Category: Republican

Those Lying Republicans


The Party of “no”, the Republicans are so used to lying and not having their statements checked that they do it recklessly. Eric Cantor is the latest victim of his own carelessness. He denounced the Democrats while they were on their way to winning the health care debate because as he claimed they were responsible for heated, incendiary rhetoric which drove the masses to threaten him and indulge in acts of anti-semitism. While anit-semitism, as well as Islamophobia, are indeed rampant in todays societies, the threat against him, which he says took the form of a gun shot directed towards his district “office” has been proven without a shadow of a doubt to be a lie. Cantor just wasn’t counting on you discovering that, and why should he? The corporate media, all of it, not just the right side of the spectrum represented by FoxNews or any of the talking radio heads, has done nothing but be a mouthpiece for the Republican party since the beginning of this century.

So when the address of 25 E Main Street in Richmond was given by Cantor  as the location where a bullet was found everyone assumed, jumped to either deny the accusation, repeat or doubt it.  It didn’t matter that the building at that location had no identifying marks to Cantor,  we all guffawed or believed the lying Republican.  Then the police report came back saying the bullet was a stray bullet not meant for the premises but Cantor’s veracity remained intact and unchallenged.  Until….Until the lid was blown off, not by corporate media, but by alternative media and Cantor was discovered lying.  It turns out the address 25 E Main Street is not in Eric Cantor’s district but rather in the 3rd district of Virginia which happens to be  the district of congressman Bobby Scott, Democrat.  Why would Cantor give an address for an act of violence directed towards his “office” in a district that is not his?  Sloppy victimology.  Could it be the perpetrator of this crime, that of intimidation and destruction of property, was directing it towards Scott and not Cantor, who decided to make political hay of it by claiming victim status for himself.  A look at Scott’s legislative record who  is a liberal Democrat who voted for the Obama health care proposal reveals him to be the kind of politician today’s tea bagger would certainly love to shot at or intimidate. With the political right calling for such action against its enemies as breaking windows and a window broken in the district of a health care supporter, it wouldn’t take much of a jump for an ambitious politician to claim victim status for himself even when nothing about what happened had anything to do with him.  Therefore, you need to keep a sharp ear out for the name Eric Cantor, a politician who can easily and seamlessly lie about anything for political advantage, not blink an eye and not be held accountable by his friends in corporate media.  For liars and politicians,it doesn’t get any better than that!

The Dance of Denial


It has been very revealing watching members of the Right deny the responsibility of their ideology for two tragic murders that have recently occured which captured the attention of the Nation.  First came the cold blooded slaughter of an abortionist, Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas followed up shortly by the brutal killing of a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC of all places.

Dr. Tiller’s death is troubling because he had been the target of anti-abortionists’ rage before and even the person charged with his murder had been known to stalk and even vandalize  the clinic where Tiller worked in the days preceeding his death.  Several people in the clinic have gone on record saying they knew about Scott Roeder’s attempts at disrupting the operation of the clinic and notified the proper authorities yet nothing was done to apprehend Roeder and possibly prevent Dr. Tiller’s death.  Such ineptness on the park of the federal beaucracy does not mean that even more layers of government are necessary to protect the citizens but rather irresponsible civil servants need to be replaced with more diligent and efficient ones.

The death of Stephen Jones at the National Holocaust Museum at the hands of a white supremacist is a tragedy underscored by the fact this murderer had a long history, easily documented that could possibly point to such a heinious crime being committed by his hand, age notwithstanding, yet he very easily walked down a metropolitan city street with a .22 caliber rifle and shot and killed an armed federal agent.  The reason why I mention again both of these crimes is because of the contortions those on the right are taking to distance their ideology from these two men who claimed to hold that ideology near and dear to them.   Political pundits are taking great lengths to say that these murderes aren’t from the right at all but rather from the left of the political spectrum, despite the fact they, the perpetrators clearly identify with the Right.  Punditry has managed to make actions a mark of political persuasion and not words and have told their admirers that death and killing are marks of the political left, terrorism marks of Muslims,  while the opposition the Right makes to anything is noble and necessary to save America from its enemies.

This was the kind of meme advanced by Dick Cheney, more recently, and the entire Bush administration before which reduced all argument to ‘with us or against us’ sloganeering.  In that small universe built by the likes of the triumphant Right there was nothing that we did to  those ‘against us’ that could be considered illegal or immoral behavior.   The concept of “exceptionalism” had been developed to the point that meant even the boundaries of legality didn’t apply to us or we made every attempt to legalize illegal behavior in order to legitimize our unlawful actions.  It was a vicious circle we continue to traverse by denying the rational of these latest criminals for their criminal behavior.

News accounts and political pundits have taken great pains to classify these murderers as lone gunmen who are completely separate and detached from the environment which they have enveloped themselves.  By doing so they hope to further distance themselves from the effect their rhetoric has on the people who listen to and subscribe to it.

In our system of law as it pertains to capital crimes unless there is a conspiracy there is no guilt by association. Conversely there is also no innocence by association. Christian leaders and conservative citizens in general have jumped at the chance to label Mr. Roeder a vigilante, a monster and things far worse.

Regrettably this tactic is only applied to members of the right who spent an entire two terms of a right leaning Republican administration to paint with the broadest of brushes entire groups of people based on the actions of individual(s).  This has been a common practice of demagoguery; the politics of the many condensed into the actions of the lone individual.  Cries of bombing the institutions that are symbolic of political ideology have given way to the absolute negation of ideology and their import on an individual’s actions.   Murderers on the right have suddenly appeared on our political landscape and killed their perceived foes because they were inherently defective and acting completely on their own, while the last eights years of a Republican administration were spent literally trying to root out whole communities of conspirators who lurked in every corner of our country waiting for a chance to reap their collective death and destruction at the earliest possible moment on an unsuspecting public that need the invasive protection of a government bureaucracy.

Finally the absence in many cases of condemnation from the progenitors of rightist motivation for such murderous tendencies is another characteristic of the sudden revisionism going on in Obama’s America.  During the Bush years people were always challenged to condemn the acts of coreligionist or fellow ideologues, today’s America sees there is no need for condemnation because such acts rarely accomplish anything and not worth the time spent doing so.

Condemning Roeder doesn’t add anything to the pro-life cause. Pro-abortionists are always quick to remind the Christians of Christ’s rule of not judging or condemning. Why add fuel to the fire by condemning Mr. Roeder, isn’t it just a matter of six of one and a half dozen of the other? Both Tiller and Roeder have One that will be their final judge and he is neither hot under the collar, biased or partial. Why don’t we leave all that to Him?

In many ways such ideas mirror the current glossing over done by the Obama administration vis-a-vis Bush Administration crimes of torture and violations of the US constitution and are entirely motivated by groups’ needs to absolve themselves of responsibilty for actions of the past or the future.

The Republican Epiphany


It’s a bit too late and dishonest, but it’s now being said that Bush is a socialist.  Progressives and people on the left have been saying the same thing but were excoriated for it, accused of being traitors and in so many words told to leave their country.  However, the signs of Bush’s socialist leaning tendencies have been apparent since 911.  That marked the beginning of big government, although that may not quite be the “big government” Republicans now have in mind.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

What seems to have particularly drawn the Republicans’ ire is the financial bailouts and that indeed should be enough to upset EVERYONE within the borders of the US.  The Republicans however, are responsible for the mechanism behind the bailouts and how it works.  Although the country has been in a recession for over a year, the Bush Administration made the economy a priority only within the last 6 months and hurried initiatives through Congress, much like they did after 911, scaring all who opposed them with dire political consequences (this was an election year) as well as economical ones for the country.  In that kind of atmosphere all felt obliged to give the Administration what it asked for, but this is how Bush has worked throughout his two terms, turning every issue into a national crisis which could only be solved through the immediate and direct involvment of Government.  At every turn Democrats and Republicans participated in this turns towards “socialism” and very few people, except those on the fringe, complained.

Now, Republicans are claiming Bush is a socialist? Bush is NOT the target of this resolution being mulled within the RNC, rather it is Obama.  In fact the resolution itself won’t be considered until after Obama takes office, but what party officials want to do is tie Obama to Bush’s policies and plaster the “socialist” pejorative to the Democrats to use against them in ’12.  Republicans are quite happy with the big government they voted in during the last eight years and they know much of what they instituted will not be rescinded.  Government rarely if ever gives back power, and Bush has done a very good job of handing Democrats hot button issues that are irreparable in the short term so Republicans can position themselves as a “viable” opposition party….much like the Democrats did in ’06, and regain control of the executive and legislative.  Why anyone would want to be President under these circumstances is beyond me.

So the Bush is a socialist accusation is only window dressing to ensnare the Dems who will be forced to defend what transpired during Bush’s term, because once government gives, they can’t taketh back, while they, Republicans argue what they indeed voted for is no good and irrelevant.  A neat political trick.

Trying to keep score


This last week has been really fun to watch with so much going on.  I’m sure other bloggers have written about the shenanigans but here are my two cents concerning the political fiasco call the presidential campaign. The McCain campaign tried to capitalize on “Joe the Plumber” until it was learned he was closely related to the Keating scandal which McCain played a major role.

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

Opps! You have to ask yourself what was the Obama campain thinking when they let their candidate get sandbagged by an obvious political hack.  Why was Obama walking through this guy’s neighborhood?  Dumb and dumber, I suppose.

William Buckley’s son Chris has come out endorsing Obama and has had to quit his post as a contributing writer on the National Review as a result.  Conservatives, or rather the truest party loyalists among them, those I consider brain dead and members of THE REPUBLICAN PARTY can’t stand the idea that a born and raised conservative doesn’t see anything conservative about their present party.  They forget, those on the National Review, how their publication’s founder distanced himself from Bush and his foray into Iraq, pretty much declaring himself a heretic from his own magazine and the modern day conservative right neocon cabal.

“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

The conservative right has also distanced itself from Palin’s choice as the vice presidential nominee.

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for?

*snip*

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

You betcha’!

What’s with Republicans?


They put Sarah Palin on the ticket in order for her to attack Barak Obama and play the damsel in distress when she is attacked, even though her attacks against Obama don’t even come close to her own issues of associating with terrorists or terrorist minded individuals and organizations!

“My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. “She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”

You can find out more about this “Party” that until recently Sarah Palin’s husband used to belong to here.  One can see all too quickly why the Pallin’s must distance themselves from this group as they’ve distanced themselves from her, choosing to endorse the Constitutional Party’s presidential candidate over Sarah Pallin’s.

What is shameful in all this is the mock outrage the McCain/Pallin ticket expresses when they meet people who, having listened to the campaign rhetoric express themselves in ways the candidates really want them to!

John McCain was booed by his own supporters during a rally on Friday after he described Barack Obama as a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

McCain was responding to a town hall attendee who claimed he was concerned about raising a child under a president who “cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers.” Despite the fact that McCain and his campaign have repeatedly used Ayers to hammer Obama in recent days, the Arizona Senator tried to calm the man.

“[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States,” he said, before adding: “If I didn’t think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn’t be running.”

The crowd groaned with disapproval.

Later, McCain was again pressed about Obama’s “other-ness” and again he refused to play ball. “I don’t trust Obama,” a woman said. “I have read about him. He’s an Arab.”

“No, ma’am,” McCain said several times, shaking his head in disagreement. “He’s a decent, family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Yeah, lady, there’s definitely something wrong with being an Arab….plausible deniability is the intended meaning of this dog and pony show.  The McCain campaign has done a pretty good of planting all the seeds of hatred and distrust towards Obama among the American citizens and it wants the fruits of those efforts to be that people forget the financial “crisis” America finds itself in, some saying it’s the largest economic crisis the country has faced since the Great Depression.

America’s mortgage crisis has spiralled into “the largest financial shock since the Great Depression” and there is now a one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession over the next 12 months, the International Monetary Fund warned today.

The US is already sliding into what the IMF predicts will be a “mild recession” but there is mounting pessimism about the ability of the rest of the world to escape unscathed, the IMF said in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook. Britain is particularly vulnerable, it warned, as it slashed its growth targets for both the US and the UK.

The report made it clear that there will be no early resolution to the global financial crisis.

The failed Iraq/Afghanistan war with a 12 billion per month price tag has also significantly contributed to this economic problem, and the WOT, which is being shown for the sham it really is each and every day it has an appearance before a government body NOT fully controlled by this Administration.

Today, for the first time, a federal court ordered the release into the United States of 17 innocent Uighur men who have been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay for nearly seven years. The men are refugees who would face persecution and imprisonment, if not death, if returned to their native China.

“In the history of our Republic, the military never imprisoned any man so harshly, and for so long, let alone men who are not the enemy. We have broken faith with the rule of law, and been untrue to the generosity of spirit that is our national character,” said Sabin Willett, Partner at Bingham McCutchen who argued the case for the detainees today.

“This is a historic day for the U.S. Finally, we are beginning the process of taking responsibility for our mistakes and fixing them,” said CCR Attorney Emi MacLean. “For years, the United States has begged other countries to clean up the mess we made in Guantánamo, but the hypocrisy of this appeal was evident abroad. Perhaps now other countries will be less reluctant to come to our aid.” MacLean continued, “Allowing these wrongfully detained men a fresh start would also provide the U.S. a fresh start — an opportunity to turn a page and finally take a position of leadership in closing Guantánamo.”

McCain, et.co want Americans to forget all this and instead concentrate on the spin they are putting to an Obama association that is tangential AT BEST, while being able to say they have had nothing to do with the conclusion. It should be painfully obvious to any and all that at staged public appearances this late into the campaign process, candidates are able to control who gets in and who says what.  Dirty and cheap politics have been a hallmark of the GOP the last several elections.  It’s sad it’s being bought, lock, stock and barrel, but should come as no surprise.

UPDATE

John McCain gets mugged very nicely by Juan Cole, who calls McCain out for using demagoguery and then withdrawing it.

John McCain quickly shed his last vestiges of decency when he allowed his campaign to try to smear Barack Obama for having been in the same room with Bill Ayers, who had been a Weatherman in the 1960s when Obama was a child. McCain knows very well that Obama is a centrist, not a radical, that Ayers had long since been rehabilitated and has ties to the Republican governor of South Carolina, and that Obama had very little to do with Ayers. The ‘terrorist’ charge is supposed to work subliminally, and to subconsciously suggest other smears.

However, I disagree with Professor Cole when he says the two messages of the McCain candidacy, the decent high road McCain versus the wallow in the mud McCain are conflicted.  To the contrary, I think McCain is trying to have his cake and eat it too.  He’s appealing to the wine and cheese crowd of the party with his attempts at calming the lynch mob out to get Obama, while inciting that very mob to action!  McCain has been on the receiving end of this lynch mob mentality during the primary of a few campaigns ago so he is a testament to its effectiveness. It’s a shameful display of hypocrisy.  I also like the fact that Cole says what Obama dare not say and it’s another reason why I’m not fully behind the man Barack Obama.  He should be man enough to speak for himself and not let others do the talking for him.

Mr. McCain, Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans are decent, family-oriented citizens. The only thing wrong with calling Obama by either of these modifiers is that it would be incorrect. He is not an Arab ethnically, but rather northern European and Luo (Nilotic). He is not a Muslim but a Christian.

McCain’s insinuation that “Arabs” (whether he and his friend actually meant “Muslims” or not) are not decent and not family-oriented and not citizens is obscene.

Perhaps Juan Cole is the one who should run for the presidency.

The Republican Party’s dirty tricks-at it again


What should you expect from the party of whiners and liars.  Let’s just go and put it on the record before it gets lost in the memory hole amidst all the shouting about Gwen Ifill’s book and the liberal media and minorities who can’t pay their mortages. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is out distributing a flier intended to scare black voters in Philadelphia.

An anonymous flier circulating in African-American neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia states that voters who are facing outstanding arrest warrants or who have unpaid traffic tickets may be arrested at the polls on Election Day.

The flier starts off by identifying its origins from an Obama supporter; the underlying assumption of the hit piece is that those who might support Obama in the targeted communities are criminals or on the run from the law.  You can read the flier here.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, who learned of the flier last week, said that the message is completely false.

Typical for the party of whiners and liars.

Republicans have become the party of liars


Bush’s legacy is he has reduced his party to one of whiners and he has no one to blame but himself, as do both houses of Congress who have no one to blame but themselves.  It’s a pathetic group of politicians.  The latest offense that has really upset me is the one dealing with the financial bailout and the reasons why it is necessary.  The Republicans began by erroneously blaming minorities and Clinton for the Nation’s financial situation because of the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA which allowed more and more members of minority communities to purchase homes and we called them on it, saying they were the party of sleaze and race baiting.  Unfortunately theirs is a mantra which works on some of their constituents, so they sent out their party hacks to repeat it and much like everything else they utter to cover for the party of race baiters, it’s a lie!  The cause of the housing meltdown lies solely at the feet of the Bush Administration!  You can read all about that here.

Now that they’ve deflected the blame for the cause of the problem, Republicans then set about to say why they can’t solve the problem, blaming a speech Nancy Pelosi gave on the House floor the day of the vote on the Administration’s bail out plan.  Typical.  Does this blame business ever get tiresome with these folks? Of course the corporate equally sleazy media picked up on and broadcast the excuse without commenting on how lame and ridiculous the excuse really was.  Only after Congressman Barney Frank made the comment of the year….”Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country? I don’t believe they had the votes. They are covering up the fact that they don’t have the votes.” did the Republicans come around to saying Pelosi’s verbal bombast wasn’t the reason the bill didn’t pass.

Quite simply the bill is a bad piece of legislation for reasons we’ve already mentioned on this blog, but those reasons are not why House Republicans voted against the measure.  As we’ve discussed the legislation gives broader powers to the executive and specifically the Treasury department than ever before, as well as removes oversight from the other two branches of government.  The Republicans have always given away this power when Bush asked for it, but this time, facing the possibility of defeat in the presidential elections as well as their own seats they decided to listen to the people or did they?  Does anyone else find it ironic that opponents of the bill are now saying such legislation should be more carefully thought out before coming to the floor for a vote?  I seem to remember a lot of peole saying the same thing during the war on terror series of voluminous reams of legislation that were always rushed through at the risk of its opponents being called traitors or siding with the enemies against us. That the Republicans would throw out red herrings which were picked up by the corporate media and hide the real fact of their opposition, that they don’t want to cede this kind of power to a Democratic administration on the eve of what they consider a likely defeat in the presidential elections is just one more example of the pandering and lies they engage in their efforts to frighten, threaten and intimidate the voting public.  I wish I could say at this time that the Democrats are a viable alternative.

The Nation’s first black president disses the Nation’s aspiring black president


The Clintons wanted to be a political dynasty, much like the Bush family, but Obama got in their way and it has been a rocky road between the two camps ever since.

McCain and the Republican party have some serious problems when matched against a polished performer like Obama so big John along with his running mate, Sara,  have been running scared ever since the Republican National Convention and the hurricanes.  The party that has gone the world over fighting wars of aggression has dodged  behind natural emergencies like Ike and Gustav  and national ones, like the economy, when it comes time to face the American public. So what happens?  Bill Clinton comes to the rescue for the Republicans and bails John McCain out of a public relations problem had it been pursued by the media.  Of course the very fact that Bill was out and about trying to reassure people he wasn’t a party wrecker is a sure sign he sees himself in that role, as do most others.

So the nation’s first black and Jewish president has been a bit less than a rousing endorser of the nation’s second aspiring black president. It also doesn’t help that Clinton views his role as getting out the “cracker” vote for Obama.  Let me ask a simple question here.  Does the use of pejorative terms by someone help the candidate they support, especially in a racially charged campaign as this?  Not likely. So, eight more years of THE REPUBLICAN party, invasions of third world countries, or emerging economies and death and destruction.  Gee, thanks Bill!

America’s steady decline into fascism


It’s been coming since the dawn of this century and accelerated with the events of 911.  America’s response, defined by its political leaders, promulgated by members of the media, and accepted by a large segment of the population has steered the country towards fascism.  The political definition of fascism fits to a “t” what is happening in 21st century America.  Our increased militarism, which has given rise to a new military state which responds even to natural disasters with a military presence, the nationalism spurred by the ‘either you are with us or against us’ mentality, the tackling of a new and equally imaginary  jihadist Islam, to replace an old one, communism and now the nationalization of the banking system all are signs of the encroachment of fascism into the collective.  The last example has raised more than a few eyebrows, mine included, in a piece written for the Huffington Post.

Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you….. This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands.

From the very beginning Bush’s administration has always tried to remove any and all opposition to its policies, including Congress’ oversight function, and the unfortunate aspect of that is Congress has allowed it to happen.  The reinterpretation of FISA statutes, the Military Commissions Act and now the bail out of financial institutions have been structured in such a way as to bypass the other two main bodies of government, the legislative and judicial, and leave power solely in the hands of the executive.  The concept of the unitary executive, has been expanded under this Administration far more than previous ones and under Bush he deems fit to categorically dismiss laws passed by Congress and signed by him via signing statements which say in some cases he is not bound by the very law he is signing.

What struck me about this latest offense to come from Bush’s government is the way bailouts of Wall Street are designed to give power solely to the Secretary of the Treasury  in a manner which leaves out the other branches of government in the decision making process.

The Treasury Secretary can buy broadly defined assets, on any terms he wants, he can hire anyone he wants to do it and can appoint private sector companies as financial deputies of the US government. And he can write whatever regulation he thinks are needed.

*snip*

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Such language sounds so much like that employed in the Military Commissions Act, where only the President and or the Secretary of Defense can define someone as an unlawful enemy combatant and outside the reach of one of the most cherished rights of American statehood, habeas corpus and the judicial system.

But even in the waning days of the Bush Administration it appears this descent is in free fall.  The Republican Party feels confident nominating a ticket that includes one who claims it’s perfectly ok to look into the personnel records of state employees, while protesting the invasion of her own privacy and emails.  We’ve already talked about the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin’s position vis-a-vis her own party, but her idea that she can invade others’ privacy so early in the election campaign is chutzpah beyond measure and a sure sign that things will continue as they have been for the last 8 years.

I have an endearing hope in the goodness of the American society to overcome these shortcomings in our political leaders.  This is not to say the choices we are presented with at this time are solutions to where we are heading, but before the Brown shirts fully take over, I hope we can reverse this process which has wreaked havoc on societies similarly placed in the not too distant past.

Cry baby politics or the shoe is now on the other foot


Republicans can dish it out but they can’t take it, or so it seems.  Earlier this week when the Obama campaign unleashed some Spanish speaking political advertisements which took pot shots at the McCain campaign and featured excerpts from  Rush Limbaugh’s program where Limbaugh does his usually good job of inserting his own foot in his own mouth, Limbaugh took offense and fired off a response which spoke of Obama’s divisive “racism”.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black……Then there was the racism card pulled by the Republicans when it came to Oprah’s refusal to have Sarah Palin on her show which had to be muted until the McCain campaign finally decided before they could criticize Winfrey for not having Palin on they first had to make her “available” to the press! The Repubs will resort to this tactic of “crying” how they are being misrepresented or misinterpreted alot during this campaign season and into the next four years if the lose.  Of course they weren’t willing at all to entertain the idea that their opponents could have the same problem when inflammatory quotes were exhibited to demonstrate their opponents lack of patriotism.

Glen Greenwald does an excellent job of demonstrating the Republican’s hypocrisy in his blog on the latest Sarah Palin controversy surrounding her email account that was “hacked”.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a part of the GOP’s dirty tricks to get sympathy for their candidate, and it would have worked had  Greenwald not pointed out some of the problems in the Party’s protestations.

The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin’s privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.

*snip*

Shouldn’t these same people be standing up today and insisting that if Sarah Palin has done nothing wrong, then she should have nothing to hide? If Sarah Palin isn’t committing crimes or consorting with The Terrorists, then why would she care if we can monitor her emails? And if private companies such as Yahoo can access her emails — as they can — then she doesn’t really have any “privacy” anyway, so what’s the big deal if others read through her communications, too? Isn’t that the authoritarian idiocy that has been spewed since The Day That 9/11 Changed Everything — beginning with the Constitution — to justify vesting secret and unchecked surveillance powers in our Great and Good Leaders?

*snip*

And then there’s the McCain campaign, protesting this “shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law” even though the GOP nominee has supported every last expansion of surveillance power and stood by the President’s every last violation of our surveillance laws. I wonder if the laws which the Palin hacker violated are similar to the federal statute that makes it a felony — punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense — to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans without warrants, or the multiple statutes (.pdf) which expressly outlaw the telecoms from allowing government spying on their customers without warrants from a court?

*snip*

All these privacy fetishists and (to use Joe Klein’s term) “civil liberties extremists” screeching today over Sarah Palin’s “privacy” need to get some sense of proportion. If Sarah Palin has nothing to hide, if she’s not a Terrorist, why would she mind anyone going through her emails? And just because these things — those things that some overly-earnest people call “statutes” or “laws” or whatever the new trendy Leftist term for them is today — say that you can’t invade people’s private communications without committing a crime, does anyone other than shrill Leftists really take that seriously, really think that someone who does what the law says you can’t do should get in trouble or — more absurdly still — be arrested? Isn’t it time — just like David Broder and so many other of our Elite Guardians have directed — that we stop criminalizing our politics?

‘Attaboy…sic ’em Glen.

Oh no they don’t!


I saw this editorial and thought how naive of someone to write.   The GOP doesn’t have to accept ANY group of people, and especially Muslims.  I still shake my head at the way the Republican Party treated Sami al-Arian who urged the Muslims of Florida to vote for George Bush in 2000 and then spent the last five years in prison, persecuted by the very party he supported. The GOP has had one major policy battle success after another on the backs of “Islamophobia” and its announcements of the arrests of various Muslim groups and personalities here in the US and abroad.  As for the US arrests, very few of them have amounted to much in the way of revealing a terrorist base, instead they have ended up as immigration violations that merely amounted to paperwork issues.  That hasn’t stopped the Republicans from sounding the alarm over the Muslims in our midst, as we have seen with this latest shameful approach.  I’m a little disappointed by some who stand outside a political establishment banging on the door to be let in or crying to be included.  It’s really a little unbecoming.  I understand where it comes from, however.  Minorities in America have always wanted to participate in American politics, and this very act is a sign of their respect for the institutions this country holds dear, so it’s a good thing to see a Muslim writer say they should be included in the American political process, but it’s beneath human dignity to demand inclusion with those who are oppressing you.  What Muslims should do, and any other group that thinks it is not welcomed among the two major American political parties is what other progressive Americans who are equally interested in the “process” do; form their own party which addresses their concerns and those of other dispossessed groups in America.  As the writer of the editorial mentions, the Republican National Convention was held in a city that elected the first Muslim Democrat to the US Senate who had a broad enough appeal to get elected in a state with a Muslim population of less than 5,000.  So grassroots politics is what Muslims of America should get involved in, but with the goal of defining a party that suits their needs as citizens of the US, not asking for inclusion with a party that exploits and persecutes them.  The former takes a lot of work, the latter is laziness.  Muslims would do well to remember the verse from the Quran, ‘for every difficulty there is relief.’

George Bush redux


I was absolutely floored to read that Sarah Palin is also a member of the God squad. (Oh, do you think anyone will challenge her religious fervor or patriotism because of the absence of either the cross or the American flag on her lapel?) Another American Ayatollah in the making, following the succession of George Bush, and possibly the next president should McCain be elected, it’s frightening to hear her say the invasion of Iraq was God’s task for America. What we have is another religious crusader on the world’s political stage leading us closer to their desired Armageddon many see also as God’s Will. I think McCain stepped in it big time with this one. Time will tell.