We are now definitely in the dog days of summer. A few days in New Jersey, where fears of Obama's health plan are high, and birther nonsense seems to win favor, it dawned on me that I can't listen to these people anymore. Basically, healthcare will pass in some form that will ameliorate the present crisis and Obama will have another domestic triumph of some sort. Sotomayor will be confirmed, despite the racist positions of Sessions, Hatch and Kyle. And we remain in Afghanistan and Iraq is acting independently. Newsweek reports the recession is over--not for some of us. Recovery will be long and hard and I doubt whether the old economy will remain the same.
While away, the birthers got wall-to-wall media coverage from CNN, FOX and NBC. Of course, the big fly in their oinment is the fact Barack Obama's mother was an American. All the rest of the nonsense about birth certificates, live births, the rumors about Mombassa (which would have been in Zanzibar when he was born) and his mother renouncing her American citizenship in Indonesia (extremely doubtful as she was a U.S. government employee in a country in the middle of a civil war), is just that nonsense. Huffingtonpost.com actually had a person videotape answers of House Republicans about whether Obama was a U.S citizen. Only one very conservative representative from Arizona answered in the affirmative.
Republicans believe they can play the race card to win the 2010 by-elections. That's why they don't want to alienate the birthers. In fact, Republicans didn't even respond to the prime-time press conference by President Obama on health care. Instead, the RNC and the NRSC rifled off denunciations of Obama's criticism of Cambridge, Mass police arresting Harvard professor Gates while in his own home. Now House Republicans want to pass a resolution calling on Congress forcing him to apologize because he said the police acted stupidly. Arresting a black man entering his own home with suitcases might be called stupid in the world of reality. But this flap served to get the media off the healthcare debate. In other words it served the Republicans short-term purpose. Now the new argument about healthcare reform is that illegal immigrants will receive free healthcare. Maybe this will all pay off for the Republicans but how it serves the country is beyond me.
Howard Kurtz reported that he had made frequent inquiries to Republican offices about the GOP ideas about healthcare reform and found out they have no such plan,although Roy Blunt, the leading Republican on healthcare had previously claimed a plan would be forthcoming. So in terms of policy initiatives, the GOP remains without a single idea except to race bait on every issues. Even the cancellation of the F-22 is now made into an issue of trying to prevent the Hate Crime Bill from being passed in the Senate. From healthcare to defense, it's all about race and gays. We also know the health insurance industry--the last standing prosperous financial sector in America--has bought and sold the Republicans and many of the Blue Dog Democrats like Max Baucus. If nothing happens on healthcare, the number of uninsured is expected to raise to 66 million and insurance rates for the rest of us are expected to double.
The Grifter from Wasilla or the Quittah from Wasilla turned her farewell week into a series of picnics. She isn't even funny anymore. The Fox News poll today showed a plurality of Americans believe she should have a new life as a housewife, followed by being a TV announcer. Her stature among Republicans has dropped so that she is in fourth place with about 17% for the 2012 presidential nomination. Her farewell speeches were incomprehensible to me somehow linking honoring the troops by urging the press not to make things up. A Tenth Amendment follower she warned about ever-expanding federal control over state affairs. Although she was a recipient of federal largesse during her short tenure as was fellow Tenth Amender Rick Perry of Texas who has filled in his budget gaps with stimulus money.
The best fun was the internet rumors that Rupert Murdoch's yacht and private plane had showed up in Alaska during Palin's last week. Using Google Earth they were there in living color. I would imagine to finalize deals with the Palin family on her memoirs and possible Fox appearances. Hopefully, Sarah Palin has transcended to celebritydom where she will now be the filler for tabloids, which will chronicle her marital ups and downs and her latest fashion styles.
Which brings me to real Harold Bloom theme of the Real Closing of the American Mind. Having treated myself to Stacy Keach's landmark performance as King Lear at our local Shakespeare theater, I feel an authority today on this issue. The greatest danger to the United States is the willful embrace of ignorance. We saw alot of this during the Bush-Cheney years and during Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential bid in 2008. Ideology alone triumphed over competence. Success was and is solely defined as wealth and a lack of education is considered a virtue and a sign of one's basic honesty. The more ignorant one's positions the more honest one is perceived.
The election of Barack Obama spurred this embrace of the stupid so that it is an arch leading to our destruction. Let's take Glenn Beck. Having defeated his drug and alcohol abuse, his Mormanism and his libertarianism, he has warned about the inherent fascism of the Obama Administration. A strange thing for a person earning $25 million a year to say. He pointed to the fasces decorating the podium of the Speaker of the House and its appearance on the dime. He told his viewers that appeared because of Woodrow Wilson, one of the so-called progressive leaders around the time of WWI. Actually, before the fascists coopted the symbol, it represented a Republican form of government. The right has embraced this theme of fascism as being leftist, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. They flog Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism as the definite statement on this subject.
If anyone has any doubt on this issue, a good introduction to fascism's rightist orientation can be found in Kevin Passmore's Fascism, a very short introduction in the Oxford series on various ideologies and philosophies. Passmore has it his study to examine emerging fascism--that is, fascism before it reaches the mature states of Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Dysfunctional democracies allow for fascist openings and fascist leaders form alliances with conservative business interests to propel and sustain themselves in power. The whole theme is to renovate the nation as an organic, racial entity and not embark on a set of economic policies. They tend to be the cultural warriors par excellence. As we saw in the Holocaust, the idea is to purge the body politic of "foreign" influences and peoples considered as racially alien to the country. I would suggest some parts of the Republican base share much with early fascists.
This week we received news that the Obama Administration will release U.S. Government photographic evidence about climate change that had been suppressed during the Bush-Cheney regnum. This was an Administration which had enormous trouble coping with science. Probably the next revelations will be the release of recent dinosaur discoveries which the Bush Administration feared would prove evolution.
We end today's entry with Rush Limbaugh, the 50 million dollar man, warning about dictatorship and torture to be carried out by the Obama Administration. During Abu Ghraib, he said all this was like a frat party and he touted with great humor Club Gitmo, as the Muslim resort. Why the sudden darkness? A 2% income tax hike might cause him another $1 million. His audience probably can understand that.
Today's quiz is "Who is the most educated? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin? The answer is--it's a she.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment