The Sunshine Empire

I’m having a difficult time trying to fashion a coherent point regarding the new Catholic-Contraception uproar with the White House. I was raised in the Catholic faith and attended Catholic school until the fifth grade. I also have no issue with contraception availability as a way to stem the growth of unwanted children. The timing of this issue of the Obama administration finalizing a regulation that requires Catholic organizations to provide contraception as part of their health plans with no deductible is what I wonder about.

The requirement that is at issue has been a part of codified law since 2009′s Affordable Care act. What has changed since then was the Obama administration finalized the rule on January 20th of this year. The right as a whole and the quartet of GOP presidential hopefuls specifically have seized upon this rule finalization as if it was a sudden and specific reversal on the part of Obama specifically. After the 9th circuit’s declaration of Prop 8 as unconstitutional, the GOP and conservatives have begun to paint a narrative of Barack Obama as morally unacceptable to middle America. This is in large part because the economy has shown marked improvement, deflating a major attack point for the GOP. President Obama is now polling ahead of his challengers in places like Virginia again. If this was put forward by the administration purposefully there could only be two reasons for such. First it would be a play to his base. For all the characterization of the president by the right as someone hell bent for leather to force contraception into the hands of every woman in America, they forget his refusal to expand availability of the so called “Morning After Pill” last year. Also after a year and a half of the right’s full court press on abortion funding and providers, the move could be seen as a secret shot back from the progressive left. There is faction of the left that views Obama as no better than a center right Republican. This would appeal to them.

In the end I would imagine the Obama administration will find some way to exempt certain Catholic organizations from the contraception ruling in some way that would not seem like backing down from a fight. I would also be shocked if the issue is even an afterthought by the time we get to July. We’ll have all new pointless issues to vex upon then.

After last night’s results from GOP Primary Party Train Part Seven, things again look bad for our boy Mittens. But it should be noted that this year’s Republican presidential primary is like the weather in Florida. Just give it a minute and it will change drastically. Last night’s turn had Dan Savage’s favorite Pennsylvania senator winning all three contests. Although it results in little to no delegates for Rick, it feeds the notion of disarray in the GOP and general dissatisfaction in general for Mitt Romney. But it also told me that the state of Missouri is officially a part of the South.

I often tell people that I was not born in the south, I was born in Florida. As incongruous as most of Florida is to the rest of the traditional deep south, living in northern Florida is like living on Sarah Palin’s porch. We can at least see it from here. But Missouri has never identified itself as part of the south. But as the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you might be a redneck. Missouri carries all the hallmarks of a southern state now. Earlier this year the University Of Missouri left basically the only conference they have ever known, and joined the Southeastern Conference. SEC football is about as southern as it gets. Columbia will now open its doors every fall to people from Starkville, Knoxville, and Tuscaloosa. I’ve also heard far too many people who hail from Missouri carry some form of southern accent. I would be surprised if they are not fond of fried foods and bourbon as well. But the state’s politics, have turned decidedly southern.

With the rise of a Senator like Roy Blunt, and his son the former governor, Missouri now looks eerily similar to places like Kentucky and Georgia. Missouri broke with its tradition of always picking the winner of the presidential election by siding with the south and John McCain. Yet now, with the Missouri primary being won by Rick Santorum, I think we can all drop any pretense that this state is anything but southern. People say geography trumps that, with Missouri always being called midwestern. Washington State is southern if you’re on Sarah Palin’s porch in Alaska.

The inaugural Sunshine Empire Podcast Empire. The Florida primary and a little football as well.

Nuance and context are normally things that the modern conservative shuns when it comes to political discourse. When former Tennessee senator and Vice president Al Gore discussed how he’d spearheaded the development of the internet for public use through legislation, conservatives and Republicans spent the next decade guffawing about how he’d claimed he’d invented the internet. Gore had done nothing of the sort, but what does nuance and context matter when it comes to a great political attack line? Years later at the end of his historic 50 state grueling Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton, then senator Barack Obama made a wry comment about having campaigned in “57 states.” Anyone with an education beyond the second grade could tell that he was making an absurdist comment regarding the historic length of the primary season. Conservatives on the other hand have spent the years since believing that a constitutional law professor and sitting United States Senator was unaware that there were only 50 states in the union. When you explain to the conservative how Gore was discussing his legislative record, or that Obama was making a joking comment on the historic length of that particular primary campaign, the conservative will roll their eyes at you and turn up the Limbaugh.

Now we arrive at another presidential election and the super-rich French-looking man from Massachusetts is now in total control of the race for the GOP nomination. The man who will face president Barack Obama in the fall was quoted on CNN this morning as saying, “I’m not concerned about the very poor,”. I feel there’s a fair amount in the man’s record to establish that he may not think all that much about the very poor, without him having made the quote. But notice there’s a comma there. Romney’s people have begged for that all important nuance and context. The people that make their bones with specially fashioned cut clips of opposition candidates are asking us to all slow down. The same pertains to his comments about loving to fire people. There was context in that, and it was unrelated to his days involved with locust capitalism. But context and nuance will suddenly become all the rage in GOP circles this elecion season, while Mittens runs around making $10,000 with homeless people.

Today former Utah governor John Huntsman withdrew from the race for the Republican nomination for president. Now, what looked like a crowded race could be over before Florida holds its presidential primary at the end of January. The city of Jacksonville was slated to host a nationally televised presidential debate on January 26th, and the race could very well be over by that time. That could leave no one to debate Mitt Romney. But then a twitter follower of mine had a better idea.

@SunshineEmpire I’m sure with all the different views he has had on topics, it will be just as interesting with just him debating himself.

— mocando (@mocando) January 16, 2012

The idea is brilliant. I feel the more entertaining option for a debate would be to have all the different Mitt Romneys debate one another to determine which would make the best presidential candidate to face Barack Obama in the fall. We could invite 1994 Senate race Mitt Romney, who stated then “Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to take us back to Reagan-Bush.” We could also invite 2003 Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney. That Mitt Romney raised several hundreds of millions in new fees from Massachusetts taxpayers, and created the health care initiative that would become the template for Obamacare.

These two Romneys could be joined by 2008 presidential election Romney. This Romney, unlike his 2003 edition who said he had unequivocal support for Roe V Wade, is now anti-abortion. 2008 Romney was also in favor of TARP. We could round out the debate invitations with Mitt Romney 2012, who is now a Tea Party darling. So if the 2012 GOP presidential nomination is essentially decided come January 26th, the powers that be with the Republican Party of Florida need not cancel any debate. Everyone wins.

The wonder and spectacle of the Iowa Caucuses has come and gone. I was thinking on Tuesday evening that somewhere, out there in the great beyond, Theodore H. White was sitting down to the typewriter and began the first chapter of The Making Of The President 2012. It’s normally my custom to write a post about what I feel we’ve all learned after a major debate, primary, or election. I didn’t write anything on Wednesday because after the results of the Iowa Caucuses were set in stone, we learned very little at all about the direction of the 2012 presidential election.

Going into Tuesday Mitt Romney was the prohibitive front-runner of the Republican presidential field. The conservative wing of the GOP and its now marginalized Tea Party contingent had cycled through a wide assortment of anti-Romneys and vetted them out of the race one by one. The big wheel of fortune stopped spinning on Rick Santorum’s name once the Republican faithful had exited their caucus rooms Tuesday, but not for anything to do with Rick Santorum himself. The former senator won among an electorate dead set against accepting what they know is the truth: Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Santorum for all intents won the Iowa Caucuses. Considering the millions that Romney spent and having campaigned there for the better part of six years, his stagnant vote total showed the lasting problem he has with the throne he will eventually assume in Tampa this summer. Ron Paul’s vote percentage grew drastically. Yet with there being no real viable Democratic caucus race to speak of, most of Iowa’s independents crowded into the GOP rooms this year.

The Iowa Caucuses taught us essentially what we already knew. Mitt Romney has the only viable organization that can win the Republican nomination, no matter how lukewarm his support is. Ron Paul still has solid support among the pseudo-independent. Rick Perry is still borderline retarded. But there will be some drama in between now and Tampa. Although Romney will walk away with New Hampshire, there will be a large chance he comes in third in South Carolina. We’re barely starting chapter one.

The modern conservative’s relationship with the legacy of George W. Bush is a fantastic, bi-polar, hot mess. At one moment they could be lauding his unabashed Christianity and his keeping us safe for all those years after worst attack in American history. On the other they deny him three times before the rooster crows when presented with his habit of spending like a drunken French socialist. This delicate dance is once again on display as the United States formally ends the disastrous Iraq War debacle that he began.

At this point nine years later, anyone that does not realize that the Bush Administration lied us deliberately into the invasion of Iraq is willfully ignorant of history. There is no point to rehashing the run-up to the invasion, but we all remember quite well in mid-2003 when Bush famously appeared below the banner “Mission Accomplished.” As conservatives currently mumble about President Obama doing a victory lap, as if it was so uncouth, they conveniently keep quiet about Dubya’s landing in a fighter jet in battle costume on an aircraft carrier. Yet now as the Iraq war is over conservatives hope that the fog of time has worked its magic on our collective consciousnesses.

As the Iraq War was still a raging mess, then Senator Obama ran on a platform of getting our troops out of Iraq. As he has now completed the task that proved impossible for the last administration in six years now that he’s president, Obama has been lauding the accomplishment by lauding the brave men and women who gave their all to achieve it. Conservatives have decried his speeches as doing a victory lap after winning Bush’s war. Again conservatives have gone back to the Dubya well somehow thinking that the American people forget what a disaster he was. But again they have it all wrong. If Obama is celebrating anything with a victory lap, it’s having finally cleaned up the unmitigated disaster of Bush’s presidency.

Taking standard conservative logic with regard to history and applying it to this point after the Iraq War is even more troublesome for conservatives. Despite the work of all America presidents from Truman to Carter, conservatives routinely claim that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Now to be sure, Ronald Reagan played an integral role in the United States emerging from the Cold War as the world’s remaining sole superpower. But his credentials for “winning” it seem to be solely that he was the one to wrap up the whole mess at the end. To use that same logic, Barack Obama won the Iraq war.

Last evening before I retired to dreamland, I caught Senator John McCain’s floor speech marking the end of the 9 year Iraq War. Like many in this nation I have in the past had a very positive view of the senior senator from Arizona. As a Republican primary voter in 2000 I was prepared to cast my vote for McCain. This never came to pass as he had bowed out in favor of George W. Bush. I respected McCain’s service in the Vietnam war and his principled stand against Bush’s tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy early last decade. Yet a far different man from that John McCain gave the speech I watched last evening.

Senator McCain began his speech on the senate floor with high praise for our Commander In Chief. The words, stating how genuine the president’s words at Fort Bragg earlier in the day had been, caused me to stop and take notice. I was preparing to tweet my surprise as to McCain’s deference to the man who defeated him by more than 10 million votes in the 2008 presidential election, when he took a drastic nasty turn. With acidic loathing dripping from his voice he then began to accuse the president of making a political decision in following the guidelines of the agreement reached between the Bush administration and the Iraqi people. He assured us that if Obama had worked in good faith, he could have easily negotiated a longer stay for American troops beyond what huge majorities of Americans and Iraqis want.

What was most remarkable about the bitter floor speech was the essential message. He was accusing the president of the United States of essentially fulfilling a campaign promise. McCain accused the president of basically taking the easy way out by doing exactly what he promised the American people he would do if elected. The American people were presented with Obama’s vision of our role in Iraq and McCain’s. The American people chose Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of over 10 million votes. Senator McCain made a few valid points about then Senator Obama’s view of the surge. He noted the disagreements that the president made while in the senate during the “Surge” argument. I could point out that Obama’s views were more to the point of the war having been a giant mistake in the first place. But that’s beside the point. McCain seemed more angry that again, Obama had done exactly what he promised. A promise that he told the American people in 2008 was wrong to make. But what puzzles me is what exactly his play is here. The extreme right hating him was part of the reason he lost to Obama. Yet he’s turned away from the reasoned middle that he previously held an exalted position in. John McCain has simply become the angry crazy old man sitting on his porch telling the kids to slow down and stop with all the rock music that I’m destined to become. It’s sad to see, and America is the worse for it.

Today will more than likely mark the end an era in the history of Jacksonville Florida. At the NFL owners meetings in Dallas today a vote is all but assured to approve the sale of the Jacksonville Jaguars to Illinois businessman Shahid Khan. Although the sale of the franchise will not be completely final until January 4th of next year, the vote will essentially mark the end of J. Wayne Weaver’s ownership of the club he founded. Weaver’s impact on the city of Jacksonville cannot be underestimated and he deserves to stand with the great men and women who have shaped the history of this town.

A handful of men have truly changed the course of history in this city since the Great Fire of 1901. After the entirety of Jacksonville burned to the ground in 1901, Mayor Duncan Fletcher (Who would go on to serve in the United States Senate) rebuilt the city from scratch. Mayor Hans Tanzler would guide the city in its consolidation with Duval County as it became the largest city in the lower 48. Tanzler’s successor as Jacksonville Mayor, Jake Godbold, would be the first to strive to put Jacksonville in the national spotlight. Godbold entered the city in bids to host the Super Bowl, and brought Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay to The Gator Bowl in a helicopter to see Jacksonville’s football passion. But it wasn’t until Wayne Weaver joined Jacksonville’s effort that the city would realize it’s dream.

Wayne Weaver’s leadership and influence took the most improbable of candidates to the top when the National Football League’s 30th club was awarded. I was there with my mother the day after the announcement when he and mayor Ed Austin landed in a helicopter at mid-field at the Gator Bowl for the celebration rally. The move and theatrics were meant to match the beginning of the quest with Irsay’s landing. But Weaver quickly built an immediate winner that had filled stadiums on display for the entire country on Monday Night Football. Weaver’s influence became so great in NFL owners circles that he brought the Super Bowl to Jacksonville in 2005. Because of Weaver, the city that Duncan Fletcher had dragged out of the ashes in 1901 was hosting the largest single day sporting event in the world. He’s contributed to the national consciousness slowly starting to drop the FL after mentioning the name Jacksonville. But he’s also contributed greatly to the betterment of Jacksonville by the countless tens of millions of dollars he and Delores have given back to the community.

When the fortunes of the club he founded started to unravel, and the national media began to mark the Jaguars as all but assured to move, Weaver again showed principled dedication to Jacksonville. He declined $800 million to sell to a Los Angeles billionaire and has now sold the club for less in the effort to keep the club in Northern Florida. The impact that Wayne Weaver has had on Jacksonville Florida means he deserves to be mentioned among the great names in our city’s history. The value of his 18 years in my hometown make me thankful he’s been a part of it. He and his wife have said they are staying in Jacksonville, so I’m sure his legacy will continue to grow. We’re all the better for it.