Author: chasdarwin

Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU

To JUST which mission where you referring?

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Greg Michell, author of Why Obama Won, writes in Huffpost:

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in aUSA Today Op-Ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, exactly six years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq — with the NOW-INFAMOUS  “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him in the war’s greatest photo op.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing.”

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: “As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.” His guest, Joe Klein, responded: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me.”

Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run…”

not ME!

more:

By Elisabeth Bumiller


WASHINGTON, May 1–President Bush’s made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush’s advisors to create the moment.

The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily, and–above all–to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home.

”This is the formalization that tells everybody we’re not engaged in combat anymore, we’re prepared for getting out,” a senior administration official said.

***
By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

BAGHDAD, May 2–The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.”

Which is why I read HuffPost before the NY Times…

 

seehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/on-6th-anniversary-of-mis_b_194452.html

Differed Gratification

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Having been politically active from 1963 on, I saw the GOP recover, over many years, from the party out of control to the one in: listening to the advocates of the new minority party today, some of them think that it will be a short road back – lets hope not!

How do we stay on top?

o Deliver solutions, not problems.

o Set reasonable expectations.

o Stay on message

o Use teachable moments to demonstrate what has failed, why it failed, and how we are going to repair.

This side now…

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Having been persona non grata since the late (19) 60’s, it is a refreshing change for us to be on top.  I don’t have much data on how conservative R’s felt in 1933-40, but I do know how they appear to feel now:

o Still think the destruction and failure that began on Jan 20, 1981 was progress.

o Still operate under the delusion that they are on top.

o Think that taxes are the root of all evil.

Let’s hope that they stay on this message!

Inequality in Their Gilded Age…

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From AlterNet: “Tax responsibilities have shifted off of large wealth holders and onto wage earners, off corporations and onto individuals, off the progressive federal tax system and onto state and local tax systems, which tend to be more regressive. Tax cuts for the rich have shrunk federal services — and shifted responsibilities to states for health, anti-poverty, transportation and more. That’s the shaft part. …

We’re in America’s “Second Gilded Age.”

— Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good.”

Mark Karlin

“On April 15, the Mad Hatters of the Teabagging Party protested that the extreme income redistribution over the last 30 years continue unabated so that the super-rich become even richer as America’s middle class sinks into oblivion.

There’s been a class war going on since Ronald Reagan was elected, and it’s been a war on the working class as the average wage earner got mugged by the largest shift of wealth to the rich in American history. BuzzFlash interviewed Chuck Collins on the income redistribution scam that has been pulled off in full view of the American public, fattening the wallets of the already financially engorged fat cats.

Excerts of the interview with Mr. Collins:

With the economic meltdown, we’ve all gotten a “crash course” in how extreme inequality is “BAD for the economy. With wages stagnant for three decades, most working families have survived by working MORE hours and borrowing on credit cards and against home values, if they are fortunate enough to own one. The consumption of the bottom 70 percent of U.S. households has been based on DEEBT — not on real wage growth.

Meanwhile, wealth has dramatically concentrated at the TOP of the pyramid. The super rich in the top 1 percent put massive amounts of this wealth into the speculative casino economy — which helped wreck the economy. In our view, extreme inequalities contributed to the economic collapse…We’ve become dangerously unequal as wealth has concentrated in very few hands. The top 1 percent has over 34 percent of all private wealth — more than the bottom 95 percent of the population combined. In the mid-1970s, this wealthiest 1 percent had less than 20 percent of private wealth. This is a dramatic shift in a short time. We’re in America’s “Second Gilded Age.”  This matters because wealth is POWER…For 30 years, right-wingers have pushed for policy rule changes in the economy (trade, taxes, government spending, deregulation) that have FUELED a radical redistribution of wealth FROM the bottom and middle of society — to the tippy top. It’s been a Robin Hood in reverse.

When President [Barack] Obama proposes to RAISE the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, they call him a “socialist.” Imagine, a 4.6 percent hike in taxes could tip us into a totalitarian socialist state.

What would these right-wing extremists call Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who presided over a TOP TAX RATE of 91 percent on the ultra rich?…Remember anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s stated goal: “I want to SHRINK government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

Tax responsibilities have SHIFTED off of large wealth holders and onto wage earners, off corporations and onto individuals, off the progressive federal tax system and onto state and local tax systems, which tend to be more regressive.

Tax cuts for the rich have SHRUNK  federal services — and shifted responsibilities to states for health, anti-poverty, transportation and more. That’s the SHAFT part.

The result is a WEAKENED REGULATORY STATE — which, by the way, was the goal of the neo-con anti-tax, anti-government activists. So speculators boost up housing or oil prices — and we all pay more. It’s a form of taxation — although the money goes to speculators. With the lack of strong government oversight, we all end up paying more to private corporations and speculators….The problem of runaway CEO pay has been alarming for 20 years. In 1980, the GAP between highest and average paid workers in a company was about 42 to 1. Today, it is over 300 to 1.

Excessive pay to top managers promotes a very short-term outlook, encouraging CEOs to do whatever it takes to boost their share price for the next quarter. It provides a disincentive for long-term company health and growth.

Wall Street’s culture of GREED HAS WRECKED our economy. Most ordinary taxpayers don’t know we subsidize excessive pay by allowing corporations to deduct bloated pay packages…”

see: 

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/137057

GOP and Extremists

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From John Ridely, HuffPost: “EMPTY of better ideas — of any ideas — of how to REMAIN relevant, the reactionary wing of the conservative movement has chosen to quit faking respectability and get back to doing what they do best: cranking up the HATE to eleven.

This is the week we have lived:

A week when Texas Governor Rick Perry — a man with presidential aspirations — gets comfortable being flippant about the idea SECESSION , raising the specter of both the anti-civil rights movement and the Civil War

A week when Texas Republican State Rep. Betty Brown (what is it with Texas?) told a hearing on voter registration that if Asians wanted to avoid problems at the polls they needed to CHANGE their names to something that’s “easier for US to deal with.”

A week when Illinois Republican Congressman Mark Kirk said he thought the people of Illinois “are ready to SHOOT” anyone who’s going to raise taxes.

A week when the Caucasian Stepin Fetchit Glenn Beck — which is more of a slam against Lincoln Perry than it is Glenn — thought it was humorous to take on the guise of our president and pantomime him pouring gas on the average citizen before setting a match to him…….These may be the last, desperate days of reactionary, anti-American Conservatism. But in the manner of a rabid animal backed against a wall, these are its most dangerous as well.”

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/the-conservatives-dangero_b_188514.html

From the Parado Principle to tea bags…

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80% of our national debut has been accumulated under Republican Presidents, so why are they whining now?

N.B.:  The Parado Principle, often known as the rule of 80/20, was first used as a principle of inventory management, which was used in the pre just in time era, and meant that 80% of sales came from 20% of products, or 80% of inventory value was in 20% of the items.  It has other meanings now:

 “It has many names-the Parado Principle, the Principle of Imbalance, and the 80/20 rule–but they all mean the same thing. Richard Kock, author of The 80/20 Principle explains, “The 80/20 principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance between causes and results, inputs and outputs, and effort and reward.” In fact, this consistent mathematical relationship indicates that 80 percent of output comes from 20 percent of inputs, not only in the business world, but also in virtually every aspect of life.”

see: http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/careers/articles/simmons_six_career_secrets.asp

Jeffrey Miron: Legalize Drugs

“Prohibition is the trigger of crime”

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“Prohibition is the trigger of crime”  (“The Man with the Golden Gun”, Ian Fleming).

From Raw Story:”Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron believes that LEGALIZING all drugs, not just marijuana, is the only way to ELIMINATE drug-related violence.
Miron argued during an appearance Monday on CNN, “Prohibition … hasn’t PREVENTED kids from getting access to heroin, including very, very cheap heroin. … At the same time, we’re GETTING all the ancillary costs of drug prohibition, such as the violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States.””Some people will misuse drugs even if it’s legal,” Miron acknowledged, “but the MAGNITUDE of negative things would be vastly reduced.”
However, former DEA agent Bob Stutman believes that legalizing drugs would lead to a VAST increase in addiction, although he agrees with Miron that “the present system certainly is BROKEN and needs fixing.”Stutman, who has been described as “the most famous narc in America” by New York Magazine, told CNN — with a few false starts — “Drugs are bad … Drugs are not illegal … Drugs are not bad because they’re illegal. Drugs are legal — illegal, because they are bad.” 
“The one change we don’t need to make is give any drug to any person at any age who wants it for any reason,” he insisted, warning that “the United States cannot afford to end up with about — best estimate — about fifty million drug addicts and alcoholics running around this country with us supporting them.”

Miron responded by INSISTING that there is “not a shred of evidence” to suggest there would be a huge increase in addiction as suggested by Stutman and that “there is aboslutely NO correlation between use rates and whether these drugs are prohibited.”

EMPHASIS MINE

SEE: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Harvard_economist_Legalize_drugs_to_reduce_0413.html

“Prohibition is the trigger of crime”

The Political Brain and Obama

SACRIFICING the American taxpayer at the altar of their free-market extremism.

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Drew Westen, author of  “The Political Brain”, writes in HuffPost:”President Obama’s APPROVAL  ratings have continued to break records, and with good reason. In less than 3 months, he has already proven himself remarkably CAPABLE as a leader, in getting a STIMULUS  package passed (while learning some hard lessons about splitting the difference in policy with the people who created the mess); steadfastly REFUSING TO JETTISON health care, energy, and education reform from his budget in tough economic times; beginning to HEAL the deep wounds left by his predecessor in the U.S.’s relationship with the rest of the world through both his mastery of foreign affairs and his emotional intelligence as diplomat-in-chief; and even signaling his intention to take on comprehensive IMMIGRATION REFORM. All of this has happened as Republicans have seemed increasingly impotent, ideologically inflexible, and oppositional, NONE of which endears them to anyone but the 30% who still THINK Bush was a great president (and apparently remain off their medication).Yet at the same time, something else is happening under the radar: the fortunes of Democrats more generally are starting to wane…how could it be that President Obama’s standing in the polls is holding steady or improving while Democrats’ standing in the polls is FALLING? And does it matter, so long as he is able to get his agenda passed through a heavily Democratic House and Senate?…Let’s start with the second question first. It does matter. The President’s ability to stay on the path he has charted REQUIRES not only Democrats holding or increasing their majorities in 2010 but on their holding onto public SUPPORT  for sweeping change. It also requires moderate Democrats and those from conservative states and districts to feel comfortable voting for new spending, and likely a second stimulus package, knowing that they will be ATTACKED in the next election with the familiar refrains of big-government tax-and-spend liberals (if not socialists).

And as for the first question, the paradoxical popularity of the new President while the fortunes of his party are waning, not only makes sense but is predictable from an understanding of the psychology of public opinion and “branding.” Any marketing executive will tell you that a good product is certainly a big help for sales, … the situation we have now in American politics, where the Democrats are PRODUCING solutions where Republicans MANUFACTURED problems, and where the Republicans are now trying to re-sell “pre-owned” ideological vehicles that have a bad habit of running into ditches.In politics, you DON’T WIN on ideas ALONE. Comprehensive energy reform was a no-brainer after OPEC began embargoing oil 35 years ago, but the percent of our energy we are importing from overseas has only SKYROCKED since then, and Americans were buying Hummers until gas hit $4.00 a gallon. Health care REFORM made good sense in 1993, but last I looked, it hasn’t happened. Successful branding requires TWO things: CREATING positive associations to your own brand, and DIFFERENTIATING it from competing brands. In POLITICS, that means offering voters a clear, memorable, emotionally compelling narrative about your party’s core principles, while presenting them with an equally clear, memorable, and evocative story about the other party that would not make anyone want to be associated with it. If there were ever a time Democrats could offer both stories, this is it.

But the FAILURE of Democrats to brand themselves has been a perennial problem since the breakdown of the New Deal coalition in the 1970s, and it remains a major problem today,leaving Republicans the OPPORTUNITY, once they get their ideological chops back, to start branding both parties again, as they have for the better part of thirty years. Democrats stand for spending our way out of a looming Depression–a sound policy when no one else has the money or chutzpa to spend or invest–but how does that differ from the fiscal irresponsibility with which Ronald Reagan branded the party of “tax and spend” 30 years ago? Democrats stand for shifting to clean, safe 21st century sources of energy rather than relying on the fossil fuels of the last two centuries, but then why is the Secretary of the Interior waxing poetic about expanded offshore drilling?

It’s hard for people to hear your message when you aren’t speaking…PERHAPS President Obama will succeed where Adams and Jefferson could not, and America WILL BECOMEnot only a post-racial society but a post-partisan one. But if he does not succeed in turning a broken economy around substantially by the summer of 2010 and REMINDING the American people on a regular basis (REPETITION is essential psychologically, neurologically, and empirically to branding) that he and his fellow Democrats are trying to PULL the nation OUT of the ditch the Republicans left us in by the side of the road, his administration will gradually become associated in voters’ minds with the economic crisis he inherited, and he will find himself working with a Congress far LESS friendly to progressive reforms in two years.

Under similar circumstances, FDR trumpeted the failures of the Republican leadership and ideology that created the Great Depression while still managing to unite a terrified nation around not only his own charismatic presence but around New Deal reforms–reforms he could never have enacted if he had not contrasted the failed ideology that had led the nation over the economic cliff with the radically different solutions he and his party were offering. Roosevelt’s consistent branding of the Republicans as inflexible ideologues at the same time as he showed what progressive, pragmatic action and Democratic leadership could offer led to a political realignment that lasted 40 years.

That is not President Obama’s style. … the REALITY is that millions of Americans are out of work, and most hard working Americans have LOST nearly half of their wealth, and many their HOMES, because of the way George W. Bush and the radical Republican ideologues who enabled him ran the government–and ran it into the ground. The reality is that we had a SURPLUS when Bill Clinton left office, and the only reason President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit that now constrains him is that George W. Bush and the radical Republicans believed in handing out suitcases full of cash to their wealthy friends with no strings attached and no transparency… I think it particularly BEARS SAYING every time those same Republicans preach fiscal discipline, heap scorn on government “bailouts” they BOTH necessitated and engineered, or offer their quasi-religious answer of “the free market” to every problem the market has created or failed to solve, from the crisis in the housing industry and the lack of regulations on Wall Street that took down our economy (and the world economy along with it) to the fact that most working Americans are now afraid of changing jobs for fear of losing their health insurance. Republican politicians would certainly be a LITTLE LESS QUICK to step up to the microphone if they knew that EVERY time they talked about fiscal discipline, a Democrat would be there to remind them that they were the ones who went on a 6-year spending spree with our children’s money and then handed the better part of a trillion dollars out to Wall Street bankers and speculators, SACRIFICING the American taxpayer at the altar of their free-market extremism. ..That’s a lesson we should have learned a long time ago.

In politics, there is nothing so deadly as silence. ”  (EMPHASIS MINE)

SEE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/why-the-democrats-are-los_b_186047.html

Limbaugh’s success is based on:

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Giving it away!

Bill Mann reports in HuffPost: “Did Rush accrue hundreds of local radio affiliates across the country because his political views are mainstream? That’s obviously not it. OK, so why IS his show so “popular?” Why do hundreds of stations around the country carry his show, the most widely syndicated talkfest in the country?  Glad you asked.

The real story is not generally well-known. The only reason I know is through my covering the business of radio for years for several major daily newspapers and also, for industry trade magazines like Radio World.

It’s because — ready for this? — Rush’s show was, and presumably still is, GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE to many local radio stations.

This shocker is because of a little-known practice in broadcast syndication called a “barter deal… Major-market right-wing talk stations, like San Francisco’s KSFO-AM (“Reichstag Radio”) have to pay actual money, of course, to carry Boss Limbaugh’s daily proclamation-a-thon. (Note: KSFO, which I referred to as “Sieg Heil on Your Dial” in my column when it first switched to righty talk, is the same station that gave hatemonger Michael Savage his first radio megaphone).

Radio sources say that small- and medium-market stations STILL GET Limbaugh’s show for free, or pay only a token amount of cash for it….So, when you hear Rush bellowing as you’re passing through Birdseed Junction, Beanblossom, or Pyrite, just remember: The radio station’s getting what it paid for. Or, more accurately, DIDN’T pay for.”

(SOME EMPHASIS MINE).

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mann/limbaughs-dirty-little-se_b_185965.html