Obama's Small Circle

An oddity of politics is that one has to be open and encompassing, quite literally have a million close friends, in order to get elected. Once elected, the cacophony of all those friends mixes with the complexity of the job to make a totally unbearable mishmash. It doesn't matter if you are a small town councilman or President of the United States, the natural reaction is to try to shut out as much of the noise as possible. Since you can't make the job less complex you start limiting the number of voices you hear.

It is perfectly natural and also incredibly stupid.

Also natural is that your closest aides will encourage you in this self-destructive behavior because they realize that their personal power over you is inversely related to how many people have your ear. If your inner circle is five close advisors and you suddenly decided to increase that circle to 25 then their power diminishes greatly. Your inner circle will naturally fight like rabid animals to keep that circle as small as possible.

Such is the case with President Barack Obama. In my lifetime I don't recall any president who successfully bucked the inertia of their aides to cut them off from their greater network of friends. My gut tells me that Eisenhower and FDR managed it - Ike because he had long experience with headstrong assholes during WWII and Roosevelt because his personality was too strong to be locked away either by polio or advisors. My gut says this but I can't be certain. All the presidents of my lifetime (Clinton, Bush I & II, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Johnson) ignored their cabinets and allowed access to only a very small circle of advisors.

More recent presidents have had the likes of Rahm Emanuel and Karl Rove. These aides set themselves up as high priests, the only ones allowed direct access to the President. All the others must submit their petitions through the priesthood. It's a bad way to run a life and a worse way to run a country. Still, I understand why it happens. It's human nature.

Tea Party Racism

There are few humans on the face of the Earth more terrified of people with Hispanic surnames than Tom Tancredo. On setting foot in Miami and finding people fluent in Spanish he declared the city "Third World."

It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country. ~ Tom Tancredo

Ironically, his name can be freely translated to mean "extreme belief."

Tancredo's latest venture into the obscene is to call for a revival of Jim Crow Laws to oppress Hispanics. Specifically, he wants a "literacy test before people can vote in this country." Of course, anyone with minimal intelligence (I know that excludes Tancredo) knows that this country used literacy testing for decades to disenfranchise black voters.

Then again, Tancredo's goal is the total disenfranchisement of Hispanic-Americans. In his perfect United States, people with Hispanic surnames would have to pass impossible hurdles to be considered citizens. People born in this country, people who can trace their linage as Americans back several generations, if they have brown skin and Hispanic names are the target of Tancredo's unremitting hatred.

And note. Tancredo is a beloved of the Tea Party crowd.

The Future of a Republican America

Can be found today in Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs is Reagan Country. In 2008, El Paso County gave John McCain a 59%-40% edge. Twenty-two percent of the region believes that Barack Obama was born in Kenya (or the planet Zork). It is 80% white with a lot of those retired military. There are five military bases surrounding Colorado Springs including the Cheyenne Mountain headquarters of Stargate Command. The economy is based on military spending ("War...War...War...Doesn't matter what it's for") and tourism.

And Colorado Springites believe that taxes are the Devil's dues. Last years they rejected by a 2-1 margin a tax increase necessary to prevent a wholesale shutdown of city services. The result is:

• Citizens are being urged to mow public parks with their own lawn mowers as the city can't afford to.
• They won't need to mow the grass for long because park irrigation is ending and the city's green spaces will quickly turn brown.
  
• Trash collection is ending in the parks too so the long, brown grass won't be visible beneath the piles of garbage.
  
• But with the street lights turned out it is going to be hard to find the brown, trash strewn parks.
• With cuts in police services no one but fools or criminals will be going to those dark parks anyhow.
• The street repair budget is being zeroed out meaning an economic boon for local tire shops.
• Museums, rec centers, and swimming pools are all being closed giving tourists no places to go except the aforementioned parks.

This is just the top of a long spiral down. The city relies on sales taxes for most of its revenue and tourists for the sales taxes. What sort of tourists will be attracted to brownscaped parks, shuttered museums, and third-world sized potholes?

Colorado Springs is not some Rust Belt town trying to survive a decades-long depression. It is a well-off ($80,000 median household income) community of Republicans who brag about having the "largest independent gun dealer in Colorado." It is the evangelical mega-church capital of the world (James Dobson and Ted Haggard). The area is chock-a-block with gated communities that don't give a fuck about their neighbors.

The four things (guns, evangelical Christians, Republicans, and gated communities) fit together to form a city that is a blueprint for post-Tea Party America.

Hat tip to Sadly No.

The Tortured Art of Torturer Protection

There is a queer little dance going on to insure no one is punished for all of the torturing that filled the past decade.

• The people who did the torturing get off because they were just following orders.
• The people who planned and justified the torturing get off because they were just ignorant twits.
• The people who ordered the torture get off because....

Okay, this last one is a toughie. Partly, you just don't charge the former president for the war crimes he committed because it wouldn't be collegial. Partly, the current president might want to do the same thing or at least use the results of past torture. Partly, there is an old rule in royalty that the current king does not hang the former king lest hanging kings becomes a habit.

Bottom line? John Yoo will not be punished (except by having to hold his Stanford law classes at secret locations) because being he is only an idiot and didn't get any actual blood on his hands. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are found blameless because they were just following the advice of the idiot Yoo. As for the hands-on people connected to torturing people? Hell, they are getting medals.

This doesn't mean nobody is being punished because of the torture. Defense attorneys are still at risk.

The Sound of Silence

How did President Obama's Q&A with congressional Republicans go? The best metric is what rightwing websites are saying about it.

Virtually nothing.

You know that if the President had said something stupid or even the least bit non-genius Republicans would have been all over it today like stink on a skunk. Republicans across the Internet are trying to pretend today that yesterday never happened.

The silence is telling. Barack hit a home run.

Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe

You've got to respect people who have the balls to call lawyers dicks, to their faces.

Sure, there are people who will laugh at lawyers, generically, as a class, I'm not mentioning anyone specifically. Heck, lawyers even laugh at themselves, allegedly.

But Cracked.com had the courage to single out five law firms, by name complete with links to their websites, as totally sick bastards. We're talking law firms that specialize in drug charges that uses images of cocaine in their ads and firms that brag about their ability to clear child molesters of charges by attacking the child in court.

I'm not mirroring Cracked.com's article, not showing any of the specific law firms mentioned, because I don't have a death wish. You can go there and read it yourself. But be quick because Cracked is probably going to be drowning in lawsuits in about six minutes.

Revealing the Number of the Beast

Goldman Sachs by the numbers:

• $8 billion - from the Federal Government due to the AIG bailout.
• $16 billion - Bonuses to top executives.
• $1 million - Donation to Haiti relief.
• $1 million (less $6,000) - Donations to Barack Obama, 2008.
• $6 million - All political donations, 2008.
• 133333% - Return on investment - $6 million invested versus $8 billion bailout.

Standard Disclaimer: The wondrous evil that is Goldman Sachs deserves daily worship. Please don't sue me.