One of Arizona’s most famous son’s is Barry Goldwater, a five term Senator known as “Mr. Conservative”.

Republican Senator Goldwater launched a bid for President of the United States against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and Goldwater was portrayed as reactionary, too right-wing and bat-shit crazy for his fights against the New Deal, unions and liberalism.

He lost the election to Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, taking down several Republicans with him.

Goldwater was known as a ‘libertarian’ way back when, and in the 80′s when he saw the religious right’s influence with Reagan, Goldwater predicted that there would come a day when he would be labeled a “LIBERAL.”

Then there was Republican Evan Mecham, who owned a car dealership, and he won the election for governor of Arizona in 1986 and is famous for his recollections of folks calling African American children ‘pickaninny’ meant in an affectionate way.

Governor Mecham is also known for overturning the Martin Luther King Holiday and blaming working women for high divorce rates.

Governor Mecham was impeached by the voters of Arizona in April of 1988 for obstruction of justice and misuse of government funds, which he was later acquitted.

Then there was Republican Jane Hull, who bankrupted the state of Arizona with the alt-fuel fiasco, and perhaps lesser known, was that Governor Hull launched the bid of Texas Governor George Bush Jr. for President.

Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano was elected after Hull’s reign of errors, and in her first term as governor of Arizona, Governor Napolitano balanced the budget and got the state out of debt and into the black.

Governor Napolitano even managed to setup a “rainy day” fund, which has since been raided and decimated.

To be fair, midway though Governor Napolitano’s 2nd term, she did play with the numbers and credit and did leave her successor with massive debt, since no one in power saw the collapse of the housing market, which was Arizona’s main economic source.

Arizona’s State Legislature has always been Republican majority and Governor Napolitano did work with them and they would vociferously complain about her vetoes, yet she managed to get the job done.

President Obama scooped Governor Napolitano from Arizona by offering her the job as head of Homeland Security, and there were Republicans rejoicing that Janet was gone, and others saddened that she left, and others angered because she left Arizona in such dire straits.

Jan Brewer slipped into the position of Governor, as Arizona does not have a lieutenant governor, and Jan Brewer is a Republican that held the position of Secretary of State.

Governor Brewer is the fourth woman, the third consecutive woman to hold the title of governor in Arizona.

Governor Brewer, an unelected governor, has not been able to work with the Republican majority in the state’s legislature.

Following former President GW Bush’s example, the Republicans shut out the Democrats from all legislative meetings, Governor Brewer only calling on the Democrats to sign her bills when the Republican majority refused.

The Arizona Democrats refused to support the legislation, since they had no voice in forming the bills, and Governor Brewer led the Republican charge that the reason the state could not balance the budget was due to the Democrats and obstruction.

The Arizona Legislature under Governor Brewer have managed to pass some of the most liberal gun laws in the country, and once again to be fair, Vermont has similar laws.

Governor Brewer was very unpopular for being unable to work within her own Republican Party, but all that changed once Governor Brewer signed the anti-immigration SB1070 into law.

I do not need to share last night’s debate between the unelected Governor Brewer and the Democratic candidate Terry Goddard as it has gone viral on the Internet.

Due to Arizona’s ‘Clean Election Law’ voted in by voters in 1996, Governor Brewer was forced to do one debate and of course, the Republican legislature has been working hard on overturning the ‘Clean Election Law’.

Last night, the local CBS station did a story on Governor Brewer’s ties to private prisons in the state, and the money they are giving to her campaign for governor.

Governor Brewer was silent when 3 dangerous criminals escaped from a private prison in Kingman and when a woman tossed wire cutters over the fence, and then two of the escapees killed a couple from Oklahoma while they were camping New Mexico.

Governor Brewer is not happy with that expose and has pulled all her ads for governor from the local CBS channel 5 in Phoenix.

On another update of Arizona news is that the Department of Justice has issued fines against Sheriff Joe due to his non-compliance with 2 subpoenas for his records regarding a DOJ investigation into abuse of power and civil rights abuse in his jails.

I’ve researched subpoenas and what it means when a person refuses to comply and it is normal for 2 warnings to be given.

This is rare, as a sheriff’s office has never refused to cooperate with a DOJ and Grand Jury investigation since Mississippi in the 1960′s.

Isn’t it amazing that Sheriff Joe is refusing to “show his papers”?

It is a given that the party out of power picks up seats in the off year election.

Why is that? The logic would seem simple. American voters have the patience and vision of a nearsighted 3 year old. Every two years after they have decided that they want a particular party to run the country, they conclude, “Where’s the unicorn I wanted?” and decide that the other party might have a better unicorn ranch…even though the very reason they elected the current party was their dissatisfaction with the delivery of unicorns by the party that was previously in power.

So, first we have to begin with the concept that no matter what the American electorate orders from the menu of Democracy, when it arrives, they always want to send it back and just get the nachos instead.

As disappointing as that principle of American Democracy may be, it creates a paradox that is inescapable.

a. If a party wants to have power, it must win elections.

b. Once a party wins an election, it is held to an unrealistic standard by an impatient public.

c. The party in power, not being able to meet unrealistic expectations is eventually viewed negatively by the public.

d. In the following election, Americans vote for the party they last voted out because, since they are not currently in power, they provide an alternative to the party in power that has failed to meet unrealistic expectations.

e. Rinse and repeat.

What is kind of depressing is that Americans seem unable to commit to long term goals, too reliant on short term gratification to solve profound issues and build long term successes. Can you imagine if the American electorate was a building contractor? Every other month it would tear down the work that had been done all month and replace all the workers because it wanted the perfect house built in a month and that didn’t happen. This is the Sisyphus School of Construction.

This paradox does however necessarily trip up all that participate in it.

The Republicans, after having handed a near Depression to Obama, have executed a Party of No campaign since he was elected. Thanks to our thriving public education system and a fair and balanced MSM , the American Public instead blames Obama and the Dems for what the GOP has wrought. So, just one and a half years after recognizing how destructive the policies of the GOP are, their bi-annual amnesia has kicked in and they’re ready to proclaim to the Party of Destruction, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

The Republicans will win many seats in Congress, perhaps enough to take over the House. What will that mean?

Well, Michelle Bachman and Darryl Issa have boasted loudly about spending the next two years in a Clinton-style witch hunt against Obama, times 100. Joe Barton, who apologized to BP for their being asked to compensate people for ruining their lives will be in charge of energy policy. And John Boehner who declared that HCR would bring the Apocolypse will be Majority Leader in the House.

Is there a way to give the American electorate an IQ test or at the very least, a consultation with a mental health professional?

But wait, remember the cycle described above? The silver lining to the Repubs possibly taking over the House is that…they will be in power. So now the unrealistic expectations will be projected on them by the Public. In 2012 they won’t be able to run as they are this year, as the outsiders who had no control over the last two years. Uh-oh!!! Yes, they will BS about how, “If only we had all the power in DC, we could bring you the unicorns you want!” but that’s a bit more complicated than just being able to say, “Blame them, we’re not in power, nothing’s our fault!”

And as we learned from a Repub House impeaching Clinton, not to mention the 8 years of Bush and 6 years of Repub control in Congress, give them a little power and they’ll hang themselves with it.

We should work as hard as we can this year to fend off Repub control of the House but if despite all of our best efforts, they win…it could be the big motivator for Dems to get out in 2012 and re-elect Obama and a Dem majority in Congress. We may have to give up two crucial years of gridlock for at least two more years of progress but that might be the best deal we can get.

It is nearly impossible for Obama and Dems to get credit for what they prevented from happening. If we had a President McCain, I think we would have plunged into a massive depression that would have set this nation back twenty years or more from where it is today (giving tax cuts to the wealthy instead of the stimulus spending would have been the nail in the coffin). But that concept is not concrete enough for many out there to appreciate. Nor are all of the other strides Obama has made.

And don’t get me started on the Purist Dems attacking Obama, I imagine many of them smugly watching Repubs win this year, pleased at how it harms Obama’s presidency. If there was a way to give a Wedgie of Mass Discomfort to all of them, I gladly would.

Ultimately, the pendulum that passes for the mass mindset of American Voters will have a chance to swing back to sanity by 2012 and while we can’t give an inch this year, if Repubs win back the House, I think there will be a silver lining to that sulfurous cloud that could descend on DC after this November.

With all the hype and furor being generated about making marijuana legal, there are a few points that have not heard from anyone other than me. And I’m still waiting for a coherent, fact based argument against passage of Proposition 19 that doesn’t involve emotionally charge ‘could happen’ scenarios about school bus drivers killing children by driving stoned or schools losing grant money because they can’t do drug testing on their employees anymore. I thought fear-based rhetoric went out with the Bush Administration but apparently it’s been recycled by the opposition. Why not, it worked so well the first time around?

First, for those of you who live outside of California, Proposition 19 would make it legal for citizens over the age of 19 to grow, use or transport up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use. However, it would still be a crime to drive under the influence, possess the substance on school grounds, use in public or while minors are present and commercial production for individuals is still forbidden. In exchange for making the use legal, local governments would be able to initiate a tax on sales which would generate an estimated $1.4 billion dollars in revenue. For a state that is $1.9 billion in the hole, this kind of income could prevent the legislature from continuing with the draconian cuts to schools, hospitals, police and fire personnel and could rejuvenate the much needed infrastructure projects that have been put on indefinite hold.

This is not just a victory for the potheads, or as I call them, the ‘Chips Ahoy Enthusiasts’ and passage of Prop 19 benefits more than just the state economy. According to an FBI report in 2008, there were 61,000 Californians arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession while 60,000 violent crimes went unsolved. Inclusion of marijuana offenses in the War on Drugs has crippled law enforcement’s ability to focus on more serious cases such as methamphetamine abuse which is where the real crimes are committed. It’s been reported that 60% of drug cartel income comes from the illegal U.S. marijuana market. By cutting off such a large funding source, the drug cartels will be forced to take their business elsewhere and take the white powder they rode in on.

The fear of fellow Democrats is that the voting public is not in favor of taking such a bold step and by endorsing Prop 19, we are handing the Republicans ammunition to portray Democrats as pot-smoking slackers with a penchant for brownies. But I disagree. Medical marijuana has been legal in California and if I remember correctly, it passed with very little opposition or fanfare, although it did grab the attention of then Attorney General John Ashcroft who was unsuccessful at overturning the law. His next stop was the state of Oregon to overturn their Death with Dignity Act which he failed in that attempt as well. I think the voters are much more open to passage of Prop 19 than the naysayers give them credit for. Let’s be honest, the current financial situation has inspired an anything that works atmosphere which makes voters more open to out of the box options.

I will be voting for Prop 19 and keeping my fingers crossed that others follow suit. But I guess we’ll just have to watch and see what the voters are willing to support.

Remember the movie “Memento”, about the guy who couldn’t remember recent things because his short term memory was damaged? Er…what was I saying?

That brilliant film now seems to be an unintentional but fitting allegory for American voters and our democracy. Here’s a proposed synopsis for a sequel “Memento 2 “:

The American Voter awakens in the morning. It’s June 2010. The economy is hobbled, corporations dominate democracy and our government, Wall Street corporations are making record profits while unemployment and foreclosures are at record highs, oil gushes uncontrollably from a well in the Gulf, insecurity and anger are rampant across the country.

The American Voter suffers from short term memory loss, has no idea where  he is or why. “Wow, things are really bad, anyone can see that. How did this happen? Who’s responsible for this? If only I could remember! Wait, that doesn’t matter! Whoever’s in charge now is responsible since it’s happening today! Yes! ”

Swiftly, before this thought is knocked out of the head of The American Voter by news about Lindsey Lohan’s marrying a giant promotional bottle of Hornitos tequila,  they switch on the tv. Cable News is playing and the Talking Heads explain that the current President is a man named Obama who, with his fellow Democrats, have not solved all of these problems.

“Bastards! It’s all their fault! They need to pay a price for things being the way they are! We need someone else in power who wouldn’t get us into this situation! Hmm…Re-pub-licans? They’re saying all the right things, everything I want to hear! I may not be able to remember who got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, who freed financial and oil corporations from regulations and thus allowed them to destroy our nation’s economy and oceans but I do love me some retribution! I’m voting you Dems out of office!  That’ll teach you!”

I hear Lipton is interested in marketing Memento 2 with promotional tea bags.

Really, how can Americans be so damn clueless? “Bush who? Republicans were in control of Congress before? Did they lower the deficit then, solve the Health Care crisis, make our economy better and make life better for Americans just as they promise to do now? Huh? Sure I’ll pull your finger, why not?!”

If you’ll excuse me mixing my allegories on an empty stomach, another one came to mind. This situation is like impatiently watching firemen trying to put out a forest fire started by arsonists, they don’t succeed as quickly as desired so they are the ones blamed for the fire, they are fired from their jobs and the arsonists are instead put in charge of stopping the fire they started.

Instead of short term memory loss being a physiological thing for far too many Americans, maybe they’re just political pot heads. They get high on their politics, eat crappy food that makes them obese and lazy and lose their short term memory of why they voted for Obama and which party put this country in a position where it needs to be rescued.

From now on, whenever I hear someone railing against Obama and the Dems for not quickly fixing all of the destruction of our country we’re suffering through that the Repubs and Bush caused and want to express their dissatisfaction by putting matches and gasoline back in the hands of these arsonists, all I can say is, “Are you high?”

The spin of yesterday’s election that is all over the MSM today is, “It’s the year of the woman”.

Some would beg to differ. On the surface it is true, several winners of primaries yesterday were women. But the case could be made that half of the four most prominent women who won, were incredibly wealthy people who bought their elections. Billionaire Meg Whitman spent $81 million dollars of her own money to buy her win (ending up equaling $80/vote) and boasted that she would spend $150 million to win (buy) the Governorship.

Millionaire Carly Fiorina bought her primary at a comparable bargain, only spending about $7 million.

Down in Arkansas, corporate-owned Blanche Lincoln won. She was heavily funded by oil corps, Wall Street corps and health insurance corps, she boasted about blocking Obama on the Stimulus and HCR, she had Pres Obama and Clinton campaigning for her and meanwhile attacked Unions as outsiders and the enemy.

Isn’t the real common denominator here money, not sex? Or maybe sex in that there is no difference that gender makes when you can spend $80 million dollars to win an election? One could argue that there is no glass ceiling over the wealthy, whatever their sex. Their money is just as green and buys the same attack ads.

So why does the MSM focus on the sex of candidates instead of what really got them elected? Because it’s an effective way for the wealthy and corporations to pleasantly mask the real story of how our democracy is just an auction that goes to the highest bidder?

What is very instructive is what happened in California with ballot propositions. Two propositions, put up by corporations to benefit themselves at the expense of the public, nearly passed. Meanwhile, a proposition that would have allowed public funding to reduce the power of corporations over our elected officials and elections, was decisively defeated (big cheers and props to Choicelady for all her efforts on trying to get this passed!).

People seem so conditioned by commercial advertising, they can be convinced to vote for candidates and laws that clearly would hurt them.

This would instead seem to be The Year of The Billionaires. With the SCOTUS ruling permitting corps to spend unlimited sums on supporting candidates who will work for them and opposing those who are foolish enough to want to represent the citizens, billionaires have far more power and influence over our elections than ever before.

So, instead of being pacified with the pleasant, uplifting spin that what happened yesterday was a great win for sexual equality, if we consider the inequity between 99.5% Americans and corporations, the dominating influence and control they have over our elections and democracy, yesterday’s election should instead be a warning and a wake up call that our democracy is continuing to be bought right out from under the feet of men and women equally.

It’s Election Day today, you can smell the aroma of desperation and tea bags in the air.

It will be interesting, this will be the first big reflection of the influence the Republican Extremists, aka, Tea Partiers, have. With the election of Rand Paul and what transpired there, I would think Dems and Progressives are thrilled by the Tea Partiers being in the mix. They are forcing even an old timer “maverick” McCain to subscribe to extremist positions.

Here are a couple of tidbits from a new WAPO/ABC poll:

7. Overall, which party, the (Democrats) or the (Republicans), do you trust to do a better job in coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years?

Both    Neither
              Democrats   Republicans   (vol.)   (vol.)    No opinion
6/6/10           44           32          2        18           4
4/25/10          46           32          2        18           3
2/8/10           43           37          2        17           2

24. How do you personally feel about the policies offered by the Republicans in Congress – enthusiastic, satisfied but not enthusiastic, dissatisfied but not angry, or angry?

            ---------- Positive ----------   -------- Negative --------   No
            NET   Enthusiastic   Satisfied   NET   Dissatisfied   Angry   op.
6/6/10      38          3           35       60         44         16      2
11/23/09    34          3           31       61         46         15      5

25. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the political movement known as the Tea Party? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

         ------- Favorable -------   ------ Unfavorable ------     No
         NET   Strongly   Somewhat   NET   Somewhat   Strongly   opinion
6/6/10   36       17         19      50       25         24        14
3/26/10  41       21         21      39       16         23        20
2/8/10   35       20         15      40       20         20        25

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_060810.html?sid=ST2010060800022

So, while anti-incumbent fever is at an all time high, those who cool down enough to think about it would, by a meaningful majority, want new Dems to replace their incumbents than Repubs.

And The Tea Party crowd is nosediving in popularity, 50% unfavorable now against 36% favorable.

Sure hope Orly Taitz and other wackjob Tea Partiers win in primaries today,  it may spell the death knell of this bogus group.

If you haven’t already, get out there and vote and please share your thoughts on your state and local elections below!

In 2008, a majority of voters seemed to have recognized that the GOP’s policy of allegiance to the wealthy and destruction of our constitution, principles and economy was really not something that they wanted to continue.

The voters wanted change and elected Barack Obama.

Here we are, a scant year and a half later and in response to the change they voted for, many are freaking out and apparently, spitefully supporting the very party they know destroyed much of what’s best about America.

The voters are revolting. Maybe even a bit obnoxious too.

Is it because they liked the idea of change but in reality, just wanted the same movie but with a fresh face in the lead?

Is it because they had some fantasized version of change, that it would rain $100 bills and no one would ever be sick or unhappy again?

Or is it because they weren’t voting for Obama as much as they were flipping the bird to Bush…and now are petulantly voting for Repubs just to flip the bird to Obama for not being a magic genie?

It may be a combination of the above.

In the end, this lack of consistency and patience doesn’t reflect well on us as citizens and voters. Are we simply short attention span children who want what they want and want it right now…and if we don’t get it immediately and exactly as we imagined, we will throw a tantrum and “get even” with no thought of the consequences?

We are continuing through a terrible recession and too many people are still out of work. But we avoided what everyone insisted would be a Second Depression thanks in large part to Pres. Obama’s response.

Instead of recognizing that and how the banks are still withholding credit (to hurt Obama and help the pro-bank Repubs?) which is keeping unemployment high…and that there is not much ANY president could do about this to force them to give credit…many citizens seem to petulantly point a finger at Obama for not waving a wand and magically making everything perfect.

As if a President can somehow, just by sheer force of will or policy, end a recession?

How self-centered and uninformed are many citizens? What powers do they think Obama has that he hasn’t used to try and end the recession? Don’t they understand that any Repub or Dem president would do whatever they thought they could to cure a recession and improve their approval ratings?

Many seem to be operating from a position of childish blame…on Bizarro World.  “Things am bad so since Dems and Obama am in charge, me let them know how mad me am by voting in more of Repubs I hated a year and a half ago for destroying economy! Me am smart! Hello!”

From one direction, our democracy is being damaged by corporate, oligarchic control and from another direction, it is being destroyed by adults showing the patience of 2 year olds.

How long do these people think it should take for a near-depression to be turned around? It seems that many think that it should have taken less than a year.

And voting in a Repub majority or near-majority in Congress which will assure gridlock, is the solution that these geniuses have come up with to address the lack of progress in turning around the economy?

I may be insulting Bizarro World by making a comparison to it.

How can we ever make profound change in this nation when so many Americans demand instant gratification or they’ll vote out the party in power? No long term planning can occur with such a mindset controlling political power.

Imagine if the same sensibility was applied to constructing a building. The land owner has two different construction firms to choose from to build an office building. One wants it built with a lot of  glass, one wants it built with a lot of marble. The company who planned a glass building is chosen and begins…but doesn’t complete the building in one week so the impatient land owners fire them and instead hire their competitor. The competitor tears down the work of the first architect and starts building with marble. But the short attention span land owner gets frustrated after another week that it’s still not completed, fires them and re-hires the other architects.

And the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. A constant cycle of beginning then undermining the completion of something because the one in charge easily becomes impatient. And of course, the ultimate goal to construct a building is never completed because his catering to his impatience and unrealistic expectations makes him act against his own best interests.

We need to have a bit more vision and patience and a bit less of an obsession with immediate gratification.

Yes, people are hurting in this nation now but the response to a doctor not healing an injury as fast as the patient wants is not to put the attacker who inflicted the injury in charge just to express spite at the doctor for not performing a miracle.

Don’t we want things to get better? Will a gridlocked Congress or a President Romney continuing the 8 years of Bush policies fix the results of 8 years of Bush policies?

I must say, I’m a bit pissed at some of the Dem and indie voters out there who are blindly spiteful and are happily expressing how gratifying it will be to cut off one’s traitorous nose to teach one’s slow-to-gratify face a lesson.

If I was spiteful, I might hope that they get their wish and get Repub rule back to cut off their unemployment, SS, Medicare and health care. Then instead of being impatient about when the economy will improve for them, they can worry about missing Cornbread Night at the local soup kitchen.

But if I was so spiteful and cheered on the further disintegration of a safety net to occur, how would I be able to afford the cost of plastic surgery to replace my nose?

As, some of you know, my passion for politics extends ‘across the pond’ as they say. I didn’t think of writing anything until results started streaming in, and that for a subject I feel deserves more notice from us Yanks, my little O/T post was clearly not gonna cut it.

If you have absolutely no idea what this is all about (and even if you do), see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Britain’s Elections. For questions about parties and what they represent, this is a decent overview from Political Compass.

Any articles, updates, post wrap-up analyses – heck, anything British, can be added in the comments section.

A few indispensable resources:

• BBC’s Results Map and Data

• The Guardian‘s Results Map and Data [English]

• The Herald‘s Results Map and Data [Scottish]

• The Western Mail Map Results and Data [Welsh]

• The Belfast Telegraph Updates [Northern Irish]

These sites with some redundant constituency information also double as helpful sources for a particular country’s local focus so that you may navigate from there.

For more news sites across Britain, or, if you would like more information on the tilt of those listed above, simply ask.

And, as you see the results, you may compare them with this aggregate poll of the albeit short (by American standards) campaign stretch to see how the projections panned out.

I’m not accustomed to doing short articles, but felt that posting my links would be less cumbersome under its own article than in the “Off Topic” section.

I do also hope, if only for the next couple days and the forming of the new government, that I can open up a few of you to the exciting world of British politics!

But do please keep it down with the harrumphs, boos and hisses; we don’t need it to be like Prime Minister’s Questions in here.

The Grateful Dead must be rolling in their joints. As described in the NYT:

On Wednesday, the California secretary of state certified a November vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a plan that advocates say could raise $1.4 billion and save precious law enforcement and prison resources.

Indeed, unlike previous efforts at legalization — including a failed 1972 measure in California — the 2010 campaign will not dwell on assertions of marijuana’s harmlessness or its social acceptance, but rather on cold cash.

“We need the tax money,” said Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for marijuana growers, in Oakland, who backed the ballot measure’s successful petition drive. “Second, we need the tax savings on police and law enforcement, and have that law enforcement directed towards real crime.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/us/26pot.html?sq=california%20marijuana&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=2&adxnnlx=1269709254-nlBZAkB3cWx5qZPbg8cRaw

It’s been a while since the last time CA voted on legalizing pot but as we all know, the state was a leader in legalizing medical marijuana. It does seem like an opportune time for this choice to be presented to the public…munchies are cheaper than ever.

Seriously, though, today’s society generally accepts that there must have been good reasons for marijuana originally being made illegal in the first place, there is nothing historically that backs this up.

The history of marijuana criminalization is a mix of wrongheaded theories, fear and racism towards Mexicans.

From The History of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 By David F. Musto, M.D., From the Child Study Center, School of Medicine, and the Department of History, Graduate School, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1972:

The anti-marihuana law of 1937 was largely the federal government’s response to political pressure from enforcement agencies and other alarmed groups who feared the use and spread of marihuana by “Mexicans.” Recent evidence also suggests that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics resisted the enforcement burden of the antimarihuana law until mounting pressure on the Treasury Department led to a departmental decision, probably in 1935, to appease this fear, mostly in the Southwest and West, by federal legislation. Previously unpublished documents clarify the role of medical research in the campaign for a federal anti-marihuana law and in the Treasury Department’s preparation for congressional hearings.

Dr. Hamilton Wright, a State Department official who from 1908 to 1914 coordinated the domestic and international aspects of the federal antinarcotic campaign, wanted cannabis to be included in drug abuse legislation chiefly because of his belief in a hydraulic model of drug appetites. He reasoned, along with numerous other experts, that if one dangerous drug was effectively prohibited, the addict’s depraved desires would switch to another substance more easily available.

When the great Depression settled over America, the Mexicans, who had been welcomed by at least a fraction of the communities in which they lived, became an unwelcome surplus in regions devastated by unemployment. Considered a dangerous minority which should be induced to return to Mexico by whatever means seemed appropriate, they dwelt in isolated living groups.

Although employers welcomed them in the 1920s, Mexicans were also feared as a locus of crime and deviant social behavior. By the mid-1920s horrible crimes were attributed to marihuana and its Mexican purveyors.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/mustomj1.html

For a great documentary about the history of marijuana, If you haven’t seen Grass, roll a fatty, fire up the lava lamp, order a pizza, sit back and enjoy:

via videosift.com

Now, many may support this measure for self-gratifying reasons, there are some hugely important reasons for the ball to start rolling on legalizing marijuana in America.

1. The Economy

Billions of Federal, State and local dollars are spent enforcing laws against growing, selling and possessing marijuana. Add to that the billions spent trying cases and incarcerating people for all of these non-violent crimes.

Instead, there are billions to be gained in tax revenue annually if it is legalized and taxed as alcohol is. Combining the billions saved with the billions generated, it could be a huge help in balancing the budget in CA and elsewhere.

If it’s legalized, growing marijuana could also be a timely income stream for those unemployed.

Cost alone is not the reason to legalize a substance. Is it addictive? Does it cause violent behavior? Does it have medicinal uses? Is it exceptionally harmful to one’s body? How does Jack Daniels stack up on all of these questions?

2. Society

Prisons are overcrowded and make a huge dent in state and federal budgets. Billions need to be spent on building more prisons to reduce overcrowding. The Prison Industrial Complex has been insatiable and a huge beneficiary of the futile Drug War. In California, more is spent on prisons than universities.

Add to that the inequity of people being imprisoned for the substantial possession, use, sale, purchase or growing of marijuana…alongside rapists and murderers.

Marijuana is a plant that naturally grows on planet Earth. How sensible is it to make laws that outlaw nature? Relatively harmless nature, at that.

I certainly understand laws against the manipulation, processing or distilling of natural substances into deadlier forms, such as processing poppies to create something destructive like heroin. Yes, there are plants that are poisonous too but we seem to be able to deal with many of them being in our gardens (Azalea, Belladonna, Foxglove, Larkspur, Lily of the Valley, Nightshade, Oleander, Periwinkle, Rhododendron, Lantana, etc.)

3. Crime

Gangs in America, gang wars and criminal operations are financed by dealing marijuana. There is a crisis with drug lords and crime in Mexico threatening to undermine that nation’s stability and increasingly spilling over our borders. The majority of the revenue that finances the operations, bribery and crime networks of these Mexican drug lords is generated by marijuana.

Legalizing marijuana would slash the price, kill the black market and thus cripple gangs in the U.S. and drug lords in Mexico and South America overnight.

Of course, there will be powerful forces out to stop this proposition in CA, religious, right wing Republicans, pharmaceuticals and politicians who are more fearful of how supporting this bill could be used against them in elections.

Still, the time may have come for the people to resist the forces who have painted us into this corner. CA has taken the first step with medical marijuana and the horrors of potheads roaming the streets like Night of the Living Dead Heads, as predicted by some, never occurred.

All I can say is that if it does pass, I want to be at the official party celebrating that! Actually, those in neighboring states may get a contact high that night.

Come November, the Republican Party may need to change their mascot from the elephant to the lemming.

In the aftermath of Scott Brown’s upset election in January, the GOP redoubled their bets on the failure of Health Care Reform. As they had for the last year, they showed no hesitation or remorse in spouting outrageous lies to frighten the public, incite hatred and caricature Pres. Obama as a socialist who is bent on destroying America by turning it into the USSR…and is also Hitler, the Antichrist, Dr. Evil and an arugula farmer all rolled into one.

It was and continues to be a scorched earth campaign to destroy Americans’ belief in their democracy, their government and the concept of doing what’s right for our entire society  instead of “me”. But this strategy may already be backfiring once their Sherman’s March across the soul of America ran into the month of March.

Sen. DeMint was the first to connect “Waterloo” with trying to pass HCR, towards Pres. Obama of course. It would be ironic if it did indeed turn out to be the GOP’s Waterloo. Negative campaigning has historically proven to  be effective in the short term but can boomerang in the long run. The public can be stirred into fear, resentment and/or hatred far too easily as a kneejerk reaction to negative campaigning. Emotion trumps reason for many in the immediacy of the moment. However, as time passes, emotion wanes. The public which has been whipped up to feel negative emotions by politicians…can start to associate those feelings with the source of them and feel greater distaste towards those politicians  than their targets.

Aiding this is the debunking of the terrible, trumped up accusations that the passage of time can expose. When the sky doesn’t fall and we don’t have our guns taken away on our way to government work camps after being taught our new official language of Russian…at least some will begin to recognize that they’ve been a sheep in lemming’s clothing.

Let’s take a look at where public opinion is today, after passage of HCR per Gallup:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126959/Majority-Poor-Young-Uninsured-Back-Healthcare-Bill.aspx

Hmm…what was the hue and cry of Republicans over the last week? Listen to the majority and follow their wishes or you undermine our democracy. So, now that a greater number favor HCR, does that mean we can expect John Boehner to start crying in regret at opposing HCR? I wouldn’t bet my tanning bed on it.

What’s interesting about the above poll is that the main demographic that is opposed to HCR is that of Senior Citizens. This seems to be very intuitive. No offense to Granny but she is likely still trembling a bit about that death panel that’s coming for her. It is well established that Seniors are the biggest target for scammers, they are naturally easier to scare, intimidate, convince and manipulate.  So,  it would seem that the above poll is actually good news for Pres. Obama and Dems and bad news for the GOP.

At a time when they’ve thrown all the fear and hatred they could at HCR, most favor it. And the biggest demo opposing it who we know can be easier to convince, will soon get $250 checks, drug payment donut holes closed and health care guaranteed for all of their grandchildren and in 4 years, all of their children too. They’re going to vote in November for Repubs who want to take that away from them?

By the time November rolls around, will the emotions and the lies surrounding HCR  still be as resonant with the majority of the public or will they have moved on? With the short attention span of today’s MSM and society, will an 8 month old bill be on the front burner still? Nothing else like the economy, jobs or anything that pops up in the meantime might get the focus? And in the end, might not people simply come to accept and appreciate HCR even more once they personally experience the benefits and protections and/or the lack of terrible things that the GOP insisted would occur?

Yes, the GOP will keep beating that nasty drum from now until then but instead of marching to the beat, might not Seniors just begin to complain about all that racket? Especially after buying that new box of hard candy they can afford since they are saving a fortune with the donut hole being mostly closed.

And where will that leave the GOP, the party of “hell” and “no”? As is typical, the party out of power is likely to pick up some seats in Nov. The GOP will doubtlessly claim a landslide mandate no matter how common the number of the pickup is. In truth though, given a near-depression, rampant home foreclosures and job losses and a dishonestly vicious campaign against the Dems and Pres. Obama, if the Repubs’ pickup is unremarkable for an off year election, will they not have lost hugely?

After all that’s transpired, if the best the GOP can do in Nov is perform typically, they will have sacrificed their identity and whatever moderates would have considered them worthy of leading the nation in a futile, self-destructive (and intended to be destructive to the nation and or democracy) campaign.

Instead of this mutated GOP succeeding in a scorched earth campaign, they may instead be marching like flaming lemmings right off the edge of the political cliff.

I am a Virginian.  My mother was a Virginian, and so was her father. His family came to the colonies out of necessity and choice. During the English Civil War in the 1640s, my ever-so-many-great grandfather backed the losing horse (thus, establishing a long tradition in my family): King Charles I.

Years before this little altercation started, the King had given my ancestor a rather large tract of land in the new colony – not that my ancestor ever bothered to go check it out, you understand. He was pretty cosy with the life he had in Halifax, in the North of England. But then the Civil War started, and the King lost his head – literally – and my ancestor was faced with a choice: stick around and lose his head (and land and everything else) or get ye the hell out to the colonies.

(Even though my family aren’t the greatest gamblers in the world, we do have a reasonable modicum of common sense and a desire for survival).

So, that’s how Virginian I am. I couldn’t be more Virginian if I were Poca-bloody-hontas (and one of her granddaughters married into my ancestor’s family), so I’m entitled to a reasonable amount of snobbism … or rather, that pejorative synonym for it: elitism.

It is as a bona fide elitist from that most elite of the original 13 colonies, I would like to address the matter of why the Democratic candidate for governor from the Commonwealth of Virginia lost in November 2009, because a lot of netroots know-it-all HuffPo dittoes, in their infinite misinformed and discombabulated thinking, have ascertained the reason of Creagh Deeds’ s defeat incorrectly.

Put simply: Y’all are WRONG!

First of all, Bob McDonnell was not ”widely popular” as some people regularly claim in HuffPo land. If anything, most logical voters viewed him suspiciously, as someone who ran as a moderate appeaser, but who had the shifty eyes of an arch-conservative in waiting to dismantle every Progressive piece of legislation enacted by the outgoing Governor, Tim Kaine.

When he appeared on the campaign trail at various times under the Confederate flag, hackles were raised along Democratic spines in alarm. The publication of ueber-regressive philosophies written in his doctoral thesis from a glorified Bible-school sent everyone’s mindset into overdrive at the regressive and repressive attitude he exhibited toward women and women’s rights. That McDonnell slickly - he exudes an image of slime trailing in his wake – excused these sentiments as a folly of youth wasn’t lost amongst the more discerning voter. 

When, exactly, does “youth” end? McDonnell was expressing these beliefs as a man of 35, when the thesis was written!!!

Nope. McDonnell appealed to Sarah Palin’s ”real Virginians,” the rural residents along the south-central corridor, extending into the mountainous westside of the state – people like the Wise County constituents, dependent on travelling medical charities for their healthcare. Sarah offered him her expert campaigning skills, and he turned her down. That, it seems, was a political stroke of sheer genius.

These were the people who couldn’t reconcile themselves to the specter of a black man in the White House.

He then turned his attention to the Socialist Communist People’s Democratic Republic of Northern Virginia (so dubbed by Joe McCain, foul-mouthed brother of Senator John), subtly reminding all and sundry that he, Bob McDonnell, came from the Northern Virginia area.

As if that mattered. 

It didn’t because – and here’s the rub – the election was won by McDonnell as much as because of who didn’t vote as who did. And it was also lost, I’m sorry to say, because the Democratic Party endorsed the wrong man as candidate.

Creagh Deeds is a lovely man, but he was little known throughout the state as a whole. He was chosen by the Democratic voters from a field that included Terry McAuliffe (the high-profile Clinton operative) and Brian Moran, the brother of the popular and Progressive 8th District Congressman. McAuliffe came with the tag “Carpetbagger” (a term that still carries images of Yankees marching through the Shenandoah), and Moran, like his brother, was viewed as too far to the Left. That left Deeds a nice compromise candidate – nice, being the operative word.

Mr Nice proceeded to run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history.

That was a big mistake.

The other big mistake was simply that Virginia voters traditionally don’t turn out in droves to elect a governor. The winner of the prize can only serve one four-year term, and then he goes. The voters are savvy enough to realise that the fella in the Big Chair will only work for the first two years and then phone in for the final two, because he’ll be busy raising campaign funds for his US Senate candidacy that will take place immediately he leaves office (Chuck Robb, Macaca Allen, Mark Warner et al). Most people don’t bother voting, considering that they’ll probably be voting for whomever in four years’ time in a senatorial campaign, so McDonnell appealed to the people he knew had a vested interest in voting.

To the goobers in the rural Southern part of the state, he was the white man who’d stand up to the one who had no right to sit in the Oval Office; and to the independents, he could put hand on heart and claim to be a fiscal conservative. He rightly calculated that most of the people who didn’t vote, would be Democrats anyway, lazily complacent, and he wasn’t wrong.

First, that particular demographic which carried Obama in the state did a no-show: the college kids. Why should they? They’d participated in the ‘big one’, the Party party. They’d canvassed and registered voters and campaigned door-o-door. They’d participated in history. Now they were having a voter hangover, or they were studying for mid-terms, or both.

Either way, they didn’t show; or they couldn’t be bothered to do so. They simply couldn’t be bothered to vote for a greying, middle-aged man with a stutter, where they’d turned out in droves for a greying, middle-aged celebrity with a teleprompter.

The other demographic that won the state for Obama failed to show as well – the African American community. In fact, they were divided, with some high profiled African American Virginians, actually, endorseing McDonnell (e.g., the divine Doug Wilder, first African American governor of any state.)

So most of the African American community stayed home too.

Statistics show that in any given election, the lower the voter turnout, the more chance a Republican or an incumbent will prevail. This is exactly what happened.

And as for this being an indictment of Obama’s shortcomings as a President, after less than one year, that’s a fallacy too. In almost every voting precinct in the state, exit polls amongst independents, who voted for McDonnell, showed that the reason they voted Republican had nothing to do with President Obama’s freshman year performance and everything to do with what they perceived to be a shoddily-run campaign on the part of the Democratic candidate. In fact, almost to a person, these voters said that they wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Obama again, as President.

As Walter Cronkite and – even better – that real Virginian Bruce Hornsby would say, “That’s just the way it is” – unfortunate, coincidental, but true.

I am just pissed off and sick and tired of self-appointed pundits in the blogosphere attempting to use this election as a rod with which to beat the President; and if that conjures up images of Simon Legree or Ole Massa beatin’ the field hands, good. I want it to show that.

Because the people making the loudest wailings about the Virginia result (and, to a degree, the New Jersey one and the Massachusetts one) are the same adolescently-inclined people who are threatening to sulk out the vote in 2010 or 2012 or who are whining for some whiter than white (literally) Progressive saviour to descend from secular heaven in the form of Howard Dean or Denis Kucinich and mount a primary challenge against the President. They’re the same people demanding that the President fire his team of advisors, including his Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Treasury and hire a whole new entourage of their own choosing – said entourage to include, again, Howard Dean and Denis Kucinich, as well as Eliot Spitzer and Elizabeth Warren.

They’re are the political innocents, mischief makers and miscreants who proclaim themselves Progressives, far superior in intellect, tolerance, open-mindedness and understanding than the Bible-bashing, gun-totin’ Republican Right, yet they want various Rightwing commentators/politicians ‘silenced’; they ban any adverse comment on certain Progressive aggregates, whilst preaching the First Amendment. When they’re told the truth by anyone in a position to know better, they either effect selective deafness or they’re arrogant enough to deem the truth a lie.

So the salutory lesson in all of this is simply this: look at what happens when you decide, for whatever reason, not to vote in an election. The fox gets in the henhouse and all hell breaks loose. McDonnell and his merry men have unleased a war against their LGBT constituents, after Tim Kaine signed executive order legislation banning any discrimination against anyone based on sexual orientation … and that’s just the start of things to come.

A helluva lot of fuck-ups can happen in four short years. Just look at the damage Bush wreaked!

This morning the office of Senator Evan Bayh, D-IN, announced that he will not run for re-election this November. There’s more than one way to react to this news. Since Bayh is a Democrat, the gut reaction might be to fear that we’re going to lose another seat — like we did in Massachusetts. Bayh is, after all, a conservative Dem in a conservative state.

But what about looking at this resignation as an opportunity? Bayh’s father, Birch Bayh, was a true Liberal Dem, a champion of Liberal causes, and a hero. He proved that a strong Liberal can win in Indiana.

Birch Bayh was defeated in 1980 by Dan Quayle during the successful demonization of the term “liberal” by the GOP. It was just another war of words — a PR campaign that had nothing to do with governance or responding to what the people need. It was the empty and shallow game that the GOP plays so well and that Democrats play so badly.

As a result, when Evan Bayh decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, he did so as a conservative. But who can say whether Evan’s politics could ever have gotten him into the governor’s mansion or to the senate without his father’s Liberal legacy.

Now that Bayh is resigning, will Democrats have the organization and skill to put forth a Liberal Dem as a candidate and defend the Liberal label? This is a true opportunity to talk about serving the people — bringing jobs back home, getting health care coverage to people who need it, starting a green energy economy, making peace.

These are the Liberal ideals that most Americans support. But they have poor advocates in the democratic pundits and spokespeople. Liberal ideals have no advocacy at all in the media.

Progressives should decide right now — not waste a moment in this critical election year — how they feel about this open seat, and what we’re going to do about it.

UPDATE (15 Feb, 8:45 pm)

Candidates — Republicans and Democrats — only have until Tuesday, February 16, 2010, to gather 4,500 signatures and file for inclusion on the Democratic primary ballot. The Democratic Party, however, has plenty of time to nominate its own candidate — until June. The timing of this decision couldn’t have been worse for independent- and progressive-minded candidates who want to push back against the status quo of the Democratic Party.

Bayh cites the partisanship in congress as reason for his departure. But how will walking away — or potentially reducing the number of Democrats in the Senate — improve that situation?

UPDATE (16 Feb, 12:10 pm)

Evan Bayh made a phone call last night to the Indiana Democratic Committee to say it’s good that Indiana won’t have a primary.

Bayh Calls Lack Of Primary To Replace Him A Good Thing On Call With Dems

Because, you know, you can’t trust those damn voters anyway (my words, not his).

And another interesting wrinkle: FEC Rules Give Bayh Room To Decide What To Do With His $13 Million War Chest

A New York Times reporter asked a man the following question, What is a fascist?  How many fascists have we?  How dangerous are they?  The man answered,

The really dangerous American fascist….is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.  The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.  His method is to poison the channels of public information.  With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.  They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.  They demand free enterprise but are the spokesman for monolopy and vested interest.  Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjucation.

The man who answered that question?  Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944.   Dr. James Luther Adams, an ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School who passed on in July 1994, had known this for a long time.  During 1935 and 1936 Dr Adams was working in Germany with the underground anti-Nazi church, also known as the Confessing Church.  Because of his work with the dissidents of that group, he was interrograted by the Gestapo who suggested he return to America, which he did, along with rolls of home movie film he took of the German Christian Church.  He saw in our christian right and our corporate dominance exactly what he saw during those early dark days in Nazi Germany.  He was advising his students as early as 1982 that when they were close to 80 they would all be fighting the Christian fascists.  He also warned his students at that time that intellectual snobbery would blind them to the signs when they came.  At that time, the religious right and their demogagues were in the infancy of their eventual corporate reign.  Today, it is not so far-fetched that they are poised, with the SCOTUS ruling, to set their course for complete dominance in the political arena.

The corporations and the right have been setting the stage for several years for dominance over the middle class.   We have stood by and watched as our manufacturing base has been decimated by jobs sent overseas to places where they can pay pennies on the dollar for labor.  We have watched the Wall Street institutions and the Mortgage industry take this country to the brink.  We watch a Federal Reserve, which is not a government entity, work in secret with trillions of our dollars.  And all the time, the right screams “Less regulation, let free market capitalism work, free market capitalism will right itself”  In other words, do nothing, we like what is happening right now and want to see it to its proper conclusion.  What could that conclusion be?

Is there another ”situation” out there that is going to take the American public to the brink, then over?  Many of our fellow countrymen right now are in despair because they cannot find a decent job with fair wages and benefits.  Abandoned by the economy, beleagured by their dissappearing middle class status, their loss of community when forced to leave a foreclosed home, all of these could be the kindling for a mass movement.  In fact these very people are the people who need a friend most and who the religious right is waiting in the wings to lead them to Jesus who may solve all their problems.   Or not, but where will that movement go, will they turn to the people who will say they will make their lives better with Jesus, or will they turn to people who will help them fight their way out of the mess we are in?  We all know that bigotry and resentment are lurking just below the surface, under the right conditions can that be roused to promote a creed that calls for the destruction of democracy?  There are forces out there who are waiting for just the right time and SCOTUS gave them a big shot in the arm with their decision that corporations are people too.

I believe with the right organizational cooperation, this can be flushed and dealt a death blow.

Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world:  Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.  Margaret Mead

Watching the Teabaggers ponce, preen and pontificate for the better part of last year, and ending with their recent convention, I’m always struck by the fact that they and their ilk have channeled Thomas Jefferson as their Founding Father icon. Jefferson has become their idol – from the armed idiot who carried the ‘Tree of Liberty’ banner, to those souls who like to parrot Jefferson’s other paradigm of ‘he who governs best, governs least.’

So you can imagine my surprise when I heard President Obama’s Snowmageddon speech earlier this month to the Democratic Party, when he reminded the audience that we were not only the party of FDR and the Kennedy brothers, but also the party of Jefferson.

That confused me.

Many years ago, I graduated from Mr Jefferson’s university – a member of the Bicentennial class, no less, and only the third graduating class to number women amongst its members. As one  is wont to do, when one is young and foolish, being young and foolish, I became associated, in an amorous sort of way with a young Alabaman law student, of the conservative ilk. (Picture Lindsey Graham with balls and you have an accurate picture of my beau.) I was a very Left-leaning Democrat and he was, what would be today, a dying breed of intelligent, intellectual Republican. Political arguments were common, but the make-up sex was good. (I can understand the ethos behind James Carville’s and Mary Matalin’s marriage, believe me).

After all these years, my own marriage and his subsequent marriage, divorce and military career, we’re still in touch; so when Obama uttered those words about the Democratic Party being the party of Jefferson, I consulted the oracle that is my friend Allen. I was under the impression that Jefferson was a Teabagger’s wet dream, I told him: Fond of minimalist government, writing the Kentucky Resolution, which framed States’ Rights and formed the basis of Secession that caused that minor conflagration of the mid-19th Century. Even that little snippet of ‘The Tree of Liberty, from time to time, needs watering with the blood of tyrants.’

All true, my friend assured me, but Jefferson, as well as being a bit of a political intriguer, himself, was also a political chameleon; and many of his later ideals closely resemble Democratic principles. In other words, Jefferson was a straddler, like our own state, Virginia, was described, during the early days of the country: neither Northern nor Southern (but eventually opting for the South).

I’ve recently begun reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincoln biography, “Team of Rivals.” Lincoln is one President, who was swiftly glossed over in my earliest elementary school history lessons, and – to a great degree – during high school as well. One of my earliest memories is the Centennial celebration of the beginning of the Civil War in 1961. (Notice that we celebrated the ‘beginning’ of the War, not the centennial of its end; by 1965, sociological changes were afoot in Virginia, in the form of civil rights and de-segregation, and besides, we lost the war – and that was glossed over too).

The sum total of my knowledge of Lincoln was:

- Abraham Lincoln was President at the time of Fort Sumter.

- Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

- Abraham Lincoln was the first President to be assassinated.

- Oh, and … Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

When I was in the Fifth Grade, my class made a field trip to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. I remember poking my head inside an old bookshop there and wrinkling my nose at the musty odor. I was only nine years old, but – so steeped in Civil War was the place, I reckoned that’s what the Civil War smelled like. To this day, if I smell damp mildew, I describe it as ‘smelling like the Civil War’ (which confuses my British husband, as his idea of the Civil War occurred two hundred years before mine).

I was raised in Mosby’s country. My great-great-grandfather’s youngest brother rode with him, was captured and executed by General Custer. When the East got word that Custer was killed at the Little Big Horn, my great-great-grandfather toasted Sitting Bull. Even if my Virginia-born-and-bred mother and my second generation immigrant father were Roosevelt-cum-Kennedy Democrats, the War Between the States was ingrained in my blood.

In order to avoid any discussion, in depth, of Abraham Lincoln’s philosophy and Presidential achievements, later on, my high school US history teacher sought to teach the class about the battles fought and the military history, good and bad.

So I never knew that much about Lincoln the man, much less, Lincoln the politician.

Oh, I knew about him being born in a log cabin, and doing his homework at a rough-hewn table by candlelight. I knew his mother died when he was nine and that her name was Nancy Hanks. I knew he split rails, read the law, and married a crazy woman (something he has in common with Todd Palin, Mr Bachmann and Dick Cheney’s son-in-law).

I’m not even a quarter of the way through the book (which is massive), and I’m learning something new every day. Like Lincoln was an arch pragmatist. I’d heard this before – how he really didn’t want to end slavery per se, just not see it extended into the newer territories of the United States, hoping it would die a natural death eventually in the South (much like Ron Paul still reckons), or that, in an effort to deflect the oncoming war and to keep the Union intact, he sought financial reimbursement to Southern slave-owners, in exchange for passing an amendment to ensure freedom for slaves. This proposal was overturned by the more radical part of his party in … guess what? … Congress.

This is not only a biography of Lincoln, it’s a biography, as well, of his team of rivals: Salmon P Chase, William Henry Seward and Edward Bates – all of whom, challenged Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential convention, and all of whom served in his Cabinet. But, more than all of those four men, combined, this book is actually a history of how the Republican Party was formed from the old Whig Party.

And this is the interesting part!

The end of the first quarter of the 19th Century saw universal suffrage – well, universal, as in all white males over the age of 21, as opposed to white males over the age of 21, educated to a certain standard and owning a certain amount of land and/or a certain amount of property to a certain value.

That’s right, Teabaggers … The Founding Fathers, whom you clasp to your bosom and profess to love second only to God, Himself, didn’t want your grubby, little Cracker hands anyplace near the helm of government. They were elitists, you see – educated at Harvard and William and Mary and founding universities like the University of Virginia. In fact, to paraphrase James Madison (my personal favourite of the bunch), he wrote the Constitution specifically to ensure that the riffraff of the country was kept well away from anything to do with governing. For all the wonderfully poetic justice of the First Amendment, the real message behind that to the hoi polloi was this: Sit down, shut up, and your betters will decide what’s best for you … So punk ONE for the notion that the United States was founded as a purely classless society. It wasn’t. It was framed and founded around the notion that the natural aristocracy would govern the lesser mortals, and these natural aristocrats were, to a man, secularists. And those lesser mortals only concerned the type of the white variety with a dangly bit hanging down between their legs. If you were a black person or a Native American or a white woman, forget it.

Real social mobility opened up in the 1820s, when any white male over the age of 21 was allowed suffrage. That opened up the power of the Democratic Party, with Andy Jackson the first ‘people’s President.’ General Jackson of the Battle of New Orleans fame, just an ordinary guy, self-educated, a man’s man, plain spoken, a guy just like any guy, someone you could have a beer or a fistfight with … kinda like …you know who …

For two decades after Jackson, with the occasional Whig, there followed a period of Democratic political domination. The Democrats were the party of the working, rural people … no different from today, on first glance. But then, a bit different. Their supporters were found in the mostly agrarian South, and they were either slave-holders or sympathetic to the system. The Whigs, on the other hand, who got weaker and weaker, were the traditional party of business interests and intellectual conservatives. In the 1850s, however, their Leftwing, Progressive branch broke off from the dying party, itself, and remolded themselves into the Republican Party, fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, advocating an abolition of slavery, amongst other things, and a very liberal social agenda.

It’s significant to note that in the decade preceding the Civil War, the Whigs produced the Republican Party, while the Democrats produced the mercifully short-lived Know-Nothings, who derided intellectual pursuit and virulently hated foreign immigration.

What stands out about Kearns Goodwin’s book is the significance of its title – that the three men listed above, were all ambitious, socially progressive experienced politicians, all educated and refined, who looked down on Lincoln, the President, as a man of little experience, but who were chosen by him, after he defeated them in the Republican convention, to serve in various capacities in his Cabinet, where they all excelled. Well, I hold Seward responsible for a pretty reprehensible act – he bought Alaska at a bargain basement price from Russia, and we all know what came from that moment of madness …

Seward’s Folly, yes?

And so thing toddled along, after Lincoln’s assassination, with the Republican Party’s identification with big business and corporate development, spawning social philanthropists and cultural liberals from Teddy Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney. Theh Democrats, always a big tent, produced the Northeastern quasi-socialist rich-men-for-a-poor-man’s-fight bruisers like Franklin Roosevelt and the Kennedys, the Southern populist Huey Long and people of the ilk of George Wallace. That part of the party of FDR were segregationists was an anomaly, and when a Southern Democratic President signed the Civil Rights bill, by 1972, the Dixiecrats embraced Richard Nixon’s Republican party.

After Johnson, the Democratic Party moved steadily to the Left, unelectable until people voted in the Carter Administration, as a demonstration of discontent with the Watergate Republicans. And then we had the seesaw of Ronald Reagan campaign for and win the hearts and minds of middle-class Democrats, by means of faux promises of economic wealth (delivered up in the form of a plastic card) and ‘Morning in America.’ When the Democrats came back again, for an 8-year stint, it was in the shape of a former Leftwing populist governor, who took a leaf out of the book of Henri IV of France, who sold his religious Protestant soul to become the Catholic King of France. Bill Clinton pulled the protest party of civil unrest, of hippy students waving banners in the face of National Guardsmen, of black radical civil rights’ protesters, into the late 20th Century with the compromising pragmatism of the Third Way. He governed from the centre, and he got two terms and left the US with a balanced budget.

During this time, the Republicans got dirtier through an astute dirty trickster with an appropriately reptilian name and embraced the Religious Right, not through devotion to the Christian theology, but to achieve power through the galvanisation of their base. If forcibly ramming God and the Christian way into every aspect of American life was the price to pay for a Republican hegemony, so be it. And whilst all this was going on, this courtship of the rural, agrarian South and Midwest, the Democrats, embracing socially progressive ideals of same-sex marriage and equal rights for LGBTs, as well as pro-Choice, gun control and an anti-War agenda, creeped closer to court big business and the corporations.

So what have I learned from one quarter of this book? Only that we now occupy the place and the same basic set of core values (that aren’t written on the palms of our hands) that the fledgling Republicans held at the beginning of the Civil War; and that the Republicans are now the intransigent, unbending, socially and intellectually backward agrarian Democrats of that same period, complete with the call for states’ rights to be dominant to the point of secession.

In learning that, I think I’ve sussed how the Democratic Party can wrest control of the situation at hand and squelch the GOP in its current form: We should declare ourselves the natural successors of Lincoln, proclaim ourselves the real Republicans, and brand Boehner, McConnell and co, secessionist Democrats.

Not only would that confuse them to no end, Sarah Palin would be struck dumb in consternation, Rush Limbaugh’s head would explode and Glenn Beck would decompensate.

Happy birthday, President Lincoln … from your natural children, the Democratic Party.

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