Australia has announced it will arrest Sarah Palin if she travels there because she urged violence on one of the country's citizens, Julien Assange, Mr. Wikileaks.
Seymour Hersh has a new book coming out that says that 8 or 9 neoconservatives hijacked our government and that a cabal of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei guide our military adventures abroad. Why not? It's as plausible as anything else.
The California Highway Patrol has stepped up its investigations into the death threats against Jerry Brown.
Rudy Guiliani says that he will run for the Republican presidential nomination if Sarah Palin does. Guiliani hopes to gather support as a moderate. Poor Rudy. He's been away from the GOP for a while. Even George W. Bush couldn't run as a Republican now.
While Barack Obama's re-election office will be in Chicago, Newt Gingrich is going to locate his in Georgia. I wonder whether he's going to invite the men in sheets to participate in the grand-opening.
Barack is running ahead of all Republicans in the swing states with the exception of being behind by a point to Huckabee in North Carolina. But watch out Mitt is running only one or two behind in the pivotal Midwestern states. Here in the land of the Cooch, Obama beats all comers by big margins. I would like to see a PPP poll of Palin versus Obama in Texas.
Speaking of classy, the Teabagger who lost to Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson called today for a special election and said he wants to run again. The former Marine captured news for holding a fund-raiser by having guests shoot M-16s at targets with Giffords' face on them.
I hope the news of Giffords' recovery is accurate but I can't conceive of a recovery that will be anything but brutal.
Rachel Maddow has spent the week exploring our tendency to violence. Nancy Pelosi gave her the best subject to focus on--mental health. The healthcare bill actually created parity for mental health treatment--which is long overdue. Meanwhile mental health funding is being cut across the states.
There is little or no chance for any serious gun control legislation,despite Dr. Maddow eloquent arguments. The fact of the matter is we are an enormously violent people and have mythologized violence so it has been so deeply internalized in our speech and actions. But one welcomes her delving into the issue once again. The attractive part of the Rachel Maddow show is that Dr. Maddow remains intellectually curious and wants to raise questions which others are too lazy or cynical to ask. Good for her.
It looks like the lab tests of the Spokane bomb are yielding clues that indicate the culprits live in nearby neighborhoods.
Mike Malloy went on a justifiably rampage on the air last night concerning one Glenn Beck. People had drawn a moral equivalence between Malloy's wishing ill on conservatives and the current violent rhetoric on right-wing talk radio. Last night he talked about Glenn Beck's obsession with Frances Fox Piven, the 78-year old City College professor and political theorist. Beck has been fixated on Dr.Piven calling her "an enemy of the constitution" and claiming her recent article in the Nation called for violent revolution, which it did not. Mike Malloy read the death threats against Piven on Glenn beck's own website and asked why a moderator did not shut down the violent threats against her. One person posted her home address and phone number. In the past week, Dr. Piven has reported receiving direct death threats because of Beck's tirades. The former chair of the American Sociological Association once proposed in 1966 the provocative idea that people overwhelm the public welfare rolls to bring about a guaranteed national income. Beck claims that ideas like these have made our economic system unsustainable.
The good news is that the Center for Constitutional Rights has mailed a letter to Roger Ailes, Beck's boss and mentor,requesting Ailes "order Mr. Beck to cease and desist his allegations against Dr. Piven." I wondered when some action would be taken on this issue. Beck is already linked to three cases of attempted assassination--the famous Tides Foundation case, the Pittsburgh police killings and the death threats against a Washington congresswoman.
While writing this, Keith Olbermann signed off on his last Countdown. Wonder what that is all about. MSNBC thanked Keith and sort of implied don't let the door hit you on your way out. One wonders about the corporate hijinks involved. The Young Turk now takes the 6pm slot and the rest is murky.
This also reminds me of some recent beefs with the progressives on their concerns about Barack Obama. It is true that Social Security has absolutely nothing to due with our national debt. While Republicans are chomping at the bit to eliminate social security, why all this concern about President Obama. Even the Catfood Commission with DLCer Erskine Bowles and conservative Alan Simpson repeatedly defended the centrality of social security to our social welfare system and only suggested the raising of the retirement age about a generation down the pike. The raise in retirement went up a year after a couple of decades and about 50 years further it would be two years up. In any event, it would affect my son by a year, and if I had grandchildren maybe two years. This proposal has drawn constant fire and the progressive caucus is up in arms challenging President Obama to defend social security. I respect the caucus to do so if they trained their guns at the real enemy, instead of the President.
The same applies to this criticism of Obama calling for a re-evaluation of business regulations. Here he already has implemented an overhaul of our food security system for the first time since the 1930s,created a Consumer Protection Agency, restricted offshore drilling, toughened mine regulations, passed financial reform. Why the concern that he would undo everything he has just fought for. This guy doesn't get a break from the Right or the Left. But at least the Left nowadays raises policy criticisms or concerns, while the Right has nothing left upstairs anymore.
As I wrote before President Obama looks like he has done Boehner's work for him, cutting $58 billion in the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coupled with the previous cuts ordered by Gates, Obama is now clocking in at about $100 billion in cuts, the target number for Republicans. FYI--President Obama also cut the deficit this year. You won't hear that on the major networks.
President Obama is moving toward Tuesday's speech with some significant news on the economic front and his own ideas about thoughtfully and gradually cutting the national debt. While the Washington Post thought the China-U.S. Summit was a symbolic success, it complained about its accomplishments. This seems to be the meme of every Summit. We didn't hear about the trade deals with India when he was there, we heard about his temporary failure in South Korea but not his ultimate success, and now we do not hear about the trade deals which will mean 230,000 more jobs for Americans.
The Council for Budget Priorities is out with their analysis of the Republican Study Group's prosed $2.5 trillion budget cut. They concluded it would gut vital government services. Interestingly, a recent poll shows that across the political spectrum the number 1 item to be cut is military spending. The House Republicans are claiming a mandate unlike the President Obama's victory with the largest popular vote in history. Somehow winning the House means a mandate. However, according to polls, the number one priority for the American people is jobs,cutting government spending is low on the list. It also should be remembered that both McCain and Obama ran on health reform but the House GOP has no plan to replace what they just repealed. Without any healthreform,the national debt will balloon unchecked for two decades. Likewise, they refuse to cut defense spending even though a plurality of Republicans support this and do not support cuts to Medicare and Social Security. The real problem is that having lost a decade already we can lost another one.
In the State of the Union, President Obama will have to lift us again,reassuring the American people that we are not in decline and that we must raise to the occasion to develop the technologies and energy sources for the 21st century. It's almost as if he must ignore the noise of the Right and maintain his steady composure as he tries to carve out the Vital Center. It is no mean task. Over two-thirds of our states face bankruptcy or its equivalent and without structural change we are looking at a permanent 8 percent unemployment figure. The social network is frayed and a whole sector of our society has abandoned the idea of a common good. Even if it is delusional, President Obama has to invoke the myths that strike a chord within the hardest of hearts. He also must remind America that its strength derives from diversity and replenishing our talents with immigrants. Somehow he must find the words to silence the growing voices for isolationism and xenophobia. This is his last chance before the end of his term. It's one of the few moments he can speak above the Congress directly to the American people.
Gore Vidal still is right, "President Barack Obama is too smart for the people he leads". Let's hope our Black Pilgrim meets the challenge.
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