Panic's first cousin

  Today's Wall Street Journal tells me that the Tea Party gang -- they don't mention "birthers," Palinites, Limbaugh lovers or Fox "News" faithful --  are creating problems for the Republican Party in its efforts to rehabilitate itself and retake Congress in 2010.

  I don't believe a word of it.

  The Republican base IS the Tea Party Gang -- and the birthers, Christicans, Foxies and their ilk.  Among the assets they bring to their party, besides a zealot's passion and a lemming's mob mentality, is an uncanny ability to use the internet to turn blatant lies into widely accepted "truth."

   Breathes there a soul who did not receive the e-mail about how Ollie North, testifying in the Iran-Contra hearings, warned the country about Osama bin Laden and put a Senate questioner, John Kerry, in his place while doing so?  There were two little flaws in this: North, long enshrined in the litany of right-wing saints, never said any such thing; and Kerry was not a member of the Senate committee that questioned St. Ollie.

   What's now going around is an e-mail purported to have been written by David Kaiser, a reputable historian and member of the faculty of the Naval War College.

   It's a screed, pure and simple, sounding very much like a list of talking points from Limbaugh and Michael Steele.  The friend who forwarded it to me asked, "What if he's right?"

  "He" is not right and "he" is not David E. Kaiser, who posted the following on his website, "History Unfolding:"

"People are still arriving here because they have received an email attributed to myself comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. They are also still calling my home, contacting the public affairs office of the Naval War College, and deluging another David Kaiser with emails. I did not write, and do not agree with, that fraudulent email."

   There was the Jane Fonda lie intended to add heroic dimension to John McCain's stoicism as a Prisoner of War.  The fellow POW to whom it was attributed denied having written it.

   The birth certificate lie got its first legs through internet forwarding of messages often attributed to reputable sources who had to issue denials.

   I can't count the number of internet forwards -- not all of them political in nature -- that I've checked out and found to be fraudulent.  Most of the political frauds come from the far right and they have been inordinately effective -- "death panels," forced enrollment in government-run health plans, Obama as socialist, Obama as Muslim, Obama  and the birth certificate.

   The Base disttributes these lies and The Base believes them.  A recent poll conducted in rural, fundamentalist Tennessee disclosed pluralities who believed the socialist, Muslim and birther lies.

   The First Amendment right to free speech must not be weakened, although, as the Supreme Court ruled in Schenk v. United States, it is not absolute.  In his majority ruling, Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., wrote:

   ". . .the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

   In my view, the right-wing internet liars are shouting fire in a very crowded public place.  Are they causing a panic?  They're sowing fear, which is panic's first cousin.
 

Toward Corporatocracy

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

–W.B Yeats

By Steve Klinger

   The summer was all about what happens when a country is run by a greed-driven oligarchy that is able to tap into populist fear, anger and racism to advance its agenda – and block reform. Although polls have shown up to 75 percent of Americans support universal health care, it’s the other 25 percent, largely funded by moneyed special interests, who grab all the headlines with their hysterical obstructionism and wild accusations.
   Instead of a discourse on corporate healthcare rationing and the impending bankruptcy of the middle class, teabaggers and rabble-rousers scream incendiary rhetoric: socialism, Hitler, Maobama. The debate is deflected from the merits of fixing our broken healthcare system to a vitriolic assault on all things Democrat that leaves progressives and moderates alike in helpless confusion at this unexpected lack of civility from the right. Gosh, could there be violence?
   Congress as usual is gridlocked, with all the power residing in the corporate puppetmasters who pull the strings backstage while Max Baucus does his little tapdance. The Democrats, having already compromised with themselves, are poignantly begging for one Republican vote to get the most diluted of bills moving in the Senate. Also stalled are meaningful climate-change and financial-industry reform. The economy may be inching out of recession, but home foreclosures and unemployment rage on. The ice shelf keeps crumbling into the sea. Everybody knows what the problems are, but no one can accomplish a solution.
   It’s a good thing Americans are optimistic people because things are about to get a whole lot worse. Our glaring socioeconomic inequities and ongoing national paralysis are perhaps a few months away from taking a mortal body blow from the third branch of government – the Supreme Court. While the mainstream media have frothed over healthcare legislation, a SCOTUS case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was reheard by the Roberts court in September, and the smart money says the conservative majority will overturn more provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, allowing special interests to pour money more freely into campaign advertising, just in time for the 2010 elections and the 2012 presidential campaign (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26843.html).
   To put it succinctly, the Court is leaning heavily toward a ruling that puts the First Amendment protection of corporations on the same footing as that of individuals, rolling back some tight restraints on political spending by special interests. Instead of having to channel money through PACs to “soft-issue” advertising, corporations (and labor unions, among others) would be able to spend money on ads directly backing or opposing candidates. If the Court doesn’t just further loosen restraints but opens the floodgates, the millions now filtering into the healthcare debate from Big Pharma and Big Insurance would be a trickle compared to the frontal assault unleashed to help Republicans regain Congress and oust Obama.
   Forget public campaign financing, the sensible alternative practiced in most other advanced western nations, along with universal health care. (Do we see a pattern here?). Like single payer, that’s off the table in this country. Instead, we seem to be in a losing fight to hold onto what’s left of McCain-Feingold. If you think it’s frustrating right now that our leaders won’t do the people’s bidding on financial or healthcare reform, just wait and see what kind of “elected” government we have in a few years.
   Isn’t it ironic that so many humanoids who pass for citizens of American Dreamland are getting their panties in a knot calling Obama and the Democrats totalitarians? They will have a rude awakening when the fecal waste of their populist rhetoric hits the blades of the approaching corporate propeller.
   (Steve Klinger conducts and writes regularly on http://www.grass-roots-press.com/blog/ and is the founder of both the print and online versions of New Mexico's outstanding alternative information source, The Grassroots Press.

Racist? Me?

   Republicans today seem largely incapable of political discussion without resort to vitriol, personal attacks and canned lies -- especially vitriol.

   My local paper recently published a letter to the editor from a Republican appropriately named Biles.  Biles's bilious blurb of 300 words began with 120 words of sheer  personal insults to the writer of a column he disagreed with.  "Demagogue" and "drivel" were two of the milder derogations.

   The columnist (rightly, in my opinion, as readers of this site already know) had written that much of the Republican hatred of President Obama is race-based.  Biles retorted that, as a lifelong, proud Republican, he didn't know of a single racist in the party.  It would appear that he's never heard of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Joe Wilson or Michelle Bachmann.

   Biles repeated several of the favorite Frank Luntz mantras against the Democrats, then got off on the personal responsibility tack.  We believe in helping the truly needy, he asserted, but if "they" aren't willing to work for what "they" get, then "they" can just go pound sand. Why should "we" share "our" hard-earned wealth with "them?"

  Is there anyone who doesn't recognize the code?

  Ironically, on the very day that I read Biles's bile I learned the story of Michelle, a highly educated (Ph.D. and two MA's) specialist in an esoteric field, who had held a well-paying job at a public agency before the Republican economic disaster.

  She'd been laid off in the vast round of budget cuts caused by the failed Republican policies.   She had been freelancing projects in her field for anyone who had funds to pay for them.  She had lost her health insurance with her job.  She didn't have an ort of food in the house.  She couldn't afford to buy food until an expected $300 check arrived, her fee for a recent freelance project.  IF the check ever arrived.

  The compassionate Republicans don't give a damn about the hundreds of thousands of Michelles in this country; meanly resist repairs of a broken health care system that might at least enable them to get flu shots; fight viciously to preserve multi-million-dollar bonuses for the bailed out honchos of the failed financial system; and gladly circulate watermelon patch in the Rose Garden jokes on the internet.

   May they all choke in their own vitriol.

Our Nobelist President

Today I wonder what The Great American Center, whoever and wherever it is, thinks about President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

The instant it became known, the Left and the Right predictably denounced it, continuing their Odd Couple dans macabre to criticize this president for utterly opposing reasons.

Rob Kall, a progressive blogger with whom I agree on most things, was among the front runners on the left.  What has the President done to deserve it?  He's still conducting two ugly wars, killing civilians with drones and bombs, sending storm troopers into Pittsbiurgh for the G2, refusing to act against torturers, achieving nothing with his Iran policy, being defied by North Korea. . . .

A voice of the other half of the Odd Coupling, Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, said: ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished? It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

One might ask if even Mr. Steele, a master of Beckian vitriol and garbage, counts any living Republicans among those who have "made real achievements working toward peace and human rights."  Mr. Kall, at least, speaks from the high ground of advocacy for not just human rights and peace, but also health care for all, improved public education, ending the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, curbing the influence of military hawks on foreign policy and  the antioxidant values of chocolate.

Well, maybe I'm wrong about the chocolate.

In its announcement, the Nobel committee said: it "has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the United States is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.”

Fair enough.  I hope "the center," whoever and wherever it is, appreciates the significance of the "new climate."

I sometimes chide myself in my own criticism of Obama for forgetting where we were during the preceding eight years.  I think of the Ship of State, under full steam, careering in the wrong direction for those eight years.  Is there any force in the ocean strong enough got turn it around 180 degrees in nine short months?

I don't think so.

When Will They Ever Learn?

Despite countless burnings by the lies of Bush administration officials, mainstream journalists still haven't learned to be skeptical of what they're told by government insiders.

The latest case in point is the so-called "secret" nuclear site being built by Iran.  Even usually reliable media sources, such as McClatchey newspapers' Washington bureau,
reported without question or qualification the Obama administration's assertion that the facility was "discovered" by western intelligence agents and "revealed" by President Obama on Sept. 25.

The fact is that Iran disclosed its building plans to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Sept. 21.  According to Marc Vidricaire of the IAEA:
  
          “I can confirm that on 21 September Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country.”
         “In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible." (Update: The head of IAEA is en route to Iran to schedule the requested inspection.)      
           “The Agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said, "The U.S. president made a big and historic mistake."
That he did.  And he seems intent on making a bigger and more historic one: the illegal invasion of or attack upon a sovereign state.

Remember the WMDs that weren't there?  The yellow cake that was neither yellow nor cake?  The aluminum tubes that were only good for the passage of hot air?  The al Qaeda meeting that didn't happen?

Get ready for Iraq II.  Operation Iraqi Freedom needs only to change one letter to become a noose around Obama's neck.

When will they ever learn?

George W. Obama

Once again, President George W. Obama has made it clear that he doesn't want nosey reporters poking around the inner workings of his administration.

Not that there are many nosey reporters left in this country.  But that's another story.

The New Dubyah, taking essentially the same position as the original, has sent underlings to tell Congress to back off from legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security. Or so at least reports the New York Times, quoting several unnamed leakers.

The congressional bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”
But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, the leakers told the Times.

The main Senate backers of the bill, Chuck Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat from Pennsylvania, waxed wroth over the White House shenanigans. "Totally unacceptable," snorted Mr. Specter. Schumer said: “The White House’s opposition to the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback."  This suggests that Schumer actually believed the Obama campaign rhetoric about a transparent administration back when he was still Barrack.

Ben LaBolt, a  spokesman for the new Dubyah, called the proposed changes appropriate and argued that the administration was making a significant concession by accepting any judicial review. He even cited the Original Dubyah's position that such review would be an incursion into executive power.

Plus ça change, plus c'est meme chose.

Step Aside, Judas

Save your kisses, Judas Iscariot.  Stop praising Caesar, Brutus.  Make room in your special hell, Benedict Arnold, Axis Sally and all traitors of any age and stripe.  Make room for five United States Senators named  Max  Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.

Today they gave their souls to the insurance industry, tacitly licensing private insurers to withhold health insurance from the sick, the poor and the dying; to amass fortunes on the pain of sick, suffering people; to thumb their noses at the quaint notions of compassion and human decency.

Today those five nominal members of the Democratic party voted to send out from the Senate Finance Committee a so-called health care bill that has no government-run option to compete with the rapacious private insurers.

Rapacious.  That's the word Sen  Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia rightly used in the debate before the vote.  Generous, I suppose, is the term the Traitorous Five would use, because their campaign funds -- which will one day augment their Senatorial pensions -- have been exponentially swollen by donations from the insurers.

Thus the United States of Goldman Sachs proudly admits to its ruling oligarchy the Supreme States of Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna and United Healthcare.

Today, the Infamous Five not only betrayed the best traditions of their party.  That betrayal is minor compared to their greater treason: against the 50 million American citizens without health insurance today; against the millions more who have been victimized by loopholes, fine print, lies and bullying of the insurers and now will continue to be so victimized; and against the Constitution they swore allegiance to, whose preamble demands that they promote the general welfare, not the welfare of rapacious corporations.

This is a sad day for the Republic.  With representatives like Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Nelson and Carper, its people will suffer many more sad days.  Too many more.

Wave the Flags. Again.

   Few of today's journalists were around in the days when lazy editors who wrote wishy-washy editorials on subjects nobody knew or cared about were held guilty of "Afghanistanism."

   Of course, few of today's journalists are held to any of the standards that made journalism -- especially newspaper journalism -- a respected craft back then.

   One might conclude that mainstream journalism's inadequate, inaccurate or lazy coverage of what once was called "the good war" can be attributed to their perception that most Americans don't know and don't care much about what's happening in Afghanistan.

   If that were their perception, it would be only half right.  While American citizens are, on the whole, the most poorly-informed and ill-educated among the world's advanced nations, and know little about that part of the world, they do care about the war there.  Wherever "there" is.  They tell pollsters that they'd like it to be over rather quickly.

   For the most part, nobody in government is listening.  The military commanders want more troops there, a lot more.  The military always wants more of everything. The president is considering another option, but not one that would bring the end of the war appreciably closer.  The Congress is divided along party lines, which is meaningless anyway because the Congress is controlled by the vast, private, corporate shadow government that really runs the country.  What President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex" is by far the largest and most powerful component of the shadow government, and it sustains itself by perpetual war.

   If not Cold, then hot.  If not Korea, then Vietnam.  If not Panama, then Granada.  If not Iraq, then Afghanistan.  If not Afghanistan, then Iran.  Or Korea again.  Bush left us with a wonderful, cover-all phrase for the perpetual war that sustains our shadow government: war on terror.  Perfect!  Whatever we bomb, whomever we kill, wherever we establish bases and missiles and aircraft  and tanks and troops, we're waging a "war on terror."  Wave the flags!  Paste ribbon symbols on the SUVs!  Support our troops!  Round up some ragheads!  Torture them, depersonalize them, don't bother charging them with anything, keep them far away from any system of law or justice!  Hooray for our side!

   It's so easy for the American media to "cover" terror wars.  Transcribe what the generals say.  Send it to the bosses back home.  Hit the bar in the hotel that houses the journalists safely away from the bullets and bombs.  Swap gossip and report it as truth -- as long as it reflects "glory" on the troops and their leadership.  So it was our own fire that killed the football star?  Cover it up, make up a hero story, who'll ever know the difference?  So the bad guys simply let the captured woman warrior walk away from the hospital when she was well enough?  Make up a hero story about commando raids and a defiant machine-gun toting Amazon riddling al Qaida baddies like swiss cheeses.

   The flag-wavers back home lap it up. 

    But even the flag-wavers will tire of this war in -- where was it?  Oh, yes, Afghanistan, wherever that is --as it drags on and on.

   That's the exit strategy.

   By then everyone inside the Beltway will agree on a reason to move the perpetual war to Iran. And the media will applaud the flawless reasoning behind this invasion.  And the flags will wave again.

   Always, the flags will wave.

  

Do Not Tolerate Another Failure

 Succeeding the worst president in United States history, and doing so with the support of majorities in both houses of Congress, Barack Obama ought to have led us into a golden age of reform in American government.

 He has not.

   The private institutions that were allowed to wreck the economy under Bush have not been reformed.

   The unjustified foreign wars that Bush lied us into continue to be fought.  The military brass want still more troops to bleed and die in Afghanistan.

   The health care reform that nearly three-quarters of the American public demands teeters on the brink of disaster  under the weight of the money bags of unregulated health care profiteers.

   This week, the President and his majorities in Congress have an opportunity to undo the most sweeping desecration of the Constitution in the history of the republic: the so-called USA PATRIOT Act.

   Russ Feingold and nine other Senators have introduced the JUSTICE Act to correct the worst of the crimes of the PATRIOT Act.  It must pass.

   Hearings are scheduled also in the House.  Its members must remember and remember well the words uttered by one of its most distinguished members on Feb. 17, 2002:

How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
   
Dennis R. Kucinich no doubt will remind his colleagues once again of their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution .  He will urge them to restore the Bill of Rights without compromising our national security.
   It can be done.  It should be done.  It must be done.

Portrait of the Evening "News"

   I am of the generation of print journalists who harbored some respect for certain of our competitors on the broadcast side -- especially if they worked for CBS.

  The likes of Fred W. Friendly, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and their colleagues provided us with a great deal of good journalism -- and would have provided exponentially more if they had ever managed to persuade CBS to make the nightly news an hour long.

   Another of the truly fine journalists of my generation, Mort Persky, closely monitors the performers, actors and entertainers who pose as journalists on TV these days.

   This is one of his reports:

   Alas, I don't think Walter Cronkite met his maker before seeing what happened to the TV news business since his, Murrow's and Bill Paley's day. Even without Fox, we actually have non-cable TV news telling us what it wants to tell us, the facts be damned. And the network "newscasts," by being a bit stealthier, do a better job of fooling their public than Fox, which because it is believed in like God, doesn't need to fool anyone. I've watched this on the 6:30 newscasts for years, though the only way I can stomach even two minutes of Fox is when it shows up as a clip on Olbermann or Maddow.

 Here's CBS last week, following up its report on Obama's healthcare speech (or is it the "You lie" speech?) with what they call their "USERS GUIDE To Healthcare"  (official looking visual right here emphasizes how factual this is gonna be. NOTE: Beware when ABC or CBS does something official looking like a "Users Guide" or a "Fact Check"; that's when the distortions flow thickest). Anyway, this "USERS GUIDE" purports to explain what a Public Option really means. But its target is bigger -- "government-run healthcare." For balance, they start with a white couple in Florida who run a small accounting firm and have to pay $2,000 a month -- one-fourth of their income -- for health insurance to cover themselves and their two sons, one of whom has a chronic illness. They're in their 50s, and can't afford to hire the employee they need and pay for health care too, They're rooting hard for the public option.


   For Point B, CBS moves to its man in Tennessee, which has, or had, a public system called TennCare. First, they show poor black woman benefiting from TennCare, unable to do without it. 2. Now they "report," then repeat and repeat that it damn near broke state of Tennessee and had to be cut back. Two persons are quoted on camera: Rep. Phil Roe, a Repub from the state's NE corner who was an obstetrician and pisses all over Tenncare. Also quoted is,Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Neighborhood Health Services of Nashville. She says, "Tenncare's lesson is a cautionary tale for us all. Tenncare's lesson is "Control costs, control costs, control costs." Hmmm. Why quote her? I smell a rat, and think her organization is some kind of anti-healthcare outfit with a cover-up name (a common subterfuge on CBS and ABC; the few-seconds quote and who's saying it is quicker than the eye). So I look up Ms. Bufwack's group, and it appears to pass the smell test. I drop her an email asking how she feels about the way she was quoted on CBS News.

   She answers a day later: "Mort, let's put it this way....One of my comments that did not get into the story was that the issue of TennCare's runaway costs wasn't that the state was too involved, the issue was that the state wasn't involved enough in controlling costs.  I also noted that one cannot leave cost controls to the private sector. How perceptive of you. Mary."

   CBS segment continues: Mark Strassmann, their man in Tennessee, closes out with a glimpse of Rep. Roe and a few dark words about how TennCare didn't work, cost way too much. His last words are, "Another reason many here will never trust government-run health care again."

   Portrait of the unbiased evening news on Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow's old network. Congratulations, Katie!
   --M.P.

The Nuts and the ACORN

     When I witness the hilarious mouth-frothing of the Foxes over the great ACORN scandal, my memory takes me back to a musical theater stage in post-riot Detroit.  In John and Dorothy Ashby's splendid jazz play, "Three Six," the approach of the white police would be signaled by the distant sound of sirens, whereupon the black cast would break out into song: "Ring around the ghetto, keep the Niggers in.  Let them knife each other, fighting' over gin."

   As the police arrived onstage they heard a torrent of misinformation that sent them scurrying off on wild goose chases.  Then their real prey, the king of the numbers books and his runners, emerged from hiding and resumed the day's business.

   "Three Six" was a whimsical depiction of real life in the black ghetto as it existed on the evening when a white police raid on a black after-hours drinking and gambling dive set off the rampage that killed what was then America's fifth-largest city.

   Against a similar  backdrop, the Foxes are shocked, SHOCKED!, that some ACORN employees were receptive to and willing to help establish a house of ill repute suggested by the Fox scammers who set them up.

   Fox conveniently did not mention the ACORN employees who saw through the ruse.  One threw them out of the office.  Another gave them some hum -- "Ah done kilt bof' ma husbins" -- which the big fools bit into and didn't even retract when the local sheriff reported that both men were alive and well and laughing like hell at Beck, O'Reilly and the other whiteys who were so easy to fool.

   ACORN is a grassroots outfit that has tasked itself with showing ghetto residents how to lift themselves up by the bootstraps.  One of its operations is a vast, nationwide effort to register poor blacks, hispanics and others as legal voters.  To give them a voice in a government that otherwise is hostile to them.  It recruits most of its employees and most of its fee-for-servicer voter registration workers off the streets of the ghetto.

   Is it really shocking, SHOCKING !  that some of these people, approached by slick-talking dudes in fine threads and flashing very long green, might think that a nice, clean, well-run whorehouse could be good for the neighborhood?  Bring in some tax-free white money, fix up a rundown place and make it look real nice, provide a few jobs.  What's surprising is that so many of these rung-in "Niggers" were smart enough not to fall for the Foxes' hoax.

   Virtually all of the legitimate voters enrolled by the ACORN workers vote Democrat, which is what really worms the Foxes.

   The registration teams, recruited right off the ghetto streets and paid serious Johnny Walker Red money for each voter they signed up, of course gamed the system and registered thousands of non-existent voters, or ineligible ones.  Grow up on the streets and that's what you know: game the system.

   Who's guiltier, the ACORN dudes with sixth-grade educations in ghetto schools who enrolled fictitious voters, or the Yale and Liberty Law School educated lawyers and shills who disenfranchised thousands of legal voters in  Florida, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere to steal elections for the GOP?

   American racism comes in subtle tones, not always in black and white.  The hypocritical flap over ACORN is just one more racist bleat from the white far right.

   They cannot get over the fact that there's a black man -- A BLACK MAN! -- in "their" White House.
 

 

Why Are We Such Cowards?

   Chris Hedges, whose work as a reporter and thinker I have long admired, has issued a call to anger to Americans outside the madness of the far right.  Although our deluded national passion for war is an important target of his essay,  citizen passivity that enables war and other government failures is what he's really railing against.

   This is his concluding paragraph:

   It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending (our) young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.

   Why are we such moral cowards?  Why do we permit parrots of the trash-talkers to perpetuate hateful myths and utter falsehoods in our local media?  Why do we allow the far right to rewrite the political vocabulary, so that "liberal" becomes a term of derision, "pro life" becomes the euphemism for those who believe in killing abortion providers, and the moral imperative of government-guaranteed health care for every citizen becomes "socialism?"  Why do we demean the handful of courageous members of Congress who saw through the emotionalism and deliberate falsehoods and dared to vote against the so-called Patriot Act, against the invasion of Iraq and against the Military  Commissions Act that makes a mockery of our Constitution? Why were we not present in greater numbers than the confused and angry right-wing marchers, outshouting them and demanding that the failed policies of the preceding eight years be overturned, reversed, repealed, undone and that true reform begin to take place . . . .NOW!

Why not a better country?  Why not NOW?