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That shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist, Sandy Hook, and the “profoundly unpatriotic effort to put war over every other policy priority”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in iraq, obama, terrorism, war, war on terrorTagged , , No Comments on That shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist, Sandy Hook, and the “profoundly unpatriotic effort to put war over every other policy priority”

Seven years ago yesterday, this happened.

Muntadhar Al-Zaidi paid a steep price for his act of defiance, but apparently thought it was worth being…

… beaten with cables and pipes and tortured with electricity immediately after guards removed him from a news conference for hurling both shoes at Bush. He said he was taken into another room and beaten even as the news conference continued.

However, he remained defiant about the incident that landed him in prison.

“I got my chance, and I didn’t miss it,” he said.

“I am not a hero, and I admit that,” he added. “I am a person with a stance. I saw my country burning.”

***

Yesterday was another anniversary, marking three years since the Sandy Hook massacre. The occasion has produced an abundance of hyperbolic hysterical reactions, but no concrete solutions to the gun violence crisis. In fact, the specific horrorshow of December 14, 2013, has been replicated numerous times in the past three years.

Here is a map of school shootings since Sandy Hook.

Embedded image permalink

And according to NBC News, 554 children under the age of 12 have died from gunshot wounds since Sandy Hook.

***

Of all the retrospectives and think-pieces marking the Sandy Hook anniversary, I thought Marcy Wheeler’s was the most compelling. In it, she synthesizes our (well, my) numbness over two ongoing catastrophes, the epidemic of gun violence in this country, and our government’s damn-the-torpedoes exportation of ultra-violence to the rest of the planet, otherwise known as the Global War on (a very narrow definition of) Terror.

The occasion of Wheeler’s post was to comment on president Obama’s remarks in reaction to the San Bernadino shootings of two weeks ago. I want to quote what I thought was the best part of it, and encourage you to read the entire piece.

The right wingers who insist on calling any attack by a Muslim “terrorism” — who insist on tying the San Bernardino attack to ISIS, even in the absence of evidence — do it to prioritize the fight against Islamic terrorists over all the other ills facing America: over other gun violence, over climate change, over the persistent economic struggles of most Americans. Theirs is a profoundly unpatriotic effort to put war over every other policy priority, even far more pressing ones. That stance has led to a disinvestment in America, with real consequences for everyone not getting rich off of arms sales.

Last week, President Obama capitulated to these forces, giving a speech designed to give the attack in San Bernardino precedence over all the other mass killings of late, to give its 14 dead victims more importance over all the other dead victims. Most strikingly, Obama called attacks that aren’t, legally, terrorism, something his critics have long been demanding.

It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009; in Chattanooga earlier this year; and now in San Bernardino.

And he lectured Muslims to reject any interpretation of Islam that is “incompatible” with “religious tolerance.”

That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities. This is a real problem that Muslims must confront, without excuse. Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.

Not only does this give too little credit for the condemnation Muslims have long voiced against terrorist attacks, but it holds Muslims to a standard Obama doesn’t demand from Christians spewing intolerance.

It was a horrible speech. But this line struck me.

I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure.

In context, it was about terrorism.

I know we see our kids in the faces of the young people killed in Paris. And I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure.

Well, here’s what I want you to know: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.

But, particularly coming as it did after invoking dead children, it shouldn’t have been. Aside from those whose own kids narrowly missed being in Paris, why should we see our kids in the faces of the young people killed in Paris, rather than in the faces of the young people killed in the Umpqua Community College attack or the over 60 people under the age of 25 shot in Chicago between the Paris attack and Obama’s speech? If we were to think of a cancer with no immediate cure, why wouldn’t we be thinking of the 20 6-year olds killed in Newtown?

We have a cancer, but it’s not terrorism.

Wheeler goes on to compare and contrast Obama’s speech to Jimmy Carter’s 1979 Crisis of Confidence (“malaise”) speech. Again I encourage you to take the time to read the entire piece.

“squabbles around the edges about who’d get elected, but wide agreement on the rules of the game”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in bailout, bombing, civil liberties, corporatism, corruption, energy policy, environment, liberalism, militarism, obama, plus ca change, politics, rule of law, war, war on terrorNo Comments on “squabbles around the edges about who’d get elected, but wide agreement on the rules of the game”

Bruce Dixon’s Closer Than You Think: Top 15 Things Romney and Obama Agree On improves and expands upon the point I was trying to make in my WASSUP post a while back.

Basically, I said what is Off the Table is far more important, and more dangerous, than what the parties are arguing about.

Dixon looks back to the post-Civil War era as a comparable era of malign consensus:

Too much agreement between Republicans and Democrats has always been bad news for those at the bottom of America’s class and racial totem poles.

Back in 1875, Frederick Douglass observed that it took a war among the whites to free his people from slavery. What then, he wondered, would an era of peace among the whites bring us? He already knew the answer. Louisiana had its Colfax Massacre two years earlier. A wave of thousands upon thousands of terroristic bombings, shootings, mutilations, murders and threats had driven African Americans from courthouses, city halls, legislatures, from their own farms, businesses and private properties and from the voting rolls across the South. They didn’t get the vote back for 80 years, and they never did get the land back. But none of that mattered because on the broad and important questions of those days there was at last peace between white Republicans and white Democrats — squabbles around the edges about who’d get elected, but wide agreement on the rules of the game.

Like Douglass, the shallow talking heads who cover the 2012 presidential campaign on corporate media have noticed out loud the remarkable absence of disagreement between Republican and Democratic candidates on many matters. They usually mention what the establishment likes to call “foreign policy.” But the list of things Republicans and Democrat presidential candidates agree on, from coddling Wall Street speculators, protecting mortgage fraudsters and corporate wrongdoers to preventing Medicare For All to so-called “foreign policy,” “free trade,” “the deficit” “clean coal and safe nuclear power” and “entitlement reform,” is clearly longer and more important than the few points of mostly race and style, upon which they disagree.

Read the whole thing….

I’m going to get straight to work hammering out a clever little acronym that contains all fifteen of Dixon’s points. It might take me a while.

WASSUP?

By timmukyPosted on Posted in batshit crazy politicians, bombing, obama, plus ca change, politics, priorities, warTagged , , No Comments on WASSUP?

Garry Wills, who is a smart man, is really mad at Roberto Unger and others who are tempted to stray from the two-party system.

All these brave “independents” say that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, and claim they can start history over, with candidates suddenly become as good as they are themselves. What they do is give us the worst of evils.

Long sad sigh.

First, no one ever said there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the candidates. Some of the points Wills makes are valid, and a reign of Romney, especially one combined with Republican control of Congress, would be a dark age indeed.

But for the overwhelming majority of Americans, and millions living in countries unfortunate enough to be “strategically important” to Washington,  so was the Bush era. And so are the Obama years. Yep, Romney would be worse, but as David Swanson’s tweet below says, our choices are calamity and catastrophe. Definitely there is a difference, but forgive us for not getting excited about it.

The Obama years have taught me (and I am slow to learn, though not as slow as some) that what binds the parties is more important than what separates them, and that the areas of agreement, the issues that aren’t even on the table, are a bigger problem that the things the parties fight about. As Conor Friedersdorf wrote recently, “the political press mostly covers whatever arguments Republicans and Democrats are having, a tendency that effectively outsources judgment about what’s important to partisans.” Or, to be a little less polite, party hacks.

I have been trying to summarize these commonalities with a catchy little acronym.  I’ve been stuck on WASP for some time (War, Austerity, Surveillance and Prisons) but it left a lot of things out. This week, I had a breakthrough. Tossing on a hot sleepless summer night, this came  to me:  our politics, it’s like those old Bud commericials, you know: WASSUP!

So. WASSUP? No matter who wins the 2012 presidential election we will get:

WARS, lot of them, declared  and un-, fought with armies, swarthy special forces spooks, and robots. Wars fought in particularly dirty ways, like bombing wedding parties, and targeting first responders who come to the aid of first strike victims. And those are only the ones we know about.

AUSTERITY, in just slightly differing flavors.

SURVEILLANCE: Your right to privacy went out the window in September 2001. That’s the story and both parties are sticking to it.

SECRECY, for the gubmint, not for us. See above. I mean, who saw this coming? You couldn’t have been more skeptical about Obama than me, and yet I’m shocked on a daily basis that the man who ran as the transparency candidate has been an absolute nightmare on that front.  And don’t get me started on whistleblower persecutions, especially as that would mess up the WASSUP.

UNDEREMPLOYMENT, and (bonus letter) UNAFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE (and education).

PRISONS, and prisoners, inside the United States, at Guantanamo, and God knows where else. An area where the USA can proudly and  truthfully claim We’re Number One. Not just in the number of people incarcerated, but in the staggering variety of cruel and unusual punishments  a true growth industry can create when motivated: from Supermax to the pure evil of the death penalty system, to mandatory long sentences for the pettiest of crimes.

More on this latter, but all I have to say is (wait for it) WASSUP with that? WASSUP?! WAZZZZZAAAAPPPPPP!!?????

And to get back to the Gary Wills thing. It’s a little disappointing. I expect, and usually get, sophisticated analysis from him. That NYROB piece is a bit lazy, based on straw men and oversimplifications, and as a bonus perpetuates the canard that Nader cost Gore the election in 2000.* How tedious have arguments been over that very point for the past dozen years?

The 2012 election will make that argument seem as brilliant as the repartee in Gertrude Stein’s salon. Yeah, Obama’s been appalling, but Romney would be worse. Can’t WAIT to rehash that simple proposition in all its permutations for the next six months.

And I don’t disagree. But … calamity/catastrophe. Not exactly stoked about the choice.

_________________

* Here is a more than decent summary of the state of the truthiness in that Gore Nader thing.

“I don’t know what she has been up to”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in civil liberties, obama, war on terrorNo Comments on “I don’t know what she has been up to”

For a day or two at least, people who are alarmed at Orwellian legal trends can jump up and down and get excited. Katherine Forrest, an Obama-appointed judge (yes, you read that right), has enjoined any enforcement of Section 1021 of the NDAA because she was concerned that the Government was implying speech may equal terrorism (and be subject to indefinite detention)!

Glenn Greenwald:

This afternoon’s ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven dissident plaintiffs — including Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jonsdottir — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

A couple of quotes to give flavor of the caliber (and arrogance) of the government’s lawyers:

The Court then asked: Give me an example. Tell me what it means to substantially support associated forces.

Government: I’m not in a position to give specific examples.

Court: Give me one.

Government: I’m not in a position to give one specific example.

 

Adam Serwer, filling in for Kevin Drum, and a good thing too:

When Forrest asked the government lawyer charged with defending the statute whether the journalists, who said their work has brought them into contact with groups like Hamas or the Taliban, could be indefinitely detained, the government’s lawyer wouldn’t say….

When asked again whether one of the journalists’ activities would qualify as “substantial” support for a terrorist group, the government attorney said, “I don’t know what she has been up to.”

Good analysis as usual by Serwer here, and it almost goes without saying by Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald.

Behind all of this looms the case of Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who continues to be locked up at Obama’s personal insistence, basically for the crime of being an intrepid and independent journalist.

But of course that couldn’t happen here….

And apparently, this could conceivably get (partially) sorted out today, in Congress with passage of the Smith-Amash Amendment.

That would be something. Yesterday, we had a rare instance of the Judicial Branch (an Obama-appointed judge, no less) doing its job and acting as a check on a grotesque power grab by the Executive Branch. Today, Congress has a chance to do something similar.

Yasir and Ariel, get off your asses!

By timmukyPosted on Posted in iran, obama, politics, warNo Comments on Yasir and Ariel, get off your asses!

Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Pitts issued this serious statesmanlike call to action in April. Yes, April 2012!

With the global war against terrorism, it is now incumbent on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists that have perpetuated violence and to restart a peace process that has collapsed.

Meanwhile, Pitts’ only slightly more clued-in esteemed colleagues are about to ram through H Res 568, which contains this astonishing clause:

The House “urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and opposition to any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”

MJ Rosenberg, former AIPAC staffer, draws the obvious conclusion:

Think about that.

The resolution, which almost surely will pass on Tuesday, is telling the president that he may not “rely on containment” in response to “the Iranian nuclear threat.”

Since the resolution, and U.S. policy itself defines Iranian possession of nuclear weapons as, ipso facto, a threat, Congress would be telling the president that any U.S. response to that threat other than war is unacceptable. In fact, it goes farther than that, not only ruling out containment of a nuclear armed Iran but also containment of an Iran that has a “nuclear weapons capability.”

That means that the only acceptable response to a nuclear armed or nuclear capable Iran is not containment but its opposite: war.

Rosenberg notes that “13,000 AIPAC delegates were dispatched to Capitol Hill, on the last day of [AIPAC’s recent] conference, with instructions to tell the senators and representatives whom they met that supporting this resolution was #1 on AIPAC’s election year agenda.” (He also notes that this is a non-binding resolution.)

I would encourage you all to call your Congressman to discourage him or her from supporting this creepy bill, but to be honest I think that’s likely to be about as effective as waiting for Ariel and Yasir to sort it all out.

The Obama administration acts disgracefully; GOP does them one better

By timmukyPosted on Posted in obama, politics, war, war on terrorNo Comments on The Obama administration acts disgracefully; GOP does them one better

One hoped there would be some negative consequences for overplaying the offing of Osama so shamelessly, but one is not holding one’s breath.

In a first for network television, NBC News has been granted unprecedented access to the most secret and secure part of the White House, the Situation Room. In a “Rock Center with Brian Williams” exclusive airing on Wednesday, May 2 at 9p/8c, President Obama and his national security and military teams, relive the pivotal moments of the raid targeting Osama bin Laden.

Well that generated at least this little bit of snark, directed at NBC: “I guess bowing to the president and hiring the secretary of state’s unqualified daughter as a special correspondent should be worth something, shouldn’t it?”

But, ah, well. McCain. Romney. Rove. Oy.

I don’t accept the premise that the killing, by twenty-some rippled, ever-so-manly assassins, of an unarmed, old man in front of his family, is “a nonpartisan, nationally unifying anniversary.” No matter what crimes he is accused of. But that puts me in the kook corner, and I’m OK with that.

As is so often the case, the behavior of both parties is cringe-worthy. Happily, as is rarely the case, this controversy CAN be summed up in a tweet, and Radley Balko said it best:

(A) Yes, Bush would have been selling a “He Killed Osama” campaign shirt by now. (B) “Not Quite as Crass as Bush” shouldn’t be your aim.

In which the author discovers his true identity: progressive purity troll

By timmukyPosted on Posted in obama, politicsTagged , , No Comments on In which the author discovers his true identity: progressive purity troll

A really good cartoon.  I reblogged it secondhand. It originally came from STFU Conservatives, a site whose self-description is as follows:

Basically, we like facts and truth, and we hate ignorance. If you believe in feminism, liberal ideals, civil rights, abortion, marijuana legalization, healthcare access, marriage equality, stopping slut-shaming and fatphobia, ending the wars, and revamping the tax codes

I like all of those things too! Some are more important to me than others: ending wars is a bigger deal than fatphobia, but that’s just me. But I wandered around the site, and if I may be so bold as to generalize, it seems to be all about saying bad things about Republicans and worshipful paeans to the president (Obama’s 11 Most Badass Moments, e.g.) Which is fine, but really? This cartoon? Do the STFU people feel the War on Drugs and War on Terror are essentially or exclusively REPUBLICAN things?

Also, there’s a lot here about the ACA. I followed a link to a TPM piece with the headline “How An ‘Obamacare’ Repeal Would Take Medicare And The Rest Of The Health Care System With It”.

I read on. Wasn’t really convinced. Another post on TPM says overturning ACA would lead to single payer. Who knows? I don’t. I kept at it until I got to the comments, which were not particularly enlightened. One comment made the fairly uncontroversial point that the ACA is a “Republican bill.” And was pounced upon in general. And then, one of my favorite comments of all time came up:

Blah de blah de blah blah blah. Same old progressive purity troll crap, different year. You are exactly the kind of idiot who gave Florida to George W. Bush by convincing people to vote for Nader.

That’s it. Criticize Obama and the Democrats and ultimately the partisans will take the conversation here. At least now I know what I am: a progressive purity troll.

“Due process just means a process that you do.” Colbert’s reductio ad absurdum FTW

By timmukyPosted on Posted in civil liberties, obama, politics, rule of law, war, war on terrorNo Comments on “Due process just means a process that you do.” Colbert’s reductio ad absurdum FTW

There is not much to add to this priceless Colbert bit.

Except to point out that nobody really cares. It’s not exactly heartening to see what little impact Holder’s mind-bogglingly brazen (and incoherent) Northwestern speech had. I know. I know. Rush Limbaugh!

I’ll also concede that this is just making it official: the U.S. Government refuses to be bound by any authority beyond its own political calculations. It’s normalizing and codifying the fact that the War on Terror’s largest single consequence may now be that the Government no longer feels it needs to offer its citizens centuries-old rights and protections.

Today, it’s the Obama Administration; a few years earlier, it was Bush, doing it on the sly. The two are presidents from Central Casting. Bush was the blustery Cowboy, Obama the calm bipartisan bureaucrat–but the effect is the same. Regardless of what party is in office, the government realizes that the electorate no longer has any significant leverage. Democrats will support the leader of their party, no matter how conservative or, in this case, downright reactionary his policies are. So a living wage? Why? What are the people gonna do? Constitutional protections? Why? Who’s gonna squawk? The ACLU? Ha.Ha.

So this is where we are. Due process was once the hallmark of American government, (within obvious limitations–for blacks, for women, for Japanese and Germans in wartime, it didn’t apply. Naturally.) But it was there, at least for the people the government claimed to represent. But, like habeas corpus, it belongs to another time. Today, for the unfortunate soul accused of being a terrorist (which used to mean being al qaeda, but now has expanded to include [former allies] the Taliban and associated groups–and adolescent family members), your due process boils down to this:

The President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one, acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he’s accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations; is that not enough due process for you?

You gotta hand it to Obama, though. This is great politics. Blowing people up in some dusty land halfway around the world is such a perfect piece of political theater and control. Poll numbers down? Time to get another scalp. The government need only trumpet the successes. Beautiful. (And grudgingly, passive-aggressively sorta kinda own up to the misses. Not that there’s a whole lot of follow-up on these things).

Obama’s defenders, remarkably, see nothing odd or contradictory or WRONG in the president’s more than enthusiastic adaptation of Bush policies he campaigned against. In fact, they cannot contain their glee.

President Obama’s foreign policy has been remarkably successful. Just ask 22 of the top 30 al Qaeda leaders. Oh, wait, you can’t. They’re dead—on Obama’s orders. He has approved 239 Predator drone attacks in just three years. George W. Bush approved 44 in eight years, the wuss.

So that’s the calculus of consummate insider Paul Begala. The more drone strikes, the better the foreign policy. And Republicans are wusses. Nyah! Nyah!

Will the Republicans, those brave representatives of the Constitution-obsessed Tea Party throngs, make Obama face any consequences for, in effect, vaporizing vaguely threatening foreigners (even those who are U.S. citizens) with a mere wave of his finger?

Hell nah! They can’t wait til it’s their turn….

It’s complicated…

By timmukyPosted on Posted in afghanistan, civil liberties, environment, neoliberalism, obama, politics, warTagged , , No Comments on It’s complicated…

Noam Chomsky and Ron Paul agree on at least one thing: War is a racket.

Juan Cole uses last night’s GOP debate to compare and contrast Paul’s libertarian antiwar position and the left, Chomskyite variation.

As Right anarchists, [Libertarian Republicans] want the least government possible, and see government as a distraction for businesses, who succumb to the temptation to use the government to distort the eufunctional* free market. In essence, government is a scam whereby some companies are seduced by the possibility of manacling the invisible hand that ought to be magically rewarding enterprise and innovation. A significant stream within libertarianism theorizes war as the ultimate in this racket, whereby some companies use government to throw enormous sums to themselves by waging wars abroad and invoking patriotic themes. This analysis is remarkably similar to that of Left anarchists such as Noam Chomsky.

The difference is that for anarcho-syndicalists like Chomsky, the good guys of history are the workers and ordinary folk, whereas for Libertarians, it is entrepreneurs. Both theories depend on a naive reading of social interest. Right anarchists seem not to be able to perceive that without government, corporations would reduce us all to living in company towns on bad wages and would constantly be purveying to us bad banking, tainted food, dangerous drugs, etc.

…. Likewise, the anarcho-syndicalist tradition makes workers unions more saintly and disinterested than they typically actually are, though since they are looking out for the interests of the majority (workers), they typically have more equitable positions than the narrower business elites idolized by Libertarians.

___________

* great word!

This is OK, if simplistic. I might add that Cole is a stubborn defender of America’s and NATO’s latest adventure in Libya, “unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on.” As such, not really the guy to be flinging the word naive about. He even wrote an open letter, scolding the timid left for not getting behind our nation’s noble effort. To date, that mission has amounted to “18,774 sorties including 7,127 strike sorties.” That is a hell of a lot of metal to be slinging in a humanitarian kinetic action, but these are Hellfire rockets of love and concern, of course.

Back to Paul, in her summation of the GOP debate, the always thoughtful Amy Davidson gets a tad wistful when musing on the man’s appeal:

It was a little sad, watching the Republican Presidential debate last night, to remind oneself that at a certain point, next winter or summer or sooner, Ron Paul will no longer be taking part in these exercises. He is not likely to get his party’s nomination; and yet how useful was Paul’s presence in the debate last night? When he was asked a question, one knew, if nothing else, that one’s attention would be held by the answer, whether it’s about allowing churches to harbor undocumented immigrants or, as he seemed to be suggesting, effectively renouncing much of our national debt. His appeal to a certain segment of Republicans (and not just Republicans) is often ascribed to his consistency; just what he is consistent about is a harder question to answer, and anyway doesn’t get at his odd charisma.

These two pieces together start to get at what is so maddening about Paul. On issue after issue, he is coherent, rational, and appealing, especially to someone comme moi, with a vaguely leftish lean, and a strong disgust at the mainstream corporatist politics practiced by both parties.

On a host of issues, Paul’s positions and mine line up pretty well, and probably line up with the attitudes of a great number of uncommitted voters. He is the only high-profile politician seeing straight on war, militarism, civil liberties, and privacy issues.

But then there are the scary positions, anchored by the Libertarian Achilles Heel, the completely untethered-from-reality belief in the magic of Markets. Social Security and Medicare and the EPA are clunky and inefficient, but they are necessary protections against the predations of the marketplace. And they are not the drivers of the deficit. So, Ron: I like you, I really do, and I’m not saying you’re crazy, but you’ve said some crazy things.

BUT and this is where it gets complicated….Is Ron Paul SCARY?  Somebody thinks so:

But Ari has his own reasons. The question is: should ordinary folks  be scared of someone who thinks so opposite to the consensus, at least the consensus of Washington and mainstream media? I think not.

There is always much noise at this point in the election cycle about the frightening prospect of candidate A or B actually making his (or her) way into the White House.

Yes, we’re talking about that nutjob from Minnesota who shall remain nameless. Uh, er, the Lady Nutjob. I forget there are two sometimes…. Ryan Lizza has pretty much sealed the deal for anyone who had any doubts.

Nope, I don’t want to see her in the White House, nor do I find that much of a realistic concern. But there is another faction at least trying to make us very afraid of people with strange ideas taking the reins of power.

The We Must Re-elect Obama to Keep X Out of the White House hysteria brings up a large question for me: Why? Do we have a sane and/or benign presence in the White House?

The short answer is … no. And the short reason is … War.  And while one could, and I would, have some dissenting words on the necessities of any of the United States’ wars, it’s not controversial at all to observe that the wars of the past few decades have been beyond pointless. Or that alarmingly, the warfare state has expanded greatly in the Obama era. (I had a fairly low opinion of the man when he took office, but this is one absolutely shocking development. Who  saw that coming?)

The United States is currently admitting to be warring on, or in, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and our putative ally Pakistan. Why? I mean, really, why? When pressed, officials will mumble something about humanitarianism  or the threat of Islamic terror groups, and other times they will talk with a straight face about the remaining 22 targets in Afghanistan (140,000 US and NATO soldiers, makes 7000 soldiers per threat?!) And one might well ponder this underappreciated weirdness, as fleshed out by Nick Turse:

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The six wars, expensive wars, in terms of both lives destroyed and treasure wasted. The nuclear arsenal. The undeclared/unexamined military footprint  in nigh on 100 countries. This is the status quo. (And oh crap I did not even mention the callous disregard for rule of law, Obama’s assertion of his personal right to have anyone in the world ordered killed, the widening gulf between rich and poor, white and black, the overstuffed prisons, the ongoing criminalization of poverty. I’ve been away for so long….)

But let’s stay focused on the deranged, paranoiac military fortress that America has become. Try as I might, I cannot get my brain to accept that the civilian and uniformed planners of such madness think they’re doing the right thing for the world. I prefer to think it’s more about competition among the multitude of military branches and secret agencies, known and unknown.

I like to think there’s cynicism behind this, because the scarier thought is that very powerful people believe this shit–that a perpetual war footing against a sad excuse for a civilization-threatening enemy is a necessary and just thing to do. I’m hoping it’s more Milo Minderbinder than Jack Ripper, but who knows?

The recent frantic concern over the debt and the deficit is a fraudulent thing. Politicians nominally work for voters, and no demographic cohort puts this issue very high up on the list of things that need to be fixed. The drive to rewrite the social contract came from somewhere else. And the social programs that will be gutted to assuage this selective fit of fiscal probity will make America poorer, meaner, and less safe for everyone. Anyone seeking a serious bettering of the money mess need only focus on a distinctive five-sided building on the Potomac. But don’t hold your breath. Only fringe pols and marginalized media outlets ever mention the subject.

To say there’s not a whole lot of promise in the field of realistic presidential aspirants is a massive understatement.  Some are truly scary (that word again!) Perry scares me. Bachmann scares me. And Ron Paul scares me, but  less than anyone else, and a lot less than the Players in DC. Obama, Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, who with their Super Committee now look to disempower all but a dozen representatives when “fixing” the deficit. The rest might as well go home. The insider culture in Washington is already being run by crooks who may or may not also be bonkers.

Not saying who I’ll be voting for come election time, if anyone (Mr. Carlin is always whispering in my ear), but painting outsiders as “crazy” isn’t very convincing. We’re already at crazy.

“They are right.”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in following obama over a cliff, obama, plus ca change, politics, populism, prioritiesTagged No Comments on “They are right.”
Barry and Mitch, working together for their constituency, and you ain't in it! Credit: Newscom

From the New York Times this morning:

  • At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.
  • The wealthiest Americans will also reap tax savings from the proposal’s plan to keep the cap on dividend and capital gains taxes at 15 percent, well below the highest rates on ordinary income.
  • And negotiators have agreed that the estimated $900 billion cost of the cuts will simply be added to the deficit…
  • In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale — individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,00.

From Nobody represents the American people by Michael Lind, in Salon:

The basic outlines of American economic policy and foreign policy remain the same, even as Congress and the White House change hands. The changes promised by progressive Democrats and Tea Party Republicans are quickly discarded after the elections.

The changes that do take place are often the opposite of those that majorities of Americans want. Most Americans want Social Security to be strengthened and American manufacturing protected. But the conversation among elites inside the Beltway-New York bubble is about cutting Social Security and more one-sided “free trade” deals with mercantilist nations that, unlike the U.S., protect and promote their domestic industries.

Many Americans have come to the conclusion that nobody represents them in Washington anymore. They are right.

PS And on that one tiny sliver of something that might, in a pinch, be called progressive, the “extension” of unemployment benefits, another case of false, or at least deceptive advertising:

Just to be clear, the “extension of the unemployment benefits” is an extension of the qualifying dates for the various tiers of benefits, and not additional weeks of benefits. There is no additional help for the so-called “99ers”.

You’re welcome. And Merry Christmas.

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