Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Sanders’ claim to turnout is valid

Posted on by
Reply

Several commentators have disparaged Sen. Bernard Sanders’ argument that turnout will be vital to Democrats in November and that he can help the turnout. He is right on both counts.

Commentators at MSNBC, CNN and now some of the networks have gotten on a train recently, though–pointing to the undoubted fact that Democratic turnout in primaries this year is lower than in 2008. (Barack Obama ran that year. No one has turned out newly energized voters like President Obama.) They also point out that the Democratic turnout is lower than turnout in Republican primaries, where Donald Trump has gotten the GOP moving. So–they go on to gloat–where is the turnout that Sanders promises to deliver? (Some particularly unappealing and smarmy gloating on this item has come from Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews. No surprise there. Matthews’ wife, Kathleen Matthews, is losing her race for Maryland’s 8th District congressional seat, in spite of locking hips with the Clinton team and its donor base behind the scenes; you can’t expect him to be a good sport–a man who uses the phrase “Washington insiders” with a straight face is hardly going to be an objective observer of the nation’s fortunes. Blitzer and a tiny handful of others at CNN have been drawing envious blood from Obama since moments after the president’s election November 4, 2008. They apparently resent both his and Vice President Biden’s independence of the DC media establishment. Maddow seems long since to have bought in to the notion that careerism=feminism, or something to that effect. In between fawning on Brian Williams, she seems to be pretty much engaged in boosting the most mediocre women she can find in public life.)

But there is a factor at work this year that did not weigh on turnout in previous elections. The factor is “superdelegates.” Regardless of how hard Sanders’ ardent supporters work–and most of his supporters are ardent–Hillary Rodham Clinton and her team quietly sewed up somewhere around 450 party insiders, to paste her into the nomination should she have difficulty with voters.

Senator Sanders

Hint to analysts: if you want to be an analyst, it might help to analyze. Is there any realistic possibility that the mass of offstage superdelegates would not discourage turnout, among any voters who knew about them? Or among voters who just saw the delegate tallies for the candidates, without clarification?

So much for hope and change. The insider campaign against both–again, by ‘Washington insiders’–has been relentless–while it has also been picayune, bigoted, petty, envious and competitive. Money does not mean sense.

Nor, in the media establishment, does it mean rigorous adherence to journalistic standards. (You read it here first.) Any political analyst is intellectually required to clarify those superdelegates, in the public interest. That is not happening.

The accrual of more than 400 superdelegates by the wealth- and foundation-supported Clintons should also have been rigorously and accurately reported as it occurred. That did not happen either.

This process will have to change, and will change. In the narrowest partisan terms, it is disastrous for the Democratic Party. Democrats are living in a dream world if they think that a Hillary Clinton campaign can just skate by a nominee like Donald Trump. Trump has already appealed to independents–and to Democrats. It is unrealistic just to assume that a gravely flawed candidate like Clinton can defeat him. This is a pipe dream, and that’s even before the rest of the information on the private-server emails comes out. The insecurities about Hillary Rodham Clinton as a candidate are already manifest, in the behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent anyone else from even running.

Vice President Biden

This strategy is also being feverishly boosted by the Maddows and Matthews of the media world. Maddow spent a lengthy segment one evening on some whack-job’s push to get a death penalty(?) for gays. The clear implication was that Hillary Clinton is our only firewall against measures such as, as Maddow put it, “executing homosexuals.” Do Maddow and her ilk really think that executing homosexuals would be opposed only by a Clinton? They don’t think a candidate like, for example, Vice President Joseph Biden would step up to the plate? They don’t think Biden would oppose executing homosexuals? Do they really think Jim Webb would not have opposed these ills, if he had been allowed in the field? Lincoln Chafee? Wouldn’t even Gov. Martin O’Malley have opposed executing homosexuals, at least if the polls were going the right way?

Bernie Sanders could crush Trump. But he has to become the nominee to do so.

Meanwhile, when these over-promoted, overpaid, and under-qualified folks joined up behind scenes to paste Clinton into a nomination she has not earned and does not deserve, they took away part of my vote. They will not get the rest of it. I will not be blackmailed into voting for the ‘electable’ candidate. For one thing, she’s not. For another, the blackmail is being pushed by the very people who put us in this situation in the first place. This is not a process, a candidate, or a strategy that can withstand accurate scrutiny.

 

 

Big Bird turnaround artists

Posted on by
Reply

A Big Bird round-up

For fun, or not

Big Bird costumes are hot sellers for Halloween this year. It happened you-know-when.

Not every comic can top that.

Big Bird in the news

But then it’s not all comedy.

Pathos

Not all history is in the past, either.

Romney would end unemployment lines. No more unemployment compensation

This might be a good time to remember that the Party of Romney, while dwindling, is the party that has shown itself unabashedly willing to use fiscal cliffs for blackmail.

Look back in anger

 

It’s the same party that has worked for decades to cast doubt on any publicly funded program that could in any way benefit children.

Generations

This is the same candidate who has expressed support for shedding blood around the globe–except when the shedding was done in a measured, limited way, to take out the main coordinator behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.

War room

This is the same candidate who has repeatedly expressed willingness to cut education funding, with a sop to ‘choice’ in vouchers for poor families.

Reading, fun and information

He is also the candidate whose corporate turnarounds succeeded more for a comparatively small group of investors than for employees in companies his firm bought in fire sales.

Investment

 

Note: There is probably some spinner out there right now, attempting to reassure the public that Mitt Romney didn’t mean it about firing Big Bird. To do the man justice, I believe he was sincere.

 

Why GOPers don’t talk about campaign debt

Posted on by
1

Why Republicans don’t talk about campaign debt

For a while there, back in August 2011, the CEO of Starbucks floated an idea of boycotting campaign contributions to all incumbents. Within days, more than a hundred CEOs of large companies had joined/signed on to the idea. We have heard little about it since, undoubtedly for a combination of reasons. Many corporate donors are indeed holding back even now, closer to the election, but less because of an objection to money in politics than because of a predilection for fence-sitting. They are by no means confident that Mitt Romney can win the 2012 presidential election and are not eager to bail on a popular president to become linked with a ludicrous challenger. Their state and local incumbents will either win the election and thus don’t need money—so far as they know—or will not win and thus are a losing proposition. In any case if they want to donate to politics, they can smoothly and discreetly do so through PACs and super-PACs.

 

Romney

Possibly there is another reason as well. At the time Starbucks’ Howard Schultz floated his proposal, it would have particularly damaged the new GOP members of Congress. As the public generally knows, big money in politics does not rain on the just and the unjust alike; the biggest donations—especially from big pharma, big oil and the finance sector–flow mostly to Republican candidates. And for all the hoopla over those budget-cutting deficit-hawk tightfisted Tea Party-influenced GOP freshmen in Congress, the majority of them finished their campaigns in serious debt—and stayed that way.

 

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.)

A quick overview of new GOP congress members, in a snapshot of their indebtedness as of Aug. 15, 2011, indicates that at least 45 of them* were still carrying serious debt from their election campaigns a year later. The Republican wave of 2010 did not carry its victorious campaigns to solvency. The situation has altered by now, of course, but there are still some interesting indicators.

Steel belt

A perennial GOP election tactic is to characterize the major industrial states as ‘swing’ states. At best, this characterization is seldom corrected in the national political press. No matter how many times Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin vote for the Democrat for the White House—the last FIVE elections, from 1992 through 2008, for Pennsylvania; the last SIX elections, back to 1988, for Michigan and Wisconsin—they still get pitched as swing states when an election year rolls around. There must be a lot of GOP consultants, or commentators who might as well be, left over from 1988. (There are.) This passive-aggressive media tactic, or sometimes genuine political ignorance, is particularly damaging as newspapers shrink in number and coverage and as the media are blanketed with multi-million-dollar false advertising. (Successfully-not-recalled Gov. Scott Walker’s dubious claim that he has brought about a budget surplus in Wisconsin is only one recent example. Walker’s claim looks likely to be rebutted by events, and a federal investigation is underway.)

The swing-state mentality, or analysis if it’s called that, is inherently pro-GOP. At least eleven new Republicans swept into Congress in the industrial ‘swing’ states in 2010 are on the list below—if they won at all, they ended their campaigns in serious debt, and they stayed in debt for at least another year. A set of hard, expensive campaigns does not look like a groundswell of enthusiasm for the GOP or even for throwing out incumbents.

To do them justice, at least all but one of them eventually voted in Congress to raise what is called the debt ceiling. The lone holdout, Michigan’s Justin Amash, seems to try to be a consistent libertarian conservative on the model of Ron Paul.

Illinois

Four new GOP members on the list below came in from Illinois. Of these, Randy Hultgren (Ill. 14th) still has money problems, relatively speaking—at least if the Dems have the sense to support challenger Dennis Anderson. House speaker John Boehner, leaving nothing to chance in the 14th, is out fundraising for Hultgren, whose district went solidly for Obama in 2008.

 

More ludicrously, Illinois also still has Rep. Joe Walsh in situ. Walsh is the notorious child-support dodger and debt defaulter who ended his 2010 campaign at least $340,000 in debt—and then voted in Congress against raising the debt limit, on grounds of fiscal probity. Walsh’s unsavory finances—besides child support–have been discussed elsewhere, including here and here, but he has drawn big-bucks support, presumably because of his low-rent-style personal attacks on the president. Everything that turns the public off on politics benefits the GOP and its corporate donors. Still, if someone like Joe Walsh could beat someone like Tammy Duckworth, Illinois has a worse literacy problem than yet brought to light. In fact, if the national GOP or its supporting orgs are actually still throwing money Walsh’s direction, there are few stronger indicators that they have money to burn.

Duckworth

In Illinois’ 17th, Bobby Schilling came out of 2010-11 somewhat less in debt and has also pulled in large donations. Schilling has a solid challenger in Democrat Cheri Bustos, but another challenger, Eric Reyes, is trying to get on the ballot as a write-in candidate.

Tennessee, West Virginia

The most-preyed-upon belt produced three loaded-with-debt Republican freshmen in 2010—none from Kentucky, but two from Tennessee and one from West Virginia. New GOP Rep Diane Black (Tenn. 6th) had almost a million in debt a year later, David McKinley over half a million; Charles Fleischmann only $200K-plus. Black is heavily financed this time around, facing Democratic challenger attorney Brett Carter. McKinley of West Virginia is also heavily financed, against Dem challenger Susan Thorn. At least Black and McKinley eventually voted to raise the debt limit. Fleischmann, of Tennessee’s heavily gerrymandered 3rd, supported basket-case brinkmanship to the last, getting Boehner’s support anyway. Primaries still to come, in August, with the Democratic contenders looking a lot more credible than the GOP field.

For the rest

The point of highlighting some of our debt-ridden representatives is that coming in loaded with debt does not tend to make even a raw new congress member ‘independent’. Mouthing about ‘revolution’ or the Tea Party or ‘reining in spending’ or debt, when one is carrying liabilities in excess of one’s campaign’s ability to pay them off, should therefore draw some skeptical attention. In this context it might be noted that Arizona produced three of the new GOP in-the-redders, beating out California (one) and Florida (two). Paul Gosar of Arizona’s 4th and David Schweikert of Arizona’s 6th are a lot better off now, financially speaking—but face opponents in the August primaries in AZ. Schweikert’s opponent is fellow listee Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle; both are lavishly funded. Presumably Quayle and Schweikert can’t both make hay in the primary over the fact that they both opposed raising the debt ceiling to the last, while in debt themselves.

*List on Aug 15, 2011:

  • Justin Amash,  MI 3: $10K cash on hand, $408K debts            N (unopposed for GOP primary Aug 7)
  • Louis J. Barletta, PA 11: $9K cash, $258K debt
  • Daniel J. Benishek, MI 1: $35K cash, $145K debt
  • Diane Lynn Black, TN 6: $36K cash, $1M debt
  • Francisco Canseco, TX 23: $141K cash, $1.1M debt
  • Steve Chabot, OH 1: $7K cash, $10K debt
  • Jeff Denham, CA 10: $47K cash, $54K debt
  • Robert Dold, IL 10: $81K cash, $144K debt
  • Blake Farenthold, TX 27: $33K cash, $157K debt
  • Michael G. Fitzpatrick, PA 8: $28 cash, $129K debt
  • Charles J. Fleischmann, TN 3: $31K cash, $250K debt            N
  • William Flores, TX 17: $44K cash, $731K debt
  • Cory Gardner, CO 4: $19K cash, $103K debt
  • Chris Gibson, NY 20: $31K cash, $50K debt
  • Paul Gosar, AZ 1: $740 cash, $59K debt
  • Tim Griffin, AR 2: $81K cash, $206K debt
  • Michael Grimm, NY  : $21K cash, $95K debt
  • Frank Guinta, NH 1: $493 cash, $355K debt
  • Richard L. Hanna, NY 24: $39K cash, $537K debt
  • Andy Harris, MD 1: $40K cash, $97K debt
  • Vicky Hartzler, MO 4: $22K cash, $163K debt           N
  • Nan Hayworth, NY 19: $53K cash, $505K debt
  • Jaime Herrerra, WA 3: $23K cash, $41K debt
  • Randy Hultgren, IL 14: $29K cash, $61K debt N
  • Bill Johnson, OH 6: $32K cash, $55K debt
  • Mike Kelly, PA 3: $28K cash, $383K debt
  • Jeffrey M. Landry, LA 3: $930 cash, $323K debt         N
  • David B. McKinley, WV 1: $77K cash, $670K debt
  • John Mick Mulvaney, SC 5: $137K cash, $210K debt N
  • Richard B. Nugent, FL 5: $12K cash, $15K debt
  • Ben Quayle, AZ 3: $8K cash, $27K debt         N
  • Tom Reed, NY 29: $37K cash, $76K debt
  • James B. Renacci, OH 16: $50K cash, $375K debt
  • Reid Ribble, WI 8: $2K cash, $173K debt
  • Scott Rigell, VA 2: $157K cash, $378K debt
  • David Rivera, FL 25: $11K cash, $137K debt
  • Jon Runyan, NJ 3:  $5K cash, $339K debt
  • Bobby Schilling, IL 17: $10K cash, $54K debt
  • David Schweikert, AZ 5: $16K cash, $523K debt        N
  • Austin Scott, GA 8: $11K cash, $99K debt      N
  • Steve Stivers, OH 15: $10K cash, $41K debt
  • Marlin Stutzman, IN 3: $523 cash, $8K debt                N
  • Scott Tipton, CO 3: $22K cash, $159K debt               N
  • Tim Walberg, MI 7: $52K cash, $72K debt
  • Joe Walsh, IL 14: $22K cash, $362K debt                   N

 

Fox News, Barack Obama, and Ignorance of Religion

Posted on by
Reply

Ignorance of religion . . .

Fox News Sunday today is relentlessly flogging the Reverend You-know-who. In its pursuit to bring down Barack Obama, Fox has shifted tactics somewhat, allowing some questions about Hillary Clinton into interviews—asking Terry McAuliffe, for example, about several prominent members of the Clinton administration who now support Obama. (McAuliffe’s answer: I cd give you a list of thousands of former Clinton people who still support Hillary Clinton. Fair enough.)

 

Joe Andrews speaks for himself

Chris Wallace harped on the Reverend throughout his interviews with DNC chair Howard Dean, McAuliffe, and Rep. Joe Andrew, who famously has switched from supporting Clinton to supporting Obama. The harping continues into the panel discussion graced with neocon luminaries like Bill Kristol. Meanwhile, as Wallace repeatedly mentions, the Republicans are trying to tie Democratic candidates around the nation (read: the South) to the reverend, for his “damnAmerica” remarks . . .

Proving once again that some of these highly compensated political consultants really are as underqualified as some of television pundits and news figures (George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, Bill Kristol, George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer, etc).

 

All the little foxes/neocons

Not that everyone has taken Comparative Religion, History of Religion, or any similar college course usually taught in the philosophy department of your nearest university. Many nominally educated people have, in fact, never taken any course touching on world history. Still, there are a few fundamental points that many Westerners do grow up knowing, if only by osmosis, or by . . . let’s see—oh, yes—thinking. Fox personnel like Wallace, above, really do seem to have convinced themselves that the Reverend You-know-who is ‘radioactive.’ I think they’re overreaching.

Meanwhile, on the other ticket . . .

 

(YouTube video clip of opposing party, re religion, here)

 

A quick recap, Comparative Religion 101-style, here:

  • Contemptus mundi, contempt of this world in anticipation of the next, has always been an extremist problem for Christianity. Since the first century of the Christian era, there has always been a tension between “In my father’s house are many mansions” and all the other visions of a better hereafter, on one hand, and instructions to live this life well and make this world better while you’re here, on the other. Contempt of earthly dross—flesh, gold—is good up to a point. But when you get into arrogance (spiritual pride), lack of charity (unloving behavior) and suicide, you have problems.
  • Still, it is consistent with every known Christian denomination to downplay earthly power. Put not your faith in princes or principalities. Strong stuff; goes way back.
  • In this tradition, we often—routinely—have preachers and other men (usually) of the cloth excoriating this country. Fire and brimstone from the pulpit does not spare self; it does not spare one’s own community; it does not spare one’s own country. If more of the media figures and political consultants who pander to the right wing actually entered some of those churches they try to get money from, they would know this.
  • The history of the United States, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to now, is replete with these religious traditions. For many millions of Americans, they are central in everyday thought. Very few churches inAmerica would seriously tell their congregants to place a president above conscience, above God, or even above their church. The Supreme Being, in this line of thought, does hold the power of salvation and damnation.
  • Some commentators on the left are bringing up rightwing pastors—Jerry Falwell springs to mind—as a riposte to the Reverend You-know-who inChicago. I think this is a basic misreading. Anyone who does this kind of thing is invading another place of worship, at least intellectually invading it, in a way that millions of people feel instinctively—and rightly—to be a violation.
  • Btw, this phenomenon is by no means restricted to “black churches.” Nor are members of “black churches” the only Americans offended by the current media harping—entirely by overpaid individuals—on Reverend You-know-who.

I am not going to quote other American preachers making equivalent or similar statements aboutAmerica. But I could. And this little point is one widely known—to people who have actually sat through a sermon in their lives.

Speaking of churches, African-Americans, and related topics: I leave you, my brethren and sisters, with a brighter historical note for the day. The reverend Billy Graham, a member of a large and prominent Baptist church in Dallas, and already world-famous himself, became concerned at the fact that his church was segregated.

So, in some of the best traditions that have made America what it is today, he took steps. He visited with his church elders, and told them point-blank, in no uncertain words, to desegregate. Otherwise, he informed them, he would leave the church—and would tell the world why.

The church desegregated in short order. It’s called blackmail. Wonder whether some of those elders left the gathering thinking, “God damn . . .”

But there was no Chris Wallace and Fox News in those days, so we’ll never know. Oh, come to think of it, we would never have found out from Fox News anyway.

Live-blogging the Petraeus and Crocker Iraq hearings, continued

Posted on by
Reply

11:15 a.m. With the televised portion of the Petraeus and Crocker appearances now concluded–including a very little Q&A with some senators–there is indeed little new news. What Petraeus said, or projects for the future–“the way ahead,” it’s characterized–amounts to little good, for the public interest.

Gen. Petraeus

The ‘drawdown’ of the ‘surge’ buildup will be completed in about July. Then there will be a ‘pause,’ acc to SecDef Gates, tho Petraeus phrases it differently, for “assessment” and “evaluation.” The ‘pause’ is projected to last about 45 days, during which time apparently they’re not going to be trying to bring any more troops home. Then–it will be around election time.

I suppose we can all hope that John McCain will not suddenly notice that the Iraq war is wrong, go roadblock on national television at the end of October, and call for bringing all the troops home with a promise to do it himself if elected. Or if he does, we can but hope that the public will not be fooled. But both Ike and Nixon did milder versions of same, Ike with regard to Korea and Nixon w/ Vietnam.

Shots of Sen. Joe Lieberman always show him looking like McCain’s mini-me. All the speculation about how the three senators who are presidential candidates will present seems to me to be trumped by the inevitable: Sen. Clinton will come across bogus; Sen. McCain will come across used up by the system, played out; Sen. Obama will come across well.

CNN seems to have judged accurately that the news quotient of any remaining discourse will be comparatively negligible. Some senators might ask good questions, however. We can tune in at cnn.com.

Meanwhile, I wish the Code Pink people would demonstrate at Lockheed Martin, at GE (incl NBC), etc. Much of the political world has gotten the message. It’s the corporate world that needs to get it.