Un-Civil discourse

A letter to the editor into today's AJC claimed that Rep. Joe Wilson's shouting out "You lie!" in the middle of President Obama's address to Congress last week was no big deal. After all, he said, Democrats have never been shy about saying that President Bush lied to Congress.

Let's put this in perspective.

(1). Joe Wilson made his accusation in a shouted interruption of the President of the United States while he was addressing a joint session of the Congress. In our government, there is no more august occasion, demanding decorum and respect for the office.

Calling geoge bush a liar in print, on the web, on TV newscasts, and on late night comedy shows is hardly comparable.

Wilson's excuse was that he got carried away by his emotions. Then I would say that he is unfit emotionally to be a United States Congressman if he has that little self-control. Thank god they had metal detectors; suppose he had had a gun and got carried away by his emotions?

(2). President Bush DID lie to Congress IN ORDER to sell them and the American people on his bogus case for invading Iraq, a country that was no immediate threat to us, had nothing to do with 9/11, and we now know did not have the weapons of mass destruction. And there is good evidence that he knew he was lying. The clever way he worded it "The British have said . . . " was his way of convincing us of what he knew not to be true, and doing it in a way that technically he was not lying. It was true that the British had said it.

It was also true that the British had said in private that the bush administration was determined to invade Iraq and that "intelligence was being fixed" around that.

IN CONTRAST: President Obama did not lie. Independent opinions of his plan have agreed. He said that his health care reform plan would not be available to illegal immigrants. That's when Wilson shouted "You lie!"

The Republicans have said it would -- but they base their "lie" charge on the fact that some illegal immigrants manage to get government services now, even though they're not supposed to. Therefore, Obama is lying to say they will not get health care in his plan, because they will find a way, even if it's not in the plan. They're saying there are not enough safe-guards in the plan to prevent this.

That's what they equate to Bush cooking up a spin on lies to get backing for his illegal invasion of a sovereign nation that was not an immediate threat to us?

Patheticly illogical . . . . And despicable.

But then, it's no surprise. That's the level of intelligence and lack of logic that has come to characterize the opposition to anything Obama does.

Ralph

Obama as world leader

President Obama has hit his stride as a world leader in his back-to-back United Nations address, presding over the Security Council, adjunct meetings with world leaders, and then the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.

Along the way, his response to the revelation of a second nuclear facility in Iran has projected strength, resolve, and leadership. In his radio address today, he said:

"Iran's leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people."

At the same time, he offered them a "serious, meaningful dialogue," along with the warning about serous consequences. And he got Russia and China to agree. The issue couldn't have been more timely. One has to wonder if we leaked this news to coincide with the focus at the UN on sanctions against Iran. It helped galvanize and consolidate the world's resolve to deal with the problem.

There is some indication that new information had just come to light; on the other hand, some have said that we have known about this second, underground facility for some time.

Anyway -- it seems to be working. Iran was obviously caught off guard and now has announced that the UN inspectors will be allowed to inspect the new underground facility.

This does not change what I wrote yesterday about Israel's widely-known "secret" nuclear bombs. If I were the Iranians, that would be my first line of defense: "We will allow UN inspectors into our peaceful nuclear power plants the same day Israel allows UN inspectors into their nuclear arsenal."

Nevertheless -- this has been a good week for Obama on the national stage. If george bush has any capacity for self-reflection and any humility, he has to be realizing how pitiful, how wrong, and how destructive his leadership was by comparison.

Ralph

Another double standard

Iran revealed this week that it has another nuclear facility that it had previously kept secret and has not allowed to be inspected. They also, however, still insist that their nuclear activities are solely for the peaceful use of energy, not weapons.

Obama and the leaders of France and Britain said that this ups the ante on Tehran in the international talks next week. They must either cooperate and allow inspections or "be held accountable." And Obama said, "The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law."

Yes, but what about Israel? -- which everyone knows actually has nuclear weapons and delivery capability. They are a known "nuclear power" and yet they have never acknowledged it, are not part of any of the nuclear control treaties, and are not inspected by the UN team.

Why does Israel get to have nuclear bombs and Iran can't even make nuclear power plants?

Granted, I feel safer with Israel having them than I would with Iran having them -- but not all that much, judging by their rash actions in Lebanon and Gaza. But why do they not at least admit it? Why are they allowed to avoid inspections and accountability? And how much fuel does this known fact add to the fires that consume the Middle East?

Ralph

Doth the tide turn?

Finally, perhaps, the right-wing swill that's trashing health care reform seems on the wane. There are a few hopeful signs that some media people -- in addition to the admirable Jon Stewart and Rachel Madow -- are beginning to challenge them.

Ed Schulz, progressive talk radio host -- now there's a rarity -- has challenged Eric Cantor to come on his show for a full hour and explain his remarks to the woman at his town hall last week. She had asked where her uninsured relative could get needed surgery, and Cantor told her to look into existing government programs or charity organizations (see my blog of 9/23 "Getting down to cases"). Their vaunted private insurance wasn't mentioned. Schultz is also challenging Cantor to tell the audience about the Republican plan in detail for health care reform. Now that would be news.

That's what we've been needing.

Wouldn't it be something if it turns out that the right-wing smear-fight peaked too soon and the momentum is now going the other way?

There is encouraging news that the Democrats are increasingly optimistic that we will wind up with Obama signing into law a bill that includes a robust public option plan.

Ralph

Double standard: Abu Graib and ACORN

Big news this week: conservatives have gone a long way toward their goal of destroying ACORN, the community-organizing, public services, non-profit organization. During the campaign, Republicans looked for every opportunity to discredit them, for example, by crying "scandal" in isolated incidents of paid workers in voter registration drives making up names to pad their credits. They accused the entire organization of "voter fraud" and tried to smear Obama, who had long-standing ties to the organization from his community organizing days. Let it be known that not one single "Mickey Mouse" bogus name tried to vote, because they weren't actual people -- just names listed to get another buck.

Of course, that was in fact voter registration fraud -- not voter fraud, as they tried to paint it. That is entirely different from when an actual person who is not eligible to vote tries to do so anyway. That's voter fraud. But the rare ACORN incidents were simply due to a few "bad apples" trying to make an extra buck in a system where they were paid according to how many people they registered.

Now the latest scandal involving ACORN is a tape of two ACORN workers advising a couple, posing as a prostitute and her pimp, about how to lie about her profession and launder her earnings so she could get housing aid. The purpose of the ACORN workers is to help people find low income housing. It was even more outrageous: the couple said they would be bringing in 13 yr old girls from Latin America to work as prostitutes, and the workers apparently kept on advising them. So all kinds of illegal acts were being discussed -- and all being secretly filmed by the sting operation.

Now we know that the whole thing was a set-up by conservative sources, secretly filmed, and gleefully leaked on the internet. The actors posing as the couple have a history of such politically motivated stings, as does the person who spread the video around.

Here's the problem. Of course this was wrong, and the two ACORN workers were promptly fired. They were bad apples doing what the organization never intended. Now Congress has gotten into the act and has voted to deny any federal funds to ACORN. IRS jumped in and canceled its program that provided tax preparation help to poor people. There will likely be outraged demands from other politically-sensitive public agencies that will be afraid to continue an association; and donors will stop giving money.

The conservatives will have won -- they will have destroyed ACORN. . . . Unless . . . ACORN has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit claiming illegal secret audio taping and defamation by illegally distributing the video. My first thought when I heard about it: the whole thing was a set-up -- including the two ACORN "workers." So far, ACORN hasn't said that, but I would still want investigators to make sure no money passed between the actors and the workers.

Let's call it what it was: entrapment, deliberately planned to destroy ACORN.

But here's my point. The Abu Graib detainee abuse scandal was blamed on a few low-level "bad apples." Only one mid-level officer was disciplined; and those who planned and encouraged -- nay, ordered -- 'enhanced interrogation techniques 'and set the tone for 'ends justify means' mindset went scott free. In fact, I believe president bush gave some of them Medals of Freedom.

Now we have something similar: a few bad apples responded to a sting operation and got caught playing along. But instead of just getting rid of the bad apples, the whole humanitarian organization that has done so much good work will probably be destroyed.

Double standard. Here's the Republican standard:

our bad apples are just bad apples and the tree is fine;
your bad apples indicate a rotten tree and it must be cut down.

Ralph

My new hero

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is standing up to his colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee. First, last week, he came out against the Baucus bill as it was presented and in favor of a public option.

Today, in their session marking up the bill, he had this to say (HuffingtonPost):

Reacting to an amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) during the Senate Finance Committee's markup of health care reform legislation on Thursday, committee member Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) called his colleague a pawn of the health insurance industry.

"This is a very, very important amendment and it's a very, very bad amendment," said Rockefeller. "If there's anything which is clear, it's that the insurance industry is not running this markup, but is running certain people in this markup."

On Wednesday, committee member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) unintentionally made this same point about himself when he begged for "at least 72 hours for the people that the providers have hired to keep up with all of the legislation that we pass around here, and the regulations that we pass around here, to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Have you considered this?'"

Of course, he was talking about the lobbyists. And one commentator quipped: the lobbyists are the ones who wrote the bill anyway; why do they need time to read it?

If there is any doubt about this being a bill they like, remember what I wrote on September 18th: as soon as the Baucus plan was released, the stocks of the insurance companies and drug makers shot way up. There is also reason to think that Baucus himself, not just Republican members, is a pawn of the insurance companies -- given the amount of money he has received from them and the fact that he has fashioned his bill to be as kind to them as possible and still stay close to what Obama is insisting on.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/24/rockefeller-the-insurance_n_298555.html

This deserves a prize for creative lying

I could probably think of some other crazy thinking from the right, but this one ranks up there near the top:

fighting pornography by claiming it will make you gay.

From TalkingPointsMemo:

In an infamous moment at the Values Voter Summit over the weekend, captured on video by Dave Weigel, Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) chief of staff Michael Schwartz made the case against pornography. "All pornography is homosexual pornography," said Schwartz, quoting an ex-gay friend of his, "because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards."

Schwartz then explained the side benefit of this finding -- that if boys know pornography will make them gay, they'll never touch it, taking advantage of what Schwartz sees as a natural homophobia. "And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he's going to want to get a copy of Playboy?" he said. "I'm pretty sure he'll lose interest. That's the last thing he wants!"

Well, now we know !! Thank god there's a solution to the problem of homosexuality !!!!!

Just say no to Playboy and all the other girlie magazines.

But . . . but isn't that the same thing that turns boys into raging, hormone-besotted young lotharios and leads to (gasp!) boy-girl sex? It's very confusing.

Ralph

Getting down to cases

Republicans haven't come up with a solution to the health care crisis themselves. They're too busy trying to defeat anything the Democrats propose that doesn't benefit the health care industry itself more than the people. And unfortunately there are some Democrats who are doing the same.

But here's how the #2 Republican in the House advises people to handle real problems (from TalkingPointsMemo):

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared yesterday at a health care reform discussion hosted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. As the newspaper reported, constituents "listened without booing" and "left in an orderly fashion -- without shouting, fighting or the escort of law enforcement." What a refreshing change of pace.

As Think Progress pointed out, there was only one glitch: Cantor told a woman whose uninsured relative needs a tumor operation that she ought to look into "an existing government program" or seek charity to pay for the operation. Way to stick to conservative principles. . . .

"There are programs, there are charitable organizations, there are hospitals here who do provide charity care," he continued.

The woman had formerly had a high paying job and health insurance but lost her job and her insurance. One way to read his answer is an endorsement of the status quo. The other is to realize that he suggests turning to "existing government programs." Nowhere does he mention private insurnce as the answer.

Reminds me of george bush's similar answer to people who have no insurance: they actually do have access to health care, he insisted; they go to emergency rooms. That's how clueless he was to the problem. I've got mine, Jack; you go fend for yourself.

Ralph

Gradualism's advantage

I've been of divided mind about the best way to gain equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians -- whether to go all out for the Supreme Court to overturn all state laws, as it did in decriminalizing sodomy; or whether to allow the process to proceed state by state until a larger percent of the country already has it in their states. Then go for a knockout blow by the Supremes.

I had thought the only disadvantage to the immediate Supreme Court route was the likelihood that the current Court would not overturn laws such as CA Prop8, and thus it would be a setback for some time.

But now I'm seeing the positive side to the gradual, state by state approach. As each new state (now there are six) approves same-sex marriage, we get the cumulative effect of another demonstration that the dire effects predicted by opponents do not materialize. And with each one, there is likely to be less and less backlash.

Now comes a report of a poll in Iowa, whose courts overturned its laws against gay marriage earlier this year. In this poll, conducted by the Des Moines Register, 92% of respondents said that "gay marriage has brought no real change to their lives."

I haven't see the actual questions, so it's hard to know quite how to interpret that. On the face of it, it is highly significant. But it might be even more so, if some of those 8% who presumably said that it did bring change to their lives might have meant a positive change -- ie, same-sex couples who got married or were close friends or relatives. So those who felt a negative change might be even less than that 8%.

Now there's some data that is hard to deny or for the opponents to distort.

New York and New Jersey: Are you listening? The corhhuskers are leaving you urban sophisticates behind.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/poll-92-of-iowans-believe_n_293539.html

Zipper denial

I guess male politicians with zipper problems just lose their good sense along with it. They never seem to learn that, in today's goldfish bowl and with the marketability of scandal, nothing is going to stay a secret. The lies and coverup will bring you down when the truth might not.

John Edwards. What a disappointment. I was a strong supporter and contributor early in his presidential campaign. I believed in his sincerity. I especially believed in Elizabeth and felt that she gave him credibility that made up for the suspicion of excessive narcissism that his pretty boy image created.

But I did not at the time suspect that he had a zipper problem.

Even more, he has a problem with telling the truth. How many lies has he told about the affair with Rielle Hunter and about the now-almost-certain fact that he is the father of her baby? He has involved not only his wife in the cover-up, but he apparently induced one of his close associates, Andrew Young, to claim to be the father. This young man was himself married. So what must have been his reward for falsely claiming to have fathered someone else's child?

There is now a grand jury looking into whether campaign funds were used in the affair. We know Hunter was paid by the campaign for documentary filming, which makes it easy to hide money for other purposes. But the big payoff, apparently, came from a wealthy Texas trial attorney, Fred Baron, who was the campaign's national finance director. He has said that he made secret payments to both Hunter and Young from his personal funds. Sounds like a deal to me.

And now this twist: apparently one question the grand jury is looking at: if an individual makes such hush money payments to prevent a scandal from destroying a political campaign, does that constitute a campaign contribution? If so, then this would have been a violation of campaign finance laws.

The big problem for Edwards now is that Young is shopping a book proposal that retracts his fatherhood confession and seems to be "telling all." Book advances trump silence money, I suppose.

Wow !! This is far worse than anything Bill Clinton was ever accused of. Here's what I resent most in my fallen hero.

He let his self-importance and blind illusion of invulnerability put at risk the chances for the Democrats to win the presidency.

Suppose he had been nominated? And then two weeks before the election, all this came out? We would have lost the election.

I still think Edwards has done a lot of good in fighting poverty and working to help the underdog. And I think he was right on most of the big issues. But he is unqualified to be president -- not because of his zipper problem but because he would risk so much for so little and be so blind to that risk. For me, it's not so much a moral issue as one of judgment and perspective and maturity.

Such is the power of a zipper to change the course of history. I'm glad that Edwards' lack of success in the early primaries led me to switch my backing to Obama as having a better chance of defeating Hillary. We are so much better off with Obama as president than we would have been with Edwards.

Ralph

Civility and honesty

Jay Mulberry who moderates one of the blogs I follow, The Back Fence, said something that I think is very important.

The meta-discussion of the whole meme of uncivility in criticism of Obama, Joe Wilson's "You lie," and the raucousness of the tea-party protesters has taken a turn toward issues of freedom to speak truth to power. When does uncivility serves legitimate protest and when does it serve the status quo?

Jay wrote:

Civility is generally a good thing, but foolish civility can become mere acquiescence to the status quo. Incivility is often an appropriate way, probably the only way of "speaking truth to power." If you don't believe this, you must believe that power is willing to give way to reason, and if you believe that you are naive.

The current examples of Tea-Party raucousness do not, from my point of view, speak truth to power but use incivility, lies, threats and racism to serve the status quo.

It is their basic dishonesty that disturbs me, not their uncivility.

For me, this settles the question about "uncivil discourse." Be uncivil if need be to make your point -- but be honest.

Ralph