… and I’m one of them.
Whatever the progressive complaints about the Obama administration may be, isn’t it nice to be able to have some confidence that our government is returning to competence?
It’s early days, but consider the difference between Bush’s response to Katrina/New Orleans and Obama’s response to the Haitian disaster. To me, the difference is already clear.
I’ll make a couple predictions here:
1) The American response to the Haiti catastrophe will prove vastly superior to the national response to the Katrina disaster
2) There will be excessive right-wing disparaging of that effort to mask (1) above.
Here’s my letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov):
Mr. Holder,
It is my belief that persons who engaged in torture should be prosecuted on both criminal and constitutional grounds.
1) I believe that laws and treaties of the United States were broken by torture.
2) I believe that the Constitution was violated by the executive branch essentially making its own laws regarding torture.
I further believe that the country would support the full and legal repudiation of torture, and that our nation would gain immeasurable respect around the world by behaving as we claim to behave.
Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Greg Walz-Chojnacki
There’s much to be disturbed about with the pace of change — as in “Change is Coming” — but let me suggest two things to bear in mind.
First, consider the situation in late 1941, when the United States found itself in a war that required our nation to take a fight across two vast oceans. The difficult decision was made to take a holding position in the Pacific Theater and concentrate on the war in Europe, despite having been attacked by Japan, not Germany. I’ve never heard anyone argue that this was the wrong choice.
While I’m fully sympathetic with the complaints of LGBT Americans, as an an example, I think that it is prudent to similarly triage our national problems, starting with the basic economic troubles (in which I include health care). And as angry as I am with the lack of accountability for people who’ve made out like — or is it as? — bandits in the financial sector while the rest of the country has burned, I think it’s politically and even morally prudent to concentrate on getting the bleeding under control with the most conservative means possible.
Secondly, as President Obama moves relatively slowly across a broad front, it’s natural for progressives to say, it’s our time, let’s get moving. But I’d suggest that this is a direct response to Bush, Rove and Co. riding roughshod over progressive sensibilities. We must be careful not to emulate them, but rather consider, as Obama is rightly considering, the spectrum of political beliefs that makes up America.
The real challenge, I believe, is not for us to put pressure on Obama, but to concentrate on making our voices heard in the places our laws are written — our state and federal legislatures. We also need to engage our neighbors in respectful dialog, encouraging our sympathizers to become more active and vocal, and reminding our opponents that we can disagree with respect.
This is a long road, but the grand victory we seek will not be won by presidential fiat, or a single election. Instead, it will be won by a steady accretion of progressive argument and gentle persuasion. It demands a commitment of many tens or hundreds of hours in service and activism by all of us who want to advance the progressive agenda. It means paying attention to local and state government, and communicating our wishes to our elected officials.
So be passionate about the causes you find compelling. But think strategically. And gear up for the long haul.
The primary reason I supported Obama, was that his campaign had the promise of making individual voters more important than dollars. But that’s more than a promise: It’s a challenge.
I’ve maintained this blog for quite a while, but recently a large portion of it was inexplicably and irrecoverably lost.
That by way of explaining the vast gap found after the first few recent posts.
George W. Bush has been spending a lot of time responding to the Congressional (and popular) mandate to end his misadventure in Iraq. He is whining that Congress is making decisions that the generals should make.
Leaving aside the disingenuousness of the suggestion that unqualified people are making military decisions, I’d like to point out that in our form of government, generals are rightly left to make the tactical decisions about warmaking, and even given a large role in strategic decisions about how to conduct wars.
What they are not entitled to do is decide whether we start or stop wars. That is a decision for the the public to make. When the public elected a Democratic Congress, it knew full well that such a Congress would work to end the war.
I’m not sure how we lost track of the fact that we shouldn’t be engaged in wars without congressional declarations of war. (Obviously, Truman and Lyndon Johnson are the two previous offenders in this regard.)
The people have spoken, and Congress is listening. It’s time for our feckless, reckless, and careless President to start listening, too.
I’ve written this in other blogs, so I might as well put it in mine…
If anyone’s interested in impeachment, let’s start with Dick Cheney.
As to the bill of impeachment, I’d start with Halliburton and work forward…
Speaking of Karl Rove (OK, I wasn’t, but everyone seems to be), GOP’s recent electoral failure points to the self-correcting nature of a health democracy.
Rove’s strategy of getting out the base and winning by 1% (or one vote) is largely predicated, I think, on the belief that a small base is sufficient because of a largely apathetic electorate.
We saw the limit of that theory on Nov. 7, 2006.The problem for the GOP is that the wreckage of the Bush Administration and its congressional abettors is so widely and deeply strewn around the country – and the world – that people were finally moved to demand some cleanup. If the Administration and Republican Congress had done even a mediocre job , Rove’s strategy might have held up.
But Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove have proven so corrupt, so governmentally inept, so venal, so mired in political calculation that they failed at the basic tasks of government, and no amount of political lipstick could make the public kiss that pig.
It took a while, but hooray for the people!
It’s been a wild ride for me, as for many progressives.
Nationally, the election exceeded my expectations. The recovery of both houses of Congress is fabulous. I’m hopeful the Democratic leadership will use subpoena power judiciously, not so much as to make it seem like a witch hunt, but enough to expose the damage caused by the Bush/Republican campaign of rotten legislation, bad policy and dishonesty.
This isn’t sex with an intern, folks, it’s been a full-scale assault on our system of government to consolidate power for old wealth in this country. Not only has this Administration threatened to condemn a large percentage of the population to declining standards of living, but it’s stifled the entrepreneurial energy of the nation. (More on this some other time.)
I also believe that Bush committed impeachable crimes against the constitution, but I think more good will be done by two years’ exposure of his deeply flawed and corrupting activities than by a traumatic impeachment. Moreover, I think the bogus impeachment of Clinton looks politically brilliant now, since a Bush impeachment would be widely seen — or at leat played in the media — as political payback, rather than the constitutional corrective it really would be.
[Note to David Brooks: You lost. America elected people in favor of a national health care policy, a forward-looking energy policy, and a decent minumum wage. They elected people of faith whose faith is not threatened by science. (See e.g.) Those are not your “conservative” values.]
I feel that we’ve killed the Bush/Rove campaign of government by smear, fear and secrecy. The task now is to bury it.
Regarding the Wisconsin vote, this was bittersweet. On the one hand, we
On the other hand, we
The first benighted referendum is mitigated by the election of a Governor and Senate that will not pass a death penalty amendment.
The second is more troubling, but I’m hopeful that it will eventually be rescinded when people recognize the harm it does to people they know and love, as well as the cultural harm caused by building discrimination into our constitution.
On the whole, Wednesday, Nov. 8, was a good day.
I’ve been making phone calls for the Dems, and have had a number of people say they were disgusted by the negative ads. Yet, they were willing to talk about the election.
Could this be the year that the negative ad finally ricochets back at the perpetrators? I think so.
I think the GOP is going to go thermonuclear in its negative ads, and will prove to be so shrill and ridiculous that people will see through it.
I don’t think that will motivate people to go out against and vote against the GOP, but there’s already sufficient motivation for that. Also, it might actually turn off enough GOP voters to hurt where it really counts.
What do you think?
I have to admit that I’m reflexively against the death penalty. Besides the fairly high probability of mistakes, I just can’t abide the notion of the state as a killer.
However, I’ve been thinking about the question, anyway. In particular, I was thinking about what the Christian position ought to be. This, naturally, led me to thinking about what Jesus might say about the current proposal to amend the Wisconsin constitution.
I’m no biblical scholar, but the only instance in the Gospels relating to capital punishment that I can think* of is in Chapter 8 of the Gospel of John, in which a woman accused of adultery is brought to Jesus for his judgment.
According to the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, she is to be stoned to death, but Jesus’ judgment is to simply say to the woman “I do not condemn you; go and sin no more.”
I think from the words “do not sin any more,” we can surmise that Jesus accepts that she is guilty of the charge.
But Jesus also clearly refuses to condemn her to death.
So, if you’re looking for guidance on how to vote on the constitutional amendment to allow the death penalty, you can see how Jesus voted in John 8: 11.
[In case the language of the amendment causes any uncertainty, the correct vote is “No.”]
* [April 2, 2007] Doh! I just realized that each of the Gospels contains another reference to capital punishment: The execution of Jesus.
OK, try this one on for size:
While you keep hearing that the GOP holds the high cards on national security, and some airheads like O’Reilly keep saying the terrorists want Democrats elected…
I have to believe that Osama bin Laden would much prefer Bush to be President. Why? Because Bush’s policies serve to radicalize Muslims, and that helps recruit suicide bombers, etc.
You only have to look to Iraq to see how obvious this is.
It seems clear to me that John Kerry had it right: Fighting terrorism is not a military problem, but a law enforcement problem. Again, having 130,000 American troops in Iraq hasn’t done anything to reduce terrorism. Certainly not in Iraq.
I’ve been making phone calls through MoveOn.org (it’s fabuous, go to callforchange.org), and it’s forced me to think about how to distill the many travesties of the Republican government into a 15-second litany.
Here’s what I”ve come up with:
Am I coverering the high (low) points?
Let’s be clear about something: The House Republican leadership failed to act to protect pages from a pedophile. And, like so many things Republican these days, politics trumped good judgment and policy.
Mark Foley himself had to be talked into running again in 2004.
Now, you may want to believe that this scandal was somehow engineered by the Democrats to maximize the political damage to Republicans but
The second point is the one to keep in mind. If I wait to disclose my enemy’s embezzling church funds to maximize his embarassment, that’s bad. But it’s not nearly as bad as the embezzlement, for crying out loud!
Let’s be clear about something else: As bad as this is, it’s not the worst case of Republican nonfeasance in Congress, and it’s not nearly as bad as the many acts of omission and commission by the Republican Administration.
In church the last Sunday I was struck by a passage in the Gospel in which Jesus says, “those who are not against us are for us.”
Hear any echoes there? Harken back to George W. Bush’s remarks to a special joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001 (link):
“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
And on Nov. 6, 2001: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
Note the difference. Jesus makes common cause with those not actively against him; Bush attacks those not actively with him.
So, George got it backwards. Consequently, he’s isolated America in foreign affairs.
This by the way, is the same manner in which he’s run domestic politics, with his “mandates” to “reform” Social Security and repeal the estate tax.
Which is why he’s becoming increasingly isolated himself.
In 2000 , George W. Bush and his cohorts were willing to subvert the electoral process to win control of the country. In 2004, they probably did it again, and certainly used the unifying tragedy of 9/11 to further divide the country and win again.
So, Bush has controlled the U.S. since 2000. And since 9/11/01, he has invaded two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether he controls them or not is open to interpretation, I guess.
But let’s take a quick inventory of the countries Bush has attempted to assert control over.
After letting Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora (shades of his father letting Saddaam Hussein “escape” in ‘91!) he essentially turned his back on this country. Now the country is the leading source of heroin in the world, and the Taliban is back, terrorizing the country (and funded in large part by the heroin traffic).
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It’s a fairly well-documented fact that one of Republican strategist Karl Rove’s main tactics is to attack an opponent at his strength. Perhaps the best example is the “swift-boating” of John Kerry, an attack on his war record, which was clearly a strength in light of George W. Bush’s wartime “service.”
It worth looking at a more recent canard or talking point, if you will: That the Democrats have no ideas.
For starters, it’s obvious the Democrats have plenty of ideas, on health care, social security, the war on terror, and fiscal responsibility. The Republican “ideas,” such as they are, are cut taxes for the wealthy and “stay the course” in Iraq.
But the larger point is, to the extent that Republicans have ideas, they are wildly out of step with most Americans. This is why Rove’s tactics and those of the right wing echo chamber (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Kristol, et al.) involve not ideas, but deceit. Rather than advance their weirdly bad ideas, they misrepresent the sound liberal ideas that made this country great.
Now, I don’t want to tar all Republicans with that brush; I think there are plenty of truly thoughtful, patriotic Republicans with interesting ideas. You just don’t hear from them nowadays.
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In a recent column, Cal Thomas wonders why the coverage of Mel Gibson’s recent drunken misbehavior hasn’t dragged Gibson’s marital problems into the discussion. (Apparently there was a young woman with Gibson.)
Because, you idiot, it’s none of our business. That’s between Mr. Gibson, his wife, and whomever he may or may not have been acting adulterously with.
Thomas is more concerned about people’s behavior in their personal lives than their public lives. This explains why he finds eight years of peace and prosperity under Clinton as time in the wilderness, whereas he thinks the corruption, deceit, hubris, and reprehensibly inept and inappropriate warmaking of the George W. Bush Administration so wonderful.
This, I think, is a good working definition of lunacy.
I’ve written before that I trust the wisdom of Wisconsin voters sufficiently to actually look forward to a referendum on a constitutional amendment essentially banning gay marriage.
My question is, will enough Wisconsinites actually vote?
The issue, I believe, is that people who hold what I regard as irrational views about gays generally, and about gay marriage specifically, are more motivated than people who are not concerned about it; hence supporters of an amendment are more likely to vote. (Someone who doesn’t believe it will rain, or who doesn’t mind getting wet, is less likely to carry an umbrella than someone who believes that it will rain and it will be harmful, e.g.)
But I would remind people of three things:
1) It’s important not to let fanatics take over governance in our state.
2) You need think about looking your gay family members, friends, and acquaintances in the eye and telling them “I think you’re less of a person ethically and emotional than me because you’re different.” (If you can do that, I guess you’ll vote for the amendment; not voting against it ethically amounts to voting for it.)
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