what dots?

The GOP has become a tribe

2011-09-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I started to write this posting a few days ago but didn't get beyond the title. My point was to be that the Republican Party has become so focused upon winning elections rather than doing good for the country that painting the Democrats as hating everything Americans are supposed to stand for has become more important to them than policy. In order to do this, they have demonized undocumented immigrants, non-believers, racial minorities (through code and innuendo), the poor, the elderly, unions, working people, children, gay men and lesbians, and liberals. (They have been aided and abetted in this effort by the Democratic Party, which has proven utterly feckless when it comes to providing an alternative view of the universe.) As a result, the GOP has driven out all but the rich, the white, the bigoted, the militaristic, and the Luddites among their ranks. They have become a tribe, with all the homogeneity, closed-mindedness, and inbreeding that that label implies. All I have to do is listen as their leaders recite endlessly the same talking points over and over, often in contravention of all they have previously stood for, or look at the faces in a Tea Party rally crowd to understand how the GOP has morphed over the past 50 years.

Then, today, I read a piece on truth-out.org by Mike Lofgren that makes the case with much more authority and eloquence than I could ever muster. Mr. Lofgren was a GOP staffer in both branches of Congress over a period of nearly 30 years. He resigned last June in disgust over his disenchantment with the present evolution of the Party for which he had been for so long a loyal soldier. I commend it to your consumption with all my heart, soul, and mind. Here is the link. It's somewhat lengthy but can be read in far less time than it takes a Democrat to use the word "liberal" in a speech. Enjoy.

God just became obsolete

2011-08-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

Imagine opening your favorite newspaper or blog and reading the following story--

Genesis story confirmed by archaeological find

Archaeologists digging among ancient ruins in Palestine last month discovered a partial skeleton of what may be the progenitor of the Abrahamic religions. Half of the rib cage was intact, including a rib that has now been confirmed through DNA testing to be from a man's body. Carbon dating has determined that this "hybrid human" lived between 9500 and 10000 years ago. Theologians are still struggling with the significance of this find. "This could be an even bigger find than would be the Ark of the Covenant or Noah's Ark" said Pincus Ashkenazy, chief archaeologist for the Israeli Museum of Antiquities.

[Editor's note: The above story is entirely a figment of my imagination. No resemblance to any fact or real person is either intended or should be implied.]

As a non-believer whose inclinations run toward fact-based evidence as the most sound basis for conviction, I would have no choice but to question my pre-conceived notions of the existence of a Biblical God after reading and pondering upon such a story. But, as of today, no such story has ever appeared in any credible publication, to my knowledge.

Let me draw your attention to a story first published in The Washington Post. The text of the story follows:

DNA building blocks found in meteorites

By — Brian Vastag, Published: August 8

For 50 years, scientists have debated whether the components of DNA — the molecule central to all life on Earth — could spontaneously form in space. A new analysis of a dozen meteorites found in Antarctica and elsewhere presents the strongest evidence yet that the answer is yes.

Meteorites are space rocks that have fallen to the ground, and the new report bolsters the notion that heavy meteorite bombardment of the early Earth may have seeded the planet with the stuff of life.

“[M]eteorites may have served as a molecular kit providing essential ingredients for the origin of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere,” write the authors of the report out today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While life has not been found beyond Earth, all earthly plants and animals rely on DNA to store genetic information. At the center of the ladder-like DNA molecule lie ring-like structures called nucleobases.

It’s these tiny rings that scientists at NASA and the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington found in 11 of 12 meteorites they scrutinized.

Two of the meteorites in particular, called Murchison and Lonewolf Nunataks 94102, contained a trove of nucleobases, including those also found in DNA. But these meteorites and also held an extraterrestrial secret: related but exotic nucleobases never seen before, said Michael Callahan, the NASA scientist who analyzed the space rocks.

Analysis of dirt and ice found near the meteorites showed no evidence of these exotic nucleobases.

Since the 1960s, other scientists have reported nucleobases in meteorites, but concerns about contamination always hung over those findings, said Max Bernstein, a NASA scientist who has studied organic molecules in meteorites but was not involved in the current study.

The detection of the exotic nucleobases, and their absence from surrounding material, helped rule out contamination in this study, said Callahan.

Bernstein said the study’s thoroughness gave him confidence in its conclusions. “I don’t think it’s contamination,” he said.

In laboratory experiments, Callahan and colleagues showed how the nucleobases could have formed inside meteorites. Simple chemical reactions involving ammonia, water and hydrogen cyanide — all ingredients found in meteorites — produced the wide range of nucleobases the scientists found in the space rocks.

“It would be awfully coincidental if our laboratory chemistry produced the same things we saw in the meteorites,” said Callahan.

Scientists have also found other building blocks of life — most notably amino acids, the links that form proteins — inside meteorites.

While Bernstein said that it’s impossible to discern whether the first life on Earth was built on chemicals that fell from the sky, that possibility is now stronger. “These molecules are at the core of [life’s] blueprints,” Bernstein said of the nucleobases. “It’s possible that the presence of these molecules in meteorites made us what we are today.”

There you have it--a scientific explanation for how life on Earth came to be, one that is consistent with all we know about the age of our planet and the origin of the species. Hopefully, this new discovery will be enough to open at least a crack in the closed minds of many people who cling to antiquated notions of magical beginnings and heavenly endings.

Has the GOP become a force for evil?

2011-02-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

"Evil" is defined in Wikipedia thus: 1) Evil generally seeks own [sic] benefit at the expense of others and is based on general malevolence and 2) any particular individual or [political entity] which may follow these forces or behaviors.

I herein maintain that a political party (or sub-set thereof), which, when possessed of sufficient political influence to effect actions which accrue to the benefit of itself and its benefactors to the clear and present detriment of others, is inherently malevolent. I would also maintain that being forced to pay a fair and reasonable level of taxes is not detrimental to any individual or organization in the sense intended in the context of this definition.

Therefore, a political party which consistently pursues positions which 1) seek to deny any group of citizens access to their full constitutional rights through withholding funds or redefining terms or following a course of "death by a thousand cuts" in an attempt to pacify a zealous portion of their political base; 2) manufacture a financial crisis so as to provide the political cover for undermining the well-being of a class of citizens which does not vote "as they should"; 3) seek to thwart every policy position of a president in the hope that it will make him (or her) look bad and help their own political cause; 4) ceaselessly berate our government and its employees in the attempt to deny it the popular confidence needed to effectively govern; 5) denigrate a nearly unanimously-held scientific theory which, if allowed to progress to its logical conclusion without human intervention, would mean the end of life as we know it simply because the alternative is to deny certain industries (which contribute financially to that party's coffers) future profits; 6) focus on reversing decades of human progress rather than finding solutions to real problems; 7) consider any and all solutions to common human problems that don't originate with domestic capitalists as worthless; 8) refuse any reasonable effort to address the questions of racism, religious persecution, homophobia, poverty, hunger, or poor health on the false grounds that they are either nonexistent or beyond our means; 9) derive from the principle that the more capital that is held by the fewest number, the better for everyone; and 10) pretend that 25% of its base is not so uninformed and naive as to risk dragging the country into a mindless, immoral morass of senseless-but-well-armed blabber is an evil institution.

It has taken me six-and-one half decades to reach this rather extreme position. Still, the Republican Party of today is such a far cry from that of President Eisenhower that I have trouble getting my mind around it. The political revolution that started with Ronald Reagan has brought us to the point where neither he nor Sen. Barry Goldwater could likely run for office today without having to worry about in intra-party battle with a primary challenger from the Right. This, with none of the social, economic, and political upheaval that let to Germany's slide into fascism in the 1920's and 30's. Yet, we now have state legislators who advocate making it legal to murder abortion providers. Others want to force everybody to carry a firearm, deny health care to poor women and children (perhaps, the "soft genocide" of economic conservatism), and denying the EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gases. When a person, motivated by the promise or actuality of economic gain, acts in furtherance of a design which would inevitably lead to the death of someone (perhaps thousands), we might call that accessory before the fact to involuntary manslaughter. I would prefer to simply call it "EVIL".

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's Report--Good Job, Snow Job, or Blow Job?

2011-01-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published its report. After a year-and-a-half of delays, internal bickering, and staff changes, everyone is wondering if we really do know who to blame for the worst recession since the 1930's. It seems that the answer to that question depends upon who one believes, for there are two distinct opinions. [Note to those readers who might be contemplating writing a who-done-it novel: Split guilt or alternate endings do not sell well. People like some certainty when it comes to villainy.]

The 6-member majority, led by Phil Angelides, former California state treasurer, and five other Democratic-appointees (a group that was "not particularly ideological", according to USA Today) spread the blame with a broad brush: Wall Street, the federal government, the Federal Reserve, mortgagors, financial firms, and derivative-traders all came in for a little finger-pointing.

The four Republicans dissented, finding fault, not with Wall Street but with Pennsylvania Avenue, Main Street, and that insidious, amorphous entity known as the "Housing Bubble". Yes, if only Clinton and Bush II had not wanted to encourage expanded home ownership, thereby prompting mortgage lenders to peddle very low-interest rate products, and if home buyers hadn't been stupid or dishonest enough to believe the lies that their mortgage bankers were telling them, this whole disaster might have been avoided. But, you might ask, what about the Merrill Lynch's and Goldman Sachs's of Wall Street? Well, according to the minority, they were victims, merely trying to second-guess the housing market and applying free market principles. They were merely catching a ride on the housing bubble, trying to make a buck here and there. When the bubble burst, they were as surprised as anybody (though they hardly fell as hard as most).

The four members of the minority suffer from an ideological aversion to regulation. This is part-and-parcel with their failure to blame unfettered capitalism for any part of the crisis, a view subsumed from American Enterprise Institute fellow, Peter Wallison (see USA Today editorial linked above). I strongly recommend checking out the Wikipedia article on the AEI. Their ties to the Bush II administration are truly Cephalopodic.

Is there a dot here anywhere? I believe there is. Here's how USA Today put it:

"These dissents raise valid points, which are acknowledged in the majority report. But they glaringly omit the many failures of U.S. regulators to spot the growing credit bubble and to take actions to mitigate it. That, unfortunately, seems to be the point. Last year, Congress passed a sweeping banking reform law, and various agencies will craft rules to implement it. The dissenters seem intent on avoiding any conclusion that would argue for tough standards."

When an investigative commission, with the power to subpoena witnesses, conducts an 18 month investigation and issues a report, I, as a concerned citizen and the millions of others in this country whose very livelihoods have been put at risk, would like to think that we will be told the truth about where the fault lies, so that we can do something to head off such calamities in the future. When the report finally emerges from that closeted investigation, I would like to think that every member would sign up to conclusions that point the way to solutions, not down a road that circles back to the slippery slope that we are trying to get out of. As USA Today opines:

"In fact, the commission seems to have become a microcosm of dysfunctional American politics. The panel's four Republicans refused to go along with Democrats, then divided among themselves. Sound familiar?"

Yes, all too familiar. It is yet another example--perhaps the most tragic example--of the fact that Republicans absolutely cannot be trusted to govern America. For they are more interested in defending their ideology than they are in solving problems--even the ones upon which the very future of our republic depends.

Who are the real "job-creators"?

2011-01-22T15:28:00.001-08:00

Republicans are fond of claiming that legislation that helps working people and the poor are "job-killing" measures--most notably, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They claim that it is the business tycoons, hedge fund managers, Wall Street credit default swappers, and insurance company CEOs that create jobs. Therefore, they say, any regulations that slow down the profit-generating machinations of business are bad for the economy.

In the real world, however, it is not the wealthiest Americans who create jobs. This can be understood from the fact that Bush II's tax cuts for the wealthy created only a few hundred thousand jobs over his eight years in office. Since 2000, the U.S. has lost 10% of its middle-class jobs. Today, businesses are holding billions of dollars in their vaults rather than using that money to hire workers. Why? Because they are waiting until the market shows more evidence of spending by consumers. When consumers spend, businesses hire. Therefore, it is in reality the American people who create the jobs through their demand for goods and services.

Why is this an important distinction? Because it means that our government would be much more effective in putting people back to work if they were to put more money directly into the pockets of the people who are now jobless (such as through extending unemployment benefits) or are working but not spending (such as by cutting middle class tax rates), rather than cutting tax rates for the rich in half (as Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., proposes to do) or choking off regulations that protect our environment (which we hold in trust for our children and grandchildren) and the purity of our food supply.

If you need further evidence that the Republicans are not serious about creating jobs, look no further than Rep. Ryan's latest "deficit-reduction" budget. It would mandate a 15% cut in the number of federal employees, as if that would not add to the unemployment problem. The current crop of Republicans are either idiots or are lying to us. (Feel free to pick the least "uncivil" option.)

"Fertile ground" or just a pile of manure?

2011-01-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

In an article titled "House GOP investigator to scrutinize major Obama legislation", Mark Paoletta, a lawyer who helped run investigations for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when the Republicans last were in control prior to the 1996 elections, is quoted as saying, "These will be very fertile grounds to find waste, fraud and abuse. It will be a gold mine that goes to the heart of some of Obama's signature legislative issues." Well, I wish them luck. I suspect that the ground that they will be treading over will not be a fertile as, for example, the issue of the missing billions of U.S. dollars unaccounted for in Iraq. But, nevertheless, it could be fertile enough that the investigators might want to watch where they are stepping.

It's not the mentality, it's the metality

2011-01-14T15:24:00.000-08:00

In an article discussing the likelihood that the recent horrors in Tucson will result in any meaningful change in the rancorous political dialogue in the U.S., Roy Peter Clark, a leading journalism expert at the Poynter Institute is quoted as believing that "the shootings represent a broken mental-health system that continues to be largely ignored even while spree killers with serious mental illnesses strike with harrowing regularity".

While I agree that our mental health system is in dire need of reform, Mr. Clark is barking up the wrong tree. America's world class murder rate is not the result of having more mentally ill people than other countries. It is the result of having more very lethal guns. Passing laws that would prevent mentally ill people from getting their hands on semiautomatic weapons and massive ammo clips would cost far more and take decades longer to achieve than for the Supreme Court to admit that the section of the Second Amendment to the Constitution that reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." is not there merely as an anachronistic place-holder. How is it that the so-called "strict constructionists", such as Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito seem to turn all squishy when it comes to the right to bear arms?

"When everyone is carrying a firearm...

2011-01-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

...nobody is going to be a victim." So says Arizona Republican state Rep. Jack Harper, sponsor of legislation that would allow college faculty members to carry firearms in the classroom. Harper also blamed Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for the tragedy. "If he would have done his job, maybe this doesn't happen", he reportedly said.

Rep. Harper has a beef with Sheriff Dupnik for having said, in the aftermath of Saturday's mayhem, "We're the Tombstone of the United States of America. I have never been a proponent of letting everybody in the state carry weapons wherever they are. That's almost where we are. That's the ridiculous state to where we have become."

I think it's time that the Old Saw about the solution to mass slaughter at the hands of an armed madman being to arm everyone in the vicinity be laid to rest for good. Imagine that all of those two dozen or so people standing around their congresswoman last Saturday morning had been carrying Glock 19s of their own. Suddenly, one of their number pulls out his firearm and puts a bullet in the head of Congresswoman Giffords and then starts shooting at anybody and everybody in close proximity. A witness to that shooting pulls out his weapon and starts firing back in desperation. Another person draws his or her weapon and wants to shoot but may not at this point be certain at whom to direct the fire. Was it shooter number 1 or number 2? A dozen other citizens have drawn their loaded weapons by this juncture, anxious to be the hero of the day. Some people have dropped to the ground. Have they been shot or are they simply taking a defensive position? Two other people are struggling over an ammunition clip. Which one is trying to reload? Not a pretty picture to contemplate. In fact, it's pure insanity and could only be the solution of someone who values gun ownership over protecting lives.

The Great American Gun Divide

2011-01-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

Two stories in today's news make, once more, an oft-repeated-but-seldom-heeded case for greater gun control. The first involved a 10-year-old boy in Big Prairie, OH, who shot his mother in the head--fatally--with a .22-caliber rifle after she demanded that he bring some firewood inside to heat their house in bone-chilling cold weather. It turns out the the boy not only had several guns in a rack in his bedroom but ammunition as well. In addition, he was prone to violence, once hitting the principle at his school for children with behavioral problems in the face with a dust pan. His mother should be so lucky. Perhaps she sent him to his room until he settled down, not suspecting that he might emerge, guns blazing. According to the story in the Denver Post, attributed to Meghan Barr of the AP, the boy's mother had protested against having guns in his room but the father, recently estranged from her, had insisted they be allowed to remain. She would have been better off if she had kept him and tossed out the guns.

The second story involved the shootings yesterday at the Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. In this one, another apparently angry and deranged young man--age 22 and presumably more mature--took his Glock 19 semi-automatic and at least four clips holding at total of about 90 rounds as he went shopping for politicians and their groupies. By the time he stopped shooting, six people were dead, including a nine-year-old girl who was born on Sep. 11, 2001, and the Chief Judge of the Federal District Court in Arizona. At least 12 people were hurt, most notably the Democratic Congresswoman from the Arizona 8th Congressional District, which included Tucson. The shooter appears to be another weird loner who confounded and bemused his high school peers, disturbed the administration at Pima Community College who suspended him from enrollment, and the U.S. Army recruiter enough to reject him. Yet, such a troubled man is allowed to access--we don't know yet how--enough firepower to forever change the lives of nearly two dozen people within a few seconds.

In the United States of America, we are becoming inured of a lot of nuttiness lately. Hotheads and quacks can be found from Main Street to Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. Guns are so common in rural America that the neighbor of the dead mother in Ohio was quoted as saying, "Out here, if you don't hear a gunshot in a day's time, then something's wrong".

I'll tell you what's wrong with America. It's initials are NRA. It's the organization that turns its back on cases such as these as the "price we have to pay" for their twisted idea of the meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The only reason to want to own a gun, other than for sport, is fear. Fear of "those others" who lurk across the border, around the block, downtown, in dark alleys, and--worst case--outside their bedroom window. If they feared more their own son "borrowing" their gun out of curiosity and then accidentally killing himself or his friend or sibling; if they feared more that someone might use that hunting rifle to kill his mother or the kid next door out of juvenile rage; if they feared more that their "worthless" or "different" son might use their means of self-defense to blast into oblivion the hopes of dozens of innocent strangers; then--and only then--might we become more deserving of taking our place among the great civilizations of the world.

GOP Hitting the Poor When They're "Up"

2011-01-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

No sooner did the Republican's intention to reduce the size of our government at the expense of schoolchildren, sick people, the elderly, crime victims, travelers, and the poor become apparent than we learn that the Census Bureau has revealed that revised figures for 2009 place the number of poor people in the U.S. at 15.7% or nearly 48 million. The poverty rate for those over age 65 is even higher--16.1%. So, in the richest nation on earth, almost 1 out of every 6 people is mired in deep poverty (in the Western states, it's 1 out of 5). According to the Census Bureau's analysis, had true comprehensive medical care for all been enacted prior to 2009, it would have kept 10 million people out of poverty. (The Bureau estimated that the poverty rate would have been only 12.4% but for out-of-pocket medical expenses.)

And what do those champions of the Common Man, the true-blue, red-blooded American electorate plan to do about poverty? Well, judging by their announced intent to slash $100 billion from six months of government spending without touching defense, the military, veterans, or national security, I would say they, should they get their way, will do their best to "grow" poverty. This will create massive numbers of jobs in the health care, burial, and social worker industries. This is the price we pay for caring more about repealing the "job-killing, death-panel-creating Obamacare" bill than we do about lives shortened by poverty.

If Jesus met a battered Republican on the road to Damascus (or Detroit) would he stop to administer aid?

A Parable for Our Times

2011-01-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there lived in the land of Free Enterprise, a boy named Geoffrey O. Pretentious. Despite having come into the world without so much as shirt on his back, Geoffrey soon became accustomed to having everything he wanted. He would ask his prosperous parents for something and they would comply, asking only that he remember their generosity when he was powerful and famous. One year, they got him a pit bull, which he named Liberty.

Next door to Geoffrey's house was an orphanage. His parents tried to keep the orphanage out of their neighborhood but, due to governmental regulations, they were unsuccessful. Geoffrey's dad used to complain that, because the orphans were willing to cut the Pretentious' lawn for less than the local landscaper, they were depriving deserving Free Enterprisers of jobs.

"See what happens to the job market when government interferes?", Geoffrey's dad used to bellow.

"See that boy there?", he would sometimes say, pointing his thick finger for the benefit of Geoffrey. "He can barely push the lawnmower through our plush grass. They ought to feed him better. And look at his skin. It looks kinda dark to me. I'm going to have one of my employees check into his immigration status."

Geoffrey, naturally wanting to please his daddy and benefactor, tried to come up with a means to discourage the owners of the orphanage from staying in their location next door. At first, he would leave his toys in the orphanage's driveway, so the adults couldn't drive their cars into the garage without moving them. Later, he would let the air out of their tires or shut off the power to the house when they weren't looking. He would collect all of Liberty's poop and save it 'til it was time to mow the grass, then scatter it all over the lawn, so that the brown-skinned boy would step in it. [Note: Geoffrey didn't have to worry about stepping in the poop because he owned a Playstation 4 and seldom stepped outside.]

As Geoffrey "matured", his pranks became more and more demoralizing to his neighbors. If they attempted to conserve heat by replacing the old, drafty windows with new Thermopanes, he would shoot at them with his BB gun, although always from a direction that would not cast suspicion on him. When the orphanage replaced their blacktopped driveway with a new concrete one, Geoffrey sneaked out in the dead of night and wrote in big letters on the still-soft surface, "No amnesty for illegal alien orphans or those who coddle them. Signed, Compassionate Conservative". To do this, Geoffrey used the Big Stick that his daddy used to carry around while Talking Softly.

After several years of this kind of treatment, the orphanage moved to another neighborhood. Geoffrey's parents threw a block Tea Party, at which time they announced that they had bought the lot where the orphanage had stood and were going to tear it down and let the ground go fallow. Next year, they would allow their wealthy neighbors to mow the hay for the feeding of their thoroughbred horses and use the money saved on taxes to turn their lawn into a miniature golf course and tennis emporium.

Tear dots

2010-12-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

Having long been an observer of politics, it has occurred to me over the years that the things that make liberals cry are not necessarily the things that make conservatives cry. This observation was validated recently when Rep. John Boehner, R-OH, made an appearance on 60 Minutes. The soon-to-be Speaker of the House, with his wife by his side, choked up when talking about the American Dream and how he hopes he can use his new-found power to make it accessible to more Americans. He reacted in a similar fashion when appearing before reporters shortly after the magnitude of the Republican victory became clear.

This reaction is certainly understandable, given Speaker-elect Boehner's humble background (one of 12 children whose parents owed a neighborhood bar in southern Ohio). It is probably true that a rise from such humble beginnings to being third-in-line for the top office in the land could only happen in a handful countries in the world. If I were in his shoes, I would probably cry, too.

Lots of people cry when reminded of their childhood or early adulthood. The feelings come up at weddings, funerals, and reunions. My uncle, who witnessed the horrific reality of the German concentration camps, never failed to attend his Army unit's reunion. (He could still don his uniform even into his 70's.) Even speaking of it would cause him to tear up. Some people weep upon hearing The Star-Spangled Banner or Pledge of Allegiance. The sight of a flag-draped coffin is heart-breaking for many. It apparently caused enough concern for the George W. Bush administration that they forbid pictures to be taken of them.

These are things that stir emotion in most of us, regardless of our political philosophy. They touch our patriotism and/or sense of nostalgia in a very meaningful way. They relate to God, country, and family--the very foundation of conservative religious values.

I didn't notice many moist eyes, however, in the early 1980's, when President Reagan was ignoring the new plague that was devastating thousands of American families. I don't see many tears being shed by conservatives for the miners who suffer from atrocious working conditions; or the folks who, as recently as last year, could not get health insurance because they suffered from poor health; or the people who, through no fault of their own, have been out of work for six months or longer; or the gay men and women willing to give their lives for our country by serving in the military who are at risk of being discharged; or the women for whom an unwanted pregnancy means physical, emotional, or financial ruin; or the workers who lose their jobs to sweat shops overseas; or home owners thrown out of their houses because they lost their jobs through the machinations of Wall Street billionaires.

What good is love of country if you hate so many of its people? It's easy to get sentimental over an ideal, a concept, a document like the Constitution. What's hard is to really care about human beings--imperfect, untidy, sometimes smelly or selfish or intimidatingly needy--people. To care about them is to realize that the work isn't done when the tears dry up. And this is why liberals are different from conservatives.

The 'science is bunk' dot

2010-12-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

In a news analysis story in the Denver Post yesterday titled, "On climate, the ignored elephant", Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press makes poignantly clear that delegates to the two-week-long climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, were constantly looking over their shoulders at an invisible "elephant in the room", careful not to agree to anything that would actually require the U.S., along with other major polluters, to reduce their output of poisonous carbon dioxide. Although careful not to be too specific, delegates insinuated that the biggest obstacle to making real strides toward confronting "one of the greatest challenges of our time" was none other than "the impending Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives". Euphemisms included "governments deadlocked because of ideological divisions" and the "backward politics" of an unnamed developed country.

This item leads to connecting a dot to a David Brooks column titled, "Social science palooza", from The New York Times, December 6, 2010. In it, Mr. Brooks refers to this item from Kevin Lewis, who covers social sciences for The Boston Globe and National Affairs:

Classic research has suggested that the more people doubt their own beliefs, the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them. David Gal and Derek Rucker published a study in Psychological Science in which they presented some research subjects with evidence that undermined their core convictions. The subjects who were forced to confront the counter-evidence went on to more forcefully advocate their original beliefs, thus confirming the earlier findings.

When I read this, I was reminded of something I read few years ago in Drew Westen's brilliant book, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. In it, he tells of studies done in measuring the brain waves of college students during the presidential campaign of 2004 when presented with videos of their favorite candidate making statements, followed by other videos presenting evidence which contravened those statements.

When Kerry supporters were shown evidence challenging their beliefs, the part of their brains that indicates an effort to reconcile what they had just seen with their preconceptions became more active. In other words, there was at least a brief period of confusion and reassessment. Though they may not have ultimately changed their minds about Kerry, they had learned something or, at least, had been given "food for thought".

However, when Bush supporters were placed in a similar position regarding their previous beliefs about their candidate, the area of their brains which produces the fight or flight stimulus was almost immediately active, suggesting that, as in the study mentioned above, their reaction was to argue even more forcefully for their preconceived notions of truth.

This explains, perfectly, why Republicans can insist that global warming is "the worst hoax ever foisted upon the American people" despite over-whelming evidence to the contrary.

It explains why Republican hooligans from the Bush campaign could be sent to Dade County, Florida, to harass and intimidate the poll workers trying to sort out the hanging chad mess in 2000 and appear to be so utterly self-righteous that it reminded me of the mobs that used to string up prisoners locked up but "at risk of escaping justice" in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

It explains why Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina could shout out "You lie!" to President Obama in the middle of the State of the Union address (and be financially rewarded for it by his constituents)...and how a sitting Supreme Court justice could sit in the front row and visibly and plainly mouth the words, "That's not true," when the President said that the decision in Citizens United would lead to a massive increase in spending and influence by corporations in upcoming elections--something that we now know is a fact.

It explains why Republicans can be handed a sheet of talking points and told how to vote on a bill before Congress and they will follow it, without a word of question or complaint.

This is what happens when one's politics is based upon religion or beliefs inculcated in young children by their parents without any basis in truth but rather an unquestioning obeisance or respect for the "teller of truths". It is what happens when a person's ego has been so bruised that they dare not admit the possibility of error. It is what happens when self-worth is married to Eternal and Unchanging Truth. It is what happens when conservatism becomes preserving the status quo at whatever cost. It is what happens when one believes that all goodness came into being two thousand or two hundred years ago and nothing good has happened since. It is what happens when cynicism about humanity replaces the belief in one's own capacity to discern the truth.

The regulatory dot

2010-12-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

Today's Progress Report, from the Center for American Progress, makes clear the difference between the two major parties as to whom governmental regulations are meant to serve. No, not, as those foolish Democrats seem to believe, the people, as in "of the people, by the people, and for the people", but the banks and Wall Street, as in "of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks". That's right. According to Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the newly elected chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks". This will certainly come as welcome news to all the Tea Partiers out there in Wonderland who blame borrowers for ripping off unsuspecting bankers and naive Wall Street accountants.

Let's re-name the G.O.P.

2010-12-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

I think it's time that we discarded the elephant as the mascot of the Republican Party. After all, the elephant is monogamous, big on family, and wise. Plus, it is becoming an endangered species. None of these attributes apply to the modern Republican Party. The only similarity between Republicans and elephants is that both travel in herds and leave a mess in their wake.

I propose, as modestly as I possibly can, that the new generic mascot of the GOP become the Fat Cat (think of Garfield). Instead of being the Grand Ole Party, the modern Republican Party would be known as Grandiose Obsequious Powerbrokers.

Case-in-Point # 1: With Americans suffering from the least cost-effective health care in the Western World, the Republicans lined up last year like, well, elephants, trunk-to-tail, behind the rogue bull known as the health care industry--immune to the suffering of people whose bellies were bloated, not from too many cocktails and calories, but from organ failure.

Case-in-point # 2: Blocked tax relief for 98% of Americans unless millionaires and billionaires got the biggest tax breaks of all.

Case-in-point # 3: Blocked medical aide for 9/11 rescuers and other victims because "it wasn't paid for". If it weren't for their implacable resistance to comprehensive health care reform, beginning in 1993, such ad hoc aid wouldn't be necessary.

Enough examples for now. I will post others as they make the news in coming weeks.

My Jerk of the Month, John Tyner

2010-11-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

Every once in a great while, there emerges in the pubic consciousness [pun intended], an individual who is so obnoxious that the situation calls for instantaneous revulsion, on a personal level. Such a person is John Tyner, the young man from San Diego who told a Transportation Security Agent who was about to pat him down, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested." It is reported that John was on his way to South Dakota so that he could shoot lots of little holes in some pheasant. Apparently, the season was getting short and he didn't have time for national security considerations. Instead, he first refused to submit to a body scan and, then, in a brazen flaunting of law and the safety of his fellow travelers, threatened the security person with retribution if he (the patter is, by law, of the same gender as the patty [pun intended]) should dare to place his rubber-gloved-hand anywhere near his "junk".

I was not familiar with the word "junk" as a slang term for genitalia. I can't imagine any self-respecting man employing the term in a public setting. Having done so, I can only conclude that Mr. Tyner is straight, thinks sex is dirty, or was molested by a man in his younger days. Still, nothing justifies his current status as a folk hero among similarly jaundiced frequent flyers. Only in America, would spoiled youths create such a self-important stink over a momentary encounter with what many gay men would consider a cheap thrill. Get over it, people. Not everything is about you!

Which political party is more interested in winning than governing?

2010-11-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

A brand-new poll by USA TODAY/Gallup tells us all we really need to know about the difference between Republicans and Democrats. In the lead article from USA Today for Tuesday, November 9, 2010, Susan Page summarized the results thus:

Democratic voters want to sit down and work things out. Republicans are ready to rumble.

Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to say it's more important for political leaders to stick to their beliefs even if little gets done. Forty-one percent of Republicans put themselves at four or five on a scale in which five is the most unyielding. Only 18% of Democrats feel that way.

Democrats are almost twice as likely as Republicans to say it's more important for political leaders to compromise in order to get things done. Fifty-nine percent of Democrats rate themselves at one or two on the five-point scale compared with 31% of Republicans.

Interestingly, 49% of independents, upon whom Republicans relied upon for their sweeping victory last Tuesday, say it's more important to get things done, against only 24% who want leaders to stick to their beliefs.

Thus, it would appear that the country is destined to experience a repeat of the same obstructionism on the part of Republicans from the 112th Congress that we saw with the 111th, with the added dimension of a more powerful--and even more effective--Republican influence in the House. It's as if the boy who refuses to eat his vegetables is now planning the family meals.

The Republicans are saying that their first priority when the "Lame Duck Session" begins in ten day or so is to renew all of the 2001 tax cuts indefinitely, despite their persistent insistence during the election cycle on reducing the massive federal deficit. On the other hand, some Republicans are threatening to vote against increasing the deficit ceiling, which could result in a shut-down of the entire federal governmental apparatus.

Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell? Forget about it. Ratifying the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty? Am I nuts? Further stimulus spending to head off a double-dip recession? Who am I kidding? Putting a price on the CO2 that is over-heating the planet? What's the rush?

According to this same USA Today/Gallup poll, when asked "Do you think President Obama will make a sincere effort to work with Republicans in Congress to find solutions that are acceptable to both parties?", 64% said "yes"; when asked if Republicans in Congress would do the same, only 43% said "yes; when asked if Democrats in Congress would do the same, 51% said "yes". Unless the Democrats are willing to meet the Republicans on their own terms on every issue, deadlock seems almost certain. Nevertheless, 57% of Americans say that, as a result of the recent elections, they are more upbeat about what will happen over the next two years. Which proves either that a dollop of optimism is added to every bottle of water or voters are more naive that even I thought. No wonder the gaming industry is doing so well.

Which political party is comprised of the true "activists"?, Part I

2010-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

In a most-welcome announcement, hundreds of climate scientists have decided to set aside their past policy of disengagement from the world of politics and confront head-on congressional conservatives who deny both the existence and principle cause of global warming. Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa, Joe Barton, and F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., all expected to be assuming the chairmanships of key committees on January 2, 2011, have pledged to investigate the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions and the so-called Climategate scandal involving the hacking and release of thousands of emails between leading British climate scientists. (Multiple independent investigations subsequently cleared the scientists of any wrong-doing and validated their research.) I would hope that they would be attempting to find who was behind the illegal invasion of privacy but I doubt that is going to happen.

James M. Taylor, senior fellow and specialist in global warming at the conservative Heartland Institute in Chicago, was quoted by Neela Banerjee, Tribune Co. Washington Bureau, as saying, "The budget is spiraling out of control while government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to climate scientists, many of whom are unabashed activists". (For conservatives true concern for budget deficits, see my preceding blog post.) First, research grants are in no way "handouts". Ask any PhD. Second, according to Wikipedia, an "activist" is "one who is politically active in the role of a citizen". Therefore, a scientist who renders an opinion based upon his or her research cannot be an "activist". Nor could Mr. Taylor, for that matter. The difference is that Mr. Taylor's statement, which cannot be based upon peer-reviewed scientific research, is, therefore, opinion. (I realize that anyone who places science on a higher level than ideology-tested opinion is likely to be accused of being an elitist. I'm willing to take that chance.) Mr. Taylor's job as a think-tank mouthpiece doesn't make him a mere citizen; nor does it make him an expert. He is paid to find arguments which justify the pre-determined biases of his employers. He seems to fulfill that role very well.

Which political party is the true "big spender"?, Part I

2010-11-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

House Republican leaders, such as Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, took a strong stand yesterday against allowing the Bush tax cuts from 2001 to expire for those individuals making more than $200,000 a year for individuals or $250,000 for couples. (The tax cuts are due to expire at the end of this year--10 years after passage--because they were not "paid for" through countervailing budget measures.)

President Obama is a strong advocate for renewing the tax cuts only for those making less than those amounts. Should the Republicans get their way, the federal deficit would increase by $700,000,000,000 more over the next 10 years than with Obama's proposal. Since tax cuts have the exact same effect on the federal deficit as spending--without the concomitant widely-dispersed benefits--it is plain to see that the Republicans are the real big spenders. Boy, won't the Tea Partiers be pissed when they realize this!

Announcing my own Tea Party Points to Ponder

2010-09-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

[Preface: Over the coming days up to the November 2nd election, I will be posing a series of questions designed to help members of the Tea Party movement dispel some of the fog in their own minds as to which political party actually serves their interests. It is clear to me that they are allowing their emotions to get the best of their powers of reason. For example, they rail against growth in government at a time when corporate power--over which they have zero influence--is at a zenith and has nearly resulted in a second Great Depression. They decry high taxes when taxes are lower than they have been in decades and our nation's infrastructure is crumbling. They bemoan government regulation of business at a time when lack of effective regulation has led to worldwide economic meltdown and environmental disasters of heretofore unseen magnitude. They whine about loss of freedom due to so-called socialistic Democratic policies as massive numbers of Americans have more free time than ever because of their lack of employment due to Republican policies for which they wax nostalgic.]

One of two things is happening--1) either they are simply in need of some lens cleaner so that they can see the world--as it really is--clearly or 2) they have lost touch with reality and need to be placed in some type of managed care facility. As a writer, I need something to do, so I will assume that the correct remedy is alternative # 1 and offer some Points for Tea Partiers to Ponder before they burst a blood vessel:

Case in Point # 1: Assuming you--the Tea Partier--agree that we live in a capitalist society and that "private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit in a market, and prices and wages are elements of capitalism" [from the Wikipedia definition of "capitalism"] and assuming that you agree that there is a role for government in capitalist societies in the areas of consumer protection and fair and open competition, the question arises, "As a consumer, who is in the better position to look out for your interests: A corporation, whose principle stakeholders are the shareholders and employees, or the government, whose principle stakeholder--outside of corporate lobbyists--is the voter?"

If you answered "corporations", then you might want to ignore news stories about product recalls, ponzi schemes, sticking accelerators, oil spills, and corporate malfeasance; trust your soul to Wall Street and keep voting for Republicans.

But if you answered "government", then I have to ask, "What the heck are you thinking when you're out there supporting people like Palin, O'Connell, Joe Miller, and Angle?" Are you saying that you support these champions of laissez-faire economics as a shareholder or employee? If not, then who else do you expect to fight for your rights as a consumer/private citizen, if not your government? Or, has your conservative ideology become the enemy of your personal well-being? If so, then at least have the intellectual honesty to say so and stop hiding behind your irrational and irresponsible anger. For from such comes anarchy or, worse, totalitarianism.

From dots to dashes (of the highway paint line type)

2010-06-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, while in the throes of hypertension-reduction therapy with a new doctor (without much success at the time), I decided that, more than medications, a change in lifestyle was called for. I notified those friends and acquaintances to whom I had been forwarding up to a dozen emails per week concerning the political "outrages" of the day that I was out of the calamity clearinghouse business. I suspended the once monthly political forums I was facilitating at my Unitarian Universalist Church. I stopped watching The Rachel Maddow Show as if it were a religion. I unsubscribed from three dozen or more listserves. Finally, I vowed to distance myself from involvement in politics or debates about the rightness or wrongness of any side of the debate on political issues, except on occasion with my closest friends. Like water off a duck's back--and unlike oil off a brown pelican's--I will keep abreast of developments while never allowing it to get on my chest.

This new policy has already paid dividends. Since I began to put it into practice, my average blood pressure (diastolic) has dropped 20 points. I have much more time to pursue other interests, including long-distance calls to relatives, reading books, and planning vacations. The last undertaking is the reason for the title of this post. Relieved of the self-imposed duty to connect seemingly randomly-dispersed "dots" of truth, I can now spend my retirement life finding ways to enjoy the world as it is...or, at least, my little corner of it. In July, we will be undertaking a 4000-mile journey via Ford Focus to visit friends in Nanaimo, BC, CA, taking in half-a-dozen national parks along the way to and fro. In October, we will drive to Detroit to attend my first-born child's wedding and visit old friends there. As our Focus gets nearly 40 mpg on the open road, my conscience allows us to do this while feeling free of guilt for sins against the planet.

Socrates made a perhaps fatal point of decrying the usefulness of democracy as a form of governance, questioning whether an electorate ignorant of science, geography, other cultures, and the workings of government could possibly make better decisions than a Senate comprised of the intellectually elite. Having followed the recent meteoric rise of Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers, I must finally acquiesce to his wisdom. Having seen one of two major political parties adopt as its primary strategy not finding solutions to the existential problems that face us today but rather snuffing out the life of any ideas whose execution would not directly accrue to the advancement of their ideology, I am beginning to seriously doubt whether the U.S. is capable of saving ourselves, let alone bringing enlightenment to those far-flung corners of the world where the peddlers of ignorance, prejudice, poverty, and dogmatism find voice.

So, I will not turn my back on social justice, ecological sanity, and all the causes that I have championed for decades. However, I will turn my face more to welcoming the beauty and grace of this planet and its inhabitants while it, they, and I last. I can do this knowing that others--many of them so young--have already picked up the torch and are carrying it more faithfully than I ever did. I no longer feel responsible for curing the world's ills. What a relief! I have already seen many turnings toward the light, just in the last couple of years. If we don't turn back, there is still some room for optimism. I just won't have "my hand on the till", as if I ever did. To all of you still fighting the good fight, I say, "more power to you and Godspeed".

Porsches, not politics

2010-05-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

I have always had a thing for people who drive expensive German sedans or sports cars. Call it resentment, call it envy, whatever. Like all status symbols, such indulgences are typically a way for the owner to set him/herself off from the humdrum crowd.

Anyway, last Saturday, Laurin and I were visiting a friend who lives in a high-rise senior community. We parked our car--a 2009 Ford Focus--on the street in front of the building. As I was getting out of the car, a man drove by in one of those "classic" Porsche Carrera's with the "whale tail". He turned into the circle driveway in front of the same building we were headed for. As he coasted through the drive, he blipped his throttle a couple of times with the clutch in, no doubt hoping to attract attention to his ineluctable good taste and high fortune. (Perhaps, he was simply trying to keep his race-tuned engine from getting loaded up with carbon?)

As we walked up to the entrance, I glanced over at the driver--a silver-haired white male in his 60's or so--hoping not to attract his attention so as to give him the satisfaction of feeling that he had scored another jealous conquest.

Inside, we stepped up to the desk to sign in. As I leaned over the guest book to ask the receptionist a question, I felt a hand against my right flank pushing me aside. Who should it be but the creep in the Carrera. Now, I'm normally pretty restrained when dealing with people in general. But that morning, I was feeling a little edgy. I turned and said to him something like, "So it's the guy in the Porsche who obviously feels like the ordinary rules of life don't apply to him!"

To my utter amazement, he reacted with a degree of grace and aplomb that still stuns me. He smilingly replied to the effect that "Yeah, I'm like one of those alluded to in the joke about Porsches and porcupines." I knew what he meant. One of my favorite jokes--although when told to me concerned BMWs, not Porsche's--goes like this:

Q: What's the difference between a BMW/Porsche and a porcupine?

A: The porcupine has its pricks on the outside.

He had totally let the scirocco out of my sails. All I could think to say was, "When I heard it, it was about BMWs." Lame.

Lesson-learned: You can never judge a boob by his blips.

A personal message

2010-04-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

For years, I have been struggling with hypertension. Up until a few months ago, it has been under control with medication. Something in my anatomy, my psychology, or my karma has been altered, however, and now I find myself in the position of having to take six different medications daily and my blood pressure is only at acceptable levels half the time. My husband, Laurin, has been urging me to put politics aside completely, as he knows how I tend to get worked up over world events. Even knowing the strong role that stress can play in one's state of health, I poo-pooed the notion that only by making a lifestyle change, outside of diet, could I expect to get well.

Yesterday, I learned that a cousin of mine had a second heart attack at the age of 58. He's recovering. Last week, I found out that a young man in his mid-30's whom I knew back in Detroit died suddenly of a heart attack. I like my life in Denver. I love my friends and my husband and I want to be around until I'm as old as he is (84). I don't know what else to do. So, I'm going to unsubscribe from Alternet, ProgressNow, RePower America, and all the other purely political websites that now fatten my in-basket day-in and day-out. I am going to delete messages from political candidates and stop watching MSNBC. (Coincidentally, both Bill Moyers' Journal and NOW are going off the air at the end of April. Perhaps PBS was trying to make my decision easier?)

Many of my devoted readers--you both know who you are--will be sad to learn that this also means that I will no longer be facilitating the DisabusedUUs political forum. I will miss our lively discussions but will still see you on Sunday mornings. I would love to hear your thoughts on this posting (and any of my earlier missives), should you care to post a comment.

I have no idea whether I will be able to successfully transition into this new way of being in the world. I have been a political junkie since high school. It is in my blood--and that's the problem. Of course, I will continue to participate in the system by voting (Democratic) until I am too weak to lick a stamp. But my personal health must be my highest priority. (If political invigoration doesn't arise from self-interest, where else? But persisting in the face of a life-threatening illness would be pure foolishness.)

I intend to spend my new-found time relearning to cook, exercising, and watching all those wonderful TV sitcoms that I missed while attending rallies. I will also be traveling the country by auto, taking in the beauty of nature and visiting friends and family, with Laurin at my side. I will always care about my countrymen and women and their part in building a more peaceful and greener world. But I am passing the torch with no regret to very capable younger generations...and those seniors who are healthier than myself. Carpe diem!

A Tea Party for Liberals?

2010-04-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Denver Post contained this headline on page 6A: "Liberals work to start 3rd party". A group of liberals in North Carolina, frustrated by three Democratic congressmen who voted against health care reform, is gathering signatures to put a third party, North Carolina First, on the ballot for the November mid-term election. Notwithstanding the fact that, if successful, the result of their effort could well mean that the defeat of the three conservative Democrats would accrue to the benefit of the Republican alternatives, these would-be Tea Partiers of the Left say they do not care; they are made as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.

Such self-defeating foolishness reminds me of the central character in the book and movie, Into the Woods, Christopher McCandless (portrayed in the film by Emile Hirsch). Finding himself completely alienated by the superficiality and materialism of his upper middle-class parents, this college star athlete and scholar gives his entire life savings to charity, abandons his old clunker of a car in the desert, and hitchhikes his way to Alaska, where he plans to live in the wilderness where he can eat what the animals eat and live a life of purity and aestheticism, next to nature and all its beauty and what-you-see-is-what-you-get honesty. Availing himself of the kindness of strangers along the way--average folk for whom he seems to have little patience or time--and an old, decrepit school bus formerly used as a base camp for a group of hunters, Chris at last finds his nirvana, surrounded by mountains, streams, and tundra.

I won't give away the ending--this truly is a movie worth seeing, as was the book a fantastic read (or, so I'm told). Let me just say that the life the self-righteous isn't always as gratifying as it's cracked-up to be. You may feel that you are teaching the world and all the bastards in it a huge lesson and that may feel very comforting, for a little while. But the law of politics, like the law of the jungle, is that you either eat or get eaten. And you never--EVER--eat your own.

Don't grasp, don't swish

2010-02-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

"I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of [Don't Ask, Don't Tell] on a force that's fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for 8-1/2 years. We just don't know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness." Thus spoke Gen. George Casey, Jr., Army Chief of Staff, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

What Gen. Casey fails to mention is that his "force" includes men and women who happen to be gay or lesbian. They, too, have been risking life and limb on behalf of the security of our nation. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before the same committee on February 2nd, said, "I have served with homosexuals since 1968. Everybody in the military has, and we understand that." Truth be told, "homosexuals" have been fighting America's battles since the Revolutionary War. They weren't knows as "homosexuals" then, because humanity didn't have the understanding of primate sexuality to thus label them. Nevertheless, they were there, taking the same risks and paying the same price as anyone else. There was no law like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 1776. Not when "coming out" at that time might well mean a bullet in your head--not from a Redcoat but from a fellow Patriot.

Similarly, there were gay soldiers at the Alamo, at Bull Run and San Juan Hill, in the fields at3 Flanders, on the beaches of Normandy and Incheon, and at Hue. They fought and died not because they were gay soldiers but because they were there to do a job. The germane difference for them was that they did so while being forced to conform to a heterosexual culture that was as alien to them as the Viet Cong with whom they were locked in a life-and-death struggle. As the 21st Century approached, some of these gay men and women may have found the confidence to reveal their sexual orientation to their comrades on the battlefield...and lived. Life went on, the effectiveness of our fighting forces was not compromised, and morale did not suffer.

So, my question for Gen. Casey would be, "How, exactly, would our military effectiveness and readiness be compromised if our fighting men and women who are gay--and are right now every day doing their job effectively and on command--were simply allowed to talk about their loved one in the same chummy and casual manner as the person sleeping in the next bedroll or eating rations on the adjacent rock?" Unless you assume that the person on the receiving end of that information is a homophobe, incapable of doing his or her duty after knowing that an individual with whom they have almost literally walked through the gates of hell is gay, I can think of no reason at all. And, even if your dark suspicions should turn out to be justified, it seems to me that the only acceptable remedy would be to discharge the straight soldier who is terrified that that gay soldier might give them a wolf whistle, a pinch on the behind, or a wiggle of their booty. If they can't deal with that, how much less will they be stalwart when faced with an adversary that would love nothing better than to see them blown to little bits?

How to Get Our Democracy Back [linked]

2010-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

This piece by Lawrence Lessig from The Nation gets to the root problem--the last and most elusive dot in the matrix--without a remedy for which we as a free and democratic nation are doomed. I couldn't possibly have said it better if I tried for a year.

What Dots, You Say?

2010-01-26T06:34:00.000-08:00

My blog is titled 'What Dots?' for a simple reason--failure to do so can be extremely inefficient, in terms of time, lives, and money. Wars have been fought for the lack of looking at the big picture--seven generations down the road, in Native American tradition--usually due to the perceived need to save face or preserve individual or national power.

A case in point is the inaptly-named "War on Terror".

I'm not going to enumerate the cost of this war in terms of time, tragedy, or treasure. We're all quite familiar with those details, even if not personally stricken by the physical or emotional pain. What strikes me is the deliberate--it can only be intentional and strategic--failure on the part of our national leadership over the past eight years to acknowledge that our foreign policy actions have real consequences.

The latest and, perhaps, most graphic evidence for this proposition came yesterday, when it became known that Osama bin Laden had released an audio tape addressed to President Obama on which bin Laden said, "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine. God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue."

How did the administration respond to this statement? According to the story from the New York Times [linked above], David Axelrod, White House senior advisor, appearing on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, said, "that whatever the source [there is some question as to the identity of the voice on the tape-ed.], the message 'contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents'".

Hollow justification? For the mass rage felt by the Muslim world at the "mass slaughter" of Palestinians in Gaza during the Israeli offensive of December and January a year ago?

It seems that the U.S. is joined to Israel at the head. Neither of us can survive without the other. Israel is free to do whatever they deem necessary--out of a raging paranoia festering since the Holocaust--for the preservation of their security and restoration of their "God-given" territory--no matter how heinous, and we, as Americans, must not only provide the materiel but also the moral support.

Also in yesterday's news was a story about Israel's reaffirming its claim to land also claimed by Palestinians. In it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted as saying, "Our message is clear: We are planting [trees--a symbolic act of ownership] here [in the West Bank], we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel for eternity".

I wonder if the Prime Minister would be so brazenly defiant if he did not know that the U.S. would use its full might to back him up, no matter how many American lives were thereby put at risk? I wonder if an American president would dare to admit to the American people that the real reason we have expended so many thousands of lives and a trillion dollars on two wars on the other side of the world is not to make us secure from terrorism (the acts of terrorism on U.S. soil would stop the day that we suspended our financial aid to Israel) but to pimp for Zionist fanatics?

Axelrod's statement was a cover-up. It was a likely successful ploy to preempt the connection in the American mind of the dots that link Israel with al-Qaeda. Until that line is drawn, we in the U.S. will have to put up with living in constant fear and state of alertness. Our soldiers will continue to die in the Middle East. Our deficit will continue to rise until our economy collapses. Unfortunately, we've never been good at looking at our own motives in relation to the motives of others.

A Liberal Response to Justice Kennedy's Folly

2010-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

All may not be lost. As Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, [at approx. 8:00 min.] Congress has the constitutional power to regulate corporations as legal creations of the state. (Unlike people, corporations are not "natural-born" citizens, but must be chartered by a state of the union and are, thus, subject to regulation. This fact, obviously, was not pressing on the minds of Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito when they arrived at their decision in this case.)

Although he wasn't specific last night as to possible remedies, I have a few of my own. One would be for Congress to pass a constitutional amendment kicking corporations out of the human race and send it on to the states for ratification. (Several NGOs are currently working on petitions to Congress to do just this.) Another would be for Congress to limit a corporation's expenditures in support of any one candidate in an election cycle to the same amount of money per employee that an individual could contribute to that or any other candidate. The last would be to pass an updated version of the Fairness Doctrine, stating that any media organization--print, TV, or radio--must devote the same amount of "air time" to each of the opposing candidates from the two major political parties, within reason. This would stop the fat cat corporations from buying up ALL the available advertising time during prime time, which they could easily do, otherwise.

Is Massachusetts Mad?

2010-01-20T11:08:00.000-08:00

So, the good voters of Massachusetts--arguably the "bluest" in the country--have decided to send to the U.S. Senate as their representative a man "who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique, opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country". This surprising development, according to common wisdom, "represented an unexpected reproach to President Barack Obama after his first year in office", as well as "independents[' anxiety] about the economy and [concern] about the direction taken by Democrats." [Ibid.] According to one lifelong Massachusetts Democrat who cast her first vote for a Republican in this election, "I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it's a message of 'That's enough.' Let's stop the giveaways and let's get jobs going." [Ibid.]

Interestingly, on that very same day, "the Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points, and analysts attributed the increase to hopes the election would make it harder for Obama to make his changes to health care. That eased investor concerns that profits at companies such as insurers and drugmakers would suffer." [Ibid.]

Let me see if I've got this right. The voters who pulled the lever for Brown were so disgusted with how the Democrats have played favorites with Wall Street bankers, insurance company CEOs, and big pharma that they called for the change that they could REALLY believe in--more profits for Wall Street bankers, insurance company CEOs, and big pharma. Hmmmm. There must be some subtle innuendo here that I'm missing. [Readers: if you would care to clue me in, I would welcome it, because right now I'm about to declare myself a complete dunce when it comes to social psychology.]

It seems to me that there are only a few explanations for this phenomenon:

1) The voters are bonkers;
2) The voters are so blazing mad that they are like the father who's pissed off at the wife or kids and, finding that they aren't available, kicks the dog;
3) That the voters don't have much time for politics, so they only know what they see on TV between segments of American Idol (whereby they thought that Senator-elect Brown's daughter, Ayla, a former American Idol contestant, was cute); or
4) Like Frankenstein's monster, they can only repeat by rote, "Democrats bad; Republicans good".

I don't truly believe that Massachusetts' voters (or any other voters) are stupid, crazy, mad dogs, or monsters. They are, however, as I've said here before, dumbed-down, distracted, delusional, and in denial.

Dumbed-down because their parents were too distracted or delusional to stress the value of discipline and a good education; and because our school systems are underfunded and unreformed, its teachers overburdened, and its administrators intimidated by a system that favors parents/taxpayers over public servants.
Distracted because of a corporatocracy that plies them with endless branding, commercialism, and mind-numbing forms of "entertainment" that fill their precious and few free hours with so-called 'reality shows' and sports.
Delusional to believe that all democracy requires is to "throw the bums out" in a recessional election year and maintain the status quo in seemingly prosperous times, no matter how inept or dishonest are those in power.
In denial of the fact that, in a democracy, you tend to get the public servants you deserve; if you're not keeping up with developments because you're dumbed-down, distracted, and delusional, you're going to make a lot of mistakes in your choices.

So, I would maintain that, no, Massachusetts is not "mad", only maddening. To vote against a candidate because he or she may have offended one of your sports heroes (Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher) by saying that he was a "Yankees fan"--as some reportedly did--is to treat American governance like a petty disagreement between two sixth graders. Politics should not be a spectator sport. In fact, it's a lot more like choosing a life partner--one that you're about to share with 300 million others who are counting on your good judgment. You have to give it at least as much attention as bingo, beer, or baseball.

An Open Letter to President Obama

2010-01-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

I thought you might use some advice from someone who is neither a right-wing-nut nor a true-believer in your status as a knight-in-shining-armor who was going to make every boo-boo on our nation's psyche heal within the very first year of your term of office. Oh, yes, I willingly voted for you and cried when I watched you and your beautiful family stand before a crowd of a hundred thousand in Grant Park in Chicago that night to declare victory. I did not work for nor donate to your campaign because it became evident to me early on that, while you were not prone to sudden outbursts of emotion while over-amplified (as another promising candidate did not so long ago), neither were you the type to rock the boat by making the kind of drastic turnaround that the country so desperately needed. Now that your public approval rating has slipped into George W. Bush territory, I thought you might be looking beyond the usual advisory insiders for some clues as to how to get back in the good graces of Mr. and Ms. America.

First, Mr. President, short of a personality transplant, you need to ditch the entire Mr. Cool routine, assuming that you can still muster up true-blue, honest-to-God feelings and a congruent affect to go with it. (Your predecessor had an embarrassing tendency to display facial expressions one would more expect to see on a preschooler while delivering the most sobering news.) When everything you say emanates from a visage that never changes, you are sending the message that either everything matters equally or nothing matters at all. "Is he lying or telling the truth? What does he really care about? Does he know that I exist?"

Second, Mr. President, and concurrently with the above, you need to talk less like a contracts lawyer and more like a trial lawyer. Talk like your audience is a jury in a murder trial and not the judge sitting on the bench. (Note: this is not "talking-down", it is "talking to.") People want to hear words that stir their hearts and imaginations. They do not want you to "win them over". Most voters in the middle, independent, or undecided columns do not really know how they feel about the complex issues that you deal with day-in and day-out. What they want to hear from you is that you have a sincere conviction as to the right course and are willing to explain to them why in your gut you know you are right.

Last night, my husband and I attended a concert by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. On the program were two highly contrasting works: Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs and Peter Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. One hundred and thirty-five years separated the creation of these two works about romantic love. The first was receiving it's premier performance by the CSO. The latter can only be described as a workhouse, it has been performed so often. The first had Spanish lyrics, the English translation of which was written in the program, sung by a very talented mezzo-soprano. Lieberson had written his piece out of love for his wife, herself a first-rate mezzo-soprano, who he knew was dying of breast cancer. She lived long enough to sing his work at its world premier.

Lieberson's musical setting of five poems, written by Chilean Pablo Neruda in the late 1950's, might have been as stirring as Tchaikovsky's earlier fantasy on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, given its context within Lieberson's life. Both stories involve incipient love needlessly and far too early lost. Yet, the audience's reaction to the two pieces was starkly contrasted. Lieberson's music was like Obama's speeches--fresh, sonorous, and melodious, in a 21st century kind of way. When it finished, the audience applauded politely, some even stood. There was no doubt that the rendition they had heard was exemplary. But the music and poetry plucked the strings of the mind more than the heart.

Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, cares little for plucking strings that aren't connected to emotions, as I'm sure you are aware, Mr. President. His Romeo and Juliet Fantasy, with its love theme that has been on every best-love-songs-of-all-time album since the days of wax cylinders, blasts out "try to top this, Mantovani" from every measure. Predictably, when it ended, the crowd "went wild", standing, clapping, and hooting en masse.

Why the difference? Was it purely a matter of familiarity? Doesn't familiarity breed contempt? I think the answer holds a secret to your success, Mr. President. Here it is: whether listening to you or a symphony orchestra, people want to be reminded what it is they care about. What they care about isn't mind games, elegance, or eloquence. It's about heart-to-heart human connection. What they care about is knowing that the person or persons they are listening to care about those things too. This is especially true of their president. They don't care how many times they've heard it said (played) by someone else; they want to hear it from you. You are America's lover. When we are hurting, we need to know that you feel our pain. (Clinton said it but didn't prove it.) Not only feel our pain but will continue to feel it until its gone.

Great conductors make you believe that the music comes from inside them. If the "Great Health Care Symphony" is programmed, they don't hand the baton over to the Principle Guest Conductor or the Principle Pops Conductor. Great trial lawyers take classes in acting, just as some football players take ballet. It's time to get a little theatrical, Mr. President. The jury is still in the box and they're getting restless.

The Compassionate Conservative Unmasked

2010-01-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

It's time we held a moment of silence for the mythological "compassionate conservative". Only a moment, because the corpse has long-since ossified. It doesn't even stink anymore.

Perhaps George W. Bush was the last conservative to dabble in compassion. He played it up pretty large in the 2000 campaign, before he became America's "Great Protector". The cornerstone of this era was No Child Left Behind, perhaps the most compassionate title ever inscribe upon the title page of a piece of legislation; enough so, to rope Sen. Ted Kennedy in, anyway.

That done, Bush's reputation as a compassionate conservative was secured and he could turn his attention to abstaining from nation-building. Other conservatives could feel free to return to their first love, bloating the Defense budget with new weapons systems and fighting multiple wars against people obviously not suited for displays of compassion.

Of course, ever since President Reagan's era, the standard mantra of their party was "low taxes, small government, and individual liberty". Sounds pretty appealing to many people. Just keep the government off my back and I'll do just fine. Problem is, it's not easy to constantly battle against higher taxes while still maintaining the infrastructure that keeps commerce flowing, neighborhoods safe, and the workforce well-educated with a growing and aging population and the tendency of things to wear out.

Conservatives don't seem to grasp the concept of wear out. They never stay in one house or drive one car long enough to have to maintain them. As George Lakoff inveighs, when their children reach the age of majority, they're expected to be fully independent and never trouble their parents for anything again. The same goes for roads and bridges. The neglect of our interstate highway and electrical distribution system during the Reagan Era led to the current crumbling crisis. Now, of course, conservatives' cash cow, business, is starting to complain loudly about the condition of the roads. It's taking workers too long to get to the job. Sometimes, they have blowouts from potholes. Call it "concrete compassion".

When it comes to compassion for real flesh-and-blood people, however, the conservatives' empathy seems to be in rather short supply. In quiet, private moments they may say a little prayer for those in need but don't bother asking them to pony up. That would be too much of an infringement upon their personal liberty.

Two recent examples come almost as emotional aftershocks of the terrible tragedy in Haiti. The first came from none other than a man who, if not the prophet of parsimony, is certainly the creative force behind the college of conservative orthodoxy, Regent University, alma mater of the man who has just been elected Virginia's new governor, Bob McDonnell. His name is Pat Robertson. Here's what Rev. Robertson had to say about the misfortunes that have befallen Haiti in recent years:

“They (Haitians) were under the heel of the French…and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you’…and so, the devil said ‘Okay, it’s a deal’ and kicked the French out....They need to have…a great turning to God.”

I guess, for conservatives like Robertson, compassion is caring enough to send the very best wishes for a spiritual revival, led, no doubt, by "the Man" himself.

Then, there was this gem from the most-influential conservative in the U.S., Rush Limbaugh:

“We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Limbaugh was upset that President Obama--a moderate and, thus, not of the belief that government is not the solution but rather the problem--was so quick to send aid to those people, of whatever nationality, who might have had the bad taste to get themselves buried under tons of wrecked buildings. No doubt, it was a fiscal conservative who wrote the building code that saved all the tax dollars that can now be used for reconstruction.

So, the next time you hear a conservative effuse the standard talking points of "low taxes, small government, and individual liberty", remember that policies just like those produce the offspring of societal decline and death. Offspring that can only be aborted by politicians who understand history, think outside their own skin, and give a hoot for the other--politicians who don't just pay lip service to Jesus but actually try to live as he did.

Brief acknowledgement

2010-01-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank my friend, Gerry Todd, for the following string of modifiers of the American electorate, as used in the previous post: dumbed-down, delusional, distracted, and in denial. I couldn't have said it better. Perhaps soon, I'll explain why I think these descriptors are apt.

Shooting the messenger in 2010

2010-01-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

It's widely acknowledged that the Recession That Was Almost a Second Great Depression started in December of 2007. That was fully one year before George W. Bush left office. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, commonly referred to as the "bailout" of the U.S. financial system, was proposed by Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary under President Bush. President Bush signed it into law within hours of its bipartisan enactment by Congress in October of 2008.

The Great Recession in which we are currently mired was a byproduct of the economic policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations. [Note: At least, during the Clinton years, jobs were created by the millions. During Bush II's two terms, 90% fewer jobs were created than under Clinton. Not only were there few new jobs under eight years of a Republican administration, but real median income was 0.6 percent lower in 2007 than it was at the end of the Clinton era.]

Within a month of taking office, President Obama signed into law a $787 billion economic stimulus bill intended primarily to put Americans back to work. Since then, he has signed a bill to rescue General Motors and Chrysler from bankruptcy and get car and truck assembly lines cranked up again. This administration's policies have headed-off what was likely a second Great Depression and stemmed even worse unemployment among state workers, including teachers.

I know that folks who are about to lose their homes to foreclosure, who are without a job and unable to find one, who can't get a loan to start a small business, or whose unemployment benefits are about to run out, have little patience for a recovery that is still in its early stages. What I can't understand is why they would want to punish the party in power in favor of a party that has never in its modern history done them any favors.

Most pundits are predicting a possible Republican blowout come November's elections. This, despite the fact a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that the Tea Party is favored by more Americans than either the Democratic or Republican Parties, by 41 to 35 to 28% favorable, respectively. Almost surreal, isn't it? Of course, the Tea Party, which doesn't even have a leader that 99% of Americans could name (although Sarah Palin is apparently trying to plant its brand squarely on her forehead), is more closely associated with the Republican Party than the Dems. Since it's unlikely that the Tea Party will be able to have more than a few candidates' names on ballots by November, we must assume that its loyalists will pull the Republican lever on November 2nd. Assuming that all of them--conservatives and independents--do that, we might expect the current out party to receive almost 70% of the vote.

Not at all likely. But 60% of the vote might well be within reach, which would almost surely put Republicans near or at a majority in the U.S. House and guarantee them the ability to stop any piece of liberal legislation in its tracks in the Senate. The result would be two years of stalemate in Washington. Is stalemate what the voters really want? Economically speaking, stalemate is what we effectively got during the Bush II years in office. No new jobs, no income growth, no progress on climate change or health care (oh, yes, I forgot the donut hole), more speculation on Wall Street, more governmental incompetence, and more--yes, more--debt.

I know that the electorate is dumbed-down, distracted, delusional, and in denial, but, surely, they can't be this stupid!

Keeping one step ahead of airplane terrorists

2010-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

Today's Denver Post quotes President Obama as saying during his report-out on airline bomb-plot security yesterday, "There is, of course, no foolproof solution. We have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary." The article states that one of the president's recommendations is to "[i]ncrease the use of explosive detection technology, including imaging technology, at airports."

Here's a thought:

We know that, while the new "whole body imaging" technology might reveal explosives hidden in a person's clothing, including shoes and underwear, it is not capable of revealing explosives hidden under the skin. How long will it be before al Qaeda operatives, who have little to be squeamish about, realize that explosives hidden inside their bodies cannot be detected? For example, in incision could be made in the abdomen and the explosives neatly tucked inside. The chemical that ignites the explosive could then be injected through the skin once on board the airplane. (If oxygen is required for ignition, a tube that protrudes through the skin might suffice. The tube would also facilitate ignition.)

Since current technologies offer no defense against this scenario, I would propose that all passengers be subjected to a full strip search before boarding. This would reveal any recent scars and apparatus that might fit the above description. I realize that this would be likely to reduce the number of people interested in flying. However, this would be a boon for the environment. Oh, and it would also create new jobs. Not many proposals can be said to reduce the risk of terrorism, save the planet, and help end the recession at the same time. I would promote the program through the slogan, "Shy? Don't fly."

My letter to USA Today

2010-01-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Here's the text of a letter to the editor that I sent today. It was in response to their editorial in yesterday's edition and its published response from Newt Gingrich--

In his Opposing View on the subject of whether partisanship in public debate is getting out of hand, former House Speaker and current senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Newt Gingrich, states that "when something threatens the life of the country, it would be suicidal not to speak up." He adds, "If we do not recognize we are at war [on terror] and behave effectively against enemies who want to kill us, we are going to lose a lot of American lives. Warning that change is needed to save American lives and secure America from enemies is not partisanship. It is citizenship at its most profound."

For most of my sixty-three years, it has been standard practice to protest against the waging of wars considered to be immoral in their very conception. At the same time, it was considered impolitic, if not treasonous, to directly criticize our Commander-in-Chief, not for the immorality of the cause to which he committed our fighting forces, but for an imagined lack of care for the safety of Americans in how he waged it. Surely, there is no valid argument that President Obama has been "ineffective" in his efforts to defend the people of the United States from terrorism, especially in contrast to the previous administration, whose incomprehensible attempt to rout phantom terrorists from Iraq resulted in the introduction of Al Queda to that country. To imply otherwise is to give aid and comfort to an enemy that has not a single moral leg to stand on. That is not citizenship, profound or otherwise; it is dangerously partisan demagoguery.

The true cost of capitalism

2010-01-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

Subtitle: Capitalism for dummies

For those of us who were not economics majors--or didn't get a college degree--I am going to attempt to make the case for why capitalism and democracy do not play well together. The underlying theme will be that capitalism is based upon the notion of the "shining individual upon a hill" or, to put it a little more succinctly, man-as-god. [Note: nothing that I say here is meant to imply that it is not possible, even likely, that there will be women-as-gods, too.]

Here is the hypothesis behind my little theory: If a society is based upon the ideas 1) that individuals should be empowered to achieve the maximum they can achieve in terms of the accumulation of wealth, as long as it is done within the law; 2) that those laws should be structured to encourage the accumulation of individual wealth even at the risk of doing injury to others (as long as that injury is byproduct and not the objective); and 3) that the political system is engineered to tip the balance of power in favor of the wealthy (and the corporations they control), then it follows that all societal costs incidental to the accumulation of wealth, whether financial or health-related, will fall upon the broader society.

This little theory of mine, while certainly not new or unique, may, nonetheless, come as a somewhat shocking realization to some, including me. Furthermore, it tends to make finding solutions to crises more problematic. For example, we know that global climate change is an imminent and existential threat to human existence. Yet, capitalistic societies seem completely incapable of focusing on the issue with enough resolve to take the steps likely to slow down the inevitable march to oblivion. Why is that?

I'll tell you. All you have to do is look at the state of the two political parties in the U.S. today. The Republican Party has become the State Apologist for the New American Oligarchy. They are buried so deep in the pockets of the fat cats that they cannot see daylight. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is divided between the faction that still cares about the well-being of common folk and the faction that is politically aligned with Democrats--for pragmatic reasons--but ideologically aligned with Republicans. Nowhere to be found is a party which not only cares, first and foremost, about the 95% of Americans who control but 50% of the nation's wealth but also is in a position to challenge the power elite.

Since the other capitalist countries around the world are looking to the U.S. for leadership on global climate change, nothing truly revolutionary is going to happen unless we show the way.

Here are a couple of examples from yesterday's news of why I am not optimistic that we ever will--

A) The Washington Post, in a story by Lyndsey Layton, informs us that our own Environmental Protection Agency has, for 33 years, kept the names and physical properties of approximately 16,000 chemicals in commercial use secret, both from the public and the federal government, under a little-known federal law designed to protect trade secrets.

B) The Denver Post, as reported by Margaret Jackson, states that redevelopment of an area of the city includes land once owned by a chemical company"which salvaged uranium from defective fuel rods." It seems the company closed in 1982,"leaving the site contaminated with radioactivity. The site was cleaned up under the federal Superfund program in 2006."

So, let's analyze this in context. Chemical companies' profits are enhanced by federal government policies that protect their trade secrets, even at the risk that those same chemicals may be ingested, inhaled, or otherwise absorbed into the bodies of the very same people--of which, by which, and for which, our government was established--and any toxic messes they should negligently leave behind will be cleaned up at the expense of those same people. At least, we're not being forced to do the actual labor, in which case, we would literally be the indentured servants of industry.

This madness must stop! Our system of financial accounting must, in the future, internalize the costs to society of commercial/industrial enterprise. Only then will the true value of a green economy become evident and a fair trade-off with the chemical and oil industry be made.

It's time to prepare for the decline and fall of America

2010-01-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

You know that times are bad when even landfill owners are complaining about the drop-off in the amount of refuse produced by Americans. I see this as a good sign, however. Not only good, but both inevitable and soon to become something akin to the sea change from high tide to low.

The United States of America has--for 170 years since the time of Alexis de Tocqueville--been the world's favorite son. The Dutch Empire lasted for about 150 years and the Second British Empire for about 130. Both owed their decline in major part to the obsolescence of their power generation systems--for the Dutch, it was their hydrology and for the British their coal-fired industrial revolution. When their source of power diminished, either through inefficiency or resource depletion, their empire withered and died.

The U.S. is faced with exactly the same circumstance today. Geopolitics has driven American foreign policy since the end of the Civil War and the concomitant rapid growth of industrialization in this country. We are a leviathan empire whose culture, machinery, and arsenal are slickened with oil. With the arrival of peak oil production already upon us, the end is in sight for U.S. supremacy over world commerce and economic growth.

China has outmaneuvered us in buying up the rights to the rare earth metals that are needed for the production of computers, cell phones, and hybrid electric car batteries. Unwilling to sell the U.S. the raw materials, China will only allow us to purchase the end products. Thus, we will continue to be in debt to them for the foreseeable future.

I expect to be blogging on this subject much more in coming days. Climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, and America's public debt are the issues that will result in our continuing decline in status as a world power. They are really the only issues that matter. They are the issues that most threaten an oligarchy such as the U.S. That is why they are below the radar screen--made in China--of the mainstream media, the president, and the Congress. I will be the ant knocking on the door of the drawbridge, trying to wake the sleeping giant.

2010s: Decade of grief or glory?

2010-01-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."--Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.

It seems to this mediocre blogger that the United States of America is tottering on a brink no less daunting than that so eloquently elicited by President Lincoln on the bloody hills of Gettysburg, PA, on that day almost 140 years ago when he spoke the lines quoted above. Today, it is not bombs and bullets that threaten the cause for which patriotism summons our devotion. The question we as Americans are root-bound to answer is whether we shall allow incivility and indecency in public affairs to drive a stake through the heart of a dream that has tickled the fancies of millions of freedom-loving people the world over for 225 years.

The notion that it is the rightful duty of any political party to design its entire strategy not on a platform of ideas but on a political pogrom against a duly-elected president and the opposition party, so as to render ineffective any attempts to rectify the abuses and deficiencies of the status quo, and thereby be once again elevated into a position of power based not on merit but on being the last party standing would surely set the nation on a course of destruction from which we would never recover. It is a strategy based on the kind of hooliganism that shut down the counting of votes in Florida in 2000 and led to the elevation of a president not by voters but by a narrow majority of jaundiced jurists.

Democracy can not withstand such an onslaught. Those of us who believed President Reagan when he called American a "shining city on a hill" and recognized that what makes a city shiny is not its neon lights--or else, Las Vegas would be the true "All-American City"--but the glow that arises from the decency of its people must now take up that "great task remaining before us" with which Lincoln entrusted us and demand that mutual respect and statesmanship be the mantra of all elected officials from this day forward, else we shall surely "perish from the earth".

Conservatives' Uh-Kyl-eze Heel

2009-10-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

Today's news sheds a great deal of light on what it is that drives today's modern conservative. You know the type--anti-tax, small government, tea-bagging advocates for free enterprise, capitalism, and maximizing individual liberty. USA Today, in a story headlined "Health care bills tackle gender gap in coverage" (p. 5A), quotes Sen. Jon Kyl, defending his right as an American not to have to pay for mandatory maternity coverage, "I don't need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive".

Kyl is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is currently engaged in putting the final touches on a health care reform bill. Also sitting on that committee is Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Her retort to Kyl was, "I think your mom probably did".

Thus, we have it--writ small--the inherent disconnect between the two sides in this or any other debate in America over the role of government vis-a-vis what has been called the "common good". One side feels that a society is never more noble than when it harnesses the common treasure for the common weal. The other feels ennobled when the few are empowered to gather the highest possible percentage of the treasure unto themselves--even to the point of feeling resentful that a neighboring mother's labor might cost them a few dollars more for health insurance.

I know which kind of society I would not want to live in. I pray I never do.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan - Newsroom - Health care reform

2009-09-04T12:07:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to a statement from my employer regarding health care reform. This post does not necessarily represent the point of view of the blog authors (Lewis and Dan)...

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan - Newsroom - Health care reform

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What duty?

2009-08-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Today's USA Today [Opinionline, p. 7A] includes a quote from Jonathan Cohn, senior editor of The New Republic, as follows:

"[Ted] Kennedy...was a crusader....He saw a country full of people made vulnerable--by circumstances of birth, economic misfortune, illness, or injury....He believed we had an obligation, as a nation, to protect them. And so he spoke out--for universal health care, for civil rights, for aid to people with disabilities, for more generous assistance to the poor. And when opponents criticized those moves, because they meant bigger government or bigger taxes, Kennedy didn't deny the charge. He justified it, in a way few Democrats would dare to do today. It was, he said, the way Americans fulfill their duty to one another."

Americans duty to one another? Now, there's a novel notion. Of course, there are millions of Americans who step up to the plate to help other Americans in need through charitable service or private donations. This is all very good. However, there are some ways of helping our fellow Americans for which private charity simply cannot get the job done. One of those areas is health care. Nor is the free market the answer. Why? Because when it comes to health care, profitability, prevention, and doctor-patient privilege just do not mix well. Cost efficacy judgments must be made by those with the most at risk in the treatment, not by those whose stake is measured solely by the advantage to shareholders.

It's like one of the health care professionals said tonight on Bill Moyers' Journal: "We live in a society, not just an economy." Kennedy understood that. The question now is, does Obama get it?

In Memorium--Edward M. Kennedy

2009-08-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

I became a Democrat in November of 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th president of the United States. I was 14 years old and just on the cusp of forming my own moral and political consciousness. President Kennedy's assassination, three years later, shattered whatever illusions I had about the nobility of politics in America. It cauterized my naivete as to the superiority of America's ideals and ushered in a brief but devastating era of the worst form of anarchy--ballot by bullet. It was that mind-numbing insanity that brought down another of my heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in 1968. What idealism about America I had left at that point, bled to death in that same moment.

Today is the first day in my life as a socially sentient being that there is not a Kennedy brother walking the earth--no voice, unabashedly liberal, yet willing to speak with, to, and for those of a very different ideology. Yet, I cannot say that Ted Kennedy was my idol; a hero, yes, but not my ideal. Like every tragic hero whose story has ever been written, he was noble, yet flawed. He drank too much, womanized far too often, and indulged his enormous appetites more than I could fathom. Yet, his voice was raised, in defense of those less fortunate, more loudly and clearly than I could ever muster. He understood his wealth and how to enjoy it to the fullest. But he never forgot that "there, but for the grace of God, go I". For that, I will always admire the man and seek to emulate him.

Thought dot II

2009-08-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail."--Abraham Maslow, 1962 [Also known as "The Law of the Instrument"]

The trademark cry of fiscal conservatives and libertarians is "low taxes, small government" as the solution to each and every problem that comes before Congress. It is, in Maslow's vernacular, the only tool in their toolbox. In times of economic contraction, such as we are experiencing now, their response is to use a larger hammer.

Even in matters of life-and-death, such as health care reform, tight-wad true-believers will consistently pull out the same tool and pound on the problem with all the enthusiasm of a preschooler gleefully driving a square peg into a round hole--oblivious to the damage done to both peg and hole. Thus, we hear [USA Today, Monday, August 24, 2009, page 6A] the voices of Senators Lieberman and Conrad calling for delaying any further action on health insurance reform legislation "until the economy's out of recession".

Despite the fact that some economists are now saying the worst of the recession is likely over, in almost the same breath they caution us that employment may not return to normal levels for several years. Since our current health insurance system is joined at the (artificial) hip to employment, delaying action on reform--again!--after 50 years of dissembling and demurral by the same mindset that is calling for yet more delay will only mean more Americans suffering delayed treatment and premature death due to a lack of money to pay for sick care. These voices deserve to be ignored and, if necessary, bowled over before they can strike one more blow against sanity, humanity, and reality.

Dot thought

2009-08-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

[Editor's note: This is my first attempt to come up with very succinct "dot thoughts" that capture a profound truth which hopefully will cut through some of the confusion and obfuscation that rampages amongst the citizenry.]

Subject: The health care public option

Background: Those opposed to the public option opine that it would eventually lead to a "government takeover of U.S. health care".

The Question: Are they right?

The Short Answer: Yes...and that's a good thing.

The Dot Thought for today: Who would you trust more with your life (and the availability and source of health care insurance fundamentally gets down to this question)? Option 1: a private, for-profit company bureaucrat whose bonus and salary is determined by the difference between the amount taken in via premiums and the amount paid out in claims. Option 2: a government bureaucrat whose salary and performance review is based upon the level of service delivered to the customer/taxpayer (or is based on time-in-service with indirect relation to performance, if at all).

Conclusion: If you chose Option 1, your interests are probably tied to those of the private insurance industry, either due to your investments in the industry or its investments in you. Your health is probably good and your income better than average. If you chose Option 2, you probably have no financial stake in the game at all--outside of the hope that your premiums will be lower or coverage more readily available--and feel some level of insecurity that you will have medical coverage when you need it.

Because the latter group is many times larger than the former, the public option would become reality, if left to a vote of the people. If it doesn't, the outcome will have been driven by beltway politics and not democracy.

It's that simple.

Categorizing the Electorate Redux

2009-08-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'd like to thank Lewis for using the word "redux" recently, and hence bringing it into my vocabulary.

A few months ago I posted a categorization of the U.S. electorate which looked something like this, each with about 25%:

Social Conservative
Economic Conservative / Libertarian
Moderate
Progressive

Another way of looking at things is that globalists account for 50% of the electorate, and isolationists account for 50%. Social Conservatives and Progressives tend to be more isolationist, at least in terms of being against the multi-national mindset which looks at the world as one big integrated economy. The powerful centrists -- Moderates and Economic Conservatives -- tend to be more globalist in perspective.

Of course, there are exceptions. The Ron Paul Libertarians tend to be isolationist. And many progressives have a strong global perspective. So the globalist v isolationalist categorization doesn't map all that neatly on top of my previous categorization schema. But there is a generalization which can be made: the centrists tend to be in favor of free trade and a more integrated global economy, while the left and right wing tends to be against the recent torrid pace of globalization.

Both the left and right are in this sense conservative. They oppose different aspects of rapid change. The right is conservative with regard to behavioral standards. The left is conservative with regard to the environment. Both are conservative with regard to the economic dislocation caused by globalization.

In this regard, the Obama Administration, like the Clinton Administration before, is right smack in the center. Both the left and right are marginalized. However, if the economy fails to improve and, in fact, worsens, the center will become weaker as more and more American realize the global economy isn't working to their benefit these days...

Thompson Home (Formerly Thompson Home For Old Ladies)--Detroit MI

2009-07-19T08:45:00.001-07:00

Thompson Home (Formerly Thompson Home For Old Ladies)--Detroit MI
Originally uploaded by pinehurst19475

This 1884 Queen Anne structure is an early work by noted local architect George D. Mason. The home was established as a care facility for older women by philanthropist Mary Thompson. The building is now owned by Wayne State University and houses the School of Social Work. This is where Al Acker works...

IT'S NOW TIME TO THINK OF OUR CHILDREN

2009-06-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

I am 63 years old. That makes me one of the oldest Baby Boomers in the U.S. I am young enough to have been spared the deprivations of the Great Depression and the horrors of World War II. I grew up with the paranoia of the Red Scare and the Cold War and the turmoil of the Vietnam War. Yet, I remained conscious of an abiding truth that gave rise to an optimism completely alien to those of my parents' era--I knew that I and those of my generation were likely to thrive in terms of lifestyle beyond what they had been able to achieve and that many of the struggles they endured in attempting to secure a college education and find productive and rewarding work, wherever that might take them, would not frustrate our dreams as theirs had been. I and those of my generation were truly the first to have a chance of finding the American Dream on a wholesale level.

In my youth, I saw that opportunity coming from standing on the shoulders of my parents' relentless devotion to making that American Dream come true, not only for me but, in a small measure for themselves. They owned a very modest ranch house in a new subdivision, were able to take vacations, drive newer cars, and set some money aside for their retirement. I, on the other hand, was able, upon college graduation and securing my first job, to buy a first car and house more flashy or capacious than they were living in after a lifetime of working.

It never occurred to me that my instant success might be due to something other than my own hard work or marriage to a woman with a well-paying career of her own. I took for granted that my children would also find the American Dream as easy in the realization as in the speaking of its name. Cars would continue to grow in power, houses in the number and size of rooms. Gas would remain abundant and cheap. The air would be cleaned by mechanical and chemical catalytic methods. Electronic devices would evolve to bring us an unending string of new forms of entertainment and lower and lower prices. Freedom and equality would inevitable advance as American ingenuity brought "better living through chemistry" to all the citizens of the world. Future success must depend upon the inevitability of continuous and uninterrupted growth--in population, infrastructure, ingenuity, and, as day follows the night, consumption of cheap and abundant oil.

It has been a good life. Not luxurious but comfortable. I have experienced all of the perquisites and privileges of middle class life in the U.S. One of those was the freedom to acquire without regard for any downside. Nor did I give any thought to whether my acquisitions played any part in how happy I was on any given day. Although I felt myself to be somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to TV commercials, I never doubted that they and the programs that bookended them influenced my wants and desires. Nor did I question the fundamental premise that ownership and contentment were somehow related.

I am now retired and in chapter three of my life. My consumerism has been tempered by a flatlined income. At some point, I realized that I could be happy without a closet full of new clothes or a living room adorned with spotless furniture. I learned that downsizing my living space was not the end of world; in fact, it could be the beginning of a new, more care-free life. I downsized to save money and reduce my carbon footprint. Fifteen years ago, I had no awareness of what a carbon footprint was or why it mattered. Today, I realize that, to my children and their children, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere matters more than the status conveyed by anything they might own or, for that matter, the rate of growth of the GDP. What matters to them is not any longer their prospects of having a higher standard of living but whether they will live to retire at all. By that measure, fear of diminished prospects of wealth today or temporary tax increases or postponing gratification pales in comparison.

Why All Moralities Are Not Equal, Redux

2009-04-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

Today brings the news that Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has just switched from a Republican to a Democrat. He said that his former party has simply moved away from the center, leaving him more closely aligned with the Democrats. Hmmm. Perhaps this will please not only the Dems but the Republican base, as well. After all, they are the champions of the morality of "purity". Doesn't the departure of a member who did not hew to a strict conservative line leave their party more pure than it was yesterday? Sounds like a win-win to me.

Why All Moralities Are Not Equal

2009-04-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

In an article published by Alternet titled, Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe--And Here's Why It Matters, Tom Jacobs expounds upon the morality theories of psychologist Jonathan Haidt to the effect that the problem with liberals is that we fail to understand--and, therefore, discount--the moral values of conservatives when making our cases for our favorite policies. In the article, Jacobs, quoting from Dan McAdams, Northwestern University research psychologist and noted author, describes the "five foundational moral impulses" as follows:

Harm/care: It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
Fairness/reciprocity: Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
In-group loyalty: People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty, and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
Authority/respect: People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
Purity/sanctity: The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination, and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

According to Haidt (and I don't think many folks on the right or left would vehemently disagree), liberals tend to feel strongly about the first two in the list but often feel cold or even negatively about the last three. Further, Haidt argues that his studies have indicated that conservatives are drawn to loyalty, authority, and purity--thought of as outdated or backward by liberals--while acknowledging the importance of preventing harm and being fair.

The article by Jacobs began with him telling a story about Haidt--how, though a liberal himself, he would fly almost into a rage over bumper stickers on "Volvos" such as, "Support Our Troops: Bring them home!" or "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." What upset Haidt was that, in his view, liberals were thus being disingenuous for claiming to be patriotic or supporting our troops when we were, in fact, being critical of our government because our moral system doesn't value loyalty to nations.

Well, gee, we ARE talking about a bumper sticker! I don't see a lot of balancing of competing moralities on conservative's bumper stickers, either. (America: Love It or Leave It! comes to mind.)

The issue here isn't really bumper stickers. It's whether or not the five moralities which Haidt describes--and for which he believes it is incumbent upon liberals to account--are all equal. If there are moralities among the list which can lead--inevitably--to the diminution of any of the others, then we should not pay as much homage to those. I would argue that, if history has anything worthwhile to teach, it is that a morality based upon the word "should" should (irony intended) be taken with a grain of salt.

Example 1: In-group loyalty. I see this brand of morality as virtually worthless as a moral compass. In fact, I would say that it is greatest force for evil in the world (unless your cousins in a strange city insist that you attend a football game with them and not rooting for their team would jeopardize family ties (another questionable, but arguably discretionary, loyalty)). If you doubt what I am saying, let me remind you that Hitler was really, really big on in-group loyalty--as are the Taliban, the Mafia, and others of that ilk. Unless you're talking about Nobel Peace Prize winners, almost all in-groups have nothing at all to do with moral meritocracy; they are about circumstances over which the individual members have absolutely no control and have few requirements for membership beyond happenstance.

Let me say, as forcefully as I can, that I do believe in patriotism. But it is a patriotism based upon merit and not "My country, right or wrong!" This is why liberalism is morally superior to conservatism. In fact, the Jacobs article admits as much when he quotes Dallas Morning News columnist and BeliefNet blogger, Rod Dreher, "an Orthodox Christian, unorthodox conservative, and Haidt fan" as saying, "Look how horribly the GOP had to screw up [during the Bush II years] to alienate many conservatives. In the end, the GOP, the conservative movement and the nation [emphasis added] would have been better served had we on the right not been so yellow-dog loyal. But, as Haidt shows, it's in our nature [emphasis added]."

Here's the question I would have for Mr. Haidt: Should liberals pay lip service or make any kind of concessions (other than the merely semantic ones) to people who cling foolishly to their senseless false morality that places personal vanity and pride over the welfare of the country?

Example 2: Authority/respect. I believe that most all liberals have a full measure of deference to authority. After all, we seem to be just as successful at business and non-profit enterprises as conservatives. Obama ran a superlative and very successful campaign with his staff stuffed with liberals. His White House seems to run in a tight and disciplined manner. As far as I know, FDR was a pretty good manager and his staff got the job done as he wished.

I think the difference between liberals and conservatives might be that liberals seek to work for people that they admire; respect must be earned. I would guess that conscientious objectors tend to be liberals. Those Germans, Austrians, Poles, Danes, and Dutch who harbored Jews from the clutches of the Nazis were probably liberals. Most of them were not Jews themselves. (What does that say about the morality of in-group loyalty?) Liberals know when the righteous bounds of authority have been breached and it is time to withhold respect. Would there be any whistleblowers without liberals? Would we have known about My Lai?

Robert Oppenheimer worked diligently on the atomic bomb and contributed a great deal toward the success of that project. Yet, he spent the rest of his life, much of it black-balled, because he regretted what he had done and sought to put an end to proliferation. Oppenheimer was a liberal who did his duty to country, despite his personal morality that valued "do no harm" more. It nearly destroyed him.

Example 3: Purity/sanctity. As Jacobs admits in his piece, the notion of purity has been, since the early 1900's and the advances in science and medicine and to quote a noted conservative in the Bush II Justice Department in an entirely different context, made "quaint". As Jacobs suggests, it is most likely to rear its pugnacious head in defense of one of Haidt's least favorite human characteristics--disengenuousness (remember his bumper sticker diatribe). To argue that gay marriage--one of Haidt's examples of this morality coming into play--somehow taints the purity of the institution of marriage or the family is like saying that allowing African-Americans full citizenship will destroy Western civilization. It really isn't about "purity" or "sanctity" at all. It's back to the old, rotten-to-the-core idea of in-group morality. The "institution" of marriage has undergone more transformations than music. In most states, it is easier to get a marriage license than a driver's license. As for family values, well, I think we've heard enough news stories about infanticide, matricide and patricide to know how far that notion will carry you.

Here's a new Dot for all my [three or four] readers: Liberals are the ONLY ONES in our society who worry about how to reach across the aisle toward those of different moral points of view. Conservatives may understand liberal morality more than liberals understand theirs (as Jacobs contends), but, if so, their tendency to remain loyal to country, party, class, sect, family, faith, and quarterback keeps them huddling inward and not facing outward toward the world. In that posture, it's a little hard to feel caring or empathetic about your fellow humans. What usually happens is that they only hear the play as called by the quarterback, then break for their set positions.

Viva Olbermann!

2009-04-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Along with Jon Stewart, he's the best thing to happen to TV in my lifetime. And kudos to him for pulling the whole network (MSNBC) with him. Maddow is a great addition, just as Colbert was a great offshoot of Stewart's show.

People need to speak out against the atrocities, and these folks are doing so. If the country is going to move in the right direction, the truth must be spoken on TV...

4 Electoral Groups & 2 Power Blocks

2009-04-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to my previous post -- Four Economic Flavors.

I've changed the name of the far right political block to "social conservative" (was "Republican"). So now I see the following four electoral blocks, each with about 25% of the electorate:

Social Conservative
Economic Conservative / Libertarian
Moderate
Progressive

Obama is firmly in the "Moderate" group, which is where the much of the power lies. Speaking of power, here are 2 powerful special interest groups:

Wall Street
Military-Industrial Complex

Is this a reasonable description of where power and opinion lies in our country? What could change the balance for better or worse?

Obama's Grasp on Power

2009-04-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some political observers have been impressed with how much Obama is taking on, and there is a lot on his plate -- health care reform, renewed focus on Afghanistan, fiscal stimulus, carbon cap and trade, new dog, etc. But some of us progressives are looking at the power interests that is unwilling to confront at present:

Wall Street
Intelligence community

With regard to Wall Street, I have previously posted that I feel Obama is in dangerous territory with regard to his embrace of the status quo as embodied in the policies of Summers and Geithner. Here's further commentary along those lines:

I don't generally overreact to news (from the NYT this morning, on the AIG-Goldman connection that runs through Edward Liddy's stock ownership), but this has gone far enough. Have we completely lost of sense of what is and is not a conflict of interest? ...

If the Obama Administration thinks this is a storm in a tea cup, think again (I'm sure Valerie Jarrett gets this, but someone please check). Straws may or may not break camel's backs, but simple symbolic issues - that millions of people can understand and relate to - can bring major political damage in the midst of a broader, more complex economic fiasco.

With regard to the intelligence community, torture, and possible Bush Administration crimes, Keith Olbermann blasted Obama last night...

In a "Special Comment" regarding the release by the Obama Administration of "the remainder of this nightmare of Bush Administration torture memos," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offered the current Commander in Chief some praise for going "half-way," then blasted him for issuing a statement which said that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

"This President has gone where few before him, dared," Olbermann said Thursday night. "The dirty laundry — illegal, un-American, self-defeating, self-destroying — is out for all to see."

Olbermann continued, "Mr. Obama deserves our praise and our thanks for that. And yet he has gone but half-way. And, in this case, in far too many respects, half the distance is worse than standing still... Mr. President, you are wrong. What you describe would be not "spent energy" but catharsis. Not 'blame laid,' but responsibility ascribed."

While I tend to agree with Olbermann on Bush era crimes and with those who would have Obama take on the Wall Street titans, I have to wonder whether or not those are battles that Obama can win at this point in his presidency. My observation is that presidents are always embattled, and Democratic presidents especially. Carter was overwhelmed by reactionary forces, and perhaps from the intelligence agencies in particular. Clinton, of course, was impeached following years of being hounded by the political opposition. Perhaps the only reason he ultimately survived was that he was "bi-partisan" and not actually that much of a threat to the powers that be.

So I think we need to cut Obama some slack and give him a chance to consolidate some power before taking on Wall Street and the Cheney faction of the military-industrial complex...

The Minority's Dilemma

2009-04-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

The following is from an email sent today by former Colorado Senate Majority Leader and Democrat, Ken Gordon, of Denver. Ken is far more prescient and introspective than most politicians that I know and I thought his piece would be of fairly broad interest:

The Minority’s Dilemma: It seems that a majority of the country is willing to give President Obama a chance. Most Americans recognize that he came into a difficult situation and they are hoping his program will be successful in helping with the economy, the war, the environment, etc. Yet Republican elected officials seem to be less supportive.

I was in the minority in the Colorado Legislature for ten years so I have some familiarity with the quandary facing minority parties.

I think it is useful to create a decision box. On the vertical axis we have two possibilities. The minority can either support the President’s program or they can oppose it. On the horizontal plane we have two possibilities as well. The program can either succeed or fail. So this creates four boxes--

1. The minority party supports the President, and the plan is successful.
2. The minority party supports the plan, and the plan fails.
3. The minority party opposes the plan, and the plan succeeds.
4. The minority party opposes the plan, and the plan fails.

Let’s assume that some of the Republican elected officials have a partisan interest. That is, their principle goal is to win more seats in the next election, and defeat the President in 2012. Which of the four possibilities is most likely to help them reach their goal?

If they support the President and he is successful, they may have done the right thing for the country, but the President will get most of the credit. So supporting the President when he is successful won’t hurt, but it is unlikely to help them pick up seats or defeat the President in 2012.

If they support the President and he is unsuccessful, they won’t get a benefit because they were advocates for the same unsuccessful policy.

If they oppose the President, and he is successful, they will obviously receive no benefit from that approach.

However, if they oppose the President, and his plan is unsuccessful, they can say, more or less, “We told you so.” This will benefit them.

As you can see, this analysis does not consider the merits of any proposed program. It is an analysis that the minority can use regardless of the merits, and I believe that it is what leads so many elected Republicans to relentlessly oppose whatever the President and the Democrats in Washington, or Denver for that matter, propose.

The only political advantage they can receive is for them to oppose the Democratic program and have it fail.

Now there are quite a few Republicans who do not go through this analysis. They make their decisions based on a genuine examination of the merits of a proposal seen through the light of their values. But unfortunately there are enough who only care about the politics so that every talk show has no trouble finding knee-jerk opposition to every Obama or Democratic proposal. It is disheartening for those of us who would like to see the country come together in the face of our serious challenges, but there it is.

By the way, when the Democrats are in the minority, I am sorry to say, there is no shortage of knee-jerk opponents as well.

I have been troubled by the opposition to Obama, who in my view is making a good faith effort to deal with a difficult situation. I had hoped for more of a “country over party” position from the minority. Perhaps we will get there someday.

I hope you are doing well. As always do not hesitate to write back with comments or questions and feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might be interested or to republish, with attribution, in any blog or other publication.

Sincerely,

Ken Gordon

Four Economic Flavors

2009-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that are 4 sets of opinions in the public discourse regarding our current economic situation:

Republican. This viewpoint, embraced by current & former Republican leaders including Dubya and McCain, is totally disconnected from reality. These people had no idea that the economic crash was approaching, and I have no respect for their opinions. However, they remain a serious danger since they will try to regain power should the economy fail to recover in a timely fashion.
Status quo. This includes most of Obama's economic team. It also includes much of the mainstream media including NPR (for the most part). While much better than the Republicans, this elite group failed to anticipate the severe economic recession we are now in. Erstwhile moderate Republicans are in this group along with the powerful Wall Street Democrats such as Summers and Rubin. This group was riding high in the latter years of the Clinton Administration, but now seems out of touch. There is a revolving door between the Wall Street investment firm Goldman-Sachs and the Treasury Department. These people mean well, but they also mean to keep their elite status. They are fat cats and many have inappropriately benefited from the recent government bailouts of the financial sector. There are numerous disturbing conflicts of interest in this group.
Pissed off conservative. There are many conservatives who could see that the Bush Administration was screwing up, and now have the same opinion of the Obama Administration. Some of these people were correct in predicting the financial meltdown and ensuing economic distress. Think Ron Paul. So these people have a good track record in that respect. They hate the subsidies to the big banks and their voices will become more influential if the recession worsens.
Progressive. Most of the media that I follow are skeptical of the Obama Administration's efforts to rescue the economy by providing subsidies to the giant financial corporations. Some are downright hostile toward the Obama Administration, but most are just plain worried that we are going in the wrong direction. I am in this camp myself. I half-heartedly want Obama to succeed in rescuing Citibank and Goldman Sachs so that he will continue to be a popular and powerful president. But I am worried that this will falter and that all hell will break loose as Republicans and conservatives smell blood and progressives won't really be able to defend the corporate elites behind the Obama plan.

Will the center hold? The progressives and conservatives that I follow have a much better track record in predicting the path of the economy than do the mainstream Democrats and their Wall Street teammates. The voices I respect the most are calling attention to the severity of this downturn and warning that it won't be over anytime soon. If this is the case, then the public may lose its patience with the status quo leadership. If Obama tries to ride out the storm with Geithner, Summers, and the other insiders, it could be his undoing. I love Obama and I think he'll be able to adjust should the current plans start to unravel. I hope to see him move strongly in a progressive direction should that happen. Then we'll be in for a real battle, but at least the lines will be clearly drawn...

How to Change the World

2009-04-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

First -- To see how not to change the world, I recommend this speech by Joe Bageant. Mr. Bageant says that "We've Let Corporations and Media Rob Our Souls -- It's Time to Do Something Meaningful" and proceeds to belittle American society.

Here are some of the remarks that may turn off readers:

"This financialization of our consciousness under American-style capitalism has become all we know."
"Corporations are, of course, deathless and faceless machines and have no soul or human emotions. That we look to them for so much makes us a corporate cult and makes corporations a fetish of our culture."
"Yet you and I are not unique in the least. Despite the American yada-yada about individualism, you are not special. Nor am I."
"The fact is, you will seldom, if ever, make any significant material or lifestyle choices of your own in your entire life."
"We are all replaceable parts in the machinery of a capitalist economy."
"Citizenship has been reduced to simple consumer-group consciousness. Consequently, even though Americans are only 6 percent of the planet's population, we use 36 percent of the planet's resources. And we interpret that experience as normal and desirable and as evidence of being the most-advanced nation in the world. Despite that our lives have been reduced to a mere marketing demographic."

Certainly, there is a germ of truth in all these points. But constructive criticism requires some connection with the listener beyond utter debasement of his or her culture.

The last point, about American's consuming more than our share of the planet's resources, is one serious point I want to address. I dare say that this statistic is losing its luster as far as I'm concerned. News flash:

SHANGHAI (AP) — Preliminary figures show auto sales in China reached about 1.03 million in March, exceeding U.S. sales for the third month in a row, state media reports said Wednesday. Associated Press

Are we getting better because our share of world consumption is going down?

Bageant's point is that the whole world is going to capitalist hell, but he offers not even a glimmer of an alternative. The best he can do is suggest that we might be better off moving to Belize and living as simple peasants. This happens to be what he has done, and his smug superiority really turns me off. He doesn't provide a solution; rather he congratulates himself on having moved outside of American society, and suggests that we will all be happier, and the world will be a better place, if we do the same. That may be true, but I doubt it, and it's not going to happen.

Rather than attacking all of society, I suggest that the battle be more focused. Perhaps we could start by dealing with environmental issues, including threats posed by modern weaponry such as nuclear bombs. One doesn't have to buy all the generalizations about how we're all pawns in the capitalist game to believe that it makes sense to protect the environment. Even our corporate masters do not want to destroy the environment. After all, a healthy environment is necessary to sustain a healthy corporation.

I'm intrigued by the idea of treating environmental debates as a kind of warfare. What if we applied the principles of warfare, as outlined by Sun Tzu in The Art of War to fighting political battles over how to preserve the environment? A winning strategy will require sound planning and coordinated effort.

Look at the recent Iraq War. Bush failed because he didn't unite the country (USA) behind him in this war. His team belittled moderates and didn't listen to opponents. The worst mistake we can make in fighting our environmental foes is to rant and rave and say that you are either with us or against us.

At least, that how I see it right now...

A new star in the heavens

2009-02-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

To observe Barack Obama deliver his speech before a joint session of Congress last night after eight years of watching George W. Bush do the same was a little like sitting through hours of a Three Stooges retrospective not realizing that the main feature to follow was Some Like It Hot. The realization that you have just wasted a good chunk of your life being dumbed-down is devastating. Knowing that genius still flourishes, together with the promise of more of the same to come makes the price of the ticket seem like a bargain.

During my lifetime, I have only once experienced anything like the feeling of being witness to a sphinx rising from a desert of despair that I feel now. That was in 1961, when I, as a 15-year-old boy, experienced my first political crush when John F. Kennedy and his remarkable family moved into the White House. Then, it seemed a torch had been passed from the hands of an old, tired-but-wise warrior who looked like my grandfather, to another type of warrior--young, glamorous, eloquent, vigorous, compassionate. The times were much like now--menace from abroad, crippled economy at home. JFK swept in like a stiff ocean breeze, stirring souls like so many palm trees lining a beach. Suddenly, it felt as if we could make it through to the other side. America was on the move again, making the world safer for democracy and offering hope to the unfortunate.

It was Ronald Reagan who said, "It's morning in America". He was wrong. It was only the gaudy glitter of Las Vegas at night, harbinger of the greed and decadence that has brought our economy to its knees, like a street beggar tugging at the sleeve of every passing socialist for relief.

Now, Obama has risen from the desert of the Reagan Legacy, guardian of the temple, where lay our most sacred values, facing directly toward the rising sun. Vandals may take pot shots at his nose but they cannot alter his magnificence, his grandeur, his timeless wisdom. As surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, President Obama will be there to show it where its light is most needed. I know this because last night, he was truly a shooting star.

In Defense of Auto Workers

2009-02-19T12:44:00.001-08:00

Mayor of Lansing gives Fox News a piece of his mind:

NY Times on White Collar Workers in Detroit

2009-02-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

From the NY Times --

DETROIT — For all the ups and downs, and more downs, that white-collar workers here have lived through, they have always managed to put on a brave face, assuring one another that the American auto industry will come back stronger than ever.
But now that resolve has given way to grim resignation, as General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler have announced wave upon wave of job cuts.
After closing plants and shrinking their blue-collar work force, Detroit’s troubled Big Three are cutting white-collar jobs in their hometown at an unprecedented pace — more than 15,000 in the last year, with more to come.
Unlike union workers laid off from idled factories, salaried workers have no safety net of health care or guaranteed income for a year. At best, it’s a small severance or buyout, and a voucher for a discount on one of the hundreds of thousands of unsold cars that G.M. or Chrysler has sitting in inventory.
White-collar workers who walk out of the headquarters of the auto companies face few prospects in the Michigan economy. And with G.M. and Chrysler surviving on federal loans, facing a deadline Tuesday to submit new and broader restructuring plans to the government, the outlook grows only more bleak.
The market for the skills of auto engineers or designers in the prime of their careers has evaporated, with no hope in sight for a turnaround. Moving to another city is hardly an option when there are so few buyers for the suburban homes that would have to be sold first...
G.M., Ford and Chrysler have eliminated a total of 120,000 manufacturing jobs in the last three years. And now the cuts are drastically thinning the ranks of white-collar professionals, turning the once-bustling office towers of the companies into half-empty monuments to better days.
G.M. delivered another blow last week when it said it would reduce its global salaried work force by 14 percent, or 10,000 workers this year. In the Detroit area, that could mean an additional 3,000 workers will be out of a job by May 1. G.M.’s next round of white-collar cuts will not include buyouts. Chrysler has not said whether it plans more cuts.
The Detroit area housing market, already deeply depressed, has plummeted since the buyouts. In January, the foreclosure rate increased 102 percent from the same month a year earlier in Oakland County, Mich., home to a huge number of G.M. and Chrysler employees.
The state’s unemployment rate was 10.6 percent in December and continues to climb. Job fairs routinely create mob scenes, drawing thousands of out-of-work employees of the Big Three and their suppliers...

The cuts are extending to the vast network of employees who worked on contract to the Detroit companies. Craig Meyer, employed by a supplier named Aerotek, was told by phone that his seven years as a contract designer at Chrysler were over as he was driving to the home of his in-laws the night before Thanksgiving.
Mr. Meyer has been collecting unemployment since, although the $362 he gets a week is less than half what he was making at Chrysler. “We’re just about able to pay the bills each month,” he said. “Food and gas is when we need to start to dip into savings.”
The prospects are getting worse for Detroit, not better. Last year, United States car sales dropped 18 percent, to 13.2 million, and industry executives expect just 10 million car sales in 2009 and possibly for years to come.
“Those white-collar jobs aren’t going to come back any more than the blue-collar jobs are,” said Kevin Boyle, a Detroit native and author of historical books on the city. “As bad as it is everywhere, it’s not as bad as it is in Detroit right now.”

More Good News

2009-02-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

Again, from today's Freep:

Annual traffic crash deaths are on the verge of dropping below 40,000 for the first time since the early 1960s, and it's not solely because our miserable economy is taking drivers off the roads.
The nation is in the midst of a big decline in driving....
Other reasons, too, seem obvious. Long term, more people are wearing seatbelts -- 83% nationwide, according to the transportation department. Automakers are building safer vehicles. Roads, meanwhile, have been designed in recent decades with fewer sharp curves and dangerous hills, and more safety features such as median barriers, said FHWA spokesman Doug Hecox.
But the rapid drop in fatalities is outpacing the decline in travel and advances in technology.

Good Ecological News

2009-02-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

From today's Freep:

In a stunning sign of ecological recovery, beavers have returned to Detroit for the first time in perhaps a century....
"It's part of that larger story of ecological recovery," Hartig said, citing the return of many species to the Detroit River area in recent years. Those include sturgeon, whitefish, peregrine falcons, bald eagles, walleye, and, now, a beaver.

"If it's cleaner for them, it's cleaner for us, too," Hartig said...
The river's ecology is recovering, said Tim Payne, Southeast Michigan wildlife supervisor for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

"There's no question that having a cleaner river is having an impact on species coming back," he said.

Stock Market Prediction

2009-02-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

My favorite economist/analyst is David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch. He makes a prediction which is referenced in the following snippet from a newsletter by John Mauldin:

Last week I said that 2009 as-reported earnings estimates for the S&P 500 would be dropping. 2008 earnings had dropped to $29.57 as I wrote the letter. They are now down to $28.60. One of my favorite analysts is David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch. His forecast for reported earnings for 2009 is now down to $28. That puts the P/E for the S&P 500 at 30.

He also projects "operating" earnings to be $55 for 2010. And, as he writes today:

"For those looking for a silver lining, at least we are going to have a deeper bottom to bounce off. Applying a classic recession-trough multiple of 12x against a forward EPS estimate of $55 would imply an ultimate low of 666 on the S&P 500, likely by October if our estimate of the timing for the end of the official downturn is accurate."

That is a 20% drop from today's close of 829.

Valentine's Dinner

2009-02-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

Vote for Sam Seder to join MSNBC at 10:00 PM

2009-02-12T10:48:00.001-08:00

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/msnbc/msnbc_looking_to_add_new_10pmet_show_106545.asp

I'm In!

2009-02-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Lewis has added me as an authorized poster here. I'm honored and can't wait to start contributing. But I'll have to wait a bit as my lunch calls, followed by my job at Blue Cross of Michigan...

The Case against Moderation, Part 3

2009-02-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

"We got the sense that he was very genuine," said Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). But "if he comes and meets with us like that and it doesn't have an impact, it begins to hurt his credibility."

And, thus, we have it--the outlines of the trap that President Obama has tripped with his neck. This quote, taken from yesterday's Washington Post, betrays more plainly than I ever could, the folly of trying to reach across the aisle to make warm-and-fuzzy with the current stripe of Congressional Republicans. The circus tiger that for years has let you put your head in its mouth and remove it unharmed--but for a little drool that tends to get in your eyes--has now shut its yap--hard. With black suits, spotless white shirts, bleached smiles, and wipe-on/wipe-off suntans, Rep. John Boehner and his minions have made a sucker out of America's smartest man.

It was our President, with his ideology of moderation and compromise, that not only stuck his head in it, but also forced that foul mouth open. His promise of reaching across the aisle gave his opponents, unable to muster even a wisp of a smile during his Inauguration, the means to make meaningless his promise of "change we can believe in". All they had to do was to play along, like the team-players they had neither the inclination or the skills to be, and, when the time came to act-not-yak, unite behind their leader (Rush?) and vote in unanimous opposition to whatever it was that their President wanted. By voting to insure Obama's failure, while praising his "bipartisanship"--and, thus, appearing to be willing to compromise if only the terms were right--they could then say, as Rep. Wamp did, that it was Obama's ineffectiveness in attempting to gain their support--a clear failure of leadership--that was the problem.

It may have been a brilliant strategy for their party, if yet disastrous for the country. I can only hope and pray that the public will see through this cynicism and short-sightedness and punish the tiger by thrashing him within a inch of his life in November 2010.

The Purpose-Driven Saddleback Website

2008-12-23T08:07:00.000-08:00

Last night, a couple of hours after posting the previous blog, I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. (By the way, if you aren't already a devoted fan, you aren't a true-blue liberal.) She mentioned that John Aravosis had, on his blog, discovered that the website for Saddleback Church, home to the Rev. Rick Warren, had taken down language in the "We Believe" section stating that "unrepentant gays" would not be admitted into membership. While this is a step in the right direction, it is but a baby-sized one; if the church's policy remains the same--only clandestine--it is a step in the wrong direction.

I don't know if Saddleback made the decision to take down the offensive language due to any pressure from President-elect Obama's transition team or because of adverse publicity from Rachel Maddow, who made a humongous issue of it on Friday night. Whatever the motive, this symbolic action does not satisfy the need for real and meaningful compromise on the part of Rick Warren in return for the rare and elevated privilege of giving the spiritual message at the most momentous presidential inauguration since John F. Kennedy's. Obama should not be fooled.

The Purpose-Driven Invocation Invitation

2008-12-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama

Dear President-Elect:

Your invitation to the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, to give the invocation at your inaugural in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2009, has been to the already invigorated activists among the gay and lesbian population of America what a red cape is to an irascible bull. It seems that, to Obama's advisors and, perhaps, even to the man himself, the queer vote is so firmly in hand that the downside to poking them in the eye with a sharp stick is so slight as to be completely discountable. He/they may well be right. As a gay man myself who has voted in every biannual election since 1968, I could count on one hand the number of times I have pulled the Republican lever and the kinds of Republicans who warranted that kind of "bipartisanship" from me have long gone the way of the Dodo.

Many activists are calling for you to retract the invitation to Rev. Warren to give the invocation. I think this would be a mistake. I see in this situation an opportunity for a teachable moment for the good Reverend. To retract the invitation would make you look indecisive, insincere, and confused. It would restore the Rev. Warren to his previous level of esteem among his evangelical contemporaries. Further, it would not truly satisfy your critics on the left, as it would merely mollify for the moment rather than fulfill for the future.

Here's what the you should do (with all respect to one of your high office): say to Rev. Warren that the invitation is still open for him to give the invocation at your inauguration, so long as he agrees to open his church to full membership for all people, regardless of color, race, ethnicity, religious background, sexual orientation, and gender identity or presentation.

This is the fairest resolution of this crisis I can think of. You would be saying that, while you are reaching out to him across the aisle, giving him perhaps the single biggest honor of his career, you expect that he will use this opportunity to do the same on behalf of those who are now barred from his church. You would send a message to all Americans that healing is a two-way street, that we all must do our part to close the divide that separates us and prevents us from solving the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead of us. You would be giving Rev. Warren the chance to turn Saddleback Church toward a more noble and universal purpose and imbue his appearance on the steps of the Capitol on this auspicious Tuesday in January with fresh hope for inclusion and love.

May it be so. Shalom. Peace. Namaste.

Postscript on Proposition 8

2008-11-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

It was midday today, Wednesday, before The New York Times, via the AP, was able to analyze the demographics behind the success of the most expensive ballot issue in American history that didn't deal with the oil and gas industry:

Exit polls for The Associated Press found that Proposition 8 received critical support from black voters who flocked to the polls to support Barack Obama for president. About seven in 10 blacks voted in favor of the ban, while Latinos also supported it and whites were split.

Thoughts on the aftermath of victory

2008-11-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

As some pundits have said, perhaps November 4, 2008, marks the true beginning of the 21st Century. The American voters have taken the "whites only" sign off the desk in the Oval Office. We have done what no other Western nation has done--elect to the highest office in the land a man of color. Under different circumstances, we could have had the first women to occupy a power position within the White House. I am more proud of my country now than I have been in forty-eight years.

Yet, with the likely passage of Referendum 8 in California, a measure that will, perhaps for the first time in American history, take away a constitutional right from an entire class of citizens, we must face the fact that, at least for gay men and lesbians, the American Dream is still in black-and-white, not color. Arizona, likewise, voted to deny marriage equality to its gay citizens. No state has yet failed to discriminate against gay men and lesbians when given an opportunity to vote straight up-or-down on the issue. I guess you could say that those of us who love a person of the same sex have yet to "win" a single electoral vote, let alone a majority. Furthermore, with no chance that our percentage of the electorate will ever exceed the current 5-6%, the picture is unlikely to change unless straight voters have a change of heart.

There is a stark irony in the fact that African-American voters, the very ones who were most vindicated in this election, are the same demographic that votes most one-sidedly against gay rights. The same voters who put Obama in office are probably responsible for the abrogation of equal rights in California.

So, I do have mixed feelings about today's events. More than most, I see the light but at the end of a longer tunnel. I have a little less reason to hope for change, slightly less belief that true change--change that could impact my personal happiness and prosperity significantly--will happen in my lifetime. If I could make one request of the president-elect tonight, it would be this: I voted for you. I was thrilled that you said the words "gay and lesbian" in your speech tonight. Will you work tirelessly to see that, before your first term ends, I have the same rights under federal law that you do?

Election day dots

2008-11-04T09:33:00.000-08:00

Here are my random thoughts on this election day, 2008--

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in punditry to understand that this will be a watershed election. The choices are so stark as to shock the imagination:

The first-ever African-American candidate for president

The first-ever woman candidate for vice-president

Youthful exuberance vs. wizened experience

Liberal vs. "maverick" conservative

Hope vs. fear

Statesmanship vs. vituperation

American prestige and worldwide respect restored vs. continued suspicion and contempt

US leadership on worldwide economic recovery vs. fumbling ineptness and indecision

US leadership on addressing the root causes of global warming vs. drill, baby, drill

Rebuilding American infrastructure vs. another four years and $600B squandered in Iraq

More freedom for more people vs. ongoing discrimination against gay men and lesbians

Competency and vision vs. incompetency and political expediency

Civility vs. fear-mongering

Statesmanship vs. demagoguery

Team depth vs. Ohmigod, SHE's commander-in-chief!

The issues are so clear-cut that I have serious trouble understanding how anyone could be undecided right up to the day of the election. (Polls indicate that perhaps 5% of voters still fall into this category.) I suspect that they know how they will vote, they just don't want to say. My guess is that 75% of them will vote for McCain.

It's this simple, if Obama wins, things will get better. If McCain wins, they will get worse.

McCain has no idea how to win in Iraq other than by keeping the troops there indefinitely. McCain has no new ideas on how to cure the economy. He says the economy is in the ditch but he helped to put it there, voting with George W. Bush's economic game plan every time.

McCain's theme of "Country First", while helping him connect with his base--which seems to have been the primary focus of his campaign, will not help to mend relations with Europe or Asia, let alone the Arab world.

McCain's willingness to listen to the admonitions of Karl Rove's proteges to take the low road--eschewing discussion of the issues in favor of personal attacks upon his opponent--during his campaign, will assure that the heavily Democratic Congress will have little inclination to cooperate with his legislative agenda. This would mean four years of likely deadlock, which would be disastrous for the country and the world. We've had quite enough of rule via executive orders, signing statements, and vetoes.

The plight of the shrinking middle class will continue. Good-paying jobs will continue to migrate oversees while ever-cheapening labor here in America will assure a growing supply of Mexican workers eager for the relative riches here, while native-born poor will continue their slide into despair. Health care will, even more so, be the sole province of the upper middle and elite classes.

With a Supreme Court packed with clones of Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts--assuming a President McCain can get his nominees confirmed in the Senate--women's power over their own bodies will be a thing of the past, consumers will find it nearly impossible to find compensation for their injuries in the US courts, and the notion that "all men are created equal" will become "you will get what we say you deserve".

In short, America's reputation for being a haven of individual liberty, equality for all, and the iron fist in the velvet glove in foreign affairs will be in danger of being lost forever. The political gutter-sniping that will have given McCain victory will become standard fare for decades to come. Soon, America will be but a shadow of it's greatest days and the world will curse our name as the chaos that is sure to come from global warming sweeps across our only planet home.

My prediction? Obama will win with close to 300 electoral votes and 52% of the popular vote. The joyful noise on the morrow will be heard around the world.

Justice, Texas-Style

2008-10-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Like everyone, there are things I like to hate. One of my favorites is the state of Texas...well, almost all of the state of Texas. I will grant favored-city status to Austin, where my aunt and uncle used to live and my cousin still does and where there is an oasis of enlightenment in a desert of materialism and ignorance. Oh, occasionally, the people of Houston will elect a gay woman as sheriff or something else will happen that dampens my enthusiasm for hating Texas, Texans, and everything about The Lone Star State. Texas gave us Bill Moyers, the American I would most like to have a beer with. But he's left Texas far behind now. Then, there's Jim Hightower, one of the funniest and most liberal Texans I know, now that Molly Ivins no longer freshens those barren confines (if you can call anything about Texas physically confining)or any other.

Texas is the state that gave us George Herbert Walker Bush and his morally-challenged son, George Walker Bush, as Presidents of the United States in exchange for taking the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Some swap! Texas also gave us John Tower, Tom DeLay, Phil Gramm, and Dick Armey--the Four Coarsemen of the Texapocalypse. Texas is the only state whose legislative minority has been the object of a manhunt by the Department of Homeland Security ordered by the legislative majority. They execute more prisoners, summarily shoot more Mexicans (at the hand of Texas Rangers, circa 1900), allow more air and water pollution, pray at more public high school football games, and rear more bigots than any other state in the union.

Just this week, two stories broke in the news that reminded me, once again, of how much I hate Texas and Texans--

The first concerns a certain young lady--a McCain/Palin campaign worker, as the story goes--who claimed that she was assaulted, raped, and disfigured by a tall, black man who was upset because she had a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on her car. Matt Drudge picked up the story first, followed by a few newspapers. Soon, the McCain campaign was demagogueing the story in an effort to raise doubt in the minds of undecided voters as to who the REAL OBAMA is. Then, the whole thing collapsed when the young woman admitted that the entire story was made up. While the fictional event took place in Pittsburgh--another geographic location that seems to have its share of bigots--the disturbed young "victim" was from...try to guess...Texas.

The second horror story comes from Paris, Texas, where racism has been institutionalized. There, in September, two white men returning from a beer run across the border into Oklahoma (Paris is apparently a place where sanctimoniousness about using alcohol is more valued than the life of a black man) drove their Dodge pickup over their dark-skinned drinking buddy and dragged his body along the two-lane highway until body parts littered their wake.

One of the accused white men had been previously found guilty of shooting another "friend" in the head three times while trying to ward off "two black men" who were attempting to rob the two white guys in the (same?) truck. The black would-be robbers were never located.

According to the byzantine and bizarre machinations of Texas justice, the shooter, who was defended by the county district attorney appointed as his public defender, plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter and served a little over a year of a four-year sentence. The victim in the more recent "black buddy as road kill" case testified on behalf of the very man who may have driven the truck that later killed him, hoping to provide him an alibi. For his trouble, the African-American was convicted of aggravated perjury and spent two years in jail, nearly double what the white murderer served.

Last year, also in Paris, Texas, a 14-year-old black girl was sentence to seven years in detention for shoving a hall monitor at her high school. Just three months earlier, the same judge had sentenced a white 14-year-old girl to probation after finding her guilty of setting fire to her parents' house. Only pubic outrage at the injustice led to the release of the black defendant.

Texas never disappoints when it comes to Third-Word kinds of outrages. In fact, I feel a little bad about lumping Bolivia in with Texas. If I had my way, I would offer to rent Texas back to Mexico for the cost of tearing down the wall that now separates the two. Of course, I would require that businesses in Texas remain open to provide jobs for the former "illegal aliens" who would now have their own "state". Whites who had no real business responsibility could freely emigrate northward. When Texas was no longer a majority white "state", we would terminate the lease and welcome the new 50th state back into the fold, now transformed into a civilized society.

What Makes People Vote Republican?

2008-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

First, I want to explain why I have posted so infrequently here over the past month. My husband, Laurin, has been having health issues which has necessitated numerous trips to visit hospitals or doctors. He has fainting spells, episodes of inarticulateness, and early signs of Alzheimer's Disease or senile dementia. In addition, after a long period of procrastination, I have finally agreed to downsize to a smaller, less expensive apartment. We will be moving right after Thanksgiving and I have much work to do to liquidate my vast and virtually worthless collection of movies on now-passe forms of home reproduction. Both of these have taken much of my time and energy. I won't promise anything for the future, except that I need to do this writing to sustain my soul. Please do check back from time to time.

The title of this post is taken from an article written for Alternet.org by Jonathan Haidt, associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. Prof. Haidt has done original research on how people process information concerning actions that might be characterized as disgusting or disrespectful, specifically involving objects of affection, such as pets, or patriotic symbols, such as the American flag. He concludes, firstly, that when people react viscerally to something that someone has done or said, reason seldom enters into their response. As Haidt puts it, "feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so." Haidt goes on to argue that Democrats often fail to grasp this concept, picking candidates who sound professorial in their extensive use of facts and figures.

Haidt's second principle is that morality--the base subject of his research--is not just about how we treat each other, as liberals claim, but is also about strengthening traditional institutions which bind disparate people together as a society and living in a way that reveres the sacred and respects the noble nature of mankind. It is this aspect of morality that Haidt claims Democrats "just don't get". By dismissing this position as "narrow-minded, racist, or dumb", Democrats, according to Haidt, fail to grasp that "politics is more like religion than it is like shopping [for policy positions that will convince 51% of voters to buy]". Politics is like religion because "across eras and cultures...they are about the same thing: performing the miracle of converting individuals into a group".

One illustrative example that I have found for looking at these contrasting moral views centers around the very hot topic of marriage between individuals of the same sex. Liberals (I prefer to speak in terms of liberal vs. conservative rather than Democrat vs. Republican) believe that same-sex marriage equality is a matter of fairness, because all people are entitled to the same treatment under the US Constitution. Social conservatives, on the other hand, see same-sex marriage as a threat to "traditional marriage, the chief building block of society". They would put the moral value of a culture or tradition ahead of what they see as individual freedom to do as one pleases.

President Clinton used to sell his welfare reform proposal with words such as, "if you play be the rules, you should be able to enjoy the advantages of the good life". This was a coded message to conservatives that people should be expected to work for a living and not become dependent upon government handouts. For gay couples who wish to marry, this would analogize to "if you want to marry, marry someone of the opposite sex". Other examples would be, "if you want to live here, you must enter the country legally and learn the language" or "this is a Christian nation, if you want to have equal rights around your beliefs, you must convert to Christianity".

For conservatives, the only moral question is "How well does this individual fit into the norms of society?" This means obeying the rules (laws) as they have been on the books from the days of the Founding Fathers--at least, as far as the conservative mind understands them. I say this because many conservatives seem to feel that the rules were set by the Founding Fathers for all time and it is forbidden to change them in any way (think: Scalia, Bork, Thomas). Other rules were set by God in the Garden of Eden and are not to be modified as long as someone in some pulpit somewhere still finds them useful.

This, indeed, seems to be the Achilles' Heel of the conservative moral position as Haidt outlines it and as I believe it often functions in society today:

While it is good for our society to be bound together through sharing of common culture, values, morality, rules, etc., the binding is only as strong as the buy-in. Rules are established by the "ruling class" to establish order and protect the status quo. The "commonality" that is nurtured, even revered, is that which assures the security of those in possession of power and wealth. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers felt the need to break away from the power of King George III to bind British society together through the force of the monarchy and the church, which were inextricably bound together. There is nothing more "American" than to sever the binds that tie freedom to oppression.

In my lifetime, I have seen the tremendous changes brought about by the desire of African-Americans, women, sexual minorities, and, now, undocumented immigrants to break free from the unworkable tethers of tradition that have exploited them. Yes, it is moral to seek to avoid disorder, violence, and anarchy by setting a floor on human behavior. It may even be desirable to define what is sacred and attempt to establish a modicum of conformity as to how that should be honored. Where I differ from those on the right is in the relative value to be put on order vis-a-vis oppression. Even Jesus said that the most important rules to be remembered are to do unto others as you would have them do unto you and to love God with all your being. All else is, as someone has said, dicta.

Therefore, I say, what is the harm in telling people where and how to vote in two languages? Is how they receive the message that, in a democracy, it is important to vote more moral than that they actually are able to vote? Is the sex of the person I marry more of a moral imperative than the fact of my love and devotion? Is it more moral to be "color-blind" than to atone for centuries of slavery? Does honoring thy father and mother mean not reporting parental abuse? Does respecting the purity of young girls require consigning them to ignorance about birth control and then forcing them to bear a child they neither want nor are able to care for?

I agree with Haidt that healing the divide among Americans requires a "clear and oft-repeated commitment to guarding the precious coherence of the whole", that "America lacks the long history, small size, ethnic homogeneity, and soccer mania that holds many other nations together, so our flag, our founding fathers, our military, and our common language take on a moral importance that many liberals find hard to fathom". But I also believe that the morality we must consider as most sacred, most deserving of respect, most worthy of holding in high authority is that which underlies the symbol of our flag, the fire in the belly of our founding fathers, the honor of our military, and the resonance of our common language. To place greater value on the institution than its raison d'etre is to remove oneself from the root of all morality and demean the commonweal through the use of rote rules to divide rather than unify and preserve the current power structure rather than open the doors of opportunity to the disenfranchised.

Welcome, Staceyann

2008-09-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks for checking out my modest blog. I hope you find something here that interests you. I would welcome your comments...as long as you're honest. (C;

Guns don't make a man, only misery

2008-08-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

“We’re here tonight to make sense of the senseless.”

So said the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, to an overflow crowd of 1000 at a special service for the dead and wounded of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN.

To end the service, which was held at neighboring Second Presbyterian Church, TVUU children, whose performance of Annie, Jr. was interrupted by the shootings, sang the song they didn’t get to sing on that fatal morning. A part of that song goes like this:

When I’m stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely,
I’ll just stick out my chin…
and grin…and say,
‘Oh, the sun’ll come out tomorrow,
So, you gotta hang on ‘til tomorrow,
Come what may.
Tomorrow, tomorrow,
I love ya, tomorrow,
You’re always a day away!

The words must have resonated with those in attendance, as, just before the service began, the skies over Knoxville had poured forth rain, as if weeping in sympathy.

It is not easy to make sense of such an act as blasting away at a sanctuary full of people who have gathered to watch children put on a play on a Sunday morning. It is not easy to imagine how a human being could have been brought so low in his life as to do such a thing.

As I write this, three days after the event [sic], facts about the perpetrator are becoming more and more known. It appears that the safest thing that might be said about him is that he was a failure at just about everything he attempted. As people are wont to do, he likely sought to assign blame for his troubles. Ultimately, that blame descended with a vengeance upon a group of people--self-proclaimed liberals--whose willingness to welcome everyone, regardless of race, faith, or sexual or gender orientation, was deemed by this one man’s troubled mind to be the greatest threat to everything he held to be constant and valuable. Unable or unwilling to deal with his dilemma creatively, he acted in the only way he felt competent—through violence.

His first victim, Greg McKendry, was a 60-year-old man who served on the Board of the church and was an usher. (I identify personally with that description.) Witnesses say that Greg positioned himself between the shooter and the congregation. In doing so, Greg “gave the last full measure of devotion” to the cause of liberalism—to believe that the lives of those who are vulnerable are worth even the sacrifice of our own.

If there is any sense to be made out of what happened at that UU gathering place on that day—or at Virginia Tech or Columbine or a thousand other places where hatred has bred death—it must grow from the tiny seed of realization that, while lives can be altered forever in the flash of a gun barrel, it is the spontaneous act of selfless love that can turn the world around.

As Unitarian Universalists, it is our belief that “sainthood” is manifested by those who, like Greg McKendry, see a human need and fill it, though we don’t always have to die in the cause to be appreciated. More than perhaps any time in our memories, the world needs UUs to rededicate ourselves to doing the work that can heal our battered and bruised world.

My Personal Vision and Mission Statements

2008-08-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

My Personal Vision Statement—

To make a contribution to the betterment of the human condition for as long as I am able and then to leave the scene before I become a burden on others.

My Personal Mission Statement—

Through my writings, to be a voice for clarity, purpose, and the betterment of the human condition throughout the world. To enable others to see how their problems are not so different from the problems of humanity, that all issues are related, and that only by working together can we create a rising tide of humanity that will float all boats, both skiff and yacht, and all whom they contain.

Big Oil's Ox Gored by Big Al

2008-07-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't written on the subject of the environment here, yet, despite that it is a subject to which I have devoted hours and hours of my time in both study and action over the past year. Yesterday, something happened to change that. Former Vice President Al Gore--the very man who would be our president today if not for the greatest political embezzlement ever perpetrated upon the human race--gave a speech on the necessity of converting 100% of America's energy production to solar and wind power within ten years. I strongly urge you to use the link on the left side of this page--under "More Deserving Dots"--to see and hear the 30-minute speech yourself. Al Gore says more in this speech that could secure the future of our children and our children's children's than all of the speeches made by the current administration over the past seven years.

I'm not going to summarize what Mr. Gore says in my blog. I'd rather use the bytes to urge you to contemplate two things: 1) What might the US and the rest of the world look like today if the occupant of the White House over the last seven years had been AG instead of GWB?; and 2)How did it happen that American presidents are chosen not for the content of their ideas or character but by the timing of their sighs or their appeal on television?

How is it that GWB's dereliction of duty in the Air National Guard during wartime and his connections with Big Oil received less air time on the major networks and cable channels than AG's alleged "exaggerations" about his influence on the development of the Internet? Does a candidate's style really matter more than what she or he does? Answer: only if her or his style can be spun to instill enough fear in the electorate to overcome the things she or he does that scare the hell out of the people who own the news media.

I fault Al Gore--and his party--for being far too wimpy about the events of November and December of 2000. It seems to me that liberals/progressives are overly sensitive to the feelings of others--to the point that they let neoconservative's zealotry run roughshod over the truth, even at the cost of a very important election.

However, the mainstream media also had a vital role to play, in that--as Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols explain in their brilliant book, Our Media Not Theirs--they were far too amenable to listen to the Republican mantra that the voters had declared Bush II the winner and the Democrats were trying to forestall their will. This came about the moment the networks and newspapers became businesses and not purveyors of news. With staffing cutbacks and greater fiscal dependency on advertising, reporters became--as McChesney and Nichols claim--mere stenographers, capturing the words of partisan elitists of the left and right without inquiry into wherein lay the truth. It took Greg Palast, writing for British news media, to reveal the truth about the disenfranchisement of thousands of poor Florida voters--a direct attack on democracy that could well have, by itself, changed the outcome of the election.

Well, you may say, but that's ancient history. It couldn't happen today. If you feel this way, I encourage you to post a reply and tell me why you feel that way. I only see things getting worse when it comes to mainstream media in the US.

As for Al Gore's energy plan, all I can say is that it's bold, workable, and will be fought tooth-and-nail by the likes of Exxon/Mobile and the coal and natural gas industries. I'm with him 100%, however, and will give time and money to the effort to bring it into fruition. I don't call myself "Legacy Guy" for nothing. I believe that the greatest mission of my (Baby Boomer) generation is to make it possible for my children and their children to live, first of all, and, beyond that, to live healthy and happy lives. I'm willing to make sacrifices to make that happen but I don't see Gore's plan as being one that calls for a great deal of sacrifice. I see it as one that will do far more for real people than did Kennedy's dream of putting an American on the moon. It will be expensive--Gore estimates as much as $3 trillion over the next decade. That's roughly what the ill-advised and -fated war in Iraq will cost us before it's over. Consider what we will have when the money's spent on Gore's project compared to what we will have when all our soldiers are home from Iraq.

The Case against Moderation, Part 2

2008-07-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

Arianna Huffington said it best, I think, in her recent blog piece titled, "Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle Is for Losers". She wrote, "Fixating on--and pandering to--[undecided swing voters] is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize....In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters--voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart--allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals". [For more, see http://www.alternet.org/story/90465.]

Since I wrote the first installment of The Case against Moderation three weeks ago, it has become pretty plain that Sen. Barack Obama has been told by his oh-so-well-paid advisors that the way to win is to take a lesson from the New Democrats/Democratic Leadership Council/Blue Dog Democrats crowd and tack right until the left shore is out of sight. With his newly-minted positions on "Free Trade", FISA, gun control, the death penalty, and, now, "faith-based" social programs, Sen. Obama risks so compromising his political cache and audacity of hope that, like Gore and Kerry, he will find the McCain campaign defining him to the voters in their way, not his. He is beginning to look--unfairly or not--like any other Washington beltway politician. Perhaps that is because he spends too much time listening to Washington beltway pundits.

So-called "swing voters" are, by their very definition, the political equivalent of vanilla ice cream--they take on the flavor of whatever is poured, spooned, or dipped over them. This may also be true of many independents, though I'm sure not all. Swing voters are as likely to be swayed to vote for someone because of the color of their spouse's hair as any one issue. The fact is, for many of them, they couldn't care less about politics, history, science, or political genius. They like what they like, end of story. Moving to the right to appease these voters on the issues is a very risky gamble. Mostly importantly, it confuses and alienates the very base that gave Obama the nomination. Secondly, it confuses those voters who don't quite understand what Democrats stand for and validates those who say there's no difference between the two parties.

We all know what Republicans stand for--small [ineffective] government, low [skewed in favor of the rich] taxes, a strong [exorbitant] defense, cozy relationships with big business, and winning at all costs. But what does the Democratic side of the slate look like? Right now, it's blank because Democrats keep erasing what was written there yesterday and replacing it with something designed to offend as few voters as possible. They used to be for a strong social safety net for the poor and the elderly, civil rights for all, prudent budgets with a vital middle class, and a best-in-the-world military. That was the legacy of FDR and Truman. Now, the Democratic mantra seems to be, "we have to work with the Republicans to avoid the appearance of obstructionism (or elitism or lack of patriotism or whatever other pejorative the other side happens to be slinging at the moment". The Party of the People that used to stand against injustice like a mighty oak has turned out to be hollowed out, filled with worms...just when the country needs it to stand strong the most.

Here's what I would like to say to Senator Obama:

If our country is ripe for change, as you seem to believe it is and as your campaign's success in the primaries seems to prove, that change will not come from the middle. As Albert Einstein once said, "The same thinking that got us where we are is not going to get us where we should be (I'm liberally paraphrasing)." We need a president with a rare vision to see the future and the path that will steer this ship of state away from the shoals. The people see you as a leader with the vision to take their hands and lead them to a more gentle America. Not everyone has that same vision and like all great leaders--Abe Lincoln comes to mind--you can listen to them for what they might have to offer. But there comes a time when a leader must connect the dots where others may not even see dots and lead, not cajole, nor pander, nor equivocate, BUT LEAD US TO THE LIGHT AS GOD HAS GIVEN HIM OR HER TO SEE THE LIGHT.

So, keep your eye on the prize, be true to yourself, and take us there by the strength of your convictions. We will be there beside you, proud as you, and just as confident that our world will heal, not from making nice with tyrants, but from pursuing the hard, tough course that will lead us away from sure madness and destruction. Surely, the challenge you face is no less daunting than that of Lincoln. If you are not willing to risk division, as he did, you cannot bring a resolution to the existential issues that face us today.

FDR once said in a fireside chat that he "welcomed" the hatred of those of the well-healed elite who felt that he was a traitor to his class. If you pursue the course that I have recommended, you will be hated by some, Sen. Obama. But you will be loved by many others. This is the fate of those who have the courage of their convictions and the power of effect real change. It cannot be helped. Welcome it. Your legacy will save our children and their children and they will sing your praises unto the seventh generation. Godspeed to you, Sen. Obama. A proud nation awaits.

Corruption: A Natural Outgrowth of the Unitary Executive Theory

2008-06-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

With each and every week bringing to light new disclosures of apparent corruption and cronyism within the George W. Bush administration, I am reminded of the last president we had who brought into his administration individuals who put ideology above the common interest and were amply rewarded for doing so--Ronald Reagan. Both presidents were champions of a new elite--an elite comprising not those persons of superior intellect or ability but rather those of unquestioned loyalty to a particular point of view.

When coupled with the particular point of view of this administration--that is, belief in the almost unlimited power of the commander-in-chief in times of war (the Unitary Executive Theory) and the accumulation of vast personal wealth and power over all other considerations--our nation is confronted, as it is today, with a grave threat to its reputation around the world, its self-confidence at home, and its rule of law.

Corruption flows from such an environment as naturally as mountain streams from a glacier. When loyalty is the most important character trait from the top of an administration down to the lowly paper shufflers, unquestioning obedience trumps altruism every time. If you do what you are told, you know that you will be protected--from having to testify before Congress or appear before a grand jury to having a lucrative job when you leave. If you leak information or squeal on a fellow, you lose your entire social network overnight. No administration I can think of has mastered this system better than the present one.

Given this environment, it is only natural for people to think they can get away with anything. Just think of the stuff that this administration has done with complete impunity compared to the problems that the previous administration had over a perjury related to a purely private matter.

All this is made worse by the attitude of the neo-conservatives that they are on a mission to democratize the world and thus immortalize themselves as champions of all that is noble and good. In their minds, the ends justify the means, no matter who or what they have to stomp on to get there, including the US Constitution.

My hope is that the American people have learned a lesson from the past seven years. I hope that they recognize that the Republican Party of the past 30 years is not the Party they thought they knew (if they've been around that long). The Republican Party of today is not a "party" at all. A "party" is a gathering of disparate people under one banner for a particular purpose, whether that be having fun or running a country. The Republican Party, in its current manifestation, is more like a club--perhaps the world's largest country club. You must pay your dues to enter the Republican Party today; those dues include promising to vote with your peers on every issue, memorizing the Party talking points, and keeping your mouth shut about what goes on behind closed doors.

My Notes on a George Lakoff Lecture on His Latest Book

2008-06-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

GEORGE LAKOFF LECTURE, JUNE 9, 2008, CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, DENVER, CO, USA—

[George Lakoff teaches at the University of California at Berkeley in the field of Cognitive Science and Linguistics. His new book is titled, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain.]

Why do people vote against their self-interest? Why do Democrats cower before attacks from the other side?

Democrats operate from a philosophy that might be called the “Theory of Mind”, which says that all thought is reasoned, rational, and conscious. This philosophy contends that politics is disembodied and abstract, the purpose of which is to pursue self-interest.

BUT…

Now we know from recent research on the mind that ALL OF THESE BELIEFS ARE FALSE. We now know, for example, that 85% of all reasoning is UNCONSCIOUS. It is a PHYSICAL process over which we have little conscious control. The brain is structured to run a body via trillions of neurons. The brain can’t think just any way at all; it doesn’t always fit the world as it is. Furthermore, it can’t be rational without being emotional.

Stroke or injury can destroy our ability to feel emotion. How, then, would we know what to want? We wouldn’t. We MUST HAVE EMOTION IN ORDER TO REASON.

Cultural Narratives

[Ed.: Please excuse me if I take some undue liberty here in explaining complex processes in the brain about which I know very little. I’m interpreting my somewhat cryptic notes here and may not have this technically accurate, despite my attempts to sort some of it out using Wikipedia.]

There are two chemicals in the brain that regulate our emotions: dopamine and epinephrine (adrenaline). Dopamine is associated with reward-seeking behavior, such as the desire for food or other pleasant stimulation—what Lakoff calls “good emotions”. Epinephrine is associated with “fight or flight” responses and stress—what Lakoff calls “bad emotions”. When politicians’ words trigger the dopamine response, they are thought of as “good guys or gals” and they tend to win; when they trigger the epinephrine response, they are thought of as “bad guys or gals” and they tend to lose.

Framing

Shortly after beginning his lecture, a young man brought Dr. Lakoff a paper cup filled with what appeared to be a hot liquid. Upon receiving it, Dr. Lakoff quipped that, just as conservatives suspect of all liberals, he likes his latte. Later, he used the cup to illustrate what he means by “framing”. When a person hears the word “cup”, he or she makes an unconscious association through neurons in his or her brain. He or she forms a mental picture of what a cup looks like and its function—the very definition of a “cup”.

Sometimes, these neural pathways form associations that have moral connotations (metaphors). For example, the word “more” is associated with “up”, as in “fill it up”. The “less” is associated with “down”, as in “the stock market is down”. Affectionate people are thought of as “warm”; indifferent people are thought of as “cold”. These associations are physically activated in the brain instantaneously, without conscious thought. Each time the associations are made, the synapses—the physical connections between nerve endings in the brain—are strengthened (they spread and grow). Over time, they become very strong—second nature, so to speak.

In terms of politics, we as individuals are first “governed” by our nuclear families. In Lakoff’s view, there are TWO IDEALS OF THE FAMILY. If you’ve read either of Lakoff’s books on framing, Moral Politics or Don’t Think of an Elephant, you’re familiar with these.

The first he calls the “strict father” model. In this model, children are raised by a mother and father with clearly defined roles, with the father being dominant. Misbehavior must be punished, often physically, even at times painfully. The values behind this model are self-sufficiency, competency, and ambition. It is felt that these qualities will lead to success in life and, therefore, productive contribution to society. Possession of these qualities is deemed to be moral. Therefore, wealth is an indication that the person possesses these qualities in abundance and should be left alone by government. (Lakoff points out—notably--that many persons with this outlook on life had happy childhoods, despite having to submit to corporal punishment.) In these families, the parents believe that when the child reaches the age of 25 or so, they should be able to survive entirely on their own. Likewise, government should leave people alone to make their own decisions in most areas of life, including how they spend their money.

The second family model is what he calls “nurturing parent”. This value seeks to impart in its offspring the values of empathy, responsibility for others, and self-fulfillment. The duty of the family is to protect the child while she or he is vulnerable and empower the child to pursue happiness as s/he sees fit. Out of this view of the family grows the idea that government, too, should protect and empower the people. Empowerment is achieved via the courts and a regulated stock market and banking system.

Lakoff talked about “mirror neurons”. When you see or hear someone laugh, we tend to laugh with them. (Think of the laugh track on sitcoms.) The same neurons in our brains are activated when seeing someone else laugh as are activated when someone tells us a joke. This is the source of empathy.

Voting against self-interest

Voting against self-interest is NOT AN ACCIDENT. IT’S ALL ABOUT “COGNITIVE POLICY” OR FRAMES.

Conservatives have for forty years understood the connection between winning elections and framing. (Liberals have yet to get it.) If you can create in the minds of your listeners or seers a connection between an neutral political device, say, taxes, and “bad emotions”, you can change the way they think about your candidate. One way to do that is to ALWAYS associate two concepts together in a frame that gets the epinephrine flowing. (Remember that epinephrine is the chemical in the brain associated with “fight or flight”.) So, if we talk about “tax relief”, the brain AUTOMATICALLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY associates “taxes” with “pain”. Combine that with the “strict father” notion of government as a body that neither empowers nor protects but merely gets in the way of “the market” and you have built a strong case for voting for the anti-tax candidate WITHOUT BOTHERING WITH A SINGLE FACT.

This is why it is so difficult to win political arguments. You cannot change someone’s mind without changing their brain. [This is why I have so little faith in bipartisanship in Congress. The only way to pass progressive legislation is to numerically overwhelm the opposition.—Ed.]

Democrats used to be champions of the working class (remember the New Deal?). Because of the Republicans’ effective use of frames, Dems are now looked upon by many as “liberal elitists”.

We all have BOTH parent models in our brains. A moderate has both models on political issues. But there is no such thing as a “moderate parenting model”. On some issues, one neuron pair can neutralize another neuron pair, making the individual “liberal” on some issues and “conservative” on others. Joe Lieberman is a “hawk” on the war and a “liberal” socially. Chuck Hagel is for peace in Iraq but conservative on other issues.

People vote against their own economic interests because of what Lakoff calls “conservative populism”. (Lakoff pointed out that neither Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas, nor Al Gore, author of The Assault on Reason, seems to grasp this concept.) Conservatives who love the outdoors, while they might oppose smart growth legislation, may team up with environmentalists to stop development that would diminish fishing or hunting opportunities. Some self-described “conservative” entrepreneurs are quite liberal in their business practices. Pro-labor “liberals” may be rabidly anti-immigrant.

There is hope for dialogue between liberals and conservatives. But, first, we must get past the argument over specific policies and “the facts” and get to the question, “What do you care about?”. Get your “opponent” to talk about what’s in their hearts. Perhaps you’ll find something in common that you both value—caring, empathy, freedom, or fairness.

Bipartisanship

There are two means of achieving bipartisanship. For Sen. Clinton, bipartisanship means that the progressives move to the right, meeting the opposition half-way. For Sen. Obama, bipartisanship means finding the conservatives who have liberal values on a particular issue, such as John McCain on campaign finance reform or Church Hagel on setting a timetable to withdraw from Iraq.

[This was the end of his talk. He then took Q&A from the audience. Most of the questions were about how to frame the case for selling ballot initiatives or legislation. The following are my notes from that back-and-forth…]

On the Peter Barnes’ Carbon-Cap-and-Dividend bill before Congress:

Speaker on the philosophy behind the bill: We all own the air. Polluters should pay for polluting. If you want to impose a fee for the extraction of polluting fuels, do so at the source. Ratchet down the cap on CO2 emissions by 2% per year, meaning that the cost of polluting will go up. Make the oil and gas companies bid against each other for the right to pollute by auctioning off pollution credits. The money raised—estimated to be about $1000 per person for 150 million taxpayers—would be distributed equally to each citizen.

Lakoff on oil and gas severance taxes: Don’t call anything a “severance tax”. This is bad framing. “Oil depletion fee” would be good.

Lakoff on other questions: Liberals must take back the good words that we have forfeited: freedom and liberty (others?). “Single-payer health care”—bad framing. “Doctor-patient-run health care” is better. (HB676—good). Say what you really mean. Say what values are behind your idea. Then, say why it isn’t crazy. [Show how your values are served by your policy proposal.—Ed.]

The Case against Moderation, Part I

2008-06-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I go for political wisdom these days, I'm hearing stuff like, "The way to victory is for the progressives to move toward the middle, the center of American political thought. That's where the votes are--the independents and the undecideds that can be the key to victory. Change will come but we must be patient, finding middle ground where we can and waiting for calmer waters when we can't."

Well, no doubt, patience is a virtue--when virtue is plentiful. The problem is that that's no longer the case. Ultra-rightist thinking has dominated our national policy for the past seven years now--soon to be eight. As a result, we are in such a pickle that, in order to restore balance, the pendulum will have to swing just as far to the left, though without the name-calling and obstreperousness.

[Queer question (question you are not likely to hear while listening to NPR or PBS): Why is it that it is the liberals who are always advocating for caution, measured steps, moderation, and compromise? Hasn't it been the liberals who have been the ones to move the country forward toward real progress (as opposed to conquest)? Haven't we been the ones who have woven the safety net, balanced the budget, created sustained stock market growth, and brought justice and freedom to more people? Why should we feel that it is US who must compromise our principles in order to achieve anything?]

I'll tell you why. It's because we know that the other side is fundamentally incapable of moderation. This didn't used to be true of Republicans but it certainly is now. These ideologues, with few exceptions, only understand one thing and that is power. We on the left must realize that we will only save the planet and nation by going over them, not around or alongside them. They are only concerned about preserving their power. We are the only ones concerned about the common good, solving more problems than we create, and passing on to future generations an American Dream worthy of the name. Centrism, as George Lakoff claims, is not a political philosophy at all but rather a strategy. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late to make a real difference. This I firmly believe. It is why I believe that, ultimately, the Clinton administration was a failed one. He sold the heart of the Democratic Party for political expediency. He, more than any other man, made the word "liberal" anathema.

I still say that we need another FDR. Sure, he campaigned as a centrist. But when he was in office, he governed as a liberal and he saved the nation from its greatest crises of the 20th Century (and I'm not forgetting the Cold War here). He was not afraid of the backlash. In fact, he said that he "welcomed" the hatred of the elite who called him a traitor to his class. His courage and wisdom won him reelection twice. THAT is the lesson that I hope Barack Obama learns when he is in office.

Rove Redux?

2008-05-17T04:18:00.000-07:00

Here's how "Sebastian", writing live from the Network of Rectal Aspirators (NRA) "Celebration of American Values" event yesterday for his blog, Snowflakes from Hell, characterized John McCain's comment on Barack Obama's willingness to talk to Iran's leaders: "McCain takes Obama to task for wanting to talk to our enemies instead of just kicking their asses." (You gotta love the NRA-types' grasp of diplomacy.)

Here are McCain's actual words:

Senator Obama would meet unconditionally with some of the world's worst dictators and state sponsors of terrorists. I would not add to the prestige of those who support violent extremists or seek to destroy our allies....Senator Obama has said, if elected, he will withdraw Americans from Iraq quickly no matter what the situation on the ground is and no matter what U.S. military commanders advise. But if we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. A reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will view it as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly.

So now we have the outline of the Republican spin on one of the key issues in this fall's campaign: it's a choice between kiss ass or kick ass. This, from a crowd of neocons who let Darth Vader escape so they could go after the Ewoks and managed to f*** up even that! They unwittingly lured al Qaeda into Iraq by bringing down one of the few secular dictatorships in the Middle East and disbanding the Iraqi army and the mostly Baathist police--leading to anarchy and an opening for al Qaeda--and now claim that we must stay there indefinitely to restore order, despite spending billions of dollars to train hundreds of thousands of new Iraqi troops and police for that very purpose. The only sane reaction would be to tar-and-feather the entire bunch and carry them out of town tied to a rail. At the very least, we must hope that the American voters will turn a deaf ear to such complete and utter drivel. Else, we may find Karl Rove back in the White House in 2009.

Awk, Barack!

2008-05-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

In today's New York Times, in a story headlined, "Republican election losses stir fall fears", appears the following quote:

"Woody Jenkins, a Louisiana Republican who lost in a special House election this month, said in an interview that the high African-American turnout in his district was 'probably the decisive factor' in his loss.

"The election results also raised questions about what had been a main Republican strategy for the fall, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination: to link Democrats in conservative districts to Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama, campaigning in Sterling Heights, Mich., said the outcome in the Mississippi contest, to fill a 'hard-core Republican seat,' proved that the strategy would not work.

“'They lost it by eight points, and they did everything they could,' Mr. Obama said. 'They ran ads with my face on it, and they said, "Oh, you look at this, a former liberal, and his former pastor’s said offensive things." They were trying to do everything in the book to try to scare folks in Mississippi, and it didn’t work.'” [Emphasis mine.]

Now, if I were a Republican muckraker from Louisiana, would I run an ad--in any medium--that described Barack Obama as a "former liberal"? Hell, no, I wouldn't. I would describe him as a dyed-in-the-wool, lifetime-card-carrying, unrepentant, blue-blooded liberal. Would I describe the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his "former pastor"? I don't think so. I would say that Rev. Wright has been Obama's pastor for twenty years (which is true).

Something is fishy here. Why would Barack Obama misquote an ad that the other side has run about him? Well, he might want to make them look more disingenuous that they really were, for one. But that's not the case here. If anything, Obama softened the language to make him seem less out of step with the typical Louisiana voter. (Let's be clear about this: we're talking white voters here, as well.) Since the election is over, why would he do that? Only one reason that I would judge worthy of expending energy trying to explicate: Not only does Barack want to distance himself from his trusted spiritual adviser of two decades but also the political philosophy known proudly for 3/4 of a century as "liberalism". It would seem that Sen. Obama is as anxious to leave that piece of baggage to circulate forever on the carousel of discarded descriptors as he is to break free of the Wright curse.

Why would ANY candidate for president be ashamed of the label of liberal? Is it because George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale lost so badly to their conservative rivals, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan? Did Nixon prove McGovern wrong on the Vietnam War? How many lives--American and foreign--would have been saved had McGovern been president from early 1972 through 1976? Would Watergate have happened? If Carter had been reelected, would there still be solar panels on the roof of the White House? Would the US have done something about global warming twenty years ago? Would the US hostages being held by Iranian militants have been released sooner had there been no hope that Carter would lose? Would we have been well on the way to a treatment for AIDS before Reagan could even bring himself to say the word? Would we have invaded Grenada? Would we have suffered through the loss of many billions of dollars in the savings and loan debacle?

What part of the progress of the 20th Century would be left if liberalism had not been invented? Certainly, the Cold War would have been carefully preserved, along with McCarthyism, the Arms Race, the CIA-financed coups against Allende, Mossadegh, and a half-dozen others. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion would have surely have been employed, in all its ineptness. But what of the Civilization Conservation Corps, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Housing Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority? What of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communication Commission, the Department of Labor, the GI Bill, food stamps, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Peace Corps?

Here's the only non-tax-related program of Ronald Reagan's that turns up in the Wikipedia article on Ronald Reagan's presidency: the sales of arms to Iran in exchange for cash to assist the anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, in subversion of a democratically-elected government. So, we see that, during the period of classic liberalism of the 20th Century, conservatism has a legacy of corruption, if they can be said to have a legacy at all.

So, what is Barack running from anyway? I think I've asked this question before (I can't check from this screen). He should stop cowering before the bigots and know-nothings and reclaim his religious and political heritage before it's too late.

2008-05-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

[Readers, please indulge me in a little fantasy. Pretend that I am a Unitarian Universalist candidate for the presidency of these United States, speaking on the subject of health care. Note: I actually did give this speech during both Sunday services on May 11, 2008, at First Unitarian Denver.]

It’s hard to imagine someone like myself—a gay, atheistic, unreformed, unabashed, and unrepentant 1960’s-era liberal—running for any public office today. Most likely, I could get every member of my political “base” to the polls in a Volvo station wagon, a Toyota Prius, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

However, never one to concede “family values” to the likes of James Dobson and Pastor John Hagee, I will take these few minutes to explain how, for me, Unitarian Universalism informs my opinions on health care.

Because I subscribe to the proposition that every human being has inherent worth and dignity, I believe that a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system is the ONLY moral solution to the mess that American medical practice is in today.

Many decry such a plan as “socialized medicine”. My response is, “Why shouldn’t the treatment of disease be socialized? Public health is the most socialized science known to the human race.”

For those of you who saw the recent HBO miniseries, John Adams, you will likely recall the scene early on when Abigail Adams, left alone to raise their four children and terrified at the prospect of the entire family coming down with smallpox, makes the incredibly courageous decision to have the family inoculated against that horrific disease. The doctor makes a house call with a horse-drawn cart containing the pox-ravaged body of a teenaged boy. Using a crude instrument, the doctor scrapes some of the erupted goo from a pustule on the boy’s body, which he then rubs into a small cut on an arm of each member of the family. The only daughter, Nabby, develops a mild form of the disease but survives.

Every new drug, surgical procedure, or therapy for a medical condition devised by the minds of men and women depends for its efficacy on clinical trials. Human bodies are the laboratories for medical breakthroughs. These people volunteer to subject themselves to some degree of risk for the sake of medical science. Since almost half of the American population either has no health insurance or say they’ve had trouble getting the health care they need despite having insurance, we must ask the value-driven question, “What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”

As Bill Moyers reported on his Journal on PBS this past Friday, if an ordinary citizen has had four major heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, an implantable defibrillator in his chest, atrial fibrillation, cardio vertigo, and a heart rhythm that goes out of whack, he would likely be uninsurable for having a preexisting condition. Vice President Dick Cheney fits this exact description and yet cannot be denied insurance at the public expense because he is an employee of the federal government, no matter how serious his heart condition.

We are the wealthiest nation on earth—for now—whose citizens experience disease, injury, and disability as capriciously as the citizens of any other country, yet for whom the ability to receive the care that would mitigate or cure these conditions is parceled out via an immoral and undemocratic merit system based upon ability to pay. Under such a system, there is nothing inherent about the worth and dignity of anyone. Your worth and dignity are measures of what’s in your bank account. My religious tradition finds this notion to be repugnant.

Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations is another tenet of my faith. Yet, within the health industry, justice, equity, and compassion is meted out based not upon need or professional opinion but often upon the career prospects of an insurance company employee whose bonus is based upon the number and size of the claims that he or she denies. My religious faith finds this notion to be odious.

My faith also values the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. To me, this means that when truth is established, the responsible thing to do is to make reality conform to that truth--even if it means brushing aside reactionary attempts to impugn, deny, or obfuscate the truth; even if it means confronting a very powerful lobby or forcing the privileged to face up to the injustice of their circumstance and put their lot in with “common folk”; even if it means admitting that we CAN learn from other nation’s experience, keeping the good and discarding the bad.

My faith also believes in respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. In this spirit, I would like to offer a truly radical notion that would make power brokers of both political parties and the Kings of K Street alike cringe: No one, no matter how wealthy or powerful, should have access to health care that is not available to everyone.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

A for-profit health care system is a roadblock against Jefferson’s idea of the human birthright. If you believe as I do, I ask for your vote as the future President of these United States of America. Together, we can restore Life where today there is Death and Disease, Liberty where there is Financial Obligation, and Happiness where there is Misery.

Thank you.

Health care is an unalienable right

2008-05-01T03:27:00.000-07:00

Never before in the history of the world had such a bold statement of the inherent worth and dignity of every man, woman, and child been conceptualized, let alone set down as the challenge for a new form of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. With these words, Thomas Jefferson conceived and the assembled representatives of the original thirteen American colonies affirmed that when “Governments, instituted among men and deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed, become destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and institute a new Government so as to most likely effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It is the DUTY of government to effect the safety and happiness of the people. It is a duty so sacrosanct that the people have the right, if not the obligation, to change the government should it fail to do so. This is the most important principle responsible for the birth of this, the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation on the face of the earth.

Yet, today, nearly one of every six Americans is vulnerable to bankruptcy, misery, and even an early death because they do not have the financial means to pay their medical bills. Why? Because Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness has been turned into just another commodity to be bought and sold on the open market, like butter, guns, and video games. If you can pay for it, you get it. If not, well, too bad. You can always go to the emergency room, if you can get there, where you will be humiliated and treated as a charity case.

For me, the most unforgettable scene in the recent HBO miniseries, John Adams, occurs early on, when Abigail Adams, left alone to raise their four children and terrified at the prospect of the entire family coming down with smallpox, makes the incredibly courageous decision to have the family inoculated against that horrific disease. The doctor—was he a specialist?—arrives with a horse-drawn cart containing the ravaged body of a teenaged boy with an advanced case of the pox. Using a crude instrument, the doctor scrapes some of the erupted goo from a pustule on the boy’s body, which he then rubs into a small cut on an arm of each member of the family. The only daughter develops a mild form of the disease but survives.

I don’t know if Massachusetts Mutual existed in 1776. If they did, they probably would have denied a medical claim for such treatment as “experimental”, which it surely was. Perhaps the doctor didn’t charge for his services; he may well have thought that that sick boy in the wooden cart paid more than a fair price for the services rendered.

What a powerful metaphor for the reality that, as human beings, we are all both the victims and the hope of each other when it comes to the security of our health. We have all felt threatened at some time or another by a person behind us sneezing on a bus or coughing on an elevator. We have known what it is to become ill following an airplane ride or worry when a coworker comes to work sick. None of us is truly healthy until all are healthy or, at least, receiving the quality health care we all deserve.

Maintaining a quality system of comprehensive health care, accessible to everyone equally, is as sacred a trust among the free peoples of a democracy as the assurance that we will not deliberately physically harm each other. If it is a crime to willfully do injury to another person, why is it not a crime to deny that victim the dignity not to have to "beg" for the treatment that will restore her to wholeness? A civilized society takes upon itself certain obligations, including the responsibility to not only do no harm but also to do good—to see that we all—men, women, children—never suffer from lack of the best health care we as a nation can afford.

Let us take up this cause—both today and for as long as accident, disease, mental illness, and visual or hearing infirmity afflict our fellow citizens. Let us make Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness more than a promise but a hallmark of our democracy and the fulfillment of our Founding Fathers’ dream of so long ago. Let us resolve today to make comprehensive, universal, not-for-profit health care the American standard and the freshest and brightest new promise to our children and our children’s children.

If you get your news from TV, the Pentagon is messing with your mind

2008-04-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

In a three-page story beginning on page 1A of Sunday's New York Times, David Barstow documents how the Pentagon has been using retired high-ranking military personnel as propaganda agents for the purpose of selling the "success" of the Iraq Occupation (my word, not theirs) to the American people on the three "major" networks, as well as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and PBS.

You've seen them--the suited "retired Army major general so-and-so" who has just returned from a "fact-finding" mission to Guantanamo/Baghdad/Afghanistan to happily report that we "have turned the corner/seen light at the end of the tunnel/begun to kick some ass/are clearly winning the war" in Iraq. The only problem: the "scoops" pouring out of these malleable mouths were nothing but Rumsfeld talking points given a military haircut and shoe shine and trotted out to see how they would play in the lala land that is contemporary major network news.

Don't you wonder why it is that we are NEVER ALLOWED TO SEE anything that looks like death on our TV screens? Why, even the sight of a flag-draped coffin containing the remains of a US soldier is taboo, let alone the gruesome, gut-wrenching stuff that draws Americans to movie and TV gore-fests like '24', CSI, and such, week after week. As Amy Goodman said in a speech last night here in Denver, if Americans were forced--as Iraqi men, women, and children are day-in/day-out--to see scenes of war AS IT ACTUALLY IS alongside images of their pretty-boy-and-girl news anchors, they would demand an end to the madness faster than the character, Marlow, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness can say, "The horror! The horror!"

Here's another dot for you:

If you can't look at the product of your particular enterprise at any given moment, it probably isn't something you should be doing.

Elephant dots

2008-04-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

This morning, I spent about three hours watching the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee "grille" Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Some words were to be heard so frequently as to cause tears of boredom--words such as "progress", "al Qaeda", "safer", "thanks", "responsibility", "uh (from Crocker)", "surge is working", "open-ended", "extremists", "bin Laden", "cost", "coalition forces", and "Iran".

Most of the words I was listening for were nowhere to be heard: "Iraqi nationalists" ("Arab nationalists" WAS mentioned, but it's not the same thing), "Iraqi death toll", "polls of the Iraqi people", "occupation", , "quagmire", "root cause", "American economy", and anything doing with the facts on the ground in Iraq BEFORE the "coalition forces" invaded that country.

In other words--with exceptions voiced by Senators Evan Bayh, Carl Levin, and one or two others--it was basically on the level of a interview delivered by rock star to a room full of groupies. Like everything else this administration and its Senate minions do, it was based on such a small sliver of reality as to have totally lost the truth of "the big picture". (Does anyone out there in cyberspace remember the Army's half-hour TV series of the '50's and '60's by that same name? Those were the days when the US government cared about such things.)

Had any of the folks on the committee read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine or Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater? If they had, I don't see how they could just sit there and take it while a parade of white-haired, white-skinned, privileged men from the deep South out-bid each other for the honor of having their noses buried the furthest up Petraeus' keester, while pretending that Iraq is anything other than a wasted mess of a country.

A "quagmire" is defined by Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary as "a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position". With Gen. Petraeus' repeated refusal to estimate a possible end date for the occupation of Iraq, claiming that it depended solely upon "conditions" on the ground, I would have loved just one senator to have asked, "General, would you say that the current situation in Iraq vis-a-vis the US could be summarized as a quagmire?"

The other definition for "quagmire" is "soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot". Quicksand, perhaps? Like quicksand, there seem to be only two moral options in Iraq for the US: either try not to move or change position and somehow stay afloat (Bush's course) or struggle to free ourselves (withdraw) and perhaps sink deeper into the moral morass, along with the Iraqis. There must be an especially hot place in hell for those who did this to all of us.

A word from Rabbi Michael Lerner

2008-03-28T09:07:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, what I'm feeling is best expressed by others. This is such a case. I commend to you the following (warning: there is a commercial pitch at the end)--

The Obama Phenomenon
by Michael Lerner
from the March/April issue of Tikkun Magazine

The Phenomenon is not Barack Obama. Senator Obama is a masterful organizer and teacher. But this editorial is not about Obama as much as about what he elicits in others, and should not be read as an endorsement of him.

The energy, hopefulness, and excitement that manifests in Obama's campaign has shown up before in the last fifty years, only to quickly be crushed. It was there in the 1960s and 1970s in the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the movement for gay liberation. One felt it flowing at rallies and demonstrations at which Robert Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Betty Friedan, Isaac Deutscher, Joan Baez, and Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated their visions. It was there again in Earth Day, in the anti-nuclear movement, and in the movement against the war with the Contras. It was there during the campaign of Jesse Jackson in 1988 and the Clintons' campaign in 1992. And it has been there-dare we say it-in the growth of the religious right and the Campus Crusade for Christ.

What is that energy and excitement, and why does it touch people so deeply?

Since Tikkun started in 1986 we've been trying to convince the political leadership of the liberal and progressive forces that they needed to understand this phenomenon and speak to it. Sometimes we've written about it as a hunger for meaning and purpose, and prescribed a "politics of meaning" as the way to respond politically; in the last few years we've written about the need for a spiritual progressive politics to bring this energy into the public sphere.

The phenomenon in question is this: the intense desire of every human being on this planet to overcome and transcend the materialism and selfishness that shape the global economic arrangements and permeate the consciousness of all people, to overcome the looking-out-for-number one consciousness that divides us and the technocratic language that shapes our public institutions and denies us access to our common humanity, and to overcome the alienation from each other that this way of being has created so that we might once again recognize each other as embodiments of God or Spirit (or however you want to talk about the force-field of goodness, generosity, kindness, justice, peace, nonviolence, and care for each other and nature and the entirety of all that is).

We Avert Our Eyes from One Another

Every gesture, every word, every deed, every political act, every interaction with others, every message we give ourselves all combine to either reinforce our separation and estrangement from each other or to reconnect us in a deep way that allows genuine mutual recognition, the seeing and hearing of who we really are, the contact we have with the sacred in ourselves, in each other, and in the world.

We live in a world that is humanly deadening. It's not just the actual murders committed in our name. I picked up the newspaper this morning and read that U.S. forces barged into a home in the village of Door, 100 miles north of Baghdad, and began to fire at the family living there, killing four, including an eleven-year-old girl. Perhaps tomorrow they will issue a statement acknowledging that this was a mistake, as they did today about the killing of nine Iraqi civilians in Iskandariya a few days ago, and the death "under mysterious circumstances" of an Iraqi militiaman who died "in custody after being held for three days on a Baghdad arrest warrant" as a result of a bullet in the head. At some point they'll
acknowledge that the U.S. invasion let loose dynamics that have led to the deaths of over one million Iraqis, and that the "surge" could only be described as "working" because it accelerated the process of some 3 million Iraqis leaving their homes while neighborhoods were being surrounded by concrete walls to provide protection to one ethnic group while the other groups fled to "safety" elsewhere. But today, most Americans remain in a state of zombie-like denial of what this country continues to do.

Nor is the deadening process confined to the various ways we deny our involvement in the world and what is happening therein. For example, our refusal to acknowledge that paying the taxes to keep the war going is part of what makes it possible; and our refusal to acknowledge that the 20,000-30,000 children who die (on average) every single day around the world because of inadequate food and healthcare are directly connected to our global economic system in which we participate daily and which we accept as "inevitable"; and the distance we maintain from those who seek fundamental change, whom we reject as unrealistic.

No, it's not just these large systems of oppression and manipulation that deaden us. It's also our own withdrawn and depressive certainty that nothing much can happen in the world of politics and economics, or even in our interactions with each other. We walk down the streets or ride the buses, subways, or airplanes, averting our eyes from the others who share our circumstances. We are certain that if we start talking to others that they will feel that their privacy has been invaded and will resent it, suspecting that we are out to sell them something or take advantage of them or manipulate them. Instead, as Tikkun associate editor Peter Gabel has so frequently articulated on these pages, we stay inside ourselves, offering ourselves to others only in tightly controlled roles, the dimensions of which have been carefully constructed to ensure that we will not awaken in the others their own hunger for love, friendship, recognition, or aliveness.

And so we deaden ourselves and deaden each other. Each time we avert our eyes, each time we pretend not to see the homeless person, the fellow worker getting into trouble, the neighbor who needs our help, the car stalled on the freeway, and each time we tighten our face and muscles to give to the other the message of "don't go there" where "there" means "don't try to force me to be real with you when I'm scared to do that," we manage to convince the others that nobody gives a damn, that they, too, are alone, and that they would be making a huge mistake to try to break out of their isolation or to think that their own desires for connection are shared by billions of others and are not simply a manifestation of some private inadequacy or pathology.

Recently, some columnists have compared Obama to a rock star because his supporters seem to treat him more like that than like a politician. They are only partially mistaken. What the best and most fulfilling rock concerts of the past several decades have offered one generation is what other multi-generational mega-churches or Super Bowls and World Series' offer to others: a chance to momentarily experience a transcendence of all those feelings of loneliness and alienation, a momentary ability to be part of a "we" that reminds us of what it feels like to be less alone. For a moment we experience a community of shared purpose, and no matter how intellectually, psychologically, or spiritually empty that moment might be, for that moment we get a distorted but, nevertheless, powerful way of reminding ourselves of how much more we could be than when we are alone and scared.

The problem, of course, is that these moments are often based on an us-versus-them vision of the world: our community requires that some other people be the bad guys. As contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapists like to point out, we are often engaged in splitting our own internalized image of ourselves as fundamentally good and decent from another part, which we see as dirty and unacceptable and hence not really part of us at all but rather part of some "evil Other," which in the West, through history, has been the Jew, the Black man, the feminist, the homosexual, the communist, the terrorist, the illegal immigrant, etc.

The Effectiveness of Not Demonizing

Obama's appeal starts from his insistence on not demonizing the Other-the very point from which Tikkun started as a project of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health (ILMH) twenty-two years ago. At ILMH we learned-through conducting an intensive study of working class consciousness-that people moving to the Right politically were not primarily motivated by racism, sexism, and hatred, but by the spiritual crisis in their lives that the Left failed to address and the Right spoke to (albeit with distorted solutions).

Obama avoids detailing his political programs precisely because he knows that in so doing he would shift the discourse from how to break through the fear we have of each other and our "certainty" that we are condemned to be alone and alienated, back to the old discourse about point X or point Y in his health care or environmental program, leaving most people behind in despair. Instead, he confronts that despair straight on.

Obama knows that most people want a very different world, but don't believe it is possible unless someone else makes it happen. He challenges his audience by telling them that there is no one else, that they themselves are the people who must make the world different. To quote Obama from his Super Tuesday speech: "So many of us have been waiting so long for the time when we could finally expect more from our politics, when we could give more of ourselves and feel truly invested in something bigger than a particular candidate or cause. This is it. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

In short, Obama is telling his supporters, we are not in need of some magical leader, not even Obama himself. Rather, what we need is the confidence in ourselves to reclaim the public space, to break down our fears about ourselves and each other, and to recognize that it is only when we move beyond our personal lives and work together for our highest vision that anything substantial will change.

Obama has used his campaign to teach us that we actually can emerge from our frightened, withdrawn state, and enter into a public community and affirm each other's humanity, whether that be through our foreign relations, in our approach to immigration, in our economic lives, or, even, in overcoming the ossified categories of "the Left" and "the Right." And Obama presents himself with a sense of certainty that helps us overcome our own uncertainty-he is determined to win the election because he thinks we can do this if we are willing to "declare that we are with each other."

It is precisely this striving to create a transcendent experience of connection without demonizing the Other that has been the important element in the Obama phenomenon. Although the criticisms of his seeming inability to recognize the depth of the struggles that must be waged against the entrenched powers of global capital are well-founded, the Obama phenomenon promises to accumulate the power to challenge the powerful precisely by rejecting the demonizing of the other and following a path of nonviolence, not only in actions but also in words. This kind of nonviolent communication, a powerful extension of Gandhi's and King's methodology, may actually, in the long run, prove far more effective than pointing out the cruelty and hypocrisy of those who will not challenge the existing systems of militarism and global economic and political domination.

This is About Us, Not About Obama

Surely, one might object, we are giving far too much credit to Obama himself. After all, many on the Left argue, Obama is just a consummate politician, and not one committed to the programs that we all need. Obama voted against the war in Iraq, but he does not advocate the kind of withdrawal that we at Tikkun believe is the necessary precondition for any real healing in that country, namely a total and complete withdrawal not fudged by turning our military into "advisors" who could then stay in the country until it is stabilized. (Our troops are still in Germany and Japan sixty-three years after the end of the Second World War, so we know how hard it is for any government to acknowledge that "stabilization" has been achieved.) Obama does not support a single payer health care program of the sort that the NSP supports, and his ideas on health care have been less plausible than those of Hillary Clinton. Obama has not supported a serious tax on carbon emissions and his environmental programs have not challenged the global corporate polluters and exploiters of the earth, nor is he likely to support the kinds of radical changes in our Western levels of consumption necessary to save the planet from destruction. Obama has not been on the forefront of struggles against poverty and for the empowerment of workers. And Obama does not yet advocate for a Global Marshall Plan or for the Strategy of Generosity that has been central to this magazine and the NSP's approach to transforming the world.

All of the above would be relevant points if we were discussing whether to endorse the candidate Barack Obama. But we are not. We have never endorsed a candidate, despite the many who misperceived our enthusiasm for the language being used by the Clintons during the 1992 campaign and for Hillary Clinton's spontaneous speech when she explicitly endorsed our "politics of meaning" and then invited us to meet with her and strategize together in the White House in 1993. The truth is that even beyond the legal prohibitions that make endorsement impossible for a 501c3, we actually don't see any political party or candidate who fully articulates a spiritual politics of the sort you'll find in our Spiritual Covenant with America at www.spiritualprogressives.org. So while some of us may endorse a candidate in 2008 as private citizens, in no way does this extend to an endorsement by the magazine or the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Nor are we surprised to find that members of the NSP differ sharply in who they would endorse.

These Dead Bones Shall Yet Live

What we are talking about is the phenomenon of hope and the coming back to life of the spiritually dead. This is the good news of Spring, with nature blooming; the good news of Passover and its message that no system of slavery or deadness is inevitable because there is a Force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from that which is to that which ought to be; and the good news of Easter with its message that even the dead can be resurrected, or as our Jewish prophet Ezekiel put it, that "these dead bones shall yet live."

Or to put it another way: no matter how spiritually and emotionally dead the majority of people on the planet may appear to be, no matter how lost in their pursuit of money and fame and sexual conquest and me-first-ism and don't-bother-me-ism, the truth is that the resurrection of the dead is always at hand, always a possibility. Human beings can always be awakened again to choose life, to choose love, to choose kindness, generosity, ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. That capacity of human beings is what it means to have a soul, though in my view it might be better to say that all human beings participate in the soul of the universe, which is the God of the universe.

The big task for spiritual progressives is to keep the Obama phenomenon alive whether or not he becomes the next president of the U.S; either way, the challenge is substantial. In the early days of the Clinton presidency when the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal were describing me as Hillary Clinton's guru, and Bill Clinton was steadily reading Tikkun, Hillary told me a
powerful story that has stayed with me ever after. She told of a meeting that FDR had with leaders of the labor movement who were trying to convince FDR to support the Lehman Act (to grant legal status to union strikes and organizing). After four hours of discussion, FDR summarized this way: "Gentlemen, you have totally convinced me that you are right. Now, go out there into the world and force me to do it" [emphasis mine]. His point, Hillary explained, is that even as president, the forces pushing in the direction of the status quo are potentially overwhelming unless countered by a well-organized popular movement, and she and Bill did not feel that they had enough of a movement behind them to push for their most visionary ideas.

That's why the movement is so very important.

The Living Movements We Need

It matters, however, what kind of movement. The Left and the liberal progressives have not been particularly effective in building a transformative movement in large part because they've been stuck on the level of "policy and program" while ignoring the spiritual hunger for meaning and purpose, for connection and mutual recognition, that we've been talking about in Tikkun all these years.

All of the movements and campaigns that were mentioned above were originally embodiments of that larger set of spiritual concerns, and they drew their energy precisely from their ability to reconnect to the deep and abiding hunger, often well-hidden below the surface appearance, for a return to life, to the spirit, to God, or however else you choose to express this. When that hunger explodes into life, when people are resurrected from their spiritual death, everything becomes possible. And that itself can be overwhelming, as we can see from reading how scared the people were at Mt. Sinai when God revealed Herself to the people. It feels so much safer if people can find a way to turn that energy into something not quite so revolutionary: into commandments, social programs, rituals, legislation, political platforms, or concrete demands. And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this as long as one keeps the fires burning inside, the connection to the loving and awesome energy of the God of the universe, or of the power of staying alive to each other and to oneself at every moment.

Unfortunately, what often happens in social change organizations is that the fear becomes so great that it overwhelms the hopefulness and the love, and so they barely keep alive the pale shadow of that hopefulness, and instead try to prove that they are "realistic" by focusing their energies on struggles for this or that specific program, now increasingly out of touch with the underlying desire which led them and their supporters into these struggles in the first place. And without that desire and the contact with the
aliveness that it first evoked, these struggles become deadening and people drop away, and then they are lost. Washington, D.C. and many of our major cities around the country are filled with people who are involved in these liberal or progressive organizations that have lost their fire, and many more who have dropped out because the experience was no longer humanly satisfying or sustainable.

It's not enough to conclude that one should keep the movement alive after the campaign is finished. That was the promise of the McGovern campaign in 1972, the Carter campaign in 1976, the Kennedy campaign in 1980, the Jesse Jackson campaign in 1988, and the Clinton campaign in 1992. This won't happen unless the people work to make it happen during the campaign, right now, in the midst of the struggle. And it must be done in such a way that people are not re-privatized, passivized, and then eventually demobilized. It has to be planned regardless of what happens in the actual horse race for the presidency.

And this year there is a special challenge, because the people who have returned to life and energy are not just in the Obama campaign but in the Clinton campaign, and in the Green party, and in other political parties as well, and they need to be welcomed into an ongoing movement that keeps this energy alive, without facing recriminations for not having backed whoever others think that they should have.

Win or Lose: What Obama Needs to Do Right Now

Obama himself seems to recognize, at times, that what really counts is not the horse race or even who wins the presidency, but the creation of an ongoing movement that will last. Unfortunately, he does not take the next, absolutely necessary step of telling his supporters what they can do to keep the movement going right now and endow it with the energy to last beyond the November elections. So, for example, the people in New York, California, Massachusetts, Iowa, New Hampshire and all the other states that have voted are implicitly being given the message that there is nothing for them to do right now except to donate more money to the campaigns of their candidates.

Imagine how different that could be if Obama were to ask people to meet weekly in their neighborhoods in small groups to begin to build ongoing projects of social change that would embody their highest ideals. Groups could be organized, for example, around universal health care, environmental sanity, the Global Marshall Plan as the path to homeland security, corporate social responsibility, and electoral reform. If the millions of people who have been touched by the campaigns (and yes, not only by Obama, but by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, etc.) were to begin working now for the changes they want their candidate to bring to the country, then these campaigns would stop resembling horse races and start resembling the building of mass movements and the reclaiming of social space from all those columnists, politicians, and public opinion leaders whose impact historically has been to deaden our hopes and convince us that we should just attend to our own personal lives.

This is where the NSP comes in. We are not of any particular candidacy, and not feeling conflicted about people who didn't back Obama but backed Clinton or even Huckabee or McCain or Nader or whoever. We see the big picture. We know that the key is to keep the hopeful energy alive, regardless of the outcome of the election, because that is the energy that will set the contours for what elected officials do once they have won.

That is the challenge, and for that, we need a way for people to become fully engaged in the electoral arena, and yet to recognize that what moves them is something far bigger than a great speaker and dynamic politician, but rather the goodness within them and within everyone else that has momentarily been allowed to reveal itself through the legitimating framework of an electoral campaign. But far too few people know about the NSP, and unless you help us change that (e.g. by inviting friends to a weekend afternoon or weekday evening gathering at your apartment or house and showing them the NSP video and then discussing with them our program and ideas) people will not know where to go or what to do, and instead will simply be waiting for the next round of the election from September to November, and after November will feel lost and powerless and may even feel that they've been used and tricked once again.

It has always been that way after elections. But it doesn't have to be. The movements that have been generated by Obama, Clinton, McCain, Huckabee, and others could remain alive if we choose to make them such-alive, and able to transcend sectarian political boundaries. We at NSP will do our part to make that happen, but we can't do it without your involvement.

Contact: www.spiritualprogressives.org or .

Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, and chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

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Krauthammer's disrespect

2008-03-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer is a real piece of work. Three years ago, I heard him speak at the annual Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (You may remember last year's conference, following which Bill O'Reilly and other luminaries on the right went ape-shit over statements made by a single panelist--of over 100 in attendance--which seemed to them to have the effect of encouraging high school-age children to experiment with sex and drugs.) Mr. Krauthammer, who was the sole speaker for a plenary, answered a question from a member of the audience, who suggested that perhaps the U.S. was not the best country to be exporting democracy to the Middle East, by reminding the gentleman that the mere fact that he was able to ask such a question of one such as himself was prima facie evidence of how free America truly is. Suddenly feeling myself to be in the presence of a very scary op-ed writer, I scampered to safety outside the building.

Nothing seems to excite the ever-attenuated antennas of the Righteous Right as much as liberals being exposed to free speech without being penalized. Thus it is with Charles Krauthammer, who, in his recent column in the Washington Post titled, ever so modestly, Obama's dereliction, first quotes Obama from his now-famous speech on race:

"There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"

I would imagine that Mr. Krauthammer is not a church-going person, for the next words out of his pen were, "But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church?" Is Mr. Krauthammer used to hanging around with people who belong to two or more churches? For myself, I know that I wouldn't be caught dead with someone who attended two churches at the same time. Personally, I think that going to one church for the fiery sermons and another for the kicking potluck dinners is more than a little cheesy.

That being as it may, Krauthammer sees Obama's dereliction as continuing to attend Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago given the things that Rev. Wright has said over the past decades, all of which were condensed into one ten-second sound bite so that the conservatives wouldn't exceed their attention span. Krauthammer must have stopped reading (listening?) to Obama's speech soon after the words he quotes above were spoken. He must have missed the part where Obama pointed out that Rev. Wright is no longer the minister there (he recently retired).

But what really got to Krauthammer--and, I suspect conservatives everywhere--was that Obama suggested that some blacks of a certain age might have some justification for their anger at America, while pointing out that some whites, in turn, might feel justified in being distrustful that blacks may take their jobs under affirmative action. Krauthammer seems uninterested in the feelings of his own race toward blacks; but Obama must pay for suggesting that blacks have any justification for feeling slighted by our society. "This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination."

So, for Krauthammer, the sins of the past must not be placed or placated. They must be swept under the rug. When it comes to guilt, Krauthammer and his fans are not buying. Could this have something to do with the idea that most movement conservatives have that to admit error or fault is to put the lie to the notion that only they have God's eye and ear? Or does it have more to do with Maoist Mother and Fascist Father, who would smack them but good if they ever admitted to stealing a cookie? Think back to the last time a conservative ever admitted that society owed anything to anybody, that they made an "honest mistake", or that people needed to have an honest and open dialogue about a festering issue. What were people of that day wearing, if anything at all?

Dot of the Day: Claiming that American society owes anything to anybody--outside of tax cuts for those who used to be known as the "landed gentry"--will cause your conservative friends to go into denial faster than you can say, George W. Bush.

A response to Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern

2008-03-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

I posted the following response to an article in the March 11, 2008, Tulsa Worldheadlined "Kern cites support from the GOP". Here's how the story begins:

"OKLAHOMA CITY -- A state lawmaker who declared that homosexuality is a greater threat to the United States than terrorism said Monday that she received a standing ovation from her fellow Republican legislators Monday."

Here's my posted response:

"That Rep. Kern should receive a standing ovation from her fellow Republicans is a graphic example as to why Barack Obama's message of hope and unity is answering such a moral and visionary aching among Americans today. When the party of hate--sadly, that is what the Republicans have become despite their "compassionate" rhetoric--proudly and vociferously embraces language which divides one group of loyal Americans from another by seeking to paint them as the enemy of the people, they are engaging in blatant demagogery. As long as they behave this way, they will constitute a far greater threat to American values than any external enemy and, as such, will be soundly rebuked in November in all those places where equality, freedom, and justice truly are embraced."

Barack Gets Dots

2008-03-20T05:58:00.001-07:00

Something truly remarkable happened on Tuesday. Barack Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia that was all the rage on liberal Air America Radio but which was noticed, if at all, by mainstream media only insofar as it advanced the "controversy of the week" concerning his distancing of himself from his longtime pastor and friend, Reverend Wright. What passed beneath the radar screen of the vast majority of Americans was the sea change the speech brought to the political consciousness of our nation. Allow me to quote from the very beginning of the speech to the point where I started to choke up (it's not long):

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"A More Perfect Union"
Constitution Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the
street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched
America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars;
statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny
and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a
Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished.
It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that
divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the
founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more
years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within
our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of
equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people
liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over
time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from
bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights
and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were
Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part -
through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a
civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that
gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

These are only words, yet, they carry far more power to move the hearts and minds of men and women than any resume. They are words we have longed to hear since we were last challenged by the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy to harken the promise of "the last, great hope of mankind"--the greatest system of government ever devised by the minds of mankind.

They are words that elucidate the "audacity of hope"--the hope of every child that he will someday be able to reach greater heights of happiness than his parents; of every adult that she can live with the dignity of knowing that America's promise is without question her promise, too; and the hope of every senior that their life will be honored in sickness and in health by a society that truly values all life from cradle to grave.

They are also words that will strike terror in those whose hearts have been hardened by a fear of never having enough--enough wealth, enough power, enough love--to assure their place of prominence in the world. These are the folks who believe that life is a zero-sum game, that when others are enriched, even in the most powerful and richest country in the world, they are necessarily diminished. It is in the minds of a miserable few of these folks that the thought might take root that the solution to all their problems is to quash any dreams of success that might spring forth from such words. It has happened so many times before. Think of a great prophet of the past and with it comes the realization that, for such as these, life is a flame that flashes with a brilliant light and then is extinguished so suddenly as to make the darkness seem eternal.

So, we must take words such as those Sen. Obama spoke on Tuesday, carry them in our hearts, and give them life. They are what keep us going, despite all the ignorance, hate, and foolishness we see about us. They are the gift that keeps on giving and that will guide us toward reawakening the enlightenment of America's beginning and the promise of all humans everywhere.

The mind of the movement conservative

2008-03-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, the US House held a symbolic vote as to whether President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy should be allowed to expire, as they are now scheduled to do, in 2010. The measure passed on a very close vote, with every Republican voting to continue the tax cuts indefinitely.

This degree of solidarity among those on the Political Right seems to me to be becoming more and more common and, at the same time, historically unprecedented. How is it that 200 individuals from different backgrounds and from disparate regions of the country can agree unanimously on anything, including the color of Condoleezza Rice's eyes?

Paul Krugman, in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, offers an explanation. Over the past forty or so years since Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, social conservatives and foreign policy hawks have coalesced into a tight-knit movement of ideologues whose loyalty to scripted talking points from a few like-minded think tanks have produced what we know today as movement conservatism. Because movement conservatives are "hard-wired" to be loyal to cultural traditions as well as having a deep sense of loyalty to loyalty itself, they vote as a block for their leader's agenda and, further, for their leader himself. This is why John McCain became the nominee of their party despite being practically written-off last summer and being the bane of the Religious Right--it was "his turn".

How, then, can Democrats hope to ever be unified enough to overcome such loyalty? Everyone knows that trying to organize Democrats is like herding feral cats. For example, a recent USA Today poll indicated that, while 60% of Americans favor setting a timetable for withdrawal of US armed forces from Iraq, they have four different opinions as to the conditions under which the withdrawal should take place. On the other hand, the 40% in the poll who wanted to "stay the course" in Iraq were relatively united on that course of action.

Life for movement conservatives is relatively uncomplicated. Right is right and wrong is wrong. They would probably agree with Henry Ford that "history is bunk". It's much easier to make decisions in ignorance of both the errors of the past and the reality on the ground. Always cheer for the home team.

The only way for the Democrats to win against such a unified and unwavering opponent is to overpower them. Barack Obama, as much as I like the man, is wrong if he believes he can extend the hand of friendship to the likes of movement conservatives and expect to have it taken in a spirit of bipartisanship. Negotiation is a noble endeavor but it is a two-way street. How does one negotiate with someone who believes that to compromise is, to quote Grover Norquist, "date rape"? You don't. You can only shout them down by having the votes to muscle past them on every issue.

Here's a really big dot for you: If you're not registered to vote, by all means , do so. If you're registered but haven't voted recently, find the time to vote this year and every year. If you're tired of borrowing from your children to pay for foolish wars today, if you're tired of ignoring science while the planet burns, if you're tired of planned governmental incompetence in the face of natural disasters, and if you're tired of Congressional gridlock in the midst of societal collapse, then, when you do vote, vote for those candidates who will change things.

E.T.: Eliot's Testosterone

2008-03-13T05:23:00.000-07:00

I liked Eliot Spitzer. Of course, I didn't have to work with him on a daily basis, which I understand could be a problem. He was the first governor in US history to introduce legislation that would grant same-gender couples equal rights. That takes balls. He was a tough, uncompromising prosecutor who went after Wall Street tycoons like a bulldog after a rat. That also takes balls. Unfortunately, his balls took him places he shouldn't have been, such as to bed with high-priced call girls. Oh, how precipitously the mighty have fallen.

It's easy to say that power corrupts. That's more-or-less conventional wisdom today. But is it true? Or is there something about American politics that weeds out those personalities less likely to fall prey to the testosterone trap?

Perhaps I should clearly define what I mean by the "testosterone trap". By that term, I mean simply that, in an age of perpetual fear, the very quality in a (male) candidate most likely to assure success is also that most likely to lead to his moral downfall. The evidence for this proposition is overwhelming. Just think of all the successful politicians who, in recent years, have been disgraced (or, at least, embarrassed) by their philandering. I hardly need to list them here.

What is this quality so necessary to political good fortune? To be rather crude about it, it's having bigger balls than your rivals. It's about frat boy behavior, John Wayne's swagger, frequent use of profanity, bluster, bellicosity, and belligerence. Why, even women candidates fall prey to the testosterone trap. Think of Golda Meir; the "Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher; and, now, Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton is even suggesting, implicitly, that she has more "balls" when it comes to standing up to terrorism than her Democratic rival, Barack Obama. (Think of her emphasis on "experience" as a euphemism for "balls". I mean, really, does Hillary have THAT MUCH more experience in foreign policy or homeland security than Barack? Does the image she wants you to have in your mind when you think of her taking that call at 3am conjure up hair curlers and Oil of Olay?)

No one falls into the testosterone trap more whole-heartedly than John McCain. He even takes wife, Cindy, his icon of "I'm a better man than you", with him wherever he goes, like a favorite briefcase. His hair-trigger temper and harrowing grimace make him a fearsome opponent, even to the likes of "Islamic terrorists". No wonder that recent polls show him running well ahead of Hillary and Barack in the category of "most likely to kick the crap out of anybody who messes with the US".

I wonder how Jesus would do in a run for the presidency of our "Christian Nation"? I'm sure that his advisers would tone-down his talk of turning the other cheek and loving our enemies and play up his throwing the money-changers out of the temple. Language like "suffer the little children" would have to go and he would simply have to chuck the passivity and macho up. (I just realized that this makes two days in a row that I have mentioned Jesus; if I'm not careful, some people may get the impression that I'm a Bible-thumper.)

Here's a new dot for you: when you're all alone with your thoughts and your paper ballot or touch-screen voting machine, ask yourself if what you want in a president is a tough daddy who can beat up your best friend's daddy (along with his own wife and kids) or that other guy--or gal--who bears a slight resemblance disposition-wise to that swishy kid back in high school. Perhaps if we looked for qualities in our leaders similar to those we seek in our lovers, we'd have leaders who don't need so many lovers.

Phooey on Brian Williams

2008-03-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

In very first post here, I made a moral mistake on the very first word. I said "Shame on Brian Williams". What WAS I thinking? I don't really believe in shame. I shame someone when I make them feel that they are a bad person (or seek to make them feel that way). I really don't want to do that. I don't think that feeling that I am a bad person is at all productive or constructive. From time to time, I may take a person to task for doing or saying something that I think is like shaming someone; that is, making them feel less than a full human being--for example, what Brian did to Rachel Maddow (see my initial post). At other times, I will point out some of the world's outrageousness and why, in my opinion, it is such. I hope to never again shame someone or call them names. (Watch me on the name-calling, will you?)

Here's a new dot for you: If we are to heal the world, we must begin by treating EVERY human being with respect, even our enemies. This is the hardest challenge we will ever face as relational beings. But isn't this exactly what Jesus commanded us to do? Did anyone ever say it would be easy?

PS Don't expect frequent references to Jesus in this blog.

About "what dots?"

2008-03-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

What dots? may disappoint you. It will surely disappoint you if what you are looking for is wit, satire, irony, vitriol, rant, gobs of data, quotations, citations, and dissertations. What I will promise to give you is a piece of my mind, for whatever that's worth. I will not attempt to keep you abreast of the latest virtual gossip, so don't come here looking for scoops. What I will attempt to do is to provide you with some "dots"--mileposts for the mind. If you should desire to wander in here, I hope that you will find some raison d'etre: a reason for living. This may sound a bit pretentious. I don't mean it to be. I simply mean that I hope to tie some loose ends together for you, help you to make some sense of this crazy-and-getting-crazier world. If the world makes sense (even darkly), a path out of the morass may manifest itself.

Think of Google Earth. If you zoom in on a location, it just looks like a mass of gray stuff. You can't tell where you are. If you zoom out just far enough to get a point of reference--a "dot", as it were--it seems to make a lot more sense (or reason). I will try to find the best height above the "political earth" to help give it rhyme and reason. I promise to give you...dots. It's up to you to fill in the places between the "dots"--to get from where your head is to where my is. Good luck!

Shame on Brian Williams

2008-03-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

The night of the Ohio and Texas primaries, I was watching the returns on MSNBC. Brian Williams hosted. There was a panel of four pundits--two from the left and two from the right--which included Rachel Maddow from Air America Radio. The panelists had just spoken and the camera cut back to Williams. Brian commented on the unique studio setup that evening, one that gave him a frontal view of the four panelists through a glass wall. He then proceeded to say something like, "I'm seeing quite a bit of Rachel Maddow this evening. She's been drinking a lot. I don't know what's in her cup but she's been going after it."

A short while later--by then, apparent that Senator John McCain would be the Republican nominee for president--Brian launched into a brief biography of McCain's war record, emphasizing his toughness and perseverance, then urged his listeners to "keep this in mind between now and the election".

I could hardly believe what I was seeing and hearing. Having been a regular viewer of the NBC Nightly News, I had come to respect Brian Williams for his warmth and fairness. I was flabbergasted by his apparent misogyny and blatant disregard for the reputation of one of the fastest-rising female commentators in the business. I hardly need to explain to my readers--both of them--the implications of his remarks directed toward Rachel. These were compounded in their egregiousness by his subsequent open endorsement of a partisan candidate for president.

I walked the few feet to my PC and attempted to send an email of complaint to MSNBC/NBC (they are virtually one entity vis-a-vis their websites). However, I was further frustrated by my inability to find a way to do that. Nowhere on the websites could I find a link to an email address, either to the network or to Brian Williams personally. (What is the use of being raging mad and unable to vent? Thus, this blog.)

It seems that Mr. Williams has just driven one more spike into the coffin of the "liberal media bias". If it ever existed--which I don't doubt--it's long-dead now. How I long for the days of Eric Sevareid, Charles Kuralt, and Walter Cronkite. Those were the days when newsmen--and they were all men--were born, not transplanted from the White House press room or failed congressional or presidential campaigns. They were what they were, unvarnished and as honest as the day is long. But they didn't pretend to be unbiased while consorting with the enemy.

Here's a new dot for you: when you're looking for "news", try to get at the truth and not just what might smooth the feathers of General Electric.