Showing posts with label editorials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editorials. Show all posts
Sunday, July 27, 2014
NY Times Editorial: Repeal Prohibition, Again
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.
There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.
We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these.
But that would leave their citizens vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law.
The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.
There is honest debate among scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.
There are legitimate concerns about marijuana on the development of adolescent brains. For that reason, we advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21.
Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime.
In coming days, we will publish articles by members of the Editorial Board and supplementary material that will examine these questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and we will report back on their responses, pro and con.
We recognize that this Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition.
Original article
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Bergdahl, Afghanistan, and the Darkening of the American Soul
When Bowe Bergdahl was reported missing in Afghanistan on the morning of June 30, 2009, a crack formed in the U.S. narrative about the longest war in our nation’s history. Bergdahl’s release this week, as part of a prisoner-of-war swap with the Taliban, has provoked the partisan pundits to hurl invective at the American POW, his family, and at President Barack Obama. Far removed from the din of these professional Beltway hecklers, though, in Hailey, Idaho, Bob Bergdahl, the young prisoner’s father, has been struggling for his son’s release. The ordeal of the son, and the disciplined, contemplative activism of the father, projects the U.S. war in Afghanistan through a different lens.
We know little yet of what exactly led to Bowe Bergdahl’s disappearance that night in Paktika province. Sean Smith, a filmmaker with The Guardian, met him the month before his disappearance. “Bowe was a softly spoken, intelligent and thoughtful guy,” Smith wrote. Smith produced two remarkable videos, one with footage shot in Afghanistan, another in Idaho, showing Bob Bergdahl’s personal efforts to not only free his son, but to understand the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Bowe himself is not interviewed in Smith’s films, but two fellow soldiers, in their tightly-knit group of five or six, were:
SOLDIER ONE: “These people just want to be left alone.”
SOLDIER TWO: “They got dicked with from the Russians for 17 years and then now we’re here.”
SOLDIER ONE: “Same thing in Iraq when I was there. These people just want to be left alone. Have their crops, weddings, stuff like that, that’s it, man."
Days later, Bergdahl disappeared. Smith told me, “They weren’t criticizing the chain of command, but they were questioning the war and the concept of it ... a number of American soldiers expressed queries and questions.”
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We know little yet of what exactly led to Bowe Bergdahl’s disappearance that night in Paktika province. Sean Smith, a filmmaker with The Guardian, met him the month before his disappearance. “Bowe was a softly spoken, intelligent and thoughtful guy,” Smith wrote. Smith produced two remarkable videos, one with footage shot in Afghanistan, another in Idaho, showing Bob Bergdahl’s personal efforts to not only free his son, but to understand the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Bowe himself is not interviewed in Smith’s films, but two fellow soldiers, in their tightly-knit group of five or six, were:
SOLDIER ONE: “These people just want to be left alone.”
SOLDIER TWO: “They got dicked with from the Russians for 17 years and then now we’re here.”
SOLDIER ONE: “Same thing in Iraq when I was there. These people just want to be left alone. Have their crops, weddings, stuff like that, that’s it, man."
Days later, Bergdahl disappeared. Smith told me, “They weren’t criticizing the chain of command, but they were questioning the war and the concept of it ... a number of American soldiers expressed queries and questions.”
Read more
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
The gun supremacists’ folly
Nothing better reveals the utter irrationality of our politics for the whole world to see than this madness about guns — and no issue better demonstrates how deeply divided our nation is by region, ideology and party.
The New York Times reported that in the 12 months after the Sandy Hook shootings, 39 laws were enacted tightening gun restrictions; 25 were passed by state governments under full Democratic control. Seventy laws were passed loosening gun restrictions, 49 of them in Republican-controlled states. The Wall Street Journal cited data showing that 21 states strengthened firearms restrictions in 2013 and 20 weakened them.
Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries.
The program for the NRA’s annual convention, held over the weekend in Indianapolis, listed sessions on “Survival Mindset: Are You Prepared?”; “Creating a Constitutionally Centered Estate Plan”; and “Refuse to be a Victim.”
Party on, guys. I can’t wait for you to figure out the ways in which even Georgia’s law is too restrictive. In the meantime, the nation’s unarmed majority might ponder how badly we have failed in asserting our own rights.
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The New York Times reported that in the 12 months after the Sandy Hook shootings, 39 laws were enacted tightening gun restrictions; 25 were passed by state governments under full Democratic control. Seventy laws were passed loosening gun restrictions, 49 of them in Republican-controlled states. The Wall Street Journal cited data showing that 21 states strengthened firearms restrictions in 2013 and 20 weakened them.
Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries.
The program for the NRA’s annual convention, held over the weekend in Indianapolis, listed sessions on “Survival Mindset: Are You Prepared?”; “Creating a Constitutionally Centered Estate Plan”; and “Refuse to be a Victim.”
Party on, guys. I can’t wait for you to figure out the ways in which even Georgia’s law is too restrictive. In the meantime, the nation’s unarmed majority might ponder how badly we have failed in asserting our own rights.
Read more
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Sunday, May 20, 2012
THE WIDENING NET OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
The Feds are using trumped-up cases to justify a clampdown on civil liberties and legitimate protest--in the name of the "war on terror."
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Monday, February 27, 2012
NY Times Editorial - A Million Jobs
The American economy was terrifyingly close to the brink in 2008 and 2009, and the impending collapse of General Motors and Chrysler threatened to be the final push. When the companies begged the federal government to save them from financial catastrophe, President George W. Bush and later President Obama ignored strong Republican objections, saving a signature American industry and the whole country from an even deeper crash.
Four years later, there are 1.45 million people who are working as a direct result of the $80 billion bailout, according to the nonpartisan Center for Automotive Research, both at the carmakers and associated businesses downstream in the economy. Michigan’s unemployment level is at its lowest level in three years. G.M. is again the world’s biggest automaker, and both companies are reporting substantial profits.
And yet Mitt Romney, along with the other Republican presidential candidates, has spent the days before the Michigan primary denouncing the bailout that has rescued his native state. Mr. Romney has been especially vociferous in his insistence that he would have allowed the carmakers to go bankrupt, and said he believes they could somehow have clawed their way back to profitability without a dollar of federal assistance.
“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse,” he wrote recently in The Detroit News. “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”
This critique is detached from reality. Steven Rattner, who was Mr. Obama’s lead auto adviser, wrote in The Times on Friday that not a single dollar of private capital could be found to prop up the companies, despite desperate efforts, and he challenged Mr. Romney to name one investor who might differ. The Detroit News, which otherwise enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Romney in the primary, said he was dead wrong about the bailout. Only the government was in a position to save the auto industry from “the darkest hour of its history,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.
Mr. Romney slid into this quicksand in 2008 with an Op-Ed essay in The Times arguing against government help for Detroit. It included the memorable prediction that if the bailout were granted, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” Having been criticized for his inconsistency on so many other issues, he apparently feels he cannot back away from this one — no matter that his argument has proved so wrong.
These days he has added a new trope: union-bashing. He is now calling the bailout “crony capitalism” because it was designed to save union jobs. He charges that Mr. Obama used the Treasury to help his political allies. “While a lot of workers and investors got the short end of the stick, Obama’s union allies — and his major campaign contributors — reaped reward upon reward, all on the taxpayer’s dime,” he wrote earlier this month.
High labor costs were undeniably part of Detroit’s problems. But his claim that the government did not do nearly enough to drive those costs down in the bailout is just flat-out wrong. Labor made substantial concessions.
After earlier agreeing to let newly hired workers make half the wage of current employees, unions consented in the bailout deal to give up cost-of-living increases, dental coverage, and some vacation benefits and work rules. Unions also took the gamble of accepting a company stock fund to pay for their health benefits, instead of cash.
Mr. Romney is oblivious to those givebacks, expressing anger that a health care fund for nearly half a million United Automobile Workers retirees (“union-boss controlled”) got a higher priority in the bailout than lenders to Chrysler.
In a speech on Friday, he continued to insist that the U.A.W. and federal fuel-economy standards were somehow imperiling the future of the industry, even though neither seems to have halted the carmakers’ current success.
Neither Mr. Romney nor any of the Republican candidates are able to admit that sometimes only the government can rescue a major sector of the economy. Any autoworker, however, can explain it to them.
Original
Four years later, there are 1.45 million people who are working as a direct result of the $80 billion bailout, according to the nonpartisan Center for Automotive Research, both at the carmakers and associated businesses downstream in the economy. Michigan’s unemployment level is at its lowest level in three years. G.M. is again the world’s biggest automaker, and both companies are reporting substantial profits.
And yet Mitt Romney, along with the other Republican presidential candidates, has spent the days before the Michigan primary denouncing the bailout that has rescued his native state. Mr. Romney has been especially vociferous in his insistence that he would have allowed the carmakers to go bankrupt, and said he believes they could somehow have clawed their way back to profitability without a dollar of federal assistance.
“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse,” he wrote recently in The Detroit News. “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”
This critique is detached from reality. Steven Rattner, who was Mr. Obama’s lead auto adviser, wrote in The Times on Friday that not a single dollar of private capital could be found to prop up the companies, despite desperate efforts, and he challenged Mr. Romney to name one investor who might differ. The Detroit News, which otherwise enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Romney in the primary, said he was dead wrong about the bailout. Only the government was in a position to save the auto industry from “the darkest hour of its history,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.
Mr. Romney slid into this quicksand in 2008 with an Op-Ed essay in The Times arguing against government help for Detroit. It included the memorable prediction that if the bailout were granted, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” Having been criticized for his inconsistency on so many other issues, he apparently feels he cannot back away from this one — no matter that his argument has proved so wrong.
These days he has added a new trope: union-bashing. He is now calling the bailout “crony capitalism” because it was designed to save union jobs. He charges that Mr. Obama used the Treasury to help his political allies. “While a lot of workers and investors got the short end of the stick, Obama’s union allies — and his major campaign contributors — reaped reward upon reward, all on the taxpayer’s dime,” he wrote earlier this month.
High labor costs were undeniably part of Detroit’s problems. But his claim that the government did not do nearly enough to drive those costs down in the bailout is just flat-out wrong. Labor made substantial concessions.
After earlier agreeing to let newly hired workers make half the wage of current employees, unions consented in the bailout deal to give up cost-of-living increases, dental coverage, and some vacation benefits and work rules. Unions also took the gamble of accepting a company stock fund to pay for their health benefits, instead of cash.
Mr. Romney is oblivious to those givebacks, expressing anger that a health care fund for nearly half a million United Automobile Workers retirees (“union-boss controlled”) got a higher priority in the bailout than lenders to Chrysler.
In a speech on Friday, he continued to insist that the U.A.W. and federal fuel-economy standards were somehow imperiling the future of the industry, even though neither seems to have halted the carmakers’ current success.
Neither Mr. Romney nor any of the Republican candidates are able to admit that sometimes only the government can rescue a major sector of the economy. Any autoworker, however, can explain it to them.
Original
Sunday, February 05, 2012
NYT Editorial: A Painful Betrayal
With its roster of corporate sponsors and the pink ribbons that lend a halo to almost any kind of product you can think of, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has a longstanding reputation as a staunch protector of women’s health. That reputation suffered a grievous, perhaps mortal, wound this week from the news that Komen, the world’s largest breast cancer organization, decided to betray that mission. It threw itself into the middle of one of America’s nastiest political battles, on the side of hard-right forces working to demonize Planned Parenthood and undermine women’s health and freedom.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the foundation is cutting off its financing of breast cancer screening and education programs run by Planned Parenthood affiliates. That means nearly $700,000 less for Planned Parenthood, which performed 750,000 such screenings last year, many thousands of them with money from the Komen foundation.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York pledged to match up to $250,000 for Planned Parenthood, a generous move, although it addresses only one year’s financing. There was also an outpouring of support from small donors.
In addition to harming women, the foundation has also tarnished, perhaps permanently, its brand, symbolized by the pink ribbon that adorns yogurt cups and running shoes and tote bags and Federal Premium Ammunition’s pink shotgun shells. Companies like Ford Motor, Dell and Yoplait may not find the same value in identifying themselves with the foundation after its sharp departure from political neutrality.
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The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the foundation is cutting off its financing of breast cancer screening and education programs run by Planned Parenthood affiliates. That means nearly $700,000 less for Planned Parenthood, which performed 750,000 such screenings last year, many thousands of them with money from the Komen foundation.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York pledged to match up to $250,000 for Planned Parenthood, a generous move, although it addresses only one year’s financing. There was also an outpouring of support from small donors.
In addition to harming women, the foundation has also tarnished, perhaps permanently, its brand, symbolized by the pink ribbon that adorns yogurt cups and running shoes and tote bags and Federal Premium Ammunition’s pink shotgun shells. Companies like Ford Motor, Dell and Yoplait may not find the same value in identifying themselves with the foundation after its sharp departure from political neutrality.
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Sunday, January 08, 2012
Obama vs Civil Liberties
The U.S. military can indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without trial--that's the latest of our "inalienable rights" sacrificed by the Democrat in the White House.
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Monday, October 10, 2011
Protesters Against Wall Street
As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.
At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.
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At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.
Read more
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Blame the billionaires, not government workers
After looting the Treasury to bail out the banks, Corporate America and the politicians want to blame the budget deficit on public-sector workers.
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Friday, October 15, 2010
MAKING FREE SPEECH A CRIME
A U.S. Supreme Court decision last June gave a green light for squelching dissent--and the FBI raids on antiwar activists and socialists are the consequence.
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Friday, September 10, 2010
WHY IS THE RIGHT CALLING THE SHOTS?
Here's what passes for mainstream politics today--the Republicans spout inflammatory lies, and the Democrats retreat and act like they can't do anything about it.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
The Third Depression
By Paul Krugman
We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost - to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs - will nonetheless be immense.
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We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost - to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs - will nonetheless be immense.
Read more
Monday, May 31, 2010
An Unnatural Disaster
Bob Herbert
NY Times Op-Ed
“Where I was wrong,” said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, “was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.”
NY Times Op-Ed
“Where I was wrong,” said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, “was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.”
With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow “had their act together” with regard to worst-case scenarios.
These are not Little Lord Fauntleroys who can be trusted to abide by some fanciful honor system. These are greedy merchant armies drilling blindly at depths a mile and more beneath the seas while at the same time doing all they can to stifle the government oversight that is necessary to protect human lives and preserve the integrity of the environment.
President Obama knows that. He knows — or should know — that the biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.
There is nothing new to us about this. Haven’t we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn’t it just a few weeks before this hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia — at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record — killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?
The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd. Even after the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon site, BP officials were telling us (as their noses grew longer and longer) that about only 1,000 barrels of oil a day were escaping into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a month into the disaster, BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, was publicly offering the comforting assessment that the environmental damage resulting from the spill would likely be “very, very modest.”
They were somewhat wide of the mark (as reputable scientists were telling us day after day after day). We now know, of course, that this is the worst spill in U.S. history, that instead of 1,000 barrels a day, something in the range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day have likely been spewing into the gulf. And the environmental impact can fairly be described as catastrophic.
The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.
President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the “cozy relationship” between the oil companies and the federal government. It’s not just a cozy relationship. It’s an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.
Forget BP for a moment. When is the United States going to get its act together? Will we learn anything from this disaster or will we simply express our collective dismay, ignore the inevitable commission reports (no one pays attention to study commissions), and bury our heads back in the oily sand?
President Obama said on Thursday that his administration was “moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.” Well, he can’t ensure anything of the kind. And, in fact, his corporate-friendly policy of opening up new regions for offshore drilling (that policy is only temporarily halted) will all but guarantee future disastrous spills.
The U.S. will never get its act together until we develop the courage and the will to crack down hard on these giant corporations. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of the American people.
Mr. Hayward of BP was on television on Friday referring to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent fouling of the Gulf of Mexico as a “natural disaster.” He was wrong, as usual. Like the unholy alliance of government and big business, this tragedy set in motion by Mr. Hayward’s corporation is a grotesquely harmful and wholly unnatural disaster.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The NCAA weaklings
Editorial: If academic failure cost schools tourney slots, they'd pay more attention to their players' classroom performance.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan doesn't think Kentucky, the top-seeded team in the East Region, should have been invited to the NCAA men's basketball tournament this year. He doesn't think Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Baylor, California, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico State, Tennessee and Washington should be in the field either. That has nothing to do with those teams' hoops prowess. It's about their slipshod academics.
Each of those 12 schools graduated fewer than 40 percent of their players over a four-year span, according to a study released last week by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. That's unacceptable, Duncan said. If a program wants its athletes to play under college basketball's brightest lights, it must ensure they're succeeding as students: "If you can't manage to graduate two out of five players, how serious are the institution and the coach about their players' academic success? How are you preparing your student athletes for life?"
Easy to answer: They're not, and they're not.
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Education Secretary Arne Duncan doesn't think Kentucky, the top-seeded team in the East Region, should have been invited to the NCAA men's basketball tournament this year. He doesn't think Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Baylor, California, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico State, Tennessee and Washington should be in the field either. That has nothing to do with those teams' hoops prowess. It's about their slipshod academics.
Each of those 12 schools graduated fewer than 40 percent of their players over a four-year span, according to a study released last week by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. That's unacceptable, Duncan said. If a program wants its athletes to play under college basketball's brightest lights, it must ensure they're succeeding as students: "If you can't manage to graduate two out of five players, how serious are the institution and the coach about their players' academic success? How are you preparing your student athletes for life?"
Easy to answer: They're not, and they're not.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The year of frustrated hopes
Why has Barack Obama disappointed his supporters on so many issues?
ONE YEAR ago, millions of people were in Washington for the inauguration of Barack Obama as president.
They wanted to witness history being made--the first African American president taking the oath of office in a land built on slavery. But they were also celebrating the end of the long years of Republican dominance in Washington and the expectation that a new era was beginning in U.S. politics.
Obama's oft-repeated statement from the campaign spoke to the hopes of millions of people: "We are the change we have been waiting for."
One year later, we're still waiting--and the idea that Barack Obama is part of anything to do with change seems like a joke. The disillusionment in Obama has left many people wondering if they were wrong to hope at all.
True, expectations in the new administration a year ago were so high that Obama was bound to disappoint. As USA Today summarized the results of a poll at the time:
Eight in 10 said he will improve conditions for minorities and the poor, and 76 percent said he'll increase respect for the United States abroad. About seven in 10 said he'll be able to improve education and the environment. More than 60 percent said he will reduce unemployment, bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, improve the health care system, create a strong economic recovery and keep the U.S. safe from terrorism. More than half said he will be able to bring troops home from Afghanistan, reduce U.S. oil dependence, heal political divisions and control federal spending.
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ONE YEAR ago, millions of people were in Washington for the inauguration of Barack Obama as president.
They wanted to witness history being made--the first African American president taking the oath of office in a land built on slavery. But they were also celebrating the end of the long years of Republican dominance in Washington and the expectation that a new era was beginning in U.S. politics.
Obama's oft-repeated statement from the campaign spoke to the hopes of millions of people: "We are the change we have been waiting for."
One year later, we're still waiting--and the idea that Barack Obama is part of anything to do with change seems like a joke. The disillusionment in Obama has left many people wondering if they were wrong to hope at all.
True, expectations in the new administration a year ago were so high that Obama was bound to disappoint. As USA Today summarized the results of a poll at the time:
Eight in 10 said he will improve conditions for minorities and the poor, and 76 percent said he'll increase respect for the United States abroad. About seven in 10 said he'll be able to improve education and the environment. More than 60 percent said he will reduce unemployment, bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, improve the health care system, create a strong economic recovery and keep the U.S. safe from terrorism. More than half said he will be able to bring troops home from Afghanistan, reduce U.S. oil dependence, heal political divisions and control federal spending.
Read more
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Scum of the Earth
By William Rivers Pitt
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, GOP luminaries Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have once again waded into a catastrophic tragedy with all the care and concern of hammerhead sharks unleashed into a fish tank full of orphans. For those not yet in the know, the dynamic global response in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti was accompanied by comments from Robertson and Limbaugh that would be unutterably sickening if they were not so completely predictable. To wit:
"I have been to Haiti way, way back a long time ago when it was a cruise ship stop, Port Au Prince, and I've seen pictures of Haiti. It is a devastatingly poor place. Nothing has ever changed, and right across the mountain ridge in the middle you've got the Dominican Republic, which is like night and day. It's like night and day. What is the one common factor. That place, Haiti, has been run by dictators and communists. How long is it going to be, how long is it going to be, before we hear Obama and the Left in this country say that what we really need to do is reinstate the communist Aristide to the leadership position down there, to coordinate putting the country back together. The Haitian economy is entirely dependent on foreign aid. They produce nothing, zilch, zero, nada, and it's been that way for the longest time."
- Rush Limbaugh
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God."
- Pat Robertson
It is well-nigh impossible to decipher what Limbaugh spewed on Haiti. It is perfect gibberish: he's seen pictures, the place is poor, Aristide is a communist, and the country produces nothing (except Disney merchandise, a fact Rush left off). Coherent? Hardly. Hateful? You tell me. Robertson, however, managed to fully outstrip Limbaugh on the verbal dementia scale by alleging a Haitian pact with Satan is the reason for the earthquake, despite the fact that Haiti is 85 percent Catholic.
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Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, GOP luminaries Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have once again waded into a catastrophic tragedy with all the care and concern of hammerhead sharks unleashed into a fish tank full of orphans. For those not yet in the know, the dynamic global response in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti was accompanied by comments from Robertson and Limbaugh that would be unutterably sickening if they were not so completely predictable. To wit:
"I have been to Haiti way, way back a long time ago when it was a cruise ship stop, Port Au Prince, and I've seen pictures of Haiti. It is a devastatingly poor place. Nothing has ever changed, and right across the mountain ridge in the middle you've got the Dominican Republic, which is like night and day. It's like night and day. What is the one common factor. That place, Haiti, has been run by dictators and communists. How long is it going to be, how long is it going to be, before we hear Obama and the Left in this country say that what we really need to do is reinstate the communist Aristide to the leadership position down there, to coordinate putting the country back together. The Haitian economy is entirely dependent on foreign aid. They produce nothing, zilch, zero, nada, and it's been that way for the longest time."
- Rush Limbaugh
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God."
- Pat Robertson
It is well-nigh impossible to decipher what Limbaugh spewed on Haiti. It is perfect gibberish: he's seen pictures, the place is poor, Aristide is a communist, and the country produces nothing (except Disney merchandise, a fact Rush left off). Coherent? Hardly. Hateful? You tell me. Robertson, however, managed to fully outstrip Limbaugh on the verbal dementia scale by alleging a Haitian pact with Satan is the reason for the earthquake, despite the fact that Haiti is 85 percent Catholic.
Read more
Sunday, September 27, 2009
How to talk to complete idiots
Mark Morford/SF Gate
There are three basic ways to talk to complete idiots.
The first is to assail them with facts, truths, scientific data, the commonsensical obviousness of it all. You do this in the very reasonable expectation that it will nudge them away from the ledge of their more ridiculous and paranoid misconceptions because, well, they're facts, after all, and who can dispute those?
Why, idiots can, that's who. It is exactly this sort of logical, levelheaded appeal to reason and mental acuity that's doomed to fail, simply because in the idiotosphere, facts are lies and truth is always dubious, whereas hysteria and alarmism resulting in mysterious undercarriage rashes are the only things to be relied upon.
Examples? Endless. You may, for instance, attempt to explain evolution to an extreme fundamentalist Christian. You may offer up carbon dating, the fossil record, glaciers, any one of 10,000 irrefutable proofs. You may even dare to talk about the Bible as the clever, completely manufactured, man-made piece of heavily politicized, massively edited, literary myth-making it so very much is, using all sorts of sound academic evidence and historical record.
You are, of course, insane beyond belief to try this, but sometimes you just can't help it. To the educated mind, it seems inconceivable that millions of people will choose rabid ignorance and childish fantasy over, say, a polar bear. Permafrost. Rocks. Nag Hammadi. But they will, and they do. Faced with this mountain of factual obviousness, the bewildered fundamentalist will merely leap back as if you just jabbed him with a flaming homosexual cattle prod, and then fall into a swoon about how neat it is that angels can fly.
But it's not just the fundamentalists. This Rule of Idiocy also explains why, when you show certain jumpy, conservative Americans the irrefutable facts about, say, skyrocketing health care costs that are draining their bank accounts, and then show how Obama's rather modest overhaul is meant to save members of all ages and genders and party affiliations a significant amount of money while providing basic insurance for their family, they, too, will scream and kick like a child made to eat a single bite of broccoli.
Remember, facts do not matter. The actual Obama plan itself does not matter. Fear of change, fear of the "Other," fear of the scary black socialist president, fear that yet another important shift is taking place that they cannot understand and which therefore makes them thrash around like a trapped animal? This is all that matters.
Read more
There are three basic ways to talk to complete idiots.
The first is to assail them with facts, truths, scientific data, the commonsensical obviousness of it all. You do this in the very reasonable expectation that it will nudge them away from the ledge of their more ridiculous and paranoid misconceptions because, well, they're facts, after all, and who can dispute those?
Why, idiots can, that's who. It is exactly this sort of logical, levelheaded appeal to reason and mental acuity that's doomed to fail, simply because in the idiotosphere, facts are lies and truth is always dubious, whereas hysteria and alarmism resulting in mysterious undercarriage rashes are the only things to be relied upon.
Examples? Endless. You may, for instance, attempt to explain evolution to an extreme fundamentalist Christian. You may offer up carbon dating, the fossil record, glaciers, any one of 10,000 irrefutable proofs. You may even dare to talk about the Bible as the clever, completely manufactured, man-made piece of heavily politicized, massively edited, literary myth-making it so very much is, using all sorts of sound academic evidence and historical record.
You are, of course, insane beyond belief to try this, but sometimes you just can't help it. To the educated mind, it seems inconceivable that millions of people will choose rabid ignorance and childish fantasy over, say, a polar bear. Permafrost. Rocks. Nag Hammadi. But they will, and they do. Faced with this mountain of factual obviousness, the bewildered fundamentalist will merely leap back as if you just jabbed him with a flaming homosexual cattle prod, and then fall into a swoon about how neat it is that angels can fly.
But it's not just the fundamentalists. This Rule of Idiocy also explains why, when you show certain jumpy, conservative Americans the irrefutable facts about, say, skyrocketing health care costs that are draining their bank accounts, and then show how Obama's rather modest overhaul is meant to save members of all ages and genders and party affiliations a significant amount of money while providing basic insurance for their family, they, too, will scream and kick like a child made to eat a single bite of broccoli.
Remember, facts do not matter. The actual Obama plan itself does not matter. Fear of change, fear of the "Other," fear of the scary black socialist president, fear that yet another important shift is taking place that they cannot understand and which therefore makes them thrash around like a trapped animal? This is all that matters.
Read more
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Torture
Friday 24 April 2009
by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
On Tuesday evening, I watched Anderson Cooper and Bill O'Reilly utter the same euphemism for torture. "Harsh" techniques, they said. And then, to each of their guests they posed the question of whether or not these "harsh interrogation techniques" worked and shouldn't that be an important part of judging their merit? I felt dirty just listening to them.
Harsh interrogation techniques, coercive tactics, enhanced techniques - These are the rebranding tools for torture. In order to avoid turning our eyes away or burying our heads in the sand, we grab politically acceptable words and terms to diminish the sting and shame of actual torture, so we can brag about being a moral society open to the discussion of stressful questioning of enemy combatants. Sterile words remove us from the very real sins of torturing human beings. And the more we become adept at anesthetic language, the easier it becomes to talk without vomiting when we speak our sins aloud. The easier it becomes to torture. The easier it becomes to maintain the nobility of torture as a tool of patriotism.
The talking heads on television now preen and prep to define reality. Torture is not the issue, they say. The politics of torture is the issue and that is the shiny object we should all be focused on. This is political. Right versus left, not right versus wrong.
The Republicans tell us that torture is legal if the Justice Department and the president say it is. Nixon said if the president does it, it is not illegal. But the ensuing investigations and judgments proved him wrong. This time around, the president generated supportive judicial opinions, so that everyone could wave a paper in America's face and say, "See, it's all legal. The Justice Department says so. It is not torture in the strictest legal definition because there is no organ failure or death. God bless America. Amen."
If torture (harsh interrogation) works - why does it take 183 times to get results? Does it wear off after the first five times? Like a bad inoculation? Or did the prisoner just forget the question while he was choking to death and so you had to keep repeating everything?
Republicans and FOX News tell me that President Obama has disgraced and endangered America by smiling and shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, a particularly despicable character. But incorporating the practices of the KGB and Communist China in our interrogation of enemy combatants is the American thing to do. We hate the Evildoers of the world except for those wonderfully effective torture techniques they use.
They tell us that torture is the only way to avoid another 9/11. Haven't we kept America safe since that awful day? Thanks to torture, no one has attacked us since. Never mind that we didn't pay attention to the threat previously, or that we lost focus because the warnings came from Clinton and he was not a real President. Or that Richard Clarke and others shouted about their hair being on fire over the possibility of an attack. No one could have imagined such a thing. No one. Except of course the people who put it in memos that were ignored.
But that was the past and this is the present. Do not look back in anger. Look to the future. Torture is the only way to protect us, to keep us safe. Torture will teach them not to dare think of another attack. It is revenge for what the Evildoers have wrought upon democracy, but even more importantly, it is the sword of justice that will lay waste to our enemies.
We are all Jack Bauer now. The ticking time bomb is out there and we need torture to save America. The threat is imminent. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
There are voices telling us that "enhanced interrogation techniques" work, that multiple plots and potential attacks have been averted, secret incidents that cannot be revealed for reasons of national security. Voices intone the gravity of having released these memos authorizing torture that now tell the enemy what to expect and how to defend themselves against these "harsh" techniques. But these warnings and complaints come from the same men who willing revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent for political gain, an agent who was protecting America.
For 60 years, America has denounced the torture tactics of our enemies as being criminal. From WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam to the Iraq War, torture was evil. We invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam because he was evil and tortured his people. We denounced the torture of POWs in Hanoi and pointed out that torture only served a propaganda purpose. And now, we say torture is not torture because we do it humanely. If America tortures, it is not the same as Communists and tyrants and Islamic fundamentalists. There is good torture and bad torture. America defines the difference.
And so, the great talking heads and pundits of the media village will inoculate us against guilt and anger by explaining the game of politics and morality. The game of semantics will numb our indignation if we just listen to their soothing voices in the darkness that has become America. They will calm our troubled hearts. They will ease our pain and whisper the words we so desperately want to hear, "There, there, you are America. You are good. You are special. You do not torture. You simply protect us from the monsters under the bed. Hush now, don't look in the mirror; just close your eyes and everything will be all right."
Original
by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
On Tuesday evening, I watched Anderson Cooper and Bill O'Reilly utter the same euphemism for torture. "Harsh" techniques, they said. And then, to each of their guests they posed the question of whether or not these "harsh interrogation techniques" worked and shouldn't that be an important part of judging their merit? I felt dirty just listening to them.
Harsh interrogation techniques, coercive tactics, enhanced techniques - These are the rebranding tools for torture. In order to avoid turning our eyes away or burying our heads in the sand, we grab politically acceptable words and terms to diminish the sting and shame of actual torture, so we can brag about being a moral society open to the discussion of stressful questioning of enemy combatants. Sterile words remove us from the very real sins of torturing human beings. And the more we become adept at anesthetic language, the easier it becomes to talk without vomiting when we speak our sins aloud. The easier it becomes to torture. The easier it becomes to maintain the nobility of torture as a tool of patriotism.
The talking heads on television now preen and prep to define reality. Torture is not the issue, they say. The politics of torture is the issue and that is the shiny object we should all be focused on. This is political. Right versus left, not right versus wrong.
The Republicans tell us that torture is legal if the Justice Department and the president say it is. Nixon said if the president does it, it is not illegal. But the ensuing investigations and judgments proved him wrong. This time around, the president generated supportive judicial opinions, so that everyone could wave a paper in America's face and say, "See, it's all legal. The Justice Department says so. It is not torture in the strictest legal definition because there is no organ failure or death. God bless America. Amen."
If torture (harsh interrogation) works - why does it take 183 times to get results? Does it wear off after the first five times? Like a bad inoculation? Or did the prisoner just forget the question while he was choking to death and so you had to keep repeating everything?
Republicans and FOX News tell me that President Obama has disgraced and endangered America by smiling and shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, a particularly despicable character. But incorporating the practices of the KGB and Communist China in our interrogation of enemy combatants is the American thing to do. We hate the Evildoers of the world except for those wonderfully effective torture techniques they use.
They tell us that torture is the only way to avoid another 9/11. Haven't we kept America safe since that awful day? Thanks to torture, no one has attacked us since. Never mind that we didn't pay attention to the threat previously, or that we lost focus because the warnings came from Clinton and he was not a real President. Or that Richard Clarke and others shouted about their hair being on fire over the possibility of an attack. No one could have imagined such a thing. No one. Except of course the people who put it in memos that were ignored.
But that was the past and this is the present. Do not look back in anger. Look to the future. Torture is the only way to protect us, to keep us safe. Torture will teach them not to dare think of another attack. It is revenge for what the Evildoers have wrought upon democracy, but even more importantly, it is the sword of justice that will lay waste to our enemies.
We are all Jack Bauer now. The ticking time bomb is out there and we need torture to save America. The threat is imminent. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
There are voices telling us that "enhanced interrogation techniques" work, that multiple plots and potential attacks have been averted, secret incidents that cannot be revealed for reasons of national security. Voices intone the gravity of having released these memos authorizing torture that now tell the enemy what to expect and how to defend themselves against these "harsh" techniques. But these warnings and complaints come from the same men who willing revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent for political gain, an agent who was protecting America.
For 60 years, America has denounced the torture tactics of our enemies as being criminal. From WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam to the Iraq War, torture was evil. We invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam because he was evil and tortured his people. We denounced the torture of POWs in Hanoi and pointed out that torture only served a propaganda purpose. And now, we say torture is not torture because we do it humanely. If America tortures, it is not the same as Communists and tyrants and Islamic fundamentalists. There is good torture and bad torture. America defines the difference.
And so, the great talking heads and pundits of the media village will inoculate us against guilt and anger by explaining the game of politics and morality. The game of semantics will numb our indignation if we just listen to their soothing voices in the darkness that has become America. They will calm our troubled hearts. They will ease our pain and whisper the words we so desperately want to hear, "There, there, you are America. You are good. You are special. You do not torture. You simply protect us from the monsters under the bed. Hush now, don't look in the mirror; just close your eyes and everything will be all right."
Original
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Hopebroken and Hopesick: A Lexicon of Disappointment
by Naomi Klein
All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.
Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.
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