Michael Bryan

Michael founded BlogForArizona.net as the Howard Dean presidential campaign blog for Arizona in 2003, and has been blogging ever since. The Blog is now coming up on 20 years of continuous publication, a major achievement for any political blog, which usually have the life-spans of mayflies. Michael is an attorney living in Tucson with his wife Lauren. In 2008, Michael remade BlogForArizona into a collaborative project. Michael is now but one of the contributors to the blog and provides editorial and publishing direction in consultation with the Board of Directors and the other authors. If you want to keep up with the latest Arizona and National political news in an entertaining quick hit of news and opinion, check out the BlogForArizona twitter feed, which Mike largely curates and writes. Michael is also an AAPC member who occassionally consults on political campaigns, strategy and communications.

Saturday… Well… Weekend? Editorial August 11th, 2012

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By Michael Bryan

DlbottleI'd like to let you all know that Drinking Liberally will be meeting this week at the regular time and place (Wednesday, 6pm at The Shanty). This week our guest is… Me! I will be presenting the Propositions that will appear on this November's ballot (and a few that might not be…). We'll discuss the pros and cons (where such exists) and a have a few beers. For a preview, or if you can't make it, you can take a look at my 2012 Ballot Prop Guide.

Donkeysatmanger2I personally read almost every news source in Arizona – and keep up with national reaction to our politics, as well. I do it to bring you readers of BlogForArizona the Arizona Donkey Feed, which appears on our right-hand sidebar every day (you may also have the Feed emailed to you daily). Sometimes the avalanche of information available in our 24/7 news cycle can be overwhelming. I do generally succeed in keeping the Feed topically restricted to Arizona politics. But it is a lot of noise to sort through, so, I decided I might like to sit down once a week and take some time to look around, and try to get some perspective on the news.

This week, I chose to present an extended rumination on the Jared Loughner plea and the Arpaio trial. I sense some connections that might not be entirely obvious.

Read more after the click…

SunZia: The Making of a Slave State, First Power then Transmission

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SunZia: The Making of a Slave State, First Power then Transmission
Why does Arizona tolerate it? Why do its citizens tolerate it? Who benefits by creating a slave-state status for Arizona?
This unnecessary transmission line has been touted as a renewable energy line, while every map option for this line connects with the Bowie Natural Gas facility, owned by the same owners of SunZia.
Energy Efficiency is the best way to spend dollars to meet energy needs in Arizona, followed by a mix of efficiency and solar and wind energy.

Romney Campaign Stumps for Obamacare

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By Michael Bryan

OK. So the Obama campaign runs an ad that crushes Romney on a Bain plant closure that caused a fellow to lose his healthcare, which cost his wife her life. Brutal, right?

So. Romney's campaign counters with a spokesperson, Andrea Saul, on Fox. She says this:

“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care. There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President Obama’s economy.”

Really? Your counter is that if only that poor bastard has been lucky enough to have lived in Massachusetts in order to benefit from Romneycare, his wife would have been fine. Except that Romney wants to repeal Obama's version of national Romneycare if he's elected.

It boogles the mind. It's as if these people live in a video game of a campaign which has no connection to real people or real consequences. Scoring the next point is the only goal. "Well, Romneycare would have saved that guy's wife, so there!" Cue pleased look on face of Romneybot as she mentally tots up another point for her team…

See the video of Romneybot Ms. Saul basically admitting that Obamacare saves lives after the click…

Visualizing AIMS and _other_ school performance data

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Posted by John Denker On August 2nd, the Arizona Dept. of Education released the 2012 AIMS results and other data. I plotted up some of the data in the form of maps, so that you can easily see the location of the high-scoring schools and the low-scoring schools.  The plots along with some explanation and … Read more

Andy Thomas’ Judicial Tyranny Conspiracy Theories

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By Michael Bryan

Thomas123Disgraced and disbarred, almost-Arizona-Attorney-General Andy Thomas published a conspiracy-theory laced diatribe on 'judicial tyranny'. It is an impressively reality-challenged piece of political propaganda. The defining feature of propaganda is hyperbolic and unsupported assertions lacking any sort of proof or factual basis: Andy's rant has this feature in spades.

Let's take a look at what Andy has to say, and point out it's many, many problems. Andy is in bold and I'm in italics…

[hat tip to Sonoran Alliance for publishing this oozing sore on the face of our public life…]
Read the oozing sore, and my attempt to apply antibiotic, after the click…