November 2nd, 2008
Just a few more days until this election is over. A few scarce days left until Sarah Palin can go home to Alaska and fulfill her true destiny: getting mauled by an enraged, oil-soaked caribou.
The caribou, quite frankly, are the only ones who can save us from her. That woman has emerged as a pillar of the reactionary Christianist Right. They love her. Come Wednesday morning they’ll be handing her promise rings for the 2012 election, pledging their devotion for the next four years, and anointing her as the GOP front-runner in the next Presidential election.
Palin’s transition will be from Governor to Pundit, paid speaker at conservative rallies, and official voice of the aggrieved Christianists basking in their moral outrage at the country’s turn against their theocratic dreams.
They will no doubt attribute next year’s economic recovery to their own prayers. In the meantime rational, thinking people will be running the government again.
The January inauguration of Senator Obama will herald the end of faith-based government, and a return to knowledge-based governance. Now if only we can get some more people of his generation into Congress, and boot out the Feinsteins, the Reids, and the Rockerfellers, we might actually have a chance of repairing the damage wrought to our nation over the last eight years.
But first we’ll have to vote, and we’re here with some recommendations for our listening audience on the Timothy Jordan Show News for the Second of November, Ought-Eight.
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This marks our final show before the Tuesday election, and our concluding edition of the Timothy Jordan Show Voter’s Guide for the November 2008 election.
We’ll provide a full wrap-up of our recommendations at the end of this evening’s guide, along with a handy printer-sized cheat-sheet version for listeners to bring along to the polls on the 4th.
The Guide left off last week with our wholehearted endorsement of Prop 7. I mention it again because there have been some recent polling numbers showing lower support for Prop 7 in the electorate.
The negative advertising is taking its toll. I’ve heard the same lines over and over again. “It’s poorly written.” “Major environmental groups oppose it.” “It will raise utility rates.” “It will hurt small solar companies.”
Okay, read the text. I’ve read the text. It’s not poorly written. In fact it’s very clear in its goals. Take a look at it in your voters guide, or linked from our website.
Major environmental groups are opposing it because they’ve sold us out. They’re taking donations from, and share board members and executive staff with the very same businesses like PG&E, businesses that they used to oppose. The Sierra Club and NRDC have done a lot of great things in their time, but on energy policy they’re simply not to be trusted.
The major utilities, locked into power generation from increasingly expensive fossil fuels, have been raising energy prices every year. So. Cal. Edison recently tried to jack rates by 20%. Prop 7 would not only force them into renewable, and therefore cost-stable resources, but it would also cap rate increases to 3% over the next 13 years. Three percent: less than Twenty. Think about it.
And I’ve heard the complaints about small solar companies, but discount them entirely. I’d love to see rooftop solar panels providing distributed, small-scale energy generation for our nation, but it’s just not realistic with current technology. Small solar has a place, but California’s electrical grid is built upon distribution of power from gigawatt-scale natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants. The near-term solution, while we work towards local power generation, has to be large-scale thermal solar and wind farms.
As I said last week, Prop 7 is the most important piece of legislation to come before California voters in a generation. It’s opponents only offer us the status quo, and we know how well that’s been working. The Timothy Jordan Show staff recommends a YES vote on Prop 7.
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We move on then, to Proposition 8, The California Marriage Protection Act, a Constitutional Amendment that simply adds one line to Article 1 in the California State Constitution: Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
As we drove around around in recent weeks and saw the Yes on 8 lawn signs my staff and I have been tempted to add a matching sign to those lawns that says “God hates Fags.”
Because that’s really what this is all about: simple-minded, petty, discrimination against hundreds of thousands of people for the simple reason that they’re attracted to their same gender. Why this is so terrifying and offensive to religious conservatives continues to baffle me.
It’s one of these last few bastions of socially acceptable discrimination, and it’s time for that to end. The California State Supreme Court ruled in May that a State ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, but the backers of Prop 8, aware that concepts like “equality” and “civil rights” were aligned against them, had this amendment to our Constitution ready in the wings.
It’s shameful to see that so many people in our Golden State want to drag us back into the dark ages by supporting Prop. 8.
We prefer the light, and recommend a NO vote on Proposition 8.
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Next on the list is Proposition 9, the Victims’ Bill of Rights Act of 2008, known around our office as the BUILD MORE PRISONS Act.
No, Proposition 9 doesn’t call for the construction of more prisons, but it does make it harder for State and local governments to release prisoners out on parole.
It would allow the family members of crime victims to appear without limit at parole hearings, as well as allowing any and all of them to testify at those same hearings. It fails to include a requirement for a defense legal counsel at those same hearings, which likely places it in violation of Federal law.
We have to admit that much of our initial opposition was based upon the supporting statement in the official State-issued Voters’ Guide, a statement that included a great deal of INFLAMMATORY BOLD-FACED TEXT.
It is our opinion that Prop 9 does more to impose additional burdens on the criminal justice system than it provides rights for victims. We recommend a NO vote on Proposition 9.
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The environmental initiative likely to pass, Proposition 10, isn’t actually an environmental initiative at all. Titled the California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuel Act, it is a five-billion dollar bond measure that, unlike Proposition 7, really is poorly written.
The bulk of the five billion dollars being raised, some $3.4 billion would be allocated towards something called the Clean Alternative Fuels Account. Clean alternative fuels, eh? Sounds like something we can get behind, right?
Well unfortunately Proposition 10 defines Clean Alternative Fuel as, “… natural gas or any fuel that achieves a reduction of at least 10 percent carbon intensity…”
Since when was natural gas a renewable resource? Since when was it a clean alternative fuel? I’ll give our listeners a hint: it isn’t.
And it won’t be, even if Prop 10 passes, except in California law. It’s an invitation for PG&E, and natural gas producers like Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the major backer of Prop 10, to call it an environmentally friendly fuel.
It could mean an additional subsidy for the natural gas that supplies most of our state’s electrical power, at the expense of real progress towards renewable energy production. Yes, there’s some money provided for actual energy research, but the opportunity for Pickens and PG&E to label natural gas as clean energy pretty much ruins any hope of seeing near-term progress away from fossil fuels made.
We recommend a vote of NO on Proposition 10.
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Proposition 11 is another Constitutional Amendment, titled the Voters FIRST Act.
We object, once again, to the use of unnecessary capitol letters in the official Voters’ Guide, but this may not be all that bad of a proposition.
If passed, Prop 11 would take the responsibility of drawing new district boundaries for the State Legislature and Board of Equalization away from elected officials in Sacramento. In their place would be a group of 14 citizen volunteers. Eight members would be drawn from the sixty most qualified applicants. Those eight would then choose the remaining six members of the Citizens Redistricting Commission.
The final Commission would be made up of five members from each of the largest parties in the state, as well as four members from minority parties, or who decline to state.
To be selected, no member could have held political office, donated more than $2,000 to a campaign, worked as a lobbyist, or had a direct family relation do any of those, either.
All hearings by the Commission would be open to the public.
Now we have to admit that there’s a certain random element to this Proposition. What if the only people who applied were complete and total morons. The Proposition assumes that the only people who would be interested in working on a redistricting commission will be intelligent.
I don’t know about that.
On the other hand, it couldn’t be much worse than the system that we have now, where our Legislature is able to gerrymander districts all willy-nilly.
We’re recommending a YES vote on Proposition 11.
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Our last ballot initiative is Proposition 12, the Veterans’ Bond Act of 2008.
It’s a $900 million bond to provide loans for U.S. military veterans to buy homes and farmland.
Vote against it if you’re a cruel, unpatriotic bastard.
We, we’re going to recommend a YES vote on Proposition 12, because while we don’t always respect the wars in which our Veterans have fought, we do respect their service to the nation.
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And that concludes this year’s Timothy Jordan Show Voters’ Guide. To sum up, on the State ballot initiatives we recommend a vote of:
1A. YES
2. YES
3. YES
4. NO
5. YES
6. NO
7. BIG YES
8. BIG NO
9. NO
10. BIG NO
11. YES
and
12. YES
Did you not catch that?
1A. YES
2. YES
3. YES
4. NO
5. YES
6. NO
7. BIG YES
8. BIG NO
9. NO
10. BIG NO
11. YES
and
12. YES
We’re recommending a vote for the incumbent Democrats in all of the State and National races.
And we recommend a NO vote on County Measure B.
The full text of each recommendation, with our reasoning behind each choice and links to the official information, can be found at timothyjordanshow * com, titled November 2008 TJ Voters’ Guide.
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This is still a News segment, even if we’ve spent most of our time focused on Tuesday’s election.
The Bush Administration, busy with trying to push through some last-minute rapine and pillaging of our nation’s environmental, privacy rights, and business law, faced a setback this weekend when Justice Henry Kennedy of the the D.C. District Court ordered them to turn over ten sets of memos from the Office of Legal Counsel and the FBI; memos that justify the ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.
The Administration was seeking to have all pending document requests dismissed, but the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC) was able to convince Justice Kennedy that some of them are worth further court review.
The government’s claims are centered around the protections of Executive Privilege, classification, and standard FOIA exemptions.
Their arguments were largely successful. The crown jewels of the case, the specific chain of memorandums between the White House and Office of Legal Counsel that provided the justification for warrantless wiretapping of millions of Americans, will remain locked away.
But some ten documents, mostly centered on legal advice provided to the FBI from the Office of Legal Counsel, the Executive Branch’s top lawyers, will be presented to the court for review.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of that review, because by the testimony of two former members of the Bush Administration, James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the senior lawyers at the FBI and NSA were left largely in the dark about the extent of, and the legal justification for the warrantless wiretapping program.
The documents are due for review by the 17th of this month. If there’s more to be said, we’ll say it here.
• Opinion and Order by Hon. Kennedy, Civil Action 06-00096 (HHK) PDF
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Senator Ted Stevens, facing re-election for the seat that he’s held for forty years this coming Tuesday, is now also facing his sentencing hearing on seven counts of failing to report gifts. Some $250,000 in work was performed by VASKO corporation, an Alaskan oil services provider, on one of Senator Stevens’ homes.
It has been alleged that Senator Stevens greased the wheels for several international contracts earned by VASKO, but prosecutors did not formally charge him with corruption. Instead the trial focused upon seven years of mandatory gift and income disclosure forms. Senator Stevens was unable to convince a jury that his failure to disclose a quarter-million dollars of work on his vacation estate was simply a failure of the contractors to send the bills.
Yeah, that really was his defense. “I would have paid them, but nobody sent me a bill.”
Well, Federal wiretaps, WARRANTED wiretaps, approved by a judge, thank you, revealed the Senator discussing the developing case with a co-consipirator, the former CEO of VASKO. The recordings were not favorable for his defense.
The Senator continues to claim to Alaskan voters, however, that he’s not yet a convicted felon, since technically his sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 25th. He’s facing a maximum of 35 years in prison.
We hope that he quickly learns how to protect his precious tubes.
• Sen. Stevens convicted, via Politico
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We’ll send our listeners to the tubes in a moment, because that’s one of the places where they can witness excellence. It’s…
Many of our listeners, born in the eighties, probably don’t remember Bloom County.
It was a staple of my childhood, funny even before I understood the darkly political humor of Berkeley Breathed.
Into adolescence the comic, and its follow-on, Outland, gained new depth for me. I remember looking back on one of the earliest Bloom County strips published; a strip where the bombastic Senator Bedfellow is congratulating a farmer on his fine corn crop in some hard times.
“’tain’t corn. It’s dope.”
Oh! That’s what he meant. I laughed again, finally getting the joke after first reading it somewhere around age six.
Well for the last few years Mr. Breathed has been doing a single weekly Sunday strip, a return to his classic characters, titled Opus.
When our local Mercury News went through restructuring in a failing attempt to modernize, we hung on to our subscription at the Fortified Mountain Compound because they still provided us a beautiful, half-page color print of each week’s Opus strip.
Then they dropped Opus, and we canceled our subscription.
There will be no more Opus to drop, because this morning saw the publication of the very last Opus comic.
It’s a sad day for the comics page. We will miss Mr. Breathed’s humor, and we hope that this retirement is no more permanent than the two before it.
Still, Berkeley Breathed is this week’s winner of the Timothy Jordan Show Award of Excellence. We have his final strip linked in this evening’s post of the News segment, a link that doesn’t go to the craptacular Merc.
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And that’s been our News for the Second of November, Ought-Eight. Be sure to check out our entire Voters’ Guide, published at timothyjordanshow * com.