Since we were shocked, shocked, by Columbine, and our hearts went out to and we prayed for the victims and their families, and some of us called for new gun laws and others said guns don't kill, people kill, and politicians prattled platitudes on one hand while the other hand pocketed millions in bribes from the NRA and gun and ammunition makers, and Michael Moore plunged headlong into making a shocking, shocking movie called Bowling for Columbine and the NRA spent more millions bribing more politicians who blathered refutations of the movie and after a while we forgot about the kids killed in the Colorado high school and went back to watching Fox and stewing about which celebrity was being unfaithful to which other celebrity . . .
. . . .since that time there have been 25 mass slayings in public places in the United States. Schools, workplaces, hospitals, religious places, government places, business places. At least 237 Americans have died in these shootings. Another 220 or more were wounded. The dead include at least 52 children. Since 1982, this country has experienced more than 60 mass murders by firearms. More than three quarters of the weapons used in these assassinations were legally obtained.
"The Columbine Massacre changed the way society looked at children and at schools," a contemporary historian wrote. "Violence was no longer just an after-school, inner-city activity. It could happen anywhere."
Today, anywhere was an upscale New York exurb called Newtown, Conn., and the school was Sandy Hook Elementary and 20 little kids are dead.
It was the seventh mass slaying by gunfire in the United States in the calendar year of 2012.
What is wrong with you, America? Why in the name of whatever god you invoke to decry each tragedy, and then forget about it, do you not rise up and demand that your governments do something to stop this carnage?
The Second Amendment "argument" is sheer bovine excrement. We must round up and destroy the guns in private citizens' hands and pass iron-clad laws that prohibit unauthorized persons from possessing them. All kinds of guns, not just so-called "assault weapons."
This isn't the time to bring up gun control, a White House spokesman said.
More bovine excrement! If this isn't the time, when the hell is the right time? After 500 more are dead in mass killings? A thousand more? After an unarmed citizen is no longer able to go safely into a shopping mall, send his kids to school, go to worship, browse in a library or sip a mocha in Starbucks without their being in danger of death by gunshot?
Act like a President, Barack Obama. Go before the Congress tomorrow and demand sweeping gun control legislation.
Act like responsible leaders, members of Congress. Start today to frame such legislation.
Seize the day, governors of the states, mayors of cities, legislatures, town councils. Draft your own gun control measures.
Stop the carnage now.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Musings on Republicans and Hatred
I'm convinced more than ever that the underlying and unifying force driving today's Republican party is hatred.
It oozes from every pore of the public demonstrations I've seen by the Tea Party wing. In Congress, only hatred can account for some of the GOP actions against women, immigrants, people of color, the poor, the sick, the elderly and all the children of all of the above.
Just last Tuesday, for example, Republicans in the Senate blocked ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which more than 150 other (obviously more compassionate) countries have already ratified. To the GOP, all those cripples are takers, a burden on society, not "makers" like good, conservative Republicans. Or maybe they think the metal in those wheelchairs should be diverted to the weapons industry to help keep us safe from Muslims.
Symptoms of Republican hatred turn up all over the place. Women? In Arizona, a drunken cop flashed his badge to enter a bar, walked up to a woman, put his hand under her skirt and groped her genitals. When he finally turned up in court, the Rpublican judge gave him probabtion and chided the victim! "If you wouldn't have been there that night," the judge said, "none of this would have happened to you." The judge told her to "take a positive lesson" from the assault.
A journalist friend thinks that such hatred stems from fear, fear of all those "Others." As Freud wrote, "if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.”
The Republican position on immigration is, at bottom, racist and hateful. Arizona Republicans seem determined to fight to the death for their Xenophobic Gestapo law ("Ve vant to see your papers, now!) Even though net immigration from Mexico has dwindled to nearly zero, the Republicans still want to put up steel fences, fly armed drones over the border and station legions of armed outriders along a no-man's-land between us and Them.
Right wing hatred ended the community service group, ACORN, when rigged videos by a truant brat scared Congress into cutting off its funding. Even though it no longer exists, a recent poll showed that 47% of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the recent election for Obama.
More than half of every tax dollar goes to illegal wars on people of color, and spying not just on suspected enemies abroad but on us, the people. Our local Republican Congressman supported these wars and that spying, yet today in the local paper he argued in an op ed that we're spending too much on "entitlements" like Social Security, health care and education. It happens that in his district, most of the people who need those "entitlements" just to survive have skin of a different color than his.
I suppose one might say that it's not hatred of people so much as love of money that drives the Republican machine. Coming from Arkansas and becoming richer than Croesus, Sam Walton surely must have been a Republican. Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a director of ethical sourcing for Sam's worldwide Walmart empire, imay not be a member of the GOP, but he played the lead role in blocking an effort to have global retailers pay more for apparel to help Bangladesh factories improve their electrical and fire safety. The New York Times, citing the minutes of a 2011 meeting of a worlwide association of apparel retailers, said the Walmart man noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories and would be “in most cases” a “very extensive and costly modification."
"It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments," the minutes said.
Two weeks ago, in one of those factories in Bangladesh, 112 workers, people of color, died in a horrible electrical fire.
Robert E. Lee is said to have remarked to an aide, just before a major civil war battle began, "It is good that war is so terrible lest men grow to love it too much."
I have never heard of a CEO saying. "it's good that money is so terrible lest men grow to love it too much." But then, most CEOs are Republicans, aren't they?
It oozes from every pore of the public demonstrations I've seen by the Tea Party wing. In Congress, only hatred can account for some of the GOP actions against women, immigrants, people of color, the poor, the sick, the elderly and all the children of all of the above.
Just last Tuesday, for example, Republicans in the Senate blocked ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which more than 150 other (obviously more compassionate) countries have already ratified. To the GOP, all those cripples are takers, a burden on society, not "makers" like good, conservative Republicans. Or maybe they think the metal in those wheelchairs should be diverted to the weapons industry to help keep us safe from Muslims.
Symptoms of Republican hatred turn up all over the place. Women? In Arizona, a drunken cop flashed his badge to enter a bar, walked up to a woman, put his hand under her skirt and groped her genitals. When he finally turned up in court, the Rpublican judge gave him probabtion and chided the victim! "If you wouldn't have been there that night," the judge said, "none of this would have happened to you." The judge told her to "take a positive lesson" from the assault.
A journalist friend thinks that such hatred stems from fear, fear of all those "Others." As Freud wrote, "if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.”
The Republican position on immigration is, at bottom, racist and hateful. Arizona Republicans seem determined to fight to the death for their Xenophobic Gestapo law ("Ve vant to see your papers, now!) Even though net immigration from Mexico has dwindled to nearly zero, the Republicans still want to put up steel fences, fly armed drones over the border and station legions of armed outriders along a no-man's-land between us and Them.
Right wing hatred ended the community service group, ACORN, when rigged videos by a truant brat scared Congress into cutting off its funding. Even though it no longer exists, a recent poll showed that 47% of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the recent election for Obama.
More than half of every tax dollar goes to illegal wars on people of color, and spying not just on suspected enemies abroad but on us, the people. Our local Republican Congressman supported these wars and that spying, yet today in the local paper he argued in an op ed that we're spending too much on "entitlements" like Social Security, health care and education. It happens that in his district, most of the people who need those "entitlements" just to survive have skin of a different color than his.
I suppose one might say that it's not hatred of people so much as love of money that drives the Republican machine. Coming from Arkansas and becoming richer than Croesus, Sam Walton surely must have been a Republican. Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a director of ethical sourcing for Sam's worldwide Walmart empire, imay not be a member of the GOP, but he played the lead role in blocking an effort to have global retailers pay more for apparel to help Bangladesh factories improve their electrical and fire safety. The New York Times, citing the minutes of a 2011 meeting of a worlwide association of apparel retailers, said the Walmart man noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories and would be “in most cases” a “very extensive and costly modification."
"It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments," the minutes said.
Two weeks ago, in one of those factories in Bangladesh, 112 workers, people of color, died in a horrible electrical fire.
Robert E. Lee is said to have remarked to an aide, just before a major civil war battle began, "It is good that war is so terrible lest men grow to love it too much."
I have never heard of a CEO saying. "it's good that money is so terrible lest men grow to love it too much." But then, most CEOs are Republicans, aren't they?
Sunday, November 18, 2012
The Living Horror That Is Gaza
This is how Deacon Muskrat, the hatefully hawkish cleric in Walt Kelly's great comic strip Pogo, put it years ago: "If I had the bomb, I'd force peace down their throats."
Once more, Israel is forcing peace down the throats of the beleaguered citizens of Gaza. And the blood of innocents flows and flows. Thirty-two of the 66 acknowledged victims of the latest bloodbath have been civilian men, women and children.
Never mind the numbers. Bibi and his friends don't care.
One invites being labeled anti-semitic for thinking these thoughts. And so I give you the son of a teacher of Hebrew, who visited Gaza just before the latest reign of terror began:
" . . . it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified."
Noam Chomsky wrote that, even as Israel was calling up 70,000 more reserve troops to active duty, the better to force peace down the throats of the sick, starving, angry inhabitants of "the world's largest open-air prison."
Granted, diplomatic solutions do not come easy in the most troubled parts of this vale of tears, especially when tens, even hundreds of generations of ethnic and religious conflict have buried the last vestiges of human decency under layers of murder, terror, torture, rape and pillage.
And so we -- most of us in the so-called civilized world, remote as we are from the worst of the ethno-religious horrors -- as Pete Seger musically laments, "live like an ostrich, bury our heads in the sand . . ."
When the U.N. sought to condemn Israel's latest ourages on the Gazans, the United States, Netanyahu's enabler, vetoed the resolution because "Israel has a right to defend itself." What Chomsky disdainfully calls "the security pretext." He quotes "the prominent military-political analyst Yoram Peri, who wrote that the Israeli army's task is not to defend the state, but 'to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim ("nigger," "kikes") living in territories that God promised to us.'" And so the people of Gaza have become Samid (steadfast), watching their homeland turned into a prison by brutal occupiers, able to do nothing but somehow "endure."
And we bury our heads in the sand.
Chomsky writes that after several days there his reaction "was amazement, not only at the ability to go on with life, but also at the vibrancy and vitality among young people, particularly at the university. . . But there too one can detect signs that the pressure may become too hard to bear. . . There is only so much that caged animals can endure, and there may be an eruption, perhaps taking ugly forms — offering an opportunity for Israeli and western apologists to self-righteously condemn the people who are culturally backward, as Mitt Romney insightfully explained.
"Gaza has the look of a typical third world society, with pockets of wealth surrounded by hideous poverty. It is not, however, 'undeveloped.' Rather it is 'de-developed,' and very systematically so, to borrow the terms of Sara Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza.
"The signs are easy to see, even on a brief visit. Sitting in a hotel near the shore, one can hear the machine gun fire of Israeli gunboats driving fishermen out of Gaza’s territorial waters and towards shore, so they are compelled to fish in waters that are heavily polluted because of US-Israeli refusal to allow reconstruction of the sewage and power systems that they destroyed. . .
"Water is severely limited. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which cares for refugees (but not other Gazans), recently released a report warning that damage to the aquifer may soon become 'irreversible,' and that without remedial action quickly, by 2020 Gaza may not be a 'liveable place.'
"All of this is part of the general program described by Israeli official Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after Palestinians failed to follow orders in the 2006 elections: 'The idea,' he said, 'is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.'
"And the plan is being scrupulously followed. Sara Roy has provided extensive evidence in her scholarly studies. Recently, after several years of effort, the Israeli human rights organization Gisha succeeded to obtain a court order for the government to release its records detailing plans for the diet, and how they are executed. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook summarizes them: 'Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day ... an average of only 67 trucks — much less than half of the minimum requirement — entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.' And even this estimate is overly generous, UN relief officials report.
"Mideast scholar Juan Cole observes that “[a]bout ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition ... in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers.” The US and Israel want to ensure that nothing more than bare survival is possible.
"In one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, a visiting Stanford physician, appalled by what he witnessed, describes Gaza as 'something of a laboratory for observing an absence of dignity,' a condition that has 'devastating' effects on physical, mental, and social wellbeing. 'The constant surveillance from the sky, collective punishment through blockade and isolation, the intrusion into homes and communications, and restrictions on those trying to travel, or marry, or work make it difficult to live a dignified life in Gaza.' The Araboushim must be taught not to raise their heads."
Even as we bury our own in the sand.
Once more, Israel is forcing peace down the throats of the beleaguered citizens of Gaza. And the blood of innocents flows and flows. Thirty-two of the 66 acknowledged victims of the latest bloodbath have been civilian men, women and children.
Never mind the numbers. Bibi and his friends don't care.
One invites being labeled anti-semitic for thinking these thoughts. And so I give you the son of a teacher of Hebrew, who visited Gaza just before the latest reign of terror began:
" . . . it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified."
Noam Chomsky wrote that, even as Israel was calling up 70,000 more reserve troops to active duty, the better to force peace down the throats of the sick, starving, angry inhabitants of "the world's largest open-air prison."
Granted, diplomatic solutions do not come easy in the most troubled parts of this vale of tears, especially when tens, even hundreds of generations of ethnic and religious conflict have buried the last vestiges of human decency under layers of murder, terror, torture, rape and pillage.
And so we -- most of us in the so-called civilized world, remote as we are from the worst of the ethno-religious horrors -- as Pete Seger musically laments, "live like an ostrich, bury our heads in the sand . . ."
When the U.N. sought to condemn Israel's latest ourages on the Gazans, the United States, Netanyahu's enabler, vetoed the resolution because "Israel has a right to defend itself." What Chomsky disdainfully calls "the security pretext." He quotes "the prominent military-political analyst Yoram Peri, who wrote that the Israeli army's task is not to defend the state, but 'to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim ("nigger," "kikes") living in territories that God promised to us.'" And so the people of Gaza have become Samid (steadfast), watching their homeland turned into a prison by brutal occupiers, able to do nothing but somehow "endure."
And we bury our heads in the sand.
Chomsky writes that after several days there his reaction "was amazement, not only at the ability to go on with life, but also at the vibrancy and vitality among young people, particularly at the university. . . But there too one can detect signs that the pressure may become too hard to bear. . . There is only so much that caged animals can endure, and there may be an eruption, perhaps taking ugly forms — offering an opportunity for Israeli and western apologists to self-righteously condemn the people who are culturally backward, as Mitt Romney insightfully explained.
"Gaza has the look of a typical third world society, with pockets of wealth surrounded by hideous poverty. It is not, however, 'undeveloped.' Rather it is 'de-developed,' and very systematically so, to borrow the terms of Sara Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza.
"The signs are easy to see, even on a brief visit. Sitting in a hotel near the shore, one can hear the machine gun fire of Israeli gunboats driving fishermen out of Gaza’s territorial waters and towards shore, so they are compelled to fish in waters that are heavily polluted because of US-Israeli refusal to allow reconstruction of the sewage and power systems that they destroyed. . .
"Water is severely limited. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which cares for refugees (but not other Gazans), recently released a report warning that damage to the aquifer may soon become 'irreversible,' and that without remedial action quickly, by 2020 Gaza may not be a 'liveable place.'
"All of this is part of the general program described by Israeli official Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after Palestinians failed to follow orders in the 2006 elections: 'The idea,' he said, 'is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.'
"And the plan is being scrupulously followed. Sara Roy has provided extensive evidence in her scholarly studies. Recently, after several years of effort, the Israeli human rights organization Gisha succeeded to obtain a court order for the government to release its records detailing plans for the diet, and how they are executed. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook summarizes them: 'Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day ... an average of only 67 trucks — much less than half of the minimum requirement — entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.' And even this estimate is overly generous, UN relief officials report.
"Mideast scholar Juan Cole observes that “[a]bout ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition ... in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers.” The US and Israel want to ensure that nothing more than bare survival is possible.
"In one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, a visiting Stanford physician, appalled by what he witnessed, describes Gaza as 'something of a laboratory for observing an absence of dignity,' a condition that has 'devastating' effects on physical, mental, and social wellbeing. 'The constant surveillance from the sky, collective punishment through blockade and isolation, the intrusion into homes and communications, and restrictions on those trying to travel, or marry, or work make it difficult to live a dignified life in Gaza.' The Araboushim must be taught not to raise their heads."
Even as we bury our own in the sand.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Smoke, Catacombs and Partisanship
Once again in the nation's capital, blue smoke curls around black ops to make whitewash.
Someone -- Jimmy Hoffa? James Bond? Maybe even David Petraeus! -- was spirited through the catacombs of Congess and into a secret room, there to be interrogated by some of the best and brightest members of that bastion of intellect and integrity, the U.S. House of Representatives. Those servants of the people had sworn to "get to the bottom" of a complicated mess involving fatal violence at an American consulate in Libya and femmes fatales in the extra-marital embrace of at least one, and possibly more, high ranking members of our military and spying establishment. The someone they sneaked into their hidey-hole was thought to have all the answers to all their questions.
OK, for the record, let's just stipulate that the someone was, indeed, retired Gen. David Petraeus, the walking medal chest, military hero of our great conquests in Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other places great and small around this troubled globe. Not only did he appear before a panel of great minds from the House, he also talked to a group of Senators.
Some are reporting that he "testified," although he was not repeat not under oath. Some testimony.
What did he say?
That depends upon whether you're being briefed by a Republican or a Democrat. Their characterizations of what he said differ greatly. Either he did or he didn't support the administration's version of events around the consulate in Benghazi that fateful day when an ambassador was slain.
What seems clear is that the questioning wasn't prosecutorial or probing. Both Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D.-CA.) indicated that out of respect for the tender sensibilities of the general and his family, there were no questions about his sexual pecadillos, and the questions that were asked were not "tough."
Questioners on both sides of both panels seemed to agree that the focus was on "clarifying" what Petraeus had told Congress about Benghazi back when he was still director of the CIA -- what we knew and when we knew it. What he says now and what he said then seem still to be interpreted strictly along party lines, leaving us, the people, still in the dark.
Even before the blue smoke began wafting through the bowels of the Capitol yesterday, there were whiffs of gray smoke suggesting a deeper CIA involvement in what happened there than anyone has so far disclosed. I suspect this aspect was never raised in yesterday's questioning.
King and the Republicans seem satisfied that Petraeus gave them answers yesterday, answers that substantiate their charges that "politics" marred the intelligence the administration used in addressing the American public about the episode. Since semen spots on black dresses seem to excite Republicans more readily than suggestions of black ops, they'll probably let things rest where they are.
Is there any hope at all that the public will ever know the truth? Perhaps that depends upon what the definition of is is.
Someone -- Jimmy Hoffa? James Bond? Maybe even David Petraeus! -- was spirited through the catacombs of Congess and into a secret room, there to be interrogated by some of the best and brightest members of that bastion of intellect and integrity, the U.S. House of Representatives. Those servants of the people had sworn to "get to the bottom" of a complicated mess involving fatal violence at an American consulate in Libya and femmes fatales in the extra-marital embrace of at least one, and possibly more, high ranking members of our military and spying establishment. The someone they sneaked into their hidey-hole was thought to have all the answers to all their questions.
OK, for the record, let's just stipulate that the someone was, indeed, retired Gen. David Petraeus, the walking medal chest, military hero of our great conquests in Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other places great and small around this troubled globe. Not only did he appear before a panel of great minds from the House, he also talked to a group of Senators.
Some are reporting that he "testified," although he was not repeat not under oath. Some testimony.
What did he say?
That depends upon whether you're being briefed by a Republican or a Democrat. Their characterizations of what he said differ greatly. Either he did or he didn't support the administration's version of events around the consulate in Benghazi that fateful day when an ambassador was slain.
What seems clear is that the questioning wasn't prosecutorial or probing. Both Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D.-CA.) indicated that out of respect for the tender sensibilities of the general and his family, there were no questions about his sexual pecadillos, and the questions that were asked were not "tough."
Questioners on both sides of both panels seemed to agree that the focus was on "clarifying" what Petraeus had told Congress about Benghazi back when he was still director of the CIA -- what we knew and when we knew it. What he says now and what he said then seem still to be interpreted strictly along party lines, leaving us, the people, still in the dark.
Even before the blue smoke began wafting through the bowels of the Capitol yesterday, there were whiffs of gray smoke suggesting a deeper CIA involvement in what happened there than anyone has so far disclosed. I suspect this aspect was never raised in yesterday's questioning.
King and the Republicans seem satisfied that Petraeus gave them answers yesterday, answers that substantiate their charges that "politics" marred the intelligence the administration used in addressing the American public about the episode. Since semen spots on black dresses seem to excite Republicans more readily than suggestions of black ops, they'll probably let things rest where they are.
Is there any hope at all that the public will ever know the truth? Perhaps that depends upon what the definition of is is.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Sex! Generals! A Cast of Thousands!
A television performer named Krya Phillips is the latest addition to the cast of the tragic-comic farce playing out around Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned abruptly last week as head of the CIA.
Phillips, of Headline News Network, disclosed that she had a discussion with Petraeus recently about the episodes that have titillated Washington and the media. "I've had a very good professional relationship with General Petraeus," she said. "I've kept in touch with him ... we've always had a great measure of respect for each other. Needless to say, I'm shocked by his behavior.
"We didn't even talk about Benghazi at the beginning," she said. "It was more, 'oh my God, I'm in shock, I'm sick about this, what the hell happened.'" She said Petraeus told her that he had made a huge error, that he had not passed on classified information, and that his resignation had nothing to do with the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Drawing on my own experience as a journalist in Washington, dealing with the city's spooks (as we always referred conversationally to people who worked for the intelligence-gathering agencies), I infer the following from Phillips's remarks:
Her relationship with Petraeus was cozier than "professional," classified information did seep from him to a paramour, and his resignation was all about the Benghazi affair, in which an American ambassador and two CIA operatives were killed.
I infer also that Petraeus was the direct source of bad information --possibly intentionally bad information -- fed to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the White House regarding Benghazi.
We are told that Petraeus himself will be called to testify as our brilliant representatives in Congress empanel themselves to "get to the bottom" of all this. Maybe the truth will out, but don't bet the house on it.
Republicans will go haywire over the sex details, as they did with Monica Lewinsky and William Jefferson Clinton. The saliva of anticipation of erotic detail is running deep in every hallway in the Capitol.
Democrats will have to be careful about whose ox they gore. Petraeus is, as more than one academic has noted, America's most political general since MacArthur. He has meddled deeply in electoral politics and, indeed, built his entire career on political skills rather than military ones.
Despite what his worshipful media cult writes and broadcasts, he is far from a military genius. He wears a chestful of medals and ribbons not one of which was earned in combat. He is vain, arrogant and manipulative. But he is the darling of the military-industrial complex and President Obama loves his drone warfare concept.
A strong case can be made, I suspect, that Petraeus and Obama and former President Bush and many other most senior government officials of the last 12 years committed what under international law are war crimes.
Angry as Obama might be that Petraeus's leaks and misinformation played into the hands of the Romney campaign late in the recent electioneering, he can't afford to have too deep a probe into Petraeus, the CIA and the FBI.
Where there are spooks, there will be blood and dirt. The more ambitious, political and powerful the spook, the greater the amount of blood and dirt. You can bet the house on that.
Phillips, of Headline News Network, disclosed that she had a discussion with Petraeus recently about the episodes that have titillated Washington and the media. "I've had a very good professional relationship with General Petraeus," she said. "I've kept in touch with him ... we've always had a great measure of respect for each other. Needless to say, I'm shocked by his behavior.
"We didn't even talk about Benghazi at the beginning," she said. "It was more, 'oh my God, I'm in shock, I'm sick about this, what the hell happened.'" She said Petraeus told her that he had made a huge error, that he had not passed on classified information, and that his resignation had nothing to do with the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Drawing on my own experience as a journalist in Washington, dealing with the city's spooks (as we always referred conversationally to people who worked for the intelligence-gathering agencies), I infer the following from Phillips's remarks:
Her relationship with Petraeus was cozier than "professional," classified information did seep from him to a paramour, and his resignation was all about the Benghazi affair, in which an American ambassador and two CIA operatives were killed.
I infer also that Petraeus was the direct source of bad information --possibly intentionally bad information -- fed to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the White House regarding Benghazi.
We are told that Petraeus himself will be called to testify as our brilliant representatives in Congress empanel themselves to "get to the bottom" of all this. Maybe the truth will out, but don't bet the house on it.
Republicans will go haywire over the sex details, as they did with Monica Lewinsky and William Jefferson Clinton. The saliva of anticipation of erotic detail is running deep in every hallway in the Capitol.
Democrats will have to be careful about whose ox they gore. Petraeus is, as more than one academic has noted, America's most political general since MacArthur. He has meddled deeply in electoral politics and, indeed, built his entire career on political skills rather than military ones.
Despite what his worshipful media cult writes and broadcasts, he is far from a military genius. He wears a chestful of medals and ribbons not one of which was earned in combat. He is vain, arrogant and manipulative. But he is the darling of the military-industrial complex and President Obama loves his drone warfare concept.
A strong case can be made, I suspect, that Petraeus and Obama and former President Bush and many other most senior government officials of the last 12 years committed what under international law are war crimes.
Angry as Obama might be that Petraeus's leaks and misinformation played into the hands of the Romney campaign late in the recent electioneering, he can't afford to have too deep a probe into Petraeus, the CIA and the FBI.
Where there are spooks, there will be blood and dirt. The more ambitious, political and powerful the spook, the greater the amount of blood and dirt. You can bet the house on that.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Will a Progressive Posse Ride in the Senate?
If there is a spark of life left in liberalism in these United States, the last, best hope for rekindling it lies in the newly elected Senate.
There, one can pray, women like Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren might rally around Bernie Sanders to form a Progressive Posse, perhaps attracting New Mexico's new Senator Martin Heinrich and a few other lefties to come out of the closet and grow some cojones.
Such a posse could have a profound effect on policy. But it would have to coalesce fast or all will be lost and Dr. Kidglove's second term will be a worse disaster than his first.
John Boehner's Teapot House will be as delusional in its next incarnation as it has been for the last two years. Sanity, if any, in the legislative branch has to come from the Senate.
A Progressive Posse's first order of business should be to send a message to President Obama that if he nominates Erskine Bowles to succeed Timmy Titmouse Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, they will lead the fight against his confirmation. Bowles's name is floating all over Washington as the likely nominees for Geithner's post. Bowles, a sleazy tool of the corporatocracy, has called Paul Ryan's Disneyworld Fantasy budget plan "serious and sensible."
Just as Geithner's own nomination signaled what a farce of surrender Obama's first term would be, so the Bowles nomination, if it happens, would signal the magnitude of the disaster Term Two would become.
Someone needs as well to stiffen the President's spine to stand pat on the brink of the so-called financial cliff until Boehner and his cockeyed cronies come to grips with reality and accept a permanent extension of the Bush middle-class tax cuts, along with an agreement in principle on increasing taxes for the very rich. Warren and Baldwin, a budget stalwart in the House, are ideal candidates to lead the spine-stiffening campaign.
The Progressive Posse could also submit its own list of proposed nominees to succeed Lady Macbeth as Secretary of State. Obama would make a long overdue down payment on his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize if he nominated someone for Foggy Bottom who has less blood on his or her hands than Hillary. Inasmuch as Bibi Netanyahu was Mitt Romney's offstage campaign manager, Dr. Kidglove really doesn't have to cater to the Israeli leader's whims this time around. What's wrong with having a Secretary of State who might spend a few minutes in cabinet meetings suggesting peace alternatives?
A country without an effective left cannot be a democracy. The democratic republic we called the United States of America died along with the victims of the planes that crashed into those twin towers eleven years ago, because liberalism went up in the smoke.
Chris Hedges, the brilliant journalist and social critic, says the American left cannot be revived. Part of me fears that he is right. Another part hopes that somehow there will arise in the Senate the seed of rebirth.
"I didn't run for the Senate to make history," said the openly lesbian Ms. Baldwin, "I ran to make change."
You go, girl!
There, one can pray, women like Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren might rally around Bernie Sanders to form a Progressive Posse, perhaps attracting New Mexico's new Senator Martin Heinrich and a few other lefties to come out of the closet and grow some cojones.
Such a posse could have a profound effect on policy. But it would have to coalesce fast or all will be lost and Dr. Kidglove's second term will be a worse disaster than his first.
John Boehner's Teapot House will be as delusional in its next incarnation as it has been for the last two years. Sanity, if any, in the legislative branch has to come from the Senate.
A Progressive Posse's first order of business should be to send a message to President Obama that if he nominates Erskine Bowles to succeed Timmy Titmouse Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, they will lead the fight against his confirmation. Bowles's name is floating all over Washington as the likely nominees for Geithner's post. Bowles, a sleazy tool of the corporatocracy, has called Paul Ryan's Disneyworld Fantasy budget plan "serious and sensible."
Just as Geithner's own nomination signaled what a farce of surrender Obama's first term would be, so the Bowles nomination, if it happens, would signal the magnitude of the disaster Term Two would become.
Someone needs as well to stiffen the President's spine to stand pat on the brink of the so-called financial cliff until Boehner and his cockeyed cronies come to grips with reality and accept a permanent extension of the Bush middle-class tax cuts, along with an agreement in principle on increasing taxes for the very rich. Warren and Baldwin, a budget stalwart in the House, are ideal candidates to lead the spine-stiffening campaign.
The Progressive Posse could also submit its own list of proposed nominees to succeed Lady Macbeth as Secretary of State. Obama would make a long overdue down payment on his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize if he nominated someone for Foggy Bottom who has less blood on his or her hands than Hillary. Inasmuch as Bibi Netanyahu was Mitt Romney's offstage campaign manager, Dr. Kidglove really doesn't have to cater to the Israeli leader's whims this time around. What's wrong with having a Secretary of State who might spend a few minutes in cabinet meetings suggesting peace alternatives?
A country without an effective left cannot be a democracy. The democratic republic we called the United States of America died along with the victims of the planes that crashed into those twin towers eleven years ago, because liberalism went up in the smoke.
Chris Hedges, the brilliant journalist and social critic, says the American left cannot be revived. Part of me fears that he is right. Another part hopes that somehow there will arise in the Senate the seed of rebirth.
"I didn't run for the Senate to make history," said the openly lesbian Ms. Baldwin, "I ran to make change."
You go, girl!
Thursday, November 8, 2012
The High Cards Are in the West Wing
We'll find out right quick if the electoral college landslide for Barack Obama stiffened his spine.
Did we re-elect Dr. Kidglove or a real President?
John Boehner obviously thinks he's still dealing with Kidglove. The Republican Speaker of the House, in his first public comment on the election results, was still telling the President what to do about the nation's finances.
Today, there's a hint from Vice President Joe Biden that there might be a real President somewhere in the West Wing. In a press briefing today, Biden said " . . . it appears is that, on the issue of the tax issue, there was a clear sort of mandate about people coming much closer to our view about how to deal with tax policy." Since "our view" is that people earning $250,000 a year or more need to pay a higher tax rate, Biden seemed to be sending a signal to Boehner that he's not sparring with Kidglove any more.
But, whoa! Biden also said, "We are prepared to work with Republican leadership to actually deal with the two overarching problems right now. One is the whole sequester piece, and the other is the tax piece. It's possible you can bifurcate them. It's possible, there's all kinds of potential to be able to reach a rational, principled compromise."
There's that dirty word again. "Compromise." Kidglove's version of compromise is to give away the farm, and then open "negotiations."
But Obama and Biden hold the high cards between now and the swearing-in of a new Congress, if only they'll play out the hand that way.
Obama should quickly follow up the opening volley by his Vice President by ignoring Boehner and Mitch McConnell and talking directly to the American people who just re-elected them.
Simply by standing pat, the administration can let the Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich expire, increasing revenues; the payroll tax holiday for wage-earners expire, resuming normal funding for Social Security; and the mandatory ten per cent cut in war spending take place, a first step toward reducing the deficit. These are all positive things. They will have an immediate effect on people's lives.
The President, who can be an articulate and persuasive speaker when he chooses to be, should use the bully puplpit to applaud these inevitable results of previous skirmishes but lay out in broad, general terms a plan for realistic tax reform, in which corporations and very wealthy individuals begin to pay their fair share of our nation's expenses, and for bold national spending on direct job-creating government initiatives to repair and improve the infrastructure. He should pledge to flesh out these plans with specific legislation when a new, more progressive Senate is seated along with a House whose Republican majority has been slightly reduced, largely by the defeat of a handful of its most extreme right-wing financial policy whackos.
That's what a real President would do.
Let's see if we re-elected one.
The Kidgove of the first term gave away too much before the work on health care reform even began. He bailed out the financial industry, saving the bonuses of fat cat bankers. President Obama bailed out the automakers, saving thousands of workers' jobs.
It's time now to bail out the people who re-elected him.
Did we re-elect Dr. Kidglove or a real President?
John Boehner obviously thinks he's still dealing with Kidglove. The Republican Speaker of the House, in his first public comment on the election results, was still telling the President what to do about the nation's finances.
Today, there's a hint from Vice President Joe Biden that there might be a real President somewhere in the West Wing. In a press briefing today, Biden said " . . . it appears is that, on the issue of the tax issue, there was a clear sort of mandate about people coming much closer to our view about how to deal with tax policy." Since "our view" is that people earning $250,000 a year or more need to pay a higher tax rate, Biden seemed to be sending a signal to Boehner that he's not sparring with Kidglove any more.
But, whoa! Biden also said, "We are prepared to work with Republican leadership to actually deal with the two overarching problems right now. One is the whole sequester piece, and the other is the tax piece. It's possible you can bifurcate them. It's possible, there's all kinds of potential to be able to reach a rational, principled compromise."
There's that dirty word again. "Compromise." Kidglove's version of compromise is to give away the farm, and then open "negotiations."
But Obama and Biden hold the high cards between now and the swearing-in of a new Congress, if only they'll play out the hand that way.
Obama should quickly follow up the opening volley by his Vice President by ignoring Boehner and Mitch McConnell and talking directly to the American people who just re-elected them.
Simply by standing pat, the administration can let the Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich expire, increasing revenues; the payroll tax holiday for wage-earners expire, resuming normal funding for Social Security; and the mandatory ten per cent cut in war spending take place, a first step toward reducing the deficit. These are all positive things. They will have an immediate effect on people's lives.
The President, who can be an articulate and persuasive speaker when he chooses to be, should use the bully puplpit to applaud these inevitable results of previous skirmishes but lay out in broad, general terms a plan for realistic tax reform, in which corporations and very wealthy individuals begin to pay their fair share of our nation's expenses, and for bold national spending on direct job-creating government initiatives to repair and improve the infrastructure. He should pledge to flesh out these plans with specific legislation when a new, more progressive Senate is seated along with a House whose Republican majority has been slightly reduced, largely by the defeat of a handful of its most extreme right-wing financial policy whackos.
That's what a real President would do.
Let's see if we re-elected one.
The Kidgove of the first term gave away too much before the work on health care reform even began. He bailed out the financial industry, saving the bonuses of fat cat bankers. President Obama bailed out the automakers, saving thousands of workers' jobs.
It's time now to bail out the people who re-elected him.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
You Can't Ignore the Sociopaths
Having done my civic duty, and worn a hairshirt for a day in the desert to atone for my vote for a truly bad president, I keep trying now to ignore the idiocy that passes for an election campaign in these United States.
But when Bishop Willard Romney refuses to withhold his endorsements of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, he reaffirms one of the many reasons why we simply cannot allow this man to become President of the United States.
Only a sick mind could come up with the kinds of obscene distortions about women and rape that Akin and, most recently, Mourdock have uttered in campaign appearances and never really recanted. It is a sickness that seems to infect only Republicans: various pieces of legislation in GOP-controlled state legislatures, most recently Pennsylvania's, reflect the same kind of sociopathic ignorance. Of course, the Bishop's tolerance of such obscenity comes as no surprise, given his own church's attitude toward women. Mormon belief holds, in effect, that they should be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
Bishop Romney's own ignorance of geography ought to raise warning signals for those voters who care about foreign policy. This guy thinks Iran's access to the sea is via Syria! (Iran in fact has both northern and southern seacoasts, and there's a hunk of land called Iraq between it and Syria.)
Since I still cling to the quaint Jeffersonian idea of separation of church and state, I consider it supremely unwise for any nation aspiring to be a democratic republic to even consider allowing a bishop of any religion to be its president. But then I also think the founders were dead serious when they wrote the first ten amendments to their own Constitution, the ones we now call the Bill of Rights. The current President and his predecessor both seem to have repealed those amendments by presidential fiat. Who knows what further mischief would be done to them under the presidency of a bishop born to a CEO mentality?
I cannot even walk the dog without passing the Romney/Ryan and other Republican campaign signs in a neighbor's yard. I am well acquainted with this neighbor, who is an otherwise intelligent and successful man. How can he support the delusional policies of the Republicans whose signs he displays?
Part of it, I think, has to do with the distorted American definition of "success." Whether an American is deemed "successful" depends entirely on how much money he or she has made and kept.
Bishop Willard Romney was born to wealth and used his money to acquire still more money. In the process, he outsourced far more American jobs than he ever created.
But he is a "successful" man.
So was Attila the Hun.
But when Bishop Willard Romney refuses to withhold his endorsements of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, he reaffirms one of the many reasons why we simply cannot allow this man to become President of the United States.
Only a sick mind could come up with the kinds of obscene distortions about women and rape that Akin and, most recently, Mourdock have uttered in campaign appearances and never really recanted. It is a sickness that seems to infect only Republicans: various pieces of legislation in GOP-controlled state legislatures, most recently Pennsylvania's, reflect the same kind of sociopathic ignorance. Of course, the Bishop's tolerance of such obscenity comes as no surprise, given his own church's attitude toward women. Mormon belief holds, in effect, that they should be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
Bishop Romney's own ignorance of geography ought to raise warning signals for those voters who care about foreign policy. This guy thinks Iran's access to the sea is via Syria! (Iran in fact has both northern and southern seacoasts, and there's a hunk of land called Iraq between it and Syria.)
Since I still cling to the quaint Jeffersonian idea of separation of church and state, I consider it supremely unwise for any nation aspiring to be a democratic republic to even consider allowing a bishop of any religion to be its president. But then I also think the founders were dead serious when they wrote the first ten amendments to their own Constitution, the ones we now call the Bill of Rights. The current President and his predecessor both seem to have repealed those amendments by presidential fiat. Who knows what further mischief would be done to them under the presidency of a bishop born to a CEO mentality?
I cannot even walk the dog without passing the Romney/Ryan and other Republican campaign signs in a neighbor's yard. I am well acquainted with this neighbor, who is an otherwise intelligent and successful man. How can he support the delusional policies of the Republicans whose signs he displays?
Part of it, I think, has to do with the distorted American definition of "success." Whether an American is deemed "successful" depends entirely on how much money he or she has made and kept.
Bishop Willard Romney was born to wealth and used his money to acquire still more money. In the process, he outsourced far more American jobs than he ever created.
But he is a "successful" man.
So was Attila the Hun.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Should Sport Drop Those Doping Bans?
A blogger in the United Kingdom, commenting on the Lance Armstrong case, recently suggested that sport should lift all rules banning performance enhancing substances.
He argues that even the most stringent penalties have not halted the practice; that these are, after all, adults capable of making their own decisions about health, diet, training regimens etc.; and that with such huge amounts of money at stake, it is only human nature to seek an "edge" on the competition.
He has a strong case, in my opinion, where cycling is concerned. I want to believe that Armstrong really is clean despite the testimony of 26 people, mostly former teammates, to the contrary. Miguel Indurain of Spain, who along with four other riders has won five Tours de France untainted by doping allegations, told a Madrid radio station this week that he believes in Armstrong's innocence. He said the entire case was ``bizarre'' since Armstong never tested positive for doping. "It is strange they take away his tours because of the testimonies of some teammates,'' Indurain said.
Someone with inside knowledge of cycling, and no ax to grind, told me that "all three podium places in the Tour for at least ten years have gone to cyclists who either tested positive or otherwise were known to have used banned substances." If that's so, where's the edge?
This would include Floyd Landis of the United States, first and foremost of the Armstrong ex-teammates to point the finger, who was stripped of his own Tour de France title after testing positive.
Track and field is another sport in which it could be argued that eliminating substance bans would save a lot of time and money and not really compromise the competition. It's been 25 years since Ben Johnson of Canada tested positive after breaking the world record for 100 meters by a full tenth of a second. World records at this distance usually are matters of hundredths of a second.
Johnson's punishments appear not to have diminished the practice in track and field. Marion Jones, the great American track and field athlete, was jailed for lying about substance abuse. Even Florence Griffith-Joyner, the memorable "Flo Jo," has been subject to allegations of doping. She dominated women's track and field in the manner that Armstrong dominated cycling with his seven Tour de France victories. Flo Jo, who died in 1998 after an epileptic seizure, set records in the 100 and 200 meter sprints that have never been seriously challenged in the 24 years since she set them. She never tested positive for any banned substance, but, as was the case when Armstrong was competing, clean blood tests didn't stop tongues from wagging.
And baseball! How many asterisks would it take to print a record book of achievements by steroid users and other performance enhancing drug users? Why not allow any players who's willing to take the health risk go ahead and use them, to make the playing fields level? Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one season, and 711 in his career, boosted only by booze and hot dogs. Yet his home run records have all been taken by suspect sluggers like Barry Bonds and Mark Maguire. The hero of one of this year's World Series team's has served a suspension for banned substances. Why not let all the players choose to use or not use?
The case weakens, in my view, for football players. Allowing the use of steroids and other chemicals that artificially increase the size and strength of football players is life threatening for other football players. I was acquainted with the young Alex Karras, the fun - loving Detroit Lion who became a fair comic actor, and it saddens me deeply that he suffered dementia for so long before dying of his accumulation of football injuries. There is, of course, knowledge aforethought of the risks entailed in playing football for a livelihood -- as there is, say, for boxing as well -- and if an unimpaired adult chooses to take that risk, so be it.
As one who has always enjoyed sports as a participant and an observer, I'd like to think that wonderful performances like Flo Jo's and Lance Armstrong's -- or Roger Federer's, for that matter -- are the result of natural ability and good training, not chemical enhancers. But that is, of course, naive.
Speaking of Federer, his sport of tennis has never had a major doping scandal. Perhaps nobody has yet come up with a performance-enhancing drug that is specific to the sport. I almost wish they would. I still play the game even though I'm too old and physically spent to play it well. But if they came up with a pill . . . . .
He argues that even the most stringent penalties have not halted the practice; that these are, after all, adults capable of making their own decisions about health, diet, training regimens etc.; and that with such huge amounts of money at stake, it is only human nature to seek an "edge" on the competition.
He has a strong case, in my opinion, where cycling is concerned. I want to believe that Armstrong really is clean despite the testimony of 26 people, mostly former teammates, to the contrary. Miguel Indurain of Spain, who along with four other riders has won five Tours de France untainted by doping allegations, told a Madrid radio station this week that he believes in Armstrong's innocence. He said the entire case was ``bizarre'' since Armstong never tested positive for doping. "It is strange they take away his tours because of the testimonies of some teammates,'' Indurain said.
Someone with inside knowledge of cycling, and no ax to grind, told me that "all three podium places in the Tour for at least ten years have gone to cyclists who either tested positive or otherwise were known to have used banned substances." If that's so, where's the edge?
This would include Floyd Landis of the United States, first and foremost of the Armstrong ex-teammates to point the finger, who was stripped of his own Tour de France title after testing positive.
Track and field is another sport in which it could be argued that eliminating substance bans would save a lot of time and money and not really compromise the competition. It's been 25 years since Ben Johnson of Canada tested positive after breaking the world record for 100 meters by a full tenth of a second. World records at this distance usually are matters of hundredths of a second.
Johnson's punishments appear not to have diminished the practice in track and field. Marion Jones, the great American track and field athlete, was jailed for lying about substance abuse. Even Florence Griffith-Joyner, the memorable "Flo Jo," has been subject to allegations of doping. She dominated women's track and field in the manner that Armstrong dominated cycling with his seven Tour de France victories. Flo Jo, who died in 1998 after an epileptic seizure, set records in the 100 and 200 meter sprints that have never been seriously challenged in the 24 years since she set them. She never tested positive for any banned substance, but, as was the case when Armstrong was competing, clean blood tests didn't stop tongues from wagging.
And baseball! How many asterisks would it take to print a record book of achievements by steroid users and other performance enhancing drug users? Why not allow any players who's willing to take the health risk go ahead and use them, to make the playing fields level? Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one season, and 711 in his career, boosted only by booze and hot dogs. Yet his home run records have all been taken by suspect sluggers like Barry Bonds and Mark Maguire. The hero of one of this year's World Series team's has served a suspension for banned substances. Why not let all the players choose to use or not use?
The case weakens, in my view, for football players. Allowing the use of steroids and other chemicals that artificially increase the size and strength of football players is life threatening for other football players. I was acquainted with the young Alex Karras, the fun - loving Detroit Lion who became a fair comic actor, and it saddens me deeply that he suffered dementia for so long before dying of his accumulation of football injuries. There is, of course, knowledge aforethought of the risks entailed in playing football for a livelihood -- as there is, say, for boxing as well -- and if an unimpaired adult chooses to take that risk, so be it.
As one who has always enjoyed sports as a participant and an observer, I'd like to think that wonderful performances like Flo Jo's and Lance Armstrong's -- or Roger Federer's, for that matter -- are the result of natural ability and good training, not chemical enhancers. But that is, of course, naive.
Speaking of Federer, his sport of tennis has never had a major doping scandal. Perhaps nobody has yet come up with a performance-enhancing drug that is specific to the sport. I almost wish they would. I still play the game even though I'm too old and physically spent to play it well. But if they came up with a pill . . . . .
Monday, October 22, 2012
Reflections on George McGovern -- and Voting
The best -- well, most effective -- people on the other side of the Great Corporate American War and Greed Machine are cynical pragmatists. People like the late George McGovern, who proudly called himself a liberal, and who spoke what he believed, not what he thought his audience wanted to hear, had no chance in the dogfight pit of American politics.
Thus his obituaries all stressed that he was on the wrong side of the greatest landslide in presidential election history. With the exception of the piece by my dear friend, the late David Rosenbaum, in the New York Times, the obit writers largely ignored the probability that Sen. McGoven was absolutely right on all the great issues of his political era.
George McGovern was a good man. That will never be written about Richard Nixon, the man who won that landslide, then left the White House in disgrace to avoid impeachment.
As the brilliant social critic Chris Hedges wrote the other day, George McGovern never sold his soul.
Today, alas, our only real electoral choice is between two men who have sold their souls.
In its remarkable endorsement of Barack Obama to retain his presidency, the Salt Lake Tribune, largest newspaper in Mormon Utah, laments this very fact about Mitt Romney, whom it once idolized. "Romney. . . is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear," the Tribune wrote.
Every true liberal left in the land laments the sell-out by Mr. Obama, who is now owned by Wall Street, the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Coal and every other Big Nasty in our part of the universe.
Sen. McGovern, as recently as three years ago, held out the hope that Mr. Obama would be a good, possibly even a great, president. This came at a Nation Institute symposium during which, in his role as a historian, McGovern discussed the humanity, wisdom and moral standing of former Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Adams and others.
Among the others was Lyndon Johnson, who, Sen. McGovern pointed out, "hated" the Vietnam war but could not figure out how to end our involvement in it. Johnson, McGovern recalled, once consulted Georgia Sen. Dick Russell about the question, and all they could come up with was a Machiavellian scheme to finance an assassination and coup that would establish a new regime that would invite us to leave. It never occurred to them that we could simply withdraw, on the ground that we were doing no good there. That, McGovern mused, would have been politically suicidal, as the opposite strategy of staying the course ultimately proved also to be.
Sen. McGovern implied that Iraq and Afghanistan are Obama's Vietnam, and advocated withdrawal on the ground that we are doing no good there. "Most people around the world don’t look like you and me, they look like him," McGovern said. "And I think that our standing worldwide is much better, all across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America." This was still true three years ago, but has changed now, because Obama's worst moral sell-out has been the wars, overt and covert, that are the core of his foreign policy. The people his drones are slaying willy-nilly do not look like George McGovern and me, they look like him.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to end the Vietnam war that Lyndon Johnson could not bring himself to end, declared the other day that, with no illusions of better government to result, he was urging voters in swing states to support Obama because a sold-out Obama is still less bad than a sold-out Mitt Romney. The Salt Lake Tribune's cogent editorial reached essentially the same conclusion from a completely different starting point.
I have long argued that the only morally defensible position for me is to support Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate, whose positions on the important issues of our time are closest to mine (and Sen. McGovern's). Now, mulling the meaning of George McGovern's life and beliefs, I'm less certain.
Tomorrow I will vote early. I hope the nation will re-elect Barack Obama, and somehow survive another four years of his morally bankrupt reign. I hope in the meantime some new leader arises from among the people, a leader whose soul cannot be bought, a leader who can win the presidency in another four years and begin the nearly impossible task of rebuilding the American Dream.
I will mark my ballot for Mr. Obama. With self-loathing for selling my own soul. Begging but not deserving the forgiveness of the families of young Americans slain in illegal wars; of the tortured, the imprisoned and the damned in our black holes around the world; of the elderly and the sick who will suffer and die because they still cannot afford proper medical care in the richest nation in the world; of those Americans who live in abject poverty and whose numbers are growing by the day; of the millions of jobless who have no hope of ever finding employment again, even though they are educated, capable and desperate for work; of the women whose most sacred privacy is violated by obscene government laws and regulations; of the women who are lucky enough still to have jobs, but for which they are paid less than men in comparable work; of the students who thought they were climbing the American ladder of success but now languish deep in debt to usurers; of the civilian men, women and children called "collateral damage" who have been slain, maimed and shamed by our endless wars; of the foreclosed, the homeless, the broken paupers who once were part of an American middle class; of those Americans who look more like Barack Obama than like me, but who bleed, sweat and weep with equal opportunity in an America rigged against them; of the land itself, and the planet, for the orgy of crimes against the very envelope of life that sustains us.
I will mark my ballot, and go off alone into the desert, and weep in shame for myself and my country.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Oh, to Have Had Ed Dale on the Case!
Edwin L. Dale Jr. was one of those New York Times reporters who knew as much as, and in some cases more than, the experts in his field, which was economics.
For example, Ed was credited by economists with being one of the first to establish that the roots of inflation lay as much in the service sector as in the pricing of goods. He came to this insight in the 1950's and helped bring it to public awareness.
When Ed died in 1999, Joseph Laitin, a spokesman for Government agencies including the Treasury Department, said, ''One budget director commented to me after an interview that this man Dale was qualified to be budget director.''
Ed was famously good at digging out the real meaning of regular periodic government reports, like unemployment, gross national product, etc., and never accepting the official spin at face value. These reports were widely available before the release date, which gave Ed plenty of time to report and evaluate the deeper meaning behind the numbers.
Occasionally a reporter, usually a wire service rookie, would rush to publish the numbers in advance of the release date. "Statistics scooping," Ed would sneer. "One of the lower forms of journalistic sin."
A couple of recent news stories reminded me of Ed, and how I wish his likes were still reporting from Washington.
One, just before the presidential "debate," was from a statistics scooper who wanted to appear wise. I'm willing to bet he had a copy of the new employment report in hand when he wrote that the forthcoming data would be bad news for President Obama because the economy had only added 114,000 new jobs in the preceding month, which meant that the unemployment rate would be 8.2 per cent.
Then Willard Romney wiped the floor with Dr. Kidglove in the so-called debate.
Then the actual report came out. The new jobs number was the same. But magically, it had driven the unemployment rate down to 7.8 per cent, the lowest it had been since January of 2009. Calloo, callay and hip-hip hooray for Kidglove and the Gutless Democrats of Oz.
"I wonder what Ed Dale would have done with this one," I thought.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and something of a hero in many economic circles, smelled the same rat. "Unbelievable," he tweeted, setting off a wave of skepticism about the numbers, which the Administration promptly defended as being beyond finagling, even if someone wanted to finagle them.
I'm betting that Ed Dale would not only have smelled this rat, he'd have captured it, measured its tail, counted its whiskers and dumped it in the trash can with all the other recent government deceptions.
Oh, for the good old days.
For example, Ed was credited by economists with being one of the first to establish that the roots of inflation lay as much in the service sector as in the pricing of goods. He came to this insight in the 1950's and helped bring it to public awareness.
When Ed died in 1999, Joseph Laitin, a spokesman for Government agencies including the Treasury Department, said, ''One budget director commented to me after an interview that this man Dale was qualified to be budget director.''
Ed was famously good at digging out the real meaning of regular periodic government reports, like unemployment, gross national product, etc., and never accepting the official spin at face value. These reports were widely available before the release date, which gave Ed plenty of time to report and evaluate the deeper meaning behind the numbers.
Occasionally a reporter, usually a wire service rookie, would rush to publish the numbers in advance of the release date. "Statistics scooping," Ed would sneer. "One of the lower forms of journalistic sin."
A couple of recent news stories reminded me of Ed, and how I wish his likes were still reporting from Washington.
One, just before the presidential "debate," was from a statistics scooper who wanted to appear wise. I'm willing to bet he had a copy of the new employment report in hand when he wrote that the forthcoming data would be bad news for President Obama because the economy had only added 114,000 new jobs in the preceding month, which meant that the unemployment rate would be 8.2 per cent.
Then Willard Romney wiped the floor with Dr. Kidglove in the so-called debate.
Then the actual report came out. The new jobs number was the same. But magically, it had driven the unemployment rate down to 7.8 per cent, the lowest it had been since January of 2009. Calloo, callay and hip-hip hooray for Kidglove and the Gutless Democrats of Oz.
"I wonder what Ed Dale would have done with this one," I thought.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and something of a hero in many economic circles, smelled the same rat. "Unbelievable," he tweeted, setting off a wave of skepticism about the numbers, which the Administration promptly defended as being beyond finagling, even if someone wanted to finagle them.
I'm betting that Ed Dale would not only have smelled this rat, he'd have captured it, measured its tail, counted its whiskers and dumped it in the trash can with all the other recent government deceptions.
Oh, for the good old days.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Great Journalism Leavened with Humor
I had the privilege to commit journalism in the tents of two of America's greatest newspaper publishers -- John S. Knight and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.
When "Punch" Sulzberger died last week at 86, the obituary writers unanimously declared his greatest moment as publisher of the New York Times to have been the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which he personally approved. The documentation of lies and deceit at the highest levels of government and the military during the Vietnam War took place while I was an editor at the Washington Bureau of The Times.
Parenthetically, when publication was temporarily enjoined while the case was argued before the Supreme Court, journalists at the bureau conducted a wagering pool; entrants had to predict the decision, the vote, the justices on each side and, as a tie-breaker, the day and time the decision would be announced. I won the pool with a nearly perfect score, missing only by about four minutes on the exact time of the announcement that The Times had won the historic case.
On Punch's next visit to the Bureau, he sought out the editor who had "called the shot" on the Pentagon Papers court battle. Given this rare opportunity to impress the Boss of Bosses, I began to pontificate about Potter Stewart's historic role on the court and blah, blah, blah. When I paused for breath, Punch smiled indulgently and said, "In other words, blind luck."
Clyde Haberman's excellent obituary in last Sunday's Times rightly made much of Sulzberger's sense of humor, a trait he shared with Knight, whose chain of fine papers was a magnet for great editors and reporters
Both men were not averse to making themselves the butt of their jokes. "Jack" Knight attended a meeting with his Detroit Free Press editors not long after he had been the subject of a flattering cover story in Time magazine. When this was mentioned, Knight said, with just the right hint of a wry smile, "The piece called me 'crusty,' which I think means hard on the outside -- and empty on the inside."
Both men filled their newsrooms with outstanding editors and reporters, then let them do what they did best unfettered by concerns about what the publisher did or did not want. Both men believed that the news columns belonged, not to the man who owned the presses, but to the readers.
Under their leadership, The Times, The Chicago Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal and other fine papers practiced a kind of journalism that has all but vanished from these United States, leaving democracy the poorer.
I think probably it helped that the editors of those newspapers knew the top boss had a sense of humor.
When "Punch" Sulzberger died last week at 86, the obituary writers unanimously declared his greatest moment as publisher of the New York Times to have been the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which he personally approved. The documentation of lies and deceit at the highest levels of government and the military during the Vietnam War took place while I was an editor at the Washington Bureau of The Times.
Parenthetically, when publication was temporarily enjoined while the case was argued before the Supreme Court, journalists at the bureau conducted a wagering pool; entrants had to predict the decision, the vote, the justices on each side and, as a tie-breaker, the day and time the decision would be announced. I won the pool with a nearly perfect score, missing only by about four minutes on the exact time of the announcement that The Times had won the historic case.
On Punch's next visit to the Bureau, he sought out the editor who had "called the shot" on the Pentagon Papers court battle. Given this rare opportunity to impress the Boss of Bosses, I began to pontificate about Potter Stewart's historic role on the court and blah, blah, blah. When I paused for breath, Punch smiled indulgently and said, "In other words, blind luck."
Clyde Haberman's excellent obituary in last Sunday's Times rightly made much of Sulzberger's sense of humor, a trait he shared with Knight, whose chain of fine papers was a magnet for great editors and reporters
Both men were not averse to making themselves the butt of their jokes. "Jack" Knight attended a meeting with his Detroit Free Press editors not long after he had been the subject of a flattering cover story in Time magazine. When this was mentioned, Knight said, with just the right hint of a wry smile, "The piece called me 'crusty,' which I think means hard on the outside -- and empty on the inside."
Both men filled their newsrooms with outstanding editors and reporters, then let them do what they did best unfettered by concerns about what the publisher did or did not want. Both men believed that the news columns belonged, not to the man who owned the presses, but to the readers.
Under their leadership, The Times, The Chicago Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal and other fine papers practiced a kind of journalism that has all but vanished from these United States, leaving democracy the poorer.
I think probably it helped that the editors of those newspapers knew the top boss had a sense of humor.
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