L'affaire Babeu

The Data Port returns to the fray after a long absence. Political blogging is made hard by a number of factors, not the least of which is that there are so many political bloggers... and the rascals are so quick.

By the time a thoughtful commentator has marshaled his wits to make the necessary trenchant comment four other folks in the blogosphere have already done so, and their views have been demolished by equally perceptive critiques by their opponents. 

Oh, well.

I recently shamelessly eavesdropped on a vigorous  conversation going on at an adjoining lunch table. It was about L’affaire Babeu, and the Sheriff’s recent outing by an alleged former lover. The speaker loudly affirmed that he would never pull the lever for that man again.

I found that very odd. He must have once approved of the Sheriff enough to vote for him. Liked his aggressive immigration policies; favored his pursuit of grants to improve equipment; found no fault with the management of his department, and so on.

It’s pretty hard to believe that while he was in the closet his deputies didn’t at least suspect,  but apparently Babeau was on efficient, workmanlike terms with his staff and the policing of Pinal County went forward to everyone’s satisfaction.

And he did all this while he was gay? How’d he do that?

The real loser in all this is my involuntary lunch companion, who has now rejected the man he once would have, I imagine, supported for Congress. Good Grief!    

Here’s a link to Babeau’s web site. <click>

      

The Republicans’ Phony Meme

There have been a number over the years. “Tax and Spend Democrats,” and “Death Tax” are a couple of examples. About the time “Tax and Spend” was launched the Republicans were slashing tax revenues and borrowing and spending to support our two ruinous wars.

But that was then and this is now.

The latest slogan the Republican word magicians want us to swallow as God’s truth is “Job Killing Tax Increases.” Say that often enough and people will believe that it’s true; that increased federal income will (or has) stifled job creation.

There is not a jot of evidence that this is true. Think a minute, people. No jobs are being created now, when the tax laws are as forgiving as any in the modern industrial world. Forgiving taxation hasn’t done thing to produce jobs. Corporate America is sitting on record amounts of cash and we have 9.2% unemployment.

In the current debt limit debate the Republicans have fought any suggestion of tax reform that would increase revenue by closing loopholes, or removing some selected tax exemptions.

The Republican solution to the debt crisis is to slash expenditures in the area of the social safety net. If they don’t want to raise taxes, let’s cut 200 billion out of the defense budget instead.

Cross Posted from: http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I love the picnics and fireworks, the parades and marching bands-- but what I love most are the words of the day; the words of Jefferson and Paine, of the founding documents and the passionate speeches.

English is the mother tongue of democracy and no better political prose has ever been written. It’s muscular, direct, clear. It appeals to the mind as well as the heart and it expresses what we are as a nation. When we fall short of its ideals it reminds us what we ought to be.

The movements to deconstruct and reconstruct American history, to reveal the hidden hypocrisies at the heart of the nation’s founding, have tempted some into an attitude of world-weary dismissal of those ideals.

But imperfect men may yet have perfect thoughts, and slave owners may recognize the moral imperative of the rights of man.

On the morning of July 4th I’ll take my coffee out on the patio and read the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

These truths are the axioms of our political geometry. The assertion of them is not a scientific proposition, nor the deduction from some simpler or more evident truths. They are the bedrock on which we build a government. They are the commandments of a political faith.

Although all men have these rights, in a material and imperfect world they must be secured to us.

… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The preamble to the Constitution echoes the theme. The Constitution is written to… establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Democratic government is not a burden, it is the condition of our liberty. Without it, as Thomas Hobbes earlier observed, we live in a state described as “the war of all against all” and lead lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Government cannot be left simply in the hands of others, as Thomas Paine reminded his fellow citizens in “The Crisis” (December 1776).

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women.

Not every crisis that our nation faces has the chilling dimensions of that winter in Valley Forge. Some may be purely local, springing up only in our own moral neighborhoods so to speak, but each to some degree requires that we shoulder the responsibility for protecting our fellow citizens’ unalienable rights, and promoting the general welfare.

To fail in this is to be no more than summer soldiers, espousing the right but not defending it.

Circling the interior of the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial is the following quotation.

I am quoting it from memory, and perhaps I have some single word wrong, but if I do, so be it.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

This is the great commandment of our political faith. Of course it implies freedom of speech, the press, expression… because a truth thought but not expressed is nothing.

There are other forms that tyranny over the mind can take, subtle, elusive, not always recognized for what they are: Hunger, prejudice and bigotry, poverty, the closing off of access to knowledge, the simple refusal to listen…all of these may stunt or cripple the mind by denying it the conditions to develop fully.

Finally, it is good to keep in mind that we are a country born of revolution.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. .( Jefferson.)

As a nation we might well remember this and take a more understanding and supportive view of other people’s revolutions.

Have a great Fourth of July.

The Republican Party vs The Rest of Us

There are two stories in today’s Arizona Daily Star that mesh nicely with yesterday’s “Loading Dock Manifesto” post.

The first was on the front page of the business section and headlined. “Recovery is most off-kiter since ’30s.”

Not surprisingly the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us have been done the dirty. There are still 9.1% of us unemployed, but none of the 9.1% happen to be the CEOs of major corporations. .

An associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth.

In the meantime worker’s wages have slipped from where they were in the mid 2000s (64% of the economy) to 57.5 percent and any new jobs being created pay less than the ones that have been lost.

As this wealth-shift has gone on Republican legislators have persisted in their refusal to include tax increases in a program of budget balancing; and at the Federal level they have fought controls on the financial industry whose rascality got us into the recession in the first place.

Have our masters kept an eye out for the welfare of their workers?

Au contraire, mon frere...they have pushed for more tax cuts (the Laugher Principle...they cut taxes and laugh all the way to the bank) and cut the services that constitute the workingman’s safety net.

Mark Dayton, the governor of Minnesota, has shown remarkable courage in digging in against his Republican legislature’s refusal to make tax increases a part of the state’s budget. Absent a new budget the state is now idle.Turn out the lights...for now the party’s over.

The soft-spoken Dayton refuses to cave to the GOP's stance that higher taxes are verboten. Since taking office, he has championed tax hikes on rich Minnesotans - or at least some form of new state revenue - as a necessary part of any solution to closing the state's $5 billion budget deficit.

Read more

The Loading Doc Manifesto---John Hyduk

The Loading Dock Manifesto by John Hyduk

America isn’t long on working-class intellectuals, but surely John Hyduk is one of them...although he would sure be scornful of my calling him one. He’s a working guy who happens to write. Not a lot, not enough to quit his night job on a beverage company loading dock

“You want something higher, a prickly Everyman speaking half-truths to power, go scare up Joe the Plumber. All I know is this: I am a schlub walking a high wire between paydays in steel-toed shoes. And my name is legion.”

His wonderful essay on what the working life is, and its values, was recently published in Esquire.

“I grew up in a blue-collar Cleveland neighborhood, a little bit of Old Europe transplanted onto a bend of the Cuyahoga River. The men — Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukies, Hungarians — were scrappers and needed to be. Their wives stayed home, had gardens and babies, and could see the future in the bottoms of teacups.

I never needed a fortune-teller to see mine. It came shuffling past our porch every evening at 5:25, toting a lunch pail. At eighteen you were swallowed by the python and made your way through the beast like a lump. At the other end was a mill pension, casino trips on a bus charter twice a year, and church bingo every Wednesday.”

You don’t always have work. After losing a job, five months went by before the loading dock job came up.

Once a month I update my résumé. Why, I don't know exactly. When I was looking, five months spent on orange plastic interview chairs, with my livelihood hanging on reliable transportation and a willingness to pee in a stranger's cup, that was the mantra. "Make sure you keep your résumé updated," some hiring clerk would tell me.

So I walk the hall of mirrors. There I am at the beginning — my hair is black and my back is straight, and I'm sliding into my first Ford, heading off to work. "Honky Tonk Women" is on the radio. Then I'm gone, pushing, pulling my way down a tunnel. A page later you look up and that gray-haired daddy o' mine is ... you. That's the working life.

No illusions: The only way I will ever see Paris is on the Travel Channel. I will never taste cassoulet unless they put it on the menu at Sheetz. I'm okay with that. One day you stare into the bathroom mirror and Willie Nelson is staring back at you. I'm okay with that, too.

You tote a lot more to work in a lunch pail than Ring Dings. You pack alimony and autism diagnoses and car notes and the rest of the workingman's grind. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. Also braces, a better school, and a down payment on that spring field trip. And you chew whatever has been dumped on your plate in silence.

You don't go into therapy. You go to work.

Read More: http://www.esquire.com/features/essay/john-hyduk-0511

Gettysburg!

July 1, 1863

Our correspondent in the field reports the BMI (Bureau of Military Information) has confirmed Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia has crossed the Potomac River and after its march north into Pennsylvania has wheeled east. Units of the rebel Third Corps ( Lt. General A. P. Hill commanding) are approaching Gettysburg.

Two brigades of the Federal First Cavalry Division (Brig.Gen. John Buford commanding) are drawn up to interdict the advancing rebel army. Buford’s two brigades number just under 3,000 men.

With the approach of July Fourth we naturally focus on the great events of 1776 and the Revolutionary War. That war was our great founding conflict.

But less than one hundred years later the nation was to be in another war, as important to the founding and character of our nation as the events of 1776.

We were “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The key battle in that war, the one that marked its turning point, was a series of savage engagements fought around the small Pennsylvania town Gettysburg on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

One of the great ironies of the war was that Lee didn’t really want to fight the federals there, but on some other ground of his own choosing where he could defeat The Army of The Potomac under Maj. Gen. George Mead. Mead, for his part, had found the battle more or less forced on him (as it was on Lee) when A.P. Hill’s engagement with Buford’s cavalry grew out of hand.

It had been Lee’s hope to defeat federal forces and threaten Washington, forcing the North to recognize The Confederate States of America. Lincoln, for his part wanted Mead to crush the Army of Northern Virginia and pursue it to Richmond, ending the war. Although Gettysburg was a great victory for the North, Mead did not pursue the victory and Lee slipped away back to Virginia.

I’ve been reading two excellent books about Gettysburg as I holed up against the 110 degree heat.

The first, and probably most accessible to the average reader is Michael Shaara’s “The Killer Angels” for which he was awarded the 1975 Pulitzer Prize. This is a novelized but extremely accurate account of the battle told from the perspectives of major participants, among them Chamberlain, Buford, Longstreet, Armistead and Freemantle. Freemantle was a British observer with Lee’s army and Chamberlain was the hero of the Little Round Top defense. A Maine man, he survived serious wounds and lived to become the the Governor of Maine.

The second book is Stephen W. Sears’ “Gettysburg.” This is a serious book of historical scholarship, meticulously researched with detailed notes and bibliography. But don’t let me put you off, in it’s way it’s as much of a page turner as “Killer Angels.”

Gettysburg was a series of engagements which are collectively “the battle.” George Skoch’s maps of the stages of the battle are a big help in visualizing the events. My suggestion is to read Shaara first.

Anarchy and Anarchism

The English language is rich in words and complex in structure. Pay any attention at all to this richness and complexity and it is a more than adequate medium of expression.

Sadly, in the age of bullet points, run-on sentences, and tweets, this richness and complexity is either lost on, or completely baffles, the average writer.

Often it is with pairs of words that the careless writer has problems. Is it “shall” or “will”? Never mind, I’ll cover my indecision with an apostrophe.

There seems to be an epidemic merging of “valid” with “true” so that we feel free to use one for the other with little understanding of their difference. Validity is a characteristic of arguments; truth is a characteristic of propositions. Consider the following argument:

All celestial bodies are made of cream cheese,

The moon is a celestial body

Therefore the moon is made of cream cheese.

This is a formally valid argument, yet it is false that the moon is made of cream cheese because the major premise is false.

Well, this distinction probably makes no fine difference in the twitter-verse since we all, like, understand one another anyway. By the way, the subjunctive mood is essentially dead...at least amongst the ill-educated...so I wouldn’t worry about that either, if I was you.

Many of the technical terms of political discourse that appear in comment threads are used for little more than an acquired emotional tone. Marxist! Communist! Socialist! Fascist! are epithets thrown at opponents to indicate our disapproval of them. As readers we often wonder whether the commenter understands what they mean, or whether he understands his opponent’s position.

Now, consider “anarchy” and “Anarchism.”

Anarchy (with a small “a”) is the confusion and lack of order that follows on the failure or breakdown of law and government; or it’s confusion or lack of order of any kind.

Anarchism, on the other hand is a philosophy of social organization. There is a confusing wealth of “anarchisms,” however the the core belief of all is that government is a form of tyranny that must be destroyed.

But anarchists are not fools; they recognize that that modern society is complex and that mechanisms for the exchange of goods and services must be established. The Anarcho-Syndicalists, who flourished during the Spanish Civil War, conceived of a society organized from the bottom up through an integrated system of trade unions.

To learn a bit more about this form of anarchism look at this:

Cross-posted from The Data Port

Vibrant, Gannett, and a Reader’s Complaint

A regular reader of TucsonCitizen.com, and of The Data Port, forwarded us the following letter sent to Editor Mark Evans:

I often read blog on the Tucson Citizen website and have found the use of what appears at first to be links to further knowledge are advertisements of unrelated "stuff". One recognizes the income that might flow from such techniques, but it sure interferes with the manner in which people will desire to use your source for obtaining knowledge which is so generally and readily available elsewhere without such distractions. I doubt I'm the first one to take note of this technique and likely not the first to voice a negative feeling gained by the mis-use of reader's time and attentions. Just count me as one more reader who thinks this is a poor choice for gathering advertising dollars where many better choices exist in harmony with Internet content on a very broad basis.

Just to remind everyone, here’s a quote from the letter Vibrant sent me in response to my complaint about their using my copy for advertising for which I’m not paid.

Can you disable these ads?

Vibrant In-Text Ads are found on over 3,500 premium websites. Some of these websites choose to offer a disable switch. You can find this by going to the website and moving your mouse over a double-underlined word or phrase. Once you see the Vibrant In-Text Ad unit, click on the "?" in the upper right corner. If the website has chosen to offer the disable feature it will be found on this page

I clicked. No disable feature was offered by Gannett.

I have no objection to advertising copy (I’ve written it for pay) and I don’t object to being paid for what I write, which is not the case here at TC.com.

But imagine you’re at the flicks watching a jungle thriller and the hero is under attack by army ants. Suddenly the action stops and a pitchman appears on screen with a fifteen second ad for “Ants-Be-Gone” inserted there by Vibrant In-Film Advertising. How would the producers of the movie feel about that? Really.

As the reader quoted above indicates this in-text advertising nonsense does violence to all the advantages of web 2.0

Cross-posted from http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Good Editors Make Good Writers

It is the rare writer who doesn’t benefit from the thoughtful attention of his or her editor. Part of what distinguishes TucsonCitizen.com from fully-fledged online newspapers is the absence of editorial supervision.

What gets written here, according to Gannett, are blogs. As bloggers we are independent entities, for whom our publisher accepts no responsibility.

This is not necessarily a good thing.

No assignment editor is pointing us in the direction of a reportorial task and no copy editor is vetting the copy for style or fact. This accounts for the occasionally rackety and unrestrained nature of a good deal of what goes on here.

A case in point is a recent posting over at “The View from Baja Arizona.” I’m a big booster of Hugh Holub’s coverage of the border. That said, this piece could have used the helpful hand of a fair-minded editor.

Holub draws a stark picture of cartel violence and of the apparent inability of the Mexican government to control it. He will eventually ask the sorts of “what is to be done” questions that could stimulate thoughtful debate: Should we make cross-border military incursions? Should we legalize drugs to kill the profit motive?

Fair enough; but first he introduces the question of Aztec human sacrifice and wonders if there may not be something in Mexican cultural history that explains cartel savagery. The implication seems to be that Mexicans are genetically predisposed to violence

And the ‘chit’ hits the fan. An editor might well have pencilled out the Aztecs on the grounds that they are really a distraction from his central concern, or factually dubious. I can hear the editor saying, “It’s the blue pencil or the spike, take your choice.”

Cross-posted from: TucsonCitizen.com

Read Holub’s column here

http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja-arizona/2011/06/20/drug-cartel-violence-in-mexico-the-aztecs-are-still

Giffords-Kelly Memoir Inked by Scribner

The New York Times reported today that Scribner, a Simon and Shuster company, will publish Mark and Gabrielle’s memoir.

From the Times article:

“The book will be an account of their courtship, Ms. Giffords’s political career and the attack in Tucson in January that left Ms. Giffords gravely wounded with a gunshot wound to the head, according to a statement from Scribner. “We are deeply honored to publish Mark Kelly’s and Gabby Giffords’ memoir, which will fully unfold the remarkable story of two exceptionally brave public servants,” said Susan Moldow, the publisher of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.”

Mark and Gabby will be assisted in the writing by Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

Vibrant Replies

When I discovered Vibrant advertising linked to The Data Port I sent a polite short note to Vibrant. I enquired how I might be paid on a per-hit basis for their use of, and intrusion into, my posts.

My reality principle is perfectly sound. I didn’t really expect an answer...but what the hey! it was worth a shot. I didn’t at the time realize that Gannett, a powerful communications organization was responsible. I assumed that it must be making enough money from a Joint Operating Agreement with the Star to throw a few bucks in our direction.

I received a courteous boilerplate response from Vibrant, part of which follows:

Can you disable these ads?

Vibrant In-Text Ads are found on over 3,500 premium websites. Some of these websites choose to offer a disable switch. You can find this by going to the website and moving your mouse over a double-underlined word or phrase. Once you see the Vibrant In-Text Ad unit, click on the "?" in the upper right corner. If the website has chosen to offer the disable feature it will be found on this page.

I clicked. No disable feature was offered by Gannett.

Official Data Port Disclaimer:

The Data Port does not endorse or guarantee the safety, honesty or reliability of any product or service offered by hot link in the body of a Data Port post. If you wish to follow The Data Port free of these unwanted links please visit us here.

This post will be puzzling to some as I have just started to double post again. For background visit:

http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

More Republican Infighting

Over in Jim Kelly’s cactus patch I read that Jim Deakin may be losing his home. This is a serious enough fault, apparently, to occasion a continuing rant against Deakin’s candidacy for the Republican senatorial nomination.

In fairness to the prickly one he does go on to sympathize with Deakin for the loss of his home.

Wait a minute...is that a tear in the crocodile’s eye?

For earlier comments on political hit pieces click here.

CrossPosted from: http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

WikiLeaks and the Afghan War

It’s been five days since WikiLeaks released the raw intelligence data about the Afghan war.

If you are a true political junky you have probably devoured the reportage by The NY Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. If you’ve missed any of it I suggest you visit those sites and get caught up. Links below.

There are two questions that can be asked about this huge data dump: Has it done any harm and does it tell us anything about the progress of the war that we (as citizens here at home) didn’t already know?

Let’s talk about the possible damage. On this issue Don Smith, over at Fort Buckley, makes an excellent point. The data dumps revealed the names of numerous Afghan informants upon whom our forces relied. Those informants were ordinary Afghanis and not part of the Afghan government infrastructure...army, police, political officials.

They have now been put in harm’s way and, worse, their reasonable expectation of confidentiality has been damaged...with the result that informants will be less likely to come forward in the future.

It’s argued by some that another source of damage is the fact that these reports reveal something about the response tactics of our forces; something that the Taliban somehow didn’t know. It’s not clear to me that this could be true, since the Taliban have been on the receiving end of those tactics and they’re not dummies.

So what do we at home know that’s new, really new? Not much, with the possible exception of the fact that the enemy now has heat-seeking missiles with which to bring down helicopters. I imagine they’re a bit more sophisticated than the weapons we gave the Mujahidin with which to torment the Russian bear.

For the rest of it, all the leaks do is confirm what we might already have assumed from news reports:

The Taliban are skilled guerilla fighters, whose mobility allows them to offset some of the advantages of heavily mechanized armies. Like all guerilla forces they have the advantage of invisibility, able to melt into the population, like fish in the ocean.

The Afghanis have apparently no real sense of “Nationhood.” Afghanistan is essentially a collection of tribal fiefdoms in which corruption (or what we recognize as corruption) is simply what they recognize as common practice.

Corruption is so commonplace that it became fodder for an American comic strip. Trudeau (Doonesbury) spent a week describing an Afghan commander and his soldiers systematically disassembling an army post and selling it off piecemeal.

Civilian deaths do us no good, and there have been a number of them. I believe that we have made every effort to avoid them. However, in the fog of war, especially in the sort of guerilla war that is Afghanistan, face this fact: These deaths are tragic, but unavoidable.

To the extent that we, as American citizens, continue to support this war, or fail to oppose it, the responsibility for those deaths are yours and mine

Finally, something we knew but didn’t want to face: It is cheaper for the Taliban to fight us than it is for us to fight them. The latest supplemental war funding bill was a shade less than 59 billion dollars. That’s 59,000 million dollars. Since we are planning to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan that figures to almost 2 million dollars a soldier.

Perhaps it’s time for us, as citizens, as voters, to discuss what we really want to do about this war. Nine years is a long time; 1215 deaths and 6773 casualties is a high cost in human suffering; 90 billion dollars (Heritage Foundation estimate through 2010) is a lot of money.

Does the present state of the Afghan war represent success or failure? Ultimately it’s our call.

Here are some links:

Der Spiegel

The Guardian

NY Times

Fort Buckley

Re-posted from Http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Political Hit Pieces

I’m a big fan of the rough-and-tumble of political debates. When debate becomes character assassination I worry about the consequences for the health of our political system.

I’m sorry, but I’ve about had it with the repeated mailings from the McCain campaign about JD Hayworth. Now I happen to believe that Hayworth has the heart of a scoundrel; but I also believe that once McCain has pointed this out he should move on to outlining plans and programs for the next six years.

Assuming he’s elected, that is...and the rancorous progress of the Republican primary makes that less likely. How many Independents and quietly middle of the road Republicans are going to swallow McCain’s avidity for office? His rejection of hands-across-the aisle cooperation with Democrats in the interest of what’s good for the nation? The loss of his fabled status as a “maverick?” Your guess is as good as mine.

By the same token he has probably put paid to Hayworth’s chances, which leaves the Republican Party in bad shape.

And what about the third wheel in the campaign, Jim Deakin? He’s despised by the Hayworth supporters, because they are afraid he will take votes from Hayworth and hand the primary to McCain.

Frankly I can’t see a nickel’s worth of difference between the Tea Party convictions of any of them. Why not vote for Deakin?

The Tea Party conservatives are as interested in defeating McCain (in the primary) as his potential Democratic opponents would be (in the general.) For the sake of defeating McCain they are willing to risk sacrificing a Senate seat.

Before this primary season I’d have bet the farm on the proposition that no Democrat would be able to defeat McCain. But now the Democrats have a field of talented and aggressive candidates, any one of whom could defeat Hayworth or Deakin; and any one of whom stands a great chance of beating McCain, should he survive the primary.

Hard times ahead for the Republican Party.

Cross-posted to tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Primary Early Voting Begins Thursday

(Independents Welcome)

Not that anyone will notice, since that’s the day when SB 1070 becomes active and we’ll all be riveted by the events of the day. Still, the events surrounding “1070 Day” may wake you from political lethargy to the point that you’d want to vote.

It’s important to remember that Independents may vote in any of the four primaries...Republican, Democratic, Green or Libertarian. All you have to do is ask.

There are plenty of reasons for Independents to shoulder in to one of the four primaries. If there are no contests in the party you secretly favor you may want to nip over into the opposition primary and vote for the “weakest” opposition candidate.

Of course you may secretly favor a party in which there are a number of contestants in a race and you want to vote for your favorite.

Don’t forget there are races for more than state and national legislators. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Corporation Commission, among others. You may want to cast a ballot to deny some whacko a chance of election.

During early voting there are two ways of requesting an early ballot.

You may contact the Pima County Recorder on line and request an early ballot. To do that, click here.

(http://www.recorder.pima.gov/earlyballot/default.aspx).

You may also request a ballot by phone: 520-740-4330

If you would prefer to cast a ballot in person a number of polling places will be available. These are listed here, click.

(http://www.recorder.pima.gov/ev_sites.aspx)

Cross-Posted from TucsonCitizen.com/dataport

Concealed Carry

I don’t really have a dog in this fight. Back in my pistol-shooting days I’d just drop my holstered weapon into a saddle bag and ride off; but I’m not shooting any longer.

As I’ve aged I do occasionally carry a walking stick and I wonder if now I might not carry my quite elegant sword cane. Clearly a weapon and clearly concealed.

Perhaps it was the coming change in our laws that helped call attention to the bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

ARIZONA
Armed and Uneducated

Reposted from The Data Port at TucsonCitizen.com

April's Fools

Yesterday the Republican majority in the state legislature voted to join 14 other states in a courageous battle to keep health care for Arizonans from being forced down their throats.

Here are some examples of the incisive Republican analysis of the dangers of health care reform, as reported in the Arizona Republic:

Rep. Ray Barnes, R-Phoenix, said the health-care law is a death sentence for elderly Americans because, he predicted, it will lead to rationed care.

Apparently Barnes wants to return to the good old days when 30 million Americans had their health care rationed into near non-existence by their inability to buy insurance.

"This really is about much more than health care, and much more than cost," said House Health Committee Chairwoman Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix. "It's about freedom."

The federal law, she said, gives Washington, D.C., complete control of health-care decisions.

No...federal law leaves almost complete control of health-care decisions in the hands of the insurance industry.

The loopiest justification of the the proposed legal attack on health care reform comes from Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise:

“We're seeking to protect the citizens from this unconstitutional socialism that is under way. The socialists of today are only a gun confiscation away from the communists of tomorrow.”

Wow! How’s that for a slippery slope? Insurance by private corporations...to socialism...to gun confiscation...to communism.

Oh, comrades, if only it were that simple.

Cross Posted from TucsonCitizen.com

A Short Note on Coffee

I’ve just finished reading “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” the first two novels in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium-series trilogy about Lisbeth Salander.

Assuming that Larsson’s picture of daily life in Sweden is true, the Swedes are close to the world’s champion coffee drinkers. Of course it may be that a world filled with journalists, cops, and a quirky little girl hacker...the fascinating Lisbeth Salander...isn’t perfectly reflective of the quotidian life of the average Swede. But I don’t think so.

I’ve always thought that Americans were the most devoted coffee drinkers, but the United States annually consumes 4.2 kilograms of coffee per capita; the Swedes top out at 8.2 kilograms per capita. (Incidentally the Finns seem to be the champs, at 12 Kilograms per person...I wonder why.)

Still, we undoubtedly do a lot coffee drinking and that makes me wonder why so much of it is so bad. It’s heresy, I know, but we drink an awful lot of bad coffee...a kind of watery brown fluid which you might not recognize as coffee blindfolded. A decent cup of restaurant coffee is rare.

One reason may be that we make our coffee too weak, which might explain why Swedes apparently use twice as much coffee in their cup of Joe as we do. And why devoted coffee drinkers go to specialty coffee houses.

Fun coffee statistics here

Read about Stieg Larsson here.

Cross Posted from Tucson Citizen