Sunday - The Sun's out

Sunday June 14, 2009

' ' 'One long, multi-part question today: Who are you? What do you want? What are you willing to do? What are you afraid of? Hasn't it already happened? Why don't you do it?

. . . .Sunday afternoon updates:

. . . .Cognitive dissonance: You cannot both call yourself a patriot and condone acts of treason and sedition at the same time. It is logically impossible. Therefore, to agree with the lies put forth in an effort to undermine the government of the United States by extreme Right wing media entertainers such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter & Michael Savage is to condone acts of sedition. You cannot, I repeat, logically cannot call yourself a patriot when you do so. There may be other names and labels for you, but you cannot call yourself a patriot. Logically impossible. Cognitive dissonance.

. . . . .OK, here we go. After my rant on Right Wing extremism, 2 shootings by right wing extremists, another shooting by a Left wing extremist, treason, sedition, traitors and Fox News (see how they all fit together in one sentence so nicely!) over the weekend, (see the week's previous posts below), I'm going to let others do my talking for me for just a bit here:
. . . .CIA Director Leon Panetta on Cheney - and Dick's almost "wishing this country would be attacked again, so he could prove his point."
. . . . .Frank Rich, the New York Times op-ed columnist on "The Obama Haters Silent Enablers" (hint - it's Fox News):

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

We don’t know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — though we do tend to assume that foreign jihadists respond like Pavlov’s dogs to the words of their most fanatical leaders and polemicists. But well before the latest murderers struck — well before another “antigovernment” Obama hater went on a cop-killing rampage in Pittsburgh in April — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

That honeymoon, if it was one, is over. Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there mightbe a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party’s big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

. . . . .Read the entire piece at the jump here.

. . . .Krugman in the New York Times:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists. There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.

. . . . . .Read the rest at the jump here.

. . . .My problem with Fox News; O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity? With Rush Limbaugh & Michael Savage? With Ann Coulter & Michelle Malkin? It's simple. I've printed the Webster's definitions of treason, sedition and traitor here three times over the last week, I won't belabor it again, look it up down below. By simple dictionary and legal definition, they are traitors, engaging in acts of treason and sedition, who need to arrested under military law, stood in front of a military tribunal, taken to another country for "rendition" and have "extraordinary interrogation techniques" used on them to find out what, if any, ties they may have to Right wing extemist groups planning another act of domestic terrorism like the shooting at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum last week, or if they know of any other acts, such as a Timothy McVeigh type of attack on a Federal Institution. I'm not kidding about any of that, nor being cute.

. . . .My other problem with them? Their disingenuous false front. They ARE the mainstream media, each of them are educated millionaires a few times over, who have absolutely no connection to "just folks", and no clue as to what it's like to just try and get by every day, and truth be told, laugh at the "rubes" they sucker in every day. They're not journalists, nor news people, they are entertainers. Those who work for Fox News are employees of a branch of Fox Networks, and are as dependent on ratings as any cast member of "House" or "Bones". The rest are entertainers who depend on their bookings for an income. To a person, each of them is dependent on their audience, whose numbers are measured, in order to gain advertising dollars.

. . . .Lastly, at the top of the heap, Rupert Murdoch, who is not an American by birth, and who, with T. Boone Pickens (now much to Pickens regret, and Murdoch's anger at "outing" the whole business) was behind the "swiftboating" of John Kerry. Murdoch makes no secret of his contempt for you the average American citizen, and how easily manipulated people are. Murdoch is in business for one reason and one reason alone, to make money.The way he makes money is simple, he takes it from you, any way he can, and really doesn't care about any damage or scar tissue left in the wake, as long as he's the one walking home with the bucks, that's all that counts.

. . . .And while I'm on a roll here, would the next one of you devout Christians that wants to debate with me about gay marriage and quote Leviticus "A man shall not lie with another man" whatever, please remember before talking to me that you better have never ever eaten pork or rabbit in your life, nor had sex with a woman at any stage whatsoever during her menstrual cycle, and made sure that during your daily offerings to God that you're commanded to, that you burned the right incense and burned your meat the right way, and that you only used the right parts of your ox to burn. Oh yeah, and that you've never, ever better have worn mixed fabrics in your life in your clothing. Don't mess with a pagan that's read Leviticus.

. . . Is that labeling? As in all Christians? Hmm. . . .let's see, would that be like labeling all Muslims because a relatively small percentage (compared to the world-wide population of Muslims) of Jihadists interpret one passage of the 17th century version of the Quran to validate their war with the West, while the rest of Islam wants to just get through the damn day and feed their family and raise their kids?

. . . .Speaking of Christianity, realize that 11% of the American public still thinks their President is a Muslim. This despite the fact that he has publicly declared his Christian faith in front of church audiences and in Muslim countries. Despite the fact that he's quoted Christian scripture in his inaugural address and economic speeches, he invokes Jesus Christ's name more often than George W. Bush and devoted an entire chapter in his book to his Christian faith. It's called ignorance of fact, people, ignorance.

. . . .Ahmadinejad has shown his hand. The scary part about the Internet, Facebook and Twitter? It means you can't hide the truth any more. Ahmadinejad, the Ayatollah and the mullahs now face a choice, an enraged, informed populace who aren't hard-liners, who want a moderate President, who don't want to go to nuclear war with the West or Israel, or showing the world that they truly are the oppressive regime that everybody else knew all along they were. There is a live blog of the uprising here.

. . . .Any of you out there that want to lump all Muslims in the same category as "those people" and hate them happy to see them getting ridden down in the streets of Tehran by police on motorcycles and beaten mercilessly for taking to the streets in support of a pro-Western moderate who had an election stolen from him, for taking to the streets because they've had enough of the hard-liner who assumes absolute power over them? They're fighting for a better future for themselves and their children.

. . . All that said, it's pretty obvious that I support the current sitting President. Personal reason aside, it's a simple matter of patriotism and loving my country. He is the sitting President, elected by due Constitutional process, and as such is the leader of this Nation. This is a country in grave trouble, economically, the disaster grows each day, and looks to be getting worse. New figures have come in on climate change that now say it may be too late, period. The President of the United States, sitting in that chair, gets my support as a simple matter of my American citizenship period. I do not want to see him fail, if he fails, we all do, and the country fails. That must not occur.

. . . .I said all along, that once elected, I'd be a critic when he wasn't getting the job done. He's not. I like him, I believe he's smart enough to do the job, and has a much better chance at doing a better job of it than his predecessor, but the honeymoon's over, and he's not getting it done. I support him, and he must not be allowed to fail.

. . . .Right now, he's got a Democratic Congress and House, and can't even get them under control. When the Presidency, the Congress and the House are all aligned in one party, isn't the man at the top in charge of the political party?
. . . .He's stated, for the record and as a matter of policy, that the photos from Guantanamo will not be released. He has sound reasoning behind it. (a) Releasing photographs of Mideastern detainees and suspects being tortured, raped, sodomized and degraded is insane. We have young men and women in uniform, under fire, in Iraq and Afghanistan, (and soon Pakistan and Iran, if that keeps up). Letting those photographs show up on Al-Jazeera and terror websites will only further endanger our own troops by inflaming a populace that is already on edge, (this weekend's events in Iran are only exacerbating the powderkeg that is the Mideast). (b) establishing a precedent, and producing more evidence, of a previous adminstration's misdeeds does not serve to unite a Nation that is already on the brink of shattering apart. (c) Further, if the House decides that it wants to pursue legal ends over this, that's more insanity. It establishes a legal precedent for a sitting administration to prosecute a previous administration for things done under Executive Order. Bad idea, period.
. . . .He's in charge. He stated what he wanted, and the bozos in the House decided to strip the rider barring their release from the funding bill for Iraq. We have troops on the ground in Iraq now, bar that they never should have been there, (should have been in Afghanistan all along people). The fact is, they're there. They need the funding bill.

. . . .The Republican Party is finally starting to show publicly what a joke it's been all along. If he can't get Health Care reform pushed through this sorry bunch, when will it get reformed? When will we see some true health care packages. And don't give me that tired old song of "I don't want my choices made for me by government." Government is at least paid to look out for your best interests, the insurance adjuster that is making your decision for you now (No, you don't make your own health care decisions, and don't have your own choices) doesn't give one flying fuck about you, all he cares about is making money for his employer. (Do the intials AIG mean anything to you).

. . . .Anyone besides me think that Sarah Palin deciding to match wits with David Letterman puts her in way over her head? We aren't talking about the brightest bulb in the chandelier here.

. . . .They truly are a sorry joke. Romney can't get past his own ethnocentricity and believing that America is the center of the universe. Stating that the Iranian uprising is "proof that Obama's policies don't work" is (a) a non sequitir (b) about as relevant as the price of tomatoes in China and (c) demeaning to a people that have finally had enough of their Fascist regime.

. . . .Economically, his team of Summers, Geithner, Bernanke aren't getting it done. The banks and AIG, under Bush and Paulson, and a completely deregulated system took your money, gambled with it and lost, and weren't held accountable (remember last September). They took the first half of the bailout money, pre-election, spent it all on bonuses and office remodels. Took the second half of the money after meekly looking at the floor and saying "I'm sorry" and they're laughing at everyone behind their backs.

. . . .Here's the charts and numbers that count:

. . . . .The simple interpretation of the above chart? It shows the job losses during the current Depression vs. past recessions. What it means is that job losses haven't bottomed out, and are continuing to mount, and probably will match the '30s numbers before it's all over.

. . . . .Foreclosure up 40%
. . . . .Industrial Output at a 58 year low, the current curve matching 1929's for output.
. . . . ..Credit Card default up 12% last month
. . . . . .2.6 million jobs lost last month, 6.7 million total lost since the "official" start.

. . . .Bottom line, he's not getting it done at a banking level. I'll withhold judgment on the stimulus packages for now. It's only 4 months, and that vast majority of those dollars haven't even been put into the system yet, so we'll see what's happening.

. . . .Paul Krugman, the economist I've trusted through all of this, (because he's been right) gave an interview in the Guardian U.K. in London this morning, while he's over there, and see's some signs he likes in the current situation:

WH: If you believe that, is Obama doing enough on fiscal policy?

PK: Well we have a stimulus which is a little over 5% of one year's GDP but some of it is not real - something that was going to happen anyway and not very stimulative. So it's really about 4% of GDP of genuine stimulus, but spread over two and a half years. So, it's actually quite a lot less than what I was arguing for.

WH: So, will it be sufficient?

PK: Well, sufficient to actually restore full employment would probably have to be 5% or more. More than we have would certainly be a good thing. It actually might happen. You know, the buzz I'm getting is that a second-round stimulus might well come on the agenda.

WH: Really? When you say "the buzz you're getting", have you been asked?

PK: Well, it's what you hear from people who talk to people who talk to people.

WH: Who would argue for that? Would it be Larry Summers [director of the US National Economic Council]?

PK: I think Larry. I'm not sure Tim Geithner [US treasury secretary] would be opposed to it. Nor would Chrissie [Christine Romer, director of the Council of Economic Advisers] I'm sure they would be making similar judgements. It is actually a little spooky.

PK: There is a possibility that we get some perk-up as the stimulus dollars start to flow and an almost mechanical bounceback in industrial production as inventories are built up. But then we slide down again. The idea that we sort of bounce along the bottom is all too easy to imagine.

WH: Is it just a story about the right dose of fiscal policy? What structural change would you advocate in the economy, to support recovery?

PK: Financial regulation. Rein in that monster. The huge increase in general private-sector leverage is at the core of how we got so vulnerable. We went for 50 years after the Great Depression without any major financial crises, and that, I think, was because we had a financial sector that didn't let people get as deeply into debt as they have now.

WH: So rein in the financial monster and give a fiscal stimulus. So you would leave the American way of doing capitalism untouched?

PK: I'm not that cosmic in this stuff. But it is true that Gordon Gekko [the anti-hero of Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, motto: Greed is Good] went hand in hand with the wave of financialisation. Corporations got more brutal and fiercer.

WH: But it is all connected. Without the leverage, there would have been no Gordon Gekkos. And leverage meant that predator companies had the firepower to launch contested hostile takeovers. The only way to fend off attack, or to make the sums work after an attack, was for companies to be more brutal and fierce - often breaking the promises to staff and suppliers that kept commitment and trust.

PK: All of that is true. I have a more mundane view about what we do. I just want a stronger welfare state and a little bit more social democracy. And some restoration of the labour movement as a counterweight.

I'm not sure - maybe I'm just not thinking about it deeply enough. I guess I've got the same attitude Keynes had, which was he was looking for almost technical fixes. You're looking for ways to fix the parts that have gone wrong rather than replace the whole thing.

You know the human cost of this crisis is vastly worse in America than it is on this side of the Atlantic. So this is a good time to push for a better US social safety net too.

WH: And lastly - you've been critical about Obama. Your view now?

PK: I'm increasingly happy with him. I was unhappy; I think they could have gotten a bigger stimulus coming out the gate. But they've become more forceful. I would have been more aggressive on the banks; we'll see if we need to re-fight that battle later on.

Healthcare is looking really good. I'm getting increasingly optimistic on healthcare reform. Climate change looks like it's going to happen. So my odds that this will in fact be the kind of New Deal I was hoping for are rising. I had my scepticism, but he is smart. He's impressive. And it is such a relief to have somebody whom you can respect in the White House.

. . . .Read the entire interview at the jump here.

. . . .I like him, by approval ratings and polls, most of America likes him. He's personable, photogenic, telegenic, well-spoken and intelligent. I don't need a community organizer right now, what I need, what the country needs is him to be a leader, a Chief Executive. I think he's capable of it, now, he needs to do it. Whatever support he needs from the House and Senate to get it done, well, I'm no stranger to the e-mail inbox of my Senators and Representative, and I know the phone number to the offices of all 3.
. . . .Maybe it's time to cut Rahm Emmanuel loose and let him off the leash.

. . . Outta here for today.

. . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one gets out alive, so it's not about yesterday or tomorrow, it's about right here, right now.

. . . .Got your back

The Desolation Angel