What Americans Want

Washington, D.C. – Senator Ron Johnson (WI) today commented on President Obama's inauguration:

“The American people Republican redistricting elected divided government. They want the President and Congress to work together to address the serious challenges facing our nation.”

There, fixed that for you, Senator.

I am sick of both sides claiming that, "The American people want this, the American people want that," in their press releases. It strongly implies all of the American people agree on something and, as we all know, that just isn't the case for anything. There are more than 42 of us, some of the American people will support and oppose just about anything. If you want to make a genuine argument, cite quality polling with publicly released data.

Using conclusive statements for persuasion as Senator Johnson's staff did in this case is just offensive.

Electoral Votes and Districts

Governor Walker and RNC Chair Priebus want to split electoral votes based on who won congressional districts. Given the gerrymandering that occurred in 2010, this means WI would go from sending all electoral votes to the Democratic presidential candidate to giving over half to the Replublican presidential candidate.

In principal, I could agree to that if the senate electoral votes were split among the top two vote getters unless one person won 2/3 of the congressional votes. The state would always end up 6/4 as things stand and the majority of folks probably wouldn't have to deal with all the adds anymore. That gives you most of what you want, right?

But here's what I want in return: eliminate districts and make the WI Assembly a party-proportional election every two years.

So, the Republicans get some presidential electoral votes due to the congressional seat gerrymandering but the people get an Assembly that actually matches the way Wisconsinite votes were cast instead of what we have now. Deal?

Current Currency

The Press Gannette reposts an AP article on eliminating the dollar bill.

Boo I say! But not for the reasons you might think. I say it doesn't go far enough. It's past time we got rid of the one and five dollar bills as well as pennies, nickles and quarters. Create reasonably cheap to produce dollar and fiver coins, keep the dime, and make a slightly larger 20 cent piece.

The penny, nickle, and quarter have served us well but the time has come when a penny costs more than a penny to produce.

Districts and Majorities

Good story of the impact of redistricting on the partisan makeup of the legislative bodies in WI.

I note that Democrats won the "popular vote" for The House of Representatives but that Republicans maintained a forty plus seat advantage.

That holds true for the WI Congressional class. When you add up the votes state wide you get 1398916 for the GOP and 1442491 for the Dems. You might think that vote would split our 8 seats in half, four for each party. You might even think that it'd end up five to three in favor of the Dems. In fact, the GOP hove a 5 to 3 seat advantage. We use districts and those districts are redrawn by those in control every ten years.

I have to wonder who won the popular vote in Wisconsin's Legislature. Unfortunately, the GAB doesn't have the numbers up yet but I'm guessing the popular vote for the bodies doesn't match the elected representatives.

Political Thoughts

Folks will blame the the hurricane or the debates or the LDS Church or whatever else they can come up with for Willard Mitt Romney losing to Barrack Hussein Obama. Turns out none of that really mattered because it wasn't... even... close...

I think Kathleen Parker nails a big part of it: "The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved. Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut."

But I think Kathleen overdoes the party blame and basically gives Mitt a pass. Romney is supposed to be this great manager and leader, right? He saved countless businesses! He saved the Utah Olympics! In the way of these things, his talking points sometimes so heavily used the word "leadership" it became absurd. A great leader would find a way to bring the far right in to his fold besides lying to them in the primaries. A great leader would have made sure his organization was firing on all cylinders and made corrections where required. But his single largest failure in my view was buying in to the Fox filtered reality so much that-- by all accounts-- he was surprised that he lost when public polling has plainly stated for weeks that he was going to lose. I followed the liberal site electoral-vote.com and the conservative electionprojection.com which both said Romney was going to lose. Really? Leadership? Leadership requires gathering and judging information reliability before choosing a course. Leadership would have meant privately pulling aside a writer and having a concession speech prepared. (Though, I have to credit him. Great job for a last minute throw together.) I don't claim to be any sort of insider and nobody bats a thousand but it sure looks to me like team Romney and it's leader was simply out-executed pretty much everywhere but debate number one while operating on incorrect information, especially on election day.

Depending on how you count, I made four or five win predictions this cycle. Obama (while losing the popular vote), Ribble, Hansen, and Genrich. Turns out I was right about the winners but wrong about the presidential popular vote. I really thought it would be closer. And that's part of the reason I just couldn't bring myself to say that Tammy might beat Tommy too. I was just too cynical, so sure that the nether reaches of the conservative machine would be quietly slipping child molester fliers under wipers on the Sunday before the election which would tip it to Tommy in a close race.

I knew that the House of Representatives and WI Assembly would remain essentially unchanged. We just got done with Republican controlled gerrymandering... err, redistricting. The partisan impact of the districts will wear off over the next two or three cycles but we'll have Republican control of the lower houses until then. (These little districts with absurd lines drawn by whoever happens to be in control every ten years are going to make divisiveness worse and worse from here on out. It's too easy to gerrymander with modern technology. Much like how electoral college distorts the presidential, small districts with movable lines distort these legislative bodies. I think it's past time we passed laws that say counties and municipalities should be kept whole in the least or we should just abolish districts and go to proportional representation in the Assembly. Maybe I'll post on this...)

What I didn't see coming is the Republicans taking full control of Wisconsin again. I just wasn't paying attention to other races. Lets hope the party in control acts, well, conservatively instead of ramming things through in a hurry this time. "Bold action" is not a synonym for "good action", and "common sense" is not the same as "good sense". Please try to remember that, OK Republicans? I'm dead serious. No sarcasm here, zero. If you lead with thoughtfulness and deliberateness while sending up trial balloons and setting expectations, you won't have half the state yelling and screaming and drumming at you again.

P.S. I wonder if there has ever before been a Presidential campaign where both candidates tried so hard to ignore whole parts of their names?

Catholic Contrast and Perception

Three out of four Irish who identified themselves as Catholics find the church's teaching on sexuality "irrelevant" Probably not as high among self identified Catholics in the USA but I'd still bet it's a majority.

Now contrast that with this:

"The ad hoc committee opened its statement with several 'concrete examples' of recent threats to religious liberty, saying that 'this is not a theological or legal dispute without real-world consequences.'"

Consequences indeed. I think this sort of disconnect between leadership and flock is why both continue to shrink.

Sizing things up, relatively.

Use your mouse wheel after opening this window.

Seeing something like this that shows how much we, humanity, have come to know makes me think of all that remains to be discovered. What's lies beyond, what is further within, and what have we missed along the way?