And this afternoon the Senate just held an emotional, fully attended little session for Stephens, letting him wax on ridiculously (his farewell to the Club – and ceremonial handing over of the men’s room key), and giving him a standing ovation.

Meanwhile, the House Dems actually showed some stones.  They booted Dingell out of the chairmanship of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, as Dingell has been massively resistant to all manner of green energy initiatives, and Waxman is a champion of them.  This move signals that the House Dems, unlike their partners in the Senate, are getting serious about change, rearranging the deck to make it easier to get new ideas into action. 

But then, the House has never been the Senate.  It has never been the cozy little old boys club, the cover-my-ass-and-I’ll-cover-yours nest that the Senate has been, is, and is likely to always be.

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Age and being a member of the minority party seem like two great disadvantages for this incoming Member of Congress. However, both have failed to stop this silver bullet lawmaker. 

When he was just five years old, Aaron started selling strawberries with his siblings on their family farm. Just ten years later he was working in a gravel pit, earning up to $18,000 a year. After years of saving, Aaron purchased his first piece of real estate on his 18^th birthday. 

Making money and investing weren’t Aaron’s only strong points. He also proved to be just as dedicated to his education, completing a four year degree in Finance in just two years. 

After high school, Aaron Schock wasted no time expanding his career beyond real estate investing. At the age of 19, he defeated the sitting President of the Peoria School Board as a write in candidate. But the Peoria School Board was just the beginning. Just three years later, in a very Democratic district, Aaron went on to defeat an incumbent and become a member of the Illinois General Assembly.  

Can the majority in Congress handle someone with this tireless, homegrown work ethic? I don’t think so! No doubt he will be well received by the new House Republican leadership team which is eager to push Republican legislation through Congress and build a new Republican majority.  

Watch for Aaron to become a familiar face during his first term in Congress. During his first five months in the Illinois State House, Aaron was able to push through 11 bills as a member of the minority party. He will for sure be a breath of fresh air in the stuffy halls of Congress. 

With “change” on the minds of the American people, Aaron will undoubtedly get the attention he deserves for the substance and citizen-first approach that he will bring to Washington, DC. Look for him to be a thorn in the side of the Obama administration as well as Republicans and Democrats who are comfortable with business as usual.  

If ever Washington, DC and the Republican Party needed to be turned upside down, now is the time and it looks like there is a workhorse to lead that charge, Aaron Schock. Looking at his record, we shouldn’t expect anything less. 

Congressman-Elect Aaron Schock (R-IL)

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As you can see from the following Venn diagram the intersection of Conservatives and Truth, Reason and Logic is well… non-existent. What is the source of data which supports this diagram? Oh, well, see I took a page from the Neocon playbook and I just made it up. See how is easy it is to make your case when you don’t have to be bothered by pesky things like facts?

Nate Silver, of www.fivethirtyeight.com has a comprehensive breakdown of why the Zogby poll Drew referenced in his earlier post (financed by right-wing talk-show host and documentary film-maker with some serious rage issues, John Ziegler) is, in a word, bogus. Though claiming to ascertain the level of awareness on certain issues of people who voted for Obama, it is in reality nothing but a push poll. An attempt to spread misinformation about a candidate or candidates by asking questions loaded with half-truths and outright lies.

The validity of the poll is completely negated when those being polled are asked to assign untrue statements to various candidates. An easy analogy would be asking people to identify which celestial body is actually a hunk of Gouda. Most people would not be able to identify the correct body, since the original statement isn’t true to begin with. It is important to note that those who voted for McCain were not polled, therefore, by their omission, it is implied that Obama voters are inherently misinformed idiots, while McCain supporters are supposedly far better informed. There is no data to support this implication at all.

It is intellectually repugnant to label people as misinformed or unthinking simply because they refuse to swallow the smears and lies you’ve wanted them to believe. And though Drew states that his support for a competency test is not directed at Obama voters, his use of data relating solely to Obama voters contradicts this statement. Come on, Right wingers, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim that only uneducated, misinformed people voted for Obama and then once confronted with the fact that Obama won handily among those with higher educations (in fact, the more educated, the more likely a person was to vote for Obama) suggest that only Ivy League elites voted for Obama. So what you’re saying is that both the uneducated and educated, both the informed and uninformed voted for Obama. Why, isn’t that everybody? Hmmmm…..

(P.S. Question #6 is clearly yet another attempt to remind people that President Lincoln was a Republican. I think it’s time to retire this particular strategy of associating the modern GOP with the party of Lincoln. First off, the offensive subtext of beating this rhetorical horse is that apparently African-Americans somehow owe allegiance to the Republican party for the actions of Lincoln, and if only they weren’t so easily duped into supporting the party that has actually done something for them in the last century, then they would vote Republican like good little black folk who know their place. And secondly, as I’ve stated before, the party of Lincoln and the current Republican Party share only a name in common. The Republican party of Lincoln’s time was a party of social progressives, a reality that had begun to wane by the end of the 19th century and come to completion after the bigoted Dixiecrats such as Helm switched allegiance to the GOP by the late 40s and early 50s. But then getting history straight hasn’t been a conservative strong point either. Let’s put it this way. The amphibian and the restaurant broiler may both be called “salamanders” but that doesn’t mean you can finish off a Baked Alaska by swinging a lizard at it. Get it?)

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Like many Americans, I started working in customer service as a teenager, serving the public. Most people who have worked with the public, especially in a retail setting, do not have much confidence in the intelligence of many of their fellow citizens.

In high school, I worked at an Albertsons grocery store which served people from homes with no incomes as well as those who were worth millions of dollars. Oddly enough, I did not see much difference in the level of intelligence between the two socioeconomic extremes – at least when it came to common sense, judgment and accountability.

Talking with others who came from a similar work setting, we find ourselves agreeing on one thing: there needs to be a voter competency test when someone casts their ballot. This judgment comes from our first hand experience, watching people try to function in society who cannot do something as simple as accurately read a price tag.

I felt the need to blog about this after seeing the results of a very controversial Zogby poll. In the poll, some disturbing statistics were revealed about Obama voters:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

This should concern us all! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on Obama supporters. I would have the exact same concerns if these were Republicans being polled.

In this country our greatest right and responsibility is to vote. However, what good is voting if you have no idea who your voting for or why you are voting for them? That can harm our republic.

I would like to propose a ten question voter competency test in which a perfect score is required in order for your ballot to be counted. Such a test would be issued with your ballot and would be turned in just the same as the ballot that one would cast. I think that it should consist of some of the following questions:

1. What is 1+1?
2. Who was the first President of the United States of America?
3. Name the two major political parties in this country.
4. Who is the current Vice President?
5. On what date was the United States founded?
6. Which President freed the slaves?
7. Name your Member of Congress.
8. What is the capitol of the United States of America?
9. What is the capitol of your state?
10. How many Constitutional amendments make up the Bill of Rights?

What do you think? Is this fair? Is it to harsh? Why?

I’d like to hear back from you.

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I have a better plan:

1) Make

2) Better

3) Cars

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Bail ‘em out, and bail ‘em out now.  Give the big three automakers the money that they need to stay in business.  Put strings all over it – strings about re-tooling the industry away from Hummers and into greener and cheaper energy sources.  But bail ‘em out!

What’s the alternative?  Well, first you’d get Chapter 11, bankruptcy re-organization.  And, since credit markets are sewn tight, wages are stagnant, and unemployment is rising, no one would be buying cars.  Moreover, most Americans would not buy a car from a bankrupt carmaker, as a car is a long-term asset that needs service, and if the carmaker is potentially out of business, that’s an unacceptable risk.  Yes, people bought airline tickets from bankrupt (Chapter 11) airlines in the wake of 9/11, but a plane ticket is a short-term expenditure that leaves you on the financial hook temporarily for the small cost of one flight. 

With no one able to or willing to buy cars from a Chapter 11 car company, that means that the Big 3 would quickly fall into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which is liquidation.  Then, billions of dollars in pension funds get stuck on the Federal budget, not to mention the billions – yes BILLIONS – in litigation that would flow all around this.  That’s just what this economy needs…

No bail out?  There goes tens – hundreds – of thousands of jobs, in the Big Three and in the supply chains and consumer chains that link off of the Big Three.  There goes a recession and here comes a depression.

For those who want to point to the much smaller, non-unionized carmakers in the South, and claim that they are the answer, so let the dinosaurs in Michigan go the way of, well, dinosaurs, try and remember that a lot of the Southern carmakers’ cost structure is based on economies of scale achieved through low priced supplier parts, and that those are low priced because the same suppliers also supply the Big Three.  Close down the Big Three and those cheap suppliers lose their scale economies and suddenly costs go through the roof in the Southern auto industry as well.

Listening to the gyro-head-spinning, shit-thrown-on-a-wall counter arguments from the Right is hysterical.  Their arguments range from textbook Friedman economics (heavy on the textbook, light on the reality), to neo-Darwinist “survival of the fittest” b.s.   Man, just once, I would like to see these fat-cat uber rich neo-cons have to actually live in a world of pure meritocracy, a world in which, truly, the fittest and only the fittest survive.  Most of these Neanderthals would look like road-kill…

Bail, Baby, Bail!

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Hillary Clinton looks like she’ll get the nod for Secretary of State; Obama wants the Senate Dems to leave Lieberman in the caucus and in charge of Homeland Security, and Obama will be meeting with McCain this coming Monday at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.

I hate it.  I wanted retribution and blood.  I guess this is why I won’t be getting a call from the Obama transition team anytime soon. 

Personally, I think that Maximilien had it right…

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No on Prop 8, the not-for-profit that Democrats set up to challenge California’s proposed same sex marriage ban, could be the most ill-conceived thing to come out of Hollywood since Flubber. Despite its record $35 million in contributions and help from Ellen Degeneres and other stars, it went down in flames on Election Day, no pun intended.

I’m not the first to complain.

The Los Angeles Times writes that No on Prop 8 declined to use the term “hate” in its advertising, deeming that too divisive. And Joe writes that it should have anticipated resistance from African Americans and tried to mitigate that.

I expected a bold campaign. But No on Prop 8 - the Bob Shrum of non-profits - chose a more cautious approach, airing ads that made no mention of marriage at all, as Michael points out. Leave it to Democrats to spend $35 million and come back with magic beans.

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Initially, I was hesitant to protest the Mormon Church, sensing that it was unproductive and would appear anti-religious. Why fight hate with hate towards a specific group when the majority of Californian Catholics, evangelicals and Protestants supported Prop. 8. After all, its government policy we’re legitimately protesting, not religious doctrine. We should concentrate on that.  

But I saw something else that went beyond motives: Solidarity. Protesters were energized and mostly chanting pro-tolerance words, WHAT DO WE WANT - EQUAL RIGHTS, WHEN DO WE WANT IT - NOW! while holding signs with positive messages. Men of all types, and they were mostly men from my vantage point, were holding hands, canoodling, side by side like some activist circuit party. It was inspiring to see so many bystanders ignorant of the protest rally with us. At one point one dude gave a shout out to all the heteros in the rally supporting us, and there were many! The police were just as civil, too, with few provocations save the usual, Keep It Moving! And we did. And so did they down Broadway with their sirens and lights screaming; until about 8 PM when we reached the Southern end of Central Park and what appeared to be the rally leader instructing us to continue the cause this Saturday at Civil hall, which I urge all readers to do in their city.

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