Tuesday, December 21, 2010

"a bitter man now"

Excellent article this past Sunday in TIME online on the "John McCain I used to know" by Joe Klein.

Some rather insightful remarks sprinkled through the piece:
  • Klein cites the passage of the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as "another step toward the perfection of our democracy " (a feeling with which I heartily agree, given that the United States is finally joining 38 other "civilized" and [not always] "progressive" nations around the world. Some of the Comments on the piece note that McCain has carried on a consistently hateful and duplicitous diatribe against the DADT legislation that he first said he would support if the military supported it (and then switched his position in a rather bald-faced dance giving a variety of nonsensical reasons about why he was now consistenly against passage). Nevertheless, repeal passed.
  • However, in citing the difficulties of trying to pass the "Dream Act", Klein cites that two "of the original sponsors, John McCain and Orrin Hatch, voted against the bill...and one wonders why".
  • Klein's final conclusion mirrors my own appraisal:  "He's a bitter man now, who can barely tolerate the fact that he lost to Barack Obama. But he lost for an obvious reason: his campaign proved him to be puerile and feckless, a politician who panicked when the heat was on during the financial collapse, a trigger-happy gambler who chose an incompetent for his vice president. He has made quite a show ever since of demonstrating his petulance and lack of grace."
I heartily recommend browsing the full article. ALSO, some of the Comments are jewels!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Win One, Lose One (Two? Three? Four?)

After knuckling under to the ridiculous demands of the Republican minority on extending the Bush tax cuts to the ultra-rich ($250K+) filers -- tax cuts which are proven to have not added ONE single job to the working poor (or non-poor) in this country -- the Senate finally passed the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".


While I am very pleased that DADT is on the way to being gone (America finally joins 38 other countries around the world which do not discriminate!), I fear for my country when procedural bottlenecks like a minority in the U.S. Senate can hand the minority this huge tax-savings windfall.  Let us be clear here: this fight was mostly about the difference in the upper tax rate reverting to 39% as opposed to staying at the 35% rate.  Of course, that rate difference results in about $700 billion being added to the deficit at a time when the Republicans and their Tea Party "new blood" are haranguing against the deficit. It's interesting to see how the moneyed folks at the top can hold disparate ideas. Of course, the writing on the wall will be that these same folks will now come attacking Medicare and Social Security insisting that the deficit they have added to be reduced by cuts in these programs. Our "great society" gets a little less great.

Other  pending issues (passed by the House and awaiting action in the Senate) will likely see NO progress before the lame duck Congress goes home for their holiday break. Those issues include confirming the latest START treaty, the adoption of the DREAM act (a good start to approaching immigration reform), and passage of the medical coverage for 9/11 First Responders.

The Senate has ONE opportunity to modify the rules under which they operate. In particular, there is a relatively grass-roots movement afoot to address the rule which allows a minority (in the case of 100 Senators, 41) to block any vote. This used to be called "the nuclear option" (during the Bush years) and was rarely used by the Democratic minority in the years 2001 to 2006 but has become the means by which the "party of no" can stop ANY legislation from proceeding. This MUST be changed. (Of course, the footnote here is that some Democrats are concerned that should they become the minority then this blocking method is no longer available for them.) Senate rules can be changed ONLY on the first day of the new Senate class (every two years) and it would reasonable that this rule be revisited, if necessary, in each new session. The Senate, by and large, operates as the world's most elite "boys club", steeped in tradition and antiquated rules and procedures that have more to do with a time when the Senator commuted to and from Washington by horseback than by air. It's time to let a little modernization in folks!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Presidential Atrophy

Rachel Maddow today brought up a kernal of wisdom from Mahatma Ghandi of the four steps of a struggle: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". She used these four steps in reverse to make a rather succinct observation on the Presidency of Barack Obama: "First you win, then they fight you, then they laugh at you, then they ignore you". A cautionary prediction, certainly, but one which is quite sadly possible when our presumed strong "change you can believe in" President capitulates to a Republican minority during the current lame duck congressional session and gives away the store, caving into the Republican demands to add $900 billion dollars to the national deficit by extending all of the Bush tax cuts for an additional 2 years. And who really believes that a Republican-controlled House will let a bill pass in 2011 that eliminates this gift to the super wealthy?

And why? The assumption here is that this concession was politically required in order to get a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits during the greatest economic downturn in our history since the Great Depression.

Some of the wiser economists have pointed out that the President has bargained away $900 billion (for a paltry $40 billion--which is approximately what the unemployment extensions will cost--at a time when many Republicans are terrified about voting now against unemployment benefits and would eventually let that measure  pass by itself, not linked to any other proposals. In other words, to get "a deal" the President has "punted on third down" (forgive the sports metaphor repeated by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown on Maddow's 12/7 program). Who knows whether it was 3rd down and 1 yard or 3rd down and 20 yards, but "the team" went for the punt prematurely and yielded the playing field.

This is not the "change we can believe in" that progressive, independent and Democratic voters campaigned for in the fall of 2008. This is not the strength that we assumed a congressional majority could deliver. This is more than disappointing, it's almost criminal.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

It's Time!

Today (Thursday, December 2, 2010) the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee is holding hearings to gather information prior to voting on the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"--the flawed policy which has (so far) resulted in almost 14,000 men and women being cashiered out of various military branches of service. 

In the HuffingtonPost coverage, one of the most significant items to come out of the live blog of the hearings (so far) was the "split" by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman whose passionate argument was simple, yet eloquent:

"In our time, one of the great transitions occurring is the growing readiness and understanding among the American people that you simply -- it's just wrong and un-American to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation."

Although I've certainly had my differences with Senator Lieberman in the past (particularly over his decision to support fellow Senator John McCain during the 2008 presidential election), I've got to say that the statement (above) redeems him in my eyes--and not just because he agrees with my position.

On Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program yesterday she ran down the parallels between President Harry S Truman's executive order ending segregation of the races in post WW2 1945. In so many ways, integrating the U.S. military services racially is equivalent to finally integrating the services as far as sexual orientation. In the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11/2001, there was an urgent need for Arabic-speaking translators )to scan the growing flood of message traffic about possible future attack plans). Yet almost 60 Arabic speakers (along with 9 gay Farsi speakers) have been discharged from the military (through June 2009) despite a dire shortage of translators for those languages. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! A policy which values adherence more to policy than to realistic need (not to mention being in step with other major militaries of the world who have "advanced" to include lesbian and gay member in their ranks) is a flawed policy and it's time for that to end!

Finally, I would cite the 38 countries that (so far) have removed restrictions from gay and lesbian citizens from serving in their ranks: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Bermuda and Uruguay. LOOK AT THIS LIST! Does the United States count itself among the civilized nations of the world? Can the Russian and South African militaries be more advanced than ours in their thinking!?

It's time--NOW!!--for this flawed policy to end.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Unapologetic Bastard Rethuglicans!

So it has come down to this: Give the ultra-rich the continuing tax breaks or NOTHING will happen in government. No extension of needed unemployment benefits, no continuation of the tax breaks for those earning $250,000 and under, no action on "dont' ask, don't tell" (despite the urgency that the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have urged). JUST NOTHING!

Everything is hostage to the fat cats getting tax breaks which are unfunded and (no matter how many times the Rethuglican parrots  repeat the "talking points") do nothing other than line the pockets of the already rich while adding between $4 and $7 billion to the deficit that Rethuglicans say MUST be brought under control. It's quite amazing that this bunch can hold these two disparate ideas in their political heads while at the same time just shutting the government down, all the while pointing to a "mandate" which really changed the make-up of the two houses of Congress very little.

It's time for Democratic legislators with some semblance of backbone to call their bluff!  The American public is not truly stupid enough to believe that this intransigent, bullying behavior is in any way honest or fair.