March 9, 2011 in Wisconsin

Long time, no talkee.

Sorry. I've been rescuing Dobermans and working to improve as a artist in polymer clay. If anyone wants to see my work, I can post an image or two, but that's another world, really.

So much of note I've ignored here, or missed. Maybe others can do it, but I can't stay fixated on, mired day in and day out in, politics. If I try, I lose perspective. And yet, of course, I can't be unaware, any more than I can unsee a brutal car accident I've just driven past. The thing is, though, there's no driving past, or out of, one's historical time and place. I merely avert my eyes for a moment, aware of the obscenity of privilege.

So the Republicans in Wisconsin have offered us a moment of particular import tonight. In one fell swoop, they've stripped the public sector of the right to pursue collective bargaining, and said outright that the purpose is to try to de-fund the Wisconsin Democratic Party and thus weaken the Obama campaign in 2012.

If I've got this right, Republicans -- not just in Wisconsin -- are actively creating a one-party state (nation) and a disarmed middle and working class. I believe this is called fascism.

I'm reminded of Martin Niemoller's famous confession.

Do we need an engraved announcement?

Uninsured Texas Fill Free Houston Health Clinic

This is evil funny.

Texas is probably the reddest state in the Union, and lookee here:

"One out of every three adults in Harris County is now uninsured and Texas ranks the worst among the 50 states in healthcare coverage, according to the U.S. Census. The National Association of Free Clinics decided it was time to hold a massive free clinic at Houston's Reliant Center."

Good thing it wasn't "socialized medicine."

There they were, all lined up like villagers come to Port au Prince.

It's a live, 3-D, walking-around prognostication, a glimpse of the future in the here-and-now if the GOP has its way on health care. You don't think Texas' GOP Senators support a public option, do you? Oh puhleeze. They rather see you die before the vote for that. Their GOP insurance friends aren't fat enough, rich enough, or mean enough quite yet.

But still the Texas lame, halt, and blind vote GOP.

Oh how I wish Molly Ivins were here to comment. She'd probably remind us of St. Barbara Bush's compassionate observation upon seeing the sodden, crisis-pummeled Katrina victims housed at the Houston Astrodome (September 5, 2005):

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Man, that's some kind of hospitality. Thank you, Senator Cornyn! Thank you, Senator Hutchinson!

A Perfect Storm, Part 2: "The Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This a President Was Killed"

That being John F. Kennedy, who was gunned down in Dallas, of course.

I've been thinking a lot of Kennedy and Dallas as I've watched the increasingly violent rhetorical attacks on Obama be unfurled. As Americans yank their kids of class in order to save them from being exposed to the President of the United States who only wanted to urge them to excel in the classroom. And as unvarnished hate and name-calling passed for health care 'debate' this summer.

The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what existed in 1963, has turned demonizing Obama--making him into a vile object of disgust--into a crusade. It's a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times.

But I've been thinking about Dallas in 1963 because I've been recalling the history and how that city stood as an outpost for the radical right, which never tried to hide its contempt for the New England Democrat.



Now, in this this month's Vanity Fair, Sam Kashner offers up in rich detail the hatred that ran wild in Dallas in 1963. To me, the similarity between Dallas in 1963 and today's unhinged Obama hate is downright chilling.

Kashner's fascinating cover story actually chronicles the professional struggles of writer William Manchester who was tapped by the Kennedy family, after the president's assassination, to write the definitive book about the shooting. The Vanity Fair articles details the power struggles, and epic lawsuits, that ensued prior to Manchester's publication.

But this unnerving passage from VF caught my eye. In it, Kashner retraces Manchester's step as he researched his book. It's unsettling because if you insert "Obama" for every "Kennedy" reference, it reads like 2009:

Manchester also discovered that Dallas “had become the Mecca for medicine-show evangelists … the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry Societies, and the headquarters of [ultra-conservative oil billionaire] H. L. Hunt and his activities.”

“In that third year of the Kennedy presidency,” Manchester wrote, “a kind of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed, ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas.…Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were required to attend radical seminars.”

A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as “the Democrat flag.” A wanted poster with J.F.K.’s face on it was circulated, announcing “this man is Wanted” for—among other things—“turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations” and appointing “anti-Christians … aliens and known Communists” to federal offices.

And a full-page advertisement had appeared the day of the assassination in The Dallas Morning News accusing Kennedy of making a secret deal with the Communist Party; when it was shown to the president, he was appalled. He turned to Jacqueline, who was visibly upset, and said, “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country today.”

Manchester discovered that in a wealthy Dallas suburb, when told that President Kennedy had been murdered in their city, the students in a fourth-grade class burst into applause.

Today, conservatives are expressing outrage that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had the nerve to raise concerns about the onrush of violent political rhetoric. The Noise Machine claims it has no idea what Pelosi's talking about. But the truth is, America's most famous bouts of political violence (i.e. JFK, Oklahoma City, etc.) have always been accompanied by waves of radical, right-wing rhetoric. Given that history, the GOP's insistence that the hate now filling the streets couldn't possibly inspire violence seems woefully naive.

It is time for Americans of every stripe to insist that the Secret Service and FBI operate at the highest levels of effectiveness. Sign your name to this petition so that Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, hears the message loud and clear. And please pass this message on to your friends and colleagues. It is a difficult time in America, and we have to stand up and make sure our president is safe.


[This piece, by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, appeared September 18, 2009,on AlterNet. I think it is worth including here, in full.]

What a Difference a Day Makes

Who knew when I got involved in Doberman rescue that it would consume my life? Not me, that's for sure. And that's where I've been.

It's hard to write with dogs all over you. Right now there are our four and two rescues here. That's a lotta dawg.

I'll write more and more about what being a dog rescuer means, and why it's important, and what fostering involves. But for now, I need a brief dog break!

Sarah Palin has a future in the GOP, says Squeakie Matthews. Yeah. Sarah Palin, Queen of the Bottom Feeders, that lowest 20% of Americans who still think George Bush is a genius and Obama is a secret IslamoTerrorist cell of one.

Michael Steele, the new BLACK chair of the Republican part, is a BLACK chair. Did I mention that he's a BLACK BLACK? A BLACK, AFRICAN AMERICAN-type BLACK AFRICAN AMERICAN? Just like Sarah Palin was a WOMAN. See, for the GOP, it's any old b*tch, any old N-word. We're all interchangeable tokens.

And how about the patriotism of the GOP? Have you noticed? There's just no there there. Any hope we may have had for enough bipartisanship to get the country out of the maelstrom has utterly dissipated, thanks to men like the two Arizona senators, Kyle and the back-stabber McCain. I don't know where they get their values, but not from any place I recognize.

I agree with Senators Collins and Nelson: There's too much in the big budget package that isn't obviously related to job creation. Mind you, I like what's in there. I just think--not for the first time--that the Congressional Leadership is composed of idiots. Reid and Pelosi ought to have had the sense to unpack the funding for other projects from this bill. Anybody could see this GOP attack coming. That they didn't says to me that they aren't worth their paychecks. It's about strategy. It's about rolling out a bill that the GOP doesn't dare oppose without obviously showing its true colors.

Regarding the Bailout . . .

Thanks to the fabulous Dependable Renegade

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.

Arizona Republicans' War on the Constitution, Again

Point One: Let's get clear. Proposition 102 isn't about marriage.

Proposition 102 is only one state-level deployment of a powerful weapon in radical Christianist Republicans' war on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. That weapon is a fierce 30-year PR campaign to gin up heterosexual Americans' suspicion, dislike, and fear of gay men and lesbian women.

Again, their target--keep this front and center--is not gay marriage. Gay marriage is merely the decoy. Their target is the US Constitution.

Here's why.

All that stands between you and me and the kind of radical fundamentalist theocracy that Sarah Palin represents are the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court that interprets them.

At present, only a tiny handful of constitutional guarantees, explicit and implicit, keep a possible President Sarah Palin from, say, criminalizing homosexual conduct, defining those who protest as "terrorists" under the Patriot Acts, and seizing our assets. Absurd? Not if you've paid attention to Guantanamo and St. Paul.

The distinction is merely one of degree. The thing is, if these few constitutional protections can be neutralized, there's nothing in US law to stop a powerful movement from turning its guns elsewhere: On you, for example. Even the little that we citizens have been permitted to know of the Patriot Acts makes that clear.

Exaggerated? Not at all. After all, that movement has already seized control of the Republican Party. Fact, not opinion.

The so-called "marriage protection" campaign has nothing to do with marriage except in the minds of a sector of citizens--evangelical and fundamentalist Republicans--who've been bombarded with virulent anti-gay propaganda for 30 years. This has taken the form of mass-distributed CDs, videos, direct-mail campaigns, and voter guides, and a whole host of home-schooling and private Christianist academy curricular materials, and conservative church and legal initiatives orchestrated by the extreme Christianist Right. Fact, not opinion.

The point of all this is to reverse 250 years of traditional American legal thought in order to neutralize the Constitution's defense of women, minorities, and the interests of the people as a whole vs. the rights of the individual. Campaigns like "Defense of Marriage" exist solely to draw conservatives to the polls to directly assail a handful of key constitutional protections, and to vote into office the next phalanx of radical Christianists to make laws and appoint judges who will reverse the great liberal legal tradition that has made America the beacon for freedom all over the world. Fact, not opinion.

The Targets

The Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee to every individual of equal protection of the law is the springboard from which judges and justices at every level have found in favor of minorities since Brown v. Board of Education (1954). From that Supreme Court decision flows every subsequent legal advance in US human rights.

Its privacy protection, implicit in the 9th Amendment and reinforced in Amendments 3, 4, and 5 of the Bill of Rights, is absolutely central to each individual's defense against unwarranted state intrusion into personal matters such as non-exploitative sexual relations between consenting adults, and a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy under strict and limited conditions. It also underlies the sensible search warrant.

The Constitution's powerful 1st Amendment affirmation of every individual's freedom to choose his or her religion (or to decline religion), and the wall it imposes between your religion and mine, between my religion and yours, and between a state religion and all of us, are the last and greatest defense each of us has against the radical ideology represented by Sarah Palin, James Dobson, and John McCain.


The Strategy

It isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact that a radical, extraordinarily powerful, richly-funded, highly orchestrated Christian Right already virtually controls the Republican party. Moderate Republicans know it and discuss it openly. If you doubt it, consider this. A few days ago, its own presidential candidate was powerless to select his own vice president. John McCain knuckled under to the Christianist Right because he had to.

Radical Christianists' takeover of the party began in 1991. Why?

Because when extreme fundamental Christianist Pat Robertson lost his White House bid in 1988, radical Christianists got it that they could never take control of the country from the top down. In 1989, they founded the Christian Coalition and developed a winning strategy to seize control of the country from the grassroot up, by seizing control of the Republican party.

This they accomplished by fielding closeted radical fundamentalists for grassroots offices in order to gain, and eventually dominate, delegates to the Republican National Convention. By this means they can, and as we can observe today, they do, write its platform and determine its presidential candidates. Obviously, with control of the platform and the presidency, they control political appointees at every bureaucratic level, dictate what happens in state and local elections, and above all, determine federal appeals court and US Supreme Court appointees.

The fundamentalists' decisive take-control strategy first came to national attention in the well-known San Diego Stealth Initiative. It continues today, more powerful than ever. If in 2000, John McCain could still denounce its takeover, by 2008, John McCain has been forced to capitulate to it and to advance it one giant step by placing extreme Christianist Sarah Palin one heartbeat from the presidency.

Paralleling this GOP take-over strategy is Part 1 of radical Christianists' legal strategy. Their lynchpin legal initiative is the "original intent" campaign, a point-blank assault on traditional American constitutional values as enunciated since the founding of the country. It asserts (absurdly) that at some unknowable place and point in time, all the founders universally concurred on one interpretation of every constitutional issue for all time. That this never occurred--and that the idea itself was denounced even by Madison himself--doesn't stand in the way of fundamentalist extremists. Truth is irrelevant.

Part 2 is the fear-based, seductive PR campaign against so-called "activist judges," also a chimera: The fact is that any so-called "activist" judge exists only in the eye of the beholder. It's a PR tactic obvious because radical Christianists deem only mainstream judges who interpret the Constitution in accord with traditional American values as "activist."

Not surprisingly, in other words, the only "activist" judges are those the Christianists denounce as "liberal." These are the judges and justices who find that the Constitution and Bill of Rights actually give equal protection to women, minorities, labor, and--powerfully--sometimes to the people as a whole (as in environmental protection and gun control) over individuals.

Given this reality check, in the real light of day, Proposition 102, Arizona's GOP-dominated legislature's upchucked version of a measure we defeated just two years ago, can be seen for what it is, and the reason it's back on the ballot can be exposed for what it is.

These are heavy duty weapons aimed at the heart of American freedoms. They and the radical theocratic ideals they serve constitute the most serious threat to democracy in our history. Such propositions are first-line guns in a war on the ideals that make Americans uniquely Americans. The ironic thing is, those guns aren't just aimed at queers.

What the founders who drafted our majestic core documents saw is this simple paradox: A Constitution that defends the rights of one American defends the rights of all Americans. Without our Constitution intact, and without a committed, staunch legal tradition and Supreme Court unshakably devoted to that simple principle, we're all at the mercy of the next commander in chief and the hidden strings that control him or her. That's not democracy. That's fascism.

So don't be stupid. If you vote for Prop 102, it's just youself you're firing at.

Cyborg Sarah

Sarah Palin is all over the news, but so far I haven't heard an informed, incisive analysis of what she means in the larger context of national politics.

Sarah Palin no accident. What created her is exactly what makes her viable today. A large and well-funded extreme Right militant Christianist movement begun some thirty years ago is just now watching its true firstborn come onto the international stage.

It isn’t that we haven’t seen Christianists (more or less) before her. We have, but they, mostly hybrids, arrived onto the political scene by stealth rather than invitation. They were a vanguard whose mission was to quietly penetrate the local levels of the Republican Party and secure the national government for a far more radicalized cohort that was, meanwhile, being cultivated in home schools and private Christian academies run by sophisticated and heavily funded evangelical and fundamentalist cults, nurtured on Christian rock, and inspired by Tim LaHaye's Left Behind visions of the Rapture.

We may have seen men and women like Karen Hughes and Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer and Sam Brownback and Kay Bailey Hutchison, but we ain’t seen nothing yet.

It isn’t that Palin herself was specifically selected from infancy to be groomed for the presidency. She wasn’t. However, of millions of seeds cast in the past three decades onto that cold theocratic ground, hers is the one that has blossomed into the most plausible perfect contender for this moment.

What’s important to notice is that she had already percolated far enough up the ranks to be both noticed and to pass the right vetting criteria. That didn't happen in a vaccuum.

What is sought is a campaigner, not a stateswoman. And what was found? Precisely the right counterpart to the Obama/Clinton muse: a very smart, beautiful, young mother simultaneously savvy about but innocent of the system she’s to destroy, simultaneously equal to but no threat to the big boys, simultaneously seductive and PTA, simultaneously Vogue and Revelation, simultaneously church-lady and moose-killer, simultaneously ethnic and white.

It might be a little far-fetched to say that in the Far Right Christianists’ collective unconscious Sarah (note the biblical name) evokes the Madonna, but I do think something of near archetypal force is being prepared for us here and woven into the candidate’s manufactured storyline. This, after all, is Karl Rove’s forte.

What we do not see, and yet must see and see clearly, is that in every hamlet, town, and city in America are dozens or hundreds or thousands of families who have been nurtured for 30 years in the bosom of intensely politicized little congregations, churches like Palin’s Wasilla Assembly of God that serve on a Sunday as a hybrid House of God and local precinct station, ready-made to serve the One God so long as he is a Republican.

What we do not see, and yet must see quickly, are the phalanxes of Christianist soldiers, graduates and soon-to-be graduates of intensely politicized Christianist day schools, home schools, bible colleges, patriot schools, and law colleges—even US military academies and Army bases. Fed a pabulum of King James and NRA, these 20- to 40-somethings have been churned out by the thousands from schools like Liberty and Patrick Henry, schools that were founded explicitly for the purpose of turning this constitutional democracy into a fundamentalist’s idea of a Christian nation.

And it isn’t just these bureaucrats. To them and to the secular right, the white supremacists, and the Freepers, add the minions of Joel’s Army who have sprung from the loins of The Promise Keepers and the wives of Eagle Forum. This is the Far Right. It isn’t their mission to listen to reason or to ponder qualifications for negotiating with the Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans. Such arguments resonate with us but not with them.

I am saying that what dismiss as home-grown ignorance and naïveté is in fact a tightly orchestrated mindset impervious to anything outside itself, and it is legion.

Remember: We’ve seen a modest Palin prototype before, placed at the Justice Department, no less, to break the law by root out qualified Democrats for state Attorneys General and hire only those Republicans she could personally determine had truly swallowed the Kool Aid and the wafer. Her name is Monica Goodling. Asked whom she served, she answered in truth: “The President.” Unfortunately for the democracy, she was supposed to serve the Constitution.

Note the heights she attained and the mission she effected. Do you think for a second that this Monica Goodling cares whether Sarah has the “experience” necessary to assume the presidency if something happens to George McCain? Not even Sarah cares. Remember: We’re not talking qualifications that we might seek for a stateswoman. That’s the farthest thing from the minds of George McCain, Sarah Palin, and the extreme Right Christianist GOP elite.

It isn’t mere arrogant cluelessness that explains Palin’s acceptance. It’s that Palin has an undisclosed mission and it isn't ours. In a scenario in which her people talk openly of hoping to rush Armageddon, statecraft is the last thing that’s wanted or needed.

From the Matrix-like land of ultra-Right extreme Christianists, Sarah Palin is a cyborg. She looks like one of us and she’s anything but. This is a heads they win/tails we lose game.

Unfortunately, when the faithful are called to defend her, they will. Every attack we make, every point we score will be a call to arms. It is imperative that we rally more of our troops than they, and that ours are more intensely committed than theirs. We've much to do, but we must get it done.

If the Republicans win in November, it’s game over. Enter fascism unleashed. That’s what Sarah Palin is, and that what she means for the US political landscape. Today we see its mere outlines: suppression of political dissent in St. Paul; run-amok Patriot Acts; privatized concentration camps on our soil, targeted and terrorized subgroups, illegal domestic espionage, proposals to dehumanize GLBGT people, video games of conversion at gunpoint, or death; private Christianist armies; a planet subjected to unbridled greed and exploitation; shredding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If McCain wins, Sarah Palin will be his successor, and following Palin are millions more schooled in her school, steeped in her fanatic rage.

More On Palin: The Next Bridge to Nowhere?

Didn't expect to see this in the Dallas Morning News!

"Five reasons why Sarah Palin is a laugh-out-loud choice for VP. It's one thing for millions of voters to put forward a sitting senator as a possible commander in chief, but for John McCain to hand-pick a first-term governor of a tiny state is bizarre. Here are five reasons why, if she is the pick, this is a huge mistake." More

A little background from the Alaska Daily News:

"During her first run for mayor, critics complained that Palin, at 32, was too young and inexperienced. The Wasilla mayor was a full-time, $68,000-a-year job. They objected to a quiet campaign by some Palin supporters raising emotional issues like abortion and gun control, which had no apparent tie to municipal politics.

"And they said that by posing for ads with the area's Republican legislators, who implied they could work better with her than her opponent, she was injecting divisive party politics into what was technically a nonpartisan race.

"The high-profile support from local Republicans was hardly surprising, however. Party officials say Palin was already being groomed for bigger and better things, even as she talked about sewers and road-paving projects. In Alaska's fastest-growing region, Palin was the fresh young face of the suddenly dominant Republicans." More

And then this, from Mudflats, a Palin hometown blogger:

"Just months ago, when rumors surfaced that she was on the long version of the short list, she was questioned if she’d be interested in the position. She said she couldn’t answer “until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day. I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here….” More

Two Can Play Swiftboating

This isn't a conclusion I come to easily, but I've come to it reluctantly. It's time for Democrats to do their own swiftboating. I don't see America responding to anything but destructive campaigning. If that's the new standard, then there's not really an option if we want to win. We didn't make the rules, but we are going to have to play by them just the same.

The secret to effective swiftboating is to punch the fear button and the trust button. It won't do to pass along just any old gossip. The playing field underlying this stuff is the unconscious, where the demons play.

I want to see a knock-out punch, and I want to see it now. As the GOP is fond of saying, a bully only understands one language. Maybe if we speak it back, the Republicans will finally be motivated to leave the sewer they fondly call home.

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.

His (GOP) State of Mind?

From HuffPo about John McCain's hilarious sense of humor:

Last week, in response to a serious question about Iran, the Republican presumptive nominee joked about killing Iranians with weaponized cancer. This week, it's news about a joke involving gorillas and rape.

'Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, 'Where is that marvelous ape?'

Get it? Women like to be beaten and raped. Hoo-hoo! In days past, it's been jokes about wife-beating, bombing Iran, Chelsea Clinton's looks, and Alzheimer's Disease. Based on these precedents, I can only imagine Senator McCain's forthcoming zingers about still-births, burn victims and Thalidomide.

Studies abound that show a predictive link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to people. In fact, as children, pathological killers frequently abuse animals through torturing, dismembering, burning, and other means. For this reason, mental health professionals pay special attention when kids with this predilection show up on their couches.

So I wonder: Has anyone discovered a similar link between a predilection for certain kinds of "humor" and serious, potentially dangerous pathology?

I'm not talking about "gallows humor," which is beloved of many a first-line defender and infantry warrior as a means of staying sane when each day brings something truly ghastly up close and personal.

I'm talking about jokes that depend for their punch on identifying with an abuser, on obliterating a victim of abuse. Actually I'm talking about patterns that become evident over time in the material that some people select for amusement, and about an increasingly obvious tone deafness that prevents their sensing what is creepily inappropriate.

Some things just aren't hilarious. It's not funny when a candidate for the United States presidency boogies down to "bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran," particularly against the backdrop of an ongoing military obliteration next door. There's no saving divide between his comment and reality. If elected, McCain CAN do that, which makes the fact that he thinks it's funny really, really threatening, and really, really grotesque.

Some things just aren't hilarious. It's not funny when a white-haired old man publicly humiliates a teenager about anything. It's particulary un-funny when the joke depends on virulent sexism for any oxygen it hopes to have. In McCain's frame of reference, Chelsea ceases to be a living, sentient teenage girl. She is nothing but a second-shelf commodity. The "humor" turns on publicly debasing a child but you see, child abuse just isn't funny. That McCain and his Republican audience just don't get that fundamental reality is, rightly, disturbing to anyone who does.

Some things just aren't hilarious. Ambush, beating, and multiple brutal rapes don't strike me as ha-ha-ha material. The mental health and criminal justice communities have understood for decades that rape is a crime of violence, not of passion. It's a particularly violent abuse of power--of male strength and a carefully inculcated male sense of social entitlement. If it's funny, then other violent abuses of power must be equally amusing, and, as just noted, for John McCain, they are.

All this is of a piece with McCain's having publicly called his wife a "cunt." The oomph in that putdown, of course, is in its vulgar degradation of the female. Like all other forms of verbal abuse this was an act of violence. But this act acquires an added measure of brutality because it is committed in public. It's reprehensible anywhere, but in public, it becomes gladiatorial sport. Funny, right?

I'll leave it to others to ponder what it means for McCain to call the woman who is the source of his wealth and psycho-social privilege a "cunt."

Unleashing weaponized cancer on any nation is amusing? Wife beating is something to laugh about?

The crude, blunt, ugly sexism this Tailhook poster boy seems to feed on is (as it often is) symbolic of his entire world view. His choice of laughing matter makes that patently clear.

That is, through his choice of "jokes," the Republican candidate for Leader of the Free World displays time and again his opinion that it's amusing to abuse, degrade, humiliate, and hurt anyone he deems less powerful and less valuable than he is. It's entertaining, and it's his right to display his amusement whenever he sees fit and in any form he pleases.

"Let McCain be McCain"? It's a sobering consideration given his predecessor's legitimizing of torture and claim to imperial power and presidential infallibilty. And it's of a piece with his advisors' notions that Americans losing homes to foreclosure are "whiners," and that another attack on the USA would be "good" for his campaign.

There's just something more than a little twisted going on here. McCain's jokes, like W's, comprise a clear window on his character and his state of mind. Once again, it ain't a pretty view.

Caveat emptor. Please God, for the planet's sake, let the buyer beware..

GOP Twice Shuts Down Senate Hearings

Using a little known and rarely used rule that requires hearing to adjourn after two hours unless there is unanimous approval, two Senate hearings exploring subjects sensitive to the Republican administration were arbitrarily shut down. Here's the tape.

This is not just about quashing an embarrassing investigation. In line with the views of David Addington and John Yoo and Dick Cheney and George Bush, this is about defiance of the constitutionally mandated balance of powers in the US government. When one party blocks investigations into the actions of the other's White House, effectively it blocks Congress's constitutional right of oversight.

I was around during Watergate. At that time, everyone at least played by the rules set by the Constitution. Not so much anymore.

Anybody care? I mean, it is your country.

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.

I'm Voting Republican

Daily Fitz and AZ's American War on Education

Mike Bryan over at Blog for Arizona has an ongoing discussion in his Recent Comments section about a Daily Fitz cartoon pillorying the AZ GOP for its paranoia about public education. Here's my two cents about that.

Seems to me from developments over the last 30 years that the Right here and nationally is coming from two visions of society to justify dismantling public schools. Since both ultimately serve its anti-Jeffersonian-Democracy ideology, the advocates of each are happy to use the advocates of the other to advance their own game plan. No one Republican need buy into both ideals to get both accomplished.

Both visions have given birth to ideology-driven agendas that are all to ready to capitalize on (pun intended) problems in public education caused by decades of underfunding, corruption, institutionalized racism (as in local school districts), disengaged parents, badly-behaved kids, and a host of other "inputs." Up the rhetoric and go for a broken national, affordable public education platform. Literally.

One is economic: The privatization agenda. This is one means to wipe out every vestige of the ideal that government ought to help ensure the basics necessary for everyone’s boat to rise. Affordable, good public education is certainly fundamental for that, as is a commonwealth, people-centered approach to the environment--as contrasted with the prevailing view.

Privatization defunds our government by seizing tax-payer paid-for assets (infrastructure, parklands, schools, etc.) by any means possible (hurricanes, private-public investment instruments, condemnation, revising definitions in law, etc.) and then turning them over to favored entities (ultimately, few hundred families) to operate for private profit while funding them by more taxpayer dollars. I say "a few favored entities" because of the pattern emerging in other privatization initiatives, like rebuilding Iraq and seizing its oil, the border fence, the TransTexas Corridor, post-Katrina initiatives in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast, and mercenary armies. Let’s call privatization the secular, plutocratic fundamentalist agenda.

The other is religious: The theocracy agenda. This means funneling our kids into home schooling (a "privatized" curriculum using privatized teaching aids developed privately) and voucher schools (private and privatized).

Anyone familiar with political developments over the last 30 years knows about the takeover of school boards, Rightwing wars over issues like prayer in public schools and the contents of textbooks, and the rise of private, fundamentalist colleges(Liberty and the newer Patrick Henry U, for instance).

They may not be as familiar with the overlap of key GOP players in these spheres and in the ranks of White House, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branch internships and employment. They also may not be as aware of privatized, canned curricula in private religious schools and in the home schooling business, or of the myriad problems that razing our great public education heritage to create our very own mudrashas raises for the country’s future. Let’s call this the theocratic fundamentalist agenda.

Both the secular and the theocrat fundamentalists benefit from collaborating to dismantle public education. By this means they create an ideologically molded cadre of kids tailor-made to follow a ideologically determined marching orders, whether religious, partisan, or corporatist.

By replacing the hated core Jeffersonian ideals with narrow theocratic, elitist, and totalitarian alternatives, they create a dumber-down generation that is trained rather than educated. Trashing the old "liberal arts" model means trashing the tools that empower thinkers and problem-solvers. Replacing it with a task-oriented curriculum means creating generations of malleable worker bees ideally suited to be told what to do and when to do it, at work, at home, and at the polls.

The dumbed-down “news” media (compare Cronkite with Wolf Blitzer, or even worse, Edward R. Murrow with Sean Hannity) are just team players in the larger ball game.

If you think I’ve donned my tin hat, poke around as I have for 25+ years in the organizations and issues the Far Right has created and funded, the key players, and the outcomes. Not least has been its breathtaking progress in converting the GOP from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Dobson, Robertson, Bush, McCain, Norquist, Kyle, Renzi, and Rove. What used to be an honorable alternative view of the great American experiment has become an instrument of mass indoctrination; rank, elitist profiteering; institutionalized ignorance; and unabashed xenophobia.

That’s where I think Fitz was headed.

The Trans-Texas Corridor and Why You Really Do Care

"It will connect to Interstate and other major highways. However, by design it will not provide easy, if any, access to the communities it passes by. It will not spur commercial development along its frontage like our Interstate Highways. There will be no frontage. There will be no opportunity for the owners of property it abuts to develop new or expanded businesses with access to the Corridor. Moreover, it has provisions in the plan and the law to place all possible traveler services on the corridor itself."

"Every mile of Corridor will consume 146 acres of land. That's property that will [be] . . . removed from county and school district tax rolls everywhere it extends."

"With a right-of-way approximately 1,200-feet-wide, the proposed corridor could change the face of agriculture in Texas forever as it swallows up thousands of production acres of farmland."

"If you take comfort in the lengthy environmental process and public hearings for a highway project of this massive size, you're in for a rude awakening. The Federal Highway Administration announced on March 16, 2004, that the first segment of the Trans Texas Corridor (Hillsboro to San Antonio) has been granted 'experimental project' status and construction can begin before the environmental study is complete." [Excerpted from Corridorwatch.com]

This one has everything.

This one, the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), is the perfect illustration of shock-doctrine privatized predator capitalism brought home to the USA, and the all-encompassing symbol and manifestation of what "free trade" means for us, the people.

It has years of behind-the-scenes planning reminiscent of the Iraq occupation in more ways than I can count. It has corruption on at least the same order of magnitude. It benefits the same people for the same reasons by the same means. It is occurring without regard for the views of the people directly affected, without due process, with blissful disregard of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and of their deeper meaning for this beautiful country, and without regard for its impact on the people or the ecosystem.

It is being packaged and sold by a bunch of taxpayer-paid for lies and obfuscations, just as was the Iraq war.

Official rhetoric provides clues for the attentive about its connections to other domestic disasters that were utterly unfathomable before Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: an infrastructure left to crumble; a New Orleans left to rot, an endless train of immigration muck-ups, lousy guest worker programs, and the border fence BS, etc.

And if it isn't already, when it becomes a matter of "national security," like the border fence it so closely resembles in its RepubliCon dimension, an un-elected and utterly unaccountable Department of Homeland Security cabinet secretary will waive every law and regulation ever designed to protect workers, the people, their investments, the environment and ecosystems, the parklands, small agriculture, and the rest.

It is what it is, but it is also a gargantuan Trojan horse deliberately designed to enrich the richest, bleed and indenture the rest, and dismantle what is left of a legal system that was built on the understanding that community and commonwealth are intrinsically interconnected.

And if you imagine that the Party in power, which is run by exactly the people who are directly responsible for this catastrophe, will adandon this multi-billion cash cow and fascist wet dream, I sincerely believe you have a big think coming. I hope to God I'm wrong.

Why do you care? You care deeply, not just because this model is coming to a theatre near, you but also because you care about the people of Texas, who, like the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, are about to be thrown under a very big bus.

You care deeply because a few dozen well-oiled, well-connected high rollers with deep links to the GOP, here and abroad (can you spell BUSH?), are systematically looting and gutting the USA, and this is an example that even the dimmest among us can possibly grasp. Before it's too late, I hope.

What is the TTC? A privately-owned, outsourced, uber-super commerce corridor whose priority routes alone will total 4,000 miles. The entire TTC will total 8,000 miles and consume one million Texas acres. It will be a quarter-mile—wide, transecting Texas in all directions. The Texas Department of Transportation (TX-DOT) describes it thus:

It "will include [ten vehicle lanes,] separate toll ways for passenger vehicles and trucks. The corridor also will include six rail lines (three in each direction): two tracks for high-speed passenger rail, two for commuter rail and two for freight. The third component of the corridor will be a protected network of safe and reliable utility lines for water, petroleum, natural gas, electricity and data."

The fourth component will enclose and franchise to select privileged owners as "state concessions" all the services that sustain human travel—hotels, entertainment sites, fast-food joints, etc., as well as all the myriad service and maintenance infrastructure required to keep things moving.

The entire TTC could take as long as 50 years to complete. The initial cost estimate, $200 Billion for the first 4,000 miles, was low even for 2002 dollars. Imagine what the price tag will be given 2008 gas prices.

Why the TTC? Eventually it will be the key link in the trade chain from Mexico to Canada, and from LA to Dade County. Note this official excerpt from TX-DOT. For a plan described recently as having nothing to do with NAFTA, the title of the official propaganda is more than interestingly titled: Crossroads of the Americas: Trans-Texas Corridor Plan. And check the contents:

Draw a north-south line from Mexico City to Chicago. Draw an east-west line from Los Angeles to Miami. The two lines intersect in Texas.

Texas has long been seen as the crossroads of North America, but this concept has never been more relevant as trade between North and South America continues to grow.

Most goods and commodities coming into the United States from Mexico and South America cross the Texas border and move north, sometimes all the way to Canada.

The reverse is true for exports. In fact, 79 percent of all U.S.-Mexico trade passes through Texas ports of entry. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, this international traffic will only increase.

A large percentage of the nation's cross-continent traffic also passes through Texas. And then there are the transportation needs of the 21 million people who already live here.

. . . Beyond that, much of Texas' transportation infrastructure is nearing the end of its design life. [Emphasis added throughout.]

From the same source:

"Four corridors have been identified as priority segments of the Trans Texas Corridor. These corridors parallel I-35, I-37 and I-69 (propose) from Denison to the Rio Grande Valley, I-69 (proposed) from Texarkana to Houston to Laredo, I-45 from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston and I-10 from El Paso to Orange. . . . [Texas Republican] Governor Rick Perry wrote Transportation Commission Chairman John W. Johnson on January 30, 2002 to outline his vision for the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Governor asked the three-member commission to assemble the Texas Department of Transportation's top talent to create and deliver a Trans Texas Corridor implementation plan in 90 days."

From TX-DOT: "Connection between the corridor and nearby cities will be accomplished with the existing highway system. Proposed corridor segments will require interconnection with additional modes of transportation to enable passengers and freight to reach their final destinations in nearby cities. Privately funded franchises or public/private partnerships will provide transportation from the corridor to destination cities."

However, as toll roads always do, TTC will transverse many rural areas and towns without the customary on- and off-ramps. That is, it will cut existing towns and communities off from the sustenance of daily travel and commerce, and play havoc with developments and investments made but not yet realized all along its path.

How this New Jerusalem will affect the workers who are needed to staff all these facilities hasn't been publicly addressed, to my knowledge. Will they be "guest workers" imported for the purpose and housed in some out-of-sight Bahrain-style ghettos within the corridor, or will they be expected to commute, paying their own way from their homes to travel to and from the nearest access point? I don't know yet, but I'm betting it won't be an all-fees-paid vacation plan.

Obviously, the TTC will also carve great, hideous scars across the Texas landscape. It will bisect some areas and segment others--ranches, developments, parkland--into useless, isolated micro-parcels, and it will wreck the ecosystem in ways yet even to be imagined.

As horrifying as its physical structure and its implications for the people of Texas are its underlying financing and profit structures—public/private partnership (PPP) deals financed and managed through a new class of financial instruments called infrastructure funds.

This structure, based on Australia's Macquarie model, is being pushed hard by the Bush Federal Highway Administration on all state governments, despite having been reliably slammed for Enron-style "high debt levels, high fees, paying distributions out of capital rather than cash flow, overpaying for assets, related-party transactions, booking profits from revaluations, poor disclosure, myriad conflicts of interest, auditor conflicts and other poor corporate governance." Macquarie, not incidentally, is the partner of Cintro, the Spanish firm to which the TTC has – you guessed it – been outsourced. A big Macquarie investor until he ran for president? Giuliani. Its law firm? Giuliani's a partner in Houston-based Bracewell and Giuliani, known for big energy clients and TTC. Other domestic trough-feeders? Halliburton KBR. Duh.

And there's more. The TTC will be a toll road, but just one of many more toll roads proposed for Texas.

Last but not least, critics of the plan have noticed that clustering critical national life supports-–rail, highway, pipeline, electrical, and even data--into one neat 4,000-mile ribbon will provide any US enemy a handy way to slice a major artery in the US blood supply. Don't think only "terrorists." Think nations, too. Ostensibly the bet is that interlocking multinational trade interests will protect us from the latter, but even if that does work, what about the former?

Oh, and that reference to Texas ports of entry. Would I be delusional to imagine that one reason New Orleans is being left to rot could have to do with relocating its share of that commerce to Houston-Galveston?
Or, given this gem, would I be crazy to be concerned about Arizona: "Expanding the corridor beyond Texas will require a cooperative effort with Mexico, as well as Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico." Is an end-run planned for Arizona's I-10, Phoenix, Tucson, Nogales, and for I-17 and points north? A "heads-I-win/tails-you-lose" for Texas? I don't know, but I'll be asking around.

I believe the TX legislature has begun to put some breaks on this runaway train, but I need help finding the beef on that. More later as I learn more. Meanwhile, other sources on the TTC: corridorwatch, jobsanger, texastollparty, muckraker, burkablog

Quote of the Day

From my man Mike over at Blog for Arizona, this gem:

"And both [GOP drug policy and GOP immigration policy] represent the fundamentally brain-dead approach to governing that conservatives so often adopt: use government to try to simply ban anything you don't like, and punish the crap out of anyone who steps out of line. They choose such policies primarily because they are conceptually simple and familiar, symbolically and rhetorically powerful even when ineffective, and place the costs of the policy squarely on the least powerful in our society." [Emphasis added.]

And that's a wrap!

AZ's SB 1108: Thought Control for the Homeland

Frankly, we should welcome this bill because it outlines the world that Pearce and Kavanagh, with the blessings of Uberchancellors Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Kyle, would have in store for us.

This analysis explains that what is not said is actually as important as what is said.

SB 1108 in effect defines non-white persons as de facto threats to national security; proposes an unelected, partisan, ideologically-driven Council of Censors to determine the content of Arizona public education curriculum from first grade through college or university; legislates replacing the liberal arts curriculum that made America great with pure, ideologically-driven far-Right indoctrination; encourages far-Right forces to disrupt public education with bogus "bias" lawsuits, defines nonconformists as agents of sedition and so subtly legitimizes the use of violence against non-white students and educators who are perceived to violate The Plan; proposes to use your tax dollars to force Arizona teachers to become indoctrinators, not educators; and establishes vague and unspecified punishment anybody who doesn't get in line.

Here is the text of SB 1108, a bill sponsored by AZ Republican state Rep. Russell Pearce and others to revise Sec. 41-4258, Arizona Revised Statutes, relating to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. As here, I’ve italicized key phrases for your reference when reading the comments that follow. Also, as you read the italicized passages, keep in mind their authors' implied objectives and the administrative infrastructure that would be required to implement this measure.

This is the bill to which I've referred sarcastically in a couple of previous posts. Now I'm taking a more serious look. First the bill, then my comments.

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AMENDMENTS TO S.B. 1108

Section 1. Title 15, chapter 1, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding sections 15-107 and 15-108, to read: 15-107. Declaration of policy. The legislature finds and declares that:

1. A primary purpose of public education is to inculcate values of American citizenship.

2. Public tax dollars used in public schools should not be used to denigrate American values and the teachings of western civilization.

3. Public tax dollars should not be used to promote political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values as truth when such values are in conflict with the values of American citizenship and the teachings of western CIVILIZATION.

15-108. Denigration, disparagement or encouragement of dissent from values of American democracy and western civilization; prohibition; enforcement; prohibition of race-based organizations; definition:

A. A public school in this state shall not include within the program of instruction any courses, classes or school sponsored activities that promote, assert as truth or feature as an exclusive focus any political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values that denigrate, disparage or overtly ENCOURAGE dissent from the values of American democracy and western civilization, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration.

B. This section does not prohibit the inclusion of diverse political, religious, ideological or CULTURAL beliefs or values if the course, CLASS or school sponsored activity as a whole does not denigrate, disparage or overtly ENCOURAGE dissent from the values of American democracy and western civilization.

C. On request of the superintendent of public instruction or the superintendent's designee, a public school shall promptly provide copies of curricula, course materials and course syllabi to the superintendent of public INSTRUCTION. The superintendent of public instruction, after providing appropriate notice and conducting an appropriate hearing, may withhold a proportionate share of state monies from any public school that violates subsection A. The superintendent of public instruction may take reasonable and APPROPRIATE regulatory actions to enforce this subsection. Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to enlarge the authority of the superintendent of public instruction to regulate the CONTENT of curriculum in public schools.

D. A public school in this state, a university under the JURISDICTION of the arizona board of regents and a community college under the JURISDICTION of a community college DISTRICT in this state shall not allow organizations to operate on the CAMPUS of the school, UNIVERSITY or community college if the organization is based in whole or in part on race-based criteria.

E. For the purposes of this section, "public school" means any of the following:
1. A school district.
2. A school in a school district.
3. A charter school.
4. An accommodation school.
5. The arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind."

Pico's Comments

Frankly, we should welcome this bill because it outlines the world that Pearce and Kavanagh, with the blessings of Uberchancellors Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Kyle, would have in store for us.

This analysis shows that what is not said is actually as important as what is said.

SB 1108 in effect defines non-white persons as de facto threats to national security; proposes an unelected, partisan, ideologically-driven Council of Censors to determine the content of Arizona public education curriculum from first grade through college or university; legislates replacing the classic liberal arts curriculum that made America great with pure, ideologically-driven far-Right indoctrination; encourages far-Right forces to disrupt public education with bogus "bias" lawsuits at will; defines nonconformists and non-whites as agents of sedition and so subtly legitimizes the use of violence against students and educators who are perceived to violate The Plan; proposes to use your tax dollars to force Arizona teachers to become indoctrinators, not educators; and establishes vague and unspecified punishment for anybody who doesn't get in line.

Historically, in rightwing discourse, the word "race," unless modified by "white," is code for non-white races. Here, because the bill is attached to a state homeland security law instead of to a tax bill, say, or to a public school funding bill, we see plainly that its authors regard "race" as a national security issue: Non-white = threat to national security.

Militia types and other far-Right fascists always co-opt the American flag to symbolize their hate-based ideology. This is the statutory equivalent.(PS: Isn't it about time for us to be flying the American flag on our side of the street where it belongs?)

"A primary purpose of public education is to inculcate values of American citizenship."

By definition, there's only one primary (first, leading, main, most important) purpose of anything. The proper article isn't "a," it's "the." So for Pearce (and Bush, and Cheney, and all the rest of the GOP), we see a very telling confusion about the meanings of "indoctrinate" and "educate."

I grant that one purpose of education is to socialize each generation with the norms of its culture. But education and socialization are not the same thing. If they were, we could scrap our entire school system and save gazillions. Our kids could be indoctrinated in a select few mantras by age 5 without ever leaving the house. Perhaps that's the plan.

Education, which also differs from training, is about critical thinking skills. These cannot be taught without exposing students broadly to conflicting ideas, good 'uns and bad 'uns, and debating them.

Measures like this actually imply that the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are too fragile to withstand alternatives. Oh. Er. Oops. Silly me. When they say "the values of American citizenship," I thought they meant LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. FREEDOM OF SPEECH. That kind of thing.

Clearly they have something else in mind, so let's ask them: What, precisely, are "the values of American citizenship and where are they found?" What, exactly, sets "American citizenship" apart from, say, "Canadian citizenship" if not the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights"?

This should be fascinating. If the anwer is anything other than our founding documents, the bill's backers will have to tell us what it is and when we ratified it. If the answer is our founding documents, they'll have to explain why they propose to nullify large chunks of our guaranteed freedoms.

This bill shows between its lines that people like Pearce in fact despise the founding documents and actually do propose to nullify large chunks of our guaranteed freedoms. As American neo-fascist racists, they have no alternative. America, by origin and law, is a classic liberal culture that, by design, is meant always to stand for liberty and justice for all. This is the meaning of American patriotism. But because that isn't good news for white supremacist American neo-fascists, these sacred founding principles really must be put squarely in their gun sights along with people of color.

In truth, small-minded people fear your liberty. If the last seven years under far-Right GOP rule haven't taught Americans that much, we really are on the verge of losing everything.

Public tax dollars should not be used to promote political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values as truth when such values are in conflict with the values of American citizenship and the teachings of western CIVILIZATION.

But according to this bill, they can and must be used to promote far-Right ideology and to fund an unelected Council of Censors to decide which is which. Well, isn't that special. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition. Such an irony!

All the obvious questions--So, we can't excoriate Enron? Which teachings of "Western civilization"? When does "Western civilization" begin? What cultures does it encompass? Is it English-speaking only? Who decides? Based on what qualifications, please?--all these are moot. This bill is "need to know." If the bill's sponsors know the answers, you don't need to know them.

Fortunately, the bill is so flagrantly unconstitutional that, at least for now, it can't stand. Meanwhile, a word to the wise is sufficient: The whole point is that it isn't merely unconstitutional. It's anti-constitutional.

The rest of the measure--the parts about what may be taught and who may assemble--don't just go to the heart of our constitutional liberties. Again, that's the point. These sections also subtly encourage nuisance lawsuits against courses and instructors perceived as violating far-Right ideological mandates.

We know that all across the country, rightwing financed interests have challenged specific courses and individual instructors as promoting a "liberal" bias when, in fact, they are actually teaching solid constitutional values. Here, Pearce et al. are providing the legal underpinnings for those interests to make war on traditional constitutional values in Arizona courts using your tax dollars. (Do you begin to see why Bush has seeded the US Court of Appeals with far-Right judges?)

Finally, SB 1108 encourages violence against non-white persons because it links "race" explicitly to national security, and defines "race-based" assemblies, multicultural content, and dissent as sedition.

Bottom line: For Pearce and the Uberchancellors--Bush, Cheney, Alito, Kyle, McCain, and the rest--the idea is that, for classic constitutional liberals and people of color, it's going to be a short walk from ASU or Rio Salado Community College to your friendly local detention center. For Pearce, McCain, Bush, and the rest, it's a win-win. After all, prison privatization is just a permanent employment plan and stream of cash for Republican cronies, and the state pays by the head.

That would be your head and mine.

Call your state legislator. Now.

PS: Grab an American flag and start showing Americans what "patriotism" really means.