Apr 16 2008
• unSupporting Our Troops
Rep. John F. Tierney (D-MA): So it is a little astonishing to me, and I think to others, the planning for what is going to happen to our troops, their meals, their water, their housing, the essentials of life, their protection, all of that doesn’t even begin to happen until May 2003, after Baghdad falls, but in the meantime the administration had your company planning for Iraq’s oil infrastructure months before it had a plan how to support our troops.
Apr 16 2008
and extremely tired of sucking up to power. It is well past time to flex our collective muscles. What is wrong with people in this country? Most of us are wage slaves because we have to be. Okay: fine. Maybe that’s the way of the world. They call it “work” for a reason, right? And I don’t think anybody here opposes work, per se. What I oppose is the suppression of the “underclass”–which increasingly means anybody who isn’t a multimillionaire.
Apr 12 2008
This is (a small part of a) cross-post (excerpted by permission) by THE ENVIRONMENTALIST‘s Managing Editor:
In her recent speech at the Conference on World Affairs, Rachel Maddow cited James Madison’s warning about the unitary executive, the propensity of an unchecked executive branch to lean toward war, whereas the legislature would be more likely to debate the issue before moving toward conflict.
Maddow’s supposition, that the Bush administration’s seeming incompetence, its torture memos, its rush to war, was by design — Bush and Cheney’s direct effort to shift power to the executive and, thereby, to shift the entire country to a more warlike stance — does have historical precedence.
I’m not referring to Madison, though he did warn of this, or Jefferson, who raised prescient concern about undue influence, but earlier in history to the systems that Madison and Jefferson used as the inspiration for their grand experiment: The Roman Republic of Caesar’s time and the Greek democracy of Solon.
This is not to say that George W. Bush is Julius Caesar or that any of his lawgivers (like the ones who approved that torture memo) are Solon. But there are interesting parallels to the way Caesar and his contemporaries used war to further their wealth and political ambitions, as well as to the actions that Solon’s contemporaries took to undermine codified law…
Highly recommend you link to link to the whole essay for the point it makes about Bush and McCain’s wars.
Illuminating and frightening.
Apr 08 2008
Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST
The Bush Administration’s Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, was a no-show at last Wednesday’s Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee hearing, chaired by Barbara Boxer, on the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species.
“This listing is months overdue, in violation of the Endangered Species Act,” the California Democrat said at the hearing of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.
The deadline for a decision was Jan. 9. Conservation groups petitioned to list polar bears as threatened more than three years ago because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming.
In a letter to Boxer, Kempthorne said he “respectfully” declined her invitation to appear at the hearing, since he is a named defendant in a lawsuit over the polar bear listing filed by an environmental group.
Apr 08 2008
I’ve been struggling a bit. With role assignments. Because I’m confused. Are the Iraqis themselves the terrorists? Or do Iraqis harbor terrorists? No. Wait. Terrorists infiltrate Iraq. And we are there to get rid of terrorists, right? Wait, or was it to get rid of the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WsMD)? Or was it the threat of terrorism? Who are the insurgents btw? Are they related to the terrorists? Wait. Iran is involved in this, right? It’s terrorists [being paid by Iran to infiltrate Iraq] who are killing Iraqis, right? Or are the Iranian people themselves terrorists? Or do they just harbor terrorists? I know… maybe they outsource their terrorism. Anybody? Do they also have WsMD? Wait.
Tell me again, who are the terrorists?
The Historic Basis of … Prosperity
The main expansionist strategy of the European business classes during the 19th century was colonialism; that is, each country would try to carve out areas of control in the third world, using its technological superiority translated into military terms. The raw materials and labor and markets of these colonies were for the exclusive exploitation of businesses centered in the home country. The inherent weakness of this colonialist strategy, from a capitalist point of view, is that the bulk of the populace remained in poverty and therefore provided not much of a market for the goods of the home country.
Apr 05 2008
I wish I could have figured out how to embed this video properly, as it happens you will have to click a link.
I realize asking anybody to listen to John McCain speak for nine minutes is a stretch for patriotism and patience. You won’t get this nine minutes back from your life. I can’t give a time refund but I can buy you a drink some time.
I have some thoughts on the speech that I would like to offer and am hoping to get feedback/analysis from you as well. Click the link, you might need toothpicks to keep your eyelids propped open.
John McCain mumbles and makes me hopeful we will have a Dem president. Watch the speech if you aren’t suffering from a stomach virus. My apologies in advance. There is a much more abbreviated version on you tube that simply fails to catch the essence of dullness, lifelessness, lack of conviction, blatant discomfort, and lack of sincerity this one offers.
McCain wouldn’t last three seconds in a parliamentary system where delivery, wit, and tone count as much as content.
He manages a feat I thought impossible, a speech about one of the greatest men who ever graced this country that lacks passion. A boring speech about MLK. How on earth did he accomplish this? That requires conviction.
My take is that the crowd is tolerant at best and vaguely restless.
I am also astounded that McCain manages to stumble and drift through a speech about Dr.King without once ever mentioning the word racism. He dances slowly around it mentioning “unfairness” and “justice”. He never uses the words “black” and “white” just once, pretty impressive. He certainly doesn’t suggest that “black” Americans were purposefully oppressed by “white” Americans. I am not sure he even mentioned that Dr.King was black himself.
He pays lip service to Darfur and Tibet and lumps them in with Iran. Does this mean he wants to invade all of them?
McCain, clothes his words in Christianity and faith, and almost completely avoids placing the civil rights movements in political context. As if it had no political context. None. Not that his faith based argument worked, there isn’t one “praise Jesus” or “hallelujah” from the crowd. You’ve completely missed your mark in the south if you make a personal/political speech your weaving your faith through it and nobody answers you.
Apr 04 2008
(I apologize in advance for writing about a different King on the anniversary of Dr. King’s death)
Everyone should have an arch-enemy, right? Someone who is the very antithesis of everything you stand for and believe in? I’ve been looking for just the right candidate in an arch-enemy and a clear frontrunner has emerged: Rep. Steve King of Iowa’s 5th congressional district.
King, a Republican (duh!), was recently in the news for his remarks about Barack Obama. He said if Obama was elected president that al-Qaida “would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.” King also said of terrorists’ reaction to a potential Obama victory that “he will certainly be viewed as a savior for them.” A savior for terrorists, Congressman? Remarks like this are, sadly, just another day at the office for King.
Apr 03 2008
one thing. if you want to change, then you will.
no more “what we need to do.” i’m done with that… no more needing. no more shoulding. no more coulding. no more.
it’s this::: WE CAN. simple.
we can and we will make the world better. because we want to. because we can. because, for us, it’s what we choose.
Apr 03 2008
Howard Zinn asks why neither candidate wants to talk about the New Deal and offers up a potential speech one of them could give. I would argue that neither of them want to invoke that image because both hope to appeal to those who consider themselves “independents”, people who have voted Republican in the past but are disenchanted for various reasons and appealing to a “New Deal ethos” would be considered “too radical” for such broad based appeal. And invoking the “New Deal” would be a frank admission that we are teetering far too closely to collapse. Americans, above all like to “feel good” about themselves and their country. Never mind the blatant hatred those on the right have for the “New Deal”.
As Zinn notes, the “New Deal” was really an accommodation with capitalism, not rejection.
We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative, cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers, migrants or domestic workers, they didn’t qualify for unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies
Indeed, what many on the right fail to grasp is the extent to which the “New Deal” sought to save capitalism, not replace it. If one accepts Zinn’s description, the “New Deal” was much better than a band aid, and much less than real structural change.
You can read the whole Zinn article with the speech he wishes somebody would give here.
Apr 03 2008
In the last couple of years, money and power sure have translated into sex when it comes to our National Political and Religious figures.
First we had Mark (Underage Page) Foley. I don’t know if he paid anyone anything, but it was certainly his undoing in the end. He turned the page on his Congressional career, so to speak.
Next up? President Bush’s spiritual advisor, Reverend Ted Haggard.
While serving as President of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted was outed by a male prostitute for snorting meth and having gay sex. Ted then resigned his “position” as we all know.
After spending time in teh Gay-hab, three weeks of intensive counseling, the Rev. declared that he was now completely hetrosexual. The team working those three weeks with Haggard are not unlike Professional Golfers. Those guys are GOOD!
Apr 02 2008
I love campaigning. Love it. Knocking on doors, meeting strangers, … getting into political debate. I know, doesn’t sound like me, but…………………
I discovered this after finally finding a Democratic party in my township (no easy feat, I can tell you). I was swept away, meeting people who cared about all the same issues and who put so much into making the township and, by extension, the country a better place. I became a county delegate the year that Jon Corazin and former Gov. Jim Florio were vying for a U.S. Senate seat.
Our country chair was an influential guy and A debate was arranged between Corazin and Florio staged a debate for our delegates, each wanting to win our endorsement and support.
And my passions (it was challenging both Jon Corazine and former Gov. Jim Florio somehow got me hooked into running for township committee in 1999. The one thing I didn’t quite feel comfortable with was asking for campaign donations.