Charlie Crist’s departure from the Republican Party in Florida has a lot of people wondering just what’s happening to us. It’s a good question. As it turns out, there’s only one time in our (relatively) short history when something like this happened before.

The United States has always had a two-party system. We’re set up so that third parties can safely be ignored. Their only real impact has always been as a “spoiler” – as when Ralph Nader single-handedly elected the idiot Bush in 2000 (to his everlasting shame). But just once in history, it didn’t work that way.

In the 1850’s, our nation was unalterably split over the question of slavery. The Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott case that slaves were still slaves even if they were taken to a free state. It all boiled over with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was essentially a “states rights” law that said states could decide by popular vote whether they would allow slavery or not. (Back then, Democrats were the champions of “states rights”!) Whigs, the opposition to the Democrats at the time, could never figure out where they stood on the issue. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on it:

“The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction successfully prevented the nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott, who was soundly defeated. Its leaders quit politics (as Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The voter base defected to the Republican Party, various coalition parties in some states, and to the Democratic Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party had lost its ability to maintain a national coalition of effective state parties.”

This is essentially what the Tea Party people want to do – destroy the Republican Party as it now stands and elect the next President, just as Lincoln was elected in 1860, on the ashes. It’s not that far fetched. Today’s Republicans can’t figure out what they stand for either. Grass-roots Republicans believe in balanced budgets, non-interference in foreign wars, and smaller governments. Republican administrations run monsterous budget deficits, start or continue foreign wars, and expand the federal government. (Bush was responsible for the biggest expansion of federal power seen since Roosevelt.) Republican voters tend to vote “against” the other guy rather than “for” their own guy (They are ‘The Party of No’.) but they figure it out eventually.

There is no single, soul wrenching issue that unites them like slavery united the Republicans in 1860, however. Even if the Tea Party people were somehow successful, I’m not sure what they would do.

The key lesson for the Democrats in all this is to avoid the same awful fate. Passing health care was a good first step in actually standing for something. But we need more. Much more.

Franklin Graham, who inherited the successful and lucrative pulpit of his famed preacher father Billy Graham, is in trouble for publically calling Islam a “very evil and wicked religion” and claimed Muslims are “enslaved by Islam.”

The nation, it seems, will be engaged in prayer on May 1. Doing something right, the Pentagon has dis-invited Reverend Graham junior from their part of the celebration, but he’s still on for the Congressionally organized “National Day of Prayer” events.

They should dis-invite him too. As Janet Haag, Executive Director of “Fellowship in Prayer” wrote in the Huffington Post, “For a day of prayer to be authentically deemed national, it should reflect the pluralism that now defines us.” And, in fact, when the National Day of Prayer was authorized by Congress in 1988, the law stipulated that it would be a day when adherents of all great religions could unite in prayer.

I guess the NDP organizers didn’t get the memo. According to Ms. Haag and other sources, only people willing to sign an application that basically states that they are evangelical Christians are welcome. (See Note 1)

In the same way that Bush was “a uniter, not a divider”, Jews and Moslems are united in their opposition to this hijack of a national holiday by the Christian Right. “Jews on First” says this on their site. “What began as President Truman’s declaration of a National Prayer Day for all Americans is now excluding and dividing us on religious lines.”

As Reverend Graham senior might say, “Ah … whadda they know. They’re just a buncha Jews.” Although there’s no record that he said that, he did say this about the Jews, in a recorded conversation with Nixon in the White House released by the National Archives, “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.” But he’s evidently a little smarter than his son because he was a lot more careful in public, telling Nixon that, “They don’t know how I really feel …”

Perhaps the Reverend Graham, junior and senior, ought to pay more attention to what Christ said as recorded in the Bible and get out of the public prayer business:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6 – New American Standard Bible

(I’d like to see the Christian Right find something explicit and unmistakable, direct from Christ in the New Testament, supporting their positions against, say, gays or abortions. They’re great at carefully picking and choosing which verse to follow.)

I could do without the whole thing. A federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled that it’s unconstitutional. The ruling makes a point similar to the one made by Christ: “It is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual’s decision whether and when to pray.”

But the festivities are still on. The judge also said that the ruling shouldn’t be applied until appeals are exhausted. Darn!

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Note 1 – According to USA Today, “Applicants to be official coordinators are asked to indicate if they believe in a statement that includes: ‘I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.’”

Technically, this isn’t a requirement of the “National Day of Prayer”. It’s only a requirement of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. In practice, they’re one and the same, however. This issue is covered exhaustively by the web site: http://www.religioustolerance.org/day_pray8.htm.

Many years ago, when my wife was still willing to get on airplanes, I used to go to Europe every chance I got. Back then, I also liked to wear boots and western shirts. (We weren’t veggies yet.) That was before people in Europe started dressing that way too, so I made a special effort to pack my most western clothes and wear them over there, just to stand out a little. My idea was to give people over there a reason to talk to me. It worked like a shot! I always had a great time.

One of the earliest trips was to Ireland for an IFIPS Conference – International Federation of Information Processing Societies – in Dublin. IFIPS arranged a “shopping night” at the biggest department store just for us. They had wine and cheese and even a few good deals. Anyway, I was wandering around eating the free food. I stopped to ask a store clerk a question but before I could, she said …

“Are you from Texas?”

In a flash of inspiration, I replied,

“Why shucks no, Ma’am. I’m from the real West. The onliest thing folks from Texas know about cows is that one end is horny and they ain’t right sure which end it is.”

She laughed so hard that I eventually got tired of waiting and found another clerk. It set the pattern for the next two weeks. It seems that a lot of people in Ireland would ask that same question. With practice, the answer would just roll right out automatically. It always worked!

Near the end of the trip, we pulled into a parking lot and another car just happened to park next to us at about the same time. When the people in the other car got out, they asked ‘the question’: “Are you from Texas?” The answer came out in a polished performance. But then they said, “We are from Texas.”

Ah, well. Win some and lose some.

Anyway, I have this great idea about how to improve their slogan.

“Don’t mess with Texas. They’re messed up enough already!”

And they can have their idiot back too.

In my previous blogs, I’ve written about all the fun I had in the Visual Studio 2010 launch event in Las Vegas. In one of the technical sessions, the presenter let a detail slip that has alerted me to the possibility of implementing enormous productivity and efficiency in Nevada gaming. He said it was all very secret and that none of the two hundred or so people who had randomly decided to attend should let the secret out. Not being that honorable myself, I’m going to do it anyway. But I’m still going to keep the presenter’s identity confidential because I wouldn’t want to get Tim in trouble with his customers. Grandma Huckaby would never forgive me.

The secret is that slot machines in Las Vegas are being installed that use Microsoft’s latest Windows Presentation Foundation technology to display the images of spinning wheels and the theme window above them. Not only is it cheaper to build the machines, but it’s more flexible too. The guys behind the one-way glass can change a St. Patrick’s Day theme to a Hanukah theme with the click of a mouse. Instead of three bars (or “pubs” as the Irish call them), you can win with three bitter herbs.

As I wandered back to my room, I could see that it was all true! White-haired grandmothers were pressing touch-sensitive screen images to see graphic representations of spinning wheels all over the place.

The original concept of a slot machine was kind of a three wheeled roulette. A handle kicked off three actual wheels that, presumably, stopped in a completely random configuration. My neighbor here in Springdale has restored some of the antiques in his back room. They’re great!! As mechanical devices, however, they were really not all that random. The dependability of the process of extracting a predictable amount of money from white-haired grandmothers was improved a lot when the internal workings were changed to electronic control.

Now that we have made the leap to an improved electronic User Interface (or “UI” as we say in the biz), it’s a short hop to vastly improved productivity. Since the mathematical accuracy of money extraction is calculated to … ummm … maybe thirty or forty decimal places in modern slot machines, why can’t we just accept a credit card at the door, extract the calculated amount, and then the white-haired grandmother doesn’t have to spend those endless hours with her finger pressed to a touch-sensitive device control. The “winners”, so necessary for advertising reasons, can be selected automatically at the door too.

It’s the humane thing to do! If Nike was forcing third-world factory workers to press a button all day like that, people would be marching in the streets protesting their mistreatment.

But … (I hear you protesting) … Grandma likes to spend those endless hours that way. She can get away from her grandkids for up to a week at a time. And it even takes less mental effort than watching TV.

Gotcha covered! Simply inject Grandma with drugs to induce a coma that will last a week and wake her up when it’s over. You can even position her so that the same bedsores created by those endless hours in a chair in front of a slot machine are reproduced.

And she can’t remember what she did yesterday anyway.

In Virginia, the government is honoring the memory of an armed rebellion against the United States. They’re celebrating the same armed rebellion in Mississippi.

The supporters of this kind of thinking say that their ancestors rebelled against the United States to defend their freedom and property.

Yeah … their freedom to own slaves and the slaves that were the property.

These people are a new and more abhorrent type of neo-con: Neo-Confederates. This reinvention of history is disgusting.

There is certainly no question that the southern states had deep reservations about being part of the United States right from the beginning. Virginian Patrick Henry, famous for saying, “Give me liberty or give me death!” during the Revolutionary War, never accepted the concept of the United States. He was a Virginian, first, last, and always. If he had his way, the North American continent would be a mass of little empires, like all of those little “-stan’s” south of Russia today. They would all be dominated by Canada which at least held together. But the main reason for all of this was slavery. Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian, went along with abominations like counting slaves as three-fifths of a human being for tax and census purposes (read Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution) because the slave masters in the southern states would not have joined the United States without it. It’s a classic example where making the end justify the means is making us all pay a price two hundred years later.

Just as the Nazis in Germany believed in the superiority of the German race, so the Confederates believed in their right to own other human beings as property. The Germans have totally disowned their past. The southern states need to make that fundamental step toward civilization too.

Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had active sex lives with women to whom they were not married. Actually, lots of women. Their wives knew about it. (They evidently decided that it was better to enjoy the perks of being First Lady than to make a scene.) Lots of people knew about it when it was happening. But their behavior didn’t become public knowledge until well after they were both dead.

Then Newt Gingrich decided to make President Clinton’s momentary thrill with Monica the centerpiece in his naked grab for power and everything changed – it seems, permanently. (See Note 1)

Now, every time anyone in the spotlight has some sex that is, in our theoretical western moral code is, “off limits” – we find out about it in every lurid detail. Without even thinking about it very much …

• Tiger, who seems to have a port at every hole.
• South Carolina’s Governor Sanford and his Argentine obsession.
• Nevada’s Senator John Ensign has enlisted his whole family in a failed attempt to cover up his own vacation to “Sexland”.
• Former Senator Edwards. Cheating on your wife when she’s in the hospital must be a political thing. Both Newt Gingrich and John McCain did it too.
• There have been several aide molestors who have quit Congress just in the last few months.

I received an email recently that asked, “It seems that we learn about another one every other day. Are people getting that much worse today?”

My one word answer was, “No.” IMHO, about the same proportion of people have always been that way. The only thing that has changed is that today, we splash it all over the news. It’s become a spectator sport. But not, it seems, a political liability. Clinton survived. Sanford and Ensign are still in office and even plan on winning the next election.

The question is, “Are we better off knowing whenever one of our ‘leaders’ starts thinking with the little head instead of the big one — or not?”

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Note 1 – There are two other peripheral issues that are interesting to me about the Newt and his fight for power during the Clinton years.

The first is how relatively modest and brief President Clinton’s indescretion actually was compared to the huge political firestorm Newt made of it. There was no actual intercourse, just a few brief encounters in the hallway. I believe it was Monica herself who said that she told people that she didn’t have sex with Clinton because she didn’t. She said that if what happened with Clinton was “sex” then she had “sex” with lots and lots of people. But it wasn’t sex. Whatever it was, it was enough to leave a testable stain on the infamous “blue dress”.

The second is the blazing red hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich. He married his former high school geometry teacher when he was 19 years old. She was seven years older than him. It’s not a stretch to imagine that there might have been some statuatory rape going on a few years earlier. But she got cancer, and while she was in the hospital, Newt couldn’t keep it in his pants, so they got divorced and he married the new thang. A few years later, at the very same time Newt was leading the crusade to grab power from Clinton, he was cheating on his second wife – frequently – with his third. It’s difficult for me to imagine how Gingrich could stand in the House and preach so convincingly against Clinton and then sneak off and have real sex on the sly.

Health Care Reform has been passed. The fall elections are still just far enough away so they don’t dominate headlines. There haven’t even been any catastrophic earthquakes or hurricanes in the last few days, although a lot of folks are still trying to put their lives back together after a few recent ones.

I recently received a link to President Obama’s April 1 speech in Boston and I read it all. Although it’s mainly a political speech, it’s worth reading. The main thing that struck me was how great it is to have a President that we can be proud of again. Whenever the idiot Bush would open his mouth, it seems that there was an irresistable attraction for his foot. Who can forget Bushisms like:

“You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” -Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.” –to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

And, of course, possibly the most notable Bushism of all time:

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” –to FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

Whether you agree with Obama or not, he radiates intelligence and inspiration when he stands up in public. And that dramatic change from the past feels good to me.

Postscript: Neither is this blog. See the “PS” below!

A few weeks ago, I wrote that former Governor Palin was the best thing that could happen to improve President Obama’s re-election chances. I still feel that way, but unfortunately, her “15 minutes of fame” doesn’t look like it’s going to stretch out far enough to be more than an anthill on the mountain when the campaign gets hot. It’s too bad. She’s great for laughs and we all need a few. Who will Jon Stewart make fun of now?

Fortunately, there always seems to be a replacement in the wings. He’s no Sarah Palin, but the Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is starting to measure up to the challenge of making the ‘Party of No’ look bad enough to lose big. He’s always had a knack for saying the wrong things at the wrong time. Not in the Bush style of nonsense and gibberish, but more in the Cheney or Rove style of something that just grates against your nerves. Did you know that he worked for Faux News before he got this gig?

Recently, those nasty young Republicans had themselves a really good time in a sex club in California and charged the whole thing off to Daddy Steele. Everything was fine until a sharp-eyed blogger noticed the expense in a boring accounting report. Now, the body count for the incident is up to three.

• The mid-level staffer who put together the sex party and filed the expense in the first place.
• A top consultant who decided he couldn’t stand the smell and announced he wouldn’t have anything else to do with them.
• Most significant so far, the number two man in the “Party of No”, right below Steele himself. It’s not clear whether he was fired or quit – nor does it matter.

Steele-ing himself for the coming fight … it’s good to see the ‘Party of No’ ripping itself apart … Chairman Steele did what Chairmen do. He sent out a memo. He forthrightly wrote, “The buck stops with me.” And therefore the guy below him is getting fired.

He also ticked off a laundry list of what the ‘Party of No’ does best. The items include:

• “going on offense with message” – A-men to that! I couldn’t think of a better word than “offensive”.
• “raising money” – Well, yes, but they didn’t deliver for the insurance and pharmaceutical companies! But I have to agree that he’s on target with their core values.
• “grooming new donors” – I told you that the insurance and pharmaceutical companies were pissed!
• “crushing Democrats in November” – You couldn’t ask for a more clear confession that it’s all about power and money to the ‘Party of No’.

The best news, however, is that Chairman Steele gives every indication that he’s dug in like a tick and is not going away gracefully or quickly. He very well may last at least long enough to be a real help to the re-election of President Obama.

But there’s more good news! Since Steele had to throw his top guy under the bus, he needs a new top guy now. And since his power patrons are out of power now, Dixie’s own Michael O. Leavitt just happens to need a job! His resume includes the fact that he ran Steele’s own Senate campaign. They lost. And after that, he was a key staffer in McCain’s campaign. They lost too.

Things are looking up!

Important PS ….

It’s a different Michael Leavitt! It’s not Dixie’s own. Darn!!

I did have a strong source for my earlier claim. (And I figured it out for myself before someone corrected me!) But I was a little too fast with the “post” button. Everything else is true, however, including the fact that the ‘real’ Michael Leavitt lost twice recently.

President Obama’s hard won victory in passing some sort of national health care is a good first step. But it’s only a first step. The main fact that everyone should remember is that health care costs way more than twice as much in the US as in any other country. And we get substandard care for all that money.

Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital management companies, and doctors have concocted the lie that, “it’s not about the money – it’s about your freedoms”. There’s one thing you can be sure of: “It’s about the money!” There are billions of dollars of excess profit at stake. They’re not going to give up all that money easily. They have bought and paid for a lot of legislators.

Recently, The New York Times printed one of their great investigative journalism articles about how American patients get a raw deal from the companies that manufacture artificial joints. (Makers of Artificial Joints Rarely Offer Warranties). The main thrust of the article is that, unlike a toaster oven or a lawn mower, if an artificial joint manufacturer makes a shoddy product in the US, you (or the government) get to eat the cost. As a patient, you also get the suffering and risk of dying from a second operation to replace the shoddy product. As one authority quoted in the article puts it, the companies have no skin in the game. In fact, they get more profit by selling TWO joints instead of just one when they screw up the first one.

In other countries (Britain is quoted in the article), the very same manufacturers do offer a warranty. So the question naturally comes up, “Why don’t they offer a warranty in the US?” As a news source with some journalistic ethics (they’re not Faux News), the New York Times doesn’t reach conclusions in their news reporting. They just report facts. The most likely conclusion isn’t much of a reach, however. It’s a great example of how we pay more and get less in the US.

The real question that needs to concern us is, “Why? Why do we get this rotten deal?”

The answer is that corporations (who, thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision, can now spend as much money as they like buying legislators) have a lot of power to set the terms of a deal when we buy an artificial joint. You and I have almost none. In fact, there’s only one way that we’re going to be able to bargain with these guys on anything like equal terms. We have to band together. There’s a name for that process of banding together: “democratic government”. Only our elected representatives can force corporations to do what’s right. The problem is that they’re not our elected representatives; they are the corporations’ “bought and paid for” legislators.

People die from unnecessary multiple joint replacement operations. Always remember, the executives who reap obscene profits in their positions of power in corporations don’t care if you live or die. They only care about the money.

The news reports that at least ten members of the House of Representatives have received violent threats as a result of their vote for health reform. I’m not surprised. James Zogby, writing in the Huffington Post, predicted this kind of thing in his blog, “Frightening GOP Behavior“. Zogby points out that The Party of No assumes that only they have a monopoly on truth and nobody else does. That’s why they claim that only they represent “the people” and nobody else does. That’s why anything they do, from torturing prisoners to lying to Congress, is justifiable – in their own minds. After all – in their own minds, they’re only doing what’s ‘right’!

This has happened before. Many times before. And it has always turned out badly.

The original fascists, Mussolini’s blackshirts, rose to power on a tide of violence against their enemies. Originally, they were just a splinter group. Violence and intolerance created the foundation for Mussolini’s rise to power. It was the same for Hitler in Germany. Only the color of their uniform was different. In our own time, Bin Laden and the Taliban maintain their own grip on power through violence. When village chiefs have enough security to state their own point of view, they reject the harsh rules of the Taliban. (They reject Americans too — something that ought to be remembered.)

Conservatives don’t seem to be all that united through a political philosophy (for example, the very worst budget deficits have consistently been racked up by ‘conservative’ Republican administrations). The most consistent thing that does seem to unite them is the conviction that they are ‘right’ and their ‘enemies’ are wrong – and that any lie, any action, any double-dealing is OK – so long as they can get back into power.

As a very current example today, according to ABC news, Republican National Committee Communications Director Doug Heye tried to justify the threats against Democratic congressmen by saying, “Democrats didn’t say a word. When Gov. Mitt Romney was assaulted on an airplane last month, Democrats [never] said a word.”

As it turns out, I reported about what actually happened to the Mittster here in my blog, Anger Management Counseling Needed?. The Mittster was the one who initiated the violence. They’ll tell any lie, any lie at all.