Brokered Convention

In recent weeks certain political pundits have been suggesting that there's a possibility of a brokered Republican Convention this year.

A brokered convention occurs when none of the candidates has won at least 50 percent of the pledged delegates by the time of their party's convention.  This hasn't happened since the 1952 Democratic Convention when Adlai Stevenson was chosen to run against Dwight Eisenhower.  It hasn't happened to the Republicans since 1946 when the Republicans chose Thomas Dewey to run against Harry S. Truman.

There was some similar scuttlebutt back in 2008 when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were running closely throughout the race.  If neither of them had been able to carry a majority it would have gone to a brokered convention in which the party elite would choose the candidate rather than those who voted.

However the way the system has been set up for years-- with each state's primaries or caucuses being all or nothing affairs does not lend itself as readily to the likelihood of brokered conventions... especially not in the information age when momentum is a much stronger factor than it was in the early pre-telegraph, pre-telephone days of our country.

That has changed in some states starting with this election cycle.  Some states are opting to go to a proportional allotment of delegates.

To clarify--

Historically speaking, whoever wins a state carries ALL that state's delegates regardless of how close the race might have been.  So in Iowa where Rick Santorum won by 30 some votes, he'd carry ALL of Iowa's delegates.

To my knowledge Iowa is not a state where that changed but let's say it was-- instead of Santorum getting ALL of Iowa's delegates, the delegates would be split proportionally to the number of votes won by each candidate.

If enough states end up going to the proportional allotment of delegates in the future brokered conventions will likely become a bit more common.

Where things get hairy is that many times the candidate chosen by the party elite ends up being a candidate who did not actually run in the primaries.  The name floated around in 2008 when it looked like Obama and Clinton might have split the delegates with neither of them getting a majority was not either of them... it was Al Gore.

Similarly, the names being floated around on the GOP side if this goes to a brokered convention are not Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, or even Rick Santorum... some of the names rumored for consideration in the event of a brokered GOP convention include Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (the chap who delivered the GOP rebuttal speech to Obama's most recent State of the Union address).

The logic behind choosing a candidate who did not run in the primaries is that if none of the candidates who ran in the primaries were strong enough to get that majority none of them are strong enough to face the other party's nominee in the general election so we should look at other possibilities.

Inconvenient Truths about the "Racist" Republicans

One of my liberal friends posted this on his facebook page and it rather annoyed me.  Largely because several of these points are historically false and inaccurate.  Let's go through point by point:

1) "Liberals got women the right to vote." - The 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote was drafted by Susan B. Anthony and was first presented to Congress by Aaron Augustus Sargent, a Republican Senator from California.  Unfortunately, at the time it failed.  In 1920 when the 19th amendment was finally passed by Congress, the House of Representatives was under Republican control.  The Amendment was signed into law by then Speaker of the House, Frederick H. Gillett, a Republican.

2) "Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote" - The 15th amendment was one of the Reconstruction Amendments, again passed by Republicans.  No Democrats voted in favor of this amendment and only 3 Republicans voting against it and one abstaining (Charles Sumner who felt it didn't go far enough to protect the voting rights of minorities).

3) "Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of people out of poverty." - This one is true.  Social Security was established under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

4) "Liberals ended segregation." - In the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren (appointed by Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower) overturned the laws that allowed segregation and made it illegal.  It was also President Eisenhower who ordered in the National Guard to enforce the Supreme Court decision.

The rest of the statements are true... The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were both passed under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency.

Medicare was created with the Social Security Act of 1965, also under LBJ.

The Clean Air Act went into effect in December 1963.  The Clean Water Act was passed into law in 1972 when Republican, Richard Nixon was president but it was passed by Congress which was controlled by a Democratic majority at the time.

In addition the above quote fails to acknowledge:

The first African-American governor, was Republican Oscar Dunn.

The first African-American elected to the US Senate was Mississippi Republican, Hiram Revels.

The first African-American elected to the US House of Representatives was South Carolina Republican, Joseph Rainey.

The first woman to serve in Congress, Jeanette Rankin, was a Montana Republican.

The first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated by Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

The first African-American Secretary of State, Colin Powell AND the first  female African-American Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, were appointed by Republican George W. Bush.

The first Latin-American attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, was also appointed by Bush.

For that matter George W. Bush appointed more women and minorities to his cabinet than any president before him.

The first Indian-American governor, Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal is a Republican.

The first female Indian-American governor, South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, is a Republican.

The first Hispanic governor, Nevada governor, Brian Sandoval, is a Republican.

The first female Hispanic governor, New Mexico governor, Susana Martinez, is a Republican.

We're two of a kind....

If I cried out loud of the sorrow I've known
And the secrets I've heard
It would me ease my mind
Someone sharing the load
But I won't breathe a word


We're two of a kind
Silence and I
We need a chance to talk things over
Two of a kind
Silence and I
We'll find a way to work it out


While the children laughed
I was always afraid
Of the smile of the clown
So I close my eyes
Till I can't see the light
And I hide from the sound 

We're two of a kind
Silence and I
We need a chance to talk things over
Two of a kind
Silence and I
We'll find a way to work it out 

I can hear the cry
Of the leaf on a tree
As it falls to the ground
I can hear the call
Of an echoing voice
And there's no one around 

We're two of a kind
Silence and I
We need a chance to talk things over
Two of a kind
Silence and I
We'll find a way to work it out

For some reason this song really speaks to me lately.  I've been on a big Alan Parsons Project kick lately.  This is one of their most hauntingly beautiful songs sung by the late Eric Woolfson (the same guy who sang Time and Eye In the Sky).  Listening to APP and Pink Floyd you can really hear how PF influenced Alan Parsons (or was it the other way around as Parsons was the engineer for Dark Side of the Moon).  Take this live version of Time for example, it sounds like it could just easily be a Pink Floyd song:




And now check out Pink Floyd's Us & Them:



The similarities are more than a little bit uncanny, aren't they?

On Broadway

In April 1991 I went to Montreal to see Les Miserables. It was the first professionally done musical I'd ever seen. I loved it. I was hooked. Since then I've also seen Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (performed by college students at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam) and Miss Saigon.

While I've never seen Phantom of the Opera I do have it on CD (in both English and German) and have listened to it countless times (oddly enough I prefer the German version despite my lack of comprehension of the language... the German singers sing it with far more power and emotion than the London cast).

I've started delving into other musicals I've not yet seen-- Whistle Down the Wind, Ragtime, Jekyll & Hyde, Movin' Out, Martin Guerre, Titanic, Mama Mia, and even the German musical Tanz der Vampire. I've especially enjoyed Whistle Down the Wind and Tanz der Vampire both of which were co-written by Jim Steinman (best known for writing all of the material on Meat Loaf's first 2 Bat Out of Hell albums (not to mention much of the material on the 3rd one as well), he also wrote Air Supply's Making Love Out of Nothing At All, Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, and Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back to Me Now).

I've tried some of the older musicals like Oklahoma, West Side Story, & Carousel but none of them have really grabbed me the way the more contemporary musicals have.  Perhaps it's that those musicals haven't aged well. The stories may be good but much of that music does sound dated today.  In all fairness the music to many of these more contemporary musicals that I've come to enjoy may also end up sounding a bit dated.

There's an emotional power in the vocal performances in many of these musicals that has the capacity imho to bring even the hardiest of men to tears.  The words aren't just sung, the emotions that go with the words come pouring out too, much moreso than in spoken word.  The same can be said in certain rock and pop songs but many of them are too "light" to really pull that off.

I've heard that 80s pop mall starlet, Debbie Gibson, only ever pursued pop music to bide her time and make some extra money as her voice matured.  She had come from broadway singing the part of "Young Cosette" in Les Miserables as a child but her voice hadn't yet matured enough to sing either the parts of the adult Cosette or even the more heart-wrenching vocal performance of Eponine in that musical.  She did inevitably go back to Broadway using her full name, "Deborah Gibson," instead of the more tween-teen sounding "Debbie."

Smooth Criminal

The recent guilty verdict of Dr. Conrad Murray has given me reason to pause... Not so much the verdict itself (which was and is just), but the public reaction to it.

Seemingly getting lost in the mix is Jackson's own culpability in his untimely demise.  Yes Murray was a well-paid and willing accomplice, but Jackson knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong, and despite paying a doctor to assist him in his rather posh drug habit, he did bring it upon himself.  Murray, while guilty, was an accomplice and not the murderer that many Jackson fans paint him to be.

What bothers me about the reaction is the perpetuation of the buck-passing, "it's always someone else's fault" mentality.  In the end no one "won" this case and the unfortunate biggest loser in this case was any semblance of personal accountability.

Jackson was largely martyred in his passing for the immense talent he showed in life.  The voices condemning his actions, his own hand in his demise were muted if not silenced by the voices that lifted his legend onto pedestals at the expense of any semblance of Jackson's accountability for the actions that led to his death.

And now those same voices are cheering his "murderer"... While it's good that Murray is being held accountable for his role Jackson's passing, referring to him as a "murderer" is an insult to personal accountability.  Jackson was his own murderer... Murray just provided the means and "supervision" that allowed MJ to commit his crime.

Expanding Musical Horizons in Young Ears

The past few weeks I've been trying to expose my daughter...  (it sounds really bad if I leave it at that, doesn't it?)  to more of "Daddy's taste in music."  The past couple of months we've been listening to The Best of 1927 (an Aussie pop band from the late 80s), Chicago 16, and Chicago 17.

At eleven when my interests started shifted firmly away from toys to music my favorite albums were Chicago 16, 17, and 18.  I listened to them incessantly.  As my taste in music matured I started exploring more and more of Chicago's back catalog.  Those eighties albums were like "gateway drugs" that started feeding my interest in exploring the band's more adventurous material from earlier in their careers.

While I now prefer their earlier material (much of which was recorded before I was even a glimmer in my parents' eyes) I still hold a soft spot in my heart for their eighties material.  If not for getting "hooked" on their later material, I might never have later discovered their more complex and interesting earlier material.

With that in mind, I figured that if I want to get my daughter interested in Chicago I should start with the same albums that initially sparked my interest.  Listening to Chicago 16 & 17 again as much as I have been the past couple of months has reminded me that despite not being as daring as their earlier material, for pop music it was still quite complex.  With the addition of Bill Champlin on keyboards and vocals in 1981 the band shifted to being a 2 keyboard band... having a keyboard-centric producer in David Foster only pushed the keyboards more to the front of the mix and relegated the horn players to reading newspapers, twiddling their thumbs, or pretending to play keyboards or guitars in music videos.  Luckily for the band, keyboards and synthesizers were the IN thing in the eighties so the shift paid off for the band.  The horns were still present on many songs but oddly enough they were absent on some of the band's biggest hits of the eighties-- Hard to Say I'm Sorry, Hard Habit to Break, You're the Inspiration, Will You Still Love Me, and Look Away for the most part lacked horns.  In all fairness, You're the Inspiration included multiple changes in key and time signature showing it to be a considerably more complex song than much of the 3/4 or 4/4, 3 chord dime-a-dozen material of that era.

So the past few days I've tried introducing Marillion and The Sons of Champlin to my daughter.  In hindsight I realize going from Chicago to the Sons of Champlin is a bit too ambitious.  While both bands have horn sections and featured Bill Champlin on vocals and keys. That kind of shift is kind of like teaching her to cook by starting with instruction on boiling water and skipping straight to making a souffle.  There need to be a few more steps between 80s pop-rock with horns and psychedelic-tinged blue-eyed soul.

My attempts introducing her to Marillion have been marginally more successful.  She's not too keen on Pseudo Silk Kimono (neither am I though) which opens the Misplaced Childhood album but she seems to enjoy Kayleigh and Lavender as both of those songs are considerably more accessible and are at least from the same era as the Chicago and 1927 material that she's come to enjoy over the past couple of months.

I'm thinking the next step is to introduce her to Toto and start dipping her toes into Chicago's 70s catalog with their Hot Streets album (probably their most pop-friendly album of the 70s).

Politicin'

The muse has had really bad timing lately.  She gently flicks my ear to get my attention while I'm at work, she whispers ideas to me while I'm still half asleep in the shower, or sometimes when I'm driving home she tries to forcibly get ideas in my head....  But when I finally sit down to write, she's nowhere to be found.  She makes herself scarce and I'm left grasping at the ghosts of the ideas she planted in my head, the apparitions of thoughts that I can barely make out let alone put into words.

But, I'm here now so...

If you're a regular reader you already know my political beliefs fall right of center.  I've been following  the Occupy Wall Street/Chicago/etc. protests on the news with some level of amusement.  I know that the press is doing to them what they were doing to the Tea Party... finding the most asinine and outspoken idiots to use as a representative sample when it's anything but.

The truth is-- and I feel like a broken record here, the further on the fringe people are the more vocal they are.  The more vocal they are the more attention gets paid to them.  That does not mean they speak for the majority, it does not mean that they have the majority opinion... It just means they're the most vocal at expressing their thoughts and ideas.  

We human beans love a good circus and we tend to gravitate towards the freaks when we go to the circus, our media plays into that and contributes heavily to it.  The partisan rancor that exists in this country is largely the end product of the media... every story-- even in the news apparently there needs to be a good guy and a bad guy...  But reality is really just shades of grey, isn't it?

I still maintain that there are far more of us "in the middle" than on the fringes.  Most of us have opinions that are more similar than different.  Each of us has our own little leanings a little to the right here, a little to the left there...  but we all put our pants on one leg at a time, we breathe the same air, we live under the same sun and moon as everyone else... and maybe just maybe the rancor we have for "the opposition" is misguided.

In politics it's all about divide and conquer... and again the media plays into this.  Our politicians are like magicians.. they use deflection to distract us... and to "deflect" they get us to fight amongst ourselves.  And when we stop fighting amongst ourselves from time to time we realize they've made our taxpayer dollars disappear...  And it's not like pulling a rabbit out of a hat... It's not a matter of our money was there a second ago and suddenly highways or mass transit rail appear where the money once was...  the money is GONE... disappeared.  However sometimes when the money disappears, in its place you can clearly see tons and tons of red tape.