New Study Proves Fox News Makes You Stupid

You don't negotiate with terrorists

        (Thanks to www.edsteinink.com for the cartoon.)

In yesterday's news conference, President Obama defended his deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts at all income levels, including the richest 2% of Americans. He said "I've said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts. I think it's tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage  gets harmed...In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed."

Unfortunately, this is the wrong approach.

We've all seen this on TV, or in the news. Some high profile terrorist action requires negotiation, and the government says "we don't negotiate with terrorists." It can be  heartbreaking, and infuriating, but it's necessary in the long run. The reasoning behind this approach is that to negotiate merely proves to the terrorists that their tactics work, will get results. If you don't even begin to negotiate with them they have no hope of getting what they want.

The Bush tax cuts were only passed ten years ago because Republicans promised to let them expire - you know, just in case the tax cuts failed to stimulate the economy or create jobs. (News flash: They didn't.)  Now that the tax cuts are scheduled to expire, the Republicans are clamoring for their continuation, calling it a 'tax hike' if they end. (Clever bit of verbal jiu jitsu, that. It's what the Republicans are known for. Regardless of what you think of their
positions you have to admire their tenacity, not to mention the verbal gymnastics and contortions they can achieve to support them.)

To further this end, the Republicans have forced the Democrats into a game of chicken with the American economy. Never mind that it's our car they're driving, there's going to be a crash of some sort. Now it's a game where the first one to blink loses. Neither party can
escape this game; thus, the only option is to play to win. It's more than a simple political calculation, however; it's a moral one; this is a fight for what is right for the American people.

President Obama, however, decided to capitulate shortly after the game of chicken began. Since this is a test of will, plain and simple, the Republicans will win because they're far more stubborn and ideological than all too many of their Democratic counterparts. The Democrats -  as they must - look to their president, their party leader, their driver. When he swerves to avoid a collision he instantly loses the game. In this case, 'losing the game' means borrowing billions more from foreign countries to give tax breaks to the rich who neither need nor deserve it, tax breaks which will neither stimulate the economy nor generate jobs, tax breaks that add billions to the deficit for no good reason.

In an argument between a reasonable man and a stubborn ideologue, the latter will always win. The simple fact is the ideologue will never admit to being wrong, no matter what the facts say. President Obama is the reasonable man in this scenario. Sadly, he has let his commendable desire for reason and rationality get run down by the Party of No, who look very likely to score another win for the rich and powerful.

Most tragically, a win for the Republicans here signals that this tactic works. Taking hostages means you'll get to negotiate, and from a position of strength.  The next time they want something they'll just take something else hostage. It may be some pet project or
bill the president wants, or maybe they'll threaten to stop all legislative activity altogether, in a characteristically juvenile game of 'take my ball and go home.' Oh wait, they've already done
that.

President Obama's capitulation on this issue just ends up rewarding bad behavior and encourages more of it in the future. The American people will suffer greatly as a result.

The Night John Lennon Died

I was a young man of 24, working at a radio station in northeast Wisconsin. I heard the news after I'd gotten home from work; a colleague called me. I then turned on my small black and white TV to check the CBS Evening News.

I remembered being sorely disappointed that Walter Cronkite treated it as if it was so unimportant. The only news story he had on following the announcement was a recycled story from 1963 where older, square people laughed about how goofy the Beatles were with their long hair and silly singing. That was one time Mr. Cronkite truly disappointed me.

There was no internet then. No blogs, no news sites, no Twitter or Facebook. My TV only picked up two local broadcast stations (why the heck would I need to pay for a cable to bring in a signal?) so I turned to the radio. Our tiny station was automated and had no news staff in the evenings, so I turned the AM dial looking for news from other larger, faraway stations.

When I was a youngster in isolated Marquette, Michigan I'd eagerly wait 'till nighttime so I could turn on my AM radio and pick up exotic, far away radio stations. At night you could pick up stations from amazing distances, since their signals bounced off the ionosphere, which is pressed flat against the earth during the day but balloons far out into space at night. Rather than being stuck with the local, lame MOR (middle of the road) stations, I could listen to big-time, big city stations that actually played rock music, most notably WLS and WCFL in Chicago, back when AM radio played the Top Forty.

I returned to 'the ether' that night to scour the airwaves for news. I found a station - can't remember which one - that was doing nothing but playing Beatles music, separated by brief news recaps and updates on the tragic story. It was the depths of winter, cold and dark. My girlfriend came home from night school and sat with me. We listened until well past midnight, listening to the AM radio. We cried.

Not to dismiss what Lennon had done with his celebrity in the 70s, his activisim, etc., but the thing that really hit us was that it was a *Beatle.* Who would want to hurt *any* of the Fab Four, the lovable moptops, the lads who wrote the cheery, amazing, funny, romantic and heartbreaking soundtrack to our childhood and adolescence? It was a total punch to the gut.

Your Wake Up Call.

Question on HuffPo: "Do we want to give the government virtually unlimited power to control our purchases now and forever in exchange for greater access to healthcare?"

This is a valid question, but let me ask the same question in other arenas:

Do we want to give the government virtually unlimited power to...

• Defend our country against military attack?
• Regulate the flow of vehicles, goods commerce between states?
• Regulate what food producers can and cannot put in our food?
• Regulate what manufacturers can and cannot dump in our water, in a landfill or into the air?
• Regulate what the financial industry can and cannot do?
• Try, convict and imprison people if they do bad things, like murder, injure or steal?

When you put it this way, the concept of government regulating how healthcare is provided and paid for is not without precedent. There are certainly ample examples of this in other advanced countries and none of them would go back, despite their systems' flaws. Would it be perfect? No, but it'd be vastly better than what we have now.

I have advocated for a single payer system because there are economies of scale to be realized. Medications could be bought in bulk at vast savings. There would be the elimination of private corporate profits. Marketing and advertising costs would be largely eliminated. Administrative functions could be combined, standardized and hopefully streamlined. (Normally this would be a laugh when talking about the government, but since most medical record keeping is not computerized anyway we could both combine and computerize this process into a *new* system not hidebound by decades of government precedent.)

In the recent attempt at healthcare reform, what prevented this? Not Tea Partiers, protesting at the periphery with their hats, costumes, slogans and signs. No, it was Big insurance and Big Pharma, the ones who would stand to lose the most money from a system like this. They have their hands in the guts of the current system and in the current legislative process as well. They stopped it cold, turned it into a means whereby they were guaranteed millions more customers, And yet they still protest it now, because the new rules they'll have to follow will cut into their profits even more -- never mind the health care they're supposed to be providing.

Bad Judgment, Bad Judge

I don't often agree with Dowd, but I do this time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/opinion/24dowd.html?_r=1

Where've You Been?!?!?

When I was a young man, still living with my folks, I went through the same thing my older siblings did. Creeping in at two in the morning, only to be confronted by my mother. In her best and most outraged English accent, she'd gently but firmly demand "Where've You Been?"

Okay, maybe my older brother and especially my older sister got that more than me. But still, it was memorable. Especially when, years later, my buddy (who was bunking with us for a short time) and I got home at 1:30 in the morning and Mum wasn't yet home.


Energized, ready to pounce, we waited by the door. Finally at 1:45 am she comes in. "WHERE'VE YOU BEEN?!!!?" we gleefully demanded in our best British falsetto imitations. All of us laughed over that one for years afterwards.

So -- where've I been? it's been a while. Three years, in fact. But better late than never.

Quite honestly, this blog was not getting any attention. But I want to give it another shot. There is too much going on in this country of ours, much of it crazy, disheartening, amazing (in both good and bad ways) that I have to try again.

I've not given up my political opinionizing -- I've just been doing it in other places. But now that I'm on Facebook and Twitter, I'm going to try a little cross pollination.

So if you're new to this old blog, maybe read the old stuff. Maybe not. But more is coming..

So where've you been?

Barry

Give Me Liberty. No, really, GIVE ME LIBERTY!

Harry Reid today pulled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from the floor of the Senate.

This is not the war, but this particular battle has been won. Kudos to Senator Chris Dodd for showing the Democrats what a man with a backbone looks like.

Give me Liberty or... whatever

Major telephone companies (telcos) have been collaborating with the Bush administration for years to spy on our personal communications. This goes back to well before 9/11. Yet now the Senate is considering a bill which will grant telcos retroactive immunity!

It's appalling, especially in light of this little bit of text...

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That obscure bit of history is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Even more outrageous, the Democratic Party appears to be in cahoots with this effort. Even though Democratic senator Chris Dodd has put a hold on the bill, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, has in an unprecedented move disregarded the hold and is bringing it to the floor! Dodd has said he will filibuster the bill. Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden have claimed to be against retroactive immunity but they have no plans to return to Washington to support Senator Chris Dodd in his filibuster. (They'll be too busy talking on the stump about 'leadership' to even follow, never mind lead!)

Patrick Henry said "give me liberty or give me death." He did not say "keep me safe, no matter the cost." The state motto of New Hampshire is "Live Free or Die," not "keep me alive by spying on me." Our government is sworn to protect us from all enemies, foreign or domestic. In this case the enemy is domestic. They're also subtle, manipulative and like to do their work in secrecy.

Don't let them! I urge you to contact your senators and tell them that the government should not be spying on us and that those who do so should be prosecuted and punished.

Read more here:

• Salon
  
• CBS News
  
• Wired
  

Sally Kohn Misdirects Her Outrage

Sally Kohn published a screed on Huffington Post today accusing Democrats of hypocrisy regarding the anti-gay backlash against Senator Larry Craig today. It's quite a reach. Here was my response:

----------

Are you implying that because of the Larry Craig situation 'push has come to shove' for Democrats? Your argument doesn't hold water. You claim basically states that when the going gets tough, the tough get homophobic. That may be true in many cases, but not here.

Larry Craig should be denounced for his hypocrisy on gay issues. He should also be denounced for soliciting sex in a public restroom. 'Gay' needn't enter into that part of it for his actions to be condemmed as reprehensible.

But it does, though. There are many, including posters here, who excoriate Craig for his perceived homosexuality even though they claim to be progressive liberals. Does that mean we should extend that blame to all Democrats? All liberals? I think not. Sorry, those wires don't hook up that way. Your post is just an ad hominem attack writ large.

One last thought: You maintain "Craig is just one hypocritical senator from Idaho" and that "the Democratic party ... is responsible for half of the political playing field in our country." Uh, I don't THINK so. Bear in mind the inordinate influence of Fox News and the rest of Rupert Murdoch's empire, the inherent conservatism of network news, owned by big-business-friendly megacorporations, the ubiquitous, hate-filled reach of right-wing talk radio and the rampant stubbornness and certainty of the hyperventilating religious right and you have a national discourse DOMINATED by the intolerant right, shouting and relying on the very same base, vile emotions you claim to condemm.

And yet you blame progressives, liberals or Democrats for the intolerant undertow in this country. It just doesn't add up.

I have seen again on the blogs the canard that the Clinton administration somehow 'failed' in their handling of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center because it failed to prevent 9/11. This begs the question: Can someone be labeled a failure if they haven't anticipated and prevented every possible bad thing that could happen to them?

This line of thinking is ridiculous. The United States government caught, convicted and sentenced the 1993 WTC attackers. But to argue in spite of all this that Clinton somehow 'failed' because he didn't anticipate and prevent 9/11 is just ridiculous. His was not a 'failed strategy.' The administration responded accordingly and achieved justice.

If you seek evidence of a 'failed strategy' then consider how we have tried to manipulate the rest of the world and it's wealth (mainly oil) to our own selfish advantage since WWII. I concede that the effort of containing Communism during the Cold War somewhat justified some of it, but not all of it -- and now that Communism is dead, how can we continue to justify our selfish foreign policy?

We use economic and military pressure to get all the oil we want at bargain prices, never mind which oppressive dictators we keep in place to facilitate that. We have bullied and invaded countries for 60 years to get what we wanted, and to hell with the impoverished citizens of these nations who suffer grievously due to our machinations.

So when those impoverished citizens rise up and attack western interests in the only way they can we blindly label them terrorists. We do not take into account the desperation, oppression and exploitation that drives them down this most extremist and indefensible road.

I am not justifying or excusing terrorism. But when another pundit parrots the 'why do they hate us?' line, why is it that so few really know a good answer to this question?

If we treated the world more fairly then there wouldn't be so many in the world who *do* hate us.

See Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival."

Rant on Muslims

As a progressive I am horrified at what our government is trying to do to combat terrorism. I am against a lot of it as being unconstitutional, elitist and wrong.

However, it's important to remember that radical Islam is a real and valid threat and those who perpetrate it's horrors are even more deserving of our scorn and opposition. Witness this video. It's a delightful rant which I highly recommend.

I'm Liking John Edwards.

Caught this quote today in a story about John Edwards:

"We need to reform our tax code," Edwards said. "Our current system favors the unearned income of people already doing incredibly well instead of rewarding the work of families trying to get ahead. It has all kinds of loopholes and shelters that lawyers can twist for their wealthy clients. It forces millions of families to hire help to figure out how much they owe."

I like the sound of this a LOT. It says it all.

Then the Republicans come back with '$400 haircuts. John Edwards is rich. Neener neener neener.' How asinine.

Here is the full text of Edwards' remarks.

This is Vile: Cheney's office "Not Part of the Executive Branch"

This is vile.

According to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

After further back and forth, "The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order. "

This is bloody amazing and amazingly arrogant! Mr. Cheney seems to think the rules don't apply to him, that he can keep all the secrets he wants and circumvent, avoid or cancel his legal responsibilities.

There is no place hot enough in Hell to accommodate this man's soul.

All Or Nothing

I've been seeing a lot of 'All or Nothing' in various conservative posts and replies around the blogosphere. I've even encountered it in a personal conversation with a few old friends who, surprisingly to me, have become diehard conservatives.

So let me address a few of these misperceptions.

"Liberals want someone else to pay for their health care."
This makes us sound like lazy, shiftless bums, which we are not. We want everyone to pay for everyone's health care. There's a big difference. How would you feel if you heard someone complaining that 'liberals want someone else to pay for the roads,' or 'liberals want someone else to pay for clean water.'

Liberals consider health care to be a public need and a public benefit. If everyone gets health care from the government there will be vast savings reaped by moving the administration of the system out of the hands of profit-driven bureaucrats in huge, unacccountable insurance companies. There will be more savings realized by the many users who will no longer ignore health problems until they become serious enough to warrant emergency room attention. But make no mistake, we're willing to pay our fair share.

"Liberals want the government to look out for your and hold your hand."
Another grotesque oversimplification. Liberals simply want there to be a safety net to ensure the least fortunate of us are not totally hosed by the occasional catastrophe we are all subject to. It simply makes sense, on a moral as well as a practical plane, for the group to help look out for the individual.

The rich and the powerful can look out for themselves. It's the poor who are vulnerable, who are trying hard, that we should help. We need to provide a better minimium wage for the countless thousands of working poor who are busting their butts holding down a part- or full time job and still live below the poverty level.

"Liberals Engage in Class Warfare."
This is the most Orwellian spin of all. When the rich and the powerful adjust (or circumvent) the rules in order to protect and increase their profits, that's somehow okay, but when liberals try to adjust the balance back in favor of the little guy doing better, it's 'class warfare.'

The real class warfare is how the middle class has been eviscerated in the past 30 years. Bear in mind that during the boom years following World War II the rich were taxed far more heavily than they are now. We had shrinking poverty, a growing middle class, an unprecedented economic boom and increasing levels of literacy. Heck, my parents were a carpenter and a secretary and they managed to put 2.5 kids throuch college! (I was the .5 kid, dropped out and then finished my college in the Navy.) Just try doing that on today's wages.

Since the Reagan years, we've seen more and more of that income go to the richest of Americans while the rest sink into poverty. This is the injustice we seek to remedy. If anything, we want to end the class warfare that has been waged against the poor and middle class.

"Liberals all believe [fill in the blank]."
Yeah, well so do conservatives. Neener neener neener. That's intellectually satisfying, isn't it?

The Blog | Lane Hudson: Democrats Poised to Abandon Troops AND American People? | The Huffington Post

Great post by Lane Hudson on HuffPo:

The Blog | Lane Hudson: Democrats Poised to Abandon Troops AND American People? | The Huffington Post

Trudeau: "I Told You So"

Doonesbury is engaging in a powerfully prescient series of "I Told You So" reruns. Click each image for the full size version.

The next president should put Garry Trudeau in his foreign affairs cabinet.

See the series at www.doonesbury.com

Okay, this is unfair, but...

Okay, this is unfair, but ....

I'm looking at my Yahoo! home page today and under 'Most Viewed Photos' I see two images...

This one...




And this one...

















Now, these are up there on the same day, people.

Totally unfair, I know. Still....How am I supposed to not do anything about it? [g]

Click each picture for the link.

Moyers: Buying the War

Watch this. Tell your friends to watch it.

WATCH IT.

Bill Moyers Journal . Buying the War . Additional Interviews | PBS

Faster than Light is Possible - Google Ads

Do a Google search for 'faster than light travel' and you'll get a lot of scientists saying it's not feasible... but a Google Ad from lowfares.com says it can be done and they're selling it now!