Sotomayor's critics can't do simple math

IF WE NEEDED more persuasive proof of the right-wing's desperation in self-serving revisions of current events, it was the gangland attacks on Sonia Sotomayer in the wake of yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court decision in the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case. Proving that they are as inept in math as they are in their public utterances, the wingnuts immediately described the 5-4 decision as a 9-0 whipping of Sotomayor's vote to reject the firefighters' complaint of discrimination. (By the way, she was one of three appellate judges who unanimously supported the city's action against the firefighters.). Fox commentator Laura Ingraham called it "9-0 on Soto's summary judgment of firefighters claims." Or as Rush Limbaugh put it, "9-zip." On and on throughout the day, the absurd story line reported a "9-0" defeat for Sotomayor. But I was particularly struck by the judgment of Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego, who bloviated: "Nobody agreed with Sotomayor - nobody!" Did I say law professor? At any rate, this group deserves a unified award for its loony day's work, and I will honor it with my first multiple Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award. (GALL)" I regret that this will have to do for now inasmuch as I have never set up a similar math award for folks who can't count.

GOP howling: Old business as usual

NO ONE SHOULD BE too surprised by the stiff resistance by congressional Republicans to the Administration's efforts to clean up the air we all breathe. Aided by those hide-and-seek Democrats who are incapable of rising above their own mediocrity, the GOP's attacks on climate change legislation represent business as usual for a party long identified with maintaining the status quo against all reason. If it's not global warming on this day, it's health care reform that sends the Republicans to the barricades to fire off screeching fears that we will become a nation paralyzed by taxes and deeper unemployment, as squishy as their figures may be..

Nothing unusual or imaginative here. The party of Nixon and Hoover has a well deserved reputation of opposing whatever might help the majority of Americans who don't enjoy their dinners in 5-star restaurants. It assailed the introduction of Social Security in the 1930s, insisting that it would bankrupt Franklin D. Roosevelt's America within a year. It fought Medicare and legislation to assist the unemployed. And now it is armed again to fight any steps, modest though they may be, to deal belatedly with global warming and the tens of millions who are not covered by medical insurance. Thank you Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

The GOP's only sub-imaginative way of attacking two of most important issues of our time is to howl about the inflated costs. And the costs of doing nothing? The question is too profound for entrenched Republicans and the skittish amorphous Democrats who will never be remembered for noble behavior.

But in response to those who claim to have a better (albeit unclear) idea than the Obama Administration in dealing with these critical issues, a little history: The nation has had Republican presidents for 20 of the past 28 years, a great many of them shared by GOP majorities on Capitol Hill. And during those collegial periods neither the president nor his congressional base worked seriously to change the status quo in health care nor climate change - despite the opportunity to do so. Instead, the party slept, or lived as lemmings by the Bob Lutz Rule. You may recall that Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, once declared that global warming was a "total crock of shit." Many of his conservative friends in Congress agree.

Some of it can be traced to self-survival at the polls, which for the ordinary pol trumps any issue of national importance. Some of it is also driven by a deep distrust of science, which plays to the evangelical Christian wing of the Republican Party. Whatever the case, the same folks who are whining about the Administration's initiatives in climate change and health insurance had their chance and, you know what? They blew it. So let's pay no attention to anything from their side that suggests they have a better way to solve the nation's cutting-edge problems. They don't - and won't.

Bachmann: Name, rank and serial number only?

HOW CAN I say this gently? Oh, hell!... Michele Bachmann is from Planet Pathetic, that mysteriously orbiting fragment that delivers folks to Congress to provide content for Fox News and diversion for everyone else.

Frankly, if Michele weren't an elected Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, which is looking more like a failed state every day with Norm Coleman's senatorial stonewalling, no one would take notice of her fanciful gibberish. But it is worrisome to me that she gets to vote along with normal people on everything that passes through the House of Representatives. I say normal because that's how some of the other crackpots in the House measure up so favorably against her verbal meltdowns.

That being the case, you may fairly ask , why all of the new attention that she has drawn these days from the gallery? Well, she is unhesitantly casting herself as a potential World War II detainee like the Japanese who were rounded up on our soil for internment. She leaps to that vacuous conclusion because of an encounter with the Census Bureau that, by law,will ask her to answer some questions for the 2010 Census. She says she will report no more than the number of people living in his home, which means she intends to break the law. "We will give the number of people in our home, and that's where we're going to draw the line," she told a flattering Glenn Beck, the tearful wannabe comedian and Limbaugh sound-alike, on his Fox show. Besides, she said, she doesn't want people from ACORN, the community organizers, knocking on her door for information. She despises ACORN.

You should also know that she has linked President Obama to swine flu, insisting that such epidemics occur only under Democratic presidents. (She tends to be forgetful. The las one was under Gerald Ford, a Republican) and once asked for an investigation of Congress to root out anti-American members. She also is satisfied that she was sent to congress by God.

Fair warning. But to repeat: she gets to vote like everybody else. .

Recall leftovers:a turkey without the trimmings

AMONG THE MANY disconnects - and there were many - in Warner Mendenhall's failed attempt to eliminate Mayor Plusquellic short of Medieval poison, were his frequent references to democracy. It was a little surprising to me, at least, that a fellow with a law degree could find so little case history to justify his motives other than it was "democracy" in action. Having never spent a minute in a law school class, I can only refer to the cautionary words of John Ciardi, the late poet and poetry editor of Saturday Review and truly civilized human being:

"The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself."

Trouble is, Mendenhall was costing taxpayers a lot of money while he was trying to perfect his obsession against the mayor (another disconnect because he argued that his recall campaign was nothing personal against Plusquellic!).

Well, for all that, it ain't over yet. Mendenhall and his understudies are giving evidence that there is much more to come as he morphs into Batman's ever-troublesome Joker. His wife Kelly will run for council-at large and a couple of other seats will be challenged by Plusquellic haters. I don't have any problems with that. That's what regular elections are all about, a point lost in Mendenhall's haste to fast-forward a mayoral challenge with a recall election.

But given the failure to make Mendenhall's briefcase issues drive out Plusquellic, we can only wonder whether they will be revived in the council races. Wonder? Of course they will.

** * * *

On Monday night, I happened to tune in to this fellow Tom Erickson on WNIR at another person's request. Glad I did. It's pure comedy. Erickson, like some other right wingers on the station, is driven by demons that, among other bits of sophistry, try to raise doubts about the legitimacy of Plusquellic's Democratic primary victory in 2007. Erickson thinks conspiratorially that it should have been investigated. In a discussion about Akron's debt, an issue raised by his buddy Mendenhall, he declared; "Debt is a crime." But the real fun began in earnest when one woman caller complained that she didn't know whether she could vote in the recall election because she didn't know where she lived; and another caller expressed hope that the recall would fail because the governor shouldn't be kicked out.

Well, there's a lot of this crap going around these days, inspired by right-wing talk show hosts who merely tease their listeners into questioning such long-resolved matters as whether President Obama is actually an American citizen or, for God's sake, whether he is socialist-communist-underground Muslim-etc.etc.etc. And I would simply ask the anti-tax crowd to stay off the paved roads. My taxes paid for them.

* * * * *

Among the first orders of business in the post-recall hours should be finding a way to raise the threshold on the number of petitions to set up a recall election. It was the work of mice and politicians and unless it is dramatically improved, Akron may again find itself in a mayoral recall campaign. The current situation is as dumb as term limiting, which is costing legislators their jobs rather then letting the voters decide who will stay and who will go. The restriction cuts across party lines, of course, and even affects conservative Republican State Sen. Kevin Coughlin, of Cuyahoga Falls, who isn't thrilled with the limits, and must look for other work that doesn't require heavy lifting when his current term expires.

A Sanford Chronicle

Late word from Alfred Lord Venison:

Mark Sanford has 'fessed up as a cheat

a born-again who was not too discreet!

He was a Republican star

Like Ensign, primed to go far

Soon, only Sarah will be left to compete.

Turn out the lights, Warner. The party's over

IT DIDN'T TAKE long after the polls closed Tuesday night to learn that Warner Mendenhall's drive-by drill team had been drubbed by the voters. Word spread quickly around the packed rally crowd at Musica downtown that Mayor Plusquellic had not only survived the farcical recall election but also did so with such overwhelming 3-to-1 authority that perhaps only Mendenhall and the night gab-guy on WNIR would sulkingly still consider it close enough for a recount.

Actually, still on his white horse after the final vote was in, Mendenhall emerged at his base, the Country something-or-other restaurant, to declare a moral victory by sending an important message to City Hall that would "change the future of the city" As he had during the entire ludicrous campaign against the mayor, he was still talking in riddles. What message might he be referring to? Was this the beleaguered football coach trying to incite his team to play harder after a 45-0 halftime deficit?

On the other hand, I didn't find a single Plusquellic supporter who had anticipated the wide margin of victory. When Dave Lieberth, the mayor's right-hand man and factotum at City Hall, was asked if were surprised, he could only nod that he was, while adding that he believed the mayor would survive, but added cautiously: "One never knows." County Executive Russ Pry and City Council President Marco Sommerville, also appeared to be sorting out the impressive showing by the mayor. Pry said the Mendenhall campaign was a "speed bump" when government should be concentrating on the more serious business at hand. "When you go through a campaign like this, it takes a lot of energy and time," Pry said. Sommerville handed the challenge back to Mendenhall, asserting: "The people have spoken. He (Mendenhall) says he listens to the people. We'll see...."

But it was the mayor himself who wrote the campaign's epilogue, reviving his plain-spoken cut-to-the-bone ways as he addressed the throng. He slashed at the "false statements" from the other side while conceding that he could be wrong on some issues but would never retreat from his commitment as a determined leader "to continue to be strong and continue to fight for the citizens of Akron."

Several people mentioned that one of the problems with the Mendenhall assault is that a mayoral recall election was the first in the city's history and nobody had any experience in addressing it. In some ways it was a a grimy underground protest campaign, word of mouth, full of sound and fury in certain precincts, , and as the Bard of Avon once wrote, "signifying nothing." Mendenhall cost the city's taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of it in time spent by city workers to research records sought by his forces. And what did he prove by all of this? Only that there was nothing to be proved.

Get over it, Warner. You lost, doubtless in a way that startled even you. Now try hard to become a good citizen like the kind that you want everybody else to be.

P.S. If you accomplished anything . Warner, with yesterday's numbers, you doubtless have made the mayor a much stronger candidate for his next election campaign. Sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for, you may get it in ways that you never anticipated.

Oops and Oops

THANKS TO the blog Think Progress for alerting me to the learned malfunction of two of the nation's most visible right-wing commentators.

The first one belongs in the history books for disconnects: Hosting a conference to support English-only language in America, Pat Buchanan again assailed Sonia Sotomayor on her ethnic roots while ridiculing her reading habits as a child that supposedly prepared her for the Ivy League by reading only children's books. Ha, ha! But the conference room featured a large banner that misspelled conference as "conferenece." Some days, Pat, it doesn't pay to get out of bed.

The second misfire was offered by Charles Krauthammer, the always-dyspeptic right-wing columnist and talk show guy who has been hammering President Obama for being too meek in engaging in the Iranian uprising. Krauty even sizzled because Obama referred to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the "supreme leader," which is, after all, the supreme leader's official title over there, whether we like it or not. However, appearing later on Dennis Miller's radio show, Krauty had this to say:

"There's no way he's ( Obama) going to sweet talk, you know, the supreme leader out of his nukes."

Maybe it all depends on how you tell it, right Chuck?

Mendenhall's recall campaign nears the 'finished' line

DON PLUSQUELLIC seemed a little subdued when I caught up with him at Democratic Headquarters on Grant Street Saturday. Many of the mayor's supporters had departed with anti-recall material that would be handed out across the city. There wasn't much left for him to do to respond to the slanderous campaign against him by Warner Mendenhall and the Akron lawyer's obsessing cadre of me-too followers. He could now only hope for a decent turnout Tuesday by his side to repudiate the wannabe political kingmaker (and maybe, even king) who has driven him and much of City Hall to distraction, intruding upon workers' time that could be a lot better spent serving the public at large rather than a single venting dissonant. Plusquellic briefly mentioned to me the fallout from the administration's obligation to tend to the serious business of a city. The costs to the human delivery system as well as the new expenses of running a special election are hideous. Least impressed by the burdens placed on Akron, of course, was Mendenhall, whose tunnel vision about what makes cities function begins well below ground level and ends at the same murky depth.

The campaign has attracted the attention of many beyond Akron who are puzzled by the inexplicable siege on a mayor who as led the city to many honors. Indeed, Brent Larkin, the recently retired editorial director of the Plain Dealer , asserted in a Sunday column what I also believe:

"For the record, Plusquellic does offend. he's no Mr. Cogeniality. He is combative, acerbic and thin-skinned. Oh, he is one more thing: He is, by far, Ohio's best big-city mayor."

That won't impress the aginners who would risk losing a usually successful chief executive for...well, we don't really know, do we?

Over the the many years of working in Akron's political arena, I haven't always agreed with Plusquellic - and he hasn't always agreed with me. With similar temperaments, we were bound to bump into each other. But I grew to respect his style, convinced that he always had the best interests of his city at heart even when he erupted against a critic. As a political writer, I watched the mayor's service evolve as an idea-activist who, as Larkin noted, was not afraid to fail.

Well, with Tuesday's election arriving, I never thought I would be defending a feisty mayor who is perfectly capable of defending himself. As the panoply of corporate, business, professional and labor supporters lined up behind him, it should be obvious that he has been doing something right. That has left Mendenhall with nothing more than to boast wildly of a hair-thin endorsement of the recall by the Fraternal Order of Police. Some lonely mandate, huh?

I've felt from the outset that Plusquellic will survive the recall. I've seen nothing to change my mind.

Inhofe the captain of GOP's Ship of Fools.

THROUGHOUT HISTORY there have been crackpots, religious zealots and boobs, some of whom were either dangerous or plainly stupid. Figures like Torquemada, Savanarola, Caligula and Praise-God Barebone come quickly to mind. So I have to remind myself that we are not the only generation of fools every time Jim Inhofe's name pops up in the news, which has been happening with more than normal frequency for a politician of his trifling worth since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme court.

Inhofe is the Republican senator from Oklahoma who spends a lot of his time preaching about wholesome American conduct when he isn't hanging out with bulging-pocketed oil interests. He's also been extraordinarily open about whom he considers worthy of a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. He doesn't exactly say so, but you easily get the feeling that he prefers to seat white guys on the bench rather than women of Puerto Rican lineage that would serve America more efficiently in the kitchens of Manhattan restaurants. Of course, he doesn't get it. Boobs seldom do.

Inhofe's latest expression of protecting the long-held turf of upwardly mobile Caucasian males was his refusal this week to meet with Sotomayor as she made the rounds of senators' offices before heading for her committee hearings. Having decided 11 years ago that she was unworthy to be seated as a federal appellate judge (he voted against her at that time, but she got the job. Great memory, that guy!), he decided that nothing could have happened in more than a decade to change his mind about her judicial qualifications. He may have noticed that she was still a woman as well as one still retaining her Puerto Rican ancestry.

In 2009, we should all be embarrassed by the actions of the senator from the Okie state. But if Inhofe's fellow-Republicans on Capitol Hill are embarrassed as they are reeling from the John Ensign affair, they aren't saying so. Instead they have rehearsed their talking points well about Sotomayor. Four GPO senators have been recorded saying virtually the same thing: Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Charles Grassley and John Cornyn want everyone to know that the high court job should not be about "personal feelings, politics or preferences".

Read: personal feelings (women), politics (liberal) and preferences (Puerto Ricans and others who worked their way up from lean childhoods.)

Before the GOP can get serious about returning to power with the votes of women and minorities it might consider giving up its addiction to Kool-Aid. It might also work out a cash- for-clunkers deal for Inhofe.

On Bush, baseball and balloting baloney

FROM A FRIEND comes a report of a speech by ex-President George W. Bush to a loving business group in Erie, Pa. in which he first asserted that he would not criticize President Obama - and then spent the next hour attacking Obama's policies on a wide range of issues from the plan to close Guantanamo Prison to the stimulus package. (I'll assume that he didn't also attack his one-time military guru, Gen. Petraeus, for supporting the closure.) The conservative audience responded gleefully to Bush's non-assault assault. As for me, it has often occurred to me when I see Dubya that his mien is much like what inspired Lillian Hellman to say of Norma Shearer: "A face unclouded by thought."

* * * * *

FROM ANOTHER FRIEND comes word from Baseball America, the go-to publication for all things baseball, that the shrinking newspaper world is impacting on how BA gets its reports from the beat correspondents on the hometown newspaper's sports pages as newspapers shut down or the baseball writers resign for other jobs. This is not the sort of shifting sand that would help us cope with melting glaciers. But it does add another downside piece to the fallout from the industry's melt-down.

On that point, Journalism.Org reported earlier that while the number of Washington-based reporters for American newspapers has shrunk dramatically by more than a third since 1985, the number of foreign media based in DC has increased ten-fold since the late 1960s. There has also been a huge increase in so-called niche newsletters and magazines of interest to special audiences. The decline in the mainstream media has been accompanied by less accountability for whomever is running the government. "Symbolic of the state of this relationship, George W. Bush is the first president since Theodore Roosevelt not to address the National Press Club during his his years in office," Journalism.Org. noted. In this instance, I'd say all's well that ends well.

* * * * *

It's conclusively OVER! In response to a column by the Beacon Journal's Steve Hoffman, on the recall campaign against Mayor Don Plusquellic, former Councilman Warner Mendenhall, the messy effort's icon, declared "success in many ways." That being the case, should there still be a costly election on Tuesday by Akron's voters? In years of covering elections , I found this one to be the first that failed to connect any of the dots. Could it be that the dots were never there in the first place?