Hunt for Red October

San Jose, CA – In common political talk, a Red State is Republican and a Blue State is a Democratic One. (Red State think Texas. Blue State think California) On November Fourth schedules will be scrambled, people will be in a rush, some will turn on the evening news for the first time since Inauguration Day, and everyone will find out if the pundits were right about this year’s midterm elections.

While the elections aren’t actually in October, it is the last month in which both major parties, (and a few minor ones) can try to gain support for candidates, both for the House of Representatives, (every seat) and the Senate, (a third of the seats.)

The Democrats hold the Senate, 55-45. The Republicans are looking for six seats. They would certainly love more, but six seats alone would be need to give them a majority in the Senate, and if they hold the house, where they are up by a bit more than six, they will control all of congress, leaving Barak Obama and the Democrats with a clear majority in only one branch of government, the presidency.

The Republican Outlook is hopeful. Barak Obama and friends have more than a little baggage carrying into the race. Not only do they have Benghazi, IRS, and the Affordable Care Act Website, (Obama Care) to worry about, they have the simple problem that they are the party in power.

When you are the president, you are everyone’s favorite, current sitting president. You are also everyone least favorite, current sitting president. Being at the front is always difficult. You get all the credit…for everything. I have read articles on the internet about bagels, and in the comments someone took the time to use some form of twisted logic to bring the president into the mix of cream cheese and raisin and cinnamon toppings, and make it all his fault. (Don't ask me how.)

The Democrats have held the reins, with a bit of struggling and input from the Republicans, for six years, and during that time not everything has gone well. Some of it was their fault, some of it wasn’t. But since they were at the wheel, it was all their fault in many people’s eyes.

In 1984 Tom Clancy published his first novel. The Hunt for Red October. A submarine, the Red October went missing. Just as the Republicans Red October went missing six years ago. In the novel, the submarine was never found again.

Andrew C. Abbott

“A page is missing:” The Resignation of Eric Holder

The Department of Justice, that institution once presided over by a Kennedy, and watched over by many of America’s greatest lawyer, has a motto worth reading. "Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur" Which means in normal talk “Who Pursues For Lady Justice.”

In the recent months of its existence however, there have been questions from all sides of the political spectrum about its handling of various issues, including Fast and Furious years ago, and in more recent times his handling of pot, guns, and gay marriage.

Barak Obama’s is an administration that has been rocked with scandals, from the alleged IRS targeting of Tea Party groups to the health care rollout that went less than swimmingly. More like drowningly. The overseer of that fiasco, although admittedly it was not entirely her fault, Kathrine Sebelius, resigned earlier this year with one last glitch. Finding, in her speech, that “Unfortunately, a page is missing.”

Eric Holder served and serves on the same cabinet, and, unlike Kathrine, he has been held in contempt of Congress by the House of Representatives, and has been called all sorts of things and been accused of all sorts of charges. At one point the screen behind the FOX News panelists, with a picture of Holder stated “Department of Injustice.”

His resignation has been called for, for months, and yet Holder, the first African-American attorney-general serving under the first African-American President of the United States of America, stuck it out. As his tenure wore on, he fell under fire for his crack downs on the press, which ignited a fire storm from the one part of the country every politician who wants a future has to keep happy- the media.

The drama continued, and finally the missing page of the story was found today, when Eric Holder resigned his position. He will stay on until a replacement is found, but now he is a lame duck in many regards. Eric Holder came on the scene from private practice around six years ago and leaped immediately into controversy, and kept on doing so right up until now. He will depart Washington with his president being disapproved of by over half the nation, and nearly two-thirds thinking the entire country is headed in the wrong direction and downhill.

Republicans, in issuing statements about his resignation, made it abundantly clear that by them at least, and probably by the Democrats that also criticized him in his tenure, he will not be missed.

Andrew C. Abbott

Green Talk, Green Walk

In New York City, two days ago, an estimated 310,000 people marched, holding up signs and shouting slogans about how much they love the planet. Dubbed the People’s Planet March, if the organizers of the massive (and larger than expected) turnout are to be believed, then it is the largest climate march in history. Some estimates put the marchers at over 400,000. By comparison that’s around twice as many people, depending on who counted the crowds that listened to the great civil rights speech “I have a Dream” Martin Luther King, Jr. gave back in the sixties.

In recent months the New Greens, as they might be called, have been in the news a lot. Specifically because they seemed determined that no matter what he does on the Keystone XL Pipeline, he is going to hear about it. If refuses to allow it the Republicans in Washington are going to kick up a fuss, and his party is already having enough trouble with plenty of other fuss about plenty of other issues this fall. If he lets it pass…there were around 400,000 of them on Sunday, at that was just New York City.

A Climate Summit with many world leaders, with Barak Obama expected to make a showing, begins today. The march was just the warm up. The march itself, according to organizers, was only the largest of over 2,000 such marches happening all around the world.

America does not have a Green Party of any significance, like the United Kingdom, where they hold one out of over five hundred seats, but it does have vocal activists ready to shout out what they feel. One undying theme rang through all the reports, these people are anti-Keystone XL.

Yet, among the marches, the summits, and pictures of Bono, one is reminded of the Hippy Peace Movement of the 1960s. They were growing to unbelievable proportions. They were growing wildly and getting more and more vocal. Then along came Richard Nixon who promised to end to the war in in the far off steamy jungle, and the whole thing ended.

Although not entirely of course, the Green Movement, as it is now emerging is in large part about the pipeline. If that becomes all it is about, than a decision on that could easily trigger the entire thing falling apart.

One is reminded that the hippies were once the new big thing. But we haven’t seen any in a while.

 

Andrew C. Abbott

A Time for Choosing: Ronald Reagan.

The speech that more than any other single one, perhaps, brought Reagan to fame. Given in support of Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign, it left some wishing Reagan was the one running, and not Goldwater.