Tuesday Reads

Posted: March 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Hillary Clinton, legislation, Libya, morning reads, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 92 Comments

Good morning, political junkies!! Let’s get right to the news.

President Obama gave a speech last night in which he made a pretty good case (IMO) for U.S. limited intervention in Libya. He stated that there were not going to be American boots on the ground and that the U.S. is essentially finished with its part of the operation–it will be up to the UK, France, and Italy to police the no-fly zone and to the Libyan people to depose Gaddafi and decide what comes next.

Surprisingly, Obama was a bit more animated than usual–actually emphasizing points with his voice and at times appearing almost passionate. At least the speech didn’t start to put me to sleep until the last several minutes.

Obama indicated that the U.S. will continue to support efforts to set up a functioning government in Libya, but that will be a non-military effort. If he stands strong with that, I think he’s finally done something I agree with and can support.

Obama also argued that just because we can’t intervene in every conflict doesn’t mean that we should never intervene at all. We have to choose our battles, and in the case of Libya we had a dictator who was using his military–and his air power to kill his own citizens indiscriminately. If he had managed to attack Benghazi he might have murdered hundreds of thousands of people.

Furthermore, Libyans had asked for our help, and our action was supported by other Arab countries and by the Arab League. For once the U.S. was doing something that most Arabs wanted us to do. If we had not acted, we would have seen an atrocity take place, and that would have encouraged dictators in other Arab countries to crack down violently on protesters.

Here is the full text of the speech, if you are interested. I do think Obama went on too long after making the case for Libya. The speech would have been much better if he had done that and then wrapped it up.

I must say, I do not understand the criticisms of this Libya policy that I’m seeing in the progosphere, and from some people here at Sky Dancing. Maybe I’m nuts, but I think the U.S. finally had a chance to do something good with its massive military power and at the same time we get some good PR in a part of the world that has long hated us–with justification because we have enabled most of the tyrants in the region. I’m glad Hillary was able to convince her boss to do the right thing.

I want to call attention to some very knowledgeable people who agree with my assessment–and we do appear to be in the minority.

Thomas Ricks was on Monday’s edition of NPR’s Talk of the Nation. He said that he was struck by how many people either aren’t listening to what Obama, Clinton, and Gates are saying or they are discounting it out of hand.

Ricks said that these three are saying that the U.S. goals in Libya have already been achieved. The rebel forces are knocking on the door of Tripoli, thanks to the no-fly zone and some strategic bombing by the coalition countries. As Obama said last night, it is now up to Libyans to decide what to do with Gaddafi. We aren’t going to try to take him out.

Here’s what Ricks wrote on his blog after his appearance on Meet the Press with Gates and Clinton:

I was on Meet the Press yesterday, following Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates. I was struck at how frequently they emphasized the short-term, limited nature of the U.S. action in Libya, and how they used the past tense to discuss it:

Gates: “I think that the no fly zone aspect of the mission has been accomplished.”

Clinton: “I think we’ve prevented a great humanitarian disaster.”

Gates: “we see our commitment of resources actually beginning to — to decline.”

Gates: “in terms of the military commitment, the president has put some very strict limitations in terms of what we are prepared to do.”

Gates: “I don’t think it’s [Libya] a vital interest for the United States. But we clearly have interests there. And it’s a part of the region, which is a vital interest for the United States.”

I also was struck at how much more assertive Clinton seemed than Gates. A friend of mine calls this “State’s War.”

Ricks also blogged about his take on Obama’s speech: Obama on Libya: Watch out, Saudi Arabia

What we saw in the NDU speech was a logical defense of what the president has ordered the military to do and an exposition of what the limits of the action will be. The cost of inaction threatened to be greater than the cost of action, but now we have done our part. Next role for the U.S. military is best supporting actor, providing electronic jammers, combat search and rescue, logistics and intelligence. That was all necessary, and pretty much as expected.

But I was most struck by the last few minutes of the speech, when Obama sought to put the Libyan intervention in the context of the regional Arab uprising. He firmly embraced the forces of change, saying that history is on their side, not on the side of the oppressors. In doing so he deftly evoked two moments in our own history-first, explicitly, the American Revolution, and second, more slyly, abolitionism, with a reference to “the North Star,” which happened to be the name of Frederick Douglass’s newspaper. If you think that was unintentional, read this.

Hmmm…I totally missed that. Follow me below the fold…

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Hypocrisy ad infintum

Posted: March 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Republican presidential politics | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

I actually know something about Sharia’h compliant finance and banking systems.  They’re roughly similar to those used by orthodox Jewish communities in places like New York state that follow the biblical imperative of no usury.  Just as orthodox Jewish communities have long been allowed clauses in laws providing institutions that reflect the no interest imperative, Minnesota had a program to help strict followers of the same Islamic imperative.  That is until today when Governor and Presidential Wannabe Tim Pawlenty shut down a program aimed at structuring loans that would be compliant in both faiths.  I want you to remember and read his rationale first.

Pawlenty’s objection: “The United States should be governed by the U.S. Constitution, not religious laws,” Conant said.

This is from a man that wants his extremist Christian views defining abortion rights among other things.  Here’s some of the background from Adam Serwer who framed the Minnesota Housing program as Pawlenty’s “Sharia problem”.

Abid Lakhani wanted to buy a home.

Unfortunately, as an observant Muslim, his options were limited. Many Muslims hold that the paying or charging of interest is prohibited, which makes it difficult to purchase a home in the United States.

“The house I was living in, I was living in it for 22 years because I don’t believe in getting interest-bearing loans,” the 44-year-old insurance salesman and father of four explains. But after years of renting, he was finally able to acquire a home for himself and his family this month through University Islamic Financial, Corp., which structures house payments so as to avoid charging interest. “For a Muslim living in this day and age, it’s difficult to practice and stay within the rules of the faith,” Lakhani says. “These kinds of options weren’t available before.”

Sharia-compliant financing is a growing industry, particularly when it comes to mortgages. “Traditional secular, money lending banks are setting up Sharia-compliant products because they make money,” says Abed Awad, an attorney who specializes in Islamic law. Companies like Citigroup and Visa have tried their hand at Sharia-compliant products. Usually companies structure the payments in a sort of house-buying layaway plan. “It’s a major moneymaker for banks.” Shariah compliant mortgages allow observant Muslims like Lakhani to buy homes, where previously they were stuck renting to avoid interest payments.

There’s nothing sinister about the growth of Sharia-compliant finance. It is just capitalism at work, an emerging market in which firms are meeting demand for a particular kind of product. But a decision by one 2012 Republican hopeful, Tim Pawlenty, may come back to haunt him in the GOP presidential primary, where any association with Sharia-compliant finance could be toxic.

Yes, there is absolutely nothing sinister about Sharia’h finance or any other numbers of laws that we have that help people’s religious tenets co-exist with modern, secular life.  This includes allowing Jehovah’s witness’s to forgo “so help me god” in oaths so they don’t take their god’s name in vain.  They can say “I so affirm” instead.  This clause lets me–an atheist and vajrayana Buddhist–say the same so I don’t have to violate my Buddhist and atheist precepts.  I’m not suppose to do anything that  puts any worldly gods ahead of dharma, sangha, and buddha. This includes all the possible monotheistic and polytheistic combinations of gods you can come up with.  Every time I have to swear an oath, it puts an earthly god in front of my own beliefs.  This really makes me highly uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, having to recognize some one else’s invisible friend creeps me out completely.  So, you know that it’s not like I want to establish religious laws.  I do believe that we can do things to accommodate various belief systems and this one is no more than an accommodation.   Like I said, we have accommodated the same set up for Orthodox Jewish Communities for years.  There were three people in Minnesota that used this particular accommodation.

Here’s Sewer’s explanation in The American Prospect which makes it even more sad that it was his article that  motivated Pawlenty to remove the program from devout Muslims in Minnesota.   Talk about stoking the flames of bigotry and hatred.  Pawlenty’s probably afraid it will bite him in his extremist Republican ass;  just as the article speculates.

While many conservatives believe Sharia-compliant finance is part of a “stealth jihad” to subvert the Constitution, Islamic finance is no more frightening than Kosher food. “You have a segment of society willing to pay more for products as long as they comply with their religious strictures,” Awad says. “We want to grow our businesses and make more money. This is the American way.” In 2005, when the MHFA issued its plan for increasing minority homeownership, the idea of the U.S. coming under Taliban-style Islamic law was still a fringe conspiracy theory, if it existed at all.

This just makes me sick.  Pawlenty can’t rise above naked political pandering or the opportunity to be hatefully macho in the face of right wing republican religious extremists.  Not even a subtle gesture of accommodation can ever be made by an ideologue and his fanatical followers.

The Donald Segretti School of Young Republicans

Posted: March 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: collective bargaining, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , | 44 Comments

Donald Segretti, professional Republican CREEP circa 1970

One of the things that I’ve  noticed about Republican politics and politicians is that they really haven’t given up the Donald Segretti tactics of the Nixon Years.  If any thing, they’ve adopted a new version that combines the lunacy of JackAss and the immaturity of early Ashton Kutcher.  They film themselves committing cons and use the internet to spread sex, lies, and videotapes.  I’ve definitely seen and experienced the sadistic huckster aspect of the fetus fetishists. They’ll lie, stalk, steal, and shoot and harm people to further their crusades.  This isn’t opposition research.  This is opposition fictional narrative and dirty tricks for dirty Republicans. Anything justifies getting the agenda done.

Now, we have the latest graduate of the Donald Segretti School of Young Republican Morality.  Will this email help undo the right wing extremist reign of Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker?  One can only hope against hope that the governor responded as eagerly to this email as he did with the suggestions from the fake David Koch which included sending thugs into peaceful labor protests.  This is from Wisconsin Watch.

An Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered an email to Gov. Scott Walker in which he suggested a fake attack on the governor to discredit union protesters.

Carlos F. Lam submitted his resignation shortly before the Center published a story quoting his Feb. 19 email, which praised Walker for standing up to unions but went on to say that the chaos in Wisconsin presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”

“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions,” the email said.

Carlos Lam: Donald Segretti Wannabe

“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

At 5 a.m. Thursday, expecting the story to come out that day, Lam called his boss, Johnson County, Ind., Prosecutor Brad Cooper, and told him he had been up all night thinking about it.

“He wanted to come clean, I guess, and said he is the one who sent that email,” Cooper said.

He came into the office and gave his resignation verbally, Cooper told the Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind. The resignation was announced after the Center’s initial story was published.

James O'Keefe, professional Republican CREEP circa 2010

Lila Rose, Snookie of the Fetus Festishists, also professional Republican CREEP

We’ve seen a number of people like Carlos F. Lam who will pull any thing.   Jame’s O’Keefe is another one of the Segretti wannabes.  His antics down here in Louisiana in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office should’ve netted him serious jail time. He was just barely blocked from sexually harassing a CNN reporter. He managed to fatally damage ACORN and create a right wing angst storm on NPR. Then there is Lilla Rose. She’s obsessed with other women’s pregnancies and Planned Parenthood. These two pull outrageous, punk’d style pranks that provide heavily edited outrage content for right wing blogs and pundits.  They both are modern day flim flam floosies.  The latest evidence of the confidence game is O’Keefe’s fundraising efforts.

We get to now add a third name to the young Republicans gone wild. This crew is the equivalence of the Jersey Show cast. They are over-the-top crazies seeking the spotlight and money doing appalling things.  What I want to know aren’t they in jail for running confidence schemes?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: March 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: John Birch Society in Charge, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups | Tags: , , , , , , | 72 Comments

Beware the Ides of March!!

Well, things remain in flux. First, Senate Republicans in Wisconsin are still holding the 14 Democrats hostage to their policies and contempt.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald wrote this afternoon in an email to his caucus that Senate Dems remain in contempt of the Senate and will not be allowed to vote in committees despite returning from their out-of-state boycott of the budget repair bill vote.

“They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition, but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded,” wrote Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.

Republicans in Kansas are also suggesting some pretty bizarre things.

A legislator said Monday it might be a good idea to control illegal immigration the way the feral hog population has been controlled — with hunters shooting from helicopters.

State Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, said he was just joking, but that his comment did reflect frustration with the problem of illegal immigration.

Peck made his comment came during a discussion by the House Appropriations Committee on state spending for controlling feral swine.

After one of the committee members talked about a program that uses hunters in helicopters to shoot wild swine, Peck suggested that may be a way to control illegal immigration.

Then, Glenn Beck decided to take Pat Robertson’s place in talking about earthquakes, god, and endtimes.

Discussing the devastation in Japan on his radio program this morning, Glenn Beck lamented that we “can’t see the connections here.”

Beck said that he’s “not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes,” then clarified that he is “not not saying that, either,” then added: “Whether you call it Gaia, or whether you call it Jesus, there’s a message being sent and that is, ‘hey, you know that stuff we’re doing? Not really working out real well.’ Maybe we should stop doing some of it.”

Think that’s outrageous?  Check out this one from a GOP House member from New Hampshire that at least retired after this comment.

Rep. Martin Harty, a Barrington Republican, has resigned his House seat in the wake of fire he drew for remarks on mental illness and population control.

Harty, who turns 92 this month, came into spotlight last week after telling a voter during a phone call that he thought the best treatment for the mentally ill would be a one-way trip to Siberia.

He also said population growth and mental illness could be controlled with eugenics, a form of genetic engineering commonly associated with Hitler’s Germany.

Kinda makes you wonder what’s wrong with some people in this country doesn’t it?  If this is coming from the country’s decision makers and opinion leaders, I think we’re in a heckuva lotta trouble.  Then there’s this bit of news on the Supreme Court coming from a study co-authored by conservative Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner.

… the Roberts Court places a huge thumb on the scale in favor of corporate interests. According to the study, the Roberts Court rules in favor of business interests 61 percent of the time, a 15 point spike from the five years before when Chief Justice Roberts joined the Court.

While the Chamber of Commerce has recently tried to downplay the favorable treatment it receives from the Supreme Court, its own top lawyer admitted a few years after Roberts joined the Court that the justices give his client special treatment:

Carter G. Phillips, who often represents the chamber and has argued more Supreme Court cases than any active lawyer in private practice, reflected on its influence. “I know from personal experience that the chamber’s support carries significant weight with the justices,” he wrote. “Except for the solicitor general representing the United States, no single entity has more influence on what cases the Supreme Court decides and how it decides them than the National Chamber Litigation Center.”

Phillips’ confession, and the Posner study’s conclusion, corroborates other data showing the Roberts Court’s favoritism towards corporate interests.

Women are definitely on the losing end of Republican Government overreach. Here’s the latest example from Iowa.

Life can’t get much worse for Christine Taylor. Last month, after an upsetting phone conversation with her estranged husband, Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.

That’s when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn’t always been sure she’d wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She’d considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose.

According to Iowa state law, attempted feticide is an trying “to intentionally terminate a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy.” At least 37 states have similar laws. Taylor spent two days in jail before being released. That’s right, a pregnant woman was jailed for admitting to thinking about an abortion at some point early in her pregnancy and then having the audacity to fall down some stairs a couple of months later. Please tell me you find this as horrifying as I do.

With that bit of news, I’d like to recommend something Bostonboomer found yesterday by Chris Hedges: Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand.

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism.

Well, there are some places in the world where people see themselves as altogether in one big struggle against the bad things that happen.  The Japanese are certainly providing some good examples of resilience and human strength in the face of some horrendous disasters.  In the UK,  The Telegraph asks: ‘Why is there no looting in Japan?’

The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.

And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.

This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.

Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?

We might ask ourselves the same question.  Why is it that some folks display altruism even in adversity?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Lessons in Overreach

Posted: March 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Elections, Federal Budget, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments

Politicians within the beltway seem to live in a world of their own.  No place is this more clear than in the results of the last two elections where voters in desperate need of solutions for big problems have been misunderstood as providing ‘overwhelming mandates’ for the two party’s special interests’ agendas.  The 2008 election was a resounding no to the direction the country ushered in by Dubya and his neocons.  The 2010 election was a resounding no to the continued mess of partisanship and the passage of bailouts and a health care reform that no one understood.  I don’t think voters understood why this issue was put above solving the basic unemployment and recession-based problems.   Polls appear to indicate that neither side gets the message these days even though it appears very loud and clear to many of us.

There’s several places that this is really clear.  First, the tea party is a prime example.  This movement has been a hodgepodge of people looking for ways to send a populist message to the beltway. However, the movement has funding and leadership that’s hell bent on returning the country to the excesses of Robber Baron days.  Some of the electorate voted for tea party candidates thinking more on the folksy rhetoric and less of the hardcore John Bircher philosophy championed by movement organizers.  Plus, they just wanted some gridlock until they could get their minds around what was going on with a flurry of laws passed that seemed less related to what they asked for than what US bankers and businesses demanded.  They wanted jobs.  They got bailouts of Detroit and Wall Street and forced into a health care plan that benefited big Pharma and insurance company interests.  It seems like the Democratic party just looked at the election numbers, smiled, and went their merry way.  Republicans aren’t doing much better since they just looked at the last election numbers, smiled, and went their merry way.

A Bloomberg national poll indicates that the Washington crowd just doesn’t get it. It has to be a deliberate misconnect. You can’t be so wrong so many times.  They just don’t want to listen.  People don’t like paying taxes that are then used to fund politician’s pet projects and bailouts for big businesses and banks.  They don’t mind tax cuts to the middle class but they’re getting tired of footing the bill for the beneficiaries of the nation’s army of lobbyists.  The Republicans have missed the mark with their current assaults on collective bargaining and programs that impact just plain folks.  Why can’t both parties just shut up and listen for a change?

Americans are sending a message to congressional Republicans: Don’t shut down the federal government or slash spending on popular programs.

Almost 8 in 10 people say Republicans and Democrats should reach a compromise on a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit to keep the government running, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. At the same time, lopsided margins oppose cuts to Medicare, education, environmental protection, medical research and community-renewal programs.

While Americans say it’s important to improve the government’s fiscal situation, among the few deficit-reducing moves they back are cutting foreign aid, pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 a year.

The results of the March 4-7 poll underscore the hazards confronting Republicans, as well as President Barack Obama and Democrats, as they face a showdown over funding the government and seek a broader deficit-reduction plan.

The rejection of Dubya and cronies in 2008 wasn’t an invitation for further bailouts of fat cats, expansion of unpopular wars and invention of a health care program while current programs have such severe issues.  The Republicans need to understand that the ‘shellacking’ in November wasn’t an invitation for a full on assault on Sesame Street, Yellowstone National Park, and women’s ability to have a menstrual cycle without fearing manslaughter charges.   Here’s the message.

When given five choices for the most important issue facing the nation, unemployment and jobs ranked first with 43 percent – – down from 50 percent in Bloomberg’s December 2010 poll — with the deficit and spending cited by 29 percent, up from 25 percent. Health care was chosen by 12 percent, the war in Afghanistan by 7 percent, and immigration by 3 percent.

Asked to choose between jobs and the deficit, 56 percent called creating jobs the government’s more important priority now, while 42 percent said cutting spending was.

Why couldn’t we have gotten a decent jobs program and stimulus right off the bat during the first few months of Obama’s term?  We’d have been in a much better position politically, economically, and fiscally.  Instead, we got a bunch of worthless tax cuts that siphoned money off to investments abroad and just enough money to stem about 2 years of fiscal disaster in the states.

There are two follies that should haunt a few leaders for the rest of their natural born days.  Blame goes first to Obama for carving out the health care reform instead of focusing laserlike on job creation.  He clearly created a lot of unnecessary strife and tempests in teabots by taking his eye off the job markets.  The second heap of guilt goes to Mitch McConnell and his party of no. The Republicans seem intent on pleasing their base and burying the rest of the country in joblessness and despair.   Clearly, this is a man that will do anything to regain a Republican White House.  This includes taking our country down with the plan.

Some one needs to tell the President that ending bipartisan strife doesn’t mean selling out to other side.  That’s what brought us a health care plan that assaults women’s rights and forces every one to pay and play.  The Republican strategy of petulance has been paying off big time for them in terms of policy gains.  They need to pay for that petulance.   Giving into Republican demands is not bipartisanship.  The Republican agenda is clear now.  The political moves by Republican governors to force their will no matter what is being met resistance by Democratic legislators.   Polls are showing that the public is taking the side of these legislators.  The President needs to take a page from their playbooks rather than doing his version of bipartisanship (i.e. giving into Republican bullying on things like tax cuts for billionaires).  The leadership shown by Democrats in the heartland is being rewarded and is clearly showing the politicians in Washington the type of future the voters want.  Now, if we could only get Washington to listen before the presidential campaign silly season begins.

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