Give some hits to a lonely sane voice in the reddest of red states.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
It starts
Let us not forget what our President-elect is up against. Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
AN ADVANCE LOOK AT THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION.... It's only been a couple of days since Barack Obama was declared the president-elect, but it's hard not to notice that congressional Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Take these ridiculous comments from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R).
Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.
Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.
"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.
Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.
Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven't been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don't exist.
What the hell.
Just because you're paranoid....
They are perfectly willing to steal another election.
Don't think it can't happen.
Big Lies and Little Lies
It is said that history gets written by the conquerors. A very post-modernist thought for an old saying, isn't it?
In my lifetime, I have watched the manipulation of history by those whose fates were ascendant: So Ronald Reagan was credited for the fall of the Soviet Union and neo-conservatives are now claiming Vietnam could have been won if we'd only been willing to spend more lives. Those are Big Lies. They affect our understanding of our own past, our ability to learn lessons provided.
I have also watched the power of the little lies: the Clintons had people murdered; Gore was a perpetual liar, and Kerry was a weak wimp. The little lies can change history, too, and have in devastating ways. But they are still little lies.
Obama is being besieged by little lies: He pals around with terrorists; he's non-christian and somehow exotic while at the same time being a typical Chicago pol, "a guy of the streets." I'm not even going to bother finding you links. You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard it.
This time, because of Obama's incomparable grace, the little lies will not change history.
So I'm getting ready to leave town for a few days and I wanted to leave you chewing on a couple Big Lies floating around this season, lies directed mostly at poor people and those working on their behalf.
The first Big Lie is that poor people are responsible for the housing crisis and, by extension, the collapse of the entire global economy. Heard anyone mention the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)? The conservative talking heads are all over it. All the way back to Carter go the roots of the crisis in the storyline of this Big Lie. Too many poor people being given mortgages for houses they couldn't afford.
That is a ridiculous pile of crap. Look at where the highest rates of foreclosures are: Las Vegas? Miami? California? These are not houses that were bought by poor people.
And look at who issued the original paper behind most of this crap. Did neighborhood banking institutions issue the bulk of sub-prime mortgages? No, they did not. It is Countrywide and other non-bank lenders who peddled the garbage we now have to clean up.
We are compelled to educate ourselves so that we can smack this shit back. Instead of a bunch of links giving you the facts behind this Big Lie I give you one really good one.
The assault on ACORN is another Big Lie, just the latest in a long line of GOP voter suppression tactics. I can't believe the MSM is giving this so much air. (OK, yes I can.)
There is absolutely no evidence that voter fraud is a significant problem in this country, while there is plenty of evidence of GOP-erected obstacles designed to prevent poor people and minorities from voting. Go read this about that.
Traveling most of the next several days. Posting will be sketchy.
No Shame
All this time, as the Republicans have manipulated 911 to enter into adventures in democracy (a re-packaged pursuit of the free flow of oil,) the Democrats have refused to use the most obvious political weapon at their disposal.
911 happened on Republican watch. “Daddy” let us down. They controlled all three branches of the government and they let it happen.
Oh sure, they can and do whine that Clinton set them up, but it doesn’t change that essential fact that it happened on their watch. Democrats are, of course too essentially decent to call them on it – even as Republicans continue to threaten to hammer us on what they define as national security.
Maybe we should.
An explanation and a laugh
I have not used this as a personal blog. From the early email "postings" until now, I have blogged about the political, not the personal. I don't really expect that to change.
But I am moving through another transition period in my life, as my father's health continues to fail, and whether or not he manages to recover from this latest crisis, it is still true that we are all, those that love him, trying to be there for him during this last transition in his life.
So my posting here is affected, both in its frequency and perhaps, ultimately, in its content.
I needed a laugh tonight, so you get one, too.
FISA -- It's Not Over Yet
FDL and Glenzilla are on it. The Blue Dogs are at it again, trying to work out something for those telecom dollars that have poured out.
And I don’t even care that my current readership don’t seem to want to get active. This assault on our constitution is one of the big reasons I began blogging.
Giving it all away
The New Republic hosts a feature piece today on Andy Stern who, if you haven’t heard, is supposed to be the new savior of organized labor from his post as head of the SEIU. Ezra Klein was asked to critique, and I thought this observation very telling:
As for Stern's impact on the national health care scene, I can say, in context
of reporting that I've been doing, that it's immense. It was SEIU's pressure
that pushed the Democrats to the left on health care in the campaign (Stern
declared that they wouldn't even consider endorsing any candidate that didn't
have serious, detailed, universal health plan -- though Obama, who had the least
universal plan of the Big Three, eventually got the endorsement).
Read the last line again.
Andy Stern made universal health care the determinative factor in his negotiations with potential Democratic nominees ( we may assume because it has the single biggest impact on the health and well-being of his constituents), and yet ultimately threw his support behind Obama – the ONLY serious candidate whose plan fails to achieve that goal. What possible conclusion is there to be drawn but an exchange of policy objective for influence?
People who are serious about a progressive agenda need to let go of the politics of personality and recognize that we must hold our support as conditional – provided only to the extent that candidates support the same outcomes of policy that we do. This is where we have our greatest impact.
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