A woman for president in 2024

What if we elected a woman to the US Presidency in 2024?

Hillary Rodham Clinton famously ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 "None of the above, please God, please" presidential election. In one of the early rallies in her campaign, she called out to a largely female audience, "Who wants to see a woman president?" 

As I have said before, Clinton didn't lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was ... um ... objectionable. Undesirable. An even worse choice than Trump, if such a thing were possible.

I had also said that I would entertain a matchup between two female statesmen (stateswomen? statespersons? respected leaders, anyway) like Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

This year, we have two new possibilities.

On the right, we have Nikki Hailey who, in spite of her support of Donald Trump, has shown herself to be an adequate and able politician and diplomat.

On the left, we have Kamala Harris who has spent the last four years in President Biden's shadow, the spare, as it were. Before becoming Vice President, she was also an accomplished leader and politician. If, for some reason, Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Harris would be a good replacement for him.

Here's the two of them, having fun together. (Not a real picture. Credit: OpenArtAI)

It's a pretty even matchup, with an interesting twist.

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley (from Wikipedia)

Nikki Haley was born in 1972, in South Carolina. Her parents were Sikh Indian immigrants. Her birth name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She goes by her middle name, and "Haley" is her married name.

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris (from Wikipedia)

Kamala Harris was born in 1964 in California. Her mother was a Tamil Indian immigrant, and her father was a Jamaican immigrant. Her birth name was Kamala Devi Harris.

The Bottom Line

So not only would we have two women running against each other, but we would have two Indian Americans, both of them children of immigrants, running against each other.

Both of them have a net positive track record and no serious scandals to worry about (if we ignore Haley's support of Donald Trump). Both are refreshingly young, compared to the current front-runners, meaning that they won't die or go senile in office. And both have a lot of potential.

Haley vs. Harris for 2024. It has a nice ring to it.

It's a choice I'd like to have to make.

Election 2020: Advice for Republicans

Here at the end of 2018, and the beginning of 2019, the whole nation is waiting to see whether Donald Trump serves his full four years in office, or whether he leaves office in disgrace, one way or another. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter.

If he leaves early, Mike Pence will be the new president, and he will serve until the 2020 election.

Donald Trump has left such a foul taste in the mouths of the American voters, that it is unlikely the Republican Party will win the presidency in 2020. By their actions, the leaders of the Republican Party have shown that they are easily bought off, bullied, fooled, and manipulated by people like Trump. To put it crudely, Americans are tired of this shit.

And they are going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right now, a Republican candidate for president stands to lose the 2020 election simply because he's a Republican.

If the Republicans intend to win the 2020 presidential election, they need to give the American people a candidate who is electable.Here's my shopping list for the 2020 presidential candidate:

1. First, I don't care if the candidate is male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian. Race and gender do not qualify (or disqualify) someone for the office. But making a campaign issue of their race or gender will cost them a lot of points, in my book. So will any reference to their opponents' race or gender.

2. Second, they need to be knowledgeable. They need to know enough about the areas that matter, to be an effective chief executive. They need to be competent in talking and making decisions about:

• Domestic policy
• Foreign policy
• Waging wars and making peace
• Economic policy
• Science
• Environmental issues
• Contemporary urgent medical issues
• The law
• The Constitution
• The life of the average, working-class American

3. Related to that, they need to be well-informed and open-minded. Presidents can't possibly know everything, and so they need to get good information from others. I need to know where they will go to get advice. If I suspect that they're going to rely on yes-men, self-serving cronies, party hacks, and Fox News, then they have lost my vote.

4. Speaking of which: they need to completely ignore Fox News, and whatever its left-leaning equivalent may be. For a U.S. President, Fox News should be totally irrelevant. Domestic and foreign policy should not be dictated by a television station, newspaper or website.

5. They need to have integrity. They need to someone of sound character and good moral judgment.

Integrity, character, and morals are timeless, universal concepts. They are independent of religion.

In fact, I don't care what religion they profess. I don't want to know about it. There are, or should be, no religious criteria in a presidential election. To me, religion should be no more a factor than race or gender.


6. They need to be savvy, not naïve, in the ways of the world. Past presidents (Carter, both Bushes, and Trump) have been easily manipulated by foreign leaders and domestic actors because of their naïveté. Other presidents (Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Reagan at the beginning) were so savvy that they had the world by the balls.

7. They need to have class. Class must not be equated with coolness, popularity, beauty, social or economic status, and so on. Class is difficult to define, but easy to recognize. Mr. and Mrs. Obama had class. Trump has absolutely zero class. Hillary Clinton has never had class, and doesn't seem to care.

8. They need to practice true statesmanship and true leadership. The last true statesman and leader we had was ... hmm ... Ronald Reagan, back when his mind was still intact. No, that's not true. Obama was both a statesman and a leader. That's still being debated, but I think that in 20 years, that will be the universal consensus.

9. They need to put the entire country's interests above their own interests, above their party's interests, above their friends' and cronies' interests, and especially above the interests of the rich and powerful and self-serving.

10. They need to have vision. They need to take a long-term view on everything they do: not to next year, not to the midterm elections, not to getting re-elected or to setting things up for their party after their eight years are expired. The United States will be around long after they have left office, and their vision needs to be one that will leave the nation better off for their having served.

11. They need to remember that they are public servants, not rulers.

If the Republicans don't put up someone who meets all of these criteria, then I won't vote for him or her.

Election 2020: Advice for Democrats

The 2020 presidential election is just around the corner. Here is some advice for Democrats.

The Democratic Party lost the 2016 presidential election because they nominated a candidate who was unelectable. They didn't lose because of the vagaries of the electoral college. They didn't lose because of third-party voters. They didn't lose because their candidate was a woman. And they definitely, most certainly, didn't lose because the Republicans put up a better candidate.

They lost because Hillary Rodham Clinton was unlikeable. Objectionable. To her credit, she was transparent — she was transparently greedy, power-hungry, even Machiavellian. She was elitist. She didn't hide the fact that she didn't care about the Little People. She only cared about people with money, power, and status, and she never tried to hide that fact.

And, to put it bluntly, she was a jerk. She treated everyone else like the dirt on her shoes. Maybe some people like to be treated like that, but most Americans do not.

(Don't bother telling me that the Republican candidate was the same, or maybe even worse. We already know that.)

If the Democratic Party wants to win in 2020, they had better put up somebody who is electable. Here's my shopping list for the 2020 presidential candidate:

1. First, I don't care if the candidate is male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian. Race and gender do not qualify (or disqualify) someone for the office. But making a campaign issue of their race or gender will cost them a lot of points, in my book. No more of this "Vote for me because I'm a woman" crap, or the after-the-fact lament, "They didn't vote for me because I'm a woman." (By the way, Clinton said both of those things.)

2. Second, they need to be knowledgeable. They need to know enough about the areas that matter, to be an effective chief executive. They need to be competent in talking and making decisions about:

• Domestic policy
• Foreign policy
• Waging wars and making peace
• Economic policy
• Science
• Environmental issues
• Contemporary urgent medical issues
• The law
• The Constitution
• The life of the average, working-class American

3. Related to that, they need to be well-informed and open-minded. Presidents can't possibly know everything, and so they need to get good information from others. I need to know where they will go to get advice. If I suspect that they're going to rely on yes-men, self-serving cronies, party hacks, and Fox News, then they have lost my vote.

4. Speaking of which: they need to completely ignore Fox News, and whatever its left-leaning equivalent may be. For a U.S. President, Fox News should be totally irrelevant. Domestic and foreign policy should not be dictated by a television station, newspaper or website.

5. They need to have integrity. They need to someone of sound character and good moral judgment.

Integrity, character, and morals are timeless, universal concepts. They are independent of religion.

In fact, I don't care what religion they profess. I don't want to know about it. There are, or should be, no religious criteria in a presidential election. To me, religion should be no more a factor than race or gender.


6. They need to be savvy, not naïve, in the ways of the world. Past presidents (Carter, both Bushes, and Trump) have been easily manipulated by foreign leaders and domestic actors because of their naïveté. Other presidents (Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Reagan at the beginning) were so savvy that they had the world by the balls.

7. They need to have class. Class must not be equated with coolness, popularity, beauty, social or economic status, and so on. Class is difficult to define, but easy to recognize. Mr. and Mrs. Obama had class. Trump has absolutely zero class. Hillary Clinton has never had class, and doesn't seem to care.

8. They need to practice true statesmanship and true leadership. The last true statesman and leader we had was ... hmm ... Ronald Reagan, back when his mind was still intact. No, that's not true. Obama was both a statesman and a leader. That's still being debated, but I think that in 20 years, that will be the universal consensus.

9. They need to put the entire country's interests above their own interests, above their party's interests, above their friends' and cronies' interests, and especially above the interests of the rich and powerful and self-serving.

10. They need to have vision. They need to take a long-term view on everything they do: not to next year, not to the midterm elections, not to getting re-elected or to setting things up for their party after their eight years are expired. The United States will be around long after they have left office, and their vision needs to be one that will leave the nation better off for their having served.

11. They need to remember that they are public servants, not rulers.

If the Democrats don't put up someone who meets all of these criteria, then I won't vote for him or her.

More proof that Barak Obama is a classy guy

I have written that Barak Obama is a classy guy. I have never written about his wife, Michelle Obama, who is even classier than he is.

By "classy", I don't mean someone who is rich or powerful, or well-dressed. Normal, everyday people can have class. Donald Trump, in spite of all his purported riches, has no class. Zero. Hillary Clinton, in spite of her professional and political career, has no class, either. But Obama has tons of it.

You don't have to like his politics, and you can even disagree passionately with some of his words and actions as President. (Personally, I still do.) But you can't deny that the man has class.

As yet another piece of evidence, I offer this photograph, by official White House photographer Pete Souza, published in a photo essay in the Huffington Post called simply, "Obama With Kids." This is a picture of the prez with Ella Rhodes, daughter of National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, in her elephant Halloween costume last October.

That's the Oval Office, people. And the President of the United States. In a really expensive suit and shoes. During business hours. AND this isn't the first time he's gotten down on the floor to play with this little girl.

I will say it once more.

The man has class.

The IRS: No credibility at all, part 2

Yesterday, in my article The IRS: No Credibility At All, I said:

"The IRS expected the public to believe that the agency did not have a regular data backup plan in place, and that backup tapes of Lerner's hard drive did not exist. I find that impossible to believe."

and, speaking of all IRS email, not just Lerner's email:

"To suggest that the IRS did not have a backup policy for their mailserver is way, way beyond stupid. It's unbelievable. Inconceivable. Asinine."

It turns out that the mailserver backup tapes were safe in a storage building in West Virginia. Last July, a lawyer went to court to get hold of those tapes and look at them. The Department of Justice basically shut down that request. It took until mid-February this year to finally get the tapes. Everything I said in my previous article was true.

You know what's funny? Actually, it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. The IRS treated everyone else like chumps - as if everyone else were stupid. But the IRS comes out of this looking ... well, looking stupid, idiotic, immoral, and any number of other adjectives you would use for a bunch of twelve-year-old boys who tried to start a fire on the gym floor, then cover it up and think they could get away with it. That is what the IRS, collectively, looks like right now.

Now I'll let somebody else do the talking. This is Patrick Howley, political reporter for The Daily Caller. The original article is at http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/02/exposed-department-of-justice-shut-down-search-for-lois-lerners-emails/. (I try not to copy entire articles like this, but they have a nasty habit of disappearing if I only post the links, and I don't want that to happen. I will remove the article and just write a summary of it if Patrick or the DC ask me to, but it's important enough that I'd rather leave the verbatim copy here.)

Here's the story about how the IRS and the DOJ tried to keep the backup tapes of Lois Lerner's emails from going public.

---

The Department of Justice blocked an attempt to force the Internal Revenue Service to search for Lois Lerner’s missing emails at off-site storage facilities, according to a lawyer pushing to obtain the emails.

The IRS never looked for Lerner’s backup email tapes at the West Virginia storage facility where they were being housed. Treasury deputy inspector general Timothy Camus told Congress that the IRS never asked IT professionals at the New Martinsville, W.V. storage site for the backup tapes. Camus only found the backup tape for Lerner’s missing 2011 emails about two weeks ago.

But the Obama administration knew that emails were stored at off-site facilities, and even shut down a legal request to send somebody to go look for them.

“We said in court that there are off-site servers where all IRS emails are stored,” lawyer Cleta Mitchell told The Daily Caller.

Mitchell represents the voter-ID group True the Vote in its lawsuit against the IRS over improper targeting. Shortly after it was revealed last summer that the IRS was missing Lerner’s emails, Mitchell petitioned U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton for an independent forensic examiner to be appointed to investigate the missing emails.

Mitchell referred to the IRS’ off-site storage facilities in West Virginia and Pittsburgh in court in July. But DOJ lawyers representing the IRS and the Treasury inspector general argued that Mitchell could not even discuss the existence of the storage facilities in her capacity as a lawyer.

“The Department of Justice lawyers objected to that and said I shouldn’t even be allowed to mention these off-site servers without sworn affidavits,” Mitchell told TheDC. “They meant that I was trying to testify to the judge without bringing in witnesses with sworn affidavits.”

Mitchell’s motion to get an independent forensic examiner was denied. The IRS’ internal investigation never headed to West Virginia, and the Treasury inspector general’s investigation managed to find a pertinent tape in West Virginia a mere two weeks before last Thursday’s House Oversight hearing. One of the IRS employees tasked with finding data on Lerner’s crashed hard drive was legally blind.

Mitchell’s statement about the off-site servers was clear as day, according to court transcripts obtained by TheDC.

“I’m advised that the IRS maintains servers that are in different states in different locations and that IRS employees are advised that their emails are never lost,” Mitchell said in court, according to the transcripts.

“That’s what I’ve been told as far as my emails here,” the court replied.

“And I have had individuals who worked with, for the IRS from all across the country who have communicated that to me,” Mitchell continued. “And they say — I hear from government employees, retired and active, who say what is being said is not possible. It is not plausible and it is contrary to what we are told as employees of the IRS.”

Mitchell requested “the opportunity to at least have some expert look at whether the perimeters of the investigation are complete and … will fully cover all of the potential ways or places in which this investigation should look or take into consideration.”

But the email tapes sat there in West Virginia, alone and unexamined.

DOJ did not return a request for comment for this report.

As TheDC reported, the IRS fired its email-storage contractor Sonasoft just weeks after Lerner’s email-deleting computer crash.

The IRS: No credibility at all

You know, it's really sad that we in the USA are all subject to the will, the caprices and the passions of the IRS.

In less than a day, the Internal Revenue Service can deprive us of our homes, our bank accounts, our credit ratings, our personal reputations, our livelihoods, and even our freedom (I mean, like locking us in jail), for what some IRS employee perceives as our breaking the law.

This is the tax law. You know, the Internal Revenue Code, or whatever it is called. A law so huge and complicated that even the IRS admits that they don't completely understand it. Heck, even the congressmen who voted for it don't understand it.

Yeah, and if the IRS even thinks you are cheating the government out of their rightful share of your hard-earned money, they can come down on you like a ton of bricks, and there is literally nothing you can do about it.

HOWEVER, if you work for the IRS and you do something that is blatantly illegal, and you do it over and over and over again, nothing happens to you. How does it feel to be both omnipotent and invincible, unaccountable to anyone even though it's obvious that you are the biggest jerk, collectively, in the entire country?

Does anybody who works at the IRS wonder why regular, everyday, ordinary, law-abiding Americans hold the taxman in such deep contempt?

In 2013, it was obvious to anybody who could read a newspaper that the IRS had unfairly targeted and bullied conservative action groups - especially those who chose to include the words "tea party" or "patriot" in the names of their groups. The IRS even issued a public apology for having done so.

The big question at the time was whether this was the work of a few rogue IRS agents, or whether the directive came all the way from the top. "Top" could be defined as the head of the IRS, Lois Lerner, or someone even higher, up to and including President Obama himself.

To answer this question, investigators ordered the IRS to turn over all of Lois Lerner's emails for the critical period of time. The IRS responded that the emails were lost because the hard drive on Lerner's computer had crashed and the contents could not be retrieved - the contents including the emails in question. They used all sorts of tech mumbo-jumbo to claim that the hard drive had been physically damaged and, consequently, physically destroyed. They claimed that this was per department policy, stupidly ignoring the fact that that same department policy had a "records retention clause" dictating that all electronic correspondence should be backed up and saved for several years.

This clause had the force of law - which the IRS flouted. Destroying emails or hard drives containing them could be construed as destroying evidence.

The IRS expected the public to believe that the agency did not have a regular data backup plan in place, and that backup tapes of Lerner's hard drive did not exist. I find that impossible to believe.

The IRS also expected the public not to understand the concept of a mailserver - the electronic post office that handles all the mail in and out of an office or a company. Mailservers are regularly backed up as well, especially in a place like a government office, where a "paper trail" can be crucial to conducting everyday business and to enforcing both contracts and laws. To suggest that the IRS did not have a backup policy for their mailserver is way, way beyond stupid. It's unbelievable. Inconceivable. Asinine.

(SHORT EDIT, THE NEXT DAY: Oh, it gets worse than that. See my next article .)

In testifying before a congressional inquiry into the matter, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, adding, "I will not answer any questions or testify about the subject matter of this committee’s meeting." I can't think of an appropriate word to express my contempt for someone like that.

So Lerner's excuse was the equivalent of "My dog ate my homework," and the public was expected to believe her, in spite of the glaring evidence to the contrary.

President Obama even contributed to the deception, declaring in February 2014 that there was "not a smidgen of corruption" in the IRS or in their handling of the "tea party" paperwork. He expected us to believe him simply on the strength of his voice.

His earnestness reminded me of what Jean Girardoux once said: "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

(Maybe Obama didn't realize that what he was saying was false. Maybe he thought he was telling the truth because he didn't know the truth yet.)

After Lerner resigned, other IRS officials said that (surprise!) backup tapes DO exist, but that retrieving the thousands of emails from the tapes would be "onerous."

So investigators tried other ways to retrieve the missing emails. In fact, trying to retrieve the missing emails by scouring thousands of other  users' email accounts for messages sent To or From Lois Lerner netted about 67,000 emails, at a cost to the taxpayer (yes, the TAXpayer. Catch the irony?) of about $14 million. It took over a year. This whole time, the backup tapes were staring them in the face, and any high school nerd with a PC and Python could have written a program to search and retrieve the missing emails from the tapes in much less time and at a much lower cost.

Well, finally somebody did just that - but not a high school kid. Investigators hired an outside company, who took the tapes and TWO WEEKS LATER retrieved ALL of the emails from them, including an additional 32,000 Lois Lerner emails. That is MUCH less "onerous" than the exercise that the IRS put us, the American public, through to find the first 67,000 emails.

There is no question in the public's mind that Lerner, and the IRS departments that bullied the conservative groups, were corrupt. And dishonest. AND thoroughly, completely, despairingly incompetent. The agency's credibility in the public eye is absolutely zero. And while they have spent the past two years  babbling about this to the press and to Congress, they have hoped that the public would buy their story and not see through the flimsy fabric it was written upon.

The game's up, you morons.

You freaking morons.

You all ought to be fired. I wouldn't give you a job as a greeter at WalMart.

I hesitate to be so bold in my pronouncements, all of which are taken from public news reports, because I have also heard that the IRS targets people who speak out against the agency. Nobody believes those "random" audits are completely random. But I'll give it a shot and we'll see what happens.

Common Core: the backlash against "Frustrated Parent"

Well, I'm not the only person who stood up in defense of Common Core, or who put "Frustrated Parent" in his place. The Huffington Post, which has admirably refused to jump on the anti-Common Core bandwagon,
published an article that I missed - way back around April 1 - quoting many of CC's defenders and calling out "Frustrated Father" for his lack of ... common sense? understanding? ability to follow directions? comprehension? The article also pointed out very clearly - yet again - the difference between Common Core and all the stuff being passed along by CC opponents and the popular media as "Common Core."

Actually, considering that my blog postings about "Frustrated Parent" and Common Core were published on March 26, and the HuffPo article was posted on March 28, it could be that they used my blog as uncredited source material. This is even more probable considering that the article says at the bottom, "This article has been updated."

I sort of jumped the gun (like, two months after the fact) and posted a comment to the article today without having read it completely. Shame on me. It's still a good article. I recommend it to you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/viral-common-core-homework_n_5049829.html

Common Core: It's Not Really as Hard as You're Making It

I'm afraid that, in this Common Core debate, the voices of reason (and the voices of the teachers, bless 'em) are getting drowned out by all the yelling and screaming. Adjectives like "shrill" and "irrational" to describe some of CC's vocal opponents come immediately to mind, followed closely by "stupid" and "morons," and then devolving into words not suitable for a G-rated blog.

Here's another attempt to inject some calm and rational input into the debate. A commenter to an article on Yahoo! Shine, an actual teacher, has this to say about Common Core:

Common Core is a set of standards, not a curriculum. I teach common core without a specific textbook or program. I look at the standard such as 7th grade geometry: 7/G.A.1 Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale. I find examples of the problem and worksheets to support practice. Then I assess as needed that the student has mastered the skill. The worksheets people refer to are from a private publishing company that has sold the school a new program. If you don't like the program your school purchased, let them know. Common Core hasn't changed the way I teach, it's just a different standard.

Unfortunately, her words will not be heard. They make too much sense, they do not convey an extreme emotion, nor do they convey an extreme viewpoint. In the long run, the bullies and the reactionaries will take down Common Core, just like they're doing with the rest of society's useful institutions. In the end, the Common Core standards will be subscribed to by a small group of exceptional schools who quietly turn out exceptional scholars, while the rest of society wrings their hands about the decay in public education, never realizing that they have brought it upon themselves.

Note: This posting is a follow-on to my previous posting  on the topic. Click here to read it.

Common Core: Getting past the bullshit and the myths

(Please forgive me. I don't use profanity very much. But this time it was truly needed.)

I'm getting fed up with all the attacks on the Common Core State Standards Initiative (abbreviated herein as "Common Core," or "CC"). It seems like the anti-CC folks, and the anti-CC arguments, come from people who have no idea what they're talking about.

Some people misunderstand one piece of CC, draw an erroneous conclusion, and trumpet their conclusion as proof that CC is bad. An example of this is the myth that "CC will let a student say that 3x4=11 and get away with it, if his reasoning is good enough." I dare any of you to find the text in official CC documents that supports that statement. There isn't any. It's a myth - or, to put it more baldly, IT'S A LIE. It gains credibility through retelling, but it's still false.

Some people hear an anecdote about a bad experience somebody had with CC, and they repeat the anecdote. They tweet it; they put it on Facebook; they put it on their blogs and again, through repetition, the anecdote acquires enough credibility to be a powerful (but bogus) argument against CC. These bad experiences are usually based on a misunderstanding. One example of this is the recent story of Jeff Severt, the "Frustrated Parent" who couldn't understand his child's CC math worksheet and got his 15 minutes of fame by crafting a snotty response to the question on the worksheet. As I have shown in a previous post, the guy proved that, even with an engineering degree, he couldn't grasp an elementary mathematical concept and couldn't read or follow directions.

MOREOVER (and I added this on April 7 and put it in italics), a lot of people's complaints are not about the CC standards, but about curricula (that's a fancy word for "lesson plans") developed by textbook companies and sold to school districts, curricula which claim to be compliant with CC. If you don't like the curriculum, then complain about the curriculum, not the standards. Despite what you may think, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Some of you may take the lazy way out and say, "But the curriculum is written to comply with the standards; therefore the standards must dictate the way the curriculum is laid out." That's some kind of logical fallacy. I don't know how to label it, but only intellectually lazy people would believe something like that.

My question to my readers is this: with all the resources available from the CC initiative itself, why are you relying on distorted opinions and anecdotes about stupid people, to form and to reinforce your negative opinions about Common Core? Why don't you bypass all the bullshit and go directly to the source?

And Now, A History Lesson:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was started in 2009. It was a collaborative effort between state governors, school administrators, teachers and yes, those nasty old teachers' unions. The federal government was not a part of it back then - and the federal government is still not a part of it. Okay, I can hear you sputtering with exasperation back there. Hold onto your horses, okay? We'll talk about the feds in a minute.

Before CC came about, departments in individual schools tried to come up with a common set of goals or standards, to ensure that all the students in their school learned the same stuff. It was a collaborative effort, driven by teachers.

Then teachers at many different schools in the district realized they were all working on the same thing, so they collaborated to create district-wide standards. Their efforts were usually coordinated by a curriculum chair at the district level. This was not a bad thing. Don't get your shorts in a bunch.

With the advent of No Child Left Behind, state boards of education were responsible for coming up with a set of common statewide standards, against which all students could be evaluated. Whether you like NCLB or not (I don't), it doesn't matter. NCLB led to the creation of state standards, and the districts hustled to conform, because statewide standardized testing was next. The state BOEs (well, the smart ones) relied on the work that had already been done by the teachers in the school districts in their states.

In the field of mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recognized the major effort that these teachers were making, and so NCTM surveyed the teachers and developed a uniform nationwide set of standards for mathematics in all grades. I imagine that similar movements were happening in other subjects.

So in 2009, a bunch of governors and school district administrators had the bright idea to codify these efforts, and define a core of knowledge, the bare minimum standards that American students should learn. This core would be the same in all participating states or districts; hence it would be known as the Common Core, and the standards as the Common Core State Standards.

NOW, ALL YOU ANTI-COMMON-CORE LOUDMOUTHS: Notice that the CC standards were driven by the teachers - the ones doing the teaching - and fostered by the governors of some of the states in the Union. Not all of them.

Like all good things, the federal government got wind of CC, and they messed with it. They screwed it up. They didn't change the content of CC, but they took what should have been a teaching tool, to be handled delicately by skilled practitioners, and turned it into a club, to be wielded by clumsy politicians and inept bureaucrats. They made threats like, "If you don't adopt CC in your school, or district, or state, we will withhold federal education funding." You can blame it on the Obama administration if you want to. You won't be very far off. I wouldn't say it was Obama's doing, but the few times I've heard him speak about Common Core, it was obvious that he didn't understand CC any better than the anti-CC forces did.

A Special Message for You Mormons

The Mormon church has had to endure a lot of bad press in its 180-plus years of existence. It seems like the same lies, half-truths, and innuendo keep getting repeated over and over, in spite of the church's (and its adherents') attempts at rebuttal. In addition, it seems like everybody knows a friend of a friend who has a scare story about a Mormon, illustrating just how evil, terrible and bad the Mormons are.

Now, all of you Mormons know that the lies are just lies. You know that the anecdotal Mormons are either extreme fabrications or aberrations. Don't you wish that people would find out the truth about the Mormons by talking to a Mormon? or by reading the official Mormon website or something? Doesn't it really frost your cookies when people try to find out about the Mormons from somebody other than a Mormon, and they end up getting it all wrong?

So why the hell are you doing the same thing with Common Core? If you want to know the truth about Common Core, then go to the Common Core website. Read everything the creators have to say. Don't rely on CC's opponents to tell you the truth. Read the actual standards themselves, not somebody's interpretation of them. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Finally, a Message for Everybody

The Common Core standards were developed by teachers, for teachers. It was, and remains, a grassroots effort, with the students' best interests in mind. Although CCSSI itself was launched only four years ago, the groundwork for it was laid years before - by teachers.

This isn't something that was thought up by politicians, bureaucrats, administrators or union bosses. It came from the teachers themselves, because they cared about their students.

Don't believe the negative stuff in the press. If it's not outright lies, then it's distortions and innuendo. Even the anecdotes are suspect, as I've shown in the case of Jeff Severt. If you look behind the stories, you will see that they're based on misunderstanding, and sometimes on stupidity.

Finally, and I can't stress this enough: read the standards yourself. Go to the Common Core website and read them. Understand them. Make up your own mind. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Final final note: My wife says I'm ranting. Yes, I certainly am.

Update, April 7: I found a great explanation of the difference between Common Core standards and Common Core curriculum. I quoted it in my latest posting. Click here to read it. 

The IRS "Apologizes"

The news outlets are full of words from IRS officials, saying "we apologize" for targeting certain groups which had applied for non-profit status in the past six years.

Do they "apologize" for all the extra money those groups had to spend to comply with the demands of the IRS? Do they "apologize" for the lost time that those groups had to spend? Do they apologize for, let's be honest, harassing those groups and effectively abridging their freedom of speech?

You know, in a lot of cases, a victim will be charitable and noble and say, "I don't want their money. I don't want them to go to jail. I just want a sincere apology."

NOT IN THIS CASE.

The IRS is in the business of taking our money. That's their mission. If they don't get the money they're due, they will fine you, garnish your wages, shut down your business, throw you in jail, and commit all sorts of other legally-sanctioned nasty things.

THIS TIME, WE WANT THEIR HEADS.

We want to see the IRS treated the same way, when they abuse tax law, as the rest of us are treated when we abuse tax law. And more, because they acted from a position of ultimate power.

We want to see heads roll. We want to see people fired. We want to see people forbidden from ever having another job that includes handling other peoples' money. We want to see them reduced to WalMart greeters and lawnmower operators.

Moreover, we want to see the guilty parties jailed. From the minions all the way up to the directors, we want to see everyone in the chain of command, who knew about this or should have known about it, and who could have done something to stop it but didn't - we want them to serve jail time.

And we want to see financial restitution. That's right: we want to see the IRS financially penalized for their evil behavior. Hit 'em where it counts, just like they do to us. It would be really nice to see the money distributed among their victims.

But none of this will happen. A few people will get fired, but not very many, and certainly not the guilty ones. After six weeks or less, we'll be back to business as usual. That's the way Washington works.

From 'Sideshow' to Three-Ring Circus

Yesterday I posted a short article, rebutting the Obama administration's assertion that the Benghazi affair was just a 'sideshow.' Boy, how things have changed overnight.

It turns out that the Obama administration is engaged in a full-blown three-ring circus. After last night's bombshell about the Associated Press, we have the following three scandals involving the Executive Branch. And if they weren't scandals before, they are now — or will be soon.

1. Benghazi. It is now clear that the State Department never told us the truth about what happened in Benghazi. Secretary of State Clinton's "What difference does it make?" dismissal of some of the important facts will come back to haunt her next year, should she decide to run for President.

2. The IRS. It is now clear that the Department of the Treasury was using the IRS as a tool to hound and harass non-profit groups with a clear political agenda  — in short, abridging their freedom of speech. It is also clear that higher-ups in both the IRS and the Executive Branch were aware of this practice long before they said they were, and that they allowed it to continue. One could even accuse them of ordering it or mandating it. The IRS and the Treasury Dept. stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech.

3. The AP phone records grab. This is brand-new news, and it is developing even as I write this blog entry. But it is already clear that the Justice Department secretly and illegally stole two months' worth of telephone records from Associated Press reporters. DOJ's excuse for doing this was that they were trying to stop an unauthorized leak from inside the White House (as opposed to an "authorized leak"? what a bunch of clumsy idiots!) , but they totally flouted the law to do this, acting imperiously, maybe even dictatorially, and having a potentially chilling effect on the AP's ability to investigate and report the news. This time it was DOJ that stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech, to due process, and to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

That's the three-ring circus, folks. And I hear that other acts are waiting for their turn in the ring.

I didn't start out anti-Obama. I was one of the independents who said, "Give the guy a chance." I note with chagrin that presidents Reagan, Carter and (Bill) Clinton had similar problems during their terms in office. Reagan was completely oblivious to what his staff was doing, Carter was too trusting of everyone, and Clinton's staff were merely following the boss's dishonest and conniving example. I don't know what Obama's excuse is.

But we've heard enough of the president and his staff dismissing all of this as partisan bickering, Republican grandstanding, and so on. They have acted unethically, if not illegally, they have used terribly poor judgement, and they have attempted to cover their tracks or to shift the blame to other, innocent parties. It's time for them to stand up and be accountable for what they have done.

And we need to make sure that the former Secretary of State, who once said she would "do whatever it takes" to get elected president, doesn't get that chance in 2016.

(Image copied from Townhall.com. I would ask for permission to repost this if I could contact them. I hope that this attribution/credit will be enough for them.)

The fiscal cliff: a couple of ideas

Idea #1: Someone suggested that it would be very wise for the Republicans to acquiesce, and to accept Obama's (and the Democrats') proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Warren Buffett and other wealthy people have pooh-poohed the Republicans' contention that when wealthy people are taxed more, they invest less; therefore, raising the taxes on the rich will not have the net negative effect the Republicans are predicting.

But the better reason to raise the taxes on the wealthy is that, four years from now, when we're in worse shape than we are today, the Republicans can point at President Obama and the Democrats in Congress and say, "See? We TOLD you it wouldn't work! But NOOOOO, you wouldn't listen!" It would give them a lot a lot of leverage for unseating all of those Democrats.

Idea #2: This idea has been floating through Facebook and email lore, and it's a perfectly sensible idea. The idea is that we take away all of the special privileges that Congresscriters enjoy, and make them live the same way the rest of us live: the same tax laws, Social Security payments, Medicare/Medicaid payments, health plans, and everything else. They have forgotten how normal people live, and they need to be made to remember.


And here's a third idea, tangentially related to the fiscal cliff and the financial mismanagement that brought us to this point in the first place:

Idea #3: It was indeed Warren Buffett who proposed a constitutional amendment that says, in essence, whenever Congress cannot balance the budget for a given year, all of the members of Congress automatically become ineligible for re-election.

Barack Obama is a Classy Guy

Like him or not, you have to admit that Barack Obama is a classy guy.

You may not like his politics, you may disagree with his philosophy, and you can even question his integrity if you want to. But you cannot deny that this president has class. I give you three undeniable examples.

Example #1: At the end of the inauguration ceremonies in 2009, the new president and his wife escorted the former president and his wife from the dais (where Mr. and Mrs. Bush had been honored guests), all the way through the capitol building, out the front door, down the front staircase, and to the steps of Marine One, the (new) president's own helicopter. Marine One would deliver the Bushes to Andrews AFB for their flight home aboard Air Force One, the (new) president's own airplane. Obama didn't have to do any of that. What is more, the Obamas escorted the Bushes alone, without any personal assistants, TV cameras or other hangers-on. Cameras were kept at a great distance - we wouldn't even know these details if it weren't for huge telephoto lenses on distant TV cameras. The four of them engaged in friendly (and private) conversation all along the way. The Obamas treated the Bushes with courtesy, kindness and the greatest respect. They parted at the steps of Marine One with smiles, sincere embraces and words of farewell. Then the president and his wife turned around, held hands, and walked back into the Capitol.

Example #2: In the midst of a bitter and hard-fought election campaign, the two contenders, Obama and Mitt Romney, took time out to attend and speak at the Albert E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a black-tie affair held on Thursday, October 18, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Laying the campaign aside for a while, both men poked fun at themselves and at each other. The jokes were in good taste and bore not even a hint of mean-spiritedness. At the end of their remarks, each candidate praised the other and made special mention of the other man's family and of his role as husband and father, which (to paraphrase their words) was more important than being president.

Example #3: Obama likes having lunch, or tipping a beer, with different people of varying degrees of fame. These lunches are always great publicity opportunities and are exploited as such by the president's handlers - except for last Wednesday, November 29th. After having won re-election, Obama invited Romney to lunch, and they dined at the White House on Wednesday. It was a VERY private affair. Besides Obama and Romney, the only other people in the room were the waiters - no photographers, no staff, no members of the press. The conversation was cordial, even friendly, and strictly confidential. The only details that we got on the lunch were part of the menu (turkey chili, chicken salad). Romney arrived and left as a friend, or at least as an esteemed colleague.

Class doesn't depend on intellectual or political superiority, or on wealth or heritage. Class is something that comes from inside of you, no matter what your station in life. For example, you know that story about the NYPD beat cop who, on the frigid night of November 14, went into a store and spent $100 on socks and boots for a homeless man, then knelt down on the sidewalk to help him put them on? That cop had class.

President Obama has class, too. Cynics will add their own details to these three stories, or put their own spin on them, but these are just three examples of an indisputable fact: President Obama is a classy guy.

The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win

One of my friends (a real one, not a FB one) saw an article on Reason.com and suggested that I read it. In today's political climate, which is at turns divisive, extremist, absolute and contrarian, the author of this article channels Jonathan Swift to warn us about something really important. The article is called The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win . I'm not going to post the text of the entire article here, because I'm hoping that after November 2, nobody will need to read it again. But it's really important, right now.

A government that really works: is that too much to ask for?

Today I'm reprinting an article from ABC News. I was going to write a blog entry like this anyway, but I found this article by Amy Walter while I was doing research for my entry, and she says it so much better than I would have. Excerpting it wouldn't have done it justice.

If ABC or Ms. Walter asks me to take it down, I will, but I wanted to post a copy of it here because I've noticed that articles like this on the mainstream news outlets have a tendency to expire. They disappear after some length of time. This one deserves an extended life. It's something that all politicians need to keep in mind, both before and especially after an election. And as Ms. Walter points out, the rebuke applies to all political parties.

An Ideological Battle that Voters Don't Want

In picking Rep. Paul Ryan, whose eponymous budget plan has become synonymous with political polarization, Mitt Romney assured an ideological campaign where a debate over the role of government will be front and center. It is a debate the Obama campaign and partisans on both sides are also eager to have. But it’s not a debate that swing voters want.

They aren’t as interested in choosing whether government should be more active or less. They are more interested in simply having it work.

BLAME IT ON THE WAVE

This debate is the culmination of four consecutive wave elections — elections where each side (wrongly) assumed a mandate from the American public.

It started in 2006 when, fed up with one party control, voters tossed Congressional Republicans out of power. Once, the party of “outsider” Republicans had turned into creatures of Washington. Voters saw them as gluttonous, self-absorbed and more interested in retaining power than using their power to help the little guy.

Two years later, voters elected a president who promised to break the partisan gridlock and to focus on an agenda that transcended party and special interest groups.

Yet, elected as a counter-weight to previous GOP rule, Democrats turned out to act much like them. They passed legislation on party-line only votes. They pushed a health care law through Congress, but failed to make the case for how it was going to help people survive a flailing economy.

Fueled by this frustration, voters put Republicans back in control of the House in 2010. But like the Democrats before them, Republicans mistook the election as a mandate for their own ideology — an ideology that saw compromise as a dirty word. And, less than two years after providing the energy for the 2010 sweep of Congress, the tea party is an unpopular than ever.

Six years after voters sent a message to Republicans that they were sick and tired of a government that was polarized and self-absorbed, they find a political system that is as polarized and ineffective as ever.

Each wave election has ultimately produced a class of politicians who are convinced that their victory was about them rather than a repudiation of the tactics and behavior of the other party. They were convinced that voters were choosing an ideology, when in reality they were simply trying to punish the folks who put ideology over accomplishment and compromise.

PHILOSOPHY FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Which brings us to today. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney argue that this election provides voters with a very stark choice between two competing ideologies. One that says that government can be part of the solution (Obama) and one that says that government is getting in the way of the solution (Romney).

But there are plenty of voters out there who are more concerned about function than ideology. They aren’t spending their evenings debating the benefits of Hayek or Keynesian economic models. They are just trying to figure out which candidate is capable of getting something done. They will reward the politician who succeeds in getting things moving again. But that shouldn’t be taken as proof that voters are endorsing the philosophical underpinnings of that success.

In other words, voters are looking less at ideology and more at competency. And that’s not something that either side has been able to show that can deliver.

"Never had a real job" - Karma, round two

Loose-cannon Democrats have not cornered the stupidity market in this election year. Republicans are now taking their turn in the arena.

Remember back in April, when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen said (in an interview on CNN) that Ann Romney had "never worked a day in her life," and then Rosen got buried in the blowback, and abandoned by her fellow Democrats?

Well now, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said (in an interview on Fox News, yesterday) that Barack Obama has "never even had a real job, for [God's] sake."

Huh. According to celebritynetworth.com, Barack Obama is worth $11.8 million. He didn't inherit that money from his father. According to his résumé, he worked hard for at least part of that money. I think that working hard for your money is what constitutes a "real job," don't you?

I guess it depends on how you define a "real job." If Speaker Boehner means that Obama never had to punch a time clock, then he may have a point. (Then again, he may not. Maybe Obama worked at McDonald's when he was a teen. Surely, that would qualify as a "real job.")

What's makes Boehner's statement really stupid is that, only a few sentences earlier, he said "Sometimes I have to catch my breath and slow down because the rhetoric in this campaign is just so over the top."

Watch for the blowback.

Oops - the secret's out

It's a good thing the Obama administration has such a tight hold on operational security. I'm sure that the rebels in Syria are both impressed and reassured by it.

To quote the header of a news item today:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, sources familiar with the matter said."

It seems to me that somebody inside the Obama administration doesn't understand the concept of "secret."

On Polls, Politicking, and Super PACs

About super PACs:

They're not fooling anybody, you know. They're a blatant move by the classic men-behind-the-scenes to control the political landscape and the political discourse like they used to do. They're not about free speech. They're about money and power. We all know that.

But they're frighteningly effective, and so are their tactics. Most voters in a given election will vote based on emotion, not logic or facts, and the super PACs' tactics are focused on manipulating voters' emotions.

About politicking:


You know, since we stopped subscribing to cable TV and watching network TV, we have missed all of the political ads. And when I say "missed," I mean "not seen" or "not been subject to."

When we listen to the radio, we change stations every time we hear a political ad. (In fact, we frequently change stations for any kind of advertisement.) In radio parlance, political ads are an automatic tune-out.

When we read the newspaper, we read the political ads for local issues or candidates, and then go to the Internet to find detailed, impartial facts and to read both sides of the issue.

We get most of our news today from the Internet. We read from a variety of news outlets, analysts, and opinion leaders. We assume that everybody has a bias, and so we make sure to take our news from across the political spectrum. Some of the most detached, unbiased reporting comes from overseas, from outside looking in, but even then we are careful to watch for hidden biases.

We've noticed a lot more political advertising on the Internet. We ignore all of it. (However, we are intrigued by which political ads AdSense chooses to serve up on places like Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters.)

We listen to speeches, or read transcripts of speeches, on the Internet. Sometimes we will find multiple versions of the speech. Sometimes it takes a little work to find an accurate video of the speech, unedited and uncut. We listen to some of the after-speech commentary, but not much. After 5 or 10 minutes, the commentators go into talking-head mode, and then it's time to move on.

About polls:


I used to participate in telephone polls and surveys, thinking that I was fulfilling my civic duty in making my voice heard. Boy, was I mistaken. It took me a while, but I finally caught on to the fact that a "poll" is not really a "poll": the pollster is pushing a specific agenda, and is politicking (or selling, if it's a consumer poll and not a voter poll) just like everybody else.

Caller ID is a wonderful thing. During election season (like, right now), we ignore incoming calls if we don't recognize the calling number, or if no number is shown. There's no law that requires you to answer a ringing telephone.

That short pause before the human starts talking is also a wonderful thing. One day autodialers will be fast enough to eliminate the pause, but for 2012, that brief time while the autodialer processes our "Hello?" and routes us to a human or to a recorded message, is just enough time to alert us to the fact that it's a call we can safely hang up on.

This year I'm going to try something new. If I answer a ringing telephone and I don't realize it's a political call until the caller starts talking, I'm going to abruptly and wordlessly hang up. It may be rude, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to them, any more than I have the time or inclination to listen to a door-to-door salesman.

To wrap up:

Politicians must hate voters like us. We think about the candidates, and the issues. We do our research. We look at all sides of the story. We judge the credibility of everything we hear or read, and we ignore  emotional appeals. And we hate buzzwords, slogans, and cute catchphrases, with a hatred that surpasses all understanding. We don't vote a strict party or ideological line, although we prefer moderates over radicals because we know they will get things done and not just crow like a rooster all day long. We vote for what we think will be best in the long run for our community, our state and our country.

Election predictions

It's too early to predict who's going to win the presidential election in November. But I can make some predictions about the movements of the voting public. Here are my predictions:

• Led by evangelicals, many (if not most) Christians will vote against Romney because he's a Mormon.
• In a similar fashion, many (if not most) Mormons will vote for Romney because he's a Mormon.

Both groups will give other lame excuses to justify their votes, but when it comes down to it, they will vote for or against Romney because he's a Mormon.

So much for religious tolerance in this country. But it gets better.

• Many people will vote against Obama because (they say) he wasn't born in the United States.
• Other people will vote against Obama because (they say) he's a Muslim.
• Many (if not most) blacks will vote for Obama because he's black.
• Many (but definitely not most) whites will vote against Obama because he's black.
• Many (way too many) Republicans will vote for Romney simply because he's a Republican.
• Many (way too many) Democrats will vote for Obama simply because he's a Democrat.

Who does that leave? Oh, the free thinkers, right? Let's look at what the free thinkers will do in November:

• Many of them will vote against Romney because the negative ads about him were so convincing.
• Many of them will vote against Obama because the negative ads about him were so convincing.
• Many of them will vote for the candidate they saw or met in person, just because of that personal contact.
• Many of them will vote for the last candidate whose ad they saw on the TV before heading to the polls.

Does that leave anybody who's actually going to think before they vote? Anybody who's going to use logic and reasoning, to figure out for themselves who will be the best president for the next four years? Please tell me you are in this final group, and not one of the other groups I've listed!

Dear Congressman: You did it again! Good grief, how stupid ARE you?

To all members of the Congress of the United States:

On Wednesday, September 21, the House of Representatives voted that all 435 of its members are idiots.  We're waiting to see if the Senate comes up with something similar.

Once again, a serious deadline looms:  the federal government will be out of money - operating funds, that is - on October 1, little more than a week from now.  Another emergency budget bill was presented for a vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.  Forty-eight Tea Party Republicans voted against the bill because it didn't cut taxes.  (That's not what it was intended to do!  Idiots!)  Almost all Democrats voted against the bill because it didn't spend enough money.  (Haven't you learned?  That's the last thing we need to be doing right now: spending more money.  How do you think we got into this problem in the first place?  Idiots!)

And you, the empty-headed, drooling, mouth-breathing, slope-headed, beetle-browed, lawyers and millionaires, whom We The People naively elected to "represent" us in the Congress of the United States, you are back to Business as Usual.

Party politics.  Brinksmanship.  Obstructionism. Ultimatums.  Tantrums.  Narrowmindedness.  Selling of favors.  Catering to special interests.  Everything except the cooperation and compromise that we expect of you.  Didn't you MORONS learn ANYTHING from the debt-ceiling debacle?

It was a simple thing!  All you had to do was pass a bill!  You couldn't even do that!

Once again, you are going to wait until just before midnight on September 30 to do something that you are perfectly capable of doing right now, because you're too stubborn, too immature, and too fond of power.

Listen to me carefully.  I want you to remember these words.  The American people have lost all confidence in their Senators and their Representatives.  (This time, it's the Representatives' fault.  Senators, I'm sure your turn is coming.)  This November, and in the next five Novembers, We The People are going to show you what you can do with that power which you think you possess.  We are going to kick all of you out of Washington, D.C. and send you back home, where you won't cause any more trouble.  We will replace you with people who know what it's like to try to survive and keep a family together in these times, who know how to get something done.

You obviously don't know, and you apparently don't care.  And for that reason alone, you are unworthy to hold office.  You're all fired.

UPDATE, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23:  The House of Representatives stayed up past midnight, and finally got a version of the bill passed.  The vote went right down party lines, revealing that, even though they were able to pass the bill, all 435 members of the House of Representatives are still idiots.  Stupid.  Morons.  Mental disasters.  Buck-toothed jackasses, braying and kicking and blocking the trail.

The bill does contain a compromise:  $1 billion of a requested $3.6 billion spending increase for disaster aid now, and another $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2012, which starts October 1.  See, that wasn't so hard, was it?  And they even threw in some spending cuts to appease the Tea Partiers.

Today, the bill goes to the Senate, where the Senate is expected to vote to reject it.  As in the House, the vote will go right down party lines.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, today the United States Senate is going to vote that all 100 of its members are flaming idiots, just like their counterparts down the hall.  Here's why.  An unnamed aide to a Democratic Senator gives this hypocritical, two-faced, self-serving comment in a CNN article:

On Thursday night, senior Senate Democratic leadership aide said the party's caucus is united against Republican-tailored versions of the measure.  "We are looking for a real attempt to compromise, not just an attempt to appease their own people," the aide said.

Nobody in the Senate - on either side of the aisle - is interested in compromise, as they have made clear.  For either party to suggest that they are is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.  This is a do-nothing Congress.  All they can do is talk and talk, and they do way too much of that.  We The People want deeds, not words.

Once again, to all members of the Congress of the United States:  Today, the Senate will vote on whether or not you are idiots.  And the money's riding on a "yes" vote.

With the screeching sound of the Eurozone crashing and burning in the background, the whole world is watching you, the Congress of the United States.  Nobody is watching Europe.  They're all focused on Washington, and wondering whether a nation so gridlocked, and so mismanaged, can long endure.