It began with John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. The choice of this incompetent, unqualified, inexperienced, and stupid person as a vice presidential candidate called McCain’s judgment into serious question. Had the old war hero turned senile? How could he have put such a person a heartbeat from the Presidency? The mere thought of Palin in the White House was frightening. But McCain’s choice was far more than a scare—it insulted America and unleashed a wave of violence and racism that continues.
Never forget the crosshairs map Palin posted on her Facebook page. She urged her Twitter followers, “Don’t retreat, reload.” Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ face was in one of the crosshairs. On January 8, 2011, Congresswoman Giffords was shot in the head outside a Tucson Safeway supermarket. Fortunately she survived and is making a remarkable recovery. But America is still coping with the incivility and insults initiated by Palin and taken up by the Tea Party and Congressional Republicans.
The insults continued after President Obama was elected and took office. With exhortations to “take back our country,” the Tea Party, overwhelmingly made up of whites, spread its unsubtle racist message. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that “take back our country” meant take it back from the black guy who’s President.
Four days before the President was inaugurated, the tone was set by radio talk show bloviator Rush Limbaugh. On January 16, 2010, Limbaugh said, “I hope Obama fails.”
During the President’s first term, Congressional Republicans took up Limbaugh’s mantra, deciding to do everything in their power to destroy the Obama presidency by holding up, blocking, weakening, misrepresenting, and voting against everything the President and Democrats wanted to accomplish.
Republican senator Mitch McConnell stated the Republicans’ position quite clearly: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” McConnell told Major Garrett in an interview published in the National Review in October 2010. A month later, in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, he repeated his position: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” In another time, such a call of opposition to a sitting President would have been considered treason. But over the past two years, Republicans have, like obedient little soldiers, followed McConnell’s marching orders, turning their backs on their country and the people who elected them and abandoning their responsibility to participate in government.
Despite repeated attempts by the President to work in a bipartisan fashion, Republicans refused, becoming the “Party of No.” No to health care for all Americans. No to the President’s job creation bill. No to restoring regulations of the banks whose fraudulent practices caused the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. No to repealing the Bush tax cuts that added billions of dollars to the deficit. No to taxing millionaires and billionaires so they pay their fair share. Last summer, Republicans’ political brinksmanship with the debt ceiling resulted in the first downgrade in the national credit rating in U.S. history. In carrying out Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell’s dictum to bring about failure of the Obama administration, Republicans have made Congress dysfunctional and the economic recovery slower than it might have been had they spent more time working with the President instead of working against him. That President Obama has been able to accomplish so much despite Republicans’ intransigence is a tribute to his political skill, patience and intelligence.
Now we come to this election year and the line-up of potential Republican presidential candidates who are as insultingly unqualified as Sarah Palin. All celebrate their ignorance of history, science, economics, foreign policy, and the U.S. Constitution. All denounce evolution. All deny climate change despite more than 30 years of scientific evidence that proves it is happening with alarming acceleration. All oppose reproductive choice and health services for women. All denounce government intrusion except in a woman’s uterus. All exude hatred for the President. All display a craziness and brazen greed.
Ron abolish-the-department-of-education Paul opposed requiring health insurers to cover pre-existing illnesses and denounced Medicare and Medicaid.
Herman 9-9-9 Cain and Rick execution-champion Perry both exhibited brain freeze, the former showing gross ignorance of foreign policy, the latter unable to recall his own thoughts and appearing as if he were high during a campaign speech in New Hampshire.
Michele tea-party-madam Bachmann has made so many statements displaying her ignorance that it would be impossible to list even a fraction of them. Just one will suffice—she said the founding fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” She was off by almost a century. (The U.S. Constitution went into effect March 4, 1789. Slavery ended with the 13th Amendment in 1865.)
Rick contraception-is-dangerous Santorum, displaying his fanatical opposition to abortion, said pregnancy through rape is “a gift of human life.” His advice to women who become pregnant through rape is, “accept what God is giving you.”
Newt family-values Gingrich, proposed hiring poor kids to clean their schools. So much for child labor laws.
Mitt “corporations-are-people” Romney, the current frontrunner, has changed positions so many times that he seems in perpetual twirl like a wind-up toy out of control. But his recent gaffe may be the most truthful thing he has said: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” It’s been clear all along that Mitt is out of touch with everybody except millionaires and billionaires. Asked about his gaffe, Mitt said he “misspoke,” but he misspoke the truth.
One could view the so-called “debates” as a mediocre comedy show were the stakes not so high. As a group, the quality of the Republican candidates is embarrassing, insulting Americans’ intelligence and displaying contempt for the people. If this is the best Republicans have to offer, it is a pathetic commentary on the level to which the party has sunk. There was a time when there were Republican statesmen and stateswomen, people you could respect even through you didn’t agree with them, people who could compromise and work with the President instead of doing their best to derail him. Sadly the current Republican party has sold its soul to right-wing fanatics and greed-driven lobbyists. In response to the February 2012 good news that unemployment dropped for the fifth straight month and job creation was higher than at any time since 1998, Republicans criticized the President for “slowing” economic recovery and stated, “We can do better.” Well, why haven’t they done better for their country during the past two years when they have controlled the House?
Throughout the President’s entire first term, Congressional Republicans have shown they are empty suits with nothing to offer. They have persistently pursued only two objectives: destroy the Obama presidency and further reduce taxes for millionaires and billionaires. The thought of Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich becoming President should fill anyone with dread. Neither has the breadth of vision or the understanding of the complex world in which we live to be President of the United States of America. The election of either would be the final disastrous insult to our country, our democracy and the American people.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Friday, December 3, 2010
Rappers for the Rich
So the Republican blockade of bills that might actually help the middle class and the poor continues—all held hostage to the party’s demand that tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires be extended. You have to hand it to Republicans, they know how to practice togetherness. Not one independent voice among them. Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, and Tweedle-Dee-Dum—the Boehner, McConnell-Cantor corporate rap trio – lead their faithful lackeys in their continuing assault on government for the American people. It’s nothing new. Ever since President Obama took office, Republicans have turned their backs on the people whom they were elected to represent and have instead refused to participate in governing. President Carter called their behavior “irresponsible” in an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm on Tuesday, November 30th. Along with raw sewage and flesh-eating microbes, Republicans are right up there with the most toxic elements in public life. Never before in my lifetime – and I’m a senior citizen – have I seen an entire political party work single-mindedly to bring down the country in order to bring down the President.
Congressional Republicans have become the most destructive force in American life. Their efforts to create more economic disaster to gain political advantage in the 2012 election displays disrespect for the Presidency and contempt for the American people, for democracy and for our Constitution. As if their actions hadn’t revealed their seditious strategy right out front, corporate rapper McConnell proclaimed the Republicans’ agenda baldly: “The single more important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” he said in an interview with the National Journal’s Major Garrett on October 29, 2010. Note: not a single word about the good of the country or the American people. Now McConnell has sent his ultimatum letter to Senator Harry Reid basically saying, “It’s our way or the highway.” In the ultimate display of arrogance and hypocrisy, the Boehner/McConnell/Cantor trio refused to extend unemployment benefits for the 2 million Americans whose benefits expired midnight December 1st. For the past two years, this gang of naysayers has voiced support for only one thing – tax cuts for the super rich. In case you don’t remember, these are the Bush tax cuts that raided the U.S. Treasury, squandering the budget surplus left by President Clinton and creating the largest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to millionaires in the nation’s history. No matter that extending these tax cuts will add $700 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. Well, you know, the country can afford a deficit that goes to “feeding” millionaires but not an $18 billion (the cost of extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed) deficit that goes to put food on the tables of people who’ve lost their jobs. Recall Rhett Butler’s line to Scarlet O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
It’s all so simple really – not all deficits are equal. Although the “party of No” proclaims cutting the deficit is the single most important thing that Congress must do, this deficit addition that will be created if Congress allows itself to be bullied into extending the millionaire tax cuts doesn’t count. Under a Democratic President, Republicans are for reducing the deficit; under a Republican President, they’re for racking it up. And rack it up, they did, creating the largest deficit in the history of all previous administrations put together. But that was THEN, you know, under the Bush/Cheney team of good ol’ corporate boys.
If the Tea Partiers, or anybody else who voted the new crop of Republicans in office, believes Republican propaganda about working for the American people, they should pay close attention to what Republicans have voted against during these past two years. Then decide what people Republicans are working to help. Here’s just a partial list of what Republicans have blocked, stalled and tried to kill altogether:
- No to regulating the big banks and investment houses, the very institutions whose fraudulent manipulations brought the country to the brink of another Great Depression.
- No to equal pay for women.
- No to requiring oil companies to fully pay for oil spill damage.
- No to increasing bank loans to small businesses.
- No to the health reform bill, which will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years and by $2 trillion in the second 10 years.
- No to expanding health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.
- No to eliminating pre-existing conditions as insurers’ pretext for dropping coverage.
- No to closing the Medicare prescription “donut hole.”
- No to giving seniors in the gap a 50-percent discount on brand-name drugs in 2011.
- No to allowing children to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26.
- No to eliminating co-payments for preventive health under Medicare.
- No to prohibiting health insurers from placing lifetime caps on coverage.
- No to banning annual limits on coverage.
- No to reforming student aid.
- No to expanding eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
- No to increased infrastructure spending for roads, bridges and power plants
- No to consumer financial protections
No. No. No. That’s all Republicans have contributed to government over the past two years. It’s a tribute to President Obama that despite Republican attempts to bring down the government, more legislation has been passed during these first two years of his administration than under any other modern President. Yes, Republican opposition has caused some of this legislation to be weaker than it could have been, but it’s out there. Despite Republicans’ refusal to act in a bipartisan manner even after President Obama offered numerous – perhaps too many – attempts to reach across the political aisle, landmark legislation, such as the Health Care Reform Bill, was passed.
The message of Republicans’ behavior has been loud and clear. Their constituency is not the people who elected them; it is the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the big banks, the investment houses, and the two percent of the wealthiest Americans. Anybody who thinks any differently is in denial. If Republicans have their way and are enabled to carry out their corporate agenda, American’s middle class will sink to the level of the poor in Third-World countries, becoming just a cheap labor pool ripe for exploitation. Maybe China will give them jobs. The Republicans surely aren’t.
Congressional Republicans have become the most destructive force in American life. Their efforts to create more economic disaster to gain political advantage in the 2012 election displays disrespect for the Presidency and contempt for the American people, for democracy and for our Constitution. As if their actions hadn’t revealed their seditious strategy right out front, corporate rapper McConnell proclaimed the Republicans’ agenda baldly: “The single more important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” he said in an interview with the National Journal’s Major Garrett on October 29, 2010. Note: not a single word about the good of the country or the American people. Now McConnell has sent his ultimatum letter to Senator Harry Reid basically saying, “It’s our way or the highway.” In the ultimate display of arrogance and hypocrisy, the Boehner/McConnell/Cantor trio refused to extend unemployment benefits for the 2 million Americans whose benefits expired midnight December 1st. For the past two years, this gang of naysayers has voiced support for only one thing – tax cuts for the super rich. In case you don’t remember, these are the Bush tax cuts that raided the U.S. Treasury, squandering the budget surplus left by President Clinton and creating the largest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to millionaires in the nation’s history. No matter that extending these tax cuts will add $700 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. Well, you know, the country can afford a deficit that goes to “feeding” millionaires but not an $18 billion (the cost of extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed) deficit that goes to put food on the tables of people who’ve lost their jobs. Recall Rhett Butler’s line to Scarlet O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
It’s all so simple really – not all deficits are equal. Although the “party of No” proclaims cutting the deficit is the single most important thing that Congress must do, this deficit addition that will be created if Congress allows itself to be bullied into extending the millionaire tax cuts doesn’t count. Under a Democratic President, Republicans are for reducing the deficit; under a Republican President, they’re for racking it up. And rack it up, they did, creating the largest deficit in the history of all previous administrations put together. But that was THEN, you know, under the Bush/Cheney team of good ol’ corporate boys.
If the Tea Partiers, or anybody else who voted the new crop of Republicans in office, believes Republican propaganda about working for the American people, they should pay close attention to what Republicans have voted against during these past two years. Then decide what people Republicans are working to help. Here’s just a partial list of what Republicans have blocked, stalled and tried to kill altogether:
- No to regulating the big banks and investment houses, the very institutions whose fraudulent manipulations brought the country to the brink of another Great Depression.
- No to equal pay for women.
- No to requiring oil companies to fully pay for oil spill damage.
- No to increasing bank loans to small businesses.
- No to the health reform bill, which will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years and by $2 trillion in the second 10 years.
- No to expanding health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.
- No to eliminating pre-existing conditions as insurers’ pretext for dropping coverage.
- No to closing the Medicare prescription “donut hole.”
- No to giving seniors in the gap a 50-percent discount on brand-name drugs in 2011.
- No to allowing children to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26.
- No to eliminating co-payments for preventive health under Medicare.
- No to prohibiting health insurers from placing lifetime caps on coverage.
- No to banning annual limits on coverage.
- No to reforming student aid.
- No to expanding eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
- No to increased infrastructure spending for roads, bridges and power plants
- No to consumer financial protections
No. No. No. That’s all Republicans have contributed to government over the past two years. It’s a tribute to President Obama that despite Republican attempts to bring down the government, more legislation has been passed during these first two years of his administration than under any other modern President. Yes, Republican opposition has caused some of this legislation to be weaker than it could have been, but it’s out there. Despite Republicans’ refusal to act in a bipartisan manner even after President Obama offered numerous – perhaps too many – attempts to reach across the political aisle, landmark legislation, such as the Health Care Reform Bill, was passed.
The message of Republicans’ behavior has been loud and clear. Their constituency is not the people who elected them; it is the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the big banks, the investment houses, and the two percent of the wealthiest Americans. Anybody who thinks any differently is in denial. If Republicans have their way and are enabled to carry out their corporate agenda, American’s middle class will sink to the level of the poor in Third-World countries, becoming just a cheap labor pool ripe for exploitation. Maybe China will give them jobs. The Republicans surely aren’t.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
My 2010 Wish List
I wish that by some shift in solar winds or magnetic fields, Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak and Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson could have their hormones scrambled and change into women. It’s not that I’m eager to join into sisterhood with these two but it would be instructive for them to feel in their feminized gut what it’s like to have a pair of men using their legislative clout to restrict women’s reproductive health services. It’s difficult to understand what motivates men like Stupak and Nelson. Maybe they’re so angry nature didn’t give them the biological equipment to become pregnant and give birth that they’re out to get revenge by efforts to control women’s bodies. Maybe they just hate women. There’s surely a lot of that sentiment among men throughout the world. The Taliban, radical Islamists, fundamentalist Christians—they’re all the same in their anti-woman attitudes. Whatever their twisted motivation, Stupak and Nelson are among a cadre of fanatical men who lead the anti-choice brigade. If these men are enabled by a spineless Congress to succeed in their ultimate goal of banning abortion under the ruse of “health reform,” American women’s health will be pushed back to the era of coat-hanger abortions. Since I don’t believe in magic, I know there’s not even the freakiest chance that Stupak and Nelson will change into women. So my back-up wish is that they change into frogs. Forever. With no chance of becoming princes!
My second wish is for more members of Congress who will serve the people who elected them rather than the lobbyists that dump bribe money into their campaign coffers. We have some terrific Congresspersons who do stand up for the American people and who passionately care for our Constitution rather than the corporations but we need more. So I wish that in the upcoming 2010 elections, all the corporate fascists and cultural Neanderthals will be kicked out of office and more enlightened candidates elected.
I wish for a Republican party that is a true opposition party rather than a demolition party. Since Barack Obama was elected, Republicans seem to have only one item on their agenda – destroying his Presidency. There was a time when overt efforts to bring down a Presidency would have been considered treason. Today it’s just business as usual for a Republican party dominated by white right-wing fanatics and led by a venomous ex-vice-president and hate-mongering spokespersons like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Democracy needs an intelligent opposition party; right now, we don’t have one. The “party of no” is just that. All negatives, lies and fear manipulation. Nothing positive or coherent or intelligent.
On the cusp of a new decade, I wish for an end to war. I wish leaders of the world’s nations would recognize the terrible waste of war – the killings, raping, ecological destruction – so much needless suffering and misery. With commitment and leadership, economies could be profitably based on efforts that nourish life rather than on technologies that hasten death and philosophies that turn human beings into weapons of mass destruction. The human lifespan is pitifully short but it’s all we have – less than nine decades to discover and fulfill our potential, realize our hopes and dreams, raise families, and leave the planet a better place than the one we inherited. Subjugating that precious lifespan to death and destruction is the most obscene crime against nature imaginable.
Finally I wish for a powerful global movement of citizen activists that will work on all fronts – the arts, science, education, technology, politics, religion – to transform societies from death promoters to life supporters. Each individual in her/his own way CAN help to make a difference. We CAN empower each other.
My second wish is for more members of Congress who will serve the people who elected them rather than the lobbyists that dump bribe money into their campaign coffers. We have some terrific Congresspersons who do stand up for the American people and who passionately care for our Constitution rather than the corporations but we need more. So I wish that in the upcoming 2010 elections, all the corporate fascists and cultural Neanderthals will be kicked out of office and more enlightened candidates elected.
I wish for a Republican party that is a true opposition party rather than a demolition party. Since Barack Obama was elected, Republicans seem to have only one item on their agenda – destroying his Presidency. There was a time when overt efforts to bring down a Presidency would have been considered treason. Today it’s just business as usual for a Republican party dominated by white right-wing fanatics and led by a venomous ex-vice-president and hate-mongering spokespersons like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Democracy needs an intelligent opposition party; right now, we don’t have one. The “party of no” is just that. All negatives, lies and fear manipulation. Nothing positive or coherent or intelligent.
On the cusp of a new decade, I wish for an end to war. I wish leaders of the world’s nations would recognize the terrible waste of war – the killings, raping, ecological destruction – so much needless suffering and misery. With commitment and leadership, economies could be profitably based on efforts that nourish life rather than on technologies that hasten death and philosophies that turn human beings into weapons of mass destruction. The human lifespan is pitifully short but it’s all we have – less than nine decades to discover and fulfill our potential, realize our hopes and dreams, raise families, and leave the planet a better place than the one we inherited. Subjugating that precious lifespan to death and destruction is the most obscene crime against nature imaginable.
Finally I wish for a powerful global movement of citizen activists that will work on all fronts – the arts, science, education, technology, politics, religion – to transform societies from death promoters to life supporters. Each individual in her/his own way CAN help to make a difference. We CAN empower each other.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Hypocritic Oath
Accept the fact – life is a pre-existing condition. Any health insurance that denies this fact is not health insurance; it’s death insurance. Sad to say, that’s what the United States’ so-called health care has become. Except for the rich, of course. The poor don’t count. The middle class don’t count. They’re going to die anyway. May as well be sooner as later.
The opposition to healthcare reform comes mainly from Republicans but also from a small group of “blue dog” Democrats, and it’s gotten ugly. These politicians, elected to serve the American people are, instead, serving health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists. Once again, the power of money trumps the health of a nation.
Forget single-payer – the plan some 72 percent of polled Americans want. It’s socialism, cry the corporate flunkies. But the two government programs that really help people – Medicare and Social Security – are both socialism. Without those programs, millions of Americans would be suffering more than they are. They’re the only two programs the United States has that return benefit to citizens who have worked and paid taxes all their lives. Why not solve the health crisis by extending Medicare to everyone?
It’s striking that the same crowd of public citizens who oppose single-payer health insurance didn’t mind socializing debt through the bank bailouts. Okay for the government to be the single payer in those transactions. Mercy! What would happen if we really had universal health care in the United States like most other civilized Western countries? If we cherished and nourished that pre-existing condition we call life instead of denying it coverage? The big bad wolf of socialism would eat up some of those inflated profits of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Oh mercy, health care just might become affordable for our citizens if we had a single-payer system. People might go for check-ups more often. Maybe our citizens would be healthier and wouldn’t have to wait until they are so ill, they have to use hospital emergency rooms as their family physician. Sickness is costly. Untreated diseases that reach advanced stages when diagnosed require the most expensive treatment. Fostering health is a lot more cost-effective than the current neglect and denial built into our wretched healthcare system. It’s no accident our health care is the most expensive in the world but our outcomes are among the worse. In our current system, only the lives of the rich seem worth saving. Do they think they aren’t going to die?
In their zeal to “kill” healthcare reform, Republicans have declared war against President Obama, predicting a defeat will be the President’s “Waterloo” and will “break” him. Isn’t there something a bit unpatriotic about trying to bring down a President who is heroically working to repair the severe damage inflicted on the United States by the previous Republican administration? The gang that for eight years self-righteously promoted itself as the party of family values and country now turns its back on both and acts as if it wishes nothing other than revenge against the American people for electing President Obama.
As the President said in his press conference about healthcare last week, this isn’t about him. It’s about the health of the American people and the future of our economy. But nobody gets rich looking out for the poor and middle class in this country. Only the corporate rich deserve tax breaks, health care, and bonuses.
The party that racked up the largest deficit in American history – more than that of all previous Presidents combined – now complains about the cost of healthcare reform. Do they really think Americans are too stupid to see through the hypocrisy?
What a sorry bunch of human specimens that would rather, through their cynical inaction and sudden onset of fiscal conservatism, kill a healthcare bill that could prevent so much suffering and save people’s lives. Life is cheap. It’s health industry dollars that line politicians’ pockets.
As for the blue dog Democrats, their opposition to healthcare reform places them in the same alternate universe as the right-wing Republicans who have sold their souls to lobbyists and turned their backs on the only condition that afflicts any of us -- life.
The opposition to healthcare reform comes mainly from Republicans but also from a small group of “blue dog” Democrats, and it’s gotten ugly. These politicians, elected to serve the American people are, instead, serving health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists. Once again, the power of money trumps the health of a nation.
Forget single-payer – the plan some 72 percent of polled Americans want. It’s socialism, cry the corporate flunkies. But the two government programs that really help people – Medicare and Social Security – are both socialism. Without those programs, millions of Americans would be suffering more than they are. They’re the only two programs the United States has that return benefit to citizens who have worked and paid taxes all their lives. Why not solve the health crisis by extending Medicare to everyone?
It’s striking that the same crowd of public citizens who oppose single-payer health insurance didn’t mind socializing debt through the bank bailouts. Okay for the government to be the single payer in those transactions. Mercy! What would happen if we really had universal health care in the United States like most other civilized Western countries? If we cherished and nourished that pre-existing condition we call life instead of denying it coverage? The big bad wolf of socialism would eat up some of those inflated profits of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Oh mercy, health care just might become affordable for our citizens if we had a single-payer system. People might go for check-ups more often. Maybe our citizens would be healthier and wouldn’t have to wait until they are so ill, they have to use hospital emergency rooms as their family physician. Sickness is costly. Untreated diseases that reach advanced stages when diagnosed require the most expensive treatment. Fostering health is a lot more cost-effective than the current neglect and denial built into our wretched healthcare system. It’s no accident our health care is the most expensive in the world but our outcomes are among the worse. In our current system, only the lives of the rich seem worth saving. Do they think they aren’t going to die?
In their zeal to “kill” healthcare reform, Republicans have declared war against President Obama, predicting a defeat will be the President’s “Waterloo” and will “break” him. Isn’t there something a bit unpatriotic about trying to bring down a President who is heroically working to repair the severe damage inflicted on the United States by the previous Republican administration? The gang that for eight years self-righteously promoted itself as the party of family values and country now turns its back on both and acts as if it wishes nothing other than revenge against the American people for electing President Obama.
As the President said in his press conference about healthcare last week, this isn’t about him. It’s about the health of the American people and the future of our economy. But nobody gets rich looking out for the poor and middle class in this country. Only the corporate rich deserve tax breaks, health care, and bonuses.
The party that racked up the largest deficit in American history – more than that of all previous Presidents combined – now complains about the cost of healthcare reform. Do they really think Americans are too stupid to see through the hypocrisy?
What a sorry bunch of human specimens that would rather, through their cynical inaction and sudden onset of fiscal conservatism, kill a healthcare bill that could prevent so much suffering and save people’s lives. Life is cheap. It’s health industry dollars that line politicians’ pockets.
As for the blue dog Democrats, their opposition to healthcare reform places them in the same alternate universe as the right-wing Republicans who have sold their souls to lobbyists and turned their backs on the only condition that afflicts any of us -- life.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Will Congress Sell Out Americans’ Health Care to Insurance Companies Again?
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Benjamin Franklin
The assault on a public option for health care is a mounting obscenity as Republicans, insurance lobbyists, and some Democrats roll out a propaganda campaign designed to scare Americans – and Congress – into turning their backs once again on the American people in favor of corporate greed.
Contrary to industry propaganda, the system we have does not work. High costs are bankrupting families and businesses and our quality of care is abominable. The United States is the richest country in the world but it provides the poorest health care among Western industrialized countries. According to the World Health Organization, The United States ranks 37th – lower than all the Western European countries. We rank lower than Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Israel, and Canada. (France is ranked #1, Italy #2, and Japan #3.) What a miserable shame we can’t – or won’t – do as well
Ranked by “Health System Attainment and Performance,” the U.S. was 72nd, between Argentina and Bhutan!
Nor is the U.S. any better than some Third World countries in average life expectancy. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s rankings for 2009, the U.S. ranks 50th, (78.11 years), between Wallis and Futuna (You aren’t alone if you never heard of these two tiny islands in the South Pacific.) and Albania. In comparison, Japan’s average life expectancy is 82.12 years, Canada’s 81.23 years, and France’s 80.98 years.
With respect to infant mortality, the U.S. has the worst rate in the Western world, ranking 37th with 6.37 deaths per 1,000 live births, between South Korea and Croatia. In comparison, Sweden’s infant mortality rate is 2.76 deaths per 1,000 live births. Keep in mind that these are average rates. In America’s inner cities, the rates are much worse. In 2007, Washington, D.C., had the highest rate: 12.22 deaths per 1,000 live births. In New York City, the infant mortality rate for black babies was 9.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births compared with 3.9 deaths for every 1,000 live births among white babies. Minnesota had the lowest infant mortality rate in the U.S.: 4.78 per 1,000 live births.
The U.S. maternal mortality rate is scandalous, ranking 41st among 171 countries surveyed by the United Nations. Even South Korea has a lower maternal mortality rate than the U.S. Based on the United Nations’ 2005 estimates, one in 4,800 American women carry a lifetime risk of death from pregnancy, something the anti-choice crowd doesn’t bother to mention. In contrast, among the ten top-ranked industrialized countries, fewer than one woman in 16,400 carry such a risk. The most probable reason is that many European countries and Japan guarantee women high-quality health care and family planning services.
For those who tout the U.S. health system as “the best in the world,” there’s an important qualification – IF YOU’RE RICH. Anyone in the top one percent of wealthiest Americans can buy the best health care in the world no matter where they have to go to get it. But the majority of American citizens have to fight their way through a maze of bureaucratic fine print to obtain health care that, in far too may cases, is no better than that in the Third World. Families have the triple financial whammy of foreclosures, lost jobs, and mounting healthcare costs while insurance executives and pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Paying for health care is the major reason for personal bankruptcies, a situation that analysts say will continue unless Congress passes meaningful health reform.
Our current healthcare system is not only a burden for citizens, it also burdens physicians. By enabling insurance companies to run our healthcare system, Congress usurps physicians’ medical expertise and burdens them with voluminous paperwork and restrictions. The nation’s doctors want to be healers not secretarial assistants to health insurance companies. Doctors – not insurance companies – are the experts in providing medical services, yet in too many cases, insurers dictate medical decisions to doctors and hospitals. Sometimes patients die because an insurer has delayed or denied needed medical care. Yet those who support corporate profits rather than public health don’t seem to give a damn.
President Obama calls for a public option. The message of the last election is that the people support a public option. Now is the best opportunity since Clinton’s failure on health care for Congress to pass a real health reform bill. If our elected officials turn their backs on we-the-people this time, such an opportunity may not come again in our lifetime.
NOTE: Since publishing this post, economist Dean Baker has published an excellent commentary on Truthout. See ""Spreading the Wealth Around to the Insurance Industry and Friends," Truthout, June 22, 2009.
Benjamin Franklin
The assault on a public option for health care is a mounting obscenity as Republicans, insurance lobbyists, and some Democrats roll out a propaganda campaign designed to scare Americans – and Congress – into turning their backs once again on the American people in favor of corporate greed.
Contrary to industry propaganda, the system we have does not work. High costs are bankrupting families and businesses and our quality of care is abominable. The United States is the richest country in the world but it provides the poorest health care among Western industrialized countries. According to the World Health Organization, The United States ranks 37th – lower than all the Western European countries. We rank lower than Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Israel, and Canada. (France is ranked #1, Italy #2, and Japan #3.) What a miserable shame we can’t – or won’t – do as well
Ranked by “Health System Attainment and Performance,” the U.S. was 72nd, between Argentina and Bhutan!
Nor is the U.S. any better than some Third World countries in average life expectancy. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s rankings for 2009, the U.S. ranks 50th, (78.11 years), between Wallis and Futuna (You aren’t alone if you never heard of these two tiny islands in the South Pacific.) and Albania. In comparison, Japan’s average life expectancy is 82.12 years, Canada’s 81.23 years, and France’s 80.98 years.
With respect to infant mortality, the U.S. has the worst rate in the Western world, ranking 37th with 6.37 deaths per 1,000 live births, between South Korea and Croatia. In comparison, Sweden’s infant mortality rate is 2.76 deaths per 1,000 live births. Keep in mind that these are average rates. In America’s inner cities, the rates are much worse. In 2007, Washington, D.C., had the highest rate: 12.22 deaths per 1,000 live births. In New York City, the infant mortality rate for black babies was 9.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births compared with 3.9 deaths for every 1,000 live births among white babies. Minnesota had the lowest infant mortality rate in the U.S.: 4.78 per 1,000 live births.
The U.S. maternal mortality rate is scandalous, ranking 41st among 171 countries surveyed by the United Nations. Even South Korea has a lower maternal mortality rate than the U.S. Based on the United Nations’ 2005 estimates, one in 4,800 American women carry a lifetime risk of death from pregnancy, something the anti-choice crowd doesn’t bother to mention. In contrast, among the ten top-ranked industrialized countries, fewer than one woman in 16,400 carry such a risk. The most probable reason is that many European countries and Japan guarantee women high-quality health care and family planning services.
For those who tout the U.S. health system as “the best in the world,” there’s an important qualification – IF YOU’RE RICH. Anyone in the top one percent of wealthiest Americans can buy the best health care in the world no matter where they have to go to get it. But the majority of American citizens have to fight their way through a maze of bureaucratic fine print to obtain health care that, in far too may cases, is no better than that in the Third World. Families have the triple financial whammy of foreclosures, lost jobs, and mounting healthcare costs while insurance executives and pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Paying for health care is the major reason for personal bankruptcies, a situation that analysts say will continue unless Congress passes meaningful health reform.
Our current healthcare system is not only a burden for citizens, it also burdens physicians. By enabling insurance companies to run our healthcare system, Congress usurps physicians’ medical expertise and burdens them with voluminous paperwork and restrictions. The nation’s doctors want to be healers not secretarial assistants to health insurance companies. Doctors – not insurance companies – are the experts in providing medical services, yet in too many cases, insurers dictate medical decisions to doctors and hospitals. Sometimes patients die because an insurer has delayed or denied needed medical care. Yet those who support corporate profits rather than public health don’t seem to give a damn.
President Obama calls for a public option. The message of the last election is that the people support a public option. Now is the best opportunity since Clinton’s failure on health care for Congress to pass a real health reform bill. If our elected officials turn their backs on we-the-people this time, such an opportunity may not come again in our lifetime.
NOTE: Since publishing this post, economist Dean Baker has published an excellent commentary on Truthout. See ""Spreading the Wealth Around to the Insurance Industry and Friends," Truthout, June 22, 2009.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
THE GLOBAL WAR AGAINST WOMEN
It happens every minute of every day. Women and girls somewhere in the world are humiliated, raped, beaten, sold into sex slavery, genitally mutilated, blinded, set on fire, and murdered. They are victims of the most vicious animals on planet Earth – not the four-legged kind but men -- male specimens of our species Homo sapiens. But neither Homo nor sapiens applies to such men. Police know about these crimes. Government officials know about these crimes but the criminals are rarely arrested or prosecuted. All too often, assaults on women are not taken seriously. They are excused as “family matters” or “honor killings”. But what kind of honor resides in killing a woman?
Atrocities committed against women seem to be cropping up more frequently on the news these days. Just today, a Muslim man in Buffalo, New York, confessed to beheading his wife in what is apparently an “honor killing.” She had filed for divorce and had an order of protection that removed him from their home as of February 6, 2009. This past Sunday (February 15, 2009), the CBS television program, 60 MINUTES, aired a report on Pakistan that mentioned the Taliban recently blew up five girls’ schools. On Saturday night, February 14th -- ironically Valentine’s Day -- ABC World News featured a story about young women in Pakistan whose faces are disfigured by acid thrown by men – spurned suitors, husbands, or other disgruntled males. The scarred faces of these once beautiful women are haunting reminders that the most pervasive, destructive, yet undeclared world war is that waged against women. Yet no country raises an army to combat the terrorism that women have endured for centuries. There is no “coalition of the willing” to protect women. The question is, Why not? Why no international force to protect mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, grandmothers, children? Why?
The ugly fact is that no other species treats its females with such cruelty. In her 1981 book, The Woman That Never Evolved, anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote: “ . . . women in so many human societies occupy a position that is far worse than that of females in all but a few species of non-human primates.” What is going on? Why do some human males have such a feeble sense of masculinity that they believe their manhood depends on raping or beating up women? Why do young women in some countries bear the burden of a concept of family honor based on their chastity? It’s a fragile sense of honor that resides in an intact hymen!
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have to say right now that this is not a tract against men in general. I do not hate men. There are intelligent, tender, compassionate, creative, liberated, wonderful, supportive men who treat each other and women as full human beings. I am married to one such man and my son and son-in-law are among many others. The men who mistreat women also mistreat each other and the planet. The only foreign policy they understand is war. They construct economies based on weapons and violence. They seem beset by a madness that hates all life, including their own. In their suicidal frenzy, they act to destroy life for everyone and everything around them. Even the basic animal survival instinct seems to have left them.
I suspect that the worldwide battle to control women rages as a sub-text of all other wars. This is not the proverbial “battle of the sexes”. It is a savage war, powered by attitudes that females are less than human and deserve mistreatment. A Pakistani woman interviewed on the ABC News report was asked whether women are considered second-class citizens in her country. She replied, “We are not even citizens. We are commodities.”
In some countries, women are treated worse than farm animals. Recently I was reading about The Carter Center's “latrine revolution” in Ethiopia. The goal of this project is to fight trachoma, a crippling disease spread by flies that breed in human waste. But the project has an unexpected benefit for women. Without a latrine, people are forced to use the fields and woods as toilets. However, custom requires that women hold in their natural urge to relieve themselves until night so no one can see them. Latrines give women freedom to carry out basic bodily functions. Not surprisingly, women are now activist leaders of the latrine project and a latrine has become a status symbol in Ethiopia.
In many countries, groups of courageous women are protesting and speaking out, demanding justice, sometimes at great risk to their lives. But this is not just a women’s issue. Violence against women diminishes all of us. Everyone who cares for our common humanity needs to speak out and demand international action because the war against women is the most long-lasting and destructive ever waged in human history.
Rape has long been an instrument of war. A GOOGLE search for “rape + war” turns up 5,160,000 hits. One need only read recent accounts of the tens of thousands of women raped by soldiers in Bosnia, Congo, Darfur, East Timor, Haiti, and Rwanda. In Congo and Darfur, rape by soldiers has increased to the point where it is considered the “norm” and nothing is done to stop it.
Rape, genital mutilation, burning, and murder are the most extreme forms of gender terrorism. But there are other daily humiliations and restrictions that women, particularly those living under religious fundamentalist regimes, endure.
I am reading Iranian author Azar Nafisi's 2003 memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, about the literature group for women that she held in her home so they could take off their veils and freely discuss books forbidden by the Islamic fundamentalist regime. The intellectual deprivation was just one of the government’s attempts to subjugate women. Expelled from her university post in Tehran in 1997 for refusing to wear the veil, Nafisi, who is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, describes the separate entrance women university students in Tehran were forced to use and the “morality police” patrolling the streets on the lookout for the least exposure of female skin.
Throughout the world, the restrictions and humiliations forced on women take many forms: denial of education, laws against owning property, job discrimination, punishment for listening to music, wearing Western clothes, driving, or going outside the home unless covered from head to foot and accompanied by a male family member.
Nor are such anti-woman actions confined to developing countries or Islamic regimes. Under Communist rule, Romania banned birth control and abortion. The result was unwanted children, many of whom were abandoned or sold by desperate parents overburdened by more children than they could afford. In the United States today, Christian fundamentalist groups are trying to outlaw reproductive choice and make women’s bodies property of the state. They even try to prevent pharmacists from filling doctors’ prescriptions for birth control. It’s as if birth should be punishment for having sex. Notably there are no organized protests against Viagra or other erection-promoting drugs. Male potency drugs are advertised on prime time television but there are no such advertisements for condoms or birth-control pills! “If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” said an anonymous taxi driver, quoted years ago by author Gloria Steinem.
It’s easy to forget that it was only in 1920 – less than a century ago – that the U.S. constitution was amended to allow women to vote. It was only on January 27, 2009, that President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act granting equal pay for equal work. Oh yes, we’ve come a long way, but the operative term is “long”. From the time this case was first filed, it took ten years to end this particular form of job discrimination against women.
Yes, Western women are much better off and enjoy many more liberties than our sisters in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a score of other countries. But one can never let down her guard. There is still a lot of work to do in extending human rights to women throughout the world. In the United States, maintaining the rights women have achieved continues to require vigilance because there are too many reactionary forces that would return women to the Middle Ages. Thankfully, we now have a President who respects and supports full equality for women.
Educated women and supportive men are the best -- and only -- hope for improving living conditions for all people and prosecuting the mad animals that wage the most brutal gender war in all of nature.
Atrocities committed against women seem to be cropping up more frequently on the news these days. Just today, a Muslim man in Buffalo, New York, confessed to beheading his wife in what is apparently an “honor killing.” She had filed for divorce and had an order of protection that removed him from their home as of February 6, 2009. This past Sunday (February 15, 2009), the CBS television program, 60 MINUTES, aired a report on Pakistan that mentioned the Taliban recently blew up five girls’ schools. On Saturday night, February 14th -- ironically Valentine’s Day -- ABC World News featured a story about young women in Pakistan whose faces are disfigured by acid thrown by men – spurned suitors, husbands, or other disgruntled males. The scarred faces of these once beautiful women are haunting reminders that the most pervasive, destructive, yet undeclared world war is that waged against women. Yet no country raises an army to combat the terrorism that women have endured for centuries. There is no “coalition of the willing” to protect women. The question is, Why not? Why no international force to protect mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, grandmothers, children? Why?
The ugly fact is that no other species treats its females with such cruelty. In her 1981 book, The Woman That Never Evolved, anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote: “ . . . women in so many human societies occupy a position that is far worse than that of females in all but a few species of non-human primates.” What is going on? Why do some human males have such a feeble sense of masculinity that they believe their manhood depends on raping or beating up women? Why do young women in some countries bear the burden of a concept of family honor based on their chastity? It’s a fragile sense of honor that resides in an intact hymen!
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have to say right now that this is not a tract against men in general. I do not hate men. There are intelligent, tender, compassionate, creative, liberated, wonderful, supportive men who treat each other and women as full human beings. I am married to one such man and my son and son-in-law are among many others. The men who mistreat women also mistreat each other and the planet. The only foreign policy they understand is war. They construct economies based on weapons and violence. They seem beset by a madness that hates all life, including their own. In their suicidal frenzy, they act to destroy life for everyone and everything around them. Even the basic animal survival instinct seems to have left them.
I suspect that the worldwide battle to control women rages as a sub-text of all other wars. This is not the proverbial “battle of the sexes”. It is a savage war, powered by attitudes that females are less than human and deserve mistreatment. A Pakistani woman interviewed on the ABC News report was asked whether women are considered second-class citizens in her country. She replied, “We are not even citizens. We are commodities.”
In some countries, women are treated worse than farm animals. Recently I was reading about The Carter Center's “latrine revolution” in Ethiopia. The goal of this project is to fight trachoma, a crippling disease spread by flies that breed in human waste. But the project has an unexpected benefit for women. Without a latrine, people are forced to use the fields and woods as toilets. However, custom requires that women hold in their natural urge to relieve themselves until night so no one can see them. Latrines give women freedom to carry out basic bodily functions. Not surprisingly, women are now activist leaders of the latrine project and a latrine has become a status symbol in Ethiopia.
In many countries, groups of courageous women are protesting and speaking out, demanding justice, sometimes at great risk to their lives. But this is not just a women’s issue. Violence against women diminishes all of us. Everyone who cares for our common humanity needs to speak out and demand international action because the war against women is the most long-lasting and destructive ever waged in human history.
Rape has long been an instrument of war. A GOOGLE search for “rape + war” turns up 5,160,000 hits. One need only read recent accounts of the tens of thousands of women raped by soldiers in Bosnia, Congo, Darfur, East Timor, Haiti, and Rwanda. In Congo and Darfur, rape by soldiers has increased to the point where it is considered the “norm” and nothing is done to stop it.
Rape, genital mutilation, burning, and murder are the most extreme forms of gender terrorism. But there are other daily humiliations and restrictions that women, particularly those living under religious fundamentalist regimes, endure.
I am reading Iranian author Azar Nafisi's 2003 memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, about the literature group for women that she held in her home so they could take off their veils and freely discuss books forbidden by the Islamic fundamentalist regime. The intellectual deprivation was just one of the government’s attempts to subjugate women. Expelled from her university post in Tehran in 1997 for refusing to wear the veil, Nafisi, who is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, describes the separate entrance women university students in Tehran were forced to use and the “morality police” patrolling the streets on the lookout for the least exposure of female skin.
Throughout the world, the restrictions and humiliations forced on women take many forms: denial of education, laws against owning property, job discrimination, punishment for listening to music, wearing Western clothes, driving, or going outside the home unless covered from head to foot and accompanied by a male family member.
Nor are such anti-woman actions confined to developing countries or Islamic regimes. Under Communist rule, Romania banned birth control and abortion. The result was unwanted children, many of whom were abandoned or sold by desperate parents overburdened by more children than they could afford. In the United States today, Christian fundamentalist groups are trying to outlaw reproductive choice and make women’s bodies property of the state. They even try to prevent pharmacists from filling doctors’ prescriptions for birth control. It’s as if birth should be punishment for having sex. Notably there are no organized protests against Viagra or other erection-promoting drugs. Male potency drugs are advertised on prime time television but there are no such advertisements for condoms or birth-control pills! “If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” said an anonymous taxi driver, quoted years ago by author Gloria Steinem.
It’s easy to forget that it was only in 1920 – less than a century ago – that the U.S. constitution was amended to allow women to vote. It was only on January 27, 2009, that President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act granting equal pay for equal work. Oh yes, we’ve come a long way, but the operative term is “long”. From the time this case was first filed, it took ten years to end this particular form of job discrimination against women.
Yes, Western women are much better off and enjoy many more liberties than our sisters in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a score of other countries. But one can never let down her guard. There is still a lot of work to do in extending human rights to women throughout the world. In the United States, maintaining the rights women have achieved continues to require vigilance because there are too many reactionary forces that would return women to the Middle Ages. Thankfully, we now have a President who respects and supports full equality for women.
Educated women and supportive men are the best -- and only -- hope for improving living conditions for all people and prosecuting the mad animals that wage the most brutal gender war in all of nature.
Monday, October 20, 2008
McCain/Palin – King and Queen of Sleaze
Yesterday General Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President and then firmly chastised John McCain’s hate-mongering ads and robocalls as “nonsense” and “over the top” for political campaigning. General Powell is a statesman. John McCain and Sarah Palin are moral meltdowns.
In the past few weeks, the deplorable duo have descended into the political sewer, belching out the same kind of gaseous slurs and lies that George Bush and Karl Rove used to defeat McCain’s Presidential bid in 2000. Remember? The smears reached peak stridency in South Carolina. McCain was accused of being homosexual, fathering a “black” child out of wedlock, and having a “dope-addict” wife. All lies. Now, after his commitment to run a “clean” campaign, McCain is indulging in even more vicious smears against Barack Obama. Fear-mongering robocalls accusing Obama of being a terrorist are clogging people’s phones in Virginia and other states. Racist TV ads that begin with Obama’s face in dark shadow visually suggest that the black man is dangerous. In every way possible, McCain is trying to make people afraid to vote for Obama.
Sarah Palin’s major function in the McCain campaign seems to be as the mindless attack dog and she acts as if she relishes the role. Forget any attempt at eloquence or intelligence. Palin follows a script filled with lies casting Obama as un-American and in league with terrorists. But who cares about lies? Following Karl Rove’s script, George Bush and Dick Cheney have conducted their entire administration based on lies. Who needs facts or evidence? Reality can be a hindrance. McCain and Palin are no different. After all, isn’t the lesson that if you repeat lies often enough, people will believe they’re true? Bush/Cheney started a war based on lies. Surely the same technique can be used to elect a president. It worked in 2004, defeating John Kerry.
Thankfully, increasing numbers of Americans are smarter this time. They see that John McCain and Sarah Palin’s lies are inciting hate and fear. At their rallies, people have shouted “kill him” when Obama’s name was mentioned. John McCain even had to take the microphone from a supporter who said she was afraid of Obama because “he’s a Muslim.” McCain was forced to defend Obama from the hate and fear his own campaign has stirred up. It’s more than a sorry spectacle from two adults in public office who should know better. It’s offensive and dangerous – the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that once incited mobs to lynch black men and burn women as witches.
But if we can believe the polls, the McCain/ Palin lies are backfiring. In trying to paint Barack Obama as someone voters should fear, McCain has painted himself as the scary candidate, too angry, unfocused and impulsive to be President. In ignoring the economic and social issues that are the real threats to people’s lives, McCain is sinking his campaign ship in the slop of his own making.
I have never been a McCain supporter, but even I find it sad to see a man who heroically served the United States demeaning himself for political gain. In stooping to such sleaze, McCain shows his willingness to put his political ambition ahead of the country that he says he loves.
Then there is the matter of McCain’s judgment. In addition to condoning what may be the nastiest presidential campaign in American history, McCain’s selection of the pitifully unqualified Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, demonstrates extraordinarily poor judgment. I find it hard to believe that a man who truly loves his country could jeopardize it by selecting a running mate as ignorant as Sarah Palin. Should McCain become President and suffer a health crisis – or worse – elevating Palin to the Presidency would be like putting a not-terribly-bright high-school student in the Oval Office!
Finally, in the last debate, McCain betrayed a shocking contempt for women. With huffing and puffing and much head and shoulder jerking, he mocked Obama’s support of a woman’s right to abortion to protect the health of the mother. Using air quotes, McCain dismissed women’s health as the “extreme pro-abortion position.” In that exchange, McCain In effect, was saying that women don’t count. Like George W. Bush and the Republican right-wing, McCain wants to undo all the hard-fought victories women have won for their dignity, their privacy, and their right to control their own bodies. McCain, like Bush, would take women backwards to a time when there was no birth control, no reproductive options. McCain, like Bush, would overturn Roe v. Wade, have government invade the womb, usurp women’s bodies as state property, and deny women’s most intimate and fundamental right to exercise reproductive choice. This position should be unacceptable to every woman and every enlightened man. Returning Americans to the pre-contraceptive tyranny of the gonads is not a tolerable platform of a 21st-century president.
And that’s the biggest problem. McCain hasn’t moved into the 21st-century and he seems incapable of doing so. It’s not just his age; it’s his attitude, one which the younger Palin shares. McCain is hopelessly locked in the past and his presidency would drag us all back with him. Yesterday, General Powell spoke of America’s need for “a generational change.” McCain represents a past generation. Obama has the vision, the world outlook, the understanding of complexity, and what Powell called “the intellectual vigor” to address the wretched problems left by Bush/Cheney. It’s Obama who presents the possibility for change you can believe in.
In the past few weeks, the deplorable duo have descended into the political sewer, belching out the same kind of gaseous slurs and lies that George Bush and Karl Rove used to defeat McCain’s Presidential bid in 2000. Remember? The smears reached peak stridency in South Carolina. McCain was accused of being homosexual, fathering a “black” child out of wedlock, and having a “dope-addict” wife. All lies. Now, after his commitment to run a “clean” campaign, McCain is indulging in even more vicious smears against Barack Obama. Fear-mongering robocalls accusing Obama of being a terrorist are clogging people’s phones in Virginia and other states. Racist TV ads that begin with Obama’s face in dark shadow visually suggest that the black man is dangerous. In every way possible, McCain is trying to make people afraid to vote for Obama.
Sarah Palin’s major function in the McCain campaign seems to be as the mindless attack dog and she acts as if she relishes the role. Forget any attempt at eloquence or intelligence. Palin follows a script filled with lies casting Obama as un-American and in league with terrorists. But who cares about lies? Following Karl Rove’s script, George Bush and Dick Cheney have conducted their entire administration based on lies. Who needs facts or evidence? Reality can be a hindrance. McCain and Palin are no different. After all, isn’t the lesson that if you repeat lies often enough, people will believe they’re true? Bush/Cheney started a war based on lies. Surely the same technique can be used to elect a president. It worked in 2004, defeating John Kerry.
Thankfully, increasing numbers of Americans are smarter this time. They see that John McCain and Sarah Palin’s lies are inciting hate and fear. At their rallies, people have shouted “kill him” when Obama’s name was mentioned. John McCain even had to take the microphone from a supporter who said she was afraid of Obama because “he’s a Muslim.” McCain was forced to defend Obama from the hate and fear his own campaign has stirred up. It’s more than a sorry spectacle from two adults in public office who should know better. It’s offensive and dangerous – the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that once incited mobs to lynch black men and burn women as witches.
But if we can believe the polls, the McCain/ Palin lies are backfiring. In trying to paint Barack Obama as someone voters should fear, McCain has painted himself as the scary candidate, too angry, unfocused and impulsive to be President. In ignoring the economic and social issues that are the real threats to people’s lives, McCain is sinking his campaign ship in the slop of his own making.
I have never been a McCain supporter, but even I find it sad to see a man who heroically served the United States demeaning himself for political gain. In stooping to such sleaze, McCain shows his willingness to put his political ambition ahead of the country that he says he loves.
Then there is the matter of McCain’s judgment. In addition to condoning what may be the nastiest presidential campaign in American history, McCain’s selection of the pitifully unqualified Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, demonstrates extraordinarily poor judgment. I find it hard to believe that a man who truly loves his country could jeopardize it by selecting a running mate as ignorant as Sarah Palin. Should McCain become President and suffer a health crisis – or worse – elevating Palin to the Presidency would be like putting a not-terribly-bright high-school student in the Oval Office!
Finally, in the last debate, McCain betrayed a shocking contempt for women. With huffing and puffing and much head and shoulder jerking, he mocked Obama’s support of a woman’s right to abortion to protect the health of the mother. Using air quotes, McCain dismissed women’s health as the “extreme pro-abortion position.” In that exchange, McCain In effect, was saying that women don’t count. Like George W. Bush and the Republican right-wing, McCain wants to undo all the hard-fought victories women have won for their dignity, their privacy, and their right to control their own bodies. McCain, like Bush, would take women backwards to a time when there was no birth control, no reproductive options. McCain, like Bush, would overturn Roe v. Wade, have government invade the womb, usurp women’s bodies as state property, and deny women’s most intimate and fundamental right to exercise reproductive choice. This position should be unacceptable to every woman and every enlightened man. Returning Americans to the pre-contraceptive tyranny of the gonads is not a tolerable platform of a 21st-century president.
And that’s the biggest problem. McCain hasn’t moved into the 21st-century and he seems incapable of doing so. It’s not just his age; it’s his attitude, one which the younger Palin shares. McCain is hopelessly locked in the past and his presidency would drag us all back with him. Yesterday, General Powell spoke of America’s need for “a generational change.” McCain represents a past generation. Obama has the vision, the world outlook, the understanding of complexity, and what Powell called “the intellectual vigor” to address the wretched problems left by Bush/Cheney. It’s Obama who presents the possibility for change you can believe in.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
McCain's VP Choice Insults Women, Endangers Nation
If there were any doubt about John McCain’s judgment, his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate bares all. His choice was both impulsive and ill-informed. He didn’t even know her and she was not thoroughly vetted! The choice of Palin insults the intelligence of all Americans, but its cynicism is particularly insulting to women. Does McCain really think that women are such gender knee-jerks that they will embrace the Republican ticket simply because Palin is female? Women I know are outraged. Some men of my acquaintance wonder, “Has McCain lost his mind?” As Clinton supporters have pointed out, they voted for Hillary because she was qualified to be President of the United States. Aerial hunting Alaskan wildlife does not quality Palin to have her finger on nuclear triggers should that case arise. And it may. McCain is 72 years old, the oldest candidate ever to run for a first term as President. In a health crisis or worse, his vice president will become Commander in Chief. She is literally a breath away from the presidency. For all his bombast about the importance of experience, McCain has displayed his hypocrisy and poor judgment by choosing a person who lacks national experience and has no shred of international experience. Palin’s sudden elevation to the presidency could endanger the country even more than a McCain presidency.
Forced to abandon his first choices for vice president (Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge), McCain reacted like an adolescent boy with an “Okay, I’ll-show-you” attitude. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want our country to be run by another adolescent boy or an adolescent girl trying to prove how tough they are. The voters, the country, and the planet would be the losers.
Republicans are making a lot of Palin’s “executive experience.” So far as I’m concerned, running a household is a kind of executive experience but it hardly qualifies a person to be President of the United States. Before becoming governor of Alaska, Palin was mayor of a suburban community of fewer than 6000 people. She has served barely two years as governor of the 47th least populous state. Alaska’s entire population—650,000—is less than one-fourth that of Chicago (2.8 million) where Barack Obama spent years as a community organizer before becoming a member of the Illinois state Senate, where he served for eight years before being elected a U.S. Senator. Palin has served a largely homogenous isolated population in contrast to the diverse communities that Obama has served and knows so well. At best, her experience is too limited to qualify her for CEO of a large company.
Beyond the demographics in Palin’s background, her fierce opposition to reproductive choice – even in cases of rape and incest – threaten women’s health and autonomy. McCain has already said he would work to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark case that freed women from enslavement to their gonads. A McCain-Palin administration would continue the war against women waged by Bush and Cheney. If Roe v Wade were overturned, women’s bodies would become, in effect, property of the state. The next President will likely fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court. One more right-wing justice in the mold of Scalia, Roberts and Alito would plunge women back to a medieval mentality that would not only outlaw abortion but also force contraception underground. Yes, Palin is a woman but she represents the good old evangelical boys’ club when it comes to their fanatical desire to control women’s bodies. Reproductive choice should be personal not state-controlled. There is no more intimate right than the individual freedom to control one’s own reproductive biology.
By selecting Palin, McCain has just upped the stakes in this critical election. He and Palin represent an unacceptable and intolerable past that is better relegated to history than to a future it is unprepared to meet.
Forced to abandon his first choices for vice president (Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge), McCain reacted like an adolescent boy with an “Okay, I’ll-show-you” attitude. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want our country to be run by another adolescent boy or an adolescent girl trying to prove how tough they are. The voters, the country, and the planet would be the losers.
Republicans are making a lot of Palin’s “executive experience.” So far as I’m concerned, running a household is a kind of executive experience but it hardly qualifies a person to be President of the United States. Before becoming governor of Alaska, Palin was mayor of a suburban community of fewer than 6000 people. She has served barely two years as governor of the 47th least populous state. Alaska’s entire population—650,000—is less than one-fourth that of Chicago (2.8 million) where Barack Obama spent years as a community organizer before becoming a member of the Illinois state Senate, where he served for eight years before being elected a U.S. Senator. Palin has served a largely homogenous isolated population in contrast to the diverse communities that Obama has served and knows so well. At best, her experience is too limited to qualify her for CEO of a large company.
Beyond the demographics in Palin’s background, her fierce opposition to reproductive choice – even in cases of rape and incest – threaten women’s health and autonomy. McCain has already said he would work to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark case that freed women from enslavement to their gonads. A McCain-Palin administration would continue the war against women waged by Bush and Cheney. If Roe v Wade were overturned, women’s bodies would become, in effect, property of the state. The next President will likely fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court. One more right-wing justice in the mold of Scalia, Roberts and Alito would plunge women back to a medieval mentality that would not only outlaw abortion but also force contraception underground. Yes, Palin is a woman but she represents the good old evangelical boys’ club when it comes to their fanatical desire to control women’s bodies. Reproductive choice should be personal not state-controlled. There is no more intimate right than the individual freedom to control one’s own reproductive biology.
By selecting Palin, McCain has just upped the stakes in this critical election. He and Palin represent an unacceptable and intolerable past that is better relegated to history than to a future it is unprepared to meet.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Our Endangered Democracy
The Republicans are at it again -- "purging" new registrations from voter rolls in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, and Nevada. Guess who's being purged. You're right if you guessed blacks and Hispanics. "They" shouldn't be participating in our democracy! Just as Alberto Conzales's Justice Department illegally weeded out any applicant that didn't embrace Bush's right-wing Republican posture, so Republicans now want to prevent Democrats--especially minority Democrats--from participating in this year's Presidential election. The rot in Bush's Justice Department is hitting the fan this week with the testimony of flunky Monica Goodling before the House Judiciary Committee. Unless there is massive protest and Congressional action, we'll have a repeat of Florida and the stolen 2000 Presidential election. That can't happen. Anybody who cares about the future of our country must take action to prevent what will amount to the destruction of our election process and the ultimate destruction of democracy in the United States. Fact is, democracy's just too risky. The people might actually kick the lobbyists out of government. The people just might win for a change. Bush/Cheney and an all too compliant Congress have set us on the road of becoming a big banana republic, lawless, fascist, a pathetic vestige of what we could be. Author Jane Mayer has just published a book called The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. In her essay, "The Battle for a Country's Soul," published in the August 14, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books, she writes: "Seven years after al-Qaeda's attack on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul."
But the Bush/Cheney era will not slip into history if John McCain wins the White House. McCain is making himself into a Bush clone. His flip-flopping positions and ignorance of basic geographical and political facts will push us into an ever darker age of deception and fear manipulation, continuing the Bush/Cheney dismemberment of our Constitution and keeping us bound to the only foreign policy he and Bush/Cheney seem capable of -- war. Forever.
Greg Palast, a fine investigative journalist, reports the underhanded attempts by Republicans to subvert our electoral process in an essay titled "Obama Doesn't Sweat, He Should." For more information see www.GregPalast.com.
But the Bush/Cheney era will not slip into history if John McCain wins the White House. McCain is making himself into a Bush clone. His flip-flopping positions and ignorance of basic geographical and political facts will push us into an ever darker age of deception and fear manipulation, continuing the Bush/Cheney dismemberment of our Constitution and keeping us bound to the only foreign policy he and Bush/Cheney seem capable of -- war. Forever.
Greg Palast, a fine investigative journalist, reports the underhanded attempts by Republicans to subvert our electoral process in an essay titled "Obama Doesn't Sweat, He Should." For more information see www.GregPalast.com.
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