Author's posts
Mar 08 2010
Here We Go Again
From Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director, Immigration and National Campaigns at the National Council of La Raza, posting at HuffPo:
Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that President Obama will meet on Monday with Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and is “looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill,” according to White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro.
But let’s be clear. If the meeting is just to “hear more,” it’s not going to cut it. The president had a meeting with Republican and Democratic members of both chambers in June 2009, and in August held a White House summit, hosted by Secretary Janet Napolitano, with a large number of representatives from faith, labor, business, law enforcement, immigrant, ethnic, and civil rights groups. Around that time, Schumer and Graham started working on a bipartisan proposal, and Schumer announced he would have the parameters of a proposal ready by Labor Day 2009.
With the Congressional legislative runway getting crowded and time running out before the November elections, it is time to land this plane. Monday’s meeting must be followed by a clear, bipartisan proposal and a firm timeline for Senate action. Anything less will be regarded as more stalling by the tens of thousands coming to DC to march in two weeks.
So today President Obama will meet with Senators Schumer and Graham. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on that wall?
Mar 07 2010
Into the Rare
We say that if we don’t do A, then B will happen.
That is a mindset, a very powerful mindset conditioned on the notion that what is here now isn’t here yet.
Operative word here being “conditioned.”
So we hear and even say ourselves … “oh, if we don’t fix healthcare legislation before it is passed into law, our brothers and sisters will suffer.”
When the reality is that our brothers and sisters are suffering right now, not in some hazy future time.
Now making the transition to present tense can often cause extreme grumpiness, so I will just make note of that for informational purposes.
Mar 05 2010
Open Thread
Got some breaking news off my email news feeder thing:
2 police officers shot at Pentagon entrance.
Latest update:
Chris Layman, a spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, said the suspect walked up to the main entrance of the Pentagon at 6:40 p.,m. and opened fire. He hit two officers, both of whom have injuries that are not life-threatening. The officers fired back, and the suspect was hit. His injures are more serious.
Layman declined to speculate on a motive.
In other news, Docudharma has 3 2 essays with “Pussy” (or some variation thereof) in the title and one with “Autistic AIG Wankers.” I don’t know what this means. Perhaps there’s a meteorological event I missed.
Open thread! Thread away Garth!
Mar 02 2010
Opinion Piece: Rahm and Obama
This is pure political punditry, iow, I’m bullshitting.
But what a perfect topic to bullshit over. Not a completely unrewarded activity.
We’re somehow supposed to figure out how the folks in the Executive Branch are getting along, how many people working in the Executive Branch other than President Obama are acting in such a way, politically, that their action affects our lives insofar as the politics of legislation and governance.
Now if we had some transparency in government, I suppose we could just find that out and move on.
Alas, we don’t.
So we are reduced to speculating about our Executive Branch.
Are we witnessing a power struggle?
Probably every day, given the culture of D.C.
So in my opinion (as after all this is an opinion piece), until we have some real, honest transparency in our government, we as citizen bloggers will have to publicly bumble around until we get the answers ourselves. And we will, oh we will.
Ha!
Mar 01 2010
From 1984 to Brave New World
From the ACLU:
Congress Drops the Ball on Upgrading Patriot Protections
We’re sorry to say, but is anyone surprised that Congress has capitulated to post-underpants bomber fear-mongering and passed the three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without so much as a debate?
Oh, you didn’t hear about that?
Wednesday night, the Senate passed a straight one-year extension by voice vote, and last night, the House followed suit.
That’s right. No changes. Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, zero. (You get the picture.)
That leaves ordinary Americans like you and me without the civil liberties safeguards proposed by several bills last year. Both the House and Senate had bills that would have improved the Patriot Act…
And of course, President Obama signed the bill with nary a public statement, no muss, no fuss.
Mar 01 2010
Politics and Visionary Poetry
Political Poem
by
Nightprowlkittyas tho there is
any reality
to politics
that can be
grasped ever,
ever, never,
it is smoke,
it is elaborate
costume of
deception created
to capture
our attention
in spiderweb of power
enchanting us to believe
there is separation
between ourselves and each other
and the sky and the earth.politics cannot contain
our fierce fire,
our fresh air,
our loving waters,
our humble earth,
our limitless space
with no boundaries
never boundaries
always free
always liberation.Old tales
are helpful,
stories of humanity
from every corner
of the world
leading to the roots,
waiting for us,
waiting to feed us,
to welcome us home.
Feb 27 2010
Opinion Piece: Hoodwinked
I’ve read some of the speculation about the politics of the Patriot Act renewal happening under all our noses while the HCR spectacle diverted our attention.
AndyS in Colorado hit the nail on the head on what’s very fishy about this political act:
The Patriot Act provisions were set to expire this year. People who rallied the entire country to vote for Barack Obama, the entire liberal blogosphere was on fire for years at the unconstitutionality of this law and its depredations on the Fourth Amendment among others.
— snip–
Let me remind the reader that provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire this year. To defeat those Patriot Act provisions required no action at all.
Yet here we are.
Ok. I’m no political genius, but I would say that doing “nothing at all” politically on an issue all of us were passionate about appears to be an action in and of itself that goes against the latest political style of following the “path of least resistance.”
Are our representatives actually going to try to make us believe this was necessary for our national security?
‘Cause if they do that, I’d suggest buying a lot of stock in anti-indigestion medicine. It’ll go sky high.
Feb 26 2010
Eh
Short version of Obama’s real message from the Health Care Summit:
“We made our back door deals, with Big Pharma, with private hospitals (which means no public option), with Republicans, with ConservaDems.
Now we’re going to have a public conversation to let you know how stupid and mean the Republicans are.
Now that we’ve taken off the table what most Americans are in favor of, and kept in what most Americans don’t want, we’ll allow “the people” to make up their own minds.”
And then there’s all the noise and racket from the OFA’ers saying “pass the bill! pass the bill! We’ll fix it later!”
OFA is the DLC. OFA does not exist to advocate good policy but to support Obama’s plans. OFA will not revisit health care reform. OFA will gear up to support whatever is next on Obama’s agenda.
And the same thing will happen again and again, with each issue, immigration, national security, the economy, education. We’ll be told that legislation is ugly and messy and hooray! At least Dems are better than Republicans! As the back door deals go on and on, and once again no one listens to the people.
And Obama speaks of transparency. Yep, we get transparency only after all the back door deals have been made, and that “transparency” is nothing but public relations. Plouffe is now there to make sure of it.
I don’t think it takes a genius to debate Republicans and come off looking pretty good.
I’d sure like to see Obama publicly speak and debate with the Left. I don’t think he’d find it as easy to come off looking pretty good.
So of course that will not happen.
Folks are hurting. They’re losing their jobs, their homes, their health. I don’t think Plouffe is going to find it so easy to spin Obama’s “accomplishments” in the face of real suffering of the middle class. I doubt most of those folks even watched the Health Care Summit.
But hey, “we’re better than the Republicans!”
Feb 21 2010
Milarepa Day
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, a chain of human communication was threatened with breaking.
Two thousand five hundred years of continual communication of a spiritual tradition. Twenty-five hundred years ago when Buddhism arrived in Tibet, the native spiritual tradition, Bon was not discarded by the great teacher Padmasambhava, an Indian spiritual adept who is credited with transmitting Buddhism to Tibet (and, according to the linked Wiki, Bhutan as well).
Transmitted. That is an important word.
But first, today is Milarepa Day.
The link is to the Shambhala website (and the Shambhala organization), and will figure into all this later.
