Back from a jaunt to upstate New York,I missed a raft of weirdness on the internet in my days away. Some stories deserve calps and other boos.
Claps
Frank Schaeffer's post at his website "Obama is now and will be a great President." Just when you think the left and the right are going to eviscerate President Obama, Frank, recovering from his days as founder of the Christian Right, reminds us all what is at stake with this presidency and ably defends President Obama's record of achievements so far. He manages to punch out the Right for their ravings and slap down the Left for their whining.
Thom Hartmann. Thom Hartmann is growing on me. First, he explained how the original tea party was against huge corporate tax cuts--that time for the East India Company. Now, he runs a montage assembled by Think Progress on how the Ryan Plan is inspired by Ayn Rand. The kicker was his detail that Ayn Rand's libertarianism started with her admiration for a serial killer and a brutal child molester named William Hickman. Hartmann read from Rand's diary, which saw this monster as a type of Superman, who did not care about society. He went on to say that Rand actually started a novel with an Hickman character as the hero. Nice job.
TPM uncovered the nice little historical note that Ayn Rand applied for Medicare when her husband came down with Alzheimer's. The centerpiece of Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand-inspired budget is the elimination of Medicare.
Think Progress for its wonderful montage of House Republicans espousing their belief in Ay Rand interspersed with footage of Mike Wallace interviewing Ayn Rand, where she advocates the destruction of everything about America and Christianity. Her supreme virtue is selfishness and in the tape argues that self-love is superior and that the weak don't deserve love.
Paul Krugman for explaining in his New York Times post that the S&P's warning on the national debt is a big nothingburger. TPM reminds us that the last time the S&P commented on our creditworthiness was in 1995 when Newt and company threatened not to vote for the debt ceiling. Ed Klein reminds us that the S&P gave three stars to the subprime mortgages.
Rachel Maddow for solving the mystery of why Michigan appointed an emergency manager for Benton Harbor, a small lakeside town. The reason is that the town is almost 90% black and has a per capita income of $10,000. But they do have a wonderful lakeside park, which was given to the town by their mayor in the early 20th century. Well, it seems the author of the Financial Emergency Bill has an interest in developing Lakeshore Estates, which would be a high end residential community with golf courses bordering the park. The plan has been rejected by the Benton Harbor Planning Commission. But, never fear, the Emergency Manager has fired all the planning board and installed members who favor the development. A very nice job of reporting.
Wisconsin Recall Drive. The Recall drive has now hit four Republican Senators, enough to turn that body Democratic. Our favorite Senator, Randy Hopper, the one with a mistress hired by Scott Walker, sent out a mailing to his constituents and listed a phone number if they had questions. The problem is that the number is a sex talk line. Tends to reinforce attitudes about Randy Randy.
CNN's latest poll shows that 51% of Americans back same-sex marriage.
A Marist poll shows that 70% of teabaggers are opposed to Medicare cuts.
Mariano Rivero,who saved my short trip, by saving two straight games for the Yankees against the Texas Rangers.
BOOs
David Barton,phony historian and Christian. David Barton has been hitting them out of the ballpark. Barton's latest big boner was saying that the bible was against "net neutrality". He said that the idea was "evil". Last week, Barton said that Jesus was against the minimum wage and the estate tax. But he hit two today. The second is his claim that Thomas Jefferson allowed the use of Government funds to evangelize American Indians, thereby showing that he did not believe in the separation of church and state. His evidence was the treaty with the Kaskaskia tribe which allowed for funds to pay for the building of a church and the payment of a priest. What Barton never tells his audience was that Jefferson was mortified by this treaty and tried to hide its contents from Congress, precisely because he knew this provision would spark an uproar. The Indians had converted to Catholicism in the 1600s and they had requested these two items as part of the deal. Jefferson OK'd it because of realpolitik but in his writings disavowed any attempt to evangelize the Indians.
John Boehner for hiring Paul Clement , the former Solicitor-General under George W, for $500,000 to argue the case of the Defense of Marriage Act, which has been ruled unconstitutional---and trying to stick the DOJ with the bill for the defense because the Obama Administration decided not to defend the case.
John Boehner again for turning down the opportunity to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that has-- until this year-- been celebrated on a bipartisan basis. I guess if you have access to enough money, you don't need the Hispanic vote.
Showing posts with label Frank Schaeffer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Schaeffer. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Year's Day Brunch at the Last Manatee
Frank Schaeffer writes today another defense of President Obama at Huffingtonpost. This time I find myself disagreeing with his attack on Paul Krugman and others on the Left, saying they can't get over Obama beating Hillary Clinton. Schaeffer is right in his praise of the President struggling in a toxic environment and still triumphing as in the Repeal of DADT, the ratification of the New Start Treaty and the unanimous approval of the 9/11 responders bill. Frank praises Rachel Maddow for her frequent public apologies when something occurs which she has expressed doubt about. But I can't shake the feeling that Frank chose the wrong targets this time.I look forward to him blasting the House Republicans in the forthcoming weeks.
It has been incredibly calm over the past two weeks in the rhetoric department. I guess conservatives really did want to take off for the Holidays. The noise level has gone done immeasurably. I am sure by the second week of January it will be raised through the roof.
Interesting factoid--In 2010, there were more private sector jobs created than in the entire George W. Bush presidency. So much for the job-killing policies of the Obama Administration. But read Paul Krugman's piece today in the New York Times. He predicts about a 4% growth rate this year and an unemployment rate around 9 percent. What Krugman has been right over the past two years is that the rate of job creation has to go into overdrive to just get back to the 2008 level unemployment rate. He also had written with the current nature of our economy based on FIRE--Finance,Insurance, and Real Estate--it can't be done. We are looking at around 8% until we make some structural changes.
Add more lunacy to the State politics--New Hampshire's legislature now has a veto-proof majority by the Republicans. The first bill they are introducing is to eliminate the same-sex act, which has seen 3,000 couples married in the last year. The same is going to occur in Iowa. Emboldened by defeating the Supreme Court justices who voted for same sex marriage in the state, the religious right aims to outlaw same sex marriage altogether. Basically, this will end up with several Prop 8-like cases.
In Georgia, the GOP is pushing a bill that would require all taxpayers to pay their taxes in gold and silver. I'm sure that can be found in the "original constitution".
Joe Miller has thrown in the towel after filing lawsuits at the Alaska Supreme Court level and then the Federal Appeals court. He lost all judicial decisions and the election as well. But he promises that he and his brownshirts will return soon.
Christine O'Donnell, who says she's not a witch, but I guess she's a grifter, is being investigated for using campaign funds for her personal use. She does this everytime she runs for office. She claims that Joe Biden and George Soros are after her as well as the GOP establishment.
Chris Christie, the portly New Jersey governor, defended being at Disney World while the Garden States was pummelled with a blizzard. He said he had a great vacation and New Jersey didn't experience any surge in unexpected deaths during the snowfall. Democrats are grousing that Christie is rewarding state contracts out to his campaign donors without competitive bidding.
Meanwhile in Florida, Medicare fraudster Rick Scott enters office with a whopping 30% approval rate. Yet, the national GOP are saying he will become a national figure--in a good sense, not in a criminal sense. Already Floridians are barking about his holding closed door meetings with corporations and trying to cut deals before he takes office. This is a case for Carl Hiaasen and his column in the Miami Herald. Speaking of Carl, I wished Matt Tiabbi had the same sense of humor.
If you want to suck on a gas pipe, be sure to read Matt Tiabbi's "Griftopia", which documents in excruciating detail the ransacking of America by almost everyone. I can't read him except in small doses chosen by my interest. In "Griftopia", we learn that Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania went to the Middle East for the purpose of selling the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the Arabs. Also that Mayor Daley did indeed sell all the parking meters of Chicago to Morgan Stanley, who were fronting for Abu Dubai and its Sovereign Wealth Fund. And the list goes on about states and cities that have sold American infrastructure and public property to foreign financial interests.
One of my favorite observers of Islamic Fundamentalism has come out with a new book called "Holy Ignorance". Olivier Roy, whose books this blog has written about before, takes on all fundamentalisms and concludes that they are all a symptom and not a reaction to the secularization of society. Roy always disappoints American audiences because first he pronounced political Islam a miserable failure and second he indicated that it was the educated,middle-to-upper class alienated Muslims in developed countries who were the new recruits for Islamic terrorism. He also has observed that Hamas and Iran really are operating out of a type of nationalism and not Islamic ideology. In his new book, he embraces Max Weber and Emile Durkheim's belief that has modernity advanced religious faith would diminish. On the surface this doesn't appear to be true but Roy argues quite the contrary. But he also includes in his analysis how globalization is re-shaping all these equations. The real Buddhist may end up in San Francisco for an authentic Buddhist experience and the Muslim reality is now found far from Mecca. Roy always provokes and I've found him to be lucid and spot on in his assessment of Islamic fundamentalism at least.
AEI's Norm Ornstein writes today in the Washington Post about the new phenomenon of Republican death panels in Arizona,Indiana and Texas. Norm writes that because state's have balance the budget amendments and the stimulus money that kept them afloat is evaporating,states are opting to cut Medicare and health programs for the poor. As a result, Arizona, Indiana and Texas have deprived patients about to receive organ transplants of funds for their operations. Already several patients have died in Arizona. Ornstein warns that this is a trend to come this year.
Wise guys in D.C. are wondering whether Gentleman John Boehner will commit the same faux pas this time when he reads the Constitution. Last time he read the Declaration of Independence and didn 't know the difference.
President Obama gave his New Year's greeting to the country with his message that Americans want Democrats and Republicans to work together to solve the country's problems. He always sounds so reasonable. But I think he should batten down the hatches because the House is more right-wing than at any time in our history. Every Republican elected has a conservative rating over 92%.
Today, new elements of the healthcare reform take place. For seniors, it provides free preventive care and other goodies. But the kicker is that the health insurance industry must now devote 80% of their income to real health care costs and not overhead or lobbying. The Teabagger Governor of Maine has applied for a state waiver on the restrictions on the health insurance industry. He's the first.
Dennis Kucinich appeared on Fox News to inform the audience that any attempt to repeal the healthreform bill will trigger a new movement for the public option. While realpolitik tells me no, I believe we will be heading that way soon.
The Right says that Barack Obama is going to deliver the country to native American Overlords because of his commitment to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In fact, they say he's going to give part of Manhattan back to the Indians. So, blacks,Hispanics,gays, women and now we have Indians. Boy, the Right is becoming more appealing every day.
But we should recognize that the 111th Congress--and we will dearly miss it--passed several landmark bill for Indians, including laws overhauling tribal health care and law enforcement. Congress provided some $2.5 billion in economic stimulus money to tribes and resolved four long-standing water disputes totaling more than $1 billion. Tribal leaders and Indian advocates called the 111th Congress the most productive for American indians in four decades. Congress also provided the funds to settle the 15-year old royalties case, which covers claims by Native Americans who were swindled out of payments for oil, gas, timber and grazing rights for more than a century. $2 billion went to buy up divided Indians lands from individual owners willing to sell, with lands turned over to tribes. And another $60 million goes to a scholarship fund for young Indians. A separate deal was struck with the Agriculture Department that some $680 million would go to Indians for the improper denial of farm loans.
The Indians should celebrate these achievements as well as the legal recognition of tribes, who had been waiting for years to achieve their rightful identity. Unfortunately, there doesn't look to be many more celebrations ahead.
If you want to know one basic reason the economy is flagging, compare the price of oil during President Clinton --$20.--with that under Obama--$90. But recent reports on the oil trade indicate Americans are not going to change their ways anytime soon. In fact, the Koch Brothers paid tea party members to travel to Cancun to protest the climate change summit. The target for their efforts will be to block the United States commitment to give third-world countries the United Nations mandated funds to compensate them for taking measures to combat carbon emissions in their own societies.
Both President Obama and Secretary of Energy Chu said that the United States was at a "sputnik" moment in terms of the global rivalry in developing alternative energy sources and other modes of transportation. Rep. Sensenbrenner, who will have a major say on high-speed rail, says America can't afford it. I happen to think that the House Republicans will deny further funds for alternative fuels and transportation. Ironically, this comes when the ten-year Highway Fund is depleted and needs to be funded again. This was the opening when Democrats and Republicans could have come together and put significant funds to the development of a 21st Century Infrastructure in the country.
As we move into the last two-years of President Obama's first term in office, it's worth mentioning that if Americans want a great country, they need to pay for it. There is no indication right now that Americans really understand the investment necessary to continue the development of the country. For the next two years, we will be treated to demogaguery on the national debt and deficit. This will be accompanied by bizarre cuts in government programs, which will make no sense to rational people.
It has been incredibly calm over the past two weeks in the rhetoric department. I guess conservatives really did want to take off for the Holidays. The noise level has gone done immeasurably. I am sure by the second week of January it will be raised through the roof.
Interesting factoid--In 2010, there were more private sector jobs created than in the entire George W. Bush presidency. So much for the job-killing policies of the Obama Administration. But read Paul Krugman's piece today in the New York Times. He predicts about a 4% growth rate this year and an unemployment rate around 9 percent. What Krugman has been right over the past two years is that the rate of job creation has to go into overdrive to just get back to the 2008 level unemployment rate. He also had written with the current nature of our economy based on FIRE--Finance,Insurance, and Real Estate--it can't be done. We are looking at around 8% until we make some structural changes.
Add more lunacy to the State politics--New Hampshire's legislature now has a veto-proof majority by the Republicans. The first bill they are introducing is to eliminate the same-sex act, which has seen 3,000 couples married in the last year. The same is going to occur in Iowa. Emboldened by defeating the Supreme Court justices who voted for same sex marriage in the state, the religious right aims to outlaw same sex marriage altogether. Basically, this will end up with several Prop 8-like cases.
In Georgia, the GOP is pushing a bill that would require all taxpayers to pay their taxes in gold and silver. I'm sure that can be found in the "original constitution".
Joe Miller has thrown in the towel after filing lawsuits at the Alaska Supreme Court level and then the Federal Appeals court. He lost all judicial decisions and the election as well. But he promises that he and his brownshirts will return soon.
Christine O'Donnell, who says she's not a witch, but I guess she's a grifter, is being investigated for using campaign funds for her personal use. She does this everytime she runs for office. She claims that Joe Biden and George Soros are after her as well as the GOP establishment.
Chris Christie, the portly New Jersey governor, defended being at Disney World while the Garden States was pummelled with a blizzard. He said he had a great vacation and New Jersey didn't experience any surge in unexpected deaths during the snowfall. Democrats are grousing that Christie is rewarding state contracts out to his campaign donors without competitive bidding.
Meanwhile in Florida, Medicare fraudster Rick Scott enters office with a whopping 30% approval rate. Yet, the national GOP are saying he will become a national figure--in a good sense, not in a criminal sense. Already Floridians are barking about his holding closed door meetings with corporations and trying to cut deals before he takes office. This is a case for Carl Hiaasen and his column in the Miami Herald. Speaking of Carl, I wished Matt Tiabbi had the same sense of humor.
If you want to suck on a gas pipe, be sure to read Matt Tiabbi's "Griftopia", which documents in excruciating detail the ransacking of America by almost everyone. I can't read him except in small doses chosen by my interest. In "Griftopia", we learn that Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania went to the Middle East for the purpose of selling the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the Arabs. Also that Mayor Daley did indeed sell all the parking meters of Chicago to Morgan Stanley, who were fronting for Abu Dubai and its Sovereign Wealth Fund. And the list goes on about states and cities that have sold American infrastructure and public property to foreign financial interests.
One of my favorite observers of Islamic Fundamentalism has come out with a new book called "Holy Ignorance". Olivier Roy, whose books this blog has written about before, takes on all fundamentalisms and concludes that they are all a symptom and not a reaction to the secularization of society. Roy always disappoints American audiences because first he pronounced political Islam a miserable failure and second he indicated that it was the educated,middle-to-upper class alienated Muslims in developed countries who were the new recruits for Islamic terrorism. He also has observed that Hamas and Iran really are operating out of a type of nationalism and not Islamic ideology. In his new book, he embraces Max Weber and Emile Durkheim's belief that has modernity advanced religious faith would diminish. On the surface this doesn't appear to be true but Roy argues quite the contrary. But he also includes in his analysis how globalization is re-shaping all these equations. The real Buddhist may end up in San Francisco for an authentic Buddhist experience and the Muslim reality is now found far from Mecca. Roy always provokes and I've found him to be lucid and spot on in his assessment of Islamic fundamentalism at least.
AEI's Norm Ornstein writes today in the Washington Post about the new phenomenon of Republican death panels in Arizona,Indiana and Texas. Norm writes that because state's have balance the budget amendments and the stimulus money that kept them afloat is evaporating,states are opting to cut Medicare and health programs for the poor. As a result, Arizona, Indiana and Texas have deprived patients about to receive organ transplants of funds for their operations. Already several patients have died in Arizona. Ornstein warns that this is a trend to come this year.
Wise guys in D.C. are wondering whether Gentleman John Boehner will commit the same faux pas this time when he reads the Constitution. Last time he read the Declaration of Independence and didn 't know the difference.
President Obama gave his New Year's greeting to the country with his message that Americans want Democrats and Republicans to work together to solve the country's problems. He always sounds so reasonable. But I think he should batten down the hatches because the House is more right-wing than at any time in our history. Every Republican elected has a conservative rating over 92%.
Today, new elements of the healthcare reform take place. For seniors, it provides free preventive care and other goodies. But the kicker is that the health insurance industry must now devote 80% of their income to real health care costs and not overhead or lobbying. The Teabagger Governor of Maine has applied for a state waiver on the restrictions on the health insurance industry. He's the first.
Dennis Kucinich appeared on Fox News to inform the audience that any attempt to repeal the healthreform bill will trigger a new movement for the public option. While realpolitik tells me no, I believe we will be heading that way soon.
The Right says that Barack Obama is going to deliver the country to native American Overlords because of his commitment to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In fact, they say he's going to give part of Manhattan back to the Indians. So, blacks,Hispanics,gays, women and now we have Indians. Boy, the Right is becoming more appealing every day.
But we should recognize that the 111th Congress--and we will dearly miss it--passed several landmark bill for Indians, including laws overhauling tribal health care and law enforcement. Congress provided some $2.5 billion in economic stimulus money to tribes and resolved four long-standing water disputes totaling more than $1 billion. Tribal leaders and Indian advocates called the 111th Congress the most productive for American indians in four decades. Congress also provided the funds to settle the 15-year old royalties case, which covers claims by Native Americans who were swindled out of payments for oil, gas, timber and grazing rights for more than a century. $2 billion went to buy up divided Indians lands from individual owners willing to sell, with lands turned over to tribes. And another $60 million goes to a scholarship fund for young Indians. A separate deal was struck with the Agriculture Department that some $680 million would go to Indians for the improper denial of farm loans.
The Indians should celebrate these achievements as well as the legal recognition of tribes, who had been waiting for years to achieve their rightful identity. Unfortunately, there doesn't look to be many more celebrations ahead.
If you want to know one basic reason the economy is flagging, compare the price of oil during President Clinton --$20.--with that under Obama--$90. But recent reports on the oil trade indicate Americans are not going to change their ways anytime soon. In fact, the Koch Brothers paid tea party members to travel to Cancun to protest the climate change summit. The target for their efforts will be to block the United States commitment to give third-world countries the United Nations mandated funds to compensate them for taking measures to combat carbon emissions in their own societies.
Both President Obama and Secretary of Energy Chu said that the United States was at a "sputnik" moment in terms of the global rivalry in developing alternative energy sources and other modes of transportation. Rep. Sensenbrenner, who will have a major say on high-speed rail, says America can't afford it. I happen to think that the House Republicans will deny further funds for alternative fuels and transportation. Ironically, this comes when the ten-year Highway Fund is depleted and needs to be funded again. This was the opening when Democrats and Republicans could have come together and put significant funds to the development of a 21st Century Infrastructure in the country.
As we move into the last two-years of President Obama's first term in office, it's worth mentioning that if Americans want a great country, they need to pay for it. There is no indication right now that Americans really understand the investment necessary to continue the development of the country. For the next two years, we will be treated to demogaguery on the national debt and deficit. This will be accompanied by bizarre cuts in government programs, which will make no sense to rational people.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Happiness is a Warm Gun, Momma*
*The Beatles still a "blessing" and a "miracle".
I saw the carry rally in Richmond. It was pretty pathetic. Late middle-aged white men with potbellies with holsters on their waists. It occurred to me that the hundreds of junk e-mails I receive every day advertising viagra, cialis, and ED come from "cookies" implanted on conservative websites. This is the crowd for those advertisements. In Michigan they allowed the carry crowd to take their arms in the state legislature while it was in session. Crazy.
I'm having a tough time adjusting to the new definition of "patriot". Let's see. The federal government is evil. The most subversive man in the United States is the President. A true patriot doesn't pay taxes and is against them. Public schools are for losers. The second amendment is absolute, while the First Amendment is conditional. The primary government is the state but that shouldn't be funded either. The separation of church and state is a myth perpetrated by liberals. Torture should be permitted against Muslims, who are terrorist by definition. White people can't be terrorists. The government should get out of our business except to protect us against gays and atheists. The free-market can solve any problem better than government. The military is great. The only proper role of the federal government is to protect the country from threats real or imagined. The role of society is to maximize individual freedom except if that individual does things we don't agree with. People who receive services from the government are leeches and lazy unless they're me.
Some of this lunacy appeared throughout the teabaggers' rallies around the country. A couple with 9 home-schooled children protested in Boston against socialized health care but admitted they had Medicaid because they wanted more children but couldn't afford the private health insurance. A retired military officer protested government handouts but admitted that all his healthcare was handled through the VA. An older woman was protesting entitlement programs but admitted she received social security and Medicare. When this was pointed out to her, she acknowledged maybe she wanted less government but with her social security and Medicare. Patriots in Spokane, Washington wanted all relations of the state with any UN agencies to be terminated.
The slogan of "Take Our Country Back" clearly is racial. The utter incoherence of the whole teabagger phenomenon underscores that the anger has very little to do with any real initiatives by the government and a whole lot to do with a black man winning the Presidency. The tip-off to this is that 58% have a high approval rating of George W. Bush and another 50% believe that Sarah Palin would be an effective President. This is the rump of the last Bush supporters in the country--a residue of the Christian Right and the extreme conservatives. You can almost map it out according to the demographics I posted yesterday. The predominance of the South and Midwest are the two regions of Christian fundamentalism and neo-secessionist thought. The Western teabaggers lean libertarian.
The real delusion is that they overwhelmingly believe they represent the views of America. We saw by the polling data that they almost always vote Republican and consider themselves conservative,even extreme conservatives. What Republicans don't get is how far the Christian Right, which these people represent in part, has taken over their party. When you see a Michelle Bachmann, a Sarah Palin, a Jim DeMint, a Steven King, a Tom Coburn, you are seeing the result of the Christian Right's efforts since the mid-1990s to take control of the Republican Party. Andrew Sullivan diverted his attention from the pedophile scandal in the Vatican to this yesterday saying, I believe, accurately that the Republican party has been reduced to Theocons and Neocons, who now work synergistically. That's why he believes the former half-governor of Alaska is a serious political threat.
Frank Schaeffer wrote a piece yesterday on the Huffington Post entitled The Perpetual American Lynch Mob, where he traces the violent language in our political discourse right now to his and his father's efforts to create the anti-abortion movement.
He talks about "what our Christian Founders had in mind" according to the fundamentalists. "They don't often say so openly but their ideal turns out to be a white's only evangelical country filled with consumer goods where no gays, blacks, or other "foreigners" need apply and everyone goes to church but no one lives by following the actual incovenient tolerant and inclusive example set by Jesus.....In this sense these "Christians" are in fact anti-Christian and these "patriots " turn out to be anti-American."
Or as Frank puts it another way, " (A long list of Founding fathers) 'had in mind' turns out to be a white,racist, homophobic, myth-believing nation of Village Idiots suckled on Fox News and wet dreams of the 'Rapture'.
What has been missing from conservatives like Doug Brooks or Bob Tyrrell is any awareness of this happening to the so-called conservative movement and particularly on this destructive scale. The Republicans have just capitulated to the Religious Right because they depend on its organizational structure.
One of the interesting side stories to this is how the John Birch society regained their place in the conservative movement after decades in exile through the Religious Right. I will write more about this later when I deal with the issue of Christian Zionists, another favorite topic of Frank Schaeffer's.
I saw the carry rally in Richmond. It was pretty pathetic. Late middle-aged white men with potbellies with holsters on their waists. It occurred to me that the hundreds of junk e-mails I receive every day advertising viagra, cialis, and ED come from "cookies" implanted on conservative websites. This is the crowd for those advertisements. In Michigan they allowed the carry crowd to take their arms in the state legislature while it was in session. Crazy.
I'm having a tough time adjusting to the new definition of "patriot". Let's see. The federal government is evil. The most subversive man in the United States is the President. A true patriot doesn't pay taxes and is against them. Public schools are for losers. The second amendment is absolute, while the First Amendment is conditional. The primary government is the state but that shouldn't be funded either. The separation of church and state is a myth perpetrated by liberals. Torture should be permitted against Muslims, who are terrorist by definition. White people can't be terrorists. The government should get out of our business except to protect us against gays and atheists. The free-market can solve any problem better than government. The military is great. The only proper role of the federal government is to protect the country from threats real or imagined. The role of society is to maximize individual freedom except if that individual does things we don't agree with. People who receive services from the government are leeches and lazy unless they're me.
Some of this lunacy appeared throughout the teabaggers' rallies around the country. A couple with 9 home-schooled children protested in Boston against socialized health care but admitted they had Medicaid because they wanted more children but couldn't afford the private health insurance. A retired military officer protested government handouts but admitted that all his healthcare was handled through the VA. An older woman was protesting entitlement programs but admitted she received social security and Medicare. When this was pointed out to her, she acknowledged maybe she wanted less government but with her social security and Medicare. Patriots in Spokane, Washington wanted all relations of the state with any UN agencies to be terminated.
The slogan of "Take Our Country Back" clearly is racial. The utter incoherence of the whole teabagger phenomenon underscores that the anger has very little to do with any real initiatives by the government and a whole lot to do with a black man winning the Presidency. The tip-off to this is that 58% have a high approval rating of George W. Bush and another 50% believe that Sarah Palin would be an effective President. This is the rump of the last Bush supporters in the country--a residue of the Christian Right and the extreme conservatives. You can almost map it out according to the demographics I posted yesterday. The predominance of the South and Midwest are the two regions of Christian fundamentalism and neo-secessionist thought. The Western teabaggers lean libertarian.
The real delusion is that they overwhelmingly believe they represent the views of America. We saw by the polling data that they almost always vote Republican and consider themselves conservative,even extreme conservatives. What Republicans don't get is how far the Christian Right, which these people represent in part, has taken over their party. When you see a Michelle Bachmann, a Sarah Palin, a Jim DeMint, a Steven King, a Tom Coburn, you are seeing the result of the Christian Right's efforts since the mid-1990s to take control of the Republican Party. Andrew Sullivan diverted his attention from the pedophile scandal in the Vatican to this yesterday saying, I believe, accurately that the Republican party has been reduced to Theocons and Neocons, who now work synergistically. That's why he believes the former half-governor of Alaska is a serious political threat.
Frank Schaeffer wrote a piece yesterday on the Huffington Post entitled The Perpetual American Lynch Mob, where he traces the violent language in our political discourse right now to his and his father's efforts to create the anti-abortion movement.
He talks about "what our Christian Founders had in mind" according to the fundamentalists. "They don't often say so openly but their ideal turns out to be a white's only evangelical country filled with consumer goods where no gays, blacks, or other "foreigners" need apply and everyone goes to church but no one lives by following the actual incovenient tolerant and inclusive example set by Jesus.....In this sense these "Christians" are in fact anti-Christian and these "patriots " turn out to be anti-American."
Or as Frank puts it another way, " (A long list of Founding fathers) 'had in mind' turns out to be a white,racist, homophobic, myth-believing nation of Village Idiots suckled on Fox News and wet dreams of the 'Rapture'.
What has been missing from conservatives like Doug Brooks or Bob Tyrrell is any awareness of this happening to the so-called conservative movement and particularly on this destructive scale. The Republicans have just capitulated to the Religious Right because they depend on its organizational structure.
One of the interesting side stories to this is how the John Birch society regained their place in the conservative movement after decades in exile through the Religious Right. I will write more about this later when I deal with the issue of Christian Zionists, another favorite topic of Frank Schaeffer's.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Good Friday Coffee--Just Give Me Some Truth--All I Want is The Truth
John Lennon asked but I don't know how he made out.
I received Bob Tyrrell's After The Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery (Thomas Nelson, 2010). I will report on this next week. I accept Bob's distortions of liberalism as necessary for his worldview but I expected to read a more honest appraisal of the George W. Bush Administration, which was stocked with more movement conservatives than any other administration in history. As Ronald Reagan said, "Personnel is policy."Somehow that doesn't make a difference in terms of how Bob sees the validity of "conservative ideas". He expects the revival of conservatism to come from the same think-tanks and a greater self-consciousness that conservatism is a movement and should not be strictly be confused with a political party. So far his litany of policy prescriptions reads like an old-worn manual of things that simply do not address the severe crises facing the country.
His analysis of the Obama Administration as "collectivist" simply doesn't mirror reality and his selective appraisal of Obama's foreign policy doesn't hold water. So far, I have not read any reservations about the performance and actions and morality of our private sector, which should inform any re-thinking of so-called conservative positions. Also, I have problems with his view that Obama is trying to over-regulate the economy, when we have not had any enforced regulation in over 10 years. Bob actually speaks well of the Mount Vernon Declaration, which I have written about, lamenting that there was no one under 65 in the whole bunch.
I was hoping for a recognition that the last Administration expanded the size and power of executive branch greater than at any time in our history, including during FDR. Also, I would like a conservative or Republican to admit that they took a surplus and ran it into a $12 trillion deficit. That is coveniently missing in the analysis, while Obama is criticized as the most profilgate President of our time. While Bob praises the greatest boom in job creation after 1980, he neglects to say how the economy has not grown any jobs since 2007. Luckily, this month it did produce some jobs but half of which are temporary.
Also in the mail came Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians ( 2006), which is available free on-line at www.theauthoritarians.com . This is not what I had expected but it is rich in examining the attitudes of the evangelical movement, which detailed references to internal criticisms of the movement by evangelical theologians themselves. The findings of a rigid authoritarian mindset doesn't fit with the calls for the conservative resurgence mentioned above.
Not to beat up on Bob today but he says conservative ideas are supported by the majority of Americans. The Quinnipiac poll shows that 60% of both parties support raising income taxes over $250,000 to tame the deficit. 70% support making people who earn $1 million pay more taxes. 80% are against raising taxes on people earning less than $250,000 and these 80% are opposed to cutting Medicare and Social Security. Bob's policy perscriptions call for cuts in both programs.
A Washington Post poll on the anger in the country show that 94% of the angry crowd are white and 73% are conservative. One respondent affectionately mentioned the 1950s and how he grew up with Ozzie& Harriet, but he added something that I think is telling," No one was trying to get rich then." My hunch is that there has been a delayed reaction to the devastation wrought on the nation by the last Administration. Much of the conservative noisechamber has tried and to some degree has been successful in diverting attention away from this fact. Perhaps they will succeed in its entirety but if not, then there will be another political price to pay for the Republicans.
The FBI is investigating a series of threats against IRS offices. As I wrote last week concerning my monitoring militia broadcasts, the militia movement, this time in the name of Guardians of the Free Republics, has sent letters to 30 sitting Governors demanding they leave office within three days or they will be removed. The group claims to want "to restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government. The threats were made both to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, signifying a bipartisan victim list. The FBI associates the letter with "sovereign citizens", the Christian identity movement, who believe they are free from all duties of a U.S. citizen, like paying taxes or needing a government license to drive. Scott Roeder, the man sentenced yesterday for killing Dr. Tiller, is a member of this group and was arrested in the 1990s for driving with a car filled with explosives.
Chip Berlet posted on www.talk2action.org an article entitled "Armed Militias, the Antichrist, and Obama", which outlines how millennialism has been mainstreamed and how the Christian Identity, Patriot amd militia movements have used this to popularize xenophobia,authoritarianism and scapegoating. Chip Berlet has spent a career documenting the militia movement and now ,after years of freelancing, regularly appears on television to discuss the phenomenon and its threats.
Frank Schaeffer posted on www.huffingtonpost.com April 1st his take on "The Evangelical 'Mainstream' Insanity Behind the Michigan 'End Times' Militia" . Knowing of what he speaks, Frank refers to the influence of the "Christian Reconstructionist" Movement and the Left Behind series in shaping this type of extremism. Frank believes this type of thinking influences the tea party movement and its encouragement that the government of the United States is illegitimate.
Rand Paul, Ron's son who is the Tea Party Choice running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Kentucky,held a campiagn rally surrounded by camo-clad militia members sportingautomatic weapons. The militia members claimed to be "the real homeland security" force not the "feds" and promised they would kill Democratic politicians. Bloggers noted that this might be Rand's "Macaca" moment. I disagree I think the political landscape has changed sufficiently that we will see more politicians embrace the militia movement.
Michael Steele's sexytime party has been supplanted by a parallel organization led by three former RNC chairpeople with the addition of Karl Rove, which aims to siphon off the big donor money that has fled Steele.
Peggy Noonan defended the Pope today, while the new hotlines to report sexual abuse in Europe are receiving 4,000 calls per hour. The Vatican's exorcist now says the Devil is in the media.
Roger Clemens wants to tell you his "pipes are working fine". Thanks for sharing.
The President received a thunderous welcome in the whitest state in the union, Maine. Hecarried Maine with about 70% of the vote last time. Conservatives are complaining that he "targeted Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck" in his recent CBS interview. All he said was that they don't represent the majority of the country.
Believe it or not Republicans said that they improved the health bill by getting rid of the "death panels".
That's All, folks.
I received Bob Tyrrell's After The Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery (Thomas Nelson, 2010). I will report on this next week. I accept Bob's distortions of liberalism as necessary for his worldview but I expected to read a more honest appraisal of the George W. Bush Administration, which was stocked with more movement conservatives than any other administration in history. As Ronald Reagan said, "Personnel is policy."Somehow that doesn't make a difference in terms of how Bob sees the validity of "conservative ideas". He expects the revival of conservatism to come from the same think-tanks and a greater self-consciousness that conservatism is a movement and should not be strictly be confused with a political party. So far his litany of policy prescriptions reads like an old-worn manual of things that simply do not address the severe crises facing the country.
His analysis of the Obama Administration as "collectivist" simply doesn't mirror reality and his selective appraisal of Obama's foreign policy doesn't hold water. So far, I have not read any reservations about the performance and actions and morality of our private sector, which should inform any re-thinking of so-called conservative positions. Also, I have problems with his view that Obama is trying to over-regulate the economy, when we have not had any enforced regulation in over 10 years. Bob actually speaks well of the Mount Vernon Declaration, which I have written about, lamenting that there was no one under 65 in the whole bunch.
I was hoping for a recognition that the last Administration expanded the size and power of executive branch greater than at any time in our history, including during FDR. Also, I would like a conservative or Republican to admit that they took a surplus and ran it into a $12 trillion deficit. That is coveniently missing in the analysis, while Obama is criticized as the most profilgate President of our time. While Bob praises the greatest boom in job creation after 1980, he neglects to say how the economy has not grown any jobs since 2007. Luckily, this month it did produce some jobs but half of which are temporary.
Also in the mail came Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians ( 2006), which is available free on-line at www.theauthoritarians.com . This is not what I had expected but it is rich in examining the attitudes of the evangelical movement, which detailed references to internal criticisms of the movement by evangelical theologians themselves. The findings of a rigid authoritarian mindset doesn't fit with the calls for the conservative resurgence mentioned above.
Not to beat up on Bob today but he says conservative ideas are supported by the majority of Americans. The Quinnipiac poll shows that 60% of both parties support raising income taxes over $250,000 to tame the deficit. 70% support making people who earn $1 million pay more taxes. 80% are against raising taxes on people earning less than $250,000 and these 80% are opposed to cutting Medicare and Social Security. Bob's policy perscriptions call for cuts in both programs.
A Washington Post poll on the anger in the country show that 94% of the angry crowd are white and 73% are conservative. One respondent affectionately mentioned the 1950s and how he grew up with Ozzie& Harriet, but he added something that I think is telling," No one was trying to get rich then." My hunch is that there has been a delayed reaction to the devastation wrought on the nation by the last Administration. Much of the conservative noisechamber has tried and to some degree has been successful in diverting attention away from this fact. Perhaps they will succeed in its entirety but if not, then there will be another political price to pay for the Republicans.
The FBI is investigating a series of threats against IRS offices. As I wrote last week concerning my monitoring militia broadcasts, the militia movement, this time in the name of Guardians of the Free Republics, has sent letters to 30 sitting Governors demanding they leave office within three days or they will be removed. The group claims to want "to restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government. The threats were made both to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, signifying a bipartisan victim list. The FBI associates the letter with "sovereign citizens", the Christian identity movement, who believe they are free from all duties of a U.S. citizen, like paying taxes or needing a government license to drive. Scott Roeder, the man sentenced yesterday for killing Dr. Tiller, is a member of this group and was arrested in the 1990s for driving with a car filled with explosives.
Chip Berlet posted on www.talk2action.org an article entitled "Armed Militias, the Antichrist, and Obama", which outlines how millennialism has been mainstreamed and how the Christian Identity, Patriot amd militia movements have used this to popularize xenophobia,authoritarianism and scapegoating. Chip Berlet has spent a career documenting the militia movement and now ,after years of freelancing, regularly appears on television to discuss the phenomenon and its threats.
Frank Schaeffer posted on www.huffingtonpost.com April 1st his take on "The Evangelical 'Mainstream' Insanity Behind the Michigan 'End Times' Militia" . Knowing of what he speaks, Frank refers to the influence of the "Christian Reconstructionist" Movement and the Left Behind series in shaping this type of extremism. Frank believes this type of thinking influences the tea party movement and its encouragement that the government of the United States is illegitimate.
Rand Paul, Ron's son who is the Tea Party Choice running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Kentucky,held a campiagn rally surrounded by camo-clad militia members sportingautomatic weapons. The militia members claimed to be "the real homeland security" force not the "feds" and promised they would kill Democratic politicians. Bloggers noted that this might be Rand's "Macaca" moment. I disagree I think the political landscape has changed sufficiently that we will see more politicians embrace the militia movement.
Michael Steele's sexytime party has been supplanted by a parallel organization led by three former RNC chairpeople with the addition of Karl Rove, which aims to siphon off the big donor money that has fled Steele.
Peggy Noonan defended the Pope today, while the new hotlines to report sexual abuse in Europe are receiving 4,000 calls per hour. The Vatican's exorcist now says the Devil is in the media.
Roger Clemens wants to tell you his "pipes are working fine". Thanks for sharing.
The President received a thunderous welcome in the whitest state in the union, Maine. Hecarried Maine with about 70% of the vote last time. Conservatives are complaining that he "targeted Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck" in his recent CBS interview. All he said was that they don't represent the majority of the country.
Believe it or not Republicans said that they improved the health bill by getting rid of the "death panels".
That's All, folks.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Blue Rain*--The Final Cut
Hooray! President Obama has delayed his trip to focus on health care. We're becoming a banana republic when the President flies overseas and has to worry what mischief is going to play out in D.C.
Thank you , Frank Schaeffer. On http://www.frankschaeffer.blogspot.com/ , my favorite repentent co-creator of the Religious Right morphs back into his Calvinist mode to sternly lecture us all that under our "fickle noses" this is a time of national rebirth and he's delighted with President Obama, even more than he has been. He rips the shrivelled old conservatives abnd blasts the left for dumping on Obama. He proceeds to list all his achievements in the past year and taunts Obama's critics as they say" that's not good enough."
Rachel Maddow interviewed Nancy Pelosi last night. While not my favorite politician, the Speaker has been ferociously effective as a leader. Every one of the President's campaign promises except immigration reform passed the House last year. Now over 290 bills are bottled up in the Senate.
Could some one please muzzle Larry O'Donnell? Last night was another bummer about the health care bill. This was after a day when Harry Reid sent a blistering letter to Mitch McConnell on why he is going to use reconciliation and the House leadership walked away from dealing with Bart Stupak and the anti-abortion crowd. But Larry focused on the strange news yesterday that the Republicans say that Republicans asked the Parliamentarian whether President Obama would have to sign the Senate bill before reconciliation. Now we have no statement from the Senate Parliamentarian on this and on the face of it it doesn't make any sense considering past uses of reconciliation. But never mind, let's all worry..
The CBO price tag came in. The Healthcare bill saves about $190 billion over ten years and another $1 trillion in the second ten years. And it comes in under $900 billion. So the Speaker of the House is beginning to mark it up on Monday.
Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn Democrats about passing healthcare because of the dire consequences in the fall. Their long column in the Washington Post recites the depth of American opposition to health care reform.. Interesting thing is that they only quote our friend Mr. Rasmussen on his polling data--which conveniently didn't ask about the specific provisions of the bill. Last night Nancy Pelosi effectively laid out the meaning of healthcare in her interview with Rachel Maddow. She pointed to both the human and fiscal necessary for it and did it in great detail.
Now as I turn the curve on my taxes, let's make healthcare costs personally. Remember my eye operation is being billed this year. For 2009, the McColm family, which takes no medicines and last year had nothing wrong, spent cash out of pocket for medical expenses and insurance--$25,100. That is over half the average income of the American family. It is no joke to say that if anything serious happened, I would have to declare bankruptcy. That's why I want healthcare reform.
All is not well in GlennBeckistan: After the Jesuit dog whistle, conservative Catholics followed suit in their criticism of his positions on religion. Wakening from his deep slumber, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, called on Christians to boycott Beck. His own church said that the Book of Morman was almost entirely a book about social justice. Let's not carried away guys. However, the term "social justice" does appear some 180 times in Morman doctrinal texts.
After "changing American history"--that was his promise--with the Eric Massa interview, Glenn Beck decided to go after FDR. We know from the Wall Street Journal and Amity Schlaes that FDR prolonged the Depression. Actually, we know from economists trained in the period that FDR cut the unemployment rate from 25-12% and did other things like create Social Security and the FDIC. But Beck's complaint about this President who was as popular as Obama was that he hired Communists. Yes, he did after the U.S. formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. In my mind, I always wondered why the Communists ended up in the Department of Agriculture.
Anyway, Beck then extolls Joe McCarthy's crusade against these characters and mentions the Dies Committee. (He should have disclosed his mentor the Morman" historian" was a staffer for the Dies Committee and was subsequently fired by J.Edgar Hoover from the FBI for being "paranoid and too extreme in his anti-Communism".) And he brings up the conservative's favorite hero Whittaker Chambers. A little dirty secret--Whittaker only ratted out the NKVD cells that were not longer functional to protect the one left behind. Conservatives love the rumpy looking Whittaker Chambers for bringing down fancy pants Alger Hiss. But they love him even more for saying that the United States already lost the Cold War in the 1950s.
Now how this relates to Barack Obama I don't know. But he gets around to Woody Guthrie and the song "This Land Is Your Land". I wrote about how delighted I was last year when Pete Seegar sang the uncensored version of the song at the Lincoln Memorial. A year later Beck picked this up. And said that this was a song about the Communist dream. He told his audience that Barack Obama's initiative to save millions of acres for the wilderness was a Maoist plot. Actually this was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt's vision , a man Beck hates worse than Mao.
Beck also decided to attack the union movement for harboring communists. For future shows I hope he mentions that the AFL-CIO's international department was led by the former head of the American Communist Party , Jay Lovestone. This could provoke another Jesuit-style backlash by older union types.
Howell Raines finally wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, chastising his fellow journalists for not mentioning that for the first time in modern American history we have a self-proclaimed news agency identified with a single political party. He called on his feloow journalists to start going after Roger Ailes and his right-wing Echochamber. A little late but welcomed.
My interest in Rep. Paul Ryan's Blueprint for the Future was only reinforced yesterday as the American Spectator and other conservative publications have endorsed it. Ryan asked the CBO to score his budget plan--using only his revenue figures. The plan called for the total dismantling of all entitlement programs, an increase in taxes on the Middle Class, a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich and corporations. Even people like Andrew Sullivan seem infatuated with the Ryan plan. Maybe it's like figuring out some mathematical formula to eliminate our deficit.
The final results for the Ryan plan were ruinous. If adopted, the federal government would be gasping for air and deficits would run so large through 2019 we couldn't ever recover. That's using his revenue figures. This is the new Supply-Side theory and I promise you it will be part of the Republican platform in 2012. I call it Aircraft Carrier Economics. The United States would become a gigantic platform from which one can launch endless wars but there would be no benefit to any Americans. I think Paul Ryan would have gotten along great with Brezhnev. They share the same worldview.
Leonard Pitts wrote a column lamenting the fact the GOP's own campaign now is based on fear. Sentimental guy that he is he waxed nostalgic for the days when politicians from both the right and left encouraged us to adopt higher principles that united us. It's not morning in America, he writes, it's now High-Noon every day.
To my conservative friends who believed President Obama would not donate his Nobel Prize money to charity, yesterday he did and the charities are all posted on line. Actually he made some good choices, emphasizing educational funds for minority students, including Native Americans. He also gave a sizeable gift to the Clinton Haiti Fund. Conservatives always liked to brag about how Dick Cheney gave his earnings from Halliburton to charity when he took office. The charity was the Richard Cheney Vice Presidential Library--believe it or not.
You will have noticed that I have not been referring to the FreeRepublic website lately. Yesterday their bloggers said that if health care reform passes they can't wait until 2012. They must engage in armed struggle now. At this point, I can't help but believe the Secret Service is n camped out at that website and in Jim Robinson's office.
A retired General sent me his latest article , which called for Revolution, because Washington is adopting progressive socialism and we constitutionalists must stop it. It reminds me of Sterling Hayden's great performance as a right-wing general with a private army in Winter Kills, which was about the JFK assassination. I don't respond because his notion of constitutionalism is based on the white nationalist movement and he doesn't even know it.
On President's Day, leading ministers of the Southern Baptist Church prayed to God for the death of President Obama. They think he is either the one to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ or the anti-Christ himself. Nero was the real Anti-Christ because he persecuted early Christians and inspired the Book of Revelations. Tim Lahaye of the Left Behind Series said it was Gorbachev because he had the mark of the beast on his forehead. Sarah Palin's minister believes the Anti-Christ is gay,which, I guess brings us back to the Vatican. But all this contradicts some of the think of the Southern Baptists, who believe the rapture ic coming in May 2012, before our next election. So no need for armed struggle or assassination--everything is solved.
Our Texas School Board problem hasn't been solved by the defeat of the wingnuts. They still refuse to include a section in the American History text why we have separation of church and state. They also want to include a section on the Emancipation Proclamation that it raised expectations of minorities too high.
George Will writes that Roberts should boycott the State of the Union address and wants more people to do so. After all we have a Black President and he's too uppity--I'm just translating. But Roberts, who is miffed by Obama's justified criticism of the Citizens United decision, should have been on the court of John Marshall when he ruled for the Cherokee Nation against its forced removal to Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson ignored him and the press asked about the Supreme Court Decision. Jackson said,"Let him (Marshall) enforce it."
Drudge reminds us that Obama's approval rating fell to its lowest point in Gallup of all time! Gallup reminds its readers that Obama's weekly approval ratings are very consistent and holding up. Rasmussen must be pleased he's getting traction--imaginary though it is. RS2000 has Obama where he was last week with a slight drop in the disapproval ratings.
We have an immediate consequence of the Citizens United ruling. Millions of dollars are flowing through front organizations with the usualy names like Americans for Free Donuts. The Corporate flood is a last gasp to defeath healthreform. I have never seen a time when corporate America has waged such an unrelenting war against the American people. Whether it's health reform or fiscal reform. And they don't even pay taxes or create jobs here!
The Democrats pledged they will not use earmarks for corporate funding anymore. The Republicans came in a day late and said they would do this also--for one year! The group of Republicans who signed onto this plan netted over $400 million in earmarks last year. K Street is in deep mourning and generating op-eds to defend their work on behalf of corporations.
* Hendrix's last cut on the album.
Thank you , Frank Schaeffer. On http://www.frankschaeffer.blogspot.com/ , my favorite repentent co-creator of the Religious Right morphs back into his Calvinist mode to sternly lecture us all that under our "fickle noses" this is a time of national rebirth and he's delighted with President Obama, even more than he has been. He rips the shrivelled old conservatives abnd blasts the left for dumping on Obama. He proceeds to list all his achievements in the past year and taunts Obama's critics as they say" that's not good enough."
Rachel Maddow interviewed Nancy Pelosi last night. While not my favorite politician, the Speaker has been ferociously effective as a leader. Every one of the President's campaign promises except immigration reform passed the House last year. Now over 290 bills are bottled up in the Senate.
Could some one please muzzle Larry O'Donnell? Last night was another bummer about the health care bill. This was after a day when Harry Reid sent a blistering letter to Mitch McConnell on why he is going to use reconciliation and the House leadership walked away from dealing with Bart Stupak and the anti-abortion crowd. But Larry focused on the strange news yesterday that the Republicans say that Republicans asked the Parliamentarian whether President Obama would have to sign the Senate bill before reconciliation. Now we have no statement from the Senate Parliamentarian on this and on the face of it it doesn't make any sense considering past uses of reconciliation. But never mind, let's all worry..
The CBO price tag came in. The Healthcare bill saves about $190 billion over ten years and another $1 trillion in the second ten years. And it comes in under $900 billion. So the Speaker of the House is beginning to mark it up on Monday.
Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn Democrats about passing healthcare because of the dire consequences in the fall. Their long column in the Washington Post recites the depth of American opposition to health care reform.. Interesting thing is that they only quote our friend Mr. Rasmussen on his polling data--which conveniently didn't ask about the specific provisions of the bill. Last night Nancy Pelosi effectively laid out the meaning of healthcare in her interview with Rachel Maddow. She pointed to both the human and fiscal necessary for it and did it in great detail.
Now as I turn the curve on my taxes, let's make healthcare costs personally. Remember my eye operation is being billed this year. For 2009, the McColm family, which takes no medicines and last year had nothing wrong, spent cash out of pocket for medical expenses and insurance--$25,100. That is over half the average income of the American family. It is no joke to say that if anything serious happened, I would have to declare bankruptcy. That's why I want healthcare reform.
All is not well in GlennBeckistan: After the Jesuit dog whistle, conservative Catholics followed suit in their criticism of his positions on religion. Wakening from his deep slumber, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, called on Christians to boycott Beck. His own church said that the Book of Morman was almost entirely a book about social justice. Let's not carried away guys. However, the term "social justice" does appear some 180 times in Morman doctrinal texts.
After "changing American history"--that was his promise--with the Eric Massa interview, Glenn Beck decided to go after FDR. We know from the Wall Street Journal and Amity Schlaes that FDR prolonged the Depression. Actually, we know from economists trained in the period that FDR cut the unemployment rate from 25-12% and did other things like create Social Security and the FDIC. But Beck's complaint about this President who was as popular as Obama was that he hired Communists. Yes, he did after the U.S. formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. In my mind, I always wondered why the Communists ended up in the Department of Agriculture.
Anyway, Beck then extolls Joe McCarthy's crusade against these characters and mentions the Dies Committee. (He should have disclosed his mentor the Morman" historian" was a staffer for the Dies Committee and was subsequently fired by J.Edgar Hoover from the FBI for being "paranoid and too extreme in his anti-Communism".) And he brings up the conservative's favorite hero Whittaker Chambers. A little dirty secret--Whittaker only ratted out the NKVD cells that were not longer functional to protect the one left behind. Conservatives love the rumpy looking Whittaker Chambers for bringing down fancy pants Alger Hiss. But they love him even more for saying that the United States already lost the Cold War in the 1950s.
Now how this relates to Barack Obama I don't know. But he gets around to Woody Guthrie and the song "This Land Is Your Land". I wrote about how delighted I was last year when Pete Seegar sang the uncensored version of the song at the Lincoln Memorial. A year later Beck picked this up. And said that this was a song about the Communist dream. He told his audience that Barack Obama's initiative to save millions of acres for the wilderness was a Maoist plot. Actually this was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt's vision , a man Beck hates worse than Mao.
Beck also decided to attack the union movement for harboring communists. For future shows I hope he mentions that the AFL-CIO's international department was led by the former head of the American Communist Party , Jay Lovestone. This could provoke another Jesuit-style backlash by older union types.
Howell Raines finally wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, chastising his fellow journalists for not mentioning that for the first time in modern American history we have a self-proclaimed news agency identified with a single political party. He called on his feloow journalists to start going after Roger Ailes and his right-wing Echochamber. A little late but welcomed.
My interest in Rep. Paul Ryan's Blueprint for the Future was only reinforced yesterday as the American Spectator and other conservative publications have endorsed it. Ryan asked the CBO to score his budget plan--using only his revenue figures. The plan called for the total dismantling of all entitlement programs, an increase in taxes on the Middle Class, a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich and corporations. Even people like Andrew Sullivan seem infatuated with the Ryan plan. Maybe it's like figuring out some mathematical formula to eliminate our deficit.
The final results for the Ryan plan were ruinous. If adopted, the federal government would be gasping for air and deficits would run so large through 2019 we couldn't ever recover. That's using his revenue figures. This is the new Supply-Side theory and I promise you it will be part of the Republican platform in 2012. I call it Aircraft Carrier Economics. The United States would become a gigantic platform from which one can launch endless wars but there would be no benefit to any Americans. I think Paul Ryan would have gotten along great with Brezhnev. They share the same worldview.
Leonard Pitts wrote a column lamenting the fact the GOP's own campaign now is based on fear. Sentimental guy that he is he waxed nostalgic for the days when politicians from both the right and left encouraged us to adopt higher principles that united us. It's not morning in America, he writes, it's now High-Noon every day.
To my conservative friends who believed President Obama would not donate his Nobel Prize money to charity, yesterday he did and the charities are all posted on line. Actually he made some good choices, emphasizing educational funds for minority students, including Native Americans. He also gave a sizeable gift to the Clinton Haiti Fund. Conservatives always liked to brag about how Dick Cheney gave his earnings from Halliburton to charity when he took office. The charity was the Richard Cheney Vice Presidential Library--believe it or not.
You will have noticed that I have not been referring to the FreeRepublic website lately. Yesterday their bloggers said that if health care reform passes they can't wait until 2012. They must engage in armed struggle now. At this point, I can't help but believe the Secret Service is n camped out at that website and in Jim Robinson's office.
A retired General sent me his latest article , which called for Revolution, because Washington is adopting progressive socialism and we constitutionalists must stop it. It reminds me of Sterling Hayden's great performance as a right-wing general with a private army in Winter Kills, which was about the JFK assassination. I don't respond because his notion of constitutionalism is based on the white nationalist movement and he doesn't even know it.
On President's Day, leading ministers of the Southern Baptist Church prayed to God for the death of President Obama. They think he is either the one to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ or the anti-Christ himself. Nero was the real Anti-Christ because he persecuted early Christians and inspired the Book of Revelations. Tim Lahaye of the Left Behind Series said it was Gorbachev because he had the mark of the beast on his forehead. Sarah Palin's minister believes the Anti-Christ is gay,which, I guess brings us back to the Vatican. But all this contradicts some of the think of the Southern Baptists, who believe the rapture ic coming in May 2012, before our next election. So no need for armed struggle or assassination--everything is solved.
Our Texas School Board problem hasn't been solved by the defeat of the wingnuts. They still refuse to include a section in the American History text why we have separation of church and state. They also want to include a section on the Emancipation Proclamation that it raised expectations of minorities too high.
George Will writes that Roberts should boycott the State of the Union address and wants more people to do so. After all we have a Black President and he's too uppity--I'm just translating. But Roberts, who is miffed by Obama's justified criticism of the Citizens United decision, should have been on the court of John Marshall when he ruled for the Cherokee Nation against its forced removal to Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson ignored him and the press asked about the Supreme Court Decision. Jackson said,"Let him (Marshall) enforce it."
Drudge reminds us that Obama's approval rating fell to its lowest point in Gallup of all time! Gallup reminds its readers that Obama's weekly approval ratings are very consistent and holding up. Rasmussen must be pleased he's getting traction--imaginary though it is. RS2000 has Obama where he was last week with a slight drop in the disapproval ratings.
We have an immediate consequence of the Citizens United ruling. Millions of dollars are flowing through front organizations with the usualy names like Americans for Free Donuts. The Corporate flood is a last gasp to defeath healthreform. I have never seen a time when corporate America has waged such an unrelenting war against the American people. Whether it's health reform or fiscal reform. And they don't even pay taxes or create jobs here!
The Democrats pledged they will not use earmarks for corporate funding anymore. The Republicans came in a day late and said they would do this also--for one year! The group of Republicans who signed onto this plan netted over $400 million in earmarks last year. K Street is in deep mourning and generating op-eds to defend their work on behalf of corporations.
* Hendrix's last cut on the album.
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