Category: politics

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do we ask?

Larry Beinhart:

What is civilization?

Is it doing business? Exxon, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs? Or is it the rule of law, social order, clean water, sewers and waste disposal, a reliable food supply, literacy, mathematics, science and technology, art, architecture, public spaces and public forums?

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family values

I wonder when America will confront pathology and be done with it?

California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), a fierce opponent of gay rights and top organizer of anti-gay marriage rallies is arrested for DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified man in a state vehicle.

As Jon Stewart points out, “Jim Bunning didn’t block the extension of unemployment benefits as a principled stand against fiscal responsibility — he’s just a dick.”

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nature in the debate

The health care clash, like American politics, remains rooted in our mommy and daddy political parties.

Our political parties are ‘maternal’ and ‘paternal’?

See, the Democrat Party is the Mommy Party because it projects “warmth.” And the Republican Party is the Daddy Party because it leaves work early to have anonymous sex, drives home blind drunk, knocks over the neighbors’ mailboxes, yells at the kids for dressing like sluts and fags, kicks the dog, sexually harasses the undocumented Guatemalan housekeeper, and spends the rest of the night blogging on the Decline of Civility.

I’m exaggerating, of course. In reality, the Daddy Party just wants to keep us safe from immigrants and taxes and Mohammedanism and socialized medicine and gay sex and Hollywood and stuff like that.

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we are stuck with us

we the karikaturePulitzer-prize winning Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote, “Increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.”

You can’t demand that debate be rational strictly on the basis of the evidence, because that’s not how the public operates.

Which is to say, we’re stuck with us.

Public discourse has changed; information that does not fit one’s worldview is now discounted or rejected.

I think Plato made a somewhat similar argument. As did Francis Bacon, when he said that “the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.”

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dumbaggedon

Republican Trent Franks of Arizona reflecting on his belief that African Americans may have been better off under slavery:

“Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

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let’s start a coffee party

It is not Us against the Govt. It is democracy vs corporatocracy . . . I just can’t believe that the Tea Party speaks for all patriotic Americans.

Dan Zak at the Washington Post:

You’re dealing with a nation that’s jaded, paranoid, distrustful, broke, angry — it’s like they just woke up from an eight-year binge. We’ve become so polarized. Once we say our political affiliations, everyone goes to their corner and then comes out swinging. . . . A lot of people have the same goals and desires.

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said when dead

Alexander HaigAlexander Haig:
“Those who get to the top are usually prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get there.”

“Reagan was a cipher.”

James Baker, Edwin Meese, Michael Deaver. “These men were running the government.”

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a few minutes

Joe the Plumber aka Samuel WurzelbacherWhatever has happened to Joe the Plumber aka Samuel Wurzelbacher? He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore.

“McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy. I don’t owe him shit. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

About 200 politicians have asked for his support this year!

He likes Obama, in some ways, but stumps for the Teabaggers.

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corruption thrives

Bruce Falconer:

After the legendary corruption of the Iraq occupation — private contractors fashioning spurs for their cowboy boots from stolen Iraqi gold — you’d think the US government would be keeping an extra-close watch on the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.

Many billions were siphoned under the head-in-the-sand administration of Bush’s mission in Iraq. What now?

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Now We All Hereby Proclaim

Office of the Press Secretary
————————————
For Immediate Release April 28, 2009

NATIONAL EQUAL PAY DAY, 2009

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 28, 2009, as National Equal Pay Day.

I call upon American men and women, and all employers, to acknowledge the injustice of wage discrimination and to commit themselves to equal pay for equal work.

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Karl Rove strips flu system

Republicans stripped $900 million in flu pandemic preparedness funds from the stimulus bill and refashioned the budget so that state and local emergency services get nothing.

Positioning for deeper tax cuts, Karl Rove complained that “$462 million for the Centers for Disease Control and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations” is wasteful spending. Tax cuts are not.

House and Senate Republicans bet that they would be able to score their political points without any life or death consequences… but how do so-called free markets manage flu pandemics?

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Victory Over Torture Day

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA

Yeah, right.

I have now lived through three major episodes in my life where the political elite have told me quite plainly that neither I nor my fellow citizens are sufficiently mature to suffer the public prosecution of major crimes committed within my government.

The first was when Gerry Ford told me I wasn’t strong enough to handle the sight of Richard Nixon in the dock. (Ed. note–I would have thrown a parade.) Dick Cheney looked at this episode and determined that the only thing Nixon did wrong was get caught.

The second time was when the entire government went into spasm over the crimes of the Iran-Contra gang and I was told that I wasn’t strong enough to see Ronald Reagan impeached or his men packed off to Danbury. Dick Cheney looked at this and determined that the only thing Reagan and his men did wrong was get caught and, by then, Cheney had decided that even that wasn’t really so very wrong and everybody should shut up.

Now, Barack Obama, who won election by telling the country and its people that they were great because of all they’d done for him, has told me that I am not strong enough to handle the prosecution of pale and vicious bureaucrats, many of them acting at the behest of Dick Cheney, who decided that the only thing he was doing wrong was nothing at all, who have broken the law, disgraced their oaths, and manifestly belong in a one-room suite at the Hague. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m sick and goddamn tired of being told that, as a citizen, I am too fragile to bear the horrible burden of watching public criminals pay for their crimes and that, as a political entity, my fellow citizens and I are delicate flowers encased in candy-glass who must be kept away from the sight of men in fine suits weeping as they are ripped from the arms of their families and sent off to penal institutions manifestly more kind than those in which they arranged to get their rocks off vicariously while driving other men mad.

Hey, Mr. President. Put these barbarians on trial and watch me. I’ll be the guy out in front of the courtroom with a lawn chair, some sandwiches, and a cooler of fine beer. I’ll be the guy who hires the brass band to serenade these criminal bastards on their way off to the big house. I’ll be the one who shows up at every one of their probation hearings with a copy of the Constitution, the way crime victims show up at the parole board when their attacker comes up for release. I’ll declare a national holiday — Victory Over Torture Day — and lead the parade right up whatever gated street it is that Cheney lives on these days.

Trust me, Mr. President. I can take it.


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Bush, Cheney As Recruiters

The chief US interrogator in Iraq, Major Mathew Alexander says that during 1,300 interrogations he supervised, he came across only one true ideologue. He is quoted as saying that:

“I listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis, state that the number one reason they had decided to pick up arms and join al-Qa’ida was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorised torture and abuse at Guantanamo Bay.”


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Track Billions

Recovery.gov, Where's your money going?Recovery.gov [http://www.recovery.gov/] is a website that lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. There are going to be a few different ways to search for information. The money is being distributed by Federal agencies, and soon you’ll be able to see where it’s going — to which states, to which congressional districts, even to which Federal contractors. As soon as we are able to, we’ll display that information visually in maps, charts, and graphics.

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Infiltrating Opportunist

I posted August 30 that Sarah Palin did not suddenly appear on the scene late in McCain’s campaign but has cultivated her career to reach the national scene. Perhaps part of her drive to infiltrate our government for her religion, Palin had put significant effort into catching the attention of Republican insiders.

And she’s been promoted for at least a year by the most influential Republican pundits helping to position her. Stephan Hayes, a writer among the caffeinated crew at Weekly Standard, reported in How Palin Got Picked. On the air last spring, Rush Limbaugh promoted Palin as Vice President, “Mother of four, she is a ‘babe’, you have to notice.”

The only mainstream media story I’ve noticed about the hidden positioning of Sarah Palin is published October 28 by Richard Cohen at the Washington Post. He reveals that top conservative editors and writers were invited to the Alaska governor’s mansion in 2007 – a coterie of ideologues.

Sarah Palin says on the stump in carefully crafted speeches that she is not an insider but in truth she is glued to the rafters in a very small, secretive and arrogant clubhouse.

It’s the New Yorker, which stands out this year for robust and fearless journalism, that offers detail.

Sarah Palin promoting herselfThe Insiders, by Jane Mayer

Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington élite than her rhetoric has suggested.

Upon being elected governor, Palin began developing relationships with Washington insiders, who later championed the idea of putting her on the 2008 ticket.

She’s had D.C. in mind for years.

An interview with Jane Mayer by Amy Goldman is here:
The Real Story Behind How McCain Chose Sarah Palin

Oct 28 2008, George Monbiot at the Guardian sums up why we should put an end to Sarah Palin and rebuild our political media.

How was it allowed to happen?

How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance?

How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington – the degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics…

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Alaska Bridge For Sale

Obama said… “if you think those lobbyists are working day and night for John McCain just to put themselves out of business, well, then, I’ve got a bridge to sell you up in Alaska.”

The Obama Campaign is asking us to think about 170 lobbyists moving into the White House. Be careful. McCain’s economic advisor was President Bush’s chief economist!

Lies in advertisingWe live in lies.

The spinners lie constantly.

They lie with a straight face.

They lie sentence after sentence, relentlessly.

We’re accustomed to lies.

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More Palin Posts

McCain - Pain 2008 McCain-Palin banner, Rageboy notices our country is fried

Major media stumbles, but the web has enabled fact finding, insight and direct reach to good citizens, showing a great weakness in our headlines.

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Palin’s Predators

Improving relations between humans is no simple task.

Improving relations between humans and bears is no simple task. It’s dangerous, folks are often hurt, especially as development encroaches.

Yet there are serious efforts and dedicated pioneers, for instance, as one man remembers:

cute polar bear cub thumbSometime during that afternoon I sprawled, belly down, on the kitchen floor.

One of the cubs climbed aboard, crawled up my back, and began to sniff and lick and paw at my neck and head. After a few minutes, he discovered my right ear. Grabbing hold, he began to chew and suck on it, much like (I guessed) he would suckle his mother’s teat.

Suddenly the cub began to purr. The purrs were like that of a cat, except deeper, more rumbling. It was something I’d never imagined a bear might do.

I lay there quietly, breathing in the purrs and the tickling of my ears, and felt as content, even peaceful, as I’d been in a long time.

But many believe that this new frontier to understand and sustain wildlife, to perhaps prevent extinction, is unimportant, and distracting. Sarah Palin has famously said today’s environmentalism is opportunistic, a field where specialists manipulate funding rather than science, a treachery of private agenda using public budgets she will fight to remove.

Thus, Sarah Palin claims to be protecting the environment by adhering to rules and removing fraud. But these claims are dubious at best. What has she done?

Her policies and appointments during her tenure as Governor and before show that she’s fought the old guard merely to become the vanguard of a new ‘domination politics’ in Alaska.

Palin says “Alaskans want hope and opportunity, leaders with vision. They don’t want leaders and candidates who are looking at everything as doom and gloom.”

With her kitchen optimism, she invigorates Alaskans. As old players are tarnished, new decision makers appear, but who are these new captains? A few are local. A few are global. A few are Party and D.C. wonks. Generally, these are replicate men and women, wanting power and prize as her combatants, but along with her, they are stubbornly parading family and freedom – a trick of trumpets that hides the elite and lures loyal followers to ignore who is winning the great favors. This is called politics and business.

Sarah Palin, rifle hunterYes, Sarah Palin is ordinary commerce and old politics. At bottom, studying current Alaska will reveal Wall Street in a bear rug. Nothing important here.

Evidence of her stumbling will continue. Americans may or may not avoid the spin. As time passes, relations with corporate capital and industrial project executives will appear that are far beyond her tiny reform and fungelical principles.

A small sample is her famed and infamous stand against listing the polar bear as an endangered species. Yes, she has changed boards and committees but research is baring more white than merely polar bears on ice floes. She may have only introduced another imperial conquest.

Here’s insight from the Anchorage Press where she confidently re-arranged Alaska’s decision making. Though a small sample, as they say in the Arctic, it’s the tip of an iceberg.

After The Times went out of business in 1992, I stopped being a regular at Board of Game meetings. Even as my attendance has lagged, my involvement in Alaska’s wildlife politics has increased substantially.

The first Board of Game I covered was immeasurably more balanced, moderate, and independent than the one we’ve got today. Its members included a federal wildlife researcher, a filmmaker, an outdoors columnist, a hunting guide, and leaders in the Native community. Their attitudes toward wildlife covered just about the entire spectrum, which provoked lively discussions.

But there was no group think, no larger agenda as there seems to be today, with a board that is dominated by men aligned with the Alaska Outdoor Council, a politically connected group of mostly white, male, urban sport hunters, who are fervent predator-control advocates.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears during summers are unreliable, Palin said. It’s her opportunity that only the White House agrees.

They’ve espoused a management system that in recent years has served an ever-narrower slice of Alaska’s population and, at every turn, has increased opportunities for recreational hunters and trappers to kill predators.

Under Governor Sarah Palin the current board would be entirely white, urban, and male, except for an uproar after appointments she made this past winter.

Palin backtracked and added one Native voice with rural roots to the panel. But there’s not a whisper of hope that it might include a non-Native who thinks outside the AOC box, someone who’s more of a wildlife watcher or naturalist or independent wildlife scientist than a hunter or trapper.

Across Alaska, Sarah Palin introduced and held open the door to her new cadre, declaring their purpose was to sweep away inefficient programs, dust away embedded agenda, remove professional malingerers, and bring new prosperity but her housekeeping is almost entirely sheltering big business and often radical proponents of the so-called free market.

“Unfortunately, people vote more for what they don’t want than what they do want,” says Ivan Moore, an Alaska pollster.

A local Alaskan has said, “I own a home in Sarah Palin’s hometown and lived there during her rise to power. I am amazed by the ease by which people like Palin can espouse distrust in government while simultaneously expand its grasp.

Palin was part of a movement that included her, Scott Ogan, Vic Kohring and the gang that told us government is bad, unless it is feeding our pet interests. The movement adopted its own lexicon which made things like public schools (renamed government schools) sound sinister and intruding.

Most importantly, the playbook involved the ‘divide and conquer’ approach. Government was responsible for all ills of society. The Palinistas were the true believers who would, in their great benevolence, build a great society where anyone who wasn’t like ‘us’ would be penalized.

John McCain seems to have picked up on this divide and conquer approach. His playbook to win the presidency is to appeal to our lesser dem ons and tell us the cause of all of our problems are the unorthodox (liberal leaning thinkers) among us and that government is what is holding us down. He’s recruited our woman Sarah to be his cheerleader in this cause.

She will be a great help to him in this strategy. She is of the ‘if you are not for us, you are against us’ school and will appeal to the part of our nation that believes we can change society by teaching creationism, ending a woman’s right to choose and defining good government as that which promotes the self-interest of a select few.

Another superb comment:

This Sarah Palin must truly be a noble soul, right? She’s going to prioritize the sanctity of life. She’s going to live up to her reputation as a crusader for “family values”. She must be absolutely inexhaustible. As governor of a state of such crucial importance to the rest of the nation, she must call upon her extensive education and experience to look out for the interests of all US citizens, and not just the tens of thousands who elected her to office. And that’s not all. Now she’s agreed to take on a bigger role of service to our country. She’s willing to accept the nomination to be our Vice President. Why is that? Well, as of the beginning of this month she didn’t even know. In her own words “I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?”

Stumbling with science, economics and social administration, not many other national leaders bring as many quaint omissions of urbane wisdom as Sarah Palin. Her candidate questionnaire for the Alaska 2006 gubernatorial race tells us her depth:

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

Palin: “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.”

A comment at DailyKoss about Palin’s naive answer said, “Reminds me of the story of Ma Ferguson, first woman governor of Texas (1925). She is often credited with the saying: ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.'”

The headlines say we mustn’t worry about mundane Tweed-favored Alaskan arrangements. We are at war. Sabers rattle in hidden caves. Oil oligarchs haunt our garage and only our power and virtue can repel these dreads.

So in a manner most excellent as if Victoria comforts our retreating Empire, Cindy McCain tells George Stephanopoulos, “[R]emember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. It’s not as if she doesn’t understand what’s at stake here.”

Cindy Hensely McCain speaks to remind us that our foreign policy challenges are along the frigid coasts of the Czars. This Sarah did know as a child. Why then would Sarah falter in the heady halls of statesmanship and intellect? Pip, pip, pass the bubbly.

Oh America, my friends, let’s talk, don’t you see? Sarah Palin comes across so strong. She will assuage our nerves, rake our sloth, invoke our initiative, keep our conscience, bond our medical records, and, oh yes, look, from the highest hill in Fairbanks you can see, she will fill our gas tanks for a few months or a year….

Wasilla is the new wow!

But something is very wrong with this nomination! Sophistication is missing. Competence is missing. The steel and compassion and restraint of diplomacy is missing. Pure hard study and grasp is missing.

Palin’s father recently bought t-shirts hawked at the State Fair, the event of the year just down the highway from Governor Sarah Palin’s town of Wasilla: “Alaska: The Coldest State with the Hottest Governor”. Tonight the Fair closes, the booths are broken home, and TIME reports that there have got to be 500 people packed into a beer-soaked clapboard called the Sluice Box listening to honky-tonk.

“Here’s to the girl from the great Northwest,” he sings, “with tits as hard as a hornet’s nest.”

The crowd whistles its new prowess and approval.

Will Americans approve McCain-Palin?

As the days go by, citizens and journalists and legal watchdogs of our social weal will ask if Palin’s fjord diplomacy is adequate foreign policy and will study Palin’s appointments of government and commercial predators in Alaska.

High School, 1982, Sarah PalinThere may be other predators too.

Global predators with billions ready to engineer resources none of us will enjoy except to purchase.

Political predators that rearrange budgets no less tax drawn than scientists and green research.

Religious predators that gild new pulpits along the oh so persecuted remote.

A question more important than Sarah Palin, or the strength of political stumping and electoral sloganeering, is whether McCain and these Republicans are predators too. Are both Sarah and we their scent of blood?

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Confounded Palin Pundits

McCain PalinOpinion is on fire. It’s an utter free-for-all as everybody tries to figure out McCain and his tactics, dig up insight about Sarah Palin, or dirt, or search for her husband’s contact with other women.

Facts are few. There’s not a long record. Alaska politics is smaller than San Diego, listing or not listing polar bears.

She’s not a ‘reformer’ merely because of two or three legislative bills. She’s not a ‘muckraker’ because scandals were all over Alaska prior to her swearing in. She doesn’t seem to be a ‘humanitarian’ offering zero support for native programs. She’s not a ‘maverick’ because bargaining extra cash from oil companies is a tradition in Alaska. She’s not a ‘commander’ with only a tiny state guard, regardless miles of coastline near dreaded Russia. She’s not rated highly either, dropping to 67% in a fully Republican state where it seems that 80% can be seen as low.

She’s canned her Christian tho’ and will gather hardwired defenders. Perhaps her sincerity will energize believers, and might lift the crowd away from some of its hate, a task becoming important and necessary.

Sarah Palin, Alaska GuardAnother Alaskan, Shannyn Moore has written an article that seriously questions some aspects of Governor Palin’s judgment and posted this picture of Sarah Palin behind a .50 caliber machine gun, “doing her Michael Dukakis impression last year”.

I just don’t get it. This is a new form of politics to me.

Maybe mall mining and television imprints are powerful, but I’m thinking the decision might be pure numbers.

I mean, the campaign has rented a mainframe and crunched the electorate in the red states and realized they could squeak through if they can succeed in firing up the ‘loyalists’ to get out to the polls. This decision must be pure political engineering.

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waging of nonviolent conflict

A Force More Powerful is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance.