AZ Republican Rep Calls Obama "Enemy of Humanity"

From Salon's War Room today:

Republican congressman: Obama "enemy of humanity"
"Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., has always been a little skeptical of President Obama. Skeptical enough, in fact, that he flirted with the Birther movement for a while, and even considered filing a lawsuit before the election in order to seek proof that the then-senator was eligible, under the Constitution's guidelines, to be president. He's moved past that -- mostly -- but he hasn't exactly embraced Obama, either.

"This past weekend, Franks spoke at the How to Take Back America Conference, an event co-chaired by Phyllis Schlafly and Janet Porter, a World Net Daily columnist who's apparently yet to meet a conspiracy theory about Obama that was too extreme for her taste. (You're probably going to Hell if you voted for him, by the way. But since he may be a Soviet mole, you probably deserve that eternal damnation.)

"So Franks had to work hard in order to live up to his host's example. But he managed to get there, saying:

Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries .... [T]here's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.

See the video via Right Wing Watch."

It's Yours to Save or Yours to Lose

I'm sitting here watching the country nose-dive into the latter-day equivalent of the Dark Ages, wondering how in the hell we got here.

For anyone with any historical depth vis a vis the US of A--that would be anyone who is at least 40, has an interest in this country, and values a fact-based universe--where we are is all but unimaginable.

Did you ever think, in your wildest imagination, that a vocal part of the country would actually object to a sitting President's extolling our kids to study hard, learn more, and excel? I confess: I sit nigh paralized in wonder.

I'm even more stupefied that the whole entire rest of the country hasn't just risen up as one and slain these agents provocateur.

Can we immediately stop calling these people fools and morons? Can we step back a moment and observe that they are successfully de-railing the agenda of a Democratically controlled government? That's many things, but "stupid" isn't one of them.

I've followed the Far Right for quite a while: since the early 80s, in fact. All that time, I've tried to warn any who would listen that we're in for a whirlwind of the Daniel Webster (see Scopes monkey trial) sort. Can you see it now?

AND WHY IS THAT? When Pat Robertson lost his bid for the White House, the Christianist Far Right devised a brilliant long-term strategy to remake this country in the image of a fascist, patriarchalist, capitalist, racist, fundamentalist society.

what does that mean? Look up each word. Fascist. Capitalist. Patriarchal. Racist. Fundamentalist. Now THINK. Is what you see consistent with what I say is going down?

We have a choice. Either we say NOT NO, HELL NO, and say it NOW, or we will be ruled by the most violent, illiterate, uneducated, male-supremacist, racist, homophobic, and Darwinian 20 percent of Americans ever created.

Young Americans: Wake up. You are about to lose the Dream.

And that, my friends, is why this President is right: A good education is worth more than gold. With it, you can navigate the dangerous rapids of endless propaganda and mass manipulation. Without it, you're helpless.

Back

I'll be amazed if anybody's still here after my unexcused absense, but I'm going to pretend you're there anyhow. I'm humoring myself.


OK, I admit it. I haven't posted much lately partly because I've been up to my eyeballs in rescuing abandoned Doberman Pinschers, and partly because I've been FURIOUS at Blogger for not helping me fix my previously disappeared righthand column. A glitch like that takes the wind right out of my sails.

If you've visited here before today, you may have noticed that all the wonderful photos and features that now appear on the right side of the posts had disappeared. They actually plunged to the bottom of the lefthand column. This pissed me off just enough to feel sick at my stomach when I thought I might like to post something. I mean, it's not like I didn't spend countless hours of my life working on this site.

So now it's back. YAY!! I found a very nice guy -- The Laughing Idiot -- who knew exactly what I needed to do, and I fixed it just now. Thanks, Laughing Idiot. You rock! I looked for a stranger upon whose kindness to rely, and there you were! Please, let me know if you're up for it. I'll find a way to thank you.

So now that there's a lull in Doberman rescue, and now that I'm snit free, I thought I'd post for a while. I hope you're still there.

So what about Obama?

I've enjoyed the last few months of relative sanity. I'm speaking of the post-election period. How wonderful to ignore the world and to rest at last, assured that Obama can't screw it up as much as Bush did even if he tries. I really needed that break. We all did.

So. Are we out of Iraq yet? Do we have universal health care? Has the President put the Department of Homeland Security back on the tracks of the law and the Constitution and is domestic spying without a warrant once again really illegal? Can gays serve proudly in the military now? Are we happy? Having fun yet?

No. I still like him but like Bill Maher said, "A Socialist? Jesus, he's not even a Liberal!" OK I knew that. I did. I knew when he enlisted Rahm Emanuel that we weren't going to see anything like FDR. But still I'm disappointed. I expected more than I've gotten.

What I think is that this President isn't a Boomer. He's of the next generation, the anti-radical generation. This President was born in 1961, and was in his formative years when American radicals captured the decades of the 1960s and 70s.

Like my partner who was born in 1955, Obama is of the generation for which it was obligatory to react to the radical agenda, just as, for my generation, it was obligatory to react to the conservative agenda represented by the 1950s.

It is not in his character or in his cohort to react to anything with radical fervor. Not the outrage of warrantless spying, not the latter-day ghettoization of GLBT constituted by DOMA and DADT, and not the murder of Neda in the streets of Tehran.

Yet the media are populated with my peers. We and they do expect fervor, passion, steel and flint. We expect sparks. At least once in a while. We do. We just do.

Measured rhetoric slammed up against the bewildering babble of a George Bush is one thing. But measured rhetoric up against five previous months of measured rhetoric is just possibly a tiny bit flat. Disappointing. Deflated. Oomphless.

And that's a dilemma for O. For O's popularity ratings. The accident of birth that makes him so measured, so deliberate, may cause him to disappoint us from time to time. That's not so bad. What's unfortunate is that if he disappoints us, the Right will pound him with it, distort him, and try to work its wicked will.

He needs someone who gets that.

What about Obama? I like him but I'm not happy. I really hate the bailouts. I don't know if the rationale is true or not. What do I know? What does anybody know? But bu God if we're going to make the little people live by free market, the big shots ought to have to live by free market too. It's what Gore Vidal said. We have socialism for the rich and free market capitalism for the rest of us. (Well, that's a paraphrase.) What I do know is that if he doesn't get us decent health care, fix this depression, and get us queers out of the military and marriage closet, he's toast. Congress won't take the rap. Obama will. And with considerable justification. The reason? Because he will not have wielded his personal power and the power of the presidency well.

Anti-Semitic, Misogynistic, and Homophobic: Now Do You Care About Rick Warren?

Here's an important new article about the Rick Warren tag that puts a whole lot more light on this ugly subject. I strongly recommend it. Here's an outtake:

"Yet this is symbolism with real-world consequences and concrete implications. First of all, it reifies the image that Warren has been assiduously constructing for himself as 'America’s Pastor,' a post-partisan and benevolent figure with a quasi-official role atop the nation’s civic life. When it comes to his public persona, Warren is something of a magician. He has convinced much of the media and many influential Democrats that he represents a new, more centrist breed of evangelical with a broader agenda than the old religious right. This is, in many ways, deceptive. Yes, Warren has done a lot of work on AIDS in Africa, but he supports the same types of destructive, abstinence-only policies as the Bush administration. One of his protegés, Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, has been a major force in moving that country away from its lifesaving safer-sex programs. He’s been known to burn condoms at Makerere University, the prestigious school in Uganda’s capital, and in his Pentecostal services, marked by much sobbing and speaking in tongues, he offers the promise of faith healing to his desperate congregants, a particularly cruel ruse in a country ravaged by HIV.

"The truth is that the primary difference between Warren and, say, James Dobson is the former’s penchant for Hawaiian shirts. Warren compares abortion to the Holocaust, gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, and social gospel Christians as 'closet Marxists.' He doesn’t believe in evolution. He has won plaudits from some journalists for his honesty in forthrightly admitting that he believes that Jews are going to hell, but even if one sees such candor is a virtue, the underlying conviction hardly qualifies him as an ecumenical peacemaker. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Warren himself described his differences with Dobson as 'mainly a matter of tone,' and was unable to come up with a theological issue on which they disagree.

"If Democrats collaborate in positioning Warren as the centrist alternative to the religious right, they consign vast numbers of people, including many of the party’s most dedicated supporters, to the fringe. 'It does strengthen Warren as kind of a new Billy Graham figure,' says the Reverend Dan Schultz, a United Church of Christ pastor and the founder of the progressive religious blog Street Prophets. That has especial relevance for Warren’s role in Africa, where a very conservative kind of evangelical Christianity is exploding, bringing with it virulently anti-gay politics. 'What I have heard is that it will help Warren overseas,' Schultz says of Warren’s role in the inauguration. “He’s big into work in Africa. This will give him a lot of clout over there. Part of the reason this is kind of insulting for me is that Warren has supported some pretty awful people in Africa, including people who think homosexuals should be jailed.”

[Emphasis added throughout.]

Did you say "Rick Warren"???????

Thanks to Zooborns for the loan of this image, and hat tip to VL!

This Has to Stop. Now.

I'm pretty upset. Five minutes ago, moments after I fired off an email to Newsweek for its bogglingly irresponsible article, "Is Obama the AntiChrist?," I learned that a Roman Catholic cardinal at the Vatican has called Obama's agenda "destructive," "violent," and "apocalyptic," and inquired what grieving Catholics should do with "our hot, angry tears of betrayal."

Apparently it's not enough that Sarah Palin ignited the "patriots" and the racists to shout kill slogans. Now, no less than Newsweek and a member of the upper tier of the RC hierarchy have elected to stoke the flames still higher. Much higher.

My concern has partly to do with the overlaps among four populations: extremely conservative Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists, racists, and extreme Rightwing militia/minuteman/"patriots."

All of them are already whipped to frenzies of rage by the election of the young African American moderate. Just visit the Free Republic site for proof. Remember: This nation has been subjected to a steadily ant-liberal toxic infusion for some thirty years. I mean the likes of Michael Medved, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Tom DeLay, Tom Tancredo, Lou Dobbs, and the rest. When it takes only one zealot alight with holy conviction, pouring apocalyptic kerosene on the white-hot flames of race, religion, and nativism isn't merely irresponsible. It's explosive. It's all but inciting assassination.

As I wrote to Newsweek's editors:

Regarding http://www.newsweek.com/id/169192 -- Well, golly! Can’t you do something else to make sure some paranoid fundamentalist nut job kills the next President? It wasn’t enough for you that Palin stirred the “patriots” and the racists to shout kill threats? That Southern Law Poverty Center is warning of a sharp spike in threats and violence toward African Americans (and others)? Now you have to go the next giant step by giving credibility to those who think that he’s “the anti-Christ”? Why don’t you just take out a contract?

I’m aghast. There’s a responsible way to write about stuff like this, but surely it isn’t to give it the Newsweek imprimatur, as you do here:

"The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they're not nuts: "They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared," Staver says."

You could have troubled to interview universally respected, educated biblical scholars such as John Shelby Spong or Elaine Pagels or Bart Ehrman, who could have spoken to End Times phantasms like “the anti-Christ” from a deeply knowledgeable, profoundly Christian place. But nooooo. In tone and content, you’ve both perpetuated the public view that only fundamentalists speak for all Christians, and quite possibly put the President-Elect’s very life in graver danger than ever.

You’ve got a young wife, two little girls, the Secret Service, the majority of Americans, and a whole, breathless, hopeful world to answer to.

If anything happens to him, the ensuing chaos will dwarf today’s troubles. Thanks ever so for upping the odds. Shame on you. Serious heaps of shame on you. What were you thinking?

Even Blitzer himself--as today, for instance--is stoking the flames. Inadvertently? Who can say. All day long, his drum beats incessant fear to thrum within conservative Americans, that Obama will abolish restraints on gay men and lesbian women in the military. Whether he will or won't we don't know. It gets ratings. Consequences be damned.

What's disturbing, in other words, is that the timing is as troubling as the content, because it adds weight to the heavy backpack of outrage that zealots on the Far Right have toted since Obama was first nominated. And remember: For at least the last eight years, Bush has explicitly "Christianized" the US military and military academies, and created his own private army. Think Mikey Weinstein. Think radical extreme Christianist Erik Prince and his private mercenary military force, Blackwater.

Bush, Blackwater, the Christianization of the armed forces, and 30 years of anti-liberal hate propaganda, in my view, raise the ante far beyond anything we might have anticipated when John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. There's a sinister constellation of means and motive on a scale unprecedented in this country. Not even the run-up to the Civil War saw these things.

It troubles me enormouslythat I'm not seeing or hearing, anywhere, even a sporadic appearance from even one universally respected, highly educated biblical scholar to speak for Christians (as contrasted with Christianists) about the meaning of concepts like "the anti-Christ," Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the like--what they are, what they aren't, what they mean, what they don't mean.

For that reason, all--and I mean ALL--that most Americans know are the fevered nightmare fantasiesof extreme Christianist militant Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind chronicles.

And remember: The Left Behind series of cheap novels--close to 100 million copies have sold--hawk a violent, bloody fundamentalist vision of the End Times, and reportedly have inspired at least one computer game that advocates killing anyone who can't be converted to militant Christianist fundamentalism. These things weren't even on the horizon when the Kennedys and King were assassinated. And we have no way of knowing how many folks are running around out there who've been fed this poison since birth. We do know there are a lot of them.

What can you and I do? Make ourselves and everyone we know acutely aware of these developments, challenge anything in the media anywhere that fans these flames even inadvertently, and hold the whole country accountable for ensuring that we protect this young President-Elect and all the hope that he has stirred in hearts across the world.

The alternative is unthinkable.

Our Immediate "To Do" List

If you're like me, you're getting one petition after another urging you to tell the new guy what to get done first. Does it surprise you that my immediate "To Do" list for Obama doesn't look like any of the others out there? Here it is:

Watch your back. I've learned that when W makes a big show of doing the right thing,it probably means he's going to do exactly the opposite. (Remember his promise of humility in foreign policy? Of "compassionate conservatism"? His pledge to be "a uniter, not a divider"?) Well. Bush's recent show of instructing his staff to ensure that there's a smooth transition struck a false note with me. It's not like he's got the country's best interests in mind.

That's it. I'm happy to back off and let President-Elect Obama do what he's doing right now; I voted for him because I trust his judgment.

However, I do have an immediate "To Do" list for us--for you and me and everyone who wants to get this country back together. Here goes:

1. Put the limelight and the pressure on the White House to stop the avalanche of last-minute executive orders and regulations that are designed to advantage Bush and Cheney's wealthy Republican buddies and to thwart the agenda of the newly elected President.

2. Vow right now not to let relatively minor disappointments in policy or immediate priorities cause us to splinter. We can best help Obama by giving him a powerful, united public base for doing the work he needs to do. He'd going to be more centrist than some of us hope, but just remember that whatever he does will be a vast improvement over the Republican alternative. Keep that in mind. There will be time in his second term for a swing to the Left.

3. Try to reach across the aisle. We have to help Obama heal the division. If we fail to do that, he and his family will be at even greater personal risk, and his ability to govern will be hampered by even more obstructionism and hatred. We can't turn his bitterest enemies into friends, but more moderate Republicans can be embraced if they wish to be.

4. Continue the work of Civil Rights. Gay and Lesbian Americans were just told by three states in no uncertain terms that we are to be second-class citizens. It wasn't just African Americans, and it wasn't just Mormons. To their eternal shame, ninety-nine percent of local mosques, synagogues and mainline churches were either silent (complicit)or concurred with 100 percent of fundamentalist and evangelical churches that separate and unequal is good enough for us. They said that "certain inalienable rights" -- including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- don't apply to us.

Well, guess what? They apply to us. They also apply to immigrants and to women and to transgendered people, and to every other human being on this planet. Just as we believed in the sixties, we believe now that those rights weren't awarded by nationality or gender or sexual orientation. They are universal and they are inalienable. Let's remind our fellow citizens of that fact by every peaceful means necessary, and be even more determined to seize that birthright wherever it's in question.

S'Obama! S'Gotta Be!

The champagne is chilling in the fridge in affirmation before the results, and for celebration afterward! It's looking good. See the count at the top of the left column.

Change We Need. Change We Can Believe In

It all seems perfectly clear to me.

We need jobs, the economy needs stimulus in the form of flowing dollars, and we have a global warming and closely related energy crisis to address immediately. If we can create a national renewable energy development program, we create jobs that provide cash flow, and we begin to address global warming and our dependence on foreign oil.

Fortunatey, it seems clear to Obama, as well. That, alone, is reason to reject his Neanderthal alternative.

If federal investment in renewable energy is "socialism," bring it on, baby. It's no more and no less "socialism" than federal investment in investment banking. The difference is that federal investment in renewable energy builds jobs. Therefore, it builds the economy from the bottom up. From the foundation. Federal investment in investment banking doesn't build anything. It creates, Pavlov style, a foolhardy Wall Street ever confident of a bailout. It attempts to build the house from the roof down. That, uh, doesn't work.

The infrastructure is worn out. We need money to fix it. Creating projects to re-build infrastructure at least gets us infrastructure for our money. Pouring money into investment firms doesn't even get us shares. Bring on federal investment in infrastructure renovation. The alternative is to contract out infrastructure innovation to the private sector. This accomplishes enormous wealth for a few, in the form of ownership of infrastructure and tolls for its use from the rest of us. If we're worried about redirecting wealth, I'd far rather redirect it to public ownership than to private oligarchies.

That money -- for healthcare and for infrastructure and college education for the next generations -- has to come from somewhere. It won't be coming from our 401(k)s anytime soon, thanks to Republican economic policy. It has to come from the federal government. This, by the way, is just another variety of "trickle down." Federal dollars are our dollars. Their investment in our collective wellbeing is hardly redistribution of wealth. It's OUR money to start with.

Let's get it out of Iraq so that we and our soldiers can get on with living, and with real priorities. Let's elect Barack and start a new era. Vote tomorrow if you haven't already. No matter how long it takes, vote. It's the most important election of your life.

Vote Barack!

The Mother's Health is a Loophole?

John McCain lost it tonight.

His attacks may have appealed to some of the base, but his comment about allowing abortions in cases where the mother's health is at risk was the shot heard round the world.

Husbands, wives, and mothers-to-be do not regard the mother's health as a cynical political calculation. They regard it as a matter of sacred responsibility.

Buried within that comment, in my opinion, was core misogyny, the inquisitorial Malleus Malefacorum of Rightwing domestic policy.

Underlying that remark was a profound, pretty much psychotic contempt for and distrust of American women, and a tellingly fearful exaggeration of the influence of the Female in shaping American public policy. Here was a male child confronted with the power of his mother, confounding that primal relationship with public discourse about a woman's right to control her own body.

What McCain didn't recognize in making that remark was how revealing it was of the man himself, and how revealing it is of the male-dominated anti-woman's-right posture. What it revealed to me, again, for the umpteenth time, is that this is not someone I want anywhere near the lever of social or foreign policy.

And is it me, or do John McCain's eyes come across on the television screen as exact replicas of the dead, black eyes of devils in TV serials? When the camera closed in on McCain, his eyes dominated the screen, and it wasn't a reassuring picture.

Press Finally Outing McCain, Palin on Lies, Unreadiness, Judgment

From a New York Times news story today, "McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions:

Harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, but Senator John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Senator Barack Obama’s record and positions.

Today, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, certainly no flaming liberals, also are reporting that Palin did NOT visit Iraq after all, regardless of what McCain and Palin claim:

Report: Palin Did Not Visit Iraq, by Anne E. Kornblut
WASILLA, Alaska -- Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin are scrambling to explain details of her only trip outside North America -- which, according to a new report, did not include Iraq, as the McCain-Palin campaign had initially claimed.

Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq, but did not actually visit the country, according to a new report in the Boston Globe.

Earlier, McCain aides had said that Palin visited Iraq, and expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

And meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle homed in on this jewel:

In a televised interview Friday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin defended her request for an estimated $200 million in federal projects from Congress - even as earlier in the day her GOP running mate John McCain insisted Palin had never sought money from Congress.

In a second ABC interview with Charlie Gibson, the GOP vice presidential candidate acknowledged that she has supported millions of dollars in congressional money - including the famed "Bridge to Nowhere" - to allow Alaska "to plug into ... along with every other state, a share of the federal budget in infrastructure."

Maybe God is not yet dead after all?

I'm being facetious, of course. I mean, maybe responsible US media are figuring out that it's not in their interests, either, to shoehorn the Ditzy Duo into the West Wing.

I really hope Rightwing Reader is reading this. (By the way, he never identified his websites, did he?) He did say, after all, that he hates lying. I assume that he also hates being manipulated, and gives a damn if the nation is in competent hands (having seen what incompetence means). If so, like all the rest of us, he would do to read a wide variety of informed commentary on these campaigns and these candidates.

It's time to get our heads out and pay attention. I have a feeling we're entering the most dangerous decade in US history. I, for one, don't want Johnny Hothead and Moose-a-lini anywhere near the launch button. Whatever weaknesses Obama and Biden might have--all candidates have weaknesses--I take theirs any day of the week.

From the editorial, and keep in mind that despite the rhetoric, the Times is not a "liberal" paper. Granted, it's to the left of the Wall Street Journal, but what isn't?

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

From Bob Herbert's op-ed. I quote this because I think it nails the issue precisely. This isn't about bashing bit-part mayors. That's another faux class-war bullet shot at the only party that isn't waging class war: the Democratic Party:

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

It all kind of makes you wonder what else they're lying about, and what other judgment blunders they're up to, doesn't it? Let's find out now. Before November.

Democrat, Republican, Independent, None-of-the-Above, we all deserve to know.

And surely we owe it to our kids to find out.

More on Nailing the Left

Paul Krugman's August 17, 2008, op-ed "It's the Economy Stupor," illustrates absolutely perfectly the Left's--in this case, Obama's--bizarre lack of fire:

No, the problem isn't lack of specifics — it's lack of passion. When it comes to the economy, Mr. Obama's campaign seems oddly lethargic.

I was astonished at the flatness of the big economy speech he gave in St. Petersburg at the beginning of this month — a speech that was billed as the start of a new campaign focus on economic issues. . . . he seemed to go out of his way to avoid scoring political points. "Back in the 1990s," he declared, "your incomes grew by $6,000, and over the last several years, they've actually fallen by nearly $1,000." Um, not quite: real median household income didn't rise $6,000 during "the 1990s," it did so during the Clinton years, after falling under the first Bush administration. Income hasn't fallen $1,000 in "recent years," it's fallen under George Bush, with all of the decline taking place before 2005.

Obama surrogates have shown a similar inclination to go for the capillaries rather than the jugular. [Emphasis added.]

Shades of Al Gore, Jr.

W's catastrophes don't stop with the economy, either, as we know. The thing is, if McSame is elected, it will be because we Democrats ran another utterly inept campaign, learning nothing from Kerry's experience, and nothing from Gore's. And if McSame is elected, there will be no relief for the US middle classes, nothing will be done about renewable energy and global warming, and there will assuredly be nuclear war. He just can't wait.

If we can't get passionate over these issues, we are the living dead.

Oh, and PS

This is why fighting the lies matters so much.

From Media Matters and the Washington Post:

"In an August 15 article examining the political opinions of young evangelical voters, Washington Post staff writer Krissah Williams Thompson wrote that one such voter is 'leaning toward [Sen. John] McCain because she shares his economic views and is afraid that [Sen. Barack] Obama will raise taxes.' But Williams Thompson did not also report that Obama has proposed cutting taxes for low- and middle-income families, and McCain's own chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has reportedly said it is inaccurate to say that 'Barack Obama raises taxes,' as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted.

"A recent analysis of the candidates' tax plans by the Tax Policy Center found that 'Senator McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes,' while 'Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers.'"

Kickin' Back

Earlier today, I posted about getting an email dishonestly contrasting Obama and McCain's tax policies. I said that we all need to stand up to this stuff. We didn't fight back hard in 04. We didn't take it all that seriously. Now, I hope, we know better.

Most of this e-trash comes to me via six or eight other sequential emailers who don't know how to forward without sharing every email address to which the post had previously been sent.

So I opened the Obama-McCain tax policy email, scrolled down to the bottom, and voila! There was the name and the business card of the guy who originated at least this daisy chain. I decided to write him and cc: everyone else. Here's what I said:

Hi ____,

Your reputation as a knowledgeable, honest money manager is important to you, right? Well, you might want to check out Snopes.com about the “facts “ in the email you're sending around over your name and business card. (Scroll down) http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/taxes.asp Your post gives me the impression that you’re either a lousy fact-checker or a casual liar, neither of which makes me long to sign up with [your well-known securities investment firm]. I hope my impression is mistaken.

By all means vote your conscience, but at least vote based on facts.

In my view, fighting irresponsible lies and other propaganda from all sides is the job of good people of all political views, because lies just shove us all down further into ignorance, divide us bitterly, manipulate and distract us, and, little by little, create the character of the country we want our children to live in. They also lead us to make stupid decisions.

Your views may differ, but I doubt it. I think you, too, like me, don’t appreciated being manipulated, want to live in a decent world, among honorable people, making decisions based on reality, getting accurate news and information from people you can trust who respect your ability to think for yourself.

Do us all a favor: Fact check before emailing.

About an hour later, I received the following post:

Thank you for contacting _____ regarding a recent email regarding "proposed changes in taxes after the 2008 General election." Please know that [this company] does not endorse any political party, candidate, or initiative, and that our Firm did not endorse or approve the email as it is contrary to our Code of Conduct and Corporate Values.

Members of executive and departmental leadership in ___ Corporation and ___ Securities have been made aware of the email, and ____ has been dealt with appropriately and directly. Every effort has been made to ensure that no additional emails or communications of this nature will be issued by any member of our Firm.

We sincerely apologize for this unfortunate incident.

___________,
Assistant Branch Manager

Well, let's get some things clear here. I'm not a rat, and I didn't contact the firm. I wrote the sender himself, personally, at his work email address from which his post originated--the only address I have for him. How company officials got my email to him, I don't know. I guess they read employees' mail. And that's not my problem.

For the record, I wrote the branch manager back to that effect, expressing no intent to get the guy in trouble and my hope that he was "dealt with" gently.

But having said that, I'm just really not sorry this little incident percolated up through the ranks of a Wall Street investment firm. I hope it shook up a few people, and I hope it made them all think a little more carefully about what happens to reputations when liars and careless gossips get found out. Maybe people will be more careful. It's too bad, but if it takes this kind of kicking up a fuss to force us all to be more honest and better fact checkers, I guess that's what it takes. And I encourage you to go and do likewise. If you get a propaganda email, fight back. You never know what might come of it.

Your opinion? Would you email a bunch of strangers telling them politely to play nice? Would you mind if your complaint percolated up the ranks to somebody's boss? Would you feel guilty? Let me know your take.

That New Yorker Cover

Got no problem with satire, but it has to work to work. This doesn't. The reason is simple. The object of the satire is absent entirely.

Satire requires a clear reference, a direct object, as it were. Because viewers aren't mind readers.

There's no reference in this work. The object of the satire is somewhere else, unaccessible and unimaginable no matter how we might try. We know what we'd like the object to be. We know what we hope the object is meant to be. We know who we'd like to satirize, but the thing is, all of that's completely in our own heads and completely outside of and beyond The New Yorker cover.

When the poop hit the fan--which would be about a nanosecond after the first intelligent being saw this thing--the mag trotted out its spokespersons to interpret for us. "But this is satire!" they said. "This is brilliant! Don't you see? It lampoons all those morons out there who think Barack and Michele are terrorists! AHA-HAHA-HA-HAAAA!," they said. You could almost hear the "Duh!"

But see, it doesn't. Duh.

In order for that concept to work, the world would have to see that moron. Alas, he's just not there.

Imagine the difference if the cartoonist had drawn in a racist yokel with a bubble that frames all the rest. Now that would be satire. A little heavy, maybe, a little hackneyed, but the object of our ridicule would be evident and the lampooning would make us laugh.

This isn't a protracted essay in which the satirist could place clues aplenty to direct and focus our attention. This is a cartoon. This medium floats through space collecting a thousand possible referents as it goes, leaving us to wonder which, if any, the artist intended.

You might say that's how art's supposed to work, and you'd be right, sort of. All art is a dialog between artist and recipient. Some is more obscure than others. But not all art is satire, and satire has its own rules. Chief among them is that the satirist must communicate effectively with his or her audience or there's just no satire.

There may be attempted satire, but there's no satire. Only confusion.

For this reason, this cover fails, and that's not acceptable for a magazine of the stature and resources of The New Yorker. In fact, it's inexcusable.

However, the offense doesn't stop there, of course. Because the satire fails utterly, the cover injects a toxic and partisan spin into an already supercharged contest poisoned by an already biased media. It doesn't matter whether this is inadvertent. The damage is done and is unretractable.

In this post 9-11 environment, this cover inevitably acquires all the venomous racism that ignorant Americans have poured out over Muslims these last seven years. This is doubly true because the Obamas, as African Americans who in fact are seen as the subject, don't merit these acid accusations any more than the millions of Muslims who aren't terrorists merit them. Yet here they are, portrayed not merely as terrorists but specifically as Islamic terrorists. So if this butt-headed graphical bloviation enrages Muslims and much as it enrages Obama supporters, The New Yorker has only itself to blame.

It's a shoddy and singularly un-funny piece of work. Whoever approved it should be fired, not for political commentary but for editorial incompetence.

A Vote for McCain is a Vote for Tyranny

If you want to know what Barack Obama thinks on the issues, go here, not to Sean Hannity and Karl Rove. Duh.

Speaking of Obama, count me among those who are furious about his FISA vote. I read his explanation today (available at HuffPo and the Barack site), and am not mollified. (Mollified? What a word!)

Here's why. If the Senate fails to strip the telecom immunity provision, so much for America's freedom from illegal domestic espionage. The signal will have been given that constitutional rights can be violated, even rescinded, at will. Obama's vote, hinged on a later Senate action, is too big a gamble with my rights.

Some say we're not holding McCain accountable in the same way. Nonsense. We're not voting for McCain. That's a pretty big statement in a two-person race. We KNOW he'd gut the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Not a question. But Obama promised that he would be unflaggingly opposed to giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms. We expected him to stand on that pledge, not to gamble on it.

The fundamental issue at stake in this FISA matter and in the recent Supreme Court on habeas corpus has changed in the last 7.5 years. Before George II, the issue was that these are among a handful of rights that define America. That remains the case. But now the issue at stake is how the next President will address George II's massive ursurpation of powers to the presidency. You see the dilemma. It is one thing to oppose these tyrannical powers outside the Oval Office. It is another to oppose them when you're their sole beneficiary.

This entire speculation might be an exercise in futility, I know. I remain uncertain that the Addingtons, Cheneys, Robertses, Bushes, Yoos, and Gateses and their military cronies will permit an orderly change of power should the Democrats outmanuver the entrapped black voting boxes and roadblocks to the polls. I'll believe it when I see it, because too much money is at stake. I don't expect the Halliburtons and Monsantos and GMs and Chevrons and Exxons and the rest to go quietly back into the relative poverty of pre-George II days. Which brings me to the probability that either Clinton or Obama will actually do anything about CAFTA and NAFTA: Nill. Anyway, I digress.

I can't see any president willingly unburden him- or herself of the powers that Cheney and Addington et al. have appropriated for the Executive--particularly not when we are supposedly living at the whim of Al Qaeda. Can you? Really?

The one--and I mean the sole, the sine qua non, the only--safeguard remaining is the US Supreme Court. We are now ONE VOTE away from losing everything except the by-god-sacred Second Amendment (that's sarcasm). I mean it. When interpretation is all, one vote is all that stands between us and totalitarianism.

This makes me sick, for obvious reasons. It makes me sicker because we got here for two reasons: As a people, we are more easily manipulated than sheep, and dumber.

Most who haven't yet demanded the rights that our ancestors died to bequeath us are selling us out because they are afraid of Al Qaeda. The rest are selling us out because they never understood those rights in the first place.

I may be furious at O, but there's no question who I'll vote for in November. A vote for Obama is a vote for the possibility that there's still time to restore the land of the free and the home of the brave.

A vote for McCain is a vote for tyranny.

Thinking Good Thoughts

So, that thought nobody wants to speak out loud: Instead of spending even one second of good energy fearing it, put your effort instead into surrounding Obama and his family with a sphere of light, an impenetrable protective shield that keeps them safe. Envision his breathing in strength and wisdom and love, and breathing them out again. Envision his drawing out all our cooperation and power to make radical changes for The Greater Good. Envision an invincible American citizenry united for change coming out to the polls in a tidal wave. Envision it, and then be the change you want to see.

Frank Schaeffer to the GOP: Wake Up Before it's Too Late!

Who'da thunk it?

Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer, one of the founders of the politicized "Christian Right," and former Christian Right member himself, has written quite a stirring call to Republicans to wake up and see the dawn of a new age.

I haven't read son Frank's CRAZY FOR GOD: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back, but I'm dying to hear from the lips of one of their own what drew him back from the brink.

Obama the Centrist

I keep having this urge to scream.

I know what's going to happen. Obama is going to tack Rightward, even as McSame tacks Leftward. Both want the voters to believe they're centrists.

The thing is, I have believed Obama is too centrist from Day Uno. Take, for instance, his stance on Israel, Palestine, and Iran. His healthcare plan. His terribly magnanimous pro "civil unions" position. His immigration stance, not significantly different from what McSame's used to be before he flip-flopped to court the Klan vote.

If he gets any "Righter" will the ex-Clintonistas vote for him instead of McSame?

OK, I definitely want a Democrat in the White House, and if I had my druthers, there'd be wall-to-wall donkeys in the House and Senate, too.

I only hope that at the swearings-in, the God of the "Little People" (as that termagint Leona Helmsley called us taxpayers)transforms them all, Obama especially, into Planetary Warriors and Loving Vindicators. I.e., people with Guts. Integrity. Vision. Brains. Compassion. I want a Latter Day Roosevelt. I'll take him, warts and all.

Meanwhile, I guess I have to hold my nose and pray. It would be a miracle, but stranger things have happened.