Republicans run against their earlier incarnations

The Republicans have developed a simple strategy for beating the Democrats: No matter how strongly you supported a position last year (or even for many years), if Obama and the Democrats are for it, you are against it. It's an absolutely fascinating political strategy to watch in action. The real question is, will there be a political sucker born every minute who will buy this political hypocrisy (pace P.T. Barnum)? Here's the wonderful Rachel Maddow's take on this latest Republican "strategy."

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Rachel Maddow on ACORN, Part II

Here is Part II of Rachel Maddow's multi-show comment on the Republican "Defunding and demonizing" of ACORN. But as angry as she is about it, and I fully agree with her response, she still doesn't get to the reason for the Republican action. The GOP may be racist and dishonest, but they are not stupid. Why attack a 40-year-old community organization? The reason, as I suggested in the previous post, is that if more and more poor Black people are registered to vote (ACORN's main work) the Republican Party will go the way of the pre-Civil Rights South. Remember that only 43% of the white electorate voted for Obama. The votes that elected him had to come from somewhere. Get it? Registering Black people = Republican defeats. The real question is: why did so many Democrats cast self-defeating votes to defund ACORN? And, of course, as always the other question is: Why does the mainstream media just buy into the Republican lies about ACORN?

Tonight's Rachel Maddow comment on the "defunding and demonizing" of ACORN co-stars Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater
(If you are viewing this on FaceBook click here to see the video)

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Right attack on ACORN reminiscent of pre-Civil Rights South

I think it would be a serious mistake for us to underestimate the Republican attack on ACORN. We really have to take it very seriously. It's very much a part of the right-wing racist attack on Obama and democratic voting rights. The attack on ACORN is reminiscent of the pre-Voting Rights Act (1965) Southern determination to prevent the voting registration of Black people. Once upon a time before the civil rights movement (SNCC, etc.) went below the Mason-Dixon Line to register African-American voters, the powers-that-be in the South did everything they could to prevent people 0f color from voting. The powers that were feared that if Black people voted they would lose control of the political process in their states. And that, of course, is what happened.

The Republicans, with the help of the mainstream media and Democrats, have promulgated outright lies about ACORN. Their purpose has been to defund the one organization doing more to register people of color to vote. And that, of course, is exactly what the Republican Party wants to accomplish. Just like their ancestors in the South, they know that if poor people, particularly poor Black people, register to vote their percentage of the vote will continue to shrink. Remember in the 2008 election Obama was elected by 53 percent of the broad electorate but only 43 percent of the white electorate voted for him and that's what scares the hell out of the Republicans.

Here's Rachel Maddow last night discussing the Republican attempt to "defund and demonize" ACORN and particularly the mainstream media's failure to report the story accurately, thereby enabling the Republican Party's attempt to increase the white percentage of the voting population. (If you are viewing this post on FaceBook, please click here to see the Rachel Maddow video).

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Blagojevich: Innocent until proven guilty?

I was watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC tonight (Thurs. 12/11) and she interviewed Illinois state Rep. John Fritchey, who is currently the Chair of the Illinois house judiciary committee. You can imagine what the subject of the interview was. (If you have been out of the earth's orbit for the last week, it was the shenanigans of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.) Here's Rachel's interview with Fritchey:

(If you are seeing this on FaceBook, click here to see video)

What troubles me about this interview is not only Fritchey's unseemly haste to get rid of the Governor but Rachel's lack of any skepticism about what Fritchey is saying. For example, when he says:

In Illinois we have allot of latitude in seeking to impeach a governor.... Essentially all we need to show is that he has an inability to perform the duties of his office. The way we would envision an impeachment resolution looking is that he has violated his oath of office, namely to uphold the laws of Illinois and the Constitution of Illinois and he has not been able to fulfill his duties as governor. And that he has rendered (?) official misconduct as a result of the allegations brought forth by the U.S. attorney.

It would seem to me that impeachment is one of the most serious actions that can be taken in a democracy. And until recently people were considered innocent until proven guilty. With all due respect to U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, "allegations" are not proof. I think, that no matter how inconvenient the governor's behavior may appear to be, we still have to protect our democratic values. Essentially I wish Rachel - for whom I have great admiration - had questioned Fritchey's haste to impeach.

The New York Times and Mr. Kristol

I certainly wouldn't hazard a guess as to why the powers that be at the New York Times chose this moment in U.S. history (on the cusp of the most important election in years) to hire an extreme right-wing ideolog to write a bi-weekly column. Well maybe I would but for the moment I would rather take them at their word.

Ernest Partridge quotes Op-Ed page Editor Andrew Rosenthal's explanation of why they hired William Kristol:

Mr. Kristol ... is a columnist and magazine editor, with views that clearly bother you. I disagree with many of his views, as well as many of the other views expressed on our Op-Ed page. It is not my job to print only those with whom I agree. It is my job to give readers [as] broad a spectrum of views to read as we can manage.

So Mr. Rosenthal opens up the question of how we can broaden the spectrum of views the New York Times can manage. Let's start a canpaign to persuade the paper of record to hire a columnist who would balance Kristol. Well perhaps there is no one not institutionalized who can actually balance Kristol but right off the top of my head I can suggest several very good journalists who would broaden the political spectrum of views available to Times readers (that would be "fit to print"). How about Democracy Now's Amy Goodman? Or perhaps Air America's Rachel Maddow (who often appears on Countdown with Keith Olbermann)? Other possibilities are Media Beat author Norman Solomon or independen journalist Greg Palast. I haven't spoken to any of these people and have no idea if they would even be interested in a Times' column. But they only scratch the surface of "broadening the Times spectrum of views" unless Mr. Rosenthal doesn't really mean it and "broadening the spectrum" is just an excuse to extend the Times spectrum as far to the right as is humanly possible.

But the problem with Kristol isn't that he is on the extreme right, but that he was one of the key neo-con artists who constructed the ideological justification for the Bush Doctrine. Now he is using the column to attack all critics of Bush foreign policy and justify the fantasies of the neo-con led Bush foreign policy. So what does Kristol actually say about our occupation of Iraq and his sworn enemy the Democratic Party.

Obama has been pretty consistent in his opposition to the war. But Bill Clinton is right [I can just feel the pain in Kristol's face as he wrote out those four words]...:Obama's view of the current situation in Iraq is out of touch with reality. In this, however, Obama is at one with Hillary Clinton and the entire leadership of the Democratic Party.

Would that that were true. If it was, I would register as a Democrat tommorow.

What is Kristol's version of reality with which Obama is "out of touch?" The Democrats refuse

to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of...George W. Bush.

But what is this success the Democrats won't admit?

The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003.

So we've gone from "Mission Accomplished" to measuring "real success" in Iraq in terms of less of our troops being killed.

Kristol has one more piece of evidence for Bush success:

...Now Iraq's Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law - one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground [less U.S. forces being killed] by harping on the failure of the Iraqui government to pass the benchmark legislation. They are being deprived of even that talking point.

Kristol's desperate rush to judgement of the Democrats is unfortunately undermined by the Times "harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation" in the very same issue in which Kristol's column appeared. Here's Solomon Moore's analysis:

...the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baaathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.

I don't think this is actually what Congress had in mind. It's not that Kristol could have seen this article when he wrote his column, but it demonstrates his premature self-justification and rush to attack his enemies.

It would seem to me that New York Times' readers deserve better than William Kristol's self-serving screed, but, if Rosenthal really wants to broaden the spectrum of views available on the op-ed page, there are many excellent ant real journalists avilable.