The panic–8 years too late

Watching CNN this morning, I was struck by some particularly telling arguments.  On the one hand, host Campbell Brown of CNN’s “Campbell Brown, No Bias, No Bull;” was waxing hotly critical of Obama’s allowing cabinet and other nominations to go forward where either some of his picks had lobbying experience or were related to those who had lobbying experience.  Brown basically made the argument that President elect Barack Obama basically went back on his campaign pledge that he wouldn’t allow lobbyists to set the agenda for his administration.  I have news for Campbell Brown full of bias and bull at this point, if you are going to surround yourself with people who happen to have experience in Washington, D.C. to help a former junior Senator from Illinois get his administration off the ground by 20 January 2009, then it is going to be somewhat inevitable that lobbyists or those related to lobbyists will have some part of that administration.  To date, Daschle (?) among the incoming administration picks, does have a wife who does lobby.  But should Daschle get the final nod and approval, his wife is leaving her firm to avoid conflicts of interest.  Brown wasn’t interested in disclosing that part of the news on public record by no less than CNN itself.  Like I said, full of bias and bull at that point.  President elect Obama must be the man who does indeed set the agenda no matter what his final cabinet happens to be.  Let us not be naive about the interconnections between lobbyists and politicians that has been a public fact since that story broke some years ago. What Obama can do, is simply limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration if not eliminate lobbyists completely.

Continuing on from “Reliable Sources” to “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” and finally to Fareed Zakaria, “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”  I was hearing a state of panic in the various panels of discussion on the latter two shows.  We have a global financial melt down, we have the threat of extinction from the Big 3 auto makers.  And what was plainly voiced, was how we needed, just needed President elect Obama to say something now about our current problems.  The man is not in office.  Sorry, but he can exercise no authority until he is officially sworn in.  He can put his various teams together to begin looking at this nation’s monumental problems in the meantime, but he can do nothing officially, until 20 January 2009.  You get the impression from Robert Reich, Levin, even Friedman of the New York Times that they would sooner rather than later push GW out the door and get Obama installed in the White House.  Because, they said that GW isn’t going to do anything in the next two months and that there was a power vacuum between the two administrations.  Well now, what did GW do in the last 8 years?  Friedman at one point said that he would actually like the inauguration pushed up.

What I find truly amazing is that there can be this sort of criticism now, in the waning days of the GW administration, that was greatly lacking in all of the last 8 years.  Let me present a brief history.

1. GW enters the White House in 2001 not only having lost the popular vote but also having to turn to the U.S. Supreme Court to certify that he will become the U.S. Presidency.  Yes, actually, the Dems are disappointed in the outcome and the Republicans are crowing delightedly at the end of the Clinton era.  However, during the following weeks, we heard more about Clinton, no longer president, from no less than CNN; than we heard about GW and in what direction he wished to take this nation.  Basically, the news media wanted to go on beating a dead horse of a presidency.
2. GW enters office making false accusations of a “vengeful Clinton” trashing the White House and Air Force 1.  Again, the news media makes a big hulabaloo over the issue.  But when GW finally admits to the fact that what he claimed initially was a fiction, the admission got buried and the story died quietly without any follow up.  Indeed, this should have been treated as a scandal that ought to have seriously undermined a new presidency.  The news media did nothing to challenge it.
3. Before GW won in 2000, “The Nation” came out with declarations of GW having the history of being a terrible business man.  During the GW presidency, I had the occasion of picking up a book or two written by the late Molly Ivins concerning GW’s past business and political history.  Let’s put it bluntly, the past worst presidents of America’s 19^th century would have fared better under such critical scrutiny than GW would have and should have today.  But, beyond Ivin’s books and editorials, GW was basically getting “It’s morning in America” treatment from the media.  That was before 9/11/2001.
4. The New York Times did manage to point out that GW wasn’t all that anxious about continuing Clinton’s counter-terrorism measures.  He was far more concerned about such faith-based issues as stem cell research and abortion.  We heard more from GW about how people should get married before going on the federal dole than we heard about Al Qaeda, and the testing they had in store for GW.
5. On the day it happened, GW was reading “My Pet Goat,” with a bunch of grade schoolers.  But before 9/11/2001, he had plenty of warning from the CIA, from Richard Clarke; and as then National Security Adviser Condi Rice was to admit, those prior and valid warnings were pretty much dismissed out of hand.  As being “historical.”  This too should have been seen as a scandal to undermine a presidency.  The news media gave it a pass.

There are numerous other examples throughout the GW administration in which the media reported and did not follow through.  When Senator Kerry ran against GW in 2004, the talking heads on CNN did more complaining and ridiculing of Kerry than they saw fit to discuss GW and his obvious political failures, esp. as it concerned the mismanagement of the war in Iraq and the failure to deal decisively with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  After 2005, and Katrina, the GW administration’s unwillingness to deal decisively with an east coast’s general uprooting of entire populations, and general destruction of vast areas of landscape and property; should have been an eye-opener to a presidency that was more for show than actual governance.  That then Senator Obama could tap into that anger by 2007, and win the presidency on 4 November 2008; should have shown the news media then that the people got it.  They got it that they no longer had homes to go to, food or medicines that they could no longer trust, education was becoming impossible to afford, health care was beyond the reach of many, insurance covered less and less while costing more and more.  They got it, when the news media could finally get around to reporting on the fact that Afghanistan was deteriorating and NATO and American generals were demanding more troops.  We can’t deliver because they are needed for “victory” in Iraq.  There was plenty that the people got that the news media quite frankly ignored.  The financial industry that started leveraging itself out of existence with the prospects of creating a global crisis on the level of the end of days.  And Sec. Treasury Paulson who can’t seem to be getting his act together (You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie) in this latest version of a Katrina style of disaster.

The media types are whining now, and would like nothing better than to have GW out and a new administration installed ASAP.  Well, they had a mouth and could have used it over the last 8 years to challenge a fellow who was elected first on questionable grounds, and the news media made the argument that a man who made many mistakes and many messes should be put back in office to correct them…  No, actually GW did not do that.  He has if anything, left bigger piles for Obama to clean up after than he might have left for Kerry in 2004.

Obama can wait his time and be inaugurated on the required date.  GW is still president, and he can be deluged with the necessary criticisms and scathing catcalls, and even the tons of verbal tomatoes being lofted his way, until he leaves office at 12:00 pm on 20 January 2009.  The news media didn’t want to challenge this screwup who didn’t have a Monica Lewinsky waiting in the wings.  But, let us put it bluntly, adultery is the least of our problems given the last 8 years.  The Congress didn’t want to put this president out of office.  So, they are going to have to wait for the next administration to be installed before they can begin the business (long overdue) of the people.  On this, give me a break.  The old left proved to be entirely too correct about GW.  Unfortunately, they weren’t listened to with any kind of respect.

Al Qaeda hates Obama

This just in to CNN, they have been running a tape and commenting on it from the Number 2 guy in Al Qaeda, Zawahiri (sic?) who among other things, slams Obama for his love of Israel, acceptance of Christianity and horrors, he is a “house Negro” besides.  The on the record comment from Obama and his incoming administration, “no comment.”  “They won’t engage in a tit for tat” with a terrorist.  There was a fellow who appeared briefly on CNN Prof (?) Gerges who adviced that the best thing the Obama administration could do is ignore the published tape.  That would probably be a good thing.  Although, no one should ignore the potential of a terrorist threat against this nation during the transfer of power.

On the other hand, I can see some local implications here that CNN hadn’t bothered to address.  Rick Sanchez had, to a point, about the churches with the “hate Obama” signs and scriptures used to justify why they could.  On one such sign, America had its first “Muslim” president.  Well now, if that were true, why would number 2 terrorist in the Al Qaeda organization express pure hatred of that “house Negro” and even taunt him?  That is because Zawahiri doesn’t have a problem checking out web sites I am quite certain and believing that even if Obama went to a church presided over by a radical African-American preacher, it was enough for him that a man with the Kenyan name of Obama sure couldn’t be a fellow believer.  Now, where does that put the people who made up their minds to hate and fear Obama?  That is, the people in America who chose to express hatred and fear of Obama?

There was a letter writer in the Spokesman-Review who put down very well in writing that when you have political stump speeches on one side (and we do know that was the McCain/Palin ticket) that chooses to whip up hatred and fear of the opposition; then you can be sure that there would be hatred and even fear expressed toward our President elect in the days that would follow.  Yes, there has been.  Well, we all know now don’t we that if you are a fellow with the name of Obama, that it won’t rhyme with Osama after all.  Not when bin Laden’s Number 2 goes into a shrieking tirade over our obviously Christian African-American president.  And, as was expressed on CNN, is desperate to keep the Islamic faithful in his camp.  “The house Negro,” if what I hear being true, could through diplomacy and other means, actually render Al Qaeda irrevelent.  Well, that is a decent prospect right there.

Who has represented the western powers from the American perspective especially in the last 60 plus years?  The white face of the federal gvt.  Who has controlled the foreign policy in the last 60 plus years?  The white face of the federal gvt.  Whom might Al Qaeda types more likely gain leverage with young Muslim recruits if not parading a white European face before them as that utter threat to their beliefs.  In the last 8 years, that white European face has been GW.  And anyone who can take an honest assessment of the last 8 years and the war on terror, GW had been very good for Al Qaeda recruitment.  Now, how about that black dude with the funny last name?  Yes, he is now that African-American face that represents the premier western power.  Where Al Qaeda was labeled “desperate” in putting out such a tape, I think I could see why.  Who would have thought that when this nation gave Obama that 368 electoral votes that we would have such global implications and even ramifications for such free and fair elections?

Islamic religions had their most grief with Europeans history being any guide, and did more to retaliate against Europe as a consequence of the Crusades.  Just as extremists in the faith have done much to harm and even kill their brethren when they seemed to have gone apostate toward the faith.  Or made common cause with foreign conquerors and unbelievers.  Which is exactly why the war in Iraq will probably never be resolved to our satisfaction, the “victory” that McCain during the campaign said we needed to have before our troops could come home in honor.  And why as well that Afghanistan is going down the tubes; that we didn’t resolve Afghanistan before we went after Hussein.  If you can understand the extremist mind of the Islamic terrorist, his rationale has many centuries to ferment before exploding into violence, death and destruction.  McCain didn’t understand that mindset.  And Obama being given a full dose of it from the GOP camp, probably is in as good a position as any to understand it more so than his predecessor.

So, I have a question for the dude who puts up a sign in front of his Bonner County home, to hang Obama, Pelosi, Reid and etc.  Would he want a casual relationship with the sort of people who proceed to verbally lash out at this country and its new president just because of who and what he is?  How about the churches that put up “hate Obama” language on their sign boards?  Would they like to argue now that they have something in common with the people who killed thousands of their fellows on 9/11/2001?  Or the children on a school bus in Idaho, who chant “assassinate Obama.”  The mayor of that town finally saying and appropriately, that such comments are uncalled for.  Would the parents of these grade schoolers like to consider that their hatred of our new president gives them common cause with a man, Zawahiri, who condemns Obama in a manner that isn’t all that dissimilar to what this nation has heard decades earlier.  How about the Roman Catholic Cardinal out of the Vatican who did his own condemning of Obama based on Obama being a pro-choicer on abortion?  Would that Cardinal consider that his own extremism when it comes to blasting the voters and those of his church for daring to vote for this man, Obama, might have something in common with Zawahiri?

If this tape does some good, it may reset the necessary priorites about what is more important to this nation and the world.  No, Al Qaeda hasn’t gone away and we need to make common ground to defeat the threat that terrorist group holds on a global level.  Extremism that divides won’t cut it.  And extremism that divides has been painfully obvious since 4 November 2008.

Child Abuse

There were a couple of letters in the Spokesman-Review as of 18 November 2008 that addressed the abuse and death of Summer Phelps. A local child who’s father was ultimately convicted for her abuse and death.  One is from a Lynn Lynch who is obviously a pro-choicer.  She addresses the question of whether Phelps would have been better off aborted so as to spare her facing abuse and then murder from her father.  Before anyone questions the wisdom of writing such a letter, in Chapter 10 of Job, Job himself asks why he did not die before he was born.  Given the hell on earth he received for the loss of family, health and wealth.  You could say that Lynch at this point could have quoted the bible.  Just as Lynch also asks why anti-abortionists aren’t in a rush to adopt children in need of loving homes.

Don’t even call this two sides of the abuse argument.  In a rather similar vein, Bobbi Crawford wondered about the people who did not come to help a child in distress.  Until the child was dead, and the post mortems of how she died became known, seems that the general public was perhaps a bit ignorant of how a child’s life was going south.

Make that, the continuation of the same argument.  In both writers’ cases, they wondered why the child wasn’t helped when she might have been.  Yes, why wasn’t the child helped when she might have been?

I remember the letters to the editor of years ago when radical anti-choicers deemed abortion to be the greatest of all child abuse cases.  Well, you can’t apply cigarette burns to a fetal body can you?  You can’t shackle a fetus to a bed in a cold dark room.  You can’t slam a door on a fetus and lock him or her in a closet.  But, you can do all that and more to a child.  If the woman isn’t in excellent health, does drugs or alcohol and doesn’t eat right, she can harm a developing fetus.  But she isn’t calling the fetus names, she isn’t producing a “shaken baby syndrome” while the child is in her womb.  She isn’t punching out a fetus.  She isn’t throwing one up against the wall to stop it from crying.  No, but all that can be done to a child.

Why do anti-abortionists stop short of child advocacy?  Perhaps in the warped world view of political morality, the fetus is the “least of these” we must do the most for, because we would do the same for Christ.  But that elevates the fetus to “the greatest of these.”  Then a born child is the least of these who simply falls off the radar.  As cases of child abuse, abandonment and etc. continue, even grow; the news reports on these cases, and anti-abortionists go out to abortion providing clinics to protest their continued existence.

Sour grapes

I finally had the occasion for coming back to post a bit this morning at Word Press.  Since the GOP Governors’ Association convened in Miami, Florida and Wolf Blitzer had an opportunity to hold an interview with an unscripted Governor Palin, between Wolf Blitzer and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” I had plenty of fodder to write something about.

Sarah Palin, she is still rehashing the campaign commentary and political stump speeches to Mr. Blitzer about how it is that now President elect Obama’s associations still bother her and then making the argument that we must now look forward…  You can’t both look backwards and then forwards if you wish to make sense to millions of viewers.  Senator Obama got elected to the Presidency despite his past associations.  And past associations were no bar to Governor Bush becoming president either.  If associations mattered so immensely now, to include one’s pastor, then Reverend Falwell should have been reason enough for the GOP to not be in control of Congress for 6 of 8 years of a GW presidency.  The point is, until Senator Obama, associations did not matter.  So shall we really call it what it is?  The GOP were walking on egg shells trying to get around the fact that the Dems had nominated a credible African-American candidate for the U.S. Presidency.  If they wanted to get “the black vote,” they had to throw in the face of African Americans, that Obama had as a pastor, a radical black preacher by the name of Jeremiah Wright.  Or that the man must be known by the company he keeps, Professor Ayers, not the policies he proposes for the nation’s future.  Policies that differed only marginally from those of Senator McCain.  Let’s put it bluntly, that for many in the GOP, race and name did matter.  For the rest of the nation, we are in the process of growing up, to where race and name or even faith isn’t a harbringer of peril.  Not if it is instead, a harbringer of hope.

Those who fear an Obama presidency fear for their toys, guns.  Or they fear for a tinge of pink besetting this nation’s domestic policies, as though they hadn’t been living with a tinge of pink for the last 8 years.  They fear an activist gvt.  But they had one for 8 years and would have seen a continuance of it even under a McCain administration.  So?  They fear that a new U.S. Supreme Court will not overturn Roe v Wade.  Well, that simply means that the U.S. Supreme Court will not void the first amendment.  That under Dem authority, the U.S. Government will be out of control, but that was already true when the GOP were in charge.

Obviously, the immature still exist in this nation.  In Bonner County, Idaho, a man with a sign claiming “free speech” who has a noose for President elect Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and House Speaker Pelosi.  Why?  At what point does “free speech” become the possibility of actual threat to our elected leaders?  When a sign potentially encourages assassins, perhaps?  He declares that Sarah Palin hung in effigy for a Hallowe’en display was some kind of double standard, when those who hung a Barack Obama (as a political statement) in effigy were arrested, but not so those who hung Sarah Palin.  Hallowe’en during a campaign season can have immense fertile ground for political cut ups.  Perhaps it would have been just as wrong to hang a Governor Palin effigy, out of disrespect for her and her office.  But immensely wrong to threaten a Dem candidate for the office of the presidency, and that was indeed what the news media informed us of during the closing days of the campaign, Decision 2008.

Now in the aftermath of such a monumental decision, the immature go haywire.  This country survived GW.  But if it is to have a future, the two year olds need to grow up.  They have far bigger problems to resolve than who this country wants for their president.  If they want a future for their kids, they need to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Crossing the threshold, at long last

It took some several days to finally come up with a desire to post an item to this blog.  Call it, I am still recovering from a high voltage election cycle fully of fury and drama.  The drama was that Senator Barack H. Obama won the election with 52% of the vote; and also got a blowout of 368 states to presumptively, Senator McCain’s 174.  That is considered landslide material compared to GW in 2004 especially for a little known African-American (bi-racial) Senator.  Let’s also put it bluntly, that Senator Obama managed to feed a cop’s words back to him when he yelled out at the crowd about Barack HUSSEIN Obama and how on November 4^th the voters should leave the Senator in the dust wondering what had happened.  Well, we all know what happened, don’t we?  The Senator is now President elect Obama.  And this country, regardless of its political leanings, managed to move beyond race.  The next time, it may also be able to move beyond sex.

Of course, there are going to be foul mouthed GOP wondering why it was that an unquestionably liberal Senator won over that old white guy who in their world view happened to be a “real” American.  Had these GOP voters paid attention, there were a lot of reasons McCain didn’t win, a lot of it had to do with the economy, GW poisoning the political well for any GOP successors, two wars, and McCain making the sort of bold promises that called for lots and lots of gvt to cure all that failed in this society.  If McCain was going to end up sounding a lot like a Democrat, why not just vote for the honest to the gods Democrat and be done with it?  Post election, from what I heard, the GOP stayed home and the Dems, the moderates and the independents came out in droves.  Blogs that speak truth to power do serve some useful function now don’t they?  And McCain wasn’t honest about where he really stood.  Now no one can say that any politician can ever be fully honest, that Obama himself had his moments, but McCain suffered a lot of campaign dishonesty that came from flip flops, a continual change of position from one day to the next, one week to the next.  An intellectual dishonesty from a dude that was supposed to pride himself on “straight talk.”  But only after the fact did any news source from CNN to Washington Week begin to break down why McCain did not win and discuss it at any length.  While McCain was in the race, he was given quite a free pass.

Given the situation now on the ground, President elect Obama is the much younger man who can likely shoulder the sort of burdens that McCain perhaps can not.  Because he is liberal, he is flexible and a fellow who can listen to what others have to say.  Because he is liberal, he is not going to shy away from utilizing government to be put back on the side of the people.  For the sour grapes eating detractors though who are out there, President elect Obama brings only the worst possible political situation to his new office; yes because he is going to resort to government being the answer for society’s biggest problems.  But who forget, while these detractors are sniping, that they too wanted government as an answer to their own special interests.  After all, look at the gay marriage ban in California.  Or unmarried couples who now can’t adopt kids in Arizona.  An extreme law that anti-abortionists tried to pass in North Dakota to give full legal rights to conceptions—but what if the woman miscarried?  Yes, in all cases, initiatives that called for gvt to do something.  How about that.  Gvt intrusion and social engineering, how about that.  And locally in Kootenai County, taxing initiatives to build a new jail and locally build and repair roads.  We probably did need all of that, but the state of the economy also says, how we also couldn’t afford it.  Yeah, taxes to not only spread the wealth around but conceivably how we would benefit from such an investment.  But, we couldn’t afford to invest because of the economy.

Which brings to mind a letter to the editor published on 8 November 2008 of the Spokesman-Review print edition.  The writer puts in a rant that is most unbelievable as to his accusations, the utter silliness as to his diatribes and finally, his assertion that because we did not vote for big government McCain, now we can cease to call ourselves American.  No, we voted out the big government of GW, who was personally intent on relegating that antique called the U.S. Constitution to the Smithsonian, never mind a congressional convention.  We decided we did not need a fellow who made it quite clear on the campaign trail that he would be more than happy to carry on many of GW’s policies that have essentially cost this country heavily.  And sought to further excuse the greed of business interests that solely on the basis of taxes, were Americans losing their jobs.  Which was never true.  And who would have promised the sort of gvt activism through the U.S. Supreme Court the essential overturning of the first claust of the first amendment as it pertained to the non-establishment of religion:  re abortion.  We can expect that President elect Obama will not satisfy anti-abortion demands for more gvt intrusion and social engineering in the private lives of families.

Now a word of advice for the GOP, if they want back in power, the core principles of conservatism means that if you say you are for limited gvt, then gvt can not be there for religious activists.  Gvt should not satisfy every whim of business lobbyists.  If the U.S. Constitution provides strict guidelines for what Congress can and should not do, then even special interests among business and the religious should bear that in mind, that the Constitution does not allow gvt to do all and be all for their specific agendas.  Even President elect Obama recognized that gvt can’t solve every problem.  So instead of attacking one’s fellow Americans as did the above mentioned letter writer, do this country a favor and consider what conservative should mean.  Literally, if it ain’t broken, don’t plan to fix it.