Four Score and Seven Years Ago...

Immense quality can be found in brevity. Current politicians could do themselves a favor by learning this lesson.

From Abraham Lincoln Online...

There are five known copies of the speech in Lincoln's handwriting, each with a slightly different text, and named for the people who first received them: Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft and Bliss. Two copies apparently were written before delivering the speech; the remaining ones were produced months later for soldier benefit events. Despite widely-circulated stories to the contrary, the president did not dash off a copy aboard a train to Gettysburg. Lincoln carefully prepared his major speeches in advance; his steady, even script in every manuscript is consistent with a firm writing surface, not the notoriously bumpy Civil War-era trains. Additional versions of the speech appeared in newspapers of the era, feeding modern-day confusion about the authoritative text.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. 

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham LincolnNovember 19, 1863

The Wealthy $34K Earners

To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

This falls into all three categories.

From Think Progress...

A conservative mogul worth $43 billion says he knows the secret to helping poor people. According to Charles Koch, the U.S. needs to get rid of the minimum wage, which he counts as a major obstacle to economic growth. 

On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Foundation launched a $200,000 media campaign in Wichita, Kansas, with a hint of expanding it elsewhere. 

The Kansas ad does not specifically mention the minimum wage, but it does claim that Americans earning $34,000 a year should count themselves as lucky, because that puts them in the top 1 percent of the world. “That is the power of economic freedom,” the ad concluded.

A Poison Chalice?

The GOP has been reveling in today's Voting Rights Act decision.  But as this article points out I suspect that in years to come -- three at a minimum -- folks will realize this decision was a classic case of being careful what you wish for.

From Business Week...

How important is this decision? Well, since 2006 the U.S. Justice Department has blocked 31 attempts to change voting laws, most of them in the nine, mostly Southern states fully covered by the relevant section of the law. Most, if not all, of those proposed changes would have aided Republican electoral fortunes by making it harder for minorities to vote because most vote Democratic. But the Justice Department stepped in. 

Now that can no longer happen. These nine states, along with those partially covered by the law, will be able to pursue whatever changes they like, free of federal oversight. They’re all but certain to make changes that favor GOP candidates.  

On its face, this looks like a big victory for Republicans. Is it really? I suspect it will turn out to be a poisoned chalice. Many of the GOP’s current problems stem from the fact that it is overly beholden to its white, Southern base at a time when the country is rapidly becoming more racially diverse. In order to expand its base of power beyond the House of Representatives, the GOP needs to expand its appeal to minority voters. As the ongoing battle over immigration reform demonstrates, that process is going poorly and looks like it will be very difficult. 

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act will make it easier for Republicans to hold and expand their power in those mainly Southern states. That will, in turn, make it easier for them to hold the House. It will also intensify the Southern captivity of the GOP, thereby making it harder for Republicans to broaden their appeal and win back the White House.

Falling Behind

For those who think the minimum wage is too high, think again.

From HuffPo...

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 is worth $2 less today than it was in 1968 when adjusted for inflation. That's one of the findings in a June study by the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute. 

Today, the minimum wage, which hasn't increased since 2009, falls short of a living wage. According to the EPI study, a full-time worker would need to earn $11.06 an hour in 2011 to keep a family of four out of poverty. 

In February, President Barack Obama proposed raising the the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. Republican lawmakers unanimously voted down a House proposal to raise the minimum wage in March.

The Election Wasn't Fair

Republicans are correct, the election wasn't fair.

From Political Wire...

A new Hamilton College poll finds that heading into the 2012 election, "both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about the fairness of the election. Only 15% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats were very confident that the election would be decided fairly." 

"After the election, fears about voter fraud abated among Democrats but skyrocketed among Republicans, with 58% of Republicans not confident at all about the fairness of the election."

But just not in the way they think.

From the Washington Post...

Faller, Nathan, and White “contacted every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.” One quarter of the e-mails used a Latino-sounding name, like “Luis Rodriguez,” and asked the voter ID question you see above. Another quarter used a non-Latino-sounding name, like “Greg Walsh”. The other half asked a control question using both sets of names to see if asking about voter ID in particular had any effects. 

[Of] 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states, [a]t least 4,557 officials replied. But the interesting story is in who they did and didn’t reply to. “Responses to Latino names,” the researchers write, “are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.” The bias against Latino e-mailers was about three points greater in voter ID questions. 

The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used. Responses to Latino voters were likelier to be non-informative, less likely to be “absolutely accurate”, and even less likely to take a friendly tone.

Institutional racism at work.

"To Turkey?"

I've watched this exchange between Rand Paul and Clinton over a half dozen times and it still cracks me up.

The entire segment is worth watching but the Hilarity (ha-ha..get it?) starts at the 5:30 mark...

Another Inaugural Dinner

And I thought the terrapin was just the University of Maryland's mascot.

From the Smithsonian Magazine and NPR...

A recently-published menu for Abraham Lincoln's lavish second inaugural ball in 1865 provides an interesting look at how different the nation celebrated its new president just seven score and eight years ago. 

Smoked tongue en geleé and blancmange (a firm custard) shared room on the buffet table with roast turkey and burnt almond ice cream. As Yale food historian Paul Freedman [staetd], the cuisine could best be described as "French via England, with some American ingredients." 

"Oyster stew and pickled oysters. You wouldn't have found them in France as much," Gambino told NPR's Jacki Lyden. 

She also pointed out the presence of turtles on the menu. "Locavores would be excited about seeing terrapin stew on the menu. Actually, I read in an article from The Washington Post from 1880 that any pretentious affair in Washington had to have Maryland-style terrapin stew."

Reality Check

How many people in the U.S. have been killed from guns in the 20 days since Newtown?

As of today, at least 409, including six children under the age of 13.

From Slate...

Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, we at Slate have been wondering how many people are dying from guns in America every day.

That information is surprisingly hard to come by. It seems shocking that when guns are in the headlines every day, there’s no one attempting to create a real-time chronicle of the deaths attributable to guns in the United States.

Well, someone is. Since this summer, the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths has been doing his best to compile those statistics, tweeting every reported death he can find. He was inspired, he told us in a phone interview, by the Aurora, Colo., shootings and simply wanted to call daily attention to the toll that guns take. Now Slate is partnering with @GunDeaths to create this interactive feature, “Gun Deaths in America Since Newtown.”

Off the Charts

Andrew Sullivan does his yearly round-up of the best content on his blog, including charts and graphs.

When there is so much bickering over cuts to programs that support the poor and elderly it's astounding that the most obvious portion of the budget to cut isn't even considered but is instead sacrosanct.

Click here for more of the best charts from the Daily Beast.

Why?

CHARLOTTE BACON

DANIEL BARDEN

RACHEL DAVINO

OLIVIA ENGEL

JOSEPHINE GAY

ANA G. MARQUEZ-GREENE

DYLAN HOCKLEY

DAWN HOCHSPRUNG

MADELEINE F. HSU

CATHERINE V. HUBBARD

CHASE KOWALSKI

JESSE LEWIS

JAMES MATTIOLI

GRACE MCDONNELL

ANNE MARIE MURPHY

EMILIE PARKER

JACK PINTO

NOAH POZNER

CAROLINE PREVIDI

JESSICA REKOS

AVIELLE RICHMAN

LAUREN ROUSSEAU

MARY SHERLACH

VICTORIA SOTO

BENJAMIN WHEELER

ALLISON N. WYATT

For me, the emotion that surfaces the most in relation to the Newtown massacre is anger.

Anger because it did not have to happen.
Anger because politicians don't have the backbone to stop this nonsense.
Anger because "We the People" have the power to say no to such tragedies but instead our selfish, fear-ridden, gun-loving selves have repeatedly said "Yes, go ahead."

"Go ahead" and kill innocent children.
"Go ahead" and slaughter young couples watching a movie.
"Go ahead" and murder and maim citizens at a political rally.
"Go ahead" and extinguish the hopes, dreams, and futures of college students.
"Go ahead" and gun down families as they Christmas shop in a mall.
"Go ahead" and snuff out your co-workers.
"Go ahead" and slay patients in a hospital.
"Go ahead" and randomly destroy a mother, brother, father, son, daughter, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousin, sister, brother, wife, husband, teacher, friend, neighbor, or colleague who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The time passed long ago for us to say "Are we out of our minds? This must stop!"

I recall a couple of years ago when I found some very old guns that used to belong to my father. My immediate reaction was to get rid of them by turning them into the police. When the officer came to the house he unbelievably asked me why I didn't just clean them up and sell them to a gun store in Virginia. Completely confused and shocked, I looked at him as if he had two heads and replied "because I don't want them on the street".

This is the insane culture we are dealing with.
This is the country we live in.
This is why I am certain that someone, somewhere, right now is methodically planning to once again murder a massive number of people.

And once again we will say "Yes, go ahead."

But it doesn't have to be this way.

We have to the power to change our future.
We have the power to save lives.
We have the power to stop this madness.

No one ever thinks it could happen to them. But it can.

Don't be silent. Demand change from our so-called leaders.

I've said my peace.

From the Washington Post...

...the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”  

Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws. 

1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.
“Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,”

2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.
Time has the full list here. In second place is Finland, with two entries. 

4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five six have happened from 2007 onward. 

9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.

From The Atlantic, a country with a sane approach to gun ownership...

To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you'll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don't forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

A few stats to contemplate from The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence...

• In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.1
• 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.2
• Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.3
• Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.4
• In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.5

ACORN's Return

This is not from The Onion but it certainly sounds like it.

From PPP...

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the [2012] election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

The ignorance never ceases to amaze me. 

Poetic justice

The final tally clocks in with a different 47%.

From The Atlantic...

With 47 percent of the popular vote, Mitt Romney may become the president of nothing more than Ironystan. Yes, the final general-election tally is trickling in and, as fate would have it, Romney's total might look more like that mythical number after all. Well, according to David Wasserman of the Cook Political report, it's more like 47.439 and dropping, which, of course rounds down to 47 — the same percentage of Americans he said were moochers and takers in a video that was one of the nails in the coffin of his presidential campaign. 

"By virtue of rounding, Romney’s share of the popular vote will be recorded here and elsewhere as 47 percent, so long as it doesn’t rise above 47.5 percent again," writes The Washington Post's Aaron Blake. "That seems unlikely. Wasserman projects that Romney’s vote share will actually head more toward 47 percent flat — 47.1 percent or 47.2 percent — because many of the outstanding ballots in the presidential race come from California and New York, which both voted for Obama by a large margin."

Vote!

A message from a President...

Herders vs. Farmers

An interesting theory about the origins of the Red-Blue state divide.

From the NYT...

The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a “culture of honor.” Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. 

As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. It can be seen in their laws (like capital punishment and a stand-your-ground right to self-defense), in their customs (like paddling children in schools and volunteering for military service), even in their physiological reactions to trivial insults.

It doesn't quite explain California.

The Grand Old Party

Thanks Richard, John, and Donald. With Mitt's attempted October make-over (Halloween is coming after all) it was quite nice of you to remind the country of what really lies behind the GOP curtain. You've done your country a service. 

Mitt Minderbinder

That whole "women full of binders" response, in addition to being condescending and creating the meme of the day, turns out to be one more pile of Mitt infused malarkey.

From The Phoenix...

What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor. 

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected. 

I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I've checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I've just presented it is correct -- and that Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.

Uno mas.

This has got to be the best photo of the debate...

Voter Suppression: It's a GOP Thang

It's a numbers game and the GOP knows it.

This is one of the primary reasons that we continue to vote on a Tuesday, a day tied to an agrarian society and horses and buggies, rather than on the weekend which would be more convenient but also result in a higher voter turnout.

From Esquire...

The same dynamic prevails when Congressman John Lewis of Georgia talks to you about voting rights. Nobody knows more than he does about their value because nobody knows more than he does about what they've cost. He was beaten nearly to death in the struggle for them. John Lewis tells you something about voting rights and you say, yes, sir, and you shut the fk up.

John Lewis gave a speech on Thursday night, in the first hour of the convention, that almost nobody saw, which is too bad, because it summed up the great unmentioned subtext of this year's election — namely, that, between the new torrents of money that are overwhelming the system, and the rise again of voter-suppression legalisms in the various states, which are in many cases products of those same new torrents of money, the election is coming perilously close to becoming a puppet show. The Republicans didn't mention that, because they have taken in so much of the new money, and because Republican governors and legislators in the various states are behind the new voter-suppression laws, and everybody knows that.

Akin: Nothing New

In the wake of Republican Rep. Todd Akin's reprehensible comments about rape and pregnancy, it's important to know that this isn't the first time that a Republican (yes it's a Republican thing) has made such a comment during the GOP's decades long war on women.

A few examples, trom The Atlantic...

• In 1995, 71-year-old North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge gained national notoriety after telling the N.C. House Appropriations Committee, "The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."

• In 1980, attorney James Leon Holmes wrote, in a letter arguing for a constitutional ban on abortion, "Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami." He later apologized for his comment and was successfully nominated to a federal judgeship by George W. Bush in 2004. Today he serves as the chief judge of the Eastern District of Arkansas.

• The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are "one in millions and millions and millions," said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature's leading abortion foe. The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to "secrete a certain secretion" that tends to kill sperm.

To slam the door on this Republican canard...

According to a 1996 article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, "among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year."

Ouch

This one has legs...

Swingless Florida

Do the crime. 
Do the time. 
And keep on paying for politics.

From The Daily Beast...

Laws that keep felons and others away from the polls “have their roots in Jim Crow laws, and were passed along with relics like literacy tests and poll taxes,” says Lee Rowland, counsel for the NYU Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program.

Statistics show that felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affect African-Americans, with 7.7% of the total African-American population denied the vote as a result, according to the Sentencing Project. That’s 1 out of every 13 black Americans. Rowland says stricter felon disenfranchisement laws are often made as a “political calculations” that “skew the electorate.”

And then there's this from Mother Jones...

In what amounts to a modern-day version of Jim Crow-era statutes, felon disenfranchisement takes a substantial bite out of the black vote. According to the report, nearly 8 percent of voting-age black Americans (1 in 13) is disenfranchised, compared with roughly 2 percent of their non-black counterparts. In three states—Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, at least 1 in 5 black Americans will be out of luck come Election Day. In the cases of Florida and Virginia, the numbers are sizeable enough to change the outcome in November. As Desmond Meade of the nonprofit Florida Rights Restoration Coalition put it to us last week: If these people were able to vote, "Florida would no longer be a swing state."