Demographics – Page 24 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – March 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the science deniers. Gallup conducted a poll that correlates political ideology, education level and acceptance of the consensus of scientists about climate change. 74% of Republicans with a college degree say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, while the opposite is true among well-educated Democrats, only 15% of whom think the risks of climate change is exaggerated. More education apparently will not mitigate the partisan divide on global warming.

The same seems true with evolution. Here is a snippet of an article by James Krupa, Professor of Evolution at the University of Kentucky:

…one of the most misused words today is…theory. Many incorrectly see theory as the opposite of fact. The National Academy of Sciences provides concise definitions of these critical words: A fact is a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it; a theory is a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence generating testable and falsifiable predictions.

So “theories” and “facts” co-exist by definition. Krupa quotes the late Stephen Jay Gould:

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

The public acceptance of evolution in the US is the 2nd lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, so it must be a steep uphill climb in states like Kentucky to fight against the power of fundamentalism.

Why does this have to be a battle of faith(s)? Among the religious groups that support the teaching of evolution are the Episcopal Church, Lutheran World Federation, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, United Unitarian Universalists, Roman Catholic Church, and the American Jewish Congress.

In fact, 77% of all American Christians belong to a denomination that supports the teaching of evolution. The question that should be asked is: “Why can’t evolution and faith in God co-exist”? Why can’t the physical body spring from one source of life, and the soul from another?

So, wake up deniers! Today is Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday. This wake up is from the movie, “The Last Waltz”, celebrating the career of The Band, directed by Martin Scorsese. You must see this movie. Here is “Further On Up The Road“, first recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland. That’s Levon Helm on drums and Robbie Robertson on guitar along with EC:

Your Monday Hot Links:

Willie Nelson will be offering his own brand of weed. The legendary pot smoker is trying to get out ahead of big business in those states where pot is legal with “Willie’s Reserve”.

Prospect Magazine is out with its annual list of the top 50 world thinkers. Any list like this is always good for a laugh, and this year, Prospect doesn’t disappoint: They have Russell Brand at #4 on their list.

Amazon is now requiring warehouse employees to sign a non-compete agreement. The requirement extends even to seasonal workers. The agreements can last for up to 18 months. But, seasonal workers can be employed by Amazon for as few as three months. That’s a hell of a trade-off.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews. The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the UK, which publishes 277 peer-reviewed journals. In a sad commentary on scientific scholarship, there is a blog that tracks scholarly paper retractions called Retraction Watch.

A scientific team in Myanmar rediscovered a bird previously thought to be extinct. The bird is Jerdon’s babbler, and had not been seen in Myanmar since July 1941. The team found the bird on 30 May 2014. Jerdon’s babbler is not to be confused with Boehner’s babbler, which is immortal.

5 years after its launch, there are 5 things that Americans still don’t understand about Obamacare.

Friday Music Break – March 27, 2015

There are more words about music than music today. People are asking a persistent question: Given our endless Middle East wars, threats to our Constitutional rights, growing income inequality, and the continuing of violence against blacks by our police, “Where is the protest music?”

Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. There has been an avalanche of provocative hip-hop and R&B, known generally as “black liberation music” around for years. Recently, it has become more thoughtful, and for whites in America, more accessible. Gawker has an article that provides a discussion of what it is about, and which artists are leading the genre.

Today, let’s focus on three artists, D’Angelo, who, in January, released an album, “Black Messiah” 14 years after his last effort. The title song has these lyrics:

Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah,
For me the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt
And in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough,
And decides to make change happen.
It’s not about celebrating one charismatic leader, but celebrating thousands of them.

The New York Times Magazine’s Jay Caspian King features another Messiah of the moment, Kendrick Lamar. His new album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has just been released. The first video released is for the song, “i“, that speaks of his experience in Compton, CA:

They wanna say there’s a war outside and a bomb in the street
And a gun in the hood and a mob of police
And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends…

Finally, J Cole released a new album in December, “Forest Hills Drive”. Here is “Intro”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hh-gGb0Mvk

Sample Lyric:
I said do you wanna, do you wanna be, free
Free from pain, free from scars
Free to sing, free from bars
Free my dawgs, you’re free to go
Block gets shot, the streets is cold
Free to love, to each his own
Free from bills, free from pills
You roll it loud, the speakers blow
Life get hard, you eat your soul

This song asks questions that the all of us must answer for ourselves. We live in a very structured, high-stress, work hard or get left behind society.

Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be free?

The answers to these questions are clearly, “YES” for everybody. Cole makes listeners think about what they are doing with their lives, and what really matters.

The Gawker article quotes Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I don’t think it’s an accident that we have all these Black artists who were born around the same time and who are now making art that urges on liberation. America produced us. If there’s any clarity that we can derive from the different stories being told…it’s that a lot of people are fed up.

Kendrick might be one of the few Hip Hop artists who doesn’t want what whiteness affords white people:

And I will die knowing that this white racial supremacy shit has fucked with white folks psychologically, intellectually, and soulfully more than it’s fucked with any of us.

White supremacy is deeply ingrained, so deeply, that in fact, most aren’t even aware they’re infected.

Is Compulsory Voting a Problem, or a Solution?

At a town hall event in Cleveland last Wednesday, President Obama (nearly) said the US should make voting compulsory, like it is in Australia. Eleven countries, including Australia, Brazil, and Singapore, enforce compulsory voting laws. Another 11 have compulsory voting laws, but don’t enforce them.

The response to Obama’s suggestion was predictable. Fox News host Andrea Tantaros along with her fellow panelists on the show “Outnumbered” on Thursday, bashed Mr. Obama’s suggestion, saying:

Do we really want everybody voting? I don’t think so.

Co-host Melissa Francis said:

If you’re not engaged enough to vote, please don’t…Stay home.

Meanwhile, another co-host, Harris Faulkner, argued that mandatory voting would be un-American because our military:

Fought for our right to decide for ourselves.

Whatever that means. The Wrongologist does not support mandatory voting, but not for the vacuous reasons you might hear on Fox News.

Compulsory voting raises questions. First, is voting a right or a duty? If it is a right, then participation in elections is voluntary. If it is a duty, then participation should be mandatory. In countries where voting is considered a duty, voting is compulsory and is regulated in their constitutions. Some countries impose sanctions (like a fine) on non-voters.

Second, what would happen if all citizens voted? Studies show that turnout increases quite a bit. A Harvard study indicated that there are secondary gains as well:

• Compulsory voting could reduce the role of money in politics. Political parties would not spend as much money on their get-out-the-vote efforts since high turn-out would already be ensured and would be fairly inelastic
• It might increase political awareness and engagement. Compulsory voting would change the ways in which candidates and political parties develop campaign strategies. For example, it might lead to fewer negative campaigns featuring attack ads
• Compulsory voting might increase government’s relevance by bringing in groups that are underrepresented among today’s voters, since the population that shows up for US elections is whiter, older, richer and more educated than the general population

But, America is a place where our “right to be left alone” is foundational. Would being legally compelled to vote deprive anyone of a part of their liberty? Yes, if you believe voting is a right, not a duty. And how big would that “deprivation” be, compared to what we have already lost of our 1st and 4th Amendment rights since 9/11?

Perhaps the final question is: Isn’t one goal of a representative democracy to maximize voter participation? Today, registering to vote isn’t easy for every American, but it ought to be. It shouldn’t be the job of the individual election boards to say who is worthy of registration.

It should be the state’s responsibility to issue every citizen a voter registration card. If the state wants to maximize voter participation, it should mail a voter ID card to each of us. How we would deal with those of us who slip through the cracks would need to be worked out.

We have seen the way that barriers to voting emerge. They create enough of a hurdle that a significant percentage of voters fail to clear it. It is not a terrible thing to demand that we have eligibility requirements for voters, but they are often enforced inequitably, and are enough of a nuisance that a significant minority will end up not voting. For the past decade in America, many individual states have been raising barriers, because barriers to voting confer partisan advantage. With mandatory voter registration, the state’s job would be to reduce the barriers to the lowest possible level.

It is arguable if citizens should be compelled to vote, or not. Wrongo believes that is the individual’s business. Yet, as voter participation drops, a self-selected minority determines who runs the country. They then set policy that primarily reflects their interests.

That isn’t the kind of society we need. We should want our country to see all citizens as full political equals, not just in theory, but in fact. The more that barriers to voting rise in America, and the further voter participation falls, the less we resemble that ideal society.

So, issue a universal voter registration card. Move voting to the weekend, or have an entire voting week. Make it frictionless, so it’s not a big effort. Go and vote, say hi to the neighbors, and then go home to view the results.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Today’s Reason for Rejecting Conservative Republicanism

Yesterday, we highlighted an effort by a county Republican Party organization to establish Christianity as the state religion of Idaho. Turns out, that idea was smack in the mainstream of Republican ideas: A national poll of Republican primary voters conducted by Public Policy Polling finds that 57% percent of these voters support establishing Christianity as the national religion, while 30% oppose making Christianity the nation’s religion. Well, this means that 57% of Republicans hate America plain and simple. They want to turn our nation into something out of the Dark Ages.

A number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, but Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the US into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s cross-tabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among supporters of Mike Huckabee (94%), Rick Perry (83%), and Ben Carson (78%).

Now the poll was small, only sampling 316 Republican primary voters. Sample sizes of 300-600 are the norm for national telephone pollsters. While 316 is on the low end of that, PPP says that its margin of error is ± 5.5%, so some will say that it can’t scale up. However, PPP has been very accurate in the past.

The same poll also found that 66% do not believe in global warming, and a plurality (49%), do not believe in evolution. So, not only do they wish to establish a national religion, but it appears that their version of Christianity is one that is at odds with the scientific consensus in climatology and biology.

These data were buried deep (starting on page 14 of 47) in a report about how Scott Walker leads in the national eye test competition among Repubs.

Here’s a repeat of yesterday’s reminder: The First Amendment to the US Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. There’s a reason that our Founding Fathers wanted to establish a strict separation of Church and State, and the poll results bear out that wisdom. If things were left up to today’s Republican primary voters, we’d already be a theocracy, perhaps as self-righteous and intolerant as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The ignorance of our Constitution displayed by the poll results speaks to a voting populace that simply doesn’t care about tolerance, multicultural diversity, and most certainly, not about religious freedom.

America ought to be better than this. Instead, a significant portion of the electorate would be perfectly happy to turn this into a Christian theocracy…a recipe for tyranny by these good, God-fearing Christian patriots.

Our Founding Fathers lived at the end of a 300-year period where Europe had been racked by wars of religion, fought between adherents of various “Christian” sects, and they were only a little over a hundred years removed from the English civil wars of the mid-1600’s which were strongly influenced by religion. The colonies themselves mirrored Europe’s religious division, Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, and many German religious refugees in New York and Pennsylvania. They had darned good reasons to not want any religion to be given preeminence.

And today, we see religious violence in Asia (Burma, India, and China) and in the Middle East. Why would we want to revisit that here, in a nation that knows better?

From fear of Jihadi John, to fear of immunizations, to denial of climate change, it doesn’t seem that Conservative American Christians are comfortable with the idea of critical thinking; it seems to require too much of them. How would atheists, or non-Christians of all stripes survive under the US Christian state? Luckily, that would take a Constitutional Amendment, which could prove very difficult to enact.

How did Conservatives, noted in the not-so-distant past for a fierce commitment to logic, become such prisoners of their various religions?

Is There Risk in a Professional Military?

With the pot boiling in Ukraine, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande have spearheaded a plan to bring Russia, Ukraine along with France and Germany to a peace summit that may be held this week. That may or may not lead to anything, but, our Republican Chicken Hawk leaders in Congress have already decided it is a wimpy response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Sen. John McCain is reported by the Telegraph to have compared this initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland:

History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them…They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behavior when you fly to meet them to Moscow – just as leaders once flew to this city.

Mrs. Merkel said that she was against supplying Ukraine with lethal aid. McCain’s reaction to the leader of Germany? He summed up his reaction to Ms. Merkel’s speech with one word: “Foolishness.”

What has to happen before we stop listening to the Chicken Hawk wing in Congress? Clearly, losing wars isn’t enough for us to stop using military force to meddle in other nations’ problems. The “War on Terror” has been a transfer of national wealth to the corporatocracy. War and weapons of war are strategic US exports, peace just isn’t that profitable.

But today, let’s step back and look at the confluence of two emerging societal issues with our military, and the risks they could bring.

First, the risks implied by having a professional military have been examined by the Wrongologist. This has two effects: It divorces the rest of us from the consequences of foreign wars. Out of a population of 310 million, only about three-quarters of 1% served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years. It is also skewing the demographics of our military. Today’s map of the states of those in military service align closely with today’s red states:

Montana, Alaska, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Texas now send the largest number of people per capita to the military. The states with the lowest contribution rates? Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

What’s clear from the data is that a major national institution, the US military, now has tighter connections to some regions of the country than to others, something that wasn’t true when we had a draft. The uneven pattern of military service is not an insignificant reflection of the cultural differences that characterize different regions of our country, and this has broad ramifications for our future.

Second, according to the WaPo, we’re “optimizing” the Federal civil service for Veterans:

Obama began accelerating the hiring of veterans five years ago in response to the bleak employment prospects many service members faced after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veterans benefit from preferential hiring for civil service jobs under a law dating back to World War II, but the Obama administration has increased the extra credit veterans get, giving them an even greater edge in getting those jobs. The government has also set hiring goals for veterans at each agency, and managers are graded on how many they bring on board, officials said. WaPo says that the result is that veterans made up 46% of full-time hires last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management. They now represent a third of the federal workforce, holding positions throughout the Federal government.

Here is the concern: Heidi A. Urben, studied the attitudes of the officer corps, and found that about 60% said they identify with the Republican Party. But, that’s not all:

Officers who identify with the Republican Party display lower levels of trust for their civilian superiors

The Wrongologist is pro-military. He served during the Vietnam era. Yet, is there a perfect storm brewing?

• We have an all-professional military that doesn’t really trust civilian superiors.
• Those who leave the professional military are staffing one-third of our federal workforce.

Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general at the Duke Law Schools says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think there is a strong sense in the military that it is a better society than the one it serves…In the generation coming up, we’ve got lieutenants and majors who had been the warrior-kings in their little outposts…They were literally making life-or-death decisions. You can’t take that generation and say, ‘You can be seen and not heard.’

The Wrongologist has no idea what the effects of having veterans become a majority of our federal employees will be, but the active duty and the retired military are part of a fraternity. They share common training and values. They share political views, they come from the same states.

It is not hard to imagine that there is an iceberg straight ahead that we are ignoring.

And as the captain said on the Titanic: “Iceberg? What iceberg?”

Friday Music Break – February 6, 2015

Today we have music, but first, here is our latest Police State Watch: Vox reported that NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton unveiled a new militarized police unit that will be trained and armed with heavy protective gear, long rifles, and machine guns to restrain terrorists and social justice protesters. Bratton explained the purpose of the unit, which will consist of 350 officers: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.

Our recent protests? He’s speaking of the reaction to the killing of Eric Garner, most of which was peaceful, if antagonistic to the NYPD. The nation watched in horror last August as police officers deployed tear gas, sound cannons, and armored vehicles against crowds that were peacefully marching and chanting on the streets of Ferguson Missouri. Many of these protests grew increasingly lawless, partly as a result of police responding with military-grade gear.

But there’s more. Here is what Mr. Bratton said at the time of Garner’s killing:

You must submit to arrest, you cannot resist…The place to argue your case is in the courts, not in the streets.

Now, it looks like he supports punishing people arguing a misdemeanor arrest or who are protesting a perceived injustice even more harshly for resisting arrest. Bratton told a hearing at the NY State Senate:

If you don’t want us to enforce something, don’t make it a law.

That’s just the opposite of how resisting-arrest cases work in NYC. Most cops bring in very few cases of people resisting arrest, while a few cops bring in most of them. New York’s Public Radio station, WNYC analyzed NYPD records and found 51,503 cases with resisting arrest charges since 2009. Just 5% of officers who made arrests during that period accounted for 40% of resisting arrest cases — and 15% account for 72% of such cases:

It seems that “resisting arrest” charges say more about the police than they do about the demonstrators or defendants, and making resisting arrest a felony won’t lower the number of arrests, it will just give more power to the police.

This means you take your life in your hands if you engage in public dissent in NYC. You could be facing a heavily armed small army. You are certainly facing possible prison time and a permanent criminal record for getting on the wrong side of the wrong cop.

Your freedoms, particularly your First Amendment right of assembly, is under attack by Mr. Bratton and others like him all across America. First, they say you cannot resist arrest. Second, they have a military-style army mobilized to make sure you are busted hard, and fast.

So, with all this talk about cops and arrests, here is Janis Joplin doing “Ball ‘n’ Chain” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This was Janis’ first large-scale public performance, and it was as a member of Big Brother and The Holding Company. At Monterey, she owned the song, the stage, the crowd, and the festival. Columbia Records signed Big Brother and The Holding Company on the basis of this performance. Here is a live performance for the ages of Big Momma Thornton’s song:

See you on Sunday.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 1, 2015

The Super Bowl is today. There will be queso con chorizo and enchiladas at the Mansion of Wrong.

It was a busy week. Obama has bromance with India’s Prime Minister Modi, then flies to the funeral of the Saudi King. The Republican beauty pageant began; we learned that the Koch brothers plan to spend nearly $900 million to elect Republicans in 2016, but Mitt isn’t running. Mitt didn’t leave gracefully, but perhaps he showed the self-awareness to avoid further indignities. He signed off calling for an “end to the grip of poverty,” which, considering the source, should be received by most with something between a snort and a laugh.

The Koch brothers are almost their own political party. The biggest contenders for the Republican nomination went to Palm Springs for their audition with the Koch funding team. This means if you are a candidate, you will shade your story and beliefs to please the Kochs and their fellow travelers. That means you are going to spend more thought about getting and keeping your Koch money, and less time thinking about which policies matter. Or maybe, its just birds of a feather.

Choose your poison at the SB:

Thank you, Supreme Court, politics is now forever in your debt, and democracy has left the building:

We will soon leave the snow season for the money season:

Mitt decides not to be the next Adlai Stevenson:

Mr. Obama visits Saudi Arabia, makes sales call:

When will they ever learn?

Your word for the week: Agnotology.

Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

Does this concept bring to mind any particular group?

The 1% Are Heading to Galt’s Gulch

(Galt’s Gulch was the sanctuary in Atlas Shrugged where Ayn Rand’s Real Men of Genius spurned American socialism for their own libertarian paradise.)

Welcome to the economy that has just turned the page. But not that page.

The World Economic Forum ended in Davos Switzerland. This is their 45th annual meeting at Davos. Who attends? 2,500 business leaders, politicians, diplomats and a few celebrities take part in the meeting. As in the past, 73% of the delegates are men, and almost 800 of the attendees are from the US.

According to CNN, most of the 1% flew in to Davos on private jets. Roughly 1,700 private flights landed in Switzerland, 5% more than last year. The Guardian reported that, for Davos insiders, the big story was the world economy, but this year, they weren’t concerned all that much about income inequality. From The Guardian’s live blogging at Davos: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A year ago, Davos attendees said income disparity was the top threat to world stability, as years of lobbying by the likes of Occupy Wall Street hit home. Today, though, the issue doesn’t appear in the top 10. The Ukraine conflict, and the turmoil in the Middle East, have elbowed it out.

However, another Guardian article described that many of the global oligarchs attending Davos are already planning their escape. These people know full well that the current game won’t last forever. Their response is to take as much money as possible, and flee before the pitchforks emerge. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were going to create an oasis of uber-wealth and then lock the doors:

I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.

They want to leave to live in a Galt’s Gulch of their own creation. And Hedge fund managers are just a small part of the Plutocracy. The concentration of wealth and ownership in very few hands is growing, and that process has reached epidemic proportions.

In fact, according to the anti-poverty charity Oxfam, the wealthiest 1% will soon own more than the rest of the world’s population. Oxfam’s research shows that the share of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% last year. Based on the current trend, Oxfam says it expects the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.

But, hasn’t our economy turned the page? Apparently, the Davos 1% types are way ahead of the Obama administration. From Monday’s NYT: (Brackets by the Wrongologist)

The middle class has shrunk consistently over the past half-century. Until 2000, the reason was primarily because more Americans moved up the income ladder. But since then, the reason has shifted: [Now] there is a greater share of households on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

The Times uses yearly income of $35,000 to $100,000 to define middle class. The $35k amount is about 50% higher than the official poverty level for a family of four.

Here is the NYT’s graph of the current breakdown by income:
(All numbers on the solid black lines in the chart are percentages of the US population and do not add to 100% due to rounding)

From the NYT:

Even as the American middle class has shrunk, it has gone through a transformation. The 53 million households that remain in the middle class — about 43% of all households — look considerably different from their middle-class predecessors of a previous generation…

Recently, the fastest-growing component of the middle class has been households headed by people 65 and older. Today’s seniors have better retirement benefits than previous generations. Also, older Americans are increasingly working past traditional retirement age. More than eight million were in the labor force in 2013, nearly twice as many as in 2000.

A December New York Times poll showed that 60% of people who self-identify as middle class think that if they work hard, they will get rich. But the income and census data suggest that goal is moving increasingly out of reach.

If 60% of the middle class still think they can get rich, despite clear evidence to the contrary, the Plutocrats and lobbyists have successfully brainwashed the American public. They are unable to see just how systematically and catastrophically they have been played.

We may be able to take back control from the Plutocrats and the Oligarchs. But they now have control of our militarized police, they control cyber spying programs aimed at American citizens, and they control a byzantine political system completely removed from the average person’s day-to-day.

Gone are the days when we could storm the castle with torches and pitchforks, demanding change, and win.

If we succeed in bringing about real change, and not the faux change marketed by politicians, it will not be a pretty affair. They will fight. And they have the means to do so.

Shock and Awe, Part Deux

From the Wall Street Journal: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Jeb Bush is crisscrossing the country on a 60-event fundraising blitz aimed at raising enough money to give other Republicans second thoughts about entering the race.

The fundraising effort, which Mr. Bush’s team has dubbed a “shock and awe’’ campaign, could be particularly meaningful for Mitt Romney , who is competing with Mr. Bush for support from the same small circle of longtime Republican donors.

How can talking about “shock and awe” in a supposed positive way be a part of your election plan? We all remember “shock and awe”, and not fondly. Probably as many as 100 million Americans understand that the high volume bombing of Baghdad by Jeb’s brother George W. did not bring about a pacified Iraq. In fact, the “shock and awe” bombing campaign led to a nasty insurgency and ultimately, a failed campaign to make Iraq a democratic and peaceful place.

The analogy would be that Jeb assumes if he raises a huge amount of money, it will force his rivals out of the race. If the analogy is perfect, he will discover that his opponents don’t quit the race, and he has no plan for what to do then.

But, since Citizens United, it will take a lot of money if the nominee is going to be someone other than Bush or Romney. One lesson of the 2012 Republican primaries was that, with no restrictions on the donations by the rich, candidates did not need to have a plurality of rich guys behind them in order to compete.

Maverick rich guys could keep a candidate sufficiently funded, as both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum demonstrated. But, the rich guys also learned that there are diminishing returns to funding, particularly in the primaries, so, it is unlikely that Romney can be funds-raised out of the race, he can self-fund. Which means Romney has little to fear from Jeb’s shock and awe fundraising.

The conservative Washington Examiner isn’t convinced that Jeb will be able to raise enough money. (brackets by the Wrongologist)

It has been a while since the Bush machine was in operation…It was last up and running in 2004, for the re-election of George W. Bush, and last at work for the caucuses in 2000, for W’s first run. For the 2016 race, that means the machine has been out of action for a long time. Many Bush donors from 2000 and 2004 became Romney donors in…2012. They have conflicted loyalties, and not all of them will rejoin the [Bush] family.

It is safe to say that Jeb won’t be able to scare Mitt Romney away based on fundraising alone, and that the two of them will divide most of the big donor base. Still, once governors like John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Chris Christie of New Jersey learn how much money that Bush has brought in by doing 60 events, they may realize that they can’t really compete. One or more will go forward to compete in the debates with the hope of landing the VP slot, or positioning themselves for private sector careers. For them, Jeb’s fundraising isn’t going to push them to the sidelines, no matter how much is raised.

And Jeb is supposed to be the smart one.

Finally, we are having a “Snowmageddon” event here in the Northeast. Internet may or may not survive. In the meantime, here is “Call it Stormy Monday, (but Tuesday’s Just as Bad)” by T. Bone Walker, recorded in 1947:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVR8lg1YLuc

Friday Music Break – January 23, 2015

What is the real State of the Union? Polarized, now, and for the rest of our lifetimes.

With that in mind, today is a good day to chill, and here a few songs to promote chillin’. We start with the very funny song “I’ll Never Smoke Weed with Willie Again” during Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday celebration. It is sung by Toby Keith and Scott Emerick, with Willie Nelson laughing in the background:

Sample Lyrics:
I always heard that his herb was top shelf
I just could not wait to find out for myself
Don’t knock it ’til you tried it, well, I tried it my friend
And I’ll never smoke weed with Willie again

For all you old hippies out there, here is “Willin” and “Don’t Bogart that Joint” by Little Feat, that is, the Lowell George-led version of Little Feat, not the several incarnations of bands using that name that have been working since Lowell died in 1979. These two tracks were recorded at Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University in August of 1977:

For the Wrongologist’s (not substantial) money, Waiting for Columbus is one of the greatest live recordings. However, it is not completely a “live” album. It doesn’t take anything away from WFC or Little Feat, but there were overdubs done later, prior to release, to enhance the sound on a few cuts.

If you don’t know this album, buy the 2002 Deluxe Edition CD, you will never be sorry. Don’t buy the version on Amazon, it only has 20 songs, the actual deluxe CD has 27.

We can’t end without another Waiting for Columbus tune. WFC was recorded in London in addition to Washington DC. There were 4 dates in London. Here is “Dixie Chicken”, recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater on August 3 & 4, 1977:

That’s Bill Payne on the piano solo. Here, Little Feat combined jazz, honkytonk, swing, ragtime and dixie into one great song.

WFC is a go-to experience on any road trip for the Wrongologist.