Hands Ups are Welcome

Posted: April 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 20 Comments

Many of you may be aware that one of our frontpagers, Minkoff Minx, has been using a five year old computer that’s now completely unusable.  It’s lost the light that makes the screen work.  Minx is the mother of young children so she’s having difficulty writing as much as she usually does because she’s having to vie for the family computer. She’s also one of our Sky Dancing community that’s experiencing economic challenges so the cost of a new computer is something that would severely stress the family budget.

I know that many blogs frequently have fund drives for a variety of purposes. In our six months of existence, we’ve had some donations that have allowed us to expand things here that have been strictly used to improve the blog.  We’ve never directly asked for help but I’d like to make an appeal to those of you that are in a good position right now to help Minx get back to normal so we can enjoy her frequent contributions.

There’s a PayPal button (little orange button that says Make a Donation) over on the right column that goes to my PayPal account that I’ve recently been using for nothing but the blog and its expenses. It can be used to help us get some money to Minx.  I’d like to set a time frame of 10 days from today for every one that’s able and willing to do so to send whatever amount they could to help us buy Minx a replacement computer.  Again, there’s no pressure to do this and I don’t think she needs or is expecting a supercomputer so every little bit will help!  You can ask me to pass your name on or not pass your name on to Minx and you can ask me to specify the amount donated or just throw it in with a bundle coming from a bunch of Secret SkyDancers.

Minx has been doing two of our scheduled morning posts each week.  She’s an editor and chatroom monitor too which can be extremely time-consuming although it’s been a fairly pleasant job over here to date. Believe me, I’ve had the duty when it’s stressful and unpleasant elseblog.   Also, you’re most likely aware that Minx usually writes other posts regularly. Minx is also the CSS expert so a lot of the new Blog format is due to her patience, effort, and time.  She’s definitely worth our investment. So, please consider helping if you can.

Thanks so much!  We now return you to your regularly unscheduled blogging.

Dakinikat

Update:  As of 10 pm Sunday, cst time … we’ve got enough to get her a nice computer!!!

Thanks for to all of you that helped!!!

Paul Ryan’s Selective Randianism

Posted: April 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, poverty, Psychopaths in charge, religion, Reproductive Rights, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

While browsing the links on Memeorandum earlier this afternoon, I came across this post at Down With Tyranny: The Inspiration For Paul Ryan’s Profoundly And Explicitly Anti-Christian Budget. As Lambert would say, it is a post filled to the brim with “linky goodness.” I read all the linked articles and I refer to a few of them in this post.

DWT discusses Ryan’s self-professed admiration for the “philosophy” of Ayn Rand.

What is the great cause for which Ryan wants to devote his political life? Unkind critics point to the unprecedented– at least in Wisconsin politics– gushers of money Ryan has solicited from the Wall Street sector and detect a correlation between the bribes he takes and the policies he espouses. And since there is nothing that holds his voting record– huge, unjustifiable bailouts for Wall Street banks coupled with the dismantling of Medicare and unconscionable tax breaks for the richest Americans coupled with privatization of Social Security– other than obeisance to a garden variety Big Business agenda, this interpretation has become widespread. What people may be missing, however, is a parallel influence on Ryan– one not unrelated, but not identical either: his devotion to the adolescent philosophy of Ayn Rand: “the virtue of selfishness,” a more direct– if somewhat off-putting to non-believers– description of a philosophy known as “Objectivism.”

DWT points out that Rand’s teachings are explicitly anti-Christian–Rand was an atheist who thought altruism was evil and poor and working people were losers and “parasites.” Newsweek’s Jonathan Chait writes:

Ayn Rand, of course, was a kind of politicized L. Ron Hubbard—a novelist-philosopher who inspired a cult of acolytes who deem her the greatest human being who ever lived. The enduring heart of Rand’s totalistic philosophy was Marxism flipped upside down. Rand viewed the capitalists, not the workers, as the producers of all wealth, and the workers, not the capitalists, as useless parasites.

John Galt, the protagonist of her iconic novel Atlas Shrugged, expressed Rand’s inverted Marxism: “The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.”

Chait calls Ryan an “acolyte” of Ayn Rand, and explains at length that the deficit and the debt aren’t what’s bugging the new House superstar. Most of Ryan’s proposals don’t cut the deficit much, and besides, he includes huge new tax cuts for the rich and goodies for Wall Street in his plan. Further more Ryan was an enthusiastic supporter of the Wall Street bailout and he voted for every spending bill that came down the pike under George W. Bush. So what are the Ryan cuts all about?

Ryan’s plan does do two things in immediate and specific ways: hurt the poor and help the rich. After extending the Bush tax cuts, he would cut the top rate for individuals and corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent. Then Ryan slashes Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, and low-income housing. These programs to help the poor, which constitute approximately 21 percent of the federal budget, absorb two thirds of Ryan’s cuts.

Ryan casts these cuts as an incentive for the poor to get off their lazy butts. He insists that we “ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.” It’s worth translating what Ryan means here. Welfare reform was premised on the tough but persuasive argument that providing long-term cash payments to people who don’t work encourages long-term dependency. Ryan is saying that the poor should not only be denied cash income but also food and health care.

OK, that part does sound like Randianism, doesn’t it? Rand admired the strong and despised the weak, and so does Paul Ryan, apparently. Rand even went so far as to praise a serial killer for his lack of empathy for his fellow human beings.

On the level of personal behavior, the heroes in Rand’s novels commit borderline rape, blow up buildings, and dynamite oil fields — actions which Rand portrays as admirable and virtuous fulfillments of the characters’ personal will and desires. Her early diaries gush with admiration for William Hickman, a serial killer who raped and murdered a young girl. Hickman showed no understanding of “the necessity, meaning or importance of other people,” a trait Rand apparently found quite admirable.

But did Rand believe that corporations should benefit from government largess? According to Rand devotee Donald L. Luskin, she didn’t.

it’s a misreading of “Atlas” to claim that it is simply an antigovernment tract or an uncritical celebration of big business. In fact, the real villain of “Atlas” is a big businessman, railroad CEO James Taggart, whose crony capitalism does more to bring down the economy than all of Mouch’s regulations. With Taggart, Rand was anticipating figures like Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, the subprime lender that proved to be a toxic mortgage factory. Like Taggart, Mr. Mozilo engineered government subsidies for his company in the name of noble-sounding virtues like home ownership for all.

Still, most of the heroes of “Atlas” are big businessmen who are unfairly persecuted by government. The struggle of Rand’s fictional steel magnate Henry Rearden against confiscatory regulation is a perfect anticipation of the antitrust travails of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. In both cases, the government’s depredations were inspired by behind-the-scenes maneuverings of business rivals. And now Microsoft is maneuvering against Google with an antitrust complaint in the European Union.

The reality is that in Rand’s novel, as in life, self-described capitalists can be the worst enemies of capitalism. But that doesn’t fit in easily with the simple pro-business narrative about Rand now being retailed.

Luskin seems somewhat bemused by the selective Randianism (my term) of the new Tea Party radicals like Ryan. Traditional conservatives like William F. Buckley “loathed” Rand back in the day, probably because of her atheism and the fact that, while she verbally denigrated feminism, she lived

her life as an exemplary feminist, even as she denied it by calling herself a “male chauvinist.” She was the breadwinner throughout her lifelong marriage. The most sharply drawn hero in “Atlas” is the extraordinarily capable female railroad executive Dagny Taggart, who is set in contrast with her boss, her incompetent brother James. She’s the woman who deserves the man’s job but doesn’t have it; he’s the man who has the job but doesn’t deserve it.

Rand was strongly pro-choice, speaking out for abortion rights even before Roe v. Wade. In late middle age, she became enamored of a much younger man and made up her mind to have an affair with him, having duly informed her husband and the younger man’s wife in advance. Conservatives don’t do things like that—or at least they say they don’t.

These weren’t the only times Rand took positions that didn’t ingratiate her to the right. She was an early opponent of the Vietnam war, once saying, “I am against the war in Vietnam and have been for years. . . . In my view we should fight fascism and communism when they come to this country.” During the ’60s she declared, “I am an enemy of racism,” and advised opponents of school busing, “If you object to sending your children to school with black children, you’ll lose for sure because right is on the other side.”

BTW, none of the male authors I have cited except for Luskin mentioned the abortion issue or the incongruity of the anti-abortion Ryan claiming to believe in Ayn Rand’s vision of complete individualism.

I guess the new fantasy-based Republicans like Ryan can just mentally excise much of Rand’s individualistic philosophy–taking what they want and leaving the rest–just as they do with the bible and with science. How else can Ryan and his radical colleagues rationalize idolizing Ayn Rand while voting again and again to limit the rights of women?

Some times what looks like a Conspiracy is a Conspiracy …

Posted: April 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Environment, Environmental Protection, John Birch Society in Charge, religion, religious extremists | Tags: , , | 11 Comments

A lot of discussions here over the last three months–as well as blog posts–have been centered around what seems to be a concerted effort in Congress and Statehouses around the country to restrict women’s right to abortion, attack collective bargaining rights, and disable environmental protection laws and agencies.  This has come behind a similar set of laws aimed at restricting the rights of the GLBT community, immigrants,  and religious minorities.  A flurry of laws supposedly demonstrating state and federal interest in restricting constitutional rights all look and sound mighty familiar.

Bostonboomer and I have been trying to figure out which set of right wing “institutes” have been manufacturing these attacks, laws, and lies. We figured it was an unholy reliance of christian religious extremists and corporate interests like the Koch Brothers.  Neither of us had really dug into it yet, however.    Thankfully, People for the American Way has saved us some research in one of these areas. There’s an excellent internet monograph up called ‘The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection. You can read it online or as a down-loadable and printable pdf .

 One of the things that I find most confusing is why the religious right would want to harm “god’s creation”?  I’d understood that some fundamental christians had actually taken up the call to protect the earth.  However, that old testament verse that gets interpreted as “you’re on top of the world, it’s a gift to you, now go use it like you see fit” still seems to get the shaking and the rolling going among those whose erections depend on feeling godlike and wealthy.  PFAW says it’s basically “dominion theology”.  So, what is this toxic brand of superstition?

In the last decade, as evangelical Christian leaders increasingly became involved in conservation, “creation care” and taking action against global climate change, the alarms went up in corporate America  that many traditional members of the conservative coalition were becoming advocates  for environmental protection. To counter the rise of the faith-based environmentalist Evangelical Climate Initiative, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance emerged. The ISA, propped up by business interests including  Exxon Mobil, has peddled misleading and false claims to make the case that climate change is a myth. In 2007, the ISA was renamed the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and became more belligerent and zealous in its anti-environmental activities.

The Cornwall Alliance is led by E. Calvin Beisner, who believes that since God granted humans “dominion” over the earth, humans have a right to exploit all natural resources. As Randall Balmer writes in Thy Kingdom Come, Beisner “asserts that God has placed all of nature at the disposal of humanity.” Balmer quotes Beisner’s own summary of his dominion theology: “All of our acquisitive activities should be undertaken with the purpose of extending godly rule, or dominion.” As Balmer notes, “the combination of dominion theology from the Religious Right and the wise use ideology of corporate and business interests has created a powerful coalition to oppose environmental protection.”

According to a report by Think Progress, the Cornwall Alliance is a front group for the shadowy James Partnership. Both the James Partnership and the Cornwall Alliance are closely linked to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), an anti-environmental group that is “funded by at least $542,000 from ExxonMobil, $60,500 from Chevron, and $1,280,000 from Scaife family foundations, which are rooted in wealth from Gulf Oil and steel interests.” CFACT is also part of a climate change denialist network funded by the ExxonMobil-financed Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Beisner is a CFACT board member and an “adjunct fellow” of the Acton Institute, which is primarily funded by groups like ExxonMobil, the Scaife foundations and the Koch brothers. Beisner is also an adviser to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which is financed by the oil-backed Earthart Foundation, the Koch brothers, and ExxonMobil.

In fact, Beisner is not a scientist and has no scientific credentials. Despite claiming to be an authority on energy and environmental issues, he received his Ph.D. in Scottish History.

In 2009, Beisner’s Cornwall Alliance cosponsored a climate change denial conference led by the Heartland Institute, a pro-corporate group funded by Exxon Mobil, the Koch Family Foundations, and the Scaife foundations. Other organizations funded by energy corporations that cosponsored the conference include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity.

The Cornwall Alliance has been enormously successful in recruiting Religious Right leaders to promote its anti-environmental cause. In 1999, the group started recruiting prominent Religious Right figures to sign the “Cornwall Declaration,” a document that attacks environmentalists, saying they “deify nature or oppose human dominion over creation” and promote “erroneous theological and anthropological positions.” Among its signatories were Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Chuck Colson of the Colson Center, D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association, Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America, Daniel Lapin of Towards Tradition, and Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. The president of CFACT called himself “a driving force” behind the declaration.

You can see it’s the same old interlocking directorates of hate and intolerance.  They even have drafted a new “evangelical declaration of global warming that says “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming” and maintains that “reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures.”   Yes, they believe in religous hokum pokum above the overwhelming evidence for evolution and climate change.  Science holds no sway compared to something contrived by the Nicene Council to Romanize the known world in the 3rd century which was basically a conglomerate of all the superstitions of the day.  Yes, Constantine locked the priests up of every local cult and told them they could not come out until they had invented a “Roman” religion and that’s exactly what they did.  We’re still suffering from that grand kidnapping to this day.  They’re working hard on painting conservation and environmental protection as “anti-Christian” too.

In 2007, Jerry Falwell warned that environmental action was “Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus” away from evangelism and religious faith, and a year later James Dobson and Gary Bauer slammed Rev. Richard Cizik, a principal evangelical supporter of environmental protection, and his allies for “using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”

The Cornwall Alliance has coordinated with Religious Right leaders to accuse Christians who believe in environmental protection not only of attempting to divide the faith community, but of promoting a dangerous anti-religious and anti-Christian agenda. The group calls the environmentalist movement “The Green Dragon” and earlier this year produced a star-studded documentary to help slay it.

The Cornwall Alliance’s documentary, “Resisting the Green Dragon,”  includes appearances by a who’s who of Religious Right leaders: Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association; Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America; David Barton of WallBuilders; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College; radio show host Janet Parshall; and anti-gay activist Bishop Harry Jackson.

In heartfelt interviews for the documentary, these activists claim that the environmental movement (The Green Dragon) is promoting an anti-religious agenda:  Parshall derides the Green Dragon’s “lust for political power” and “spiritual deception,” and calls the environmental movement “deadly to the Gospel of Jesus Christ”; Fischer labels it a “threat to the Christian faith”; Perkins claims that environmentalists are “pointing people away from God and into humanism” and support “an unbiblical view”;  Beisner says “the green movement threatens liberty”; and Farris warns that environmentalists are “scaring little children to achieve [their] political ends.” Barton adds a summary of the dominion theology: “Mankind is the apex of creation; He placed it over the planet, over the environment.”

Anyway, I’m not going to print out the entire 8 pages of the pdf here although I will beg you to to read it.  Like I said, it’s the cast of usual cretins who’ve found a new cause célèbre and source of the kind of green they worship.  Why can’t we just declare all these folks public enemies or terrorists or something worse and stuff them altogether with bibles in orange jumpsuits at Guantanamo?  Oh, and just think, all those oil and gas companies get to deduct all those contributions to these nutty groups from their revenues.  It’s one of the reasons that they don’t pay much in taxes.  Think about that next time you fill up at anything affiliated with Exxon Mobil or better  yet, go fill up some place else.

So many of them, so few lions …

Saturday: sheroes and potpourri

Posted: April 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | 35 Comments

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets the children of Embassy employees at the US Embassy in Tokyo, April 17, 2011. Families were allowed back Friday, after warnings has been lifted following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Morning, news junkies. Here are my Saturday reads.

Hillaryland

  • Hillary’s profile in the 2011 Time 100 was written by dean emeritus of the Kennedy School, Joe Nye. Nye doesn’t mention Hillary’s work on behalf of women and girls, instead defining her influence in terms of how well she plays with others:

But above all, Hillary, 63, has set a model of how to be a member of a team of rivals. Unlike in many Administrations that have suffered from friction between State, Defense and the White House, Barack Obama’s strongest rival in 2008 has become one of the most effective and loyal supporters in an Administration that has been notably cohesive on foreign policy.

RIP Madelyn Pugh Davis (1921-2011)

  • I’m a huge fan of all things Desilu, and I love Christine Russell’s tribute to Madelyn over at the Atlantic: The ‘Girl Writer’ Behind ‘I Love Lucy’ Dies. It is worth the click over. Thank you Madelyn Pugh for blazing trails and for writing television that makes me laugh and smile in my times of grief and suffering. (Sisterhood, the girl gift that keeps on giving.)

Remembering Diana

Economics quick links

Pastor Un-Congeniality: ‘Peaceful, armed, and accidentally firing’

  • You can’t make this stuff up: After meeting with Dearborn Islamic Center imam on Detroit’s Fox affiliate, Terry Jones accidentally fires a gun in the studio parking lot. Keep in mind that Jones wanted to hold a protest rally outside of this imam’s Michigan mosque yesterday on Good Friday. He told the local ABC affiliate the following:

“We have made it very clear that we are coming there with very, very peaceful intentions,” the pastor explained to WXYZ-TV. “We will be armed. We do have concealed weapons permits.”

War, violence, and untruth: What is it good for?

  • Glenzilla on Friday’s drone attack killing 23 people in Pakistan: Nobel peace drones. At the end Greenwald adds an important note, summing up the quagmire-esque situation in Libya in two very pithy sentences:

A new NYT/CBS poll today finds that only 39% approve of Obama’s handling of Libya, while 45% disapprove (see p. 17). That’s what happens when a President starts a new war without any pretense of democratic debate, let alone citizenry consent through the Congress.

OBAMA: So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works.

And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.

We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

[Q: Didn’t he release evidence of war crimes?]

OBAMA: What he did was he dumped…

[Q: Isn’t that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?]

OBAMA: No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.

Women’s Rights

  • Please take a moment to read this article from the Nation by Michelle Goldberg: Policing Pregnancy. This is why Pelosi allowing Stupak to come to a vote and Obama signing that executive order was an affront to our civil rights. The Democrats emboldened the Republican war against women–and that’s how our oligarchy keeps going. But, this is no game. The assault on women has very real and damaging consequences. Targeting desperate women who have had their human rights violated and prosecuting them for trying to kill or harm themselves while pregnant is no less barbaric than the Taliban’s treatment of women.

Doom and gloom break…

Healthcare

  • And, for what? Open season on women’s health and a Dem brand so weakened that it *needs* the Republicans’ mindboggling overreach on Medicare to distract from the Dems’ own blunders on healthcare? Via Mother Jones, Dems Warn Constituents About the Evils of RyanCare:

Back in their home districts for the Easter recess, some House Democrats have put the GOP overhaul of Medicare front and center with their constituents. On Wednesday night, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) asked all the callers participating in a telephone town hall to vote on whether they supported the GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare “with a voucher system to help seniors defray the cost of health insurance.” Of some 1,300 callers who responded, the choice seemed overwhelming: 73 percent wanted to keep Medicare as is, while only 27 supported the GOP overhaul.

The informal telephone poll falls in line with a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that 65 percent of Americans oppose the Ryan plan for Medicare. That number that jumped to 84 percent when respondents were told that the cost of private insurance is supposed to outpace the cost of Medicare insurance, weakening the value of the “premium support” that recipients would receive under Ryan’s plan.

Kabuki for American oil junkies

  • WaPo PostPartisan blogger Stephen Stromberg offers this take on Obama’s oil price and fraud task force, criticizing both the president and Republicans: Obama, GOP’s empty war on gas prices.

On Thursday, President Obama unveiled a new working group to combat any fraud or manipulation in the oil and energy markets that may be contributing to near-record gas prices. But some economists and market experts worry that by focusing on criminal activity, Obama is shrugging off a much bigger problem: rampant Wall Street speculation in commodities markets that has helped drive up food and energy prices in the past.

Birthers come in all shapes of idiot; 2012 looks bleak.

  • Salon’s Justin Elliott eviscerates Andrew Sullivan and the Trig Truthers. Sarah Palin is a shallow politician with a horrid platform. She would make a horrible president. But, her pregnancy history is irrelevant, and the “investigation” of any woman politician’s hoo ha and the aspersions cast upon her teenage daughter and disabled son in the process of said investigation is a sickening and sad commentary on our zombie fourth estate and what it considers worthy of investigative journalism (especially in light of all the critical issues it does not investigate). And, on a purely pragmatic note: Sarah Palin is desperate to be the infotainment flavor of the week again. Why are Palin-haters so hellbent on giving her the attention she wants?

Also see this AP rundown of where other GOPers stand, as well as Trump to Salon: “You will be very surprised” (re: Trump releasing his net worth.)

  • Dartmouth poll: Romney beats Obama in NH by 8 points. Incidentally, Colin Powell beats O by 20 whopping points in the same poll. Colin Powell–the guy who held up that vial of anthrax for Bush-Cheney Co. at the UN and is not going to run for president, especially not against Obama. That’s how politically bankrupt both Obama and the GOP are. They can’t even compete with a hypothetical Colin Powell candidacy.

This Day in History (April 23rd)

Ray achieved another first when on April 23, 1872 she was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia which had recently removed the word “male” from its requirements.

Drawing of Charlotte Ray. Click image to learn more at fashionlawyerblog.com

The first ever African-American woman lawyer, Charlotte Ray was a woman far ahead of her time. Pictured in the sketch [to the right], Ray was born in New York City on January 13, 1850, the daughter of one of the conductors on the Underground Railroad.

Shortly after graduating from Howard University in 1872, Ray became one of the first women admitted to the District of Columbia Bar. She also was the first woman permitted to argue cases in front of the Supreme Court in the capital. Ray opened her own law office that same year, specializing in commercial law. Unfortunately, Ray only practiced for a few years because of the widespread prejudices of the time. It was too difficult for her, as an African-American woman, to attract enough clients to keep her practice going.

In 1879, Ray moved to New York where she worked as a teacher in the Brooklyn public schools. She married soon after, taking her husband’s last name, Fraim. Ray championed a number of social causes outside of her classroom, becoming involved in the women’s suffrage movement and joining the National Association of Colored Women. She died on January 4, 1911, in Woodside, New York.

Click photo read more about Charlotte at browngirlnextdoor.com

The End.

If you made it all the way through, don’t forget to chime in with your reads in the comments!

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

Late Night: Interesting Juxtapositions

Posted: April 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Surreality, torture, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

FIRST JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

First responders at Ground Zero in NYC

Huffington Post reported today that a little-known amendment in the new 9/11 health bill requires anyone who applies for benefits to be checked by the FBI to make sure they’re not terrorists.

The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.

Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address.

It’s a requirement that was tacked onto the law during the bitter debates over it last year.

The letter from Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, informs medical providers and administrators that they should begin letting patients know before the new program kicks in this July.

Yes, the people who risked their lives and their health to help after 9/11 will be treated like suspected terrorists by their government.

"Liquidators" clean up after Chernobyl explosion

From Voice of America: Chernobyl’s Cleanup Crew Pay a Steep Price, 25 Years On

On April 26, 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant caught fire and exploded, sending radioactive debris high into the sky. Aleksey Breus was an engineer at Chernobyl at the time of the explosion. He worked four straight days inside the plant after the explosion. He wore protective equipment, but still received a large dose of radiation.

According to Breus, all “lucheviki” – the Russian word surviving cleanup workers use for describing one another – have been left with one thing in common: illness and a lack of money to pay for medications. He says virtually all of them live in poverty.

Another Chernobyl worker, Aleksander Kramer, says he was one of the first to go into the plant after the explosion. Kramer, who now lives in Germany, remains angry at how he was treated by authorities in what was then the Soviet Union. From the very beginning, he says, the authorities doubted those claiming they were part of the clean-up effort.

And the suspicions have lingered. In 1993, Kramer says former rescue workers had to prove to Ukranian authorities “that their documents were not a sham and that their health problems were real.”

Remember when we were told over and over again that the United States was morally superior to the Soviet Union? What’s the difference again?


SECOND JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Time Magazine, 1970: President Richard Nixon tells the media that Charles Manson (then on trial in Los Angeles) is guilty.

Nixon had just come from a ten-day working holiday in San Clemente, where he found himself angered by the coverage given the Manson case in the local media. Many of the young, Nixon said in Denver, “tend to glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities.”

In Los Angeles, the effect of Nixon’s remarks on the Manson trial was instant and dramatic. While the Los Angeles Times came out the same afternoon with a four-inch headline reading MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES, Judge Charles Older went to great lengths to ensure that the jury, which has been sequestered since the trial began, would not learn of Nixon’s remarks. The windows of the jury bus were whited over with Bon Ami so that no juror could glimpse the headline on street newsstands. If the jury discovered Nixon’s verdict, the defense might have grounds for a mistrial.

Remember when Americans (and the media) cared when the President did something wrong?

WL Central, April 22, 2011: President Obama tells protestors that Bradley Manning “broke the law.”

Transcript and comments from WL Central:

“People can have philosophical ideas about certain things,” President Obama explains. “But, look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on open source.” He then goes on to add that he has to abide by certain classified information rules or law and if he had released material like Manning did he’d be breaking the law.

Now, here is the remark that deserves the most attention: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our decisions about how the laws operate.” He adds, “He broke the law.” Finally, before removing himself from the conversation, he says Manning “dumped” information and “it wasn’t the same thing” as what Daniel Ellsberg did because what Ellsberg leaked “wasn’t classified in the same way.”

First, President Obama says Bradley Manning did it. It is not entirely clear that he did it unless you solely rely on the chat logs published by Wired magazine. Manning is the alleged whistleblower in the case. And, displaying this attitude that he is guilty before he actually is put on trial and convicted may prejudice Manning’s case.

That’s if Mr. Obama ever allows Bradley Manning’s case to go to trial. When is that going to happen? And when will today’s media be as outraged by Obama’s irresponsible remarks as the media of 1970 was at Nixon’s?

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