TIM WALZ: MY HOT TAKE ON HARRIS' VP CANDIDATE

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have never voted for Donald Trump. I would never vote for Donald Trump. I would rather vote for Barry Goldwater than Donald Trump and Goldwater has been dead for a while now. Even dead, he'd make a better President.

When Biden stepped back and anointed  Harris as his successor, the Veepstakes immediately began. My thinking on the matter was fairly simple. I counted five attributes/qualities that would be required to be named Harris' VP. I got four of the five right.

The two easiest qualifications to predict were political necessities. The VP candidate had to be male and had to be white. I'm not particularly proud of my country for having to say that, but as Teddy Roosevelt's favorite political commentator opined in the late 19th Century, politics ain't beanbag. The rest of the quote is highly indicative of the 10th Century male mentality, but at least the part about beanbag applies. Obama's candidacy and election unleashed a supposedly dormant racist streak in the American electorate and Hillary Clinton's candidacy added misogyny to the equation. Those two streaks run sufficiently deep in the hearts of a sufficient number of voters, even a portion of those who might otherwise be partial to a Harris candidacy, that a ticket with two persons of color or two women just does not make political sense in the real world of American politics.

If I had had Harris' ear during the decision-making process, my next two criteria would have been to choose a governor from the Midwest to add executive experience to the ticket. Although Harris holds the second highest executive office in the country, she came to it from the Senate. Senators generally value consensus. They are masters of shifting the goalposts to come to an agreement. But it's the job of the President to set the goalposts and determine how much, if any, they should be allowed to shift at all. It's a different mindset, one that neither Obama nor Biden ever mastered. A governor on the ticket might assist Harris in developing that skill. Midwestern? Geographical balance, particularly since there's a Left Coast liberal at the lead.

I got the last bit wrong though. I expected her choice to balance the ticket in another way, to be more centrist than Harris. But Walz is not a centrist, as were the main challengers for the nod. No, I think that Harris chose Walz because he was as close to her progressive leanings as anyone else in the running. She doubled down. No deep policy divides. No clashes of style - although there are clearly style differences. Just not clashes. This pairing is not JFK and LBJ, or Lyndon and Hubert for that matter. Kamala and Tim will have no problem holding hands and singing Kumbaya together all of the way to the White House.

THE ATTACKS

       Military Service: Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard as a teenager. After 24 years of service, he had risen to the rank of Command Sergeant Major. I have read interviews with both superiors and subordinates that confirm that for some time prior to his retirement, Walz had discussed with them his desire to run for Congress and his concern that doing so would require him to leave the Guard because the Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from participating in political activities. He did indeed file for his run for the House in early 2005, some time before his unit was informed that they should prepare for the possibility of being deployed to the Middle East sometime in the next two years. Before. The charge that he deserted his unit because they had been cautioned to prepare for deployment is false. I suppose that he could have withdrawn from the Congressional election or asked the Pentagon for an exception to the Hatch Act as would have been required if he stayed with his unit. He did none of that. He simply continued with his planned retirement. I suspect that those in his former unit who accuse Walz of cowardly behavior will be voting for Trump. They’re entitled. I thank them for their service.

Walz's bio said that he had retired as a Command Sergeant Major. And the day that he retired, he was addressed as a Command Sergeant Major and treated like a Command Sergeant Major. The day after his retirement, because he had failed to complete a correspondence course to confirm his promotion from Staff Sergeant Major, he was considered a Staff Sergeant Major for benefits purposes. You say to-MAY-to. I say to-MAH-to. He's changed his bio.

In supporting gun control legislation, Walz once said that he opposed civilians carrying weapons such as he carried "in war." He misspoke. Although he carried such weapons and trained with such weapons, he never served in a combat zone. It is correct to say that Walz misspoke.

        Governor of Minnesota.: Tampon Tim is the sort of sniggering teenage nickname that one might expect from immature males uncomfortable discussing women’s periods. Such men are mostly Republicans, apparently. As governor, Walz signed a bill requiring that public schools make menstruation products freely available to students beginning at fourth grade. His critics charge that the law requires such products in bathrooms for boys. Not true. The law leaves the matter of distribution up to the individual school district.  I have read of several districts that do not require such products in boys rooms. I have not read of a single one that does.

Walz also signed a bill making free breakfast and lunch available to all students. In addition to simply making certain that kids were fed properly while in their charge, the law was intended to relieve districts of the administrative burden of qualifying students for free meals and of tracking families in debt to the system. Saving children the embarrassment of being refused service due to debt or administrative error was also a consideration. The attack comes because a contractor to the state’s Department of Education was found to have  defrauded the feeding programs of the Department of over $250M. The problem with this attack is that the fraud predated the law that Walz signed. It even predated Walz’s governorship, having begun during the administration of his predecessor. Yes, the buck stops at the governor’s desk. But in this case, the buck had been being passed before Walz had anything to do with the program.

IN CONCLUSION

Walz can be shown to have made mistakes. He has spent his entire life in the public eye in one way or another, so there are nits to be picked. But Walz has done nothing so egregious as to come close to losing my vote. In fact, the more that I dig, the happier that I am with Harris’ choice. I will vote Harris/Walz enthusiastically and with a clear conscious.

WHO BELONGS IN MY POLITICAL PARTY?

My politically conservative friends are convinced that I'm a masked, rock-throwing Antifa at heart. 

Why?

I believe that the gun lobby has perverted common sense when it comes to the reasonable control of firearms in the same way that the fossil fuel industry is trying to pervert our understanding of climate change. And I believe that both lobbies will eventually be understood to have the same wanton disregard for human life as we now know that the tobacco lobby had.

I believe that what goes on of a sexual nature behind closed doors is nobody's business except for the intellectually capable, of age, freely consenting adults in the room. And I believe that if you choose to participate in commerce in the public marketplace, your opinion of that sexual activity is just as irrelevant to your business as is race, religion, or ethnicity.

I believe that men in blue suits, white shirts, and red ties in state capitals do not have the right to tell a woman, her doctor, and anyone else that she chooses to consult what to say and do concerning her healthcare. And I believe that a woman's healthcare includes her reproductive healthcare.

I believe that the right to protest peacefully is a sacred American right. And I believe that carrying a flag onto a playing field for profit in a manner that is specifically forbidden by the US Flag Code is more fundamentally anti-American than taking a knee to protest racial injustice while that flag is being improperly displayed.

I do not believe that corporations are people or that money equals speech. I just don't. 

My politically progressive friends are convinced that I'm a corporatist stooge, a Reagan Republican in disguise

Why?

I believe that a flat tax can be both fair and progressive. And I believe that because I've done the math and can demonstrate that it is so.

I believe that BlackLivesMatter was doomed from the beginning to being labeled exclusive and racist. And I believe that if you have to take time from the struggle to explain to your allies why Black is inclusive of Brown, Red, and Yellow, you've obviously misnamed your movement.

I believe that MeToo has become a witch hunt that has abandoned the principles of due process and the presumption of innocence. And I believe that, although men are undeniably pigs, a witch hunt is morally repugnant regardless of the righteous intentions of the hunters.

I believe that only the privileged have the luxury to talk about privilege. And I believe that, if you took the time to ask, you would learn that White Privilege does not automatically extend to overweight, poor white women with bad teeth and a Southern accent. With props to Lenny Bruce, if Albert Einstein had a Southern accent, they would never have built The Bomb.

I don't believe that if you are White, you are by definition racist. I just don't.

Who belongs in my political party?

You belong in my political party if you believe that two plus two equal four and not some number approximating four. In other words, you belong in my political party if you believe in math and science.

You belong in my political party if you can talk to people with opposing political views without raising your voice or calling names. In other words, you belong in my political party if you have the ability to participate in civil discourse on topics that you hold dear with persons who don't believe as you believe.

You belong in my political party if you understand that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words, you belong in my political party if you know that perfection only exists in the mind of God and that you ain't God. 

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry is God.

OPEN LETTER TO MY FELLOW DEMOCRATS

Dear Democrats,

Having moved to France a couple of years ago, I have had the benefit of following the recent Presidential election at arm’s length – no television news, no mailings, no robocalls. Just internet sites like Flipboard that allowed me to pick and choose between such sources as NPR, Fox, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, AP, CNN, and such. I’m invested, though. I voted.

Here’s what I think, free of charge and worth every penny.

Progressives are now on the march. Trump is not their President. Well, I beg to differ. Trump is indeed their President, and mine too, just as Obama was the President of the Trump voters who so despised him. It is our job now to hold Trump’s feet to the fire with the same intensity that has led to Obama being criticized relentlessly from both ends of the political spectrum.

Never in my political life spanning over 60 years have I witnessed a torrent of obvious lies spoken by Presidential candidates and accepted by their devotees equivalent to the lies spoken almost daily by all four of the major party candidates. I include the Bobbsey Twins because there were those, as few as they were, who actually voted Green or Libertarian as though either of those clueless twerps represented an alternative. I don’t know if those votes affected the outcome of the election. As we all now understand, polls only have value to the elegantly coifed men and women who read the news or opine about the horse race without any connection to electoral reality. But the idea that voting for either Stein or Johnson was acceptable, either as a protest or because they deserved serious consideration for the Presidency, is ludicrous. I have in the past, when confronted with unacceptable choices, written in Sandy Koufax, a man of unquestioned character, unquestioned talent, and an aversion to the limelight. Can anyone say the same for Stein or Johnson?

Progressives in the Democratic Party are now complaining that Bernie was the better candidate and would have won the Presidency had not the DNC favored Hillary. To that argument, one never to be resolved, I would offer three points.

First, suppose that you are a lifelong member of a club. You work hard, invest time and money. Then one day, a man who for decades had every opportunity to join the club, but who refused to do so, suddenly enrolls for the sole purpose of becoming the leader of the club. His opposition for leadership is a long-time, committed member. How could anyone expect the membership of that club not to have an obvious preference between the two? It’s simply childish to suppose otherwise. We are talking politics here. And politics ain’t beanbag.

Secondly, having spent the entire primary season trashing Hillary and the DNC mercilessly, Progressives have argued that Hillary was a flawed candidate. Their vitriol lasted throughout the primaries and general election campaign. Could their constant, vicious attacks have had a bearing on the manner in which Hillary was viewed by those observing the carnage from the outside? I would certainly think so. For those on the fence, the rancor demonstrated by people purporting to be members of her own party even after the primaries were over had to have been a consideration.

Finally, marching is bullshite. Petitioning is bullshite. Only voting in an election counts. Man up. And if that phrase is too sexist for you, tough patooties. Man up.

Moving forward, we need to be asking several questions, with one voice, loudly and with conviction.

Has a wall been built along our southern border? Has Mexico paid for it? Have 11,000,000 illegals been deported? Has Trump deported even as many people as Obama has? How many Muslims are on the new national registry? (These aren’t my priorities at all but they were campaign centerpieces.)

On November 8, 2008, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed at 930.99. On November 8, 2016, it closed at 2,139.56, worth 130% more. That’s Obama’s record. How do the markets compare under a Trump administration?

In January, 2009, when Obama took office, the unemployment rate was 7.8%. In October, 2016, (most recent available numbers) the rate is 4.9%, a decrease of about 60%. That’s Obama’s record. How does unemployment compare under a Trump administration? (It’s true that the workforce participation rate declined from 65.7% to 62.8% during the same period. We’ll track that too.)

Of interest to an expat like me is the strength of the dollar, the exchange rate against the euro. On January 1, 2009, it cost $1.40 to buy a euro. On election day, I could buy a euro for $1.09, meaning that the dollar is 30% stronger against the euro since Obama took office. That’s Obama’s record. Let’s see if Trump’s dollar fares as well.

There are other indicators that we could use – decline in the deficit, inflation near zero, exports up. But let’s focus on just a few, easily determined, generally accepted statistics.

Let’s hold Trump and the Republicans in Congress accountable. If we have lost because the electorate has been pulled to the right, let’s start pulling back from the left. Let’s demonstrate why the better educated electorate votes Democratic. Let’s learn.

Affectionately,

Ira

REVEALED - KOCHS BIRTHED MODERN PROGRESSIVES

A stash of shredded documents rescued from the garbage outside of Fred Koch's pool boy's mobile home, meticulously reconstructed by an Eagle Scout from Norman, Oklahoma for his Current Events merit badge, reveals that the Koch family has been funding the progressive movement within the Democratic Party for decades. Their successes on behalf of the Republican agenda have been stunning, resulting in the election of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Here's what the documents reveal:

1. Nixon had become a political punchline. Ignored by Eisenhower, beaten by an upstart Kennedy, beaten again for the governorship of California two years later, the idea that Nixon could be elected President was ludicrous...until Koch-funded progressives branded Humphrey a turncoat and turned the Democratic convention in Chicago into a Marx Brothers movie. A wounded Humphrey and a fragmented Democratic Party never recovered. Enter President Nixon.

2. Reagan defeated the guy who defeated Nixon to be elected governor of California and chose to be inaugurated at 10 minutes past midnight on the advice of Nancy's astrologer. (No, I didn't make that up.) In 1976, Regan lost the hard-fought Republican nomination to the incumbent, albeit by appointment, President Gerald Ford. Ford then lost the election to Jimmy Carter. Did the Democrats learn the lesson that a political party loses when the incumbent President is challenged? Nope. Koch-funded progressives Jerry Brown and Ted Kennedy took on President Carter with Kennedy taking his insurgency all the way to the convention. Kennedy lost the nomination but, surprising no one, a wounded Carter and a fragmented Democratic Party never recovered. Enter President Reagan.

3. Bill Clinton was a charismatic good ol' boy from Arkansas, loved by everyone, warts and all. (The exact placement of those warts is NOT a subject for conversation.) Al Gore had all of the charisma of a damp sponge but he had been at Bill's side for eight years and his earnest nerdiness did have a certain charm. Enter Koch-funded wonkinator Ralph Nader. Nader challenged Gore for the title of Dude Least Likely to Get Laid on Prom Night and his smears of Gore as Republican Lite, combined with his ability to siphon off the votes of fellow nerds, wounded Gore sufficiently that the fragmented Democratic Party never recovered. Enter President Bush.

Now I'm supposed to believe that a wounded Hillary Clinton and a fragmented Democratic Party leading to the election of Donald Trump was facilitated by tens of millions of dollars raised on behalf of Bernie Sanders from young, unmarried activists with crushing college loan debt who are living in their parents' basements? Not likely. Follow the money. The Kochs strike again!

(It's called satire. If you haven't figured that out by now, you need to buy a book, find a beach, and chill.)

RANDOM THOUGHTS #4 - B.B. KING, WYOMING/FIRST AMENDMENT, FAST TRACK/PROGRESSIVES

B.B. KING
Rest In Peace.

I'm not capable of adding significantly to what will be written about B.B. in the coming weeks and months. But here's a tip. If you're not into guitar-driven blues, and I understand that not everyone is, give a listen to Let the Good Times Roll: The Music of Louis Jordan. It's mostly swing and jive. It's upbeat and fun. And the players are top notch. You won't hear overmuch of B.B.'s guitar but you'll get a good feel for the man's joyous feel for music.


WYOMING/FIRST AMENDMENT
Slate reports that the Wyoming legislature has just passed a law making it illegal on open lands to gather data intended for use to report, among other things, environmental crimes to the state or federal government. The report suggests that taking a photograph of a criminal environmental act in Wyoming (illegal dumping in a watercourse on federal land, for instance) would result in a jail term for the photographer.

Folks out West are fond of saying that the federal government has overreached its authority, that it's time for citizens to take back their government. Instead of government telling us what to do, so the rationale goes, we should be telling the government what to do. Well, how do you take back your government if your government criminalizes that act of exposing lawlessness? How do you tell your government that your neighbor has polluted your water if your government doesn't allow you to provide the proof?

Libertarians should be up in arms. My Libertarian friends have justified defunding the EPA to me by insisting that citizens have the right to sue polluters who befoul their air and water. That should be enough, they say. But how do citizens sue polluters if citizens are prevented from gathering evidence against them? How can the First Amendment be twisted sufficiently to ban photography on open lands, notwithstanding the First Amendment right to petition the government?

Shame on Wyoming, whose legislature is over 80% Republican. I wonder. Do they call themselves Conservatives?

FAST TRACK/PROGRESSIVES
There's nothing more disappointing to an old-school Liberal than being presented with proof that Progressives are just as intellectually dishonest as Conservatives.

Senate Democrats continue to oppose Obama's request for 'fast track' trade pact authority. Understand, the Senate is not considering a treaty. The Senate is considering fast tracking the treaty, whether or not to hold an up-or-down, simple majority, no amendments, no filibuster vote on whatever treaty Obama eventually negotiates and sends to the Senate. It seems like just yesterday that Senate Democrats were excoriating their Republican counterparts for interfering with Obama's ability to negotiate with a foreign power (Iran), interfering before the terms of the deal were known. In the recent past, Senate Democrats have also spoken forcefully for up-and-down, no filibuster, simple majority votes on any number of issues.

Shame on Senate Democrats. Shame on Progressives. They have acted with no more philosophical consistency than their Conservative counterparts.

EBOLA, CLIMATE CHANGE (GLOBAL WARMING), ISRAEL, PROGRESSIVES, PAUL RYAN & STUFF

Every once in a  while I get worked up over politics and just have to write about the silliness that surrounds us. For instance, Paul Ryan was quoted recently as having excoriated the Affordable Care Act's over $700 billion in cuts from Medicare. How terrible! Yet he certainly can't have forgotten that his own budget proposals contained approximately the same amount of cuts to Medicare. I suppose what bugs Ryan is that while he proposed to cut benefits to consumers, the Affordable Care Act cut payments to providers. Thus, in one little tidbit, behold the definition of politics, Count on the average voter to have the memory retention capabilities of a fruit fly (with apologies to fruit flies) and be shameful in exploiting that fact.

Of course, this tactic is not confined to Republicans. (I almost typed conservative Republicans but that would be a double negative.) For instance, Elizabeth Warren was a registered Republican for about as much of her adult life as she has been a Democrat, a fact that does not appear in her bio on such sites as Huffington Post. One site, however, does quote her as saying that she began (emphasis mine) voting Democratic in 1995. Does that mean that she managed to reconcile herself to voting for Reagan twice? One interviewer claims to have asked her that question and claims further that she declined to answer. Protecting her right to privacy, was she? Or protecting her newly-minted Progressive image? I would love to hear how anyone who claims the Progressive mantle managed to find sufficient reason to vote for Reagan over Carter at a time when Reagan was as far to the right of center as Ted Cruz is today.

So, the expediency of the moment abounds on both sides of the political fence.

Allow me one more shot at Progressives before I take aim at Republicans. During the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza, many of my Progressive friends were appalled. I get it. It was a hot, ugly mess. But in expressing their outrage, they not only questioned Israel's tactics of the moment, but Israel's very right to exist.

Where to begin? While Columbus was accidentally discovering the New World, Europeans back home were hunting down and killing Jews with great vigor as part of the Inquisition - not really a Spanish invention at all but sanctioned a couple of centuries previously in Rome. Russian progroms refined the art of Jewish genocide generations ahead of Hitler. And well into the 20th Century in the US, one of the Ks that the KKK wanted to eliminate in America, in addition to Koons and Katholics, was Kikes.

So even if you don't view Israel as being as legitimate as so many of the other European-sponsored constructs in the Middle East, even if you don't accept the argument that the Palestinians who left in 1948 weren't so much chased as invited to leave by Arab armies who promised a triumphant return after the Jews were driven into the Med, even if you blame the horrid conditions in the camps on the Jews rather than the indifference and/or nefarious self-interest of their Arab hosts, it seems that there's as much of a Progressive case to be made for reparations to Jews as there is on behalf of African-Americans, as is the current Progressive fashion.

On to Republicans, who are not scientists. What's with that? Are only farmers allowed to vote on farm bills? Was John Glenn given carte blanche to determine NASA's budget as the only astronaut on Capitol Hill? This is simply ludicrous. The 80s were warmer than the 70s, The 90s were warmer than the 80s. And so on and so on. You don't have to be a scientist. You just have to have blood flow to your brain. And whether or not you believe that human activity is a contributing factor, how can you legislate against the Pentagon planning for the appearance of new sea routes through Arctic or the effect of sea-level rise on existing facilities? Yet that sort of silliness managed to get written into the House's version of the Defense budget this year. One expects that sort of thing from a state like North Carolina, which has banned basing coastal development policies on scientific predictions of how much the sea level will rise. But the US House? C'mon man...

And then there's ebola. I personally like the viral internet meme: More Americans have been married to Kim Kardashian than have died from ebola. But if it bleeds, it leads. Fortunately, polls are showing that 'bleeds/leads' is turning off Gen Y to mainstream media. That's a hopeful trend. Unfortunately, Gen Y is not well represented in Congress. Brain dead people are fully represented, however. Take, for example, the Congressman who suggested that the Surgeon General should head Washington's response to ebola rather than Obama's appointed ebola czar. When it was pointed out to Congressman Chaffetz that Senate Republicans have held up the confirmation of Obama's choice for Surgeon General, leaving the post vacant, Chaffetz tried to backpedal. But read the transcript. You can't fix stupid. (I have to stop using these pop culture callouts...)

I leave you with a quote from the movie An American President:

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you (Insert Politician's Name Here) is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. 

WHITE PRIVILEGE - ONE PERSON'S TAKE

My Progressive friends call me a neo-liberal or a corporatist or worse. My Conservative friends say that I'm clearly a Progressive. One or two of my friends say, "Gee. I've got the same problem. What's wrong with us?" Maybe, after reading my take on White Privilege on my Political Page, you'll decide that there's a lot wrong with me. Or not. We'll see...