== Boundaries, borders and political miscellany ==
One of the hottest issues in the U.S. presidential campaign was Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall with Mexico. Writing from Mexico City, Homero Aridjis and James Ramey offer a highly innovative proposal: Instead of Trump’s wall, they want to build a border of solar panels. “It would have a civilizing effect in a dangerous area,” they contend. “Since solar plants use security measures to keep intruders out, the solar border would serve as a de facto virtual fence, reducing porousness of the border while producing major economic, environmental and security benefits on both sides.”
One of the netizens of my blog community recently made a petition on Change.Org that I think some of you may find interesting: Statehood for Native American tribal lands administered by the Federal Government.
Petition Text: “Native American peoples have historically been disenfranchised with the states where their reservations have been located. Even today, the more than 5 million Native Americans lack even modest representation in DC, often due to the machinations of the Red State governments surrounding them. I propose that all reservations lands that are administered by the Federal Government be designated as an American State, with 2 seats in the US Senate and an proportionate congressional delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. This American State would not be contiguous, but neither is Michigan, Virginia nor Alaska. Designation of a state capital and congressional districts will be entirely up to them. Issues arising between residence in this State and the racial qualifications for tribal membership must be resolved in full accordance with the US Constitution.”
Huh! I like the idea of giving all Native American reservations a collective statehood! Kinda hard on New Mexico. Turns it into a smaller state that’s kind of lily white, so no gain for the dems!
How about this alternative idea. Let reservations across the U.S. declare themselves to be part of New Mexico or Dakota? You’d accomplish the same thing. In fact, W.E.B. DuBois once suggested a reverse Great Migration of African Americans to either Mississippi or South Carolina. It would only take a few hundred thousand to turn either of them into a black republic. What a delicious thought... worth reviving?
Oh, in Existence you see much the same thing. The Senators from both North & South Dakota are Native Americans… because so many whites moved out after the Yellowstone volcano burped.
== Twin pillars of a cult ==
Republicans are in a tight spot, since Obamacare was originally their own damned plan.
Why am I the only one mentioning this? All of their alternatives are variations on it. Not surprisingly since Obama's Affordable Care Act was based upon the outline developed for Republicans by the Heritage Foundation, that was the GOP platform plank on health for a decade and then became “RomneyCare” in Massachusetts.
Watch this clip of Rep. Brendan Boyle explaining the origins of Obamacare in the GOP's marketplace plan for healthcare.
So why did Obama present their own plan to them, in 2009. He did it in the sappy and forlorn hope that Republicans would actually negotiate, just that once, if offered their own… damn… plan.
Instead, since Obama touched it, the plan suddenly had cooties. And was deemed satanic by all loyal dittohead Fox watchers!
Only now, what to do? What, after 6 years screeching that Obamacare - which insured 20 million Americans and steeply lowered the rate of increase of health costs in America - was devil spawn, you still don't have a replacement ready?
Expect extensive tweaking and cosmetic changes, especially in nomenclature! Lots of symbolic re-namings. And "health savings plans" that no one will buy. Oh, and a new law requiring drug companies to negotiate with Medicare on costs... something democrats have long advocated and that Republicans, by law, specifically forbade.
Why am I the only one mentioning this? All of their alternatives are variations on it. Not surprisingly since Obama's Affordable Care Act was based upon the outline developed for Republicans by the Heritage Foundation, that was the GOP platform plank on health for a decade and then became “RomneyCare” in Massachusetts.
Watch this clip of Rep. Brendan Boyle explaining the origins of Obamacare in the GOP's marketplace plan for healthcare.
So why did Obama present their own plan to them, in 2009. He did it in the sappy and forlorn hope that Republicans would actually negotiate, just that once, if offered their own… damn… plan.
Instead, since Obama touched it, the plan suddenly had cooties. And was deemed satanic by all loyal dittohead Fox watchers!
Only now, what to do? What, after 6 years screeching that Obamacare - which insured 20 million Americans and steeply lowered the rate of increase of health costs in America - was devil spawn, you still don't have a replacement ready?
Expect extensive tweaking and cosmetic changes, especially in nomenclature! Lots of symbolic re-namings. And "health savings plans" that no one will buy. Oh, and a new law requiring drug companies to negotiate with Medicare on costs... something democrats have long advocated and that Republicans, by law, specifically forbade.
Later news seems to confirm all that. Paul Ryan’s plan and Trump’s are both looking like Obamacare with Obama’s name and wording scratched out and a couple of tweaks that could have been negotiated 6 years ago, if any Republicans once showed up at the negotiating table. See where I predicted this.
To reiterate a core point about American political life: Democratic Congresses always negotiate with and compromise with Republican presidents, in order to get some business done. They yell and fight, but always pass budgets, usually based on the budget presented by the administration.
In contrast, GOP Congresses (with the sole exception of 1995) never, ever negotiate with a democratic president, even over vital national needs. And only seldom do they even pass budgets.
In contrast, GOP Congresses (with the sole exception of 1995) never, ever negotiate with a democratic president, even over vital national needs. And only seldom do they even pass budgets.
See this pattern playing out again. As it will, especially, if the dems retake Congress in 2018, the Year of the Colonels.
== Cheaters redux ==
North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project. Of course the same thing applies to all but two red states. (In fairness, two blue states also do this wretched cheating.) They do this because if gerrymandering and other cheats fail, the entire neo-feudal design collapses.
More on cheating: The U.S. is the only democracy in the world that allows its voting machines to be made – mostly unsupervised – by private, for-profit, partisan companies. "Companies that make political contributions as did Dominion, the remnants of Diebold that went out of business for worldwide fraud following the 2004 election, and Hart Intercivic. So we allow these private, for-profit partisan companies to count our vote, to set our databases with secret proprietary software that nobody can look at. It violates every principle of transparency. And the only person on a high level willing to talk about this is Jimmy Carter, who says to Der Spiegel that America has a dysfunctional democracy and that we don't meet minimum standards of transparency."
Apropos of voting machines: this article mentions Black Box Voting the outfit that has probably done the most work to explore and educate about the shift to electronic voting. With a donation, you can download a PDF of the book: Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st century.
== And irksome cavils ==
Someone I know pointed out an interesting hypocrisy: those who would proclaim that human life begins at conception rage against morning-after pills - the simplest form of abortion... yet say nothing about fertilization clinics that create scores of fertilized embryos for every successful birth. Many are flushed. Some are "stored" without any chance of ever being implanted... and are eventually flushed. Why no outrage?
Someone I know pointed out an interesting hypocrisy: those who would proclaim that human life begins at conception rage against morning-after pills - the simplest form of abortion... yet say nothing about fertilization clinics that create scores of fertilized embryos for every successful birth. Many are flushed. Some are "stored" without any chance of ever being implanted... and are eventually flushed. Why no outrage?
Perhaps because it's often poor women who need abortions, and those who can afford to could always go to New York or California. But it's mostly rich women who use in vitro fertility clinics.
Alas, it's likely even simpler than that. The abortion frenzy serves a political purpose, as a way to take the uber moral high-ground, based on a single, grand declaration that proclaims your enemies to be baby-killers. It allows fundies to get around the quandary they faced, called the Jesus Effect. (See my earlier posting: Abortion and the Jesus Effect.) For despite all of his other, beaded, bearded, socialist hippie and broadly democratic values, Jesus would have to be a Republican based on the one, simple issue of saving murdered babies. With that one declaration, they can then safely ignore everything else that Jesus stood for, and help elect a man who is his diametric opposite.
This is not a stance that can bear much scrutiny. So never scrutinize.
Alas, it's likely even simpler than that. The abortion frenzy serves a political purpose, as a way to take the uber moral high-ground, based on a single, grand declaration that proclaims your enemies to be baby-killers. It allows fundies to get around the quandary they faced, called the Jesus Effect. (See my earlier posting: Abortion and the Jesus Effect.) For despite all of his other, beaded, bearded, socialist hippie and broadly democratic values, Jesus would have to be a Republican based on the one, simple issue of saving murdered babies. With that one declaration, they can then safely ignore everything else that Jesus stood for, and help elect a man who is his diametric opposite.
This is not a stance that can bear much scrutiny. So never scrutinize.
Oh, final rant-item: Even the CATO Institute, after decades whoring for the Kochs, seems to be gathering some guts, publishing articles like this one -- The Right has its own version of Political Correctness. It's just as stifling -- calling out conservatism for being just as wording and symbolism obsessed as their left-wing “PC bully” adversaries.
“Just as?” Oh, much, much more so. Vastly more so. See here.
“Just as?” Oh, much, much more so. Vastly more so. See here.
