Friday, December 14, 2012

Sandy Hook

I'm by no means an old geezer, but I have been around long enough to remember a lot of tragic events in the USA.  These events are seared into my memory, and it only takes a word like "Challenger", "Columbine", or "9-11" to bring a flood of memories back to the surface.  However, while I'll never forget these events, I'd be lying if I told you they evoked strong emotions in me.  Sure, I realized these events were tragic, and I felt bad for those who died or lost loved ones, but none of those tragic events moved me to tears.

That all changed today.

I first saw the news at about noon today when I pulled up a web browser while eating lunch at my desk.  As I read the stories and looked at the pictures ( especially the pictures of young children fleeing in terror ), I couldn't help but think of my own kids.  I couldn't help but think of how terrified they'd be if they spent the last moments of their lives in that horrible situation.  I couldn't help but think of those kids crying out for their Mommies and Daddies ( as all children do in moments of great distress ).  I couldn't help but think of them leaving this world without their parents to comfort them. I couldn't help but think of what the parents of those children must have been feeling when they got the horrible news.

That's when I started to tear up.

I was in the middle of my workplace and had a lot of work to do, so I certainly wasn't going to break down.  I had no choice but to stop reading those articles and pull up the ESPN web site for the escapism of sports.  However, I also found that I simply could not look away.  I pulled up articles about the tragedy a few more times that day, and each time my reaction was the same.  I'd read a few paragraphs, look at a few pictures, and find myself tearing up again.  I never actually broke down ( I'm not even sure if let a tear leave my eye ), but when I watched President Obama well up later in the day, I knew exactly what he was feeling.

I guess this all hit too close to home as a parent of young children.  I'm pretty sure I thought about my kids a lot more than I thought about my work today, and certainly gave them bigger hugs than usual when I got home.

I hope this tragedy will serve as a tipping point for gun control in this country, but I've also been around long enough to know that the odds are against it.  I think that even the NRA will have the good sense to keep their mouths shut for a few days, but I guarantee that by this time next week, at least one NRA wing-nut will say something like "A lot of those kids would still be alive today, if the teachers had been carrying hand-guns".

I hope I'm wrong about that.  I hope that Americans can put pressure on their politicians to finally do something to improve gun control.  It might be a lost cause, but it's still a cause worth fighting for, and it would be a shame if most people just forgot all about this in a week a so.  We need to do what we can to keep the conversation going.   We need to honor the memory of those children to make sure that they didn't die in vain.  Maybe a conversation about gun control isn't quite the outcry this nation needs, but we've got to start somewhere.  Maybe if enough people talk, Washington will finally listen.

Rich

Edit: I just sent out an email to my Congressman about this issue, and I urge every other concerned person to do the same.  I'm not going to pretend that the members of Congress are going to read these letters, but numbers can make a statement, and perhaps a few million letters/emails on the subject can make a big statement.
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Saturday, December 1, 2012

It's a Populist Life

I was just struck tonight by how economically populist  "It's a Wonderful Life" is.  Seriously, it feels like the run-on-the-bank scene or the "scurvy little spider" scene could have been written by MSNBC's Ed Schultz.  If this film was made today, Republicans would protest that it demonizes "job creators" like Mr. Potter.  As Liberal as Hollywood is these days, they don't really make too many movies like this anymore.  It's kinda sad that movies "Atlas Shrugged" get made these days, but movies like "It's a Wonderful Life" don't.

That's not to say that the primary message of "It's a Wonderful Life" is Economic Populism, but it's definitely a major theme, perhaps the biggest theme of the first half of the movie ( up until the point where Uncle Billy loses the money ).  I never really how noticed this until tonight.  If Democrats want to start winning House seats again, I think they should all sit down and watch "It's a Wonderful Life".  If they can learn to talk about Economic Populism the way George Bailey does, they might actually be able to win some House seats in small-town Middle America.
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Sunday, November 25, 2012

The Coming Republican Civil War

I won't lie - it's been fun to watch the Republicans over these past few weeks.  Long before Election Night, I'd been wondering how the Republicans would react to a loss, and I was hoping they would react in a way that would hurt their chances in 2016.  I was hoping that after losing with moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney, the Republicans would decide to nominate a "true Conservative" in 2016.  Of course, a true conservative would get absolutely hammered in the 2016 Presidential Election.  There's no doubt that the USA electorate is going to become more liberal on social issues over the next 4 years, and the part of the electorate that believes in traditional conservative "values" is dying out ( quite literally ).  For example, take a look at the chart below from this article:



As you can see only 22% of Americans over the age of 65 support Gay Marriage, while 58% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 support Gay Marriage.  Based on those demographic trends, I've got to believe that at most 20% of people over 80 support Gay Marriage while at least 60% of people between the ages of 14 and 17 support Gay Marriage.  This doesn't bode well for socially conservative candidates when you consider that many of today's 14-17 year olds will be standing in a voting booth in 4 years while a lot today's octogenarian voters will be lying in a box in 4 years.

It's also clear that courting the white vote at the expense of the minority vote is not a good long term strategy when you consider that the majority of people being born in the USA these days are non-white.

Much to my delight, it seems like most Republicans want to adopt a near-suicidal "true Conservative" strategy for the 2016 election.  However, not all of them do - and that's where the "Civil War" comes one.

One example of a Republican who can see the writing on the wall is David Frum.  I was listening to him on a podcast a few days after the election, and he was arguing that the GOP needs to focus more on economic issues rather than social ones.  He was joined on this podcasts by a bunch of Republicans who disagreed with him vehemently.  These other Republicans ( I forget their names ) argued that most voters still agreed with the GOP message, but that Romney was simply the wrong messenger.  They argued that a candidate who was comfortable talking about conservative principles could have won the election.  They even went as far to argue that Republican's should have made more of an issue out of same-sex marriage ( as they did with much success in 2004 ), because when same-sex marriage has appeared on ballots in state referendums, the public has voted against it 90% of the time ( never mind that all the votes against same-sex marriage happened prior to 2012, and all the votes in favor of same-sex marriage happened in 2012 ).  When Frum spoke about how the GOP was abandoning the youth vote, one of the other Republicans argued that the true Conservative message could still be appealing to young voters because Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly won voters between the ages of 23 and 29.  Frum then pointed out that the 23 to 29 years olds who voted for Reagan back in 1980 are the same older people who voted for Romney in 2012 ( People between the ages of 23 and 29 in 1980 are now part of the 45-64 year-old demographic that voted for Romney 51%-47%, while today's 23-29 year-olds are part of the 18-29 year-old demographic that voted for Obama 60%-37%. ).

Ultimately, as much as the David Frum's of the world would like the Republican Party to change, I believe the reality-challenged wing of the Republican Party will win out in the 2016 Presidential primaries.  At this point there are still far too many true-believer Far Right Republican voters that would rather risk losing the general election than abandon their principles.  These people believe in their ideas with a religious fervor ( quite literally religious ), and that faith has made them so delusional that they many still sincerely believe they could win general elections with a pure Conservative message despite all evidence to the contrary.  Due to these Far Right voters, the 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee will either be an un-electable true Conservative or a moderate who gets gravely damaged by taking Far Right positions during the primaries ( For example, when likely 2016 Presidential candidate Chris Christie was recently asked whether he believed in the Theory of Evolution or Creationism he responded by saying "That's none of your business".  Chris Christie, may be many things ( and I don't like most of those things ), but he's not some Bible-thumping idiot who believes the world was created in 6 days.  The fact he's afraid to say he believes in evolution tells you all you need to know about the Republican's Presidential election chances in 2016. ).

So, assuming for the moment that I'm right and the GOP is bound to lose the 2016 Presidential Election, what happens after 2016?  Well, that's when things could get really interesting.  That's when the Republican coalition could come apart at the seams, and the real Republican Civil War could start.

For the past 32 years or so ( From Ronald Reagan's 1980 election until now ), the Republican party has been held together by an unholy alliance between Christian Conservatives and wealthy moderate Republicans ( Thomas Franks gives a great description of the dynamics between these two groups in his fantastic and still-relevant 2004 book "What's the Matter with Kansas" ).  The Christian Conservatives care primarily about social issues like abortion, gay rights, the biblical role of woman ( they should be submissive to their husbands ) and education ( They want Young Earth Creationism and  "Intelligent" Design, to be taught alongside Evolution and the Big Bang Theory in schools ).  Wealthy moderate Republicans don't care about these social issues at all.  The wealthy Republicans simply want their taxes to be low and their businesses to be less regulated.  I'm sure the vast majority of them with daughters would want their daughters to be able to get an abortion, but the abortion laws don't really concern them.  They know that it's extremely unlikely that abortion will ever be made illegal in the USA ( If Roe v. Wade was overturned today, abortion rights would be left up to the individual states, and abortion would remain legal in many states.  For well-off people, crossing state lines to get an abortion wouldn't be a great hardship. ), and even it is was they could use their wealth and influence to get qualified doctors to perform secret abortions for them using the most advanced equipment.

Most of these wealthy moderate Republican's probably look at these non-affluent Christian Conservatives with disdain.  However, they put up with them because they need them to get what they want.  If they can get these Christian Conservatives fired up and out to the polls to vote on social issues, they can get politicians elected that will give them the low taxes they want.  They can get politician's elected who will be in their pockets.    They can continue to get politician's elected who will stack the deck in favor of the rich.

For a long time, this has worked perfectly for the wealthy moderate Republicans.  Taxes are as low as they've ever been, income inequality is as great as ever, and laws governing social policy have NOT gotten more conservative ( In fact, most have become more liberal.  People can now be openly gay in the military and same-sex marriage is legal in many states. ).

However, if the Conservative Republicans nominate a true Conservative in 2016, and the Democrats take the White House again, these moderate Republicans are not going to be happy.  They are not going to be happy with 12 consecutive years of Democratic rule.  They are not going to with the higher taxes. They are not going to be happy with laws that help the "little guy".  They are not going to be happy when their workers can assert their rights more.  They are going to be angry, and they are going to blame the Christian Right yahoos they had been putting up with for 36 years.  I'm not sure what actions the moderate Republicans or Christian Right will take at this point, but their divorce will be fascinating theater.  It will be fascinating to see who will "get custody" of the Republican Party.  The moderate Republicans will have most of the money, but the Christian Right will have most of the votes.  I'm not sure who will win this battle, but when it's over, the political landscape will never be the same again.

Rich


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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Smartphones and Vampire Fingers

I've finally joined the 21st century and have gotten a smart phone.  As of last Sunday, I am now the proud owner of an iPhone 5.  I've quite enjoyed smartphone-land, but there's one problem that is starting to annoy me...

Apparently, I have vampire fingers.

I should have noticed this a long time ago.  After all, there were signs ...

1) During my first year of high school, we did a Biology lab in which which had to draw blood from our lab partner and test the blood to determine blood type.  We were each given a bunch of small sterilized metallic shards we had to strike our lab-partner's fingers with ( in order to break the skin the draw blood ) .  I was able to draw my lab partner's blood without much of a problem, but when he struck my finger with the little shard, nothing happened.

Well, actually, perhaps it's not quite accurate to say nothing happened.  It did sting quite a bit and there certainly was a little hole in my right index finger, but no matter how hard I squeezed, I couldn't get blood to come out of that little hole.  So, we tried the experiment again using my left finger, and got the same result - pain, a hole in the finger, but no blood.  Finally we tried my right ring finger and managed to get a little bit of blood out.

2) My vampire fingers surfaced again a few years later with the portable fingerprint scanner I needed to use to log in remotely to my office's network.  I could eventually get the thing to read my fingerprint, but it usually took about 10 tries.  I went to PC support to try to get the problem solved.  They tried out a few new fingerprint scanners, but I had the same problem with each one.  Finally the PC support guy just gave up and enabled a backdoor that would allow me to log into the network without fingerprint authentication ( which was so against the security rules that he whispered the information to me so nobody else could hear. ).

3) About a month ago, I went to a new doctor to get my first checkup in several years.  He was a bit concerned about my unusually low pulse rate ( It's usually in the low 50s when I'm at rest ), so he made me go through a bunch of tests.  One of the tests was a blood oxygen test which is done by sticking one's finger in a little device.  The device gave me such a low reading that the guy giving the test was surprised that I wasn't fainting right there and then.  Yeah - so basically blood oxygen finger testing devices can't detect much oxygen or blood in my fingers.  So, it does appear that I have vampire fingers ( or perhaps zombie fingers ).

So, as you might imagine, vampire fingers and smart phones don't really work well together.  There are plenty of times when I simply can't get the iPhone to recognize that I'm touching something on a screen.  I know that I don't have a faulty iPhone, because each time I ask my wife to push a button that doesn't work for me, it works fine for her.  This doesn't happen with most iPhone applications ( thank goodness ), but unfortunately, it's a big problem when I try to use the App Store or download a podcast from Podcenter.  You know that little box that says "free" on the App Store.  When you press that button, it's supposed to turn into a green bar that says "install" ( or "download", I forget which ), and then you push that little green bar to install your app.  I usually can't get that little "free" box to turn into the green box.  For more than half the apps I have, my wife needed to touch the "free" box for me.  The other problem is the little pointing-down arrow you need to touch on Podcenter to download a podcast.  Pushing that little Podcenter down-arrow only seems to work 5% of the time.  I've been downloading a lot of podcast to listen to on the train, but sometime it seems that I'm spending as much time trying to download podcasts that actually listening to them.

That being said, I can always get my normal-fingered wife to help out with this stuff, and aside from really small stuff like the Podcenter "down-arrow" of the App-Store "free" box, everything else seems to work fine.  I'm really loving the iPhone 5 so far.  Between the podcasts and all the newspapers I have apps for ( We have a weekend subscription to the New York Times, but that gives us full access 7-days a week online ), I have access to all the political/sports news I could ever want to digest.  Today, I listened to a podcast of "Meet the Press" on the train.  I'm really loving this.  Even with the vampire-fingers problem, I already can't imagine life without a smartphone.

Rich
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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Election Night Tweets

For the sake of posterity, I've pasted all my Election Night tweets below:










 



























































































































































































































































































































































































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Monday, November 5, 2012

Election Eve 2012

Quick post before the big day tomorrow ...

I'm feeling pretty good about Obama's chances, but I'm still worried about the voter suppression efforts by the Republican administrations in Florida and Ohio.  Florida has 12 referendums on the ballot to slow down voting, and the long lines we have seen in Ohio early voting this weekend suggest that pro-Democrat districts might not have been allotted enough voting machines by the Republican administration.
In any case, I'll be glued to my TV all night tomorrow, and I intent to fire out tweets with my thoughts/worries all night tomorrow.

One thought I keep having is how cool it would be it Obama won the Electoral College but lost the popular.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not really hoping for an election that close - I'd like Obama to win by a nice wide margin.  However, if he does win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote, it would change politics for the better.  If Romney lost the Presidency while winning the popular vote, Republican's would go absolutely ape-shit, and they might actually push for a Constitutional amendment to get rid of the electoral college.  Democrats would almost certainly go along with an amendment to abolish the Electoral College because  ...
1) They still remember how the Electoral College launched the George W. Bush Presidency in 2000, even though Al Gore won the popular vote.
2) Getting rid of the Electoral College would benefit Democrats more than Republicans in general.  All those low-population solid red states between the coasts have a disproportionate amount of electoral votes, because each state gets an electoral vote for each Senator regardless of the population of the state.  So, even though solid-Democrat California has about 53 times the population of solid-Republican Montana ( 53 congressional districts verses 1 for Montana ) , it only has about 18 times as many electoral votes ( 55 for California verses 3 for Montana ).  That basically means that a given voter in Montana has 3 times as much influence on the election as a voter in California.  3 electoral votes may not seem like much, but it does make a difference when you start to add up lots of small solid Republican states like Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, etc.  Republicans get a California-level of electoral votes out of a bunch of small Republican states that have nowhere near the combined population of California.
   I also believe that Democrats would have a much easier time doing Presidential campaigning in a post Electoral College nation.  The Democrats could just focus most of their resources on large cities, while the Republicans would need to find a way to get out the Republican vote across vast rural areas.

However, aside from the partisan effects, a post Electoral College nation would be better for democracy in general.  It would be great to cast a vote that actually -you know- counted.  I'll be one of the first people in my district to vote tomorrow, but I'll cast that vote with the knowledge that it doesn't really count for anything  Obama's going to win New Jersey whether I vote or not, and it's sad that the majority of Americans will be casting votes tomorrow that will be just as meaningless as mine.

In any case, my civic duty calls.  I'll be out there tomorrow, and I hope you all will be too.

Rich
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Friday, October 12, 2012

Baracky III

Does anyone remember the start of Rocky III?
Here, take a look ...



The movie starts with a montage of Rocky winning fight after fight in convincing fashion.  He's on top of the world.  It's all coming easy for him - too easy.  It soon becomes clear to us that he's getting soft.  There's a hungry challenger on the horizon who just can't wait to get his shot at Rocky.  The challenger's got the "Eye of the Tiger", and Rocky's lost it, and it's clear what's going to happen when the two of them finally meet in the ring.

That's what happened to Obama in that first debate with Romney.  After watching him mop the floor with his competition back in 2008, lots of us became convinced he was a great debater - and Obama started to believe it too.  What we didn't realize was that much like Rocky at the start of Rocky III, his resounding victories came against a bunch of palookas ( McCain, Hillary, Edwards ( His crappy performance against Cheney in 2004 killed Kerry's momentum ) ).  When he found himself up against somebody who actually came to fight, he went down as hard as Rocky did in his first fight with Clubber Lang ( The debate also reminded me of this quote from the first Rocky movie: "He doesn't know it's a damn show!  He thinks it's a damn fight!" ).

So, what's next?  Well if you're an Obama fan, all you can do is hope this story continues to follow the "Rocky III" script.  That means Obama's gotta get the "Eye of the Tiger" back.  That means he's got some serious training to do between now and Tuesday.  He's got to get into the "gym" and start training with "Apollo".  So, who's Obama's "Apollo".  Well, in Rocky III, Apollo was a retired, charismatic, egotistical former champ.  So, there really only one choice here - Obama's gotta head into the poorest, white-trashiest section of Arkansas and start training with Bill Clinton.  He's gotta train where Clinton got his start - in Arkansas' political "gyms", full of young hungry politicians with the "Eye of the Tiger".



Somewhere, I hope that Obama and Clinton are running together on a beach like this ...



Rich

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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Someone I Should Have Known

A few days ago, I learned via facebook that a very close friend of one of my best friends had died at the age of 46.  I didn't know the fellow ( his name was Mark ) at all ( I met him during the weekend of my friend's wedding 21 years ago, but we never crossed paths after that.  ), but whenever you hear news like that you can't help but think a little bit about your own mortality and the mortality of the people you love   ( BTW, my friend's wife wrote a very touching tribute to Mark.  I'll link to that tribute here if my friend's wife indicates that this is OK to do.  Otherwise I'll respect the privacy of those who are grieving and won't link to the tribute.  Just know that I was very touched by the tribute, and it indirectly led to the post I'm writing now. ).  As I was looking through the comments on my friend's facebook post about Mark, I learned that one of my other high school ( and facebook ) friends had gotten news that somebody she had been close to in our high school had just died.  The comments didn't mention who had died ( The first two comments I read didn't, but comments that I read a few hours later did ), but based on the comments, I had a pretty good guess ( and ultimately correct guess ) about who the person was.  However, I thought it would be kinda rude of me ask my grieving friend about the identity of the deceased just to satisfy my curiosity, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity myself by checking the obituaries on my high school's alumni website.

However, when I checked the obituary section, I didn't find the name I expected to find.  Instead, I found a name that got me thinking about a couple of things.

I found that somebody from my own graduating class had died a few month earlier.  I'm not going to name this person in the post, but if you know my age and my high school ( which I don't make a secret of on the Internet ) you shouldn't have a hard time finding the name.  For rest of this post I'll refer to this person as ECG ( English Class Girl - I think she was in a few of my classes, but I mostly remember her from an English class. ).

I almost hesitate to go further in this post, because what I'm about to write will seem so trivial and insignificant compared to real grieving some of my friends are going through right now.  I didn't really know ECG at all, so I'm certainly not experiencing any sad feelings about her death, other than the generic sadness one might feel upon hearing about anyone dying young.

I'm also a bit wary about seeming too self-centered.  After after, two of my friends have lost people they cared about, ECG has died tragically ( Her cause of death was never made public, but apparently she had been battling depression for a while, and there is a lot of speculation that she committed suicide ), and I'm about to go off and write about ME.

But hey, when I heard about ECG's death, it certainly made me think about a few things, perhaps things that were mostly about ME, but I can't deny I thought about these things.  If I'm a self-centered person because another person's tragic death made me think about ME, hiding the fact that I thought this way doesn't really make me any less self-centered.  I like to be an open book in this blog, and I like to share stuff, and the news of ECG's death made me think of a story I've never told anyone before.

There's nothing particularly scandalous or embarrassing about this story, but it's also not particularly exciting, and it never really felt like the right time to tell this story.  However, the story is related to ECG, and the news of ECG's death made me think of this story for the first time in many years.

So, if there's ever going to be a right time to tell this story, I guess it's now.

Our story begins during my sophomore year of high school ( I believe it was the second semester ) - or at least I think it was my sophomore year.  I think it happened in whatever semester we studied Greek myths in English class ( Stuy folks, help me out here - that was sophomore year - right? ).  In any case, I'm sure it either happened during my sophomore year or the first 5 months of junior year, because that was the time I was obsessed with the girl I've always referred to as HSG1 ( High School Girl #1 ) on this blog.

For those who are not familiar with the HSG1 story, HSG1 was the first girl I fell in "real love" with.  It's not that I had not pined for other girls in the past - I'd had a crush on the same girl from 4th grade through 8th grade.  However, I was attracted to the 4th-to-8th-grade-girl because I thought she was really pretty, and she "developed" a lot earlier than most of the other girls in her peer group.  I recognized that the attraction was purely hormonal, as was the attraction I had for another really pretty girl during my first year of high school.  With HSG1, the feelings were different.  She was undoubtedly pretty, but I had convinced myself that my feeling for her went far beyond mere physical attraction.  After all ( I told myself ), I had seen her every morning in my homeroom class during freshmen year, and I had never developed a crush on her ( because I had been focused on a really pretty girl I'd had a few classes with, plus a girl who had sat to the front-right of me in homeroom ( who had legs that I would sometimes think about during my "private time"). ).  I didn't start to think of HSG1 in a romantic way until she started to talk to me occasionally at the start of sophomore year ( She had no choice - we were assigned to be lab partners in our Chemistry class. ).  So, because I didn't fall for her until I started to get to know her a little ( I should emphasize "little" - I really barely knew her ), I had convinced myself that my feelings for her constituted pure "true love".  Heck, I had her up on such a pedestal that I didn't even think of her during my "private time".  Whether these feeling were justified or rational really isn't the point.  The point is that the feelings were real to me, and they consumed me for 17 months of my teenage years.

I took the time to explain my feeling for HSG1, because only my level of obsession with HSG1 can begin to explain my actions ( or more accurately, lack of action ) in the ECG story.

This story takes place in an English class I had with ECG.  Our English teacher had assigned a rather unusual project.  She asked all of us to create a personal adds for ourselves.  We had to hand in a sheet of loose-leaf paper with a photo of ourselves attached to it, along with a paragraph or two describing ourselves.  After collecting all these personal adds from each of her multiple English classes, our English teacher distributed the adds across all her classes, and asked the students to write comments ( anonymously or non-anonymously )  on the personal adds they thought were interesting.

Frankly, I don't know what our English teacher was thinking.  Maybe she was testing out an idea that eventually made her millions running a Match.com type site, but I can't imagine running a dating service for teens was part the English department's core curriculum.

In any case, after the personal adds were distributed and commented upon, they were handed back to the people who created them.  When I got mine back, I found 2 comments.  One comment had really nice flattering things to say about me ( This comment was from a girl in another class who I had never met before.  I never bothered to look her up ( for reasons that will be apparent soon ), and I frankly forget what her name was. )  The second comment, written directly under the first said ...

"You've got good taste!"

This comment was written anonymously, but a few minutes later, I found out who wrote it.

Our English class had a teacher's assistant ( TA ) assigned to it.  I believe the TA was either a college student or grad student who was training to become a teacher.  A few minutes after we got our personal adds back, the TA comes to my desk, points to the "You've good good taste!" comment and whispers in my ear that ECG wrote the comment.

Once again, I don't know what the heck was going on in this English class.  Was the TA trying to play cupid?  Did the English teacher promise the TA college credit for each hook-up she could facilitate in the class?  Like I said before, this was an unusual project.

In any case, I now had some information that could potentially change the course of my high school life.  The info was certainly no guarantee that ECG would be willing to go out with me ( She was rather pretty and quite social, so I would have been kinda surprised to find out that she didn't already have a boyfriend at the time.  In fact, if she did already have a boyfriend, that would certainly explain why she had decided to make her comment anonymously. ).  Still, if I had made some effort to get to know her better, there was certainly some potential there.

So, did I do anything with this new information?

Of course not.  My heart belonged to my "true love" HSG1.

Never mind that I wasn't dating her.  Never mind that she never showed any romantic interest in me.  Never mind that I barely spoke to her.  Never mind that she probably already had a boyfriend.

Never mind all that.  I was going to remain "faithful" to HSG1 until that one magical day in the future when fate would finally bring us together.

So, I never did anything with the information about ECG.  The story really ends on that day in our English class.

But what if it hadn't?

I'm certainly happy about the way my life turned out.  I have a wonderful wife and children, and I wouldn't change anything about that.  However, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a least a little bit curious about how my time in high school could have been different if I had made some different choices.

That's why it felt a little bit - I don't know - odd to find out that ECG had died.  I not sure what the right word to describe it is, but I think I may have been lying when I wrote that I just felt a generic sadness when I found out that she had died.  Well, maybe the sadness was generic, but I felt something more than just sadness.  I don't know what it was - poignancy perhaps?

I just couldn't shake the feeling that ECG was somebody that I should have known.  I'm not necessarily saying that I should have ( or could have ) dated her, but I should have gotten to know her - it certainly seemed like a door was opened a bit on that day in English class, but I choose not to walk through it.

As curious as I am about how my high school years could have been different if I had known her, I'm also curious about how her life could have been different if she had known me.  Now, it would be extremely delusional and arrogant of me to even suggest that ECG might still be alive today if she had been a friend of mine.  I really don't know how she died or why she died, or what drove her over the edge if she really did die of depression-induced suicide.  However, I feel I owe a small debt to her that I never properly repaid.

In case it wasn't already extremely obvious, I had very low self-esteem back in high school.  I was extremely shy and awkward, and most of the time I hated myself because of it.  I didn't have the courage to talk to any girls, girls didn't talk to me, and part of me couldn't imagine why any girl would ever want to go out with me.  ECG's comment on my personal add changed that a little bit ( and to a lesser extent the other girl's comment on the personal add ( However, I think ECG's comment seemed more real to me because I found out about it when she was sitting just 15 feet across the classroom from me. )).  She made me feel a little bit more self-confident.  It may have been a small thing, but every little bit helps.  If you are 100% sure that any girl you would ask out would reject you, why would you even try?  Why would you torture yourself like that?  The road from "shy guy who's afraid to speak to girls" to "married guy" is a long and hard one, and a shy guy needs to slowly build his confidence to move down that road.  ECG's comment helped me move down that road a little bit.  She made me feel better about myself, and when I found out that she had probably committed suicide, I felt some regret that I never got the chance to make her feel better about herself.

So, I guess that closes the book on my ECG story, and to a larger extent, closes the book on the time I'll spend thinking about her.  Sure, I might review this blog post years from now when I'm traveling down memory lane, but after a week or so has passed, it's unlikely that I'll be thinking about ECG again for many years.  So while she's still on my mind, I'll just say this ...

Thanks ECG.  Wherever you are, I hope you've found peace.

Rich


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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Voting Against Democracy


I'm writing this so I can post it on my wife's facebook page.  I've noticed that a pretty good percentage of my wife's friends are Romney supporters, and this post is directed at them.

Now, maybe it's not a good idea for me to ruffle any feathers, but if you support Romney in particular or the GOP in general, there's one question I just have to ask ...

How can you support a political party that consistently votes against democracy?

Look, I understand that people can have different political philosophies, and while I completely disagree with with almost all of the Republican Party's ideas about government, I can respect that some people sincerely believe in those ideas.  However, I can't respect the GOP's concerted effort to suppress the vote.

Republicans have been suppressing votes for so long in so many blatant ways that I shouldn't even have to justify my claim of voter suppression.  Republican voter suppression should be obvious to anyone who's been paying any attention for the last few decades.  However, since many GOP supporters will certainly want to defend the GOP against these charges, I'll go ahead and play the role of the prosecutor.

Like any good prosecutor, I'll start by establishing a motive.  Why would the GOP want to suppress votes?  How would it benefit the GOP to keep voter turnout low?  How would it benefit the GOP to make it harder for certain categories of people to vote?

Well, for starters, it's long been accepted by both political parties that people who are not registered to vote are more likely to support Democratic candidates.  You can tell both parties believe this because Democrats are always making efforts to increase voter registration while Republicans almost always try to curtail voter registration.  If you want to know why both Democrats and Republican's believe this, take a look at this article.  It shows that unregistered voters prefer President Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of  43% to 14%.  I'm sure you could find other similar polls online if your searched a bit, but the specific numbers are not important here.  What's important is that the GOP believes that increasing voter registration hurts their chances to win elections.  Even if polls showed that unregistered voters supported Republicans over Democrats ( which they don't ), the actions of the Republican Party over the last few decades makes it abundantly clear that the GOP believes that unregistered voters are more likely to vote for Democrats.  Congressional voting records provide hard evidence of this - evidence I'll reveal later in this post.

It also clearly benefits the Republican Party to restrict the votes of certain categories of voters, and that's where voter ID come in.  Now, I know that the common argument in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent voter fraud, but voter fraud is exceedingly rare ( if you don't trust that link, try one from FOX News ), and voter ID laws make it harder for many low-income people to vote.  Now, I know that people can dispute numbers and claim that certain studies are biased, so let's spend a little time looking at this from a common sense perspective.   Clearly, voter ID laws can go a long way towards eliminating any voter fraud that currently exists.  If voter fraud is a disease, then voter ID is certainly the cure.  However, common sense tells us that the GOP isn't really interested in the cure, they are interested in the side effects of that cure.

If the GOP was really interested in curing voter fraud, they would focus on the easiest way to commit voter fraud - absentee voting.  Think about it - if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why would you do it any way other than absentee voting?  If you want to commit vote fraud via absentee ballot, all you really need to do is get your hands on the proper forms, forge a signature, and drop the forms in the mail.  I'm not saying it's easy to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot, but it's certainly a lot easier and safer to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot than it would be via in-person voting.  Let's say you felt like committing voter fraud in-person.  You'd have to go to the polling place and claim you were somebody else.  Then the polling worker would go ahead and check the list of people in the district so you could sign next to the name you were voting under.  What if the person you were trying to impersonate had already voted and signed his or her name?  We'll you'd pretty much be busted at that point, and unless you thought of a good excuse real fast, you just might be headed to jail ( OK, you could probably just run away, and those senior-citizen poll workers would never catch you, but if they got a good look at your face ( or your car license plate if you drove to the polling place ) you still might be caught eventually ).  My point is that it doesn't make much sense to me that an individual would go through all that potential trouble just to steal one vote.  I'm not saying that nobody would ever bother to do it, but if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why wouldn't you do it using an absentee ballot so you would never have to show your face?  Sure, voter fraud via absentee ballot might not work if the person you were trying to impersonate also had voted, but the chances of you getting caught perpetrating absentee voter fraud is practically nil ( Plus, a single person could steal multiple votes via absentee voting, which would be much harder to do via in-person voter fraud ).

So, with all this in mind, you would think the GOP folks who want to cure voter fraud would be focusing heavily on absentee ballots.  However, the GOP isn't making any effort to cut down on absentee-voter ballot fraud.  The GOP is not interested in changing anything about the absentee ballot procedures, because conventional wisdom has always been that a vote cast via an absentee ballot is more likely to be a GOP vote than a vote cast in-person ( The GOP generally believes this because many members of the military need to vote via absentee ballots, and members of the military have traditionally supported the GOP in greater numbers than the Democratic Party.  I spent some time searching for studies that gave the Democrat/Republican breakdown of absentee votes on a national level, but I could only find this study which gives the breakdown for an election in California.  Clearly, California elections are generally going to have more votes for Democrats than Republicans,  but this study did show that an absentee ballot cast in a California election is more likely to be a vote for Republican candidate than an in-person vote cast in a California election. ).

So, if the GOP really isn't interested in curing voter fraud ( if they sincerely cared about voter fraud they would certainly focus on absentee ballots more than in-person ballots ), why are they pushing this voter ID cure for voter fraud?  Well, as I mentioned earlier, they are primarily interested in the side effects of this cure.  The side effect is that voter ID laws make it more difficult for certain percentage of people to vote, and people that incur this extra difficulty are disproportionately poor.

For most people, the voter ID laws will have zero impact.  Most of us have a driver's license that we could use as a photo ID for voting.  However, while most of us take our driver's licenses for granted, the same cannot be said for those living in poverty, particularly those who live in urban areas.  If you barely have enough money to buy the basic necessities of life, then it's much less likely that you'll own a car, particularly if you live in an urban area where public transportation is available.  If you grow up in a family that doesn't have a car, it's much less likely that you'll get a driver's license.  So, it's just common sense that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with driver's licences than other parts of the country.  Driver's licences are the most common form of photo ID, so it also follows that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with photo IDs than the rest of the country.  If you change the voting laws to require photo ID, then it's clear that this will adversely affect people in poor urban areas more than in the rest of country.

So, what political party do you think people in poor urban areas generally vote for?  I'm not even going to bother to link to some statistics - you all know the answer.  Poor urban people vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, so it would clearly benefit the Republican Party if less poor urban people were eligible to vote.  Now, I realize that there are ways that these poor urban registered voters can get photo IDs, but it's not always easy to get an ID, particular if you don't have a car.  As this link shows, many voters live more than 10 miles from an office where they can get a photo ID and many of those offices are only open during typical working hours on weekdays.  If you can't afford to take a day off from work and don't have a car, it can be difficult to get to these offices to acquire a photo ID.  I'm certainly not saying it's impossible to do, but these voter IDs laws will certainly keep a non-trivial amount of registered voters from voting, and those voters will disproportionately be people who support Democratic candidates.

If you have any lingering doubts about the GOP motives behind voter ID laws, check out this quote from Pennsylvania Republican House leader Mike Turzai:

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done”

 Of course,  if it's your goal to suppress the votes of likely-Democratic voters, you wouldn't stop with poor urban voters.  It would also help a lot to cut down on the number of women voters, because women voters support Democratic candidates in much higher percentages than men ( For example, this link from 9/26/12 cites a poll which shows that Obama is tied with Romney among male voters in Pennsylvania but has a 21 percentage point lead with female voters. ).  Thus, I wasn't really surprised that the GOP was supporting measures that would make it harder for married women to vote.

Also, considering that college students vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, it not surprising that Republicans are changing laws in order to make it harder for college students to vote.

Republicans have even used the voter fraud argument to try to take 30,000 "dead" people off the voter rolls in North Carolina.  Unfortunately for them, when the election officials followed up on the 30,000 "dead" people they found that these people actually were not dead.

While I think the evidence is strong that Republican-sponsored voter ID laws are instruments of voter suppression, I realize that some people will never be convinced of that.  I realize that some people will hold on to the voter fraud argument no matter what anyone says.  However, even if you reject the argument that Republicans are supporting voter ID laws in order to suppress the vote, it's hard to ignore the multitude of examples of Republican-sponsored voter suppression which have nothing to do with voter ID or voter fraud.

Some of the best examples of this are Republican led efforts to restrict early voting and reduce extended voting hours.  These Republican efforts are literally an attempt to reduce the number of hours that people can vote.  Reducing voting hours leads to a reduced number of votes, which is diametrically opposed to the ideals of democracy.

For example, Republicans in Ohio are restricting early voting and extended hours voting.  Early voting and extended hours voting were added in Ohio during the years between the 2004 and 2008 elections, primarily because of all the trouble Ohioans had casting their votes on Election Day in 2004 ( Some of you might remember the stories about people in Ohio waiting as long as 10 hours to vote or the helicopter shots of ridiculously long lines outside of polling placing in Democratic-leaning precincts. ).  However when Republicans took control of the Ohio state government ( in the elections that followed 2008 ), they started to roll back all of the early voting and extended hours voting.  In fact, they even went further than that.  They tried to make sure that voting hours would be longer in Republican leaning counties than Democratic leaning counties.  Seriously, they did that!  I'll let John Stewart give some more details below:



The quote below from this news story should erase any doubts about the motives of the Ohio GOP:

“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

It's also worth highlighting that Republican election officials have made a point to eliminate Sunday voting in both Ohio and Florida.  Back in 2008, early voting was available in Ohio and Florida on the Sunday before Election Day.  Back in 2008 many predominantly African-American congregations went straight from Sunday worship to the polling place in buses provided by the churches.  This clearly helped increase African-American turnout in 2008, so it was clearly something the GOP could not allow in 2012.  Let's face it, the GOP could not allow the "African-American voter turnout machine" to go unchecked in 2012.

Republican efforts like these are the reason why I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Republicans have been voting against democracy.  Every time a Republican-controlled state legislature passes a law to restrict voter participation, our democratic ideals are compromised. If you still have any lingering doubts about this, consider the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This act, popularly know as the "Motor Voter Act", required that state governments allow people to register to vote when applying for or renewing their driver license or when applying for social services.  There's really no good reason why anyone should have opposed this act.  The intention of this act was simply to make it more convenient for people to register to vote.  The intended result of this act was to increase the number registered voters.  The intended result of this act was to increase voter turnout.  The intended result of this act was to create a more robust democratic system in the United States. Who could possibly be against such an act?

Guess who?

Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 146 to 21.

Republicans in the Senate voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 37 to 5.

It's also worth noting that 3 of the 5 Republican Senators who voted in favor of the Motor Voter Act eventually left the Republican Party ( Arlen Specter became a Democrat in 2009. Jim Jeffords became an Independent who caucused with the Democrats in 2001.  In 2005, David Durenberger announced he was an Independent who no longer supported the Republican Party. ).  So, if you only consider Republicans Senators who actually stuck with the GOP, the Republican vote against the Motor Voter act was 37 to 2.

Any way you choose look at it, Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the Motor Voter Act ( Sure, it was 19 years ago, but the pre-"Contract with America" Republican Party of 1993 was far less conservative and partisan that the Republican Party of today.  If the same vote were held today, it's highly likely that an even higher percentage of Republicans would vote against an act like the Motor Voter Act. ).  Any way you look at it, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against an act designed to increase voter participation.  Any way you look at it, Republicans voted against the interests of democracy.

I'm not even going to argue about this anymore.  As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed.  Numbers like 146-21 and 37-5 don't lie.  Republicans want to restrict democracy.

So, that being said, let me go back to my original question.  How can anyone in the great democracy of the USA support a political party that votes against democracy?

Well actually, I can kind of  understand why people would still vote for the GOP.  Let's face it, if you want your vote to count in most elections, you really only have 2 choices.  Unless you want to completely throw your vote in the garbage and vote for somebody like Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, you need to vote for a candidate endorsed by the Republican Party or Democratic Party.  If you are sincerely against most of what the Democratic Party stands for, I guess you've got no choice but to vote for Republicans regardless of how distasteful their tactics might be.

However, that doesn't mean Republican voters need to deny what is going on or be quiet about what is going on.  I know that there's no time to change anything in the short term, but it would be nice if Republican politicians abandoned their voter suppression tactics in the long term.  I don't hold out much hope of this ever happening, but if it is ever going to happen, it would be because Republican voters took action.

What kind of action?  Well, you could write some letters to Republican representatives for a start ( particularly on the state level, as most of this voter suppression happens at the state level ).  You could let your representatives know that you support early voting and longer voting hours, and that you would support Republican candidates in favor of such pro-democracy policies in the next Republican primaries.  Heck, if you had the means and the time, you could support or work on the campaign for such a pro-democracy Republican candidate ( or even be that candidate! ).

OK, I realize I'm now being as ridiculously idealist as a Nader voter, but we've got to start somewhere right?  A grass-roots bi-partisan effort to increase voter participation wouldn't be a bad thing, would it?  Who's with me?

Now, I'll admit, as a worn-out father of two active boys, I'm far too lazy to do anything but sit on my ass at home and write stuff like this ( but hey, at least it's something! ).  But I'm sure there are some energetic people out there that could get a bi-partisan pro-democracy movement going.  At the very least, there have got to be people out there that could sit on their ass and write more blog posts on the subject.  So, if you agree at all with what I've written in this post, do me a favor and share this blog post with your facebook friends and Twitter followers.

If not, I guess it's going to be a bit awkward when I meet some of you at parties and family gatherings in the future.

Rich


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