The Japanese ambassador kicked off the Cherry Blossom Fesival here by saying that with all the snow he thought he would have to 'deem and pass" the festival. A real wiseguy.
The FBI claims the raids on the militia were to thwart a plot to sell pipebombs through the Midwest. Seems alot of firepower for that purpose. Tea Baggers should have avoided posting on their blog that the raid was at a Tea Party Compound. That raises more questions about the whole affair.
David Frum had said"... and now we work for Fox News." I'm sure he didn't mean it literally. But the RNC sent me an e-mail request to buy Sean Hannity's book on how to stop the Obama agenda. Hmmm.
Right-wing e-mail of the day was an article explaining how the health insurance mandates would not apply to Muslims. The author dutifully listed opinions from various mullahs about the Quran's view of health insurance (all negative.).
President Obama left town today to drop in on President Kazai in Kabul. Kazai only found out about it an hour before the President landed. Obama was said to have read Karzai the riot act about promises he had not fulfilled. The Free Republic did a mock announcement that "Press Secretary Gibbs would not confirm or deny whether Obama will have a meeting with Osama bin Laden." Another Freeper posted a veiled assassination threat against the President.
"I may be skinny but I'm tough." President Obama was under constant pressure from Dimtry Medvedev to change the Start treaty. Moscow analysts said that the Kremlin believed that Obama was weak and facing massive internal opposition to his presidency and therefore could be pressured to make more concessions. Unfortunately for Medvedev, the President said "a deal is a deal but I can understand if you walk away from it." Moscow decided not to walk.
Next up--Financial Reform is scheduled to be enacted by Memorial Day. Meanwhile Senator Lindsey Graham is moaning that President Obama hasn't told him his views on immigration reform. He claims he can't sign onto Chuck Schumer's bill until he knows what the President thinks. Seems to me special pleading for a White House meeting.
Nate "the Great "Silver claims that there is both good news and ot so good news for Democrats in polling after health care reform. Approval for Democrats, among Democrats, got a boost as well as a sharp rise in approval from independents. He attributes this more to the perception that the Democrats are perceived as getting things done than approval for the bill itself. On the other side, approval for Republicans among Republicans has sky-rocketed. Silver claims the mid-terms come down to two different ways of perceiving Congress and that the winner depends on which frame dominates.
President Obama made 15 recess appointments over the threats of GOP Senators. The most controversial was Craig Becker, the labor lawyer for the ACLU and SEIU, to the National Labor Relations Board. Becker's appointment was bitterly opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Republicans. Now the Democrats have the majority on the NLRB.
Mike Huckabee made the mistake of asking Jim Baker on Fox to discuss the Israeli settlements. This is not the man to have as a guest to defend Israel as Huckabee soon found out. Baker explained the American policy toward the Middle East and said that disputes with Israel occurred from time to time. Then Huckabee said that how could Obama object to Israel building settlements on Jewish land. Then Baker went steely and said abruptly," That's not Jewish land. That's land that would go to the state of Palestine." The interview ended shortly thereafter. Earlier in the year, Huckabee travelled to Jerusalem and publically supported Israel's planned settlements.
Apparently, the Obama Administration has reopened the investigation of the death of an Afghan militant at the hands of the CIA in 2002. Gul Rahman, a 30-year old suspected militant of the Hezb-e-Islamic Gulbuddin, was apprehended by the CIA in Kabul and sent to the Salt Pit "secret prison" northeast of the capitol. Salt Pit had been an abandoned brick factory the CIA converted into a prison with small cells. Gul Rahman was stripped naked and hung from the ceiling for several hours at a time. CIA agents would take him down and jump on his stomach. Left half-naked, the prison was freezing and he apparently died of hypothermia. His death at the time triggered an investigation of the CIA's methods of enhanced interrogation and the establishment of some rules. The CIA agent in charge of the Salt Pit was a new recruit on his first assignment abroad, a theme that runs through all the torture stories. The CIA investigator concluded that Gul Rahman was not deliberately killed and a Virginia Court refused to press charges. This is one of the cases that Eric Holder alluded to early in the Obama Administration that occurred before the torture memos had been written. The sooner some punitive measures are taken against personnel involved in these acts the better for the United States.
"Obama is destroying the America I knew as a boy." said a Teabagger in his 60s. There are alot of answers to this but it underlines what Frank Rich wrote today about "the national existential reordering". This is explained in the study I cited yesterday-- Bob Atemeyer's "the Authoritarians", which examines the group mind of the right-wing male. Written in 2007, Dr. Atemeyer added a postscript after Barack Obama's election that there would be several years of turbulence from now on because the rigidity of the right-wing white male can not accept a change in the political assumptions of the country. The new rightwinger that emerged in the Bush years believes he is in sole possession of the "absolute truth" and will not tolerate debate or discussion about this. In some ways, Atemeyer predicted the total obstructionism from the GOP to any of Obama's initiatives. That's why 9/11 is a talisman for the radical right. It's used to justify an entire political worldview.
Showing posts with label Teabaggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teabaggers. Show all posts
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
"John McCain was a War Hero ...and a Space Man"
At the Tucson rally, Sarah Palin sported her black leather Emma Peel sex outfit and John McCain looked like Popeye in an S&M parlor. Sadly, McCain looked like grandpa when you have to watch him before he wanders off somewhere. Sarah Palin pronounced "We are all teabaggers now." Sort of reminds me when McCain said, "We are all Georgians now" when he wanted to liberate South Ossetia. Now the former Presidential candidate is dependent on the star power of his understudy to win the Republican primary. McCain right now is only four points ahead and would be losing if the Minutemen didn't have their own candidate. Both McCain and Palin emphasized that the Republicans were the party of "Hell No". But it was nice of Sarah to say that John was a space man--maybe she should have said space cadet.
Newt Gingrich said that America is in a similar situation as in the 1850s before civil war broke out. It's interesting that he didn't mention that George W. Bush resembles in stature James Buchanan.
A Marine Sgt. "C" wrote a scathing blog chastising teabaggers for suggesting civil war. He detailed his own training and asked whether any of the teabaggers were in the same shape. He also recalled what happens to communities and towns during any civil war and listed the armaments he and his colleagues would bring to bear on them. He also reminded them that he took an oath to protect the Constitution and that once they declared their insurgency they were no longer civilians but "the enemy". He told them to get a life and that sometimes in politics you win and sometimes you lose.
John Boehner sent out a money-raising saying that the Obama Administration wants "to import foreign terrorists to our communities and give them the same rights Americans have."
Commandante Steele rejected a "civility statement" offered by DNC Tim Kaine. He said Democrats would use it against Republicans and that he would consider it in his own time. This reminds me of something alot of us do in emerging democracies. We try to get all competing parties to agree to a Code of Conduct so as to restrain extreme behavior. It's too bad that it has come to this in the United States.
Roger Ailes warned the staff at Fox News, who criticize Glenn Beck, to stop "shooting in the tent". He referred to Beck as a member of the family and all members of the family should be respected.
There was another assassination attempt against an Arkansas congressman who voted for healthcare.
Teabaggers, along with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, descended on Spotlight , Nevada for a "Conservative Woodstock" "without the LSD". The town of 700 looked forward to the tourist trade. The some 7,000 people were protesting Harry Reid, who lives there. He issued a statement that it was "gratifying for him to now realize he himself could be the key to Nevada surviving its current hard times."
ONE REPUBLICAN REMAINS SANE: Senator Richard Lugar came out in favor of the New Start Treaty. Senator Lugar promised that he and Senator John Kerry will speed up the hearings on it so that it could be ratified quickly. Watch this space to see whether the GOP has gone completely bonkers if they resist ratification. The treaty allows both the United States and Russia to pressure Iran over its nuclear program and to jointly work on stopping nuclear proliferation by other countries.
While Congress has criticized Obama's treatment of Bibi, the President gave the Israeli leader until late today to response to his requests. As I wrote yesterday, the timing of the pressure has everything to do with the Arab League meeting and this New Start Treaty. If Israel agrees to talks with the Palestianians it strengths the pro-American Arab countries in their confrontations with pro-Iranian forces. Together with a new nuclear treaty, it puts Tehran in a diplomatic box for the time being.
North Korea says that after sinking the South Korean ship yesterday that next time there will be a nuclear attack.
Charles Cook still thinks Republicans will pick up 40 seats in the House. But everyone agrees that the GOP fund-raising plea that they will repeal healthcare is a mirage and they know it.
Obamacan Frank Schaeffer doesn't believe this. Writing on the FireDogLake website in a piece entitled "Republicans: Violent Losers", he says that the pundits have it all wrong. He says that the Republicans are about to pay a historic price for the biggest miscalculation in American history since Charles Lindberg sided with the Germans. He says he is telling his reality-based friends that the Democratic Party will retain the majority in both houses of Congress and that Obama will win a second term. He says that the Republican Party is in the grip of its own propaganda and that it has committed the ultimate act of political folly--believing their own BS.
"The leaderless Republican Party--or should I say the dwindling rabble of reactionaries who still identify themselves as Republicans--is not just politically leaderless; they are also morally leaderless. This, speaking metaphorically, is a lynch mob in the making. And they have just lost a big fight in our congress. What will they do next?
Why do the Republican leadership allow this mob to rule? Because they have no choice.
The Republican leadership have literally gotten in bed with hate. And like all such bargains with the devil it was easier to begin their relationship with rube America than to end it.
...Either way: be it the next right wing act of domestic terror or the realization by the American public that the Republicans are plain wrong on the facts; the Republicans are on their way down.
They have made a historic miscalculation on health care reform. They have embraced a group of potentially violent and always embarrassing fellow travelers . The American peoplemay have been confused about the facts but they soon won't be. And most Americans are not hate-filled people who applaud other Americans spitting on congressmen or throwing bricks through office windows --or worse to come."
Tell us what you think, Frank. Frank Schaeffer is a prior lifetime c0-founded the Religious Right in the United States.
Lee Fang on the website Think Progress analyzes all the ways Republicans and their operatives cash in on teabaggers "Tea Party Profiteers: How Republican Operatives Are Exploiting Economic Anxiety For Power, Cash". www.thinkprogress.org \
www.PublicEye.org ,the website of Political Research Associates, challenges the "centrist/ extremist theory" that explains right-wing populism. This theory arrived in 1955 with the publication of essays edited by Daniel Bell entitled The New American Right. In short, this theory sees all dissident movements of the left and the right as composed of outsiders--politically marginal people who have no connection to the mainstream electoral system or nodes of government or corporate power. Social and economic stress snaps these psychologically-fragile people into a mode of irrational political hysteria , and as they embrace an increasingly paranoid style they make militant and unreasonable demands to defend their social and economic status. Because they are unstable ,they can become dangerous and violent. The solution prescribed by centrist/extremist theory is to marginalize the dissidents as radicals and dangerous religious political extremists. Their grievances and demands need not be taken seriously. Furthermore, law enforcement can then be relied upon to break up any criminal conspiracies by subersives who threaten the social order.
The writer complains that this is a status-quo oriented frame of reference that too often dismisses dissidents of all stripes. The new paradigm for analysis began in the 1970s, which said that most of this people were not joining right-wing populist movements because they were acting out personal pathology, but out of anger and desparation. The articles goes on to describe the world-view that fuels these movements and explains why combating them requires a totally different strategy from the one suggested by Bell. The article reminds me of the book "The Eliminationists".
A 2007 study on authoritarianism explained the evolution of the Republican party into the repressive, authoritarian party it became. What is so interesting is that while the psychology of right-wing populism and the Republican Party overlap quite a bit, there is a basic and fundamental conflict that can not be resolved. I believe you will see this conflict break out in the open as the year moves ahead.
I recommend Jane Mayer's review of Marc Thiessen's torture book in the new New Yorker. As one suspects, everything he writes about the CIA torture program is a lie and she eviscerates him chapter and verse.
CONGRATULATIONS TO DIANE RAVITCH. She has written the most important book on public educationin many a year and how it is being destroyed. Even though she may have wavered into heresy during her days supporting Leave No Child Behind, a small "d" democrat ultimately never abandons their fundamental principles. She does a remarkable job in detailing the history of all the education reform proposals since the 1980s and details how the "billionaire boys' club" of foundations are destroying public education by applying the principles of market reform to a public good. She also channels her old friendship with Al Shanker to elucidate what we are educating children for. "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a powerful indictment of the reforms initiated by George W. Bush and continued through Arne Duncan under President Obama. I hope she stirs up a big debate.
Newt Gingrich said that America is in a similar situation as in the 1850s before civil war broke out. It's interesting that he didn't mention that George W. Bush resembles in stature James Buchanan.
A Marine Sgt. "C" wrote a scathing blog chastising teabaggers for suggesting civil war. He detailed his own training and asked whether any of the teabaggers were in the same shape. He also recalled what happens to communities and towns during any civil war and listed the armaments he and his colleagues would bring to bear on them. He also reminded them that he took an oath to protect the Constitution and that once they declared their insurgency they were no longer civilians but "the enemy". He told them to get a life and that sometimes in politics you win and sometimes you lose.
John Boehner sent out a money-raising saying that the Obama Administration wants "to import foreign terrorists to our communities and give them the same rights Americans have."
Commandante Steele rejected a "civility statement" offered by DNC Tim Kaine. He said Democrats would use it against Republicans and that he would consider it in his own time. This reminds me of something alot of us do in emerging democracies. We try to get all competing parties to agree to a Code of Conduct so as to restrain extreme behavior. It's too bad that it has come to this in the United States.
Roger Ailes warned the staff at Fox News, who criticize Glenn Beck, to stop "shooting in the tent". He referred to Beck as a member of the family and all members of the family should be respected.
There was another assassination attempt against an Arkansas congressman who voted for healthcare.
Teabaggers, along with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, descended on Spotlight , Nevada for a "Conservative Woodstock" "without the LSD". The town of 700 looked forward to the tourist trade. The some 7,000 people were protesting Harry Reid, who lives there. He issued a statement that it was "gratifying for him to now realize he himself could be the key to Nevada surviving its current hard times."
ONE REPUBLICAN REMAINS SANE: Senator Richard Lugar came out in favor of the New Start Treaty. Senator Lugar promised that he and Senator John Kerry will speed up the hearings on it so that it could be ratified quickly. Watch this space to see whether the GOP has gone completely bonkers if they resist ratification. The treaty allows both the United States and Russia to pressure Iran over its nuclear program and to jointly work on stopping nuclear proliferation by other countries.
While Congress has criticized Obama's treatment of Bibi, the President gave the Israeli leader until late today to response to his requests. As I wrote yesterday, the timing of the pressure has everything to do with the Arab League meeting and this New Start Treaty. If Israel agrees to talks with the Palestianians it strengths the pro-American Arab countries in their confrontations with pro-Iranian forces. Together with a new nuclear treaty, it puts Tehran in a diplomatic box for the time being.
North Korea says that after sinking the South Korean ship yesterday that next time there will be a nuclear attack.
Charles Cook still thinks Republicans will pick up 40 seats in the House. But everyone agrees that the GOP fund-raising plea that they will repeal healthcare is a mirage and they know it.
Obamacan Frank Schaeffer doesn't believe this. Writing on the FireDogLake website in a piece entitled "Republicans: Violent Losers", he says that the pundits have it all wrong. He says that the Republicans are about to pay a historic price for the biggest miscalculation in American history since Charles Lindberg sided with the Germans. He says he is telling his reality-based friends that the Democratic Party will retain the majority in both houses of Congress and that Obama will win a second term. He says that the Republican Party is in the grip of its own propaganda and that it has committed the ultimate act of political folly--believing their own BS.
"The leaderless Republican Party--or should I say the dwindling rabble of reactionaries who still identify themselves as Republicans--is not just politically leaderless; they are also morally leaderless. This, speaking metaphorically, is a lynch mob in the making. And they have just lost a big fight in our congress. What will they do next?
Why do the Republican leadership allow this mob to rule? Because they have no choice.
The Republican leadership have literally gotten in bed with hate. And like all such bargains with the devil it was easier to begin their relationship with rube America than to end it.
...Either way: be it the next right wing act of domestic terror or the realization by the American public that the Republicans are plain wrong on the facts; the Republicans are on their way down.
They have made a historic miscalculation on health care reform. They have embraced a group of potentially violent and always embarrassing fellow travelers . The American peoplemay have been confused about the facts but they soon won't be. And most Americans are not hate-filled people who applaud other Americans spitting on congressmen or throwing bricks through office windows --or worse to come."
Tell us what you think, Frank. Frank Schaeffer is a prior lifetime c0-founded the Religious Right in the United States.
Lee Fang on the website Think Progress analyzes all the ways Republicans and their operatives cash in on teabaggers "Tea Party Profiteers: How Republican Operatives Are Exploiting Economic Anxiety For Power, Cash". www.thinkprogress.org \
www.PublicEye.org ,the website of Political Research Associates, challenges the "centrist/ extremist theory" that explains right-wing populism. This theory arrived in 1955 with the publication of essays edited by Daniel Bell entitled The New American Right. In short, this theory sees all dissident movements of the left and the right as composed of outsiders--politically marginal people who have no connection to the mainstream electoral system or nodes of government or corporate power. Social and economic stress snaps these psychologically-fragile people into a mode of irrational political hysteria , and as they embrace an increasingly paranoid style they make militant and unreasonable demands to defend their social and economic status. Because they are unstable ,they can become dangerous and violent. The solution prescribed by centrist/extremist theory is to marginalize the dissidents as radicals and dangerous religious political extremists. Their grievances and demands need not be taken seriously. Furthermore, law enforcement can then be relied upon to break up any criminal conspiracies by subersives who threaten the social order.
The writer complains that this is a status-quo oriented frame of reference that too often dismisses dissidents of all stripes. The new paradigm for analysis began in the 1970s, which said that most of this people were not joining right-wing populist movements because they were acting out personal pathology, but out of anger and desparation. The articles goes on to describe the world-view that fuels these movements and explains why combating them requires a totally different strategy from the one suggested by Bell. The article reminds me of the book "The Eliminationists".
A 2007 study on authoritarianism explained the evolution of the Republican party into the repressive, authoritarian party it became. What is so interesting is that while the psychology of right-wing populism and the Republican Party overlap quite a bit, there is a basic and fundamental conflict that can not be resolved. I believe you will see this conflict break out in the open as the year moves ahead.
I recommend Jane Mayer's review of Marc Thiessen's torture book in the new New Yorker. As one suspects, everything he writes about the CIA torture program is a lie and she eviscerates him chapter and verse.
CONGRATULATIONS TO DIANE RAVITCH. She has written the most important book on public educationin many a year and how it is being destroyed. Even though she may have wavered into heresy during her days supporting Leave No Child Behind, a small "d" democrat ultimately never abandons their fundamental principles. She does a remarkable job in detailing the history of all the education reform proposals since the 1980s and details how the "billionaire boys' club" of foundations are destroying public education by applying the principles of market reform to a public good. She also channels her old friendship with Al Shanker to elucidate what we are educating children for. "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a powerful indictment of the reforms initiated by George W. Bush and continued through Arne Duncan under President Obama. I hope she stirs up a big debate.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Vernal Equinox
I received a type of e-mail that is supposed to be nostalgic. From the references, I take them to be momentos from the "silent generation", those of my sister's age. The best of these come with full-color photos of 1950 cars and gas stations; the worse come with lines like "Remember when only girls won earrings" and Beatles were "bugs".
Last night I had a craving for Matzos, which occurs periodically and is deadly in Virginia. While surfing the net, I came across the nostalgia I like a blog buried deep in the DailyKos. "You Don't Have to be Jewish...To Like Levy's". It was a history of Levy's Jewish Rye complete with the best ads for it. The one I never had seen was Buster Keaton, holding a sandwich made with Levy's. The blogger also mentioned the late Leo Steiner of the Carnegie Deli who was eulogized by Henny Youngman as the "deli lama". I remember spending a New Year's Eve with my wife at the Carnegie Deli and Henny Youngman appeared and really did say," Take my wife....Please." So today I will search for my Matzos.
At 8:24am, The Democrats announced they had the votes to pass healthcare reform. So gathering at the Capitol now are pro-health care reform demonstrators.
Yesterday, Steny Hoyer gave a great speech to the Democratic Caucus. He started by pointing out that both Barack Obama and John McCain ran on health reform in 2008 and this was clear and transparent throughout the campaign. He then laid out the long history of health reform efforts in the country, mentioning all Presidents except for Reagan and George W. He spent a long time quoting from all the Presidents citing this as the long overdue domestic reform needed in the country. The longest and most articulate quote came from Richard Nixon, whom Steny didn't name. He just mentioned the year it was said. Ironically, this year's bill resembles very closely the deal Nixon offered Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy in his Memoirs wrote that it was the worst mistake he made by turning it down.
Without the much vaunted teleprompter, the descendent of the Mayflower, President Obama made an emotional but, I found, a subdued speech. He tried to remind the Democratic Caucus why they initially entered public life and the ideals they once had before all the compromises were made and big money was floating around. I found his quote from Abraham Lincoln eerie and somewhat macabre. The media found it inspiring, which is more than they've said positively lately. I thought the quote came from the depressed and melancholic Lincoln. Hopefully, it doesn't reflect President Obama mindset these days.
While I enoyed my rap on "deem and pass", the Democrats abandoned it yesterday.
The Senate promises to be the next fault line. Orrin Hatch has mentioned several times in the last two days that the House will have to pass the bill another time after Republicans in the Senate get through with it. So somewhere lurks the threat that the Republicans maybe,I stress, maybe found the single line in the bill where they will get approval from the Parliamentarian. Harry Reid told the House that he was prepared for all the ambushes. Let's hope.
I can't help believing that some Republicans in the Senate will vote for the bill. Olympia Snowe successfully added dozens of her amendments--actually good ones--to the bill. Voinovich is retiring and has blasted the GOP for being prisoners of the South. Susan Collins only flirts with nuttiness and did vote for the stimulus package. And can Scott Brown really vote against it given that he is running again in 2012 in Massachusetts and that this was Ted Kennedy's dying wish?
The Catholic Hospitals, 90,000 Nuns, the National Catholic Reporter endorsed the bill. But we know no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. The Bishops Conference issued at statement at 9:41 Saturday night that argued against the bill. They claimed by an amazing feat of deduction that there is a way that federal funds can be used for abortion. The logic was so tortuous I couldn't understand. They asserted that the Hyde Amendment is the "law of the land", which it is not. It has to be renewed periodically. The law of the land is Roe v Wade, which isn't mentioned by the Bishops. They did have one good point that immigrants aren't covered and that they support universal health care for everybody. Their position is single-payer without abortion.
About abortion. 88% of American counties have no abortion providers of any kind. One out of three American women will have to have a procedure during their lifetime that the pro-life crowd calls an abortion. Their definition is so elastic as to cover some rather mundane and routine procedures. We are now seeing states trying to implement laws to protect "eggs". Next we'll see a state like Oklahoma declare that conception begins with ejaculation. The rights obtained by women under Roe v. Wade have been dramatically curtailed and are even under graver assault today.
In August I wrote how pathetic and sad it would be if violence broke out over enlarging the number of people receiving health care in the country. Yesterday, people threw bricks through the windows of the Buffalo office of Representative Louise Slaughter. Slaughter is the nickname for a parliamentary procedure the Democrats were expected, but did not use. Jon Voight's teabagger rally, which drew about 10,000--if they want to claim 100,000 go ahead,even if it's totally false-- acted in a classy manner by screaming racial epithets against civil rights hero Congressman John Lewis and calling Barney Frank the "F"word as the two walked on the nice Spring day from the Capitol to their offices. The crowd spit on members of the Black caucus and the Free Republic declared "they should have been dragged behind cars". Bayard Rustin would have said," It just made me feel young again." John Lewis was classy in his response.
At first teabaggers denied such incidents, claiming that someone would have had it on tape if it occurred and that it was the result of liberal lies. Problem--only minutes later Democratic Underground posted a video of the incident. Then the line was that the victims deserved it.
No Republican denounced this until shamed by house members on the floor. Only then did Eric Cantor and Mark Pence, who had spoken at the rally, utter an equivocal apology, saying it was the action of a few people--with the rest of the crowd holding signs portraying Obama as Hitler.
The sign that caught everyone's attention was" If (Sen.) Brown can't kill it, This (A Brownie automatic) will." My wife said that if she wanted to avoid the teabaggers all you had to do was walk fast. They tend to be the far side of 60. If these people are the conservative side of Baby-Boomers, shouldn't they have their own Kent State? Where are all the union guys with baseball bats?
Britt Hume reminds us that the Obama Presidency will be crippled if healthcare passes. Let's see, a tenacious President fighting for what he believes and whom the public widely believes is honest and sincere passes his signature piece of legislation and is seen as a loser? OK,I think Britt should go back to converting Tiger Woods to Christianity.
David Plouffe got the better of Karl Rove on this issue today as he explained that Democrats can campaign on what they are for, while Republicans are stuck with what they are against. What David didn't factor in was that the plurality of the country are independents now, followed by Democrats. Does anyone think the vile hate of the Republican streetgangs, the teabaggers, is really going to make an independent want to vote for these people? Most people really don't like to vote for creeps. Even the media, which has egged these people on, are beginning to turn against them after yesterday's spitting episodes.
Doonesbury came out of retirement with a cartoon on the teabaggers with a radio announcer interviewing them, asking their leader about the incoherence of protesting taxation with elected representation and protesting tax cuts.
Where was Pat Roberston yesterday as a 5.5 earthquake rocked Cuba around Gitmo? Did someone make a pact with the Devil like the Haitians did? Who would they be? Would be name of the person start with the letter C and not be Castro? Maybe Cheney.
Bibi is coming to town and he looks like he's ignoring the advice of his neo-con allies. While he said he wasn't going to stop the settlements, he is reported carrying proposals to release Palestinian prisoners, ending the blockade of Gaza, and initiating talks over the core issues in the dispute. I guess he read the Israeli polls and didn't listen to Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol.
Below the radar, the United States and Russia are very close to a nuclear arms reduction treaty. This would be a singular achievement of the Obama Administration, even though we no longer have the attention span to believe this is important. It probably will not be ratified by the Senate as it will become the rallying cry of the Republicans ,who claim Obama is weak on security. It will be the last missing agenda item of the Reagan Administration. Actually the administration should pitch it as part of Reagan Centennial celebration and get Nancy to speak about it as "Ronnie's last wish". Then watch the conservatives who opposed it back then, howl with indignation.
Last night I had a craving for Matzos, which occurs periodically and is deadly in Virginia. While surfing the net, I came across the nostalgia I like a blog buried deep in the DailyKos. "You Don't Have to be Jewish...To Like Levy's". It was a history of Levy's Jewish Rye complete with the best ads for it. The one I never had seen was Buster Keaton, holding a sandwich made with Levy's. The blogger also mentioned the late Leo Steiner of the Carnegie Deli who was eulogized by Henny Youngman as the "deli lama". I remember spending a New Year's Eve with my wife at the Carnegie Deli and Henny Youngman appeared and really did say," Take my wife....Please." So today I will search for my Matzos.
At 8:24am, The Democrats announced they had the votes to pass healthcare reform. So gathering at the Capitol now are pro-health care reform demonstrators.
Yesterday, Steny Hoyer gave a great speech to the Democratic Caucus. He started by pointing out that both Barack Obama and John McCain ran on health reform in 2008 and this was clear and transparent throughout the campaign. He then laid out the long history of health reform efforts in the country, mentioning all Presidents except for Reagan and George W. He spent a long time quoting from all the Presidents citing this as the long overdue domestic reform needed in the country. The longest and most articulate quote came from Richard Nixon, whom Steny didn't name. He just mentioned the year it was said. Ironically, this year's bill resembles very closely the deal Nixon offered Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy in his Memoirs wrote that it was the worst mistake he made by turning it down.
Without the much vaunted teleprompter, the descendent of the Mayflower, President Obama made an emotional but, I found, a subdued speech. He tried to remind the Democratic Caucus why they initially entered public life and the ideals they once had before all the compromises were made and big money was floating around. I found his quote from Abraham Lincoln eerie and somewhat macabre. The media found it inspiring, which is more than they've said positively lately. I thought the quote came from the depressed and melancholic Lincoln. Hopefully, it doesn't reflect President Obama mindset these days.
While I enoyed my rap on "deem and pass", the Democrats abandoned it yesterday.
The Senate promises to be the next fault line. Orrin Hatch has mentioned several times in the last two days that the House will have to pass the bill another time after Republicans in the Senate get through with it. So somewhere lurks the threat that the Republicans maybe,I stress, maybe found the single line in the bill where they will get approval from the Parliamentarian. Harry Reid told the House that he was prepared for all the ambushes. Let's hope.
I can't help believing that some Republicans in the Senate will vote for the bill. Olympia Snowe successfully added dozens of her amendments--actually good ones--to the bill. Voinovich is retiring and has blasted the GOP for being prisoners of the South. Susan Collins only flirts with nuttiness and did vote for the stimulus package. And can Scott Brown really vote against it given that he is running again in 2012 in Massachusetts and that this was Ted Kennedy's dying wish?
The Catholic Hospitals, 90,000 Nuns, the National Catholic Reporter endorsed the bill. But we know no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. The Bishops Conference issued at statement at 9:41 Saturday night that argued against the bill. They claimed by an amazing feat of deduction that there is a way that federal funds can be used for abortion. The logic was so tortuous I couldn't understand. They asserted that the Hyde Amendment is the "law of the land", which it is not. It has to be renewed periodically. The law of the land is Roe v Wade, which isn't mentioned by the Bishops. They did have one good point that immigrants aren't covered and that they support universal health care for everybody. Their position is single-payer without abortion.
About abortion. 88% of American counties have no abortion providers of any kind. One out of three American women will have to have a procedure during their lifetime that the pro-life crowd calls an abortion. Their definition is so elastic as to cover some rather mundane and routine procedures. We are now seeing states trying to implement laws to protect "eggs". Next we'll see a state like Oklahoma declare that conception begins with ejaculation. The rights obtained by women under Roe v. Wade have been dramatically curtailed and are even under graver assault today.
In August I wrote how pathetic and sad it would be if violence broke out over enlarging the number of people receiving health care in the country. Yesterday, people threw bricks through the windows of the Buffalo office of Representative Louise Slaughter. Slaughter is the nickname for a parliamentary procedure the Democrats were expected, but did not use. Jon Voight's teabagger rally, which drew about 10,000--if they want to claim 100,000 go ahead,even if it's totally false-- acted in a classy manner by screaming racial epithets against civil rights hero Congressman John Lewis and calling Barney Frank the "F"word as the two walked on the nice Spring day from the Capitol to their offices. The crowd spit on members of the Black caucus and the Free Republic declared "they should have been dragged behind cars". Bayard Rustin would have said," It just made me feel young again." John Lewis was classy in his response.
At first teabaggers denied such incidents, claiming that someone would have had it on tape if it occurred and that it was the result of liberal lies. Problem--only minutes later Democratic Underground posted a video of the incident. Then the line was that the victims deserved it.
No Republican denounced this until shamed by house members on the floor. Only then did Eric Cantor and Mark Pence, who had spoken at the rally, utter an equivocal apology, saying it was the action of a few people--with the rest of the crowd holding signs portraying Obama as Hitler.
The sign that caught everyone's attention was" If (Sen.) Brown can't kill it, This (A Brownie automatic) will." My wife said that if she wanted to avoid the teabaggers all you had to do was walk fast. They tend to be the far side of 60. If these people are the conservative side of Baby-Boomers, shouldn't they have their own Kent State? Where are all the union guys with baseball bats?
Britt Hume reminds us that the Obama Presidency will be crippled if healthcare passes. Let's see, a tenacious President fighting for what he believes and whom the public widely believes is honest and sincere passes his signature piece of legislation and is seen as a loser? OK,I think Britt should go back to converting Tiger Woods to Christianity.
David Plouffe got the better of Karl Rove on this issue today as he explained that Democrats can campaign on what they are for, while Republicans are stuck with what they are against. What David didn't factor in was that the plurality of the country are independents now, followed by Democrats. Does anyone think the vile hate of the Republican streetgangs, the teabaggers, is really going to make an independent want to vote for these people? Most people really don't like to vote for creeps. Even the media, which has egged these people on, are beginning to turn against them after yesterday's spitting episodes.
Doonesbury came out of retirement with a cartoon on the teabaggers with a radio announcer interviewing them, asking their leader about the incoherence of protesting taxation with elected representation and protesting tax cuts.
Where was Pat Roberston yesterday as a 5.5 earthquake rocked Cuba around Gitmo? Did someone make a pact with the Devil like the Haitians did? Who would they be? Would be name of the person start with the letter C and not be Castro? Maybe Cheney.
Bibi is coming to town and he looks like he's ignoring the advice of his neo-con allies. While he said he wasn't going to stop the settlements, he is reported carrying proposals to release Palestinian prisoners, ending the blockade of Gaza, and initiating talks over the core issues in the dispute. I guess he read the Israeli polls and didn't listen to Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol.
Below the radar, the United States and Russia are very close to a nuclear arms reduction treaty. This would be a singular achievement of the Obama Administration, even though we no longer have the attention span to believe this is important. It probably will not be ratified by the Senate as it will become the rallying cry of the Republicans ,who claim Obama is weak on security. It will be the last missing agenda item of the Reagan Administration. Actually the administration should pitch it as part of Reagan Centennial celebration and get Nancy to speak about it as "Ronnie's last wish". Then watch the conservatives who opposed it back then, howl with indignation.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Calm Before the Storm--The Big Fade
The noise level has dropped dramatically. The Tea Baggers have one last go at it today by storming the Hill and button-holing members. Took me a long time to get an e-mail to our Congressman Jim Moran last night because the anti-health care folks are mass e-mailing Congress. Citizens United--those Citizens United--are robocalling against health care reform.
But I get a sense the air has gone from the fight. Bob Corker appearing on Charlie Rose looked like a defeated man when he admitted Health Care would pass. Jim DeMint, who thought this was Obama's Waterloo and vowed to break the President, says he's not sure it's going to end up that way. Teabagger-in-Chief, Dick Armey held a press conference yesterday, saying it would pass and that members of Congress are spineless and Nancy Pelosi isn't tough enough. I guess she's a girlie-girlie. 'Though I like Dick's Tony Lama boots. Americans for Prosperity will be driving around the District offices of congresscritters beeping their horns. Since it's the NCAA basketball tournament period, don't you think the message will be confused. You know it's over when World News Daily, the extreme right forum alerts everyone that healthcare reform will pass.
So the last burning question is whether Dennis "The Menace" is going to vote for it since his arm was twisted by the President while going and coming from Ohio yesterday.
What will be interesting to watch is whether Republican Senators have the stomach to submit amendments after amendments to prolong the fight. Democrats have already signed on to round-the-clock voting in the Senate. So, it might get interesting.
Lindsey Graham pouted that if health care passes , it will be much more difficult for the President to get any cooperation to pass anything else. Doug Brooks went off his meds today claiming the reconciliation process damages the "humanizing effect of the Senate". Doug, they are all dead there. The Senate reminds me of old Red Smith columns in the sporting section of the New York Times. The line was,"He only writes about famous dead people."
Our august Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia has distanced himself again from his hand-picked Attorney-General's embrace of the birther cause. And the mother of birthers, Orly Taitz, candidate for Secretary of State in California, received another blow--the court upheld her $20,000 fine for wasting their time. You will recall Orly petitioned the UN Human Rights Council to protect her from recriminations by the Obama Administration. Moldovan-born Orly is a Gsa-Gsa Gabor look-alike.
Arizona's own J.D. Hayworth is against same sex marriage because a man could marry a horse. John McCain is against same sex marriage because he doesn't believe marriage should be between two people who love each other. Great primary to watch. Cindy McCain has gone off to Africa for charity work while the two hombres shoot it out.
Sean Wilentz wrote a defense of my son's ancestor Ulysses S. Grant in the Sunday Times. He wanted to explain why Grant deserves to remain on the $50 bill and not be replaced by Ronald Reagan as proposed by southern congresscritter Patrick Henry. He said all the slanders against Grant and his Presidency were manufactured by " pro-South revisionists", who hated Grant's reconstructionist policies. Sounds similar to today.
The great state of Oklahoma has removed the picture of the President of the United States from the legislature. Apparently, it incensed to many representatives.
The FCC unveiled their internet plans today. It was a real snoozefest. All the attendees dozed off. I'm glad because it is as radical and meaningful as I said yesterday. This one will just pass through without anyone thinking about it. President Obama got the initiative off the ground through a downpayment hidden in the stimulus package. The FCC aims for 90% connectivity.
Progressives are complaining that President Obama is missing the opportunity to salt the courts with liberals. Not true--his nominees are now being quietly confirmed and they are from moderate-left to liberal. The problem will come when Justice Stevens needs to be replaced. he claims he will retire within three years. I think he will after the mid-terms if the Democrats maintain a decent majority in the Senate. But I bet President Obama will appoint a Sotomayor moderate on the bench so that the Court will tilt even more right than it is today. I would support Laurence Tribe and force the issue in the Senate about who knows the constitution and who doesn't.
My thanks to President Obama for the college tuition tax credit. This is the type of thing that he has been sprinkling around that really makes a difference. I am not sure people realize this. For an average American family, the enlargement of the credit allows you to send a son or daughter or even yourself to state universities for very little money. Here in Virginia, with the tax credit, the University of Virginia, an Ivy-League quality school, would cost you about $10K per year. And our knucklehead Governor will not be able to destroy the Virginia university system in the remaining three years of his term. For snobs like me, the tuition credit doesn't do as much good but it helps. This small act does alot for the future of education.
I am very ambivalent about President Obama's larger educational policy. I'll blog in later days some of the fall-out from this policy on our own local school system. And, having lived through the privatization of everything from prisons to our national seurity, I am very wary about Arne Duncan's plans to privatize charter schools.
The Israel flap will not go away. George Mitchell has cancelled his trip to the region. President Obama spent an hour on the phone to Bibi. The best thing that could happen now for Israel is Germany to release the Eichman files. Apparently, the files reveal that Germany smuggled Eichman to Argentina. These might remind everyone how we got Israel in the first place. Friends of Israel should call Tel Aviv and remind Bibi he isn't the mayor of Levittown. The actual background of this latest snafu is actually quite distressing and brings in some of the characters from our right whom I've been writing about.
Now when President Obama flies to Indonesia and all hell breaks out in the Senate, is the House bill he signed the law of the land? In other words, if the Senate can't get its act together, will the House bill remain as law? We know the minute he leaves the country, the Republicans will start some new nonsense. I have no idea.
(Note: I've consulted our in-house parliamentarian, Dr. Vinnie Boom-Bah, and he says it is the law of the land because the House passes the Senate version. So let the food fight begin.)
Other people are getting wise to Rep. Pat Ryan's Roadmap to Future Ruin. Several think-tanks have their analyses out and I'll share them with you as I digest them. In short--everyone earning up to $200,000 will have their taxes massively increased; the very wealthy will be earning upwards to $500,000 additional tax credits and the whole plan will basically run enormous deficits that can never be corrected. In policy language, all these think-tanks agree that the Ryan Plan is a conscious effort to de-develop the country and make us a third-world country. No wonder Tom Davis doesn't want Republicans to debate governance this year!
But I get a sense the air has gone from the fight. Bob Corker appearing on Charlie Rose looked like a defeated man when he admitted Health Care would pass. Jim DeMint, who thought this was Obama's Waterloo and vowed to break the President, says he's not sure it's going to end up that way. Teabagger-in-Chief, Dick Armey held a press conference yesterday, saying it would pass and that members of Congress are spineless and Nancy Pelosi isn't tough enough. I guess she's a girlie-girlie. 'Though I like Dick's Tony Lama boots. Americans for Prosperity will be driving around the District offices of congresscritters beeping their horns. Since it's the NCAA basketball tournament period, don't you think the message will be confused. You know it's over when World News Daily, the extreme right forum alerts everyone that healthcare reform will pass.
So the last burning question is whether Dennis "The Menace" is going to vote for it since his arm was twisted by the President while going and coming from Ohio yesterday.
What will be interesting to watch is whether Republican Senators have the stomach to submit amendments after amendments to prolong the fight. Democrats have already signed on to round-the-clock voting in the Senate. So, it might get interesting.
Lindsey Graham pouted that if health care passes , it will be much more difficult for the President to get any cooperation to pass anything else. Doug Brooks went off his meds today claiming the reconciliation process damages the "humanizing effect of the Senate". Doug, they are all dead there. The Senate reminds me of old Red Smith columns in the sporting section of the New York Times. The line was,"He only writes about famous dead people."
Our august Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia has distanced himself again from his hand-picked Attorney-General's embrace of the birther cause. And the mother of birthers, Orly Taitz, candidate for Secretary of State in California, received another blow--the court upheld her $20,000 fine for wasting their time. You will recall Orly petitioned the UN Human Rights Council to protect her from recriminations by the Obama Administration. Moldovan-born Orly is a Gsa-Gsa Gabor look-alike.
Arizona's own J.D. Hayworth is against same sex marriage because a man could marry a horse. John McCain is against same sex marriage because he doesn't believe marriage should be between two people who love each other. Great primary to watch. Cindy McCain has gone off to Africa for charity work while the two hombres shoot it out.
Sean Wilentz wrote a defense of my son's ancestor Ulysses S. Grant in the Sunday Times. He wanted to explain why Grant deserves to remain on the $50 bill and not be replaced by Ronald Reagan as proposed by southern congresscritter Patrick Henry. He said all the slanders against Grant and his Presidency were manufactured by " pro-South revisionists", who hated Grant's reconstructionist policies. Sounds similar to today.
The great state of Oklahoma has removed the picture of the President of the United States from the legislature. Apparently, it incensed to many representatives.
The FCC unveiled their internet plans today. It was a real snoozefest. All the attendees dozed off. I'm glad because it is as radical and meaningful as I said yesterday. This one will just pass through without anyone thinking about it. President Obama got the initiative off the ground through a downpayment hidden in the stimulus package. The FCC aims for 90% connectivity.
Progressives are complaining that President Obama is missing the opportunity to salt the courts with liberals. Not true--his nominees are now being quietly confirmed and they are from moderate-left to liberal. The problem will come when Justice Stevens needs to be replaced. he claims he will retire within three years. I think he will after the mid-terms if the Democrats maintain a decent majority in the Senate. But I bet President Obama will appoint a Sotomayor moderate on the bench so that the Court will tilt even more right than it is today. I would support Laurence Tribe and force the issue in the Senate about who knows the constitution and who doesn't.
My thanks to President Obama for the college tuition tax credit. This is the type of thing that he has been sprinkling around that really makes a difference. I am not sure people realize this. For an average American family, the enlargement of the credit allows you to send a son or daughter or even yourself to state universities for very little money. Here in Virginia, with the tax credit, the University of Virginia, an Ivy-League quality school, would cost you about $10K per year. And our knucklehead Governor will not be able to destroy the Virginia university system in the remaining three years of his term. For snobs like me, the tuition credit doesn't do as much good but it helps. This small act does alot for the future of education.
I am very ambivalent about President Obama's larger educational policy. I'll blog in later days some of the fall-out from this policy on our own local school system. And, having lived through the privatization of everything from prisons to our national seurity, I am very wary about Arne Duncan's plans to privatize charter schools.
The Israel flap will not go away. George Mitchell has cancelled his trip to the region. President Obama spent an hour on the phone to Bibi. The best thing that could happen now for Israel is Germany to release the Eichman files. Apparently, the files reveal that Germany smuggled Eichman to Argentina. These might remind everyone how we got Israel in the first place. Friends of Israel should call Tel Aviv and remind Bibi he isn't the mayor of Levittown. The actual background of this latest snafu is actually quite distressing and brings in some of the characters from our right whom I've been writing about.
Now when President Obama flies to Indonesia and all hell breaks out in the Senate, is the House bill he signed the law of the land? In other words, if the Senate can't get its act together, will the House bill remain as law? We know the minute he leaves the country, the Republicans will start some new nonsense. I have no idea.
(Note: I've consulted our in-house parliamentarian, Dr. Vinnie Boom-Bah, and he says it is the law of the land because the House passes the Senate version. So let the food fight begin.)
Other people are getting wise to Rep. Pat Ryan's Roadmap to Future Ruin. Several think-tanks have their analyses out and I'll share them with you as I digest them. In short--everyone earning up to $200,000 will have their taxes massively increased; the very wealthy will be earning upwards to $500,000 additional tax credits and the whole plan will basically run enormous deficits that can never be corrected. In policy language, all these think-tanks agree that the Ryan Plan is a conscious effort to de-develop the country and make us a third-world country. No wonder Tom Davis doesn't want Republicans to debate governance this year!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Before The Election--Previews of Things to Come
Elections in Massachusetts have become fairly tame since the days of Louisa Day Hicks, who excited the racist crowd in South Boston. But the Boston Globe today lashed out at the Brown campaign for its attempts at voter suppression and its physical "bullying" of Coakley supporters. An engineer in the western part of the state said he was given a ballot with Brown's name already marked. He politely asked for a clean ballot.
Republicans only have a 15% party identification in the state; Democrats 35% and independents are huge 50%. Republicans--like William Weld and Mitt Romney--can't win office unless they are socially liberal. Yesterday, the Republican-oriented newspaper in Brown's home district brought this home by endorsing Coakley. The reasons were Brown's vocal support for torture, his "ambivalence" on choice (depending on which audience he's talking to) and his statements against gay marriage, calling for a Constitutional Amendment against it. They pointed to Coakley's "well-thought out plan on economics and her fiscal restraint". Curiously missing from the campaign has been Mitt Romney himself, who will vote using his son's address now that he moved to New Hampshire. Sarah Palin has enthusiastically endorsed Brown via her Fox News forum.
So what gives? The optics of the race are quite different whether you are in the State or outside. Outside it's all about healthcare and President Obama. In the state, Brown has tapped state anger at the Governor, the first Democrat after 12 years of Weld and Romney, and cases of corruption in the legislature. It has only been the last few days that Brown has been caught out with his strange new bedfellows the teabaggers and the birthers. In state, he tries to distance himself from this fringe because he knows Massachusetts don't take kindly to them. But to out of state audiences and the right-wing radio crowd he throws them red meat.
But the physical harrassment of Martha Coakley herself and the calling of her supporters "Nazis" allow us to look at what may be the Republican roadmap for the future. Republicans, especially under the tutelage of Karl Rove, are masters of voter suppression--that is their bread and butter. Suppress the available electorate and then use wedge issues to drive victory home. Here, you also have to look at the Brown campaign--it may be a model for the future.
Brown himself is surrounded by Romney staff, who play the moderate Republican card. The entire conservative network is flooding the state with money, including the Tea Bag Express. In many ways, this allows the major corporations to get around the law since these groups are their front organizations. We have the old stand-by the anti-Coakley robocalls--that she protects child abusers, the new epithet--from out of state. The actual Get Out The Vote campaign is being provided by workers hired from temp agencies because the campiagn and the Republican Party do not have enough volunteers.
In short, the whole Brown campaign actually introduces the idea that our political parties now will become "privatized". Except for the handful of Romney aides, everything else is commercial--even the outrage. And, of course, the national media fall for this because the narrative has conflict. Now the teabaggers are accepted as legitimate political forces even though their corporate origins have been examined and laid out ad nauseum.
For its part, the Coakley campaign has the democratic party machine. And now with the urgency of the situation, the labor movements have kicked in, Obama's Organizing for America, and the netroots overcame their progressive disdain for Coakley to fill the breach.
This is what the 2010 elections will look like. It will become double this when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that corporations can give without limit to political campaigns. The corporations will still prefer the astro-turf grass-roots groups because they seem to sanitize their contributions and actually make it appear that their positions are of public concern.
By this morning, Nate The Great Silver believed Coakley only had a 25% chance of winning, a chance from yesterday. Zogby believes Coakley will win. And others believe the electronic Diebold machines will push it toward Brown. I don't have a clue. But the campaign is worth studying for the pyrotechnics we will see this coming year.
Republicans only have a 15% party identification in the state; Democrats 35% and independents are huge 50%. Republicans--like William Weld and Mitt Romney--can't win office unless they are socially liberal. Yesterday, the Republican-oriented newspaper in Brown's home district brought this home by endorsing Coakley. The reasons were Brown's vocal support for torture, his "ambivalence" on choice (depending on which audience he's talking to) and his statements against gay marriage, calling for a Constitutional Amendment against it. They pointed to Coakley's "well-thought out plan on economics and her fiscal restraint". Curiously missing from the campaign has been Mitt Romney himself, who will vote using his son's address now that he moved to New Hampshire. Sarah Palin has enthusiastically endorsed Brown via her Fox News forum.
So what gives? The optics of the race are quite different whether you are in the State or outside. Outside it's all about healthcare and President Obama. In the state, Brown has tapped state anger at the Governor, the first Democrat after 12 years of Weld and Romney, and cases of corruption in the legislature. It has only been the last few days that Brown has been caught out with his strange new bedfellows the teabaggers and the birthers. In state, he tries to distance himself from this fringe because he knows Massachusetts don't take kindly to them. But to out of state audiences and the right-wing radio crowd he throws them red meat.
But the physical harrassment of Martha Coakley herself and the calling of her supporters "Nazis" allow us to look at what may be the Republican roadmap for the future. Republicans, especially under the tutelage of Karl Rove, are masters of voter suppression--that is their bread and butter. Suppress the available electorate and then use wedge issues to drive victory home. Here, you also have to look at the Brown campaign--it may be a model for the future.
Brown himself is surrounded by Romney staff, who play the moderate Republican card. The entire conservative network is flooding the state with money, including the Tea Bag Express. In many ways, this allows the major corporations to get around the law since these groups are their front organizations. We have the old stand-by the anti-Coakley robocalls--that she protects child abusers, the new epithet--from out of state. The actual Get Out The Vote campaign is being provided by workers hired from temp agencies because the campiagn and the Republican Party do not have enough volunteers.
In short, the whole Brown campaign actually introduces the idea that our political parties now will become "privatized". Except for the handful of Romney aides, everything else is commercial--even the outrage. And, of course, the national media fall for this because the narrative has conflict. Now the teabaggers are accepted as legitimate political forces even though their corporate origins have been examined and laid out ad nauseum.
For its part, the Coakley campaign has the democratic party machine. And now with the urgency of the situation, the labor movements have kicked in, Obama's Organizing for America, and the netroots overcame their progressive disdain for Coakley to fill the breach.
This is what the 2010 elections will look like. It will become double this when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that corporations can give without limit to political campaigns. The corporations will still prefer the astro-turf grass-roots groups because they seem to sanitize their contributions and actually make it appear that their positions are of public concern.
By this morning, Nate The Great Silver believed Coakley only had a 25% chance of winning, a chance from yesterday. Zogby believes Coakley will win. And others believe the electronic Diebold machines will push it toward Brown. I don't have a clue. But the campaign is worth studying for the pyrotechnics we will see this coming year.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Flotsam and Jetsom
D.C.'s gay marriage law that passed the City Council faces pushback from Rep. Leo Chaffetz, Republican from Utah, who wants the question put to a referendum. The only problem is that lawyers believe that Congress, even though it oversees D.C., can't impose a direct vote on DC because of its status. Interesting.
In reference to my previous posts on the Prop 8 trial, I receive about a dozen e-mails a week decrying the appointment by President Obama of some gay or another. But the charges are curiously the same. All the accused encourage gay sex with underage children. When I look into these, it always turns out that the alleged incident has to do with people,almost always men, who are of consenting age. The appointees are usually accused of either explaining kinky sexual practices at seminars or recommending sexual relations with older males.
In every case, it's like six degrees of separation. The speaker at a seminar at Tufts University on gay sexuality happens to be there as pamphlets on safe sex practices are available to the audience. The speaker has absolutely no connection with their production or the organization that produced them. Yet somehow the connection is made that the speaker, since he was there, condones everything in these pamphlets, which may offend someone who is homophobic. The same applied with the young man--of consenting age who was thinking about having a relationship with an older man. The Obama appointee--many years ago--tried to convince the younger male to be careful. Hardly, the advice of someone urging such a relationship. And it goes on. But it all fits with Dr. Tam's ,Mr. Prop 8, position that a vote for gay marriage is a vote for legalizing sex with children. The meme is there--gay men are pedophiles. This is the line of reasoning that the anti-gay lawyers in California are trying to sneak into the court arguments but the expert witnesses are shutting them down.
Pentagon lawyers are saying that now is not the time to repeal DADT, which Obama has promised. I haven't made up my mind on this but I want to relay that Bill Clinton changed his mind on DADT. At last year's Netroots conference, he basically said that Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "blackmailed" him with this and that DADT was a compromise. But Clinton said he changed his mind after he found out that the troops who led the obliteration of the Republican Guard in Iraq were primarily gay. He later found out that the top commanders knew this, let them inflict their punishing victory on the Iraqis, and then promptly fired them all. Most recently, we have seen that at a time when we urging needed Arabic translators the military discharged the top translators because they were gay. As Dr. Chauncy testified at the Prop.8 trial that enforcing DADT has cost the US Government roughly $90 million--of course, a drop in the bucket when you have a trillion budget, but is it worth it? Senator Levin promises hearing on DADT rather soon and we will see what the compelling arguments are for keeping it.
It sure didn't take long. President Obama is now being criticized for his..drumroll--slowness to respond to the Haiti earthquake. He could only have been quicker if he had been telepathic. His response with the display of all the appropriate cabinet members and Vice President Biden today--all of whom cancelled all prior commitments--is a model for humanitarian disasters. He pledged an immediate $100 million to the effort and spoke eloquently about less fortunate among us. Yes, planes with aid are having a tough time landing in Haiti, since there is a bottleneck that is caused by the collapse of the total infrastructure of the country. And, as predicted, there is an outbreak of malaria and stomach viruses. But, common on, folks. Always remember only one American city was destroyed under George W. Bush. But let's keep that instant gratification going!
The Republicans believe they will take back the House in 2010. They are going to run the election as a referendum on the national Democrats. Presumably, they will spell out their exciting ideas about creating jobs and securing the Homeland through torture. I have no idea what the appeal will be except to run against incumbents. I would like to see Republicans finally fess up to destroying the economy and plunging the country into almost insurmontable debt.
The CBO doesn't believe we will get back to 8% unemployment until 2012. I think we are facing a generation of 6-8% unemployment. When I was young, I was taught that 5% unemployment was the absolute limit when the economy is running at maximum efficiency. With the collapse of our mmanufacturing base and the export of so many jobs abroad, I don't see things turning around in a strong direction until the basis of our economy is transformed. President Obama has laid the groundwork for this but I doubt whether he will be President to see it pay off.
The Health Reform Bill keeps getting tweaked. Labor has won a big concession that their insurance plans will not be taxed and I think that is just because their health benefits were won through their concessions on pay. They already paid for them. As anyone who paid attention to President Obama through the campaign and listened closely to his ideas about exchanges, it seems the bill will contain health insurance exchanges like those available to federal employees. The House claims a bill will be finalized and sent to the CBO on Saturday. Republicans vowed to run on repealing the health reform bill. On Social Security, Medicare and Health Reform, they will be voting 0 for 3.
The Teabaggers are holding their first national conference with keynote speaker Sarah Palin. The only media allowed are Fox News, Breibart, World Net Daily, and the National Review. The CPAC conference will end with Glenn Beck. This year;s conservative gathering will be cohosted by the John Birch Society. A fun time is guaranteed by all.
In reference to my previous posts on the Prop 8 trial, I receive about a dozen e-mails a week decrying the appointment by President Obama of some gay or another. But the charges are curiously the same. All the accused encourage gay sex with underage children. When I look into these, it always turns out that the alleged incident has to do with people,almost always men, who are of consenting age. The appointees are usually accused of either explaining kinky sexual practices at seminars or recommending sexual relations with older males.
In every case, it's like six degrees of separation. The speaker at a seminar at Tufts University on gay sexuality happens to be there as pamphlets on safe sex practices are available to the audience. The speaker has absolutely no connection with their production or the organization that produced them. Yet somehow the connection is made that the speaker, since he was there, condones everything in these pamphlets, which may offend someone who is homophobic. The same applied with the young man--of consenting age who was thinking about having a relationship with an older man. The Obama appointee--many years ago--tried to convince the younger male to be careful. Hardly, the advice of someone urging such a relationship. And it goes on. But it all fits with Dr. Tam's ,Mr. Prop 8, position that a vote for gay marriage is a vote for legalizing sex with children. The meme is there--gay men are pedophiles. This is the line of reasoning that the anti-gay lawyers in California are trying to sneak into the court arguments but the expert witnesses are shutting them down.
Pentagon lawyers are saying that now is not the time to repeal DADT, which Obama has promised. I haven't made up my mind on this but I want to relay that Bill Clinton changed his mind on DADT. At last year's Netroots conference, he basically said that Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "blackmailed" him with this and that DADT was a compromise. But Clinton said he changed his mind after he found out that the troops who led the obliteration of the Republican Guard in Iraq were primarily gay. He later found out that the top commanders knew this, let them inflict their punishing victory on the Iraqis, and then promptly fired them all. Most recently, we have seen that at a time when we urging needed Arabic translators the military discharged the top translators because they were gay. As Dr. Chauncy testified at the Prop.8 trial that enforcing DADT has cost the US Government roughly $90 million--of course, a drop in the bucket when you have a trillion budget, but is it worth it? Senator Levin promises hearing on DADT rather soon and we will see what the compelling arguments are for keeping it.
It sure didn't take long. President Obama is now being criticized for his..drumroll--slowness to respond to the Haiti earthquake. He could only have been quicker if he had been telepathic. His response with the display of all the appropriate cabinet members and Vice President Biden today--all of whom cancelled all prior commitments--is a model for humanitarian disasters. He pledged an immediate $100 million to the effort and spoke eloquently about less fortunate among us. Yes, planes with aid are having a tough time landing in Haiti, since there is a bottleneck that is caused by the collapse of the total infrastructure of the country. And, as predicted, there is an outbreak of malaria and stomach viruses. But, common on, folks. Always remember only one American city was destroyed under George W. Bush. But let's keep that instant gratification going!
The Republicans believe they will take back the House in 2010. They are going to run the election as a referendum on the national Democrats. Presumably, they will spell out their exciting ideas about creating jobs and securing the Homeland through torture. I have no idea what the appeal will be except to run against incumbents. I would like to see Republicans finally fess up to destroying the economy and plunging the country into almost insurmontable debt.
The CBO doesn't believe we will get back to 8% unemployment until 2012. I think we are facing a generation of 6-8% unemployment. When I was young, I was taught that 5% unemployment was the absolute limit when the economy is running at maximum efficiency. With the collapse of our mmanufacturing base and the export of so many jobs abroad, I don't see things turning around in a strong direction until the basis of our economy is transformed. President Obama has laid the groundwork for this but I doubt whether he will be President to see it pay off.
The Health Reform Bill keeps getting tweaked. Labor has won a big concession that their insurance plans will not be taxed and I think that is just because their health benefits were won through their concessions on pay. They already paid for them. As anyone who paid attention to President Obama through the campaign and listened closely to his ideas about exchanges, it seems the bill will contain health insurance exchanges like those available to federal employees. The House claims a bill will be finalized and sent to the CBO on Saturday. Republicans vowed to run on repealing the health reform bill. On Social Security, Medicare and Health Reform, they will be voting 0 for 3.
The Teabaggers are holding their first national conference with keynote speaker Sarah Palin. The only media allowed are Fox News, Breibart, World Net Daily, and the National Review. The CPAC conference will end with Glenn Beck. This year;s conservative gathering will be cohosted by the John Birch Society. A fun time is guaranteed by all.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
9-12 D.C. Gathering
With estimates of 1 million teabaggers, it turns out that the DC Fire Department thought from 25,000-50,000 showed up. From the visuals of the mall, I might even grant them about 75,000. A picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware--not the Larry Rivers version-said,"They didn't die for healthcare or government control. They died for freedom." A professionally printed sign held by a small child urged "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy". Probably printed by Freedomworks--stay classy Dick Armey.
A Freeper tweeted comments about how Democrats are better packagers of these things and the speakers were pretty lame. He also felt that the organizers should not have announced over 1 million because it was obviously not true. Others thought there were more people than at Obama's Inauguration--2 million there. Having lived through that scene, this would be virtually impossible--you could literally feel the people coming to town then. The Obama crowd was wall to wall people down the entire mall. This just didn't make it. I'm afraid to tell them. Another freeper was annoyed at Glenn Beck for his egotism--"This isn't about you, Glenn". Well, for him, it is.
Todd Browning would have been the perfect film director for this event. The still photographer would be Diane Arbus. The physiognomy of the attendees was amazing, particularly with the Americana plummage. Alot of the male figures, particularly, look like all the people you see coming out of big SUVs at the rest stops along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was clearly a thrill for them--so many expressed gratitude they could make it. There was a basic American decency hidden beneath the hate signs and the rhetoric, which exhibits a cognitive dissonance. Hating the government but delighted to be in the American capital. As much getting a kick out of meeting up with old friends as bellowing against socialism and Obama. Most were delighted they were asked by the various organizers to attend. Even our old friends the Ohio Militia showed up with a few members--they had previously called on the whole militia movement to march on D.C.--fully armed. It was like an adult version of Halloween with a colonial theme. I think people just like to get into costumes.
Then the signs had the usually vile slogans linking Obama to both Hitler and Stalin, Obama as the Joker portraits, and the usual misspelled signs. I still don't understand the misspellings--is this a sign of grassrootsness, a sign of authenticity--since many were handdrawn in the offices of the organizers? Is it a parody of the people themselves--deliberately done by Fox to portray all America like a version of the Gong Show? Is it a counter to left-wing demonstrations where people spell correctly--and therefore is a taunt at the "liberal elites? I simply don't get it. This may be a derivative of the Animal House tactics of the Republican Party--mispronounce names, call the Democratic Party, the "Democrat Party", demean one's opponents with adolescent slogans, deliberately confuse fascism, communism and socialism because all three words test negatively, and emphasize taxes and government as two words. This all escapes me. We saw this in the Bush-Kerry, and then McCain-Palin campaigns--the persistant desire to belittle one's opponent. In the case of Obama, they only looked childish, stupid and more importantly ineffective as he trumped them at every term.
The people did not look prosperous but more like lower middle-class Americans looking for a cheap weekend vacation. They are probably the people that would benefit the most from both the Obama tax cuts and the healthcare reform. And given the exorbitant amount of money charged sponsors by Freedomworks and others, you have to wonder whether this was not another cynical rightwing way for beltway bandits to make money--a subject I am increasing annoyed by. Conservative groups have been exploiting seniors, ex-military and others to donate money when the cause is already moot--gun rights, for example; or ridiculous like the birthers cause. In the middle of this are the anti-Healthcare lobbyists, who have flooded this town and our airwaves with ads.
The CNN coverage of these protests interviewed two of the organizers who have travelled the country with this motley crew and who articulated the goals as: defeat healthcare; take back Congress and the Senate in 2010; and the presidency in 2012. One organizer hoped a leader would emerge for this movement in 2010. They all like Sarah Palin--a few freepers remarked how effective she had been with her twittering. I have a surprise for these people--they will be sent to the Mojave Desert or to the North Pole, if and when a political force decides to coopt them. Even though megabucks circulated between the organizers and sponsors,these people paid their own ways as the postings of the bus schedules indicated.
For the attendees, they probably were star-struck by Glenn Beck, and other lesser lights. This is the crowd that goes to Frankie Valli concerts or theater in the round with George Hamilton. The segment of our people who love the third-rate and who are grateful for seeing a big-shot politician like Mike Pence or Joe Miller, who speaks like they do when they've had a few shots too many. They're the people who liked and agreed with Archie Bunker. In the past, they would have been a part--but not all of Richard Nixon's silent majority. I'm surprised we haven't heard more language like "Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs."
The major complaint about the demonstration was the lack of porta-potties. This is a lesson for all demonstration organizers straight from the wisdom of my mentor Bayard Rustin, who organized Dr. King's March on Washington. "My biggest fear that day was the lack of toilets", he told me. "If you have a bunch of blacks descend on Washington and they leave a mess, our cause would have been set back several years. You can imagine the image that would sent." Attendees to this year's event were senior citizens, who have more cause to go and frequently. They blamed the city workers because "they are unionized." I blame the sponsors who wanted to increase their profit margin. Always make sure there are enough facilities as my grandmother used to say.
The astroturf aspect of this has several unsavory dimensions. The first is that it is exploitative. The attendees are scheduled to bus back to their states this night. The corporate sponsors couldn't even front them a hotel room as a benefit. They paid their own way and probably will have to chip in to tip the bus driver. And all their slogans and themes were written here in Washington and then passed down. The hate rhetoric in my view is the creation of alot of DC lobby shops and conservative groups and is not from the grassroots. I think the slogans have been tested for responses and I think this is a totally cynical exercise by the organizers. In other words, these people are the rubes to be taken to the cleaners by the grifters in the capital of grifters. The hate language has given these people license to act out in ways they would not dream of. As many remarked, they are glad that so many talk shows have hosts that speak the truth.
One needs to contrast this with Barack Obama's speech in Minneapolis this afternoon to a filled stadium. The few dozen hecklers screamed at attendees they were all socialists--that's a lot of socialists in one place. The slogans that have appeared throughout the August townhalls appeared but were politely ignored. People of all political persuasions could attend to see the President. It was first come, first serve. And the people were genuinely happy and not grumpy as many in D.C. seemed when they talked about politics. The President did what he does best which is give a barnburner of a speech re-telling one more time the story behind "Are you fired up! Ready to go!" from his primary campaign. Although much of what he said, one has heard, you never tire of a great performer giving his all.
One is left wondering who the D.C teabaggers believe President Obama really is? Why after all this time is it so hard to get a sense of his character? The people in Minneapolis were joyous at seeing their President. It reminds me of a scene from the president campaign after Obama finished a speech in downtown Philadelphia in the black neighborhood. Everyone had left but an old woman just sat in her lawn chair in the street. A reporter asked her what she was doing and she answered," Wasn't that grand? I'm just sitting here and still taking it in."
A Freeper tweeted comments about how Democrats are better packagers of these things and the speakers were pretty lame. He also felt that the organizers should not have announced over 1 million because it was obviously not true. Others thought there were more people than at Obama's Inauguration--2 million there. Having lived through that scene, this would be virtually impossible--you could literally feel the people coming to town then. The Obama crowd was wall to wall people down the entire mall. This just didn't make it. I'm afraid to tell them. Another freeper was annoyed at Glenn Beck for his egotism--"This isn't about you, Glenn". Well, for him, it is.
Todd Browning would have been the perfect film director for this event. The still photographer would be Diane Arbus. The physiognomy of the attendees was amazing, particularly with the Americana plummage. Alot of the male figures, particularly, look like all the people you see coming out of big SUVs at the rest stops along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was clearly a thrill for them--so many expressed gratitude they could make it. There was a basic American decency hidden beneath the hate signs and the rhetoric, which exhibits a cognitive dissonance. Hating the government but delighted to be in the American capital. As much getting a kick out of meeting up with old friends as bellowing against socialism and Obama. Most were delighted they were asked by the various organizers to attend. Even our old friends the Ohio Militia showed up with a few members--they had previously called on the whole militia movement to march on D.C.--fully armed. It was like an adult version of Halloween with a colonial theme. I think people just like to get into costumes.
Then the signs had the usually vile slogans linking Obama to both Hitler and Stalin, Obama as the Joker portraits, and the usual misspelled signs. I still don't understand the misspellings--is this a sign of grassrootsness, a sign of authenticity--since many were handdrawn in the offices of the organizers? Is it a parody of the people themselves--deliberately done by Fox to portray all America like a version of the Gong Show? Is it a counter to left-wing demonstrations where people spell correctly--and therefore is a taunt at the "liberal elites? I simply don't get it. This may be a derivative of the Animal House tactics of the Republican Party--mispronounce names, call the Democratic Party, the "Democrat Party", demean one's opponents with adolescent slogans, deliberately confuse fascism, communism and socialism because all three words test negatively, and emphasize taxes and government as two words. This all escapes me. We saw this in the Bush-Kerry, and then McCain-Palin campaigns--the persistant desire to belittle one's opponent. In the case of Obama, they only looked childish, stupid and more importantly ineffective as he trumped them at every term.
The people did not look prosperous but more like lower middle-class Americans looking for a cheap weekend vacation. They are probably the people that would benefit the most from both the Obama tax cuts and the healthcare reform. And given the exorbitant amount of money charged sponsors by Freedomworks and others, you have to wonder whether this was not another cynical rightwing way for beltway bandits to make money--a subject I am increasing annoyed by. Conservative groups have been exploiting seniors, ex-military and others to donate money when the cause is already moot--gun rights, for example; or ridiculous like the birthers cause. In the middle of this are the anti-Healthcare lobbyists, who have flooded this town and our airwaves with ads.
The CNN coverage of these protests interviewed two of the organizers who have travelled the country with this motley crew and who articulated the goals as: defeat healthcare; take back Congress and the Senate in 2010; and the presidency in 2012. One organizer hoped a leader would emerge for this movement in 2010. They all like Sarah Palin--a few freepers remarked how effective she had been with her twittering. I have a surprise for these people--they will be sent to the Mojave Desert or to the North Pole, if and when a political force decides to coopt them. Even though megabucks circulated between the organizers and sponsors,these people paid their own ways as the postings of the bus schedules indicated.
For the attendees, they probably were star-struck by Glenn Beck, and other lesser lights. This is the crowd that goes to Frankie Valli concerts or theater in the round with George Hamilton. The segment of our people who love the third-rate and who are grateful for seeing a big-shot politician like Mike Pence or Joe Miller, who speaks like they do when they've had a few shots too many. They're the people who liked and agreed with Archie Bunker. In the past, they would have been a part--but not all of Richard Nixon's silent majority. I'm surprised we haven't heard more language like "Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs."
The major complaint about the demonstration was the lack of porta-potties. This is a lesson for all demonstration organizers straight from the wisdom of my mentor Bayard Rustin, who organized Dr. King's March on Washington. "My biggest fear that day was the lack of toilets", he told me. "If you have a bunch of blacks descend on Washington and they leave a mess, our cause would have been set back several years. You can imagine the image that would sent." Attendees to this year's event were senior citizens, who have more cause to go and frequently. They blamed the city workers because "they are unionized." I blame the sponsors who wanted to increase their profit margin. Always make sure there are enough facilities as my grandmother used to say.
The astroturf aspect of this has several unsavory dimensions. The first is that it is exploitative. The attendees are scheduled to bus back to their states this night. The corporate sponsors couldn't even front them a hotel room as a benefit. They paid their own way and probably will have to chip in to tip the bus driver. And all their slogans and themes were written here in Washington and then passed down. The hate rhetoric in my view is the creation of alot of DC lobby shops and conservative groups and is not from the grassroots. I think the slogans have been tested for responses and I think this is a totally cynical exercise by the organizers. In other words, these people are the rubes to be taken to the cleaners by the grifters in the capital of grifters. The hate language has given these people license to act out in ways they would not dream of. As many remarked, they are glad that so many talk shows have hosts that speak the truth.
One needs to contrast this with Barack Obama's speech in Minneapolis this afternoon to a filled stadium. The few dozen hecklers screamed at attendees they were all socialists--that's a lot of socialists in one place. The slogans that have appeared throughout the August townhalls appeared but were politely ignored. People of all political persuasions could attend to see the President. It was first come, first serve. And the people were genuinely happy and not grumpy as many in D.C. seemed when they talked about politics. The President did what he does best which is give a barnburner of a speech re-telling one more time the story behind "Are you fired up! Ready to go!" from his primary campaign. Although much of what he said, one has heard, you never tire of a great performer giving his all.
One is left wondering who the D.C teabaggers believe President Obama really is? Why after all this time is it so hard to get a sense of his character? The people in Minneapolis were joyous at seeing their President. It reminds me of a scene from the president campaign after Obama finished a speech in downtown Philadelphia in the black neighborhood. Everyone had left but an old woman just sat in her lawn chair in the street. A reporter asked her what she was doing and she answered," Wasn't that grand? I'm just sitting here and still taking it in."
Saturday Coffee--Not Tea--Thoughts on the Week
Neal Gabler in "The Extreme Republican Party" posted on the Boston Globe's blog writes that we have now gone past the time when we can pretend to have two serious political parties in this country--one right of center and one left of center. Both political parties are compromised and corrupted by their ties to Big Money, as witnessed to the nearly $1 billion being poured into the health reform debate; but one political party has gone nuts. In a recent Pew poll, only 23 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans. When I ran the International Republican Institute, Republicans for the first time in my lifetime had achieved a slight plurality over the Democrats with some 45% identification. From a practical political point of view, the current number means you must secure another 28% of the electorate to win--in other words the votes you must ween away from independents and Democrats is more than your entire base. We're almost at the point where Republicans might consider dumping its base to have viability in the future.
The current Republican base is so out of touch with average Americans--the charge they levelled for years at Democrats--that a majority of its members either believe or aren't sure President Obama was born in kenya, believe the House health care bill calls for death panels to euthanize senior citizens, and believe that Obama is responsible for our economic woes (61%!)
How wacked out are the current Republicans? 71% of all Americans believe that global warming is a result of human activity, only 27% of Republicans; while Rasmussen says 55% of all Americans oppose health care reform ( recent polls counter this), 87% of Republicans oppose it and 74% very strongly. Depending on the poll, President Obama's favorability rating is between 50 to 58% but fewer than 10% of Republicans approve.
But this situation gets worse. Only 41 percent of conservatives now identify themselves as Republicans--that's how extreme the Party has become. The recent embrace of birthers, deathers, tenthers, vaxers and liars not only damages the Republicans future chances but seriously blocks the ability of there to be a real political debate in this country. Among the remaining Republicans I know,this paranoid politics also becomes a groupthink. Those not subscribing to the latest lunacy are considered Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) and are not to be trusted. The Republican embrace of the Tea Party nonsense and the Glenn Beck 9-12 project now plunge them into the treacherous waters of insurrectionists, secessionists, white supremacists and theocrats. This is not only dangerous to the country, President Obama personally but also to the Republicans themselves.
The effects of this have been dramatic. Governor Pawlenty, for instance, has announced the desire to embrace the lunacy of Gov. Perry of Texas in saying that the invocation of the tenth amendment might be a way for states to stop health care reform. This is a man who honestly has aspirations for the Presidency. And he would be representing the Party of Abraham Lincoln! The tenth amendment movement is of interest to constitutional scholars only because the doctrine of nullification, which existed prior to the Civil War, has been seriously rebuffed through countless Supreme Court rulings, including one as recently as 2005 and to see people raise this is a red flag to profound historical ignorance. For their part, neo-conservatives, who once pretended to have intellectual interests, have solicited the support of former half-term Governor Sarah Palin to press their support for President Obama's Afghanistan build-up. This is a person married--at least for now--to a former secessionist and who actively accused the President of paling around with terrorists. And somehow she's supposed to have any credibility and importance?
As I wrote in my thoughts on Republican Gomorrah, the control of the Republican Party by the religious right is pernicious enough. Now Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council believe they have a second-wind in organizing the religious opposition to health care reform. Not only are Republicans lying about the facts of bills but the religious community is bearing false witness against the bill as funding abortions, providing illegal immigrants health care, and creating death panels to euthanize senior citizens. The phenomenon of self-proclaimed Christians opposing in the name of religion, not politics, health care reform is mind-boogling. As I have written elsewhere, this is a wicked brew.
The first casualty in war is truth. But for our political system it is vital that we have reality-based debates. We should have learned through a series of policy blunders on both sides that the cold shower of fact-based analysis can lead to a more sober and worthwhile policy debate. The problem of a major political party embracing paranoid politics is that you can have no real compromise if one side lives in a a parallel universe.
Today's Teabag Express demonstrations in Washington raise serious challenges to the legitimacy of the Republican Party, not President Obama. What is it that these people are really advocating? It appears to be a grab-bag of nutty things from tax hikes (even though everyone I know got a tax cut), deficits (ignoring the Republican history of this issue), gun rights (so far Eric Holder has made not a single move in this direction),national service day on 9-11, health care reform, states rights, anti-immigration, upholding the constitution ( why not protest against Dick Cheney?), against cap-and-trade legislation, against the stimulus package, against the bailout of the banks, against support for the auto industry, against ACORN, and against abortion, the grandmother of the cultural wars. This bears alot of similarity to past nativist movements in our history that ranged from the Know-Nothings to the KKK. And, I might add it is profoundly anti-American in ways that the democratic Left never was. To actively target a sitting President only eight months into his term with the purpose of crippling his administration is the height of anti-patriotism.
Astonishingly, the vast majority of the teabaggers appear to be senior citizens--who are on social security, medicare and military pensions--and yet they advocate smaller government and the cut of government programs to help others than themselves. This is a classic generational war by seniors on the rest of society. I'm not sure they are self-conscious about this. Their mantra--"Taking Our America Back"--should disturb people who want to move forward. The last time America seemed normal to these people, and we lived in a segregated world where Ossie and Harriet were parents was under Dwight David Eisenhower, a man the ancestors of the teabaggers hated as a closet Democrat, crypto-Communist and a liberal.
The one aspect that fascinates me about this is the deliberate adoption of what they perceive as the tactics of the Left. Overtly, they are fascinated by Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayres and the Weatherman Underground. We all know they were miserable failures and that no one was persuaded by domestic terrorism--as we also found out with Timothy McVeigh--or even, alas, massive demonstrations. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations often exceeded one million people and their effectiveness was negligible. What the democratic Left discovered was that they had to organize and deal with the real problems of average citizens to have any credibility and legitimacy. The jury is still out on astro-turf protesting, turning out citizens on the corporate dime. It may well be--and I believe this--fantastic for corporate interests but of marginal use for generating real, civil debate.
Alot of commentators of the Left raise the whole issue of race. With the face of the Republican party being almost exclusively white men from the South, who personally have long ties to racist groups, this is entirely legitimate. The Republican Party, starting with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy with rhetoric provided by then speechwriter Pat Buchanan, has exploited racial animosity when it suits it. However, whole sectors of the party were both liberal and progressive on civil rights legislation but they have been wiped out with the demise of the party of the Northeast and Midwest. As I've also written, today's Republicans are banking on short-term gains in 2010 by mobilizing the white anti-Obama vote by playing the race card. How this can benefit the party in the long-run is anyone's guess.
There are no national Republican leaders with the stature or clout to distance the party from the lunatic core, which seems to be their base. I would suggest that the Teabaggers and the Glenn Beck followers are heavily dominated by small splinter parties such as Alan Keyes American Independence Party (old George Wallace's party),the Libertarians, now the LaRoucheites (who are nominally Democrats), White supremacists and neo-fascist groups. It could be one of the most embarrassing baits-and-switches in American political history. This hodgepodge of parties and grouplets has learned more mainstream language and become what Republicans believe are the real base of the party. There was some of this before but the moment when this became a reality was the nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. A choice to appease the religious right, she brought with it libertarian, secessionist, and pro-militia followers.
The e-mails I receive invoke the American Revolution, an event my ancestors proudly participated in. And we should all remember it's first casualty was an African-American named Crispus Attucks. The extreme gun rights crowd, which is linked to the militias and paramilitary groups, invokes the Second Amendment as the paramount result of the revolution. Allegedly they argue our founding fathers believed a well-armed populace would be check on oppressive government. Well, not so fast. The post-revolutionary America faced a challenge from the Shays Rebellion in Western Massachusetts and when the constitution was ratified our revolutionary founders discovered that a government needed a well-organized militia--in order to suppress insurrections. The Second Amendment cuts both ways but customary beliefs have the left gun rights people the dominent interpretation.
So what colonial master am I supposed to rebel against?--foreign-owned banks and corporations looks like a good start, But that's not what my colleagues have in mind. They stated that our political rights and civil liberties are today threatened more than at any time since the American Revolution. Oh, Really? More than the Civil War? More than the Palmer Era? More than WWII? More than during the Cold War? More than under the Bush-Cheney Administration?
No, our freedoms are threatened by the new Emperor Jones in the White House and his coterie of socialists like--I guess--Ben Bernacke, Rahm Emmanuel,Bob Gates, Kathleen Sebelius, Larry Summers and David Geitner. Here, my friends lose me completely. My problems with the Obama Administration have to do with the maintenance of some of the Bush era restrictions on civil liberties, not any new abuses of constitutional power. And, there is an awesome and deliberate ignorance of these Teabaggers that doesn't realize the U.S. Government represents 30% of our national economy and President Obama has not done all this by himself in eight months.
Can you imagine any of these people who aligned themselves with the Tea Baggers being able to manage the complexities of the world's largest economy and the largest component in that economy? That's the stakes in getting two political parties back to a place where policies can be rationally debated.
I'm usually snarky in my replies. If Obama has achieved all this in eight months, created a socialist America and torn up the Constitution, then we were left with a pretty weak nation when he took over and there's nothing that can be done to reverse it.
One hoped that after President Obama's health care speech and his paramount reasonableness we would have heard some responsible Republican commentary. Instead, the almost universal response was to double-down on the deliberate lying about the president's proposals. This has provoked condemnation of Obama from the Left for maintaining the fiction that any bipartisanship is possible.
At least in the House, they are absolutely right. The President's plan will receive no Republican votes in the House because the leadership is listening to Newt Gingrich's advice that 1994 will repeat itself. In the Senate, Voinovich, Snowe and Collins are the only likely candidates for support for Health Care Reform. Voinovich because he's retiring. The Maine Senators because Collins won in 2008 and Olympia Snowe doesn't face re-election until 2012. And also they represent the last of the Northeast Republicans, who take commonsense positions.
How vile has this become? Former First Lady Laura Bush, a librarian by trade and someone who like her mother-in-law is devoted to reading, supported President Obama's school speech and condemned the partisan attacks on it. For this mild call to civility, conservative blogs attacked her, recalling her past history as a non-active Democrat before she met George W. and went on to attack the most conservative President in my lifetime as a RINO. In the crowd of teabaggers who arrived in Washington for today's festivities, many condemned George W. Bush's domestic policies and his deficit-spending. They called for a true conservative to be President.
But their means appear to be at odds with their goals. It's not the American revolution that is there real model it's the French Revolution. The Republican Base has become the latest version of the Jacobins and we know where that went. The present situation is very dangerous. Leftwing writer Naomi Wolf in The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot wrote movingly of how important it was to keep the Idea of America alive for us and the rest of the world. Whatever imperfections exist in our struggle toward a more perfect union, the idea of America has and continues to inspire the rest of the world. Today, the very idea is being threatened by the parnoid politics that have taken over the Republican Party.
The current Republican base is so out of touch with average Americans--the charge they levelled for years at Democrats--that a majority of its members either believe or aren't sure President Obama was born in kenya, believe the House health care bill calls for death panels to euthanize senior citizens, and believe that Obama is responsible for our economic woes (61%!)
How wacked out are the current Republicans? 71% of all Americans believe that global warming is a result of human activity, only 27% of Republicans; while Rasmussen says 55% of all Americans oppose health care reform ( recent polls counter this), 87% of Republicans oppose it and 74% very strongly. Depending on the poll, President Obama's favorability rating is between 50 to 58% but fewer than 10% of Republicans approve.
But this situation gets worse. Only 41 percent of conservatives now identify themselves as Republicans--that's how extreme the Party has become. The recent embrace of birthers, deathers, tenthers, vaxers and liars not only damages the Republicans future chances but seriously blocks the ability of there to be a real political debate in this country. Among the remaining Republicans I know,this paranoid politics also becomes a groupthink. Those not subscribing to the latest lunacy are considered Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) and are not to be trusted. The Republican embrace of the Tea Party nonsense and the Glenn Beck 9-12 project now plunge them into the treacherous waters of insurrectionists, secessionists, white supremacists and theocrats. This is not only dangerous to the country, President Obama personally but also to the Republicans themselves.
The effects of this have been dramatic. Governor Pawlenty, for instance, has announced the desire to embrace the lunacy of Gov. Perry of Texas in saying that the invocation of the tenth amendment might be a way for states to stop health care reform. This is a man who honestly has aspirations for the Presidency. And he would be representing the Party of Abraham Lincoln! The tenth amendment movement is of interest to constitutional scholars only because the doctrine of nullification, which existed prior to the Civil War, has been seriously rebuffed through countless Supreme Court rulings, including one as recently as 2005 and to see people raise this is a red flag to profound historical ignorance. For their part, neo-conservatives, who once pretended to have intellectual interests, have solicited the support of former half-term Governor Sarah Palin to press their support for President Obama's Afghanistan build-up. This is a person married--at least for now--to a former secessionist and who actively accused the President of paling around with terrorists. And somehow she's supposed to have any credibility and importance?
As I wrote in my thoughts on Republican Gomorrah, the control of the Republican Party by the religious right is pernicious enough. Now Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council believe they have a second-wind in organizing the religious opposition to health care reform. Not only are Republicans lying about the facts of bills but the religious community is bearing false witness against the bill as funding abortions, providing illegal immigrants health care, and creating death panels to euthanize senior citizens. The phenomenon of self-proclaimed Christians opposing in the name of religion, not politics, health care reform is mind-boogling. As I have written elsewhere, this is a wicked brew.
The first casualty in war is truth. But for our political system it is vital that we have reality-based debates. We should have learned through a series of policy blunders on both sides that the cold shower of fact-based analysis can lead to a more sober and worthwhile policy debate. The problem of a major political party embracing paranoid politics is that you can have no real compromise if one side lives in a a parallel universe.
Today's Teabag Express demonstrations in Washington raise serious challenges to the legitimacy of the Republican Party, not President Obama. What is it that these people are really advocating? It appears to be a grab-bag of nutty things from tax hikes (even though everyone I know got a tax cut), deficits (ignoring the Republican history of this issue), gun rights (so far Eric Holder has made not a single move in this direction),national service day on 9-11, health care reform, states rights, anti-immigration, upholding the constitution ( why not protest against Dick Cheney?), against cap-and-trade legislation, against the stimulus package, against the bailout of the banks, against support for the auto industry, against ACORN, and against abortion, the grandmother of the cultural wars. This bears alot of similarity to past nativist movements in our history that ranged from the Know-Nothings to the KKK. And, I might add it is profoundly anti-American in ways that the democratic Left never was. To actively target a sitting President only eight months into his term with the purpose of crippling his administration is the height of anti-patriotism.
Astonishingly, the vast majority of the teabaggers appear to be senior citizens--who are on social security, medicare and military pensions--and yet they advocate smaller government and the cut of government programs to help others than themselves. This is a classic generational war by seniors on the rest of society. I'm not sure they are self-conscious about this. Their mantra--"Taking Our America Back"--should disturb people who want to move forward. The last time America seemed normal to these people, and we lived in a segregated world where Ossie and Harriet were parents was under Dwight David Eisenhower, a man the ancestors of the teabaggers hated as a closet Democrat, crypto-Communist and a liberal.
The one aspect that fascinates me about this is the deliberate adoption of what they perceive as the tactics of the Left. Overtly, they are fascinated by Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayres and the Weatherman Underground. We all know they were miserable failures and that no one was persuaded by domestic terrorism--as we also found out with Timothy McVeigh--or even, alas, massive demonstrations. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations often exceeded one million people and their effectiveness was negligible. What the democratic Left discovered was that they had to organize and deal with the real problems of average citizens to have any credibility and legitimacy. The jury is still out on astro-turf protesting, turning out citizens on the corporate dime. It may well be--and I believe this--fantastic for corporate interests but of marginal use for generating real, civil debate.
Alot of commentators of the Left raise the whole issue of race. With the face of the Republican party being almost exclusively white men from the South, who personally have long ties to racist groups, this is entirely legitimate. The Republican Party, starting with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy with rhetoric provided by then speechwriter Pat Buchanan, has exploited racial animosity when it suits it. However, whole sectors of the party were both liberal and progressive on civil rights legislation but they have been wiped out with the demise of the party of the Northeast and Midwest. As I've also written, today's Republicans are banking on short-term gains in 2010 by mobilizing the white anti-Obama vote by playing the race card. How this can benefit the party in the long-run is anyone's guess.
There are no national Republican leaders with the stature or clout to distance the party from the lunatic core, which seems to be their base. I would suggest that the Teabaggers and the Glenn Beck followers are heavily dominated by small splinter parties such as Alan Keyes American Independence Party (old George Wallace's party),the Libertarians, now the LaRoucheites (who are nominally Democrats), White supremacists and neo-fascist groups. It could be one of the most embarrassing baits-and-switches in American political history. This hodgepodge of parties and grouplets has learned more mainstream language and become what Republicans believe are the real base of the party. There was some of this before but the moment when this became a reality was the nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. A choice to appease the religious right, she brought with it libertarian, secessionist, and pro-militia followers.
The e-mails I receive invoke the American Revolution, an event my ancestors proudly participated in. And we should all remember it's first casualty was an African-American named Crispus Attucks. The extreme gun rights crowd, which is linked to the militias and paramilitary groups, invokes the Second Amendment as the paramount result of the revolution. Allegedly they argue our founding fathers believed a well-armed populace would be check on oppressive government. Well, not so fast. The post-revolutionary America faced a challenge from the Shays Rebellion in Western Massachusetts and when the constitution was ratified our revolutionary founders discovered that a government needed a well-organized militia--in order to suppress insurrections. The Second Amendment cuts both ways but customary beliefs have the left gun rights people the dominent interpretation.
So what colonial master am I supposed to rebel against?--foreign-owned banks and corporations looks like a good start, But that's not what my colleagues have in mind. They stated that our political rights and civil liberties are today threatened more than at any time since the American Revolution. Oh, Really? More than the Civil War? More than the Palmer Era? More than WWII? More than during the Cold War? More than under the Bush-Cheney Administration?
No, our freedoms are threatened by the new Emperor Jones in the White House and his coterie of socialists like--I guess--Ben Bernacke, Rahm Emmanuel,Bob Gates, Kathleen Sebelius, Larry Summers and David Geitner. Here, my friends lose me completely. My problems with the Obama Administration have to do with the maintenance of some of the Bush era restrictions on civil liberties, not any new abuses of constitutional power. And, there is an awesome and deliberate ignorance of these Teabaggers that doesn't realize the U.S. Government represents 30% of our national economy and President Obama has not done all this by himself in eight months.
Can you imagine any of these people who aligned themselves with the Tea Baggers being able to manage the complexities of the world's largest economy and the largest component in that economy? That's the stakes in getting two political parties back to a place where policies can be rationally debated.
I'm usually snarky in my replies. If Obama has achieved all this in eight months, created a socialist America and torn up the Constitution, then we were left with a pretty weak nation when he took over and there's nothing that can be done to reverse it.
One hoped that after President Obama's health care speech and his paramount reasonableness we would have heard some responsible Republican commentary. Instead, the almost universal response was to double-down on the deliberate lying about the president's proposals. This has provoked condemnation of Obama from the Left for maintaining the fiction that any bipartisanship is possible.
At least in the House, they are absolutely right. The President's plan will receive no Republican votes in the House because the leadership is listening to Newt Gingrich's advice that 1994 will repeat itself. In the Senate, Voinovich, Snowe and Collins are the only likely candidates for support for Health Care Reform. Voinovich because he's retiring. The Maine Senators because Collins won in 2008 and Olympia Snowe doesn't face re-election until 2012. And also they represent the last of the Northeast Republicans, who take commonsense positions.
How vile has this become? Former First Lady Laura Bush, a librarian by trade and someone who like her mother-in-law is devoted to reading, supported President Obama's school speech and condemned the partisan attacks on it. For this mild call to civility, conservative blogs attacked her, recalling her past history as a non-active Democrat before she met George W. and went on to attack the most conservative President in my lifetime as a RINO. In the crowd of teabaggers who arrived in Washington for today's festivities, many condemned George W. Bush's domestic policies and his deficit-spending. They called for a true conservative to be President.
But their means appear to be at odds with their goals. It's not the American revolution that is there real model it's the French Revolution. The Republican Base has become the latest version of the Jacobins and we know where that went. The present situation is very dangerous. Leftwing writer Naomi Wolf in The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot wrote movingly of how important it was to keep the Idea of America alive for us and the rest of the world. Whatever imperfections exist in our struggle toward a more perfect union, the idea of America has and continues to inspire the rest of the world. Today, the very idea is being threatened by the parnoid politics that have taken over the Republican Party.
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