There will be 20 women in the US Senate in 2013. This is a record. But if you're anxious to smash the patriarchy and make everything "equal" this isn't anywhere near good enough. Thus some people wonder if the time hasn't come to dust off Title IX. Instead of applying it to college or high school sports or ridiculously threatening to expand its jurisdiction to the scientific classroom, some think the US should have political gender quotas for elected seats. Some people would want women to be guaranteed at least 30% representation in elected bodies while others demand 50% representation in the US Senate. Each state would have to have one man and one woman as its Senator. It is a source of constant amusement to me that Harrison Bergeron, a dystopic satire by a left-leaning writer, has instead become a virtual guidebook for some earnest current left-wingers (and a bete noire for right-wingers) who really are obsessed with trying to enforce equality of results no matter what. You don't have to be a fervent racist or chauvinist to understand that people aren't the same and have different interests. Looking at the state of the world today I wouldn't argue that men are better at leadership but they definitely seem to be more interested in leadership. Should we pretend that the gender that is literally awash in testosterone and aggression and gets certain (ahem) benefits from the other gender for seeking, holding and expressing status and power would not then on average show greater interest in obtaining formal leadership positions? Every single American man who's been elected to office in the past ninety two years has had to appeal to women voters. What we see is what the electorate, men and women, want. Maybe the electorate is wrong, bigoted, behind the times, etc. Maybe. But ultimately power resides in the people.
It may well be a feminist truism that men and women are roughly identical and interchangeable and thus any societal differences are solely an example of invidious discrimination. But just believing something doesn't make it so. We still have a legal and constitutional system that would, I hope, make it difficult for gender quotas to be used. I don't think that such quotas could be reconciled with equal protection concerns or the right to freedom of association. How can we tell voters that their choice will be limited by gender? And enforcement would be unpleasant if not impossible. Let's say that a insurgent political movement led by a honest, hardworking charismatic man arises and defeats the moribund ineffective Democratic (woman) Senator. But as the state's Republican Senator, who's not up for re-election this year is a man, that would mean that the state would then be sending two men to the Senate. No good. All those votes for the new guy were thus meaningless. Are we going to tell the rising star that sorry, he can't serve in the US Senate because he has an outie instead of an innie? Does that sound remotely American? Bad policy arises from bad ideas. There are two bad ideas here. The first is that you can only or best be politically represented by someone who shares your immutable physical traits. If everyone felt that way then we'd not have the President we have nor would a decent politician like Steve Cohen ever have served. What matters is not so much what you look like but what you do.
The second bad idea is that men and women are interchangeable and ought to be doing the exact same things in the same proportion. That's never been and never will be the case in human society. Men and women are of equal value but they are rather obviously not identical. And women can be just as mean, greedy, short-sighted, ignorant and bigoted as men. There is certainly no guarantee that having more women making or executing law will produce better results. Would you enjoy a President Palin? Michele Bachmann as head of HHS? Is it better for South Carolina pro-choice women that right wing pro-life Nikki Haley is governor instead of a right wing pro-life man? There is no law preventing interested women from running for office. There is no law preventing political parties and interest groups from encouraging women candidates, donating to women candidates or even leaning on male potential candidates to sit an election out because the party wants more women to run. There is no law preventing current women (or men) elected officials from identifying and mentoring potential women candidates.
Right now, if you've got the guts, intelligence and the heart to do it you can run for political office. There should not be a federal law preventing you from doing so because of your gender. Period. Gender quotas are the political equivalent of giving everyone in a sports event a trophy. It's a silly idea and debases the challenge. This idea also shows a nasty hostility to the voter's choice. I believe in equality of opportunity. I don't believe in legally requiring equality of results. I think our system can occasionally get away with a small thumb on the scale where there is historical or ongoing discrimination. But quotas go way beyond that. There is a tension between freedom and equality just as there is between freedom and safety. The US body politic has mostly tended towards freedom. Our constitution is set up that way. However there are some powerful currents that tend toward equality and safety at the expense of freedom. The voters must be able to choose the best woman or man for a particular job without being prevented from doing so by a particular interest group that decides it doesn't like current gender (or any other kind of) political demographics. Black people are roughly 13% of the population and have no Senate seats. Jewish people are about 3% of the population and have eleven Senate seats. Hispanic people are about 15% of the population and have three Senate seats. Left-handed redheaded bisexual agnostics are 2% of the population and on and on and on. If you go down the path of political quotas, pack a lunch because it's gonna be a long haul.
Questions
1) Do you think there will ever be proportional gender representation in Congress and the Senate?
2) Do quotas have any place in American politics? Do you think they're legal?
Now that the election is over and it is settled who will be President for the next four years a little bit of disappointment from supporters of the losing candidate is only to be expected. That's normal. I am old enough to remember how bitterly let down some people were when Reagan beat Carter and four years later turned Mondale into his personal well lubricated hand puppet. And the Bush smiting of Dukakis also left many people in my circles of family and friends wishing that things were otherwise. But if you're a mature adult sooner or later you learn that things don't always go your way. If you happen to grow up as a minority in America you learn that lesson a bit more quickly and thoroughly than seems right, as you are seemingly always outnumbered and always outgunned. Your political or aesthetic choices or styles are usually not what is popular in the cultural or political marketplace. If you happen to raise this issue with the majority, say expressing concern about the relative dearth of black faces on mainstream magazine covers the usual response is something along the lines of majority rules, so shut up and deal. And in our society that is a honest and valid statement.
But life goes on. So people didn't agree with your position this time. That doesn't mean that life is over and you fall into a pit of despair and depression. It's only politics after all. It's not life and death, right? You move on with your life and maybe work harder to bring people around to your point of view next time. I mean it's nothing to start bawling over or hang your head down in despair is it? I have voted for plenty of presidential candidates that did not win and more than a few that had virtually no chance of winning. That's life. You make your decision and work to get people to agree with you and hope that many people can see the obvious sagacity of your choice and convince others likewise. If they won't or can't then yes in private you might occasionally wonder at their IQ levels but you would never say that in public because not only is it an ugly and nasty thing to say about people but fundamentally it's untrue. There are simply too many people who are intelligent decent honest people who see the world differently than you do to say that anyone who doesn't see things just like you do is an evil wicked person who for amusement shoots puppies in their spare time. Not to say that there aren't people like that but they probably don't neatly line up with your political opposition.
One of the things that is really interesting to me is how some leading Romney supporters have forgotten this truism and gone off the deep end in not only rejecting the outcome of the election but vacillate between soul numbing depression and white-hot rage at the voters who helped re-elect the President. If you remember just a few weeks back there were more than a few conservatives, fueled by speculation from sites as Drudge, Breitbart and a few others I won't mention, who were not only convinced that Romney was going to win but that Black Obama supporters, no doubt fueled by crack cocaine, rage and resentment would riot in the streets and have to be dealt with by police and/or the National Guard. Evidently some conservatives were eagerly looking forward to this. Well as it turned out not only did Obama win but the twitter tough guy calling for violent revolution and taking it to the streets and shutting this muyerfuyer down was none other than the very successful and very white billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump, who as far as I know has never had to sleep on the streets, been locked up for years for a crime he didn't commit, been fired because of the color of his skin, wondered where his next meal was coming from, been abused by police or prosecutors, figure out which member of his outlaw organization was a police informant, make a choice between housing and medical coverage, or have any of a multitude of unpleasant experiences that tend to produce REAL revolutionaries, nevertheless saw fit to demand marches on Washington, suddenly decided the Electoral College was a disaster for democracy and said we should have a revolution. Right. Okay Donald. Meet us at the barricades but let us know which color Bentley you're driving so we'll know it's you. We certainly wouldn't want to throw rocks at our brother revolutionary. Power to the People!!!!
Meanwhile musician and racist nitwit Ted Nugent couldn't wait to let everyone know that as far as he was concerned the people that helped elect Barack Obama were all a bunch of "pimps, whores and welfare brats". As far as Teddy is concerned if you voted for Obama you are probably a subhuman varmint or soulless. There's not a huge amount of room for difference of opinion in Nugent's world I guess. Not much nuance. But at least you know where he's coming from. I don't think you can make a lot of mistakes about that. Not to be outdone conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly spewed forth that Obama's victory meant that the days of traditional America were over, that the white establishment was now a minority and that the reason Obama won was that people (hispanics and blacks) wanted free stuff and Obama was going to give it to them. Glenn Beck wept that sometimes God sucks. That's amazing, Beck's chosen candidate loses a few times and Beck comes to the belief that God sucks. Hmm. And yet there are other people who have been through a few centuries of slavery, colonialism and discrimination who still seem to have a fierce and unbroken belief in and love of God. Perhaps Beck should check with them to see how they did it because it looks like his faith is a bit weak.
Finally the gelatinous king of demagoguery himself, one Mr. Rush Limbaugh, went on air to claim that Obama won because we now live in a country of children and that therefore the adults (Romney) could not compete with Santa Claus. There's more but I think you get the idea. Oftentimes (white) conservatives criticize Blacks for identity politics. I think it is fair as we've discussed in the past to point out that some black intellectuals and even voters give Obama a pass on things they may not have let slide with other Presidents. The flip side of this though is that whites, and in these examples, white men, are not immune to identity politics any more than any other human beings are. This idea that whites are the norm and everyone else is practicing unfair identity politics needs to go. Whites were just fine with election results as long as white men won but insult voters and want revolution now that a black man won? I am shocked.... It bothers Trump so much that Obama is going to be President for another four years that he's calling for revolution? What is that about if not race? All the insults sneering at Obama voters as welfare recipients or children or subhuman are about nothing but race. The truly ironic thing is that if white conservatives had been able to put away all the constant sneers about "welfare" and "affirmative action" and "man-child" and "monkey" and "wookie" and "ghetto crackhead" and "Kenyan" and "Muslim" and "birth certificates" they might have been able to make good arguments against some of President Obama's policies. But asking some of them to stop doing that is like asking a dog to stop licking itself. It's just what they do. And O'Reilly's comments are honest if wrong. Whites are not a minority and, depending on how "white" is redefined in America, may never be a minority. White is a somewhat nebulous description that expanded to include Irish, Italians, Jews, Arabs, and other previously "non-white" ethnic groups. Somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of Hispanics also identify as white. But what IS true is that the current Republican party can't win a Presidential election with 59% of the white vote. The numbers aren't there any more. It is no longer a given that whatever a majority of whites want is what the nation wants. The nation has expanded. I think, qualms about illegal immigration aside, that this is mostly a good thing. After all Republicans should remember, everything that happens is God's will. Just relax and enjoy it. There's nothing you can do anyway. Just ask Mourdock and Akin. Don't worry, be happy. Snicker...
As the election approaches it appears as if the President or his major party opponent may have a more difficult road to (re-)election than he or his partisans initially anticipated. So we see some bloggers, political leaders or media personalities scurrying forth to invoke fear and hurl insults against independent minded people who are not going to vote for either major party candidate. They congratulate themselves on their supposed wisdom in their voting choice and demand that others do likewise. They trot out their favorite policy hobby horse to convince you that you MUST vote for their candidate. If that doesn't work then they insult your intelligence or question your membership in whatever involuntary racial/gender group to which you happen to belong. Finally if all this fails to persuade you they'll trot out the spectre of the OTHER GUY getting to make appointments to the Supreme Court and talk ominously about the 2000 election. If their guy wins they will be back to mock you as a loser. And if their guy loses they will rush back to spew putrid vitriol in your general direction. Nader and Perot loom large as betes noires for them.
Ho-hum. My conscience and vote belong to me. Nobody else. Anyone who lectures me that I am somehow "wasting" my vote by not voting for their favored candidate can kindly go attempt an aeronautical anatomical impossibility with a rapidly revolving tasty pastry. One man with courage makes a majority. To thine own self be true. Whether you want to vote for either major party candidate, any small party candidate, write in a candidate, or refrain from voting altogether, it is your sacred right to express your political preference. That's right, your political preference, not anyone else's. You have the right to dissent. Your vote is not owed to anyone except yourself. Remember that regardless who you support next week. Vote or do not vote as you like. Someone who tries to convince you that your vote won't count unless you vote as THEY see fit is really nothing more than a bully. Don't let their fear determine your vote. Your issues and beliefs are just as important as anyone else's. Stand up for what you believe. Let your conscience be your guide. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
It's silly, a little tiring and probably bad for my blood pressure to keep up with and blog about every stupid utterance that comes from major party campaign surrogates, especially racial shots from right-wing Republicans. It is what it is. But every now and then someone says something which goes a bit beyond the normal silliness and fluff of election year political statements and reveals something a bit uglier. This was the case with former Bush Chief of Staff, former New Hampshire Governor and Romney campaign adviser John Sununu who, when asked about General Colin Powell's endorsement of President Barack Obama, could only sputter that it must have been because both men are black. Right. When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to look at whether that's an endorsement based on issues or he's got a slightly different reason for endorsing President Obama," Sununu said, adding: "I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him." I don't usually pay attention to endorsements because I don't really think they mean what they used to mean but I think I would have read about or remembered the uproar if Colin Powell had endorsed candidates for President like Shirley Chisholm, Dick Gregory, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney or other humans who met the American standard for blackness. However I think all of those people struggled along the campaign trail without the Powell endorsement. Watch the Sununu video below.
This is a really interesting statement because it reveals some things about how Sununu sees the world and how he sees Black people. The immediate question that comes to my mind is whether Sununu will vote for Romney because both he and Romney are white? I would venture to guess that Sununu would say no and claim that he's voting for Romney because of issues x, y, z. But he's evidently unwilling to extend that same presumption to Colin Powell, strictly because Powell happens to be black. Never mind any of Powell's achievements, statements, beliefs, worldviews, experiences or the experiences of people who have worked with and for Colin Powell. In a slip of the tongue Sununu showed that to him race trumps all. I guess all of those Black people who constantly voted for one white candidate or another are invisible. And when whites voted for whites that was just fine. But you blacks all stick together see.
Many times people like to tell themselves that racism or us-them thinking is an artifact of the lower classes, the working classes, the kind of people who drive pickup trucks, own lots of guns, wave Confederate flags and have to take a shower as soon as they get home from work. Well, no it's not. Sununu is a very accomplished man and he's also a Mensa member. Chances are he's smarter than you are. But intelligence is no barrier to racist thinking. Sununu has eagerly taken on the role of Romney's attack dog, the Gregor Clegane that every now and then slips the leash and bites someone before the candidate rushes up and puts the muzzle back on the beast. Sununu has a history of race-baiting or outright racist remarks about the President and/or his supporters. So he's doing his job. His remarks are no accident. He didn't slip the leash; he was unleashed. He's appealing to a very ugly (small??) portion of the Republican base, one which doesn't really think that anyone black has any business being in the White House unless they're serving tea. The ironic thing is that given Sununu's Southern European/Middle Eastern origins, it wasn't that long ago in American history that his "whiteness" could be questioned. And in some places in Europe it still would be. And how in the world does someone who was born in Cuba of all places get the nerve to lecture the President of the United States on "how to be an American"? The only answer to this is that to a lot of people, too many people, American = whiteness. The election of a black man to the Presidency makes it painfully obvious that American <> whiteness. And it never did, really. This country was mixed from the start. If you've read this blog before then you know I'm not really a huge Obama fan. There are legitimate honorable reasons to vote for either major party candidate or any other candidate that best suits you. The irony is that Obama has mostly governed (feminist and gay rights sympathies aside) as a center-right politician, as what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican. His race has excited the far right to primal screams of hatred and disgust at the idea of "losing their" country and constant evocations of Obama as "an affirmative action president" (witness Donald Trump's fascination with Obama's grades and birth certificate or Palin's fascination with Obama's blackness). But Obama's race may have also made people on the left who would otherwise be up in arms over unemployment, entitlement reform and civil liberties mute their opposition, precisely because they don't want to be on the same side as some right-wing yahoos. The fact that Sununu feels comfortable calling a woman journalist and a news organization "groupies" shows that should Obama win re-election some right-wingers will literally explode from the dissonance between what's in their heads and reality. Of course the same is true of some on the left if Romney pulls it out. And either way I'll be there to laugh at the loser. Count on that. But my bigger concern is that whichever millionaire wins the election there will still be numerous Americans who think just like Sununu does. And many of those people are comfortably ensconced in positions of power in businesses and organizations where they can hire, fire and promote people. Some of them are even in law enforcement or politics. Think they'll be fair minded? It's not for nothing that Col. Wilkerson said that the GOP, his party, is full of racists.
QUESTIONS 1) Was Sununu out of line? 2) Does he owe Powell or the President an apology? 3) Should the President make a stronger statement about Sununu? 4) Why hasn't Romney been pressured to drop Sununu?
In our recent radio show we raised the issue of why, with voters faced with massive income declines and stubbornly high unemployment, Mitt Romney has so far been unable to surpass President Obama's poll numbers. Not only is Romney staying ever so slightly behind President Obama but recent swing state polling data would seem to indicate that Romney might even be headed for an electoral college beatdown were the election to be held today. Of course the election is not going to be held today but in November after the presidential and vice presidential debates and one more jobs report. So although Mitt Romney hasn't made tingles run up the legs of likely American voters the night isn't over and Mitt still might get lucky. This is despite the fact that some conservatives and Republicans are essentially edging away from him BEFORE the election while some normally Republican voters who hate President Obama are nonetheless resigned to voting for the President instead of Mitt Romney.
Sheryl Harris, a voluble 52-year-old with a Virginia drawl, voted twice for George W. Bush. Raised Baptist, she is convinced -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- that President Barack Obama, a practicing Christian, is Muslim.
So in this year's presidential election, will she support Mitt Romney? Not a chance.
"Romney's going to help the upper class," said Harris, who earns $28,000 a year as activities director of a Lynchburg senior center. "He doesn't know everyday people, except maybe the person who cleans his house."
Neither the President nor Romney is extroverted. Both men keep a close circle of friends and advisers, beyond which they don't venture willingly or for long periods of time. Doing so can be enervating. This is classic introverted behavior. I know because I am an introvert. But introversion doesn't mean you don't have a lot to say to and a lot to share with certain people. And recently Mitt Romney shared his strategy for winning with a small group of supporters. Thanks to Grand Central for bringing this to our attention. Mother Jones magazine infiltrated a recent Romney fundraiser (they won't confirm the location or timing) and took these videos of Romney. Romney said that President Obama started out with an advantage of poor voters who believed they were victims. Although Romney's statements were somewhat insulting and factually untrue, that's really almost besides the point. What I was fascinated by was the passion that animated his statements, though I vehemently disagreed with them. Romney shows a heretofore unseen self-awareness and vigor. We see the calculation of the 1% businessman who knows that he must carefully market a message to suburban white independents and hopefully peel off a few Hispanics while holding on to his own lunatic fringe. The reason the lunatic fringe is both lunatic and well...a fringe is that they actually believe that their candidate should yell their slogans from the rooftop every chance he gets. Ironically if Romney loses this election it may well be because he veered too far to the right and never could connect to those middle swing voters. These videos do show that however unsure some conservatives might feel about Romney's bona fides on immigration, affirmative action, abortion or contraception when it comes to economic issues he is Mr. 1%. If Romney could put this energy in his campaign President Obama might have something to worry about. I'm happy the videos came out. Romney lays out what appears to be a cool contempt for poor voters, those that he thinks of as lazy. I am sure there will be some damage control around this but it's good to get things out on the table, I always say.
There are numerous problems with Romney's statements but honestly I currently lack the time to point all of them out. I will just say that most people who don't pay federal income taxes don't pay because they are either retired and living on Social Security payments or they are so doggone poor that they don't even earn enough to qualify to pay federal income taxes. That would be somewhere around $20,000/yr. Does Mitt Romney really think that people earning $20,000/yr need to pay more taxes? Do you know anyone who is earning that kind of money who is happy because although they're poor they're not paying federal income taxes? Would you rather earn $20 million/yr and pay 13% in income taxes or earn $20,000/yr and pay nothing? If you have to think about your answer to that question you might be named Mitt Romney. The other factoid which Romney left out is that in 2011 there were a fair number of Fortune 500 corporations which paid extremely low income tax rates, no income taxes at all, or in a few cases wound up owed money by the Federal government. There is also the unpleasant fact that the Federal government spends more money on corporate welfare than it does on social welfare. Are those "people" victims? Should we ensure they pay higher taxes? Anyway there are numerous other issues that are raised by this that maybe we can discuss today.
QUESTIONS 1) Is insulting half the nation a winning election strategy? 2) Does Romney have it right that he essentially has no chance with poor or lower middle class voters? 3) Why isn't Romney running a better campaign? 4) If you were Romney's campaign manager how would you turn this thing around? Is it too late? 5) Should Romney apologize, clarify more or distance himself from these comments? 6) Is this much ado about nothing, since each candidate essentially ignores the other side's base?
I woke up yesterday to news that American embassies in Libya and Egypt had been stormed. In Libya, the American ambassador and at least three other Americans had been killed. Wow. What could have caused this? Were we at war? What set it off? Did we need to put our button men on the street? I was not surprised to learn that this unbelievably awful film,allegedly by a right-wing American-Israeli filmmaker that no one seems to have heard of, had somehow popped up on some people's radar screens. There is a large mostly American and European neo-conservative cottage industry of print and visual media that likes to sell the idea of a clash of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic East. In this view Muslims are irretrievably backwards, violent, women-hating, cousin-banging religious nuts who can't process that it's no longer the 7th century. Of course from this mindset it is essential that we stand with the State of Israel and support them in their desperate attempt to steal the rest of Palestine for Jewish only settlement struggle against these fanatics. It is also rather important for these ideologues to emphasize the vile, violent, expansionary and reactionary aspects of Islam while glossing over the fact that historically, European Christians weren't exactly known for tolerance of Jews.
This "clash of civilizations" idea wouldn't gain much traction were there indeed not plenty of Muslims ready, eager and willing to play their part. I mean is this stupid or what? Someone (and we don't really know who) makes an ineptly offensive film insulting Muhammad and depicting Muslims as dumb, violent brutes. Outraged Muslims take to the streets to denounce the film and commit dumb brutish acts, including the murder of an American ambassador. I guess some Egyptians and Libyans must not be familiar with the concept of getting played. I guess SOMEONE proved their point. Some Muslims should get it through their skulls that burning things, rioting and shooting people any time someone expresses an opinion you don't like is so 14th century. What happened to boycotts, peaceful protests, writing a book attacking your critics or trying to bring down someone's career behind the scenes?
Free speech in this country still includes the right to satirize, mock or even crudely insult people, ideologies or concepts you don't like, including religion. Remember The Life of Brian? Pi$$ Christ? The Last Temptation of Christ? Do you also remember the violent American Christian protests where they ran amok and started burning things? No? Me neither. Why is it that blasphemy is still a real concept for some people? Honestly I think all religions are equally valid and equally silly. I think it is is just as ridiculous to believe that God talked to you through a burning bush and told you he loved you and yours more than anyone else as it is to believe that God is going to send you to hell for eternity unless you worship him and think he's three beings in one as it is to believe that God sent a prophet who told anyone who believed in him that they were thus entitled to convert people by the sword. We should remember that Arabic is spoken in Africa for many of the same reasons that English, French and Spanish are spoken in the Americas: invasion, conquest, enslavement and settlement. No religion's metaphorical hands are clean. Everyone has awful deeds in their past.
But if I'm the State Department, I really don't care that the people outside my embassy have been lied to and manipulated. I really don't care that their little feelings have been hurt by someone calling them names and making fun of their religion. Anyone attacking my embassy or consulate is going to get two in the head. The embassy is sovereign territory. You don't want other nations or organizations to get the idea that they can just roll up to your embassy and do what they like. If the embassy is attacked it may well be overrun but there ought to be a pile of dead attackers laying on the ground when all is over. Tragically there apparently wasn't the US protection that there should have been at the Benghazi consulate but it is important to note that Libyan forces fought the attackers, along with an American rescue mission. So we can't say that all Libyans were involved with this or even that the attacks had popular support. We just don't know. By many accounts the consulate attack was simply too well organized and armed to have been the work of spontaneous rioters. Even in Libya I doubt everyone has quick access to mortars and rockets or the skill to coordinate volleys. So this is a bit curious don't you think?
This is my house. I will not allow violence against this house.
We simply can not allow violent people of any faith to enforce a rioter's veto over speech that they do not like. That takes us back to the days where blasphemy and heresy were crimes punishable by imprisonment, torture and death. If people do not like religious criticism or ridicule, unfair or not, their option is to ignore it or to respond in kind. I am an atheist. I have doubts that Muhammad existed but if he did I don't think that God or angels were talking to him. Portions of the Qu'ran or Bible or Torah are laughably ridiculous. If reading that fills a true believer with insensate rage, that's too freaking bad.
Post Enlightenment we have the right to disdain religion. In some majority Muslim countries, that's not necessarily the case. Fortunately several American Muslims are pointing out the benefits and primacy of free speech. Hopefully that idea will spread across the world. Because if a small minority of crazy Muslims goes berserk every time someone "blasphemes", more people in majority non-Muslim nations will start to ask some unpleasant questions about the costs and benefits of Muslim immigration. And that falls right into the "clash of civilizations" meme that the Right is pushing. I think it is time to stop any moves towards any sort of international blasphemy standard. I don't want any sort of internal American limitations on free speech for religious sensibilities.
This is a political movie," said Bacile. "The US lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas." Bacile, a California property developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believed the movie would help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world. "Islam is a cancer, period," he said repeatedly. The two-hour movie, Innocence of Muslims, cost $5m (£3.1m) to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, said Bacile, who wrote and directed it. The film claims Muhammad was a fraud. An English-language 13-minute trailer on YouTube shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons. It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse.
We should be VERY wary of provocateurs like Bacile, if that is indeed his real name.. Not only are his name and identity in question but an actress now claims that the film was edited post production to include insults about Muhammad. "Bacile" may have been a Coptic Christian who was upset about Muslim violence against his co-religionists and linked up with anti-Muslim people in the US and elsewhere to promote his film. If I were really really conspiracy minded I would wonder if this is indeed some sort of attempt to influence the US election by either making the US president look weak or make him feel constrained to finally give the greenlight for a US attack on Iran. But if that were the case Romney's stupid response to events frittered away an opportunity to look Presidential while making even some other Republicans question his decorum.
We don't have to excuse or explain away the submoronic responses of some Egyptians and Libyans to realize there are some right-wingers who have some very real reasons for wanting to gin up trouble between the US and the Islamic world. They believe in a religious war and they want one. Some of these folks are bigots who seek to deny American Muslims the rights they themselves enjoy and carve out exceptions to free speech that offends them while hypocritically wanting to keep the right to offend others. These people should not be silenced for that would be wrong. But we don't have to accept their world view either. The attacks in Libya and Egypt also show why I tend to be against foreign interventions and an activist neo-con foreign policy. We end up making more enemies and/or helping people that really don't like us very much. As far as Libya goes, some Russians evidently could not resist saying "We told you so".
Yevgeny Y. Satanovsky, president of the Institute of the Middle East in Moscow, said American leaders should not expect “one word of sympathy” from their Russian counterparts.
“It is a tragedy to the family of the poor ambassador, but his blood is on the hands of Hillary Clinton personally and Barack Obama personally,” Mr. Satanovsky said. He said Russian warnings against intervention in the Middle East came from the bitter experience of the Soviets in Afghanistan.
“They lynched Qaddafi — do you really think they will be thankful to you?” he said. “They use stupid white people from a big rich and stupid country which they really hate.”
QUESTIONS 1) Do you think the timing of this has anything to do with the American election?
2) Do you support limitations on speech that insults religion?
3) Did you or do you think the Libyan intervention was a wise decision?
4) How can the US avoid being blamed for things it had nothing to do with?
5) How did the protesters even find out about this film?
Do you remember all the rhetoric over the Dream Act? When the President decided to implement via executive decision what he couldn't get passed by Congress there were a lot of stories about how unfair it was that someone who was brought illegally to the United States as a child and had graduated high school or college faced the possibility of deportation and couldn't find work legally. Tears of compassion were shed and calls for change went up throughout the land. It was estimated in think tank studies, media reports and official/unofficial government statements that roughly about 800,000 illegal immigrants would be eligible under the Dream Act. Congress refused to change the law. President Obama, it being an election year, suddenly decided that he had powers that he had previously denied having and ordered the relevant agencies to cease and desist deportations of people that would have fallen under the Dream Act, had it been passed which it wasn't. Now this is a rather unique sort of approach to the law. Order people to act according to a law which doesn't exist. Fascinating. Anyway yesterday was the first day that illegal immigrants were eligible to apply for work permits and deferred action status under this new "law" which was not passed by Congress and doesn't exist. Of course now that they have what they want the details of the new policy turn out not quite to be what either the President or the advocates for illegal residence in the United States had told everyone they were. Instead of 800,000 people being eligible, the new estimate is 1.7 million!!. That's right, over twice the initial widely reported number. And it's not going to be only high school or college graduates who are all going to build the next Facebook or Microsoft, that is if they didn't have to worry about those pesky ICE agents. Nah. The new policy includes not only the people with degrees or who graduated high school but those people who are working towards a GED, people that aren't working towards a GED but will be at some time in the future or people who aren't even in high school yet but may be eligible for this deferred action status at some distant yet to be determined time.
In short dropouts, middle school kids, heck just about EVERYBODY will be eligible. It's a rolling amnesty. If you are an illegal immigrant and don't fit the deferred action criteria, don't sweat it. Just wait until you do. After all the Administration has already announced that short of committing a felony, they aren't going to even pretend to try to deport you. ICE has more important things to do than deport illegal immigrants, like allegedly running a female frat house and sexually harassing male workers.
The MPI estimates are up from the 1.39 million figure provided on June 15 —reflecting the updated DHS guidelines that youth lacking a high school or GED degree would be eligible to apply for deferred action as long as they have re-enrolled by the date of their application. While USCIS will only accept applications for the DACA initiative from applicants 15 and older, the deferred action policy also will apply to qualified unauthorized immigrants —regardless of whether they are older or younger than 15 — who are already in removal proceedings or might be in the custody of immigration officials in the future
As you may remember I opposed the Dream Act and I oppose this deferred action policy, which is the Dream Act in all but name. Why? Because this is MY country. It's not a country for illegal immigrants. If you want to be an American, either be born here or get permission from the people living here. Now this is usually where someone talks about the Native Americans and thinks that ends the conversation. It really shows how important it is to maintain a strict immigration policy. Show me a country existing today that has the exact same ethnic mix and form of government that it did 500 years ago. Those are rare. Things change. What was done to the Native Americans was wrong. It can't be undone. That has absolutely nothing to do with immigration policy in the 21st century. Maybe you want to argue that America has no right to exist and should be dismantled. I don't see things that way. Other countries, including some that are exporting millions of illegal immigrants into the US have the same history of European conquest, displacement, rape, enslavement and settlement that the US has. The Mexicans weren't exactly best friends with the Comanche or Apache. No country is quiet about millions of foreigners moving in without permission. Just about every group of people on the planet at some level have a "this is mine" relationship to the patch of earth they call home. Most of us are no longer nomadic hunter gatherers or herdsmen. I see the country as my house. I have a nice house. There are millions of homes that are much nicer and larger and millions that are not as nice but this one is mine. The only people that are allowed in my house are people that I want there. And if I decide that I don't want them there any longer, they have to leave. My basement is larger than some people's homes, as I am sure some people's basements are larger than my entire home. Does that give someone a little less fortunate the right to enter and stay in my basement, on the grounds that it looks to them like I'm not using it anyway? Even if they cleaned things up and lived quietly I wouldn't like it. And if they catch an attitude about how I run my house and agitate to invite more of their friends in I would like it even less.
Is it fair that I have a nicer house than some people? Is it fair that every day I see the same bum on the expressway exit begging for a handout? Do I owe that person anything? Do I owe him my house? Nope. I don't owe him anything. Similarly it is unfortunate that Mexico and large portions of Central America are apparently relatively unpleasant places to live and that so many residents there would evidently prefer to live somewhere nicer. But that doesn't give them any right to move to the US without permission and stay. And I feel the same way about people outside of the US regardless of where they came from. If you come here legally then I will call you an American and welcome you as a countryman. Otherwise, please go home. Race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion or any other characteristic is immaterial to me in this matter. I understand why someone would want to move to the US. I sympathize. But I also would like a new 2013 Bentley. It doesn't mean anyone owes me one. As we have discussed before no one begrudges the executive branch the right to gently stretch the law or use discretion in what cases it takes up. Although I am rarely fortunate enough to get off with just a warning I understand that police do not stop every speeder nor do they issue tickets to everyone they stop. A kid caught shoplifting may get a scary lecture in the back office instead of a juvenile record. A man who beats up his jerk brother-in-law for hurting his sister might get a wink and a nod from the prosecutor and lowered charges. I get all that. That doesn't bother me. That's not what is happening here.
If a local police chief were to suddenly announce that going forward his department would no longer enforce speed laws that's a problem. Or to put it in even more relevant terms should Mitt Romney become President he will want to lower taxes. He probably won't get that through the Senate. Let's say that a frustrated President Romney announced that since Congress wouldn't act he had to. If a President Romney were to direct the IRS and Treasury not to investigate or prosecute anyone who refused to pay capital gains or estate taxes, would you think that a good idea? Or would you rage at an arrogant princeps taking the law into his own hands? There is a difference between discretion and dismissal. And this executive Dream Act crosses that line. ICE Agents face suspension for arresting illegal immigrants-even though that is the law of the land. As you might expect the ICE union is not very happy about this. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, fresh from her general loss in the Supreme Court announced that Arizona would not be issuing driver's licenses to anyone allowed in under the new policy. For now at least states still have the right to do that. For now...
What's your take?
Is this something that is long overdue and compassionate?
If you like the country as it is are you a bad person?
Do you think the economy will be better off with millions more workers?
What is the solution to the problem of illegal immigration?
If I stood in front of an audience which had a sizable proportion of Jewish Americans and claimed (even tongue in cheek) that my political opponent would have them "back in death camps" some people might consider that a desperate attempt for votes and something of a slanderous low blow. I might even get a verbal brush back from the ADL or AIPAC chiding me for lightly using such metaphors. But Vice-President Joe Biden is not a person who is worried about such things. In Danville, VA , a city that is roughly half black and happens to have been the final capital of the Confederacy, and in front of an audience which NBC News stated was representative of the city, Vice-President Biden spoke dismissively of Republican plans to change Wall Street regulation.
Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a Republican-led effort to loosen new regulations on Wall Street would put voters "back in chains." "Romney wants to, he said in the first 100 days, he's gonna let the big banks again write their own rules," Biden said of the GOP nominee's proposals to roll back the Obama administration's financial reforms. "'Unchain Wall Street!'" Lowering his voice, Biden added, "They're going to put you all back in chains."
Now of course the Administration in the person of one Stephanie Cutter, Obama deputy campaign manager, strongly defended Vice-President Biden's statements.
We have no problem with those comments," said Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." Pressed on whether President Obama himself agrees with those comments, Cutter said the full context of the remarks was important. "[Obama] probably agrees with Joe Biden's sentiments," Cutter said. "He's using a metaphor to talk about what's going to happen."
Ok. Fair enough. I think it's a bit odd to be using language that could be interpreted as fear mongering of a return to SLAVERY because of different ideas about Wall Street regulation but there you are. Perhaps leaving Wall Street to its own devices, free from regulation or the long arm of the criminal law really is akin to putting Americans -especially Black Americans - back in chains. So maybe I should thank Vice-President Joe Biden for having the courage and the commitment to stand up and say negative things about his political rivals, the Republicans. I mean it must take a lot of moxie to talk bad about your rivals. Not everyone has the guts to criticize people on the other side politically. As Biden implied, maybe those evil Republicans really do want to protect big banks and their executives from justice and not put those dastardly devils, those rascally reprobates, those piggish parasites into prison where they so richly deserve to be.
There's just one problem with Biden's self-serving narrative of the Administration being the one that wants to go after Wall Street while the Republicans want to coddle and protect Wall Street.
It's not true.
In news which was ignored by too many people the Justice Department recently announced that it would not be prosecuting Goldman Sachs or anyof its employees for financial wrongdoing arising out of the 2008 financial crisis. This would be the same Goldman Sachs that was selling crappy bundled mortgage backed securities to clients and telling them they were A+ rated while describing them as crap in internal documents. This would be the same Goldman Sachs that journalist Matt Taibbi famously described as a vampire squid. for its centrality to the financial rot at the heart of American finance. And this would be the same Justice Department that is headed by Eric Holder, whose former law firm has Goldman Sachs as a client and whose boss, the President, received over $1 million in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs in 2008 alone. The relative lack of engagement in going after systematic misdeeds by financial institutions has been noticed.
The problem isn't a shortage of scandalous stories. We've seen a lot of those. What we haven't seen, at least here in the United States, is a single indictment of a senior Wall Street banker from the United States Department of Justice. And that's what has these political insiders concerned.
Questions raised
A growing number of people are privately expressing concern at the Justice Department's long-standing pattern of inactivity, obfuscation and obstruction. Mr. Holder's past as a highly-paid lawyer for a top Wall Street firm, Covington and Burling, is being discussed more openly among insiders. Covington & Burling was the law firm which devised the MERS shell corporation that has since been implicated in many cases of mortgage and foreclosure fraud. Wells Fargo has already been implicated in the laundering of money for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered as many as sixty thousand people, as well as having been found to have engaged in some of the most egregious borrower fraud. Now, as attorney Field notes, it's even illegally closing the bank accounts of unfriendly bloggers to extract revenge.
Despite its massive rap sheet, which includes investor fraud and the bribing of Alabama officials, and despite the SEC investigation of its "London whale" debacle, JPMorgan Chase is is defying a subpoena in California and refusing to turn its emails over to a judge. It's charged with the same kind of criminal activity that was behind the Enron scandal: manipulating energy markets. And despite Jamie Dimon's suggestion that the head of the "London whale's" group would be forced to return her ill-gotten millions, she was allowed to resign and keep the money. There's no sign that a criminal investigation of this affair is underway, despite Dimon's own admission that laws may have been broken.
In short, Biden is in a very flimsy glass house when it comes to throwing stones about who's gonna be tough on Wall Street. Very flimsy indeed. So if Biden wants to make the argument that Romney and Ryan are going to put Americans "back in chains" based on their love of Wall Street I would ask Biden when did he or Obama ever take the chains off? Is Biden really going to argue that I should vote for him because the Republicans won't prosecute Wall Street either? O-kay.
The problem as I see it is that the political establishment and the financial establishment are far too closely intertwined. When you can throw millions at a candidate, they're going to listen to what you say and return your phone calls. And when there is a revolving door between government and business, there should be no surprise that some of the people in government who are supposed to be regulating or even prosecuting business, occasionally need reminders of what their job description really is.
The Republicans, who have spent the past four years calling President Obama everything but a child of God, certainly do not have any room for sanctimonious outrage over Biden's remarks. But just because their hands are dirty doesn't mean that Biden's (and Obama's) hands are clean. There's some other analysis I want to get into about fear mongering, black people, progressives and the fall election but that will have to wait for a later post. Suffice it to say for now that no I don't believe that the world as we know it will come to an end if the "wrong" man should win.
What's your take?
Were Biden's comments appropriate?
Are the Republicans misconstruing them? Is this minor league nonsense?
Is there any difference between the two parties and their devotion to capital?
