The NSA is Playing Tricks on Me

So today there was a ton of news out about the NSA sweeping up 75% of all the data in America.  

Here's the Article from the Washington Post

But what makes me curiouser and curiouser is this.  Netflix is about 25% of all US Internet traffic.

This is According to Sandvine According to the Atlantic

This is According to Bloomberg Businessweek

If this is the case doesn't this make the recent NSA release even more cynical.  If the NSA is sucking up 75% of all Internet traffic and Netflix counts for 25% perhaps the NSA is taking 100% of all the real information.

NSA to Telecom Providers:  "Yeah, leave the Netflix stuff.  We'll take the rest."  This story just gets stranger and sadder and stranger by the day. 

Cameraman Cops

Mayor Bloomberg was incensed when Judge Shira Scheinlein ruled against him in the Stop And Frisk case in New York City.  From a short Napoleonic billionare, what would you expect?  But the part that caught my eye in the interview is when a reporter asked about the judge's recommendation that cops wear cameras.

Don't take my word for it.  See for yourself.  Start at 17:30, end at 18:30:

But the Mayor is missing the point.  Cameras on cops is like a credit report on a person.  No one would doubt that everyone is better for having credit reports.  If you pay your bills on time you get more access to more money and a company gets to make more loans safely.  Everybody wins.  If you don't pay your bills on time and the credit card company loses money they tell everyone else what you did.  Until you clean up your act there's no more credit.  No one loses.

It's the same thing with cameras.  If the cops are behaving correctly and someone comes in claiming abuse of force the cops can pull up the footage and show what happened and what was said.  If the cops are misbehaving then all the evidence is right there.  Also, this technology is being used to convict criminals in court.  You can't say a cop planted a gun if the evidence is right there on camera as the cop is searching your person.  It protects police officers, it protects suspects, it protects the system.  It protects everybody.  Don't believe me.  Check out a town that actually did it.

According to the New York Times William A. Farrar, Chief of Police for the Rialto Police Police Department in Rialto, California did a test pilot in collaboration with Barak Ariel, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.  The conclusion was surprising to say the least.

According to Randall Stross of the New York Times:

Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video.

Chief Farrar agrees saying, “When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better,” Chief Farrar said. “And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.”

I think these cameras can solve the problem of misunderstandings and clarification between police officers and citizens in a much cleaner fashion.  Officers can do their jobs without fear of being besmirched by false accusations.  Citizens don't have to be fearful of not being believed when they complain of police misconduct.  The public can rest assured knowing that there is a public record of any events that transpire and can remain safe while know that the power of government officers is being recorded.  

This type of transparency breeds trust, respect, and good behavior on all sides of the equation.  And Left Right Down the Middle is all for it.

Whose the Next Casualty of the War on Drugs? You. Or at Least Your Money

"It can happen to you," is usually a nice statement that talks about love or winning the lottery or something to that effect.  Not this time. 

What if I told you that you can be pulled over, have cash (a couple grand) in your car, or valuables of any kind, or the car itself, on the side of the road by the police and they can voucher your car or cash or jewelry and sieze it with no arrest, charges, or due process at all?

Not in America, right?  Wrong.  Watch this.

The War on Drugs is winding down.  States are finding that it's basically filling their jails with non-violent offenders who are small time (virtually micro-time) offenders using or selling ten dollars or a hundred dollars of marijuana.  They're finding that it's not worth putting someone in jail for 25,000 dollars a year for a 20 dollar bag of drugs.  

Well you don't have to be Sam Walton to figure that out.

But the result is simple.  The War on Drugs has been going on for so long that now a lot of people are employed by it, particularly police.




But now that the War on Drugs is being rethought and reconcieved there's a problem.  Police departments still need money.  Police still need to be paid.  District Attorney's Offices still have to justify their use.  

For the full story see this article by Jen Stillman in the New Yorker (an example of excellent journalism).

What's happened is that now normal everyday people are being pulled over and their goods are being taken.  Now it's not the college educated well paid well heeled that are being abused by these civil forfeiture laws.  It's the poor.  It's the working class.  It's the barely surviving middle class who can't afford a lawyer from their flush bank accounts back at home, who don't know how to work the system. 

The result: working class and lower middle class people are being robbed by their local police departments with no charges, no claims, no due process, no convictions, no lawyers (because civil forfeiture does not require a lawyer to be provided to the indigent).  

The result:  The War on Drugs has a new victim which requires no due process at all.  That victim: Y.O.U.

Is Obama's Katrina Bush's Iraq?

President Barack Obama did a great thing when he first came into office (besides stabilizing the economy).  He ended the Iraq War. The Iraq War cost the US 4,487 lives of American soldiers and over $1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion dollars) very conservatively.  The War was widely unpopular and so when I heard this on Washington Week on PBS I nearly fell out of my seat.

(Watch the first two minutes)

Barack Obama's approval rating is at 42% right now.  That's where George W. Bush's approval rating was before Hurricane Katrina.  If the President even hints at getting back into Iraq under any circumstances, i.e. training and advisors (isn't that what they said at the beginning of Vietnam) or God forbid, US drone strikes and surveillance to basically help tribes go to war with one another Barack Obama will see his trust ratings plummet.

He'll virtually ensure a Republican President in 2016 and watch his approval rating hit 35% territory, lame duck status no matter where he goes.  He'll be excoriated by his own base and elected officials from his own party will avoid him like a cake made with Chinese milk.  

It's a pretty high price to pay for a bunch of people that weren't to sad to see the US Military go a couple years ago.  But if you want to be GWB for the next three years, barricaded in the White House, trying to ride out a long destructive storm, hey, to each his own.  

The Choice: 1.3 Billion Dollars or Our American Priciples

Today I was on Facebook and saw this infographic (nice job ABC) on Egypt.  It basically lays out the benefits of our giving 1.3 Billion US Dollars to Egypt.  But my question immediately was, 'Yeah, but what's the cost.'

Thomas Friedman said something that interested me.  Basically, he says we live in a flatter world, meaning because of technology everyone can pretty much see everyone else.  That means that the United States (or any country for that matter) can not afford to say one thing and do another.  That if we act one way in Turkey and another way in Indonesia everyone around the world can see it.  Google is only one click away.  The Internet has made everyone everywhere visible.

What does this have to do with Egypt?  It's simple.  If we pay off Egypt we get military access for ships, planes, and jobs for military contractors.   We also get peace with Israel.  

But the price for all of these goods isn't 1.3 billion dollars.  The price is our principles as a nation.  Our price is our global moral authority.  Our price is our position as a shining city on a hill.  

If we pay Egypt as they slaughter their people how can we possibly lecture Bashar Al-Asad about slaughtering his own people in Syria?

If we pay Egypt as they incarcerate their political opposition how can we with a straight face correct China when they lock up political prisoners for asking about freedom?


If we pay Egypt as they silence the opposition and enforce military law and silence freedom of speech how can we tell Vladimir Putin about human rights?  He'll call us hypocrites.  And you know what?  He'll be right.

President Obama and ABC News has failed to present a complete picture to the American people when it comes to our trade with Egypt.  The cost of all of these benefits is 1.3 Billion dollars plus our moral authority.   But unlike money, once you sell your moral authority, you can't get it back.

Are You on the Team?

I was wondering why I was watching Mark Lebovich's interview on C-SPAN twice today.  Maybe because there wasn't much on Morning Joe.  Maybe because there's really not much in the newspaper today. But I've heard conversations about his book This Town a number of times and I figured, why not get it straight from the horses mouth.  So I listened.





On my second listen I stopped the video.  This clip right here made me fully nauseous:

The Team.  I often wonder why when I watch the PBS Newshour I feel like a starving kid finally getting a meal.  I am a citizen finally getting the information I need.  Often I watch "the news" but feel I'm fed a diet of junk food, histrionics, opinion, and sometimes, more often than I care to really count, I feel that I'm purposefully mislead.  But like any sane person I sit and tell myself that's not true, it must be me.  Then Mr. Leibovich tells me that it's not just me.  And nausea sets in.  The press and the government seem to be the exact same source, a Janus coin, one being speaking with two mouths.

So I went back and looked at the Michael Hastings piece:

And to be fair I then looked at the Lara Logan piece on CNN:

For starters, I didn't know there was a club.  I didn't know there was an inside.  I didn't know as a reader that there was this preservation of relationships that goes on "Inside" Washington.  

To be honest I don't know really how to take this.  The idea behind the Constitution is that the press is given freedom in order to inform the people.  It's still happening but it seems, even according to Leibovich that those that do the best reporting aren't the reporters who are "inside" or on "the Team" but rather those reporters who are outside or were when they did their best work:

Woodward and Bernstein

Michael Hastings

Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras

It seems that it is the outsiders that are doing the best work.  These are the reporters who are the most trusted I believe precisely because they are outside.  They don't follow the rules because the rule should be to bring the American people the truth.

Here's another example of the insider versus the outsider.  Are you really a journalist if you're not on the Team?

Perhaps now I know why I don't watch the "news" much. I never seem to get much information from it.  Perhaps now I know why.

Reince Priebus, GOP Chair, on the Warpath to Victory

There are lots of slick talkers in the world.  Now not all slick talking people are shiftless and good for nothing.  Some are very talented and accomplished.  Some are leaders.  Reince Priebus is not one of these slick talking leaders.  But he's a leader nonetheless.  This guy has pulled the Republican Party back from the brink of being a laughingstock and has started setting up the Party for success.

How?
1.  Diversifying the Party.  Americas changing.  We don't have to look any farther than the White House or our own television set or our own neighborhoods (depending on where we live) to see that.  America is becoming the melting pot our forefathers always knew it would become.  Reince Preibus sees that and instead of screaming at the waves he's decided to build a bigger boat.  

Reince Preibus Introduces Diverse Selection of Rising Stars in GOP

If you can't watch the entire 40 minutes watch from 10:30 - 12:30 (2 minutes) and listen to T.W. Shannon, House Speaker of the State of Oklahoma.  He's an African American whose a bona fide Conservative.  Not a flavor of the month Conservative but your grandfather's conservative.  A type of Conservative that sees Conservativism as a path to success and a way forward to a good solid and better life.  To show this type of diversity says to the people of America "Welcome."  Reince Preibus is showing Americans that the GOP is not an antiquated party of old white guys but rather a more dynamic party than is being portrayed.  Will it get the Black Vote, the Womens Vote, the Latino Vote all by itself?  No.  But it does allow the conversation to happen and I believe people are more open to that conversation than the Democratic Party thinks.

2.  Standing up for the Party.  The saying is "Even a broken clock is right twice a day," and Reince Preibus is no broken clock.  Often the GOP has launched attacks on the 'liberal mainstream media' that were short on substance and long on rhetoric.  But not this time.  NBC and CNN really stepped in it when they said they would set up multi-night mini-series about Hilary Clinton (one a docu-drama and another a documentary respectively).  But the point is that these networks are planning what amounts to four days of advertising for the Clinton Campaign. Priebus said enough is enough.  I couldn't agree more.  Watch his exchange with Erin Burnett of CNN below:

Priebus has a point.  He's doing everything in his power make sure Republican candidates have a fair shot at the Presidency.  It's what a leader does.

3.  Technology.  The Republican Party was trounced in the last election.  But that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.  Preibus has hired a bona fide tech hitter from the Facebook management team.  Now, no, he's not Harper Reed, the technical whiz kid who managed to build an elegant flexible architecture that ran a nationwide campaign.  But he does have bona fide technical chops.  He managed dozens of engineers across different production platforms at Facebook.  He is a part of the Silicon Valley community and has worked at LiveScribe (as Senior Engineer), Nvidia and Google.  

Putting these three points together don't mean that the GOP is anywhere close to a victory come 2016.  But Preibus is serving very real notice: don't think about burying anything until you're sure it's dead.  And the GOP under Preibus is showing real signs of life.

No Trust No Glory Obama

Look, I'm not one of those guys that throws the baby out with the bathwater.  I come from a working class background.  My parents did whatever it took to get me to white collar land and you can take the boy out of the working class but you can't take the working class out of the boy.  Where I'm from we believe in a word that I haven't heard in years in this country and I certainly haven't used it in years.  When I realized I hadn't said this word in years yesterday it really made me sad.  That word is loyalty.  

Where I'm from you don't forget a favor.  You don't forget your neighbor who lent you a cup of milk when there were two days until payday and you needed a little something to tide you over. You don't forget the shop owner around the block who extended you twenty dollars credit so you could buy some things for your family when you really needed them.  You don't forget the co-worker who called you up early in the morning when your car wasn't working right and asked you if you needed a ride to work and continued to call you until you got your car fixed.  And you always tried to say thank you but none of your neighbors would hear it.  Because they weren't your neighbors anymore.  They were your family.  And you don't have to thank family because they're family.  The way you say thank you is to do it for somebody else as soon as you see a need.  And never mention it or think about a thank you.  Those are the invisible ties that bind us together.

I'm mad at Barack Obama right now.  I'm mad at him because we as a nation elected him because he wasn't George W. Bush.  He said he'd set things right with the country.  Then Edward Snowden, an American Patriot, a man who sacrificed himself and put himself into exile from everyone he knows and loves in order to tell the American people something they needed to know, revealed some revelations.  The revelations need to be mentioned.

That the US government was spying on the American people in mass.  That they were collecting every single telephone call of every citizen in the entire country.  That they were accessing every email, credit card transaction, Internet search, or anything of any type in perpetuity.  

If You Want to Read Actual News Reports See Here 

I'm mad because basically our President that promised "Change" has rendered the 4th Amendment completely null and void.  For a Constitutional law professor to do that while campaigning for "Change" and lying to my face on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is a sin and a shame.  And furthermore it takes me for a fool.  I do not take kindly to that at all.  Thus for the moment he has lost my trust on this major major issue.

At the same time there's a thing called loyalty.  I've had plenty of friends that did wrong.  I let them know we were still friends but our relationship cooled.  I kept them at arms length until they recognized what they did was wrong and admitted their error and changed their ways.  Then I embraced them again, hugging them, telling them I knew they'd get it right, and laughing over beers about what were they thinking.

I remember when this President took over this country.  It was literally falling apart.  Two wars running wild, an economy about to collapse,  no trust in government, a nation completely on the brink ... anxiety ... fear.  Not imagined fear, real fear, the type of fear you get when you're looking down the barrel of a gun: blank myopic fear.  This President took the reigns and pulled this country back from the brink.  And he did it in the face of a unified opposition.

I don't throw people away because they make mistakes or they have scars.  I will keep this President at arms distance.  I will look at him askance.   But I look forward to the day when I can embrace him again, when I can hug him, when I can tell my friends I knew he'd get it right, when I can talk to my neighbors and laugh over beers about what was he thinking.  Because, while right now I don't trust him, and I will keep him at arms length, I don't throw people away because they make some mistakes or they have some scars.  That's the lesson I learned growing up. And that lesson was, and is, loyalty.

Hip Hip Hooray Pension Funds!!! Wait. Whaaa???

Wall Street has long been playing a shell game with the American people and the American people haven't know it.  You see, every janitor, sanitation worker, teacher, public bus driver, civil servant, and general city, state, or county worker pays into a pension fund.  That fund is a whole lot of money.  In New York City it's 140 Billion dollars alone.  Just in case you didn't know that's $140,000,000,000.  That's a whole lot of zeros.  In Wisconsin it's $500,000,000,000.  The list goes on and on ... times 50.

Normally what happens is that these funds give their money to slick talking Wall Street guys who take the money, promise mega returns and take a 6% fee.  Now six percent doesn't sound like much but that's sixty-million dollars per one hundred billion.  Multiply that across fifty states (not to mention sovereign wealth funds, i.e. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia - think of all that oil money) and you've got a fee fit for a room full of kings. 

All this money would go to the Mitt Romney's of the world.  They'd take this money and do the worst thing imaginable with it.  They'd use the pensions of the average government employee Joe to basically screw the average private employee Joe.  So the city workers money would be used to screw the guy who worked at the local steel mill or paper factory or manufacturing plant. Both guys were working class guys (and girls) and without them even knowing it they were killing each other just by saving for their pensions.  The Wall Street guys would then often bankrupt the pension funds of the private workers, take their funds, give them the minimum possible, and return a paltry return to the local government.

The result: Wall Street 3.  The People: 0.

Why This is One Bad Ass Canadian

The guy above, his name is Leo de Bever.  He's Canadian, our good ole neighbor to the North. He works for the pension fund in Canada and he's part of a group of pension fund managers who are basically saying, we think we can do better by ourselves.  

They're forming partnerships with other pension funds and making their own investments and since they're not complete mavericks, since they are public servants, maybe, just maybe, they'll invest with an eye on what happens to the average guy working on the line.  

Look, I don't know if their strategy will work out.  I don't know if it'll last.  But what I do know is that if one working woman's money isn't screwing another working guy (or woman), government sector or private sector, I can only think that's a good thing.  You go get 'um Leo de Bever. America's with you on this one.

Looks Like Klobuchar is Putting on Running Shoes

Last week we wrote on LRDTM that's Amy Klobuchar could put a serious dent in Hilary Clinton's plans to become the next President of the United States. 

Well, it looks like Senator Klobuchar was thinking the same thing.

Amy Klobuchar Goes to Iowa

This could split the women's vote and give Hilary Clinton a real run for her money.  Or a second dose of soul killing heartache.  You be the judge.

Why Stop and Frisk Doesn't Work

If you haven't been paying attention to New York news Stop and Frisk has been frisked pretty well by Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin and found to be holding a big bag of unconstitutional in it's left pocket.  

Why is this important?  First if you're not a Black person in New York why should this matter to you?  Well because we know from history that bad things metastasize.  Crack was in the Black community.  What happened?  Twenty years later the white community got methamphetamine.  And crack.  90% of crack in America is used by whites.  Black people got drive-by shootings.  What happened?  Twenty years later the white community got Adam Lanza and Newtown or Dylan Clebold and Colombine or ... you get the picture.

So Judge Shira Scheindlin sought to stop this unconstitutional action early if you can call ten years in early.

But who cares? Stop and frisk doesn't stop crime.  It just pretends to.  

New York has about 400 murders a year, down from 2,000 a year a couple years ago.  For a city of 8,000,0000 that's great.  But Bloomberg being the overachiever that he is wants a city of zero murders a year.  And it's close to happening.  400 is a small and shrinking number.  But the question becomes what kind of murders are these?

Make no mistake.  The Blacks & Hispanics (B&H) killing each other in New York (80%+ of the murders in New York are of young Black and Hispanic men) is not like Chicago.

In Chicago these murders are happening over drug territory.  It's about cliques, sets, gangs, crips, bloods, and small groups killing each other over the lucrative drug trade.  But in New York that's largely stopped.  Guiliani put his foot up the arse of drug murders in New York.   Under Guiliani the sign to New York said, "Welcome to New York.  Don't start no ish, won't be no ish."  Criminals got the message.  Murders went down.

But these last 400 are persistent like Athlete's Foot.  So what kind of murders are these?

They're the kind that's very difficult to stop: emotionally driven murders.  They're catching your wife with another man in the act, grabbing a pistol, and shooting him to death.  They're  arguing at a party drinks and someone has too much and shoots someone in an emotional moment.

These aren't murders that will be caught by stop and frisk because stop and frisk looks for criminals.  It looks for people that carry guns as a matter of course as a means of doing business.  Rather, these murders are by emotional individuals who become criminals in the heat of the moment, namely second degree criminals (emotional and unplanned) as opposed to first degree criminals (planned strictly business criminals).  

So how do you stop these murders?

The Right Way to Stop the Last Murders in NYC

If B&H are doing the shootings maybe B&H can stop them?  At least that's the thinking of Mayor Bloomberg (yeah, the same guy).  He funds the program that allows the guy above and a bunch like him that are ex-convicts who walk the street, no badge, no gun, just their handshake and a boatload of street cred.  These guys basically are part of the communities they are patrolling.  They get word of a murder, well before the murder takes place.  They are privy to something every cop in America wishes they were privy to: the word on the street.

The result (wait for it):

There hasn't been a murder in East New York (a rough part of town) for the last year.  No murders.  None.  Zero.  A Zero murder rate. 

The Holy Grail has been achieved in a rough part of New York and it's right in Bloomberg's back yard.  

Now the cops don't love these guys.  They're ex-convicts.  They don't turn in suspected offenders.  They don't share information.  But they do what the cops can't.  They stop murders before they happen.  

There's a way to get to zero murders in New York (and every city).  But it's not with handcuffs and guns.  It's a controversial tactic.  It's not with Stop and Frisk.  It's with Walk and Talk from a bunch of guys (and girls) that used to Shoot and Kill. 

How ironic is that?

Why Immigration Reform Should Fail

I don't hate Hispanics.  Let's get that out of the way right now.  I actually like them and am grateful.  Let's be honest.  I live, like a lot of people, in a city.  In NYC 90% of my food is delivered by Hispanics.  My pizza ... made by Hispanics.  My house cleaner ... Hispanic.  So how can I sit here and say "No Immigration Reform."  Because I'm saying no immigration reform, not no Hispanics.  The reason I'm not in favor of immigration reform has absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law.  And I don't think Hispanics are drug traffikers with cantalope-sized calves.  (What an idiot by the way!)

The reason I'm against immigration reform is economic.  Let's look at the immigrants of the past.  

Blacks (forced enslaved immigrants) were brought here for economic reasons.  The racism was layered on top of economic reasons later to give a moral justification to a morally reprehensible act.  But the economic reason was simple:  America was a land of bounty, so much so that Columbus wrote that when he looked at the forest squirrels could walk from tree to tree without jumping and never have to touch the ground.  It was astonishing.  

But someone had to clear those trees and build on that land.  They needed free labor, not cheap, because you couldn't pay someone enough to do that volume and that type of work.  They tried the Irish but the harsh temperature killed them.  They tried American Indians but they either didn't have the skill set to be farmers or they killed themselves.  Then after observing a particular group of Africans who were farmers who could also bring their goods to market Africans were chosen.  That they were Black was a fact that was used for demarcation.

This in no way justifies slavery.  Slavery is a moral abdication on too many levels to count.  This is simply to explain the morbid economic justification for it.  It was Americas first horrid attempt at using immigration to meet the needs of a labor market.  May God forgive our Country and the Souls of our Ancestors and let our other Ancestors rest in peace.

After the American atrosity, Americans began building with free market labor and our own hands.  The Irish arrived in large number in the 1820s.  That happened due to the large industrial projects going on in the Northeast, i.e. the Erie Canal and rise of other great cities.  The Chinese Americans arrived in 1840 - 1880 in order to help settle the West during the Gold Rush and to build the Railroads that helped make America great.  The Italians arrived after the Civil War, encouraged by the American Government, due to the labor shortage created by the sheer brutality of the Civil War.

The point is simple.  Every group in America was brought here for one purpose.  The purpose was work.

The business of America has been and always will be business.  We need laborers, we open our doors. We don't.  We won't.  Everything else is just window dressing aside from political asylum which goes to how we view ourselves.

Now the second wave of Hispanics have arrived.  But unfortunately they've arrived at a terrible period of time.  We are in the Information Age.  It's what allows a factory of 300 to make more cars than a factory of 3,000 could 50 years ago.  It what allows one office worker to do the work of four.  Technology has reduced the need for human labor.  Don't believe me.

Watch this:

Why do you need new labor when this thing can do the same work of 20 people.  Automation will get faster and faster.  If you can do this with lettuce you can do it with any farm vegetable.  It gets twice the lettuce in half the time with half the people and this is only the first version.  This will only get worse and worse.

McDonalds eventually will run an entire restaurant with two people using iPads to order and machines to cook.  Restaurants will cut staff in half due to automation.  Coal mines, saw mills, ... the list goes on and on.  

There is no stopping this trend. 

Unfortunately that's why there is no need for a large labor pool of unskilled workers.  We are having a lot of trouble employing low skilled Americans today.  What will happen to 20,000,000 brand new low skilled workers.  It'll be a fight for those least prepared for this age of automation.  And I can promise you there will be blood.  

We don't need low skilled immigration reform.  Not because it's racist.  Not because they are drug dealers (Steve King), not because we're bad people.  But because the business of America is business.  And right now the sign on the window says "Not Hiring."

A Monkey Wrench in Hillary's Corronation

2008 was supposed to be Hillary Clinton's year.  It was a coronation in fact.  The field was relatively clear.  Well, to be honest there were some heavy hitters.  Two multi-term Senators with deep relationships and long legislative records, but alas, both from the Eastern seaboard.  A bonafide Midwestern moderate, Evan Bayh, a man fit to be President by anyone's standard but without the political machine or the name recognition of Hillary Clinton.  An American of Hispanic descent who was the former Governor of a swing state (and lest we forget a member of a very key demographic).  And finally, a big eared black guy with a funny name.

But the Clinton political machine was revved up and ready to go.  Until Iowa.  A crack in the facade of inevitability, a charismatic highly educated highly personable leader and down went Goliath.  It was Hilary's year ... to be Secretary of State.  No, not a bad consolation prize.  But as Nelly said, "Two is not a winner and three nobody remembers."

Well, if John McCain was number two then ... well, you can figure it out.

So here we go again with the march of inevitability.  "It's Hilary's Year," women are crying out.  But is it?

Hilary's Inevitable says Morning Joe's Mika B. & Kathleen Parker 
(Start at 3:30)

The grand pubas have said it so it must be true?  Right?  Wrong.  

The real question is this?  Do women want a Madam President or do women want Madam President Clinton?

That's a huge question.  African Americans wanted an African American President and since there was no viable alternative to Barack Obama then African Americans wanted an African American President Obama.  

It's sort of like Henry Ford said about the Model T.  "You're free to have any color you want.  So long as it's black."  (No pun intended).  But with Hilary Clinton, she's not the only plausible Madam President.  She may not even be the best most electable candidate.

Who Could Throw Hilary Off?

Amy Klobuchar would seriously knock Hilary Clinton off her game.  For starters she's not from the Northeast, a plus in large swaths of the country. North Easterners are cerebral, frosty, exacting, and a bit too sophisticated.  There hasn't been a well loved President from the Northeast since JFK.  Meanwhile Klobuchar is Wisconsin-Nice (even though she's from Minnesota).  In Senate hearings she can disagrees without ever becoming disagreeable.  

She has her Ivy League bonafides, doing her undergrad at Yale and her J.D. back in the Midwest in Chicago.  She can make a speech and has presence.  She has a legislative record, being in the Senate for seven years now, much longer than Clinton or Obama, and she's imminently likable.  In an early state like Iowa where face time and a way with people matter, she's just so money.  If she won in Iowa or even came close ... I can feel the ice cracking under Clinton again.

On the Republican side Nikki Haley is looking better and better every day. A strong unquestioned conservative (let's face facts) good-looking Governor, and a minority to boot (she's of South East Indian descent), she's the Tesla to Bobby Jindal's Toyota Camry.  A great speaker with great stage presence, she isn't yet ready for prime time.  Despite the fact that she beat a long serving member of her own party in South Carolina for her first foray into politics she's still half-baked.  The local South Carolina media is nothing compared to the 24-7 detail dismantling dirt digging story starving chops of the national media.  

These people kill for a living.  South Carolinian local media is like a duck hunt compared to an African Safari.  She should not go into this fight alone.  But it is enough to knock the new penny shine off of Hilary Clinton.  I can hear the ice cracking again.  

Bottom Line:  Hilary Clinton does not need a coronation.  She'll go into the general weak and untested, clumsy and unprepared.  You don't go into a prize fight without some sparring where you get hit hard a couple times.  She needs a fight.  And if she doesn't take it seriously she might be the most famous Secretary of State who tried but never made it to the Big Chair.