A Fallacy in Motion

Charles Lipson is a walking fallcy, a professor of political science who prefers to use that credential that he might promote crackpot theses that ignore the details. To wit:

When presidents become unpopular, they are no longer welcome on the campaign trail. They’re trapped in Washington, watching their party abandon them. It happened to Lyndon B. Johnson, whose presidency collapsed amid protests over Vietnam. He left Washington only to visit his Texas ranch and assorted military bases, where he gave patriotic speeches to silent battalions. Richard Nixon, drowning in Watergate, was confined to Camp David and a few foreign capitals, where he was greeted as a global strategist. Jimmy Carter, crushed by the Iranian hostage crisis and a bad economy, stopped traveling beyond the Rose Garden.

Now, the same oppressive walls are closing in on President Barack Obama. He is welcome only in the palatial homes of Hollywood stars and hedge-fund billionaires or the well-kept fairways of Martha’s Vineyard.

Well-written, indeed, if it was listed as fiction. But it’s not, and that means it’s a fraud.

The simple fact is that President Obama is avoiding states where Democrats are running competitively but against the odds. To wit, why would Alison Lundergan Grimes want President Obama onstage with her? She’s running against one of the most powerful Republicans in the country, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader who has so botched his handling of the Senate Republican Conference that Grimes can even run close.

Lipson’s criticism about palatial homes is unusual; most political science professors would suggest it very unwise to ignore rich donors during an election season, but Lipson would prefer you believe otherwise because it helps his poisonous narrative. Christopher Keating noted that Obama’s second trip to Connecticut in a week—a scheduled rally—was cancelled because, well, he’s the president and has a job to do. You know, ebola and all that. The palatial home Lipson refers to would appear to be in Greenwich, where Obama spoke at a fundraiser for Gov. Malloy.

The president is also welcome in Wisconsin, hoping to boost support for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke.

One wonders what the political science would say of someplace like Kansas? Would the president’s presence in the Sunflower State help or hurt Democratic gubernatorial challenger Paul Davis? Given that the incumbent Republican presently has the slightest edge in an otherwise dead heat (less than a percent), the question might be how Gov. Sam Brownback found himself in such a weakened position that he must actually face the possibility of losing. Then again, it’s not much of a question: Brownback and his Republican allies have wrecked the states finances.

In that context, it’s hard to lose faith in Obama if one never had any.

A Kansas Story

It was not so long ago that Don Gonyea of NPR filed a report on the gubernatorial race in Kansas:

This isn’t your typical incumbent-in-trouble story, though. In office, Brownback has done exactly what he said he would. But many, many voters aren’t happy, including a lot of Republicans.

Big tax cuts that Brownback championed have left Kansas with a serious budget problem ....

.... Some of the loudest complaints have come from moderate Republicans. This summer, 104 Republicans — current and former Kansas officials — held a press conference to endorse Davis.

Brownback’s problem is that in fulfilling his promise to alter the state’s financial structure, he failed to fulfill the other part of his promise, that doing so would help Kansas.

In the first gubernatorial debate recently at the Kansas State Fair, Brownback addressed the state’s economic issues. “Our unemployment rate is 4.9 percent. We have a record number of Kansans working. We have the fastest-growing economy in the region and more new business created than ever in the history of the state,” he said.

But Democrat Paul Davis countered with a darker view of things, saying the deficit is projected to hit $1.3 billion in five years.

“Our credit rating has been downgraded three times. We’re 45th in the nation in new business creation,” Davis said. “In 2013, more businesses closed up shop than opened shop. It’s because we have an economic experiment that isn’t working. Let’s return to a proven Kansas model of growing our economy, and that’s how we’re going to help Kansas.”

Many of Gov. Brownback’s critics foresaw htis outcome. The question is whether or not the hardline Republican can convince voters that, “The sun is shining in Kansas and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

What about the numbers? Will they say anything different, or will they reveal the sunshine?

Right.

Josh Barro explains:

Kansas has missed its tax revenue targets again, and the state is in for new fiscal pain as a result.

You may recall that Kansas gained national attention back in June because it had cut income taxes and lost a lot more revenue than lawmakers had anticipated. For fiscal year 2014, which ended on June 30, the state collected $330 million less in taxes than it had forecast, and $700 million less than it had collected in the prior year.

Those are big numbers in a state that spends about $6 billion annually from its general fund, and the revenue weakness led both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s to cut Kansas’ credit rating this year.

Why the Seattle Police Department is a Disgrace

There are a number of lectures that many might suggest go here, but virtually all of them are actually unnecessary, and thereby condescending.

You might recall that recently we noted that a woman had to shame the Seattle Police Department into doing their jobs, and how when they finally did they figured out they were looking for a serial sex offender.

A level 3 sex offender whose alleged groping of a Seattle woman on Oct. 12 resulted in a social media campaign to have police investigate the incident may be responsible for more than a dozen similar incidents, police said.

Seattle police on Tuesday said that more than a dozen women have contacted the Sexual Assault Unit to report that they had been groped by the same man, said department spokesman Drew Fowler. “Twelve to fourteen women have come forward to say that he also groped them,” said Fowler.

We owe great thanks to Julia Marquand, whose courageous efforts finally spurred the Seattle Police Department into doing their damn jobs.

And as to the lectures? There’s really only one left, and it’s pretty short:

Dear SPD:

Do your damn jobs, for once. You know, as opposed to bawling because you can’t be criminals.

The Seattle Police Department is an embarrassment not only to the Emerald City and Evergreen State, but to the police officers and departments, indeed the mere idea of the police, everywhere.

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de Leon, John. “Alleged Westlake groper accused of more than a dozen similar attacks”. The Seattle Times. 21 October 2014.

Johnson, Gene. “Judge tosses lawsuit by Seattle police officers”. KOMO News. 20 October 2014.

America’s Rape State

A note at the outset: This is Alaska, after all. Not that such a point should provide any comfort. Rather, quite the opposite. Still, though, as appalling as the situation might be, it’s just another day on the Last Frontier.

The Alaska National Guard is facing down some grave allegations: A recruiter trying to give alcohol to high school girls, botched responses to sexual assault complaints, embezzlement, a former porn company owner keeping his job despite military investigators finding that he failed to respond to sexual assault, and whistleblowers terrified to speak out.

The alleged misconduct, detailed in an assessment by the National Guard Bureau’s Office of Complex Investigations and in investigations by local news outlets, is threatening the re-election bid of incumbent Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R). The governor, who is commander in chief of the Guard, fired three top officials from the military unit this week. His office has said that he took action each time he was made aware of misconduct, and that he was ultimately misled by his top general.

But Parnell’s critics—including whistleblowers and victims—claim that his office failed to do enough to respond to allegations of abuse over several years. Local news outlets are now suing the governor’s office to get access to internal emails that may show how much Parnell knew about the allegations, and what he did in response.

(Liebelson)

A question for Governor Parnell:

• While it is easy enough to imagine that the brass might wish to downplay the number of sex crimes in the Alaska National Guard, what is your threshold insofar as we might understand the minimum number of sexual assaults before you find the behavior problematic?

What’s the number, Governor? Five? Ten? Is it greater than one?

And what are the criteria? Is groping “no problem”, while coerced oral sex is only “kinda problematic”? How about forced vaginal intercourse? Is that not so bad, from a gubernatorial point of view, as forced anal sex? At what point, Governor Parnell, do you decide this is actually a problem you need to do something about?

No, really.

The Last Frontier is also America’s Rape State.

And no, Governor, you should not be proud of your contribution to that title.

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Liebelson, Dana. “Alaska National Guard Sex Abuse Scandal Threatens GOP Governor’s Re-election”. The Huffington Post. 22 October 2014.

A Note on the Vote: FOX News and Woman Suffrage

We’re not surprised:

Fox’s Kimberly Guilfoyle: Young Women Shouldn’t Exercise Civic Duties Because “They Don’t Get It.” During the October 21 edition of Fox News’ The Five, the co-hosts discussed the impact of women voters in the upcoming midterm elections. After co-host Greg Gutfeld suggested that young women lack the wisdom to vote as conservatives, Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that they should be excused from jury duty, because they lack life experience and just “don’t get it.” Instead, she said, they should “go back on Tinder or Match.com.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/21/14]

(Boguhn and Torres)

While Alexandrea Boguhn and Jessica Torres of Media Matters for America offer up a broader survey of the conservative movement against young women voting, Catherine Taibi of Huffington Post pulled a couple more quotes from the FOX News crew:

“The Five” co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle said Tuesday that young women should excuse themselves from voting in the upcoming midterm elections because they don’t share the same “life experience” as older women and should just go back to playing around on Tinder and Match.com.

“It’s the same reason why young women on juries are not a good idea,” Guilfoyle said. “They don’t get it!”

Earlier in the conversation, co-host Greg Gutfeld made the point that “with age comes wisdom” and the “older you get, the more conservative you get” ....

.... Guilfoyle agreed, suggesting that you can’t cast an informed vote until you’ve gone through adult things, like paying the bills.

“They’re [young women] like healthy and hot and running around without a care in the world,” she concluded. “They can go back on Tinder or Match.com.”

So let us review the FOX News editorial outlook on women:

• Young women should not serve on juries.

• Young women should not vote.

• Women in general should be gratified by sexual harassment.

To the one, that sounds about right insofar as this is FOX News we’re talking about.

Then again, FOX News is the highest-rated cable “news” outfit. We might not wonder why, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the implications.

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Boguhn, Alexandrea and Jessica Torres. “Right-Wing Media Discourage Young Women From Voting”. Media Matters for America. 21 October 2014.

Taibi, Catherine. “Fox News Hosts Tell Young Women Not To Vote, Go Back To Tinder And Match.com”. The Huffington Post. 22 October 2014.

Kittel, Olivia. “‘Let Men Be Men’: Fox News Hosts Defend Catcalling”. Media Matters for America. 28 August 2014.

For Our Neighbors to the North

What I don’t get is what anyone could possibly expect to gain by picking a fight with Canada.

Our neighbors to the north have stood by the United States, faithful friends through the best and worst of our mortal adventures.

And … this?

This will not be forgotten.

Dearest Canada, our hearts and hopes are with you in this darkest of hours. Stand strong; our nation grieves for your loss.

And please, please, please forgive the appearance of cynicism, as we might also ask that you please, please, please forgive the useless political shitstorm that is about to paralyze Capitol Hill.

It may be election season down here, but this will not be forgotten.

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Beeby, Dean. “Parliament Hill attack: Soldier dies of injuries, gunman also shot dead”. CBC News. 22 October 2014.

An Interesting Analysis

Cynicism in politics:

Political analysts keep urging the Republican Party to do more to appeal to Hispanic voters. Yet the party’s congressional leaders show little sign of doing so, blocking an immigration overhaul and harshly criticizing President Obama for his plan to defer deportation for undocumented migrants.

There’s a simple reason that congressional Republicans are willing to risk alienating Hispanics: They don’t need their votes, at least not this year.

Republicans would probably hold the House — and still have a real chance to retake the Senate — if they lost every single Hispanic voter in the country, according to an analysis by The Upshot.

Such a thing would never happen, of course, but the fact that the Republicans may not need a single Hispanic vote in 2014 says a good deal about American politics today.

(Cohn)

Say what you will about the potential cynicism of Nate Cohn’s analysis for The New York Times; electoral politics is a numbers game.

No wonder Jennifer Rubin is so anxious to poodle for the GOP on the immigration point.

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Cohn, Nate. “Why House Republicans Alienate Hispanics: They Don’t Need Them”. The Upshot. 21 October 2014.

An Example of Alaskan Virtue

In the early nineties, a disgruntled group of anti-abortion activists in Oregon decided to shift gears, and the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance rose to influence trying to compel the state to exclude homosexuals from societal participation; the ballot measure was so broadly worded that a “gay panic defense” would succeed in any question of murdering a homosexual or suspected homosexual, because prosecutors would be forbidden from not condemning homosexuality as “abnormal, perverse, and wrong”. While some of us frequently joke that marriage equality owes much to such merry bands of stooges insofar as they moved the question of gay rights to the fore as no gay rights activist possibly could, it was a grave time that even saw homophobes resort to terrorism.

Well, we didn’t call it terrorism back then, did we? It was just firebombing faggots, a method viewed at the time as questionable for its potential to create sympathy toward homosexuals.

Which is telling. But the aspect we might consider today is a persistent one: Why is the idea of consent as relates to sexual intercourse so irrelevant to the conservative political outlook?

I’m sorry, is that a harsh question?

Deal with it. We’ve been hearing this sort of talk for decades.

The latest manifestation comes from Rep. Don Young (R-AK):

At a Wasilla High School assembly Tuesday morning, U.S. Rep. Don Young didn’t temper his notoriously abrasive personality for his young audience.

Numerous witnesses say Young, 81, acted in a disrespectful and sometimes offensive manner to some students, used profanity and started talking about bull sex when confronted with a question about same-sex marriage.

(Hollander)

Then again, this is Don Young. The octagenarian congressman has a penchant for bigoted gaffes.

Which, in turn, says something about the virtues and values along the Last Frontier.

But here is the functional problem: This is part of a long-running rhetorical bit whereby social conservatives aim for comedic style points. The problem here is that in winning the debate on style points, conservatives are (A) dehumanizing their opponents, and (B) erasing sexual consent.

A Seven Year Search for Justice

It only took seven years, but four former contractors who worked in Iraq for the infamous Blackwater Worldwide have been convicted of various charges related to their participation in a 2007 massacre of civilians amid the Iraqi Bush Adventure. Matt Apuzzo brings the news—

Jurors found one defendant guilty of murder and three others of manslaughter and weapons charges, roundly asserting that the shooting was criminal.

—and despite his problems with integrity, we ought to believe this report because it is all of two paragraphs long and does not purport to be a fact-check.^α

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^α An “apuzzo” is a fake fact check, which the Associated Press reporter for whom the term is coined. This sort of thing tends to damage an alleged reporter’s credibility, but hasn’t much to do with the present issue.

Apuzzo, Matt. “Former Blackwater Guards Convicted in Iraq Shooting”. The New York Times. 22 October 2014.

Sargent, Greg. “Frontiers in fact checking”. The Plum Line. 6 September 2012.

Something About Arkansas

Sometimes the hardest part is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Jonathan Martin tries to explain the latest weirdness surrounding the U.S. Senate campaign of Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR4).

A certain level of murkiness has become the rule when it comes to campaign finance in a post-Citizens United world. But even by this standard, a group called Right Solutions Partners LLC is remarkable for its opacity.

Representative Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican running for the Senate, disbursed over $131,000 to Right Solutions Partners in March for “fund-raising consulting” and an additional $161,000 to it in August for the same purpose. A smaller third disbursement brought the total to $322,963.

But here’s the catch: It’s not clear that such an entity actually exists. It has no presence on the Internet, it appears that no other campaign is paying it this year, and it has no office at the Washington address listed on the articles of organization filed with the city last year.

As scandals go, this isn’t much to work with. Barring some evidence of illegality, the sense of scandal will blow away on the first light breeze that starts to shape this up as just another Beltway maneuver. But lacking that puff from the winds of change, the apparent scandal here would have something to do with Rep. Cotton once again affirming his appearance of plain stupidity.

Then again, stupidity might be a (ha!) “Natural State” virtue; polling shows Cotton leads his race against incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor (D).