisted any such move. Again, while the timing of the U.N. vote was not dependent on the President's visit to China, the shift in China's position from previous votes makes it pretty plain that the President scored on this issue too.

I know, I know. The media is like a stampeding herd of cattle, and once they get going in one direction it is tough to move them in another direction. Lately their narrative has been about declining Presidential approval ratings, foreign and domestic policy challenges and other negative stories. So an 'unsuccessful' trip to China fit that narrative and that's how it was reported when the President didn't leave, Neville Chamberlain-style, waving a piece of paper with promises from the Chinese leaders.

But the past few days have made it clear that the media judgment was premature at best, and just plain wrong at worst. On at least two big agenda items, the President got real action from the Chinese.

No punting pit bulls in Pittsburgh.

I'm not exactly a supporter of PETA. I eat meat and I have no problem with hunting, circuses or the use of animals in medical research.

However, there are cases where just wanton cruelty demands a response. Michael Vick (who I wrote about at the time) was such an example, and so is this case of a deranged Steelers fan.

Apparently William Woodson of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, was so outraged that his girlfriend's 13 week old pit bull puppy wouldn't behave during the Steelers game that he kicked the dog to death, reportedly punting it down the street.

If Woodson is such a big Steelers fan, how about he gets to participate in their next practice? Without pads, and maybe dressed in a Cincinnati Bengals uniform.

Legislature cuts hundreds of millions from schools, services, blames Democrats

In approving $144 million cut from K-12 and $150 million from the Department of Economic Services today, apparently House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanaugh (R-Fountain Hills) is unhappy because Democrats haven't 'pitched in.'

There is a good reason for that. Apparently when Kavanaugh, Bob Burns and other Republican leaders in Phoenix suggest that Democrats should 'pitch in,' it means vote for budgets that the Republicans have already written behind closed doors, presumably because they are having so much trouble keeping their own troops in line.

Going along with something somebody tells you they want you to vote for is not 'pitching in.'

Nobody disputes that the state's economic situation is dire, facing a budget deficit that could reach as high as a third of the budget (even after last year's budget cuts.) And while Republicans have controlled the legislature since 1964, which is one reason our 'low tax' state is unable to sustain what we do spend despite being well below the national average in terms of per capita state spending, fixing blame on decades of past failures won't solve today's problems.

Certainly the deficit is so huge that it will require more cuts, and certainly too the situation is so bad that likely a solution is only possible if all sixty members of the house and all thirty members of the Senate work together.

However if the Republican leadership wants a 'bipartisan' budget solution, they have a funny way of showing it in that they are unwilling to actually let Democrats in to help write it before expecting them to vote for it.

True, there was a report that Senator Bob Burns was chasing four specific Democratic members of the Senate to try and buy their votes. But that's hardly negotiating with Democrats. The members of the Democratic caucuses have elected Representative David Lujan as house minority leader and Senator Jorge Garcia as senate minority leader. Any real negotiation with Democrats means meaningful discussions with representative Lujan and senator Garcia and their respective leadership teams.

How bad do things have to get before we get a meaningful discussion down in Phoenix about how the legislature can move forward and solve the problems that the people expect them to solve?

Hot Air intentionally deceives

The conservative blog Hot Air claims that a letter mailed by the Congressional Budget Office to a Republican Congressman contradicts Harry Reid's numbers regarding the proposed health care bill that he has been quoting this week.

Only one problem. Reid's numbers (also from the CBO) are about the bill he is proposing that the Senate take up, while the letter is about the House version of the legislation, HR 3962.

Well, if you want to claim that someone's numbers are wrong, go find a different number that is different because it is measuring a different bill, right? Who will notice?

Tragic

Sometimes there are no winners, only losers. That seems to be the case in Michigan, in which a father became so upset that his fifteen year old son raped a three year old girl that he shot him to death over it.

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. - A 37-year-old father irate over hearing his 15-year-old son had sexual contact with a 3-year-old girl made the teen strip at gunpoint, marched him to a vacant lot and shot him to death despite pleas from the boy and his mother, a relative said.

Michigan authorities filed a first-degree murder charge Wednesday against Jamar Pinkney Sr. in the shooting death Monday of Jamar Pinkney Jr. in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park...

The boy's mother, Lazette Cherry, told the Detroit Free Press that her son told her he had improper sexual contact with the girl.

"I called and told his father. This isn't something you sweep under the rug," she said.

Cherry said the elder Pinkney arrived at the home with a gun, ordered his son to strip and marched him outside despite her protests.

"He got on his knees and begged, No, Daddy, No,' and he pulled the trigger," Cherry said.

I honestly don't know what I'd do if one of my kids turned out to be a child molester. I don't think that child molesters are ever curable (try changing your sexual orientation for a day-- you can't. Neither can they.) Likely as not the son faced a long, tough life behind bars, but it was not up to his father to take it upon himself to end it before that happened.

This is a case in which there are only victims.

LeBron should also tell the Browns, 'no thank you.'

LeBron James, the best player in the NBA, sort of half joked that he could help the Cleveland Browns as a wide receiver, a position he was heavily recruited for when he went to college. Last year a local commercial showed him wearing a Browns jersey and it's certainly true that being a high-jumping 6'8", James has the skills and physique to be a Randy Moss-type receiver. Moss is a guy who can outjump and outreach anyone for a high pass, effectively giving his quarterback a place to throw to him where there is zero chance of an interception. At 265 pounds, James is no beanpole and he is one of the toughest guys out there on the floor, so he probably could withstand an NFL hit.

The Browns were quick to suggest that they could use James.

However he should say no. Here are some of the reasons:

Reason number 1: He's the greatest basketball player in the world. He has nothing to prove.

Reason number 2: He hasn't played football since high school. He could easily embarrass himself. Remember Michael Jordan struggling to hit .196 in double-A ball. Granted, Jordan's height was anything but an asset in Birmingham, since a 6'6" guy like Jordan has a correspondingly elongated strike zone, making it tougher for him to hit than most baseball players. But the point is that James could end up making a fool out of himself.

Reason number 3: There are no minor leagues in the NFL. Jordan at least got to make his try at a lower level (never getting past double-A or stepping onto the field in a White Sox uniform.) But LeBron, who hasn't played a down since high school would be stepping onto the field with the best in the game. Even guys who played four years of college football at top schools and starred there usually find that the NFL is a whole other world, and a much harder one.

Reason number 4: LeBron risks a serious injury. The NFL is about violent collisions between 250 and 350 pound guys running at full speed. And the ones that are out there know what to expect. Maybe he could take an NFL hit, but could his knees? It would be a stupid way to end a great career.

Reason number 5: The Cavaliers, especially with Shaq around (as much as he stays healthy, anyhow) to help LeBron defend inside, are capable of winning an NBA championship. The Browns are 1-8. They know that sending LeBron out there would put some butts in the seats and get some play on television, but that, and the fact that it would be tough to play much worse than the guys they have out there now, are the only reasons they're interested.

Reason number 6: Two-sport athletes generally don't pan out in at least one of them. We've already mentioned Jordan. Bo Jackson was the most genuinely two-sport athlete, starring both as a football player and as a baseball player, in fact being named to both the all star game in baseball and the pro bowl in football. However he suffered a career-ending hip injury playing football, and while he was able to restart his baseball career after undergoing a hip replacement he was never as good a player as he had been. Deion Sanders is another notable exception, but his stardom in both baseball and football led to conflicts with and between team owners over when he would play which sport. Sanders eventually gave up baseball and finished in the NFL.

Reason number 7: the problems listed above with football/baseball players would be exacerbated in the case of football/basketball. There is more overlap between the seasons and both sports are more physical than baseball (Yes, there are certainly some very physical collisions at home plate and high spikes and chin music and great catches while running into the wall and all the rest of it but overall if you play baseball don't have the constant pounding that you get in the NBA or the NFL. The only baseball players who get anything like the kind of heavy physical wear that basketball and football produce are catchers.)

Reason number 8: LeBron, you're too classy a guy to go pull a stupid stunt like that. Let Kobe do it.

Maersk Alabama attacked again. Armed guards stop the attack.

These guys don't know when to quit, do they?

Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama again earlier today. The attack was repelled by armed security guards stationed aboard the ship.

You may recall that earlier this year the same ship was attacked, which led to a hostage standoff with the U.S. Navy that ultimately ended when Navy SEALS killed three pirates and rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama, Captain Richard Phillips.

Here is the part of the article that really gets me though:

Vice Adm. Bill Gortney of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the Maersk Alabama had followed the maritime industry's "best practices" in having a security team on board.

"This is a great example of how merchant mariners can take proactive action to prevent being attacked and why we recommend that ships follow industry best practices if they're in high-risk areas," Gortney said in a statement.

However, Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, said the international maritime community was still "solidly against" armed guards aboard vessels at sea, but that American ships have taken a different line than the rest of the international community.

"Shipping companies are still pretty much overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of armed guards," Middleton said. "Lots of private security companies employee people who don't have maritime experience. Also, there's the idea that it's the responsibility of states and navies to provide security. I would think it's a step backward if we start privatizing security of the shipping trade."

Simply put, Vice Admiral Gortney is right and Roger Middleton is wrong.

Obviously there is a need for naval protection and the United States and other countries are busy doing everything they can to keep piracy in the area at a minimum (and have been doing a pretty good job of it, as the number of pirate attacks has dropped dramatically over the past few months.)

However, pirates are going to try and attack ships which are not in the close vicinity of naval vessels. Since the northwestern Indian Ocean is a huge area it's safe to assume that if they are patient enough, they can find merchant vessels, yachts or other private vessels which are at least for the time it takes to attack beyond the reach of naval units.

When this happens it makes sense for shipping companies to have hired private security guards to protect their vessels, as apparently Maersk has done. Because when an attack happens, the only ship guaranteed to be in the vicinity is the one which is under attack. I often disagree with my fellow lefty bloggers on gun issues and it is a similar argument. I fully support the police and I believe in maintaining a strong police presence, especially in communities where there is a lot of crime, but if you do need to defend yourself or somebody else (in your home or elsewhere) the only person guaranteed to be around at all times, is yourself. Sometimes the police get there in time, and other times they show up and take pictures later.

We can also take a clue from the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when piracy was rampant. Certainly navies (which at that time especially meant the British navy) did everything they could to stamp out piracy. However, merchantmen at the time ran armed precisely because they knew they were sitting ducks if a pirate vessel showed up out of nowhere and there was no Man-of-War around. It is true that ships now have radios and can call for help as soon as an attack begins, but it still may be many hours before help arrives on the high seas.

As it becomes common knowlege that American-flagged vessels are hiring private security guards (and other nations are slower to do so) my guess is that we will see the pirates simply choose to avoid American-flagged ships and look for the easier targets.

Yeah, counselor, That's just what I want to do. Pay a whole lot of money for college, go for two years and flunk!

Many of you are aware by now that blogger Nate Silver discovered apparently phony survey results by the polling company Strategic Vision using statistical analysis. In particular he looked at a survey which was given to high school students in both Oklahoma and Arizona (which had ridiculous results, such as claiming that only a quarter of public high school students knew that George Washington was the first president.) In fact, an Oklahoma state senator named David Cannady replicated the test in that state and showed that the actual results were far, far from what the original data showed.

The results however have been trumpeted both by a conservative think tank in Oklahoma and by our very own Goldwater Institute here in Arizona.

Arizona blogger David Safier has a nice writeup on it here.

In fairness, Matthew Ladner, the lead statistician at the G.I. has said he would own up to it if the numbers turn out to be fake, and in fact it's looking like he's going to be overwhelmed with evidence.

In Safier's write up he links to the public school and private school surveys.

Looking at the entire survey, not just the ten questions on civics adds even more evidence.

For example, when asked about such matters as whether their school treats everyone well, you get a very nice statistical distribution-- however I know from having conducted surveys in issues of opinion like this in the past that a significantly higher number of people (and I'd venture even of schoolkids) are likely to answer the to the extremes (i.e. 'strongly agree' or 'strongly disagree' than the low numbers shown by the survey. Even on questions that should provoke a strong opinion, all the data seems to fit a nice, normal distribution when it should more likely be bimodal. For example, I'd think even the G.I. would question whether 2% of public school students give their teachers an 'F.' I could name more than that percent of my kids' classmates who want to blame the teachers for all their problems. But hey, once again look at the nice normal distribution there-- on a question that should very likely not be normal.

Even more strongly, look at the public school survey question on what the students want to do after high school. Note that vocational school is listed separately from the military. So if you look at just those who plan to attend college, 27% say they expect to attend college but not finish, compared with 39% (30% + 9%) who do plan to finish. This may fit the actual numbers (after all a lot of people do flunk out of college) but I don't think I've yet met a single young person who enters college intending to not graduate! Yeah, that's the ticket-- run up a lot of student loan debt and flunk! And they are claiming that that is the INTENT of 27/66 = 41% of public school students who DO plan to go to college?

Clearly THAT is a fabricated number-- the person who did it looked at the approximate number of kids who actually do flunk out of college (or leave early due to a family emergency or other reason) and extrapolated to that's what they were planning in high school.

LeBron should retire his idea to retire Jordan's number.

Cleveland star LeBron James, arguably the greatest basketball player of this generation, has proposed that the NBA retire Michael Jordan's #23 in honor of 'the greatest NBA star ever.'

I think that's a terrible idea.

Nobody questions the greatness of Jordan, and most experts agree that he probably was the greatest ever. What made Jordan great-- and this can also be said of James, is that in every game there is a most talented player on the court, and also a player on the court who puts more heart into it and plays harder than anyone else. In Jordan's case, he was both of those in one package.

However, a subjective judgement (and it will always be subjective, for example there is no way to put Jordan on the court against Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson) should not be definitive, and more to the point these kinds of things change over time.

Consider baseball. For decades it was not even questioned that Babe Ruth was the greatest player ever. After the Black Sox scandal nearly destroyed baseball in 1919, Ruth became the game's savior, changing it in such a way that even when I was a kid in the 1970's people would talk about Ruth like some sort of a demigod. When mere mortals dared to challenge a Ruthian record-- Roger Maris in 1961, Hank Aaron during the early 1970's they were booed and denigrated and it was said of them that there was simply no comparison.

Another thirty-five years have gone by since Hammerin' Hank overcame the boos (not to mention the overt racism) and launched home run # 715 off of Al Downing, and it is interesting how perceptions of Ruth have changed.

He is still counted among the game's greatest players, no doubt. And there are still plenty who would point to factors such as his highest ratio of home runs per at-bat or his success as a pitcher before becoming the Sultan of Swat and say he is still the greatest. But the point is that there even is a debate. Many other players-- Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Aaron, Ted Williams and Mike Schmidt, also have their advocates. Even Ty Cobb, who epitomized the game before Ruth, has been rehabilitated and now has his advocates who claim that he was the best pure ballplayer ever.

Or football. Back when Ruth was the greatest baseball player ever, no question, in football it was Jim Brown. Of course in those days running backs were considered more fundamentally football players than quarterbacks. The change in perception since is even more pronounced there-- because of the emergence of the position of quarterback, most people would argue today that the greatest football player ever was a quarterback, likely Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Dan Marino, John Elway or even Brett Favre. If anyone suggested a running back at all, it would probably be Emmitt Smith or Walter Payton, not Brown.

I'm not going to wade into the middle of that argument. My point is that perceptions change. Sometimes people look back into history and begin to better appreciate athletes who may have been considered not the greatest (though still great) when they were playing. After all the old days were always better, or so it often seems. Or, it may be that in the future a better athlete comes along.

And so it is with Jordan. Was he the greatest? Probably. Will he always be the greatest? Probably not. LeBron has the talent and maybe the chance to make people forget about Jordan someday. So does Kobe Bryant. And maybe some kid who is just now being signed up for the local YMCA basketball league. The truth is, we don't know.

There are examples of players whose leagues have uniformly retired their numbers. In baseball, Jackie Robinson's #42 was retired for every team. But Jackie Robinson meant something to baseball above and beyond his ability as a player. Beyond his ability on the court, Jordan--- well, he's a better shoe salesman than Al Bundy.

It is entirely appropriate that the Chicago Bulls, Jordan's team, have retired his number. But for the entire league to retire it, doesn't make the cut.

Why Arizona, California budget woes have similar causes

As I'm sure virtually everyone in Arizona has heard by now, a report out this week states flatly that Arizona is in the second worst financial shape after California.

In fact, I wonder if that's even true, for one thing California actually did overcome partisan differences and get a budget together while our Governor and legislature, led by the same party, were still bickering and not getting anything done. In fact they never did agree on a budget this year, with the Governor 'creating' a pseudo-budget by vetoing some of the legislative cuts and forcing a third special session which may or may not begin next week to address some of the unresolved budget issues.

However, for some clues to why things are so bad, it might be useful to compare the two states and see what is common between them that may have led to this situation.

Party control is not one of those factors. California, once the home of Nixon and Reagan Republicanism, has become a reliably Democratic state, and despite having a Republican Governor has had a Democratic legislature for a long time. Arizona on the other hand has had Republicans running the legislature since 1964 (when Barry Goldwater's coattails in his home state swept the GOP to power in a body they have controlled for decades since then.)

There are however three factors that all appear to have sprung from populist impulses.

The first is that Californians, who were anti-tax during the 1970's and 1980's passed the same kind of law as Arizona passed in 1992. It requires a 2/3 vote of both houses of the legislature plus a Governor's signature to raise taxes. This effectively prevents raising taxes even in an emergency like the present since it is virtually certain that you can muster 1/3 of one house or the other to always vote against a tax increase. Let's be honest here-- if the same provision applied to spending cuts, the state would be just as constricted since you could always find 1/3 of at least one house who would vote against any spending cut. What this does is effectively disables the legislature's ability to deal with problems as they emerge and in a disaster like we have now this restriction is crippling. And it is also true that preventing the legislature from raising taxes is in effect saying that you don't trust the voters to vote out any legislator who voted for an unpopular tax.

In Arizona the supermajority provision was complicated during the 1990's when the state cut taxes very deeply so that we now are faced with a situation where we already are one of the lowest tax states in the nation and still can't raise them back again.

The second is the citizen ballot initiative provision that has essentially pre-written large chunks of the state budget in both states. While I fully supported and voted for dedicated spending on programs like children's health care that I did not believe the legislature could be trusted to fund adequately (and I will oppose any effort to repeal this dedicated spending, at the ballot box or elsewhere because I know that Kirk Adams and Bob Burns would use the money to pay for tax cuts, not to reduce spending cuts) it is true that when there is a big budget deficit, the fact that certain budget items by law can't be touched forces the cuts to be deeper everywhere else. Sort of like building a wall around a town to keep out a flood. It may succeed but it will push more water downstream and flood the next town worse.

As one California observer noted, Californians are schizophrenic-- they don't want to pay taxes but they want the Government to provide a lot of stuff. So they have voted that combination, and the same is true of Arizonans. That's not a partisan observation, it's an observation of the way things are.

The third similarity is legislative term limits. Most people don't like professional legislators, but in Sacramento and Phoenix that problem has been solved by another populist measure that creates a whole new set of problems-- term limits. The biggest problem with this is that there are always at least 1/4 of the members with no experience, another 1/4 of the members who are on their way out and therefore have no reason to try and reflect what anyone in their district thinks (1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2) and the other half of the legislature in between these two extremes (i.e. with little experience and not really needing to satisfy their district beyond the next election or two.) Further, there is a lack of institutional memory. Programs that may have been begun at an earlier time (such as investments in biotechnology) may be discontinued, defunded or severely cut when a new group of legislators comes in with a different idea about where things should be headed and has no idea of what the original justification or purpose for the programs was.

Term limits may be nice in theory but in practice it means we force people to retire once they actually learn what is going on and how to get things done within the system.

These three populist ideals-- supermajority to raise taxes, budget-by-ballot-initiative and term limits, while appealing in some degree to people on both the left and the right, have essentially crippled the governments in both Arizona and California to the extent that neither may be able to deal with the tidal wave of red ink now rolling towards them at high speed.

Gunman shoots his car window first

I don't claim to know much about how to be successful at committing crimes (having chosen a different line of work) but I can give aspiring felons one piece of advice:

If you're going to do a drive-by shooting,

before you fire the gun roll down the car window, dude.

House health care reform bill passes

Today the house passed an historic health care reform bill.

The roll-call vote is right here.

The debate was fluid during the day. At one point Bart Stupak (D-MI) pushed through an amendment that will ban a public option from paying for abortions. This is clearly an anti-choice amendment (after all private insurance companies routinely cover abortion) but it also had the effect of forcing Stupak and several other anti-choice Democrats to support the bill once the amendment was included and counting the votes at that moment Pelosi pounced and pushed for a vote on the whole bill.

The vote was 220-215 in favor of the bill. However, as Lyndon Johnson once said he liked winning with small margins because then he knew he'd gotten everything out of it that he could. Pelosi got the votes of 219 Democrats, one more than she needed, and an unexpected gift-- one Republican who braved the wrath of John Boehner and voted for the bill (Anh Cao, R-LA, who represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district and got elected at all last year mainly because his opponent was corrupt congressman Willie 'cold cash' Jefferson.) After voting with the party line on the stimulus as Boehner tried to prevent any display at all of bipartisanship, apparently being asked to go against the wishes of his constituents again was too much for Cao.

I'm not thrilled with the Stupak amendment, but strategically it makes sense-- given the closeness of the vote it is entirely possible that the whole vote could have failed without Stupak and his compatriots. And as the debate moves forward to the much tougher Senate phase at least the Stupak amendment cuts off one line of attack for the right.

However, all in all, this is a good day.

Texas shooting brings more scrutiny of muslim community.

I know I'm going to get in trouble from some of my blogger buddies for writing this post, but I'm going to write it anyway because failing to acknowlege a fact in the name of political correctness is stupid.

I also want to preface this with the fact that I know that there are over four million muslims in the United States (including some who are friends of mine) and that almost all of them are peace-loving people who absolutely do not support the use of violence as a means to achieve anything. To characterize all of them based on the actions of one, or even of several, seriously disturbed individuals is unfair and wrong.

However, I have to take issue with the whole 'loner' bit that is being kicked around about Major Nidal Malik Hasan. He is certainly a lone gunman, but there is a disturbing trend here. Just a couple of weeks ago there was a shootout in Detroit between the FBI and a group of radical muslims whose stated goal was to establish an autonomous state governed by sharia law on U.S. territory. We also recently had the case of Najibullah Zazi, accused of plotting to blow up targets in the United States. Before that we had Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who attacked army recruiters in Arkansas. There is also a parade of young men from Minneapolis and elsewhere who have apparently been moving through a pipeline to Somalia where they end up as members of al-Shabob, an Islamicist rebel group in that country.

And that's just this year. If we continued this post back a few years, there are several other American muslim individuals who have committed senseless acts of violence in the United States or against fellow Americans (John Allen Muhammed, anyone?)

Now, I absolutely do not believe that we should in any way blame the entire muslim community (many of whom have condemned and spoken out against these senseless actions,) nor do I believe that the government needs more federal spy powers-- God knows we've given them enough spy powers already and if they are doing a poor job of using the powers they have now then the answer is not to give them more power to snoop on Americans. As I said before, there are millions of American muslims and these actions have been committed by a handful, who do not appear in most cases to be part of any sort of extremist organization.

However, to deny that these kinds of violent episodes are happening too often to be considered 'random' because it is politically inconvenient to do so, is also wrong headed thinking. Clearly the whole radical Islamicist, jihadi mentality has seduced a number of Americans, either those who were raised as muslims (as Dr. Hasan was) or those who have converted to Islam (as was the case for those involved in the Detroit shootout.)

We must acknowlege it and then look at how we can work with law enforcement officials and community leaders to get a handle on why some American muslims are attracted to extreme Islamicism and then address those causes directly. And to get this kind of a dialogue working we have to be willing to be blunt about what the problem is.

Unemployment vote shows Arizona Republicans in Congress are more conservative than other Republicans

Just in case you hadn't gotten the idea yet that Arizona Republicans are way off on the right end of the political spectrum, even to the extent that they are way beyond the mainstream of conservatives,

Today the house voted 403-12 to extend unemployment benefits for fourteen more weeks (plus six more in states with the highest unemployment.) This is a no-brainer with unemployment poised to break 10%, and the house action follows a 98-0 Senate vote.

Among the conservative members of the house who followed the unanimous vote of the Senate were John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Dan Burton, Eric Cantor, Duncan Hunter, Peter King, Mike Pence, Jeanne Schmidt and Joe Wilson.

Not exactly a list of bleeding-heart liberals there.

In fact, the three Republicans in the Arizona delegation-- all three of them-- Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg-- showed that they are way more conservative than even the rest of the house GOP by providing fully one fourth of the 'no' votes.

In Arizona, the most extreme views that are held anywhere else are unfortunately the 'party line' view held by many if not most of our GOP elected officials. Today's vote once again puts the extreme conservatism of Arizona Republicans on display for everyone to see.

Result being spun as exactly the opposite of what it was

Republicans are saying that Tuesday's election results, especially in Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell crushed Democrat Creigh Deeds, are a referendum on the Obama agenda. It is true that McDonnell won by 18 percent in a state that Obama last year won by seven-- a twenty-five point swing. They claim that voters wanted to 'send a message' to Washington on health care. And it is true that Obama campaigned for Deeds in the Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia only last week.

However, a closer look at the numbers suggests otherwise. To begin with, start with the exit polls of the race.

To begin with, Deeds only lost the Hampton Roads area by 54-45%. This is signficantly better relative to Obama last year (who won it by a similar margin) than he did anywhere else in the state. So if anything, it appears that the Obama appearance may have helped Deeds hold his margin of loss in the region down, because he lost more voters in other parts of the state.

Furthermore, buried down towards the bottom is a question about what the primary issue was that voters were voting on. A quarter answered it was health care. And among those who did, Deeds WON by 51-49%. Keep in mind this is a candidate who was losing big, still narrowly winning among voters who are concered about health care (McDonnell's voters incidentally cited the economy and taxes as their biggest issues.) So if anything, this seems to suggest support for the Obama agenda on health care, certainly not opposition!

There is no question that Creigh Deeds ran a very poor campaign, attempting to focus on Bob McDonnell's 20 year old master's thesis while McDonnell was talking about jobs. However there is another point to be made here: Deeds tried to run as a 'moderate' and separate himself from the Obama agenda even as he was asking for the President's support. Clearly that strategy backfired since he did not win very many votes from conservatives but the electorate that showed up included a majority of voters who had voted for John McCain last year-- in other words a lot of Obama voters decided not to vote rather than vote for a conservative Democrat like Creigh Deeds.

Nevertheless the exit poll results show clearly that if the mainstream media did more than scratch the surface they'd see that if anything the results suggest support for, not opposition to, the Obama health care plan.

Keep in mind too that Bill Owens, who won in NY-23, pledged during the campaign to vote for the health care bill now before the house (and he is being sworn in today, so he will have a chance to do that too.) So that issue was front and center during the New York campaign, and if the district voters really wanted to stop health care reform they could have voted for Doug Hoffman.

Conservatives could still pull the chair out from under Republican opportunity

We've been hearing for weeks about how the sour economy, slow recovery and historical factors (such as that the incumbent President's party nearly always loses seats in the midterm elections) all portend doom for the Democrats.

While I would suggest that I expect things to be better next year than they are today and that these predictions are both premature and likely overstated,

a prerequisite for losing is that you have to have an opponent that can put a team on the field to beat you.

That wouldn't be the Republican party, apparently.

Last year after the election some pundits made the prediction that the GOP would degenerate into an increasingly more and more extreme right-wing minority whose pursuit of ideological purity would cause it to leave the universe of rational discourse at record speed.

Since then we've heard more about how poised the GOP was for success, including by recruiting moderate candidates to run for the Senate like Mark Kirk in Illinois, Charlie Crist in Florida and Mike Castle in Delaware. But the truth is that the underlying rift between conservatives and moderates remains, and it appears that the conservative base is so intent on purifying the party at all costs that they seem ready to turn whatever chance the GOP has of winning next year into a chance to make heads roll-- Republican heads.

This week we saw a prime example of that. Republican Dede Scozzafava, whose voting record overall is slightly to the right of the rest of the New York legislative delegation but who had angered conservatives by backing same-sex marriage and abortion rights and-- horror of horrors-- President Obama's stimulus plan (which given the magnitude of state budget problems I bet she's not the only legislator who actually had to write up a budget who was grateful for the help from the stimulus)-- was running for election to a vacant house district in heavily Republican upstate New York. I say was-- because she withdrew yesterday as out of state conservatives dumped huge amounts of money into the state in support of Doug Hoffman, the candidate of the New York Conservative party. A Sarah Palin endorsement of Hoffman was followed in short order by a number of other far right figures. Glenn Beck even went so far as to say during an interview with Hoffman on his show that Scozzafava is a follower of Karl Marx.

A Marxist? So now according to these wingnuts even a standard conservative Republican is a Marxist. No wonder that Scozzafava endorsed Democrat Bill Owens a day after dropping out (undoubtedly misinterpreted by the far right as proof that they were right about her all along.) I mean, when did a GOP legislator with a solid record of fiscal conservatism suddenly transform into a Marxist? Does the right even know what a 'Marxist' actually is, or is it just a cheap name to throw around?

It gets worse. They've organized their own national campaign, "Remove the RINO's" and are dedicated to running conservative challengers against insufficiently conservative Republicans (a 'RINO' is a 'Republican in name only,' what the far right likes to call Republicans who are are not conservative enough.) They already induced Arlen Specter to switch parties, and intend to defeat all three of the above named GOP Senate recruits (Kirk, Crist and Castle) in primaries next year. Never mind that Kirk and Castle are about the only Republicans who might be able to win the Senate seats in Illinois and Delaware, two solidly Democratic states, or that Crist, a popular Governor could easily keep the Florida Senate seat in GOP hands, according to the paragons of the far right, they must be punished for their sins and they will go down in primaries. The funding behind this effort comes from organizations like the Club for Growth, which has been pushing for doctrinaire conservatives for a long time. What is new is the organization on the internet, talk radio and twitter that has allowed these zealous 'keepers of the faith' to find and network with each other to produce a potent political force.

What they do not understand is that while I'm sure that everyone at their tea bag rally probably agrees with them, their viewpoints are way out of the mainstream and reflect the views of fewer and fewer Americans all the time. If they drum every Republican they can find who ever makes less than a perfectly conservative vote out of the party (and rock-solid conservatives like Richard Lugar and both the Diaz-Balart brothers are on their hit list) they may eventually achieve the 'pure' party they crave-- and when they want to go someplace they can fit everyone onto a bus.

House minority leader John Boehner also bears a little of the responsibility for empowering this monster. By insisting that 100% of the house Republicans vote against high profile Obama-backed initiatives like the stimulus and health care, Boehner has, without winning the vote, sent a message to these wingnuts that no heresy can be tolerated, and therefore one could see this coming-- it is only a short jump to the idea that heretics must be burnt. According to the far right they are doing Boehner (who had endorsed Scozzafava) a favor by protecting him from having a Marxist in his caucus who would have voted for the stimulus. Oh, my.

Imagine Senate Republican campaign chair John Cornyn pulling his hair out on the day of the Florida Senate primary, when his prize recruit, Charlie Crist, is defeated by Marco Rubio, a conservative who at best would be a long shot to hold the seat in a general election, or when Kirk or Castle lose their primaries to little-known conservatives who have little or no chance of winning the general election. Well, don't imagine it for too long, because for Republicans this scenario is coming closer to becoming a reality.

Maybe some of the underlying factors next year are working against Democrats but if Republicans keep shooting each other in the back before the election Democrats could still come out of it looking pretty good anyway.

Real toxic assets

As if things aren't bad enough in the housing industry, it now looks like hundreds or even thousands of homeowners will lose their homes to foreclosure because of toxic Chinese drywall.

It's pretty simple, and whether you are making your payments has nothing to do with it.

If you have a mortgage then your mortgage carrier requires you to insure your home. But if your home is found to have toxic drywall, as thousands have, then expect your insurance policy to be revoked and to find that no insurance carrier will insure you. Beyond the actual cost of replacement (meaning tearing out every wall in a home), the drywall emits sulfuric acid fumes that corrode pipes and electrical wiring and cause illness in people who are in the home, so it's a cost that no insurer wants to deal with.

Case closed, your home will be foreclosed on for failure to carry insurance coverage.

Thousands of homeowners nationwide who have bought new houses made with defective building materials are finding their hopes dashed and their lives in limbo. Experts warn that cases like the Ivorys', in which insurers drop policies or send notices of nonrenewal because of tainted Chinese drywall, will become rampant as insurance companies work their way through the hundreds of claims currently in the pipeline.

At least three insurers already have canceled or refused to renew policies after homeowners sought help replacing the bad materials. Because mortgage companies require homeowners to insure their properties, they are then at risk of foreclosure, yet no law prevents the cancellations.

So what can the homeowner do? Not much.

The mortgage company is only acting as a front for what is likely a bank that controls a derivative into which each mortgage is bundled, and anyone who invests in a mortage wants their investment protected. So they require insurance, which is sensible enough.

The insurers have not only been denying the claims for toxic drywall, but they've been dropping coverage. This should not surprise anyone either, because they've been doing the same thing for years with health insurance, rescinding coverage when someone actually gets sick and needs it. Why should anyone be surprised if they look at homeowners policies through the same lens? After all, in most cases homeowners insurance and health insurance are offered through different divisions of the same giant companies.

The Chinese companies which produced the drywall made a defective product. But lots of luck trying to get compensation from them.

There is a class action lawsuit going on against builders, manufacturers and suppliers of the defective drywall. But even if these homeowners join it it is likely that any amount they receive (and in these kinds of suits most of the money goes to the lawyers) might, years or decades from now, cover the cost of the drywall but certainly would not cover the cost of a home foreclosure (in which case it is a given that any down payment or equity in the home is gone, to say nothing of the effect of a foreclosure on their credit rating should they try to get another home.)

What about the inspectors who should have but didn't catch the drywall before it was installed? Well, you can't sue the government, even when they don't do their job very well. As I've written before, in many cases our policy involving imported products (especially imported products from China) seems to be one of 'regulation by recall,' in other words very little is inspected and nothing is done until a defective product actually causes harm at which time the product is recalled.

So who bears the cost of this one? That's right, the little guy (as usual,) the people who bought the home. I know, I know. Some right winger will suggest that it is their fault for buying a defective product without doing adequate research. This is a stupid argument too, I mean when you buy a home do you ask for the name of every manufacturer, supplier and subcontractor that was involved in building it, and then research one by one whether there have been any complaints about that supplier? That kind of argument is about as ridiculous as the people who complain that homebuyers being squeezed out by ARMs, balloon payments or other mortgage 'tricks' are at fault because they didn't read paragraph 4 on page 347 of a 500 page contract written in legalese before signing. According to the letter of the law they may even be right, but morally they are not. We have an obligation to if necessary legislate (yes, that's right it means 'regulate') some way to prevent this kind of tomfoolery from happening.

As someone once said in observing someone else's misery and justifying why they should care, "there but for the grace of God go I."

Governor's races show Democrats are better off being Democrats

Democratic strategist Bob Shrum has a point.

He's not just talking about the upcoming gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, but he's drawing a critically important contrast.

In Virginia, polls showed Democrat Creigh Deeds in a close race with Republican Bob McDonnell during July and early August, while in New Jersey Republican Chris Christie was as much as fifteen points ahead of incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine at about the same time.

Today the situation is reversed. In Virginia it is Deeds who appears headed for a big loss, while Corzine has now drawn even or possibly even slightly ahead depending on which poll you look at.

Keep in mind of course that these two races have historically gone against the party in power in the White House so in both cases the Democrats are running against history and the cyclical nature of politics.

That said, there is a big difference between the races and even allowing for factors like that Deeds is a poor campaigner and in New Jersey an independent appears to be drawing more votes from Christie than from Corzine, Shrum hits the nail on the head when he points out the biggest difference between the races.

Criegh Deeds has tried to run as a 'Republican light,' alternatively saying he supports some Democratic principles but then distancing himself from them, most recently the idea of a public option on health care-- going so far as to say that if there is an 'opt-out' provision and he is Governor he might exercise it on behalf of his state.

As Shrum points out, this is a poor strategy:

Blue Dog Democrats who abandoned Bill Clinton on health care in 1994 were conspicuous among the casualties of that November's congressional elections. Their flight from Clinton alienated Democrats without placating other voters. Just ask Sen. David McCurdy of Oklahoma or Sen. Jim Cooper of Tennessee.

Oops, they're not senators. Both were favorites who lost their respective races after calculated decisions to turn away from Clintoncare. If they had stayed the course, they might not have won; but in 1994, they and others proved that apostasy is not the path to victory. (McCurdy now runs a trade association. Cooper is back in Congress after eight years in the wilderness.)

The truth is, that conservative voters in Virginia are probably going to vote for McDonnell anyway. Even Deeds' erstwhile supporters on the right turned their back on him when he needed them the most. For example, Deeds supports gun rights. This cost him directly, being cited by former Governor Douglas Wilder as the primary reason he could not endorse Deeds even after a personal appeal from President Obama. What about the NRA, which has supported Deeds in the past, most notably in his primary victory over Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran earlier this year? Well, the NRA endorsed McDonnell. Now, I'm a Democrat in support of gun rights myself and I don't fault Deeds for taking this stance if he honestly agrees with me, but any Democrat who relies on the NRA for support is a fool because they are clearly 'fair-weather friends' who will abandon said Democrat when he or she gets into a tough race against a pro-gun Republican. Running this year as a conservative Democrat will not win votes from conservatives who will still vote Republican, but it may keep liberals at home.

Deeds paradoxically asked the same President he has not pledged to support on important issues to come and campaign for him. President Obama did, appearing in Newport News and Hampton Roads in southeastern Virginia. In fact, that may be the only part of Virginia where Deeds will get even close to the percentages he would need to win.

In contrast, Corzine has embraced the Obama agenda, especially on health care and has done everything he could to appeal to liberals in his state. Now, granted New Jersey is a much more liberal state than Virginia (though that was true this summer too when Christie was still way up in the polls.) According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, though Corzine's favorability/unfavorability rating is still negative, he has improved it significantly over the past couple of months. In other words, a Democrat campaigning on Democratic themes has come back from way down. Corzine could still lose, of course, but the comeback is nonetheless significant. Unlike Deeds, he's not shied away from the President and has been very openly grateful for the President campaigning for him.

The bottom line is that a Democrat campaigning as an independent and running away from his party's themes has gone from even in the polls to fifteen points down, while a Democrat campaigning as a Democrat has gone from fifteen points down to even.

That should send a strong message to Democrats in Washington about what works and what does not.

Just in time for Halloween-- always low prices!

Just in time for Halloween, Wal-Mart has announced that they will start selling caskets.

I don't know if I'd want to buy one or get buried in it though. Virtually every product sold at Wal-Mart is produced by the cheapest manufacturer they can find (almost always overseas) and there have been a number of product recalls as a result. I keep having this image of being carried down the aisle by pallbearers and all of a sudden the bottom falls out and I fall down right in the middle of them.

Boo!

CBO scores house plan with 'robust' public option to cut the deficit

The CBO came out today with projections for a House plan that does include a 'robust' public option.

Their score is that the plan would cost $871 billion up front and when savings are included would actually reduce the deficit.

Notice that this is not so far from what the Baucus bill produced after a two month delay in the Senate Finance Committee would cost and save, only that bill was claimed as some kind of a 'breakthrough' because of cost savings that could allegedly attract GOP support. Which it did, exactly one Republican.

The claims that health care reform with a public option will run up the deficit have been punctured by today's report, in fact deficit hawks should jump on it as a way to cut tens of billions of dollars out of the long term projected deficit. This means then that there is no longer any good reason for opposing health care reform, including a public option. The only real reason anyone would is if they are still putting the interests of the insurance industry ahead of the interests of American patients (which will sooner or later by virtually all of us.) A distressingly large number of members of Congress are indeed going to be doing just that, but this pretty much makes it clear that that is what they are doing in that case.

Out of the mouth of a babe

President Obama held a town hall format meeting today at the University of New Orleans. After entertaining several questions from adults, nine year old Terrance Scott got a chance to ask a question.

Terrance's question: "Why do people hate you?"



I thought the President did a pretty good job of answering the question, explaining that a lot of it is just politics and that there are also some people who are frustrated about the economy, losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their health insurance, etc.

Of course there are still those who just plain hate the President too, and we all know that. Apparently so does the next generation of America's children.

Fundamentalist church to burn 'perverted' books, including Bibles, books by Billy Graham

A book burning.

In Berlin, 1935?

No, in North Carolina for this upcoming Halloween.

No, folks, I'm not making this up.

What books are they burning anyway?

Bibles. That's right, for starters they are burning Bibles, at least Bibles that are not King James Bibles. They are so fundamentalist that they will not accept a Bible that is not a King James Version or based on a similar translation. According to the Amazing Grace Baptist Church leaders, such a Bible is a 'perversion of God's word' and deserves to be burned.

They aren't limiting what they are burning to non-King James Bibles of course. They are also burning books by 'heretics.' They list a long list of 'heretics' on their website, including Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, James Dobson, the Pope and Mother Theresa.

Also all kinds of music, including contemporary Christian and gospel music.

Now, That's fundamentalist. I'm sure that they'd be happy to burn just about any book I own (I do own a King James Bible, but since it was published in Salt Lake City by the Mormon church, I'm sure it would be an instant decision to burn it if I brought it to their Halloween party.)

Oh, and they are having Barbeque chicken afterward. Probably with a side of Oral Roasted.

The 'world's greatest health care system' and Winslow hospital are failing my daughter

My 13 year old went to Winslow hospital on Monday because she is experiencing flu-like symptoms.

Did they actually bother to test her? No.

They said that the CDC has told them not to bother with the blood work but that people should 'assume' it is the swine flu and drink plenty of fluids. UPDATE: AS OF TODAY (OCT. 15) THE STATE FLU LAB IS REFUSING TO TEST ANY MORE SAMPLES except for people who have already died or who are very very sick. They can't keep up with the demand.

Did they admit her? No.

They said she should just stay home and sent her away.

Did they give her any medicine? No.

What happened to all that Tamiflu that was supposed to be being stockpiled for when people actually need it? I know that Senator Collins cut the pandemic preparedness funding out of the stimulus, but the least they could do would be to give her a prescription that we could shop around for it.

They told her to follow up with her doctor. But the doctor's office is overwhelmed, and they can't get her in until Thursday.

So is what they told her to do working? No.

Despite taking tylenol and ibuprofen, her fever has gone up, last night it was at 103 degrees. This morning she was coughing and having trouble just breathing.

So this is how the World's Best Health Care System is supposed to function (and by the way, we DO have health insurance) ???

According to Ralph Lauren, even unhealthily thin is still 'too fat.'

Twenty-three year old Filippa Hamilton has spoken out about the decision by Ralph Lauren to not renew her contract because she is 'too large.'

NEW YORK - A former Ralph Lauren model whose image in a roundly criticized advertisement was digitally slenderized said Wednesday that the apparel maker did not renew her contract because she was “too large.”

Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is contending that it dismissed Filippa Hamilton because of a contract dispute and that the photo was mistakenly released.

“They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn't fit in their clothes anymore,” 23-year-old Filippa Hamilton, who worked for the company since she was 15, told the Daily News. She said she considered Polo Ralph Lauren her second family.

Now HERE COMES THE STUNNER:

The photo's emaciated depiction of her, with hips about as narrow as her head, could make young women “think that it's normal to look like that — and it's not,” the 5-foot-10, 120-pound model told NBC's “Today” show.

“I saw my face on this super-extremely skinny girl, which is not me; it's not healthy, it's not right,” she said.

Polo Ralph Lauren claimed she “was too large,” she added, saying that she's a size 4 and that her weight has remained constant during eight years as a model for the iconic American brand, which has dressed U.S. Olympic teams.

Now, looking at tables available from health check systems,

a 5'10" woman with a small frame (let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is naturally slender) should weigh between 132 and 145 pounds.

This means that Hamilton is already nearly 10% below the minimum weight for her height that would be considered 'healthy,' even in women who are naturally slender.

Except according to Ralph Lauren, even unhealthily skinny is now 'too fat.'

This bothers me because I have a total of seven daughters and granddaughters and I want them to have a healthy and positive self-image without actually trying to starve themselves. It has been said that America is the only country where people starve to death in a house full of food, and thanks to anorexia, bulimia and a whole host of other disorders linked to a media- and fashion-driven desire to 'be thin,' we now have millions of healthy women (and a disturbingly rapidly increasing number of men) literally destroying their bodies so they can look 'thin.'

I'm not a 'burn Barbie' type of extremist about this but I do believe that given the continuing irresponsible behavior of the fashion industry in the face of years of publicity and objections raised about this behavior, it may be time to legislate minimum weights for models, similar to what has been done in Spain.

I have to be honest here, this Nobel is premature.

This year President Obama got the Nobel peace prize. A week after being 'slapped down' by the IOC in Copenhagen a week ago, he got a 'hand up' across the Kattegat in Oslo.

It's almost like a weekly sit com 'the adventures of Barack' and I don't like it. President Obama is an intelligent capable man who was legitimately elected as President of the United States.

And yes, his election was an inspiration to people across the world in that it represents that after centuries of racism a black man could be elected as President of its greatest power, but that in itself is not a reason to give him the Nobel Peace Prize.

To get a prize like that he should do something. Let's even stop and think that his nomination came about two weeks after his inauguration, during which time he'd had time to do little except give a fifteen minute speech, change the 'Mexico City rule' on abortion, get most of his cabinet confirmed, get and sign the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and get Congress to authorize the release of the TARP II bailout funds. Not exactly Nobel Prize winning stuff there.

But even if you consider that the Nobel committee has had several months to watch the President and consider his actions in their decision, I've seen little that is of Nobel caliber achievement.

Let's see: as positives they may consider that he has promised to close GITMO, has begun moving troops out of Iraq, has told CIA interrogators that they must follow the army field manual, effectively ending torture, has accepted the realism that the G-20 rather than the G-8 as an economic policy making body is a more realistic reflection of the world economy, made a nice broadcast to the Iranian people in Farsi and has toned down the rhetoric on Iran, and has worked to improve relations with Russia, most notably by canceling a missile defense shield that was to be located in Poland and the Czech Republic.

As negatives, there is the fact that whatever he may have said, GITMO remains open (and in some ways is being replaced by Baghram AFB in Afganistan,) American troops are still in Iraq and he has been having a public back and forth with his own attorney general about whether to prosecute Bush era officials involved with torture. He has retained the policy of rendition and is escalating the war in Afghanistan. Obama has made it clear, most recently by delaying his meeting with the Dalai Lama until after he goes to China that human rights will take a back seat to economic issues where China is involved (which is exactly the same policy that every American President, even Jimmy Carter, has followed since Richard Nixon first opened relations with Beijing in 1971.)

At best I'd consider this to be a mild overall plus. The committee said as much, describing in non-specific terms that he has changed the tone and rejected unilateralism (which is more of a slap at Bush, but I don't like foreigners using American Presidents to get back at others Presidents, even ones I don't like.)

At best, I can say that I hope that President Obama lives up to this honor. I feel confident that he will do a great deal for peace but that is still to come.

At worst, it is an award which was taken away from Morgan Tsvanagarai, who does deserve it. As you may recall, at the beginning of the year Tsvangarai had apparently won the Zimbabwean election. After several weeks of counting and vote tampering the elections commission released a result that forced him into a run-off with President Robert Mugabe. When Tsvangarai reluctantly accepted the result and the run-off, all hell broke loose in Zimbabwe as Mugabe-backed thugs went nuts and beat and murdered thousands of Tsvangarai's supporters ahead of the runoff. Tsvangarai withdrew from the election recognizing that it would be stolen anyway and that continuing as a candidate would cost the lives of more people. After the election some of his supporters wanted to take up arms and launch a guerilla movement, but Tsvangarai faced them and told them that more violence would not solve anything. He accepted the position of Prime Minister in a Mugabe-run and Mugabe-organized government, with the goal of attempting to reform the system and get the apalling economic conditions in Zimbabwe under control, and has pledged to peacefully push for reform within the system. In the process Tsvangarai has survived being beaten personally along with an automobile accident this year in which he was severely injured and which claimed the life of his wife.

As a supporter of President Obama, all I can say is that I share in the surprise and shock that the White House experienced when the call came this morning. I believe that he has the potential, the capacity and the intellect to someday be worthy of such a high honor. But it was a disservice to have given him the award before he has achieved what he can achieve.

Support a Nataline's law provision in health care legislation

Remember Nataline Sarkisyan? If the name rings a bell, it should. Nataline was a seventeen year old girl who needed a liver transplant. Only when they finally found a donor her parent's insurance company, CIGNA, which provided full coverage through her father's insurance refused to pay. After a lot of bad press they relented nine days later but by the time the procedure was performed, Sarkisyan was literally hours away from death and did not survive.

Her parents went to court to sue CIGNA for damage caused by the company's denial of their daughter's transplant. The court threw out the complaint, not because they hadn't caused her death but because of a 1987 Supreme Court decision that prevents victims from suing over coverage decisions. The decision relates to 1974's Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which governs employee retirement funds and benefit plans.

So last year Nataline's parents, Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA's corporate headquarters on October 29, 2008 to ask for an apology. What they got was a front man who came out and told them that he was very sorry but that the company would not even offer them an apology, and further that the CEO or anyone involved with the decision would not come out and talk to them. Not that they didn't see someone higher up, of course. What they got was the man upstairs throwing them 'the bird.'

Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan are not giving up in trying to change things though.

The catalyst for this came not only in the judge being forced by the 1987 court decision to have to dismiss Nataline's wrongful death suit, but also from CIGNA's official press release after this.

"Cigna said the dismissal of the wrongful-death case in April showed that the court "agreed with our position that the Sarkisyans' claims regarding Cigna's decision making were without merit."

In fact, the court did not consider the merits of the family's wrongful-death claims. Instead, it decided those claims could not be heard.

Not heard because of the Supreme Court decision!! If it were based solely on the merits of the case then it could be heard. The pure and unadulterated arrogance and contempt on display CIGNA, knowing very well that they have nothing to fear if they do kill someone, is stunning.

The Sarkisyans have proposed 'Nataline's law,' whereby Congress would put in place a mechanism by which insurance companies like CIGNA will be held accountable (even if it is by fines rather than by direct compensation to victims or their families) for injuries or death that it can be proven was caused by withholding payment for a procedure.

According to the linked article, at least one CIGNA employee did have a conscience and quit his job so he could stand with the Sarkisyans:

"ERISA is a license to kill," Glovsky said. "The companies know that they can deny treatment with the sick or dead member having virtually no recourse."

Wendell Potter, a Cigna spokesman who quit after handling the publicity surrounding the Sarkisyan case, agreed.

"HMOs and insurers are largely free to deny access to care without fear of reprisal or financial consequences," Potter said in a speech to the Civil Justice Foundation in San Francisco.

Right now, as Congress debates health care overhaul it is time to undo the disastrous ERISA provision. The truth is that tort reform is long overdue-- instead of aiming lawsuits at doctors whose hands may well be tied by the knowlege that some procedures will likely be denied even if they ask for them, maybe the truth is that it is the insurers who should be included in these suits.

Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to key congressional leaders urging them to undo the ERISA ruling, and group President Jamie Court said Nataline's case shows why such a move is crucial to any healthcare reform.

"If the insurer decides they don't want to pay for the treatment because they can save a lot of money, there is not a dime available in damages if the person dies or is injured," Court said. "It's cheaper to kill you. If you die, you can't go to court.

Baucus bill is a bad one, go the reconciliation route.

I'm certainly not a fan of the Baucus Finance Committee bill, which as I've noted before would force people who can't afford it to pay for insurance anyway-- the same formula as MittCare in Massachusetts, which has not succeeded in that state either. It also would only insure about half of the uninsured today in America.

The fact that the CBO has claimed that it will cost $829 billion over ten years and have a net effect counting savings and new taxes of reducing the deficit by $80 billion still doesn't appeal to me, because I still think it's a lousy bill, period.

That said, it is interesting to hear what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had to say today.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fired back that Democrats have yet to craft a package that can win 60 votes and, until they do, any claims that the package can dramatically shrink the ranks of the uninsured while lowering the budget deficit are "irrelevant."

Translation: He's still planning to filibuster any bill, and it doesn't matter what is in it or not.

Under the circumstances then it makes more and more sense for Democrats to throw out the half-measures, mandates and tax increases in the Baucus bill and go with a more liberal bill that they push through using reconciliation.

A hate crime in Phoenix this morning

A homeless woman was murdered today in Phoenix in what appears to be a hate crime.

A gunman opened fire on a 39-year-old woman and her friend early Saturday morning in what Phoenix police are calling a possible hate crime.

The woman, whose name wasn't released, was shot dead. Her friend, Jeffrey Wellmaker, 48, told police he and the woman were walking in Palma Park, on 12th Street and Dunlap Avenue around 1:30 a.m. when a heavily tattooed, bald White man confronted them.

Wellmaker, who is Black, said the tattooed man yelled, "What are you doing with that White woman," said Detective James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman. The friends, who are homeless, didn't respond and kept walking, Holmes said. Investigators don't know why the couple was in the park, police said.

The tattooed man followed the pair for a couple blocks. By the time the couple reached 4th Street and Puget Avenue, Wellmaker saw a white four-door newer model sedan with tinted windows drive past them, Holmes said. In the passenger seat was the tattooed man.

That's when Wellmaker said the passenger pulled out a shotgun and shot two blasts at the couple, Holmes said.

For some reason, probably a weird mix of racism, misogyny and misplaced jealousy, nothing seems to set off white racists like a white woman with a black man. Although these folks are against all interracial dating the reverse doesn't seem to set them off as quickly. Whether it is because of our President or what, they seem to be coming more out into the open lately.

Clearly this is a hate crime, and clearly this murderer is a menace as he tries to enforce his own views of marriage on everyone else by means of murder. Let's hope he gets caught quickly.