GOP Senators Call Judicial Filibuster Unconstitutional

14 GOP Senators Slam Senate GOP’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Filibuster*

By Ian Millhiser  on Dec 7, 2011 at 11:00 am
“This article was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Discuss Their Understanding Of The Constitution

Yesterday, Senate Republicans voted nearly unanimously to block Caitlan Halligan’s nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) broke party linesto join the 54-45 vote to allow Halligan to move forward — leaving Halligan six votes short of what she needed to break the GOP filibuster.

 

The Senate GOP’s decision to filibuster Halligan earned wide rebukes from Senate Republicans*, many of whom slammed this decision to filibuster a judicial nominee as unconstitutional:

• Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I  might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.”
• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA):“Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an   up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution   requires it.”
• Tom Coburn (R-OK): “If you look at the Constitution, it says the president is to nominate  these people, and the Senate is to advise and consent.  That means you  got to have a vote if they come out of committee.  And that happened for  200 years.”
• John Cornyn (R-TX): “We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I  believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this  unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his  judicial nominations.
• Mike Crapo (R-ID): “Until this Congress, not one of the President’s nominees has been  successfully filibustered in the Senate of the United States because of  the understanding of the fact that the Constitution gives the President  the right to a vote.”
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I  think filibustering judges will destroy the judiciary over time. I think  it’s unconstitutional”
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of  judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the  Democrats were going to filibuster.”
• Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX): “[T]he Constitution envisions a 51-vote  majority for judgeships…. [Filibustering judges] amend[s] the  Constitution without going through the proper processes…. We have a  majority rule that is the tradition of the Senate with judges. It is the  constitutional requirement.”
• Jon Kyl (R-AZ): “The  President was elected fair and square. He has the right to submit judicial  nominees and it is the Senate’s obligation under the Constitution to act  on those nominees.”
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The Constitution of the United States is at stake.  Article II, Section 2  clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates  judges.  The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent.  But my  Democratic colleagues want to change the rules.  They want to  reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for  confirmation.”
• Jeff Sessions (R- AL): “[The Constitution] says the Senate shall advise and consent on treaties by a  two-thirds vote, and simply ‘shall advise and consent’ on  nominations…. I think there is no doubt the Founders understood that to  mean … confirmation of a judicial nomination requires only a simple  majority vote.”
• Richard Shelby (R-AL):“Why not  allow the President to do his job of selecting judicial nominees and let us do  our job in confirming or denying them? Principles of fairness call for it and the Constitution requires it.”
• John Thune (SD): Filibustering judicial nominees “is contrary to our Constitution ….  It was the Founders’ intention that the Senate dispose of them with a simple majority vote.”

*All quotes are taken from when George W. Bush was president. But, of course, that doesn’t matter because — in the words of Cornyn — “we need to treat all nominees exactly the same, regardless of whether they’re nominated by a Democrat or a Republican president.”**

**Cornyn’s statement was also made when George W. Bush was president.

Budgetmaster “P” Spinning the Tables

Striking Workers, Fischer Body Plant; Flint, MI, 1937

 Paul Ryan’s budget has solicited a lot of adjectives. From ”sweet sounding,” (a Democratic Congress member referring to its lure) to “bold, “honest,” (American Thinker), “brave” (a CNNOpinion writer), “wise,” “refreshing.” (Reason.com)

Others made different word choices:  “shameful,” “false,” and “misleading” (AFGE President John Gage), “bogus.” (Hartford Advocate).

But there are embedded beliefs beneath the spin. These beliefs are more important than the facts, which as Winston Churchill noted, we stumble over, but keep going.

One commenter writes to express his view and shares a widely held belief:

“it is way past time for people to accept responsibility for their own actions or inactions – PERIOD! If you can’t afford to support children, don’t have them. If you fail to plan for old age, why should anyone else have the responsibility to support you? Most of us humans have a heart and don’t mind helping people when something goes wrong in their lives (especially for the old and those who are disabled), but for the leeches of society, to expect someone else to always pay their way is NOT THEIR RIGHT!!

And for one political party to place all the blame on the other is not right either. We the people are to blame because we fell asleep and let corruption overtake our elected leaders, voting like it was a popularity contest and not for what was in the best interest of our Great Country. We the people, or most of us, have now woken up and realize that things have to change. Let’s stop the name calling and get to work. But for the leeches of society – be aware, things are going to change and your free ride is just about over!”

Others commenters echo the theme:

• Republican plan: fix the program save the country. Democratic plan: Save the program, destroy the country. What to do, what to do….
• As opposed to the Dems’ plan, which will increase spending and taxes until everyone is needy, unemployed and starving?

Mississippi Cotton Hoe Workers, 1937

What some see as a “free ride,” others see as the cruel knife of power which places profit over human welfare.

A commenter from Slate says:

They should call the Ryan Plan – the Hottub time machine plan, or the Pathway to Poverty. Instead of moving us in the direction of creating a sustainable long-term plan that covers everyone. It takes us back to those wonderful days of yesteryear, when the elderly died on the streets – unseen, unheard.

Saying that the seniors will now have to play in the world where we all find ourselves misses the point. The current system is broken and costs too much for what we are getting because of health insurance industry, doctors, the AMA and the big pharma. His plan does nothing to bend the cost curve – unfetter capitalism seems to be his only answer.

Another comment notes: I don’t see how it’s “brave” to put forward a deficit reduction plan that asks absolutely nothing from the most well-off. Are we for shared sacrifice, or are we not?

Notice that very little of the discussion is about the numbers. It’s about the philosophy and the budget’s back story, the tale of two Americas, a shared sense of fairness, and the discussion is more blame than solution. It’s also a lot of jockeying for position and mega-attempts to influence the public.

To see how it all works, let’s jump directions and turn east (west?), where Japan is still battling for the control and shutdown of its nuclear powered reactors.

I can say it’s a beautiful day, and ignore the Japanese reactors leaking radiation into the oceans. I can say the amounts are too small to be concerned; I can say we should shut all nuclear plants. I can say we should immediately begin drilling for oil; I can talk about how deadly strontium is; I can begin buying and selling iodine (an anecdote for low level radiation doses).

In other words, I can ignore it, put my head in the sand, deny anything’s wrong. I can review data and shorten or lengthen the time period under review. I can cherry pick details, selectively focusing on fears. I can link one event to  another, as causes for effect. I can profit from a mistake.

I can blame the government and the company for not having an emergency plan. I can predict deaths in generations to come. I can argue it’s too expensive and its effects are exaggerated. I can demand the site be sealed with a billion tons of concrete now.

In other words, I can blame somebody and cause nightmares about the future. I can apply fiscal discipline and distort the problem. I can urge drastic action now.

Does any of this “fix” the problem, or examine the consequences of the fix?

Mother and Children, Georgia Sharecroppers, 1936.

Stepping away from the budget, one more time, I want to look at behavior.

Conservatives have several important ideals that guide their political steps.

One is that ideals are more important than actions. Who thinks that those conservatives who pledged to cut the federal budget took even one minute to see what it would take or what’s affected? Who remembers that they were silent when Bush ran up the debt and ran down the economy. But they are not duplicitous. They are simply practicing what they believe: ideals are more important than action.

The historical example is the fierce loyalty Southern conservatives hung on slavery. Sermon and speech were full of eloquent ideas about the pillars of history, foundations of civilization, and tenets of religion that ordered a world to so cruelly regulate those who lives were bought and sold. The ideals supporting this cruelty were ennobled. (In a rich irony, the safety net–food, lodging, and healthcare–was touted as the moral and honored burdens of noblesse oblige.) Real people didn’t count for much. (No, I’m not saying the Ryan budget returns slavery. I’m talking about the logic of illogical arguments. How high rhetoric can have low purposes. How words can mislead. How we act on words without worrying about the effects.)

The “look away” theory (in which words guide behavior, or separate the two) runs from Thomas Jefferson to John Boehner. Jefferson was willing to put principle and faith aside for the pleasure of raw passion, but it was outside of politics. Boehner is a tough guy admired for his aggression. His bad boy acts take their pleasure inside politics. (Addendum: Has anyone searched Haley Barbour’s distant black cousins–who also probably didn’t have birth certificates attesting to their parentage or citizenship? Come on, Mississippi genealogists, you know they are out there!)

Finally, there is a huge crowd out there who don’t care what anybody thinks. They are set in their ways. These are the birthers who refuse to budge. But does anyone think that is all they think? Is that their sole, shared belief? The only thing on which they agree?

Don’t you think they believe what John Boehner does:

John Boehner (Rolling Stone magazine interview, February, 2011):
“Can’t pay your student loan? Face it your parents were lazy and you couldn’t afford college. The world needs ditch diggers and you were born into a family of them. Can’t pay your mortgage? Your house was too expensive and you couldn’t afford it. Your taxes going up too much? That’s what you get for electing a democrat president. Never had a job after you got a degree? You learned nothing in school and you’re lazy. I didn’t get to be a congressman by watching jersey shore or playing xbox.

You think there’s no jobs for you? There used to be. There was when I was your age. You don’t have free time because you have to work all days of the week for 16 hours a day and you don’t get paid hourly? Thank the unions. They made decent jobs so out of price range of the average American company that they can’t hire anymore people and the works’ gotta get done. These unions… I tell you they won’t be happy till no one in America has a job.

And health care? Don’t get me started on health care- doctors study their entire lives and they barely make enough to live and yet Obama, who had his entire life handed to him on a silver plate wants to cut their pay. You know that’s gonna do? Increase costs–the average persons going to have to work even harder just to see a doctor.”

“It’s not going to happen in the US. The kids hereare too fat, too lazy, too addicted to TV, fast food, cheap credit, and facebook. I have news for you–there are plenty of jobs out there–the unemployed don’t want them. [my emphasis, /wr] Today’s college student feels entitled to make at least $24 right after college. When they find out they can collect unemployment they would rather do that. You know The CATO institute did a study–and but these kids today–that’s all they’ve been doing their entirelives. I’m not worried for this country–there are a few of them who actually want to work, take Mark Zucker [sic]. You don’t build a site like facebook out of thin air–it takes talent and hard work. I went to a community college and all I saw were people sitting in front of computers typing away, their eyes were fixed. Probably just facebooking away.”

If you do agree with John Boehner’s vision, his doctrine of the Manifest Destiny of the Poor, nothing anybody will say will change your support for Paul Ryan’s budget. House Whip Eric Cantor does. He said on Chris Matthews’ show, “we have a safety net in this country for people who frankly don’t really need one.”

Sisters at Meal Time; Wagoner County, OK, 1939.

I agree that Americans have lost their aspirational quality, and their praise for the common good, for compassion and community and rooting for each other’s success. It is tied to a backlash also exhibited in the years soon after the civil war. It is a lost of legacy, a lost of place and purpose. For those who feel the unbearable loss, their comfort is now fear. Stripped of their most familiar assurances, they want neither contrition or forbearance. Charleston set itself on fire, determined to burn itself to ruins the day the Union was handed civil authority. “Ruins, ruins,” the people chanted. Only destruction would make concrete their cause.

Incidentally, no state pays unemployment to recent, unemployed graduates. Obama as President has cut taxes for 95% of working families. And I know it’s anecdotal, but my favorite local coffee shop is staffed with recent graduates working for under $10 an hour, without benefits.  My daughter worked her way through college in the food commons, raising to area manager and learned how to run specials and fix yogurt machines. And unions insured the wages for families to eat and pay for meals and drinks at Andy’s Cafe, Boehner’s family Ohio restaurant.

War Fronts

(Click title above to view in separate web page; click to enlarge photos. If I’ve missed yr war/genocide/bombing/disaster/grudge/peave/relief/humanitarian/freedom effort; add it to the comments.)

The wars are on. The wars have grabbed the globe’s attention. We are fighting in the name of peace–even as we argue and fight about war and peace. Daily, we are opening new fronts, expanding the good fight around the globe.

We are fighting to save Japan from nuclear and natural disaster and we are fighting to bring freedom the Arab countries in Asia minor and North Africa. We are continuing efforts to help Haiti and New Zealand, also victims of devastating earthquakes.

Did you know the central US has recently been rocked by more than 1100 earthquakes in just the last six months, especially along the Mississippi (Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri. Arkansas) and in Oklahoma?

This year, 2011, is the anniversary of the New Madrid earthquakes, the largest series ever to hit the eastern US. Named for the territorial town in Missouri that was the epicenter, the quakes covered 9x more territory than the 1903 San Francisco earthquake.

The earthquake helped convict two of Thomas Jefferson’s nephews (who were also nephews of Merriwhether Lewis) of the axe murder of a slave named George. So powerful was the initial quake it woke sleepers up in Norfolk, VA and cracked sidewalks in DC.

The 1886 earthquake that struck Charleston (SC) at 9: 50 pm, August 31 was the second most powerful, felt as far south as Cuba. It left more than 30,000 homeless, sleeping outdoors in the public parks.

Stories say the day before the earthquake hit, in Magnolia Cemetery, the city’s largest and most prominent, all of the resting souls rose up, overturning memorials and tombstones, and singing a loud, robust anthem, gathered in ranks and marched down the road to entrance, returning to their city homes to shield their families from harm. In Summerville, my home, an elderly black man appeared to commuting workers arriving in the evening at the train depot to warn them of the impending harm. He was never seen again.

1989 California earthquake stories include dead car radios, dead traffic lights, the feeling of being rear ended, and condemned apartments, and non-working ATMs.

The biggest jolt of the week was Barack’s almost blasé announcement on the way to the airport that the US had joined a coalition of European countries that intended to defend Libyan civilians by imposing a military no-fly, no advance zone over the country’s northern half, the site of intense fighting between civilian forces and regime supporters. Minutes after the announcement, Barack left for Brasil.

Not to be outdone, SC governor Nikki Haley, the Indian rani (princess) who only appoints like-minded people to state positions at higher-than-previous salaries, with brainstorming sessions over a beer in local bars, has announced she is visiting India in the fall, continuing SC’s tradition of overseas trips to reconnect and seek new opportunities. In fact, states governors have led over 500 trade missions since 2009. The MA governor’s recent mission to Europe coincided with the loss of 1100 jobs in the state, and last fall, the WA governor sent a mission to Viet Nam, seeking sustainable peace and prosperity. TX governor Rick Perry’s June 2010 12-day Asian mission cost $130,000 and got the state “great exposure.”

Brasil is the only country in the Americas that has expanded its middle class. Adding 41 million people to its ranks since 2003; 91 million Brasilians, 49.2 percent of the country’s population, receive 46 percent of the country’s national income. Brasil now has the world’s eighth largest economy.

Barack’s greeting by the Brasilian president caused a jolt for me. President Dilma Rouseff, who is the first woman to head Brasil’s democracy, looks—well, black. Her father was a immigrant from Bulgaria, her mother a stunning Brasilian beauty who taught school.  Ms. Rouseff was a radical student, a socialist once imprisoned for her politics, a knowledgeable economist, and served in the previous government as the President’s chief of staff.

Brasil is home to the largest community of Japanese and descendants outside of Japan itself. Japanese immigration began in 1902 and continues. Rio, visited by the President, has an estimated 15,000 people in its Japanese community, the largest in Brasil who are called nipo-brasilerios in Portuguese. Approximately 260,000 Brasilians live in Japan, none reported dead. Brasil only generated 3 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, although in Rio State, nuclear plants supply 50 percent of power; both the government and the power companies issued reports detailing why, despite evacuation being difficult, Brasil has little danger of tsunamis or power plant melt-downs.

Presidents Rousseff and Fernandez; Brasil & Argentina

Intellectual fights are taking place along many global fronts with reasons flying like bullets in support of many views. Britain is pro and con. Turkey is cautious, but there is citizen support for its participation and its government is now endorsing and supporting the NATO role. (Turkey is now in, and playing a leading role. /wr) Asian countries are worried but glad not to be directly involved. Africa wonders why the Ivory Coast and the Congo, countries with many civilians dying in political violence, are not a part of the discussion or actions to save civilian lives from political butchers. Africa feels the old inquity and is disturbed.

As the lists of contrasts grows–Gabon, Gaza, the American inner city–the philosophies of Ghandi and King, of Jesus and Lao Tze, of the great wisdom and religious traditions are being defaulted. The best way to bring to the world’s attention to the cause and needs of others for safety, prosperity, and dreams is to tell the story you want heard without attacking others. Yet social media is full of slams.

Americans are taking shortcuts in rushing to judge Obama’s actions, many calling the bombing and missile sorties a “war.”  Comparisons to the past are all over the place, from Viet Nam to Iran, even Korea and World War II. Obama is being lumped with Bush and there is fierce suspicion of his motives and his rationale is suspect. Some elected officials and commentariat are insisting that the Commander-in-Chief and the chain of command be forced to ask permission before engaging in limited strikes. Many are overlooking the difference between the fact that Congress declares war but does not have to approve all military actions ordered by the President. All America wonders how and when these strikes will end.

The titantic struggles over American policy really masks the class warfare in the US as the GOP proposes budget cuts that directly shrink the middle class and also cut their rights. Large and small, Republicans are using fears as a smoke screen to strike back at long held middle class gains, taking away women’s rights, labor and bargaining rights, healthcare, school lunch, as too expensive, sacrificing the future and kneecaping the grandchildren who will left behind.

But two things to note: whether Obama’s position is agreed with or not–and there are round condemnations–and whether the risks are great, in his own immutable fashion, he has a lot of courage to see it through. Second, what is the protection of freedom to some is simply selfishness and irresponsibility to others. And what is heroic to some to others is dumb.

The fronts expose our suscipions, frights of imagination, and fears. Are genocide, cartel maurders, and tanker highjackings in the same class of violence? How large does a threat have to be to trigger protection from outside nations? Is a hidden agenda at play? Are there differences in values and policies now and 40 years ago when Cambodia experienced its massacres?

In the US, the war goes on against the working and middle class.

The goals: cut income, benefits, safety net protections; increase social, economic and health risks, increase costs, profits, and rip offs. On multiple fronts, American politician are green lighting going after the loose change of extortionist fees on bank cards and are hard wired to grab the $2.6 trillion trust fund of social security, which won’t run out until another 27 years, claiming budget needs to pillage the American dream. The House has banned NPR programming from recieving federal funds, an abridgement of free speech.

It’s a good time to recall the famous stratagem: truth is the first causality of war, as we listen to the dead words of politicians elected by votes but purchased by money who are willing to kill the Dream while claiming its casualty is for a good cause.

The war is on. Unfortunately, it’s not only half way around the world. It’s at home. The working class is being routed from the field. And no one is coming to help. Barack is facing a barrage of criticism for not saying, “may I” to Congress, for once acting Presidential with Clinton pushing and Susan Rice’s writing skills, faces a frantic press and its fire storm of speculation, from Chile.

Danish F-16 fighter

In bleak times, laughter helps sometimes. One of the best civil war stories is of a Pennsylvanian women living near Gettysburg who was wounded by a minnie ball that had traveled through a Union soldier. Two years later, she wedded the soldier. She had given birth to a child, a year old when they married, that looked exactly like her husband.

2

That said, all wars are not sliding zones for mission creep. Mission creep is really the deployment and use of the military as a political strategy—the mission creep actually occurs before the war and is heavily implied and easily inferred, despite misleading promises. The US did so in Iran, continues to in Afghanistan. The US initiated similar action in Haiti and Somali under Bush41. The difficulty occurs in trying to achieve political objectives and stability through the use of force–which actually undercuts the stability it is trying to re-enforce.

Libya is different for two reasons. First, there is no grand design to bring democracy or engage in state-building on the part of US or any of the nations supporting the UN resolution.

Secondly, the UN resolution is a historic act of diplomacy. It authorizes the use of necessary military action to preserve civilian lives. For the first time, it authorizes military intervention to prevent internal genocide, something not done in many of the African civil wars, where civilian death tolls reached the hundreds of thousands. Earlier, the Muslim majority in Bosnia met the same fate.

The new resolution marks a new principle: that the sanctity of the state does not allow for state leaders to bring in mercenaries to wantonly slaughter civilian populations to maintain power or secure private wealth, while blaming others and pretending to maintain order. How rich is the irony that Quadifi announces he is being threatened by the same terrorist group that plagues the US and Europe; yet he never cites why he is the target of pursuit. The UN resolution is a “people first” policy of peace and dignity that tells the world nations will use force to protect innocent brothers and sisters, and leaders can not kill with impunity and hide behind lies.

Refugees, guest workers and citizens fleeing the Libyan fighting may become more of a long term problem than Islamic fronts. The UN reports more than 3,000 people a day crossing Libyan borders in search of safety.

The willingness of some to reduce geo-complexity to simple causes is surprising. The willingness of the West to assist has as much to do with Lockerbie, European political calculations, disdain for Quaddifi, the pull of democratic movements, the willingness to substitute Quaddifi as a proxy for Yemen and other Emirates as it does about “oil.”

Those who cite “oil” overlook the relationships. To preserve supply and cheap prices, countries prop up dictators, not topple them. Even if toppled, the supply is disrupted. Countries can’t colonialize the oil fields. Private multi-nationals will  demand higher prices.

But the critics, even as they over-simply and ignore the obvious difficulties, have the echo right: in the hot passions of war is often the cold hunger of greed.

To cite oil as a cause is to propose a one-note, blinders-on world view.

This is a war well worth fighting. I, for one, don’t see the mission creep, except in the American agenda, at home. One wishes the war mission would creep toward peace. For those who fight for peace, remember the best weapon is mercy. Mercy’s greatest power is to embrace virtue without bitterness or condemnation. But mercy can not endorse or be a part of the sin.

Fixing Stupid: Newt, Orange County, Voters Fears

 
Klan Rally

There’s a kind of disfunctionalism that slips off into fantasy. Andy Griffith reprised such a character role in the 1957 movie, “A Face in the Crowd,” directed by Elia Kazan. The movie pointed out the great tragedy of its character’s psychic flaw: the greater the denial and contradictions, the more the character invests in its beliefs. In other words, the greater the falsehood the more the person believes it to be true.

Does this describe Newt? It has a remarkable similarity to his willingness and ability to knit whole cloth about his personal life, his relations with women in and outside of marriage, his role as a statesman, his 1997 censure by the House while he served as Speaker, and his hours spent perfecting his television delivery in after hours speeches televised on CSPAN, with no one in the gallery, to a small viewing audience at home.

But before we delude ourselves and become victims of our own smugness, the real question is why the Republican party leadership is even willing to entertain the idea of Newt running for president. Is he seen as a viable contender? Is the party practicing a form of democracy they don’t apply to legislation – embracing and encouraging all views? Is he a stalking horse proxy? If so, for who and what?

What worries me is even the idea of Newt’s candidacy makes no sense. What am I missing? Or is Newt going to play the grumpy old battle tested, politically incorrect sergeant, leading the legions while knowing his time is done?

What I do know, is that his recent extreme statements about Obama’s raison d’etre (Kenyan anti-colonialism), shows the old, familiar pattern of denial and delusion has not died. Take into account Newt’s cold, cruel treatment and unfeeling indifference toward the women in his life in the most intimate of private relationships, his blatant disregard of House rules as its leader, his eagerness to deploy defamatory labels, his desire to link patriotism to his philandering, and these sorry acts have only increased my loathing of the public and private man. A man who wraps his shortcomings and sins in the flag does not deserve to be President.

2: Why Do I Vote My Pain?

It is the law of all wise faith systems that engaging evil only multiples it, sometimes under the veil of doing good. The irony of this dialectic is the conspiracies being described can never be defeated. Like Topsy, they just “grew.” And grow until everyone outside of the immediate community of believers is a danger and a threat and our helplessness finds its resolution in blame and persecution.

Once it was little green men who harvested fertile human eggs. Before it was civil rights protesters backed by communist cells. It was women whose vote would lead to petticoat rule. Now the harbringers who make good fees sprout conpiracies about terrorists connected to organizations with names that most Americans can’t pronounce who spend their waking moments planning America’s end. This idea is accepted without critical thinking because it feels good. Fear is comfort; assurance, prima facie proof.

 
Orange County, CA Anti-Muslim Protest

The most embarassing recent act was the Yourba Linda, California rally where a large crowd of numbering hundreds jeered at American Muslims attending a fundraising dinner for a women’s shelter to “Go Home” and chanted “No Sharia Law.” This in Orange County, CA. An elected official proudly proclaimed that the the meeting facility held “evil.” Her impassioned speech offered no facts or incidents, only putting forth fears.

What happened to the time that you could shake someone’s hand, look them in the eye, and discuss ideas openly? What happened to the trust among nieghbors that was a unique quality of American community life? What happened to celebrating the different yet sincere ways that people celebrate their faith?

Recently a Methodist minister and myself attended a local health fair sponsored by Charleston’s largest mosque. The Iman, who once guided a mosque near Bob Jones University, graciously spent 45 minutes meeting with us, although we arrived unscheduled and our request was impromptu. We were greeted pleasantly. But most important that was a tangible spirit of peace and service among those from the thirty nations the mosque served. We meet the prayer crier who was from Ghana. We meet others who we did not know. We came away enriched and with a comfort not based on fear. I urge others to restore community trust by building spoken bridges rather than throwing verbal bricks. Than our differences of faith will remind us of how rich is the tapestry of life.

3: Pass This and Take This!

 

The business and political leadership who make unique use of blame to exploit consumers and mortgage holders are now going after ordinary Americans with a vengeance that exceeds the economic gain. This willingness to be reckless to the point of putting families in the streets and the attacks on those who would stop it is a dress rehearsal for expanding their absolute seizure of power and wealth in all economic sectors. Social Security and the environment are high on the hit list.

Defeating wage earners, by gaming the family mortgage or banning the unions that protect their wages and working conditions, opens the door to consolidating power on a scale associated with countries whose leaders, ironically, are now being ousted. But in America, Republican political leaders are leveraging democracy to govern by mob and throne. (Witness the Republican amendments to the budget bill (the mob) and the bills that give governors (the throne) absolute decision and regulatory authority without oversight or legislative checks.

Why are the voters permitting this, and why do these immoral and illegal acts gain popular support?

The Canon’s sermon for Lent, webcast from Washington’s National Cathedral, offered an insight into the Republican position, especially what galvanizes its voters. The sermon pointed out how those who bring good news are often accused of bringing bad news. Because the good news depends on bad things no one wants to own.

 
National Cathedral Pulpit, Washington, DC

Often, we demonize Republicans, and by their actions, many of the party’s leaders richly earn their dressing down. But often, our opinions come after the fact. No Democratic strategist anticipated the governor’s actions in Wisconsin—and Ohio—or education cuts in Texas, or the attempts to ban and restrict public employee unions in the other states that have introduced their version of union-killing bills. Or the bankers stealing homes by passive duplicity. Democratic defense is often a step slow. (The canon spoke about living a step ahead.)

Republican voters do precisely the opposite: they often make up their minds before the fact. (The also canon addressed the difficulties of being locked in the past.) Stubbornly entrenched, Republican voters are motivated by concerns they see as legitimate, and central to their actions is fear. Fear of the country collapsing, fear of their rights being denied (to guns, to legitimacy, to being validated), of their pockets being squeezed, except they shift blame based on foregone conclusions rather than facts. They simply don’t trust those who don’t share their fears.

It is important not to make Republican voters into straw figures that fit a litany of negatives, but to look past the surface and see behind their bravura to their deep fears. These fears tilt truth just enough to ruin its meaning completely.

You can’t win these Republican voters over with the promise of good news or the promotion of facts. They reject every promise if it doesn’t involve blame. So when House and Senate Republican shout of extortion they are telling Republican voters just the subliminal code words they want to hear.

Means Testing Civility

Civil War Soldiers Playing Cards

Our moral imagination has loss its center, that place where the virtues of personal character, contributions to the common good, and a careful reading of experience and logic are means tested in action. What has replaced charity and hope as guiding, glorifying principles of the American milieu is power and the power to distort.

The means test for this conclusion is based on observed inconsistencies, most recently seen in the Republican controlled House. The House corrected a Constitutional faux pas of unsworn members participating in official House actions by rushing through a bill with only four minutes of debate. The Speaker insists the CBO is wrong and engaged in double counting, when it is the Republicans own bill that is being used for estimating an additional $230 billion in deficits if healthcare reform is repealed. The Speaker, with a “schedule conflict,” winds up at a Washington reception when the nation’s heart was collectively in Tucson. (His staff reports he left early.)

Three times this week, politics has danced around the media. Yet media rhetoric still has the same old fallacies, the complacent lack of accuracy and facts, the cheap shots that stifle alternatives and substitute for insights.

The first dance occurred when two senior House members, one the Chair of the Rules committee, raised their hands before a video monitor to be sworn in and later a Republican member from the floor tried to justify that gesture od standing before a as meeting the criteria for being officially sworn in. The second, when the Speaker left the reception before the President’s televised speech; he didn’t want to get caught by a camera at an inopportune video moment. The third dance, a solo, was the eight minute teleprompted video of Ms. Palin. (You could see its reflection in her glasses.) In the video, Sarah Palin uses a phrase in her defense historically used to incite violence against the religious group to which the recovering Congresswoman belongs.

Media is driving and blocking the conversations about what we share in common, the alternative ways to approach our progress, the details of fixing what’s broken.

But the clashing, opposite views have much that is the same. This is not cynical, but a deep look at underlying processes with the system. Nice or naughty, positions on both sides have been sanitized of examples, supporting detail, model building, and a weighing of pros and cons. Both sides have parsed and pared down to sound-bites and opinions that ring with catch phrases. Both sides hide the technical details of legislation in committee and staff work, making it difficult for the public to know what’s really in a bill. And its a cliche, but both sides are far too driven by money and PR campaigns and spin and blame shifting.

There’s an old Southern adage that liars steal and my mind still rings with that $8 billion we shrunk-wrapped and shipped to Iran and the money sent to Afganistan that ends up in enemy hands. While the detested Chinese build joint infra-structure projects around the world and export their workers, we funnel money to governments and fail to benefit from it being “recycled.”

Lucy Parsons, Texas born in 1853, a slave, married to a Confederate soldier, a stalwart of the Labor Movement in Chicago, offers quotes about government that won’t be heard on Fox or MSNBC, but are memorable in their guidance: “never be deceived that the rich will let you vote away their wealth” and “governments never lead, they follow progress.”

This week, especially, we are well served to remember the greatest progressive social movement in our history occurred through non-violence, and remained so, despite brutal beatings (one of which left House member John Lewis slightly impaired), lynchings, senseless murder (in Haley Barbour’s Mississippi 15 year old Emmett Till had a 75 pound cotton scale tied around his neck to sink his beaten body), cattle prods, fire hoses, and police dogs. Yet our institutional memory is so devalued that no one in the White House of an African-American President knew the civil rights legacy of Shirley Sherrod and her husband Charles, or knew that her father had been murdered and no one convicted of the crime.

Until we recognize and learn from our history, we are condemned to restore the old insanity. Decisions have lost their principles, and if we continue to allow the pursuit of power through money and deceit, our comfort will come from the wrong means and will bring about bad ends. Right now, we would do well to remember unexpected dangers lay in freedom.

National Genocide

African-American Civil War Soldiers Burying the Battlefield Dead, Library of Congress.

Closer to home, the bell has been rung: the $230 billion cost of analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday that Speaker Boehmer discussed and questioned and claimed represented double counting was based on the health care repeal bill that House Republicans introduced on Wednesday!

The deaths of two persons needing transplants in Arizona is the first step toward cost rationing that will lead to national genocide. The CBO estimates, according to the NYTimes, 54 million people will be uninsured by 2019.

It all seems surreal. Arizona, according to BNET, burned through $2.8 billion of federal stimulus money while its politicians blamed the Democrats and Obama for the deficit and lack of jobs. The state even funded a study of algae as an alternative source of fuel. Now, the state, by default, has established ipso facto Republican death panels for patients with critical needs. Not a word about real care for Americans with critical needs from the new House leadership or Republicans in the Senate as members of its own party say no to those whose lives could be saved. WE are a country without virtue, killing itself. These are dark, tragic days for America. This is not what the people voted for. It is not our shining hour.

Winning the Closed Shop

A young woman who is a very good friend of mine was actually in Anchorage, establishing Obama’s campaign office when suddenly Palin was nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate. She was pulled, the office closed, and was reassigned to Cincinnati, OH which went for Barack.

Apparently, the Democrats have still closed shop in Alaska. The 50 state strategy so effective in winning the Presidential nomination for Barack is being abandoned at a time when its best prospects are bright. Why? Why sleep through a real opportunity to pick up a seat, when as Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted, “the GOP has become a circular firing squad.”

And while Republicans are aiming at themselves – initiating in-house those second amendment remedies so cherished – it is as though the Democrats have discovered fire and know it has important uses, but can’t quite figure out what to do with it yet. Number one is to pass the torch: deploy resources in every state where victory is possible, drawing lessons from the election of Scott Brown to what was once a safe Democratic seat, and lessons from the opposition, using the wide defeats of Rick Lazio and Mike Castle as poster children.

Number Two is let everyone see the benefits of the light: saving social security, expanding healthcare, perserving middle class tax cuts are pretty big deals. So is re-building infra-structure to improve our global economic position. Let the light of the goals achieved and the benefits added and the resources saved and shored up shine – and remind the voters exactly who threatens them with darkness. Make the differences as clear as night and day.

Number Three: Light the path to the future. Jobs are priority number one for the next two years. Who do you want to carry the torch? Expose the Republicans’ faulty analogy: the wealthy are not synonymous with small business. Quote Rep. Clyburn, “a man without a job doesn’t need a tax cut.” Make the deficit an investment in America’s future that will pay dividends to a generation of grandchildren.

Save Harry Reid; take Delaware, hold Arkansas, and win Alaska.  Fire in persons and policies is a powerful tool.

Texas Migrant Wife, 1938

Do No Good

Money has an important effect on politicians! Money infiltrates the process, scripts the message, catapults people across the stage. Directly and indirectly, money spins the wheel.

The real measure of the power of money in politics is hidden, buried within the outcomes. The depth of the ocean doesn’t reveal the power of the tides. The politicians voted in, no matter their platform or views, are bedazzled by it, be they right, left, center, or other. Money finances the noise that shapes the parameters of the debate. Money selects the superstars from among the winners.

There is so much money involved until “it” can afford to lose. That’s just part of the ledgermain. The throw away money convinces folk who should know better that maybe it’s not important.

Finally, if it weren’t important, why do office seekers spend so much of it to get elected? Why is it given and withheld? Why are the laws regulating its influence constantly schemed and bypassed? And why are the winners rewarded with it so lavishly?

Cease Digging!

On the governor’s shutting down the New Jersey tunnel project:
Bad move. Short-sighted. Cart before the horse.

Unembraceable You

History and America are filled with single minded women in hot pursuit of making a mark in the rites of politics and taking the reins of power in epochal times, the archetypes of the era’s innocent and evil, loopy and guile. Cleopatra whose soft spoken wiles betrayed a laser focus on co-opting an Empire and compromising its leaders; Queen Nzinga of Angola who played European states like Nero’s fiddle to protect enroachment upon her territory as Europe expanded Atlantic slavery; Marie Antoinette who applied free market theory to starving pleasants thinking it would solve her country’s recession, and who in upholding law and order went a step further than “second amendment remedies.” And Mary, Queen of Scots, who didn’t separate church and state; instead, focused on separating heads. (Jan Brewer seems to be channeling her!) All stepped up to the big time at a time when the times were troubled, in a season of rabid discontent.

Milwaukee’s Golda Meir was the first “Mama Grizzly,” and fiercely protected her lair against predators who lay claim against its establishment. The final open air ride of Benair Bhutto, whose death our foreign policy (or her widowed husband) seemed to have learned nothing from. Further examples.

This season brings an extended series of premieres to the national stage. Nikki Haley of South Carolina who wants to balance the state’s budget by taxing the groceries of poor people and the middle class touts her “true conservatism.” A Democrat, the All-America sounding Kesha Rogers, running for Tom DeLay’s old Congressional seat (“Without DeLay” was once her slogan) on a platform that includes impreaching Obama for supporting the goals of Britain’s colonialism (She and the Newt can debate splitting the difference over whose colonialism it really is.) These are candidates deserving of wider recognition, by pundit’s polls (geeks seeking higher ratings). They are entertaining, are fearless about their warts and faux pas, have views that chart new political courses – and have withstood direct challenges by their own parties. They, like the others, won the first round.

Do they deserve to lose? You bet’cha. While admiring that they resisted limiting their passion to facials and gossip, theirs is the politics of mud and pet phrases. Of less is more; of my own proud anti-achievements being the reason I will protect the right to achieve. Of answer the question for me that you just asked of me. Of don’t answer, don’t tell. Of hot anger being the season’s new flavor of political passion. Despite their early success and shifts of blame and repeated loud denials, history clearly shows that the curious enchantment of their charms falls flat in governing in crises or for progress. They are the unembraceable you.