wrongologist – Page 197 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake-up Call – February 22, 2016

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right saw the musical “Fun Home” on Broadway over the weekend. The story is of a lesbian’s coming-out in the 1970s, complicated by her closeted gay father’s suicide.

And it’s way more complicated than that. Dad is a high school English teacher who also manages the family funeral home, (that the kids have renamed “Fun Home”), and who has relationships with an assortment of the young men over the years. So the play is a detective story, in which Alison Bechdel tries to solve the mystery of who her father, now dead, really was, and how their relationship contributed to the person she is as a 40-something adult.

Like many adults remembering their childhood self and their father, she has an ambivalent relationship with him, particularly since his closeted identity keeps everyone in the family perpetually unsettled.

Ok, so that may not sound like a fun time at the theater, however, it is terrific. It is staged in the round, so it feels like an intimate performance, one that makes you a part of the family on stage. The play describes the arc of Alison’s life from childhood, to college student, to middle-aged cartoonist who lives in Vermont. And three different women play Alison in the various stages of her life.

Alison the child lives in an old mansion, plays with her brothers in the funeral home’s coffins and can’t abide all those things girls are supposed to like, such as frilly dresses. Since she grew up to be a cartoonist, the adult Alison in the play often begins speaking by saying “caption”. “Caption,” she says, sitting in her studio remembering her childhood:

Dad and I both grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay, and I was gay, and he killed himself, and I became a lesbian cartoonist.

That’s your plot summary right there. That, and the question of what Alison might do about the pain she sees in her parents, or about the pain they cause her as she assumes her identity as a lesbian. She sees that coming out as a freshman in college coincided with the end of her father’s life. She returns home to learn of her mother’s realization that mom had wasted her life in a lie. And yet, you have a sense here of a family that will just keep going, as families always have to do. That there is really no going back.

Kids have a way of forgetting as they are growing up, that their parents are simultaneously growing old. Their beginnings are their parents’ middles and endings. The play’s universality comes from its awareness of how we never fully know those closest to us, and of the undercurrent of grown-up secrets, intuited by children, that exists to some degree in every family. As “Fun Home” makes all too clear, parents, kids and their mutual happiness (or misery) are inextricably linked.

Maybe there is a moment when a child suddenly sees through the parents they love. Maybe it happens slowly over time. Whenever it happened to you, that progression from simple love to a fuller realization of the people your parents are, may not be so nice to contemplate, but “Fun Home” helps you get there. It forces you to visit your own past, and to think about your own children, whom you know get to make their own lives, and have their own fun, away from you.

No wonder the audience sprang from its seats at the ending, and at the start of seeing their own families in clear relief.

Here are three songs from “Fun Home” to help you get going this morning. First, “Ring of Keys” is about coming to an awareness of the sexual future that awaits the young Alison. Young Alison recognizes herself reflected in the body of a woman unlike any she has ever seen before:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email you can see the video here.

Second, in “I’m Changing My Major to Joan”, the college freshman Alison sings after her first sexual experience with a schoolmate, Joan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyN13HLSMs

For those who read the Wrongologist in email you can see the video here.

Finally, in “Telephone Lines”, the older Alison tries to find a way to talk to her father about their sexual identities, but fails, like many kids (and their dads) do when awkwardness overtakes the moment:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email you can see the video here.

If you can get to the Circle in the Square Theater, do it.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 21, 2016

The preliminary results from the Nevada Caucus gives the win to Hillary Clinton, while the preliminary results from South Carolina say that Donald Trump has won, with second place too close to call at this point.

For the Democrats, the mainstream candidate now looks quite likely to take the nomination, while on the Republican side, the insurgent appears to be the one who will be the nominee. The Sanders Democrats will fall in line behind Clinton for the general election, because they know that no issue in this election trumps judicial philosophy, and the nation can’t survive another Scalia.

Here’s why: Federal judges have great power over our democracy. We could review many of Scalia’s decisions, but let’s just focus on three:

• The five Supreme Court judges (including Scalia) who decided the 2000 election by awarding the White House to George W. Bush.
• Or, the five judges (including Scalia) who decided Citizens United, saying that big corporate money was speech.
• Or the five judges (including Scalia) who gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The judiciary controls many, many aspects of our lives; therefore, the importance of having federal judges who reject far right-wing ideology cannot be overstated.

On to cartoons. Who will walk in Scalia’s shoes?

COW Scalia 2

Obama has about as much chance of getting a Supreme Court nominee approved by Senate Republicans as he does of convincing the average GOP voter that his Hawaiian birth certificate is genuine:

COW Scalia 3

GOP dilemma: Let’s honor Scalia by ignoring the Constitution:

COW Ignore the Constitution

Obama gets a lesson in the Senate’s Advise & Consent process:

COW Clarence Votes twice

Obama: Right on Cuba, Wrong on Scalia Funeral

Mr. Obama made two decisions this week, to visit Cuba, and to not attend Justice Scalia’s funeral.

The Scalia decision may not be so smart. From Politico:

President Barack Obama is preparing for a fierce battle with the Senate over the Supreme Court vacancy, but he’s not planning to attend Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral — a decision that puzzled even some of his allies and incensed conservative media.

Yep, the decision to forgo the funeral on Saturday is called a partisan snub by the Right. They ignore that Mr. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will go to the Supreme Court on Friday to pay their respects to Justice Scalia while the justice lies in repose in the Court’s Great Hall.

Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, who share Scalia’s Catholic faith, will attend the Catholic funeral services, representing the Administration.

Politico reports there is little precedent for presidents attending the funerals of sitting justices. President George W. Bush attended, and eulogized Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 2005. But before Rehnquist, the last justice to die in office was Robert H. Jackson in 1954.

It’s a can’t-win situation for Obama. If he attends, the right will pick apart his mannerisms, facial expressions and interactions with other attendees, criticizing what they will call snubs of various kinds.

While not attending again shows Obama’s tin ear when it comes to domestic politics, his decision is acceptable. Attending the funeral would not suddenly change the stance of Republicans who think that Obama should not nominate a Scalia replacement.

His decision to visit Cuba is smart. Obama will be the first US president to visit the island in 88 years. The last US president to travel to Cuba was Calvin Coolidge in January 1928.

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced a diplomatic thaw in December 2014, after more than 50 years of disruption and confrontation between the two countries. The US and Cuba formally resumed bilateral relations in July, 2015. A month later, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, officially opened the US Embassy in Havana, becoming the first US diplomatic head to visit Cuba in 70 years.

Why do we care about opening Cuba? Here is one reason: a story in Forbes this week underlines what we can expect from opening relations.

Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal, both 72-year-old retired software engineers, are slated to become the first Americans since 1959 to set up a manufacturing plant in Cuba. Their plan: produce small, easily maintained tractors for use by family farmers. Under new regulations issued by the Obama administration, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control gave the Paint Rock, AL-based partners the go-ahead last week. Once they get final approval from the Cubans…in early 2017, they’ll start building a factory in a special economic zone set up by the Cuban government in the port city of Mariel.

The Wrongologist visited Cuba in 2014. Below is a photo of tobacco farming in Pinar Del Rio, a predominantly agricultural region about 2 hours from Havana that produces 70% of Cuba’s cigar tobacco. This farmer is using oxen to plow his tobacco field. Most independent farmers use animals for plowing.

The tractors that we did see were Soviet-era imports:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Clemmons and Berenthal got rich in tech here in the US, and identified the need for cheap tractors in Cuba. They will be showing their first tractor model at a Cuban agricultural fair in March. Why are they doing this? They have a desire to be helpful to the Cuban people, but they want profits:

Our business model says we are investing in Cuba and reinvesting any profits we make. We’ll do what we did with our other businesses. We’ll create value and then sell the company.

And was it easy for them to get US government approval? Berenthal told Forbes:

In all honesty it was tedious rather than difficult. We had to wait for the regulations to change so that the proposal we made was covered by the regulations implemented over the last nine months.

Isn’t it interesting that two entrepreneurial guys can identify a big market and jump in before the big US agricultural manufacturers?

And despite Mr. Cruz’ and Mr. Rubio’s yelling about Obama dealing with a Communist regime, the Cuban government appears willing to offer financial backing to private farmers who choose to buy from a privately owned US company.

Kudos to Obama, and to Clemmons and Berenthal. It is long overdue, yet somehow, just in time.

The Battle to Replace Scalia

With the death of Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court has become even more of a BFD than it usually is in our politics. Republicans are setting the terms of the current battle by saying that Mr. Obama should not even bring forward a candidate for the Senate’s Advise and Consent process.

The Republicans fought for 40 years to get a Conservative majority, and will not give that up without a fight. This is the first time since Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991 that the ideological balance on the Court could actually change. In the last six cases, from Ginsberg through Kagan, either a Republican president filled the seat of a conservative justice, or a Democratic president filled the seat of a liberal justice.

So the stakes are very high, both substantively and politically.

On the other hand, the voters might rediscover that presidential elections should be about serious issues. At the top of the list: Who will pick the justice that creates a new Supreme Court majority?

A brief history from Paul Waldman at the WaPo:

The Senate…used to approach nominations to the Supreme Court with a simple standard: If the nominee was qualified and wasn’t a criminal or a drunk, he or she would probably get confirmed with the support of both the president’s party and the opposition…But we may have entered an era with an entirely different starting presumption: not that a well-qualified nominee deserves confirmation, but that senators ought to oppose any nomination from a president of the other party.

Waldman provides this list of recent nominees and how the Senate voted:

Antonin Scalia (1986): 98-0
Anthony Kennedy (1987): 97-0
Clarence Thomas (1991): 52-48
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993): 96-3
Stephen Breyer (1994): 87-9
John Roberts (2005): 78-22, 20 of 42 Democrats in favor
Samuel Alito (2005): 58-42, 4 of 45 Democrats in favor
Sonia Sotomayor (2009): 68-31, 9 of 40 Republicans in favor
Elena Kagan (2010): 63-37, 5 of 40 Republicans in favor

Since Chief Justice Roberts in 2005, we see that our political divide is not simply about Congress and the President, the Supreme Court is now also entrenched in the polarization. Justice Kagan’s approval is instructive. She was well-qualified, (a former dean of Harvard Law School and Solicitor General), and had no absurd legal views. Nevertheless, only five Republicans voted to confirm her. Three of those senators — Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, and Judd Gregg — were moderates who are no longer in the Senate.

In the case of a Scalia replacement, every Republican senator trying to decide what to do will know that if they vote to confirm any Democratic nominee for this seat, a primary challenge from the right will probably happen whenever they run for re-election.

But the GOP-controlled Senate ignores its responsibilities at its peril. 24 GOP-held Senate seats are up for election this cycle to just 10 held by Democrats. A few (enough) of those GOP Senators are in states that were won in 2012 by Barack Obama including: Kirk in Illinois, Toomey in Pennsylvania, Portman in Ohio, Ayotte in New Hampshire, Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rubio’s open seat of Florida. Since Republicans hold 54 seats, losing 4 of them could flip Senate control.

But, this is a situation where the Democrats really need to get control of their message machine, or they’ll risk getting overrun again in the perception battle.

The best guess is that is unlikely that control of the Senate changes hands in 2016, so divided government will likely remain with us, assuming a presidential win for the Democrats. As Scott Lemieux says in the New Republic:

As the stakes of Supreme Court nominations get ever higher, getting Court vacancies filled during periods of divided government is going to become increasingly difficult. Depending on the results of the 2016 elections, this dysfunctional future could very soon become our present.

Could a non-functioning Supreme Court finally be the last straw? We might soon find out.

We know that Chief Justice Roberts is concerned with the public perception of SCOTUS as an institution. Perhaps if the White House and the Chief Justice held discussions about the President nominating a moderate, and then Roberts spoke publicly about the need for quick consideration, the political logjam might be broken.

Absent that, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we are heading towards a breaking point in this country as the polarization stretches the functioning of our government in every arena.

Our Constitution gives the Senate veto power over executive and judicial branch appointments with no mechanism for resolving a deadlock. That is a bug, not a feature.

It’s amazing that the system has remained functional for as long as it has.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 14, 2016

Happy Valentine’s Day. The news of Week That Was included the New Hampshire primary, another power grab by the Supreme Court, the Zika virus, and proof of the existence of gravitational waves.

Some people have an embarrassment of riches on Valentine’s Day:

COW Valentines Day

NH reminds Hillary about kids in a different way than before:

COW Comeback Kid

Sanders met with Sharpton before heading to South Carolina:

COW Sharpton Sanders

When the history of early 21st Century US is written, the villains will already be wearing black:

COW EPA Court

Zika virus is all over the news:

COW Zika

Proving Einstein right about gravitational waves took 100 years. Hope we do better with market panic:

COW Gravity Waves

Is Bernie Electable?

Nobody knows. Maybe. The “a miracle can happen” argument was made by Bob Lefsetz, who all of you should bookmark and read:

…in 1964, Elvis was king. And then the Beatles wiped him off the map. We had a decade of rock and roll. It had been whittled down to a formula…And then…A band with roots who didn’t believe in convention, who’d honed their sound off the radar, delivered an honest wallop that was undeniable. And overnight the youth switched allegiance.

Could happen again. Probably will if Bernie Sanders is any indicator.

First, he has to get the nomination. Even after winning 60% of the NH vote, Bernie has barely dented Clinton’s lead, which thanks to super delegates, currently stands at 394-42. The super delegates are lining up for Clinton, and what happens if Sanders can’t beat a massively powerful political machine? It proves his fundamental point about establishment hegemony. And if Clinton can’t beat an old leftie from Vermont on his first national run? It disproves her arguments about electability, experience and competence.

But it takes 2,382 delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president. Check out Bernie’s difficult path in the upcoming primaries:

538 Primary Polling

It won’t be easy for Bernie to win the nomination. And he has built-in disadvantages: He angers the big donors. He has limited support in the Democratic Congress. There are no governors supporting him. Add that a lot of Democrats are skittish about Sanders’ embrace of “democratic socialism,” and add his Dovish positions on foreign policy, and you’re not likely to see a stampede of Democratic insiders rallying to his cause.

OTOH, Hillary had all the insider support imaginable and couldn’t win in NH. And if she can’t beat a grumpy old socialist Jew without super delegates putting their collective thumbs on the scale, how the hell is she going to beat the Republican Media Complex fighting uphill against the Benghazi and E-mail scandals?

But, Sanders has a long, long way to go to maybe get within striking distance of the nomination. Even then, he will continue to be reviled by forces on the right that will pull no punches in order to defeat him. The Conventional Wisdom will always say that Sanders isn’t viable, electable, (a “socialist” can never win), is too old, can’t raise enough money, won’t get the votes of women, African American’s, Latino’s, etc.

And if he smashes any one “barrier,” the remaining “barriers” will be elevated in importance.

And new “barrier” constructs will be created.

Returning to the Lefsetz meme, what narrative could resurrect Hillary’s appeal to the young? “Experience” reinforces her establishment brand. “Pragmatism” runs counter to every progressive aspiration of the Sanders campaign. “Fights for people like you” invites an examination of Bill Clinton’s deregulation of Wall Street, and his welfare reforms, or his legal reforms which imprisoned many minorities.

Those who say “Hillary can work within the system and get things done where Bernie can’t” have to realize that is a double edged sword. Millennials are the largest single voting bloc this time. They think unemployment and jobs are the biggest issues. They think the system has screwed them. They want the system to be rebuilt from the ground up.

And it’s not too hard to figure out why.

They are saddled with debt, their economic opportunities are far more limited than that of any recent generation. They are told they are being selfish by the Boomer generation − the generation that while achieving many great things, has left a huge economic and geopolitical mess to deal with.

When they look at Sanders, they see someone thinking outside the box. When they see Hillary, they see the establishment. And, you can’t say Hillary is not the establishment when she has the majority of the Super Delegates and all the endorsements from, well, establishment Democrats.

So, can Bernie win? Who knows?

A hard-fought primary battle served the Democratic presidential candidate well in 2008; it’s very likely that a similar primary battle will serve the winning candidate well again in 2016.

What NH Should Teach Us

The popular vote in NH was about 521,000. Of that number, 278k went to Republican candidates, and 243k went to Democrats. Bernie led all candidates with 145,700 votes, with Trump second at 97,300 votes. Hillary was third at 92,530.

For the record, the 2008 turnout was: 287,342 for the Democrats and 238,979 for the Republicans.

The media is all over the demographics of the NH primary, and how Bernie won all segments except for people over 65 years old, and those who make more than $200k, both of which went to Hillary.

But one headline from NH ought to be that the Dems performed 15% worse than eight years ago, while the GOP performed 14% better than they did when a NH resident (Romney) was on the ballot!

In Hillary’s post-primary speech, she said that there isn’t a huge difference between the two Democratic candidates. Bernie talked about how the party had to come together down the road to prevent a White House take-over by the GOP.

But are these candidates that similar?

Let’s hear from Benjamin Studebaker, who says that Sanders and Clinton represent two very different ideologies, a neo-liberal view represented by Ms. Clinton and an FDR big government program viewpoint represented by Mr. Sanders:

Each of these ideologies wants control of the Democratic Party so that its resources can be used to advance a different conception of what a good society looks like…This is not a matter of taste and these are not flavors of popcorn.

Studebaker thinks that Hillary is ideologically similar to Barack Obama, describing that in 2008: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The most prominent difference between them was the vote on the Iraq War. On economic policy, there never was a substantive difference. The major economic legislation passed under Obama (Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act) did not address the structural inequality problem that the Democratic Party of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s…existed to confront.

In fact, while inequality decreased under FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ, it has increased under 3 Democrats: Carter, Clinton, and Obama. It also increased under 3 Republicans: Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.

Now comes the Hill & Bernie show. Sanders is not running to try to implement a set of idealistic policies that a Republican-controlled Congress will block; he is running to take the Democratic Party away from its current leadership that is unwilling to deal with the systemic economic problems that have led to wage stagnation and the shrinking of the middle class in America.

But can he be successful? David Brooks said in the NYT:

Bernie Sanders…has been so blinded by his values that the reality of the situation does not seem to penetrate his mind.

OK, that must mean that Sanders has no shot. The conventional wisdom is that the Democratic Party cannot be reclaimed by the FDR/LBJ types, or that if it is reclaimed, it will lose in 2016.

But, in the 1968 and 1976 Republican primaries, a guy named Ronald Reagan ran to take the Republican Party back from the Richard Nixon types who went along with the Democrats on welfare and regulation. He was bidding to return the Republicans to their 1920’s Conservative roots. Everyone in the 60’s and 70’s knew that Reagan couldn’t pull that off. But he did.

How? Yesterday, we spoke of Movement Conservatism, where Republicans built a conceptual base, a popular base, a business base, and an institutional infrastructure of think tanks, and by the 2000s, Conservatives again controlled the Republican Party.

So, one lesson from the NH primary is that the contest for the 2016 presidential nomination is not just a contest to see who will lead the Democrats, it’s a contest to see what kind of party the Democrats are going to be in the coming decades, what ideology and what interests, causes, and issues the Democratic Party will prioritize.

The Republican Party faces exactly the same problem in 2016.

And these facts make the 2016 primaries far more important than in any other recent election.

This is about whether the Democratic Party is going to care about inequality for the next decade. We are making a historical decision between two distinct ideological paradigms, not a choice between flavors of popcorn.

Choose carefully.

We Are Victims of Political Misrule

Yesterday we said that 2016 may be the last election we ever need if political division keeps us from getting anything meaningful done for another four years. We also said that none of the current candidates from either party appear to have the ability to lead us towards being a better country.

Despite that, partisans on both sides say their worst candidate would be a fine president, and would certainly do a better job than the best candidate on the other side. Maybe we have a failure to define exactly what our next president needs to accomplish.

We talk as if a president were all-powerful, able to simply wave his/her magic wand, and all will be well. The past 16 years of presidential and congressional misrule has taught us to know better, but candidates still campaign as if we didn’t know better.

If a president can’t solve our problems, what can he/she do? If all they will do is to continue doing what hasn’t worked in the past, why do we bother to elect them, or have elections at all?

If all we can expect is to maintain a defective status quo, what’s the point?

We need America to grow up. We need a president who can enunciate a humane, adult, reasonable worldview, and vigorously promote it at home and abroad. Perhaps over time, that message will resonate with enough people, young Americans in particular, so the next generation can take the first political baby steps towards building a better world.

Either we fix our politics, or resign ourselves to the fact that our democracy is going to continue to give us substandard results.

To succeed at changing the country’s world view, the people would have to insist upon a politics that requires a humane, adult, reasonable, sane worldview from our elected representatives. At best, we would see some compromise, and take a few steps forward. At worst, idealism fails, and we continue the tyranny of a Congress that while elected, is not accountable for the success or failure of the nation.

Donald Trump has broken the GOP, possibly fatally. The party’s recent history seems to have assigned him that task, and he has discharged it well. Thanks to Trump, “lesser evilism” has lost its power to control our politics, making it possible for genuinely progressive politicians to put non-incrementalist policy back onto the mainstream agenda.

That has been Bernie Sanders’s goal. He too has discharged his task well. He, like Trump, has become the polestar for people who are outraged at the status quo, and who want to change it fundamentally for the better. But if the Democrats nominate Sanders, they risk making the same mistake the Republicans would make if they nominate Trump. That is, not recognizing that the very rhetoric that their side likes best will be seen as inherently disqualifying in the eyes of many.

It is the error of the echo chamber–believing that your side is so obviously right that all you have to do is state your beliefs with conviction and honesty and then surely win.

Unfortunately for Hillary, she seems to be on the wrong side of the zeitgeist for a second time. In 2008, she was no match for an aspirational black man who allowed progressives to project their values on him. This time, it’s an actual progressive who may become the road block to her coronation. In different times, HRC would have the perfect resume for the Oval office, and yes, she could yet win the nomination and the big job. Her biggest problem is poor vision. Here is the NYT’s Charles Blow: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

But possibly the most damaging of Clinton’s attributes is, ironically, her practicality. As one person commented to me on social media: Clinton is running an I-Have-Half-A-Dream campaign. That simply doesn’t inspire young people brimming with the biggest of dreams. Clinton’s message says: Aim lower, think smaller, move slower. It says, I have more modest ambitions, but they are more realistic.

How long has it been since a President has campaigned on a specific platform and also urged the people to vote for his Party in Congress so that he could accomplish that platform. Reagan maybe?

No president has ever changed things alone, and none ever will. If Bernie wins, it’s because he inspires us to join a movement for change. Just like Reagan and Movement Conservatism, where Republicans built a conceptual base, a popular base, a business base, and an institutional infrastructure of think tanks. By the 2000s, movement conservatives controlled the Republican Party.

It took them 40 years, but they succeeded.

And it can happen again.

The Last Election You’ll Ever Need

“The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do, and what a man can’t do” − Captain Jack Sparrow

Some may have seen Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson. The movie came out in 1974, a time of increasing fear of random crime, creeping distrust of life in our cities, and growing frustration with what the Right called the moral relativity of liberalism. The film resonated with the US public, and had four sequels over the next 20 years.

The context for Death Wish was New York City’s decline after the fallout from years of redlining, blockbusting, and failed urban renewal. The city’s crime stats began to rise. Son of Sam would arrive in three years, a Republican president would tell a bankrupt NYC to drop dead, and Reagan’s morning in America would usher in a decade of anti-city films bookended by Escape from New York and New Jack City.

So, the question for 2016 is: Does America have a death wish? Are we about to start another period when our cities are declining, and our fears are growing? There is plenty of evidence to support both, from urban decay in Detroit and Flint, Michigan to our fears of Muslims and immigrants, to the distressingly difficult geopolitical landscape for which we have no clear strategy.

In the case of Flint’s need to replace its water pipes, no government – local, state or federal, has any idea where the money will come to fix the problem.

And in the case of geopolitics, we chose to spend $trillions on defense and homeland security, while willingly giving up some of our Constitutional rights out of fear, but are still failing to stem the tide of persistent conflict.

And no candidate from either party is offering a coherent set of policy positions that will solve these issues. Consider that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two front-runners, offer a similar pitch: Trump’s “I know how to get things done” is the same as Hillary Clinton’s.

But what can get done?

Whenever we talk about a solving a big problem, what we say is: “We can’t do that.” But in politics-speak, “can’t,” doesn’t mean: “That’s impossible” or, “We don’t have the skills or money”. What we really mean is: “It’s too hard”.

Or the solution is outside our ideological comfort zone. Ian Welsh said in 2009:

While there are no problems that America has that America can’t fix, it also appears that there are no problems America has that America is willing to fix properly. And it doesn’t matter why.

The world won’t grade us on a curve. You need to jump the fence, and you can’t. You’re running away from a bear, and you don’t run fast enough, and you’re dead. You wanted to get into a good grad school, but you don’t have the grades or test scores.

As we enter the 2016 election process, this is where America is:

• We have been shipping our real economy overseas for 30 years
• Ordinary families have had wage stagnation for the same 30 years
• We’ve voted for lower taxes
• We’ve not paid for infrastructure reinvestment, or education, or much of our domestic needs

This is where America is, and we continue to struggle to find our way in both domestic and foreign policy, despite the growing criticality of our problems.

In 2001, we elected a president who had a conservative ideology, and under his watch, we had disastrous foreign wars and the Great Recession. So, in 2008, we elected a president who we thought had a vision for the future. Someone who spoke to our better angels, who would drag us out of a near-depression, who would focus on our domestic problems and get us out of war in the Middle East.

Like Jack Sparrow says, after 16 years of presidents with very different ideologies, neither could do most of the things they promised. And we are the worse for that.

Now it is time to elect a new savior, and no candidate looks ready for the job. But choose we must, and one of them will be the next president. If, after we make our next choice, our political divisions again prevent progress for another eight years, it may be the last presidential election we ever need.

Collapse of the state is not an event, it is a process. A process that we are in.

We are right on schedule.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – Super Bowl Edition

Today’s Super Bowl marks the end of the football season, but still overshadows the political silly season, that will be with us for what will seem to be a long, long time.

Things to look for in Super Bowl 50:

COW Superbowl 50a
“And, when we score a touchdown, make sure you know your assignments for the end-zone celebration.”