The Republican Party is in a quandary -  they’ve lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections. So, what to do? They could change and not promote such hard right policies. But naw, that’s not the Republican way. Besides, any success they’ve had in the last few years has been largely due to the fringe far right Tea Party. And there’s a simpler way: If you can’t win the hearts and minds of voters, just change the way their votes count.

We already have an illegitimate Congress – Democratic House candidates received over a million more votes than Republican House candidates received,with Democrats wining a majority of 50.5% of the vote to the Republicans 49.5%. But the Republicans control the House with 53.7% of the seats belonging to Republicans. How? Simple – gerrymandering. You pack the densely Democratic areas – mostly urban centers – into a select few districts, and then mix the more evenly divided suburban areas in with heavily Republican rural areas, and voila! You have a majority of congressional districts favoring Republicans even while statewide it’s a Blue state. The Tea Party wave of 2010 swept Republicans into control of state legislatures and the Governorship of a number of Blue states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Michigan, and into control of a number of swing states such as Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. And they went right to work gerrymandering the hell out of their Congressional Districts. Just look at the 2012 election results: President Obama carried Michigan by 9 points, but Michigan’s Congressional delegation? 9 Republican Congressmen and only 5 Democrats. Obama carried Pennsylvania by just under 5 points, while its Congressional delegation is 13 Republicans and only 5 Democrats. And Ohio? Obama carried it my just under 3% (much to Karl Rove’s disbelief), while its Congressional delegation is 75% Republican , 12 Republicans to only 4 Democrats. Such a disparity in the results for President and the resulting makeup of the Congressional delegation is due only to gerrymandering the vast majority of districts to favor Republicans. And that’s I call  it an illegitimate House of Representatives – because it doesn’t represent the will of the voters, it represents the dirty tricks of politicians. And yes, to be fair, the Democratic dominated legislature in Illinois returned the favor and gerrymandered a couple Republican districts, causing a couple incumbent Republicans to lose last November. I’m against gerrymandering, whoever does it.

Compare what happened in those Midwestern states carried by President Obama but the congressional districts were gerrymandered by Republican controlled legislatures to the election results here in Arizona, where districts are set by an Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) instead of by politicians. Romney carried Arizona 54-45%, but our Congressional delegation is 5-4 Democratic. Aha! you say? That proves Republican claims that the  IRC drew maps to favor Democrats? No, look again: Here in CD2 Republican Martha McSally came within 2500 votes of defeating Ron Barber. In CD1 Republican Jonathon Paton came within 9200 votes of defeating Ann Kirkpatrick and in the new CD9 Republican Vernon Parker came within 10,400 votes of defeating Kyrsten Sinema. Those 3 districts are swing districts, and in a Republican year such as 2010 all 3 could swing to the Republicans, resulting in 7-2 Republican delegation. The IRC drew 4 “safe” Republican districts, 2 safe Democratic districts, and 3 swing districts, and that’s pretty much in line with our statewide voter registration of 36% Republican, 32% Independent, and 31% Democrat. While President Obama isn’t terribly popular here, Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona did much better, losing to Jeff Flake by only 3%. Swing districts are fair districts because either major party can carry them, and the current Congressman or Congresswoman had better pay close to the needs and views of his or her district, because if they make very many unpopular votes in Congress they can easily wind up on the losing side in the next election. Gerrymandered districts are far from fair – in most of those gerrymandered Republican districts the current officeholder fears a primary challenge from the right far more than they fear a Democratic opponent.

But back to the Republican quandary of how to win the Presidency. They were so sure they could defeat Obama that they even put up a rich guy moderate that nobody liked but were sure could beat the pants off that Obama guy. And they still got their butts kicked, by over 5 million popular votes and a landslide 62% of the Electoral vote. And then they had what they though was a stroke of genius: let’s change the way those Electoral votes are awarded! Instead of all the state’s electoral votes going to the winner of the statewide vote, they want to award by winner of those gerrymandered congressional districts. But not in Red states, of course! That would only help Democrats. Red states like Texas where Obama won 42% of the popular vote but got 0 of it’s 38 electoral votes. No, if the electoral vote was awarded to the winner of congressional districts in places like Texas Obama would have walked away with at least 12 electoral votes. We can’t have that! So, in true Republican tradition they want to change the rules only when & where it favors them, so want only only those swing states to award votes to the winner of congressional districts – Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A bill has already passed a legislative committee in Virginia that would award the 1 electoral vote to the winner of each Congressional district, and then the remaining 2 electoral votes to the winner of the most congressional districts. Yes, you read that right – not to the statewide winner, but to who wins the most gerrymandered congressional districts. We’ve got to stack this in our favor as much as possible! Had that been effect in the 2012 election, President Obama would have defeated Mitt Romney 51-47% in the statewide vote, but Romney would have won 10 of it’s electoral votes and Obama only 3. In fact, if this plan to award electoral votes by congressional districts in these swing states only (an in none of the Red states) had been in effect in 2012, it would have been Mitt Romney taking the oath of office last Monday, despite losing the popular vote by 5 million votes! Only a Republican politician could come up with such a truly anti-Democracy idea.

First of all we need to defeat this anti-Democracy plan. It may be a bridge too far for even some Republicans, with influential Republicans in Virginia and Florida coming out against the plan. But watch out Michigan and and Pennsylvania. Secondly, we need to do away with this Electoral College system of electing our President. When our Constitution was written our Founding Fathers were leery of citizens directly electing the President. And with good reason – a significant portion of the population had no formal education and couldn’t even read or write. And with such a small population with many poor, votes could be bought. In this Age of Information, there is no reason our citizens shouldn’t directly elect our President. And as a Republicans have demonstrated, 538 Electoral votes can be much more easily manipulated than the votes of hundreds of millions of citizens. And thirdly, we need to put the task of redistricting into the hands of Independent Redistricting Commissions like we do here in Arizona. Politicians have proved over and over again that when they draw the maps they consider their own reelection first, election of fellow members of their political party second, and the needs of the voters dead last.

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It’s time to finally talk about my second passion: Football (politics of course being my first passion), because I’ve ended my brief mourning period. I’m a long suffering Denver Broncos fan, who began the season with high hopes that they would finally reach the big game after a 14 year drought, finally with a quarterback worthy of succeeding John Elway. Those hopes were dashed a week ago in overtime by the Baltimore Ravens, coached by John Harbaugh. But I managed to root for the Ravens yesterday, because they played the team and coach I despise the most – the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick. Belichick has to be the most arrogant winner and the sorest loser in the history of NFL coaches. This is the coach who walked off the field with time still on the clock when the NY Giants ruined his perfect season by defeating them in Superbowl XLII in 2008. He wouldn’t grant any interviews when the Giants defeated them again in the Superbowl last year, and he wasn’t granting any interviews yesterday when the Ravens stuffed them at home 28-13. CBS sport commentator (and former Bronco) Shannon Sharpe rightfully ripped Belichick a new one:

“There’s something to be said about being gracious in defeat. We’ve seen the New England Patriots five times in the last 12 years be victorious. And we’ve seen the opposing coaches that lost come out and speak to our Steve Tasker. Coach [Bill] Cowher [who was sitting next to Sharpe] did it when they lost. We saw this last week. Bill Belichick makes it very easy for you to root against the Patriots. You can’t be a poor sport all the time. You’re not going to win every time. And he does this every time he loses. It is unacceptable.”

Yeah, Belichick makes it very easy to root against the Patriots, and that’s without even going into “Spygate”. Earlier in the day the San Francisco Forty-Niners, coach by John Harbaugh’s younger brother Jim, rallied from a 17-0 first quarter deficit to defeat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24. And so in 2 weeks we’ll have “Har-Bowl I”, the first Superbowl in history with two brothers as the opposing coaches.

The Vegas odds makers have already picked their favorite – the Forty-Niners are favored by 4.5-5 points. And I’ll be rooting for the Niners as well. I tend to support West Coast/Mountain West teams over East Coast teams to begin with and yeah, I sure rather have my Broncos in the big game instead of the Ravens. But most of all I’ll be rooting for the Niners because of this guy:

Second string backup Quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Only he is no longer backup quarterback, he’s the Niners starting quarterback. Jim Harbaugh named him the starting quarterback when Alex Smith, the former 49er starting quarterback went down in Week 10 with a concussion. And the Niners and Harbaugh haven’t looked back since. The next week Kaepernick let them in a 31-7 romp over the stunned Chicago Bears. The next week he led them over the New Orlean Saints 31-21. When Smith, who is a very good quarterback and led the team to the NFC Championship game last year, was healthy enough to return Coach Harbaugh made a tough decision, which turned out the a very good decision: he stuck with the 25 year old Colin Kapernick as his starting quarterback. And in just his 8th game as a starting quarterback Colin Kaepernick led the Niners into playoff history, out playing Superbowl MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and rushed for 181 yards, an NFL record for a quarterback, easily defeating the Green Bay Packers 45-31.

It’s hard to have anything but admiration and the highest respect for Colin Kaepernick, he’s been proving himself all his life. Given up for adoption by his young unwed mother, Colin was adopted by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, who had two other children but had lost two other children to heart defects and had been advised not to have any more children of their own. Colin is biracial racial and looks nothing like his adopted parents, who are of German descent, but they have given him nothing but love and their full support. Last week when a reporter asked Mrs. Kaepernick about Colin he made a point of saying “adopted son”, and she replied “Let me be clear: Colin is adopted, and I am his adopted mother. But he is my son.”

Colin grew up in the Bay Area, in Turlock, California. In school he excelled in several sports. He was the MVP of the Central California Conference in football leading his school to its first-ever playoff victory. In basketball he was a first-team all CCC selection at forward and led his 16th-ranked team to a near upset of the Number 1-ranked team in the opening round of playoffs. But in high school it was in was in baseball that he received his most success. He was a two-time all-state baseball player in California, and earned Northern California athlete of the week honors as a pitcher. Colin received several scholarship offers to play baseball, but he turned them all down to accept the one scholarship he received to play football. from the University of Nevada, Reno. Colin wanted to play college football because he wanted to do what he had dreamed about as a kid: he dreamed of one day playing football for the San Francisco Forty-Niners.

As a redshirt freshman, Kaepernick saw little action through Nevada’s first four games. It was during the fifth game of the season against the 2007 Fresno State Bulldogs that he got his first extended playing time. After starting quarterback Nick Graziano went down with a season-ending foot injury, Colin entered the game with 8:23 remaining in the second quarter. He would go on to amass 384 yards passing, 4 TD’s and 60 yards rushing. Kaepernick made his first start the next week as 26-point underdogs to Boise State. Colin and the UNR Wolf Pack nearly upset the Broncos in one of the highest-scoring games in NCAA history (69–67 in four overtimes). Compiling 243 yards passing with 3 TDs and rushing for another 177 yards and 2 scores, Kaepernick led the Wolf Pack into a fourth overtime period when a failed two-point conversion attempt ultimately ended the game. The game was nationally televised on ESPN and was deemed an Instant Classic and re-aired on the network’s ESPN Classic station in the following days. In the 2008 season Colin became just the fifth player in NCAA history to pass for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 or more yards in a single season. Colin finished the 2009 season with 2,052 passing yards and 1,183 rushing yards. He became the first player in NCAA history to record back-to-back 2,000/1,000 yard seasons. In the 2010 season Colin led his team to a 34–31 overtime victory against the previously undefeated Boise State Broncos, snapping a 24 game win streak that had dated back to the 2008. Colin graduated from the University of Nevada Reno in December 2010 with a bachelors degree in business management.  On April 29, 2011, The San Francisco 49ers traded up with the Denver Broncos to select Colin Kaepernick as the fourth pick in the second round (#36 overall) at the 2011 NFL Draft. Colin was selected as a backup for quarterback Alex Smith, and possible replacement for Smith’s eventual retirement. But destiny had different plans.

It should be an exciting Superbowl, whoever wins. But my prediction: Niners 41-28, with Colin Kaepernick MVP, setting more records. And fulfilling his dreams.

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A surprising poll was released today by Fairleigh Dickinson University, polling Americans on whether they believe any of the four most recent conspiracy theories:

• President George W Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 terrorist attack, and the attack was planned by the U.S. Government
• President Bush’s supporters committed significant voter fraud to win him the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio, and accordingly, reelection
• President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life, including possibly his place of birth
• President Obama’s 2012 reelection was the result of voter fraud by his supporters

Sixty-three percent of registered voters in the U.S. believe at least one conspiracy theory is true: 56 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans say that at least one is likely true. That President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life is by far the most popular conspiracy, with 36% of all Americans thinking this is likely true. But that total is skewed by 64% of registered Republicans believing this is true; only 14% of Democrats believe this. Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University offers the theory that this conspiracy is the most believed because it’s been so widely covered. “This conspiracy theory is much more widely believed mostly because it’s been discussed so often,” says Professor Cassino. “People tend to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire – so the more smoke they see, the more likely they are to believe that something is going on.” The birther nonsense certainly was covered ad nauseum after Obama’s election in 2008, and even repeated often as recently as last year by people as well known as Donald Trump.

Believing in political conspiracies is not limited to those on the political right, however – 25% of registered voters think it’s probably true that President Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks before they happened. Thirty-six percent of Democrats are “truthers”, and 37% of Democrats believe that President Bush’s supporters committed significant voter fraud to win him the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. Overall only 23% of all voters believe this.  And 23% of Americans think that President Obama’s supporters committed significant voter fraud in the 2012 elections. Thirty-six percent of Republicans think this is the case, but only 4 percent of Democrats do.

So, the “surprise” in this poll? Republicans tend to believe in conspiracies involving shenanigans by Democrats, and Democrats tend to believe in scams done by Republicans. Is it any wonder we’re so polarized as a nation? Although I wasn’t born in Missouri, I’ve always been a ‘Show Me’ kinda guy. As a pre-teen I told my Methodist parents that I didn’t want to go to Sunday School or Church anymore because I’d decided it was all just a bunch of nonsense. So I also don’t believe that in 1961, when lunch counters and public drinking fountains across the South had “Whites Only” signs, that Stanley Ann Dunham (Obama’s mother) was so convinced that the half black child she was carrying that she planned to give the name Barack Hussein Obama would one day be President that she carried out an elaborate hoax so that people would believe he was born in Hawaii instead of Kenya. And while I do believe George ‘Duya’ Bush was one of the worst Presidents ever and he was hopelessly under the influence of neo-conservatives in and out of government, I think the 9/11 attacks were planned by Osam bin Laden and carried out by his supporters, and Dubya didn’t have a clue. And while I believe former political mastermind (see 2012 elections) Karl Rove did some pretty dirty tricks in the 2004 election, including putting constitutional ban on gay marriage on the ballot in Ohio to turn out religious conservatives to the polls and then also getting Ohio election officials to short change voting machines in heavily minority precincts, that was political maneuvering and dirty tricks but NOT fraud, voter or otherwise. And I don’t believe any amount of political maneuvering or dirty tricks could result in a 5 million vote victory in 2012.

This poll only tested recent, mainly conspiracy theories. It would be interesting to see how many folks still believe the 1969 and subsequent moon landings were all a hoax by NASA and was actually filmed in Area 51 in the Nevada desert. And I’d be very interested in seeing how many folks believe in the one conspiracy theory in which I do believe: I will never be convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F Kennedy. I think his assassination was the result of either retaliation by right wing elements over Kennedy’s failure to support the Bay of Pigs invasion, or retaliation by the Mafia for Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s aggressive prosecution of Mafia leaders. Oswald was exactly what he said he was” a “patsy”.

Well, we all have to believe on one good conspiracy theory. So what do you think? Chime in!

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The Republicans in Congress are at it again, threatening a government shutdown in order to get a Democratic President to do what they want. Remember the fun and excitement of the federal government shutdown in 1995 when President Clinton wouldn’t do what Newt Gingrich wanted and he followed through with his threat to shutdown the government? It was wild and exciting times here in Arizona! With the Grand Canyon National Park closed for business Governor Fife Symington threatened to use the Arizona National Guard to take over the park by force if necessary an re-open it. The Pentagon warned the head of the Arizona National Guard against the use of force and raised the possibility that if necessary the guard would be federalized and brought under the control of the White House. The governor decided to carry out his bluff and, accompanied by the Speaker of the House, fifty unarmed National Guard troops, twenty-five state Park Department employees, and other people, traveled to the canyon. When Symington’s group arrived, Symington beat on the park gates in front of the media. The park remained closed anyway, until Newt relented and passed a budget funding the government.

Well, they’re at it again. Stung by their failure to use the poor and middle class as hostages to protect the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, Republicans in the House and Senate are threatening the need to raise the debt limit to extract revenge with demands that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all be “put on the table” for spending cuts. House Speaker John Boehner re-emphasized today that he plans to use the debt limit as a chance to force President Barack Obama to cut spending. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip in the Senate wrote in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle: “It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country”. Shut down the government for it’s own good???  A government shutdown would throw our economy back into recession and rock global financial markets. And these are the same guys who voted routinely to raise the debt limit under George W Bush, with no questions asked, to fund his wars of “regime change” and tax cuts for the rich.

And then there’s that pesky Constitution. The Constitution stipulates that all federal government spending originate from the House of Representatives. So it is the House that has authorized current spending but now wants to say it won’t authorize the borrowing needed to cover the checks they wrote? The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says “the validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned“. (full text via Wikipedia)  Some have interpreted this as giving the President the authority to ignore Congress’s inaction to raise the debt limit and continue to issue new bonds to cover the Government’s obligation. What the Constitution and 14th Amendment does is explicitly dictate that the executive branch of the government (which includes the Treasury and the President) is obligated to carry out all appropriations authorized by the Congress. What it doesn’t say is what happens if a Congress is crazy enough to tell the President and Treasury to spend the amount it has told them to spend, but then doesn’t give them the authority to borrow as much as needed in order to carry out that spending.

Well, some politicians and pundits such as Josh Barro at Bloomberg and Business Insider’s deputy editor Joseph Weisenthal have suggested an alternative: for the U.S. Mint to make $1 Trillion Platinum coins. It works like this: The Treasury Department has a bank account at The Federal Reserve. When the Treasury writes a check it is “cashed” at the Fed. When the Treasury needs money it sells bonds in an auction, and the proceeds of those bonds go into the account. So the U.S. Treasury simply instructs the U.S. Mint to issue a platinum coin with a face value of $1 Trillion and then deposit it in its bank account at the Federal Reserve, and voila! The U.S. Government now has $1 Trillion more in it’s bank account to cover its checks. Stuff it Speaker Boehner, you’re now irrelevant.

But wait, some critics cry – that would lead to hyper inflation! If that $1 Trillion was immediate pumped into the U.S. economy, sure. But it wouldn’t. It’s the same as when Congress votes to raise the debt limit by $1 Trillion – the Treasury auctions off bonds to raise the money, deposits the proceeds into its Federal Reserve Bank account, and gradually spends it to cover spending authorized by the U.S. Congress. But wait, some critics cry – a $1 Trillion coin would destroy the value of the U.S. dollar! Nope, same as the first argument – if the government just started printing $1 trillion bills, declared them legal tender, and then dropped them into banks across the country, yes, the buying power of a single dollar bill would be zilch. But because the coin isn’t a direct injection into the economy, but rather a stopgap that lets the government continue to spend on various services, you don’t have that inflationary effect.

Is this idea of a $1 Trillion platinum coin a crazy, silly idea? Yes, of course it is – but so is the idea of Congress authorizing spending and then not giving the President the means to carry it out! How crazy is the idea of some hard core, highly partisan politicians threatening to destroy the good faith and reputation of the United States Government and its debt, threaten to destroy the U.S. economy and global financial system just to force the duly elected President and Democratic Senate majority to accept their terms, and their terms only? That isn’t democracy, that’s hostage taking – and the hostages are we the American people. Many argue that since the Constitution does explicitly say that the President and Treasury is obligated to carry out the spending authorized by Congress, the President has the authority to tell the Treasury to ignore the debt limit and simply instruct the Treasury to sell enough bonds to have the funds to pay for what Congress has instructed them to pay for. But that would lead to a Constitutional crisis with the Supreme Court called in to resolve, in addition to all the economic carnage. The $1 Trillion coin is but one proposal to avoid all that until Congressional Republicans come to their senses.

President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have said they will not negotiate with Republicans on the debit limit. They need to stand their ground! Does a long term solution addressing our deficits and debt need to happen? Absolutely! Congressional Republicans and Democrats and the White House need to sit down and find common sense compromise to their positions to reach a “grand bargain” with the framework of the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan as a starting point. Our deficit and debt financial situation is the result of failure to address the problem by many years of Republican and Democratic Presidents, it is the result of failure to address the problem by many years of Republican and Democratic Congresses. It needs to now be addressed by this Democratic President, this Republican House, and this Democratic Senate. But not through the threat a Constitutional crises, not through questioning the validity and of the public debt of the United States and good faith of our government, and not through the threat of a global economic crisis. If that is what it takes they ALL should resign and let voters elect responsible leaders who do have the honesty and integrity to work together and to compromise for the good of our country and our future generations.

No negotiation over raising the debt limit. Congress wrote those checks, Congress needs to cover those checks.

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