Andrew T Trembley

I watched John McCain's town hall meeting while at the gym.

He kept on talking about "free market incentives" being the solution to our health care problems.

I am looking for answers on the following questions:

Is there a "free market incentive" in for-profit healthcare greater than the profit motive?

Is there a "free market incentive" for for-profit health insurance companies that is more attractive than rationing denying coverage to maximize profits?

Is there a "free market incentive" for hospitals and clinics to not increase rates for services to make up for losses on unpaid ER visits by uninsured people?

These are very narrow questions. Comments that stray beyond answers to these three questions will be frozen or deleted.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like it, and I'm disappointed. I would have like to see it overturned on the arguments already made.

Still, it pops the lid off a can of worms created by Prop 8. It's a very narrow judgement, and there's only one question it really answers.

On the up-side, it maintains our position of strength (sadly entirely disregarded by the "No on 8" coalition and campaign) in working to re-ammend the constitution. We have roughly 18,000 married same-sex families living their lives, working, paying taxes, raising children. We are not destroying the fabric of society in California, we're strengthening it. We are not devaluing California's spiritual life, we're celebrating it. That's what the campaign has to be about, not mealy-mouthed inoffensive unchallenging pap.

There's also the bureaucratic and business madness of supporting three different marriage and marriage-like classes of service. The RNC wants to complain that same-sex marriage will be a financial burden on small business? It's nothing compared to the burden that this balkanized judgement will place on business and government. This will have to be addressed.

Finally, there's the meat of the amendment, "a man and a woman." Wait for a spate of lawsuits to prevent or dissolve marriages since November where "man" or "woman" is debatable. Savvy divorce lawyers are going to go wild with the non-existent legal definition.

The imp of the perverse sees chaos, confusion and unintended consequences coming out of this, ideally enough that the silent center will want to repeal the amendment in disgust.

The "Tea Party" movement is a symbolic failure.

The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.

The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.

So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.

If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.

But they're not.

Pussies.

He's also the first Hawaiian President. What I just realized, though, is he's the first Midwestern President since Jerry Ford (who wasn't elected and didn't serve a full term) and the first Midwesterner elected President since Eisenhower.

Watch out!

...because I know there are a few Republicans who read this.

This is going to sound snarky, but it's not.

I would like to congratulate you on the trouncing that the Republican Party took earlier this week.

I'm serious.

Are you a Republican who believes his party has been stolen by the wingnuts and the tinfoil hat brigade? Are you a Republican sick of "Republicans in name only" who lead the party? Are you a Republican who isn't happy with minority factions driving the party platform and policy?

You've got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here, an opportunity greater than the one that a McCain/Palin victory would have given you.

This loss has forced the Republican leadership to take al long hard look at the party and what it stands for. It's time for you to contact your Congressmen and the party leadership, and tell them what you think.

I'm not going to ask you to tell them they need to reject their conservative principles. I may disagree with some of those principles, but they're representing folks who agree with them.

I am going to ask you to tell them they need to look at their methods.

Is the Republican Party going to be an impotent and obstructionist opposition party, clinging to party loyalty and old grudges and embracing the fillibuster that they only 3 years ago tried to put an end to, or is it going to be a meaningful participant in the next session of Congress?

Is the Republican Party going to embrace victimhood or move forward?

Is the Republican party going to continue on the road of division and fear, the wedge issue campaigning of Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes and Karl Rove?

There's a good chance that, if you're a Republican and reading this, you don't have a Republican congressman to call your very own. Chances are your neighbors are hostile to Republicans.

Why?

Because we, city dwellers, are campaigned against as being unpatriotic and not being real Americans.

Because we, ordinary educated coastal California working folks who may make more than the average wage-earner elsewhere but probably still have the same amount of money left over at the end of the day, are campaigned against as chardonnay swilling latté sipping elitists.

Because we, queer Americans just working our way towards full equality, are campaigned against as the destroyers of civilization.

Because we, the folks who aren't in the Christian majority and just want to practice our religion or even no religion, are campaigned against as dangerous terrorists and threats to your children.

In spite of the passage of Proposition 8 here in California, the Presidential election showed us one thing: A hope-based campaign can defeat a fear-based campaign. Campaign for something, not against your opponent's supporters.

Let your Congressmen and the Republican Leadership know that.

Let the circular firing squad begin!

No, not the wait for mail-in ballots to be counted in the Prop 8 vote. If all the numbers are true (3,000,000 outstanding mail-in ballots, a 400,000 ballot deficit) we need a 15 point advantage against in the mail-in ballots. That's pretty unlikely. Of course, once we get a report from the Secretary of State on outstanding ballots (currently the report is blank) we'll find out if any of this is even possible, much less likely. I don't expect that for days; they just got their website back up and functioning fully.

The silver lining is the ACLU's suit that the amendment initiative exceeds the boundaries of an amendment, and instead is a "revision" to the constitution. Seeing that suit win would warm the cockles of my heart. Why?

Well, "Yes on 8" burned up $40million that could have been spent by evangelicals and Mormons on other races. That's nationally significant dollars. That's more than Republican campaigns went into debt this race. Sure, "No on 8" burned up money that could have been used in other progressive campaigns, but thanks to Obama's charm and fundraising skills it wasn't needed. I would love to see all that money wasted on an initiative that was struck down.

That's not what's going to make me dance a happy dance if the courts do strike the initiative down, though. What will make me dance a happy dance is that, if the courts strike down Prop 8 on the grounds that it's a "revision" rather than an "amendment" that pretty much kills any chances future initiatives on the subject have. It raises the bar to a level that other states haven't been able to defeat, and well above the current 52% that Prop 8 could muster.

Will it happen?

I'm not going to set myself up for disappointment. That said, the courts have struck down initiatives on just these grounds; there is legal precedent.

...Obama has a commanding lead in the electoral vote race.

FiveThirtyEight.com, with its rigorous statistical methodology and analysis is currently at the "based on safe states and called races, Obama is over 270 already" stage. Yes, they're calling pretty early.

The AP (which I'm getting through the Yahoo! Election 08 Political Dashboard) isn't taking as big a risk. They've got Obama at 202 with called states (and they're being cautious about which states they call). Beyond that? Returns data from Florida looks very good, with a 3 point lead for Obama at the 66% reporting mark. Returns data from Virginia and North Carolina are looking distinctly possible for Obama with a scant lead in each with 80 and 70 percent of precincts reporting, respectively. McCain is squeaking by with the same sort of margin in Indiana. He's trouncing Obama in GA, but election-watchers there say that the Democratic-leaning urban counties are often the last returns in. I doubt that's enough to reverse a 20-point deficit, but stranger things have happened.

Senate and House numbers are also looking really good for Democratic candidates. Really good.