TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama/West, IMF, Middle East Speech, Israel, Nuance, The Money Party, Colbert!!, Daily Show, Gingrich
I haven’t had a chance to prepare anything for today’s post (and I’m behind) for a variety of unforeseen reasons…so I’m going to kind of wing it. As such, I’m just going to lay out some quick thoughts on a variety of topics.
Obama v. Cornel West Controversy
As I alluded to on my last post, Cornel West’s scathing critique of Obama was going to cause a stir, and was worth going back to in this post. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to gather my thoughts and prepare the kind of comprehensive breakdown of Obama’s record that I wanted. But, I suspect that anyone that has read this blog has a pretty good understanding of the pro’s and con’s, and the underlying truth in West’s words.
I will also say, that I’m not totally comfortable providing “expertise” on the part of West’s critique that gets into “blackness”, and Obama’s “fear of free black men”. On one level, I wish he hadn’t even gone into that area, because it’s so racially charged that it’s bound to take focus away from the more important crux of the argument: him being a tool of the oligarchy and plutocrats – an increasingly obvious truth.
As for the issue of blackness, I can’t know Obama’s heart or mind…but whether it was living in a white family, or its just his need to separate himself from the “scary black man’ stereotype, one thing is certain, you won’t see him EVER be caught hanging out with a West or a Jackson…but you absolutely will see him hob nobbing with Goldman Sachs degenerates at all times. This is undeniable…and I can see why West would feel particularly abandoned and slighted…especially after he spoke at 65 campaign events for the guy. As I said, I think Obama has an image he wants convey...and that image doesn't include "blackness" or black "radicals".
Nonetheless, West is getting brutally attacked by many on the left for saying what he did…but part of those attacks feel to me like people not wanting to confront certain truths about a man and President they simply don’t want to…and is to painful to come to grips with.
I think African Americans are the ones that will especially struggle with that part of West’s critique, and the need to balance what is an understandable desire to defend and support the first black President, and also an understandable feeling that he has disregarded the plight of the poor, and minorities. I think, in a sense, this is a balance we all must strike, particularly in light of the dark, fascist forces in the GOP, and what they are currently trying to do (end Medicare, criminalize abortion, privatize social security, destroy unions and collective bargaining, privatize and deregulate everything, and create a Christian nation).
At times like these, I think more than anything its critical for us, as citizens, to avoid falling into simplistic, black and white perceptions of reality that lead us to overly rigid and myopic perspectives (i.e. "Obama is as bad as a republican", "there's no difference between the parties", "I'll never trust a politician again", or on the flip side "we must always defend Obama to stop the GOP", or "he's really a liberal but his centrism is everyone else's fault, etc.). Thus, while my critiques of Obama can be very intense and pointed, it is also important to understand how different, on so many issues, a McCain/Palin Presidency would have been.
I’m not going to go through the long list of bills Obama signed that McCain/Bush/Palin would have vetoed that actually HELP human beings…from extending health care to children to expanding rights for women in the workplace to increasing spending on infrastructure and renewable energy development to ending the ban of gays in the military (to name just a few). But, those are real accomplishments that effect real lives.
Yet, using that list as a way to "prove" Cornel West's critique wrong is unpersuasive. Because, on the same token, all of these accomplishments are really the bare minimum in terms of what any rational person should EXPECT from a SUPPOSED progressive (he’s not…) Democrat. I mean, can you imagine him vetoing a women’s right bill? Or oppose expanding health care for children?
It should also be noted, there is absolute truth in the argument by Obama defenders that ALL KINDS of obstacles stand in his way to pass almost anything of merit. The GOP is a block of opposition that will use every parliamentary tactic to stop EVERYTHING. The democratic party is nearly a quarter Blue Dog corporatists, which together with the GOP, is a majority party. That's why, even more nuance is needed to put it all together. And that's why I always say its ever MORE important in what you say, how you say it, and how you fight. In these areas, there is MUCH to be desired from the President.
Yet, using that list as a way to "prove" Cornel West's critique wrong is unpersuasive. Because, on the same token, all of these accomplishments are really the bare minimum in terms of what any rational person should EXPECT from a SUPPOSED progressive (he’s not…) Democrat. I mean, can you imagine him vetoing a women’s right bill? Or oppose expanding health care for children?
It should also be noted, there is absolute truth in the argument by Obama defenders that ALL KINDS of obstacles stand in his way to pass almost anything of merit. The GOP is a block of opposition that will use every parliamentary tactic to stop EVERYTHING. The democratic party is nearly a quarter Blue Dog corporatists, which together with the GOP, is a majority party. That's why, even more nuance is needed to put it all together. And that's why I always say its ever MORE important in what you say, how you say it, and how you fight. In these areas, there is MUCH to be desired from the President.
So, while it goes without saying, there are still enormous differences between the parties; those are largely due to the fact that the GOP has gone so far right and as a result our political terminology is constantly being redefined. So, what in the 1980’s and even 1990’s would have been considered a centrist/liberal Republican, is now a "liberal" Democrat (Obama). This is the danger we face…the continued movement towards fascism…and us being that proverbial frog in the slowly boiling water.
And that is where West’s critique is so dead on. Just as I didn’t go through a long list of Obama’s modest accomplishments, I won’t go into too much detail of all the ways he has proven West’s fundamental critique correct. Suffice it to say, these are most apparent in the bailouts of Wall Street and the middle finger to homeowners to the tax cuts for the rich and the embracing of the “deficit is the problem” frame to his EXPANSION of the Bush war on terror and assault on civil liberties (like going after whistle blowers that led to Bush war crimes rather than the war criminals!!!) to the expansion of drone attacks and wars to his total selling out of the public option and prescription drug negotiating power to surrounding himself with Wall Street insiders...and clearly using his enormous power as President to move the Democratic Party to the right…and the list, literally, goes on and on.
I, as West, NEVER had any illusions that Obama wasn’t, for the most part, a center-left politician (he's now center-right), but I, also like him, thought there might be some progressive inclinations that could be stirred by, if nothing else, the situation our country was in...which clearly DEMANDED such policies and inclinations (from Wall street crash due to deregulation, to deficits caused by tax cuts, privatized health care, wars, to illegal wars, and so forth). But alas, it was not to be...and that is where the tragedy lies.
So, I’m glad West has had the courage to stand up and now take the heat, especially from his own community. I think it is telling though, to see the vitriol from many on the left, against a critique that should be largely OBVIOUS on its face (keeping the race component out of it). The facts is, center-RIGHT politicians like Obama, while far better than the fascist GOP, are totally and completely inadequate in preventing, or even hardly slowing, our countries current descent. Soft, centrist, Wall Street Democrats are not sufficient in taking on an extreme oligarchic takeover…and that’s where we stand.
Obama's Middle East Address and Israel
I’m going to leave it to an article by Medea Benjamin to more fully react to Obama’s Middle East speech, and the sick and twisted reaction from Israel and the entire American right. But, I will say, that it is EXTREMELY telling, that what has been considered to be a bare minimum request by the world, and even the US, for decades – that Israel and Palestine go back to the 1967 borders – could be treated as some kind of extreme proposal…and totally unacceptable to Israel.
As I have said, Israel is one of the premier terrorist rogue states in the world today. I say that only in the sense that they commit acts of terrorism on civilians regularly to spread fear in that population (Palestinians). The whole world knows this…and its only the US’s protection in the UN that has kept the world from taking action (not military) against Israel.
So, while I was glad Obama at least proposed that those 1967 borders being adhered to, what is more telling is the reaction from Israel…calling it indefensible. Really?
As for the rest of the speech, it was just a bunch of typical American proselytizing, propaganda, and gross hypocrisy. Can you imagine not even mentioning the crimes of Saudi Arabia? Or, can you imagine what it must sound like to the people of the Middle East for an American President – currently bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya - to suggest that we don’t tolerate attacks across borders???!!!! My god…we’re a moral joke.
On that note, in a report to be published in tomorrow's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have concluded that air strikes [in Iraq] by U.S.-led coalition forces have killed mostly women and children. Thirty-nine percent were children, while 46 percent were women.
GOP Clown Car, The Money Party and Medicare
Let me make another quick point about the difference between the parties…and the need for a nuanced understanding of our current political paradigm. It’s important to understand, and I see it on every bill I work on in the legislature, is there’s not just a Republican and Democratic Party. Yes, on average, the GOP members vote about 90% of the time against our consumer rights bills (same on other issues like environment), and that Democrats vote over 80% in favor. But, go deeper, and when a bill that REALLY challenges corporate power, that’s when you see the REAL majority party kick in…the Money Party.
So, for a bill that say, gives homeowners access to bankruptcy court if they’re being foreclosed on…something ABSOLUTELY necessary and totally and completely fair, you’ll see those numbers go to 100% of the GOP, and 70% of the Democrats…and that ALWAYS results in a majority against ANYTHING that challenges the current Matrix. This is why we cannot accept any longer those kinds of corporate Democrats. On other even more contentious issues with corporate America, you may even see that Democratic number drop to 30%...and thus, the Money Party majority becomes even more obvious – and strong.
To back this point up, Politico reported that almost a third of the “blue dog” Democrats who left office or were defeated in last year's midterms are now working as corporate lobbyists. “The conservative Blue Dogs formed a key voting bloc for much of the last congressional session,” reporter Aaren Mehta noted, “drawing impressive fundraising from the energy, financial services and health care industries.” The blue dogs were instrumental in watering down or blocking key Democratic legislation in both the House and the Senate. With their mission accomplished on everything from health-care reform to financial regulation, Politico notes that “industry groups [then] abandoned the pro-business coalition in favor of its GOP opponents.”
An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found that “House members who defeated a measure to...end certain subsidies for oil companies received five times more in campaign contributions, on average, from the oil and gas industry in the 2010 election cycle than those who voted to proceed with the motion.”
More from CYL: In other words, we’re a lot closer to Italy’s infamous level of public corruption than we are to that of our British cousins. And, as Fishman and Miguel noted, that’s already been pretty well established in this country:
Numerous studies have found that the economic fortunes of well-connected U.S. companies mirror the political fortunes of their connections. When U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords defected from the Republican Party and handed Senate Democrats a slim majority in 2001, Democratically connected companies benefited in the immediate aftermath. Similarly, the stock value of companies with former Republican lawmakers on their boards increased an average of 4 percent when the Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush, while companies with former Democratic politicians on their boards declined.
More from CYL: In other words, we’re a lot closer to Italy’s infamous level of public corruption than we are to that of our British cousins. And, as Fishman and Miguel noted, that’s already been pretty well established in this country:
Numerous studies have found that the economic fortunes of well-connected U.S. companies mirror the political fortunes of their connections. When U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords defected from the Republican Party and handed Senate Democrats a slim majority in 2001, Democratically connected companies benefited in the immediate aftermath. Similarly, the stock value of companies with former Republican lawmakers on their boards increased an average of 4 percent when the Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush, while companies with former Democratic politicians on their boards declined.
All of this represents the most significant structural barrier to passing progressive policies, even those with extensive popular support. It explains why a Congress and White House controlled by Democrats were unable to fulfill a number of the party's key campaign promises – while those with a “D” next to their names enjoyed a majority in 2009 and 2010, it was the “Money Party,” as David Sirota calls it, that maintained a numerical advantage throughout.
More on Budget Fight and Medicare
I won’t even go into the sheer hilarity of the Gingrich clown car (watch the videos I have), or the insanity of the GOP. Suffice it to say, the Ryan budget is a gift never dreamed of by the Democrats, as the GOP has finally shown its hand…the hand I’ve been talking about FOREVER on this blog: they want to end Medicare and social security. Now the people know it…if the Democrats really hammer away at this fact and not keep talking like centrist deficit hawks.
Thankfully, Nancy Pelosi, seems to have gotten the picture, and instead of going home to San Francisco, went to Wisconsin, where she’s holding events defending Medicare in Paul Ryan’s back yard. There, she laid it out clearly…“The fight of this Congress and beyond will be to preserve Medicare and not have it abolished. “The three most important issues we should be talking about are Medicare, Medicare, and Medicare.” And the best line in response to the question what the Democrats plan is, she said “we have a plan, it’s called Medicare.” Nice!!!!
The message should be unconditional (will Obama listen?): No cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or Social Security. More spending on education and infrastructure. Pay for it and reduce the long-term budget deficit by cutting military spending and raising taxes on the rich.
I’ll get more into how DISASTROUS the Ryan plan would be (and expensive) in future posts…though I think I’ve covered it quite a bit already.
As I’m sure you know, I like to keep focusing on the fundamentals…and that’s just how much we spend on CORPORATE WELFARE, tax cuts for the rich, and wars. The idea that spending on the health of our seniors is where we cut from is obscene.
Take this on for size, while most people are aware of the massive subsidies enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, but it's less well known that insurers rank second in industry-specific subsidies, raking in $169 billion in 2008. And they protected those subsidies by spending a half-billion on lobbying last year.
The fact is, we’re at war with a growing billionaire class that masquerade as libertarian scholars who are experts in rationalizing the behavior of sociopaths. When they speak of freedom and liberty, they refer to the 'liberation' of themselves from our democratic society's essential rules of fair play.
As one blogger noted (sorry…didn’t have time to run the name down due to time), “They resent paying taxes for anything that benefits others, they demand freedom from regulation of their corporate excesses, and they absolutely reject the notion that workers, consumers, environmentalists, and other community interests should have any power over corporate whim."
We are at the end of a 30 year “starve the beast” assault on the New Deal and Great Society…and democracy itself. The more the rich take in tax cuts and loopholes, the more we have been drive to cut core public investments. Consider:
America's richest 400 taxpayers averaged $270.5 million of income each last year but paid only 18.1 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax. (In 1955 the top 400 paid 51.2 percent of their total incomes in taxes. No wonder we didn't have huge-ass budget deficits then.) And this is at the same time that Republicans are trying to turn Medicare into a voucher program, saying "We're broke."
And now we come to the latest extortion and hostage pattern coming from the GOP: THE DEBT CEILING. I hope everyone remembers that when they were holding unemployment benefits hostage in exchange for tax cuts for millionaires I said Obama must not back down, or else they’ll just keep coming back and doing it again…and the next time it would be the debt ceiling itself (which could drive us into a REAL crisis). Well, here we are!!! Suffice it to say…Dems must take a stand, or keep falling into the hostage/extortion scenario with the terrorist network known as the GOP getting everything they want.
VIDEO SECTION
AS I said, the sheer insanity of the Gingrich campaign is perfectly played out on Colbert…with John Lithgow doing an actual reading, verbatim, of the mind bending press release from the Gingrich press secretary…CLASSIC!!!!
Just too easy…Colbert on Newt Gingrich’s week…perhaps the most pathetic in campaign history:
Disney requests a trademark for the name "SEAL Team 6," and the FCC approves the Comcast/NBC merger… Nothing illustrates the corruption rampant in Washington more than the recent resignation of Federal Communications Commission member, Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican who Obama appointed to show how “bipartisan” he can be, who is now going to work as a lavishly paid shill for the very industry she was supposedly “regulating.” Ms. Baker will now make the big bucks serving Comcast/NBC Universal after she voted for the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal. Sweet. And few in the Beltway see anything unsavory about it.
Jon Stewart felt pretty much the same way I did when watching so-called Christian conservative Mike Huckabee bring on Ted Nugent prior to his announcement on Fox News that he was not running for president.
ARTICLE SECTION
The Illegal War in Libya, by Glenn Greenwald
A FEW CLIPS:
When President Obama ordered the U.S. military to wage war in Libya without Congressional approval (even though, to use his words, it did "not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"), the administration and its defenders claimed he had legal authority to do so for two reasons: (1) the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR) authorizes the President to wage war for 60 days without Congress, and (2) the "time-limited, well defined and discrete" nature of the mission meant that it was not really a "war" under the Constitution (Deputy NSA Adviser Ben Rhodes and the Obama OLC). Those claims were specious from the start, but are unquestionably inapplicable now.
From the start, the WPR provided no such authority. Section 1541(c) explicitly states that the war-making rights conferred by the statute apply only to "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." That's why Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman -- in an article in Foreign Policy entitled "Obama's Unconstitutional War" -- wrote when the war started that the "The War Powers Resolution doesn't authorize a single day of Libyan bombing" and that "in taking the country into a war with Libya, Barack Obama's administration is breaking new ground in its construction of an imperial presidency."
SNIP
That the American people must approve of wars through their Congress is no legalistic technicality (and as my very British NYU Criminal Law Professor, Graham Hughes, dryly said of his arrival in the U.S. and initial exposure to TV debates about criminal defendants "getting off on technicalities": "I had never before been in a country where people refer to their Constitution as a 'technicality'"). The whole point of the Article I, Section 8 requirement is that democratic debate and consent is necessary to prevent Presidents from starting self-aggrandizing wars without real limits on duration, cost and purpose; the WPR was enacted after the Vietnam debacle to prevent its repeat.
This war, without Congressional authorization, is illegal in every relevant sense: Constitutionally and statutorily. That was true from its start but is especially true now. If one wants to take the position that it's not particularly important or damaging for a President to illegally start and sustain protracted wars on his own, then it's hard to see what would be important. That is the ultimate expression of a lawless empire.
This war, without Congressional authorization, is illegal in every relevant sense: Constitutionally and statutorily. That was true from its start but is especially true now. If one wants to take the position that it's not particularly important or damaging for a President to illegally start and sustain protracted wars on his own, then it's hard to see what would be important. That is the ultimate expression of a lawless empire.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn Sits in Prison While the IMF Keeps Ravaging Entire Economies Every Day, By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
A FEW CLIPS:
Regardless of who takes over for the IMF's disgraced leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), it’s unlikely he or she will bring about a philosophical shift in the IMF’s MO. For the IMF doesn’t care what caused devastating financial hardship to its current "focus" countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal, nor what deal is struck in return for its aid. Saving the superpower notion of Europe and the euro as a pan-European currency by bailing out (read: lending money in return for "austerity measures" and holding fire sales of national companies) is a goal bigger than DSK.
This ideal is more important to the IMF than the financial security of ordinary citizens. Thus, the IMF will remain the validating and financing arm of the European Union (EU) and maintain the euro’s cohesiveness, no matter the cost to ordinary people. By doing so, it will continue to create debt to pay for bank screw-ups and extract repayment from innocent local populations.
SNIP
But that’s what the IMF has always done. It provides loans at cheaper rates than countries would receive any other way during times of economic distress, in return for forcing them to open their economies to hot money looking for a good deal. This is based on the premise that public infrastructure and social safety nets are the cause of financial woes, and not the over-leveraged banks that funneled in the hot money to begin with. As Andy Robinson, a journalist stationed in Athens, who writes for the Spanish paper, La Vanguardia, put it, “The IMF wants the country to sell off its grandmother’s silver to make room for more luxury beachfront hotels.”
Unfortunately for Greece, what the IMF wants more of, is exactly what caused its debt crisis -- hot money that turned cold. External investment banks and funds extracted profits from the country and then headed for the hills.
Unfortunately for Greece, what the IMF wants more of, is exactly what caused its debt crisis -- hot money that turned cold. External investment banks and funds extracted profits from the country and then headed for the hills.
SNIP
And, yet, again and again, the IMF instills surefire economic destabilization through unaltered money-interested policies, sucking the financial life out of unarmed citizens. The IMF will soon choose a new leader to take the reigns from acting head and former JPM Chase chief economist, John Lipsky. There is talk that for the first time since its inception, this leader may come from outside the core European fold. Chances of that are remote. But, unfortunately, no matter who leads the IMF next, its legacy will continue to impart pain on the people of the countries it vows to assist. And that means more uprisings to come.
Obama Should Follow His Own Advice on the 'Moral Force' of Non-Violence, by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
A FEW CLIPS:
Cast beforehand as a major address on the Middle East, what President Obama offered with his speech on Thursday was nothing more than a reprisal of his 2009 address in Cairo: a lot of rhetoric about U.S. support for peace and freedom in the region contradicted by the actual – and bipartisan – U.S. policy over the past half-century of supporting ruthless authoritarian regimes. Yet even for all his talk of human rights and how he “will not tolerate aggression across borders” – yes, a U.S. president said this – Obama didn't even feign concern about Saudi Arabia's repressive regime invading neighboring Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy movement there. In fact, the words “Saudi Arabia” were never uttered.
It was that kind of speech: scathing condemnations of human rights abuses by the U.S.'s Official Enemies in places like Iran and Syria and muted criticism – if any – of the gross violations of human decency carried out by its dictatorial friends in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen.
SNIP
The president also didn't deviate from his policy of “unshakable” support for Israeli militarism, typified by his administration's efforts to safeguard the Jewish state from accountability for its war crimes in Gaza – crimes that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead – and his determination to hand an already wealthy nation more than $3 billion a year in military aid, even as it flaunts the “peace process” and colonizes ever more Palestinian land.
Though typical of his first two years in office, Obama's duplicity was more evident – and his rhetoric more sloppy – than usual. Mere seconds after proclaiming that “every state has the right to self-defense,” Obama called for the creation of a “sovereign, non-militarized state” for Palestinians, meaning one incapable of defending itself. And while he spoke of Israeli parents fearing their children “could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes,” he did not deign to mention the much more frequent and deadly Israeli violence perpetrated against Palestinians, saying only that the latter suffered “the humiliation of occupation,” as if Palestinian parents feel embarrassment, not pain, at the loss of a child killed by an Israeli strike.
0 comments:
Post a Comment