Some 68% of Americans believe this. Even liberals have criticized the anonymous bloggers who created the website highlighting this rumor, which they themselves created. I think it's a great piece of conceptual art, complete with an arrest record of a Glenn Beck in Durham, North Carolina and a great graphic poll on the subject. The whole stunt is a great example of how viral factoids get circulated. Why hasn't he responded? What's he trying to hide? This is a great sendup of the birthers and all the paranoid fantasists out there.
Speaking of Glenn Beck--Keith Olbermann of Countdown fame had two days running of having laughs at Beck's analysis of the artwork at Rockefeller Center. But Keith dropped the ball. No, the Roman charioteer is not Mussolini. And No! progressives did not support Mussolini. The right-wing insanity of equating fascism with the Left began with Jonah Goldberg's idiotic book on Liberal Fascism. Every serious scholar in the United States, Britain and Europe locates fascism as clearly a right-wing phenomenon. There is no argument over this. If these clowns argue this, then why did the Left fight Franco?
Another great internet rumor are those surrounding Lou Dobbs. Did Lou Dobbs' father kill Leon Trotsky? The argumentation is actually a lot of fun. Keep it up, guys
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Gonzo America--The Crazy, the Demented and the True
It's been a busy week as the incoming has been hot and heavy. The birthers or Orly Taitz or Oilie Taint acting as attorney had their case thrown out by a District Court because Orly never signed the papers. A woman medic in this brief likened President Obama to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Francois Duvalier and was seeking to apply for conscientious objection because Obama has not shown his birth certificate.
The Tenthers-- the new Tenth Amendment movement--is trying to change the Georgia state constitution to prevent health care reform. Tenthers claim that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional--something real constitution scholars deny. I would like them to succeed in their effort so when healthcare reform passes, they'll find their effort will have literally no effect--nada, zippo, the big goose egg.
Gover Rick Parry of the Republic of Texas resents President Obama planning to address the nation's school children on the first day of school. He insists that Obama should have talked to school principals about what he's going to say. The problem,Gov. Rick, is that President Obama points in the speech are already on the Department of Education website and a letter already went out to all schools. Stay informed! Stay Classy! The Florida Republican Party has denounced the speech as Obama's effort to indoctrinate children with socialism. South Carolina and Georgia are making it optional for students to attend school because of parental protests. Even here in Virginia, Loudon County with the wealthiest of Republicans will forgo the President's speech. Christians have petitioned some counties in California and in Colorado to prohibit the broadcast of the President speech.
So let's get this straight. The President, who has been a constitutional law professor and graduated law school magna cum laude, would be a bad role model for children. Having heard him on education before, he comes off like a nerdy guy emphasizing all the usual bromides of attend school, study hard, do your homework and eat healthy foods and get your sleep. The very stuff of socialist utopias. All the criticism and censorship of the speech will only make it more attractive for kids. Somehow all the protesters forget the speech will be on C-Span, WhiteHouse. gov and Youtube in case the children want to disobey their parents.
The question really is why the media actually give these morons any publicity. If anything, most of these characters protesting the President of the United States talking to the nation's students should be declared unfit parents. The head of the Florida Republican Party in his television appearances implies that he prohibits his children from ever watching the President. In my ancient youth, all parents encouraged children to listen to the President, whether they voted for him or not, because it was all a part of civics.
Levi Johnston, the once future son-in-law of Sarah Palin, has brought high entertainment back to politics this past week. Levi claims that Sarah was not the best homemaker, didn't know how to shoot a gun even though she kept one under the bed, tired of the Government's job because it was "too hard" and just wanted to make money. Levi hopes to be a male model and pose for all the gays reading Playgirl. Meanwhile, Sarah is in an undisclosed location, occasionally phoning into her family. She is"writing her memoir" and has been asking her dad about how many points she scored in basketball,when they went to the Boston Marathon and other exciting sports-related questions.
Republicans are scouting around for future Presidential candidates. Among them are General Petraeus, whom no one will remember, especially after we leave Iraq in ruins. Another is Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe fame. And another still--a favorite of the base and gays is Rick Santorum. As we all remember, Dan Savage of America's greatest sex advice column "Savage Love" had a contest about what sexual reference should be "Santorum". The winner was the bodily fluids excreted after Anal Sex. This has immortalized Rick Santorum to millions of Americans.
The Left is going bonkers over every statement or cryptic reference coming from the White House and Democratic leaders concerning whether the 'public option" is in or out of the healthcare proposals. As of this Friday before Labor Day, it's still in, although people are afraid that President Obama is negotiating a "trigger" option with Senator Olympia Snowe.
During the past week, our ace media have missed several pro-health reform rallies where thousands have gathered in support of the President's plan. Instead, the big story was a healthcare opponent having his finger beaten off by a pro-healthcare supporter. We were even treated to the drops of blood on the sidewalk.
The press continued their superb coverage by criticising the President for going on a second vacation to Camp David. OK, now President Bush spent a total of 3 full years at his ranch without a great deal of criticism. President Obama's vacation on Martha's Vineyard was something less than relaxing. He re-annouced the appointment of Ben Bernacke to the Fed, wrote and gave a statement on Senator Kennedy's death, flew to see the Kennedy family and gave a eulogy. The networks even got around to criticising him for not sticking around for the family-only funeral.
The radical Right Christian communities have topped themselves by coming out against healthcare reform. I understand one could have criticisms but a church coming out against the whole thing. Amazing. The Archdiocese of St Louis gave the reactionary Catholic voice by saying the Church does not endorse socialized medicine. One really has to get in the weeds to find anything remotely socialist in anything being proposed. It is incredibly disconcerting for religious organizations to come out against health coverage for the poor and uninsured. To put it mildly, it's theologically disturbing. A great Pastor in Tempe, Arizona, which must breed more nuts per acres than anywhere in the U.S., called for Obama to die and go to Hell. Not for anything he did, mind you; it's because the Pastor admits he hates him--something that strikes me as anti-Christian.
The great lover and fundamentalist Governor of South Carolina Sanford is being pressed to resign by the state's GOP. The Lt.Governor Andre Bauer has offered to sit for the remaining term and promised not to run for election. It appears that some of the Governor evangelical friends soon circulated rumors that the gay community has confirmed that Mr. Bauer has had gay affairs. Local evangelicals, who support his very heavy family values approach and his leadership in getting a variety of Christian slogans on license plates, had an amazing response. "Just because he had sex with men doesn't mean he's gay." "It was probably some sort of mistake." Wow!
The Head of the Board of Education selected by loverboy Sanford has been upholding family values. She home-schools her children and has introduced a consevative curriculum in the school system. At night she likes to play on line suggesting she would really like to be in a threesome and looks forward to some girl-girl action. She even dabbles in writing erotica and likes to show up at political functions and show off her sheer underwear. That might make the South rise again.
Lawrence O'Donnell, who has been ably defending Democratic views on MSNBC, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and claimed that President Obama was desparate on the health care issue and was pessimistic about it passing. It was an unusual statement in a week of unusual events. Strip away all the noise and polling on healthcare reform remains fairly consistent when people are asked about the particulars of the plan. My gut tells me something substantial will be passed.
Margaret and Helen, America's oldest bloggers, have been unkind on the subject of Republican criticisms of the health care reform. In their eighties, they promise everyone they'll live as long as they want and will spend the grandchildren's inheritance doing so. The ladies warn Americans about congress types who claim God speaks to them. They particularly aim their arrows at Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who loves to boast she is the most hated Republican woman in America--after Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachman urged her supporters to slit their wrists this week and create a blood bond to prevent healthcare reform from passing. She also promised that even though Democrats want to elect the first woman President, God will decide on a Republican. Pretty strong stuff. Margaret and Helen dished about the lack of education of some of the Republican luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, both of whom dropped out of college. They did say at least Palin got her degree after six years and five colleges later.
And speaking of Glenn Beck--he continues to infuriate me because of his colossal ignorance. The other night he decided to "decode the architecture of Rockefeller Center" as an allegory of progressive-fascist-communist conspiracies somehow linked to the Rockefeller Family and --ergo--Obama (?) The history of art in Rockefeller Center is well-documented with such pyrotechnics as Diego Rivera creating a fresco with Lenin and a lampoon of Rockefeller as part of a pay dispute. This is so well-known you have to be truly ignorant to make up your own history without any reference to it.
Advertisers continue to flee Glenn Beck, which only fuels his self-aggrandizement as the sole purveyor of truth. In Washington, we look forward to the grand finale of his 9-12 project, which somehow believes the United States was created during the Revolution and then time-travelled to 9-11, which in Beck's perverse world we became as One--sort of like a post-modern Woodstock built on tragedy. And the fine country that existed then is being taken away from us by the fiendish black man Barack Obama. The 9-12 project is to conclude with the gathering of the tea-baggers, who I guess will wait the Rapture. On the 13th then, we are to see the March on Washington of all those for healthcare reform.
This non-stop insanity since September shows no let-up. Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers, Gun nuts and the Ayran Christs make a very dangerous brew. Dan Savage was quite correct that these people want the President dead--no iffs, no ands or buts. You would have to go back to the tail-end of the Eisenhower era, when the extreme right emerged to accuse Ike and his cabinet, which included General Marshall, of being fellow travellers and Comsymps. When JFK was elected, this underbelly of our society put the train in motion that fueled the assasinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, even though the assassins themselves had a variety of politics. They legitimized violence as a way to settle disputes in our democracy. The same is going on today. What is striking is that there are no mature adults emerging on the Right to neutralize this. Instead we have Senator Jim Inhofe claiming "all our institutions are under attack today. And the President is thinking about letting terrorists free in our country" And you can make your own list of elected officials that re-iterate this nonsense ad nauseum.
I'm tempted to give it rest myself. These people are so certifiable, it is anxiety provoking just to follow their rantings. In the next posts, I'll talk about some good books that have been printed--some even by socialists.
The Tenthers-- the new Tenth Amendment movement--is trying to change the Georgia state constitution to prevent health care reform. Tenthers claim that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional--something real constitution scholars deny. I would like them to succeed in their effort so when healthcare reform passes, they'll find their effort will have literally no effect--nada, zippo, the big goose egg.
Gover Rick Parry of the Republic of Texas resents President Obama planning to address the nation's school children on the first day of school. He insists that Obama should have talked to school principals about what he's going to say. The problem,Gov. Rick, is that President Obama points in the speech are already on the Department of Education website and a letter already went out to all schools. Stay informed! Stay Classy! The Florida Republican Party has denounced the speech as Obama's effort to indoctrinate children with socialism. South Carolina and Georgia are making it optional for students to attend school because of parental protests. Even here in Virginia, Loudon County with the wealthiest of Republicans will forgo the President's speech. Christians have petitioned some counties in California and in Colorado to prohibit the broadcast of the President speech.
So let's get this straight. The President, who has been a constitutional law professor and graduated law school magna cum laude, would be a bad role model for children. Having heard him on education before, he comes off like a nerdy guy emphasizing all the usual bromides of attend school, study hard, do your homework and eat healthy foods and get your sleep. The very stuff of socialist utopias. All the criticism and censorship of the speech will only make it more attractive for kids. Somehow all the protesters forget the speech will be on C-Span, WhiteHouse. gov and Youtube in case the children want to disobey their parents.
The question really is why the media actually give these morons any publicity. If anything, most of these characters protesting the President of the United States talking to the nation's students should be declared unfit parents. The head of the Florida Republican Party in his television appearances implies that he prohibits his children from ever watching the President. In my ancient youth, all parents encouraged children to listen to the President, whether they voted for him or not, because it was all a part of civics.
Levi Johnston, the once future son-in-law of Sarah Palin, has brought high entertainment back to politics this past week. Levi claims that Sarah was not the best homemaker, didn't know how to shoot a gun even though she kept one under the bed, tired of the Government's job because it was "too hard" and just wanted to make money. Levi hopes to be a male model and pose for all the gays reading Playgirl. Meanwhile, Sarah is in an undisclosed location, occasionally phoning into her family. She is"writing her memoir" and has been asking her dad about how many points she scored in basketball,when they went to the Boston Marathon and other exciting sports-related questions.
Republicans are scouting around for future Presidential candidates. Among them are General Petraeus, whom no one will remember, especially after we leave Iraq in ruins. Another is Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe fame. And another still--a favorite of the base and gays is Rick Santorum. As we all remember, Dan Savage of America's greatest sex advice column "Savage Love" had a contest about what sexual reference should be "Santorum". The winner was the bodily fluids excreted after Anal Sex. This has immortalized Rick Santorum to millions of Americans.
The Left is going bonkers over every statement or cryptic reference coming from the White House and Democratic leaders concerning whether the 'public option" is in or out of the healthcare proposals. As of this Friday before Labor Day, it's still in, although people are afraid that President Obama is negotiating a "trigger" option with Senator Olympia Snowe.
During the past week, our ace media have missed several pro-health reform rallies where thousands have gathered in support of the President's plan. Instead, the big story was a healthcare opponent having his finger beaten off by a pro-healthcare supporter. We were even treated to the drops of blood on the sidewalk.
The press continued their superb coverage by criticising the President for going on a second vacation to Camp David. OK, now President Bush spent a total of 3 full years at his ranch without a great deal of criticism. President Obama's vacation on Martha's Vineyard was something less than relaxing. He re-annouced the appointment of Ben Bernacke to the Fed, wrote and gave a statement on Senator Kennedy's death, flew to see the Kennedy family and gave a eulogy. The networks even got around to criticising him for not sticking around for the family-only funeral.
The radical Right Christian communities have topped themselves by coming out against healthcare reform. I understand one could have criticisms but a church coming out against the whole thing. Amazing. The Archdiocese of St Louis gave the reactionary Catholic voice by saying the Church does not endorse socialized medicine. One really has to get in the weeds to find anything remotely socialist in anything being proposed. It is incredibly disconcerting for religious organizations to come out against health coverage for the poor and uninsured. To put it mildly, it's theologically disturbing. A great Pastor in Tempe, Arizona, which must breed more nuts per acres than anywhere in the U.S., called for Obama to die and go to Hell. Not for anything he did, mind you; it's because the Pastor admits he hates him--something that strikes me as anti-Christian.
The great lover and fundamentalist Governor of South Carolina Sanford is being pressed to resign by the state's GOP. The Lt.Governor Andre Bauer has offered to sit for the remaining term and promised not to run for election. It appears that some of the Governor evangelical friends soon circulated rumors that the gay community has confirmed that Mr. Bauer has had gay affairs. Local evangelicals, who support his very heavy family values approach and his leadership in getting a variety of Christian slogans on license plates, had an amazing response. "Just because he had sex with men doesn't mean he's gay." "It was probably some sort of mistake." Wow!
The Head of the Board of Education selected by loverboy Sanford has been upholding family values. She home-schools her children and has introduced a consevative curriculum in the school system. At night she likes to play on line suggesting she would really like to be in a threesome and looks forward to some girl-girl action. She even dabbles in writing erotica and likes to show up at political functions and show off her sheer underwear. That might make the South rise again.
Lawrence O'Donnell, who has been ably defending Democratic views on MSNBC, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and claimed that President Obama was desparate on the health care issue and was pessimistic about it passing. It was an unusual statement in a week of unusual events. Strip away all the noise and polling on healthcare reform remains fairly consistent when people are asked about the particulars of the plan. My gut tells me something substantial will be passed.
Margaret and Helen, America's oldest bloggers, have been unkind on the subject of Republican criticisms of the health care reform. In their eighties, they promise everyone they'll live as long as they want and will spend the grandchildren's inheritance doing so. The ladies warn Americans about congress types who claim God speaks to them. They particularly aim their arrows at Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who loves to boast she is the most hated Republican woman in America--after Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachman urged her supporters to slit their wrists this week and create a blood bond to prevent healthcare reform from passing. She also promised that even though Democrats want to elect the first woman President, God will decide on a Republican. Pretty strong stuff. Margaret and Helen dished about the lack of education of some of the Republican luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, both of whom dropped out of college. They did say at least Palin got her degree after six years and five colleges later.
And speaking of Glenn Beck--he continues to infuriate me because of his colossal ignorance. The other night he decided to "decode the architecture of Rockefeller Center" as an allegory of progressive-fascist-communist conspiracies somehow linked to the Rockefeller Family and --ergo--Obama (?) The history of art in Rockefeller Center is well-documented with such pyrotechnics as Diego Rivera creating a fresco with Lenin and a lampoon of Rockefeller as part of a pay dispute. This is so well-known you have to be truly ignorant to make up your own history without any reference to it.
Advertisers continue to flee Glenn Beck, which only fuels his self-aggrandizement as the sole purveyor of truth. In Washington, we look forward to the grand finale of his 9-12 project, which somehow believes the United States was created during the Revolution and then time-travelled to 9-11, which in Beck's perverse world we became as One--sort of like a post-modern Woodstock built on tragedy. And the fine country that existed then is being taken away from us by the fiendish black man Barack Obama. The 9-12 project is to conclude with the gathering of the tea-baggers, who I guess will wait the Rapture. On the 13th then, we are to see the March on Washington of all those for healthcare reform.
This non-stop insanity since September shows no let-up. Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers, Gun nuts and the Ayran Christs make a very dangerous brew. Dan Savage was quite correct that these people want the President dead--no iffs, no ands or buts. You would have to go back to the tail-end of the Eisenhower era, when the extreme right emerged to accuse Ike and his cabinet, which included General Marshall, of being fellow travellers and Comsymps. When JFK was elected, this underbelly of our society put the train in motion that fueled the assasinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, even though the assassins themselves had a variety of politics. They legitimized violence as a way to settle disputes in our democracy. The same is going on today. What is striking is that there are no mature adults emerging on the Right to neutralize this. Instead we have Senator Jim Inhofe claiming "all our institutions are under attack today. And the President is thinking about letting terrorists free in our country" And you can make your own list of elected officials that re-iterate this nonsense ad nauseum.
I'm tempted to give it rest myself. These people are so certifiable, it is anxiety provoking just to follow their rantings. In the next posts, I'll talk about some good books that have been printed--some even by socialists.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Health Care You Die; Torture Good
A week away across the midwest to Ohio. It was the first time I've watched television for a year and came away with that feeling one used to get in the sixties when ads were aimed at making you neurotic and anxious about your Bad Breath and Body Odor. Now one is assaulted with medicines for ailments I never heard of. From incontinence, female heart disease, erectile dysfuntion, and ringing in your ears. I thought 50 was the new 30 but you would never know from watching mid-50 year olds suffering from prostate and strange bladder diseases. You would think my generation is reaching crepitude at a blistering pace. And maybe we are.
The good news if this is our condition is that the Republicans tell us we are all going to die. not from Al Qaeda or jihadis, but from Obama's healthcare plan. Michael Steele reversed historical GOP position against medicare and issued a Bill of Health Rights for Seniors, which will preserve Medicare coverage and prevent the Democrats from summarily executing senior citizens through Death Panels. The GOP is warning fellow party members that the Democrats will be using party registration to deny Republicans healthcare. So it's best if everyone registers as an independent just in case. If you are a veteran, you're going to die because of the Democrats' Death Book, which advises serious ill veterans about their end of life options. And in case, you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. In fact, it's all going to be run like the DMV--which is actually run at a state level. If a public option is chosen, millions of Americans will lose their private health insurance and they too will die. Even John McCain argues that a public option will destroy the private health insurance industry. And the beat goes on. Real Republican members of Congress are saying on the floor that health care reform is going to kill people. There are actual members of Congress, not the public, who believe Government will intervene in Medicare--at the last notice this was a government-run program.
The birthers and Rush Limbaugh have raised a more serious threat--male circumcision. The birthers believe Obama is not circumcised--which would indicate what I'm not sure. Rush Limbaugh is afraid that under Obama's healthcare he would be cirumcised. All of this was heard in the background as the Center for Disease Control put out a report how circumcision would help control certain illnesses. Naturally, since a black man is President, he's going to sick Eric Holder on white males and shear off their foreskins.
This fear-mongering raises the delicate topic of Death itself. For a party, which is dominated by evangelical Christians and observant Jews, why would death actually be such an issue? If death is not the end, then isn't it worst to go bankrupt through illness and become incapacitated through catastrophic illness? Isn't the long-term effects of destitution on the future of one's family more horrifying than death itself? Let's face it--America is one of the least death obsessed cultures in the world and by talking about it the idea is to raise irrational fear. If you preserve the status quo, you live; if you change, you die. It doesn't matter that the insurance and drug companies are coining money at the people's expense because I'm still alive. And if you change the system,there might be unintended consequences which with long odds might, might result in you not gettting treatment for some obscure and relatively rare sickness.
I'm not sure I know where the Republicans are going with this. I know for sure if Republicans are returned to power, they will sure as shooting drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of cutting the deficit. Many such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich are on record, saying so. There is some archetype that still exists in the Republican Party, which causes an almost knee-jerk reflex to undo the safety net first created by Franklin Roosevelt. I had long thought that had passed. But the rhetoric these days from the base is even blaming Roosevelt for prolonging the Great Depression and arguing that Barack Obama is doing the same through the stimulus package and the increased deficits. There is little self-reflection here that Republicans historically are the big deficit-spenders, almost totally for political motives. In a time when it looks like the United States will be lingering around 10% unemployment for some time, people are naturally anxious, people are worried. So one political strategy is to exploit this anxiety and create real fear. However, if you create fear, you must have something to replace it with--so far the Republicans are found lacking.
Not lacking in entertainment value is the Great Glenn Beck. Dozens of sponsors are fleeing Beck show as he has turned up the amp of his rhetoric against Obama, who now is going to create civilian national security corps to implement policy from the census-taking to poll-watching. Beck, a self acknowledged recovering alcoholic, has been barking lately that he will go down with his ship and re-emerge on a larger stage--hinting that if his 9-12 project goes el floppo or violent Australian mogul will give him the heave-ho. Glenn Beck will then team up with his best fan Sarah Palin and tour the country as ther conservative's version of Elmer Gantry and Aimee McPherson. If you think his incoherence and misinformation is deliberate, it's not--he's that ignorant of political affairs and history. But, there is a role for a conservative/libertarian version of the Jerry Springer Show. I'm not sure Glenn Beck is the best choice but he is ably carrying on to sell atheist Tom Paine to the religous right. And his ratings are knocking off Bill O'Reilly. Alot of the reasons to watch is to guess when he's going to cry and if he is going to commit suicide, which is an unfortunate occurrence in his family. He's like Howard Beal in Network screaming ,"I can't take it anymore" with the cynical television producer checking his ratings. So, do, please keep asking questions.
The conservative movement has fully embraced the Radical Left. There are now seminars on Saul Alinsky's theories of organization for Town Hall conservatives. It seems Republicans got the idea that the entire Obama campaign could not have succeeded without the mastery of these Alinsky principles. Even side figures as movie star Jon Voight claims that Obama is governing based on Saul Alinsky's writings. A lot of this comes from the work done by the Republican Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton, whom they thought would ultimately secure the Democratic nomination. Secretary of State Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. So why let 1,000s of pages go to waste. A spokesperson for the Alinsky Institute said, however,"We would never call Mayor Daley of Chicago a Nazi because our goal is to work with people in power." This obvious point has gone unnoticed.
Karl Rove--still avoiding jail--was out on the hustings this week to say that this year the Republicans would be defined as to what they are against. He claimed--presuming he would still have a say in the Party he wrecked--that in 2010 Republicans would define what they are for.
Meanwhile, the Dailykos, which uses the polling firm Research 2000, published a blog called " Political Re-Alignment on Steroids". The piece dissected the recent decline in Obama's polling and ascertained his and the Democrats' strengths according to region. The bottomline is that Obama's approval ratings are basically incredibly strong throughout the country, except in the South. The South, which constitutes 21% of the country, is the only region that shows Republican strength. Generic congressional questions show Republicans with slight leads over Democrats. Everywhere else Democrats have 5 to 1 leads over the generic Republican. Obama's approval rating among White Southerners is a dysmal 9%. With nation-wide approval of congressional Republicans only slightly above 12% or in other polls at about 20%, what appears from digging deep in the Research 2000 numbers is that the Republicans have become a regional party far faster than anyone realised. What is also occuring is that whatever support Republicans used to have among non-whites is vanishing at an even faster rate.
But if health care makes you die, torture makes you good. Eric Holder finally appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the cases of abuse by CIA personnel involved in the torture of detainees. In my opinion,this was inevitable if not necessary because of the obligations of the United States and once stated ideals of advancing human rights. Immediately, the CIA started their Beltway political maneuvering and started to beat the drum of morale falling. What about the morale of those intelligence personnel who thought torture was wrong and have carried out their difficult tasks within the law? I've never understood the morale issue of punishing people who did wrong. Our town paper, The Washington Post today tried to feed the old saw that torture works by publishing a long story about how Khalid Sheik Mohammed after being water-boarded a cosmic number of times became a solid citizen and turned to a new life as a lecturer to the interrogators and assembled military and intelligence personnel on the theology and strategy of Al Qaeda. This was to back up Dick Cheney's claim that everything we know about Al Qaeda comes from the torture program. He no longer argues that imminent threats were averted because the CIA Inspector General's report clearly states this isn't true. But it does say lives were saved--but nobody knows whether they could have been saved without torture. But that's enough to serve as talking points for Republican members on the Hill who have come to the defense of the CIA interrogators. Dick Cheney called these people professionals but the record is showing they had very little training and were often contractors who had no experience in interrogation.
I have doubts about Obama's new interrogation oversight panel, which will be located at the FBI. First, he got it right that the CIA has no experience in interrogation. Only the FBI and the military do and in the case of Al Qaeda, the most successful interrogations were conducted by the FBI without the use of torture. The most successfull actually involved given a diabetic terrorist a sugar-free cookie. But I have deep misgivings about the President of the United States actually being in charge himself of the interrogation program, reporting through his National Security Council. As we saw under Reagan, the National Security Council should not be a policy implementing body.
We end with the war in Afghanistan. No one should be surprised about the irregularities reported in the Afghanistan elections. Nor should one be surprised by the increased casualties taken by our military personnel. Rather one should raise questions of what is our ultimate purpose there. Only a few months ago General Petraeus confirmed what others had already reported--Al Qaeda was not there; it was in Pakistan. Do we want to nation-build and defeat a nationalist fundamentalist group, who have no international terrorism capabities or intent? Or are we after Al Qaeda? My fears are that Al Qaeda will eventually move out of Pakistan and set up shop once again in Yemen and Somalia. Because their ultimate goal is the liberation of Saudi Arabia and its sacred shrines. There is evidence now that at least with proxies this is taking place. But I suspect the leadership will move there as well. Then we will be pouring money and men into a war that like Iraq was peripheral to any war against terrorists.
The good news if this is our condition is that the Republicans tell us we are all going to die. not from Al Qaeda or jihadis, but from Obama's healthcare plan. Michael Steele reversed historical GOP position against medicare and issued a Bill of Health Rights for Seniors, which will preserve Medicare coverage and prevent the Democrats from summarily executing senior citizens through Death Panels. The GOP is warning fellow party members that the Democrats will be using party registration to deny Republicans healthcare. So it's best if everyone registers as an independent just in case. If you are a veteran, you're going to die because of the Democrats' Death Book, which advises serious ill veterans about their end of life options. And in case, you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. In fact, it's all going to be run like the DMV--which is actually run at a state level. If a public option is chosen, millions of Americans will lose their private health insurance and they too will die. Even John McCain argues that a public option will destroy the private health insurance industry. And the beat goes on. Real Republican members of Congress are saying on the floor that health care reform is going to kill people. There are actual members of Congress, not the public, who believe Government will intervene in Medicare--at the last notice this was a government-run program.
The birthers and Rush Limbaugh have raised a more serious threat--male circumcision. The birthers believe Obama is not circumcised--which would indicate what I'm not sure. Rush Limbaugh is afraid that under Obama's healthcare he would be cirumcised. All of this was heard in the background as the Center for Disease Control put out a report how circumcision would help control certain illnesses. Naturally, since a black man is President, he's going to sick Eric Holder on white males and shear off their foreskins.
This fear-mongering raises the delicate topic of Death itself. For a party, which is dominated by evangelical Christians and observant Jews, why would death actually be such an issue? If death is not the end, then isn't it worst to go bankrupt through illness and become incapacitated through catastrophic illness? Isn't the long-term effects of destitution on the future of one's family more horrifying than death itself? Let's face it--America is one of the least death obsessed cultures in the world and by talking about it the idea is to raise irrational fear. If you preserve the status quo, you live; if you change, you die. It doesn't matter that the insurance and drug companies are coining money at the people's expense because I'm still alive. And if you change the system,there might be unintended consequences which with long odds might, might result in you not gettting treatment for some obscure and relatively rare sickness.
I'm not sure I know where the Republicans are going with this. I know for sure if Republicans are returned to power, they will sure as shooting drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of cutting the deficit. Many such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich are on record, saying so. There is some archetype that still exists in the Republican Party, which causes an almost knee-jerk reflex to undo the safety net first created by Franklin Roosevelt. I had long thought that had passed. But the rhetoric these days from the base is even blaming Roosevelt for prolonging the Great Depression and arguing that Barack Obama is doing the same through the stimulus package and the increased deficits. There is little self-reflection here that Republicans historically are the big deficit-spenders, almost totally for political motives. In a time when it looks like the United States will be lingering around 10% unemployment for some time, people are naturally anxious, people are worried. So one political strategy is to exploit this anxiety and create real fear. However, if you create fear, you must have something to replace it with--so far the Republicans are found lacking.
Not lacking in entertainment value is the Great Glenn Beck. Dozens of sponsors are fleeing Beck show as he has turned up the amp of his rhetoric against Obama, who now is going to create civilian national security corps to implement policy from the census-taking to poll-watching. Beck, a self acknowledged recovering alcoholic, has been barking lately that he will go down with his ship and re-emerge on a larger stage--hinting that if his 9-12 project goes el floppo or violent Australian mogul will give him the heave-ho. Glenn Beck will then team up with his best fan Sarah Palin and tour the country as ther conservative's version of Elmer Gantry and Aimee McPherson. If you think his incoherence and misinformation is deliberate, it's not--he's that ignorant of political affairs and history. But, there is a role for a conservative/libertarian version of the Jerry Springer Show. I'm not sure Glenn Beck is the best choice but he is ably carrying on to sell atheist Tom Paine to the religous right. And his ratings are knocking off Bill O'Reilly. Alot of the reasons to watch is to guess when he's going to cry and if he is going to commit suicide, which is an unfortunate occurrence in his family. He's like Howard Beal in Network screaming ,"I can't take it anymore" with the cynical television producer checking his ratings. So, do, please keep asking questions.
The conservative movement has fully embraced the Radical Left. There are now seminars on Saul Alinsky's theories of organization for Town Hall conservatives. It seems Republicans got the idea that the entire Obama campaign could not have succeeded without the mastery of these Alinsky principles. Even side figures as movie star Jon Voight claims that Obama is governing based on Saul Alinsky's writings. A lot of this comes from the work done by the Republican Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton, whom they thought would ultimately secure the Democratic nomination. Secretary of State Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. So why let 1,000s of pages go to waste. A spokesperson for the Alinsky Institute said, however,"We would never call Mayor Daley of Chicago a Nazi because our goal is to work with people in power." This obvious point has gone unnoticed.
Karl Rove--still avoiding jail--was out on the hustings this week to say that this year the Republicans would be defined as to what they are against. He claimed--presuming he would still have a say in the Party he wrecked--that in 2010 Republicans would define what they are for.
Meanwhile, the Dailykos, which uses the polling firm Research 2000, published a blog called " Political Re-Alignment on Steroids". The piece dissected the recent decline in Obama's polling and ascertained his and the Democrats' strengths according to region. The bottomline is that Obama's approval ratings are basically incredibly strong throughout the country, except in the South. The South, which constitutes 21% of the country, is the only region that shows Republican strength. Generic congressional questions show Republicans with slight leads over Democrats. Everywhere else Democrats have 5 to 1 leads over the generic Republican. Obama's approval rating among White Southerners is a dysmal 9%. With nation-wide approval of congressional Republicans only slightly above 12% or in other polls at about 20%, what appears from digging deep in the Research 2000 numbers is that the Republicans have become a regional party far faster than anyone realised. What is also occuring is that whatever support Republicans used to have among non-whites is vanishing at an even faster rate.
But if health care makes you die, torture makes you good. Eric Holder finally appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the cases of abuse by CIA personnel involved in the torture of detainees. In my opinion,this was inevitable if not necessary because of the obligations of the United States and once stated ideals of advancing human rights. Immediately, the CIA started their Beltway political maneuvering and started to beat the drum of morale falling. What about the morale of those intelligence personnel who thought torture was wrong and have carried out their difficult tasks within the law? I've never understood the morale issue of punishing people who did wrong. Our town paper, The Washington Post today tried to feed the old saw that torture works by publishing a long story about how Khalid Sheik Mohammed after being water-boarded a cosmic number of times became a solid citizen and turned to a new life as a lecturer to the interrogators and assembled military and intelligence personnel on the theology and strategy of Al Qaeda. This was to back up Dick Cheney's claim that everything we know about Al Qaeda comes from the torture program. He no longer argues that imminent threats were averted because the CIA Inspector General's report clearly states this isn't true. But it does say lives were saved--but nobody knows whether they could have been saved without torture. But that's enough to serve as talking points for Republican members on the Hill who have come to the defense of the CIA interrogators. Dick Cheney called these people professionals but the record is showing they had very little training and were often contractors who had no experience in interrogation.
I have doubts about Obama's new interrogation oversight panel, which will be located at the FBI. First, he got it right that the CIA has no experience in interrogation. Only the FBI and the military do and in the case of Al Qaeda, the most successful interrogations were conducted by the FBI without the use of torture. The most successfull actually involved given a diabetic terrorist a sugar-free cookie. But I have deep misgivings about the President of the United States actually being in charge himself of the interrogation program, reporting through his National Security Council. As we saw under Reagan, the National Security Council should not be a policy implementing body.
We end with the war in Afghanistan. No one should be surprised about the irregularities reported in the Afghanistan elections. Nor should one be surprised by the increased casualties taken by our military personnel. Rather one should raise questions of what is our ultimate purpose there. Only a few months ago General Petraeus confirmed what others had already reported--Al Qaeda was not there; it was in Pakistan. Do we want to nation-build and defeat a nationalist fundamentalist group, who have no international terrorism capabities or intent? Or are we after Al Qaeda? My fears are that Al Qaeda will eventually move out of Pakistan and set up shop once again in Yemen and Somalia. Because their ultimate goal is the liberation of Saudi Arabia and its sacred shrines. There is evidence now that at least with proxies this is taking place. But I suspect the leadership will move there as well. Then we will be pouring money and men into a war that like Iraq was peripheral to any war against terrorists.
Monday, August 17, 2009
A LUCKY CHILD
A colleague from a former lifetime expressed his relief that the United States no longer acted as the terrorists they were fighting. Judge Thomas Buergenthal, who now sits at the International Court of Justice in The Hague,claims the U.S. made the mistake of "assuming the only way to fight terrorism is to throw your values out the window. If we stuck to our values and own procedures, we could have achieved more without facing any of the problems we face now."
Judge Buergenthal enjoyed a distinguished academic career before he became the first U.S. judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where he served as its President from 1989 to 1994. He later served on the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador from 1995 to 1999, where he investigated the history of human rights violations during that country's long civil war. In 2000 he joined the ICJ.
Now 75-years old, Judge Buergenthal recently published a memoir of his childhood spent in the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. He attributed his survival to luck, citing times when he slept with inmates who had diptheria but he never contracted it and other such moments which could have led to certain death. In his memoir,"A Lucky Child," he says he never faced survivor syndrome that has plagued many Holocaust survivors and that it was relatively easy writing the book after all these years. He did recall that his mother when asked to set down her recollections often broke down and wept at the memory of those horrible times. The book has an introduction written by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.
Judge Buergenthal made his remarks about the war on terror while in Australia where he shared a podium with Vicenzo Cerami, who wrote Life is Beautiful, the Oscar-winning film about an Italian boy who survives the Nazi death camps through the ingenuity and love of his father.
Judge Buergenthal enjoyed a distinguished academic career before he became the first U.S. judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where he served as its President from 1989 to 1994. He later served on the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador from 1995 to 1999, where he investigated the history of human rights violations during that country's long civil war. In 2000 he joined the ICJ.
Now 75-years old, Judge Buergenthal recently published a memoir of his childhood spent in the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. He attributed his survival to luck, citing times when he slept with inmates who had diptheria but he never contracted it and other such moments which could have led to certain death. In his memoir,"A Lucky Child," he says he never faced survivor syndrome that has plagued many Holocaust survivors and that it was relatively easy writing the book after all these years. He did recall that his mother when asked to set down her recollections often broke down and wept at the memory of those horrible times. The book has an introduction written by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.
Judge Buergenthal made his remarks about the war on terror while in Australia where he shared a podium with Vicenzo Cerami, who wrote Life is Beautiful, the Oscar-winning film about an Italian boy who survives the Nazi death camps through the ingenuity and love of his father.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Obama's Townhalls
I have now viewed President Obama's townhall meetings at AARP, New Hampshire, Montana, and Colorado and wonder what the hubbub is about concerning healthcare reform. As he said in his last three townhalls eighty percent of the work on the healthcare bills has been done and the remaining needs to be negotiated out.
From the Left, there are cries that the single-payer system is not being considered. President Obama never campaigned on a single-payer platform either in the primaries of the general election. The Right has been disingenous from the very beginning about this,raising the specter of "socialized health care". But the more they argue the more I realize that probably is the right way to go if the United States can ever be a fully realized 21st century economy. The whole health care debate has brought forth in stark terms the reality that this is all about the enrichment of the so-called health insurance industry. With the economy cratering, the health insurance industry has been immune from the catastrophes affecting American lives. Their top executive earn salaries and stock options that exceed even productive elements of our society like say a Steve Jobs at Apple or someone who actually has done something worthwhile. The endless rate charges by the insurance companies--like Connecticut Blue Cross-Blue Shield's 35% hike--are unsustainable for a modern political economy. Where President Obama erred in his presentations was the claim that Blue Cross was a non-profit. It used to be but no longer.
So far, President Obama's presentations have dealt with the whole issue of small businesses and the range of reforms the insurance industry will have to make about excluding pre-existing conditions, caps on payouts, and a whole host of details that have eliminated millions of Americans from health care. So far so good. He really hasn't publicly talked about the insurance companies' near monopolistic practices in a variety of states. For instance, the state of Alabama and,I believe, Arkansas only have one company to insurance their entire states. He also hasn't talked about the situation in New Jersey where the insurance companies are not reimbursing providers for emergency room care. Yet, he has made considerable progress--more than anyone in recent memory on this vital issue.
The astro-turfing of anti-health reform issues is a sight to behold. The predominant class of people showing up to heckle members of congress and the President are senior citizens. In other words, people who are on Medicare, a government-run system. The whole demagogic claims by Republicans over euthanasia and death panels are aimed at senior citizens, who should be reminded that no Republicans ever voted for Medicare at its creation. And, in fact, the Republican long-term strategy is to eliminate Medicare, which I will get to. Another anti-health care group are the evangelicals or fundamentalists who are claiming that the bill would pay for abortions. Since the bill won't, it seems to me as a former Divinity School student that these so-called Christian sectarians are running straight against the teachings of the central figure in their religion. I just can't comprehend the religious motivation against providing healthcare for the poor, the indigent and now even the middle class.
President Obama in Colorado finally corrected what I have felt has been a long-standing error when he kept referring to inheriting a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Yesterday, he finally added the $10 trillion in structural deficit spending that had also been racked up over the last eight years. As he has made clear, if health reform isn't adopted, Medicare goes broke in eight years. He also chided his critics who are bemoaning the deficits but who passed Medicare B--the prescription drug plan--without having a way to pay for it. And, finally, he pointed out the same about the Iraq war, which was fought off budget--another $1 trillion which was not paid for.
So, let's go straight to the motives of those opposed. The Republicans have made it clear that they are banking on a revival by defeating health reform. They did this in the 1990s and believe it will work again. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma let the cat out of the bag at his townhall meeting by saying he wants to eliminate Medicare and eventually wants to privatize Social Security like George W. Bush wanted. The long-term strategy of Republicans is to eliminate Medicare. Some estimate Medicare costs will add some $40 trillion to our national deficit over the decades. Prior to it runnng out of money, look to Republicans to seek drastic reductions in benefits and then to its elimination or some gimmick to privatize.
The funding by the insurance companies--some $245 million spent on lobbying this year alone--and their financial support to organizations organizing these rallies is aimed at only one thing--to eliminate any public option that will put a break on their profit margins. That's all. They want the big bonanza of an additional 42 million customers, subsidized by the American taxpayer, without any restraints on their monopolistic activities. That's the beginning and end of the insurance agenda. At some point, the divergence between the Republican and the insurance agenda will become obvious in the fall. Can the insurance companies continue to obstruct progress since they have already forecast a less properous future for themselves with no change?
As for President Obama's performance at these townhall meetings, can you imagine President Bush answering any policy questions in such detail--especially with real opponents in the crowd? Remember his meetings were tightly controlled and scripted events. Even those who dissented from his policies and managed to sneak in were arrested. In Colorado, three were jailed for having "no war for oil" bumperstickers.
President Obama has hit the points for reform in all his townhalls. We can not afford the status quo--literally. Millions more Americans are going without health insurance. Thousands are having to declare bankruptcies because of medical expenses. Even those with insurance are finding the cost of medical care not covered and sometimes deprived by the insurance companies. The insurance companies have no mechanism by which they can be kept honest. And, he has raised the unpleasant truth that we spent over $6,000 more per person than the closest industrialized country for healthcare, which produces worst results. In short, no, we don't have the best health care system in the world.
More devastating is the fact that over 6 million Americans will go abroad for medical care next year.
In all probability, a heath reform bill will pass this year. Not enough Blue Dog Democrats will have been intimidate by the mobs to back down. The real issue is what form a "public option" takes? As of today, the press has Obama backing away from the public option. Kathleen Sibelius said that it wasn't "essential" to the health reform plan and that President Obama would settle for an "insurance cooperative". Before everyone screams, we should wait and see what this means.
I'm for GEICOing medical insurance. The medical insurance would be sold on a national markewt not on a state-by-state basis and that all major medical insurers would participate. I'm also in favor a a regulatory commission, which would take complaints against insurance company by individual patients with the power to seek restitution. I am also in favor of a public option because otherwise the whole health reform becomes a massive TARP bailout for an already rich industry.
From the Left, there are cries that the single-payer system is not being considered. President Obama never campaigned on a single-payer platform either in the primaries of the general election. The Right has been disingenous from the very beginning about this,raising the specter of "socialized health care". But the more they argue the more I realize that probably is the right way to go if the United States can ever be a fully realized 21st century economy. The whole health care debate has brought forth in stark terms the reality that this is all about the enrichment of the so-called health insurance industry. With the economy cratering, the health insurance industry has been immune from the catastrophes affecting American lives. Their top executive earn salaries and stock options that exceed even productive elements of our society like say a Steve Jobs at Apple or someone who actually has done something worthwhile. The endless rate charges by the insurance companies--like Connecticut Blue Cross-Blue Shield's 35% hike--are unsustainable for a modern political economy. Where President Obama erred in his presentations was the claim that Blue Cross was a non-profit. It used to be but no longer.
So far, President Obama's presentations have dealt with the whole issue of small businesses and the range of reforms the insurance industry will have to make about excluding pre-existing conditions, caps on payouts, and a whole host of details that have eliminated millions of Americans from health care. So far so good. He really hasn't publicly talked about the insurance companies' near monopolistic practices in a variety of states. For instance, the state of Alabama and,I believe, Arkansas only have one company to insurance their entire states. He also hasn't talked about the situation in New Jersey where the insurance companies are not reimbursing providers for emergency room care. Yet, he has made considerable progress--more than anyone in recent memory on this vital issue.
The astro-turfing of anti-health reform issues is a sight to behold. The predominant class of people showing up to heckle members of congress and the President are senior citizens. In other words, people who are on Medicare, a government-run system. The whole demagogic claims by Republicans over euthanasia and death panels are aimed at senior citizens, who should be reminded that no Republicans ever voted for Medicare at its creation. And, in fact, the Republican long-term strategy is to eliminate Medicare, which I will get to. Another anti-health care group are the evangelicals or fundamentalists who are claiming that the bill would pay for abortions. Since the bill won't, it seems to me as a former Divinity School student that these so-called Christian sectarians are running straight against the teachings of the central figure in their religion. I just can't comprehend the religious motivation against providing healthcare for the poor, the indigent and now even the middle class.
President Obama in Colorado finally corrected what I have felt has been a long-standing error when he kept referring to inheriting a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Yesterday, he finally added the $10 trillion in structural deficit spending that had also been racked up over the last eight years. As he has made clear, if health reform isn't adopted, Medicare goes broke in eight years. He also chided his critics who are bemoaning the deficits but who passed Medicare B--the prescription drug plan--without having a way to pay for it. And, finally, he pointed out the same about the Iraq war, which was fought off budget--another $1 trillion which was not paid for.
So, let's go straight to the motives of those opposed. The Republicans have made it clear that they are banking on a revival by defeating health reform. They did this in the 1990s and believe it will work again. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma let the cat out of the bag at his townhall meeting by saying he wants to eliminate Medicare and eventually wants to privatize Social Security like George W. Bush wanted. The long-term strategy of Republicans is to eliminate Medicare. Some estimate Medicare costs will add some $40 trillion to our national deficit over the decades. Prior to it runnng out of money, look to Republicans to seek drastic reductions in benefits and then to its elimination or some gimmick to privatize.
The funding by the insurance companies--some $245 million spent on lobbying this year alone--and their financial support to organizations organizing these rallies is aimed at only one thing--to eliminate any public option that will put a break on their profit margins. That's all. They want the big bonanza of an additional 42 million customers, subsidized by the American taxpayer, without any restraints on their monopolistic activities. That's the beginning and end of the insurance agenda. At some point, the divergence between the Republican and the insurance agenda will become obvious in the fall. Can the insurance companies continue to obstruct progress since they have already forecast a less properous future for themselves with no change?
As for President Obama's performance at these townhall meetings, can you imagine President Bush answering any policy questions in such detail--especially with real opponents in the crowd? Remember his meetings were tightly controlled and scripted events. Even those who dissented from his policies and managed to sneak in were arrested. In Colorado, three were jailed for having "no war for oil" bumperstickers.
President Obama has hit the points for reform in all his townhalls. We can not afford the status quo--literally. Millions more Americans are going without health insurance. Thousands are having to declare bankruptcies because of medical expenses. Even those with insurance are finding the cost of medical care not covered and sometimes deprived by the insurance companies. The insurance companies have no mechanism by which they can be kept honest. And, he has raised the unpleasant truth that we spent over $6,000 more per person than the closest industrialized country for healthcare, which produces worst results. In short, no, we don't have the best health care system in the world.
More devastating is the fact that over 6 million Americans will go abroad for medical care next year.
In all probability, a heath reform bill will pass this year. Not enough Blue Dog Democrats will have been intimidate by the mobs to back down. The real issue is what form a "public option" takes? As of today, the press has Obama backing away from the public option. Kathleen Sibelius said that it wasn't "essential" to the health reform plan and that President Obama would settle for an "insurance cooperative". Before everyone screams, we should wait and see what this means.
I'm for GEICOing medical insurance. The medical insurance would be sold on a national markewt not on a state-by-state basis and that all major medical insurers would participate. I'm also in favor a a regulatory commission, which would take complaints against insurance company by individual patients with the power to seek restitution. I am also in favor of a public option because otherwise the whole health reform becomes a massive TARP bailout for an already rich industry.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Late Evening Coffee
Glenn Beck's neighbors in New Canaan ,Connecticut are squawking that he wants to raise the fences around his multi-million dollar home to eight feet in violation of the local zoning rules. I humbly suggest they just burn the home down as part of urban renewal. Beck, Newt Gingrich, and the whole crew of death panelists have targeted medical ethicist and oncologist Ezekial Emmanuel as the alleged mastermind of this fiendish plot. Emmanuel doesn't own a television and loathes the internet so he went off on vacation to Italy to do some mountain hiking. Glenn Beck, taking a page out of the Sarah Palin disabled relative handbook,cited his sister who suffers from cerebral palsy as one of those Emmanuel would euthanize. The problem here is that Emmnual's sister also has cerebral palsy.
If you read an account of his career in Time magazine, he is almost the opposite of who he has been portrayed--someone who has actively opposed euthanasia and is one of the leading ethicists about truly complex medical matters. Mr. Nazi is in fact an Israeli-American citizen. What's troubling about this is not just the falsehoods but the fact that the target of these attacks is simply the opposite person his critics portray.
The celebration of ignorance has become the hallmark of Glenn Beck. He warned his viewers that the wildly successful cash-for-clunkers program will enable the government to invade your computer. Something--as the way the program is designed--would be virtually impossible.
Not to be outdone, a Republican congressman from Georgia claims Nancy Pelosi wants to declare martial law. This would as interesting a constitutional turn as Dick Cheney ordering the military to invade Buffalo. Of course, Cheney actually wanted to do just that. Where were the Republicans when the Bush Administration threatened Congress they would have to declare martial law if the bank TARP funds were not approved? When the financial system collapsed in the fall, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson visited the Hill and told both the Senate and House banking committees that the situation was so dire martial law would have to be declared. At least now maybe Obama will get around to it.
Obama still hasn't killed Stephen Hawkings. In fact today he awarded him the Medal of Freedom. The claims that the British medical system would terminate someone like Stephen Hawkings provoked the scientist to come out in full-throated support of the UK Health System, which he credits as having prolonged his life. American attacks against foreign health care systems in the current debate have provoked interesting backlashes. Canada conducted its own poll about their system and found that between 80-90% give it high ratings. More pointedly, a poll of Canadians revealed that the most important historical figure in the country was in fact the man who invented the national health system.
More odd news. Next year over 6 million Americans will be leaving the country to seek medical treatment abroad--something we haven't heard in the so-called health debate. The figure is expected to grow in the years ahead. likewise, hundreds of thousands of Americans live abroad because of they have pre-existing conditions and can not get health insurance in America.
The Ed Show had a disturbing segment on the Southern Poverty Law Center's report on the rise of the militia movement. The panel included former Rep. Istook, now at the Heritage Foundation, who did the moral equivalence line that there exist kooks on both sides--Left and right. He made sure to throw in the Unabomber and the anarchist demonstrations against the World Bank. He said one constituent of his threatened him and was prosecuted--the man wanted marijuana decriminalized. The editor of the Huffington Post was also strange in saying that Barack Obama helped create the situation because of the bank bailouts and the stimulus pacakage didn't create a sense of fairness. And Ed went wimpy by asking the White House correspondent if there was anything the White House can do to calm these people. The entire panel just minimized the report and simply wrote off these people as a small fringe element.
Stay tuned folks because it's only going to get worst and the media is going to be oblivious until too late. I have been writing about the birthers since I began this blog. Only in the last month has the so-called corporate media paid any attention to this group and their conspiracy theory. The fact that a plurality of Republicans believe them should be alarming. What was interesting about the ED Show was the absence of any discussion about the report's finding that the militia ideology has become mainstream with the Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and others. That was what they found troubling. Of course, none of this was mentioned.
If you read an account of his career in Time magazine, he is almost the opposite of who he has been portrayed--someone who has actively opposed euthanasia and is one of the leading ethicists about truly complex medical matters. Mr. Nazi is in fact an Israeli-American citizen. What's troubling about this is not just the falsehoods but the fact that the target of these attacks is simply the opposite person his critics portray.
The celebration of ignorance has become the hallmark of Glenn Beck. He warned his viewers that the wildly successful cash-for-clunkers program will enable the government to invade your computer. Something--as the way the program is designed--would be virtually impossible.
Not to be outdone, a Republican congressman from Georgia claims Nancy Pelosi wants to declare martial law. This would as interesting a constitutional turn as Dick Cheney ordering the military to invade Buffalo. Of course, Cheney actually wanted to do just that. Where were the Republicans when the Bush Administration threatened Congress they would have to declare martial law if the bank TARP funds were not approved? When the financial system collapsed in the fall, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson visited the Hill and told both the Senate and House banking committees that the situation was so dire martial law would have to be declared. At least now maybe Obama will get around to it.
Obama still hasn't killed Stephen Hawkings. In fact today he awarded him the Medal of Freedom. The claims that the British medical system would terminate someone like Stephen Hawkings provoked the scientist to come out in full-throated support of the UK Health System, which he credits as having prolonged his life. American attacks against foreign health care systems in the current debate have provoked interesting backlashes. Canada conducted its own poll about their system and found that between 80-90% give it high ratings. More pointedly, a poll of Canadians revealed that the most important historical figure in the country was in fact the man who invented the national health system.
More odd news. Next year over 6 million Americans will be leaving the country to seek medical treatment abroad--something we haven't heard in the so-called health debate. The figure is expected to grow in the years ahead. likewise, hundreds of thousands of Americans live abroad because of they have pre-existing conditions and can not get health insurance in America.
The Ed Show had a disturbing segment on the Southern Poverty Law Center's report on the rise of the militia movement. The panel included former Rep. Istook, now at the Heritage Foundation, who did the moral equivalence line that there exist kooks on both sides--Left and right. He made sure to throw in the Unabomber and the anarchist demonstrations against the World Bank. He said one constituent of his threatened him and was prosecuted--the man wanted marijuana decriminalized. The editor of the Huffington Post was also strange in saying that Barack Obama helped create the situation because of the bank bailouts and the stimulus pacakage didn't create a sense of fairness. And Ed went wimpy by asking the White House correspondent if there was anything the White House can do to calm these people. The entire panel just minimized the report and simply wrote off these people as a small fringe element.
Stay tuned folks because it's only going to get worst and the media is going to be oblivious until too late. I have been writing about the birthers since I began this blog. Only in the last month has the so-called corporate media paid any attention to this group and their conspiracy theory. The fact that a plurality of Republicans believe them should be alarming. What was interesting about the ED Show was the absence of any discussion about the report's finding that the militia ideology has become mainstream with the Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and others. That was what they found troubling. Of course, none of this was mentioned.
The Second Wave--The Return of the Militias
The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued its August update on the status of militias in the U.S. The report by Mark Potok reports that after a period when they faded ,weakened by systematic prosecutions and splits within ranks,the militias have re-emerged. Law enforcement agencies report they are seeing the most significant growth in 10-12 years and believe it's just a matter of time before we see threats and violence. The new twist to the Patriot movement is that because of immigration and a new black President they have become racialized. The SPLC also points out that so-called mainstream politicians and media figures have been helping spread Patriot and related propaganda from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps and wholly false claims about President Obama's country of birth.
Law enforcement authorities are concerned that militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and others of the radical right are now cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing. One law enforcement figure said:"All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence." In recent months,men with pro-militia views have committed a series of high-profile murders--including the billings of six law enforcement officers since April.
The killer of Dr. Tiller in Kansas was a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizens"movement. These citizens are people who subscribe to an exotic ideology, or constitutional theory, originated by Posse Comitatus in the 1980s. Whites are a higher kind of citizen--subject only to 'common law", not the dictates of the government--while blacks and others are mere "14th Amendment citizens" who must obey their government masters. Most of these people contend they do not have to pay taxes and are not subject to most laws. Dr.Tiller's killer picked up his ideology while being a member of the Montana Freeman. His wife said he had been in such debt that he gravitated to this ideology because he understodd he would not have to pay income taxes. He also had been previously stopped by police for having a sovereign citizen license plate.
Since February, the FBI have launched a national operation targeting white supremacists and the "militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups". These people engaged in what is called "paper terrorism" such as filing unjustified property liens and setting up pseudo-legal "common law courts" and "citizens grand juries". You might have seen the grand juries in action with Orly Taitz and the birther movement. In March, authorities raided a Las Vegas printing firm where meetings of the "Sovereign People's Court for the United States" were conducted in a mock courtroom. Seminars taught how to use phony documents and other illegal means to pay off creditors. Four people were arrested on money-laundering , tax and weapons charges.
Alot of the "sovereign "talk appears in alot of the propaganda of the tea baggers and on right-wing talk radio ,often without any awareness of its origins and the groups who created it. More worrisome according to the Southern Poverty Law Center is the emergence of the Oath Keepers, a military and police organization that was formed earlier this year and mustered on the Lexington Green. Members vow to fulfill the oaths to the Constitution that they swore when they were in the military or police. They claim they are faithful to the constitution , not to politicians.
The founder is Yale Law School Student Stewart Rhodes, a former aide to Ron Paul, who believes the day is coming that we will face a full-blown tyranny and that this can only occur if "our brothers in arms" go along." One of the Oath Keepers posted a video on the group's blog claiming he was an Afghanistan and Iraq vet and described President Obama as "an enemy of the state", adding," I would rather die than be a slave to my government."
One of the most interesting points of the SPLC report is that claim that Oath Keepers is making inroads in current law enforcement circles. The group reports that the leak of the Department of Homeland Security's report on right-wing terrorism was a sworn law enforcement agent in contact with the Oath Keepers.
The report points out that a truly remarkable aspect of the antigovernment movement is the extent that they are gaining support from elected officials and the mainsteam media. They point to the 10th Amendment movement where the re-assertion of states' rights has hit 36 states. We all saw Rick Perry of Texas flirt with secession, an idea first raised by the militia movement in the 1990s. Michele Bachman raised the specter of President Obama planning "reeducation camps for the young", a service program which ironically her son joined without telling her. Alabama representative Spencer Bachus warned of 17 socialists in Congress. And, of course, the insurrectionist leader himself, Glenn Beck calls Obama a fascist, a Nazi and a Marxist and widely publicized the militia movement's conspiracy theory that Obama has set up a country-wide network of FEMA camps to be used as concentration camps. The report also cites Lou Dobbs embrace of the Aztlan conspiracy, where Mexican illegals are being salted so that our Southwest will be taken back by Mexico, and as well as his support for the birthers.
During the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, conservative politicians claimed that the judge was linked to La Raza and hence a supporter of the Aztlan conspiracy. Sadly, La Raza had to respond that they did not support this concept. Colorado representative Tom Tancredo was the most visible spouting this view as he appeared on all major networks.
David Holthouse analyzes the morphing of the nativist vigilante groups adopting the ideas of the Patriot movement. Minuteman outposts along our southern border have been amplifying the broadcasts of ResistNet and other Patriot Network programs into their base camps. Undocumented illegal immigration sparked by the Original Minuteman Project of 2005 but now these organizations appear to be emerging as the new paramilitary wing of the resurgent Patriot Movement. While immigration flows have dropped dramatically across the border because of the deep recession, paramilitary exercises and rallies have increased. The Minutemen now believe there are larger problems beyond immigration, namely a potentitally totalitarian government, driven by an illegitimate president, bent on seizing all firearms, trampling the Constitution and imposing a fascist-socialist system on a docile population.
At Campo Minutemen, the fight song is the "Tea Party Anthem", which goes like this: "Mr. President! Your stimulus is sure to bust/It's a socialist scheme./The only thing it will do?Is kill the American Dream." This sentiment has led to Minutemen groups distributing a sovereign "citizen complaint petition" demanding Obama appear before an "American Grand Jury" to answer charges of treason. If the words are familiar, it's because you've seen them in the birther literature.
The Minuteman's defacto leader now is Jeff Schwik, the head of their San Diego Branch, a man known for his confrontational tactics and his hard-line views. In mid-April, he announced the formation of the Patriot Coalition, made up of 23 organizations, including Minuteman factios, tax-protest groups, pro-gun rights and two anti-immigration organizations. No longer were they just going to resist "the invasion from Mexico" but also the "socialist takeover" of America. The press release described their common cause under the motto "Secure Borders, Constitution and Rule of Law". It went on to say that "patriotic and Constitutional American grassroots groups" had come together to "fight the growing threats to our region and to the taxpaying American citizens." Schwik declared,"Revolution is brewing!".
To put the other pieces of the political puzzle together to include the Christian Idenity, neo-nazi movements and the white supremacists and the neo-confederates, I highly recommend Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream by Leonard Zeskind( Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009, $37.50). This is an extraordinary piece of work that covers the white nationalist movement for the last three decades. The author has been a persistent student of the international racialist movement, including the field of Holocaust deniers. He wrote the book as a warning with the hopes the subject would remain obscure and not relevant to our present reality. Unfortunately, Zeskind outlines exactly how the themes of these movements have almost become acceptable to elements in Washington, particularly the conservative movement and elements within the Republican Party.
What I found particularly important in Zeskind's book is his analysis of the sociology of this movement--the fact there has been highly educated and accomplished people in its ranks and is predominantly not of the lower classes. What most observers and critics maintain is that these people are on the fringe--true--but they suggest somehow they are ignorant because of a lack of education. The problem is that they have considerable abilities and often high education levels and that's why they are dangerous.
Law enforcement authorities are concerned that militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and others of the radical right are now cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing. One law enforcement figure said:"All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence." In recent months,men with pro-militia views have committed a series of high-profile murders--including the billings of six law enforcement officers since April.
The killer of Dr. Tiller in Kansas was a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizens"movement. These citizens are people who subscribe to an exotic ideology, or constitutional theory, originated by Posse Comitatus in the 1980s. Whites are a higher kind of citizen--subject only to 'common law", not the dictates of the government--while blacks and others are mere "14th Amendment citizens" who must obey their government masters. Most of these people contend they do not have to pay taxes and are not subject to most laws. Dr.Tiller's killer picked up his ideology while being a member of the Montana Freeman. His wife said he had been in such debt that he gravitated to this ideology because he understodd he would not have to pay income taxes. He also had been previously stopped by police for having a sovereign citizen license plate.
Since February, the FBI have launched a national operation targeting white supremacists and the "militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups". These people engaged in what is called "paper terrorism" such as filing unjustified property liens and setting up pseudo-legal "common law courts" and "citizens grand juries". You might have seen the grand juries in action with Orly Taitz and the birther movement. In March, authorities raided a Las Vegas printing firm where meetings of the "Sovereign People's Court for the United States" were conducted in a mock courtroom. Seminars taught how to use phony documents and other illegal means to pay off creditors. Four people were arrested on money-laundering , tax and weapons charges.
Alot of the "sovereign "talk appears in alot of the propaganda of the tea baggers and on right-wing talk radio ,often without any awareness of its origins and the groups who created it. More worrisome according to the Southern Poverty Law Center is the emergence of the Oath Keepers, a military and police organization that was formed earlier this year and mustered on the Lexington Green. Members vow to fulfill the oaths to the Constitution that they swore when they were in the military or police. They claim they are faithful to the constitution , not to politicians.
The founder is Yale Law School Student Stewart Rhodes, a former aide to Ron Paul, who believes the day is coming that we will face a full-blown tyranny and that this can only occur if "our brothers in arms" go along." One of the Oath Keepers posted a video on the group's blog claiming he was an Afghanistan and Iraq vet and described President Obama as "an enemy of the state", adding," I would rather die than be a slave to my government."
One of the most interesting points of the SPLC report is that claim that Oath Keepers is making inroads in current law enforcement circles. The group reports that the leak of the Department of Homeland Security's report on right-wing terrorism was a sworn law enforcement agent in contact with the Oath Keepers.
The report points out that a truly remarkable aspect of the antigovernment movement is the extent that they are gaining support from elected officials and the mainsteam media. They point to the 10th Amendment movement where the re-assertion of states' rights has hit 36 states. We all saw Rick Perry of Texas flirt with secession, an idea first raised by the militia movement in the 1990s. Michele Bachman raised the specter of President Obama planning "reeducation camps for the young", a service program which ironically her son joined without telling her. Alabama representative Spencer Bachus warned of 17 socialists in Congress. And, of course, the insurrectionist leader himself, Glenn Beck calls Obama a fascist, a Nazi and a Marxist and widely publicized the militia movement's conspiracy theory that Obama has set up a country-wide network of FEMA camps to be used as concentration camps. The report also cites Lou Dobbs embrace of the Aztlan conspiracy, where Mexican illegals are being salted so that our Southwest will be taken back by Mexico, and as well as his support for the birthers.
During the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, conservative politicians claimed that the judge was linked to La Raza and hence a supporter of the Aztlan conspiracy. Sadly, La Raza had to respond that they did not support this concept. Colorado representative Tom Tancredo was the most visible spouting this view as he appeared on all major networks.
David Holthouse analyzes the morphing of the nativist vigilante groups adopting the ideas of the Patriot movement. Minuteman outposts along our southern border have been amplifying the broadcasts of ResistNet and other Patriot Network programs into their base camps. Undocumented illegal immigration sparked by the Original Minuteman Project of 2005 but now these organizations appear to be emerging as the new paramilitary wing of the resurgent Patriot Movement. While immigration flows have dropped dramatically across the border because of the deep recession, paramilitary exercises and rallies have increased. The Minutemen now believe there are larger problems beyond immigration, namely a potentitally totalitarian government, driven by an illegitimate president, bent on seizing all firearms, trampling the Constitution and imposing a fascist-socialist system on a docile population.
At Campo Minutemen, the fight song is the "Tea Party Anthem", which goes like this: "Mr. President! Your stimulus is sure to bust/It's a socialist scheme./The only thing it will do?Is kill the American Dream." This sentiment has led to Minutemen groups distributing a sovereign "citizen complaint petition" demanding Obama appear before an "American Grand Jury" to answer charges of treason. If the words are familiar, it's because you've seen them in the birther literature.
The Minuteman's defacto leader now is Jeff Schwik, the head of their San Diego Branch, a man known for his confrontational tactics and his hard-line views. In mid-April, he announced the formation of the Patriot Coalition, made up of 23 organizations, including Minuteman factios, tax-protest groups, pro-gun rights and two anti-immigration organizations. No longer were they just going to resist "the invasion from Mexico" but also the "socialist takeover" of America. The press release described their common cause under the motto "Secure Borders, Constitution and Rule of Law". It went on to say that "patriotic and Constitutional American grassroots groups" had come together to "fight the growing threats to our region and to the taxpaying American citizens." Schwik declared,"Revolution is brewing!".
To put the other pieces of the political puzzle together to include the Christian Idenity, neo-nazi movements and the white supremacists and the neo-confederates, I highly recommend Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream by Leonard Zeskind( Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009, $37.50). This is an extraordinary piece of work that covers the white nationalist movement for the last three decades. The author has been a persistent student of the international racialist movement, including the field of Holocaust deniers. He wrote the book as a warning with the hopes the subject would remain obscure and not relevant to our present reality. Unfortunately, Zeskind outlines exactly how the themes of these movements have almost become acceptable to elements in Washington, particularly the conservative movement and elements within the Republican Party.
What I found particularly important in Zeskind's book is his analysis of the sociology of this movement--the fact there has been highly educated and accomplished people in its ranks and is predominantly not of the lower classes. What most observers and critics maintain is that these people are on the fringe--true--but they suggest somehow they are ignorant because of a lack of education. The problem is that they have considerable abilities and often high education levels and that's why they are dangerous.
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