Eight years ago, I wrote in this space that I possessed one of the few non-photo driver’s licenses left in America.  I finally submitted to the tyranny of the camera when I renewed my license in 2009.  Between frequent flying and DC bar-hopping it was just too much of a hassle to remember to always bring my passport.

Later, Charlie and I talked about how reflexive and normal the reach for ID has become.  It used to irritate me (as many things do) and tempted as I was to engage pointless, philosophical discussions with bouncers (“Really?  What’s the likelihood I’m under 21?”) I knew they were trying to hang onto not-very-remunerative jobs in a tough economy (and they were, after all, bouncers).

Here in Vermont, electric utilities are installing smart meters on houses – a good thing for efficient use of electricity and a necessary tool in the fight to slow global warming – but the state chapter of the ACLU has very real concerns about privacy and wants law enforcement to be required to obtain a search warrant before gaining access to someone’s smart meter data.

Well, what’s a little more personal data out there anyway?  Since September 2001, governments at all levels, the private corporations that work fore them, and many that don’t, have collected an enormous amount of information about us all.  George W. Bush led the initial assault on our civil liberties; Barack Obama promised to rein it in, but has actually accelerated it in some ways.

Well, what’s the problem with a middle-aged guy having to show his photo ID before entering a bar or letting cops peep at his electrons?  I neither drink nor grow pot in my basement (or anywhere else, for that matter).  The problem is we are all getting too used to being good sheep, showing IDs, taking off our shoes at airports, surrendering our data to anyone who asks.  (Or doesn’t ask.  See any facebook page.)

This week the Center for Constitutional Rights is suing New York City over the police department’s “stop and frisk” program.  Initiated under Rudy Guiliani in the ‘90s, the program has exploded under Michael Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly (who is said to have mayoral aspirations).  This year, the program is on track to harass 750,000 citizens, 85 percent of who will be black or Latino, even though those groups comprise only half the city’s population.

Isn’t it a small price to pay for safer streets?  No, it’s not.  In the first place, there’s no evidence that turning the NYPD into a thug squad has done anything to bring down the crime rate, since NYC’s crime rate has risen and fallen along the same lines as cities that don’t grab people on the sidewalk (or in the halls of the buildings where they live) and shake them down.

More important, it’s better to fear criminals than cops.  Even if stop and frisk made streets safer, it wouldn’t be worth it.  Singapore’s safe, but I don’t want to live there, not Riyadh, Pyongyang nor Tehran.  It was safe to walk the streets of Munich in 1938, unless you were Jewish, Roma or a member of other discriminated groups.  Is that an unfair comparison?  I don’t think so.  Just like New York today, members of demographic minorities were targeted for the majority of police harassment. What began with aggressive policing ended in a much uglier place.  If we don’t draw a line here, then where?  When? And if we don’t draw a line now, will be still have the capacity to do so later?

The same week the NYC gets sued for profiling racial minorities, the census bureau announces white babies now make up a minority of US births.  Do you think there’s a connection?  Does it seem to you that the white folks might be getting nervous?  It does to me.

© Mark Floegel, 2012

Don’t celebrate yet. The Bush/Cheney appetite for crime will likely increase, if anything, in the months ahead. This morning’s Washington Post gives good examples.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee whether or not he thinks waterboarding is torture, although he admitted he’d think it was torture if it happened to him. Meanwhile, the other Mike, CIA Director General Michael Hayden admits his agency has done it. Three times. If the Bush administration admits waterboarding three times, no one will blame you for guessing that it happens a whole lot more than that.

The White House spokesperson corps – that bastion of credibility – confirmed the instances of torture. Spokesoid Tony Fratto said the administration is going public because of “misinformation” about waterboarding and because the White House wants to be clear about “what the benefits were” from this particular form of torture.

I guess they would know the specifics of various forms of torture. The people who run our nation, we should be proud to say, are torture connoisseurs.

Waterboarding has been used at least as far back as the Spanish Inquisition. That’s time-tested, quality torture. In fact – and isn’t this ironic? – it was in 1492 that Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain turned the Inquisition loose to torture (with some waterboarding, we presume) Muslims and Jews into converting to Catholicism. To celebrate this, Isabella and Ferdinand gave Christopher Columbus the money he needed to sail off to America; so really, waterboarding Muslims is linked to the early foundations of American society.

Little known fact: Ponce de Leon was looking for the fountain of youth, so he could use the water for waterboarding. It seems some of the older Jews and Muslims were dying – weak hearts and whatnot – before they could be successfully tortured into accepting the One True Faith. His was truly a selfless quest.

But that’s the past. This is an election year and elections are about the future.

Rudy Giuliani, who is no longer a candidate for president, may have been done in not by his inept campaign (although it truly was inept), but because Rudy, let’s face it, is a low-class torturer.

Sure, while he was in the race, he boasted that his administration would torture more than Mr. Bush’s. He’d brag at debates about all the torture of his fellow Italian-Americans he’d overseen when he was a US attorney. Tony Fratto – or anyone else in the White House – could have told him, “Rudy, it’s not quantity, it’s quality that makes the torture.”

In Rudy Giuliani’s NYPD, they’d rape you with a plunger and kick your teeth in. That’s low class. Maybe they’d shoot you 41 times while you were pulling your wallet out. That’s counter-productive. Maybe undercover cops would ask to buy drugs from you (cause you’re, y’know, a black guy) and when you tell them you don’t sell drugs, they’d shoot you dead, then Rudy would hold a press conference to bad-mouth you while your family was mourning. But now I’m digressing. Maybe Rudy’s cops would wade into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, swinging their clubs and screaming, “It’s Giuliani time!” That’s just gauche. Like I said, low-class. Voters were right to reject him.

John McCain, who leads the GOP race, is a survivor of torture. It’s unclear if there was waterboarding. He is anti-torture. Five and a half years in a POW camp will do that to you. For his anti-torture stance and other perceived sins, the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters promise to vote for the Democratic candidate instead.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have promised that, if elected, no torturing will occur on their watch.

Mitt Romney, in the extraordinarily unlikely event he beats Mr. McCain, has promised to double the size of the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He’ll be thrilled to learn the Bush administration has a secret prison there. The Washington Post interviewed an army psychologist Col. Larry James, stationed down there. He said he knew nothing about the secret prisoners. He said, “I learned a long, long time ago, if I’m going to be successful in the intel community, I’m meticulously – in a very, very dedicated way – going to stay in my lane. So if I don’t have a specific need to know about something, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t ask about it.”

Eleven fun months to go.

Update: A few hours after this was posted, Mitt Romney dropped from the Republican race. Apparently, like Rudy Giuliani, he thought quantity torture equals quality torture and he paid for his mistake.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I noted then that the market had been eerily prescient in the 2000 election, predicting Al Gore would get the most votes, but George Bush would win the election.

As the poet said, “Noting gold can stay,” and this year’s charts, for both the Republican and Democratic primaries, reflect not prescience, but something akin to a kitten chasing a piece of string.

On the GOP side, Rudy Giuliani’s numbers were high for most of 2007, while John McCain fed from the bottom, now that we know the situation is reversed, so is the graph, but who cares? On the Democratic side, see the wild swings Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama experienced in the Iowa-New Hampshire weeks.

I can only guess this market was a victim of its own popularity. Word got out about the market and it was invaded by people aligned with each campaign, trying to game the oracle while simultaneously flooded by barroom prognosticators, the same ones that lose money every week on the NFL and NCAA.

The first thing I learned is that appearance is reality. The theme park defined what a pleasing appearance was and enforced it strictly. In the “backstage” areas, managers (“leads” in theme park jargon) would post “hot lists” of “cast members” whose appearance was beginning at odds with the official appearance. (BTW, I was not an actor, I was a waiter. The whole “backstage” and “cast member” routine was part of the corporate groupspeak at the theme park.)

I made the hot list several times because my sideburns crept below my ears’ halfway point. If I worked a double shift, my lead would make me shave in the middle of the day, so our “guests” wouldn’t have to see a five o’clock (or even a three o’clock) shadow. Women made the list for allegedly immoderate displays of jewelry or makeup. Facial hair or visible tattoos were not allowed, period. When we were onstage – and most of us onstage were white – we were all smiles and manners, regardless of how we argued and cursed each other backstage.

Wholesome and clean was the look; no expense was spared to maintain it. If an ice cream cone is dropped on the park’s “Main Street,” a discreetly dressed cast member quietly radios for assistance and another discreetly dressed maintenance cast member emerges from one of many concealed doors and cleans the mess within seconds. Flower beds with a precise arrangement of 4,000 green and yellow flowers today will have a precise arrangement of 4,000 blue and white flowers tomorrow.

The second thing I learned is that people will pay for the clean, smiley, no-facial-hair-or-visible-tattoos experience. It costs $71 for people ten and over to walk through the front gate at that theme park. No outside food allowed and the inside food is expensive, so try not to drop that ice cream cone in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about theme parks as I’ve watched Rudy Giuliani hang all his hopes for the presidency on Florida. He brags about the way he cleaned up New York City during his tenure as mayor.

I knew New York before and after Rudy and he did clean it up. He made war on the squeegee men and scoured drug dealers and prostitutes from Times Square. New York was a success under Rudy, but a success with a cost. Times Square was “Disneyified.” Disney has a thriving store in Times Square.

Money poured into a cleaner, safer New York. Real estate went through the roof and soon all the working-class people were pushed out of Manhattan. Now, like that central Florida theme park, Manhattan is cleaner and more predictable, but it’s also duller and is something of a theme park for the rich or tourists.

If you’ve ever traveled in a way that transcends tourism – by which I mean you get away from the resorts and the places where everyone speaks English – you may come to see the United States as a theme park. If you’ve spent time in Africa, Asia, South or Central America, you start to realize the people there live in the real world and we live in a scrubbed, orderly simulacrum.

What’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t we all like to live on the Main Street portrayed in central Florida? Maybe, but remember the tremendous resources it takes to create that illusion. Our national theme park is sucking dry the planet’s natural resources and our financial resources. The newspapers are full of it.

Time to head for the exit. Back to the real world.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I was not so wrong that I mind taking a lump or two. I was not so right that I can gloat.

Ms. Clinton’s campaign is far weaker this morning than it was 24 hours ago. I was surprised by the size of Mr. Obama’s eight-point margin of victory and Mr. Edwards squeaking into second-place by half a percentage point.

On the GOP side, I was surprised Mr. Huckabee’s margin over Mr. Romney was nine points, although unlike Mr. Huckabee, I don’t see the hand of Jesus in it. I was stunned that Fred Thompson beat John McCain for third (again, by less than half a percentage point). I think no one is more disappointed by that result than Mr. Thompson. In recent days he’s been sounding like a man looking for a reason to drop from the race and now he doesn’t have one. On to New Hampshire, Fred.

Democrats Joe Biden and Chris Dodd did drop from the race Thursday night after each of them failed to break the one percent threshold. Inexplicably, Dems Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich and Republican Duncan Hunter – all of whom scored zero in the caucuses – are still “in” it, whatever that means.

Rudy Giuliani, who recently led national polls, finished in sixth place, behind Ron Paul, but supposedly “that’s part of the plan,” same kind of “planning” that put his emergency response center in the number one terrorist target.

New Hampshire predictions tomorrow.

On the Democratic side, my prediction is: Hillary Clinton comes out of Iowa weaker than she went in.

The Iowa Democratic caucuses are complex processes with “preference groups” and “viability thresholds.” It’s important to note that this is public democracy. It’s not a secret ballot, voters have to go and stand under their candidate’s banner.

There are eight candidates on the Democratic side. After the first session, the supporters of candidates not deemed viable will be asked to stand with their candidate of second choice.

People supporting Bill Richardson or Joe Biden or Chris Dodd – all of whom are unlikely to pass the viability threshold – go into the evening knowing their man is unlikely to win, so they stand with their initial candidate to send a message. It’s a form of idealism. Ms. Clinton has not presented herself as the candidate of idealism, she presents herself as the candidate of inevitability.

For that reason, I think Barack Obama and John Edwards will pick up most of the supporters whose first choices didn’t make the cut.

I’m not saying both Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards will beat Ms. Clinton, but I think one of the them will. I think Mr. Obama more likely to do so than Mr. Edwards.

This will not mean Ms. Clinton is out of the race. She has a good organization, a solid war chest and a base of support in New Hampshire. But she will come out of Iowa weaker than she went in.

On the Republican side, I think it will be Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain. (n.b. – GOP caucuses in Iowa are nothing like the Democrats’. It’s straightforward ballots with no second choices.)

My sense is Mr. Huckabee wins by default, with Mr. Romney – for all the money he’s spent in Iowa – coming across as too phony. Rudy Giuliani is a) too scary and b) has not campaigned much in Iowa. Mr. McCain – who has also not campaigned much in Iowa – is the default third place finisher.

I could be wrong about third place. Ron Paul, with his zealous followers, could turn in a surprising performance.

Cheer or jeer on Friday morning.