For those concerned about how the banks are stealing homes, you can get involved by signing protest petitions at Change dot org.
Banks regularly practice parallel foreclosure. While accepting homeowners into government sponsored mortgage programs, they simultaneously foreclose on a person's home, then resell it, even if the homeowner was complying with terms of the government program!
If you decide to sign the protest petitions, don't feel obligated to list your real address, zip code or local city, list a fake one. However, you should probably use a real name and real email address.
If Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are not against this they are for it, on orders from their Wall Street masters.
Rather that the thinly disguised health insurance company bail out the House should have been holding hearings on why the financial meltdown happed, who was responsible, and seeing to it they were prosecuted. Instead we got Pelosi turning a blind eye just as she did with her refusal to look into how Bush was able to invade Iraq.
posted by Mr. Mike : 4:35 AM
Good luck in dealing with whatever issues.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 4:44 AM
I hope everything in real life goes OK and you are back soon.
posted by Anonymous : 6:05 AM
Mr. Mike, I assume that Change dot org might have some connection to Obama or Move on dot org.
What I find ironic is that Change dot org kind of proves that Obama probably could have done more good spearheading this group than being president.
Either way, parallel foreclosure is wrong and helping homeowners fight back against the bank is a good thing.
Well, to be frank, if I come back, I'll be "shopping" for a new audience. Most of the readers I have now seem to want me to become a Ron Paulie. Paulism is the "thing" now, just as Obamaism was the "thing" back in 2008.
Naturally, then as now, my job is to be Mr. Contrary.
So if this site is to continue, it may be rebranded purely in terms of strict anti-libertarianism. Take it or leave it!
Sounds like a plan to me Joseph. Personally, I come here precisely because of your contrary nature. There are things Ron Paul supports that I do to, and that Liberals are supposed to support as well, but I can't vote for any Libertarian for any reason, just so we're clear (I support Democracy, not anarchy, after all). I just wish some of those things were supported more by so-called Liberal politicians (and, heck, even citizens) than just Kucinich and a couple other marginal Dems. I suppose though, that is the USA we find ourselves in......leaning so far to the right that Liberals have to become righties to seem like they are centrists. Anyway, hope you come back soon and that your real world problems get resolved.
posted by Gus : 6:29 AM
Keep doing your thing Joseph. I enjoy your critical thinking on the many topics you broach, especially objections to libertarianism and President Obama. I may not comment much but know that you have a big fan over here. And to leave on as farcical a note as Ron Paul, Bobbabooie 20012.
Of course the car-bombings of Iranian nuke scientists are the work of Israel. Even the New York TimesandFox News point in that direction, which means that the artist wants a signature on his canvas. What's interesting is the methodology: There are quieter, subtler ways to kill people.
The Obama administration has strongly denied any involvement. However, the Jerusalem Post, citing a respected blogger named Richard Silverstein (who in turn cites an Israeli intelligence source), claims that Mossad trained terrorists from the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), and that the US was necessarily involved. Silverstein's blog post is here; come to your own assessment.
What’s disingenuous about this approach is that the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip in this black ops war against Iran. They developed Stuxnet with Israel. The very same MEK terrorists sticking magnetic bombs to the car doors of Iranian scientists are the ones our government is considering giving a clean bill of health by removing them from the terror list.
Silverstein goes on to ask the right question:
If Iran were assassinating Israeli scientists or the Soviet Union assassinated Edward Teller or J. Robert Oppenheimer does anyone in their right mind believe it wouldn’t arouse a fierce backlash against the perpetrators?
Conclusion: The Israelis hope to provoke a reaction. The car bombings cannot seriously slow the Iranian nuke program, but they can prod Iran to retaliate. In doing so, Iran would give the U.S. the casus belli which the neocons seek.
Israel wants war.
Why would Obama go along with this dangerous game? Well, I haven't seen much "Obama hates Israel" propaganda this election season. And Obama has raised money at an impressive clip.
A war with Iran would not be surgical, brief, or one-sided. As memorably noted by Gen. Anthony Zinni, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you will love Iran. It is a huge country, well-defended, with a fierce sense of nationalism. No air campaign, even if prolonged, will end the problem. Regardless of how a conflict begins, it is most likely to end with lots of boots on the ground. A squad of special forces will not do the job.
Paradoxically, the quickest way to insure that the Iranians decide to go for a bomb may be to bomb them. The most predictable result of a military strike would be Iran's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the ejection of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras that watch every step of the Iranian enrichment process.
On the domestic political front: Mitt Romney has given clear signals that he supports the war conspiracy.
Obama? Despite the words written above, he seems to be more of a mixed bag. Although he may be as oily as Romney -- well, almost as oily -- the two men represent differing constituencies. The Democratic party leadership does not want war with Iran. The Demcoratic rank-and-filers, who have put up with an infinitude of crap from this president, will not tolerate that level of military adventurism.
Corrupt Obama may be, but I've never called him a neocon, and I don't think he wants to repeat Dubya's disaster on a larger scale.
On the other hand, it is likely that his administration allowed Israel and MEK to carry out these bombings. My guess is that he intends to play along with the war conspirators until re-election is secured. Until that point, he hopes to keep the pot bubbling without boiling over.
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I think you are right. Its all about the Causus Belli.
Col. Pat Lang's blog notes Panetta's comment about Iran working towards nuclear capabilities but not towards a nuclear weapon. He also notes that the odds of significant resistance to a US Navy intervention in the Gulf are small. US Navy has some pretty awesome capabilities, and its tough to play gorrilla war on the high seas.
Im not 100% convinced but its about tail risks. Did you ever read about the 2002 Millenium Challenge war games? And Admiral Van Riper? It seems to me sometimes entrenched special interests down play risks and play up rewards to get their way.
Like when the King of Lydia went to see the Delphic Oracle about the risks associated with war with Persia.
On another note have you come across the "I was just sh*tting you people" piece from this blog. I just thought it might amuse...
http://paulbibeau.blogspot.com/
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 1:23 PM
Car bombings do send a message to potential nuclear recruits: "We will kill you." Might just affect people who were thinking of getting into the atomic business.
You know, if I was an Ayatollah, I would authorise a program of tit for tat attacks on American and Israeli scientists.
But not right now. Better to just go into the planning stage. After all, doing it carefully avoids many problems.
I might look at other retaliatory measures. After all, what would we do?
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 3:14 AM
I guess I see this one differently or look at it from a different angle. Kind of like what Bob said. I thought it was foolish for Iran to release the information. This unequivocally demonstrates that Iran cannot protect its scientists especially since this is the 4th scientist killed.
The car bomb is a deterrent made to look like a terrorist attack. However, one can also believe that there are people within Iran that do not want to become nuclear because, frankly, it will end badly for them.
Now I do believe Israel is most likely responsible but I have a hard time believing that Iran can do anything about it. If Iran declared war on Israel they'd destabilize the whole region and possibly alienate their own allies in the process. They'd have zero chance in a war and much of their infrastructure would get wiped out.
What is likelier to happen is that Iran arranges some sort of retaliatory terrorist bombing targeting Israeli's. This kind of one upping terrorism could go on indefinitely. The wild card in the whole deal is the USA and the neocon insanity. In my opinion, if war happens it will be because of their influence.
As you've reported they are constantly beating the drum of war with Iran. Now whether it is because Israel wants them to or because they have an undying dream to usher in Armageddon I have no idea. Unfortunately, they are well funded and have considerable influence.
posted by gregoryp : 10:33 AM
Sir, if a gentleman were to pose an artistic project to various persons, say perhaps at kickstarter.com, and yet he defaults on his promise, what would you expect him to do to fulfill his promise?
posted by Anonymous : 3:16 PM
Anon, I would expect him to stay alive. And I would not expect very much out of him if he were without a job, without a single dollar -- no exaggeration -- and scrambling very hard not to be evicted into the cold eastern winter without shelter.
I cannot work on a comic book under these circumstances. I want that more than anything in the world, but I can't. I can't even afford the damned paper. I can't afford ink.
I will as soon as I can, if I survive. But you have NO idea how I am living right now.
If you have any further questions, my address is above.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was once considered a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, despite his strong resemblance to a spoiled squash. At the end of his term of office, Barbour pardoned or gave clemency to more than 200 criminals, including people convicted of murder and other very serious crimes. His predecessor had issued just one pardon.
The Mississippi Attorney General (who happens to be a Democrat) has issued a temporary injunction blocking further prisoner releases, because the state's constitution requires that prisoner requests for pardons be published 30 days beforehand.
The pardon/clemency list includes the brother of New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre. (The brother accidentally killed a friend while driving drunk.) Also pardoned were David Gatlin (recently denied parole), who shot his wife while she held their small son; Anthony McCray, who also shot his wife; socialite Karen Irby, convicted of manslaughter; and Joseph Ozment, who, while committing a robbery, shot a wounded man point blank in the head.
NRA fundamentalists should rejoice: Pardoned individuals are allowed to carry firearms under federal law.
Barbour has issued a statement defending his pardons. You can read it -- festooned with suitably captious commentary -- on a Mississippi-based blog called Cottonmouth.
Barbour's strange activities made me flash on another famous Republican -- Fred Thompson. Although you may know him best as an actor, he was a lawyer before going Hollywood. He played himself in Marie, a fine 1985 film starring Sissy Spacek. The movie tells the story of Marie Ragghianti, who courageously exposed a scandal centering on certain key cronies of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton, who ran the state from 1975 to 1979. From Wikipedia:
His administration seemed rife with "cronyism", and this became more apparent when Roger Humphreys, a convicted double murderer, was pardoned for his crimes and it became public knowledge that his father was a county chairman for Blanton. It was later discovered that members of Blanton's staff were involved in the apparent sale of pardons.
In January 1979, with his term expiring, the State's Pardon Board began to make a series of pardons that seemed to be either the product of sheer politics or open bribery.
Blanton had fired Marie Ragghianti for exposing the pay-for-pardons scandal. This site has more:
Blanton was never charged in the clemency scandal, but made the ill-advised decision on January 15, 1979 to pardon three prisoners and reduce the sentences of 49 others, including 24 convicted murderers. Receiving the most attention was Roger Humphreys, who had murdered his ex-wife and her lover in 1973 and was not up for parole until 1984. Blanton commuted his sentence to time served. Humphreys, the son of a Blanton campaign manager, had already been subject to cushy treatment, including working as a photographer for the state.
Let's get back to Barbour.
One of the best reviews of the Barbour pardon scandal comes from this site, run by R.S. Ruckman, who specializes in the politics of pardons.
15 of Barbour's recipients had multiple convictions, in multiple years. Almost 30 were found guilty of murder, manslaughter, accessory to murder or the like. One third of them were originally sentenced to life in prison. It appears three literally walked right out of prison (Harper, Kambule and Irby).
Yes, it was a classic example of just about every thing the pardon power should not be. The only thing that seems to be missing, for now, is some hint of "politics" (donors, supporters, friends, relatives, inside influence and the like). But, give it time. Barbour clearly could have spread these decisions over a period of months, if not years, making each one a little more well-considered, a little less suspicious looking and - for those who really were deserving - something barely worth public celebration. But, no, a Republican governor, in the South, and potential presidential nominee has to keep up appearances.
The firm will rely on Barbour and Hurst’s expertise in economic development, strategic planning and government relations. Barbour also will be working for the BGR Group, a Washington lobbying firm he helped establish before he became governor
You can learn more about BGR in this Talking Points Memo story. These lobbyists are tied in with union-busting, a Milwaulkee energy utility called WE Energies, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. TPM neglects to mention that Walker sold WE Energies to the Koch brothers for "pennies on the dollar."
The Blanton scandal revisited: If the reader will forgive a small side-jaunt into assassination lore, the Ray Blanton scandal of the late 1970s had a strange connection to the murder of Martin Luther King. This site gives part of the story:
Undercover agents, testing how far the administration would go, met with a bodyguard and asked how much it would take to secure the release of James Earl Ray, who had murdered civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. The bodyguard responded that Ray was too high-profile a prisoner for clemency, but it was possible that he could be allowed to escape for the right price (incidentally, Ray did escape in 1977 along with a handful of other inmates; it was unlikely to be a Blanton administration plot, however, since Blanton promptly called in the troops and Ray and his fellow fugitives were recaptured within days).
I have heard -- but cannot now confirm -- that one of the recipients of an otherwise-inexplicable Blanton pardon was a prisoner who helped James Earl Ray to escape. The fact that Blanton called in the troops is neither surprising nor reassuring: Claiming that a prisoner was "shot while trying to escape" is one of the oldest tricks in the book. (There had been several attempts on Ray's life.)
The escape occurred during the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearings. During a little-noticed 1999 civil case brought by Coretta Scott King, it was established that, immediately after Ray's escape, an FBI SWAT team swarmed the woods surrounding Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Lewis Stokes, Chairman of the HSCA, called Blanton and pressured him to make sure that the FBI did not kill Ray.
I don't know what Stokes said, but he must have found the right words.
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Some of Abe Lincoln's underlings were selling pardons for prisoners at Camp Douglas. Pardon scandals have been around a while but it does make you wonder where Barbour's overblown head was at.
Everyone paid so much attention to the New Hampshire Republican primary that the Democratic contest -- if we may call it that -- has been ignored. Turns out Hillary won ten percent, which is pretty good when you consider that all of those votes were write-ins, and she has explicitly said that she does not want the nomination.
Don't jump to conclusions about Obama's vulnerability. Since the winner of the "contest" was a foregone conclusion, only 60,000 people showed up to vote for Obama. Thus, a write-in campaign engineered by die-hard Clinton fans scared up 6000 ballots. That sounds reasonable.
Too bad she didn't get, say, 30% of the vote. Things would really start to get fun.
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Remarkable after the hatchet job the Matthews and Olbermanns did on her back in 2008. I'm sure more than a few Kossholes have their panties up their cracks about it.
posted by Mr. Mike : 5:11 PM
The Kossholes who scolded Hillary supporters for being racist are through with Obama. Now they want Ron Paul who *is* a racist.
If most people are resigned to Obama "winning" every Democratic Primary, a write Hillary in movement might actually cause a few upsets (mind the pun) in some states.
I was told yesterday that she is likely to resign her post, and take 6 months off, before coming back and running with Obama as his VP.
I dont know what to think.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 3:52 AM
I've been looking for confirmation of the New Hampshire primary results on the Democratic side, but there are no news outlets reporting on write-ins for Hillary Clinton. However, I've easily found numerous articles crowing about how Ron Paul came in second place as a write-in on the Democratic ballot. There's something rotten going down (again).
"Patriots," Paul, plutocracy and pseudo-progressives
Consider this post a follow-up to the one below.
The message reproduced to the right comes from Zero Hedge. One can, of course, find many similarly inane comments scattered throughout blogland.
This particular example of inanity stands out because the outrageous contradiction on display here illustrates a much larger problem. This fellow considers himself a "Born Patriot" yet identifies himself with an image of the Confederate flag.
Ron Paul has, at times, spoken in favor of secession. If ever he were to provide "aid and comfort" to any serious attempt to bring about secession, he should be tried and executed under Article Three, section 3 of the United States Constitution. Yet his supporters label themselves patriots.
At this writing, Paul will probably win second place in the New Hampshire primary. I don't expect much from the Republicans -- but is it really too much to ask the party of Lincoln to favor the concept of maintaining the union under any and all circumstances? Apparently so. (As we shall see, some alleged "liberals" also have no problem rationalizing Paul's treasonous instincts.)
What have we come to? What would Honest Abe think about Paul's popularity?
Modern conservatives are a contradictory bunch: They continually threaten to upend the very ideals they claim to cherish.
A few days ago, we looked at the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic church. We noted that the people who bray loudest about their loyalty to the papacy are also the ones who, if they don't get their way, are the likeliest to join a schismatic movement. Similarly, the tea partiers proclaim their loyalty to the founding fathers even as they continually threaten to take up arms against an elected government, should that government do things unapproved by the libertarians. Sometimes the baggers make that threat in a sly and subtle fashion; sometimes (as in the case of Sharron Angle), they can be overt. But the threat remains, always there, lingering in the air.
Let's give this threat its proper name: Fascism.
The Confederacy -- revered by the Paulites -- was the first attempt at a fascist government: A one-party plutocracy founded on slavery and fueled by appeals to the most irrational aspects of the human psyche. The libertarians who molded Ron Paul's thinking admired fascists like Mussolini and Pinochet. These ideologues also tend to admire Joe McCarthy, who came to prominence by defending the Nazi perpetrators of the Malmedy massacre, and whose political mentors had pre-war records as fascist sympathizers.
Yet libertarian propagandists try to convince naive youngsters that FDR was pro-fascist...!
On the left side of the aisle, the situation is almost as bad. I loathe and decry the recent attempts by Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller and others to make Ron Paul palatable to liberals. Stoller is a particularly vile revisionist historian:
As the New Deal era model sheds the last trappings of anything resembling social justice or equity for what used to be called the middle class (a process which Tom Ferguson has been relentlessly documenting since the early 1980s), the breakdown will become impossible to ignore.
My god. What an absurdity. What indefensible and ludicrous propaganda.
FDR, following in the footsteps of the preceding generation's progressive movement, created the middle class. You can't hold the New Deal responsible for the attacks on the middle class that began only after Reaganites did everything they could to dismantle the New Deal. That's like blaming Sharon Tate for the Manson family murders.
Stoller claims that the New Deal was based on "warmongering." Back in FDR's day, that idea would have made sense only to someone like Robert McCormack. Or to William Randolph Hearst. Or to the Bund. Or to the fascist sympathizers who later went on to found the John Birch Society. Yes, Naked Capitalism is flirting with Birchism, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. Even as he extols the virtues of Paul, the young and ambitious Stoller (who was, of course, a fervent Obot just three short years ago) trashes the memories of Lincoln, FDR and Woodrow Wilson in terms that would make sense only to a Glenn Beck aficionado.
Stoller blames World War II on Roosevelt and the Civil War on Lincoln. Not so long ago, one would have encountered these sentiments only in pro-fascist fringe periodicals. How much distance separates Stoller from, say, William Dudley Pelley? Or George Lincoln Rockwell? Or Eustace Mullins (who also wanted to end the Fed)? Or the folks who gave us The Thunderbolt and Angriff Press? Stoller may not be a racist, but his penchant for fascist-friendly historical revisionism places him in evil company.
Hell, even The Spotlight played it more coy. Perhaps I should revise my "flirting with Birchism" remark: Comparisons to the JBS are too soft to describe what Stoller is up to. I've read some back issues of American Opinion. Absurd as they were, they weren't this absurd.
Yet this guy gets published in The Nation...!
It is true that one wing of the fractured libertarian movement denounced Bush's atrocious war in Iraq. That factor explains why so many lefties have come to sympathize with Paul. But even in 2004 and 2005, I warned anti-war liberals against making common cause with the libertarians. What the followers of Ludwig von Mises want to do to the U.S. (and to the rest of the world) would make Dubya's attack on Baghdad seem comparatively gentle and kind.
Too many alleged leftists claim to be "too liberal for Obama" while simultaneously attacking the New Deal or offering rationalizations for libertarianism (which is just another word for plutocracy). Just like our friend "Born Patriot," these people have twisted themselves into living contradictions.
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I frankly cannot understand how in the world someone could construe Greenwald's position as being an attempt to make Ron Paul palatable to liberals. That's just not the case. What he tried to do was simple to point out the fact that Paul's *candidacy* was having the positive effect of bringing issues like anti-militarism and pro civil liberties back into the electoral debate - something that liberals are willing to sweep under the rug because the current White House resident happens to be a "liberal" himself. Greenwald has not said that Paul is a nice fellow, has not endorsed his candidacy and has not said that Paul is the lesser of the two evils.
It is only because of this blog and the warnings against libertarianism that I remain skeptical of Paul's motives. Have you seen his anti-war ad? If there was a democrat out there that had the cojones to put out an ad like that I'd be happy to back them. Unfortunately we are stuck with corporate sleazoids, by and large, with the nasty habit of capitulating to Republicans even when they have both houses of Congress and the presidency. It's quite strange. Ten years ago I thought all Republicans were scum and Democrats were well meaning idealists who couldn't get elected because they wouldn't sink to the depths of cynicism that Repubs would to get elected. Now I'm not so sure, but I can't help but see fascism more in the way perception of Paul has been manipulated by the media than in Paul's beliefs. He seems like a good man; or at least he seems like a better man than most members of Congress anyhow.
posted by Anonymous : 8:53 PM
I don't know about Greenwald but I agree about Stoller's posts. Seem seriously deluded to me.
Paul's version of libertarianism, and maybe all of them, looks like the fastest way to actual tyranny. See Somalia for a libertarian paradise.
posted by ralphb : 9:52 PM
I would agree with moshe...and Greenwald is not the only one. Rachel Maddow was raising serious hackles with her portrayal of Ron Paul recently, even tho she later denounced him. She was close to lauding or legitimizing him, but it was in service to a point. On a similar tangent, did you see where MTV falsely portrayed a poetry slam event in NH as a tribute to RP? The slam community has been irate over that.
posted by prowlerzee : 10:41 PM
I think the idea of the Confederacy as the world's first fascist government is interesting and should be pursued in a larger post. (See the Genoveses, The Mind of The Master Class for some really noxious stuff....) I'm not sure about it, though. For example, the Confederate central government was so weak it couldn't collect taxes effectively. For example, I don't see Jeff Davis as a charismatic leader figure. On the other hand, perhaps the Confederacy was an alpha version. However with the response to reconstuction, with the KKK and all, the (temporarily) defeated slaveholding elite invented (did they?) many of the mass forms of terror that would go on to assume such prominence in the 20th C.
As for Paul: If somebody on the D side were advocating for an end to the wars wars, both imperial and drug, they might pick up some votes. (Obama insulted marijuana users right out of the box in 2009.) Possibly the youth might not take kindly to being sent off to die in useless military adventures because the alternative is Wal-Mart or nothing? It's not Paul's fault that the Ds are derelict or worse, and Paul isn't responsible -- at least not solely -- for the rotten state of our discourse. And if whichever messenger points this out gets shot... Well, that's the fate of messengers.
Seems to me this is a very fine line to walk because the libertarian philosophy at its core has nothing to do with American values. Can we applaud the few elements that align themselves with the traditional liberal/progressive tradition?
Only if we remember that we're pulling off a few good apples on what is a poison tree.
I see this discussion going on between disillusioned Obamacrats. They supported an illusion and now they're howling with disappointment.
Here's my question--why didn't these same progs take on Obama directly, demand that he be primaried? The answer is not heralding Ron Paul for the few good positions he holds in an otherwise twisted philosophy. The solution is first admitting that liberals supported a man who turned out to be a poor leader, basically a marketed brand, and then work to correct the mistake made in 2008.
Peggy Sue
posted by Anonymous : 8:47 AM
I'm with you Joseph re: Greenwald. He's done some useful analysis of the anthrax affair but his libertarian mojo keeps getting in the way of his political assessments. One part of Stoller's grievance is an outright libertarian assault on FDR ( never addressing the fruits of the New Deal like the SEC, Glass-Steagal, the broad White House alliance with liberal Congressmen, the TVA and PWA/CWA public works). Another strain seems to stem from the old New Left off the shelf of revisionists like William A. Williams, who so hated American foreign policy from TR on that all government interventions became suspect.
Rand is right on Iraq, for largely the wrong reasons. But any sympathy progressives show him, even short of support, is due to either a misreading of history or ignorance of it.
Ron Paul will never be president. However, if he succeeds in starting a debate/conversation about the erosion of our civil liberties, the dangers of the MIC complex, and the endless wars that this country seems to want to fight, that will be a good thing. I believe this is why his philosophy on these issues resonate with so many people. They understand that we have given up so many of our liberties in order to be "safe" - which we are not. We will never be completely safe. What we now have in this country is a police state, constant surveillance, TSA searches (a farce), phones that can track our every move, surveillance of our e-mails, and now, thanks to Obama, indefinite detention for American citizens who "might" be suspected of being a terrorist. Shades of a certain Chilean dictator come to mind.
This is not the country I grew up in, nor is it the country I want to live in if we keep going down this very dangerous path. I would love to see a debate between Obama, Paul and Romney. It would certainly be a hell of a lot more important than whether or not we approve of gay marriage or who wants to take away our birth control. (Of course, the media would never allow this to happen).
posted by Maria : 12:09 PM
Your problem is, you're obtuse. Frankly. Sorry. If you weren't, you would recognize you could find that 95% of the "born patriot" commments would be and are...on a myriad of blogs,elsewhere etc. followed with support of some Islamophobic Israel-First war hawk--like Santorum, or even Gingrich. Not Ron Paul who is attacked for his (supposed) IslamoPHILIA!
Secession? Let's play your game: Ask the victims of Obama's drone bombing and the bulk of Iraqis if they would have preferred a vibrant secessionist movement afoot in the US for the past ten years, preventing the genocides against their innocents.
The America First committee of FDR's time, considering him a warmonger, was inhabited by many leftists and socialists, eg Norman Thomas.
The Libertarian Party --the core of the movement- OPPOSED the Iraq War, which Hillary Clinton supported and hoped would subjugate the Iraqis pronto.
Not that I'm a libertarian-as a protectionist however, I can, unlike you, put in comparative abeyance economic goals to attempt to bring down the second Evil Empire's warring-and preserve the Nation, providing an arena wherein your more selfish interests can be debated with others' admittedly also selfish interests....bringing in the interim the end to America's wreaking havoc in Pakistan, Afghan and now if Obama election strategy pays off.(see Cockburn today) ...Iran.
posted by Ken Hoop : 12:36 PM
What was it some of us used to say about the damned Obots? After making the mistake of a lifetime in 2008, they should STFU and crawl back under a rock never to be heard from again.
That still holds true for me.
posted by ralphb : 8:37 PM
I think Greewald's commentary was excellent, as always (and what is with people thinking he's a libertarian or has libertarian leanings?......is that way he rails against Wall Street all the time?). Frankly, it's entirely true that Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate, from either party raising these issues at all. Nearly the only politician from either party doing this as well. Greenwald merely points out that some of these issues are what Liberals should be talking about and fighting for. This doesn't mean he or any of us should be supporting Paul. Greenwald does not endorse him and strongly implies that he would not vote for him. But, come on, who else is campaigning against our genocidal killing of Arabs and Muslims? Nobody, that's who. Or our almost equally genocidal drug war. And police state. I could go on, but I won't. I'm not going to vote for Paul, that much is certain. But damned if I wouldn't like to find one single Democrat (other than Kucinich) speaking up loudly about such issues. At this point, Santorum would be about the only person I'd be willing to vote for Obama against Well, Bachmann and Perry too, but they have no chance at all. Ron Paul will never be president, precisely because of these very issues that he talks about. If it was only his economic platform, the Republicans would make sure he was their guy.
Having said all that, I totally understand your position Joseph, I just can't agree with it completely. I do not think Paul would be a good president, and I also don't think there is any chance at all he ever will be.
posted by Gus : 12:23 PM
Ron Paul is a f**king misogynist, an ob/gyn who opposes "partial birth abortion" when in fact there is no such thing, no such procedure, and of course he knows damn well there isn't.
Perhaps I should explain that I worked for a university department of ob/gyn for five years, and came to the conclusion that men simply shouldn't be allowed to specialize in that field.
For that matter, how many female MDs specialize in urology?--and how many men would willingly see a woman doctor for penis problems anyway? (or for anything else?)
That five years convinced me that if ya don't got one, you got no business treating anyone who does.
posted by LandOLincoln : 6:08 AM
Good essay, Joseph...but I also suggest this essay by Time Wise. He pretty much hits the nail on the head in regards to Greenwald and co. on their Ron Paul mad-on:
These days, saddled as we are with a lousy president who calls himself a Democrat, I find it hard to come up with reasons to call myself a Democrat.
Perhaps my motivation for continuing to use that label comes down to this: Most Democrats still feel comfortable in the real world. If you talk to a Democrat about an Obama policy you find detestable -- the refusal to renegotiate NAFTA, the continuation of a hopeless war in Afghanistan -- your verbal sparring partner will probably accept your premise, even if he or she does not agree with you. The two of you will share a foundational reality.
Moreover, your verbal sparring partner probably will not attempt to distract you with myths, anti-issues and hallucinated pseudo-problems. A blinkered Obama supporter (yes, there are a few left) may make you grit your teeth and clench your fist, but at least he won't start talking about a war on Christmas.
Yes, it’s that time of year when Republicans try to convince us that everything old, disproved, and thrown out is shiny, patriotic and new again. Angry sky gods, debunked scientific hypotheses, and myth trump rule of law, science, and reason.
Modern fundamentalists are rewriting history in the same way they like rewriting science. They place dinosaurs and modern people in their garden of Eden panoramas. Some now argue that the founders didn’t like “Darwinism” which wasn’t even around at that time Of course, that doesn’t stop Texas putting that kind’ve nonsense in textbooks. This also explains Michelle Bachmann’s odd notion that the founding fathers fought against slavery.
Well put. (Except for that "kind've.")
Another example of reheated nonsense popping up in the current Republican primaries is Ron Paul’s obsession This is a completely debunked set of economic philosophies and musings roughly associated with Fredich Hayek who had a few good ideas about the pricing mechanisms of the market that were completely contorted by some fascists. If you ever hear any one say anything about Mises, cover your ears. It’s basically akin to learning astrophysics from a flat earther who denies the theory of gravity. No amount of historical data deters these people.
...in all my years of education, I would never believe that so much debunked tripe would form the central arguments of so many people running for president.
Since we're on tripe alert, take a look at the video I embedded at the top of this post. What we have here is a 2007 Romney commercial with a laugh track added. The guffaws help us to understand that the Mittster was lying out of his ass when he warned us about the great plot to install a "caliphate" that would rule the entire globe. The claim flies in the face of all evidence, and he knew it.
Although Bin Laden was an evil bastard, you can't point to a single authentic text, audio or video in which Bin Laden says: "Here's what we're fighting for: The establishment of a caliphate in the United States." Bin Laden's goals were always pretty clear. He didn't like Israel, he didn't like the American bases in Saudi Arabia, he considered the Saudis and other Arab potentates to be corrupt lackeys of the west, and he wanted to turn existing Islamic nations into salafist nightmares (just as Christian dominionists want to establish a fundamentalist nightmare in the U.S.). But to the best of my knowledge, Bin Laden never talked about establishing a caliphate in the U.S. or in any other non-Islamic country. If Bin Laden had said such a thing, the quote would have been repeated endlessly.
Alas, the "caliphate" myth has established a hammerlock on the right-wing imagination. Millions of people believe it to this day.
That 2007 campaign commercial isn't the point of this post, because even Republicans know by now that Mitt is an insincere opportunist who will say pretty much anything to get elected. (He's the Mormon Obama.) The ad is, however, symptomatic of a larger problem. Democracy can't work if half the country insists on battling ghosts and leprechauns. Democracy can't work if the facts of history, science and economics must do continual battle with fairy tales and fakelore.
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If you prefer voting for a party which ignores you, compared to one you don't agree with, then you vote based on fascination alone. Not on choice. And that means the democratic system is broken.
I think you're being hyperbolic, Matteo. It just means we have a bad Democratic president. This has happened before. LBJ. Carter. Well, I like Carter better than I ever liked LBJ, but I still think he was not successful.
The "Bush bulge" controversy/mystery/national running gag of 2004 began on this very blog. Although I never took the matter very seriously, this site spent an enormous amount of time talking about the whatzit on Bush's back. How could I resist? The whole thing was just too much fun.
Times have changed, and the world situation keeps finding new ways to become dire. In 2012, focusing attention on such an issue seems downright silly and irresponsible.
But...what the hell. In times like these, we need some fun.
I've embedded a TPM-produced video of the Republican debate in 100 seconds. It offers a couple of telling Mitt Romney moments. In particular:
"I understand that President Obama and people of his political persuasion would like to take more money. From the American people."
Mitt delivers the line in exactly that fashion: He inserts a period into the sentence prematurely, then opens it up again for the remaining bit. (Dubya used to do that sort of thing all the. Time.) A similar oddity crops up when Romney recounts his father's advice.
(Added note: Is it permissible to address the substance of Romney's hilariously fractured statement? Obama's much-misunderstood stimulus package cut taxes for 95 percent. Of the American people. Since tax cuts were the largest item in that package, those who say that the stimulus didn't work are also saying that tax cuts don't work. I'd like Romney to name the occasion when Obama has taken money. From the American people.)
Back in 2008, various writers accused Romney of using an earpiece. I didn't pay much attention to the brouhaha because the Mittster clearly wasn't going anywhere and my attention was on Obama. Nevertheless, the stories floating around at that time were intriguing.
Everything hinges on how you interpret this video clip. Somehow, a debate mic picked up the whispered words "He raised taxes" just before Mitt said something similar. NBC later explained that their microphone actually caught someone in the audience. That excuse is ridiculous: You never hear such whispers when game shows and sitcoms are taped in front of a live audience.
Armchair investigators posited a number of alternative theories, summarized here.
(The person who uploaded the above-linked YouTube video says that Mitt was protected by a communist conspiracy. If people consider Mitt Romney a bolshie, then this nation really has gone loony.)
A blogger at Red State says that on another occasion Romney's staff said to him that Romney wears an earpiece that his staff uses to talk to him...
During Gov. Romney’s speech, one of his handlers mentioned to one of our staff people that any time Gov. Romney needed to wrap things up, he would be happy to let Gov. Romney know through the ear-piece that he wore.
The quote links to a bygone Redstate post which has disappeared from the net. Fortunately, what I presume to be the bulk of that post is preserved here. The person making the claim was Jerry Zandstra, chair of Americans for Prosperity of Michigan. Zandstra goes on to say:
Being unfamiliar with whether or not presidential candidates wear Jack Bauer-like ear pieces, I simply assumed this was common practice.
Zandstra seems sincere enough. I don't know if he had any affiliation with a competing campaign.
We can't have a post on such a topic without a good, old-fashioned "back bulge" shot for everyone to examine and squabble over. Oddly, it is not easy to find dorsal images of Mitt Romney via Google images. However, we do have this, from which I have extracted the accompanying enlargement. I have not adjusted or sharpened the picture. Is that a rectangular something on his back? You be the judge. It's very subtle -- but to my eyes, something seems amiss.
The possibility of a Romney earpiece places this story from a few days ago in a new perspective:
Mitt Romney aides made a sudden decision to remove teleprompters from the hall at his Des Moines victory party because the candidate wanted to "speak from his heart," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior Romney official.
We even know the brand of teleprompter Romney prefers. When he doesn't use one, he tends to look like a slightly mis-programmed version of a Disneyland robot pirate.
Actually, both candidates' hesitancy and quick changes of topic, often within the same sentence, are consistent with their being whispered to. I challenge you to sound coherent when someone's talking to you and you have to not repeat what they say but reformulate it into something that sounds good, while they're still talking.
You don't even need a back bulge. I wear bluetooth hearing aids and the streamer on my neck loop is small, only 1" x " 3" by less than 1/2" thick. Easily worn under a shirtfront and hidden by a tie. With my cell phone in my pocket, I could easily get someone to feed me lnes.
posted by Anonymous : 2:52 PM
Joseph, I implore you not to call things foo-gate. Watergate was *not* about water. I'll support your goal of legitimizing decredibilize if you'll work to remove -gate from illegal kerfuffles
-syborg
posted by Anonymous : 10:00 AM
Very true, only subject to potential bluetooth interference. I would feel safer with a less fragile technology. Like radio.
It also makes me feel rather tender towards Rich Perry. Guilty of the crime of hubris clearly, as all the other candidates are wearing a wire. If he had worn the wire then he wouldnt have looked like such a dummy
posted by Anonymous : 10:24 AM
Syborg, the "-gate" tradition is by now well-established.
The neocons are resurgent, and they're going after Iran. Right now, the weapons are economic. Alas, that weapon could just as easily destroy us. This brilliant article explains how a needless confrontation with Iran could destroy our delicate recovery.
A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 - when no one was paying attention - imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran's central bank. Starting this summer, anybody who does it is prevented from doing business with the US.
Once again displaying a matchless capacity to shoot themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet, governments in the European Union (EU) are debating whether or not to buy oil from Iran anymore. The existential doubt is should we start now or wait for a few months. Inevitably, like death and taxes, the result has been - what else - oil prices soaring. Brent crude is now hovering around $114, and the only way is up.
Add to it Tehran's threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, thus preventing one-sixth of the world's oil and 70% of OPEC's exports from reaching the market; no wonder oil traders are falling over themselves to lock up as much crude as they can.
Forget about oil at an accessible $50 or even $75 a barrel. The price of oil may be destined to soon reach $120 a barrel and even $150 a barrel by summer, just as in crisis-hit 2008. OPEC, by the way, is pumping more oil than at any time since late 2008.
Even if you manage to get a job, will you be able to afford transportation to the workplace?
Welcome to the new economy. Cars are now for living in, not for driving.
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Does the US government suggest another bank that could be used to transfer oil payments to? It's not as if the Iranian government hasn't got bank accounts offshore.
posted by b : 9:51 AM
This is getting really hairy. I read yesterday that the UK is sending warships to the Gulf. They're gearing up for something. Maybe an Israeli attack?
As many of you know, this blog ran a series a few years back on Obama's possible family connections to the CIA. Wayne Madsen -- a writer untrusted by many -- took up my research leads (without crediting me) and came up with new material. Some of his finds are genuinely intriguing, while other parts...well, I don't know what to make of it all. That's Madsen for you.
Yesterday, a friend to this blog directed my attention to this review of two new books: Sally Jacobs' biography of our president's father, titled The Other Barack, and A Singular Woman, Janny Scott's biography of Stanley Ann Dunham. As it happens, I have both books. (Well, sort of: Library card + scanner = free pdfs. Is a poor person allowed to do this?)
Neither book addresses the CIA allegations directly, but both are worth reading. So is the afore-linked piece from the London Review of Books, which offers a good summary of both volumes.
Sally Jacobs' work left me with a genuine admiration for Barack Obama Sr. -- in fact, I probably like him better than Jacobs does. True, Obama had serious problems with alcohol, and he mistreated the women in his life. Many readers will, on those grounds, consider the man beyond redemption.
I disagree.
The elder Obama simultaneously justified and ruined his life when he took a principled stand. To be specific: He wrote an influential article which called for African economic independence. In that piece, Obama clearly hoped to set the economic course for all of post-colonial Africa, not just for Kenya.
Alas, his recipe was NOT what the Americans wanted to hear. His insistence on Africa-for-the-Africans helped to insure that the CIA would eventually choose the autocratic and corrupt Jomo Kenyatta over Tom Mboya, Obama's patron. Up until 1968 (or thereabouts), the Agency preferred Mboya, who was more stable and more popular; Kenyatta was considered erratic.
After that fateful article came out, BO Sr. was -- not to put too fine a point on it -- fucked. He lost his huge-paying job, his big car and his impressive home. In short: He made a headlong plunge into schlub-hood. He always remained an arrogant schlub, to be sure, but he became a schlub nonetheless. Although he had started drinking heavily in college, the problem became much worse as his prospects dimmed.
The above-linked reviewer does not see fit to mention that Barack Obama Sr. witnessed the assassination of Mboya. Had Obama identified the killer, he probably would have been killed himself. The man was brave but not stupid.
There are still those in Kenya who insist that the elder Obama was murdered. True, he had previously established a record of drunk driving incidents, a couple of which which had put him in the hospital. Not long before that final, fatal one-car accident -- a collision with a tree -- he gave his wife a rather morbid harangue on how best to raise the children in the event of his death. Make of that what you will.
We can interpret the elder Obama's life as a lesson in what happens when you play along versus what happens when you rock the boat. I think that our president learned this lesson pretty well.
Did the CIA ever directly approach Barack Obama Sr.? Probably not -- at least, not in any noticeable way. I don't think there was ever an occasion when someone in a crisp dark suit sidled up to the barstool next to Obama and said: "Hi, I represent Certain Interested Americans. We want to pay you X amount of money to perform the following services..."
Nevertheless, there are plenty of indications that, early on, the Company kept tabs on him. They would have been idiots not to. Obama was, arguably, the most brilliant economist in post-colonial Africa, and he came very close to charting a course for the entire continent. Though not a communist, he had a degree of guarded sympathy for the USSR; he even studied Russian. Of course the CIA would have opened a file on a guy like that; that's what the taxpayers paid the Agency to do.
Although Obama gave himself the title "Doctor" on his return to Africa, the State Department had (unfairly) kicked him out just before he could complete his PhD. Harvard never allowed him to acquire that degree. There's an argument to be made that The Powers That Be gave him the bum's rush when they realized that this impulsive, brash and domineering young man had an independent streak beyond their ability to tame.
Janny Scott's book about Stanley Ann Dunham is more difficult to assess. To be candid, a small part of me suspects that it was written in bad faith, or at least with one eye blind. The allegations that the CIA recruited our president's mother have, by this point, received sufficient publicity to justify at least some sort of response, if only a sneering one. Yet Scott never mentions those allegations.
A later post will offer a fuller reaction to A Singular Woman. For now, let me simply state that nothing in this volume has quelled my suspicions that Stanley Ann Dunham was spookier than Caspar.
Both of the men she married turned out to be people whom the CIA would have wanted watched and, if at all possible, brought on board. Happenstance? Well...maybe. But how often does such a thing happen in your family?
Dunham took lessons in Russian at a time and in a school where intelligence recruits often studied that language. She worked for AID and the Ford Foundation, both notorious for offering CIA cover. She became an anthropologist and a world traveler, always visiting political hot spots. No one can deny that the CIA made a special effort to enlist the aid of anthropologists. (Google the words CIA and anthropology. All sorts of interesting stuff will turn up.)
Some researchers (Madsen in particular) have even linked Ann Dunham's parents to the intelligence services. Of particular interest is the photo above, which shows Barack Obama Sr. receiving the traditional lei upon his entry into Hawaii. Also in the photo: Stanley Ann's father, Stanley Armour Dunham -- very recognizable from other images. He allegedly served in an intelligence capacity during his military service, which, I admit, does not mean a whole lot. At the time this photo was taken, he was supposed to be on the mainland, selling furniture. Yet here he is in Hawaii, standing next to his future son-in-law, well before Stanley Ann met the young African up-and-comer.
Yeah, that is intriguing. Don't pretend otherwise.
Madsen and others have alleged that our president's grandmother -- the woman who actually raised our president -- had some connection to the Rewald scandal. If you don't know about Rewald -- well, it's a very long story which I once knew in detail but now can recall only hazily. Short version: It was a CIA money thing. Alas, the allegations tying Madelyn Dunham to Rewald are iffy and vague. If Madsen has evidence, he has been very coy about making it public.
Unfortunately, most of the websites discussing CIA ties to the Dunham clan are wacky right-wing "birther" joints. Not for the first or last time, conspiracy-crazed sickos have worked hard to decredibilize legitimate research into the intelligence community.
These reactionary pseudoresearchers seem convinced that the elder Obama was brought into the United States by a cabal of Marxist fifth columnists masterminded by -- get this! -- the Unitarian Church. And how do they know that the Unitarians were in league with Moscow? Because the Unitarian Church decried racism in the 1950s and '60s. (That's why the Birchers never liked the Unitarians.) Yes, folks, we're dealing with the dreaded Unitarian conspiracy!
And there you have it. Whenever someone tries to look into what the intelligence agencies may or may not be up to, the audience soon divides into two camps:
1. The nothing-to-see-here camp. These are the insufferably arrogant and dull conformists who insist that you must never bring up such topics, lest they regale you with ever-so-clever references to tin foil chapeaus.
2. The raving loony camp. These are the frothing-at-the-mouth paranoids who never shut up about birth certificates, controlled demolitions, flying saucers at Roswell, the third secret of Fatima, the Illuminati, and god-knows-what-else.
I think that -- on occasion -- the truth lies in a no-man's land situated between those two camps. Only a few dare to explore that territory.
No. It was the Unitarian Universalists. They are FAR MORE sneaky and dangerous. They played an instrumental role in starting the anti-nuke movement and openly hug trees and stuff.
That traditional Hawaiian greeting of flowers is a "lei" not "lay".
Instead of "decredibilize" why not say "discredit"?
Spelling counts in life because it makes the difference between someone whose writing is taken seriously and someone who appears to be a kook. In an article on conspiracy theories, I think you will appear less kooky if you spell things right. Attention to one kind of detail is correlated with attention to another kind (e.g., facts).
The only thing that misspelling lei proves is that Joseph doesn't fill out the New York Times crossword puzzle.
posted by Eric : 12:55 PM
Anon: If you'll compare this blog to others -- including those written for major organizations capable of hiring proofreaders -- you'll find that I make fewer errors of spelling, grammar and usage than do most other writers. (Take, for example, the use of the word "do" in the previous sentence. Most other bloggers would have left it out. And I suspect that most bloggers would have said "less" instead of "fewer.")
That said, your quibbles about my writing would have more force if you displayed an ability to read. Did you see the Rules for Comments at the top of the page, Mr. Anonymous?
I note that you sneer at my post without countering anything I have to say. If argumentum ad hominem is the best you can do, I'll presume that my logic is sound.
That said, I did hit the "publish" button without giving the piece a second read-through. "Lei" was a foolish typo; thank you for that.
A long time ago, a friend pointed out to me that "decredibilize" is a neologism without a berth in the dictionary. I told him that I like the word because no other word conveys the same intended meaning -- "Render foolish and unbelievable." "Discredit," in my opinion, does not connote unfair ridicule. So I'll keep using "decredibilize" and will encourage others to do so.
"Spelling counts in life because it makes the difference..."
Life makes the difference?
An indefinite reference always refers to the closest antecedent. At least, that's what Mr. Matheson said in English class. Don't schools teach this stuff any more?
Eric: I was previously under the impression that the lei thing happened only on arrival. I've been looking around -- seems that there is also a departure lei ceremony, although it is usually run by a hotel.
I still can't understand what Father Dunham would be doing there. Note that Ann is not there. Barack and Ann had pretty much broken up before the child had come to term.
By the way -- the theory outlined on that American Thinker page is silly. If another man had fathered our current president, then Barack Obama senior would not have told close associates in Africa that he had a son back in the states. There's also the matter of the trip BO Sr. made to Hawaii when the younger Obama was a youngster. All of our information about that visit clearly indicates that the elder Obama, humbled and resentful, made himself disliked by over-insisting on his parental authority. Obviously, he was still trying to act like the "big man" he once had been.
Anon 8:15 -- the cloak and dagger stuff may not be empty calories. One could argue that the Jill Dalton piece at the other end of the link buttresses my point.
Joe, I would come with. I have plenty to add since I have averaged 6 hrs. per day since 8/08 researching. I spend that much time because I do understand that you cannot believe everything you read. Can we even believe a published newspaper report? or a magazine article, or an NPR radio clip.
I will tell you with certainty, Baracks mother Stanly has gone by so many names, with so many different spellings that one HAS to ask "why". And we are talking about legal documents.
I will tell you that many things have been scrubbed from the internet. I was smart enough to print out a few of them.
I will tell you that even Barack, Srs. immigration papers (available on pdf) show that he lied as well. Guess he didn't know what year he was born, whether he was married, had any kids, etc.
There is a letter in Barack, Srs. immigration file from the Unitarian Universalists.
Joe, I like reading your blog. You are quite capable of doing this research. The more you dig, the more lies will be discovered.
Good luck, and carry on.
posted by Anonymous : 2:45 AM
Ahem--ad hominem should be in italics, as all foreign language phrases should be.
posted by LandOLincoln : 8:10 AM
Well, as far as Unitarian and Universalists go--the marriage between the two occurred right about 1962 so prior to Obama's birth it would have been Unitarians only, after that Universalists get tacked on. Primitive way to monitor forgeries and such like.
As for Ann Dunham, I covered her name and showed a brief discussion of her work history to my husband, a foreign national, and asked him what this person did and he said, "CIA, of course. Who is it?' He laughed when I told him it was Obama's mama.
Although he probably won't be able to overtake Romney, Rick Santorum is making headlines again by pushing the gay marriage button. He did this in front of ninth graders. I don't have kids, but if I did, I'm not sure I would want a political candidate to come to my child's school and encourage a discussion of gay sex. Guess that makes me a fuddy-duddy.
Speaking at a college, Santorum conjured up the image of a marriage involving five people. I'm trying to imagine what the bedroom must look like: Do they push together two king-sized beds? Who sleeps in the middle? Thank you, Rick Santorum, for giving us that visual.
Quite a few denizens of blogland have been debating the question: Did Rick Santorum's wife Karen abort a doomed child to save the life of the mother? I am persuaded by this view, offered by Blue Lyon, a sometime friend to this blog, and no admirer of Santorum's politics. She argues that one cannot apply the term "abortion" to what happened on that occasion.
Bostonboomer, at Skydancing, offers a somewhat different take. I guess the controversy all comes down to the Pitocin injection. Does the administration of this drug to speed labor constitute "abortion" in any meaningful sense of the term? I don't believe so.
I think part of the squeamishness that I feel -- and I’m probably not alone -- is that the Santorums chose to share their experience with the public.
The squeamishness is understandable. Call me old school, but I prefer to keep certain very personal matters outside the realm of public discussion. The only decision made by Karen Santorum which I would -- very tentatively -- call into question was her decision to write a book about her sad experience.
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The age of the fetus isn't the point. If you imagine the life of the baby after it will be born, planning for it and including it in your thoughts, naming it and buying things for it, the loss will be greater. Some cultures with high infant mortality don't name a child until its first or second birthday, a way of maintaining psychological distance to lessen grief if the child dies. To the extent that you have become attached to an unborn child, you will need to engage in activities to help grieving after the loss. These people did a lot to help themselves grieve which, to me, suggests they may have done a great deal to anticipate the birth before the loss. These are people who invest a lot emotionally in both ways. I don't see the point in blaming them or calling them weird for doing this. I think the phrase is "whatever gets you through the night" and it refers to coping with pain. That some people magnify their pain is irrelevant. People have the right to do this, whether it is an individual choice or a cultural one. This focus by the left on Santorum's loss is ugly, in my opinion, and has nothing to do with any real election issue, including his views on abortion. If you don't know any woman who has lost a child, you are very fortunate, but the real pain experienced, even at the loss via miscarriage early in a pregnancy, is the loss of hope, not tissue, and trivializing that hope by calling it a fetus instead of a baby changes nothing at all.
posted by Anonymous : 2:45 PM
Anon, if I understand your words correctly, I think you are talking about the Santorum's decision to bring home the body of their miscarried child. Please understand that my post did not address that decision one way or the other.
All I have to say about it is this: That decision qualifies as private. We outsiders should not be debating it. We should not even know about it. I would criticize the Santorums only insofar as they made an extremely personal decision a matter of public discussion.
If she did receive a pitocin drip, it WAS abortion, as labor would not have commenced otherwise. And, I'm sorry, taking the dead fetus home, WAS weird. This is not a third-world culture. I wouldn't elect these people dog-catcher.
posted by evodevo : 4:00 PM
The manner of dealing with the death of their child is private, I agree.
However, the stance Santorum has taken on how other women deal with their pregnancy is a major election issue. He would not allow a woman to choose abortion for any reason, and has even gone so far as to suggest that contraception should be illegal.
This utterly disqualifies him to serve in any elective office, IMHO.
I am glad that Ms. Santorum had the opportunity to choose treatment for her infection, even though that treatment resulted in the loss of her baby. My issue is that candidate Rick Santorum's stance on abortion could possibly remove that option for other families facing the same situation.
I have never lost a child, so I can't even imagine that kind of grief. Again, the issue is one of choice--the Santorums chose the method they believed was correct for their family and I will not second-guess that decision.
Today is the 600th birthday of one of the many French lasses who have captured my heart over the years: Jeanne d'Arc -- Joan of Arc to you.
Like Mark Twain (who wrote a gushing but accurate biographical novel about her), I have long considered Joan the most admirable creature produced by the human race during the past thousand years. She is the only non-artist of my trio of personal heroes -- Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Mahler and Joan of Arc.
Then again, maybe she was an artist. Her medium was kicking ass.
When I was young, I read every English-language biography of Joan, and even some of the French material, back when my French was a lot better. I even came across (in the recesses of a UCLA library) an exact photographic reproduction of her trial transcript, which the notaries had verified with cool red bloodstains.
The best of the bios (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise) remains the one written by Vita Sackville-West. Although superbly written, the book has made many enemies over the years because Sackville-West -- the lover of Virginia Woolf -- implies, but never states, that she recognizes something in Joan that transgressed then-current sexual norms.
The evidence is intriguing, though hardly conclusive. There was a boy in Joan's life early on: He sued her for breach of promise, she won her case, and that's pretty much all we know about the matter. Joan wore male clothing throughout her career, and not just to go into battle -- most people forget that she spent many frustrating months on inactive status in the court of Charles VII. (Her costumes were costly, and she owned more horses than did the king. All saints have their weaknesses.) She slept with women whenever possible. Her male comrades-in-arms reported that she was comely and had nicely-shaped breasts (which they just happened to notice), yet she never aroused any sexual feelings. One soldier did try to cop a feel. You can guess her reaction.
Interpret all of that as you will. Shaw called her "the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages," and I suspect that he was right in more ways than he knew.
Joan's life teaches us that it is possible for anyone -- absolutely anyone, however unlikely -- to act in this world. She teaches us that it is possible to couple a genuine humility with an almost-infuriating level of self-confidence. Had she not lived, the Hundred Years' War would have turned out differently.
Neither arrogance nor self-regard had any place in her heart; she was pure action. She specialized in deeds, not reflection. I once hoped to be like her in that. Reflection, alas, can be the worst of habits.
I still don't know how she did what she did. The uncrowned King -- properly called the Dauphin -- granted her an audience mostly as an amusement. Speaking in private, she told him a Big Secret. Neither party ever revealed that Big Secret. Whatever it was, it convinced "Charlie-boy" (as Shaw called him) to give her control of the entire French army.
On a feminist note: Arguably, we should call her not Jeanne d'Arc but Jeanne Romée. The rules of nomenclature were still in flux; in her part of Europe, women retained the matronymic. Her mother Isabelle was named Romée, indicating that she had made a pilgrimage to Rome at some point.
Joan never referred to herself as Jeanne d'Arc; later writers gifted her with her father's name. The father may have come from Arc. We can't even be sure what his name was: Various documents from the time give it as Darc and Tart and Day and Dare and several other variations.
Joan always referred to herself as La Pucelle -- the Maid -- which was her nomme-de-guerre. Sort of like Bruce Wayne calling himself Batman.
In fact, she may be the closest thing to a comic book superhero that real life has ever offered. She had a cool name (cool by the standards of her day), a costume (the "white" armor, which wasn't really white), a putatively magic ring (sort of like the Green Lantern) and allegedly spooky powers. Although many feats of what we would now call ESP have been attributed to her, I can't offer hard proof that she ever did anything truly supernatural.
But she did once take a 70-foot fall out of a tower window -- and survived. Didn't even break a bone. So, like, there's that.
The finest modern Johannaphile writing in English is the famed medievalist Bonnie Wheeler; anything she has to say is worth your time. You may also want to look up an old book by Guy Endore, who also wrote Werewolf of London. The biographical chapters are pedestrian, but the 100 page "Discussion" at the end addresses the many bizarre rumors that Joan's legend has inspired over the years, and it is all great weird fun. W. S. Scott's bio is also worth reading.
Finally: I doubt that January 6 (the feast of the Epiphany) is her real birthday. The document which gives that date is filled with romanticized silliness. But tradition is tradition. Of all the onscreen Joans, the actress who most resembles the real thing is probably Jane Wiedlin, who played her in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. She was also in the Go-Gos.
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I put a hold (at my library) on the Mark Twain book. Not sure I'm up to the non-fiction stuff right now. ... Thanks for this I didn't know that much about her.
We celebrate her birthday down here in New Orleans each year with a parade and many dress up balls. Every one dresses up in period costumes. To us, she is the Maid of Orleans. A gold statue of her stands in the French Quarter. 12th night and her birthday are the kick off of the carnival season. She's an integral part of the entire celebration.
In the totally fictional realm, Joan is one of the cool Immortals on the side of humans in the Alchemyst series by Michael Scott. You might enjoy a cartoon done by a friend and local artist, which you can view at http://content.perspicuity.com/?q=node/240.
posted by CambridgeKnitter : 1:03 PM
Cambridge: Your friend got the facts right, and is also guilty of some horrible punnage.
I should explain one issue raised on that site. The ecclesiastical trial she received did not condemn her to death. It declared her a heretic, then handed her over to secular authority. There was supposed to be a separate civil trial, but they skipped right over that part in -- you should pardon the expression -- the heat of the moment.
This is the best piece I've seen on our new Republican superstar. As you might have guessed, Rick Santorum has a history of corruption as long and rich as that of any other politician.
I can guess your two-word response: Ho and hum. You expected as much.
Still, check out the article. I think you'll learn about scandals previously unfamiliar to you -- fake charities, misappropriations of funds, livin' large off the taxpayer teat, the K Street project, and all of the rest of it. Like most other Republicans, Santorum seems to define "morality" purely in terms of how one should and should not use one's wee-wee. Ethicists have no business talking about money.
The following paragraph deserves special attention:
Santorum has frequently insisted that his political values are guided by his religious values, and that John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech describing a separtion between the two had done "much harm" in America. But despite inviting such scrutiny, there's been little discussion of Santorum's ties to ultra-conservative movements within the Roman Catholic Church Santorum's comments about JFK were made in Rome in 2002 when he spoke at a 100th birthday event for Jose Maria Escrivade Balaguer, founder of the secretive group within the church known as Opus Dei. Although Santorum says he is not a member of Opus Dei -- which has been criticized by some for alleged cult-like qualities and ties to ultra-conservative regimes around the world -- he did receive written permission to attend the ultra-conservative St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Va., where Mass is still conducted in Latin and a long-time priest and many parishioners are members of Opus Dei, mingling with political conservatives like Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and former FBI director Louis Freeh.
Time for a long digression. I promise to bring this post back to Santorum eventually. Until then, bear with me.
Many view the Catholic Church as a monolith. Most Americans think that Catholics are Robots From Rome who all think, act and worship in the same way.
Nonsense. There is far, far greater room for variety, even creativity, within Roman Catholicism than you'll find within, say, the Southern Baptist tradition. True, Rome tries to keep its worldwide flock on the same page concerning the most basic issues of theology. But I think it's a losing battle.
Take, for example, the issue of keeping abortion legal: Within American Catholicism, opinion is split almost 50-50, a division which roughly mirrors the divergence besetting the country as a whole, give or take a few percentage points. By contrast, roughly 90 percent of Baptists insist on reversing Roe vs. Wade.
You'll never see the equivalent of a Karl Rahner or an Archbishop Romero within any fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant denomination. There are many Catholics who question the literal truth of the Bible, and some even view the Gospel story itself as a kind of divine metaphor. Even a conservative Catholic scholar like Luke Timothy Johnson can admit, grudgingly, that the New Testament contains contradictions, historically problematic material, and iffy Greek grammar. Evangelicals never allow themselves to state that obvious fact.
Politically, there have been communist Catholics and Nazi Catholics and everything-in-between Catholics. This country has Catholics who call themselves Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Any political ism you can think of will have at least a few Cat-lick representatives.
But the fact that Catholicism contains both liberal and conservative wings should not blind us to the fact that the Church's conservative faction is freaky. And scary.
Alas, the ultra-conservatives have learned that they can get their way by continually threatening to leave the Church -- a threat they mutter under their breath while braying about their devotion to the papacy.
Most of you have not heard of the sedevacantist movement. Those of you who know the word probably learned about it from profiles of Mel Gibson, the world's most famous sedevacantist.
That impressive-sounding Latin term means "vacant seat." Sedevacantists think that the seat of St. Peter has been vacant since Vatican II, and possibly since the election of John XXIII. (The splitters differ on just when the rot set in.) What about those popes we've seen in recent decades? They're really anti-popes. False leaders. Freemasonic conspirators. Maybe even outright Devil worshipers.
I'm not kidding. That's what sedevacantists like Mel Gibson believe.
(Does Gibson still think this way? I heard that he has been going through some weird shit lately. Something about a Russian woman. I haven't been keeping up.)
Bill O'Reilly made me giggle when he interviewed Gibson around the time The Passion of the Christ came out. O'Reilly kept going on and on about how much the Pope (supposedly) loved the movie, while Gibson kept squirming and trying to change the topic. The director didn't want to harm boxoffice receipts by saying anything about the Pope being a freemasonic diabolist. For those in the know, O'Reilly's display of cluelessness was freakin' hilarious.
Here's the really funny part: Sedevacantists like Gibson broke from the Church because they disagreed with the Vatican II ruling that non-Catholics can go to heaven. The schismatics have many other complaints, especially concerning the Latin Mass. But what the ultra-conservatives really demand is a "No Prots allowed" sign over the gates to paradise.
(Also "No Jews Allowed." But that goes without saying.)
The protestant fundamentalists who made Gibson wealthy still don't understand that Mel Gibson thinks they're going to hell. He broke with Rome because Rome declared that protestants are not going to hell, at least not necessarily. Sedevacantists will not tolerate tolerance.
High Weirdness abounds in the realm of the schismatics. Like protestant fundamentalists, they love miracle stories and conspiracy theories. For example, the schismatics think that Vatican conspirators killed Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos in 1959 and replaced her with an imposter. Spain has a rather impressive schismatic movement known as the Palmarian Catholic Church, run by Pope Gregory XVIII, who speaks with Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a regular basis. The Palmarians don't call themselves sedevacantists, since they believe that the seat has been re-occupied.
You may now be wondering: What does all of this have to do with Santorum? Is he a sedewhatzit?
No. But here's the thing: The schismatic movement, though numerically small, wields great power as a lingering threat. Conservative Catholics never come right out and say to the pontiff: "Any more of this liberalization crap and we will schism so fast your little white beanie will spin." But the possibility is always there.
That's why the Vatican puts up with behavior which once would have been considered beyond the pale. Rome does not want to see further schisms. The threat of a widening breakaway movement is the primary reason why we cannot expect to see any changes regarding, say, the ordination of women. Not within our lifetime.
The traditionalist parish of St. Catherine of Siena, in Great Falls, insists on a Latin Mass, as do the schismatics and the Lefebvrists. Opus Dei members are not necessarily traditionalists -- that is, many of them will attend Mass in the vernacular. Nevertheless, there is enormous overlap between Opus Dei and the traditionalist movement.
Opus Dei members are not schismatic -- indeed, they would claim to be the Pope's most fervent defenders. Moreover, sedevacantists are as paranoid about Opus Dei as they are about everything else.
Nevertheless, all of these strains -- Opus Dei, the Lefebvrists, the traditionalists, the sedevacantists, the Palmarians -- arose out of the mondo bizarro weltanschauung of Catholic ultraconservatism. Although these groups and subgroups bicker among themselves, they resemble each other more than their adherents may care to admit.
An unnerving strain of anti-Semitism occasionally surfaces within the traditionalist community. For example, traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson was excommunicated after he declared that the Holocaust never happened. In 2009, Williamson was reinstated -- a show of leniency which, I suspect, owes much to the threat of schism.
Williamson belongs to the Lefebvrist faction, known as SSPX (Society of St. Pius X). This is the best-known traditionalist group. There is some debate as to whether Archbishop Lefebvre effected a proper schism, but he did state that Rome had "lost the faith." Pope Benedict has tried to bring SSPX back within the fold:
The answer, of course, is that Benedict and his associates simply misjudged the degree of extremism and manic conspiracy theory circulating in the SSPX. The sect's eccentricity went further than simply holding quirky or reactionary views. Lefebvre and his immediate circle reacted radically and fundamentally to the Vatican's 1960s reformism. Theirs was not simply suspicion of modern decadence, but rather a fundamental belief in the evil forces subverting the modern world -- which included the Jews.
Pope Benedict erred in seeing the Lefebvrists as simple traditionalists or reactionaries whose views slotted into the right wing of the acceptable European political spectrum. Some, at least, were far more extreme, and the Vatican's attempted embrace of them will probably cause lasting damage both inside the church, and in relations with other faiths.
Some Lefebvrists consider Opus Dei too squishy-secular and modernistic -- a view which will surprise those observers who consider members of Opus Dei (yes, the same folks you read about in The Da Vinci Code) to be downright medieval in their thinking.
When Rick Santorum decried the separation of church and state, he spoke at a function honoring Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei. (I refuse to call him a saint, although the Church has canonized him, mostly as a sop to the far right.) Many writers have alleged that Escrivá favored the fascist dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, although some Escrivá apologists now claim that Franco mounted fierce attacks on the Opus Dei movement. (Both statements may be true.) From Wikipedia:
During Escrivá's beatification process, Monsignor Vladimir Felzmann, who had been Escrivá's personal assistant before Felzmann left Opus Dei and became a priest in the Archdiocese of Westminster and an aide to Basil Cardinal Hume, sent several letters to Fr. Flavio Capucci, the postulator (i.e., chief promoter) of Escrivá's cause. In his letters, Msgr. Felzmann claimed to have personally witnessed Escrivá make controversial statements in defense of Adolf Hitler. The alleged statements by Escrivá include: "Vlad, Hitler couldn't have been such a bad person. He couldn't have killed six million. It couldn't have been more than four million", and "Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs, this means Hitler against communism"... Msgr. Felzmann claimed that Escrivá made those remarks to him in 1967 or 1968, in Rome, during the intermission to a World War II-themed movie. Felzmann has also said that these remarks should be put in the context of Catholic anti-communism in Spain, and said that all of the male members of Opus Dei (who then numbered about fifty) volunteered in 1941 to join the "Blue Division", a group of Spanish and Portuguese volunteers who joined the German forces in their fight against the Soviet Army, along the eastern front.
Although Opus Dei denies that Escrivá ever said these words, I can't think of any reason for Felzmann to have lied.
Is there really that much difference between Rick Santorum and Bishop Williamson?
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Fantastic post. I knew none of this. I am ashamed.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 6:28 AM
Santorum disturbs me far more than Romney, that's for sure. Plus, being from PA, I'm much too well aware of his corruption to ever vote for him.
An interesting note, I have a degree in Religious Studies. My prof for several classes, and also my advisor, was a Catholic. It was interesting, because he was quite brutal in his textural analysis and criticism of the bible and made sure we all understood how haphazardly thrown together the thing was. He certainly never gave the impression that he thought God had much of a hand in its writing. He also felt that his religious beliefs were a personal matter and not something for class discussions. A real scholar I guess, but I found this interesting as I always thought (having been made to go to a Methodist church by my parents until I was 18) that Catholics were much more controlled by their beliefs and dogma than Protestants were. Of course, I've learned differently since then, but at the time it was something I was unaware of.
posted by Gus : 6:54 AM
You know that Bungalow Dick took their still born baby home to show his children?
That aside, apparently about 24.5% of the Iowans who went to the caucuses were willing to overlook his flaws or are willfully ignorant of his history because of the religious lunacy he spouts.
I'm hoping his campaign fizzles out in the sane states.
posted by Mr. Mike : 7:49 AM
No one planning election strategy in the US can afford to misread the Catholic vote as monolithic -- many raised but not practicing Catholics r some of the most liberal voters in national elections. About one-third of self-identified Catholics in 2010 considered themselves liberal. Much of the political feeling has to do with education of course and geography. Lot of very liberal Catholics in chilly New England, for example (and a brand new Kennedy running for Congress in Middlesex County MA).
Opus Dei has historically, along with Knights of Malta, had strong ties to military intel ops. Gen. Haig is an emblem of this nexus.
Interesting note about Louis Freeh... he is the one charged with over seeing the Penn State sex scandal.... LOL. These people are beyond the pale. Santorum is creepy beyond belief. He should fit right in. I always wondered how much damage Louis Freeh did to the Clinton Administration. Alice
posted by Anonymous : 12:05 PM
You have finally, and irretrievably, outed yourself as a liberal-catholic apologist, Joseph.
I will continue to read your blog from time to time, but I will never take you as seriously as I once did.
posted by Harry Albrecht : 12:29 PM
Harry: What the hell are you talking about? I have never set foot in any church in my life except when forced to do so out of social obligation -- weddings, funerals, that sort of thing.
I discuss the existence of various strains of Catholicism because I keep running into people who think there is no room for variation within that tradition.
I've also written knowledgeably about the inner workings of the OTO. That doesn't mean I believe what the OTOers believe. (I learned about them when I researched a screenplay about Aleister Crowley.)
If you are the sort of person who makes 5X worth of inference based on 1X worth of data, then you really should read another blog.
"By contrast, roughly 90 percent of Baptists insist on reversing Roe vs. Wade."
I live on the Buckle of the Bible Belt and I'd say 50% of the Southern Baptists I know are pro-choice. Baptists are a contrary lot generally; I doubt that you could 90% of them to agree the sky is blue.
Bob, you may be right, or closer to right than I thought. Last time I checked on the abortion controversy, I saw a poll indicating that a very high percentage of Baptists wanted to see abortion made illegal -- 87 percent, something like that. I rounded it up to 90 in my post, which may or may not have been a naughty thing for me to do.
However, I've fired up Google to do some double-checking, and it turns out that the polls have offered wide variation on this matter.
However, that poll was conducted way back in 1986, when life in America was a little less nutty. I was surprised to learn that, before 1980, the Southern Baptists officially favored lifting restrictions on abortion.
I'm still looking for that other poll. Damn, don't you hate it when you KNOW you've read something but you can't find the web page...?
Well Joseph I know I haven't posted here in a while but you really outdid yourself this time.
This has GOT to be another "Hall Of Fame" post for you! If not I'd certainly put it in there;)
It's weird noting that all Romney really has to do about Santorum is keep his mouth shut. If Santorum makes it past NH sooner or later GOP voters will see how crazy he is. Although I have a feeling once the GOP gets past New Hampshire Mittster will have ads that show how crazy Santorum is at the ready.
Might as well ask you these...:
1. Any plans to do posts on the various parts inside Islam or the Jewish or even Buddhist faith? You did a great job with Catholicism so why not other religions? 2. Which is worse to you? - that Santorum really IS that bad or that Rick just makes Barack's 2nd term that much more inevitable?
posted by Chris Lark : 3:12 PM
Joesph, I was trying to google up some myself-- you had better luck than I did. I think that monolithic thing may be getting us both here-- First Baptist church members are apt to have more liberal opinions than the Little Church of the Wildwood variety, but not always. Then there's the whole issue of membership in the Baptist Association of [pick a region] and the Southern Baptist Association and those self-professed but members-of-no-Association Baptists.
Methodists have a conservative branch, too [see Skippy Bush]. My family is Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, and a/a, so even in the Bible Belt there's more variety than some of the Frothing Christians like to pretend.
I know what you're thinking: No, she was undone by her own nuttiness, and by the bad publicity generated by her insane statements. Yes (says the author of the aforelinked piece), she was indeed wacko, but the Republican voter of today wants wacko. Craziness is no longer considered a disqualifier -- in fact, crazy makes you popular.
Ownership of a vagina is, on the other hand, a genuine problem.
It’s tempting, then, to think that part of what finally defeated Bachmann was sexism. There have been plenty of hints that some on the right were uncomfortable with the notion of a female president. “I’ve noticed that when her name is mentioned sometimes that there’s a lot of men that wouldn’t vote for a woman,” one Iowa county GOP chair told the Associated Press on Monday. Patricia Murphy also quoted Iowans who liked Bachmann but wanted a male candidate. One woman told her she’d initially been for Bachmann, “But then I just started thinking about being presidential and I don’t know that we’re ready for a woman for president.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that the Christian right’s patriarchs, many of whom explicitly preach female submission, felt the same way.
Good lord. Have we really come to this? In the 1980s, Republicans could not praise Margaret Thatcher highly enough. Now, it seems that they want women to return to housecleaning.
There was a dust-up back in August when a journalist had the temerity to inquiry whether Bachmann's run for the presidency conflicted with fundamentalist teachings on female submission. At the time, the question was considered rude; now, it seems germane.
Here's what Julie Ingersoll said in August:
After all, in the conservative Christian world there is a spectrum of views on how these texts are to be read. Evangelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patriarchy here.
While Christians traditionally hold that God is beyond gender (even while often using masculine language for God), in “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy,” Doug Phillips asserts that God is male, and explicitly not female; that the human male is the “image and glory of God in terms of authority, while the woman is the glory of man.” That is, men are in the image of God in terms of authority over their households; women are created in God’s image in a decidedly different way, sometimes called “reflected glory.”
Women should submit to their husbands. Michele Bachmann should submit to hers. Submissive wives probably won't get to be president.
The world mocks the Bible. It mocks God's design for the family. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God's Words will not pass away. The Bible will stand. God's design will stand. Submission does not demean women. Perversion of God's Word is not a better way. Whatever mess we're in is because we haven't paid attention to Him. And if we allow someone who says she is a Christian to get away with it, it's not going to make it better. It's going to get worse.
Bachmann, you may recall, once said that she became a tax lawyer -- a job she professed to loathe -- because her husband ordered her to do so.
Well. That's one good thing about being the bottom: You always have someone to blame. I believe that in the BDSM world, that's called Topping from below.
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I was wondering about that. Could that be one of the reasons John McCain did so poorly in 2008?
Not only wasn't he loony enough but he had a female running mate.
At least it wasn't the ugly attacks unleashed on Hillary by the Kosholes.
I always thought that crowd was a bunch of frustrated Young Republicans who bolted the GOP because they heard Liberal girls were easy. And yet some of them were still reduced to molesting cardboard cut outs.
Will Republicans turn against the Citizens United ruling?
An interesting email popped into my box. It came from these people; they want an amendment which would overturn the Citizens United ruling which grants corporations unlimited rights to donate money to political candidates.
According to an NBC News-Marist poll, at the beginning of December, Newt Gingrich was the GOP front-runner in Iowa, with 26% of likely voters. However, after the Super PAC, Restore Our Future, spent $2.8 million on negative ads attacking Gingrich in Iowa, Gingrich’s Iowa support was cut in half to 13% percent by the end of the month, contributing to Gingrich’s lackluster fourth place finish in this week’s Iowa caucuses.
“By spending millions and millions of dollars without any form of accountability, Super PACs are now capable of completely changing the dynamic of our elections, shifting even more power to a wealthy elite and away from the voting public,” said John Bonifaz, director of Free Speech For People. “The GOP campaigns in Iowa present a clear example of the damage done by Super PACs, and they further demonstrate how important it is to overturn the Citizens United ruling and restore democracy to the people.”
“Who is funding these Super-PACs?” adds Bonifaz. “Who decides to "take out" a candidate and for what reasons? In the Citizens United world we all live in now, we're not allowed to know. All we can do is look ahead to New Hampshire and wonder how a few more million dollars worth of negative ads will effect the field.”
The counterargument is obvious: This is Newt Gingrich we're talking about here; he did himself in by...well, by being Newt Gingrich.
But Newt really is not the point, is he? The point is this: It is clear the Republican leadership wants Romney and that the rank and file wants someone, anyone else. So the leadership is willing to spend an agonizing amount of money to convince the hoi polloi to behave. Trouble is, these efforts are rather obvious, and they are bound to piss off a lot of people.
This issue goes way beyond Newt, and even beyond this particular election. We're talking about the possibility of bipartisan pressure to amend the Constitution.
And that possibility, my friends, is intriguing.
Fun fact: Did you know that the better-funded candidate wins 94% of the time? Everyone pretends to mistrust and dislike the media, yet everyone is far more open to media manipulation than they like to think. Our minds are clay sculpted by advertising. I'd like to see a new attitude take hold in this country: A vote for the underfunded candidate should convey an aura of cool.
Of course, if that view had held sway three-plus years ago, John McCain would be president.
The same batch of email also brought me a message from Free Press, which wants transparency in identifying attack ads.
These ads will swallow up more air time in 2012 than campaign coverage on local television newscasts. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed countless millions of corporate dollars for spending on campaign ads. But broadcasters aren’t using this newfound revenue to beef up news operations and ensure in-depth coverage of candidates and election-year issues.
Instead, companies like News Corp., Viacom and the Sinclair Broadcast Group are lining their pockets with ad money from benevolent-sounding front groups like Concerned Taxpayers of America, Make Us Great Again and Citizens for a Responsible Government. And they rarely inform viewers about the wealthy individuals and corporations that fund these groups.
The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to make this financial information available online. But the agency won’t act unless it hears from you:
The FCC already requires broadcasters to keep information about political advertising in "public inspection files" that people can examine. These files contain the names of groups that purchase political advertising time, the cost involved and the names of executives at these organizations. But these files are often tucked away in dusty cabinets at news stations and are difficult for the public to access. The FCC is now weighing whether to make broadcasters transfer this information to the Internet, where anyone can find the data.
Media companies are projected to rake in more than $3 billion in revenues from political ads in 2012. But they are reluctant to take this basic step toward transparency.1
In a recently filed comment to the FCC, the National Association of Broadcasters urged the agency to drop its effort to make it easy for the public to ferret out this information online. Another group of broadcasters warned the FCC against any effort “to stimulate such examinations” of public files...
In the past, before Citizens United, some Republicans offered a trade: Unlimited corporate and private donations in exchange for transparency regarding the donors. I always presumed that transparency did not offer much of a threat, because only political junkies would care about who funded what.
Maybe we're all political junkies these days...?
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There aren't any great campaign funding reform proposals out there -- most decent systems can easily be routed by a high-spending break-the-bank plutocrat (Mayor 1% Bloomberg in '01, a one-man proto-Citizens United, spent $75 million to upend a Democrat who raised $10 million via a progressive 6 to 1 public finance program).
But ridding the political system of Cit United would improve a totally leprous system. Cuomo (who passed a marriage equality law against stiff Republican opposition last session) is proposing in NY a program that will come fairly close to $100 max contributions -- but short of free TV time, the rich will control the air attack.
Bonifaz leading this particular push was on Ratigan's show yesterday, commenting on the Montana Supreme Court's 5/4 decision, upholding the state's 100-year ban on direct corporate election funding. It could easily be the test case for Citizen's United. Ratigan is leading an effort of his own to pass an Amendment to 'get the money out.' Bernie Sanders is calling for the same rejection of Citizens United, offering an Amendment as well.
The only presidential candidates who have picked this up is Rocky Anderson [Liberty party] and Buddy Roemer [Republican]. But neither man has been given much time to voice the issue. At least not yet.
Interesting times we're living in.
Peggy Sue
posted by Anonymous : 3:31 PM
A group of broadcasters is warning the FCC?
What Bizarro World have I awakened in?
It would be like Wall Street warning Obama not to push for tougher financial regulations ... er wait, they didn't have to do that.