Thursday Reads
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, abortion rights, Foreign Affairs, Libya, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: Al Jazeera, Ban Ki-moon, Barack Obama, Comcast, death penalty for miscarriages, Georgia, Koch Brothers, Libya, poor little rich boys, Rick Santorum, Scott Walker, United Nations, wingnuts, Wisconsin protests 61 Comments
Good Morning!!
Some of us have been watching Al Jazeera live on-line a lot lately. Suddenly Comcast wants to get into the act, so they are holding talks with the Arab network about putting them on U.S. cable TV.
Al Jazeera confirmed in a press release earlier this week it was meeting with Comcast on Tuesday about adding the 24/7 Al Jazeera English news network to Comcast’s cable lineup.
In 2006, the English-language version of Al Jazeera pushed hard get on Comcast’s lineup up but lost that battle.
Al Jazeera says it can also be seen in local markets in Vermont, Ohio and Washington, D.C. A deal with Comcast would give it a huge national imprint, and force Comcast’s competitors to follow suit.
Al-Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara made his own plea on Tuesday in Time magazine.
“The hope is that after what people have been able to see on Al Jazeera in its coverage of Egypt, that cable companies may not just see the material benefits of having Al Jazeera available, but also the wisdom,” he told Time in an interview.
Wouldn’t it be great if the channel *replaced* Fox News? Anyway, that’s my good news story for today.
Yesterday, Dakinikat posted audio of a prank phone call made to Wisconsin’s wacky governor, Scott Walker by a gonzo blogger from upstate NY who pretended to be David Koch of the notorious Koch brothers.
Now Horrible John Hinderaker at Powerline is fighting back (warning: right wing blog). The left is waging “war” against the Koch Brothers and Hineraker has set himself up as their defender.
The most extraordinary story in the news these days is the all-out assault that the Left is mounting against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Enterprises. A day doesn’t go buy–hardly an hour goes by–without some new attack being launched against these two lonely libertarians.
Why? Simply because they are rich–their company is one of the best-run and most successful in the world–and conservative. The Left is trying to drive them out of politics and, more important, to deter any other people of means from daring to support conservative politicians or causes.
Awwwww….those poor, poor babies.
According to the Washington Post, Walker himself is “urging others to take stands against unions.” I guess he doesn’t want to be out on that limb by himself, and he doesn’t realize that the more governors are out there with him, the sooner the limb will break off and send them all crashing to the ground. Oh, by the way, he did the urging during the aforsaid prank phone call in which he believed he was speaking to David Koch. ROFLOL! From the WaPo:
He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers.
“There’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big,” Walker said this week. “This is our moment.”
His comments about his GOP brethren came in an unusual forum: a recorded telephone conversation with a liberal blogger purporting to be conservative financier David Koch.
Oh man, Scott Walker will forever be a joke. And speaking of jokes, did you hear that Rick Santorum spoke out on the Wisconsin protests?
All-but-declared presidential candidate Rick Santorum is stirring the pot when it comes to government entitlements, comparing the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin to drug addicts in withdrawal.
“They are acting like their drug is being taken away from them,” Santorum told a small gathering of South Carolina Republicans Monday night, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
The comments came the same day thousands of protesters rallied outside the Wisconsin state capitol for the second week, upset with Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to limit collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees. Walker says the plan is necessary to stem the state’s budget crisis while pro-union groups say the governor is trying to curb long-held labor rights under a guise of fiscal responsibility.
Meanwhile, Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination, added he thinks those who support government entitlements – including the recent health care law – are “no better than a drug dealer.”
“They give you a subtle narcotic to make you feel better as you do worse,” said Santorum.
Gee, why do I think Santorum’s White House bid is going nowhere fast?
Speaking of wingnuts (and we have been), Georgia legislator Bobby Franklin is waging an all-out war on women.
There’s a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence “victims” into “accusers”—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any “prenatal murder” in the words of the bill, including “human involvement” in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it’s everything an “pro-life” activist could want aside from making all women who’ve had abortions wear big red “A”s on their chests.
Could that really pass–even in Georgia?
In more serious news, the carnage in Libya continues.
“It’s a massacre, you can never imagine what’s going on here,” says the man, who is in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Protests in Libya have been met with violent and brutal opposition by supporters of leader Moamar Gaddafi….
‘Amairr’ says that Libya is not a state and that Gadafi’s regime is ‘not a government’.
“It’s a militia, it’s a gang,” he says.
He says Gaddafi has brought in militias from Africa who are ‘shooting anyone who stands’.
He says the Libyan nation says it feels betrayed by other countries who are concentrating on getting their citizens out rather than helping Libyans.
Some are even calling it a potential genocide.
ISLAMABAD: “We are in the midst of a massacre here” a witness told Reuters. According to Franco Frattini, Italy’s Foreign Minister, “as many as 1,000 people have likely been killed in Libya as leader Muammar Qaddafi cracks down on protests against his rule.”
The Libyan army, air force and navy have completely fractured and there has been a de facto secession of the eastern half of the country. Al-Jazeera is reporting that some air force fighters loyal to Gaddafi have “opened fire on crowds of protestors.”
The Libyan Navy is reportedly firing on residential targets onshore and senior army officers still loyal to Qaddafi have been ordered to execute soldiers refusing to fire on unarmed protestors.
Qaddafi, the longest serving dictator on the face of the planet, continues to hold fort in Tripoli scheming to kill a million if need be to save his crumbling dictatorship. Anti-Qaddafi elements have already taken over Benghazi, Sirte, Tobruk, Misurata, Khoms, Tarhunah, Zentan, al-Zawiya and Zouara but most of these elements are unarmed and thus at risk of being slaughtered by heavily armed pro-Qaddafi forces.
The response from the West has been anemic at best. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “condemned” Libyan dictator
Muammar Gaddafi for ignoring his call to stop violence against protestors, which the UN chief stressed to the Libyan leader during a 40 minute conversation this week. “What he (Gaddafi) has d one is totally unacceptable,” Ban told journalists on Wednesday.
“After such long and extensive discussions and my strong urging, and even appeal to him, he has not heeded,” he added. “This is not acceptable.”
Ban warned that the volatile situation in the North African nation could take several directions—many of them dangerous.
“The situation is developing rapidly towards a very dangerous situation,” he said. “Therefore we need to very carefully monitor the situation.”
Um…how about actually doing something? Like maybe enforcing a no-fly zone or sending in UN peacekeeping troops as the Libyan’s have been pleading for you to do?
Reuters informs us that “the world grapples for a response.”
Yet, there seemed little cohesion and urgency in a global response, even as Washington and Brussels spoke of possible sanctions against a man whose 41 years in power have been marked by idiosyncratic defiance of the West.
“It is imperative that the nations and peoples of the world speak with one voice,” Obama said. “The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous.”
The oil exports which Gaddafi used to help end his isolation in the past decade have given him means to resist the fate of his immediate neighbors, the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, who were brought down by popular unrest in the past few weeks.
It’s always about oil, isn’t it? Talk about people acting like drug addicts….
Anyway, I’ll keep my eye out for updates on the rapidly changing situation in Libya.
What are you reading and blogging about today?
Open Thread: Obama is *concerned* about Libya
Posted: February 21, 2011 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Foreign Affairs, Libya, Team Obama, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, concern, Hillary Clinton PJ Crowley, leadership vaccuum, Susan Rice 52 Comments
President Obama acting *concerned.*
As everyone who isn’t living on a desert island knows at this point, Libya is in chaos, with hundreds of people killed and probably thousands injured by their own government.
Actually, pretty much the whole Middle East is in chaos, but right now the situation in Libya is the worst. Tin pot dictator Muammar Gaddafi turned his security forces and hired goons against the Libyan people, and they did so–firing machine guns and shooting from helicopters, and dropping bombs from fighter planes. It’s a full fledged massacre, according to all reports.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement a few hours ago:
The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm. We join the international community in strongly condemning the violence in Libya. Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been lost, and with their loved ones. The government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of the people, including the right to free expression and assembly. Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed. We are working urgently with friends and partners around the world to convey this message to the Libyan government.
It’s not a very strong statement, but I assume Hillary just said what the President asked her to say. Meanwhile, our fearless leader hasn’t said boo. I do hear he’s *concerned* though.
On Friday, Obama’s new press secretary, Jay Carney, said the President was “deeply concerned.”
“I am deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur,” the president said in a statement read to reporters by White House press secretary Jay Carney.
“The United States urges the governments of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen to show restraint in responding to peaceful protests and to respect the rights of their people,” Obama said.
Yesterday, the Obama administration was “gravely concerned.”
In the administration’s strongest statement on the escalating violence in Libya, the State Department said that it was “gravely concerned” about the reports and that the number of deaths was unknown because of a lack of access to many parts of the country by news organizations and human rights groups.
Philip J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, said that the United States has raised “strong objections about the use of lethal force” with several senior Libyan officials, including Musa Kusa, the foreign minister.
“Libyan officials have stated their commitment to protecting and safeguarding the right of peaceful protest,” Mr. Crowley said in a statement. “We call upon the Libyan government to uphold that commitment and hold accountable any security officer who does not act in accordance with that commitment.”
Okay, that’s nice, but they’re not doing it. Now what?
Obama also had UN Ambassador Susan Rice appear on “Meet the Press” to tell us that he’s “very concerned” about Libya.
The administration is “very concerned” about reports of Libyan forces gunning down civilians, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Sunday.
Okay, we get that Obama concerned–very concerned, deeply concerned, even gravely concerned. When are we going to hear something directly from him? When is he going to call for a meeting of the UN Security Council to decide on some kind of action? Can’t UN forces be sent in to restore peace?
When are we going to get some leadership from this man? Does he ever get angry? Does anything outrage him? Does he ever get beyond being *concerned*?
Anger is an energy, Mr. President.
What happens when a country elects a President with no ideology or core values?
Posted: November 8, 2010 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Elections, president teleprompter jesus, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: 2010 elections, Barack Obama, Broken Promises, Jimmy Carter, politics 65 Comments
We’re seeing what happens. People voted for “the audacity of hope” and “change we can believe in” — empty slogans with no real meaning. Now our country is in desperate straits, and the man who was elected to lead us has no idea what to do. He can’t even work himself up to make an inspiring speech to encourage us to have a little hope for the future.
Last Tuesday, we saw the Democratic Party experience an epic beating in the midterm elections, and what is our President’s reaction? He gives an interview to Steve Kroft of CBS’ 60 Minutes and, to quote Peter Daou, “apologizes for being a Democrat.” And then he leaves the country before the interview airs. And he goes to a country that, fairly or unfairly, symbolizes the outsourcing of American jobs.
Peter Daou really lets Obama have it for once:
The aftermath of the GOP’s midterm triumph perfectly illustrates this problem: Obama is falling over himself seeking compromise with Republicans, ceding to their frames, while Republican leaders say they will stick to their principles and try to destroy his presidency and legacy. Here’s how I put it a couple of days ago: If one side offers “compromise” and the other claims to stand firmly on principle, which one appears more principled to voters?
Astonishingly, in a 60 Minutes piece that just aired, Obama goes one step further. During the course of the entire interview he only once mentions having the courage of one’s convictions. And he attributes it not to himself or Democrats, but to Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative!
“There are some sincere Republicans in the Senate like Tom Coburn, Oklahoma, who is about as conservative as they come, but a real friend of mine and somebody who has always had the courage of his convictions and not, you know, bringing pork projects back to Oklahoma. And it may be that that’s an example of where, on a bipartisan basis, we can work together to change practices in Washington that generate a lot of the distrust of government.”
How can anyone claim that Obama is a Democrat? At the Atlantic, Derek Thompson asks “Why Did Obama Do the 60 Mintues Interview? Good question! He sure didn’t do it to advance the goals of the party he pretends to belong to and, yes, lead. Thompson:
Five days after a demoralizing midterm election, President Obama appeared on 60 Minutes to make the case that … wait, why did the president appear on 60 Minutes, exactly?
He told Americans that the economy might never fully recover. He said the White House is discouraged about the election and the economy. He admitted that he made mistakes, knowingly committed an unforced political error in health care reform, and got too heated with his rhetoric during the midterm campaign. He prepared Americans for the “hard, long slog” ahead. That the president is his own harshest critic is admirable, but CBS interviews aren’t required at the halfway point like a midterm exam. The president sat down in that chair to make a point. So what was the point?
Beats the hell out me.
Back in 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave a famous speech that is often referred to as “the malaise speech,” even though it didn’t contain the word “malaise.” That speech is often seen as Carter’s Waterloo. And yet Carter’s speech was inspiring and upbeat in comparison to the Obama’s whiny, sad sack performance on 60 Minutes.
This man sold himself as a transformational leader–an agent of change who would inspire all of us to be all we can be and to work together to accomplish great things. But what has he done since January 2009 to transform government or inspire Americans to reach for greatness? Zippo, as far as I can see.
Yesterday, the Washington Post highlighted this cheery bit from the 60 Minutes interview:
“What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high,” he said in an interview aired Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “People who have jobs see their incomes go up. Businesses make big profits. But they’ve learned to do more with less. And so they don’t hire. And as a consequence, we keep on seeing growth that is just too slow to bring back the 8 million jobs that were lost.”
[….]
He lamented his inability to make more headway in creating jobs, conceding that “I do get discouraged.”
“I thought the economy would have gotten better by now,” he said. “One of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything.”
[….]
“Some of this is going to be just a matter of the economy healing,” he said. “Especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.
Will someone please get Obama to sit down and watch a PBS special on FDR’s responses to the Great Depression? He sounds too down in the dumps to read a book. Has this man never heard of the WPA or the CCC?
Roosevelt created the CCC with an executive order. He didn’t wait around for Congress to do something about unemployment–he went way out on a limb and did it himself. And it worked. Obama won’t do anything but wait around for Congress to act so he doesn’t have to take any responsibility.
Some of us expected this based on his history of “voting present.” But a hell of a lot of people fell for his con game, and now we’re stuck with him for at least two more years. Somehow we have to light a fire under this guy, but how?
At Huffpo, Katherine Reardon compares our predicament to “Waiting for Godot.”
Perhaps we are like Samuel Beckett’s characters Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting For Godot. These men wait for a man they admit to hardly knowing but nonetheless someone they expect to change their lives. They anticipate he will sort out their problems. Yet as they wait and wait, they decide that when he arrives he will do “nothing very definite.” Still, they wait.
I waited last night for the confident Democratic President of the United States to appear on 60 Minutes but he never quite arrived. In fact, the president who did arrive said when asked by Steve Croft about his promise to change Washington:
“That’s one of the dangers of assuming power. And you know, when you’re campaigning, you, I think you’re liberated to say things without thinking about, ‘Okay, how am I gonna actually practically implement this.'”
What? Nah! He didn’t say that, did he?
Yes, Katherine, he did. This is the “lightworker” that all the “progressives” foisted on us. More from Reardon’s piece:
Croft later asked about Social Security and Medicare — “things that the American people really think are important.” In his response, the president actually referred to “entitlements,” which the Republicans — who love that word by the way — are going to have to “confront in a serious way.” Excuse me?
Why not say:
Republicans like to talk about earning what you get. That’s exactly what people do every every pay period when they contribute to Social Security. That’s their money. They earned it. That’s their nest egg and while I’m president nobody is going to steal it from them.
Or,
Let’s be very clear. Diminishing social security in any way is income redistribution. Yes, that’s what I said — exactly what the Republicans say they hate. It’s distributing hard-working Americans’ income to the rich by way of tax cuts for the wealthy.
And of course you know what our great leader had to say about tax cuts for the wealthy: he’s open to compromising with the Republicans on that. Yes, once again, our President has capitulated before the bargaining even begins.
We’ve got to get through two more years with this guy in charge. Does anyone have any ideas about how we can either get him to act like an old-style FDR Democrat or else put someone in charge who can?
Oh, Brother …
Posted: January 3, 2010 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment | Tags: Britt Hume, Buddhism, the absurdity of forgiving 'sins' 3 CommentsThis has to rate up there with one of the biggest displays of ignorance by a pundit/journalist I’ve read in some time. Of course, it happened on Faux News, and of course, its bias shows their bias in general. It’s a biggie from Brent Hume about Tiger Woods’ serial infidelity. I guess if Hume was a Republican office holder he might have a special insider view on serial infidelity, but instead he said something that is so laughable that I have to wonder if he’s every really looked at any other religions.
I grabbed this off of “the raw story” which oddly just listed a bunch of celebrity Buddhists as some kind of justification for Tiger’s Buddhism.
Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday.
“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” said Hume. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”
Okay, so now you can watch it yourself.
I want to talk to you about the complete strangeness of this response in terms of what Buddhists believe. I’ve been a Buddhist for some time . I’m a vajrayana buddhist from a Sherpa Nyingma Lineage. That’s the oldest of the Tibetan/Himalyan sects. It’s not the one the Dali Lama leads. His sect is Gelupka. I actually share lineages with Steven Seagal through his guru Dilgo Khyence Rinpoche but that’s another story.
So here’s exactly how wrong it is in Buddhist terms, let alone ‘political correctness’ or polite society terms. First, there is no creator God in Buddhism so there is nothing to sin against. Sin isn’t really a relevant concept in Buddhism. If you commit a negative action you don’t insult any invisible being, you create karma which comes back at you like a tsunami. Karma is the result of the effect you caused by the action.
You can of course see that Karma is already hitting Tiger squarely in the billfold and just about every place else, including the break up of his marriage and family. Adultery in Buddhism is considered sexual misconduct and comes under the idea that you’re undertaking a harmful behavior. It creates bad karma for you and it hurts others. Hurting any sentient being is considered the number one bad action of any Buddhist. There are, of course, levels of bad actions, and, of course levels, it follows from that differing levels of karma created by those actions. Karma (again, it’s simply a word the means the effects from your actions, thoughts or speech) can be good, bad, or neutral as a result of an action, thought, or spoken word that is either good, bad or neutral.
In Buddhism, you basically reap what you sow. As a matter of fact that saying and all the other Jesus parables were taught by one Buddha–the one you known as Gautama–who was born in Nepal about 2500 years ago. His teachings were written down in the Sutras shortly after his death by his students and are considered to have made it to Rome when Constantine ordered the locked up local priesthoods to come up with one religion that would be known as the Roman religion. They obviously lifted a lot from Buddhism as well as the other prevailing beliefs at the time.
Forgiveness of sins, to a Buddhist, is basically considered absurd on many levels. First off, you’re asking for something from something external which is dualistic thinking which is considered the root of all ignorance and suffering. So merely by begging for something from something outside of you creates more suffering. Also, you’re asking for something from something that doesn’t exist.
Your actions were against yourself and the folks around broke vows and promises that you have made and created really really bad karma. As part of the karmic chain, the only folks involved are the folks involved; not some imaginary being in an imaginary plane of existence. It’s like saying I dropped a glass and spilled something so I’ll just go ask the Queen of England for a pardon. What’s the Queen got to do with my mistake? She’s a party to nothing. That’s even given the Queen exists and a Buddhist doesn’t believe “God” exists.
Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that Brett Hume can’t even seem to grok how absurd the statement is because he’s so swimming in the concepts of sin and the need for forgiveness that he can’t imagine what it means to some one who believes that neither exists. He can’t see outside of his own paradigm. (Gosh, I hate that stupid word, but it works here.) He’s thinks that’s important for Tiger because it’s important to Brett.
This is the problem with most folks and with religious discussions. My favorite one is that you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe (fill in the blank). Well, believe me, that threat may sound horrible to some one who seriously believes all that, but to some one who doesn’t it’s like saying Santa isn’t going to bring you presents under your tree. I think frequently when an atheist is accused of being smug, it’s because generally you’re so shocked that folks think actually believe a threat like that would even register on anything but your funny bone scale. Again, if I believe it’s not relevant and it’s imaginary, I’m going to look at you like you’ve lost it completely because you can’t seriously have listened to anything I’ve ever said. But again, it’s because, if you do believe that, it’s a really scary threat for you. What if some one said pissing off Vulcan will mean you’re going to get struck by lightening? What if some one told YOU that with a straight face?
So, Brett, there’s no sins to forgive in Buddhism so how can something that teaches something is irrelevant and doesn’t exist be inferior? You’re telling Tiger everything will be okay on Christmas morning as long as he leaves his cookies and milk out for Santa.
What does it mean to be plain ignorant in front of that many people, let alone rude and socially unacceptable? I don’t think Brett Hume’s mother raised him to be that rude, but I may be wrong. I’m sure Tiger’s recovery process will not depend on Brett Hume’s theology, even though the arrogant Hume seems to think so.
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