Stand Your Ground – And Roll the Dice

When neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman figured out that his best chance at beating the rap for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was to invoke Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, the cops and the prosecutors went along willingly and immediately, not bothering to arrest Zimmerman for 45 days. But as Zimmerman prepares to go to trial for Martin’s killing, news of another “Stand Your Ground” shooting, this one from 2010, suggests that when it comes to equitable application of the law, Florida law enforcement has some distance to go.

On August 1, 2010, Marissa Alexander shot at — but missed — her abusive estranged husband, Rico Gray, in the midst of a violent episode that resulted when Gray found text messages from Alexander’s ex-husband on her phone. “If I can’t have you, nobody’s going to have you,” Gray told her as the altercation was getting underway. In the middle of the fight, Alexander broke away and ran into the garage. She said that she wasn’t able to flee because the garage door wasn’t working, and besides, she didn’t have her car keys with her. So she opened the car door and reached into the glove compartment where there was a gun. Running back into the house, she fired a single shot at Gray, missing him and their two sons.

Florida State Senator Gary Siplin said that a case like Alexander’s was just the kind of thing that legislators had in mind when they passed the controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. “She did not have a history of criminal or violent behavior. Instead, she had a history of being physically and emotionally abused.”

In addition, she didn’t kill anyone. Alexander’s family says that she is an experienced gun handler, and that she missed him on purpose, and that she was only trying to bring an end to the fight.

In a deposition for the case, Gray admitted saying to Alexander “if she ever cheated on me I would kill her.” He also said that during the fight that led to the shooting, he told her, “If I can’t have you, nobody can.” He admitted that he was he “was going towards her” when Alexander fired, and that the shot that went “high” and to his right. Gray even went so far as to say that Alexander had not pointed the gun at him: “She just didn’t want me to put my hands on her anymore, so she did what she feel like she have to do to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt.”

None of this moved State Attorney Angela Corey who prosecuted the Alexander case, and who is currently overseeing the prosecution of George Zimmerman. She cited police photos that showed the bullet holes in the wall were at “adult height”, and argued that the “Stand Your Ground” law didn’t apply to Alexander anyway, because she could have fled the scene. This, even though the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that a woman attacked by her husband in the home they share has no duty to flee.

No matter. Because Gray changed his story by the time the trial came around, and prosecutor Corey was having none of this “self defense” business, Marissa Alexander was given a mandatory minimum 20-year sentence by a jury last week, after 12 minutes of deliberation.

Even though she had no criminal convictions prior to the shooting, and she did not injure Gray, Alexander sentence was “enhanced” because Florida law dictates a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years for anyone convicted of firing a gun during the commission of a crime. What the jury determined the crime being committed exactly was in this case is hard to pinpoint, but it seems to us as though Alexander fired the gun at Gray to bring an end to a crime being committed against her. By that standard, a convenience store clerk being robbed would get 20 years for shooting the guy holding him up. But we’re no legal expert here, especially in what passes for law in the Sunshine State.

Corey offered Alexander a plea, which would have resulted in a three year sentence, but she offered it to her just before the trial was to start. She had only three hours to think about it. Alexander considered it, but ultimately she believed that she was innocent and that no jury would convict her. She was wrong about that.

For his part, Lincoln Alexander, Marissa’s first husband, the man who left the text messages that precipitated the incident, was not at all surprised by the verdict. “We already knew what Angela Corey’s stance was. She wanted her to do 20 years.”

Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown said in a statement that she “watched in horror and extreme sadness” as Alexander’s conviction was handed down. “This African American woman didn’t hurt anyone, and now she might not hug her children for twenty years,” she said.

Oh, yes. We failed to point out that in this instance the shooter was black. Which is probably why Alexander didn’t have to wait 45 days to be arrested and for charges to be brought. The wheels of justice turn much more efficiently for African Americans than they do for people like George Zimmerman.

Also, unlike Zimmerman, Alexander was being attacked by a violent man who had abused her physically and mentally before. She wasn’t following him around with a gun, like Zimmerman did, and she didn’t call 911 and tell the dispatcher that her husband was acting “suspiciously”, and she didn’t keep following him after the 911 dispatcher told her to not to, and to let the cops handle it.

She didn’t have time for any of that. She felt that her life, or at the very least, her physical well-being was being threatened. And she didn’t kill her attacker.

Still, the cops didn’t find anything ambiguous about the situation when they arrived, and so they took Alexander away that very same night. She had charges instated immediately. She wasn’t afforded the luxury of walking around free for 45 days like some people.

We’re not defending the Florida’s preposterous “Stand Your Ground” law in the case of Marissa Alexander. We think it’s a stupid law, and besides, we don’t think it’s even relevant here. When a woman who has a history of being battered by her husband is in the process of being battered once again, we think that she has the right to defend herself. We don’t think that you need to have a “Stand Your Ground” law that says it’s OK for an abused woman to try to stop her abuser in the act of abusing her. And the fact that she used the gun in a way that caused no injury to her attacker and still got 20 years for her trouble is patently absurd.

Angela Corey, as we said above, has been called in to “oversee” the prosecution of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, mostly because of all of the uproar over the way the case has been handled thus far. Since she’s apparently willing to send a battered black woman to prison for 20 years for not shooting her abuser, we’ll be watching with keen interest to see how the George Zimmerman prosecution is going to unfold.

So will a lot of people.

Thursday Thoughts

Here at OMT, we’ve always been a fan of the actor Michael Caine, even though a lot of the movies he’s appeared in over the years were real stinkers. Not all of them, mind you, but a good deal of them. Rightly or wrongly, he’s always sort of struck us as something of a Cockney version of James Garner; a guy who projects a kind of likability that still manages to shine through a weak script, lousy direction, and cheap production.

He’s currently in New Orleans filming the upcoming thriller Now You See Me, along with co-stars Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg and Isla Fisher. Filming in the abandoned Loew’s State Theatre, the 79-year-old Caine, who unlike most stars of his caliber, does not have a personal assistant, decided to sneak off to a makeshift dressing room to grab a nap. When shooting finished up for the day and the time came to lock down the theater, everybody thought that Caine had already left; no one was aware that Caine was anywhere inside the theater. So the staff locked up the place and the crew went home for the night. Caine later woke up to discover he’d been locked in. It wasn’t until the next morning when a carpenter arrived and heard Cain yelling that he was set free.

A production source was quoted as saying, “It had been a long day of filming and Michael decided to slip upstairs to a makeshift dressing area and catch 40 winks. When Michael eventually woke up, he realised he was locked in. His mobile phone was in his trailer and there was no electricity in the attic, meaning he couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black. Michael started shouting for help but no one could hear him. It was only when an on-set carpenter who had left his tools in the theatre went to do some maintenance work the following morning that he was discovered. It’s fair to say Michael wasn’t in the best of moods – although he was grateful to have been found.”

Now You See Me is about a team of magicians that pull off bank robberies during their performances and distribute the cash to their audiences. It’s directed by French fillmaker Louis Leterrier, and is due to hit theaters next January.

We hope it’s better than Ashanti.

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One of Caine’s Now You See Me co-stars, Morgan Freeman, is in hot water with one of Time Warner’s major shareholders for having the temerity to speak his mind. Last September, in an appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight to promote the family drama Dolphin Tale in which he was starring, Freeman got off track and started talking about the “tea party” and how their drive to unseat President Obama after one term is fundamentally racist. “Stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term,” he told Morgan. “We’re going to do whatever we do to get this black man outta here.”

This did not escape the notice of Time-Warner shareholder David Ridenour, who heads up the conservative think tank, The National Center for Public Policy Research. At the annual shareholder’s meeting at the Warner Brothers’ studio in Burbank, California, Ridenour asked the board, “What specific steps will Time-Warner take to ensure that Mr Freeman avoids such divisive and insulting words while promoting his next Warner Bros film, The Dark Knight Rises?”, after citing statistics that purport to show that people are less likely to attend a movie when one of its stars voices a political opinion that they don’t agree with.

Ridenour went on to tell the board that Dolphin Tale performed poorly at the box office, much worse than the studio was expecting, and that this was likely due to Freeman shooting his mouth off about politics when he was on the Piers Morgan show to promote the film.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes was having none of it, though. “What can we do about it? Is that the question? Not much. It doesn’t usually have a significant commercial effect on the success of the film.”

We find it interesting that Ridenour considers Freeman’s words to be “divisive” and “insulting” when it was the tea party that set the bar for the use of divisive and insulting language in our public discourse, but that’s just us. Maybe Ridenour ought to be putting his money into right wing politics, instead of supporting liberal Hollywood studios. Of course, money trumps politics for people like Ridenour, and there’s probably much more money to be made with divisive and insulting liberals than there is with whack-job tea partiers.

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We reported here a couple of weeks ago that Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Congressman who ran for President in 2008 had lost his bid for a ninth term in Congress when his district was gerrymandered to force him to run against another Democratic incumbent, Marcy Kaptur.

Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, came out on top in the primary, even though Kucinich won 75% of the vote in the part of the new district that constituted his old district. Trouble was, the Ohio Republicans who redrew the district made sure that there wasn’t enough of his old district in the new one to carry him.

Kucinich was one of the most liberal voices in the entire Congress, and so naturally he was a Republican target. He was at the forefront in areas like workers’ rights, universal health care and campaign finance reform. He was a staunch opponent of the Iraq war, and he even introduced a bill of impeachment against President Bush for lying to the American people when making the case for the war, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, and he forced Congress to vote on it. It failed, of course. This did not endear him to anyone in the Republican Party, least of all the morons in the GOP back in his home state of Ohio.

In an era when gerrymandering has made Congressional districts in Republican-controlled states look like visions from an acid trip, more and more incumbent Democrats are facing off against one another. We saw it right here in Western Pennsylvania this spring when incumbent Jason Altmire lost to Mark Critz in a new district cobbled together by Pennsylvania Republicans. Republicans learned long ago that winning an election fair and square was for chumps, and so they do whatever they can do within the confines of the law — and if the law is to confining, then they simply change it — to ensure Republican victories. And this means that everything, from gerrymandering to laws forcing voters to show photo IDs at the polls — something that Democrats are more likely to lack than Republicans — is fair game.

And so, Kucinich was done in by Republican mapmakers instead of Ohio voters.

But then Kucinich got word that out in the state of Washington, there was a grassroots movement to get him to run for one of three open Democratic-leaning seats in that state. Kucinich actually considered it, but in the end decided not to go for it because of accusations of carpet-bagging.

Instead, he announced in a statement posted online that come January when his current term ends, he would retire. “At the end of this term, I will have served 16 years in the House of Representatives. After careful consideration and discussion with (wife) Elizabeth and my closest friends, I have decided that, at this time, I can best serve from outside the Congress.”

Kucinich has had quite a run. He was fist elected to the Cleveland City Council at age 23, and went on to serve as Cleveland’s mayor, becoming the youngest mayor of a major city in the United States from 1977 to 1979.

Here in Pittsburgh, of course, we have a similar situation with our own boy mayor, but Dennis Kucinich is made of entirely different stuff than Luke Ravenstahl.

If you look back at OMT’s coverage of the 2008 election, you’ll note that on several occasions we wrote about how Kucinich was saying all the right things, but that his presentation was, well, awful. We agreed with him on virtually every single point of policy, but he always seemed awkward, weird, and God help us, if you painted a tiny block mustache under his nose, he was a dead ringer for … well, there’s no point in going there.

If Dennis Kucinich had John Kerry’s looks and manner of carrying himself, we have no doubt that he would have had a much better shot at the presidency, and may well have won. And you know, that’s a damn shame.

If a tall, skinny, goofy-looking guy with a squeaky voice like Abraham Lincoln were to run for president today, he would be laughed off the podium.

The Social Market

Facebook is set to go public this week, with shares scheduled to start trading on the NASDAQ on Friday under the ticker “FB”, unless something unforeseen should come along and derail it. Shares are expected to start trading in the $34 to $38 range, up from the previous $28 to $35 range, due to high investor interest. That means that as a whole, Facebook could be valued at an astonishing $104 billion — that’s billion — for a company which many experts in finance consider to be a dubious investment.

The tsunami of interest in FB is in marked contrast with the performance of the rest of the markets in recent weeks. The Dow, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ have all given up their 2012 gains and appear to be heading lower, as investors see the US economic recovery running out of steam, with Europe on the brink of implosion, the Euro plummeting, and Greece in turmoil, with an upcoming parliamentary vote to consider whether or not Greece will continue to stay on the Euro. As of today, Greeks are starting what appears to be a run on their banks. If that should gain momentum — and it very well may — watch out.

But when it comes to FB, it’s all blue sky. There are an amazing 33 underwriters of the upcoming IPO, including heavyweights Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. With just shy of a billion active monthly members, FB’s revenue has grown from from $777 million in 2009 to $3.7 billion in 2011. Not a bad increase in just two years, as revenue increases go.

On a daily basis, it’s usually a toss-up between FB and Google for the most-visited site on the Internet. Some analysts have even suggested that some of the slump in the markets recently has been caused by potential FB investors dumping their investments in order to position themselves for a massive purchase once the stock goes public. It’s the biggest investment opportunity since Google hit the markets back in 2004.

So big that the overwhelming majority of FB investor wannabees are being crowded out by the high rollers, to where it’s likely that most investors, and even some institutions, are going to have to take their chances with the open market on Friday, where FB’s shares are expected to spike into the $50s and maybe even the $60s at the opening bell. Where they go after that is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure — it’s either going to be a payday deluxe, or it’s going to be a bloodbath. There doesn’t seem to be much room for middle ground here.

Of course, there’s “opportunity” and then there’s “opportunity”. As of yesterday, Google shares are up a whopping 464.22% since the stock went public on August 19, 2004. And Google remains a solid value today, not only because of its continued growth, but also because of its diversification — Google’s much more than just a search engine today.

FB, on the other hand, is facing some serious questions about its ability to bring a return on its investment in the long term. In the run-up to the IPO, FB has made some last-minute acquisitions (Instagram, Beluga, Lightbox) that suggest that 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who is about to get the payday of about 1,000 lifetimes — is looking to both diversify, as well as dip FB’s toe into the water of mobile apps, an area in which they are widely regarded as being weak. Still, there are rumblings among people on the street that the FB’s hype far outstrips its potential.

Facebook’s whole business model, like Google’s, is based on advertising. It’s somewhat unsettling, when you think about it, that some of the most valuable companies in the world today are those that are portals for hucksters selling stuff, rather than companies that manufacture tangible things. Welcome to the 21st century. And it is as an advertising portal of Jovian proportions that Facebook is, well, advertising itself to investors. But some observers have questioned FB’s ability to capitalize on those millions of eyes looking at their ads.

The Associated Press and CNBC released the results of a poll of American adults who use Facebook regularly — more than 40% of US adults log into Facebook at least once a week — and the results were chilling, to say the least. 83% of the respondents said that they “never” or “hardly ever” click on the ads that FB puts in front of them. Of those few who actually do click on ads, though, it was enough to provide FB with an average of $4.34 in revenue per user in 2011. That’s up over $1 per user since 2009. But it is dwarfed by the $30 in revenue per user that Google manages to get. Google is also more popular among users, according to the AP/CNBC poll, with 71% of Google users having a favorable opinion of them versus 51% of Facebook users.

Popularity is one thing, of course, but trust is the big enchilada among advertisers, and it is here that FB has some real problems. According to the poll, only 13% trust FB “completely” or “a lot”, while 59% trust them “a little” or “not at all”. Furthermore, 54% said that they would feel “not too safe” or “not safe at all” making purchases on FB, while only 8% said “very safe” or “extremely safe”.

Right now, 82% of FB’s revenue comes from advertising, which, if the poll is any indication, is an area that FB has some work to do if they are to realize some of that $104 billion potential value that frenzied investors seem to think this company has. The rest of FB’s revenue comes from Facebook “credits” towards the purchase of “virtual goods” for “social games” like Zynga, CrowdStar, Playfish and Playdom. But out of the 900 million Facebook users, only about 2% spent money on these things. If FB plans to get vendors to user FB as a sales portal, which they’ve told potential investors that they definitely plan to do, they’ve got to get people to trust them more. Both users as well as advertisers.

General Motors yesterday made a big deal at a very bad time for FB by saying that they were pulling all of their advertising from FB because they came to the conclusion that it wasn’t doing them any good, according to the Wall Street Journal. A spokesman for GM said that while they’re removing all advertising from FB, they’ll leave their company content pages on the site for the time being.

Warren Buffet, who has shunned the Facebook IPO, announced last night that Berkshire Hathaway had purchased 10 million shares of GM stock in last quarter. GM shares are expected to soar when the market opens today.

Not that any of that matters, of course. We’re just sayin’.

Friday’s Facebook launch is expected to be a blockbuster, to be sure, but the naysayers have been gathering momentum in the days leading up to the offering. In a market that thrives on frenzy, speculation, emotion, hype, glitz, and mass hysteria, often at the expense of sound business principles, it’s anybody’s guess where FB will be trading in a year.

Zuckerberg will still be stinking rich no matter what happens, of course.

A Letter From Paul to the Libertarians

1 Grace be unto thee, and peace, from Washington, our father, and from the Lord Thomas Jefferson, and from the holy framers.

2 Now I praise ye, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to thee.

3 For it has come to pass that I shall not walk among ye; nor shall I walk among those who have not yet voted; as the cost in mammon, yeh verily, is woefully high, and God does not smile upon my endeavors.

4 And yet, thus, I beseech thee, that the work of the Flag is not yet done; that in the light of the Flag shall ye one day prevail; even as those who smite thee would not invite thee into their house, or break bread with thee; for it is only by thy goodness that thy labors be rewarded, and by thy true belief that ye shall be delivered.

5 But I say unto thee, stay the hand that would cause distress to the party, as it is only by thy patience and thy good graces that they shall yield to thee.

6 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself the transgressor.

7 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith in the Flag, even ye have believed in the Flag, that ye might be justified by faith in the Flag, and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

8 Howbeit, then, that we come to this end, and yet still not know the glory of the Flag?

9 For ye still walk in the darkness of big government, while the party hath chosen a Pharisee to walk among ye.

10 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon thy wrath.

11 Neither give place to the devil who weareth the undergarments of a wizard; who worships a god of many wives; who croweth of his health care plan before he denieth it; who flip-floppeth on the auto bailout; who strappeth dogs to his chariot; who cutteth the hair of Sodomites.

12 Nor shall ye give quarter to the king; the high priest of Nubia; who is a heretic; who is not by our nation born; who is the handmaiden of Marx and Lenin; who by law forceth grandma to consent to stoning; who cutteth the shackles of Sodomites.

13 Remember then, that the day will come when all of the firmament shall quake at thy voice, and the seas shall open, and the rivers stop in their courses, and the Interstates shall crumble, and the media shall do thy bidding, and the people will come to thee and ask thee to lead them; and ye shall turn to me and I shall say unto thee, “Yea, verily, for I am come.”

14 O foolish Republicans; who hath bewitched thee, that ye should not obey the truth?

15 Now we, brethren, as Lincoln was, are the children of promise.

16 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith the Flag has made us free, and be not entangled again by the yoke of bondage.

17 For when the convention of the covenant doth commence, ye shall not disrupt, ye shall not create spectacle, ye shall not feed the media the fire with which to burn thy flesh; nor shall there be filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

18 For this ye know; that no whoremonger, no unclean person, no covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance from the Flag of freedom.

19 Hearest thou me, Newt?

20 It is only with renewed spirit, and small government, that ye shall find righteousness and true holiness.

21 And so remember Article 38, and keep it close to thy heart, as it will be pleasing and acceptable to God and the Flag.

22 For then ye shall be delivered from the darkness and into the light.

23 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things reduce taxes, whatsoever things shrink government; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

24 For if this righteousness be found within thy heart, then shall ye be delivered into the kingdom.

25 And if not, well then, there’s always 2016, and my only-begotten son, Rand.

26 The grace of the Flag be with thee.

27 Oh, and DFTBA.

A Breath of Fresh Air

If you’re like us, you’ve been listening to Terry Gross’s NPR show Fresh Air for years now. It’s one of the best interview shows in any medium, and has been for longer than we care to remember. Gross offers in-depth and incisive interviews with everyone from presidents, prime ministers, and other politicians, to movie stars, rock stars, scientists, thinkers, writers, filmmakers, and sometimes everyday people who have done extraordinary things. We often marvel at some of the questions she manages to come up with, and how thoroughly prepared she is when she sits down with her guest — it seems that she has managed to find out everything that there is to know about them in advance, and is unafraid to broach even the most potentially sensitive topic with them. Yet she manages to balance this with the ability to put both her guest as well as her audience at ease throughout. She’s really one of the best in her field.

Still, being a radio personality, the overwhelming majority of her legions of fans have no idea what she looks like.

Today we present you with a video that was made by comedian Mike Birbiglia which follows Birbiglia and Gross after a typical show, in which Birbiglia is the guest. Regular fans of the show will enjoy it because they will finally get a close-up look at Gross, but also because it’s pretty funny. And if you’ve never listened to the show, here’s an excuse to tune in. She carries the performance off surprisingly well, so much so that should she ever decide to pack in the daily grind of the interview show, she just might have a fallback career as a comic actress.

If your browser doesn’t show you the above video, or if it does and it’s not performing very well, you can access it directly from YouTube by clicking here.

Say it Ain’t So, Joe

Here at OMT, we have felt for some time now that President Obama, in order to shift the narrative of this campaign from the Republican freak show that has been dominating the discourse from the outset, needs to do something dramatic that will shake up this race and throw the GOP off balance. Something that will leave them scrambling to compensate, something that will make the GOP do what they do best — shoot themselves in the foot.

To that end, we think that for his second term President Obama should swap the roles of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

It’s the right thing to do. No one can deny Joe Biden’s foreign policy chops. We think he would make a great Secretary of State. And if Hillary Clinton has proven anything in the past four years, it’s that she is more competent, intelligent, even-handed, and, let’s just say it, more presidential than anyone that the Republicans have offered up in this campaign, and a good many that the Democrats have offered in recent years. It’s a win-win proposition.

Also, it would give Joe Biden something substantive to do, which we think would go a long way toward curbing that mouth of his. That unbridled mouth, which has mostly been self-injurious to the Vice President, last week caused some collateral damage to the President. Biden effectively forced the President’s hand on the gay marriage issue, making the President talk about his “evolution” about it and ultimately coming out in favor of it. No one in the White House is owning up to the idea that President Obama used Biden to run the idea up the flagpole to see if anyone would salute. So, it’s likely that Biden acted unilaterally. After a firestorm of media frenzy, President Obama publically declared his support for marriage between same sex couples.

This plays right into the hands of the Republicans, giving them a weapon which they will readily use all the way to election day, as if they needed one, what with the president being a foreign-born Muslim socialist, who wants to roll grandma in front of a firing squad, who wants to force teenagers to have sex with animals, and who wants to take all the money away from the job creators and give it to deadbeat welfare moms. Romney, in order to strike as sharp a relief as possible between himself and the President — not to mention taking advantage of the opportunity to preen himself in front of the bible-thumping morons at Liberty University this weekend — came out strongly in favor of the proposition that marriage is only properly constituted between “one man and one woman”. Of course, if his revision of history about the auto bailout is any indication, should it turn out that gay marriage is wildly popular among the electorate as a whole, Romney will say that he personally drafted Massachusetts’ gay marriage statute while he was governor.

Except that it’s not a wildly popular issue among the electorate a a whole. In fact, it’s an issue that may actually cost the President in the black community, as many black preachers are known not to favor gay marriage, and as a result may end up being less than enthusiastic towards Obama at best, and openly opposed to him at worst. With all the indications of this being a close election before all of this went down, this certainly doesn’t help much.

And then, of course, there are all of those Democrats and independents who go along with the President on the majority of his agenda, and are ready to support him for reelection, but who quietly take a powder when it comes to gay marriage, when they’re sure that no one’s looking. The ugly truth is that there are an awful lot of people on the left who talk the talk, but when push comes to shove, don’t walk the walk when it comes to the rights of same sex couples. That’s just true. And with this election promising to be one of the ugliest and most divisive in American history, the last thing that President Obama needs is for a significant chunk of his constituency’s support to go all tepid on him.

Don’t get us wrong. Here at OMT, we’re in favor of civil rights for same sex couples, and that includes the right to marry.

But we also believe that picking one’s battles wisely is the difference between being in a position to actually move forward on this and other important issues, and sitting on the sidelines while the GOP regains control and resumes the Reagan-Bush-Bush dismantling of everything that isn’t proto-fascist in their quest to turn America into an authoritarian, right-wing dictatorship. North Carolina’s recent law banning same-sex marriage brings to 39 the number of states that have outlawed it by statute. That’s more than enough state legislatures to approve a Constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage at the federal level, should any “tea-party” Congressman decide to introduce one. It’s clear that this is an uphill battle, and that there are forces aligned against it. To hang this issue prominently around President Obama’s neck like an albatross just in time for an election whose outcome is by no means forgone risks everything — and we mean everything — that President Obama has managed to achieve in his first term (which is a lot more than anyone in the media’s talking about), as well as much of what has come before, dating all the way back to The Great Society and The New Deal.

And, some would say, all the way back to the Declaration of Independence. All you have to do is read between the lines of what people like Little Ricky Santorum and Michelle Bachmann say about gay people to know that there is a disturbing number of people on the right, and especially in the “tea party”, who don’t simply want to stop at preventing the advancement of rights for same sex couples. They aren’t just interested in suppressing gay peoples’ pursuit of happiness. They want to go after life and liberty as well. They won’t be happy until gay blood is flowing in the streets. If this election results in a Romney victory, coupled with GOP control of both houses of Congress, gay marriage will be off the table, out of the conference room, out the front door, across the lawn and in the ditch.

This is the ship at risk of sinking from Joe Biden’s loose lips.

So, let’s give Joe the State Department, for which he is eminently qualified, and which will likely keep him busy enough to put a muzzle on that mouth of his.

And as for Hillary, well, she’s already said that she wants to step down as Secretary of State should President Obama win a second term. She’s said that she’s ready to take a break from all of the globe-trotting and the tiresome perks that come with the job, like the state dinners, the trips to the U.N., and schmoozing with third-world despots. In the Vice Presidency, she can cash in her frequent flier miles, and work as one of the President’s closest domestic advisers. And from the looks of things, he could use someone with her talents.

Plus, we think that Hillary as President Obama’s running mate would shake up this race in a way that just might pull the whole thing out of the fire. With both Hillary and Bill Clinton fully on board, the President would have America’s premiere political power couple in his arsenal. We think that it would make all the difference in the world. And there isn’t anyone in the entire Republican Party that Mitt might name as his running mate who could best Hillary Clinton in any debate format.

It could wind up being the most strategically significant move that the President could make in this entire campaign, and one which has the potential of sealing the deal on November 6th. We think that he should seriously consider it. It could be the difference between furthering the rights of same sex couples and turning back the clock on gay marriage and a host of other issues that affect both gay and straight people.

Biden as Secretary of State and Clinton as Vice President.

It’s the smart move.

It may be the only move.

The Barber of Cranbrook

Here at OMT, we’ve taken a generally lighthearted approach to Mitt Romney, the Republican automaton (if you’ll excuse the redundancy) that will be facing off against President Obama this fall. This is because, of all of the freaks, idiots, and morons that the GOP has put up as presidential candidates in an electoral cycle that seems to have come from the mind of Paddy Chayefsky, Mitt has seemed — to us, at least — to be the least overtly harmful. Of course, that’s like saying that kerosene is the least harmful petrochemical that you can pour on your Wheaties in the morning. But when the choices are kerosene and benzine, the few people who wouldn’t eat their Wheaties dry when faced with a choice like that would likely go with the former over the latter.

In addition, there’s the entire issue with the magic underwear, a Mormon quirk of faith that we particularly enjoy, not only because of its fetish appeal, but because any time that you can openly mock a presidential candidate because of his underwear, you simply must pounce on it.

You simply must.

And so, with this underwear business opening the door, not to mention that incident with Mitt strapping a dog to the roof of his car for a 600-mile trip to Canada — including the whole scene with him pulling over to a gas station to hose down the car after the poor, terrified dog had evacuated its bowels and bladder all over the station wagon, a scene right out of a National Lampoon movie, with Chevy Chase in the role of Mitt — we have up until now adopted a juvenile, sophomoric approach to Mitt’s candidacy, mining humor from the sorts of things that spring from those remote recesses of our mind in which the Three Stooges are kings, and where F Troop stands in for Catch 22.

But juvenile behavior varies widely among kids, and from it one can very often take the measure of the adult man. The humanity — or inhumanity — of the grown-up can nearly always be found in its nascent stages in their formative years. Now, that’s not to say that people are incapable of change, and that a misspent youth never blossoms into an adulthood of compassion, empathy, and caring for mankind. But it hardly every turns out that way, and that’s just true. If that makes us a cynic in your eyes, then perhaps you should open them a bit wider.

We’re talking, of course, about the report in The Washington Post yesterday, about Mitt’s teenage days at the Cranbrook School, the exclusive prep school which young Mitt attended, one of those institutions run by vicious, sadistic, and way too often for our taste, pedophilic social Darwinists who confine young minds in a straitjacket of discipline during the day only to turn them loose in their dorm rooms at night to torture one another physically and mentally for the purposes of weeding out those weaklings who have a tad too much humanity to take their rightful place in America’s moneyed elite as adults.

Mitt, of course, rose to the challenge, as is evidenced from his success as an adult. As the article brings to light, Mitt was the ringleader of a gang of thugs who attacked a nerdy, bespectacled, studious kid who had the audacity to evince a bit of sensitivity in his demeanor, and who had long, bleached blond hair. Mitt had been fuming around campus for days about the kid’s hair, and how it’s just “not right”. And when he couldn’t take it anymore, he picked up a pair of shears, gathered up a bunch of his friends and set upon the terrified kid, with Mitt holding him down and hacking off the kid’s hair.

As the Post story says, several of Mitt’s toadies have come forward to tell the tale, saying that the whole thing was Mitt’s idea, and that they were just along for the ride. The kid that Mitt attacked had been mercilessly harassed for some time, apparently, because everyone assumed he was gay. It turns out that they were right about that, because later, as a young adult, the kid, John Lauber, would come out to his family. After the incident with Mitt, Lauber was absent from school for a while, but eventually came back with his hair cropped close, and back to its natural color. He wasn’t long for Cranbrook, however, being expelled after he was caught smoking a cigarette.

Several of the others involved in the incident apologized to Lauber over the years, including some of those who came forward for the Post story. Many of those guys went on to become leading citizens with rich, rewarding careers. Lauber had a tougher time of it, though, eventually dying in 2004 of the liver cancer that results from taking to the bottle from having to live a life mired in the ostracization that stems from being different in a society which enshrines the concept of mort la difference, an ugly idea that places like Cranbrook carefully plant into young, impressionable minds, and that often comes to full flower in adulthood.

While Lauber likely vividly remembered for the rest of his days that awful haircut that Mitt gave him, and the others involved remember it in great detail, Mitt confesses that he doesn’t recall it specifically, although he allows that he may have been involved in some high school “pranks” that went “too far”.

The way we see it, if Mitt actually remembers and he’s not being up front about it, then he’s a liar.

However, if it’s really true that he doesn’t remember chasing down some kid that’s had him riled up for days, getting him down on the floor and sitting on top of him while he crudely takes a pair of shears to the kid’s hair and hacking it off, then that is perhaps even more troubling than his lying about it. Because that implies one of two things; either he didn’t see anything wrong with it at the time, and so just dismissed it as another everyday occurrence that doesn’t warrant remembering, or it is the sort of thing that he did so often that the specific incident just got lost in the shuffle of all of the other cruel and unusual “pranks” he carried out on other hapless weaklings too thoughtful, or too sensitive to fight him off.

No matter how you look at it, Mitt comes off like a chump.

And, of course, Mitt turned out to be one of Cranbrook’s noteworthy success stories. Mitt went off to great achievement at Bain Capital, that company that gave him all of the business and administrative chops he likes to talk about on the campaign trail, where he found that it was much more lucrative to pick on weak companies instead of weak people, buying them up, breaking them down, laying off tens of thousands of poor working saps, and taking out what cash he could get so that he could line his pockets in true capitalist style.

Mitt, as it turns out, is much more of a vicious, inhuman creep than anyone in the “tea party” gives him credit for. This new revelation should do more for him among these great, unwashed, resentful morons than either Rick Santorum or Marco Rubio as a running mate ever could. Here, after all, is a story of Mitt bashing a gay kid when his opponent in the upcoming election has just told the world that gay marriage is OK. In one fell swoop, The Washington Post has solved a problem that has been hounding him ever since this race began with Mitt as the presumptive front-runner that nobody seemed to want.

Well, they’ll be sure to be giving him a second look now.

Child is father to the man, as Al Kooper would say.