“The President’s big campaign donors got nice returns for their ‘investments’ in him to the tune of billions of your tax dollars in the form of ‘green energy’ stimulus funds. The technical term for this is ‘pay-to-play.’ Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and “green energy” giveaways, he took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again.”

“Some GOP candidates also raised mammoth amounts of cash, and we need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their ‘investments’? We need to know this because our country can’t afford more trillion-dollar “thank you” notes to campaign backers. It is an important question, and it cuts to the heart of our problem. And I speak from experience in confronting the corruption and the crony capitalism since starting out in public office 20 years ago. I’ve been out-spent in my campaigns two to one, three to one, five to one… But the reason is simple: It’s because like you, I’m not for sale.”

In point of fact, there really wasn’t a viable progressive choice in the 2008 primary in hindsight because of what a total piece of shit John Edwards turned out to be. So even though I currently have no intention of supporting Barack Obama’s re-election efforts and I may even vote for a 3rd party candidate, I think the idea of setting up a primary challenger for him is folly. If you’re a democrat, a well funded challenge just guarantees that he loses if the GOP manages to nominate anyone but the worst of the slavering mouth breathers. I’ll close with the final paragraph of Walsh’s piece. I think it is pretty much politics 101 for anyone who cares about the electoral world, but it’s something that damn few people in the mainstream media are willing to engage with. Only some progressive activists and bloggers had taken this on as gospel until pretty recently:

I think many on the left anointed Obama the only progressive in the race out of a rescue fantasy. But it’s possible people who want to see Obama face a primary — and I do not, as I’ve said too many times to count — have the same fantasy with a different, as yet unnamed savior. It gives progressives a sense of control: It’s not that Republicans are better organized than we are, or that they’ll fight Democrats by any means necessary; it’s our fault that we somehow chose the wrong candidate. At least we might have it in our power to make better choices. But I think it’s time to reckon with the fact that no matter whom we choose, Rush Limbaugh and his Republican Party will do whatever it takes to see them fail.

In 2008, I failed to imagine that the banks would get the money, essentially, with no strings attached. Even the one slight string that was attached (compensation limits until they’d paid the money back) was attacked as if it were the foot in the door to resurrect Stalin and install him in the White House. I failed to imagine that, within two years of their near collapse, they would be right back to doing what they had done for the two plus decades prior: helping to bust unions, cut taxes for the rich, slash benefits for the rest of us, drive the country into crippling debt, and leech off as much money from everyone they come into contact with as possible. From the perspective of a person who actually cares about human suffering, it made sense to support the bank bailouts. You’ll never convince me that letting a few more of them fail wouldn’t have dropped us right into a Great Depression style economic collapse. I don’t think 20 or 25 per cent unemployment would have been unlikely at all. Here’s the rub, though. Without those string, without major reform, we have guaranteed that there will be another bank crisis. It is not a historical accident that we managed to avoid a major banking crisis from the end of the Great Depression to the Savings & Loan scandals of the 80s. We had regulations in place that prevented bank crises. Until that next crisis comes, the finance industry will continue to undermine the living standard and the safety net of the average American. The next time the banks collapse, we ought to let them. We can give them the choice of going under or being nationalized, but either way the current owners should forfeit their investment. That includes me if my 401k is invested in them. Nothing short of a whole sale restructuring of our financial industry is going to stop the US from sliding toward being a third world country.

If I were going to do an autopsy on the Obama presidency today, though, the likely causes of death are simple.

1. He did not understand that his opponents would do anything to win, including intentionally hurting the country.

2. He did not understand how dishonest and vicious his opponents would be. That is just an unforgivable amount of stupidity or naivete after what they did to Bill Clinton.

3. He did not understand that in an economy this bad, people care more about results than about appearances of bipartisanship or about “the tone”.

Back on April 30th, I wrote a post wherein I basically said that all of the rumors of Charlie Crist’s political demise were greatly exaggerated. At the time, The Times, The Post, and the networks were calling his impending and then announced run as an independent a desperate move to try to save his career. In one article I linked, a pollster from Mason Dixon walked us through how Crist couldn’t win. I disagreed and laid out why.

Yesterday, I got an email from a Democratic fund raiser who has put his law practice on hold to raise money for Crist. I also saw a couple different blog entries (one at the Post, can’t recall the other) that were surprised to see Crist back from the dead. This is the problem with the national media. Once they have a set narrative, the whole lot of them just gets on board and will usually stick with it until (and sometimes beyond) the point where they just can’t deny that the facts say something else.

I’m really not surprised to see Democrats supporting Crist, as I wrote in April. No Democratic governor ever had the guts to take office and then almost immediately restore the voting rights of felons. That’s, by far, not the only thing that a Crist did that a lot of Democrats wished Lawton Chiles or Bob Graham had done as governor. Conventional wisdom says that California is the trendsetter in American politics, but our current polarized climate started in Florida. In the late 80s, the state’s African American leaders in the legislature made a deal with the devil. They got districts drawn that gave them free seats for life (and in some cases now handed down to their kids) in exchange for making the rest of the state permanently Republican. Many of Florida’s districts don’t even field a challenger from the other party. This has lead to an entire state where most of the legislative and (to a lesser degree) the Senate candidates have pandered to the far right to win the primary, knowing they would probably not face a challenger (and not a viable one if they did) from the other party.

Crist has been a moderate as a statewide figure as Attorney General and as Governor. He’s really the first statewide figure since Bob Graham to try to appeal to the broad center rather than his party’s base. If I were still a Floridian and Crist were running for re-election as a governor, I very might well be placing my first vote for a Republican governor. Out of the three candidates running for Senate, he’s the one who would be most likely to get my vote right now. Some Democrats have said (and Rubio’s people made use of this) that Crist was the best Democratic governor of their lifetimes. I will not be surprised at all if it turns out that a big chunk of the Democratic establishment comes out publicly in favor of him and raises money for him.

I’ve come to think that writing about social issues is also useless. That was the only possible other purpose I had in mind for the blog. I have found in my own writing and in reading some other more famous blogs that too much of how your writing is perceived comes not from the ideas in your piece, but from the biography of the writer. I don’t believe that my own words are ever either so vaguely stated or so poorly written as to allow for, literally, opposite interpretations. Yet I’ve found that to be the case at times. People who know me, know my family background, know my (admittedly lapsed) resume as an activist, etc will think I am saying one thing while people who don’t know or only know a portion of that will think I’m saying the opposite. If my writing isn’t that vague, then the reasons I’ve stated seem adequate ones for quitting. It’s the author, not the words that people are reading. If my writing is that vague, then I’m not suited to doing this.

In the last year, I’ve found that I’m losing that interest. The environment is so toxic. The structure has been so altered by recent supreme court rulings that I don’t think we’ll have a functional political system again in my lifetime. I no longer really believe that much good can be done through the political system. At best, you can stave off some of the bad, maybe even roll some of the bad back at times. I think there are ways to do good and I’m kind of actively looking toward figuring one out that will work for me. I also kind of feel like blogging about politics is just an enormous waste of time. Unless you’re famous for doing it, I don’t think your words can ever establish a meaningful reputation or track record by which you’ll be judged. In a medium that is only words, your actions outside of it don’t matter either, again, unless you’re famous for them.

For the last six months, the fact that I actually use some email addresses associated with this domain has been the only thing that’s kept me from letting it expire. If I continue to feel about this site like I’ve felt for a while, this may be my last update. The domain expires in a couple months. I may renew it for one more year to have time to switch out the email addresses and archive some content. If I don’t see you here again, thanks for reading. Hopefully, I’ll see you somewhere else.

Mr. Green’s assertion that this is a clear case of theft couldn’t be more wrong. I see neither an intent to steal nor an act of theft. I see a young man who made reasonable attempts and then some to notify the owner of this property that he possessed it. If Mr. Hogan isn’t guilty of theft, then the entire “case” that Stuart Green makes against Gizmodo and Jason Chen falls apart. The California shield law should have applied to Mr. Chen’s home. He should not have had his home searched by the police. The judge who issued the warrant to do so and the police who served it, after being informed of the shield law’s validity in this case should be disciplined.

While most Floridians are going to get introduced to Kendrick Meek in the next few months, I know who the guy is quite well. I’ve never been particularly impressed with him as a candidate before. He seemed to have done little more than inherit his position from his much more interesting and dynamic mother. If he were Kendrick Smith, I doubt he’d have been part of the Lt. Gov’s security detail as a state trooper. He may well not have been a sitting congressman right now. The long and deep ties to Florida’s African American political class is absolutely and without a doubt that biggest asset he’s got. I don’t think it’ll be hard for Crist to peel away Democrats. Unlike every other Republican at the statewide level over the last two decades, Crist has pretty good relations with the African American and non-Cuban Latino communities in this state. I think Crist’s decision to stay in this thing as an independent (and the steps he’s taken in the last month to make that viable) have been really good for him. I saw mention of a poll today that has him with 56% approval ratings in Florida. That’s up 11 points from a month ago and makes him surprisingly popular for a governor in a state with such a bad economy. At a time when all the tea party sheep have been saying that trying to govern as a post-partisan has spelled the end of Crist’s career, it may turn out to have been the thing that saved it. I’d be surprised if Meek or Rubio has anything approaching a statewide 56% approval rating. I kinda doubt meek even has 56% name recognition. In addition to just being a big media story for the run itself, Crist has the advantage of being the sitting governor. He’s not going to need to do as much media buying as the other two.