The Spencerian

Finally Friday Deep River Blues Edition

2012-06-01T20:46:00-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

When it rains hard, our yard floods. We get entire areas that look like rivers.

We're a little embarrassed about our yards -- front and back -- because we just haven't found the time to get out and do what we really want to do out there.

And once summer starts, it gets too hot to go out there. That, or it's raining. And the rainy season here in Florida has begun.

Actually, it's the first official day of hurricane season -- we've already seen Alberto and Beryl. If you're in Florida -- or anywhere up and down the coast -- make sure you're prepared, friends and neighbors.

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You know, everyone at the CDC thought it was real funny to do a Zombie Preparedness campaign.

Hardy har. Well, who's laughing now, CDC people?

Because of the spate of horrible flesh-eating incidents, the CDC has actually had to officially deny the existence of zombies.

"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)," wrote agency spokesman David Daigle in an email to The Huffington Post.

Up yours, Daigle. I'm buying a shotgun and MREs on my way home from work today. After all, shouldn't I be prepared?

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Via Peter at Saint Petersblog, looks like Representative Jeff Brandes will jump into the State Senate race in South Pinellas, setting up a tough Republican primary between him and Representative Jim Frishe.

This came up a few weeks ago when it looked like sitting State Senator Jack Latvala was going to move from his safe seat in North Pinellas and make it a bloody three way primary between himself, Brandes and Frishe. No word on what Senator Latvala will do, but the Frishe/Brandes fight may be enough for now.

I don't know who the Democrat will be that will face whoever wins the South Pinellas Senate seat match, but it does seem to be a good day for Dwight Dudley, the Democrat running in District 68 -- that's the District Brandes just left. Bill Nobles is another Democrat running there, though he's had some difficulty fundraising, and hasn't updated his website in some time.

Pinellas County will be one to watch on Election Day, gang.

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Jeb Bush won't take the VP job if Romney offers it, although it remains unclear to me why he would.

Hey, here's my VP: a guy who is more popular than I am with my base, and who will inevitably upstage me at every turn...

I don't get it.

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It's finally Friday.

Glum Jobs Report: Bad Way to End the Week

2012-06-01T20:02:00-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

The United States added only 69,000 jobs last month, a dismal number that doesn't do a lot to help the chart the White House and the Obama Campaign would like you to be intimately familiar with.

In fact, look at the White House website, and it's pretty clear what they'd like us to be talking about this weekend: President Obama marking the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War and honoring the fallen on Memorial Day.

The subtext -- if I am to be believed -- would be the Tuesday piece in the New York Times on the Obama "kill list", and the president's tough-on-global-terror stance. (As an aside, the president would probably like us all to forget his unfortunate "Polish death camps" phrase... Hey, nobody's perfect.)

These jobs numbers are probably going to keep international affairs and war and peace from being front-and-center on the Sunday talk shows. Republicans like Jeb Bush will certainly see to that.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told the House Budget Committee Friday morning that he fears the economy "is stalling again, and growing well below its historic potential."

The Republicans can make all the hay out of this that they care to -- and they will. But I'm not so sure I'd want to wade into that fight so cavalierly if I'm Romney's budget and economic advisers. the 69,000 are the fewest to be added in a year, but we're still adding jobs, and have been since Jeb's brother was president.

How do you message that? Obama's economic policies are working slowly... but still better than his Republican predecessor... that's why you should still give us a chance...?

I'm not naive. This election really is riding on an improved economy (I've said this before). I know it has to be real improvement, tangible improvement -- an improvement that people really feel. But take a look at that chart again. I'm no economist, but if you look at the summer months, they tend to dip. Can we expect a dip through this summer and another spike in job creation as we head into the fall election?

It's short-term lousy news. I suspect smarter folks than me at the Obama Campaign have their eye on something a bit longer-term.

Rick Scott Smack-Down: Justice Department Intervenes on Voter Roll Purge

2012-05-31T21:37:28-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

Bad day for our governor, the hospital grifter Rick Scott, here in Florida.

Great day for voters.

First, as I noted earlier, a U.S. District Judge threw out a chunk of the draconian election law Scott had championed. Specifically, he tossed out the piece which essentially made it impossible for organizations to register voters.

Now, breaking news out of the Justice Department, via TPM:

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

This is a big deal.

Scott had undertaken these measures as a brazen attempt to dampen Democratic turnout and help deliver Florida to Romney. After all, let's remember what I like to call the Steve Schale statistic:

Add up 32 million Florida votes over the 5 Presidentials from 1992-2008 and less than 60,000 votes separate the two major political parties.

Scott knows that as well as any of us. And he was going to use the illegal purge and his horrible election law to his advantage.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said the arc of the universe bends towards justice. Well, tonight justice -- via the U.S. Department of Justice -- bent towards Florida.

Hallelujah.

Off the Radar Legal Eagle Edition

2012-05-31T19:54:00-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

A federal appeals court up in Boston has said the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional:

A federal appeals court panel in Boston declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional on Thursday, but said that only the Supreme Court will be able to settle the question of whether the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages from states where such unions are legal.

A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the act, which was signed by President Clinton and denies federal economic and other benefits for married people from same-sex couples married in states where it is legal, could not be justified under current precedents that protect minorities and other groups from discrimination.

This is good news, of course.

I'm actually in the middle of the great Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker piece on John Roberts and the Citizens United ruling. It's a must-read as it relates to Citizens United. Of course, there's no getting around wondering how the Court will approach something like DOMA, which will make it's way there soon enough.

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The jury has apparently reached a verdict on one of six counts -- not guilty -- and a mistrial in the five others in the what must be unwatchable John Edwards trial.

Johnny Reid Edwards, a honey-voiced North Carolina lawyer who parlayed his boyish good looks and inspiring personal history as the son of a mill-worker into a meteoric political rise, was acquitted of one count Thursday in a corruption case, as the judge declared a mistrial on five other charges on which the jury was deadlocked.

The mixed result in a trial that laid bare Edwards’s sexual indiscretions and serial deceptions came after nine days of jury deliberations.

Wow.

What a mess.

Good for Edwards. I guess. If this outcome means the whole thing goes away faster, then I'm for it.

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Here in Florida, a U.S. District Judge has thrown out part of our draconian new election law:

In a much-anticipated decision, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle on Thursday struck down some provisions of a Florida elections law that imposed new restrictions on third-party groups that register voters.

Well, there likely goes at least part of the hospital grifter Governor's plan to keep people from registering to vote -- those yucky "community organizers!". Of course, he's still managed to purge hundreds and hudreds of eligible voters, so he's got that going for him.

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Also here in Florida, thug Congressman Vern Buchanan is tipping his hand. From The Hill:

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) has made a huge $4 million airtime reservation for the fall campaign, according to a memo circulated by his campaign.

The reservation is a sign that Buchanan, a wealthy auto dealer, is willing to spend huge amounts of his own money to stay in Congress. His campaign had just shy of $1.5 million in the bank as of the end of March, a total that includes a nearly $500,000 contribution from the candidate.

I guess maybe the legal challenges -- and the calls for resignation -- not to mention getting out-raised by his opponent, Keith Fitzgerald, are all starting to take their toll.

This is a big, big ad buy, and it's telling: Vern wants to keep that seat.

Of course, this isn't the first sign from the Buchanan Campaign that they were worried about Keith. 435 Members of the House of Representatives, and guess who the top spender on mass mailings is? That's right: thug Vern Buchanan:

The Longboat Key Republican spent $142,000 in the first three months of 2011 to get 3.6 million mail pieces, emails and automated phone calls to people in the 13th Congressional District.

No one else in Congress spent more than $80,000 on mailers in that period. On average, members spent about $7,400 on such communications.

That's an awful lot of money -- ahem, your money, by the way (where's a tea party weirdo when you need one?) -- just to let people know you're there. I guess if I was being investigated by more than one entity, I'd want to use your money to talk myself up, too.

If you're curious about just what that kind of money buys, here's an interesting breakdown.

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You can buy some green bananas, but if you were planning on eating them in the next 4 billion years, you might have a problem.

-- More later --

Making the List: The Obama 'Kill List' and the Cold Face of Politics

2012-05-30T20:18:00-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

The only reason you read anything at all about the "secret" kill list on the front page of yesterday's New York Times is because the Obama Administration wanted us all to read about it. It is equal parts horrifying, chilling, brutal, and even, at times, confusing. For example:

...Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

In other words, if you happen to be an innocent but in the company of a target and a Predator drone blows you up, well, sorry 'bout that. We'll just make a note of it here in the after-action report. The good news is, we have the capacity to count the number of innocent civilians we kill with drone strikes. The bad news is we haven't yet invented a drone that can bring you back to life.

I'm not sure how anyone can look at the graphic which accompanied the really interesting Times piece and say that Obama has been a weak Commander-in-Chief. Agree or disagree with the drone strikes or the "kill list," the man is certainly getting stuff done. No "wolves" ad from the Republicans this time around.

From a political point of view, I am sure the Obama folks would love to talk about foreign policy, international affairs and national security all day and night between now and November, especially against a guy who called Russia "our number one geopolitical foe."

In-depth pieces like this set up an interesting -- and, I think, slanted in Obama's political favor -- discussion about those issues of national security.

So is it going to score points for Obama politically? Maybe. Quite probably.

However, I'd like to go on the record as saying I hate it. I hate the idea of the President of the United States sitting in the Oval Office with secretive men looking at -- goddam -- "baseball cards" of terrorists or suspected terrorists and determining whether they live or die.

I think what bothers me most is not so much the drone -- I get that these drones are a technological tour de force, a "new and improved" way of going to war. As a father, I can appreciate that it is better to send an unmanned aerial vehicle into a danger zone instead of armies of young men and women who fight and die on bloody battlefields.

What bothers me is the secrecy. At least when our armies -- the actual human soldiers and sailors -- go to war, we know where they're going. We know, more or less, who they're going to fight.

The "kill list" is secret, hidden. A few names have been given, after the fact, but they were mentioned in the Times story almost incidentally.

Making the decision to go to war with a country is one thing. When we go to war in the conventional way, we attack not just the army of the other country, we attack their economy, their infrastructure, and yes, even their people.

Singling out individuals for killing alleviates vast collateral damage -- that, and saving the lives of our own warriors, is a very good thing. But who are we killing? Why? We're told these are "imminent threats" but... what does that even mean?

I don't know what drones mean for the future of warfare. I'm not an expert on warfare, or the legal questions surrounding war and international affairs.

I do know something about politics, and I know that if the American people feel safer, they will reward politicians who make them feel that way. President Obama and this plan will almost assuredly make us feel safer. And in a macabre way, maybe it should. That's just cold political truth.

Like I said, I don't know a lot about making war. But I suspect that what these drones do will make the truth around war itself even colder.

Romney Only Pawn... In Game of Life: The White People Edition

2012-05-30T19:59:00-04:00

by Benjamin J. Kirby

Via DailyKos, an interesting graphic:

It is a screen-shot of each of the close-ups in the new over-done, schmaltzy Romney video.

Notice anything about it? Notice anything in the video? Notice anything... missing?

Sure, aside from not really explaining how he'll do anything or really even what he'll do to make America (or, heh, "Amercia") "better", his "better" America is, as Jed says, awfully white.

Now, I will note that if you can stomach the video to about 1:27, there does appear to be a person of color. Granted, it's the back of his head. But still.

Of course, as Romney himself said yesterday raising big cash with Birther Trump, he only needs 50.1%. Why be inclusive of all Americans when you're only looking for half.