Ranting Liberally

The Republicans Just Got Interesting

2012-01-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Well, well, well....seems that South Carolina threw a very nice ol' monkey wrench into the inevitability of Multiple Choice Mitten's march to be the nominee. Could the GOP convention end up being brokered if no one gets enough delegates to win it outright? It's unlikely but a possibility which would mean that I'd have to watch their convention. I sure hope I don't have to.

The Republican Primary Season, So Far

2012-01-18T04:13:00.000-08:00

I've promised myself not to pay attention to what the Republicans are doing since I won't be voting for them no matter what but I figure since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd throw in my two cents on the GOP season. How I'll do it is take the predictions and see how they're doing so far.

Prediction: Romney will be the nominee.

What's happened: Once the votes have started to come in, it's looking like Romney will be the Republican nominee.

Prediction: The Republicans will lie a lot during their debates.

What's happened: The Republicans have had 16 debates with more to come and they've lied a lot during them. Knowing this beforehand, I have avoided watching any of them.

Prediction: It'll be difficult for the far right to find an anti-Romney candidate.

What's happened: After falling in and out of love of various alternatives to Romney, it's been difficult for the Teabaggers, etc. to find a viable alternative to Romney.

And on and on it goes. Wasn't that exciting?

The Case For Barack Obama

2011-08-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just because it's online and only looks bigger than it actually is or it's become suddenly fashionable to bash President Obama from the left. I think it's the internet that's making this look bigger than what it really is since recent polls show that 70% of Democrats still support the President's re-election.

Let's take a look and take apart the left's problems with Obama:

Obama isn't a progressive.

Well, maybe not what the self-appointed guardians of progressivism says what it should be but in the real world he most certainly is a progressive. What he's not is a doctrinaire progressive -- he made it more than clear during the campaign and since he's been elected that he was much more interested in getting things done than bravely losing for the progressive cause. We have health care reform because of that attitude, we have regulation of the financial sector for the first time ever thanks to that attitude plus a plethora of even more issues. Rachel Maddow has pointed out that Obama has passed into law 85% of what he ran on.

Obama betrayed us on the public option.

Nonsense. First of all, the public option wasn't what a lot of people who are crying over it thought it was. It was never set up where you could drop the insurance you've already got at work or otherwise and switch over to the new government insurance company. The public option was only going to be open to those who weren't already covered as it's name says, an option. The President also said it wasn't the main component to health insurance reform. Besides, no one is stopping anyone from introducing the public option even now even though it'll require a change of parties in the House for it to have a chance.

Obama trades everything away.

I'm putting this one down to all of the people who never got involved in politics until 2008. One of the benefits of the President coming from the Senate is that he's familiar with how things work in DC. The name of the game there is compromise (even though with the Tea Party Republicans that's being put to the test). Everything is "watered down" going through the legislative process -- it's how things get passed.

Obama isn't a fighter.

Sorry, but I don't buy this one even a little bit: No one gets 85% of his agenda passed being a milquetoast. What he isn't is a public fighter. That may make us applaud and cheer but it really doesn't do much when it comes to passing laws. Fighters make headlines but don't have a great record of laws passed under their belts. I'll take getting it done over whether I feel all warm and such about a fighting politician.

Excuse me for continuing to support the man I voted for back in 2008. He's done the best he could do with what he's had to work with and most of that has been damn successful. Keep this in mind too: dump Obama and we don't get President Bernie Sanders. We get President Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry.

The Worm Has Turned

2011-04-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

I've been fighting cancer so I haven't written much so here goes.

Even with that going on, there is something going on that has made me happy and sad at once. Namely how things have turned since the elections of 2010.

I was told by my friends on the right how devastated I was going to be on election night because the "Marxists" would soon be out of power. I'd be just a quivering, weeping little pile they told me. Well, I'll be the first to admit that last November could have been better and we did have our asses handed to us when it came to the House. Always the optimist, I took what comfort I could over the fact that even with the losses in the Senate we managed to hang onto that and the President was still a Democrat so the nuttier ideas from the House GOPers would go nowhere. Some things were going to slip through though, given how the Democrats bend over backwards to avoid annoying the other side too much.

I was also bemoaning that so many of our side decided to stay home last November as well but I wasn't surprised that it happened either. The less ideological Democrats were being bombarded with a pretty steady diet of how either evil Obama was or how he had "betrayed" the progressive cause since he was actually in office. The atmosphere was pretty darn negative when it came to our President and by extension the message being sent out was why bother voting, you're just going to get screwed no matter who gets in.

The Republicans, as is their wont, read the elections wrong. Instead of seeing it as the beneficiaries of low voter turnout and a successful campaign from both the far right and left to demonize President Obama, they saw it as a resounding endorsement of their ideas. ALL of their ideas, even the ones they neglected to mention on the campaign trial. So they went for it, policy-wise first in Wisconsin by going after the hated unions then going after Medicare and Social Security.

Then something very interesting happened.

I don't know which one it was but somewhere along the line people hit the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was the public unions being attacked or the push to privatize Medicare and Social Security but one of them did it without question. Then something happened that my friends a bit further left than I had promised and I doubted would ever happen - things had finally gotten so bad that the people woke up.

Suddenly state capitols were overcome with protesters. People were out on corners, waving signs at passing motorists. They even shut down phone exchanges with their actual phone calls to actual legislators, state and federal. People were actually doing more than signing online petitions, they were out of the house standing up to the right live and in person.

In normal times, that would be a signal to the party doing things that all these people didn't like to back off a bit. But the Republicans, tone deaf as always, had convinced themselves that they still held the majority position and decided to double down on it. How did they accomplish this? First they threatened to shut down the government if they didn't get their way entire but cooler heads prevailed that time. Those same heads lost it when their "genius" Representative Paul Ryan came out with his budget for 2012.

This was a wishlist of every thing the Republicans have wanted to do ever since the South went from solid Democratic to pretty-solid Republican. Make Medicare into a voucher-like system instead of the single payer system it is now, cut back Social Security, defund NPR, Planned Parenthood and even more like cutting food stamps and school lunches. Now, it would have been bad enough for them if this budget abomination had just stayed in the realm of "proposed" but they had to go that one more step and go ahead and pass it in the House.

Oops.

Big boo boo. Now there's actual votes to have to defend to the folks back home. No denying that or saying you really meant to do something else there.

The Republicans are now getting a taste of what they try so hard to avoid: reality. The new Tea Bag members of the House are holding town halls while they're off and instead of friendly crowds shouting down pesky liberals they're finding they are the ones being shouted at and not in a good way. Why, their "courageous" Rep. Ryan even got BOOED by a home district crowd.

Knowing the Republicans, they'll ignore even these clear signals and go even further with their policies.

Election night 2012 just might be a lot more fun than the one in 2010 was.

Help wanted

2011-02-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

I'm starting chemo today and was thinking that since I won't be posting much it'd be nice to have some more writers for this blog. Who knows, maybe we can grow this to something beyond being read when I get around to writing something and then send it around the internet. If you'd like to join in, please send me an email at proudliberal7@aol.com. I'll clean up the grammar and spelling but otherwise what you write will be all you and you could be read by dozens with the thanks of a grateful nation to keep you going.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T11:31:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I said it. I haven't been writing much lately - for those who don't know, I am fighting prostate cancer that has moved to my bones. Radiation treatment is done - chemo up next. Needless to say, I haven't felt up to doing much but I did want to make a quick post for the holidays. Hopefully I'll start feeling better as treatment progresses and will make more posts but in the meantime my best wishes to all this holiday season, no matter who or what you celebrate.

"We Can't Be Just Like Them" - We Might Win

2010-12-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

I'm about to give up on my brethren on the left. There's a disturbing subtext going around among a seeming majority of us even slightly left-of-center - fight the right but don't fight the right too hard. After all, we don't want to be "just like them."

Why the hell not? In case you haven't noticed, "them" are winning again.

The conservative movement's heavy investment in media is paying off more and more while we stick to individual causes - so much so that the con take on any given issue is now the default position of most of the media. I've essentially stopped watching cable and network TV news because of this. Most any news show think they're balanced because they have on 2-3 conservative voices and a reporter as if a news reporter was the embodiment of liberalism. Few actual progressives who could effectively argue against the current wave of rightwing talking points ever get TV facetime.

If that wasn't bad enough, the media acts like the most important view of any issue is coming from the Republican Party, whether or not they are actually in power. In a sane and truly balanced news culture, the party in power gets the most attention. In this one, John McCain is to be found most often on "serious" news programs like "Meet the Press" and Sarah Palin is declared our national obsession. The LOSERS of the 'o8 election are clearly the ones who matter to the mainstream media, not any of the Democrats who had won. This has happened because, while we are signing online petitions and complaining amongst ourselves, "them" are complaining directly to media and threatening their sponsors when they see news they don't like and consider it "bias." "Them" wins again.

The best evidence of how thoroughly the "them" has won is how Americans label themselves. A stunning majority consider themselves to be conservatives with liberals coming in under 30%. Look at the polling on individual issues without any labeling attached however and something interesting jumps out - most of those "conservatives" turn out to be very liberal. Most want the tax cuts to the rich to go away, they support gays openly serving in the military, among those who say they don't like healthcare reform most of them say it's because it didn't go far enough. And on and on....but don't you dare call them liberals.

And who, besides us brave few who understand what the term actually means and wear it as a badge of honor, would want to be a liberal anyway? Dislike what they stand for as much as you want but the right has the image of getting it done and we liberal types look like we sure don't like what the right is doing and we'd do something about it if we'd ever get up the energy but it's just too much of a bother. Oh, we'll yell about things among ourselves and sign a few things online but getting off our asses and computers and raising a real ruckus?

Well, we sure hope somebody does that. Someday.

Besides, we'd rather spend our time going after a much safer target - our own people. The conservatives just love it when we say how awful our leaders are be they in the House, Senate or White House. "See?," the righties say, "(fill in the blank) is so bad and incompetent that not even the liberals like them! Vote for us instead." Of course, our beef with Democrats in Congress and the White House is completely different than theirs, but they don't have to mention that part - the damage is done and we look "fractured" while they look united and determined. Then they go on to win 63 seats in the House.

Back to the "we can't be just like them" argument from the left. There used to be a story making the rounds before progressive talk radio stations came into being about why liberal talk shows wouldn't make it. The tale went on to say while liberals would hear something outrageous on a radio show, they'd just sadly shake their heads and drive on while a conservative would dive off the highway looking for a phone to call in and express their anger. A story clearly pre-cell phone too but the point stands - if we show some spine and anger we'll be "just like them."

I've discussed a few solutions to this in earlier posts and I'm far from alone in suggesting what to do next so I won't rehash them here. I'll just wrap up by pointing out that unless we're willing to do more than bitch among ourselves and such we're going to be stuck with rightwing crazies setting the national agenda for long past the next election. We're going to have to do what Harry Truman said to do - take the fight to them and never apologize for it - to turn things around. We don't have to do that with falsehoods like "them" live on but do it we must.

No time like the present to get that started too.

What Progressives Really Need - A Cable Channel Of Our Own

2010-11-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

After the election defeat this year, I'm reading tons of articles giving progressives advice on what to do to make a comeback. Organize, start a movement, sign lots of online petitions, send this or that group money, teach, educate, etc. etc. All doomed to failure if we can't get the word out beyond our own and right now, we can't.

Let's face facts here - all the left-leaning magazine articles and books in print and online aren't doing the job. Sure, we read them, nodding our heads in agreement but the fact remains that the people who need this information aren't getting it -- in fact, they are avoiding it. We moan and groan about Fox Noise, how the cowed-by-cons mainstream media has become not much more than a piece of the rightwing echo machine and how news channels on cable have become a parade of right-leaning radio talk shows with pictures peppered with a few actual news headlines crawling along the bottom of the TV screen.

It's a bummer but, as Walter Cronkite used to say, that's the way it is.

What we need to combat this is to join the fray. As radio talk show host Randi Rhodes says, nothing happens unless it happens on TV. So let's get our asses on TV then. My suggestion is to start a cable news channel that doesn't play at leaning left by tossing a few hours out of the broadcast day to the liberal viewpoint, get one going that actually is.

Think of the benefits - we'd finally have a place to present our actual ideas instead of reacting to the conservative media's distortions of it. Democrats and progressives would have a safe place where they can present their agendas without fear of being ridiculed after they go off the air. All those news stories that we pass among ourselves could actually be seen by someone who has never heard of them and never would given our current media situation. Less bubble boy and more about economic bubbles that are destroying our poor and middle class.

Make it splashy and entertaining too - there's no reason for any of this to be presented like a sleep-inducing lecture. Shout about it if need be, you'd probably catch the people scanning the channels and give them some real information for once.

We like petitions - let's start some urging people like George Soros to finance this and get it going. George, the right is going to demonize you no matter what - you may as well give them a reason to do it. As a foundation, I suggest naming it something that already has a sound reputation as a progressive stalwart - The Nation magazine or NationTV. It wouldn't have to exist on donations to keep it on either: as progressive radio stations have shown to advertisers, we liberals buy stuff too and are a market worth pursuing. Then market the hell out of it so people will watch - no more word of mouth only.

Pass the word and let's get this going. Our alternative is what just happened on election day - people who are voting based on unanswered myths and lies about Obama and the Democrats' agenda from the RNC and their paid or otherwise spokespeople. The truth doesn't set anybody free if they don't know about it.

What To Do About That Man In The White House

2010-11-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

I have been a fierce supporter and defender of President Obama in the past. I want to still do that but after the midterms it's becoming more and more difficult. If the next two years are going to be a repeat of the last two, it'll be impossible.

What I mean by that is if Mr. Obama continues to try and reach out to Republicans (read: appease) then I'm done with him. I defended the President to the left as a pragmatist but it appears I was wrong on that. The President is an idealist - one who really thought he could unite the country all by himself. Nothing wrong with that on its face but idealism has to be seasoned with reality for it to work.

The reality is that turning one's cheek only works twice. The Republicans have shown time and time again that they are only interested in regaining power and they'll obstruct any and everything to get it. To them, it's party over country and they don't care who they hurt as long as they can stop the Democrats then blame them for not doing anything. Repeatedly saying that no matter what you'll "strive to work with" them only encourages them. The days of bipartisanship are over - now it's time to fire up the machine and steam roll over them.

That this should have happened well before we lost the House and a ton of state legislatures should be self-evident. The opportunities and advances we could have made beyond the impressive number of things the Democratic Congress accomplished is breathtaking but instead we wasted time trying to make conservatives, outside of our party and within, happy and willing to work for the good of the country.

So much for that idea.

What actions Obama and the Democrats can do now has been limited but still do-able. There's still executive orders to make more advances and the veto pen to protect what progress we have been able to make. Given the limits, it's time to jump on the bully pulpit and cable TV and start going on the offensive. Call the Republican claims what they are - lies. Point out the very real differences between the nutcases on the right and the fact that all the Democrats did was what they were elected to do in 2008.

This is going to have to start at the top with real leadership from the White House. Professor Obama is going to have to become President finally and fight.

If he is unwilling or unable to do that, then I say it's time to look for someone else to lead the party and the nation in 2012. Primary challenges don't always have to be divisive and split the party - in order for that not to happen Democrats are going to have to be willing to say that if a primary challenger gets Obama turned into a fighter and going the right direction but loses the challenge then its mission accomplished. That's what happened last election in the governor's race in Oregon. Then-Governor Kulongoski seemed to be turning right and was challenged by two primary candidates. Gov. Ted won the primary but got the message. He emerged a better governor and candidate and his party primary opponents unified behind him to win him a second term.

President Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change. The change is underway, the hope is that he finds the steel in his spine to get us through the next two years with minimal damage from the Tea Party crazies the Republicans have become. This time President Obama really does only have two years to get this done. If he does, he'll bring back the enthusiastic base who elected him in '08 but stayed home this year to win another term.

If he doesn't, and there is no challenge in the primaries, then pay close attention to the Republican presidential primaries. It'll show us who our next President will be.

Election Day 2010 Post Mortem - The Democrats Go Spineless Again

2010-11-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

We sure blew that one. According to the polls showing us where voters actually stood when it came to issues (they still don't like Republicans and their ideas), this should have been another Democratic win. Well, if you define "win" as keeping both houses of Congress that is. I think we Dem types understood that we'd lose some seats but we apparently were hoping against hope that we'd pull it out at the end. Then reality hit on Tuesday.

Reason #1:
Too many of us stayed home and gave away the election by default. 29 million people who voted for Obama in 2008 couldn't be bothered to go to the polls this year. The majority of people who did manage to schedule in a few minutes at a polling booth were the Fox Noise demographic - angry old white people. They won. Surprise!

I put this down as yet another failure to know how our government works and not being taught Civics in school. I know that it's sexy to get out to vote for someone charismatic and intelligent on a national level and it's hard to convey that passion onto Representative Huff N. Puff and Senator Speaks Alot locally. It's also just as obvious that the vote avoiders don't get that in order for that national leader they were so hot for two years ago to get things done he or she needs a Congress that will pass the bills to do it. From the opinion pages of major national newspapers to news channel chat to bloggers, Obama has been blamed for things that are the fault of Congress. And here we are.

Reason #2:
This is a major one - the communication failure of the Democrats. That's the nice way of putting it. I'm calling it more the failure of the Democrats to call out the myriad of Republican lies they campaigned on. There was an article that came out shortly before the election - Eight False Things the Public "Knows" Prior to Election Day - that summed up the myths and outright falsehoods being pushed by the Republicans before election day. What did the Democrats do to dispell them? Not much if anything.

You'd think that after Gore and Kerry we'd have learned by now. Both presidential campaigns were slandered and smeared as expected by the GOP and both seemingly took the positions that such charges were ridiculous on their faces. They both decided that voters would see through such nonsense on their own and so there was no need to dignify those claims against them with a response. That might have worked back in the days of three TV networks and ranters such as Limbaugh, Beck etc. were considered cranky crackpots howling at the moon. Now the right has bought up enough airtime and cowed what used to be the reliable mainsteam news media from even hinting that what they say may not exactly be on the up-and-up so that those charges are repeated enough that voters got the idea that the Democrats couldn't respond because the charges were true.

I think you know who won that argument and who lost. It just happened again this year.

Reason #3:
The economy, stupid. This has and will be discussed ad nauseum so no need to repeat it here.

You may have noticed a theme here in this posting. I'm disappointed at how the election went but if there's anyone to be angry at, it's the Democrats. What the Republicans did in this campaign is what they always do so there's no news flash there. What I'm angry about is that the Democrats let them get away with it. Again.

Of course, there was a small silver lining to all of this. What the Republicans won this year was just one House of Congress. We still hold control of the Senate and the White House so the crazier planks of the GOP Tea Party platform won't go anywhere. Healthcare insurance reform won't be repealed, there will be no privatization/destruction of Social Security and Medicare, the Department of Education will continue to exist, public education will not be eradicated, etc. etc. What's most likely to happen over the next two years will be gridlock and not much of anything else, legislation-wise.

Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless. Will the Democrats get it together to make a comeback in 2012? That remains to be seen.

Teabag President - A Nightmare Scenario

2010-10-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

Imagine, if you will, that things really do go South for the Democrats and the President. The Republicans take over the House and Senate in November, ensuring that nothing meaningful is done about the Great Recession. The economy stays in the tank, unemployment goes up and it's all blamed on Obama. With no real ability to answer the charges thanks to conservative media and their water carriers in the mainstream media, we reach the 2012 election.

The Tea Party, empowered by their primary victories in 2010 and successful take-over of Congress, start turning their attention to the Republican primaries. Traditional and even mildly moderate Republican candidates are attacked as RINOs as the TPers demand that the GOP nominee be one of them. They win again.

Thanks to the bad shape of the economy, President Obama fails to win a second term.

The new Tea Party President starts acting on their agenda. Social Security is partially privatized, aid to the poor and the unemployed is scaled back. All the while, the new President issues denials that any of that actually happened and it is duly reported, unchallenged.

The Tea Party supporters start talking about the nuclear threat from "communist" Russia (which, to them, is still the USSR). They defeat efforts to dial back the American nuclear arsenal, which keeps Russia from doing the same. All efforts to convince them that Russia is now a democracy with no designs on the United States falls on deaf ears as they denounce it as "liberal propaganda." Tensions rise between the two nations. Cries for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Russians grow from the neo-conservatives in and out of the administration.

US-Russia tensions grow even more.

Then it happens - an accident between US and Russian submarines destroys the American sub. All hands are lost. The TPers and neocons scream that it is an act of war and it's repeated 24/7 on their cable "news" channels and websites. War fever spreads, The President reaches for the "football"....

Too much? Not possible? Guess again.

We have seen time and time again how information-resistant the far right Teabaggers are but we've kept our criticisms to domestic issues and their crazy positions on them. There's no reason to think that the craziness would stop at our borders if they were ever to actually gain real power. I don't think it'll ever get that far but then again, George W. Bush was President for eight years too.

It's not entirely impossible though. Keep in mind that the current polling is showing that of the probable 2012 candidates for the GOP nomination, coming in second right now is....Sarah Palin.

Imagine that hand on the nuclear button then tell me that you're going to stay home this year and not vote.

You Can't Debate The Far Right

2010-09-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

I've said this before and I repeat it here: You can't debate the far right because you have to spend all of your time correcting the falsehoods they've been fed.

I'm old enough to remember when political discourse was based on policy and actual facts. Liberals and conservatives used to argue actual ideas based on real information that both agreed on. It was good for the country too - no one has a lock on the truth or good ideas and debating those ideas helped us move forward. To paraphrase what former Senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern said once: We need both conservatives and liberals in America. We need conservatives to slow down the exuberance of liberals and liberals to speed up needed change when conservatives slow things down too much.

Those days are gone. Conservatism has been replaced by knee-jerk reaction from the right against any and everything the liberals propose. Absolutely nonsensical claims from the right are now the norm, bolstered and fed by rightwing hate radio and TV. I don't need to rehash them here - you all see and hear them everyday. The fact that most if not all of what the far right claim as truth is easily debunked matters nothing to them - tell them the truth and you get back the lie, over and over.

The right is looking more and more cult-like as the days go on as well. There was a book named Holy Terror written in 1984 just before the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. The authors made the point back then that some Christianity was very cult-like in that its adherents could listen and see nothing but Christian materials (news, music, television, etc.) all day, every day if they chose to. Thanks to the explosion of cable and the internet the rightwingers can now spend their day listening to rightwing talk, visiting rightwing "news" sites and finish their day watching Fox News if they choose. All with not a single time having to deal with real news reporting or information.

And that's exactly what they do too.

If this described just the more fervent members of the "conservative movement" there would be not as much reason for concern. Both sides have their extremes - I've heard a version of Glenn Beck's "FEMA camps" going back as far as the days of LBJ and Nixon coming from the left who breathlessly assured me that both Presidents were secretly building concentration camps for anti-war demonstrators. My response then as now to such madness was to nod, smile and back away slowly.

The dangerous part is that the nuttiness that used to confined to fringe groups that were dismissed and derided is now coming from Republican candidates and elected officials. When people on the internet and out in the streets talk about Obama being a socialist and talk about secession and revolution just because an election didn't go their way needs to be watched but is mainly harmless. The prospect that people who are or can be elected to propose and vote on actual laws acting to put that crackpot-ery into effect should scare the hell out of anyone with a lick of sense.

What to do? Those of us with "a lick of sense" and more need to realize that we're not going to reach everyone, but everyone needs to know how the modern far right thinks. Arguing with the idiot right is fruitless and a waste of time (although, admittedly, driving them even crazier is big fun): they are absolutely convinced that they, and they alone, have the truth and everything to the contrary is "liberal propaganda." Realize as well that the truth doesn't set anybody free - repeating it over and over and over until it sinks in does.

Don't count on the Democrats to do this for us either - the Dems are and always have been timid when it comes to confronting the ridiculous right. Don't count on the corporate media for help either - when they aren't pushing fluff, they continue to carry the GOP's water for a very good reason (for them): the GOP is more likely to give them more goodies, tax and legislation-wise, than the Democrats. What we need to do is blog, post, talk to our neighbors and get the facts out there. Be our own media, as it were.

The most important thing to do this year? GET OUT, VOTE, AND BRING YOUR FRIENDS. I know some of us are disappointed that voting Democrats back into power in '06 and '08 hasn't brought everything we hoped it would, but it has done a lot of it. Swallow hard if you must, but sitting home and letting rightwing nuts come to power by default is not an option. Arguing may not work with the right but defeating them sure as hell does. Then we can say to them what Dubya once said to one of his detractors: "Who cares what you think?"

WHY IT IS GOOD TO BE A CONSERVATIVE

2010-09-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

(this came from my email and is too good not to share...)

- being a conservative means I can be selfish and not feel bad about it.

- being a conservative means all the problems of the world can be attributed to liberals.

- being a conservative means I never have to acknowledge flaws in my philosophy.

- being a conservative means anything a Democrat does is bad.

- being a conservative means I can pretend we only have a liberal media.

- being a conservative means I'm more concerned about protecting a definition than I am about protecting the rights of Americans.

- being a conservative means that I'm sorry if I offended you, but I'm not really sorry for what I actually said.

- being a conservative means I never have to try to solve any problems in the government because I insist government is the problem anyway.

- being a conservative means I can lay off workers to boost profits then complain about lazy unemployed people.

- being a conservative means I am staunchly pro-life and will put a bullet through the eyes of any liberal who challenges that.

- being a conservative means you folks are going to hell because you don't live your life the way *I* think you are supposed to live your life.

- being a conservative means you can blame problems on poor people instead of the rich ones (who actually run things).

- being a conservative means believing in spite and fear instead of hope and change.

- being a conservative means knowing for certain that gays and lesbians are worthless and weak, yet letting them marry would destroy civilization as we know it.

- being a conservative means you get to yell your talking points and write in all caps, especially the word "LIBRUL!"

- being a conservative means sometimes people have to starve if it proves my point.

- being a conservative means pretending the Republican party was born the night Ronald Reagan was elected.

- being a conservative means knowing that everything that was bad up to 2006 was Bill Clinton's fault; everything bad that happened from 2007 to 2009 was Nancy Pelosi's fault, and everything after that is Barack Obama's fault.

- being a conservative means even when I'm wrong, I'm right.

- being a conservative means getting my pension through the teachers union, even though I HATE unions.

- being a conservative means I can view all things I don't understand with contempt and not have to make the effort to change.

- being a conservative means I can accuse President Obama of being divisive because I didn't vote for him and he won anyway.

- being a conservative means being more concerned about the flag than the people and the country it stands for.

- being a conservative means I am not a racist -- black people are the real racists.

- being a conservative means the news I don't like hearing is just liberal propaganda.

- being a conservative means being against Social Security, Medicare and Civil Rights, because justice is "socialist".

- being a conservative means that if I just scream "JESUS!" the loudest, I don't have to actually live by any of his teachings.

- being a conservative means I don't have to think; somebody's taking care of that for me.

- and best of all, no matter how badly I screw up, I can always get a job at Fox News or a conservative "think" tank.

9/11, Nine Years Later - Haven't We Had Enough?

2010-09-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of 9/11. The ninth anniversary. I'm not turning on my TV to watch any of the ceremonies. I'm not going to watch any TV specials about that horrific day - I've already seen them. Don't I remember 9/11? Of course I do. How can any American forget? None of us, I imagine.

I remember being woken up early for work by my late wife to the news. I remember seeing the pictures on my TV of the damage from the first plane hitting one of the World Trade Center Towers and thinking it wasn't that bad (What was on my TV was a close-up of the damage with no sense of perspective as to how large that fiery hole in the building actually was). I remember the horror of watching the second plane hit the other tower and realizing that this was no accident, this was a deliberate attack. I remember the story of the passengers on another plane paying the ultimate sacrifice over Pennsylvania to prevent their jet from becoming another missile to be used to attack the White House or the Capitol building in DC.

I remember something else as well - watching all of this from Oregon and not feeling much fear over it. I remember going to work, delivering mail as a letter carrier, and the look of shock on the faces of people when I pulled my mail truck into a particular apartment complex to deliver their mail. I remember this conversation with one of my customers too:

Customer: "You're working today?"
Me: "Of course, why wouldn't I be?"
Customer: "Aren't you afraid because of where we're at?"
Me: "You mean the state capitol?"
Customer: "Yes."
Me: "There's 50 of those across the country. I think we'll be OK."

That was all nine years ago. NINE. YEARS. AGO. Some people would like us to act like it just happened today.

I've never been to New York but from TV and other sources I understand that going to "Ground Zero" now means visiting a construction site, not the barren tangle of twisted iron it once was.   There will be a new skyscraper there to replace the two that collapsed, plus an underground mall and a memorial museum in remembrance of the worst terrorist attack on American soil to date. This is a good thing - it means that city is rebounding from the tragedy and mass murder it suffered.

The ceremonies to remember the people who's lives were cut short on that day by hate will continue, as they should. I have been to another, actual Ground Zero site: Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan - the site of the first atomic bombing.  The building that stood directly under the air burst nuclear bomb in World War II still stands there and there's a museum there as well. They still hold ceremonies - religious and civic - to remember the people who died on that day too.

Let's not forget another anniversary date in American history: April 19th, 1995.  That was when two American extreme right terrorists attacked this country at Oklahoma City in what is still the largest act of domestic terrorism committed on American soil as well. There's a memorial there as well as annual ceremonies to remember the people who died that day.

What's different between Hiroshima, Oklahoma City and the 9/11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon? Only one of them still essentially shuts down a country to remember it. This is not a good thing.

There's a difference between remembering and obsessing and we're getting very close to doing the latter when it comes to 9/11...if we haven't already reached that point. Of course, there's benefits to some to do this: political gain, for one - financial gain for others and sometimes the two overlap. It's disturbing and ghoulish to use the deaths of over 2,000 people to try to get votes and sell seminars and DVDs on hating Muslims everywhere.

It's not just some Americans who are seeing the political gain here. The constant selling of fear is just what the terrorists who attacked us wanted when they did their deed. The people who flew airplanes into buildings in New York and into the Pentagon didn't do what they did in hopes of taking over America, they did it in hopes that we'd become so fearful that we'd bankrupt ourselves fighting them and step into traps they set (like, say, Iraq) so we'd be otherwise engaged and they'd be able to pursue other goals. Look at the root word of "terrorist" - it means to invoke terror in others by attacking their victims to gain political goals. They aren't called conquestists.

How do we really fight terrorism? Be vigilant, do what we need to stop them if we can but stop being so afraid. In it's entire, murderous history terrorism has never achieved the goals it set out to accomplish. Not ever. Personally, you and I have the same chance of being involved/hurt/killed in a terrorist attack now as we did prior to 9/11: under 1%. Those are very good odds in our favor. Live your lives fearlessly.

And finally, let us never forget the events of this date and those who were killed in it but don't make it the central point of our lives or our national policy. It's time to let 9/11 go.

America - It Was A Nice Idea And Could Be Again

2010-08-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

In my email today was a piece in the Wall Street Journal from Mort Zuckerman entitled The End of American Optimism that grabbed my attention. He makes several good points (and some downright nasty ones, like how people "sitting around on the dole" should get off their lazy asses and train for new jobs. I wonder if Mort is willing to help PAY for that training?) about how bad the economy is and how, if we aren't careful, lower expectations will be the new American norm. He ends with this:

But if the economic scene these days is daunting, the political scene is downright depressing. We have a paralyzed system. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem able to find common ground to address what is clearly going to be an ongoing employment crisis. Finding that common ground is a job opportunity for real leaders.

True enough, but what's really happening is that we are reaping what we've sown here. From politicians down to regular folk, we've sat around - fat and happy - and let our democratic republic slip into oligarchy. Oligarchy is defined as a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few. Can anyone deny that is exactly what is going on here in the United States right now? Oh, we still have our elections and our nominal representation but the current Great Recession is only hurting the middle class and the poor. Massive layoffs are the norm, massive business failures are not - in fact, they are sitting on piles of cash now and refusing to hire. The rich are still getting richer while the unemployed have to beg for their barely-subsistence unemployment checks and food stamps are being cut.

This isn't a Republican versus Democrat issue either - both parties helped this come to pass.

Look around and the propaganda that got us here is breathtaking. Paris Hilton and the Kardashians are celebrities simply because they are rich and they are not alone. In the '90s, multimillionaire Ross Perot runs an independent campaign for President as a "man of the people" and gets a sizable chunk of the vote in '92 and '96. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" is on our TVs in the '80s. We tune in to wealthy Donald Trump telling people "You're fired" as well. Why did we buy into this? We thought we could become rich too.

How's that workin' out for ya? *wink*

There is a real danger here that's not being discussed - this discontent could become something more than just public grumbling. Something violent and bloody. The current mythology is that Americans will carry on and take what they get while staying true to what's been sold to us as "American values." My suggestion is to read Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States. Discard his polemics and far left (awful) view of America and one thing stands out: Our history is rife with people who didn't just decide not to sit there and take it, they went after the people who were giving it to them. Courthouses burned, rich people were dragged from their mansions and beaten or worse. This isn't taught in schools and it can happen again. If it gets bad enough, all those people with guns will eventually get it that their "enemy" isn't us liberals, it's the people who took away their livelihoods for nothing but the sake of a better profit margin.

That way leads to real revolution and we may not like the America it produces. Don't scoff - it can happen here and has many times in many countries much older than our near-300 years.

What to do? Film maker Michael Moore makes the case that capitalism is an evil that needs to be replaced in his documentary, Capitalism A Love Story. OK, but what we have as alternatives aren't much better. Both Communism and socialism are Utopian failures that got started as a reaction to the excesses of the Industrial Revolution just as much as capitalism was a justification and celebration of them. They all have one thing in common, however: they are all outdated.

I'm no economist but surely someone, somewhere can come up with a new economics system that is equitable to all. We probably won't see it in our lifetimes, but that's no excuse to not get started on one. OK thinkers, get to work. Our country is calling you to service and only our future is at stake.

Democrats Doing What Democrats Do Best

2010-08-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

President Obama's Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, recently lashed out at some progressives and oh my did the fur fly.

Speaking with Sam Youngman of The Hill, Gibbs said critics among what he termed the "professional left" would not even be "satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."

"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it's crazy," Gibbs is quoted as saying.

Oh, the screams of outrage and the gnashing of teeth leading to us Democrats' favorite sport: fighting among ourselves! From Twitter to cable news channels, progressives decried Gibb's statement as proof that the Obama administration had abandoned them again!!

To them I say, calm the eff down. Gibbs wasn't talking about you, the grassroots who helped elect President Obama. What he was talking about is what essentially makes up the left's Talking Heads Corps. You remember them, the ones who were shouting "The healthcare bill doesn't do everything! KILL THE BILL!." That crowd. Jane Hamsher and David Sirota, I'm looking at you.

Gibbs has a point.

These very same people were solidly pro-Obama right up until he was elected now can't find anything the President has done right. From financial regulation to health care reform and everything in between, they cry that none of it is good enough and it's all Obama's fault. Iraq pull-out of troops? Not fast enough. He hasn't corrected 8 years of Bush Republican civil liberties abuses yet? He must be just like Bush. Afghanistan? Obama is now an imperialist. And on and on and on.

One has to wonder if these folks had such a good time (rightfully) going after Bush that they find it hard to reign in their inner attack dogs. One also has to wonder if they are ignorant - willfully or otherwise - about the workings of their own government. A lot of the AONDs (All Or Nothing Democrats) are blaming the President for things Congress has done. Case in point: "Obama has betrayed us by not closing Gitmo!" Uh, guys? Congress cut off the money to do that. If I can remember that, writing from my house in Oregon, why can't you?

I'm no "Obamadrone" or whatever term the never-satisfied left chooses to describe liberals who have the audacity to continue to support the President we just elected two years ago...like me. I'm not 100% happy with everything the Obama administration has done so far and I've written the White House directly to tell them so. I am, however, very happy with most of the things he's done. As Press Secretary Gibbs said it:

Gibbs's tough comments reflect frustration and some bafflement from the White House, which believes it has done a lot for the left.

In just over 18 months in office, Obama has passed healthcare reform, financial regulatory reform and fair-pay legislation for women, among other bills near and dear to liberals.

Obama is also overseeing the end of the Iraq war, with the U.S. on schedule to end its combat operations by the end of this month.

He's also added diversity to the Supreme Court by nominating two female justices, including the court's first Hispanic. Yet some liberal groups have criticized his nominees for not being liberal enough.

"There's 101 things we've done," said Gibbs, who then mentioned both Iraq and healthcare.

That ain't too shabby, folks. "What, are you saying we should never criticize President Obama ever?" Not even close. I do think the way you're criticizing the President could use some work.

I'm old enough to remember some of the lessons of the anti-Vietnam war movement. One of them is this: Pound the table and alienate the person sitting on the other side of it. Mr. Obama said many times that we wouldn't agree with everything he did but if you gave him a good argument for your position he very possibly could change his mind. He's done that twice since being elected. That requires calmness and respect from the ones doing the arguing though. He's also had a meeting where the people involved were telling him how wrong he was and how bad he was for doing it. All that did was anger Obama, who left the meeting and dismissed the ones who jumped down his throat.

Hmm, I wonder which of the two was the better approach? Toughie.

My suggestion: Please, all of us should criticize the President and other Democrats when they fail to do what we want. That pressure is good for the President and the country. However, don't go into it telling them they're liars, traitors, failed to keep their promises, failures, etc. - that is the path to them hardening their positions and failure for us and any progressive movement. No one responds well to being called names and everyone in an elected office is first a human being, after all. Instead, tell them that if they do the right thing we're there for them, will support them and have their backs. That is guaranteed to get their attention and give you a fair hearing. Even if they still disagree, we all part as friends and might get the next one going our way.

If that's too much for the "disillusioned left and liberals", well keep a couple of things in mind:

First, the righties see us bashing our President, fighting among ourselves and the headline in their blogs, newspapers, magazines and TV shows is "See? Even the liberals don't like Obama!" I'm not exaggerating about that either - I'm on a few email groups with rightwingers and my email is full of pieces saying just that. Every day.

Second, dumping Obama and the Congressional Democrats isn't going to get us President Alan Grayson and a Congress full of Kucinichs and Weiners. What it will get us is President Palin and Speaker of the House John Boehner. Again, some history: During the Vietnam era and the '68 election, bashing Hubert Humphrey by the left got us....Richard Nixon. Demanding liberal ideological purity in '72 nominated George McGovern and gave Nixon a second term by a landslide. Smacking Jimmy Carter around for being "too conservative" in 1980 gave us Ronald Reagan. See a pattern here yet?

Let's not have history repeat itself, shall we?

Why Racism Matters To Me

2010-08-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

I'm a middle aged white guy. I have never been discriminated against because of the color of my skin, my national origin, religion, or anything else. I've never been turned down for service in any restaurant, hotel, motel and no one has turned me down for a job because of the way I look. So why would someone like me get so riled up over racism?

Oh, I've had racists take me for one of them more times than I care to count. Maybe it's the fact that I don't scream in their faces when they show themselves for what they are that would cause a guy back in my college days to confide in me in a conspiratorial whisper that he "he used to go shoot up Nigger Town back home." Maybe it's that I know that racism doesn't respond at all to reason or facts so I just let them rant themselves out as I sit there quietly. Maybe it's just that I don't think someone's skin color or accent says any more about them than the color of their eyes. I don't know - maybe I should walk around wearing this and that would stop:

but I doubt it.

I blame my concern over racism to a day back in high school. Back then, we had school clubs and were alloted class times to meet. I don't recall the name of the club I was in at the time, but the discussion was about the word "nigger." Our faculty advisor was trying to make a point that it was just a word and its power was what we gave it. OK, this went well with the white kids in the room including me then some of the black kids started to talk.

It was going about as you'd expect then it came to a quiet black girl and her time to talk. She did something for me at least that had never happened before then: she gave a human face to what racism does to its victims. She tearfully told us of a night during a family vacation. They had driven all day, were very tired and were looking for a motel for the night, only to be turned down time after time and told explicitly it was because of the color of her family's skin. It was one thing to think of racism's effects in the abstract - we'd all read or at least heard of books at the time like "Black Like Me" and read of distant tenements where babies were being bit by rats. She brought it home.

The tears, pain and humiliation on that young black face has stayed with me to this day. That's when fighting racism became important to me - I vowed to do whatever I could to see to it that no other American had to go through what she did and worse ever again.

I'm fortunate in that that incident broke me out of my own, home taught bigotry at a young age. What helped even more was, of all things, a class on racial tolerance when I was in the US Navy. They were having racial "incidents" aboard ships and such at the time (early '70s) and this was their way of trying to ease the tensions. They did the usual "let's be reasonable about this" routine but what stuck with me from that was a method they taught to make yourself see the person and not the color, etc.

It works like this: If you see someone who makes you uncomfortable based on the way they look, take that image, make that person looks change to something you are comfortable with in your head, then bring back what they really look like. Try it, it works like a charm and has blessed me over the years to be open enough to have had a rainbow of friends and acquaintances that I might never have had otherwise.

That "rainbow" paid off in an unexpected way for me. My two sons, from infancy on, were also exposed to people of varying backgrounds and colors and as grown men now are pretty much bigotry-free. One of my proudest moments as a father was when my son told me about something that happened at his apartment. He is a huge fan of rap music and had a large poster of his favorite rapper on the wall at the time. One of his friends brought a new guy with him to visit. The new guy pointed to the poster and asked, "Who's the nigger?"

My son told him to turn around and leave, right now. I was nearly popping the buttons off my shirt at how proud I was of my kid for that.

Racism is stupid and a waste of American human resources. Just think, thanks to racism the man or woman who could have cured cancer could now be standing on a corner drunk or high. It's getting better and rarer (or at least was until the election of a black President), but it's foolish to think it's entirely gone. And that is a shame for us all.

The Most Disgusting Right Wing Viral Email Yet (UPDATED)

2010-08-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

Keep in mind that Obama's mother died in 1995. Words fail.

Subject: Nude, guess who

An interesting item. A famous porn star? A stripper? A layout in a cheap men's magazine? Perhaps a hooker?

Don't recognize her? Here's another view.

Still can't guess her identity? Well, here's one more picture.

Does she look familiar?

This is Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro - Barack Obama 's MOTHER!

Can you imagine the widespread play these pictures would be getting by the mainstream media if this had been John McCain 's mother, or Sarah Palin 's mother?

But you won't ever see these pictures anywhere in a regular media outlet.

Oh, and keep reminding yourself that Obama is the first

BLACK President of the United States . Yeah, right.

forward to everyone ..... wait a week and forward again.....be sure and forward in NOV

We can't defeat these evil fucks enough.

UPDATE: Thanks to the good folks I follow on Twitter, I now know this viral email is a fake. The nude pictures of Obama's mother are photoshopped. Still disgusting.

Racists' CYA Is A Fail

2010-07-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Dear White Racists:

Enough. This ongoing bit of yours that everyone but you is a racist isn't working. It never did.

You send out postcards and emails with images like these:

Then claim you didn't know they were offensive. Uh huh. Right.

Then when pushed on your racism, you start howling that people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and longtime civil rights groups like the NAACP are the real racists. Bad news, boys - the NAACP started out with and still has white members and both Jackson and Sharpton have participated in demonstrations that included whites. Both also campaigned with white audiences when they both ran for President.

Oops.

When that one blows up in your face, you go to your next fallback position - the "blacks do most of the crimes" shibboleth. Studies time after time show that police go after blacks more than they do whites and blacks are more likely to do prison time than whites as well. This feeds unbalanced reports on crime statistics. You go after more blacks then let more whites slide and of course it'll seem like blacks do more crime. Pretty damn stupid position to take, bigots.

Then there's my personal favorite - blacks being "racist" to other blacks. That one should immediately set off alarms and flashing "STUPID!" signs. You see, there is an important component to racism that this claim fails on. Let's go to the dictionary:

rac·ism
–noun

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

So, really. Enough. If racists are proud of their stands they should be proud to own the label that goes with it. However, since it's still unaccepted in polite society to talk in racial epithets and push these hairbrained theories, they have to hide their racism and blame the victims of it.

So, dear racists, embrace what you are. Of course, you won't make many friends and the ones you do have will head for the hills to avoid you but keep this in mind:

Most of us already know what you are and don't think much of you anyway.

Have a nice, white sheet day.

OK, I Did It Again

2010-07-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

Remember a post I did a while back about quitting the Democrats and joining the Working Families Party?

Well, at least that lasted longer than a month this time but I went back to being a Democrat. Again.

It's not that I dislike the WFP but it seems...well...kinda quiet from them. I'll root them on but in the meantime I need a party that can actually elect people and get things done. They sounded so good, but as my best friend told me after I switched, "When will you ever learn?"

Is Sherrod The Final Nail In The Rightwing "Journalism" Coffin? Guess Again.

2010-07-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

The tale of Shirley Sherrod and her smearing by rightwing hit man Andrew Breitbart is an amazing one. In good ol' white resentment and race baiting style, a decades old speech by black US Department of Agriculture official Sherrod is edited to make her appear racist towards whites. This is posted on Breitbart's site (you'll have to find that on your own, I refuse to link to it) and the fun begins. Various other rightwing "media" echoes the "story" as the cowardly mainstream media does too. Even the Obama administration gets into the fun, pushing hard for Sherrod to resign over it (which she did, being a loyal Obamaite) because she was "going to be on Glenn Beck tonight." Even the NAACP denounced her.

It looked more and more like Breitbart had bagged another Obama administration scalp, with Sherrod joining Van Jones and ACORN on the spear. The far right was celebrating and partying hearty.

Then something happened that the rightwing smear machine didn't count on: the full video of the Sherrod speech popped up and guess what? She wasn't bragging about getting whitey at all, she was talking about overcoming prejudices and doing the right thing! UH OH!!

The NAACP backed off their denouncement of her fast enough to leave skidmarks on the road, saying they were "snookered" by the edited Breitbart tape. USDA Secretary Vilsack and President Obama were on the phone to Sherrod, apologizing for pressuring her to resign and offering her another job at the USDA to make up for what they did.

In a perfect world, this would mean the end for Andrew Breitbart and people like him in the media. Sherrod is threatening to sue and this would have killed whatever credibility Breitbart had. He'd be left ranting to a few rightwing fringe visitors to his website and totally ignored by everyone else, if he could still afford the domain name fee.

However, as they say, what will really happen is that Breitbart will come through this unscarred and undamaged among his "base." A few of his fellow rightwing media pals have made an effort to sorta kinda say what Andy B did was wrong and The Big B should apologize...as they move to pull a secondary smear based on Sherrod and her family acting on their claims in a USDA discrimination lawsuit settlement.

But thousands of farmers missed the original Pigford deadline, due to shoddy work by their own lawyers and inadequate promotion, among other reasons. In response to a decades-long movement to re-open the Pigford class, Congress passed another $100 million in the 2008 farm bill to help settle new claims; earlier this year, the Obama administration announced an additional grant -- called Pigford II -- of $1.25 billion.

But the money hasn't been doled out, because Congress hasn't given the okay yet. It missed a March 31 deadline. Then a May 31 deadline. Currently, the money for the new Pigford settlement resides in the war supplemental -- which Majority Leader Harry Reid announced last Friday would be up for a vote some time this week.

Harry Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, said it "remains unclear" whether the bill could pass with the settlement attached. The money was also included in the unemployment insurance extension; but the Pigford settlement, and other funds, had to be stripped in order to break a filibuster.

Conservatives immediately jumped on the Sherrod video -- issued by Breitbart in the wake of Reid's promise to bring the war supplemental (including the Pigford settlement money) to a vote -- to condemn the Pigford case.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), for example, tweeted immediately on Tuesday morning, after the Sherrod case hit the news, that many Pigford claims amount to fraud:

Shirley Sharrod fired by Vilsack 4 racism in her USDA position. America needs to know that, not all, but billion$ of Pigford Farms is fraud.

The Washington Times mused that Sherrod resigned because she was afraid the attention would expose "sanctioned conflicts of interest" arising from her own settlement -- though there was zero evidence to that effect. In fact, Vilsack has since acknowledged that her experience as part of the Pigford class makes her uniquely positioned to understand the historical challenges faced by the USDA. Fox News piled on, saying the settlement "thickens the plot."

If that wasn't bad enough, now the rightwing echo chamber's usual suspects are trotting out their "blame the victim" routine and trying to claim Sherrod is a "Marxist."

Beck: Sherrod "obviously has some sort of Marxist or redistributionist qualities to her." On the July 21 edition of his radio show, Beck stated that Sherrod "obviously has some sort of Marxist or redistribution qualities to her." He further said that Sherrod is "class warfare just not race warfare." On his Fox News show, Beck said Sherrod should have been made a "czar" because "she fits in" with the "Maoists" in the Obama administration.

Mattera: "Sherrod shouldn't be given her job back. The broad is a Marxist. I have no sympathy for her." In a July 21 post on Twitter, Human Events editor Jason Mattera wrote: "Sherrod shouldn't be given her job back. The broad is a Marxist. I have no sympathy for her."

Limbaugh: Sherrod supports "Obamunism," "the haves versus the have-nots and the need for redistribution." On the July 21 broadcast of his radio show, Limbaugh said that Sherrod supports "Obamunism," "the haves versus the have-nots and the need for redistribution."

Crowley suggested Sherrod may be among "radicals, racists, socialists" in Obama administration. On the July 20 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News' Monica Crowley suggested that Sherrod may be among the "radicals, racists, socialists" that have been "stocked" in the Obama administration.

Hoft: Sherrod is "a communist, radical, socialist, terror-sympathizer." In a July 21 post on his Gateway Pundit website, Jim Hoft suggested that Sherrod is "a communist, radical, socialist, terror-sympathizer." Hoft further wrote: "White farmer-hater Shirley Sherrod is linked to Bill Ayers." He then highlighted a "must-read story" at the Illinois-Review and The Washington Examiner which he said "reveals that Ms. Sherrod's husband is a former honcho in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee back in the 1960's."

What shall we make of all of this? First, Breitbart will have to wait a little while for his Sherrod smear to cool down before he's back on Fox Noise and the Tea Party speech circuit. The right's wingnutosphere will try to smear Sherrod some more then move on to their next target. The MSM will buckle under and report their next lie as a "real" news story. The Democrats will continue to act like battered wives and won't say much, if anything.

Total damage to rightwing "journalism"? Not a thing.

The Other America

2010-07-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

Following my post about the great things about the United States to contemplate on the Fourth of July, now it's time to take a look at the not-so-wonderful segment of America.

These are the people who think the USA is for them and them alone. These are the so-called "Real Americans" - the ones that define themselves and their worth to the nation in terms of race and privilege. They rage at the very concept that people who look and think differently could possibly be as patriotic and as valuable to the country as they are. They allow a few who have a different hue than them in on the edges so the Real Americans can point at them in order to deny their real feelings, but those few have to pass some tough tests to get there.

We've always had them and their numbers are diminishing, fortunately. Not so fortunately, like any other dying beast they can still do damage.

One of the things that Americans like to take for a given is that when bad things happen, we drop our differences and come together to help our fellow Americans out. There are tons of examples to support that too, with everything from coin jars on store counters to help pay for treatment for someone suffering from disease to volunteers taking it upon themselves to pitch in to help repair the damage from catastrophes natural and otherwise.

There's another current coming from the RAs (Real Americans) seeking to destroy that American impulse to help other Americans when they need it. And it's just plain mean:

They keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn’t pay as much as the unemployment benefit does. … What has happened is the system of entitlement has caused us to have a spoilage with our ability to go out and get a job. … There are some jobs out there that are available. Because they have to enter at a lower grade and they cannot keep their unemployment, they have to make a choice now.

What? We are suffering through what is being called "The Great Recession" and the unemployed are nothing but lazy welfare bums now? Those words are from the Teabag Republican challenger for Harry Reid's Senate seat in Nevada arguing against extending unemployment benefits to people who have been out of work for six months or more but she's far from being the only one with that sentiment. This came next:

Ralston then asked, “if people lose their jobs through no fault of their own, as many have during this recession, Sharron Angle’s solution is to cut their unemployment benefits so low so they’re somehow gonna go out and find jobs that don’t exist?” “There are jobs that do exist. That’s what we’re saying, is that there are jobs.” Angle replied.

Ah yes, the old "But the newspaper classifieds are FULL of jobs!" argument (as false then as it is now) - but at least in the past it didn't include the concept that it was a good idea to have unemployed people have no income whatsoever to force them to go to work. That's where the mean comes in.

Another example of the damage that can be done as the RAs get smaller and smaller is this charmer:

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that it's OK for Orlando to restrict the group feedings that have brought dozens of homeless people to Lake Eola Park.

In a case watched by cities and homeless advocates across the country, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed a 2008 ruling by a federal judge in Orlando who believed the city's rules were unconstitutional.

"We won on every single point. It's a complete vindication for the city," said City Attorney Mayanne Downs. "The point here was to protect Lake Eola Park. It's a very important part of our city's heritage and history, and all we wanted to do was to protect it from an unfair burden."

Advocates have continued to serve meals to large groups of homeless and needy people at Lake Eola Park since U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell ordered City Hall to stop enforcing its ordinance. In fact, in the nearly two years since his ruling, the regular feedings at Lake Eola have grown substantially, city officials say.

"Over 100 people have been gathering at the park every day, and it's really becoming a problem," said Commissioner Patty Sheehan, whose district includes the iconic downtown park. "It's gotten to the point where people are telling me they are no longer going to take their families to the park anymore."

The rules require advocates to obtain a permit for feedings of 25 or more people, and only two feedings a year are allowed in a given park. The City Council adopted the ordinance in 2006 after businesses and residents downtown complained that the feedings drew crowds of vagrants who caused problems outside the park.

So much for the RA's charity. (h/t digbys) Let's not only see to it that the homeless and the unemployed have no income, let's starve them too. That'll show those lazy bastards a thing or two.

And here I thought doing charitable work was a good thing.

There are more examples but we'll stay with these two to demonstrate the diminishing RAs' lashing out and base meanness. If there's a silver lining to this cloud, it's the fact that the damage they do is limited to certain states and towns - their ability to do damage on a national level was taken away from them in 2008.

If the current nastiness from the RAs isn't a good reason to see to it that they don't get back the power to hurt Americans this November, I don't know what is.

Happy 4th of July 2010

2010-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. It's a time to step back from the usual partisan sniping and count our blessings for being a part of a truly amazing country, whether we achieved that through birth or naturalization. Let's take a look at why our country is still the one that most of the world looks up to:

First, our Constitution....

As much as we argue over the meaning of this article or that amendment we take this astounding document for granted so much that sometimes we think that the world lives under it. In much of the world, whatever foundation of law they go by springboard's off the idea that government grants rights and be happy for what you've got. Our Founders set about setting up our Constitution from a different tack - we were born with the rights we have and therefore the government is restricted so they may not infringe on those rights. In other words, the Constitution set up for us a constitutionally-restricted democratic republic designed to protect rights and not grant them.

Let's take one of our most treasured and basic rights protected by the Constitution: freedom of speech. We Americans take this for granted so much that sometimes we'll look at something going on in another country and criticize it on the basis of freedom of speech. Well, those countries don't protect speech like we do. If you are a resident of Canada or the UK for example, you can be fined and imprisoned for something called "hate speech." If we lived under that, Rev. "God Hates Fags!" Phelps, Louis Farrakhan, Glenn Beck and others as well as some of us from time to time would all be in jail right now. As someone said once: Freedom of Speech doesn't mean that we only protect speech we like, it was put in place to protect speech we absolutely hate.

Our diversity

Some of our friends on the right absolutely detest that word but it is one of America's greatest strengths. Americans come in and from many colors and backgrounds. There are certain bedrock ideas that we share as Americans and we do so by also celebrating where we came from as well. The idea that we can do that in peace is the amazing part. Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims and similar seemingly competing Americans live sometimes right next door to each other and there is no street warfare over it here unlike other countries. We are part "melting pot" and part mosaic: Melting pot in that we all share American goals and ideals on a personal level - we all want to provide for ourselves and our families and keep them safe. Mosaic in that we are a country made up of bits and pieces of differences that combined make up a beautiful picture.

Lastly for now,

We aren't done yet

America at its founding was called a "great experiment" in democracy and we're all still trying to perfect it. As I do my political thing online and otherwise, one thing that strikes me is our patriotism. We all love our country and want it to be even better than it already is. Where the rhetorical battle comes into play is how we define "better" and the means to get there. We've only come to blows over it once with the Civil War - something, despite the words from some, we are in little danger of repeating.

Have your barbecues, watch some sports and fireworks tonight - today is, after all, a birthday party. We have a lot to celebrate too, but please keep in mind the words of a Vietnamese woman I talked with during my Navy days who sat me right down and told me this: "Don't you DARE take what you've got in America for granted!"

Why I Left The Democratic Party...For Now

2010-06-19T21:18:00.000-07:00

I took the plunge today and left the Democrats after 38 years. I got tired of defending a party that would leave doctors and the unemployed high and dry. I got tired of explaining why the Democrats blew their best chance in decades to use their majorities to finally give us a single payer health plan and gave us some weak regulations of health insurance companies instead. I got tired of being in a party that folds to a minority party every chance they get despite winning a mandate in 2008 to change the failed policies and damage done by that minority party.

So I left the Democrats....again.

The last time the Democrats upset me enough to leave them was when they voted for the USA PATRIOT Act. That time I changed my party to the Green Party USA. That lasted less than a month. The Greens have some great ideas but they have a huge problem: they don't want to actually do anything about them, as far as I could see. They put some candidates on the ballot from time to time but didn't seem to get the energy to campaign for them. My experience with them was their idea of "action" was to get together, watch some taped documentary, discuss a few books, cluck their tongues about how awful it all was then go home.

The Greens fit in with a term I have -- The Useless Left. You know them too, especially if you are a progressive. They're the ones who organize marches, made the word "table" into a verb (Yes, really. They no longer just sit at tables at some rally handing out literature and selling some buttons and T-shirts. They are now "tabling.") and are great with the critiques of the political system and culture. What they aren't so good at is what to do about all those problems. They are the embodiment of putting the lie to "the truth shall set you free" which doesn't work if there isn't some real, meaningful action behind it.

They ran me back to the Democratic Party, where I worked for candidates that kinda sorta believed as I do until now.

Thanks to something called "fusion voting" passed into law here in Oregon, I started looking around for a new party to help out after the Dems showed themselves barely able to stand upright due to a lack of spine.

The new party I chose is The Working Families Party. They are the first minor party I've seen that seems to understand what one can do with a minor party. Most minor parties, at their most successful, put candidates on the ballot that get few votes but sometimes just enough to elect Republicans. Their real hope is that by running those candidates they will get their ideas aired in the hope that a major party picks up on one or two of them and does something with it.

The WFP, a long-running party in New York thanks to that state's election rules, has passed on the losing candidate approach and has gone straight for the ideas. Thanks to the new fusion voting system in Oregon, they go after specific legislation by co-nominating progressive candidates that will work to get their ideas into law. After trying for 38 years to change the Democratic Party back into the party of working people and the poor from within, I've decided I liked their ideas and to help them build the party into a force that will exert pressure on the Democrats from the outside.

They rarely run candidates so the Democrats will still probably get my vote in November but I feel I will have a club with the WFP to beat them back in line when they get the urge to follow the lure of corporate dollars over the people who elected them. Registering as a member of the party gives them the number of registered voters required by Oregon to have access to the ballot.

Here's where I make my pitch to my fellow Oregonians - especially independent voters and disaffected Democrats - to do as I did. You wanted an alternative to the major parties, well this one may be our best shot.

There are two ways to immediately support the Working Families Party.

Change your party affiliation by re-registering to vote - something you can now do online here.
If you do or don't do that, you can donate at least $24.00 or more to make you a dues-paying member of the WFP. The $24.00 figure is a minimum annual donation.

Don't just sit back and complain about the major parties - do something about them.

Helen Thomas Forced To Retire - Look At Who Gets To Stay

2010-06-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

Today, 89 year old White House correspondent and columnist Helen Thomas was forced into retirement for saying this....once:

"Thomas told a rabbi at a White House event last week that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland.'"

A nasty comment without doubt but it comes from someone with no history of anti-semitism in her years covering 10 Presidents or any of her writings as a columnist after she resigned from reporting when cult leader Sun Myung Moon bought United Press International. She did apologize for her remark and someone her age finally retiring isn't exactly news. What is news is that it certainly looks like the retirement was forced, with her agent quitting and speeches she was scheduled to deliver being canceled.

There is no defense for what she said. The only question that remains is why stop with her?

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." --arguing that it would be better if they were all Christians

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's deaths so much." -on 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

All of that came from the mouth and writings of Ann Coulter. Are there any cries for her to retire and shut up? Well, a little bit over the years (she was fired by MSNBC, The National Review and various newspapers have dropped her column) but she's still getting paid for speeches, people buy her books, she is a guest on NBC's "Today" show and a regular on Fox Noise.

Then there's the Tea Party Leader, Glenn Beck:

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And you know, well, I'm not sure." –responding to the question "What would people do for $50 million?"

"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."

"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization...And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing]."

"So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research. ... Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. ... The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening."

How about him - any condemnations of him from the right? He off TV now? Absolutely not.

Then there's this gem from the Leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh:

“To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.”

Yep, he's still around too.

Well, surely someone of the advanced age of Patrick Buchanan has been put out to pasture for remarks like these:

Buchanan referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory." (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 10/20/90)

During the Gulf crisis: "There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East -- the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." (McLaughlin Group, 8/26/90)

In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler's anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was "an individual of great courage.... Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." (Guardian, 1/14/92)

Writing of "group fantasies of martyrdom," Buchanan challenged the historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel exhaust at Treblinka: "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." (New Republic, 10/22/90) Buchanan's columns have run in the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight, the German-American National PAC newsletter and other publications that claim Nazi death camps are a Zionist concoction.

Buchanan called for closing the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which prosecuted Nazi war criminals, because it was "running down 70-year-old camp guards." (New York Times, 4/21/87)

Buchanan was vehement in pushing President Reagan -- despite protests -- to visit Germany's Bitburg cemetery, where Nazi SS troops were buried. At a White House meeting, Buchanan reportedly reminded Jewish leaders that they were "Americans first" -- and repeatedly scrawled the phrase "Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews" in his notebook. Buchanan was credited with crafting Ronald Reagan's line that the SS troops buried at Bitburg were "victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." (New York Times, 5/16/85; New Republic, 1/22/96)

No, he's still a regular "analyst" on the progressive and liberal MSNBC news channel.

This isn't about "silencing conservative voices" (and if you consider these people the voices of conservatism, it says a lot about where that movement really is). It's not about the First Amendment and freedom of speech either - none of them will go to jail for what they say but nothing in the Bill of Rights says certain people have the "right" to be in newspapers or magazines and have programs on TV and radio.

What this is about is that the so-called conservatives dancing about in glee at Helen Thomas being forced into retirement should remember an old saying about people who live in glass houses and what they shouldn't be doing.

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

2010-06-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

People are upset and angry at our government over this disaster in the Gulf. No political party is particularly well-liked right now as both are seen as more concerned over the well-being of corporate interests during this oil blowout than our land and people.

I'm not a huge fan of Ralph Nader but I keep remembering one thing he said during his runs for President, namely that voting between the Democrats and the Republicans means the choice is whether we go down on our left knee or right knee before corporate interests. This is what we get for allowing our employees in Congress to be sold to the highest bidder and allowing our country to become the oligarchy it is now.

I do mean we too: too many of us think that once we've voted our job is done. We've been propagandized and indoctrinated into being meek little sheepish followers for too long too. Let's face it, the idea that the wealthy knows best isn't a monopoly of the right, it directs all of us by varying degrees and we dare not challenge them. If this oil blowout had happened to most other countries, they wouldn't wringing their hands and sitting at home just watching -- there would be wall to wall demonstrations in the streets DEMANDING this be taken care of NOW. People would be PISSED and out of their houses showing it. What are we doing? Watching TV and saying, "Oh, how awful!"

There was a great editorial caroon I caught a while back about the news of massive demonstrations overseas over what the demonstrators saw as fixed and fradulent elections in Iran. It mentions those protests over the cartoon, then shows two men's reaction to the stolen election that placed George W. Bush into the White House. The talk balloons went along the lines of, "Did ya hear about how Bush stole the White House?" "Yeah, that's awful. So what are you doing tonight?"

Michael Moore had it right when he pointed out in one of his films that around the world, people demonstrate and agitate so much that their governments are afraid of its people and act so not to upset them. Here it's the reverse -- we hardly ever get out and do something about what we don't like and fear our government. We just hope our government does the right thing, when we can get away from our new cars and HDTVs and think about such things that is.

On this I give the Tea Party credit where credit is due. Wrongheaded and angry as they are over false stories, they are at least going out of their houses and doing something about their issues. What kind of impact they are having now is undeniable in that this group of people is now a part of our national discussion, even if they only represent about 2% of the country.

Besides going out and having demonstrations and such, another thing about the TPers is that they stick to the issues they want to push. About the only other one that does the same are the pro-immigrant groups. The left has complained about not getting the same coverage as the Teabaggers since most of the time there have more people at their demonstrations and marches. Very true. Their problem is once the left has gathered, it can be hard to tell exactly what they are demonstrating about sometimes. Having been to a few good-sized demonstrations from the left in the past, I've seen where it started out as opposing the war in Iraq then spread out to include marchers who supported Palestine, Mumia, 9-11 Truthers and all sorts of other things so much so that the original idea for the march got lost in the shuffle.

The message here isn't about who demonstrates and who's more effective at it though. It is that we don't have to just sit there and take what's happening to our country. I understand that doing that can be inconvenient at times what with work, family and other things demanding our attention. However, you don't do any of that ALL of the time. Take a little time and DO something for your country. An hour or so may not sound like much but sometimes just that can do a lot.

You don't even have to wait for someone else to organize something for you to do either. Get a piece of cardboard or whiteboard out, make a sign then find a corner and start waving it at passing cars. Just that little act can have more impact on people than an entire day's worth of watching the news. Those people driving by may not remember what some politician said on TV that day, but they will remember you. Who knows, others may just join in with you.

Now that's being patriotic.

Announcement

2010-05-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

After seeing how my article about my love of horror movies stuck out like a sore thumb in a political blog, I decided to make a new one where I can post about less serious topics like movies, TV and American culture.

I would have added music to that list as well but I know next to nothing about current groups and tunes - my music kind of stopped around 1980.

Anyhow, the new blog is called An Uncultured Slob and I hope you'll check it out and follow it as well.

Obama And Race: A Different Take

2010-05-28T17:25:00.000-07:00

OK, fair warning - I'm going to make some people very uncomfortable here and it's not going to be who you think.

I'll also say upfront that I hesitate to take on racial issues: I'm a middle aged white male who admittedly has a very limited understanding of what is called "the black experience in America." I try to be empathetic but I have never suffered discrimination of any sort due to the color of my skin. However, I am seeing a dynamic going on concerning our current President that I have to talk about.

The dynamic in question is what in drama is called "subtext" when it comes to that man in the White House.

The reaction to Obama's election among the r-word set was totally expected (They get so upset when they get called racists so I'll try not to do it.). Someone remarked that the r-worders considered it OK now to drop the public polite masks and wave that r-word flag high because with Obama's election "white guilt" was now dead and they wouldn't be hit so hard when they let their bigotry out to play. Many examples abound that show that but one subtext is screaming out from them:

Obama MUST be far left and secretly hates America because he's black.

That's an old one too. I used to be told directly and indirectly that black people couldn't possibly be patriotic about America. I never have figured out how that worked either. Were the r-worders saying that because they believe that the level of patriotic fervor increases the paler your skin is? Was it their own admission of the "white guilt" that they decried and were they admitting that black people had been treated so badly in America that they think that blacks couldn't love the country that did that to them?   Who knows, deep thinking isn't exactly a requirement to join the r-word club.

Like I said, unsurprising.

There is another side to that coin and you find it among the "disappointed in Obama" wing of the left. With about everything the President does, someone on the left will pop up to complain that it didn't go far enough and was this what we voted for?   I, for one, don't know who they thought they were voting for either. Obama ran a centrist, barely liberal campaign of national unity and he's governing the way he said he would. Some people thought he was something else even though his centrism was always right there to be seen and heard in position statements and speeches.  Subtext?

Obama should be far left BECAUSE he's black.

Two sides of the same coin and both just as racist as the other.

Anyone squirming out there right now? Well, the first of anything has powerful myths to overcome - good and bad. I don't think the racism on the (white) left is conscious or purposeful, however. This stereotype is much more benign.   We love to poke holes in the mythology believed by the right and not so much when it comes to ourselves.

The example of a myth strongly believed by those of us white folk even slightly on the left that crashed to earth comes from my youth in the Sixties. The running myth at the time was, since men had done such an awful job at it, when women ran things everything would be all better. No woman would send another woman's sons to die in a war, the myth went, and since women were such mysterious, all-compassionate creatures intolerance and hatred would be a thing of the past.

Then came women in power like Indira Gandhi who imposed a strong-armed dictatorship on her country. Let's not forget Margaret Thatcher, aka "Britain's Reagan" who was never thought of as particularly cuddly and nurturing. The myth died but the lesson learned was that gender doesn't dictate behavior and when it comes down to it, women in power really aren't any better or worse than their male counterparts.

I'm not saying that President Obama is so bad that the same lesson will apply to nonwhites -- I think he's doing as good a job as can be expected given the problems he was left to deal with and has accomplished so much in his first two years that he is being favorably compared to FDR. That ain't too shabby. He's no Messiah (we never thought he was), he is human and will get things right and other things wrong just like any other (white) Democrat would if they were in office right now. If some of our friends on the left can figure this out and see the man who was actually elected instead of the one they created in their heads, the same lesson will be learned though.

Should that happen and we start seeing that people are people regardless of outward pigment and other minor differences with no guarantee of anything, President Obama will have inadvertantly given the nation a gift that will dwarf even his most ambitious proposals and programs.

Confessions Of A Horror Movie Fan

2010-05-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

(Just a little fluff for a Sunday afternoon - you can go here for something more serious from me...)

I love horror movies.

I set aside Saturday nights for them. It's a throwback to my TV days of three networks and a UHF channel or two for me when Saturday nights around 10-11pm meant it was time for the local "Chiller Theater" and usually a really cheesy horror flick. For those reading this who are too young for such things, watch the original Fright Night flick and "The Great Vampire Killer" Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell)'s TV show in it and that'll give you a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. Sometimes a local station would give an extra treat and have an afternoon science fiction movie show as well.

I fell in love with horror movies from the first day I was exposed to it at a neighbor's house, watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein with boyhood buddies. Although it was a comedy, it was my first introduction to Universal's movie monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man) at the tender age of 6 or so. It gave me nightmares but also a great joy in watching it. I wanted more. I watched more horror flicks and read everything about them that I could lay my hands on (like the old Famous Monsters magazine). I even sought horror comic books. I got so into it that one of my teachers called my parents in for a grim conference one day on whether I needed psychiatric help after I asked her who her favorite monster was. My parents told me to tone it down a bit.

Now, for those who don't share us horror fans' love of being scared on purpose, rest assured we are really normal folk. George Romero, director of the original Night of the Living Dead and sequels, put it best when he said during an interview that for fans of the genre a good scary flick was as much fun as any carnival ride for us and really operated on the same level - both provide a safe scare.

This is not as easy to find as you might think. When movie companies want something cheap to make that they can throw into theaters for a quick buck, they make a horror flick. They figure a little make-up, some fangs, buckets of fake blood and nubile young women to scream will do the trick and generally they are right.
We horror fans will give damn near anything a look and are usually disappointed that we did. As a friend of mine once said once, "You know us horror fans - we have to sit through a lot of shit to find anything decent." I can personally testify to that - I can't count the hours I've sat watching some bad horror movie saying to myself, "It HAS to get better!" right up until the end credits start rolling.

I have a simple rule when it comes to horror: Scare me. I don't care if it's a masked guy with breathing problems and a big knife, a werewolf or a vampire or something else -- if I don't at least jump a few times it's a bomb to me. That's not an easy thing to do either for someone like me who's seen a lot of horror films or even people who just use them for a date flick. A good horror director has more to overcome than any other director to make a truly good, scary movie.

No matter how you watch or what type of movie you watch you do something called "willful suspension of disbelief." What that means is that you really know that what you are looking at is light projected on a screen or a picture flickering on your TV but you are willing to pretend that what you are seeing is real so you'll get into it. Not so hard when it's a romance or action picture. However, the horror movie has the added burden of getting you to go along with the idea that vampires, demons, werewolves etc. are real too. If the monster looks fake or the actors don't sell their fear well enough for you to share it the illusion is shattered.

Now the horror director who chooses a crazed human killer to scare you has a little easier time of it - those people actually exist outside of the theater. They say that the difference between a horror movie and a mystery is that in a horror movie you get to watch the murders where a mystery generally just shows you the aftermath. Especially if the murders are gory affairs. They still have to sell you that their 'monster' is a danger though and even that can be shot to hell by bad acting.

That's why when we horror fans find something that genuinely scares us, we consider it a precious gem indeed. Problem is that even among horror fans we don't agree on what that is. It's another burden for a horror movie to overcome - different things scare different people and the fear isn't shared by all. The best example of that is the little indie horror flick that made tons of money: The Blair Witch Project. How it affects you depends on where you live and what you like to do. If you are a city person who doesn't go camping much, the forest the movie takes place in is just as scary as what happens in it and you went home absolutely terrified. If you love camping and/or live in or near a forest the reaction was more along the lines of, "What's the big deal?" and it barely bothered you at all.

So the hunt goes on for the rare scare for us gorehounds and fear junkies. You're all invited to join in with the fun. We'll turn off the lights and crank up the surround sound for you but no worries, we'll protect you. And as you watch, remember the words of the advertising campaign for the original Last House on the Left:

It's only a movie.

BOO!

Don't Blame Bush

2010-05-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on Alan Colmes' LIBERALAND)

There was a nice piece on the Crooks and Liars blog the other day by David Neiwert that got me thinking on the terms we Democrats, liberals and progressives tend to use and how to improve them. It was on how the right is howling about “blaming Bush for everything” and why it was necessary to keep bringing Dubya up:

It’s true that the miseries we’re currently enduring are not merely the fault of the sole personage of George W. Bush, the man now widely viewed by conservatives as The Man Who Betrayed Conservative Values. He had lots and lots of help. In fact, he had millions of little helpers — all those movement conservatives who now want to pretend that he wasn’t a real conservative.

This is because, in reality, Bush is The Man Who Nearly Destroyed the American Economy. It wasn’t Bush’s “betrayal” of the “conservative values” they believe are so time-honored and proven that caused his abysmal failure — it was those values themselves, and Bush’s steady adherence to them throughout his tenure.

I get that but, as the righties love to point out, George W. Bush won’t be on anyone’s ballot this year. Neiwert continues:

Conservatives need to be slapped with the Bush legacy on a daily basis. Sure, they’ll whine. But they have it coming.

I agree wholeheartedly but here’s a suggestion: instead of blaming Bush for the problems we’re forced to clean up after now, let’s put the blame where it belongs – conservatism itself and its political party, the Republicans. That is the laboratory that created Bushenstein and gave him the rubber stamp Congress that got us to where we are now.

For decades prior to Bush, we were hammered with all these conservative theories that sounded so good to so many people. Cutting taxes would increase revenue, giving tax cuts to the wealthiest would give us nearly full employment since “poor people don’t give people jobs,” government regulation was strangling business and unnecessary because the invisible hand of a free market would weed out the crooks by denying them an income and correct any problem on its own. Things like that.

This has been preached by the right for as long as I can remember: previous to, during, and after the 8 years of the righties’ secular saint, Ronald Reagan. When the Republicans did win the White House they tried to act on those theories but they all had one thing in common: a Democratic Congress to stop their excesses.

Then came the Clinton scandals, George W. Bush and the takeover of the entire legislative and executive branches of the federal government by the Republicans. Now the road was clear for the cons to finally put their ideas into action without those darn Democrats standing in the way.

No need to repeat what happened when those theories failed in the real world – we’re all living through it now. It’s not difficult to understand the right’s real platform once you boil away the distractions to get the gullible to vote for it – it’s to enrich the rich, comfort the comfortable and oppress the oppressed. They really did, and do, believe that this would fix the nation for the better, but the facts just don’t back them up.

This is not just George W. Bush’s fault or failure. Contrary to the claims being made by conservatives now, Dubya was most definitely one of them. What’s happening now would have happened if Reagan or Daddy Bush had the Republican Congress Dubya did and will happen again if the Republicans ever get back into a position where they control the House, Senate and the White House.

So, don’t just blame Bush. He didn’t fail, his conservative beliefs did and we need to hammer that message home.

Pundits Blow Smoke! Democrats Panic!

2010-05-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at Alan Colmes' LIBERALAND)

As we head into summer, the pundit class is sounding all sorts of alarms about how the Democrats are DOOMED this year. I’d list a few examples but doing a search using “Democrats 2010″ will bring up plenty. It’s all about how “anti-incumbent” the voters are supposed to be energized and the Democrats are not as revved to go vote this year as they were in 2008. Some Democrats are buying into this and doing their panic thing as well.

OK, reality check time.

First of all, let’s take a quick glance at the calendar. Does it say October or November to you? It doesn’t to me, either. These predictions are being made now before most of the candidates in the general election have even been decided yet. No worries, say the pundits, no matter who they are if they’re Democrats they’re screwed. Yeah, that works.

About that “who’s all excited to go vote and who isn’t” thing: This is May. Summer will be here shortly. Summer means many things like shorts, trips to the beach, vacations, getting a tan – things like that. One thing it doesn’t mean is politics. The elections aren’t even a faint blip on most peoples’ radar and won’t be until after Labor Day. The only ones paying attention to elections and such are us politics junkies and there ain’t that many of us. So we don’t know who’ll be itching to go vote in November yet.

OK, what about all this anti-incumbent, “we hate Congress” thing that’s flying about? Here’s my notably unreliable prediction about that: Saying people don’t like Congress is like complaining about the weather. Both sides will do their primary challenges but really – who thinks Democrats are so upset that they’ll vote to put back into power the people they rushed to the polls to toss out of power back in ‘08? The teabaggers are going to vote for the party they hate to show up the Republicans? Puhlease.

Besides, things are changing as the year progresses. Polls may fluctuate over which party is winning the generic battle over Congress, most people may not be happy with the Democrats in Congress but they plain don’t like or trust the Republicans.

So let me put on my pundit cap and do a bit of predicting myself.

The Democrats will lose a few seats this year (a pretty common occurrence for the party in power) but once the dust settles they will still have complete control of Congress. Voters will do what they normally do, say “Your Representative/Senator is awful but mine is OK,” and re-elect most of them. After all the shouting by the Tea Partiers and the pundits’ visions of Democratic doom and gloom those pronouncements will be treated the way they usually are – they’ll be totally ignored.

This isn’t to say that Democrats can just coast to victory in November – they will have to get down from their towers and do some real battling to keep what they’ve got. In most cases, with the Republicans being as crazy as they’ve been, that means pointing out their nuttiness and hammering home the real question to be decided in November:

Do you really want these Birther,Tenther, no-taxes-ever, “Obama is a Socialist” freaks in control of the government again?

Democrats, I think we’re going to do just fine.

Why I Love Oregon

2010-05-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

I know, it's an odd topic for Mother's Day but since my wife of 32 years and mother of all of my life both passed away a few years back I take this day to quietly and privately remember (and miss terribly) them both.

In all the turmoil over national and international events once in a while I sit back and am thankful for the state I now call home. I moved my family to Oregon in 1992 and have now lived in both the east and west sides of the state. A California transplant (well, one of many transplants for me having grown up the son of a 26 year, three wars Navy Chief and living all over the country), we moved because California was getting way too expensive and dangerous to stay. I've met great people on both sides of the state but I have to admit, for me the west side has the edge. Very green, lots of trees and if Oregon is blue, the west side of the state is why.

Political animal as I am, what strikes me most about the differences between California and here is Oregon's approach to politics. For example:

When I first moved to Oregon and people found out that I had been an active Democrat in my former state, I was immediately invited to attend a debate between the two major party candidates for Governor. OK, that alone set me back on my heels a bit - you either watched CA debates on TV or had to be special enough to be able to be in the actual audience. So here I am, wandering the halls of the high school where the debate was to take place and watching the people there when someone noted that the Democratic candidate, John Kitzhaber, hadn't arrived yet and we should have a rally to welcome him.

OK, I say to myself, I haven't a clue who that is but I'm always up for a bit of cheering and such. My experience with campaign rallies had always been as part of a crowd watching and cheering the candidate speaking on a stage, voice booming from mikes and speakers and us waving signs. I grab a sign and head out. No microphones, no stage. OK, maybe the candidate's arrival will offer more drama. Nope. I hear someone say, "There he is!" and all I see is a pickup truck pull up to the curb below us. The man inside gets out, alone, and heads up the hill to the high school. Now the cheering starts, I say to myself again...and again, nope. As he approaches our little band of supporters, he's greeted with "Hi, John" and that's about it.

OK, different to be sure and I'm already beginning to like it.

The debate itself was quite the departure as well. The Republican candidate for governor, Denny Smith, was a former Congressman and radio talk show host. He conducted his side of the debate like he was still on the radio: Lots of shots at liberals and then-President Clinton that pleased his supporters in the audience. Kitzhaber was more reserved and set about quietly but firmly dismembering his opponent's record and positions and was always civil throughout. I thought afterward that Kitzhaber had conducted the nicest evisceration of an opponent I'd ever seen. That 1994 election was for Governor Kitzhaber's first term and he was re-elected four years later.

The next time how different Oregon was struck me was just before an during the 2004 presidential election year. I had lived in California for 26 years, started really getting active in 1972 and in all of the time from then to when we moved out of the state in 1992 I had seen precisely two presidential candidates live and in person. I attended a rally for George McGovern in '72 at a nearby shopping mall and later a '76 pre-election day rally for Jimmy Carter in San Francisco (At least, I think Carter was there. I was so far away from the podium that day that they could have put up a cardboard cut-out of Carter and played an audio tape and I'd never would have known). That was it.

Then came Oregon and I saw and actually shook the hands of more candidates for President than ever. It started with a 2003 rally in Portland for Ralph Nader then another that year for Howard Dean, moved to a 2004 Dennis Kucinich speech at a Universalist church here in town then, for that year, ended with a massive John Kerry rally at a Portland waterfront park. Since then, I attended a rally (or "town hall" as his campaign called it) for, and featuring, Barack Obama just before the Oregon primary in 2008. I didn't shake his hand though, as I was playing hookie from work that day to attend and was avoiding being on that evening's local newscasts. With the exception of the Kucinich speech, those rallies were more like what I was used to before though - there I did cheer and wave a sign and was joined by a crowd doing the same.

Fast forward to last night and a repeat of my first exposure to Oregon politics. Our current Governor is term-limited after two terms so we will be having our primary later this month for a new one. The choices on the Democratic side this year are two men I have met and like: former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and the man I saw when I first got here - former Governor going for a third term, John Kitzhaber. Kitzhaber is favored in the primary and general election but my vote is going for Bradbury.

This time it was no debate. I ran across two guys I used to meet with regularly when we extended our local '04 "Veterans for Kerry" group past the election (it's kinda defunct now) and as we chatted they told me they were headed to a Kitzhaber fundraiser just up the block. I decided to go with them to it - I wanted to see what the former Governor was saying as he campaigned. Again, a rather quiet affair - Kitzhaber was there but wasn't being mobbed either before or after he made his remarks. Plus, he was introduced to the crowd as "John" and that was enough.

Yes, Oregon is definitely different and for a politics junkie like me, who knew that it'd end up being my idea of heaven to boot. I think I'll be staying.

A Message to Arizona

2010-04-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

There is a blog post from the Arizona Republic site by Laurie Roberts that attempts the impossible: defending Arizona's new immigration law, previously discussed on this blog. She bemoans the fact that it's made Arizona "look bad" then goes on to say the reason it was passed was that the "current and previous administrations" (although she goes out of her way to point at President Obama and Secretary Napolitano) let Arizona down on border control. But here is where she gets down to the real reason that the bill is worth supporting, according to her:

It is because of Washington's steadfast refusal to do its job that we find ourselves where we are today – when half of Arizona Democrats, 69 percent of independents and a whopping 84 percent of Republicans support SB 1070, according to the latest Rasmussen Poll of likely voters.

Dismiss this, if you like, as the work of the “radical fringe”, as Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund did on Friday. But 70 percent of likely voters supported this law.

That's all probably true, but she and others who are repeating this line are missing a huge point:

Rights are rights and not subject to popularity contests, polls or votes.

The issue here isn't about the so-called "illegal immigrants" - if Arizona had stuck to strengthening border patrols to stem the tide crossing their southern border and offered to assist federal law enforcement in finding illegals there wouldn't be much of a fuss if any. Other states have done so and the assistance of local law enforcement is not only appreciated, it is encouraged.

Where Arizona crossed the line was when they decided that they had the power to arrest people who look like illegals (aka "reasonable suspicion") when they don't have the papers on them to prove otherwise. This violates our principles of innocent until proven guilty and the right not to be forced to incriminate yourself. I don't care if 100% of Arizonians support doing away with those rights protected by the Constitution because of a perceived threat, they don't get to decide who gets rights and who doesn't. Period.

This isn't the first time putting rights up to polls and votes has been tried either.

In the years following World War II, African Americans found themselves confronted with increasing patterns of housing segregation. They were excluded from the suburbs and the real-estate industry, which severely restricted educational and economic opportunities. In 1955, William Byron Rumford, the first black to serve in the California State Legislature, introduced a fair-housing bill outlawing housing discrimination on the basis of race.

In 1963, California Legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act which outlawed restrictive covenants and the refusal to rent or sell on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, or physical disability.

In reaction to the law, a well-funded coalition of realtors and landlords was determined to protect white neighborhoods and property values. They immediately began to campaign for a referendum that would amend the state Constitution to protect property owners' ability to deny minorities equal access to housing. Known as Proposition 14, it was passed by 65 percent of the voters.

In 1966, the California State Supreme Court, in Mulkey v. Reitman, ruled that Proposition 14 violated the State Constitution's provisions for equal protection and due process.

In 1967, in Reitman v. Mulkey, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court and ruled that Proposition 14 had violated the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

It wasn't OK to put peoples' rights up for a vote in California in the '60s and it's not OK for Arizona to restrict rights by law now. The US and state constitutions do not grant rights that may be taken away by a majority vote, state law, or the percentage of support a poll shows. All of them work off a simple proposition: we are born with rights and the Constitution only exists to protect them from being taken away.

Arizona, like California before it, is about to learn that lesson as their new 70%-approved law is challenged in court and likely overturned.

Let those who are considering following Arizona's lead learn the same lesson.

And here we go!

2010-04-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

Reaction to Arizona's new anti-"illegal alien" bill being signed into law yesterday was swift and apparently I wasn't the only one to think "police state" when I heard about it. Calls to boycott Arizona came even before this Anti-American act was signed into law.

The only way we can pressure the Arizona legislature to its senses is to embark on a boycott of the "Grand Canyon State."

The world can also join the boycott effort and be quite effective. Arizona is wildly dependent on producing world exports. Ironically its largest world customer is Mexico and its second is that hot bed of socialized medicine -- Canada. Both of those countries should join Americans from every state in the union and boycott Arizona.

The battle is on. Americans can ignore the menace in our midst or we can join hands and push back with moral authority and economic resistance. People often wonder and are asked what they would have done during the times in history when people were scapegoated through the force of law based on their race or ethnicity. Americans have an opportunity to answer that question either again or for the first time. Once again the whole world is watching.

Of course, not all of the reaction has been positive. In fact, some of it has been downright scary.

U.S. Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva is closing his Tucson and Yuma offices today at noon because of what he said were multiple death threats and threats of violence.

Police are stationed outside his Tucson office, according to a statement from spokesman Adam Sarvana.

Sarvana said the office received “some pretty scary calls,” including two from the same person, he said, “who threatened to go down there and blow everyone’s brains out then go to the border to shoot Mexicans.”

Grijalva staffer Ruben Reyes said the office has been flooded with calls all week about Senate Bill 1070. About 25 percent are "very racist" in nature, Reyes said, characterizing some as "telling that tortilla-eating wetback to go back to Mexico."

He said the staff feels "very intimidated" by the calls from this morning.

What caused all this, besides the fact that Representative Grijalva is Hispanic?

Grijalva has been calling for a statewide boycott of conventions to pressure Gov. Jan Brewer into vetoing a controversial immigration bill that authorizes local law enforcement to check immigration status given reasonable suspicion.

Make that "had" since Arizona's Republican Governor signed that into law but no doubt the Congressman is still calling for a boycott. Speaking of "shooting Mexicans" ......

According to KOLD Channel 5 News in Arizona, local militiaman Bill Davis is recruiting “combat veterans, with kill records, to camp out and patrol” along the U.S.-Mexico border. “If it comes to when shots are fired in the general direction of these guys, they have my authorization to return fire, if they’re in defense of their life or their buddy next to them, return fire, stop it as fast as it starts, and they’re capable of it,” Davis told reporters. Despite a warning from Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada that the militia’s plan is “very dangerous” and “very risky,” Davis is pressing forward:

“If we think they’re carrying drugs, weapons, contraband, we’ll get out in front of ‘em and stop ‘em,” says Davis. “They won’t get past us. You can write into that what you want, short of shooting them.”

Davis may be feeling empowered (Ya think?) from the radical anti-immigrant law passed by the Arizona legislature, which requires police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of a “lawful contact.” In any case, right-wing websites are celebrating Davis’ armed border patrol. The neo-Nazi website Stormfront calls it, “[m]ore good news out of Arizona!”

Oh, since Davis (who is not a law enforcement officer) gave the militia his very own "authorization" to shoot at border crossers it must be alright then. He does say his little gang of trigger-happy and self-appointed guardians of the border won't be actually shooting any of them, but we'll see how long that lasts.
Neo-Nazis are applauding his move too, what could possibly go wrong?

This won't end well.

Rightwingers Finally Get Their Police State

2010-04-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

They went and did it. Arizona succumbed to anti-"illegal alien" madness and signed into law a measure that is so incredibly un-American that words fail.

The law requires police to stop anyone on “reasonable suspicion” of being an undocumented immigrant. People could be arrested for failing to produce a valid driver’s license or papers proving they are a legal resident.

What? Hispanic people in Arizona now have to walk around with papers proving it's OK for them to be here? Excuse me, what country is this again? Well, OK ...it's not just for brown people who either speak Spanish or have a Spanish accent but seriously, we know who's going to be stopped. It sure ain't gonna be that Canadian who lets slip an "aboot" and "oot" or that random German or French accent. They're, ya know, white.

Oh, and it gets worse. Matty Yglesias has the scoop:

According to America’s Voice, the approved bill, entitled the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” would “make every undocumented worker in Arizona guilty of a criminal offense and require state and local police to go after them.” More specifically, it would allow police to arrest anyone who is in this country illegally and charge them with trespass, require police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter, outlaw the hiring of day laborers off the street, and prohibit anyone from knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant for any reason.

Wow, a rightwing Two-fer! Take that, you pesky Fourth and Fifth Amendment - we never liked you anyway!! You're brown and guilty until proven innocent!

This isn't racial profiling, this is racial targeting.

No doubt this will be challenged in court and thrown out very soon, but until that happens let's remember one very important thing. Which party's members passed this in the Arizona legislature and which party does the Governor who signed it belong to?

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Since Hispanic-Americans - the fastest growing minority in America - are not stupid and will figure out who's to blame for this...I wonder which party will now get even more of their vote?

Tough call.....

UPDATE: Facebook Obama death prayer page

2010-04-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

According to the The Political Carnival blog, we now have an answer from Facebook on what they plan to do about the Obama Death Prayer page on their site.

Nothing.

According to CQ Politics, the page doesn't violate Facebook standards.

"While it may be considered distasteful and objectionable to some, the Facebook page in question does not violate our policies," said Andrew Noyes, Facebook's manager of public policy communications.

And it gets better - the fans of that page are now over a million.

When exactly did a sizable number of Americans go stark, raving mad?

Oh.....nearly forgot.....

No, Rightwingers, You Do NOT Get To Say Whatever You Want Without Consequence

2010-04-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

Overheated rhetoric is one thing, but hoping God takes out Obama? Sorry, no - not acceptable. However, the over 600,000 people who "like" this Facebook page think this is funny, or something.

DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN

Hilarious, huh? And "Swayzie"? The Teabag nuts have an alergic reaction to spellcheck, I suppose.

Now, the person who set this page does try to get out of what is an obvious threat to the President, but really...are they that stupid and think we'll buy this?

I just wanted to let some people who were wondering know that we are not really praying for the death of obama it is just some humor to show our disapproval of our current president

Hey, jerkweed - I don't approve of you and your little site. I sure hope some bomber doesn't lose a load of bombs over your house with you in it! Ain't that funny? I'm not really hoping you get bombed, I'm just expressing disapproval over your Facebook page. Ha ha ha.

Yeah, that crap'll work. Looks to me like the joker here needs to be introduced to this law:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 41 > § 871

§ 871. Threats against President and successors to the Presidency

(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Oops. Still a knee slapper there Bubba? Would a little visit by the Secret Service help you understand things better? I'm sure we can arrange that. Keep in mind, another would-be comedian was convicted and sent to jail for his "joke" about President George W. Bush and a "burning bush."

Now, before anyone brings it up, this Facebook page was based on a similar "joke" passed around by a teachers' union about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - in fact, the only difference between the two is that the Facebook guy replaced Governor Christie with "President" and "Obama."

Oh, well that makes it OK then! The liberals did it and so can we!

No, that doesn't make it OK. The union didn't make that into a Facebook page with thousands of followers and not a single liberal said it was OK for the union to do that. Not one - in fact it was pretty roundly denounced by all. It wasn't OK when it was directed at a Republican Governor, it sure as hell isn't OK directed at a Democratic President. In fact, as mentioned earlier, it's illegal.

Here's the thing: The far right has gotten away with saying anything about anybody without anyone making a stir about it for way too long. Do they have the right to do that? Of course they do - the government won't arrest them for it. Do they have the right to go unchallenged? HELL NO.

So here's what I'd like you, dear reader, to do:

First, report the page to the US Secret Service (look on the FAQ page for how to report threats). Similar groups and posts have already happened on Facebook and Twitter and the Secret Service is grateful when they are pointed out - they can't be everywhere.

Second, if you have a Facebook account, go to the funny little "joke" page and look for the "Report Page" link (It's small and near the bottom on the left side of the page). Do what the link says - report this to Facebook and get them to remove it. (Yes, rightwingers, you do have the right to free speech. No, rightwingers, you do not have the "right" to be on Facebook.)

We do this enough and maybe..just maybe...the idiot right will get the message that even "jokes" about threatening the life of any President is wrong.

RIGHTIES! CAN YOU HEAR US NOW?

No Racism Here!

2010-04-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

Edited version on Alan Colmes' LIBERALAND

As the Tea Party movement looks more and more like the Sarah Palin movement – she sure doesn’t seem to be able to miss going to them, even if she isn’t being paid – one wonders whose true face is being revealed in this story from Ben Smith of Politico.

It concerns one Leland Yee, a California State Senator, and the response he is getting for his efforts to get the California University at Stanislaus where Our Sister of Perpetual Victimhood, St. Sarah of the Quit agreed to speak, to reveal the rather posh contract they entered into with the former half-governor. Since the college in question is a public institution and California tax dollars helped pay for that, it’s a fair request.

Looking at the response from Palin supporters, you’d think Senator Lee had…like…personally attacked her or something:

From Yee's press release:

An expletive-laden fax received yesterday in the Senator’s San Francisco and Sacramento offices says, “To: JoBama Rectum Sniffer Fish Head Leland Yee” and then in all capital letters, “WERE YOU TO EXTRACT YOUR HEAD FROM TREASONOUS MARXIST NIG**R HUSSEIN OBAMA’S RECTUM, YOUR BRAIN WOULD STILL FUNCTION AT ITS PRESENT MUCH DIMINISHED LEVEL BUT AT LEAST THE NIG**R SH*T SMELL WOULD EVENTUALLY DISSIPATE.”

The fax, which included a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose, also states “FIGHTING The Marxist Nig**r Thug Hussein Obama” and “Safeguard the Constitution, Death of all Domestic Marxists!”

“NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON: lyeesucksobamasnig**ras*.com,” as well as “JoBama. HE IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO KILL OUR UNBORN, JUST NOT BRAVE ENOUGH TO CALL OUR ENEMIES WHAT THEY ARE: Muslim Terrorists!” The fax also includes a rifle scope targeting a shirt with the communist hammer and sickle symbol.

Wow! You’d think that the people who are saying no racial slurs were shouted at members of the Congressional Black Caucus because there’s no video of that and that the supporters of Palin are racism-and-violence-free would be more careful what they send to an elected officeholder! These elected types are tricky – they tend not to keep stuff like this to themselves and cower in the corner in fear of night riders, they go public with it.

Of course, it just may be that Lee himself is the racist since he dared to bring to light the racism directed at him. That is how it works, right? That’s what the far right keeps telling me anyway.

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Defeating the Corporate Pro-Wealthy Propaganda on TV

2010-04-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Mark Karlin of buzzflash.com posted an interesting article on that site today. He argues that a media owned by corporations and the wealthy are producing programming on radio and TV meant to keep the viewers/listeners tuned in to propaganda meant to support the wealthy and increase their wealth. Network and cable news covers trivia more than serious issues as nothing more than a vehicle for advertising - often the most important story you need to know about scrolls by on the bottom of your screen as the people on it discuss First Lady Michelle Obama's hairdo or today's version of the Balloon Boy.

As liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes once said (while testifying before a Congressional hearing held largely by Democrats during the Bush era that was forced to be held in the Congressional office building basement by the majority-at-the-time Republicans), "The news is closed."

Of course, this article produces the expected handwringing and cries of "What to do? What to do?" from its readers. Well, I have a suggestion to combat this:

Become your own news media.

Here's how I do it. When I wake up, the first thing that goes on is my computer - not my television. Thanks to Yahoo.com, I have a page set up there that's the first thing I look at. On it, I have news headlines from Yahoo (which covers everything from national news wires to Politico), the Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, the New York Times, Washington Post, local/state news plus blogs I follow. I get national and international headlines as well as entertainment news.  In five minutes, I have a pretty good idea what's going on in the world and am a click away from reading more about what interests me. You can set this up for yourself by using their My Yahoo feature. There are other sites that do this too, I just happen to use that one.

I have news and opinion sites I regularly go to bookmarked and get breaking news from ABC, CNN, NYT and WaPo via email.   I even have rightwing sites bookmarked so I can browse through them to see what the far right's talking points for the day will be.

The real message to all this is don't rely on your TV for news. I too have noticed how bad it's gotten on the tube so I don't rely on any network or cable show to inform me. I don't even watch the talking head shows that I agree with as in Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. Fox Noise never goes on my TV.  Ever. About the only time I turn on a news network is when there is something going on that I'd like to see as well as read about.

Noticing a trend here, like what's the biggest tool we have to defeat the corporate propaganda and infotainment that fills our TVs? If you're reading this, you're on it.

Care has to be taken when you rely on the internet for your information, of course - for every nugget of wheat there are tons of chaff. My suggestion on how to weed out the crap is to stick with what you know and trust that has a reputation for reporting real news, be highly suspicious with blogs (if they have no links to back up what they say, ignore and delete) and remember anyone can have a website or a blog and most of them do. Take no one's word on anything, including me - when in doubt, look it up for yourself.

We have what Michael Moore once said is a "fearsome force for democracy" right here on our computer monitors just a mouse click away. Use it well and you can be the best informed person on your block. Use it badly and you end up screaming about socialism carrying a misspelled sign.

Use your TV for entertainment. If you want news, read a paper or magazine or go online. This way we win.

Who was it?

2010-04-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

That blew up the OKC building?

That had the standoff at Ruby Ridge?

That planned to kill police officers and then blow up the first responders?

That plans on forming an militia in Oklahoma to fight the government?

That heartily endorsed tax cuts for the super-rich?

That heartily endorsed the Iraq war (even though France was RIGHT; there were NO WMDs)?

That had NO problem with Bush not securing the munitions in Iraq, which were immediately looted and used to kill Americans.

That heartily endorsed stripping US citizens of the 5th Amendment rights?

That heartily endorsed denying US citizens the right to bail or a trial or an attorney?

That heartily endorsed Halliburton building internment camps?

That heartlily endorsed PD51 by Bush, which would let him take over the government?

That heartily endorsed removing oversight of the financial industry in 1999, 2004 and 2007?

That heartily endorsed the law that is being used to prosecute those religious nuts in Michigan (or Minn or wherever) as terrorists and send them to Gitmo?

That heartily endorsed the oil companies meeting with Cheney to dictate our oil policy?

That heartily endorsed Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of Medicare since its inception?

That endorsed DOUBLING the deficit from 2001 to 2008.

That endorsed Bush directing Federalized troops to confiscate guns in New Orleans?

That endorsed Bush filing an Amicus Brief with SCOTUS in SUPPORT of the DC gun ban?

That endorsed Bush taking guns out of National Parks?

That endorsed a president that spent 1/2 of his entire presidency on vacation?

That endorsed Bush going on vacation immediately after being warned that bin Laden was about to strike?

That endorsed Bush ignoring FBI warnings about Arabs learning how to fly, but not being interested in taking off or landing?

That gave Bush a complete PASS when 9/11 happened?

That gave Bush a complete PASS when he let thousands of people die during Katrina and then didn't do what he promised about helping to rebuild?

That gave Bush a complete PASS when he KISSED a Saudi Prince and held the guy's hand?

That gave Bush a complete PASS when he let bin Laden's relatives escape the country right after 9/11, when NO OTHER flights were allowed to fly?

That gave Bush a complete PASS for gutting the Consumer Protection agency and then having people die because they weren't protected?

That gave Bush for giving companies TAX CREDITS for offshoring jobs?

That gave Cheney a complete PASS for drinking and then shooting his friend in the face?

Why - I believe it was the moronic Reich-wingers. They didn't have even ONE problem with all of that.

But NOW - they make up crap about Obama and wail and moan and shit themselves over the how we've gone far away from the Constitution - even though they don't have a clue what the Constitution says. One winger even said that the STATES hold power over the FEDS. I rather thought that the Constitution and then the voters did that - being a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC and all. I've never heard that drivel about the States; it used to be these wackos ran on and on about the power of the County (Posse Comitatus), where the COUNTY, not the state, was the supreme power. I guess they can't make up their pointy little heads.

It's a bitch having a black man in the White House; it gives those wingers fits.

h/t to Larry, who posted this to the Left Wing Radicals email group.

Feed It or Starve It

2010-04-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on the What a Nascence blog.

Sometimes I am slightly synesthetic. I think of it as I do my dyslexia. Dyslexia makes it harder to read, and sometimes, when I am tired or stressed, words make no sense at all; but the upside is that I can solve jumble puzzles, seek and finds, and even cryptographs, faster than most people who are way smarter than I am. The answers just seem to 'show' themselves.

My slightly synesthetic side gives me shape and form to forces, elements in this world, revealing them to me, their symbols and their behaviors, in ways that makes them easier for me to understand.

Under stresses and events of intimidation in my own life, I began to see, recognize fear as something with a shape, form, beginning, and end. An animal complete with gnashing teeth and a fatal flaw. That flaw is the hunger that fear creates that gives it strength and impetus, but which also MUST eat. And when it cannot consume its target, it will consume itself.

I watched as I was growing up, how people were controlled by others. Fear was key to getting people to act against their own best or better interests. Fear was key to keeping people divided by false issues or untruths, to where they would not act, collectively, in their own best interests.

The rules of fear that I have observed, work on an individual one-to-one basis, exactly the same as they work on the collective, the masses.

For the sake of making this simple to understand and to relate to, we will deal with the personal, one-to-one tactics that make fear work, and at the same time, reveals to us exactly what it is and how to defeat it.

Fear is used to control people. It is used by people who themselves, fear us. If they did not fear us, they would not need to make us fear them, for them to feel safe. They would have no need to control us.

Essentially, one has to know and understand fear and how it affects others. Fear is such an emotional core sense, that to understand it, one has to have it. Like a gun: You can't shoot it if you don't know how. You have to first know it to then use it. Then you can 'aim it'.

Unlike a gun, Fear cannot affect someone who has none of it in them to begin with. It cannot be used by someone that is not afflicted with it and it cannot afflict someone that does not recognize it. Fear has to be owned, sold and bought or it has no effect.

Essentially, they have to take their fear, and sell it to us. For this to work, we have to buy their fear. For this to continue working, we have to ignore where it came from: Their fear of us and what we can do with what we know about them.

Fear has to be reinforced in order to stay in control. That reinforcement has to come at closer and closer intervals, increasing, essentially, the frequency in the cycles, in order for it to continue to have the desired effect.

We can, if we let ourselves, begin to predict the next installment of 'fear reinforcement'. The pattern becomes predictable. Only the extremes that are required are relative unknowns. However, that each cycle will increase in intensity, is predictable.

This leaves the person who is employing fear as a weapon or tool, in a quandary. It becomes a chore. It takes more and more energy to do the wrong thing. It is exhausting. Fear is a limited resource because it has to increase how much it draws from the well each visit. Fear requires more fear.

It also requires timing. One cannot go directly to the worst case and most extreme, because they would have to top it at the next interval. How do you top your best? How do you top that? And then top it again?

Fear is limited. As a tool, it is also limiting.

Fear is utilized by those who have no other skills. It is the worst choice of anyone seeking to lead or control. Fear has no allies. It has servants, but they are never trusted completely.

Every time fear loses its desired effect or performs at less than the optimal level, it backfires. The victim of fear might get an insight or feel empowered and put up more resistance. Or lose their fear of the person bullying them, regardless of what they do.

They might even see the flaws in the Fear Plan. They might see that the person employing fear is doing so 'because they are wrong and they know it.' If they were Right, they would not need fear. It would be obvious.

When fear stops working for the ones who employ it, it does not go away. It goes home. Home is where it came from. Home is where it lives. Home is where it eats. And fear, once it is used, becomes hungry. The person who uses it can't control it. Fear begins to consume them.

This is why bullies and despots become unhinged, paranoid, sleepless. The fear they cannot sell to others, consumes them. Even if they have a majority of people cowed, they still need more. They need it all. All is not enough. Fear either grows or dies. Resources are finite. There is never enough.

Had they opted to deal with their fears in the first place, learned more about themselves and rid themselves of their insecurities, they would be immune from ravenous beast. But they chose, instead, to bully others to bend them to their will, all for the one goal of getting their way, when in fact, their way, and getting it, is what ultimately destroys them.

Fear's Worst Fear

Comedians are Fear's worst Fear. To be a comedian of any worth, any success, one has to be really smart. One has to have a true perception of times, places and events that rings true with their audience. Otherwise, no one would laugh.

People who laugh, rethink, relive that which made them laugh. Laughter is shared amongst all Human Beings. We share jokes, tell funny stories, and repeat those that are told to us.

Comedians defeat fear by showing us how stupid it is. Showing us, comically, how ludicrous the tools of it are. Essentially, we laugh at those who try to use fear on us. We begin to think.

People who are laughing are not, in those moments, in fear. Fear and laughter are mutually exclusive and both cannot reside in the same place at the same time. Laughter can come and go, and remain strong. Fear, as we have seen, must be sustained. Any break in the continuity of fear means it has to be, essentially, rebuilt again.

One laugh leads to another. People lose their fear of tyrants. Tyrants and their minions sense their own failure. They turn on one another. They begin to consume one another. Once they start feeding on one another, to survive, to consolidate their power; they become smaller. Smaller becomes weaker. The bellows and roars that used to instill quakes and shudders in their victims, become squeaks and shrieks... and fade from weapon, to ineffective implements, to vague curiosities, as victims stand up, and walk away.

Using the tools, training and skills of non-violence, we overcome those who bully us. We overcome them by not becoming them. By not employing fear or violence, both of which need to be sustained, we build a more lasting ever increasing unity.

But first we have to remember who we are: Especially in those dark moments when we are being beaten down, bullied and intimidated: We are, in ways we may not know or realize, something that they fear. Knowing that, we are already armed with several facts:

They fear us so much they are now engaging in what will be their downfall.

Whatever it is, it must be powerful in us. So powerful that they want us to be afraid of who we are and what we can do.

One laugh can undo all their efforts and they have to start over.

They will have to spend every waking moment, and many a sleepless night, worried that we will see through them. Afraid of us.

It is nothing we have done wrong that causes them this fear and panic. It is what is in them that causes this fear and panic.

All we have to do is survive or die. If we die, they have to start over on someone else. And they have to fear that they will be found out on this. If we live, we live to tell the story, and their weaknesses, fears, all that they were afraid would be found out-- is revealed.

Fear is High Maintenance

The one thing I have seen that bullies fear the most is Truth. Truth is their undoing. It reveals them to us. It reveals them to their minions. It reveals them to themselves. Whatever that is, or means to them, it is something they cannot face. It is the demon they flee while tethered to it.

Fear relies on lies. Lies that create a general mindset that is other than the truth. An alternate reality of sorts. Alternate realities require constant construction and maintenance as the gaps, contradictions and flaws, all bring it down.

Like hoards of plasterers, minions carry the mortar and try to cover the flaws. More and more are created. Mortar is whipped up faster and with less thought, becoming thinner and less supportive, some of it, towards the end, won't even stick, much less dry.

It gets louder, but it fails. The more it fails, the weaker it becomes, the more the minions and their masters become afraid. The more they become afraid, and with fewer people to impose that on, and FEAR being the only skill or tool they have, they begin to turn against one another.

Blame is all they know, so they blame one another. They then cannot reglue those alliances as they see each other as the reason for their failures.

Truth is Low Maintenance

Truth is unchanging. More and more Truth can be revealed, but Truth itself, exists whole. Lies have to be manufactured and the recipes are flawed.

Speaking Truth to Lies, even the really loud lies, even the really bad-tempered lies, is all it takes to keep the lies from sticking, drying, becoming part of the scene as anything except a work of fiction, and of little enduring relevance.

One Truth, spoken over and over again, can undo the lies of history. One Truth, unchanging, more and more revealed, can crumble the lies that have fundamentally created a false history.

In this day and time, we can, by speaking Truth to Lies, prevent a false history from ever solidifying.

We have no enemies. We are all brothers and sisters in this Human Race. We have opposition, and that can be dealt with by laughing at fear merchants, speaking Truth to Lies. They can continue to divide us, and we can continue to appeal to that we all have in common: The Truth. They have it too. They just choose to ignore it.

It is more powerful than all their lies, and it reveals the core of their fears, from which they have chosen to deal, for far too long.

Once we realize we have Truth, we have already won. It just will take time to get there. Meanwhile, they and their minions, their plaster and their noise, are running from the beasts they created and are tethered to, until they let it go.

As long as they are feeding the fear, it will consume them. Fear must feed or starve. That is the way of Fear.

As long as we stand in Truth, we are sustained by Truth.

This is why the opposition is failing. They want us to believe we are failing, but we are winning. We are gaining. Their voices are everywhere, carrying their lies... but the Truth is unchanged, unmoved, unharmed. It is there for us to see, to know and to take sustenance from.

We have done good work. We have told the truth. We have not sold fear to anyone. Those who have it chose to feed it, and it is not our fault they can't let go as it is devouring them.

Their lies starve in our presence.

4/19

2010-04-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted at Alan Colmes' 'LIBERALAND' site where I am a contributing writer.

There will be a quiet ceremony on Monday, April 19th. It won’t get national media coverage. There will be no Presidential proclamation. People attending will pass through a gate with the time “9:02″ inscribed on it and will hear remembrances of victims and stories of survivors. They will place flowers on 168 empty chairs made of bronze, glass and steel. It is a memorial to hatred and its costs and stands where the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City used to before Timothy McVeigh set off a large bomb and killed 168 of the people who worked there on that date in 1995. It’s a memorial to the worst act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States.

We can thank President Bill Clinton acting swiftly and reassuring the nation that 4/19 isn’t as well known as 9/11. Clinton did not use the terrorist act to scare the country or take us to war. He said in his address at the first memorial service that this was a singular act by individuals and that the nation was still safe. He did not use it to restrict constitutional rights or allow anyone to ramp up fears of white supremacist Christian military veterans. Among the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency, his reaction to the Oklahoma terrorism has to rank in the top 5 if not #1.

Oklahoma City happened at the height of anti-Clinton hatred by the far right. Radio hate hosts were proclaiming daily that government was the enemy and that Bill Clinton was everything from a sexual predator, an outright traitor to a serial killer of at least 45 people.. This hate directed at a Democratic President was something new on the national stage at the time, or at least in the lifetime of those around at the time. To be certain, there’s always been crackpots willing to push outlandish and unbelievable conspiracies about any President but they’d been laughed at and dismissed. This time was the first time that the craziness went mainstream among a sizable minority of Americans.

Enter Timothy McVeigh. A veteran of the first Gulf War, he had come home to hook up with white supremacists and the extreme right. His education was the white supremacist wet dream of good: white Americans rising up against liberals and nonwhites and retaking “our country” set into print in the book, The Turner Diaries. Then came the standoff at Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidian cult. McVeigh was actually there, watching in horror at what he perceived as the Democrats murdering a Christian group over their guns in a huge, live-on-TV fire. That theme was picked up by the radio haters as well. The rest, as they say, is history.

And here we are, 15 years later, and the same dynamics that set in motion the mass murder of people whose only “crime” was that they went to work and their employer was the federal government are setting up again. There’s even more radio and television haters now than then preaching the gospel of hatred toward the federal government and another Democratic President.

If there’s a hopeful sign in any of this, it’s in the fact that the people who initially turned up the heat over an election defeat on the right to a boil are now trying to tone it down. Late certainly, but there are voices in the Republican Party and even the head of a ”Tea Party” who are speaking out against the violent rhetoric before it gets worse and moves into more actual violence than what’s already happened. We don’t need history to repeat or another date to commemorate.

Confederate History Month? Past Time for this to Stop.

2010-04-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

Relatively-newly elected Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has ended 8 years of policy and declared the month of April "Confederate History Month" in his state.

I say enough.

Celebrate a war that killed the most Americans of all the wars we ever fought - and the fight being over which states got to keep slavery and which didn't? No way. Oh, we've all seen the excuses for this: that it was over states' rights, that it's part of the South's "heritage" blah blah blah. Let's be honest for once - this was a war for racism and the cheapest labor imaginable in the South as well as the largest act of treason in the history of the United States.

Article 3 - The Judicial Branch
Section 3 - Treason

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

The treason charge is the biggest one. As much as they hate him, the South should drop to their knees in thanks at the mere mention of President Abraham Lincoln - it's thanks to him that ol' Jeff Davis and Bobby E. Lee weren't swinging at the end of a rope after their War of Secession and that they weren't occupied and treated as a defeated enemy nation. Take a look back in history - Lincoln's position was hardly a popular one in the victorious Union and his thanks was a bullet in the back of his head fired by a "Confederate patriot."

Let's take a look at the "heritage" claim for keeping alive the memory of an event in American history that should evoke shame every time it is mentioned. The supporters of memorializing the late Confederate States of America bring up the concept that doing so is in remembrance of a genteel Southern culture that should be looked back upon in fondness. If you are white that is - it was far from "genteel" if you are of another skin tone and your memory of the time is of your ancestors being brought against their will overseas to another country to be sold into bondage.

They also claim as fact that their ancestors fought bravely for their side and should be remembered. It's hard to argue against that - until you remember that German soldiers fought bravely for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany as well. Bravery doesn't excuse what either were fighting for and Germany, much to the chagrin of surviving Nazis there and their supporters, has chosen not to create a "Nazi Heritage Month" for very obvious reasons even though that chapter in German history is a lot more recent a past than our Civil War. That would be as much a slap in the face to surviving German Jews and their families as a "Confederate Heritage Month" is to African-Americans.

So, what do we do about this? The answer is in the response taken when certain Southern States insisted on flying what the NAACP and other civil rights groups have called the Confederate Swastika - aka the Rebel Flag - over their state capitols: Boycott Virginia over this so-called "heritage" month declaration. Virginia isn't the only state that does this, but it's a good start and just might send a message to the other Southern states that do this that celebrating a war for slavery is past due for ending.

The Comedy Just Never Stops from the Right

2010-04-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

We've been seeing how hard the righties are trying to rewrite history but the stories have mainly been about the Texas Board of Education. It's expanding.

This particular laff riot comes from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and Scantily Clad Pin-Ups "newspaper" and the James Taranto "Best of the Web" column. This particular entry entitled "Riot Is the Voice of the Unheard" two of the far right's favorite pastimes: rewriting history and defending the outrages of the 'conservatives' under the banner of, "BUT...THE DEMOCRATS/LIBERALS/LEFT DO IT TOO!"

What re-writing of history? Thanks to Mr. Taranto, we learn that the riots following the not guilty verdict in the Rodney King beating in April of 1992 had nothing to do with black Los Angelinos' anger at police getting away with another mistreatment (read: "beating the crap out of") of an African-American but was a political riot. Ummm, ok. Taranto fails to mention what political event sparked this riot - perhaps it was the fact that Bill Clinton was looking to be the Democratic nominee for President that year. Yeah, black people HATED that.

Wait, it gets better. Taranto claims that new-at-the-time Democratic Representative Maxine Waters defended the rioters and even egged them on - not unlike what several far right hate radio shows and the Fox GOP Channel is doing now when it comes to the Tea Partiers. He then takes several quotes from statements Waters made at the time that were clearly meant to defuse and calm the situation down in L.A. and tries his darndest to twist them around to look like she was not only excusing the riots, she supported their rioting. And there's your, 'BUT...DEMOCRATS DID IT TOO!!" defense of the violent rhetoric and actions of the stealth Republican Tea Party "movement."

What's the most hilarious thing about all of this is that anyone with a working memory who paid attention to the riots and who did what can easily shoot these claims down. Then again, this isn't directed to those people. This is a bit of fancy pageant walking for the right's True Believers who'll buy anything as long as it's against the liberals and the Democrats.

And they wonder why we don't take them seriously.

David Frum - I'm calling BS

2010-03-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum has become a bit of a darling among liberals celebrating the new health reform law. It's all because of this article where Frum declares the health care vote the biggest defeat for the GOP in forty years and how awful it is that the Republicans "allowed" the fringe extreme to control the party and get them here. He's right of course, but his embrace by liberals is undeserved.

First of all a quick glance at his website, the Frum Forum, tells us that he is no friend to anyone on even the slightly left. It's chock full of articles by him and others about how awful all of us are. The health care bill stinks, Obama is not to be trusted, our positions on foreign policy are what they are because we all hate Israel and on and on. The usual far right crap. OK, not unexpected - after all, he worked for Dubya.

The case could be made that he isn't a fringe Republican with his journalism credentials, membership in the American Enterprise Institute and that he initially opposed John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Of course, to do that you'd have to accept the idea that the Bush administration was mainstream GOP.

That's where his "regrets' about how the "extreme right" took over the party falls apart.

The problem with that isn't that it isn't true, it's that he doesn't really mean it. Frum and his ilk loved the crackpots and fruitcakes just a few years back.

When the people he now decries were calling patriotic people who opposed the Iraq war (that gave him the opportunity to coin the phrase the Axis of Evil) America-hating traitors, there was no wringing of hands about extremists coming from Frum. When groups like the debunked Swift Boaters were smearing John Kerry's military record, Frum's reaction was silent assent. When delegates to the 2004 Republican Convention wore Purple Heart bandaids to mock Kerry's combat medals on the convention floor, there was no wailing and moaning from Frum about how awful it was that such people had the influence they had on the Republicans. Had he ever spoken out before now about people like Rush Limbaugh and his clones and how what they were saying on the air was harming the Republican Party? Not a word.

Nope, Frum thought Rushbo and groups that pre-dated but matched in ideas like the newer Tea Party and anti-choice crazies were just dandy back then. Of course there is another major difference between then and now - then they were winning and in control of the federal government. This was going to be the American Right's Thousand Year Reich, assured that they were the vanguards of a permanent Republican majority that would keep the Democratic Party irrelevant and delegated to the political wilderness for generations to come. Their reaction to 9/11 was going to cement the GOP as the party to be trusted on defense and this would be their chance to finally dismantle FDR's New Deal.

Now those dreams are in tatters. Conservative ideas that sounded so good to voters in the abstract ended up not working out the way they were supposed to in the real world - in fact, they crapped out big time. Democrats took back control of Congress in 2006 and the nation rejects conservative policies and supports progressive ideas now more than ever. A majority of voters not only increased the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2008 but elected a Democrat President to complete the ousting of the right from power.

The Republican plans to obstruct everything the Democrats wanted to do (so they could claim the Democrats did nothing come election time) wasn't working out too well either. They slowed things down, even watered some bills down, but in the end they:

Didn't defeat the Stimulus bill.
Failed to turn back the nomination of Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court
Didn't stop extensions to unemployment
Couldn't prevent stem cell research

...and other things they assured their supporters that they would do.

To date - after a year of lies, smears, scare stories, fact twisting - the biggest FAIL was not killing what is now the law of the land: health care reform.

David Frum didn't write what he wrote because he's "alarmed" at the turn of the Republicans to the misinformed, know-nothing-but-what-FOX-says crackpot right.

Fess up, Frum - you wrote what you wrote because you and your party lost. And that is the only reason.

Victory, The Morning After

2010-03-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today is wind-down day for a lot of us after cheering last night's passage of the history-making reforms of the health care system. Let's set aside all the problems with it and how "it's a good start" for a moment and take a second to savor this victory. Speaking for myself, after helping in my little way, I'm still waiting for what happened to settle in and to digest the fact that the first battle in our journey to true universal health care is in the win column.

First, the kudos: Remember when we are all so frustrated and saying that Democratic leadership was spineless and ineffective? We said Harry Reid was a jellyfish and worthless, Nancy Pelosi was all over the map and couldn't be trusted, and President Obama was so aloof that, even as we said otherwise, down in our guts we felt this was going to be a repeat of President Clinton's failed try to change our health care system. We cried out for an LBJ who would do the arm twisting needed to get this done and got so down on the whole thing that we gave aid and comfort to the far right when some of us said to kill the whole thing and start over - adding some of our numbers to the opposed poll numbers making it look like a majority of Americans didn't want this bill at all. I even considered bolting the party I'd been an active member of since 1972 and switching over to the Working Families Party to push the Democrats from the outside since all those years of pushing from the inside didn't look to be working.

Then a weird thing happened - we started winning.

Spineless Harry Reid produced a very servicable iron backbone, started killing Republican filibusters and got the health care bill passed in the Senate without losing a single vote from Senate Democrats and the two Independents. Even the hated Joe Lieberman voted with the majority on every vote. He marshalled the bill through the Senate so well that the final bill was passed with the same 60 votes he got to end the GOP filibusters, even though it wasn't necessary then. We were pleasantly surprised and started calling Reid a hero after that. Could it be that we could get this passed after all? On to the House!

Then came Massachusetts and the unthinkable happened - the seat of the late liberal lion and champion of health care reform, Edward Kennedy, was won in the special election to complete his term by a Republican. This was a double blow - first, "liberal" Massachusetts just replaced their favorite son liberal with a conservative. Second, we no longer had the numbers to kill a filibuster if the bill had to go back to the Senate for a final approval. What to do, what to do?

Solutions were offered: instead of passing one comprehensive bill, break it up and pass the pieces through the reconciliation process that only requires a majority vote. Or the House could just pass the Senate bill as is, which would pass it and send it to the President for his signature. Any fixes the House wanted could be passed as a second, separate bill.

The second approach finally prevailed then the screaming and shouting began - can Nancy get the votes in the House to do this? Liberals like Kucinich and DeFazio were threatening to vote no because it didn't do enough and a small contingent of anti-abortion Democrats threatened to do the same, believing that passing the Senate bill would mean the government would pay for abortions.

We now know the results of all that, how President Obama stepped up and Nancy Pelosi is being called a hero too. The Senate health care bill becomes the law of the land tomorrow when the President signs the bill.

So here we are. Is the bill a great piece of legislation that will fix all of our health care problems? No, it's a good first step and about every Democrat from the President on down gets that. They also understand that there would be no second step even to be considered if this hadn't passed, something that some of our friends on the left missed although I think even most of them got it when it was time for the House to vote. There was an interesting piece of news that was either missed or underreported during the run up to the House vote - an outfit called Upfront News reported on a poll that showed suddenly 51% of Americans supported passing the bill last night.

We will continue to fight the misinformed, deranged right. We still need at least a public option, we need to fix the anti-choice Nelson amendment that came along with the final bill and we need to keep pushing to finally bring to America what the rest of the industrialized world already has: an end to insurance-based health care and single payer, truly universal health care. Before all that, we need to push the Senate to pass the better House fixes and get that signed into law too. And we will.

But today, let's take a day off and enjoy the victory we fought so hard for. It took us a year to get here and we deserve it.

Remembrances on the near-eve of a historic vote

2010-03-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

As we approach the final passage of the historic health care reform act and it being signed into law, I share my memories of the last time we tried this and failed. My story isn't about the history of what happened back in the early Clinton administration when reform failed, this is more personal and perhaps more enlightening about what happened back then.

It was 1993, a year after I had transferred my job and moved my family to Oregon. My late wife and I were following the news about the efforts to pass universal health care with great excitement and hope - not so much for ourselves as we had health coverage through my job but for members of both of our families who didn't. We cheered the speeches for it on TV and booed those against it. Having moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small town in eastern Oregon, that was about all we could do - there wasn't much opportunity for liberal activism in a conservative town who's main claim to fame was a four day rodeo. The activist part was my thing - my wife agreed with me and often went further left than me when it came to politics but going to rallies, etc. was something she didn't do but tolerated her husband doing.

One day, we got word that President Clinton's campaign for universal health care was taking buses and going on the road - and that one of the stops was going to be the small town we'd just moved to. The tiny progressive community there was very excited and there were rumors that First Lady Hillary Clinton was on the bus. I had the day off when the bus caravan was supposed to arrive so I decided to attend, hoping I'd return home with tales of meeting and shaking hands with Hillary Clinton.

The place the bus tour was going to use was the town National Guard armory, and everything was set and prepared for the visit. There were chairs set before a podium for a rally, people were milling about waiting - there was even a roped-off area to the side for any protestors who might show up as well. I chatted with some of the people there and were told stories of how one mother-to-be was worried that she'd have to give birth with no health insurance and her worries about the health of her soon-to-arrive child. Others told me of injuries and illnesses that went untreated because they and their families just didn't have the money for a doctor. They all spoke of how great it will be when such worries are a thing of the past and I vigorously nodded my agreement.

The hour for the buses came....and went. Some started worrying that something had happened on purpose to the buses enroute and possibly to the buses' inhabitants. I sort of sidled up to the advance people for the event talking on their cell phones to see if I could get some news on what happened by listening in to their side of the phone conversation. They beat me to spreading the word - they announced to the crowd that the buses had mechanical problems and would be delayed an hour or so.

The crowd was mainly made up of people who had driven miles from rural areas and even smaller towns to be there and they groaned a bit but decided to stay on. One hour became two, two became three and as time wore on the crowd got smaller and smaller. In the fourth hour the buses finally arrived but the crowd was so small by then that holding the rally in the armory would have made it look like no one had ever shown up. So, to make us all look like a bigger crowd than we were for the cameras, the rally was jammed into the lobby of the armory so we all looked like there were so many of us that we were jammed together. The rally itself was only about 15 minutes long, with no stories from people who needed universal health care and no First Lady either.

We all know the end of that story - the Clinton universal health care plan never made it out of Congress and was never to be taken up again for the rest of President Clinton's two terms in office or George W. Bush's two terms.

Now here we are, years later, with a new Democratic President who has gotten the country to the point that we are on the very edge of passing into law the first major reform of health care in America since Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act. Now granted, what's about to be passed is not as comprehensive and far reaching as what Clinton tried to enact, he who once waved a plastic mock-up health care card during a State of the Union address promising that soon all you'd need was what he was holding to see and be treated by a doctor. No, what's about to be passed could fairly be called more regulation of health insurance than health care reform.

However, for a compromised bill, it ain't bad either. The people who told pollsters that they opposed it will like it just fine once it's up and running. It's also a fine foundation to add to on the way to getting for us what most of the industrialized world already has - a single payer, truly universal health care coverage.

To Congress and the President: The vote is scheduled right now for Sunday afternoon. We've waited long enough and too many have died who could have been saved if they'd had the health insurance they needed to see a doctor when it was first needed.

No more process, no more games, no more delays. Don't let us down again. Pass the damn bill.

Post-Oscar Thoughts

2010-03-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

Well. Good to know my prediction abilities are as crappy as usual. I called it for Best Picture for 'Avatar' and who wins?

'The Hurt Locker'

YES!!

My method on calling the Oscar still holds though: 'The Hurt Locker' is a war movie and old Hollywood loves that too.

Truth be told, I was happy to be wrong. I could not stand 'Avatar' - when I watched it I thought I was watching a CGI version of 'Dances with Wolves.'

I'll be slinking off now after that lame attempt at CYA.....

Populist! What? Where?

2010-02-14T21:26:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of discussion of "populism" in American politics recently, particularly when it comes to the corporate media covering for the Tea Baggs. It seems all of the current populists are pissed-off Republicans and people on the left calling for the Democrats to be more populist. Pop-pop-pop-pop-ulists!!

There's only one problem with all this new-found populism - it doesn't exist because we Americans don't do populist. We all love our elites too much to go for that kind of stuff. That's right, I said ELITES and I mean left and right too.

What got me started on this was a movie trailer online I stumbled across a while back and the populist talk brought it back to mind. The movie being advertised was one of those rightwing 'documentaries' that was supposed to mock Michael Moore's methods in his films. The point the movie was trying to make is that liberals are hypocrites because they are concerned about the poor and middle class...as they climb into their limosines and private jets.

OK, let's get past the conservatives' odd view that being a liberal Democrat concerned about the less privileged and middle class means that they have to become monks who take a vow of poverty (guess they never heard of noblesse oblige). The Republicans, in their way, lay claim to those same concerns and none of their supporters hold them to the same standards as they do for wealthy Democrats.

The point is that movie could have just as easily been made by a liberal about conservatives and both would still miss the real issue by a mile which is, down deep, we REALLY like rich and powerful people a lot and we keep voting them into office.

Blame it on American guilt over being thrown out of all of the good countries when we were founded and that we really do miss royalty. Lord knows we try hard to create our own - singers, actors, athletes - but they come up short and are discarded as quickly as they were crowned. See, the thing about royalty is that they are what they are no matter what. A Duchess doesn't lose her title because she loses it in a beauty salon and shaves her hair off. A Baron can go out drinking heavily and trying to take all the drugs nightly then go in and out of rehab like he has his own personal revolving door and he's still a Baron. American royalty substitutes don't get that kind of a break - go a little too crazy in public, start to lose your voice a bit, be unable to hit those homers or make those touchdowns anymore and it's the French Revolution again and off goes your head.

So where do we go for our royals? Why, politics of course.

I'm not talking about any individual here, individual politicians are often subject to the same rules that all of the other royalty substitutes rise and fall by. The royalty I'm talking about is who we always look to as ready to either represent us or lead the nation. Who are our populists, our kings and queens? Rich people, plain and simple.

You may be brilliant but if you don't have the bucks, either earned or inherited, kiss off politics. Look around: Sarah Palin and her family are worth at least a million dollars. The last nominee for President for either major party that didn't come to the race already wealthy was Bill Clinton but he wasn't exactly hurting either and he's made up for that since. Ross Perot ran for President as an independent with tons of coin in the bank to back it up. More examples abound and we even do the jobs of fooling ourselves about these people by dressing up our worship of the wealthy in the words like "success" i.e. successful business man/woman etc. etc.

Our self-delusion is so complete that we consider these people "populists" and "ordinary folks who understand our problems." Then we act surprised when they act for their interests and not ours as if it wasn't as obvious as hell that's exactly what they were all about from the get-go.

So please, don't talk to me about today's populism until you're ready to elect that intelligent janitor and send that mediocre-minded CEO packing. Until then, GOD SAVE THE KING!!

Attacking Iran

2010-02-13T14:22:00.000-08:00

Note: Welcome to Balkingpoints.com who has invited me to become one of their voices on national and international issues so here's my first shot.

What has been a surprise to me is that Iran is still an issue, at least to the United States. It's all about nuclear weapons and whether Iran has any, so let's take a look back at how we got here.

It's four months after the biggest act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil and it's clear that the 9/11 attackers were foreign based, not domestic like the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building. The country is the most united it's been for a while and with bipartisan support the invasion and initial defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan takes place. Now it's 2002, time for the State of the Union speech to the nation and a new term is introduced into the national debate: The Axis of Evil.

Who are the three nations who Bush names as members of this Axis? Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

Plans go into motion to build up support for a second invasion and war in the Middle East, this time supposedly to stop development, storage and possible terrorist use of what the Bush administration claimed were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein. The Republicans successfully use this as a campaign issue against the Democrats in 2002 as the 'threat' from Iraq is sold to frightened Americans.

In 2003, Bush makes good on his threat to invade Iraq and we're pretty familiar with what happens after that.

While a majority of Americans applaud the invasion of Iraq, the other two 'members' of the 'Axis of Evil' get worried that they will be next. What becomes clear very soon is that the Bush administration is quick to invade a nation that was essentially defenseless after the first Gulf War but when a possible opponent shows that they have the means to fight back, the Republicans shift to just wanting to talk.

Case in point: Iraq is invaded, North Korea with it's nearly 6 million member armed forces and potential to build nuclear weapons gets a good GOP talking to. The talking continues during the Bush era even when North Korea does their first nuclear tests and test fires the missiles to deliver them.

Would any of these three have a chance in hell of defeating an all-out conflict with America? Of course not, but if the case for having one is weak on the U.S. side, any support vanishes rather quickly when a lot of Americans die or get maimed for what the country sees as an unworthy war. If a party wants to build it's war cred, pick someone weak to fight so you can win fast and get out.

Iran gets this message loud and clear. Iran has armed forces but nowhere near the reported size of North Korea so what can they do to prevent invasion by the Bushies? Announce loudly that they are close to making nuclear weapons. Sure enough, the Republicans back off and instead of sending troops they send sanctions. Despite much saber rattling on both sides that's about where things stay until the election of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, even with a President who has expressed no desire or interest in following the neocons' plans for constant war in the Middle East, that's where things still stand. If you followed Iran's rhetoric, you'd think Bush was still in the White House.

The reason for this is now the Iran regime finds the threat of a foreign invader useful not on the international stage but the domestic one. Iran is facing a major movement to reform it's quasi-democratic form of government and as usual the people in power don't want their power reformed away. Attacking reform protestors in the streets, even executing some, isn't getting the job done for the Iranian establishment. So they are going for what works for every country - convince enough Iranians that they are in danger from outside attack and that silly reform thing goes by the wayside.

Now, the boogeymen in the case of the United States are hard to find here. Sure there were the usual neocon war pimps howling for war with Iraq that they could watch from the safety of their homes but they are no longer in power. Remarks from the Obama White House only vaguely spoke of further action and that looks to remain more sanctions than military. So who steps in to take our place as a friend of the rulers of Iran who are seeking a foreign threat? Israel, who openly talks of bombing raids of Iran.

OK, now what's the problem from the side of the people in the U.S. and Israel for their desire to attack Iran? Well, a couple of things:

First, the reports on where Iran actually is in developing a nuclear weapon is sketchy and contradictory, even as to whether they actually have an interest in actually making one. Some reports say a nuclear Iran is months away, others say it's still years off. Iran wants to have its cake and keep it secret too - they claim they are close for the sake of bluster but never say for sure.

Second, the real threat from a nuclear weapon isn't that anyone just has one - it's whether they can get it to a target. So far, Iran hasn't shown much capability in delivering such a weapon anywhere beyond their underground labs. Being afraid of a nuclear weapon without the means of it being delivered anywhere is like being afraid of a box of bullets. Both have the potential for harm but that requires a gun to shoot them out of or a missile to launch them on.

With domestic uses for a Iran 'threat' in three countries now, unfortunately not much is going to change. The Republicans want Iran around so they can make their usual "Democrats are weak on defense" argument for election time, a new conservative government in Israel wants to show their people that they will protect them and the Iranians want to have the threat of foreign attack to shut down that reform movement.

And so it goes.....

Handicapping the Oscars

2010-02-02T23:13:00.000-08:00

OK, movie buff as I am, this when I take a break from politics and write about the Academy Awards. I've probably done this before, but it's worth repeating (says me about me).

If you are trying to tough out who will win what, here's a main rule to keep in mind: A lot of the people who vote on the Oscars are people who either have been in the movie business a very long time or have been influenced by what we refer to as "old movies." They like what they did and they vote for the movies that remind them of what they did. Hence....

Which movie will win Best Picture?
Movies that cause nostalgia for movies of the Forties, Fifties, early Sixties etc. generally win this one. So look for the film that has at least one if not multiples of these ingredients:

War movies
Epics
Gladiator flicks, aka sword and sandal movies
Film noir like detective/crime stories
Star-crossed love stories
Gangsters
Spectacular Disasters (see: Epics)
Message films

I've used this guide and I usually have successfully chosen the Best Picture Oscar every year with the exception of about twice - sometimes by seeing the movie, a couple of times just by the movie poster or description. I called 'Titanic' on the way out of the movie theater (#2, #5, #7), 'Gladiator' just by the poster (#2, #3). One category not listed here has made a comeback of sorts - the Musical - but they are still comparatively rare.

There is an exception to the above however, and you usually get plenty of warning beforehand when it's coming. I call it Foreign Film Fever or Artsy-Fartsy-itis. Those are the years the Best Picture goes generally to a British film set in the Victorian era or the overwhelming "importance" of a movie from say, India, gets "Slumdog Millionaire" the statuette to take home.

My prediction for Best Picture this year: AVATAR (#2, #5, #7, #8)

Who will win the Acting Awards?

This is harder to call since so many factors come to play here, like:

Did the performance really knock everybody's socks off?
Did the actor or actress get passed over for an Oscar earlier and is this their make-up one?
How many times has the actor/actress won or been nominated already?
Is this an encouragement Oscar for someone seen as an up-and-comer?

Usually the rule for the acting awards is that the supporting actor/actress ones are for up-and-coming first timers and the main ones are for the stars - the rare exception is for performances like Jamie Foxx's turn as Ray Charles which was impossible to deny. The Academy Awards like to spread the wealth with these - they may nominate someone year after year but rarely award that way. Best Director pretty much follows these rules as well.

The rest of the Oscars tend to be for technical things - writing, art direction, music soundtracks, etc. - and I don't pay them much attention outside of the fact that seeing which movie picks up a lot of them is usually a good clue as to which one is going to be the Best Picture that year.

Granted, there isn't a thing important about any of this outside of the added box office a nomination and win gets for a movie company's profits and I probably won't have seen most of the nominated films by the time of the Oscar show on TV. But hey, it's still fun to watch and I get to do shallow once in a while.

Oh, and one last thing: Horror, Science Fiction and Comedy movies? If your name ain't Clark Gable or Anthony Hopkins, y'all just keep movin' on down the road. The Oscars just don't cotton to your kind.

Bartcop Nails it again

2010-01-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

Twelve hours driving alone...

I've been saying for years that Democrats are all about being fair.

Remember the old westerns, when Little Joe Cartwright was in a fight,
he'd knock the guy down, then help him to his feet and knock him down again?

But when the bad guy knocked down Little Joe, he'd kick him in the face.

I always wondered, why does the good guy always want to fight fair?

That's today's Democrats and I think I see the source of their confusion.
The Democrats seem to think they're in the NFL, and it's important to
play by the rules because there's no shame in losing if you tried your best.

They want to play the game with honor and that's a laudable goal,
but the other team is cheating so there's no way we're in a fair fight.

The Democrats don't understand that this isn't some damn football game.
It's the future of our country and health care and civil rights they're supposed
to be fighting for, but they're all hung up on playing by the rules and it's killing us.

The Democrats have laid down their arms in the hope that the GOP teabaggers
will see that disarming themselves would be the fair thing to do, but the GOP
just laughs at how gullible and naive the Democrats are as they shoot at us.

I wish the Democrats would put winning first, for once, and playing fair second.

Tell me, if you're walking with your wife on the street and some asshole jumps out
from behind a bush with a knife and says, "Give me your wallet and your wife,"
a Democrat might - I say might - engage him but as soon as he knocked the
mugger down, the Democrat would be all Little Joe and help the mugger back to his feet.

Not me.

I'd wail on the bastard until a crowd pulled me off of him.

I'd beat his head with a brick until he stopped moving.

That's what we need in this life-and-death fight we're currently in.

More bartcop and less "Let's be fair."

I'm sick to f-ing death of fighting fair - and losing.

Democrats need to fight dirty - whatever it takes to win..

Bartcop.com

Air America, RIP

2010-01-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Today, Air America announced that it has filed for bankruptcy and will end their live programs this afternoon. This is at least the third time they have done so and they have been bought previously and brought back. If this is really it for them this time, its sad for them but it doesn't mean the end of progressive talk radio.

First, a word of appreciation for Air America. Simply put, if it wasn't for them we liberals who are talk radio fans would still be stuck with Rush and his clones with no relief in sight.

Years ago, an article on CommonDreams.org made the argument that the reason liberal talk had failed because stations ran liberal shows in the middle of a conservative talk line-up. He said it was like placing an hour of classical or country music in the line-up of a rock radio station - the people who tuned in to hear rock didn't want to hear it and that dynamic was killing liberal talk. He suggested that the way to make liberal/progressive talk radio a going concern wasn't just putting out more shows, it would be to create radio stations where it would be all liberal talk, all day.

Air America was the first to take that advice to heart and go with it. They found failing radio stations across the country and offered them a complete package of liberal talk shows. The progressive radio station closest to me here in Oregon - KPOJ AM in Portland - was a low-power station with low listenership when they decided to take the plunge and was one of the first stations in the country to go with Air America from day one.

They had problems starting out. Unsure of how to approach liberal talk, they started out with only one experienced liberal talk show host - Randi Rhodes, who had a local liberal talk show in Florida. Otherwise, they believed that the way to do liberal talk was to fill their airwaves with entertainers - mainly comedians. Al Franken was tapped to be their 'name' flagship show and was so inexperienced as a radio show host that they had to pair him with a woman as co-host who had briefly hosted a public radio talk show to keep the show flowing and provide Franken with on-the-job training. They kept tweaking the format but eventually got to where we're at now.

However, Air America did one thing - they kicked the door open for progressive talk and showed that it could be profitable. My station went from nearly going off the air to a radio station that increased power and if it isn't the number one station in its market it is in the top ten.

Progressive radio was moving away from Air America long before today. Air America got local liberal talk stations their initial audience but now most are a mash of liberal syndicated programs. Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann started out as Air America programs, they are now their own separate shows. Ed Schultz was and is a syndicated show who's show is carried by liberal-only talk radio stations and ones who mix his show in with a variety of points of view. Mike Malloy, Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, even Alan Colmes - all separate syndicated programs. For my locale, about the only Air America shows left on my station are the Ron Reagan show during the week and the weekend "Ring of Fire" program.

So, it this is it for them finally, I send Air America a fond adieu and and much thanks. Thanks to them, progressive talk radio exists and continues to thrive.

And another thing....

2010-01-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

I'm seeing a lot of tweet, blog posts, and emails about the right wing echo chamber. You know, who said what, the latest outrage on *** network - usually with a cry of "Won't someone DO SOMETHING about that?"

Well hey, aren't YOU somebody? Why, yes you are!

Ask yourself - why does the mainstream media kowtow so much to the righties? OK, it's a given that their corporate owners' hearts are with them, but one thing that any news organization values most is its reputation for a fair, even-handed approach to the news. The righties have shortcircuited that and got them to go their way. How? Well, when the righties see something they don't like, they are on the phone or computer telling them so - usually accompanied with a threat to stop watching their shows and boycott their sponsors.

It's worked. It's why, with the Democrats in the majority in DC, we are seeing losers like Newt Gingrich and John McCain being interviewed instead of Democrats who chair committees and such. It's why we see more right wing think tanks spokespeople from the Heritage Foundation, etc. instead of people from organizations dedicated to supporting and urging Democratic/liberal philosophy and programs. It's why, when the Iraq War was getting going, we saw no stories about Iraq civilian causualties.

It's because the righties have scared the hell out of them and the media wants to keep them watching.

I say enough of that crap.

I say we stop complaining amongst ourselves when some news show allows some rightwing nut to baldface lie on camera without a peep. No more weepy tweets about how the media is presenting the Republicans like they are still in charge and what they say is important. And on and on and on.

Don't say that to us - we're already with you. Tell it to the news media. There's more of us than there are GOPbaggers, let them worry about offending us for a change. When you see or hear of the traditional media pandering to the right, let them know that it's not acceptable to you. Don't shake you head in disgust, pick up the phone or fire up the computer.

Below is contact information for news sources. Keep this information handy and start USING IT.

Network/Cable Television

ABC News
77 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-456-7777

General e-mail: netaudr@abc.com
Nightline: nightline@abcnews.com
20/20: 2020@abc.com

CBS News
524 W. 57 St., New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-975-4321
Fax: 212-975-1893

Email forms for all CBS news programs
CBS Evening News: evening@cbsnews.com
The Early Show: earlyshow@cbs.com
60 Minutes II: 60m@cbsnews.com
48 Hours: 48hours@cbsnews.com
Face The Nation: ftn@cbsnews.com

CNBC
900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
Phone: (201) 735-2622
Fax: (201) 583-5453

Email: info@cnbc.com

CNN
One CNN Center, Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1784

Fox News Channel
1211 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 301-3000
Fax: (212) 301-4229

comments@foxnews.com

List of Email addresses for all Fox News Channel programs
Special Report with Bret Baier: Special@foxnews.com
FOX Report with Shepard Smith: Foxreport@foxnews.com
The O'Reilly Factor: Oreilly@foxnews.com
Hannity: Hannity@foxnews.com,
On the Record with Greta: Ontherecord@foxnews.com

Glenn Beck: GlennBeck@foxnews.com

MSNBC/NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-4444
Fax: (212) 664-4426

List of Email addresses for all MSNBC/NBC news programs

Dateline NBC: dateline@nbcuni.com
Hardball with Chris Matthews: hardball@msnbc.com
MSNBC Reports with Joe Scarborough: joe@msnbc.com
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: nightly@nbc.com
NBC News Today: today@nbc.com

PBS
2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington VA 22202
Phone: 703-739-5000
Fax: 703-739-8458

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: newshour@pbs.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Radio Programs

National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001-3753
Phone: 202-513-3232
Fax: 202-513-3329

E-mail: Alicia Shephard, Ombudsman ombudsman@npr.org

The Rush Limbaugh Show
1270 Avenue of the Americas, NY 10020
Phone (on air): 800-282-2882
Fax: 212-445-3963

E-mail: ElRushbo@eibnet.com

Sean Hannity Show
Phone (on air): 800-941-7326
Sean Hannity: 212-613-3800
James Grisham, Producer: 212-613-3807

E-mail: Phil Boyce, Program Director phil.boyce@citcomm.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Newspapers

The Los Angeles Times
202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 800-528-4637 or 213-237-5000
Fax: 213-237-4712

L.A. Times Contact Information by Department

Letters to the Editor: letters@latimes.com
Readers' Representative: readers.rep@latimes.com

The New York Times
620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-556-1234
D.C. Bureau phone: 202-862-0300
Fax: 212-556-3690

Letters to the Editor (for publication): letters@nytimes.com
Write to the news editors: news-tips@nytimes.com
Corrections: senioreditor@nytimes.com

USA Today
7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22108
Phone: 703-854-3400
Fax: 703-854-2078

Letters to the Editor: editor@usatoday.com

The Wall Street Journal

200 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281
Phone: 212-416-2000
Fax: 212-416-2658

Letters to the Editor: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Comment on News Articles: wsjcontact@dowjones.com

The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20071
Phone: 202-334-6000
Fax: 202-334-5269

Letters to the Editor: letters@washpost.com
Ombudsman: ombudsman@washpost.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magazines

Newsweek
251 W 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-445-4000
Fax: 212-445-5068

Letters to the Editor: letters@newsweek.com

Time
Time & Life Bldg., Rockefeller Center, 1271 6th Ave., New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212-522-1212
Fax: 212-522-0003

Letters to the Editor letters@time.com

U.S. News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson St., Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202-955-2000
Fax: 202-955-2049

Letters to the Editor letters@usnews.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News Services / Wires

Associated Press
450 West 33rd St., New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-621-1500
Fax: 212-621-7523

General Questions and Comments: info@ap.org

Reuters
Three Times Square, New York, NY 10036
Telephone: 646-223-4000

United Press International
1133 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036
Telephone: 202-898-8000
FAX: 202-898-8048

Comments and Tips: tips@upi.com

Now get those phone lines burning and fill up those email boxes!!

Coakley and How We Don't Do That Again

2010-01-19T22:15:00.000-08:00

We lost Teddy's seat to a teabagger.

Amazing.

Let me repeat that: we just lost EDWARD KENNEDY'S SENATE SEAT to a rightwing nutter.

In stinking MASSACHUSETTS.

George McGovern could lose every other state to Richard Nixon - and still win Massachusetts. Walter Mondale could lose in a landslide to Ronald Reagan - and still win Massachusetts. Just when I think my Democratic Party can't screw things up for themselves any worse, they go and prove me wrong.

I'm not going to blame this on sneaky Republicanism, their lies or Fox or Rush or Glenn or anybody else we normally go after. I congratulate them, in fact - they knew what they were about and weren't afraid to go after it. It worked, they won. I'm not even going to blame Martha Coakley, even with her awful campaign - she'll serve just as well for a model of what we Democrats have become.

We Democrats just got shot down to earth - me included. We were so SURE that since we so soundly routed the Bush minions out of power in Washington, they'd never find their way out of the political wilderness. We were so SURE that we'd destroyed the conservative movement and the Republicans so well that we'd convinced ourselves that we'd never see them come back. In fact, in our convictions that our 2006 and 2008 victories were so solid, some of us thought it's so safe for us that we can even go after our own President without consequence. I'm just as guilty here - just look at some of my earlier posts...not so much the going after Obama part though.

OK, we lost a couple of governors but we won two House special elections we were supposed to lose so it was a push. We even got a watered down but better than nothing Health Care bill through both houses of Congress. Victory was ours and we thought it'd stay that way for a long time.

Then tonight happened. If it was any other open Senate seat in any other state, we could shrug it off as a "well, we can't win 'em all" thing. This one was special to us - it was the Senate seat of the deceased Lion of the Senate, the last fighting Liberal from a reliably liberal state who had faithfully sent their Teddy back to the Senate for around 30 years even after Chappaquidick. And we lost it.

OK, we still have control of Congress and the White House. It's a 59 seat majority in the Senate now instead of 60. Painful but not the end of the world.

WRONG.

It's an obstacle that can be overcome, but it's far from small. If this were even as recently as the Clinton era, I wouldn't be so concerned. The Republicans hated him then just as much as they hate Obama now - and for the same reason, they won - but back then at least not all of the Republican Party was willing to scuttle the country for partisan gain. A few even voted with Clinton from time to time. The Democrats didn't go there either when Dubya was in - maybe a few filibusters against some nominees to be judges, but enough Democrats went along with George that 51 Republicans in the Senate was plenty.

Make no mistake about it, those days are gone. Except for one lone Republican in the House who got called a commie and a gook by his own party for doing it, there was virtually no Republican votes for health care reform. Just that one Republican guy in the House, not a single Republican vote in the Senate even from the "moderates." 59 votes in the Senate would be enough usually, but not when you have a Republican Party who is going to filibuster EVERYTHING and you need 60 votes just to pass the Defense Bill.

The bright spot in this is, first - the Massachusetts Republican winner this evening is only in for 2 years. He has to run again in 2012. Second, there is still time for the Democrats to treat this election as the wake up call it is and turn it around in time for November.

Some suggestions on how to do that: stop still acting like a battered wife protecting an abusive husband when it comes to the conservatives. We Democrats still are in control and it's past time we started acting like it. The righties have shown us what they consider to be "bipartisan" - to them it means do it their way then vote against it anyway. Fine. We're fair people. We should give them one chance to participate in the process and if they refuse, then we do it without them. That's not quite as easily done now as it was just last Monday, but there are ways.

MAJOR change - we start changing the way we talk about our issues, in fact we take the right's methods and verbiage and turn it right back on them. Does that mean we start lying about everything like they do? No, we still can fight with real facts and real information but we do it differently.

We on the left talk about our issues as something beyond ourselves - health care is good for the people who need help and is good for the country, as an example. That comes from our world view of politics - we don't act solely out of self interest and our vision goes further than our front door. Our views can stay the same but we'll never beat the right with that approach. One thing they do well is that they make their positions personal - for themselves and who they are speaking to.

George Lakoff is a linguistics professor who wrote a book for the 2004 election entitled Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. It was a sort of primer version of a longer book, but the idea was that you don't win debates and elections by using the terms of your opponent. An example of that is, as a Democrat, when discussing tax issues you should not use the term "Tax relief." The word "relief" implies that taxes are an insufferable burden that needs to be relieved - a bad way to say it if you are arguing against, say, the Bush across the board tax cuts. He suggests, if you are taking the anti side of a tax cut debate, calling them "service cuts." This he calls "framing" - your use of language frames the debate in your favor.

His theory is a good start but we have to make that extra step - change it from global to personal. Using the health care reform debate as an example again, we state our position in terms of community, country and world. The right shoots it down by saying to the audience, "Do YOU want to pay more taxes and pay for somebody else's insurance to do this?" Then follow that up with outlandish claims and name calling spoken clearly and forcefully. We fluster and bluster, but that argument hits home faster than any argument about millions uninsured - count on it.

We need to come back, with facts, just as forcefully and right in their faces - just like they do to us - and make it personal to our audience as well. No Senator - the word you're looking for isn't "misleading", it's a LIE. Speak plainly and make them defend that lie - don't go all nuance-y and "suggest it might not be entirely true." Florid language goes directly in one ear and out the other - say the other guy is lying his ass off. That they get.

Then, when you talk about your ideas, don't talk about the country. Trust me, the guy and/or gal in the audience with sick kids and no health insurance isn't sitting in Oregon worried about millions of people or folk in Ohio - they want to know how what you are proposing is going to help them. TELL THEM. No 'we' or 'us', here's how I plan on helping you. Say, "I don't want you or your family to get so sick that the only place you can go is an emergency room, I'm going to help see to it that you can all go to the doctor well before that!"

Harry Truman said the way to win elections is to take the battle to your opponent and never apologize. He also said that if peoples' choice is between a Democrat acting like a Republican or a Republican, the Republican wins every time.

We lost it for Teddy this time. Let's not do that again.

The Tea Party Timeline...

2010-01-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

1982 - Reagan signs the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, raising taxes by $37.5 billion per year

1982 - No Tea Party Movement

1982 - Reagan signs the Highway Revenue Act of 1982, increasing the gasoline tax by $3.3 billion

1982 - No Tea Party Movement

1984 - Reagan signs the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, increasing taxes by $18 billion per year

1984 - No Tea Party Movement

1990 - Bush signs the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, raising taxes

1990 - No Tea Party Movement

1993 - Clinton increases taxes by 0.36% of GDP for 1st year and 0.83% of GDP in 4th year

1993 - No Tea Party Movement

2000 - 2008 - Bush cuts taxes creating the deficit the Tea Party Movement is so upset about

2000 - 2008 - No Tea Party Movement

2008 - The first African-American president is elected to office

2008 - The Tea Party Movement emerges to "take the country back"

2008 - 2010 - Obama slightly reduces taxes

2008 - 2010 - The Tea Party Movement opposes tax increases?

h/t to Mic test blog

Conservative Theories vs. Reality Scoreboard

2010-01-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Now that we're past the years of conservatives telling us if we only followed their ideas, things would be just GREAT (and righties still trying to make that argument now), let's review how their ideas actually played out when conservatives controlled the White House and Congress:

Con theory: Give the wealthy more tax breaks! After all, a poor man doesn't give you a job!!
Result: 10% unemployment, possibly as high as 22%

Con theory: Quit putting so much regulations on business, they'll police themselves!
Result: Banks, financial companies, auto manufacturers bailed out to prevent total economic failure.

Con theory: There's no need to regulate what businesses do, the invisible hand of the free market will correct anything bad going on!
Result: Thousands die in earthquakes due to collapsed, unregulated buildings in Peru and Haiti.

Con theory: Taxation is theft!
Result: Collapsing infrastructure, not enough or no snowplows during winter storms, school failing, poor suffering from service cuts, states near bankruptcy.

...and more that I can think of.

Remind me again why anyone would want people who think these failed policies would work if they did more of them back into power again?

Harry Reid and the Negro

2010-01-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

There's much ado and much hilarity over the far right's newfound love of political correctness and their usual fake "outrage" over two year old remarks from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comments in a new book. The comments in question were Reid's musings that Obama would do well in 2008 because he was "light skinned" and "didn't speak in a Negro dialect unless he wanted to." Or something like that.

Anyhow, what the right has seized on is Reid's use of the word "Negro" like he'd made some sort of racist remark and now the right thinks it is off the hook for their regular racism. I hate to disappoint them on this but:

They are still responsible for their racism, and
"Negro" isn't necessarily a derogatory term towards black people.

Negro is certainly an outdated term but, like 70-year-old Reid, I'm old enough to remember when the term was considered respectful, at least by whites. It was certainly a step up from the "colored" and "nigger" terms used by whites in the days prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s. Those were also the days when dark-hued people were considered inferior, genetically stupid, criminal and unattractive by the majority white population to self-justify discriminating against them. I think we're all pretty familiar with what's happened since those days.

I'm also saying all of this from my own whiteness so put it all down as conjecture. It'd be more than a little presumptive for me to declare what offends people of color and what doesn't.

However, I just don't get the kind of vibes from Reid and his record in politics that he is someone who would deliberately choose to denigrate black people.

What's a burr in everybody's saddle, left or right, is that once you get over the word usage what remains is that what white, old Mormon Harry Reid said was right on the money. The right denies it outright and the left wishes it weren't so but the fact remains that if Barack Obama had looked like Jesse Jackson and sounded like Snoop Dogg he would never have won the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency. It's an uncomfortable truth but truth nonetheless. It's also a reflection of where we are when it comes to race in America that such superficialities still affect our votes. Now that Obama has broken the color barrier when it comes to the White House, maybe later another candidate for President who looks and sounds "more black" (or "more Hispanic" or Asian) won't find the road to the White House to be harder simply because of the darker hue of his or her skin and how he/she speaks.

That being said, let's return to our friends on the right who have been trying so hard to make this an "issue."

First of all, their main position on the Reid thing is that a Democrat is getting away with a remark that a Republican would be crucified over. I think they're right on this too, but there's a very big "if" attached to it. That being, if Harry Reid had said something along the lines of Obama won despite his being a "dirty Negro" or something like that and wasn't hounded out of at least his leadership post if not his Senate seat it'd be a point well taken. Reid said nothing like that so, sorry righties but that one doesn't fly too far. Even some Republicans have defended Reid over this (most recently Rudy Giuliani) and the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that the Republicans would not pursue trying to oust Reid from anything.

This hasn't stopped the usual suspects, namely rightwing radio haters like Rush Limbaugh and cable TV's version of rightwing radio - Fox Noise - from beating the drum over it and their followers gleefully proclaiming that since Reid 'got away' with what he said they are now immune from any charge of racial prejudice. Sorry GOPbaggers, but the next time you make some racist remark or post some picture like the one morphing President Obama into a witch doctor, you're going to find using Harry Reid to protect you as about as effective as a shield made from single sheets of printer paper glued to pipe cleaners.

The other front from the right is that they are trying just as hard to say that what Republican Trent Lott said back in the Bush era was "just as bad or not bad" as what Reid said in 2008, but he was forced out of his leadership post where Reid is keeping his. This is supposedly proof of liberal and Democratic Party "hypocrisy" since we forced Lott out.

Let's review just what Lott did say and what he meant by it, shall we? From an article from 2002....

The incredible thing about the controversy surrounding soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's kissing up to the racist legacy of Strom Thurmond is that anyone thinks it is incredible.

Trent Lott's "Uptown Klan"

Lott is on the hot seat for telling a 100th birthday party for Thurmond, the South Carolina senator who in 1948 ran an overtly racist campaign for president on the State's Rights Party ticket: "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."

Those remarks have caused a major stir, which is appropriate. But this is hardly the first time that Lott, who began his political career in the 1960s as an aide to segregationist Democratic Congressman William Colmer, has hailed the legacy of those who fought to defend the practices of slavery and segregation. Nor is the tortured "apology" Lott has issued the first to come from the senator.

Indeed, there is no greater constant in Trent Lott's political career than his embrace of all things Confederate.

To wit:

* In 1978, after his election to the US House, Lott led a successful campaign to have the US citizenship of Jefferson Davis restored. Davis lost his citizenship when he became president of the Confederate States of America when southern states were in open revolt against the US government.

* During the 1980 campaign, after Thurmond spoke at a Mississippi rally for Ronald Reagan, Lott said of the old Dixiecrat: "You know, if we had elected that man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

* In 1981, when he was lending his prestige as a member of the US Congress to an effort to preserve the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University -- the notorious South Carolina college that was under fire for prohibiting interracial dating -- Lott insisted that, "Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy."

* Despite the fact that he represents the state with the largest percentage of African-American citizens in the US, Lott has throughout his career been an active supporter of the Sons of the Confederacy, a group that celebrates the soldiers who fought to defend the "right" of Mississippians to own African-Americans as slaves." Lott even appears in recruitment videos for the group.

* Speaking at a 1984 convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Lott declared that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." Asked to explain his statement in an interview with the extreme rightwing publication Southern Partisan, Lott said, "I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important to people across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party... and more of The South's sons, Jefferson Davis' descendants, direct or indirect, are becoming involved with the Republican party."

* Lott gave the keynote address at a 1992 national executive board meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a successor organization to the old white Citizens Councils, segregation-era groups the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as "the white-collar Ku Klux Klan. The C of CC may have changed its name, but it remains a passionate "white racialist" group that condemns intermarriage, integration and immigration by non-whites. As Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson, who has researched the group, argues, "There is no question of the resegregationist agenda of the Council of Conservative Citizens when four of the seven links listed on the home page for former Klan leader David Duke link back to the Council of Conservative Citizens." Other links, Jackson has noted, "deny the Holocaust and sell T-shirts with swastikas and Nazi stormtrooper symbols." But when Lott appeared at that Greenwood, Mississippi, meeting of C of CC leaders, he did not address his disdain for racism or anti-Semitism. Rather, he discussed his concerns about "the dark forces" that he said were overwhelming America and said, "We need more meetings like this across the nation... The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries."

* In 1997, Lott was photographed meeting with national leaders of the C of CC in his Washington office. At his side were two prominent C of CC leaders: Gordon Baum, a former field organizer for the Citizens Councils in the days when they were referred to as the "uptown Klan," and William Lord, who has acknowledged using the mailing lists of the Citizens Councils to build the C of CC in the 1980s and 1990s. That same year, the C of CC used an endorsement quote from Lott in recruitment literature.

* When the Washington Post began to detail Lott's ties to the C of CC, his office announced that he had "no firsthand knowledge of the group's views." But when The New York Times asked Lott's uncle, former Mississippi state Sen. Arnie Watson, a member of the C of CC executive board, about ties between the senator and the organization, Watson said, "Trent is an honorary member." When a reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger showed up at a 1998 C of CC meeting in Mississippi, he was told by those in attendance that Lott was a member. Lott's office never challenged the report when it appeared in his homestate's largest newspaper. But a year later, when the Washington Post took the issue up, Lott said, "I have made my condemnation of the white supremacist and racist view of this group, or any group, clear."

* Yet, a column written by Lott still appeared on a regular basis in the Citizens Informer, the group's publication, alongside articles thick with statements like: "Western civilization, with all its might and glory, would never have achieved its greatness without the directing hand of God and the creative genius of the white race. Any effort to destroy the race by a mixture of black blood is an effort to destroy Western civilization itself."

* Go to the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens today and you will find, beneath the Confederate flag and the section attacking an African-American professor at Vanderbilt, a big smiling picture of the Mississippi senator next to headlines that read: "A Lott of Courage!" "C of CC Passes Resolution Commending Lott" and "Lott Needs Your Support."

When he started to face questions about his most recent praise of Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat campaign, Lott initially said that his remarks were just part of "a lighthearted celebration" of the retiring segregationist's career. That was enough for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, to give Lott an initial pass. But, thankfully, Julian Bond and the NAACP, and a few African-American and progressive members of the House, refused to allow the matter to die. Only under this lingering pressure did Lott sort of apologize by saying of his statement at the Thurmond bash: "I regret the way it has been interpreted."

That's the standard line from Lott, who always apologizes when he gets caught defending the defenders of slavery and segregation. But, so far, Lott has never failed to follow each "apology" with another tribute to the Confederacy or the segregationists who seek even in the 21st century to maintain the racist legacy of Jefferson Davis, Strom Thurmond and the "uptown Klan."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/208

Why, all of that must be JUST LIKE Reid and what he said!! Yeah, right.

Another problem with the claim that Democrats and liberals forced Lott out of his leadership post: Democrats were the minority party in the Senate at the time and didn't have the votes to force anyone to do anything at the time. In fact, there is more evidence that the Bush Republicans wanted Lott out because he wasn't that effective a leader for them in the Senate and latched on to the remarks Lott made as the means to do that than any liberal group's protestations.

Ooops. Another GOP FAIL.

So what lessons do we take away from this? First of all, don't try to make mountains out of molehills - this just wasn't that big a deal. Secondarily, if you are in public life, choose your words carefully - you may have to eat them later.

Finally, if you are in a position of high visibility and you have the chance to make some racial remark - don't. It's still too tender a subject in America for any real discussion of racial issues, and that's the worst thing about all of this.

Conservative Humor

2009-12-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

Here it is, Christmas Eve Eve, and I was pondering comedy - as in why are there so few conservative comedians that are actually funny? There are a few - Drew Carey and Larry Miller spring to mind - but very few. Then there's Dennis Miller - funny moments at first but cringe-inducing now that he's gone full rightie. And consider, the cons actually consider Ann Coulter to be a humorist and satirist....you know, like Rush Limbaugh the entertainer.

What got me going on this was a posting on the excellent blog The Political Carnival - in particular, a quote about the health care reform debate that she posted about:

"I can assure you the vast majority of the Republican conference was on my side
saying we've had all the fun we're going to have."
-- Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), quoted by the Oklahoman,
noting most Senate Republicans were willing
to concede they no longer needed to delay a final health care vote until 7
p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Now, what an odd thing to say. Delaying health care reform for millions of Americans was fun for the Republicans?

Not surprising when you go about the web and find what conservatives think is funny.

Conservative "humor" seems to fall into these categories:

Nasty remarks about someone's personal appearance, i.e. "Hillary has fat ankles", "Rosie O'Donnell is fat", "Streisand has a big nose"....you get the idea.
Anything they can do to work in 'bad words' like socialist and commie.
Death is a real kneeslapper too - one rightwing 'satirist' thought it'd be the height of jocularity if terrorists attacked Las Vegas when Harry Reid didn't tow the George W. Bush line.

Here's where I probably should put in a bunch of links to demonstrate this, but do a search on "conservative humor" and you'll see how correct my list is.

Gee, nasty people who's lives are based on hate and fear think nasty, hateful and fearful jokes are funny.

No one could have ever foreseen that.

How to get your Representative and Senators' attention

2009-12-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'm hearing a lot of frustration coming from my fellow liberals and Democrats - currently about the health care reform bill but the song pretty much goes the same no matter what the issue. The tune goes along the line of how futile it all is - there's no way we can overcome the lobbyist and corporate dollars that's bought Congress.

Buck up, little camper - sure there is. Here's why:

The first and most important thing to remember when dealing with your Representative and two Senators is one cardinal rule: they like being where they're at and want to stay there. Sure, corporations and such contribute tons of money to their campaigns but that just buys TV time - not a seat in Congress or anywhere else. Go ahead, ask President Forbes about that and while you're at it ask Governor Corzine how that worked in getting him a second term.

Nope, the awful truth is that even corporate CEOs who give candidates lots of moola only get one vote on election day. Just one. Money in politics serves one purpose and one purpose only: it helps candidates and incumbents get their message out to voters. The message boils down to simply presenting the argument why they should be elected or re-elected over their opponent. Money just sees to it that more voters see their arguments and hopefully agree with it enough to get them in. That message may be printed in slick mailers and broadcast in smooth TV ads but if the voters ain't buyin' they lose.

Of course, the problem arises on the flip side of that coin. Contributors rarely give the money they give just because they believe in good government - they see it as an investment and they expect their investment to pay off. Like that member of Congress voting their way on a bill when one comes up.

Even that can be overcome through that pesky voting thing.

Here's how to make that work for you when dealing with them.

This may be a little difficult - you are going to have to get off the computer and go out to do this. It plain doesn't work with a phone call or an email - even though both help in preparation.

First, find out where your Representative or Senators' local office is located. Make an appointment to see someone there in person - a staffer will do but this works best if you can get in to see the actual Congressperson.

Once you've done that, get three or four friends who agree with what you want to say to the member to go with you to the meeting.

Once you're all there, state your case. Be polite but firm - no one likes to be yelled at and when they are they tend to shut you out. Now, they'll nod and make affirmative noises but remember, they are just making nice and may or may not agree with a word you're saying.

Once the case is made, now go in for the close. Remind them about that thing with the corporate CEOs - you know, that one vote they get thing. Then have them look at the 3 or four of you and ask if there was an election with the Congress member getting that CEO vote and somebody else getting the three or four of your votes who they think would win.

The member of Congress will get the point.

Billo's Bellow

2009-12-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

(I get these essays in my email from Zepp and since I don't know if he has his own webpage to visit, I share this with you.)

Yule be home for the holidays

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
December 5th 2009

We're coming up on the Yule Season – you may have noticed one or two ads mentioning it on the TV – and Bill O'Reilly is on his annual campaign to save Christmas.

That would be the Republican Christmas, of course. It's sort of a strange holiday in which Jesus urges everyone to go out and buy lots of shit for the kids, so they will worship. If lots of money is all it takes to get American right wingers to worship Reverend Moon and Kangarupe Murdoch, then lots of money and gifts ought to bring those little sucks into line, Jesus-wise.

Billo spent a few minutes whining about the “coal-in-your-stocking crowd,” which would include such groups as the American Humanist Association and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Billo's ire was raised by signs on buses that read, “No God? No Problem! Be good for goodness sakes!”

The funny thing is that you'll find a lot of members in both groups celebrating the holidays in various ways later this month. A lot of Humanists celebrate the Solstice, New Years', or both. And a surprising number of people in Freedom from Religion are, in fact, religious. They just understand how important it is to keep religion and government separate, because each will horribly corrupt the other.

But it's not Republican Christmas, an event that includes plastic trees, artery-clogging eggnog, huge credit card bills, and an endless agony of sending and receiving cards, and putting names in databases so you don't forget to send a card next year. All this is combined with copious amounts of sanctimony, even though none of the activities listed actually involved the putative religious aspects in any way.

Billo is riding that sanctimony, saying that not believing in God means there's no point in celebrating anything. As he says, “The question is, why bother? Why spend money at Christmas time to spread dubious will among men?”

If you were hoping for a heartwarming homily right out of the pages of Reader's Digest about family and love and peace and goodwill toward men, that just isn't the Republican Christmas.

The reason people don't celebrate Billo's Republican Christmas, according to Billo, is “atheists are jealous of the Yuletide season. While Christians have Jesus and Jews have the prophets, non-believers have Bill Maher. There are no atheist Christmas carols, no pagan displays of largesse like Santa Claus. In fact, for the non-believer, Christmas is just a day off, a time to consider that Mardi Gras is less than two months away.”

I bet more Jews celebrate Bill Maher then celebrate Christmas. Even among Republican Jews. It's not because Maher is, technically speaking, Jewish (He was raised Catholic, now a Humanist, but his mother was Jewish), nor because, technically speaking, so was Jesus. It's just that if you send a letter to Bill Maher, you have a chance of getting a reply. Plus Maher doesn't go for smiting fruit trees because they aren't bearing fruit out of season, or demanding that followers forsake their families to follow him. Maher's pretty mellow about that sort of shit. So it makes more sense to celebrate him.

I fell down laughing at the statement that there are no pagan displays of largess like Santa Claus. It's true. Republican Christmas has Santa showing up at the stable fashionably late, singing, “Yo, ho, blow the man down” and giving the baby Jesus a yarmulke and season tickets to the Rams. Humanists don't have anything like that. Nor do Christians. But the pagans do. Santa may be loosely based on a Christian saint, Nicolas, but the figure actually dates back some 3,000 years. Odin, a figure also known as Jólnir (Old Norse "yule figure") who was celebrated from Solstice to early January as a part of the ancient Nordic lunar calendar, was the first Santa figure. Nuthin' pagan about THAT, nosireebob! Later versions, based on the fourth century Saint Basil, and the sixteenth century Saint Nicklaus, came later. The modern Santa is based on nothing more than an illustration by a political cartoonist, Thomas Nast. Nast almost certainly drew from pagan lore, combining Mōdraniht, (Mother's Night) with Saturnalia.

Billo, characteristically, shifted to a vaguely threatening posture, noting that 78% of people in the US like to say “Merry Christmas” and only 22% say “Happy Holidays” and noting that all those Merry-Christmas babblers aren't going to have much goodwill left over for people who disparage their eggnog.

Most people are a little fed up with the holiday. The Guardian had a poll for favorite Christmas movie, and Billy Bob Thornton's “Bad Santa”, a cynical and depraved satire, was leading. I voted for it myself. If there's a movie the wife and I watch every Yule, that's it. There's just something about the sight of a drunken Billy Bob Thornton sprawled in a plastic Santa throne whilst a dark stain spreads across the front of his red Santa pants that proclaims the true nature and joy of Republican Christmas.

Most people just sigh and deal with Christmas. They do it for the kids, although it has never been clear to me how teaching kids utter absurdities such as the Santa legend, and then pulling the rug out from under them when they get to be about eight, fosters trust and reverence for equally absurd religious stories. If Santa's a fake, then why believe the Bible? To me, it makes a lot more sense to explain the gift giving as a custom in which people reach out to one another, and show they care. That's a lesson and a rationale that doesn't go away when a child is eight.

The only groups that actually oppose Christmas are Christian. Most of them have pretty valid reasons, as seen from their perspectives. Some groups recognize that Christmas is basically just superimposed on ancient pagan holidays, and are literate enough to know that Joseph and Mary weren't going to be walking around half the middle east in the dead of winter, and that such an odyssey would been in late summer. It doesn't help that none of the mentioned events have any historic correlation. No big bright stars appearing out of nowhere. There was a Herod, and there was a big Roman census, which did occur—10 years after Herod's death. Herod died four years before Jesus was supposedly born. That only two of the four gospels have any of the elements of the nativity at all is further cause for concern.

As a result, most Christians treat the nativity as an allegorical fable. This includes the Catholic Church, which realized many years ago that it was impossible to reconcile the irregularities and flat-out contradictions in the gospels. They believe that Jesus is the son of God, but they recognize that the fable that he was born in a manger on December 25th with three wise men, shepherds and so on was pure malarky.

Most just go ahead and enjoy the holiday, mindful of the fact that it's more a commemoration of an idea than any actual events. And they don't go around demanding that people believe fables that they don't believe themselves. They celebrate Christmas in their own way, and leave others to celebrate it – or not – in their way. This always struck me as a sensible approach.

But oddly, the strongest opposition comes from the folks who insist that the bible is literal, and that the nativity occurred exactly as described in the two gospels, and loftily ignore the contradictions between the two. However, they admit that nearly all the elements of Christmas are of pagan origin, and the commercialism is an abomination.

Billo likes to pretend that atheists get upset when people say “Merry Christmas” to them, but the fact is that few do. Some of them will even say “Merry Christmas” right back, especially if it's someone they care about, and whose beliefs they respect. Atheists don't dig in their heels and get surly unless someone forces them to say “Merry Christmas.” And Billo, who can't understand that he lives in a country where no person may impose religious observance on any other person, is flabbergasted that employers aren't willing to force employees at malls to chirp “Merry Christmas” at customers who are already fed up with the patent emotional phoniness of the commercial celebrations.

The fundamentalists are the only ones who get upset about the term itself, because they realize that the vast majority of people, when they say the phrase, don't mean it in the biblical sense. The fact that there is no coherent biblical sense makes it even worse.

Some like to pretend it's their holiday, and nobody else has any business appropriating it. In fairness, that isn't limited to fundamentalist Christians; I've heard similar grousings from Wiccans and other Pagans.

But it's pretty much a secular celebration, the tinsel and the gifts and Santa and all of that, and in any event, everyone in America is free to observe it or not, as strikes their fancy. And it is that freedom that so upsets Billo, who wants to force people to observe a holiday he doesn't even believe in himself.

Happy Yule, and if you see Billy Bob Thornton up on Santa's pagan throne, surrounded by mythical pagan creatures such as elves, think twice about plopping the kids in his lap.

They might splash.

Now THIS is how you handle Climate Change Denying Teabaggers

2009-12-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

Permalink
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defends itself

There is a lot of push back going on by those who work on climate change and those in the media and government – in other countries that is. If you live in the USA you would think that the evidence for climate change has been well and truly debunked and that Al Gore is the biggest con artist in history.

Here is a good summary from the BBC

The IPCC are not holding back re their thoughts on the motivation for release of the emails:

Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, said it was no coincidence the information was released in the run-up to the summit.

He claimed unnamed conspirators could have paid for Russian hackers to break into the university computers to steal the e-mails.

He said the theft was a scandal and was “probably ordered” to disrupt the confidence negotiators have in the science.

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister uses language to describe the deniers that Obama would do well to adopt:

He said: “There is an anti-change group. There is an anti-reform group. There is
an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the
scientific evidence for climate change.”

So there is resistance to the uneducated lemmings, the deniers, who insist they know better than people who have studied a subject for years if not their entire working lives. They also fail to grasp the significance of the fact that hundreds of scientists think that man’s actions are accelerating climate change and the number that disagree is proportionally tiny. More importantly though, a quick bit of research unearth’s the fact that the ones who are in the mainstream have no dog in the fight, the ones who oppose are invariably financed by industries who lose money every time an anti pollution or fossil fuel law is passed.

The fact that the Teabaggers think that they have enough information on this topic to even begin to form an opinion is very scary.

YEAH!!

Now that's how you handle the know-nothing Teabagger morons! We need to be hearing this from OUR people right here! Stop wimping out in the face of these idiots!!

Uncle PL's Guide to Handling Rightwing-Nuts Online

2009-12-05T00:44:00.000-08:00

I enjoy Twitter a lot - so much so that some days I will be on it for literally hours. I mean from morning until very late at night. Like I said, I am retired and do have lots of time on my hand and the internet sure beats a lot of what's on TV. I have email groups I participate in too - most of them I call slow motion chat rooms because most of the emails from them tend to be a sentence or two.

This Twitter thing is most fun though. You're forced to get your point across in literally 140 spaces that includes spaces between words. There is one basic rule about Twitter though - it's only as good as who you choose to follow and who chooses to follow you.

However, as they say on talk radio, this isn't what I called...er...am writing about.

What this post is about is what I've learned when deciding to debate the far right online. Some people who take this on are new at it, some old hands but here are some suggestions that work for me. Let's call these rules for the sake of this essay....

RULE #1

Remain calm. Be aware that the person you are debating has been told by their leaders (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc.) that if they say such and such, that will "annoy liberals" and by doing so that is a victory for them and the conservative movement. Two things to keep close to mind and heart as you post to them - you have facts, they have only what Fox News and their radio hate shows tell them is so. When they make their admittedly aggravating claims that they heard on their radio and saw on their TVs, keep repeating those facts you have.

RULE #2

Do not ask far rightwingers questions. We on the left are actually pretty nice folks and we tend to view other humans in a good light. We approach the far right with the Socratic approach as in if we ask them the right questions we will guide them to the Truth. Sorry, but that plain doesn't work with the fringe right. You cannot use reason with the unreasonable. Instead, say what you need to say in simple, declarative sentences. No "Don't you think blah blah blah?" No, they don't think. They are authoritarians - they get told by other authoritarians and they repeat it the same way they are told. Do it right back at them.

Example:

"Don't you think if we had healthcare for all the country would be better off?"

WRONG!

"The country would be better off if everyone had healthcare."

CORRECT!

You get the idea.

But Uncle PL, what if they stick with what they are saying and ignore the facts that I give them?

Then you go to....

RULE #3

The most potent weapon to use against the far right is ridicule and laughter. Don't get angry and going all ALL CAPS at them - they want that. The far righters, as much as they bluster and act macho, are really an insecure lot. They need two things most of all: attention and validation. They want to be the star of your email group, chat room or Twitter postings and pay attention only to them. You may be doing the online equivalent of shouting at them and calling them rude names but attention is attention. This is also validation of their viewpoint - since they consider liberals awful people who only trade in falsehood, your anger is only proving to them the righteousness of their positions.

However, this falls apart for them if you start to ridicule their stories and laugh at them. Call it snark or sarcasm, it's devastating to them. You just knocked their supports out from under them - not only are you not accepting their claims, you are not taking them seriously. They get told that only they are the serious ones with serious positions - undermine that and they get all flustered. Combine this with RULE #2 and count the seconds before they run away - something they are also told to do if it gets too hot for them.

But...Uncle PL! That's being mean, just like them! We can't do that - how are we going to change any minds that way?

RULE #4

Understand this simple fact - there is little to no debating online. Once in a while you'll hit someone who is genuinely on the fence on some issue or some thinking conservative who has real opinions and the information to back them up. These are so rare that they are to be treasured when found. What you are dealing with an overwhelming majority of the time are right wing ideologues who are looking to score points against you. As I said, they want you to get upset and they will use any and everything at hand to do so. They are the convinced and nothing you say to them will get them to shift a single position they've been fed - and trust me, fed is the right word here. Creativity and independent thought need not apply - what you're dealing with most of the time are followers, not leaders.

So, what do we do with them? We defeat them. We beat them down. We stick to our guns. We outlast them. We run them out of the cyber room with their tails between their legs, crawling away whimpering from the red ass we just gave them.

As James Carville said once, "I don't want to be friends with the right. I want them defeated."

Now, in a perfect world, none of my rules would be necessary. Most of us on the left don't log on with the idea of looking for a fight - we want to test our ideas and get some good information so we're better informed citizens. All comers welcome: who knows - a conservative might have a good idea that we haven't considered and be worth a look.

There once was a time in America when doing all that was possible.

Those days are gone.

Our friends on the right don't want discussion - they want to do to us what I said we should do to them. We're not people with a different point of view who share their wishes to make America a better country but just disagree with how to get there, to them we are the enemy. Read and hear what they say. They say we hate America and want to destroy it. They don't accept that we support a woman's choice in reproductive matters - to them, all we want to do is murder unborn babies. To them, we support terrorism because we don't fear all of the adherents of a particular religion since a few of them want to do us harm. We don't oppose the war on Iraq because we think it was unnecessary and sold to us on a stack of lies - to them, we want to destroy the morale of our military and cheer when they are maimed or killed because we think it bolsters our position. To them, what's our position? Surrender always because we are spineless, pacifist wimps who think the United States is an evil country, unworthy of defending.

What a load of crap.

I don't have to refute any of this - my friends on the left have already done that, early and often.

So, they want a fight? We're their huckleberries.

I say we make the far right into a club sandwich. And we've got the clubs to do just that.

Afghanistan

2009-12-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

Let me say from the outset that I was on the fence on Afghanistan. I saw the arguments from both the "stay" and "withdraw" camps and I wavered from one to the other. I both supported going into Afghanistan and participated in protest marches against it (for me it was not against why we went, I protested the general "Bomb it all" approach of the Bushies).

Then the President made his case on Tuesday, December 2nd. My response immediately after the speech was, "OK. He sold me."

Boy, did some of my fellow progressive tweeters give me hell for that. Some even said they felt "betrayed" by the President because he announced more troops for Afghanistan and didn't say "OK, we're outta there starting right now."

Well, better look at this then: Obama Campaign Promises: Afghanistan

What he said in his speech is what he ran on in 2008.

Now, about why we need to be in Afghanistan - first, remember this?

The right says we forgot all about it and we don't care about terrorism anymore. Well, I certainly do remember and real terrorism threats matter to me. Same goes for the President.

It doesn't matter that the terrorists who did this were Saudis or anything else - what matters is that they trained and were sent out to do that from.....Afghanistan.

Here's the deal, folks. A lot of the criticism from the left is saying that what Obama is doing is exactly what Bush did and the Soviet Union before him and will fail just like they did. Sorry, but I don't see it. I've put this challenge out before and it's still out there: I'll give you that point.....the second you've shown me anything President Obama has said about regime change, taking Afghanistan over, occupying it or anything else Bush and the Soviets did.

OK, it's a trick question: Obama never said anything like that, either when he was campaigning or now. If and when that changes, I'll jump right over to the Withdraw Now camp. Right now, I'm still with the Prez.

Now, it's a given that if Bush had finished the job I and every Democrat in the Senate and all but one in the House supported, Obama would never have had to have given that speech or send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. However, this doesn't mean we can now leave the job he failed to do undone.

That's just not acceptable.

The President also said on Tuesday that Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban and the number of Al Qaeda there now number between 100-200. Also true...right now. If we just packed up and left, that'd change in a hurry.

Imagine a restored Taliban-controlled Afghanistan giving Al Qaeda the green light to re-open their terrorist training camps then turning their attention to gaining control of a nuclear Pakistan as well. Then look at the picture above and imagine that happening again in America, maybe much worse. And no, this is not the same "excuse" the right used for staying in Iraq. There is a major difference that needs to also be remembered: there were no terrorist groups in Iraq before we invaded and occupied it. There most certainly were and still are in Afghanistan. Imagine them rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of getting their safe haven back.

Withdraw now and you won't have to imagine it for very long. It'll all be very real and in a very short time.

I understand some of this reaction - Obama hasn't been in office for even a year quite yet and we haven't quite gotten that nasty Dubya taste out of our mouths yet. You can see that in the reaction to the fact that non-SuperObama hasn't changed all the bad things and made America a paradise on Earth yet and it must mean that's because HE'S JUST LIKE BUSH!

Oh please. We did not elect a photo negative version of W - not even close.

This also means that the way Obama will conduct the war in Afghanistan will be anything but JUST LIKE BUSH! We're there to do two things militarily - make sure that terrorists don't come back in and set up business and tamp down the Taliban to a level where the Afghanis can handle it on their own. Then we get the hell out. Diplomatically and financially, we'll supply the aid to repair the country and establish a stable government there that was promised by the Bushies then promptly forgotten in their urge to get into Iraq.

Iraq was an unnecessary war sold by lies - this doesn't mean that every war we do is the same. Sometimes, even with the terrible costs that go with it, a war is necessary. Afghanistan is that war. The threat coming from inaction isn't the ravings of a Rush-driven neocon after a day of Fox Noise lies, it's real this time.

President Obama may have inherited this war but he'll end it after the job is done.

I stand with our President.

Some musings on global warming and other things.

2009-11-25T00:24:00.000-08:00

As happens from time to time, I recently went through some arguments over the validity of climate change science. The anti's just got a new weapon in their arsenal - a series of stolen emails between scientists that seemed to show that the eggheads were yakking it up over the fakery they were getting away with. Oh, the gloating of the climate change deniers was thick enough to cut.

The scientists themselves, besides being livid over private emails being spread about publicly, tried to explain that some of the phrases that appeared to be admitting to fraud was just the language of scientists being misunderstood.

We on the left did our usual thing - tried to reason with the unreasonable and show them that science doesn't stand still to bring the deniers into the light.

Won't happen - this isn't about science, it's about ideology namely the 'MUST PROTECT MASTER" variety and that doesn't allow for nuance. If you allow the possibility of man-created global climate change then you can't defend your 'betters' profits because then it becomes a matter of personal survival instead of an ideology that says the more money you have means that you are more good than those with less. Fortunately, this ideology is in decline - out of power, discredited and rejected by a majority of Americans.

'Greed is good', if not dead, is very sick and very much alone. That's all they've got left too - this isn't disagreement this who is basically right and wrong, bad or good. They have become their own club, their own fringe and they can't make arguments for their positions. In order for them to be good, they have to make us and everyone else bad. Doesn't matter what gender you are, the color of your skin, whether you speak with an accent, what you call yourself or even if you're in the same party they are - if you don't know the secret handshake, you're evil.

OK, so what. I'm old enough to remember when people who espoused ideas like that were considered nuts and crackpots to be laughed at for their seeing communists every place they looked.

Short version: Who cares what they believe about climate change or science. All they can do is rant and foam at the mouth - the American voters took away their ability to do anything about it. Make no mistake about this - they are angry over one thing and that's it.

Forget Global Warming, Sarah Palin, forget Gore, Michael Moore, ACORN, Soros, the ACLU, forget even Obama - one way or the other they are all means to dress up that sore loser-ism and anger over the loss of power they think they have entitlement to so to make it more acceptable to themselves if no one else.

Let me be clear here - I don't paint all conservatives with this brush or want them all to go away either. Genuine conservatives are as necessary as genuine liberals to America as no plane flies with one wing. Genuine conservatives slow down the admitted over-exuberance of liberals for change just as liberals speed up conservatives when they take their natural tendency to slow things down too far and make it too slow.

What we're dealing with now are not genuine conservatives. These are people in the South still angry they lost. These are whites who feel threatened and confused because the status they got simply because of the color of their skin is vanishing. The few people of color they get tend to be people rejected by their own communities, desperate to be accepted in something and seeking revenge on those like themselves who didn't take them in. These are rural people angry at city people because urban is considered hip and rural isn't. Things are changing and they don't want them to. Basically, they want the world to stay put or return to how they think things should be and the world is rotating and evolving despite them.

Will we get past this and back to a more stable and deliberative way of doing things? I really don't know. I see the Republicans in the same position we McGovernites were in the early '70s. We had taken over the party, certain in our righteousness and goodness, and did our best to push the moderates out of the Democratic Party. We did all that and got our asses handed to us when voting time came around. One difference between then and now though - that run probably would have lasted longer if we'd had the financial backing not to mention a slew of talk shows and our own cable channel to cheer us on like the right does today.

Historians say this isn't really all that new - the extremists of one side or the other coming into prominence that is. They say something like it happens pretty much at the start of every decade and it really gets going at the turn of the century. Those are big, scary events for a lot of people and we are just now about to finish the first decade since the triple whammy - change of the decade, change of the century, and change of the millennium. Throw into that mix something that's never really happened in this country since the Civil War - a major attack on an American city with the even worse insecurity that followed the fact that the attack didn't come from another recognizable country, but a shadowy group of international terrorists - and it's extremist Disneyland.

The thing that sustains me and gives me hope is that the extremists aren't anywhere as large a segment of the country that they think they are. Sure, they get more press but there's also more press and pseudo-press to give them that attention. On top of that, we have the greatest platform for corner soapbox speechifying that's ever existed in the history of man. Of all of the inventions that science fiction writers foresaw for the future, this one they missed completely. It's Hyde Park cubed. It's also noisy, crowded and anyone and everyone gets their say.

What is this boon to the airing of the opinions of man and woman kind? If you're reading this right now, you're on it. The internet. The web. It's a great resource if used properly, and can send a lie around the world faster than and well before the truth can even get it's shoes made, let alone on and tied. It's also highly segmented and customizable - set it up right for yourself and you never have to see a contrary word to your opinions, ever. That's also a very difficult way to be able to win converts to your point of view regardless of what that is. Most of us aren't only preaching to the choir, we're preaching to hundreds if not thousands of them.

So, what's to become of us with all this? Well, let's bring things down to earth here. The person writing this and the people reading it are also a minority. We're politics junkies. Geeks. Wonks. Freaks. Tell people you did what I did last Saturday night - listening and watching CSPAN on a Saturday night, excited over a procedural vote in the Senate and commenting on it as it went along on Twitter or a blog - and watch them smile and back away from you, slowly. Politics is our sports, primaries are our playoffs and general elections are our Super Bowls. We battle over arcane policy differences and people the general public are oblivious to. And oh my, the things we call each other would have us at dawn holding dueling pistols and ready to shoot the other down back when the country was getting started.

What's the bottom line here? We've gone through tougher times and more real division in our history than we are doing now.

We'll be just fine.

To the Teabaggers with love from Bartcop

2009-11-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

You didn't get mad...

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when VP Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy Policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA Operative was revealed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act was passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded Iraq looking for WMD'S that didn't exist.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 Billion dollars(and counting) on Iraq War.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when Bush was illegally wiretapping us at home and work.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed money to give to the oil companies.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible Conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let New Orleans drown.

You didn't get mad when Bush got 4,500 soldiers killed.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when---- The government decided that people in
America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, giving your tax dollars to super-rich, are all OK with you? But helping other Americans is the last straw?

Seven presidents have tried to pass a Health Care Plan of some sort and have failed. None have had the "hate filled" opposition of this president.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING AMERICA.

http://www.bartcop.com

The 2009 Elections

2009-11-04T17:42:00.001-08:00

Well, here we are after the great Tea Party "referendums" on President Obama.

Or not.

It looked to me to be a push. There were things for the Republicans to celebrate and there were things for Democrats too. What it never was, according to various state exit polling, was a vote up or down on Mr. Obama. Even where Republicans won, exit polling showed that Mr. Obama was little to no influence on the voters.

Let's take a look at the results, shall we?

In Virginia, it looks more and more like the Democrat - Creigh Deeds - screwed the pooch big time when he decided to run against, then with, the President. He ran ads against health care reform, cap and trade...very Republican Lite stuff sure to excite the Democrats in VA to vote for him. *cough* Then when that approach wasn't working out he called out for Obama for help, too late. He went down hard and took several state Democrats down ticket with him.

In New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine looked to be having him some Gray Davis-itis. (Gray Davis was the Democratic governor of California who was recalled with now-Gov. Schwarzenegger replacing him). What is Davis-itis, you ask? Well, what helped along the Davis recall in CA was the fact that the guy wasn't very well liked, even among Democrats. Word is that Corzine wasn't very well liked in New Jersey either and Democrats weren't real enthused about giving him another term. Both had reputations of being kind of nasty folks to be around and in Corzine's case, add in the factor of a independent candidate appealing to those unenthused Democrats and down he went too. The good news out of this is that he didn't take many with him - Democrats were able to hold on to their majorities in the state legislature.

Add the historical factor that both states have a habit of making their Governor a member of the opposing party to the President, and you have a HUGE WIN FOR THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT!!

Ummm....not so much. Governor's races are state races, not national ones. Definitely local issues rule with them. About the only time that a Governor's race makes any difference nationally is when someone new is elected Governor of California (because of the state's size and economic clout - well, pre-GOP that is - they are usually "mentioned" as a possible Presidential candidate in the future).

Republican wins to be sure, but about Obama? No.

OK, let's look at a couple of races that could have had something to do with the current President.

There were two special elections to fill seats formerly held by Republicans, one in New York and one in California. The New York one got the most attention - mainly because the news media could cover it with little travel time, it had been a GOP district since the 1800s, and the candidate who got the most out-of-state money (95% of his campaign war chest came from outside of New York) and endorsements was not the Republican. The candidate the tea party-ers and luminaries such as Sarah Palin and Dick Armey was pushing so hard was a member of the New York Conservative Party.

I'm not all that familiar with New York politics, but I do recall that the chance of a member of one of the NY minor parties winning an election was not unheard of. In 1970, William F. Buckley's brother James was elected to the US Senate on the Conservative Party ticket and served one term (brother Bill tried unsuccessfully to be elected to the Senate too as well as Mayor of New York). However, James Buckley did not get national Republicans to help out his campaign.

The Conservative Party candidate for the House in upper New York state's district 23 was going to be where the tea party, birther and hard right of the conservative movement was going to show both President Obama and the leadership of the GOP a thing or two. Make no mistake, their candidate was definitely one of them too. The actual Republican in the race had seen her support dwindle away so she withdrew her candidacy. The Hitler=Obama sign waving, "socialism" in the health care bill opposing far right was going to show their strength with this one.

Then a funny thing happened. The Democrat won. This hadn't happened in that district since the days of the cotton gin.

This election was supposed to show the nation that the tea party movement wasn't just some angry-at-something wingnuts getting together to vent over losing in 2008. It was supposed to show that the demonstrators were a REAL MOVEMENT, reflecting the secret majority just waiting to toss out that Socialist Fascist non-white Commie in the White House right out the door after being magically fooled into voting for him last year. THIS WAS THE WAKE-UP CALL!!

Oops. Guess not.

Out in California, another traditional Republican district went (D) as well. That race certainly didn't have as much drama to it, but it flipped nonetheless.

Oops again, teabaggers.

So, to recap:

The Republican right won in two Governor's races that have little to no impact nationally.

The Democrats won the two races for House seats that gives them an even bigger majority in Congress.

And Barack Obama is still President of the United States with a majority of Americans giving him thumbs up on most of the job he's been doing.

Bottom line: Not a great night for anybody, but definitely a bad night for the teabaggers.

I can live with that.

Stepping on my last nerve

2009-09-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

I have just about had it.

Up to here.

You might guess what I've had it with, but here's a little backstory if you haven't yet:

In 2000, George W. Bush was elected President. By the Supreme Court. 5-4. If you are a rightwinger reading this, don't bother giving me the old song and dance. This and This tell the tale. OK, we who voted for the actual winner that year should have been doing an Iran and hitting the streets demanding that the person we elected President be sworn in.

Didn't happen. OK.

Still not on my last nerve yet.

I'd always wondered why, given all of the elections for President in our history, it was so important that George W. Bush become President no matter what you had to do to put in the fix. It struck me as very strange. Then I found out why. 9/11 happened. We were attacked and even diehards like me were giving the new guy in the White House a chance. Now, don't put me in with the "Bush did 9/11" crowd - give me a second to make my point. We had the country as united as it ever is when faced with an external threat - even those outside of the US who were supposed to be against us were horrified at that act of mass murder and offered their sympathies and condolences. We were all pretty stirred by W's speech to Congress too, as well as when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center and promised that the ones who did this would be hearing from us soon.

I'm going to stop rehashing history here. We all know what happened next with Iraq and the lies told to us to get us to support going there. Bush's presidency survived a strong challenge for a second term then it all went to shit.

We could hardly wait to replace the Bumbler and Liar in Chief.

We did with an intelligent, eloquent man from Illinois and made history. Our first black President! My God, I never thought it would happen in my lifetime and was in tears on election night both in relief of finally getting rid of Dubya and the Neocons and in sadness that my late wife hadn't lived long enough to see it with me.

Ah, there's that word. Finally. Oops on me.

I think a lot us were a bit too full of hope that election night. We never saw Obama as a "Messiah" like the far right liked to pretend, but we also didn't see him first as a black man. The tears in Obama supporters wasn't us seeing him as the Second Coming, it was joy that we didn't have to deal with daily scandals and outrages presided over by a semi-literate party hearty "good ol' boy" from Tex-onnecticut. The tears during the inauguration was because not only did we get a very good man elected, we showed the world that we'd moved beyond racism and hate.

Or, we thought we had. Our mistake.

First mistake: we thought that the over the top rhetoric from the fringes of the right really didn't run the GOP. OK, yeah we poked and teased them over it but we didn't really didn't think that the regular Rpublican party was personified by Rush Limbaugh and Mann Coulter. Saying that was just to get the goat of the people who had rubbed our noses in Bushit for 8 years. Then out came the crazies, blaming the new President for all the bad things the previous one actually did and more without his being in office even a year yet. We said to ourselves, "Oh crap, we were really right about the Republicans?"

Getting close to that last nerve now.

Mistake #2: believing that we'd finally staked that old monster Racism in the heart and it was gone for good. OK, for a far right party these aren't necessarily racist. Tea Parties. Obama as Hitler....well, OK, not that one so much - let's be honest with ourselves here, we did do it to Bush first. Whatever the right considered "bad" they said Obama was one of them. Shouting matches at town halls over health care reform (that was a strange one).

OK, that could all be put down to partisan overzealousness as much as anything else.

However....

Postcards of the White House with watermellons on the front lawn.

Photoshopping Obama into a stereotypical African witch doctor, complete
with a bone through his nose.

Buttons saying, "If Obama wins will we still call it the White
House?"
Bumperstickers saying, "Do we really need a black man begging for CHANGE in
the White House?"
"Obama Bucks" with pictures of watermellons and fried chicken along the
edges.
A stuffed monkey in a suit with "Obama '08" on its lapel.

Try Googling "Racist Obama images" and see what pops up - the above is just a small list of examples.

If that ain't flat-out racism, I don't know what is.

Closer to that last nerve...not quite there yet......

The kicker to all of this? The racists aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Oh, they'll do their usual shuffle to avoid being called what they are. You know, if you talk about race issues at all you must be a racist...especially if you aren't white. Say some anti-Obama people are racists then start screaming "You called us ALL racists!!" The usual male bovine excrement.

However, it's not just that. The people who send this stuff out will stand there before God and a TV camera and not only not deny they sent it, they claim they didn't realize it was offensive.

What? WHAT?!!

Do you all think that when Obama was elected the heat was off and you could let that racist freak flag fly?!!!

Were you all hatched yesterday and have no clue what is racist and what isn't after all this country has gone through because of it?!!

ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!!!!

NOW we hit that last nerve!

Alrighty then. That's how you want to play it, eh righties?

Fine.

You are total ignorant assholes. I have no interest in what you think or what you say. I will no longer argue with you over what's true and what's not. I don't care what you believe in or don't. I'm not your friend and you are no friend to my country. I will not debate you. I will barely acknowledge your existence. I will not indulge in a shouting match with you. I don't care what Rush or Glenn or Sean or FOX told you to think today. You are a danger to the Republic. You are traitors to the real America. You are just enough to rate a derisive laugh.

The only thing that interests me about you is seeing to it that your empty head is beat down so far that your ass is a planter in China. I can't defeat you enough. Kick you when you're down? I'll be running a steam roller over you.

You want a war? Bring it on.

Wouldn't it be fin-ah to hate on Mr. Obama in the mooooorning?

2009-09-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Ah those teabaggers, what a bunch huh? Here we are a few days after their Two (Three? Four?) Hour Hate on the President in Washington D.C. and I am still laughing.

And what's not to laugh at? Here they are, complaining mightily that they aren't tools of insurance company lobbbyist front groups like Dick Armey's "Freedomworks" and just look at the DC podium. Full of signs from Freedomworks. Featured speakers from, you guessed it, Freedomworks. My sides are splitting here.

Then there's those signs! Nasty things about sending Obama "back" to Kenya as if he ever came from there. Those "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" ones were real classy. I sure hope the passing of one of their relatives becomes a political slogan - it'd only serve them right. Not that they'd get them, of course. And talk about all over the map! They make protest marches from the left look unified and on message!! SOCIALIST!! COMMUNIST!! NAZI!! HITLER!! OBAMA!! ACORN!! SOROS!! THE CONSTITUTION SAYS WHAT I SAY IT SAYS!!

And the favorite - DON'T HELP ME GET GOOD HEALTHCARE!!

I'd love to take them up on that one. Fortunately for them, President Obama is much nicer than I am. Then again, I'm not President so I don't have to be. I'd happily cut them loose from the good things that health care reform will do for us. Send these townhall screamer and nasty sign waver jerk-offs out in the streets to beg once their Insurance Company/Rightwing Masters take every penny they've got when they get real sick and they find out how some of their policies weren't so great after all. Hell, you don't believe in helping yourself out, great! Just don't come whining and crying to us when you find out we were right all along. Again.

But that's just me.

If that wasn't pure comedy enough, during and after the Nut-em-berg Rally they had to go and LIE ABOUT HOW MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP!! I saw people writing that it was about 30,000 - others said 70K. OK, that's a fair to middlin' number or people to make the effort to be there and protest....whatever made-up nonsense they were protesting. I think they were mostly protesting that they lost in '06 and '08 and that Obama is black. OK. Waste of time since none of that will change because they want to loudly weep about it but still OK.

This is America and you can protest any damn thing you want to - right or wrong.

I support that.

Been there, done that even.

As they are wont to do, they had to go and blow it, claiming 1.5 MILLION people were there. Ummm...no. The said ABC NEWS said so! Ummm...no. They showed PICTURES proving it! Ummm....no. What the assembled crackpot-ic folks have yet to get is that the fastest way to become marginalized and disbelieved is to lie about something. And the number of people who show up to your event is kinda a big thing to be lying about.

Anyhoo - I'm positive this won't be the last time this happens. I do have a word of advice that I know that my friends on the orbiting Saturn far right will ignore.

You have at least 3, if not 7, more years of Obama to go.

Pace yourselves.

You'll be all worn out come 2010.

On the health care reform bill(s)

2009-08-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is the response I wrote on an email group about the health care bill(s):

Well, let's see - first of all, the supposedly 1000 page bill is from the 4 different committees in the House's versions that hasn't been settled with the two committees in the Senate's versions. What will consolidate those versions is something called "mark up" - meetings of representatives of each house of Congress' committees where they decide what goes and what stays in the final bill - and that won't happen until Congress goes back into session next month. When that is done, then there will finally be an actual bill that will be voted on by Congress. Again, that hasn't happened yet so there is no final bill yet.

As for what you all have been claiming, well that would be the cherry-picked demonstrated and refuted distortions and fever dream lies put out by the health insurance companies and their Republican friends who want to see to it that are no reforms of health care at all. The people showing up at town hall meetings and screaming are the ones who get their news solely from Rush and his radio hate clones as well as Fox "News" - in other words, the willingly or otherwise misinformed minority of reactionary and plain crackpot Americans who are information resistant and thoroughly indoctrinated by rightwing talking points.

Obama is not going to force you into socialism - he's not even writing the law, Congress is doing that. There are no death panels in any of the bills. No one, elderly or not, will be encouraged to end their lives. There is no socialized or government control of medicine in any of the versions of the bill. You can keep the insurance you've got if you choose to and the bill will see to it that you're not dropped by your employer and forced into the public insurance plan to save your employer money. You will have the choice to keep that insurance even if you change jobs. You will not be dropped from your insurance when you most need it. If needed, you will be able to buy insurance and not be turned down because you were sick in the past. If you don't have the money to buy insurance you will get help to do so. No insurance company will be forced out of business and no one who makes under $250,000 a year will have their taxes raised, including small businesses. You will receive insurance coverage no matter what political party you belong to. No illegal alien will get free healthcare.

Those are the facts, folks.

The crazies' days of August

2009-08-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I did promise to post more but this last month has caught me flatfooted and jaw dropped.

By now, I'm sure you're all aware of the health care town hall shenanigans of the far right. Screaming inanities, shouting down members of Congress, carrying guns to these meetings, etc. - OK, I admit it, this is a new one on me. I know, I expected the sore loser/sour grapes Republican Party of Rural Areas and the South to take defeat badly. That the man who beat them was at least half black would make their whining even louder was a given. Bill Clinton nailed it back when he was the popular Democratic President. He was asked why the Republicans/cons hated him so. His answer was simple and devastating: "I won."

President Obama won too but at least he doesn't have to deal with an orchestrated hunt on him financed by Richard Mellon Scaife that goes back to his days in Illinois. With no sex scandal in the offing or the prospect of the Republicans taking control of Congress any time soon there won't be another phony, trumped-up impeachment circus for him to deal with either. All he has facing him is a shrinking, shrieking opposition party and the cranks, crackpots and nutters that make it up now.

However, as callers to talk shows like to say, that isn't what I wrote this about.

I'm retired, have a lot of time for emails and email groups (mostly political of course), and at least three of them are a mix of left and right. Fortunately for me, this makes it so I don't have to watch Fox Noise or listen to rightwing hate radio for even a second to get the day's line for the sheeple of the far right - all I have to do is read the posts from the righties in these groups and it's all right there, faithfully repeated for me.

Now that the "conservatives" are out of power (and even when they were in), there's always been weak defenses of the GOP when they get caught doing something bad. For years it was the "BUT...WHAT ABOUT CLINTON?!!" line which was supposed to let the Republicans off the hook by summoning up charges, real or imaginary, about the former President and extending out his flaws to the entire Democratic Party. After it became impossible to blame Clinton for everything the Republicans did, that line morphed into "BUT....THE DEMOCRATS DID IT TOO!!" - the idea being that if they found anything even remotely something similar to what they did being done before by any Democrat, anywhere it was supposed to protect them by invoking the correlary, "AND IT DIDN'T BOTHER YOU THEN!!"

The result of all that whining and crying from the right? A Democrat in the White House, Congress controlled by Democrats, more registered Democrats than Republicans, polls giving the Democratic Party around 56% approval and giving the Republican Party approval numbers in the 20s.

You'd think they'd figure out that their line didn't work and they should try something else. But, alas for them, this is not to be.

Now we have the birthers/deathers/crackpots and racists screaming their little lungs out and thinly-disguised threats of violence during this month's health care reform meetings by Representatives in their districts. This is getting pretty bad press for the Republicans and insurance companies who've urged the freaks on, told them where to go and even gave them a list of things to do once they're there. The latest Gallup poll says people are sypathetic to protestors going to the town halls and having their say (something I have no problem with either) but also say that the tactic of shouting people down at these meetings is an abuse of democracy by a good sized majority. Oh, and the President's approval number went back up to 63% in the Gallup poll too, and they say it's because of the town hall yellers.

Oh my, this isn't good for the righties at all. What to do, what to do.....

Wait, I know! Morph the old GOP defense one more time!!

Which they have, to wit: "BUT...THE LEFT DID IT TOO!!"

For this one, they're not only going for the Democrats. They're tossing in everything from the e-vil ACORN boogeyman, CODE PINK and SEIU "union thugs" to (mainly) the student radicals who protested the Vietnam War 40+ years ago to try to sell this version. There are some similarities - those student radicals were pretty rowdy back in their day. ACORN, CODE PINK, SEIU, etc.? Not so much.

As always, there is a big problem with this argument as well. Student radicals in the 60s may have been disruptive at meetings back then and did their own shouting down but they didn't do it with guns either concealed or strapped to their waists. They may have waved the North Vietnamese flag but they didn't carry little homemade signs saying death to anybody. They didn't attend a member of Congress' meet-and-greet and "drop" a gun at it. They also didn't stand 75 feet from where the President was about to enter a meeting place with a gun strapped to an ankle and a sign that referred to Jefferson's quote about the tree of liberty being fed by the blood of patriots and tyrants by saying it's time to do that again.

Do I sense another MAJOR FAIL for the latest version of the conservative pat excuse for what they are doing coming up?

I think I do.

My, My - some last few days, huh?

2009-07-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Where to start? I think I'll do a list (no particular order of importance) :

1) Michael Jackson passed away

That was a shocker - a few years younger than me and gone just like that. I did have a weird reaction to his death though. I never thought I was much of a fan but as I watched the reports of his passing I was brushing tears out of my eyes. No matter what you thought of his private life, the man was one hell of an entertainer and that's how I choose to remember him. Still not watching the all-day coverage of his memorial though.

2) Farrah Fawcett passed away too

This one was expected, and still too bad. I remember her as the poster girl phenom from TV's Charlie's Angels but I remember her later work too. The lady definitely had some acting chops to go with the looks.

3) Governor Sanford and the Road to Appalachia

OK, this one was plain weird. Did the guy really think he could ditch his governor job for a week, lie about where he was so he could be with his Argentinian mistress and no one would notice? Of course, he has asked God and his constituents to forgive him so he won't be resigning since it's all good now. I'll bet he's glad he's not a Democrat and can get away with that. I read that he spent the 4th with his wife and kids - that must of been one relaxing weekend. I thought that was the height of Republican weirdness until....

4) Caribou Barbie resigns as Governor of Alaska

OK, this one caught me all unprepared. I'd just written in a post to one of my email groups that I thought she wouldn't run for re-election next year when the breaking news came across my email box (I don't watch much TV anymore). Now normally this would mean that a possible future Presidential candidate who quit without even completing one term in office was DOA, but according to what I'm seeing from the Party of Crazy that's not always so! Some of the really hard right GOPers think she has a chance at the White House still and are urging her to go for it!! That might work with the 73% of 22% who still like her but if they ever wanted to hand Obama his second term on a silver platter, that's going to do the job just fine.

And finally, the good news from the last few days.....

5) Al Franken is finally declared the winner and is sworn into the Senate

I've always been a fan of Franken's comedy and was a faithful listener to his radio stint with Air America. I'd hoped he'd run for something, having heard quite the undertow of a serious thinker and policy wonk under the laughs so I cheered when he announced for the Senate from MN. I'm thankful he didn't pull a Gore and go "oh well, guess I lost" when the Republicans tried every thing in their bag of tricks to hand his close win over to Coleman and stayed in to fight for it. I think he will be a fine Senator in the Minnesota tradition of Humphrey, Mondale and Wellstone. The gravy here is his win is also driving the far right even crazier than normal, just like Obama's did. Hurray and welcome, Senator Franken.

What the cons wish weren't so...

2009-06-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

Namely, this part of the ABC/Washingon Post Poll:

The state of the Republican Party remains grim. Just 22 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans, near April's decades-long low point. Only 36 percent said they have a favorable impression of the GOP, with 56 percent saying they have an unfavorable impression. (Fifty-three percent said they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.)

Obama has greater than 20-point leads over congressional Republicans in public trust on dealing with health care, the deficit, terrorism and the economy. The margin on the economy has slipped since April, but still remains a hefty 55 percent to 31 percent over GOP lawmakers.

And after all those efforts to make Obama look bad and to convince themselves that Obama was just a fluke since people really did like Bush's policies but they were hypnotized or something.

Bummer for them.

The ongoing real apology tour

2009-06-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

They are making me mad again.

And no, I'm not talking about David Letterman caving to the far right's victim princess attention whore...twice. Although I think Letterman had nothing to apologize about, I understand a bit about television. The apology fits when you understand that TV is all about selling you stuff, making money and wrapping programming around that to accomplish those ends. Television - especially broadcast TV - tries to be edgy and controversial but not so much of either that they lose advertisers and income over it. Hence, the apology to the Alaska hillbilly sluts.

What is getting my goat now is yet another Democrat apologizing for telling the truth. Latest installment is the comment from the Democrats' CIA director about Cheney's increasing nonsense-spewing media tour:

"It's almost as if he's wishing that America
would be attacked again, in order to make
his point. That's dangerous politics."
-- CIA Director Panetta on Dick Cheney

Sounds like that to me too, Mr. Panetta. Way to go....no...wait a second. I spoke too soon!

CIA Director Leon Panetta doesn't really think former Vice President Dick Cheney wants to see his country attacked, the intelligence agency said Tuesday.

The CIA, through spokesman Paul Gimigliano, walked back a controversial statement Panetta recently made to The New Yorker while arguing that his quote was misinterpreted in the first place.

"The director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack. He did not say that," Gimigliano said. "He was simply expressing his profound disagreement with the assertion that President Obama's security policies have made our country less safe. Nor did he question anyone's motives."

What the hell? The CIA felt the need to apologize to freakin' DICK CHENEY????

What is wrong with these people!

As Bartcop says, Why is my party so full of wimps?

Maybe it's time for something else

2009-06-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

The blogs and news reports are buzzing with reports about how the anti-abortion women controller wannabes are still dancing with glee at the assassination of Dr. Tiller. The line essentially is The murder was wrong (politically correct part) but the guy deserved it! Even the brave "baby-saving" murderer Roeder, when he's not whining about how he's being treated in jail, basically says he'd do it again and others are planning on doing what he did too.

What's coming through loud and clear here is this:
They. Won't. Stop. Ever.

It just might be time to make them.

I know, I know....we can't be like them! That would be bad!

Screw that.

I'm getting my inspiration here from a program I watched on the History International Channel. Turns out that after the Civil War, the South didn't just quietly go off, accept their defeat, lick their wounds and cry into their mint juleps over their "lost honor and civilization."

Nope, a lot of them kept on killing US soldiers and blacks even after Lee's surrender. They even organized into terrorist groups to keep them nigras in line and not voting (something Southern blacks had the right to do after the Civil War and the ratification of the 14th Amendment) - they even had a kewl name for it, the Ku Klux Klan. Historians refer to this period of American history as the Second Civil War. I'd heard of the Klan, but this Second Civil War thing was news to me.

Oh, and this "terrorism doesn't work" bit? Well, it sure did then and even now - blacks stayed away from the polls in droves back then and so did the "yankees." Now, the family of the murdered doctor just announced that his clinic will not be re-opening. That leaves only two clinics in the entire country that are available if late term abortions are necessary.

Let me repeat that: That's TWO clinics for the whole United States of America.

What struck me most about the program was what worked as the best and most effective way it was responded to. People who wanted to talk and reason ended up dead. Blacks who tried to peacefully exercise their voting rights - dead. Oddly enough, when there were people who were just as willing to make the terrorizers as dead as their victims, only then did the killing stop.

Hmm, are we missing a lesson from history here? Might be!

If you really want the extremist anti-abortion terrorists to quit, start using their tactics against them. Picket their churches. Picket them at their homes. Show up at their rallies with pictures of dead Iraqi kids - most of the anti-abortion nuts think that's just peachy. Shout down their speakers. Disrupt their meetings. Show them there's a price for calling for murder and terrorism.

Peacefully, of course. God forbid that I should suggest that when they take down one of ours, take two of theirs. Got bullseye, Randall Terry? No, I wouldn't do that - that would be bad.

But they would deserve it.

Two Attacks on Americans

2009-06-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday there were two attacks on Americans on American soil that dominated the discussion, at least online in the email groups. One, of course, the assassination of 67 year old Dr. Tiller as he was handing out bulletins at his church in Kansas on Sunday, the second was the attack on a Navy recruiting station by a man who covnverted to Islam that killed two sailors and injured another. Two killers - one white, one black and both looking to be part of networks that urged them on to do what they did.

We don't know for sure about the networks - the terrorist doctor murderer looks to have been at least surrounded by people who thought killing a doctor who, among his other duties as an ob/gyn, did abortions was a good thing. The Navy attacker was being watched by the FBI on his return from Yemen, where he had been arrested. We don't know for sure if either of them were directed or even given the suggestion to do what they did by others but the possibility is there and strong.

Before anyone goes ballistic on my use of terms here (terrorist for the doctor killer, attacker for the Navy recruiter murderer), I suggest whoever that might be go to dictionary.com and look up the word "terrorism." It basically defines the term as violent attacks on civilians for political aims. Dr. Tiller matches that criteria, members of the United States Navy who are members of the US military do not. 9/11 was a terrorist act, the bombing of the USS Cole was an attack on a military target - both were attacks on Americans.

I'm not going to rehash the arguments about both here - they are more than available across the web. The real question is where do we go from here.

What's going to happen to prevent either or both of those attacks?

Unfortunately, not much.

The Obama administration will send out US Marshalls to protect healthcare providers and clinics but they won't be there forever. The anti-abortion extremist Christians will still call for attacks on "abortion doctors" and as long as they aren't directly involved in those attacks, they get to do that here under the First Amendment. It's been said that freedom of speech protections were put into the Constitution not to make it safe for speech we like - it was put in to protect speech we hate. The good news here is if the government can't outlaw speech we don't like, we have the option of using our right to free speech to condemn and shout the haters down.

In the case of the attack on the Navy recruiting station, I think that was a matter of time before that happened. Not because of what the Navy is - it is because of how easy it is to get the explosives, guns and ammo to commit such an act. Muslim extremists will still preach hatred against us and urge attacks on us regardless here and around the world.

We can discuss the motives and beliefs of both attackers, but the bottom line is that they were done by two guys with guns.

As a country, we can keep an eye on these people and hope we catch them before they act. We can speak out to see to it that the beliefs that ended in three deaths aren't given a free ride and are roundly denounced. Otherwise, we hope that works and wait for the next time it happens. Damn it.

Got to enjoy this

2009-05-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Republicans can't figure out what to do with Sotomayor - do they keep their 22% or less 'base' or keep the minority of the Hispanic vote that they have left? The usual far right drumbeaters (Limbaugh, Newt, Malkin, etc.) are doing their usual thing - hating on any and everything done by Democrats - while, as much as they want to agree with them, the Republicans who actually have to face voters are trying to have it both ways.

Good times.

This says it all when it comes to Obama SCOTUS pick

2009-05-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something about Judge Sotomayor and how unsurprising that a centrist President would pick a centrist for the Supreme Court - even how unwise it would be for the Republicans to filibuster her - then this came through my email:

Please, Please Filibuster Sotomayor

At the gym this morning I could not help but notice that corpulent right wing fuck Karl Rove (that's actually his official title) on Fox "News" going on about the possibility of a filibuster against Sonia Sotomayor.

To which I say, paraphrasing the words of Mr. Rove's former boss, bring it the fuck on.

Please GOP, filibuster a woman of Puerto Rican descent, who grew up in the projects in the Bronx, yet managed to attend Princeton and Yale Law School. Sotomayor worked as a federal prosecutor and corporate attorney before getting appointed to the federal bench by Bush 41, and then served on the Court of Appeals for ten years after Clinton elevated her to the Second Circuit. She is clearly well qualified and her appontment would be a milestone. But hey, filibuster away.

This is just what the Republican base wants and I would hate to see them deprived of the opportunity of denying this woman a seat on the high court.

Let this happen and then Obama should make a priority of passing comprehensive immigration reform. The Republicans can then spend the next twenty years seeing if they can crack the 40% mark in presidential elections.

Posted by Sir Charles at 07:24 AM Permalink

A word to Democrats: Leave the GOP alone

2009-05-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

One thing I and I'm sure other Democrats, in email groups and from (D) leaning pundits, have been guilty of is giving the Republicans advice on how to bring their party out of the political wilderness. Our message: be more like us. Well, that stops right now for me and I hope for anyone else passing that along.

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I have never seen a reason to vote for any Republican, ever, and I doubt that's going to change. However, my very first time volunteering for any campaign was when I was 14 and who I backed then was Richard Nixon - of course, at the time I thought he was the peace candidate when it came to Vietnam and bought his "secret plan to end the war" line. Little did I know his "secret plan" was to keep the war going until we "won," but I figured that out soon enough and became a lifelong Democrat because of it. I do vote for the person and their positions - it's not my fault they're all Democrats. And blah blah blah.

Back to the original point, I think that we need to stop giving unasked for and sure to be ignored advice to the GOP on how to run their party. After all, think back to when it was us Democrats who were the minority, couldn't get a presidential candidate elected, and the slew of articles from Republicans who were giving us advice about how to revive our party. You remember, how we should be more conservative and what a really good Democrat Joe Lieberman was and how he would save the Democrats. I'll wait for the gagging to subside. Didn't like it much, did ya?

Well, the upshot was that we didn't take their advice and finally started winning again. This may work the same way for the Republicans. We got the same questions back when we were on the outs that we're tossing at the GOPers now: Who's your leader? Are you just running on what you're against or do you actually stand for something? Can you tell us what it means to be a member of your party? I recall we had as much of a problem answering those questions back then as the Republicans do now too.

When it comes down to it, I don't know what the Republicans need to do make a comeback. It may happen by default if Obama stumbles badly, the Democrats in Congress could lose it by continuing to act like they are mewling little cowards in the face of the currently outnumbered GOP...who can say for sure. Who's correct in the GOP ranks - the ones who are saying their party needs to go further right or the moderates like Colin Powell that says they need to moderate their positions and allow more voices to be heard? Who knows right now. Can't say that I much care either, to be honest. Right now, I'm more than enjoying being a member of the party in power finally and I hope that doesn't change for quite a while. The cons enjoyed rubbing our noses in it when we were down and I'm not so pure of heart to say that giving it right back to them now isn't one hell of a lot of fun.

I do, however, caution strongly about taking the fact that we hold the reins now to mean that we'll hold them forever. I don't want to start seeing in print - online or otherwise - how our wins means we will have a permanent majority. Look how well that worked out for Karl Rove when he said that about the Republicans - and he was making the case that the Democratic Party was essentially the party of the coasts and big cities, just like I'm seeing the case being made that the Republicans are essentially a regional party based mainly in the South.

Besides the awfulness of the Bush years, we are also enjoying the pendulum swinging our way (given the temporary push the other way post 9/11). That swing actually started in 2000 when, if you combine the votes for Democrat Al Gore and Green Party Ralph Nader, marked the first time in 20 years that the majority of voters voted center-left. Had there been no terrorist attack on 9/11 (and a stronger Democratic nominee in 2004 than John Kerry) I daresay that George W. would have joined his Dad in being a one term President. That pendulum can keep going our way or turn around on a dime too.

Admittedly this is all from the viewpoint of the member of a party who even it's most conservative members would be considered ultra-liberal in the other party but the point still stands: don't completely count out the GOP quite yet. And stop trying to tell them the way out of being the minority is to be more like us - that's advice they soundly reject and rightly so.

Just askin'

2009-05-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Is it appropriate to wish someone a Happy Memorial Day? It just doesn't sound right to me.

The President and the time he needs

2009-05-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

I supported President Obama before he even announced for the job, but I am noticing a disturbing trend among other erstwhile supporters - I'll call it the "right now" syndrome.

Why hasn't Obama done more for gay rights? When is he closing Guantanamo? Why is he continuing some of Bush's policies? Why isn't he doing everything he said he would RIGHT NOW?!!!

Take a breath folks and remember how our government is set up - we just aren't configured to do things real fast. Let's remember a couple of things too, Obama has been President for less than a year. Heck, most new Presidencies haven't even filled their cabinets this early in the first term - at least he's done that much, not to mention getting passed and signed into law some important legislation like the stimulus bills that at least slowed if not stopped our slide into another Republican Great Depression.

This is in no way meant to give Obama a free ride on everything he does - I don't want us to become the Democratic version of the Republicans agreeing to everything (but immigration, of course) that Bush wanted either. The lean to keep some Bush policies going is particularly troubling, but if you read deeper into the news stories that report this there are two words that are strongly implied but rarely written: "for now." I'm willing to allow that ending everything in place from the Bush era with nothing to replace it with yet may not be the best idea in terms of actual governing so I'll give a little bit of slack here. Remember too that the Obama version isn't exactly the same as the Bush policies - there have been tweaks to make them a bit more palatable.

I think the criticism is fair about the need to really change Bush's policies when it comes to the treatment of detainees and just what are we going to be doing in Afghanistan. What's unfair is the left going on that Obama has failed us and he's just like Bush. Oh puh-lease. Give the man some time - they are working on it. As for Afghanistan, with all the moanings over how Obama is going to stick us with another quagmire I have a challenge to the moaners: Show me where Obama or his administration has ever said that they plan on staying in Afghanistan forever like the Rush Republicans want to do in Iraq. Now, if these Bush-like policies are still essentially in effect a year or more from now, I'll be joining the folks on the left that are decrying the fact that Obama hasn't done everything they wanted right now. But not quite yet.

There's a couple of things to remember as well when it comes to President Obama. First of all, after 8 years of having to deal with who lied and what outrage was going on today when the Republicans were in charge, I find myself and others still stuck in that mindset. Tell me that you haven't cringed at first when you hear that the President is giving a speech, a press conference or whatever then having to stop and remind yourself just who is the President now. That's also a function of how little time Obama has been in office - it's taking us some time to adjust as well.

There's something else to remember as well as the new administration goes forward - it's being headed by a man who actually tells us the truth. He said he wanted to hear all sides of an issue and and be less driven by ideology and more run by what is going to work and he means it. The man has actually changed direction when it's been pointed out to him that a policy idea of his is a bad one - twice so far. He's met with people on the right and the left who disagree with him - he may not agree with their analysis or positions but he did give them the chance to have their say right up in his grille as it were.

Will President Obama be a great President? Hard to say right now, but I will say this: so far, mostly so good and only time will tell. Don't let up on him but give him the time he needs to get it done.