This whole “mosque on the hallowed 9/11 ground” controversy is total bullshit, and yet another example of how the media gets played by the right-wing and how the Democrats are so spineless in responding to these extremists. For starters, it’s not “at” ground zero, it’s two blocks away. I live in a heighborhood that is two blocks away from a shopping center, but if I told someone I live at a shopping center they would think I’m crazy. Two blocks is a long way, particularly in New York City. It might as well be at the other end of Manhattan. And the idea that this is a “freedom of religion” issue is a crock as well. It’s a community center foremost, and it’s in accordance with all local laws and ordinances. Religion has nothing to do with this.
No, this is all about racist attitudes towards non-whites, Muslims in this case. This is the same old racism that has been part and parcel of the Republican party ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Back then it was hatred toward African-Americans. Then over the last ten years that racism has expanded to include Hispanics. And now it’s being directed at Muslims. The Republican Party is the party of racism, period. If you vote Republican, you are implicitly endorsing racism, and are therefore a racist. It’s that simple.
Why the media doesn’t call out these people for what they are is downright disgraceful. And why the Democrats aren’t making this a major issue just shows you how spineless they are.
August 21st, 2010 | tags:
Racism,
Republican Party
So the Rod Blagojevich trial has ended with him pretty much getting off on all the charges. Good for the jury. As I said when this whole thing started (here and here), this whole case was a total farce. This was just politics as usual in America, only difference being that Blago didn’t seem to be playing with a full deck. But to prosecute him on these various sundry charges was ridiculous. You would be hard-pressed to find any politician these days that isn’t guilty of doing exactly what he did — most of them are just a bit more clever in how they go about it so they don’t get caught.
Now this is not saying this type behavior is OK — far from it. But the problem is the American political system. It pretty much guarantees that politicians are always going to be for sale. It’s the nature of the beast. If you don’t like it, then don’t be going after people like Blagojevich — they are just the symptom. What you really want is 100% public financing of all elections. Make it illegal to give even a dime to a politician. And particularly make it illegal for corporations to be involved in the political process in any form or fashion — no donations, no entertaining, no letter writing campaigns, no helping a politician in any way. You take the money and the corporations (the two biggest sources of all evil!) out of the process and you solve the problem permanently.
Of course in The Banana Republic of America, the chances of that happening are nil.
August 20th, 2010 | tags:
Big Money,
Corruption
If there’s one thing you can count on these days, it’s that every time you think the Republican Party has hit rock bottom and can’t get any more disgusting, they will in fact do something even more morally and ethically repulsive. And so, just a couple of weeks after refusing to extend unemployment benefits to those hit hardest by the recession, we now find them blocking a health care benefits bill for the 9/11 emergency workers who are now sick as a direct result of their heroic efforts on that tragic day. How can you possibly be that insensitive, that self-centered, that uncaring of other people, particularly these first responders? How can anyone who calls themselves a Republican or votes for these scumbags sleep at night? John Stewart sums it all up here:
August 6th, 2010 | tags:
Republican Sociopaths
What makes this whole Shirley Sherrod story so interesting is that there are so many lessons to be learned here, and yet probably not a single one of them will penetrate the thick skulls of most Americans. First off there’s the obvious lesson — if the right-wing media are touting a story about liberals or minorities, then odds are it’s a total fabrication and the main stream news media should either ignore it completely, or shoot it down immediately with some good old fashioned reporting. The Sherrod story was no different than the hoaxes perpetrated by the right-wing with ACORN, with Van Jones, and with the so-called “Climategate” scandal — just to name a few recent ones. In every single case, the entire story was riddled with distortions of fact and outright lies. And yet because the mainstream media has no concern for facts or reality, but rather is interested only in selling the news, they ran with these stories. In most of these cases, by the time the facts were finally rooted out the story had fallen off the front pages — and so I’d bet most Americans don’t even know that all these stories were in fact 100% hoaxes.
Then there’s the lesson of the Obama administration treating these right wing extremists with legitimacy, and so quickly giving in to their demands. There’s nothing wrong with working with and compromising with people who are decent human beings, who respect the truth, and who just might happen to have a different opinion than you do. But that’s not what we have in today’s right-wingers. These folks are mean, vile, despicable people who are interested in helping no one but themselves. When they come out with stories like this, or demands for whatever, you politely ignore them. Under no circumstances do you engage them, much less work with them. This is a lesson the Obama administration can’t seem to grasp.
And finally there’s the real story that Shirley Sherrod was telling — that in today’s society, it’s not so much about discrimination based on race — although there is certainly way too much of that still going on (look no further than the Tea Party, the 21st century incarnation of the KKK) — but the bigger issue is discrimination against the poor. More and more of the right-wing politics of today is about taking from the poor and giving to the upper class. The recent Republican attempts to block extension of unemployment benefits is just one example. Now they are trying to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which is nothing more than wealth re-distribution to the upper class. And there’s also talk of cutting social security, another way to taking from the poor and giving to the rich. The Republican Party of today really stands for not much of anything other than plutocracy — and yet so few average Americans seem to understand this.
It’s hard to come up with words to describe this latest Republican attack on the unemployed. Here we are, supposedly the greatest, wealthiest nation in the world — and yet when we hit hard times, the worst recession the country has seen in 70+ years, we refuse to help those unfortunate people who have been hit the hardest? This goes way beyond the hypocrisy of calling ourselves a “Christian Nation” – this hits at the total lack of compassion for fellow Americans that so dominates the Republican Party these days. This is the party that brags about being the party of the “haves and have-mores”, the party that caters to a “base” composed of the ultra-wealthy. If anyone can afford to help the down-trodden, these people can. And yet they refuse. Why? What do they fear from the poor and the needy? Do they sleep better at night knowing that so many people in this country are suffering? Are they that sick?
And it’s not just unemployment benefits — it’s the whole opposition to every plan the Obama administration comes up with as a way out of the recession. What exactly is the strategy here? I keep reading that the basic plan is to block all the various stimulus plans in order to insure that the economy is still in bad shape for the mid-term elections, and thus use this as a political weapon against the Democrats. But if that’s the case, what’s the plan after November? What is their plan for economic recovery? They don’t have one! The strategy seems to be let’s keep the economy in dire straits, so we can get elected, so we can continue to keep the economy in dire straits. You would think the American people would see through that, wouldn’t you? Yes, you can fault the Obama administration and the Democrats in general for not doing enough to combat Republican obstructionism — but how does voting for the obstructionists solve any of this? It just makes matters worse! Isn’t a better answer to elect even more Democrats, and send a message to the administration that we don’t want bi-partisanship when the other side has no interest in fixing things?
We’re now two months in to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, and there’s still no sign at all that anyone is learning anything from it. Everyone is pointing fingers at BP, at the BP execs, at the oil industry in general, at Obama, at Congress, at government in general. But none of them are the problem. BP CEO Tony Hayward hit the nail on the head in a 2009 speech he gave describing the situation at BP when he took over:
“We had too many people who were working to save the world,” Browne said at the time. “We sort of lost track of the fact that our primary purpose in life was to create value for our shareholders.”
Therein lies the entirety of the problem — BP has one and only one obligation, and that is to deliver a profit to their shareholders. That’s the way the system is designed, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Keep oil rigs safe for workers? Nope, not their problem. Prevent spills from devastating ecosystems and destroying thousands of people’s livelihoods? Nope, not their problem. Providing clean energy that does not harm the environment, does not contribute to global warming, that does not require endless wars in the Middle East? Nope, not their problem. Making sure that the world is a better place for future generations? You get the idea…. not their problem.
So while mega-corporations like British Petroleum are pursuing their one and only goal of maximizing profits, just who is supposed to be looking out for the welfare of workers, consumers, citizens, and future generations? That’s the job of government. That’s what separates us from the animal world. And that’s the lesson to be learned from Deepwater Horizon. The bigger and stronger corporations are, the bigger and stronger the government has to be. Thirty years of Reaganomics have left us with a government that is totally incapable of protecting “We The People” from these monster corporations who care about nothing other than the bottom line.
Yes, we need to get the Gulf region cleaned up as quickly as possible, and yes we need to make sure that BP pays for every last penny of the recovery process. But that’s the symptom, not the problem. Ultimately what is needed is a government that is both strong enough and capable enough to tell corporations what they can and cannot do, and when they don’t obey, take away their corporate charter and put them out of business.
America, this is a very, very simple lesson. Why are you making it so difficult?
As the unemployment rate continues to hover around the 10% mark with no relief in sight, you have to wonder how much longer the so-called “deficit hawks” are going to hold our country hostage. And so you get stories like this:
WASHINGTON — The Senate easily passed an almost $60 billion war funding bill Thursday, but anxiety over out-of-control budget deficits led House leaders to drop tens of billions of dollars in spending from a separate catchall bill anchored by an extension of jobless benefits.
You know, if you really are concerned about the deficit it seems like the logical thing to do would be to attack the two major causes of that deficit — namely, the Bush tax cuts for the rich which cost this country $2.5 trillion, and the various wars in the Middle East that are costing us another $2.5 trillion. You cut military expenditures significantly, and you put the tax rates on the wealthy back to where they were pre-Bush and voila — no more deficit problem. In fact, it’s more than a little bit ironic that most of these people that are now so concerned about the deficit are the exact same people who elected and supported George Bush. The reality is that these folks really don’t give a damn about the deficit, what they are really concerned about is the idea that the government might do something to help the poor and the middle class. Good old American greed, you just can’t get away from it.
Long term, the real way out of the deficit is to grow the economy, and the way to do that is through major stimulus programs. It seems so obvious — you get the economy back on track, you get more people working and making more money and therefore paying more taxes, and the deficit then takes care of itself. Everyone is happy. Look at what happened during the economic boom of the 1990’s when Clinton was President. Healthy economy, lots of people making lots of money and thus paying lots of taxes, and there you go — a balanced budget. So simple. Heck, if you don’t believe me, how about listening to a Nobel Prize winner who has gotten everything about the economy correct for 20+ years?
It’s past time to tell these “deficit hawks” to STFU and do something positive for the majority of Americans, not just the wealthy few. Come on Congress, you can do it!
June 3rd, 2010 | tags:
Corporatism,
Environment
From Atrios:
The smart thing for BP to do is funnel all its cash out the door in the form of executive bonuses and stock dividends.
There’s just no reason to think BP is a good actor here. Their theoretical primary responsibility is to their shareholders, in practice it’s a bit more weighted towards the pockets of top executives. Birds and turtles, not so much.
This is what I’ve been preaching for years (see here, here, and here). Corporations exist for one and only one reason — to deliver a profit to shareholders (well, and a second reason as Atrios notes above — but those are really one and the same reason, no?). But working for the good of mankind and future generations? Forget about it. This is why we need government that is just as big and strong as the corporations that are running and ruining our world. You want small government? Well, OK, then you better have really, really small corporations. You need to bust up the banks and the oil companies and every other mega-corporation. If you don’t like that approach, then you sure as hell better get a big, bad-ass government to protect you from the greedy, self-centered bastards that run the big corporations.
And some good stuff from Tristero:
Yep. The response to both disasters could not be a better illustration of the sheer stupidity and madness of conservative/libertarian ideology. “Less government versus more government” is a grossly false dichotomy. The valid one is decent government versus incompetent and corrupt. As Kevin reminds us in his post, FEMA was a competent, well-run agency until Bush trashed it.
If ever there was a teaching moment on “less versus more government”, the Wall Street meltdown and now this BP oil spill are it. But will Idiot America wake up to what is going on? So far, most of America seems to be sleeping through class. God help us all.
For many years, dating back I guess to Richard Nixon’s days, the Republican Party has been an unholy alliance of racists, religious extremists, and plutocrats. For the most part the three groups have nothing in common — in fact, you would think that the religious extremists would be mightily offended by the racists (”Jesus loves the little children, Red and Yellow, Black and White….”) as well as the plutocrats (that “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” thing). But somehow these three disparate groups have hung together to get the likes of Ronald Reagan and George Bush II elected, along with a slew of Republican congressmen. And for the most part, it’s been the rich simply taking advantage of these two groups of extremists — there’s always lots of talk about tightening immigration laws and eliminating programs for “welfare queens” and teaching creationism in the public schools and taking away a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion — all the issues that get the racists and religious zealots excited. But in the end, the Republicans never seem to deliver much to these groups, but instead use all their political clout to ensure that the rich get richer and more powerful.
You would think that sooner or later the racists and religious extremists would figure out that they have been taken for a ride — and sure enough, that’s exactly what this whole Tea Party movement is about. It started out strictly as a racist backlash against having a black man as President, and then sucked in a lot of the intellectually challenged religious types with the stories of Obama being a Muslim and/or not being born in the U.S. (which of course makes him non-Christian). At first glance this would seem like the undoing of the current Republican Party. Without these two groups of voters, any chance at winning elections would disappear. There just aren’t enough rich people in the country to keep the Republican Party afloat — at least as long as there’s some semblance of democracy where people and not money ultimately determine elections.
Where all this is headed, I have no idea. But I don’t see how this really impacts the Democratic Party in any fashion. There’s no way anyone who considers themselves a Democrat would have anything to do with these Tea Party extremists. This is strictly a squabble between the extreme elements of the Republican Party. My guess is that in the end the plutocrats will ultimately have their way. But if not and the Tea Party followers go their separate way, that can only be a positive for the Democrats, no? You just end up splitting the right-wing vote, giving Democrats a better chance of winning any given election.
Bottom line is that I find the Tea Party somewhat amusing in a way — it is sad to see so many people filled with so much hate and ignorance, but they are so far over the edge that about all you can do is laugh at them. But as far as them being a threat to the Democrats in the Fall elections? Doesn’t pass the common sense test.
