Thoughts On Newtown, God, and Guns

It's been a week since one of the most horrific things I can imagine happened in Newtown, CT.  I thought I would let a little time pass before writing about it, and I want to talk more about a response from Mike Huckabee over at Fox News.  I'm not sure where this one will end up, but let's start with this clip from the beginning of the week:

There's a number of things I found interesting with this clip, namely that it encapsulates a number of expected responses to a nightmare such as the one that transpired on December 14th.  First, the question attributed to Neil Cavuto... where was God in all of this?  How could God let such violence occur, especially to children? Mike Huckabee made a somewhat expected response when he mentioned how we push God out of our public life and then ask where did He go when something unimaginable happens.

Obviously Huckabee wasn't claiming that if we had prayer in school none of this would have happened, but then he goes on to state, in very different words, that when we set out to create a society that tries to accommodate vast differences in personal beliefs, well then we shouldn't be surprised when those efforts invariably lead to pure evil.  Essentially he states that we allow evil in various forms to run our society... calling The Gays normal, having abortion pills, trying to maintain the separation of church and state called for by the founding fathers (maybe to a ridiculous degree in some cases).  By doing that, and by denying moral absolutes (I guess the particular moral absolutes that a subset of people who agree with Huckabee subscribe to which doesn't an absolute make), we create a godless environment with the potential to create an Adam Lanza.

First I'd like to congratulate Mike Huckabee for not addressing a single issue that can be directly connected to the shooting in Newtown.  This will probably come up later on.

Second, I guess I'll throw my own thoughts out here on these lines of thinking, and these thoughts should be taken with a ten-pound grain of salt.

I'm a spiritual person and I believe in God.  When tragedies such as Newtown happen and people ask how God could let this happen, I often think about one of the earliest stories in the Old Testament... Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The story I grew up with had Adam and Eve forbidden from eating from this specific tree.  Eve, pushed by a snake, eats first and disobeys God.  Then Eve pushes Adam to do the same.  That original sin dooms human kind to death and suffering.

Taking that story literally, God didn't protect all of humanity from our original sin, he gave us a choice and we chose poorly.  Taken less literally, I think the story of original sin drives home the importance of free will and accepting responsibility for our actions even in the presence of an omnipotent God.  For me, the story of original sin means that God isn't there to be used as some easy outlet of blame or source of abandoment in the worst of times.  God didn't stop Adam and Eve from making their choice and he held Adam and Eve responsible for what they did.  God isn't going to stop the next Adam Lanza from commiting whatever atrocity that occurs, and we need to hold ourselves responsible as a collective for events like Newtown.

There are other stories, such as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego getting thrown into ovens to burn to death only to have God protect them and keep them unharmed, but I feel like some of these other stories aren't so focused on the free will of human beings like those concerning Adam and Eve.

But I completely agree with Mike Huckabee that you can answer the question "Where was God?" by looking at the first responders, those trying to comfort the community and specifically the families of those lost.  More specifically you can answer that question by looking at the fallen staff members who selflessly gave themselves out of love for the children in their care.  Some charged the gunman, others cradled children and tried to shield them from gunfire.  I also personally believe you can find God in the faces of the children that died and in the faces of children everywhere.  You can find God in the words President Obama spoke to help ease Newtown's suffering, his address at the interfaith service on the Sunday after the shooting was inspirational and moving.

In the end, though, asking "Where was God..." feels more like a distraction after the initial shock wears off.  Horrors such as these feel random at the time, but they really aren't.  There's a series of events and decisions that led to that moment.  Adam Lanza suffered from mental illness, his mother Nancy was a proud gun collector - wait, let's just stop right there and let that part of the puzzle fall into place for a moment.  Just after the Newtown shooting, the following article made the rounds:

'I Am Adam Lanza's Mother': A Mom's Perspective On The Mental Illness Conversation In America

I thought it was an interesting, moving, heartbreaking peak into what some families in our country have to deal with and the societal shortfalls they encounter.  But let me tell you exactly why the author of the above article is not Adam Lanza's mother... she doesn't collect guns while raising her child suffering from mental illness.  I'm not trying to over-simplify what happened in Newtown or single out Nancy Lanza, but it does seem like a combination to be avoided.

Then there was this gem of an article over at The Daily Beast:

There's Little We Can Do To Prevent Another Massacre

First, nothing like a "throw in the towel" headline in the wake of a tragedy, but let's talk a bit about the content.  Here's a collection of quotes from the top of the article:

The things that would work are impractical and unconstitutional. The things we can do won't work.

There just aren't good words to talk about Newtown.  It is a crime that literally defies imagination--hell, it flings imagination down and dances upon its head.  No one reading this can imagine strolling into an elementary school and opening fire on a bunch of small children.  You can't imagine even wanting to.  

When one tries to picture the mind that plans it, one quickly comes to a dead end.  Even if I had been raised with no moral laws at all, even if there were no cops and no prisons, I'm pretty sure that I still wouldn't want to spend a crisp Friday morning shooting cowering children.  Trying to climb this mountain of wickedness is like trying to climb a glass wall with your bare hands. What happened there is pure evil, and evil, unlike common badness, gives an ordinary mind no foothold.  Since we can't understand it, we can't change it.  And since we can't change it, our best hope is to box it in.

Right off the bat, I feel like Megan McArdle, the article's author, is working from a flawed premise.  Maybe some of the solutions we might attempt are impractical, but so are a lot of things governments take care of... that's why they are handled by the public and not by private market forces.  Maybe you could argue banning some kinds of weapons is unconstitutional, but the constitution isn't fixed.  If we, as a society, deem it important enough to answer the assault weapon question once and for all, we can do that at the constitutional level.  Not saying an amendment is realistic or practical either, but I can't see caving just because of the reasons laid out in that very first sentence above.

Then Ms. McArdle seems to confuse empathy with understanding in the second passage.  She's absolutely right, I literally can not imagine what must be going through someone's mind when they decide to murder a child.  But we, as a society, don't need to in order to understand Adam Lanza's illnesses better or the shortcomings in our mental health system that Nancy Lanza may have faced.

Finally, in the third passage, she seems to mix up her nature versus nurture.  Adam Lanza suffered from a physical illness, and no comparison to someone raised in a lawless dystopia is going to clarify that point.

Ms. McArdle states a little further into the article that "Not every problem has a policy solution."  I agree, and so does President Obama when he clearly said in his first remarks about the shooting that no single policy is going to solve massacres.  The driving force of his response though, was we have to try to find solutions that at least make events like Newtown less likely.

It might be more tricky on some levels in this particular case, but I agree we should try.  As the article rightly points out, the Lanza's had money and lived in an affluent part of the country.  The school system had, probably, more resources than most to try to help kids like Adam Lanza growing up.  But Lanza wasn't in the public school system anymore, so why can't a first step be to look into what we do for these troubled kids as they finish growing up?  As the article states:

Adam Lanza, the apparent shooter, had some sort of moderately severe autism-spectrum disorder.  Over the years, like many parents of special needs children, his mother seems to have increasingly withdrawn from work and the community in order to focus on taking care of her son. 

So we have a single Mom having to spend more and more energy caring for her grown child suffering from mental illness.  Was there help available to her at this stage like there probably was when Adam was in school?  Did she take advantage of it given she most likely had the resources to do so?  If not, why?  Was something getting in the way from a policy standpoint or was there no help out there?

Another fact mentioned is that Adam Lanza tried to buy firearms and was denied.  Gun laws worked as intended there, but what's the difference if Adam buys the gun himself or if he lives in a house with pistols, an AR-15, and a shotgun for him to take?  Is there nothing that can be looked at here from a policy perspective?  Adam had an extended 30-round clip for the AR-15, the gun used to commit most of the atrocities.  Sure, it's not fully automatic or capable of three-round bursts, but it is capable of firing off rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger with magazines available to allow the shooter to do that for a good long while (see Aurora).  Is there nothing to look at here from a policy perspective?

From later in the article:

I'm not even going to delve into the various "tax/ban" ammunition arguments; they're just a special case of gun control, and about as useful.  Regular old bullets are extremely deadly, especially when fired at close range.  He didn't need something capable of penetratng kevlar.

Then maybe regular ammo should be considered as well under ammo tax discussions?  I don't know, but it's worth the discussion.  For me, this next quote embodies a lot of the failure behind Ms. McArdle's article:

But we are back to generic solutions. These "reasonable controls" would not, in fact, have done much to stop the horror at Newtown; Lanza's problem was not that he didn't know the four rules of gun safety, or that his aim was bad. And Lanza didn't buy the guns, so a background check would not have stopped him.  

Maybe all the government can do is offer up generic solutions, but she fails to admit the cumulative effect that a series of "generic solutions" might have.  The article demonstrates that a lot of time and thought went into arguing for the status quo, but what's she arguing for, on some level, is why we all should be comfortable with tragedies like Newtown.

From the reaction I've seen, I don't think most people want to feel comfortable with what happened in Newtown.  Our rejection of the Newtown shooting necessitates that we try to do better as a society,  Hopefully there are people working as hard at trying to discover possible policy solutions to help prevent another Newtown as Ms. McArdle worked at telling us how we can't.

Election Night

I don't think any of the four readers of this site will be surprised to know that I was pulling for Obama to win last night.  It's not that I felt the world would end if Romney won, but I'm glad to see his political approach not get rewarded.  I also feel last night's election as a whole was a nice, strong statement against the Tea Party fringes that have been trying to push their way into politics like it's the midnight opening of a Walmart on Black Friday.

More than that, I feel like the Bullshit had a hard light shown on it and people got to see what they were stepping in.  One big thing was Karl Rove doubting the call to give Ohio to President Obama.  Let's start here:

So we have Karl Rove bringing in his own numbers and given who he is, I'm sure he's experienced enough to make some decent calculations on the fly.  But he ends up running into the classic How I Want The World To Be versus How The World Really Is.  During the clip, Rove argues that Romney closes a twenty thousand vote gap with only a few percentage points of polls added to the reported column.  I don't think he realizes he's partly making the case against his argument.  The Stats Guys probably could see some closing occurring as Romney blew one of his last, bigger, wads, leaving nothing left for when Obama pulled ahead with the Cleveland area votes.  In fact, to Fox News' credit, they went and talked to the Stats Guys themselves to get the full dirt:

What I like about the response is how the Stats Guys, when asked to talk about Rove's theory, basically say there's no theory there to talk about.  There's no 2004 exit-poll debacle, it's just straight raw numbers matched with historical trends.  There comes a point when there's nothing left for spinning something... the fact becomes the fact.

Another part of the Bullshit to get illuminated in full ugly was Donald Trump, who basically melted down on Twitter as the election results came in.

Donald Trump Wins Election Night's 'Most Unhinged Conservative' Award

Here are some highlights:

He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!

The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!

Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble...like never before.

That's not a rational reaction to an election (and neither is an Obama supporter playing Queen's We Are The Champion or rolling around the interwebs rubbing in the victory).  I liked Brian Williams briefly commenting on those tweets on this Huffington Post link.  Right off the bat, Williams states that Trump has "driven well past the last exit to relevance."  I'm glad he did.  Sure, Williams prides himself on being in the business of news first, but here he got to mention, however under the radar, that commenting on Trump's tweets in the first place was a bit of bullshit, and the poster of said tweets was drowning in bullshit.

Trump, and people like Trump, have no place in our political discourse.  There is no reason not to publicly shame them into either shutting up or contributing in an intelligent fashion (so most likely shutting up).  Fox News should stop being the low self-esteem network and realize they can hold a right wing position without being a constant joke (honestly, I feel like that would do wonders for the current right wing in this country, and probably the country as a whole).  Fox News should stop pandering to fringe Bullshit like Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers are rigged for Obama, polling that favors Obama must be biased, etc.  

As Fox News host Stephen Hayes said last night, "The polling was more accurate than it wasn't."

No, Stephen... no.  Those who did correct polling and came back with answers the right didn't like (s'up Nate Silver?) were accurate, you just didn't like the results and then went all late-eighties/early-nineties Oliver Stone.  That's not the polls being inaccurate, that's you being either stupid or crazy.

What last night revealed to the fringe right, on some level, is that, facts exist, they can be uncovered, and you actually have to deal with them.  Last night it was the math behind polling, maybe tomorrow it can be the science behind climate change.  I'm not saying the real fringe doesn't have the right to state that certain things are a hoax or statistical analysis has a left-leaning bias, they just can't be part of the grown-up discussion that wants to get real things done in this country.  

I live in Jersey, and as everyone knows, we got with by Sandy last week.  Real things need to get done in order to restore the tri-state area, just like real things need to get done to protect this area from future super-storms that are now more likely due to climate change.  It's time to relegate the fringe back to the fringe so that we can move forward like a rational superpower in the 21st century.

I'll let Jon Stewart bring it home:

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Romney's Binders Full of Retractions

The statement that launched a thousand internet memes.

Truth of the matter is that when Romney took office, women made up 42% of the "important staff" which is something I don't think he should shy away from.  That's a great number.  Sure it was down to 25% by the end of his term, but you can't necessarily blame Romney for the mass exodus of ladies... right?

Here are a few of my favorite memes based off that binders line:

I get what Romney was trying to say during this debate moment, so I don't hold it against him that it may have come out a bit awkward on the spot during a debate watched by 65 million people while vying for the most powerful position on planet Earth.  I don't need every sentence to come out like poetry, but what shouldn't be lost in all of this internet attention is the question asked.

The L.A. Times has a good article breaking down this entire moment for both candidates:

Wage Gap?  Gender Gap?  Answers From Obama And Romney Fall Through The Cracks

Let's start with the question:

In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72% of what their male counterparts earn?

Very good question, because, let's face it, it feels like bullshit that we can't figure out something this simple.  The article states:

...Their responses were surprisingly condescending. 

They each immediately and very noticeably went personal, as if the word "females" triggered some deeply embedded Skinnerian word association response — "Women like personal stories," you could almost hear their handlers whisper. "Tell them a personal story."

For Obama:

Obama, with two daughters and the formidable Michelle as his wife, clearly thought this was an easy out. He loosened up, took his time. He was, as he reminded everyone for the 7 millionth time, the son of a single mother who put herself through school, raised by a grandmother who, though discriminated against in the workplace, never complained "because that generation didn't complain."

As if this were a good thing, not complaining. Which, and we must beckon for the fact-checker here, I'm fairly certain some of them did, including Betty Friedan, who was a contemporary of Obama's grandmother, as was the late great Bella Abzug, only they called it "protest."

Obama then pointed out that he had supported the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, after Ledbetter lost her pay equity case in front of the Supreme Court.

"So we fixed that," the president said. Et voila, pay equity all around! Instead of discussing how, say, that act might work for real women, he decided to turn a question about equal pay into an opportunity for him to point out his support for legal abortion and insurance coverage of contraceptives.

Because clearly any mention of women must prompt a discussion of abortion and contraception, and legal abortion and covered contraception should, somehow, make up for women not getting paid enough. (Memo to American management: Next time a man asks for a raise, just hand him a box of condoms.) He summed up with his go-to argument of the night: He would ensure that everyone gets an education. Because we all know that women with college degrees are never discriminated against in the workplace.

So yeah, looking back at Obama's response, that's kind of a train wreck of avoidance.  And obviously I posted the meat of Romney's response at the top of this article.  His binder statements struck me in the same way people proving they are not racist because some of their best friends are minorities.  Fair pay for women?  Of course I support that.  Look how much I enjoyed hiring women as governor!  Beyond that, from the L.A. Time article again:

...He also allowed his female chief of staff to go home at 5 o'clock every day so she could make dinner for her young children.

Because if you want to hire women, you have to be flexible enough to let them bring home the bacon and then fry it up in a pan.

During the debate, that part about allowing the Chief of Staff to go home and cook dinner was what jumped out at me, but I didn't consider it at the moment because I was following the rest of Romney's response.  Ms. Mary McNamara, who wrote this oft-quoted L.A. Times piece, critiques that moment perfectly.

Now, even beyond all of that, another point of interest from the Binder segment came after the debate itself.  From the Huffington Post:

Mitt Romney Adviser on Lilly Ledbetter Act: "He Was Opposed To It At The Time"

After the debate, after Romney stated his love for equal pay, Romney Campaign Advisor Ed Gillespe talked about how Romney felt about the Lilly Ledbetter Act:

Had Mitt Romney been president in 2009, he would not have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, a top adviser to the Republican nominee told The Huffington Post Tuesday night.

Now that the law has been passed, Romney has no plans to get rid of it, that adviser, Ed Gillespie, added. But Romney didn't support it while it made its way through Congress.

"The governor would not repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Act," said Gillespie, following Tuesday night's presidential debate. "He was opposed to it at the time. He would not repeal it."

Truth of the matter is that Romney never actually came out in favor of or against the bill (not sure why), and when his campaign was asked directly by the Huffington Post on a conference call with the press, the campaign simply said "We'll get back to you."   Obama specifically mentioned that during the debate.  So maybe this was the Romney campaign finally getting back to someone on that question.  

That's obviously not the case, so poor Ed Gillespie had to roll himself out again to clarify his clarification:

Hours after this story was published, the Romney campaign sent a statement from Gillespie walking back the comments he had made the night before.

“I was wrong when I said last night Governor Romney opposed the Lily Ledbetter act," the statement read. "He never weighed in on it. As President, he would not seek to repeal it.”

So a retraction on the clarification.  Why is this such a big deal?  Two reasons, first is the general vibe of why doesn't a presidential campaign have its shit together?  Seems like you want to know where you stand on something from the start just so you have a position to build on as things come up.  Seems like you would want to know what your candidate said before addressing what your candidate said.

Second, and this is a point that's been making the rounds for a while, it's infuriating that Romney is allowed to say one thing to an audience only to have his campaign "clarify" his actual positions as the exact opposite.

I know that clip is long, but it's worth watching through because the beginning establishes the Romney campaign's history of lying, and at around the six-minute mark, goes into the heart of the matter... the pattern of saying one thing and having staff say the opposite later.  While the Binder correction may not be the strongest or most blatant example of this behavior, it's the thing everyone is paying attention to at the moment.  It's an accessible way to get everyone on board with Romney's particular method of weaseling around positions or the truth.

Between Romney's "State and later Correct" and Ryan's inability to own up to his own marathon times, I think we have a ticket that clearly doesn't have the stones to run the country.

Edit: The Romney campaign tried to respond to this Binder Meme and just failed:

This sucks... the Romney campaign sucks at the internet.

Jerry Sandusky In His Own Words

By now, everyone probably knows the name Jerry Sandusky.  Charged with and found guilty of multiple counts of child molestation, Jerry and his wife Dottie offered some words to the judge just before his sentencing.  CNN published the letter here to go along with the following article:

Letter By Sandusky, Wife Blame Everyone Else

I guess I'm not entirely surprised by the tone because I don't believe Sandusky feels he ever did anything wrong.  His wife must be in a tough emotional spot, I can't imagine what it must feel like to have your spouse accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable.  Luckily my wife only dabbles in the white collar stuff and some light cocaine trafficking.  Reading over the three-page letter from Jerry Sandusky obviously yielded some interesting passages, such as:

I write without expectation or a plea for leniency.  However, I write with hope and resolve to keep fighting for a brighter day.

There were so many people involved with the orchestration of this conviction (media, investigators, prosecutors, "the system," Penn State, and the accusers).  It was well done.  They won!  When I thought about how it transpired, I wondered what they had won.  I thought of the methods, decisions, and allegations.  I relieved (sic) the inconsistent and dishonest testimonies.

Wondering what would happen if the accusers and conspirators were investigated, Sandusky mused:

All of their issues would surface.  They would no longer be these poor, innocent people, as portrayed.  I have been blamed for all of their failures and shortcomings, but nobody mentioned the impact of the people who spent much more time with them than I did.  Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this.

That last passage struck me as odd.  Maybe those closer to the victims could have more influence, but those closer to the victims aren't charged with sexually molesting anyone.  Seems like molestation might intensify your influence on someone's life greatly even in the shortest of timespans.

Sandusky's letter goes on to mention conspiracies to protect the "system," it drops a Thoreau quote, and finally talks about a book covering the Rwandan holocaust.  Yes, Sandusky compares himself to a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust:

There was betrayal and murder.  Families turned against one another.  Best friends became enemies.  Those who had been helped at one point in their life sought and killed those who had helped them.  In a lesser way I've experienced this.

In the end, his faith in people is gone but his faith in God remains.

Dottie Sandusky also penned a few pages on her husband's behalf.  It also avoids asking for sympathy, it mentions lost faith in the system, it throws the adopted son who testified against Jerry Sandusky under the bus as a Bipolar off his meds, and unfortunately includes a lot of passages with unintended molestation double entendre:

He is a very up front man.

Jerry always puts others before himself and always wanted to make each person feel special no matter who they were.

Many times he would give up much of his free time, which was not many hours when he was a coach, to make a sporting event of one of the kids he was trying to help.

In the end, there's nothing good to come from this.  The victims get closure seeing Sandusky hauled off to prison for the rest of his life, but that can't change the past.  With appeals, much of the Jerry Sandusky story could be regurgitated multiple times over the next dozen years.  The victims may have to undergo their pain again and again during this process.

Regardless of what you think of Sandusky, his family is shattered.  His wife gets to spend the rest of her life alone except for weekend visiting hours.  Their adopted kids who didn't say they were molested just lost their father for all intents and purposes.  I'm not claiming sympathy for Sandusky, but collateral damage is collateral damage.

In the end, I find this whole saga one of the saddest stories I've heard in a long time.  As a rebuttal to Sandusky's letter, I offer some moments from Bob Costas' interview with Sandusky:

Can Sandusky be a cog in his own grand conspiracy?

Looking Hard Truths Right In The Eyes

Every morning, I ask myself the same question but I never muster the stones to answer that question honestly.  Luckily, Investors.com shouldered my burden to protect me from my own cowardice:

Why Does Obama Hate America?

Having read the article, I have to admit my original question remains unanswered because it appears that Obama doesn't even know America Ferrera.  But the even more alarming question came to light... why does President Obama hate this country?  I know if I ever hated someone, I would spend my adult life climbing a tedious and bullshit-ridden path full of personal inconveniences just so I could hope to get hired as that hated person's #1 guy.  That's totally not a crazy and ridiculous thing to do with your precious limited time here on Earth.

The article addresses a recent - you know, I hate to do this to a word in the English language but I guess I must - documentary titled 2016.  The Investors article breaks down the argument made in the film 2016 by its creator, Dinesh D'Souza.  The thesis driving the film is that everyone has underestimated the impact Obama's father had on him, leading the President on a lifetime mission of revenge against the very country he leads.  Not convinced?  The article asks why would President Obama do the following things if this were not the case?

• Hold corporate America, Wall Street and the wealthy in contempt.
• Run against capitalism in a country run by capitalism.
• Deny America's exceptionalism on the world stage and lead from behind.
• Apologize and bow, literally, to Third World leaders in a bizarre and unprecedented doctrine of mea culpa.
• Throw key Middle East ally Israel under the bus over Jewish settlements.
• Withdraw hastily from Afghanistan while refusing to talk about this key front in the War on Terror in terms of victory.
• Propose slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while mothballing missile defense.
• Fail to guard national security secrets critical to protecting America from foreign threats.
• Curb domestic oil production and block the Keystone Pipeline, while underwriting exploration and drilling in South America.
• Compound America's debt crisis with even more federal spending, risking more U.S. credit downgrading.

Looking at that list... the accusations are pretty damning but they are also extremely broad at times, open to chunks of interpretation, or explainable by a number of other means (what's up last item on the list?).  Regardless of the specifics, D'Souza believes that the heart of Obama's actions are to...

...either redistribute wealth at home or U.S. power abroad. He argues it's strategic, designed to right past wrongs and delegitimize America as the world's richest superpower.

I might argue that a lot of Obama's presidency has been to react to an inherited catastrophe the same way I might if I was riding in a car spinning out on ice and the driver said "take the wheel!"  Other parts were reneging on his foreign policy promises to cut back our human rights awfulness or stepping up lethal precision attacks.  Another part was health care, and the final part was running face first repeatedly into the Senate filibuster.

The AP came back and said the claims made in 2016 are highly subjective, but let's allow the article a chance to cover the response to the AP's accusations:

For instance, D'Souza points out that London had gifted a bust of Churchill to the Oval Office only to have Obama, in a slap, return it as soon as he took office. The Brits made it clear Obama could keep the small statue in the Oval Office. Problem is, Churchill happened to be prime minister when Britain ruled Kenya and allegedly mistreated Obama's grandfather. So Obama shipped it off. 

AP claims there's no truth to the story, even though an Obama aide recently had to retract a statement denying Obama sent the bust back to the Brits.

Now, while I personally believe that the above explanation is the only possible one that could ever fit all the facts, let's give the Liberal Media a chance to defend itself:

Is The Churchill Bust Controversy A Total Bust?

So ABC claims that there were two Churchill busts, one on loan to President Bush as a post-9/11 symbolic gesture, and the other a permanent fixture in the White House residency.  The one on loan got returned, another bust put in its place.  So Obama, in order to take a dump on the evil imperialistic America, returned the Churchill bust in his office but decided to keep living with the other.  Or if the bust replacement really was a symbolic gesture, was the decision to replace the returned bust with one of Lincoln or MLK Jr just a clever ruse or some other anti-American enigma?  And was the AP claiming there was no truth to the bust being returned or no truth to the batshit reasons put forth by some to explain why Obama returned the bust?  The latter feels 147% obvious, but there's that -47% wiggle room I guess.

You can keep going in the article to read the list evidence that feels like it should end with a character in an Oliver Stone film repeating "Back, and to the left."  One other key bit of support was taken directly from Obama's memoirs, Dreams From My Father, which the article talks about:

It's plain from Obama's memoir that he worshipped his father. Obama devotes more than 130 pages, or roughly a third, of "Dreams" to covering his father's life and his colonized ancestry in Kenya. This is purposeful. Obama sympathizes with the idea that "neocolonial wealth," held even by Asian business owners in Nairobi, should be "redistributed to the people." (Neocolonialism is the alleged economic exploitation that remains even after political independence.) 

Obama says he realized who he is and what he really cares about when he visited his father's grave. He describes breaking down and weeping, whereupon he reflects: "The pain that I felt was my father's pain."

Personally, I've never read Obama's memoir but given what I know about his relationship to his father, it doesn't surprise me that a big chunk of it would be devoted to the subject.  Obama was essentially abandoned by his Dad, so does it seem so bizarre that Obama would want to explore the mystery of "just who was my father?"  It's twelve pounds of Freud and a few Shakespearian plays all wrapped into one.  To D'Souza, it's a nefarious Bond-villain plot.

In the end, the reality of day-to-day life in the United States over the last four years just doesn't sync up to what the article claims.  If Obama is pursuing some agenda fueled by O.G. beef, I'm not sure he's really started yet.  After Romney's done flip-flopping his fists into his own groin and calling it a presidential campaign, after Obama wins re-election, if all of D'Souza's predictions come true, I will happily read every instance of "I Told You So" he desires to print.  But it's so rare that the crazy guy yelling on the street corner gets that satisfaction.

Congress v. The United States: The Journalism Is Dead Edition

As we all know, James Holmes shocked the nation a few weeks ago when he shot up a packed movie theater about to show The Dark Knight Rises.  He stated "I am the Joker," even though it's obvious from his mugshot that he's doing it wrong:

As you would expect, such a horrific incident generates massive amounts of discussion, something I believe to be one of the best parts of living in a democracy.  But since the discussion exists, there has to be some point that marks the highest levels of that discussion and some point that marks the lowest... and I think we've found the lowest:

Dark Knight Rises Shooting Suspect: Why He's Not The Joker

Luckily the article wastes no time getting to the heart of its response.  I'll go ahead and quote the first part here.

Because he's just not.

So it starts with that opening salvo, but any journalist worth his or her salt knows the importance of backing up a claim.  The article goes on:

When James Holmes, the 24-year-old suspect in the Dark Knight Rises theater shooting is arraigned this morning in Colorado, his hair may still be wildly dyed, and allusions to the Joker, the Batman villain with which Holmes reportedly aligned himself, may continue to be made. 

But comic-book movie fans like Jim Littler will know better 

"Insane or not, obviously he's not the Joker," says Littler, founder of the fandom-news site ComicBookMovie.com, "and it's silly to even entertain this lunatic's perverse fantasy."  

It is silly, Mr. Littler.  I agree with you completely, and while we could stop and ask if the article quoting you is doing the very thing you rightly stated as silly, I'd rather keep going, which means citing the part where the late Heath Ledger's father adds to the slam dunk of the "Because he's just not" opening salvo.

We can't blame Heath or the character…It's [the Joker] fictious."

Indeed.  Okay, so far we have a guy who owns a comic book related URL and Heath Ledger's Dad on record, but if I were editing this E! Online article, I'd want one more random URL owner just to bulletproof the piece.

From the Batman comic to the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the overriding message, says Heidi MacDonald, editor-in-chief of the comic-news blog The Beat, is that personal tragedy can spur a fight for nothing less than "the greater good."

"I'm sure it is really dismaying for fans and readers that this message has been coopted, for a bit, by a real-life wacko," MacDonald says.

Since there really isn't much more to add, I'm just going to slow clap this shit:

Obviously I don't have anything personal against the author or the people quoted in the article, but let's be honest, there's no reason for this article to exist.  It perfectly illustrates the difference between continuing a discussion and simply prolonging it.

Twenty-four hour news networks were the worst things to happen to news in a long time, but they didn't hold the title for very long.  I think the blessing and curse of online news sources do more damage to the discourse when the final count is tallied.  E! News Online already covers fluffy nonsense like this headline -

Justin Bieber Tweets Support For Canadian Olympic Gymnast Dominique Pegg

- so I imagine it must be tough to fight for our limited time-wasting headline clicks when there's real news about.  So a hastily assembled article goes up just to keep the content fresh.  That's fine when the content covers Bieber's Twitter account, but when the content addresses Real News like the shooting in Aurora, it feels a touch more insulting.

I don't think there's a person out there who would give James Holmes' "I'm Joker" comment any degree of weight.  But The E! Online article has to, if even just for a moment, in order for the article to exist.  The article includes quotes from bloggers as primary sources to help peel back the layers of this non-existant topic.  And, of course, the article starts off with that total turd of an opening, "Because he's just not."

In the end, it's a reminder that news on the web is just one way to fill in the spaces on a web page not covered in ads.  Porn is another, and honestly, it's probably a better use of the space than empty, half-assed articles like the one that kicked off this whole thing.

It begs the question, if the original article is an empty waste of time, what does that make my post exploring said article?

Ah blogs... who knew that passing gas could take the shape of words?

Senseless Tragedy, Senseless Aftermath

As everyone not living off the grid already knows, a horrific tragedy took place last week in Aurora, a town outside of Denver in Colorado.  James Holmes reportedly entered the theater as a patron, then left through an emergency exit and propped the door open.  He went to his car, put on a full complement of body armor, and grabbed two Glock pistols, a 12 gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 rifle.  For the AR-15, Holmes had bought a drum magazine which not only allowed him to fire many more rounds without reloading, but also caused the weapon to jam, potentially saving countless lives.  An infant was shot and thankfully survived.  A six-year old girl was not so lucky as her pregnant mother had to learn later at the hospital while receiving treatment for her own bullet wounds (both the mother and unborn baby survived).

The President had some touching thoughts in his weekly address:

One thing that I appreciated about President Obama's address was the use of the work terrorize.  As the reports filtered in after the shooting, one snippet I heard confirmed that the mass murder wasn't a terrorist act.  What I think they were trying to indelicately convey was that the shooter wasn't a Muslim extremist, but make no mistake that James Holmes is most certainly a terrorist. But one article I stumbled across thanks to Ezra Klein guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show comes from Max Read on Gawker.

There Is No Such Thing As Politicizing A Tragedy

We've all heard politicians say that the aftermath of something so horrific as the Aurora shootings is not the time to discuss politics.  We've seen people who call out for more gun control after incidents like this get accused of pouncing on a tragedy for political gain.  But as Max Read states in his article:

This is stupid. There is no such thing as "politicizing" tragedy. James Holmes did not materialize in a movie theater in Aurora this morning, free of any relationship to law and authority and the structures of power in this country; nor did he exit those relationships and structures by murdering 12 people and injuring several dozen more. Before he entered the theater, he purchased guns, whether legally or illegally, under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics; in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, tactics and rights were shaped and determined by politics. Holmes' ability to seek, or to not seek, mental health care; the government's ability, or inability, to lock up persons deemed unstable — these are things decided and directed by politics. You cannot "politicize" a tragedy because the tragedy is already political. When you talk about the tragedy you're already talking about politics.

Point being, Holmes doesn't exist in a vacuum.  His plans and premeditations leading up to his disgusting act occurred within our system.  The aftermath will play out in that same system.  Max Read continues to say:

No one wants to be accused of using a tragedy for "political ends." But you don't really get to escape. The insistence that no one talk about politics is itself a political act. Politics is how we effect change in the systems and structures that govern our lives. To take the stance that tragedies are or should remain "apolitical" or "depoliticized" is to say, essentially, that everything is fine and nothing needs to be fixed; that such an act was random and unpreventable.

I honestly couldn't agree more.  I'm not saying that the only conclusion we can reach is a repeal of the second amendment, I'm only saying that we have to have a sincere debate.  As Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia said on the Ezra-Klein-hosted Maddow show:

 

Essentially, horrors such as 9/11 and the Aurora shooting wake us up to the fact that something needs to be done.  With 9/11, we attempted to accomplish that.  With mass shootings, we don't.

There are many ways to look at our current system regarding guns.  One way involves red necks stating that referring to the AR-15 as an assault rifle is a lefty agenda and they'll be damned if someone thinks they should be separated from their gun collections.  The other is a results-guided perspective.  I don't think anyone looks at the events in Aurora, or at a political rally in Arizona, or at an immigrant center in Binghamton, or Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or Fort Hood, or a California McDonalds, or an Oklahoma post office, or a Luby's restaurant in Texas, or a Long Island Railroad train and think "yeah, this well-oiled machine hums along just fine, thank you."  Conceding that you don't want mass killings to occur doesn't mean you are conceding your second amendment rights.  It's okay if someone questions your right to own an AR-15.

We say that the victims of these tragedies don't want the stink of politics surrounding them in the aftermath.  Truth be told, I'd bet most of the survivors of a mass shooting would welcome an honest debate about the issues directly involved in their loss.  They might even wonder why we didn't have the discussion earlier, and could that debate have prevented the loss of their loved ones.

Mitt Romney vs. Facts Written Down On Paper

Just the other day, the Boston Globe dropped this bombshell (as covered by Boston.com):

Mitt Romney Stayed At Bain 3 Years Longer Than He Stated

For years, political opponents of Mitt Romney have successfully dipped into the Bain Capital well for attack ads, going all the way back to Ted Kennedy in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race.

The strategy worked very well for Kennedy as he soundly trounced Romney.  When Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts, his opponent, Shannon O'Brian, did the same thing.  She had less success thanks to Romney attack ads that linked O'Brian's husband to the Enron scandal and let's be honest, the Enron thing was bigger than whatever Bain dirt might exist, but the Bain attack remained a viable strategy.  Even President Obama has continued the Bain strategy:

The fact remains that Romney never quite figured out how to defend against attacks on his Bain record, so he eventually went with a defense perfectly captured by Shaggy with a little help from RikRok:

Romney has claimed for years that when he got called to work on the Salt Lake City Olympics, he left Bain Capital and therefore couldn't be attacked for whatever happened at the firm after 1999.  Sure, it didn't really address past attacks, but at least it stemmed new ones from popping up during his 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial efforts.  It's something Romney's continued to fall back on during his current run as well. Turns out it wasn't true.  As the Boston Globe reports, while Romney claimed his tenure at Bain ended in 1999 -

(P)ublic Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.” 

Also from the article linked at the top:

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

It's not hard to make some inductive leaps from this point.  Did Romney just collect substantial paychecks from the economic hardships Bain might have created despite having no say in the matter?  I guess technically he can't be blamed for what happened in that case, but he still got paid.  Or is it just too much to believe that as the sole owner of Bain Capital he wouldn't offer up some input at some point as to what his company should do?  Furthermore:

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

Managerial control doesn't feel the same to me as retired three years ago.  I loved this response from an anonymous source inside the Romney campaign:

A Romney campaign official, who requested anonymity to discuss the SEC filings, acknowledged that they “do not square with common sense.” But SEC regulations are complicated and quirky, the official argued, and Romney’s signature on some documents after his exit does not indicate active involvement in the firm.

I know it doesn't make any sense whatsoever but sometimes paperwork can be crazy... that's the response.  I know the Texas GOP platform accidentally included a line about wanting to end the teaching of critical thinking skills in school, but that needed to be implemented decades ago for the Romney response to fly.  I know the Romney campaign would really like me to dismiss the SEC paperwork, but, as pointed out in the article:

A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily.  

“You can’t say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School... 

...“If someone invested with Bain Capital because they believed Mitt Romney was a great fund manager, and it turns out he wasn’t really doing anything, that could be considered a misrepresentation to the investor,’’ she said. “It’s a theory that could be used in a lawsuit against him.” 

Romney's always has trouble when he says things in the presence of devices intended to make sure people in the future can perfectly recall his exact words:

The written word is also proving not to be Romney's best friend either.  Between the Globe's investigative reporting, government documents, and Vanity Fair's recent and fascinating piece (seriously, read this one):

Where The Money Lives

It seems like Mitt Romney can't catch a break from the actual facts of his life.  The way he does things works very well in the world of business.  Maximize every opportunity... hold an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules so that you can find the spaces between them... make sure you get yours and once you do, make sure you hold on to it.  This is how someone becomes insanely rich and stays that way.  I don't begrudge Romney his success. But if you ask a lot of people if that's the kind of person you want serving as President, I bet most would answer no.  Liberals might talk about wanting someone who can empathize with those worst off so that the president remembers who he or she is fighting for.  Conservatives might talk about the "sit down and have a beer with" factor of a candidate to the same effect. Those descriptions don't fit Romney. If you've ever hosted some kind of board game night with friends over a few glasses of wine, you may have encountered someone known as a Rule Lawyer.  Rule Lawyers make it a point to forget the idea that everyone is just there to have a good time and instead get into the minutiae of the game in order to milk the system and maximize their chances.  Rule Lawyers technically follow the rules as written, but everyone ends up hating their guts. Mitt Romney is that kind of Rule Lawyer, and he keeps tripping up trying to avoid the consequences of that personality streak.  He's not fit for political life, his personality just doesn't suit it.  I don't mean that as an insult, my personality might not suit a political life either, so why put people through the agony of watching me fail to morph into someone I'm not? Maybe it's time Mitt took a few hours to listen to Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" on repeat and realize he's not what's best for the Republican Party. ONE LAST THING (edit): Looks like Time Magazine has a great follow-up article:

Obama Campaign Says Mitt Romney Is Either A Crook Or A Liar

 Here's one particular quote that I loved...

Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony. Or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments.

The Don Henley Lyric-Quoting Edition (with a dash of Hitler!)

I guess the Supreme Court threw down some rulin' a few weeks ago about the Affordable Health Care Act and surprised many people by upholding the law.  More surprising was that the deciding vote came from Chief Justice Roberts, often viewed as a staunch conservative.  Not-shocking-at-all-in-the-least was the rush to right-wing hyperbole as a response to the SCOTUS decision.

 

Dammit, we may have let a bonafide Agent of Rome infiltrate our court system!  And of course, no hyperbole-greatest-hits would be complete without going full Hitler.:

Maine Gov Compares IRS Under Obamacare To Gestapo

When I first heard about Chief Justice Roberts, I thought maybe he experienced something North Carolina State Representative Becky Carney experienced a week after the Supreme Court decision.

What The Frack?  North Carolina Lawmaker Accidentally Votes To Legalize Fracking.

It's 11:30pm, the legislature is trying feverishly to get through all their business, that a vote comes up to attempt to overturn the NC Governor's veto blocking fracking.  Red keeps the veto in place, green votes to overturn it.  Rep. Carney accidentally hits green and immediately panics, realizing what she's done.  When she tries to correct her error, she's told that NC House rules prevent her from doing so.  Why?  Because her vote was literally the deciding vote, and that prevents her from changing it.  So if the vote doesn't really matter, go ahead and get it right.  But when policy is on the line?  Tough shit, you exhausted loser.

Apparently Chief Justice Roberts did mean to vote the way he did, however, and the social media toilets exploded with activity, such as the following people who will now move to Canada because of Obamacare.  Which brings us to the Don Henley portion of the program.

I've been trying to get down... 
to the heart of the matter...


I have to admit, I guess the political hyperbole still shocks me.  Will the world end when the Mitt Romney's signature political achievement as governor of Massachusetts blows up nationwide?  No, of course not, but that's not the vibe I got from the right.  While thinking these things over, I came across this article on Google+.

Texas GOP's 2012 Platform Opposes Teaching Of 'Critical Thinking Skills' 

According to the article, here's the Critical Thinking bit was part of the Knowledge-Based Education plank:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Ha ha ha, stupid Texas!!!  This reinforces all of my northeast, liberally-informed stereotypes of you.

Wait, what's that?  Turns out the inclusion of the phrase "critical thinking skills" was a mistake, and like North Carolina's voting rules, there's no recourse to correct the error (until the next state GOP convention in 2014). All the platform wanted to hammer home was the desire to revert back to old-school teaching methods and it shouldn't be shocking that the Texas GOP wants things old-school.

It's the "challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority" phrase that reminded me of more Don Henley lyrics from The Heart of the Matter:

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again

The thing about Outcome-Based Education is that the outcome is king.  Teachers use varying tactics to help an individual child find the path toward knowledge.  The Texas GOP sees it as behavior modification that could directly oppose parental authority, and a child's fixed beliefs which are most likely going to be an extension of parental authority.

So maybe I'm missing something, but is the Texas GOP's platform stating that the rights of parents to keep their kids stupid are more important than the rights of kids to not be as stupid as their parents?  Is it well-known that allowing students different paths to achieving knowledge equals behavior modification, and isn't any form of discipline behavior modification?  What makes the GOP old-school approach less of a behaviorally-modified approach?

I honestly don't know.  It all feels like a continuation of the small government logic somehow, preventing schools from overriding parental efforts.

Of course, that small government logic evaporates just a few planks later in the platform:

We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle, in public policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin. Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction or belief in traditional values.

Regardless, I feel that the Texas GOP reminded me of something, even if they didn't mean to.  Critical thinking seems pretty far down the list when considering politics, from the local Facebook thought-puking to the higher levels of Congressional debate.  I'm not sure where the breakdown in critical thinking began, but I feel it needs to make a strong comeback as soon as possible.

So I'm begging you, Critical Thinking... if you have a sex tape buried somewhere, now's the time to drop it big time, swing that into a reality TV series, sell People magazine the photography rights to your nuptials, and be a real presence in American life again.

Please.

The Walker vs. Wisconsin Edition

Last night, Wisconsin held its elections to recall Governor Scott Walker, his second-in-command, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and four republican state senators.  A few republican senators were already recalled a few months ago, putting democrats in a position to reclaim control if they could manage to flip just one of those senatorial recalls.  It didn't end well for the democrats as Scott Walker became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election.

This may completely shock you to your core beliefs about the universe, but I check in with the Rachel Maddow Show a few times a week, listening to podcasts of her show during my commute to work.  She, on a number of occasions (including during her coverage of the recall election results last night), declared this Wisconsin vote the second most important vote of the year, right behind the upcoming presidential one.  Everyone had that "roll up your sleeves and put on an extra pot of coffee" mentality as the Wisconsin polls closed and the inane graphic popped up calling the election too close to call with 0% of the districts reporting in.

The first real numbers to pop up still had the outcome listed as too close to call, with Gov. Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, trailing by a few thousand votes.  Next check in with the graphic still said too close to call, but Walker's lead had increased.  Within roughly thirty minutes, and maybe less than 10% of the results in, projections made it clear that Walker would walk away with this one pretty decisively.  It looks like the democrats did manage to flip that one state senatorial seat, but otherwise the incumbents won the other three.

When you look back to pictures such as this:

or this:

... you start to wonder how this could have gotten away from the democrats?

It's no secret that Governor Walker managed to raise exorbitant amounts of cash, most of that coming from donors outside the state.  An interesting Wisconsin election law allows a sitting Governor to accept donations of any amount in an effort to fend off a recall effort, while the opposing candidate has to stick to a $10,000 per donor limit.  Why didn't George Soros match the Koch brothers' donations?  Because legally Soros could only throw ten grand at the effort.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that $100 million total was spent on this recall effort, with $44 million of that going toward last night's vote.  As described in the following article -

Gov. Scott Walker Makes History, Survives Wisconsin Recall Election

- most of that staggering amount of money came from outside the state, and the impact on the voters may have gone beyond the original intent of swaying opinion.

For voters on both sides of the aisle who are already struggling through a troubled economy, the ballooning spending became a prime example of misguided politics. For many, they voted out of disgust at the wasted money and frustration that they were forced to return to the polls for reasons that were starting to become unclear. 

I think this passage captures part of why Wisconsin could very well be the microcosm of the impending presidential election.  The GOP primary lasted forever, involved exorbitant amounts of cash, carried itself like a drunk mess, and filled itself with meaningless policy debate meant only to entertain the batshit base fringe.  Now all that rolls right into the presidential election and I think the fatigue has genuinely set in.

We treat our democracy like we treat our bridges.  We're happy to just ride them until they collapse rather than take the time to maintain and modernize.  Could we publicly finance campaigns?  Sure, but we seem to have this post-Citizens United system chosen for us.  Could we enact a transparent, standardize system of voting?  Of course, but why do that when you can create politically motivated voter registration purges like the ones going on in Florida right now.  Since the measures needed to fix the fundamental core of our system would require a collective selflessness not possible in politicians, I guess we might as well all move to the Titanic's main lounge where all drinks are free for the short remainder of the journey.

The real problem, though, might be the perception that politician = shitbag.  It's hard to take anything said by a politician seriously if the listener filters everything through the prejudice that the person speaking is a con artist of some type.  In TV and movies, the big moment for politicians is that moment when they pause and realize they just can't do the teleprompter anymore, and then become sincere.  The struggle against sincerity took its toll and the character just couldn't do it anymore... seems like a weird insight into politics, but it rings true with audiences for a reason.

At the end of Walker's victory speech, he invited the entire state legislature out for some burgers, brats, and beer to give everyone a chance to be normal people and let bygones be bygones while returning to the job at hand.  It felt like one of those normal moments that feel a little more sincere than most of the day to day politicking... the politicking of a completely republican controlled Wisconsin state government steam-rolling their agenda over the democrats and citizens since 2010.

But maybe if Walker had issued that invitation at the start of this mess, if everyone could have come together like normal, rational adults to work out the state's real problems, last night's election might never have happened.