Paul the Psychic Octopus has retired. His German handlers at the aquarium say he is returning to his original profession "making children laugh" and will no longer be making predictions about sporting events. He ends his career 8 for 8 in the World Cup. He will be remembered.
Tuli Kupferberg has died at the age of 86. One of the Fugs, he called the band the "U.S.O of the Left. He will be missed.
Also missed at Vishnu Jindal's berms. Photos on Americablog show them being washed away along with the bulldozers. I guess they didn't do much in stopping the oil in the Gulf.
The "Cooch" is at it again. Virginia's Attorney-General made a legal ruling that couples who get married out of state are not considered married in the Commonwealth. While this is seen as a preventive measure against same-sex marriage, the first victims turned out to be a straight couple who got married in Maryland. Now people are raising questions whether anyone married outside the state like my wife and I are considered married. Has anyone noticed the deterioration in conservative lawyering these days?
Pundits are marvelling at the $1 billion campaign expenditures for this year's elections. But some perspective is necessary. Over 10% of that will be spent by Meg Whitman to buy the state of California. So far that has actually bought her a slight lead in the last week over Jerry Brown. Surprisingly, Democrat Jack Conway has matched Rand Paul's donations for their Senate race in Kentucky. While Senator Burr has a $6million war chest to go against Elaine Marshall in North Carolina. This seems to be the result of corporate donations to a candidate, whome no one can figure out what he does.
Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has told Ralph Reed, who has been resurrected from the dead after the Abramoff scandal, that God chose her to run in Nevada. God also chose Jan Brewer to run for governor in Arizona. Somehow God has decided to be a teabagger this year.
67-year old Newt Gingrich says he will decide to run for President by early 2011. Newt claims Obama is the worse President in history and his administration is incompetent. He also said that whoever wins the Republican nomination will win the Presidency. Alot of Newt's activities these days is really to keep somewhat relevant until the presidential session starts. He has to keep his money-machine going no matter what he does.
Jonah Goldberg writes today that he hopes the GOP runs on Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for the Future". As I've written before Ryan's budget plans include phasing out Medicare, privatizing Social Security and ,according to the OMB, running titantic deficits for years without end. It is a recipe to deliberately transform the United States into a Third World country. It is estimated that the United States would not see a balanced budget for 75 years under Ryan's plan. If the Republicans take back the House, he would be in charge of the budget committee. While his plan is ruinous for America, conservatives have fully embraced it and believe this fulfills their ideological objectives.
Senate Republicans today say they want to cut Obama's budget because of government spending. While this year's budget contains the budget cuts the President required and the freeze on mandatory spending, it calls for an increase in Defense spending. The GOP wants to cut from the defense spending. You will recall last week President Obama announced the far-reaching program for veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. He has streamlined the process for veterans from all wars including Vietnam to get assistance on this issue. Naturally, this is the area where Republicans want to create the defense budget. Is it because the President announced the initiative or is it because they have a hard time dealing with PTSD as a real malady? Also to be cut in the Republican plan are measures to address the issue of homelessness among veterans. Roughly 25% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now become homeless on their return from abroad.
It appears that almost every Republican will vote against Elena Kagan next week. They wanted more time to review her written answers to the Judiciary Committee. And they even wanted to stall the vote. It's really a matter that the white boys want to send a message to the President and Ms. Kagan about who the real bosses in this country are.
I'll believe it when I see it. Rumors have the Senate actually voting on the extension of unemployment benefits next week. While the votes have been there for the past four months,Republican Senators, along with Ben Nelson, have managed to stop cloture on the issue.
Our distinguished number 2 Republican in the House, Rep. Cantor held a jobs fair in his district with dozens of corporations, who are donating to the Republicans. Of the several dozen companies coming to thank the representative in bringing stimulus money to Virginia, even though he voted against it,there were only 5 jobs available among them and hundreds of Virginians came for nothing. If the unemployment benefits are not renewed, this will affect roughly 45,000 additional workers in the state.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The War Against America Continues
That was no mistake by Senator Kyl. He really did mean to say that tax cuts for the wealthy must be maintained, even if it costs the government $670 billion a year in revenues. And he really did mean to say that unemployment extension can not be passed because it would increase the deficit. As Rachel Maddow pointed out, unemployment generates $1.69 for every buck paid out, while tax cuts for the rich net only $1.06. So which is more stimulating to the economy?
But Ezra Klein coming back from his bummer article on the election has noted quite clearly that what you are seeing is really the GOP's ideological commitment to their past economic policies as a way to destroy government and not to strengthen the economy. There is no more pretending that tax cuts to the wealthy or corporations has anything to do with economic theory or policy.
The new twist in my mind is that the old rhetoric about welfare is now being applied to the unemployed for the first time. Extension of unemployment benefits when the rate of unemployment is so high has been an automatic on a bipartisan basis since 1952. This is the first time there has been a denial of these benefits. Now, the GOP are saying that the unemployed are too lazy to get a job and , in the words of Orrin Hatch, just going to spend their benefits on drugs. So we've now racheted up the rhetoric against Welfare Queens to apply to millions more people. There is a certain racial genious to this: white unemployment is around 8%; Hispanic about 15% and Black about 18%. Since the latter two demographics have been written off by Republicans, all you have to worry about is white and especially white 45 or over.
Diane Rehm had teabaggers on her show yesterday. They were people on social security and receiving naval pensions "for which they worked their whole lives". They repeated the whole teahdist schtick. But they was no irony or self-awareness that they essentially had worked for the government their whole lives and wanted these benefits cut for everyone else.
On top of all this is that state governments face a $220 billion shortfall this year and another $180 billion next year. Without the Federal government stepping in, the entire benefit of the stimulus package will be wiped out. And thousands upon thousands of teachers will be fired and state government services will be dramatically eliminated. As Lawrence Kudlow asked a local government official, "do you have anything to sell?" We can have a firesale of government buildings like in Arizona or the Grand Teton Park in Wyoming.
The Catfood Commission led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson has uttered a statement that everyone over 58 will get their full social security benefits but the program will have to be changed for younger people. The House Republicans really do want to raise the retirement age to 70. That sounds reasonable if you are working a white collar job and see no prospects of losing your job. If you are blue-collar, it just means you die and lose. Now seniors can apply for jobs at McDonald's as they are doing today to make ends meet--as long as they don't get sick. What was once an entry level job for the young becomes the new safety net for the elderly. And we know that all those white collar folks will really be welcomed as younger workers would like to advance.
I hate to take potshots at my generation but it's quite clear the message to anyone younger is "We got ours, now you fend for yourselves." Trolling the rightwing websites, I noticed an interesting phenomenon the most vitriolic against Obama are people in their early 70s, who want revenge for something someone did to them in the 1960s. On the leftwing websites, you have old arguments from the 1960s being trotted out to refute their brethern across the ideological divide. And luckily, for our generation, are interests are being protected by filthy rich Senators, who will maintain the status quo at all costs. I wonder even if the aging baby bommers even listen to their old music anymore. I think they like to see Paul McCartney because he's had plastic surgery and is rich.
But maybe there are strands of sanity still surviving in the country. Billionaire Pete Peterson's roadshow on the national debt isn't generating the responses he wanted. Majorities polled at these townhall meetings want to adopt the McColm solution for Social Security--raise the FICA salary cap. A Majority wants an additional 5% tax on people earning over $1 million a year. And a Majority want defense spending included in considerations of cutting the deficit. So far, the Cat Food Commission will only own up to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as being the three major debt generating programs. But we can't address the national debt honestly--a loaded word--without tackling the issue of the cost of our empire.
Niall Ferguson, the British enthusiast for our American Empire, told the gathering at Aspen Insitute that the United States will have to make dramatic cuts in social programs over the next two years in order to maintain its position as a world power. Almost the same day, reports came out that Russia spends $88 billion on defense. This gave me the idea that the United States should calculate our nearest competitor in terms of defense outlays and simply accept a formula that we would double it. The Two Times plan would in fact slash our Defense Budget by about $200 billion a year. Any war would be paid for by a war tax. If we're supposed to be a nation at war, then we should pay for it. Remember the phone tax that paid for the Vietnam War? Something similar is called for here. So we're down to Medicare and Medicaid. It's looking easier to dramatically reduce our national debt every moment.
Did Republicans deliberately generate these deficits? For the Reagan years, the answer is yes. The Reagan deficits were aimed at bankrupting the SovietUnion by our escalation in military spending and by restraining any Democratic Administration from embarking on any domestic spending programs. We all remember Bill Clinton eliminating welfare. But the George W. deficits were part design and part chance. The Iraq War was totally under-budgeted by about $1 trillion and the revenue to be generated by tax breaks for the wealthy was totally under-estimated. There was literally no budget considerations for Medicaid Plan D, which costs $5 trillion in the outyears. The deficits were meant as restraining factors to inhibit Democrats. But once the world economy collapsed and our financial system was destroyed because of de-regulation all bets were off.
Instead, what we see today is that the Right has gone back to embrace their ideology of dismantling government as we saw in Thomas Franks'The Wrecking Crew. As we have seen by recent polls of the teahadists, their extreme positions mirror the Republican Party in general. In other words, these people mean what they say about government. And it's really not hypocritical, as long as our entitlements are protected, we don't care what happens to you and your children. That's why is seems so jarring to see elected Republicans double-down on their support for corporations, the big oil companies, banks and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's their world and their financial supporters.
TPM compiled videos of Rand Paul's positions over the years as expressed on a Kentucky PBS station. To the normal viewer, he sounds batty but through the lens of today's GOP he's fairly mainstream. It'll be interesting to see how the average voter takes this. Bob Bennett claims that Mitch McConnell has put a muzzle on Paul so he doesn't keep alienating people.
So now that we are bombarded with reports that independents have abandoned Obama, the blacks don't like him anymore, Hispanics are disillusioned, gays disappointed and the Left disgusted, how's he doing? According to the blarring headlines in today's Washington Post, only 42% of Americans believe his administration makes the rights choices for the country. The Washington Post poll screams that Americans have no confidence in Democrats. They didn't mention that only around 20% of Americans believe that Republican policies are better for America. 60% don't want to return to Bush economic policies, even though Ed Gillespie raved on Sunday talk shows about what a job creator Bush was. The facts actually indicate that W created less jobs than anyone as long as they have kept records--since Truman. And Americans in the high 40s still blame W for the economy.
So how is he doing? Well, according to the Washington Post, Obama's approval rating contnues to plummet to the ground--he's at 50%, only 15% above Reagan at the depth of the recession in the early 1980s. The lack of confidence in the Democrats shows--they have a 1% lead in the generic congressional poll. So, yeah, it is possible that the Republicans can take back the House but even this idea is getting some push back from Beltway pundits, who usually go for anything the herd believes. No one has any idea really.
Meanwhile Hapless Harry Reid seems to have picked up 60 votes to push for the Financial Reform Bill. Today is the vote on cloture again. The vote is scheduled for next week when West Virginia will have a Senator. The Republicans want to go home already so they want to delay a vote on Elena Kagan until after the August recess. As of today, Leahy says the vote will be next week sometime.
Just an aside, students of the Great Depression expect government to take a forceful role in stabilizing the economy and generating employment. But that is not the Republican view anymore. Their real goal in stopping Wall Street Reform is to return to the days prior to the New Deal when the American economy naturally crashed every 20 years. Unfortunately, a natural recovery takes about 10 years.
But Ezra Klein coming back from his bummer article on the election has noted quite clearly that what you are seeing is really the GOP's ideological commitment to their past economic policies as a way to destroy government and not to strengthen the economy. There is no more pretending that tax cuts to the wealthy or corporations has anything to do with economic theory or policy.
The new twist in my mind is that the old rhetoric about welfare is now being applied to the unemployed for the first time. Extension of unemployment benefits when the rate of unemployment is so high has been an automatic on a bipartisan basis since 1952. This is the first time there has been a denial of these benefits. Now, the GOP are saying that the unemployed are too lazy to get a job and , in the words of Orrin Hatch, just going to spend their benefits on drugs. So we've now racheted up the rhetoric against Welfare Queens to apply to millions more people. There is a certain racial genious to this: white unemployment is around 8%; Hispanic about 15% and Black about 18%. Since the latter two demographics have been written off by Republicans, all you have to worry about is white and especially white 45 or over.
Diane Rehm had teabaggers on her show yesterday. They were people on social security and receiving naval pensions "for which they worked their whole lives". They repeated the whole teahdist schtick. But they was no irony or self-awareness that they essentially had worked for the government their whole lives and wanted these benefits cut for everyone else.
On top of all this is that state governments face a $220 billion shortfall this year and another $180 billion next year. Without the Federal government stepping in, the entire benefit of the stimulus package will be wiped out. And thousands upon thousands of teachers will be fired and state government services will be dramatically eliminated. As Lawrence Kudlow asked a local government official, "do you have anything to sell?" We can have a firesale of government buildings like in Arizona or the Grand Teton Park in Wyoming.
The Catfood Commission led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson has uttered a statement that everyone over 58 will get their full social security benefits but the program will have to be changed for younger people. The House Republicans really do want to raise the retirement age to 70. That sounds reasonable if you are working a white collar job and see no prospects of losing your job. If you are blue-collar, it just means you die and lose. Now seniors can apply for jobs at McDonald's as they are doing today to make ends meet--as long as they don't get sick. What was once an entry level job for the young becomes the new safety net for the elderly. And we know that all those white collar folks will really be welcomed as younger workers would like to advance.
I hate to take potshots at my generation but it's quite clear the message to anyone younger is "We got ours, now you fend for yourselves." Trolling the rightwing websites, I noticed an interesting phenomenon the most vitriolic against Obama are people in their early 70s, who want revenge for something someone did to them in the 1960s. On the leftwing websites, you have old arguments from the 1960s being trotted out to refute their brethern across the ideological divide. And luckily, for our generation, are interests are being protected by filthy rich Senators, who will maintain the status quo at all costs. I wonder even if the aging baby bommers even listen to their old music anymore. I think they like to see Paul McCartney because he's had plastic surgery and is rich.
But maybe there are strands of sanity still surviving in the country. Billionaire Pete Peterson's roadshow on the national debt isn't generating the responses he wanted. Majorities polled at these townhall meetings want to adopt the McColm solution for Social Security--raise the FICA salary cap. A Majority wants an additional 5% tax on people earning over $1 million a year. And a Majority want defense spending included in considerations of cutting the deficit. So far, the Cat Food Commission will only own up to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as being the three major debt generating programs. But we can't address the national debt honestly--a loaded word--without tackling the issue of the cost of our empire.
Niall Ferguson, the British enthusiast for our American Empire, told the gathering at Aspen Insitute that the United States will have to make dramatic cuts in social programs over the next two years in order to maintain its position as a world power. Almost the same day, reports came out that Russia spends $88 billion on defense. This gave me the idea that the United States should calculate our nearest competitor in terms of defense outlays and simply accept a formula that we would double it. The Two Times plan would in fact slash our Defense Budget by about $200 billion a year. Any war would be paid for by a war tax. If we're supposed to be a nation at war, then we should pay for it. Remember the phone tax that paid for the Vietnam War? Something similar is called for here. So we're down to Medicare and Medicaid. It's looking easier to dramatically reduce our national debt every moment.
Did Republicans deliberately generate these deficits? For the Reagan years, the answer is yes. The Reagan deficits were aimed at bankrupting the SovietUnion by our escalation in military spending and by restraining any Democratic Administration from embarking on any domestic spending programs. We all remember Bill Clinton eliminating welfare. But the George W. deficits were part design and part chance. The Iraq War was totally under-budgeted by about $1 trillion and the revenue to be generated by tax breaks for the wealthy was totally under-estimated. There was literally no budget considerations for Medicaid Plan D, which costs $5 trillion in the outyears. The deficits were meant as restraining factors to inhibit Democrats. But once the world economy collapsed and our financial system was destroyed because of de-regulation all bets were off.
Instead, what we see today is that the Right has gone back to embrace their ideology of dismantling government as we saw in Thomas Franks'The Wrecking Crew. As we have seen by recent polls of the teahadists, their extreme positions mirror the Republican Party in general. In other words, these people mean what they say about government. And it's really not hypocritical, as long as our entitlements are protected, we don't care what happens to you and your children. That's why is seems so jarring to see elected Republicans double-down on their support for corporations, the big oil companies, banks and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's their world and their financial supporters.
TPM compiled videos of Rand Paul's positions over the years as expressed on a Kentucky PBS station. To the normal viewer, he sounds batty but through the lens of today's GOP he's fairly mainstream. It'll be interesting to see how the average voter takes this. Bob Bennett claims that Mitch McConnell has put a muzzle on Paul so he doesn't keep alienating people.
So now that we are bombarded with reports that independents have abandoned Obama, the blacks don't like him anymore, Hispanics are disillusioned, gays disappointed and the Left disgusted, how's he doing? According to the blarring headlines in today's Washington Post, only 42% of Americans believe his administration makes the rights choices for the country. The Washington Post poll screams that Americans have no confidence in Democrats. They didn't mention that only around 20% of Americans believe that Republican policies are better for America. 60% don't want to return to Bush economic policies, even though Ed Gillespie raved on Sunday talk shows about what a job creator Bush was. The facts actually indicate that W created less jobs than anyone as long as they have kept records--since Truman. And Americans in the high 40s still blame W for the economy.
So how is he doing? Well, according to the Washington Post, Obama's approval rating contnues to plummet to the ground--he's at 50%, only 15% above Reagan at the depth of the recession in the early 1980s. The lack of confidence in the Democrats shows--they have a 1% lead in the generic congressional poll. So, yeah, it is possible that the Republicans can take back the House but even this idea is getting some push back from Beltway pundits, who usually go for anything the herd believes. No one has any idea really.
Meanwhile Hapless Harry Reid seems to have picked up 60 votes to push for the Financial Reform Bill. Today is the vote on cloture again. The vote is scheduled for next week when West Virginia will have a Senator. The Republicans want to go home already so they want to delay a vote on Elena Kagan until after the August recess. As of today, Leahy says the vote will be next week sometime.
Just an aside, students of the Great Depression expect government to take a forceful role in stabilizing the economy and generating employment. But that is not the Republican view anymore. Their real goal in stopping Wall Street Reform is to return to the days prior to the New Deal when the American economy naturally crashed every 20 years. Unfortunately, a natural recovery takes about 10 years.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Egrets, I've had a few.* Lazy Sunday at the Last Manatee
* shamelessly ripped off from DailyKos blogger "Kestrel".
The tension is mounting here as the Psychic Octopus is one away from a perfect World Cup. Germany has won and we are only hours away from Netherlands versus Barcelona (let's be honest here). Does the Octopus win a fish prize?
Remember the Hutaree Militia out of Michigan? It seems one of their members was arrested yesterday for plotting to kill President Obama, during his trip to the Midwest.
Amitai Etzioni has a new proposal for small government conservatives. He proposes that the Department of Justice prepare legal opt-out forms where you can have your taxes decreased by 2/3rds if you agree not to partake of any government services, with the exception of the military. My objection is that Etzioni calculates the cost of the military wrong--it's 40% of discretionary spending. So you get a 60% reduction on your taxes instead.
Ezra Klein, policy wonk at the Washington Post, saved us $4 trillion on our national debt this past week. So instead of going on a roll, he decides to play the party pooper. You know all the hype about elections, the media coverage, the campaign expenditures and the like. Well, it doesn't matter. Ezra found some geeks who have played around with their computers and says the results of the elections within 2% error depends on the state of the economy and that specifically means how much money people feel they have in their pockets. Forget everything else. Of course, this year that's bad news for Democrats. If this catches on, it may be bad news for all the political hired hands.
The American Psychological Association wants Dr. James Mitchell stripped of his license for his participation in overseeing the 2002 torture of Abu Zubayah,who was thought to be the Number 3 of Al Qaeda. The APA warned members from participating in all programs that were considered torture during the last eight years. Since the proceedings are in Texas, it's anyone's guess about the result. For the record, classified documents have come out within the past month from the Government which indicate Abu Zubayah may not even had been a member of Al Qaeda, let alone number 3.
Richard Minter, writing in the Daily Beast, says that some of us who are making fun of the gonad bomber and the Times Square bomber are missing the point about Al Qaeda. Since the end of the Bush Administration and the first 18 months of the Obama Administration, Al Qaeda has suffered crippling blows to their middle-level managers and can not maintain the basic organizational ability to mount sophisticated operations anymore. They are stuck with buying local cell phones, which are easily followed by intelligence, and their front businesses and mechanisms for laundering money have been closed down through international cooperation. With the constant assassinations of their number 3s and other high-ranking operatives, they lack the experience of developing backup plans and fielding supportive manpower to cover the primary actors in any given action. They are in their third generation, which lacks the military experience and spycraft of the previous plotters.
But never fear, Ryan Mauro of the Christian Action Network posts a piece on David Horowitz' www.frontpagemagazine.com "Muslim Enclaves U.S.A." Building on Daniel Pipes' 2004 work documenting how Muslims are creating seperate enclaves based on sharia law in the United States, Mauro outlines several groups in the United States who are creating little Muslim enclaves in Baltimore and Philadelphia. He claims Muslims of America, a group Homeland Security links to the Pakistan terrorist group Jamaat Ul-Fugra, owns 22 villages sporting such names as "Islamberg", "Holy Islamville" and "Aliville". While interesting, the article neglects the threat of rampaging Mexican Muslims. Perhaps, that's in the follow-up piece. I thought the caliphate ended in Cordoba.
Following up on Hillary Clinton's defense in Poland of the struggling civil society around the world, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote a defense of democracy promotion, admitting the whole idea got a little abused during the Bush Administration with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But she argued that President Obama should speak on the subject more frequently.
Not having any of this, Pat Buchanan in "The Democracy Obsession" at www.amconmag.com says that the United States blew the opportunity to adopt a policy of non-intervention right after the Cold War. He then blames the superfluous foreign policy elites for conjuring up the intervention in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He accuses the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House of subverting regimes in Belgrade,Caracas, Kiev, Tbilisi, Beirut and Bishkek. He argues that democratic states don't make us any secure and are not our friends. He slams W for pushing democracy in the Middle East. Pointing out that pressuring Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine to have elections yielded us the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbullah and Hamas. He points to South Africa, Brazil, India and Turkey as prime examples of democracies going their own way--away from the United States. He points to both India and Brazil lining up with China to fight caps on carbon emissions and Turkey drifting toward Iran and Syria because of its reactions to Israeli actions.
Coming off his book on World War II, where he blames Churchill, he gets his digs in at the Brits again. He points out that the British sided with Mexico during the Mexican War and with the South in our Civil War. He points out that democratic governments such as Sweden and Ireland were neutral during WWII but that the Soviet Union and Chang Kai Shek sided with the U.S. He says that France denied Reagan airspace for his attack on Libya but that Salazar's Portugal gave Nixon the use of the Azores during the Yom Kippur War. He also has to throw in his plug for Pinochet in Chile.
With the fade of the Third Wave of Democratization, democracy advocates will have to answer Buchanan on the merits of his case and not slam him as an isolationist , anti-semite as we used to. America's engagement with the world will have to be re-thought and the advantages and limits of democracy promotion will have to be honestly addressed. My reservations these days are about the corporatization of democracy promotion programs. Those involved literally constitute multi-million dollar industries. Democracy promotion became institutionalized during the Clinton Administration when USAID committed billions to the effort, spurring the creation of democracy programs in every NGO known to man and then some. At the time, I was proud of my small role in pushing this development but sometimes it seems we neglected the other issues of development and we sold people on what democracy promotion really wasn't. Even during George W. Bush, democracy promotion was heralded as conflict resolution and as a tool of peace, not war. Today, major defense contractors reap the benefits of democracy funding, pulling down contracts of $50 million or more to implement just small segments of a democracy program. And under few cirumstances can the development of democracies in previously underdeveloped countries yield automatic allies in foreign policy.
What is ruinous to democracy promotion is its militarization and integration into war efforts. Take the slogan of democracy advocates, "Democracies don't start wars." We just got through an American administration which adopted a strategic policy of pre-emptive war. Or the idea during the W administration that democracies don't create terrorists. Throughout the 1970s, we had the alienated young in Western Europe create the Baader Mienhoff Brigade, the Red Brigade and in the United States the Weathermen. On the Left, there is the notion that it is poverty that creates the terrorism of the Middle East. But the profile of Al Qaeda and others are of upper-middle-class , college educated young people, disgusted at the discrepancy of wealth in their countries and repulsed by Western policies, who reconstitute themselves with religion and react violently to their conditions. That's why I am dubious about efforts in Afghanistan about nation-building. While they can ameliorate the local conditions, they don't address the heart of the problem.
And, finally, Glenn Beck says that Woodrow Wilson is America's most evil President. Reading Pat Buchanan's article, he might agree since Wilson started the whole American thrust toward democracy promotion and self-determination. But I gather Beck suggests that Wilson kicked off the whole "progressive" agenda to bring about socialism in our time. It's an interesting topic to consider--evil American Presidents. One of the nice things about the United States is that we really only have nincompoops, mediocrities, inadequate and sometimes corrupt Presidents. But do we get to evil?
For my generation, Richard Nixon ranks high on the ugly scale but can we even suggest this maudlin, insecure man, who actually had to rehearse walking like a President, was evil? Corrupt, cynical and Machivellian, sure. Did he commit evil acts? Yes. But he doesn't rank with Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and the others in the evil pantheon. He envied them. That's for sure.
Even W, whom I would rank as one of and maybe the worst President of the United States, given the extensive damage he did in every area of our life, just didn't have the heart to implement Dick Cheney's scheme for an all-powerful President. I think this accounts for why he was absent for the last two years of his Administration.
So Woodrow Wilson? Wilson was a racist and embarked on a domestic crackdown on strikers and dissenters, but he also tried to embrace a reform agenda. For years, Wilson ranked about 16 in the Siena College rankings of Presidents. He too was crippled for the last years of his Administration by strokes and illness. But Woodrow Wilson as evil? C'mon.
The tension is mounting here as the Psychic Octopus is one away from a perfect World Cup. Germany has won and we are only hours away from Netherlands versus Barcelona (let's be honest here). Does the Octopus win a fish prize?
Remember the Hutaree Militia out of Michigan? It seems one of their members was arrested yesterday for plotting to kill President Obama, during his trip to the Midwest.
Amitai Etzioni has a new proposal for small government conservatives. He proposes that the Department of Justice prepare legal opt-out forms where you can have your taxes decreased by 2/3rds if you agree not to partake of any government services, with the exception of the military. My objection is that Etzioni calculates the cost of the military wrong--it's 40% of discretionary spending. So you get a 60% reduction on your taxes instead.
Ezra Klein, policy wonk at the Washington Post, saved us $4 trillion on our national debt this past week. So instead of going on a roll, he decides to play the party pooper. You know all the hype about elections, the media coverage, the campaign expenditures and the like. Well, it doesn't matter. Ezra found some geeks who have played around with their computers and says the results of the elections within 2% error depends on the state of the economy and that specifically means how much money people feel they have in their pockets. Forget everything else. Of course, this year that's bad news for Democrats. If this catches on, it may be bad news for all the political hired hands.
The American Psychological Association wants Dr. James Mitchell stripped of his license for his participation in overseeing the 2002 torture of Abu Zubayah,who was thought to be the Number 3 of Al Qaeda. The APA warned members from participating in all programs that were considered torture during the last eight years. Since the proceedings are in Texas, it's anyone's guess about the result. For the record, classified documents have come out within the past month from the Government which indicate Abu Zubayah may not even had been a member of Al Qaeda, let alone number 3.
Richard Minter, writing in the Daily Beast, says that some of us who are making fun of the gonad bomber and the Times Square bomber are missing the point about Al Qaeda. Since the end of the Bush Administration and the first 18 months of the Obama Administration, Al Qaeda has suffered crippling blows to their middle-level managers and can not maintain the basic organizational ability to mount sophisticated operations anymore. They are stuck with buying local cell phones, which are easily followed by intelligence, and their front businesses and mechanisms for laundering money have been closed down through international cooperation. With the constant assassinations of their number 3s and other high-ranking operatives, they lack the experience of developing backup plans and fielding supportive manpower to cover the primary actors in any given action. They are in their third generation, which lacks the military experience and spycraft of the previous plotters.
But never fear, Ryan Mauro of the Christian Action Network posts a piece on David Horowitz' www.frontpagemagazine.com "Muslim Enclaves U.S.A." Building on Daniel Pipes' 2004 work documenting how Muslims are creating seperate enclaves based on sharia law in the United States, Mauro outlines several groups in the United States who are creating little Muslim enclaves in Baltimore and Philadelphia. He claims Muslims of America, a group Homeland Security links to the Pakistan terrorist group Jamaat Ul-Fugra, owns 22 villages sporting such names as "Islamberg", "Holy Islamville" and "Aliville". While interesting, the article neglects the threat of rampaging Mexican Muslims. Perhaps, that's in the follow-up piece. I thought the caliphate ended in Cordoba.
Following up on Hillary Clinton's defense in Poland of the struggling civil society around the world, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote a defense of democracy promotion, admitting the whole idea got a little abused during the Bush Administration with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But she argued that President Obama should speak on the subject more frequently.
Not having any of this, Pat Buchanan in "The Democracy Obsession" at www.amconmag.com says that the United States blew the opportunity to adopt a policy of non-intervention right after the Cold War. He then blames the superfluous foreign policy elites for conjuring up the intervention in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He accuses the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House of subverting regimes in Belgrade,Caracas, Kiev, Tbilisi, Beirut and Bishkek. He argues that democratic states don't make us any secure and are not our friends. He slams W for pushing democracy in the Middle East. Pointing out that pressuring Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine to have elections yielded us the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbullah and Hamas. He points to South Africa, Brazil, India and Turkey as prime examples of democracies going their own way--away from the United States. He points to both India and Brazil lining up with China to fight caps on carbon emissions and Turkey drifting toward Iran and Syria because of its reactions to Israeli actions.
Coming off his book on World War II, where he blames Churchill, he gets his digs in at the Brits again. He points out that the British sided with Mexico during the Mexican War and with the South in our Civil War. He points out that democratic governments such as Sweden and Ireland were neutral during WWII but that the Soviet Union and Chang Kai Shek sided with the U.S. He says that France denied Reagan airspace for his attack on Libya but that Salazar's Portugal gave Nixon the use of the Azores during the Yom Kippur War. He also has to throw in his plug for Pinochet in Chile.
With the fade of the Third Wave of Democratization, democracy advocates will have to answer Buchanan on the merits of his case and not slam him as an isolationist , anti-semite as we used to. America's engagement with the world will have to be re-thought and the advantages and limits of democracy promotion will have to be honestly addressed. My reservations these days are about the corporatization of democracy promotion programs. Those involved literally constitute multi-million dollar industries. Democracy promotion became institutionalized during the Clinton Administration when USAID committed billions to the effort, spurring the creation of democracy programs in every NGO known to man and then some. At the time, I was proud of my small role in pushing this development but sometimes it seems we neglected the other issues of development and we sold people on what democracy promotion really wasn't. Even during George W. Bush, democracy promotion was heralded as conflict resolution and as a tool of peace, not war. Today, major defense contractors reap the benefits of democracy funding, pulling down contracts of $50 million or more to implement just small segments of a democracy program. And under few cirumstances can the development of democracies in previously underdeveloped countries yield automatic allies in foreign policy.
What is ruinous to democracy promotion is its militarization and integration into war efforts. Take the slogan of democracy advocates, "Democracies don't start wars." We just got through an American administration which adopted a strategic policy of pre-emptive war. Or the idea during the W administration that democracies don't create terrorists. Throughout the 1970s, we had the alienated young in Western Europe create the Baader Mienhoff Brigade, the Red Brigade and in the United States the Weathermen. On the Left, there is the notion that it is poverty that creates the terrorism of the Middle East. But the profile of Al Qaeda and others are of upper-middle-class , college educated young people, disgusted at the discrepancy of wealth in their countries and repulsed by Western policies, who reconstitute themselves with religion and react violently to their conditions. That's why I am dubious about efforts in Afghanistan about nation-building. While they can ameliorate the local conditions, they don't address the heart of the problem.
And, finally, Glenn Beck says that Woodrow Wilson is America's most evil President. Reading Pat Buchanan's article, he might agree since Wilson started the whole American thrust toward democracy promotion and self-determination. But I gather Beck suggests that Wilson kicked off the whole "progressive" agenda to bring about socialism in our time. It's an interesting topic to consider--evil American Presidents. One of the nice things about the United States is that we really only have nincompoops, mediocrities, inadequate and sometimes corrupt Presidents. But do we get to evil?
For my generation, Richard Nixon ranks high on the ugly scale but can we even suggest this maudlin, insecure man, who actually had to rehearse walking like a President, was evil? Corrupt, cynical and Machivellian, sure. Did he commit evil acts? Yes. But he doesn't rank with Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and the others in the evil pantheon. He envied them. That's for sure.
Even W, whom I would rank as one of and maybe the worst President of the United States, given the extensive damage he did in every area of our life, just didn't have the heart to implement Dick Cheney's scheme for an all-powerful President. I think this accounts for why he was absent for the last two years of his Administration.
So Woodrow Wilson? Wilson was a racist and embarked on a domestic crackdown on strikers and dissenters, but he also tried to embrace a reform agenda. For years, Wilson ranked about 16 in the Siena College rankings of Presidents. He too was crippled for the last years of his Administration by strokes and illness. But Woodrow Wilson as evil? C'mon.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Octopus Picks and Headless Bodies
The Psychic Octopus has made its final picks for the World Cup. Germany will beat Uruguay and Spain wins the whole thing topping the Netherlands. Place your bets. The octopus has never been wrong the whole time. People are so incensed over the creature's predictions it has received death threats.
Speaking of death threats, Dana Milbank ought to be worried about his Washington Post column today joyfully entitled " Headless Bodies and other immigration tall tales from Arizona." Milbank eviscerates Governor Jan Brewer and the immigration hysterics. Besides the fact that everything said by supporters of the Arizona Law is wrong, I guess you just have to get into the mindset to accept such nonsense. General Boykin has. He's on Christian radio stations alerting the country to whole towns in Mexico converting to Islam and secret cells being infiltrated into the United States by smugglers of illegal immigrants. Since President Obama will do nothing about this, the Southern California Christian Militia is calling on fellow militia men to flood the border and in particular patrol the 80 mile stretch from the border to Tucson, which Fox News says Obama seceded to Mexico. This raises the important question,"What gun would Jesus use?"
Governor Brewer, who was chosen by God to be Governor of Arizona, says that law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded. Apparently Daniel Pearl was one of them. Tastless I admit. But apparently, the Arizona Guardian Website checked with medical examiners in all of Arizona's border counties and they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. Well, John McCain says that Phoenix has become the number 2 kidnapping capital in the world and after all he's a war hero. Apparently, that's not true either. Kidnapping reports are going down and almost every other city on planet Earth has a higher rate.
OK, the utter mayhem on the border has just rattled the Arizona politicians so they exaggerate a little bit. I mean the Arizona authorities simply had to take matters into their own hands because President Obama has allowed a porous border to be used by rampaging Mexican Muslims bent on creating death panels and forcing border towns to adopt sharia law. They're picking off law enforcement officers like flies. Well, that's not quite true either. Although less than 25% of deaths are linked to immigrants.
The Arizona Republic conducted a report based on the FBI and local police agencies and found that the crime rate in the border towns was ..well.. pretty much the same for the last decade. In 2000, for instance, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Arizona. After a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes. The Pima County sheriff forgot to get the memo. He says "the border has never been more secure." But Vietnam war hero and POW John McCain says the violence simply is the worst he has ever seen even during bombing raids over Vietnam. The horror is such his whole family are contemplating evacuating at least a dozen of their homes in the state.
The FBI statistics actually show that violent crime rates in all the border states are lower than they were a decade ago. President Obama claimed last week in a moment of delirium that "the southern border is more secure today that any time in the past 20 years." But as Bill O'Reilly said last night President Obama by suing Arizona is waging war of the people of America.
This is an outrage. Governor Brewer claims that the majority of people immigrating illegally "are coming here and they're bringing drugs, and they're doing drop houses and they're extorting people and they're terrorizing families." I guess even the Muslim Mexicans are afraid. It's so bad that the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector has apprehended more than 170,000 undocumented immigrants since October 1, but only about 1,100 drug prosecutions have been filed in the whole state of Arizona in that time. But Bill O'Reilly says that there are over 1,500 violent illegal immigrant felons in jail in Phoenix so I guess the Tucson Border Control missed this. Sarah Palin said that as President she would send as many National Guardsmen to the border as was needed for this national crisis. I'm sure they would be see this as relief from serving several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's so bad that these illegals are leeching across borders all the way to Georgia where one legislator claimed yesterday that illegals were costing the state $1 billion a year. Not since the Italians flooded our shores with anarchists has there even been such a crisis. And where is Eric Holder? Well, apparently in the fall, Homeland Security and the FBI busted up a ring of smugglers who were responsible for roughly 80,000 people coming across the border every year. Fox News apparently was busy that day.
Or maybe they were on to an even bigger story--the nation-wide conspiracy of the New Black Panther party to intimidate voters. Not since ACORN managed to put Obama into the White House has something so dastardly been plotted. And President Obama does nothing.
What's a White Boy to Do but Join a Rock and Roll Band. But this might support the secular, socialist government.
Speaking of death threats, Dana Milbank ought to be worried about his Washington Post column today joyfully entitled " Headless Bodies and other immigration tall tales from Arizona." Milbank eviscerates Governor Jan Brewer and the immigration hysterics. Besides the fact that everything said by supporters of the Arizona Law is wrong, I guess you just have to get into the mindset to accept such nonsense. General Boykin has. He's on Christian radio stations alerting the country to whole towns in Mexico converting to Islam and secret cells being infiltrated into the United States by smugglers of illegal immigrants. Since President Obama will do nothing about this, the Southern California Christian Militia is calling on fellow militia men to flood the border and in particular patrol the 80 mile stretch from the border to Tucson, which Fox News says Obama seceded to Mexico. This raises the important question,"What gun would Jesus use?"
Governor Brewer, who was chosen by God to be Governor of Arizona, says that law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded. Apparently Daniel Pearl was one of them. Tastless I admit. But apparently, the Arizona Guardian Website checked with medical examiners in all of Arizona's border counties and they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. Well, John McCain says that Phoenix has become the number 2 kidnapping capital in the world and after all he's a war hero. Apparently, that's not true either. Kidnapping reports are going down and almost every other city on planet Earth has a higher rate.
OK, the utter mayhem on the border has just rattled the Arizona politicians so they exaggerate a little bit. I mean the Arizona authorities simply had to take matters into their own hands because President Obama has allowed a porous border to be used by rampaging Mexican Muslims bent on creating death panels and forcing border towns to adopt sharia law. They're picking off law enforcement officers like flies. Well, that's not quite true either. Although less than 25% of deaths are linked to immigrants.
The Arizona Republic conducted a report based on the FBI and local police agencies and found that the crime rate in the border towns was ..well.. pretty much the same for the last decade. In 2000, for instance, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Arizona. After a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes. The Pima County sheriff forgot to get the memo. He says "the border has never been more secure." But Vietnam war hero and POW John McCain says the violence simply is the worst he has ever seen even during bombing raids over Vietnam. The horror is such his whole family are contemplating evacuating at least a dozen of their homes in the state.
The FBI statistics actually show that violent crime rates in all the border states are lower than they were a decade ago. President Obama claimed last week in a moment of delirium that "the southern border is more secure today that any time in the past 20 years." But as Bill O'Reilly said last night President Obama by suing Arizona is waging war of the people of America.
This is an outrage. Governor Brewer claims that the majority of people immigrating illegally "are coming here and they're bringing drugs, and they're doing drop houses and they're extorting people and they're terrorizing families." I guess even the Muslim Mexicans are afraid. It's so bad that the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector has apprehended more than 170,000 undocumented immigrants since October 1, but only about 1,100 drug prosecutions have been filed in the whole state of Arizona in that time. But Bill O'Reilly says that there are over 1,500 violent illegal immigrant felons in jail in Phoenix so I guess the Tucson Border Control missed this. Sarah Palin said that as President she would send as many National Guardsmen to the border as was needed for this national crisis. I'm sure they would be see this as relief from serving several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's so bad that these illegals are leeching across borders all the way to Georgia where one legislator claimed yesterday that illegals were costing the state $1 billion a year. Not since the Italians flooded our shores with anarchists has there even been such a crisis. And where is Eric Holder? Well, apparently in the fall, Homeland Security and the FBI busted up a ring of smugglers who were responsible for roughly 80,000 people coming across the border every year. Fox News apparently was busy that day.
Or maybe they were on to an even bigger story--the nation-wide conspiracy of the New Black Panther party to intimidate voters. Not since ACORN managed to put Obama into the White House has something so dastardly been plotted. And President Obama does nothing.
What's a White Boy to Do but Join a Rock and Roll Band. But this might support the secular, socialist government.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Afternoon Doldrums at the Last Manatee
National Debt and Deficit. Two separate things. Ezra Klein writes this week that if you allow the Bush tax cuts to lapse you pick up $4 trillion. With Barney Frank and Ron Paul proposal to cut military spending $1 trillion. With the McColm end the cap for Social Security, you runs surpluses through the next century. The CBO reports that with PayGo rules, Healthreform and other measures adopted the national debt is very managable through 2057 and even beyond. With the Cat Food Commission as the Debt Commission is affectionately called, there should be other solutions. So, no problem. The Chinese will not suddenly dump U.S. treasuries as the Republicans have claimed.
BP Oil spill. The $70 million liability cap is moot. BP has already paid out $130 million in claims. BP will go bankrupt to avoid responsibility. This is a line I've heard from conservatives and some oil people in Texas. Not true, what they put into the escrow fund is roughly the eqwuiavlent to about one quarter of their profits. What if that doesn't cover it? They have already told the Obama Administration they are prepared to even put more money into the Escrow Fund if the need arises. Keith Olbermann reported that you had to file your claims 60 days after the disaster or else you don't qualified. The Special Master for the Government says that doesn't apply and the law would have to acknowledge that the end of the disaster hasn't happened. In any case, since he's handling the claims now, he says he will ignore it. Are there problems in adjudicating claims. You bet. Some of the fisherman have cash businesses but the Special Master says he still wants records or witnesses to document one's claims. Do the funds include the whole Gulf? Yes. Anyway, it's estimated that on individual claims there will be about 3 years in whcih claims can be made. Claims from states and the federal government come from the Escrow Fund. If you wanted a slush fund as conservaties claim, you would not want the Special Master, who handled the 9-11 claims, as the boss of it.
Dick Lugar, Nixon's favorite Mayor and one of the last sane Republicans, blasted Mitt Romney's op-ed in the Washington Post against the New Start Treaty. He claims that Romney not only misconstrued articles of the treaty but even--surprise--made things up. The treaty is already supported by George Schultz, Jim Baker and Henry Kissinger on the Republican side, but Senate Republicans are still trying to kill it. This is part of the Make Barack Obama Jimmy Carter strategy.
Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast reminded Democrats that Barack Obama has already achieved more than Carter and Clinton combined and that, despite the right-wing noise machine, the country is moving with Obama's programs more to the Left.
American corporations now have more than $2 trillion in the bank ready to invest. The number has doubled in over a year. So why aren't they investing in jobs. One issue has to do with the change in the nature of American corporations. Like Thomas Alva Edison's General Electric, they have diversified into insurance and finance and do not produce things like they used to. Another factor is that they have become more efficient and less labor intensive thereby not needing the amount of workers they once did. But, from a political point of view, they complain that Wall Street reform has created an uncertainty for them and their concern about the deficit is that their taxes will increase, although they haven't to date. And as I've pointed out frequently only about 26% of American corporations pay any taxes whsoever.
American Exceptionalism--AEI now claims that another element of our nation's exceptional nature is the free-market system. In other words, we are like a Hong Kong created by God.
Tom Tancredo not only see John Boehner's America being destroyed by Barack Obama. He says that the America created by our Founding Fathers is at risk. Barack Obama is a greater than to America than Al Qaeda.
Bill Engels, the leading internet Christian missionary, has blasted Glenn Beck for claiming he's a Christian. He wants you to know that Mormonism is a cult, which says that Elohim, their God, had sex with Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, who is a brother to Lucifer. He didn't mention that Jesus is supposed to return to St. Louis. But he's just tired of Beck and those of his faioth who support him.
In Australia, the Agape Ministries is being sued by two of its parishioners for about $1.4 million because their end time predictions didn't come true. I think this is reasonable. I think American fundamentalists should keep this in mind if they don't experience Rapture in 2012.
The Log Cabin Republicans, with their new board member Grover Norquist,is suing the Obama Administration to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. So I guess they have no Log Cabin types in Montana where the Republican party adopted the platform to make homosexual acts illegal.
The Gay made headway in the Federal Court ruling making parts of the DOMA act unconstitutional. Judge Truro said that it violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Either tonight or next week expect Judge Vaughn Walker to rule on the Prop 8 case. I expect after that ruling heads will explode and the theopoliticians will rant and rave.
President Obama made Harry Reid seem interesting in his campaign stop in Las Vegas. He did go after Susan Angle and her bizarre beliefs about social security, Medicare and education. But he did't mention Angle on the issue of abortion. Asked by a radio host about abortion in the case of a father raping a daughter, she replied that young women often can "take a lemon situation and make lemonade." To which, one leftwing blogger posted Richard Nixon saying "Sometimes abortion is necessary, especially when the situation is black and white". If reid as interesting is strange, Richard Nixon being upheld as a "progressive President" is even stranger.
The West Virginia Attorney-General has ruled that there can be a special election for Senator to replace Harry Byrd. In the meantime, the Governor will appoint a substitute.
I have to stop watching Rachel Maddow on Afghanistan. I find she is having the reverse effect one me. I keep thinking aganst my better judgment that the Obama strategy is doable.
The great Bibi insists that he wants to start direct negotiations with the Palestinians now and that he is capable of making serious concessions. While he was here in town, making nice with President Obama, in Israel the settler organizations have vowed to topple his government if he made any concessions to the Palestinians on the settlement issue. Israeli extreme rightists have been trying to get a law blocking any such initiatives by the executive.
Hillary Clinton seemed to morph her inner John McCain while in Georgia. I expected her to say we are all "South Ossetians" now. If McCain were President, we would be at war with Russia over the disputed areas of Georgia.
It looks like the Grifter in Chief, the Lady Ga-Ga of Alaska, managed to muscle her son-in-law Levi into zipping his lips in return for custody rights to Bristol's child. Levi apologized to the Palins in People Magazine. His sister has gone on the offensive expressing her disappointment in her brother. I guess no Tell-All book from Levi as promised.
Newt Gingrich said part of American exceptionalism is that we are the arsenal of democracy. What was called the "Arsenal of Nazi Germany"? This answer will be explained in a further post. The answer to this trivia question is Detroit, Michigan.
BP Oil spill. The $70 million liability cap is moot. BP has already paid out $130 million in claims. BP will go bankrupt to avoid responsibility. This is a line I've heard from conservatives and some oil people in Texas. Not true, what they put into the escrow fund is roughly the eqwuiavlent to about one quarter of their profits. What if that doesn't cover it? They have already told the Obama Administration they are prepared to even put more money into the Escrow Fund if the need arises. Keith Olbermann reported that you had to file your claims 60 days after the disaster or else you don't qualified. The Special Master for the Government says that doesn't apply and the law would have to acknowledge that the end of the disaster hasn't happened. In any case, since he's handling the claims now, he says he will ignore it. Are there problems in adjudicating claims. You bet. Some of the fisherman have cash businesses but the Special Master says he still wants records or witnesses to document one's claims. Do the funds include the whole Gulf? Yes. Anyway, it's estimated that on individual claims there will be about 3 years in whcih claims can be made. Claims from states and the federal government come from the Escrow Fund. If you wanted a slush fund as conservaties claim, you would not want the Special Master, who handled the 9-11 claims, as the boss of it.
Dick Lugar, Nixon's favorite Mayor and one of the last sane Republicans, blasted Mitt Romney's op-ed in the Washington Post against the New Start Treaty. He claims that Romney not only misconstrued articles of the treaty but even--surprise--made things up. The treaty is already supported by George Schultz, Jim Baker and Henry Kissinger on the Republican side, but Senate Republicans are still trying to kill it. This is part of the Make Barack Obama Jimmy Carter strategy.
Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast reminded Democrats that Barack Obama has already achieved more than Carter and Clinton combined and that, despite the right-wing noise machine, the country is moving with Obama's programs more to the Left.
American corporations now have more than $2 trillion in the bank ready to invest. The number has doubled in over a year. So why aren't they investing in jobs. One issue has to do with the change in the nature of American corporations. Like Thomas Alva Edison's General Electric, they have diversified into insurance and finance and do not produce things like they used to. Another factor is that they have become more efficient and less labor intensive thereby not needing the amount of workers they once did. But, from a political point of view, they complain that Wall Street reform has created an uncertainty for them and their concern about the deficit is that their taxes will increase, although they haven't to date. And as I've pointed out frequently only about 26% of American corporations pay any taxes whsoever.
American Exceptionalism--AEI now claims that another element of our nation's exceptional nature is the free-market system. In other words, we are like a Hong Kong created by God.
Tom Tancredo not only see John Boehner's America being destroyed by Barack Obama. He says that the America created by our Founding Fathers is at risk. Barack Obama is a greater than to America than Al Qaeda.
Bill Engels, the leading internet Christian missionary, has blasted Glenn Beck for claiming he's a Christian. He wants you to know that Mormonism is a cult, which says that Elohim, their God, had sex with Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, who is a brother to Lucifer. He didn't mention that Jesus is supposed to return to St. Louis. But he's just tired of Beck and those of his faioth who support him.
In Australia, the Agape Ministries is being sued by two of its parishioners for about $1.4 million because their end time predictions didn't come true. I think this is reasonable. I think American fundamentalists should keep this in mind if they don't experience Rapture in 2012.
The Log Cabin Republicans, with their new board member Grover Norquist,is suing the Obama Administration to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. So I guess they have no Log Cabin types in Montana where the Republican party adopted the platform to make homosexual acts illegal.
The Gay made headway in the Federal Court ruling making parts of the DOMA act unconstitutional. Judge Truro said that it violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Either tonight or next week expect Judge Vaughn Walker to rule on the Prop 8 case. I expect after that ruling heads will explode and the theopoliticians will rant and rave.
President Obama made Harry Reid seem interesting in his campaign stop in Las Vegas. He did go after Susan Angle and her bizarre beliefs about social security, Medicare and education. But he did't mention Angle on the issue of abortion. Asked by a radio host about abortion in the case of a father raping a daughter, she replied that young women often can "take a lemon situation and make lemonade." To which, one leftwing blogger posted Richard Nixon saying "Sometimes abortion is necessary, especially when the situation is black and white". If reid as interesting is strange, Richard Nixon being upheld as a "progressive President" is even stranger.
The West Virginia Attorney-General has ruled that there can be a special election for Senator to replace Harry Byrd. In the meantime, the Governor will appoint a substitute.
I have to stop watching Rachel Maddow on Afghanistan. I find she is having the reverse effect one me. I keep thinking aganst my better judgment that the Obama strategy is doable.
The great Bibi insists that he wants to start direct negotiations with the Palestinians now and that he is capable of making serious concessions. While he was here in town, making nice with President Obama, in Israel the settler organizations have vowed to topple his government if he made any concessions to the Palestinians on the settlement issue. Israeli extreme rightists have been trying to get a law blocking any such initiatives by the executive.
Hillary Clinton seemed to morph her inner John McCain while in Georgia. I expected her to say we are all "South Ossetians" now. If McCain were President, we would be at war with Russia over the disputed areas of Georgia.
It looks like the Grifter in Chief, the Lady Ga-Ga of Alaska, managed to muscle her son-in-law Levi into zipping his lips in return for custody rights to Bristol's child. Levi apologized to the Palins in People Magazine. His sister has gone on the offensive expressing her disappointment in her brother. I guess no Tell-All book from Levi as promised.
Newt Gingrich said part of American exceptionalism is that we are the arsenal of democracy. What was called the "Arsenal of Nazi Germany"? This answer will be explained in a further post. The answer to this trivia question is Detroit, Michigan.
The Imperfect Constitution
David Barton, Christian revisionist "pseudo-historian", tells us that separation of church and state is a myth and that the Founding Fathers wanted the government to co-govern with Christianity. A few dozen states want to draft legislation depriving children born in this country from immigrant parents of citizenship, even though it's a constitutional right. Bobby Jindal signs a "nullifation act" prohibiting mandatory health insurance. The Virginia Attorney-General issues orders that gays rights are not protected. The Supreme Court of the United States rules that corporations have rights and can donate endless amounts of money to election campaigns.
And I received this morning an e-mail from conservatives who say that my Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is due to end with Barack Obama.
So what do Americans really believe about the constitution since we have been treated to claims and counter-claims over the past 18 months? Penn Schoen Berland conducted a poll for the Aspen Insitute of over 1,000 Americans on the issue of the Constitution. The poll finds that Americans are quite content with the Constitution but want more direct power both in terms of electing Supreme Court justices and ending the electoral college to elect the President.
And I received this morning an e-mail from conservatives who say that my Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is due to end with Barack Obama.
So what do Americans really believe about the constitution since we have been treated to claims and counter-claims over the past 18 months? Penn Schoen Berland conducted a poll for the Aspen Insitute of over 1,000 Americans on the issue of the Constitution. The poll finds that Americans are quite content with the Constitution but want more direct power both in terms of electing Supreme Court justices and ending the electoral college to elect the President.
By 64 to 19 Americans endorse the Constitution's systems of checks and balances as necessary to prevent one branch from dominating the government. Freedom of Speech was seen as far and away the most important right guaranteed by the Consiitution and only 28% think the press has too much freedom. 61 to 10 believe the Constitution should safeguard even more rights. Majorities support gaurantees of geneder equality, the right to privacy, the right to own property and the right to an education. 55% support the right of equality regardless of sexual orientation, while 47% believe the right to healthcare should be constitutionally protected as well.
Mark Penn claims that the most contentious issue over the Constitution is about how to interpret it. Republicans support a literal intepretation while Democrats a more living interpretation consistent wth the times, while independents are split in the middle. Upper-income Americans believe the Constitution protects all Americans equally and lower-income Americans are not so sure of that.
51 to 41% rejects giving corporations the same rights as citizens. 44 to 39% rank protecting national security over civil liberties. 56% can see circumstances in which police should be allowed to violate civil liberties for national security--in this case torture althugh worded as "exceptional measures" to extract information.
71% are dissatisfied with the way the federal government operates today, believing the fauklt in too much partisanship. 68% believe the system today is operating worse than was intended by the framers of the Constitution.
On fixing the system. 69% call for a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices and 66% favor term limits for Congress. Most worrisome, 51-34% favor popular election of Supreme Court Justices. 74% want to abolish the Electoral College and have a direct popular vote for President. And by a 49-41% margin, the public favors holding national referenda for constitutional amendments. 49% favor full representation in Congress for the District of Columbia.
So by and large, the American public favors more individual rights, including education and health, and want to tinker around the edges. However,they defer on issues of national security. So Mark Penn and associates tended to find that the American people were not the lunatics some hope they are. But stay tuned.
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