Politics Archives - Page 19 of 31

Obama’s last two years as President

This Democratic President has fulfilled the GOP campaign promises.

Undoubtedly I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:
1. I don’t support all of Barack Obama’s actions as President. But:
2. When they just make up stuff, it’s counterproductive. Reportedly, Obama is going to dismantle the Marine Corps, which is so obviously false that it is amazing it gets any traction.

What I like about President Obama is that he recognizes income inequality is a problem, even though it’s often hard to do anything about it in this political environment. This belief is behind his support for the very modest increase in the minimum wage to $10.10, and his support for free community college for qualified students, which will – down the road – also help minimize student debt.

When he was down in the polls in the fall of 2014, there were great exaggerations about how bad his approval ratings were historically. Now that he’s beginning to get credit for the nation’s economic turnaround, FOX News and others are bashing the mainstream media with “getting ahead of themselves”. This satire piece is not far off.

But the evidence is clear that the country is already better off economically than the Republicans running in 2012 had promised to achieve by 2016. In other words, this Democratic President has fulfilled the GOP campaign promises.

Interestingly, the loss of the US Senate to the Republicans seems to have energized the President. For instance, he was very funny on the Colbert Report.

More substantively, he desires to open relations with Cuba. He still wants immigration reform, taking action just like his recent predecessors.

Uh, oh: Obama pardons turkey in stunning abuse of executive power.

I’m fascinated by his optimism that the nation is less racially divided today than when he took office six years ago. And he may be right. Perhaps his ascending to the highest office has merely picked at that scab of racism in America that has always been there. This would explain, for instance, Rudy Giuliani’s claim that Obama launched anti-police ‘propaganda’ over the last few months, which rates Four Pinocchios.

A religious writer and former Republican wrote last month about slow motion lynching of President Obama, which I recommend you read BEFORE dismissing it.

I do think this is true: “The president came to Washington thinking he could change Washington, make it better, unite it and the nation. He was wrong. As he ascended, the tone of political discourse descended, as much because of who he was as what he did.”

When the Secret Service arrested a man who threatened to behead President Obama, he was using the racist Tea Party rhetoric still all too common in this country. The President can’t even quote the Bible without criticism from FOX News.

Sometimes it takes Canadians. From 2013: America – He’s Your President for Goodness Sake! Much more recently: You have NO idea just how good you have it.

So I support President Obama, at least in relation to the Republicans, while still criticizing when appropriate. I do believe his heart is in the right place on some basic issues. In addition to what’s been mentioned, I think he is trying to break down gender stereotypes. Surely, he has refused to support DOMA and repealed DADT, two federal laws that discriminated against gay marriage.

It’ll be an interesting two years, and I would not be too quick to assume he’s going to be in “lame duck” mode any time soon.

December rambling: the Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment

The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin. Plus the Atheist 10 Commandments.

This story claims: If The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Forever. But probably not happening.

This being the second anniversary of the Newtown massacre this month, should Nancy and Adam Lanza be mourned? I’d say yes.

1944 murder conviction of 14-year-old vacated. His execution can’t be. I wrote about George Stinney HERE.

Pew Explains Why the Conservatives Live in Their Own “Reality”.

Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even If You Have Nothing to Hide). I agree, in theory, but I’m not sure, in practice.

Rethinking Immigration. We don’t understand “illegal”. We just think we do.

“Sustainable Keystone XL”.

Dollree Mapp, 1923-2014: ‘The Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment’.

The PR firm using “Strange Fruit” in its name. Oy.

Feds Indict Another Person For Teaching People How To Beat Polygraph Tests.

A friend of mine wrote: “Watch this video where a casino clamps down hard on a guy who is winning at blackjack by counting cards. I think there’s a very apt correlation between what happens here and what happens in real life any time you actually start to get ahead.”

When reporters value ‘justice’ over accuracy, journalism loses.

Ted Koppel: Fox News is Bad for America.

Why IS liberal Protestantism dying, anyway?

You’re Not What You Think You Are.

Evanier talks about an aspect of creative work (writing, drawing, etc.) that doesn’t get enough attention. It’s the part about making a living.

Why you’re so busy.

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott comes out as gay, which still matters as long as homophobia exists.

All of those end-of-the-year lists that come out well before the end of December:
What we searched for on Google. I swear I had NEVER heard of Flappy Bird.
TCM remembers movie actors who died in 2014
100 Notable Books of 2014.
74 Of The Most Amazing News Photos Of 2014, which ARE amazing
50 best albums of 2014; 60% of the artists I had not heard of, and only TWO of the albums, the ones by U2 and Leonard Cohen, I’ve actually heard, though the Springsteen is on the wish list
United State of Pop 2014 (Do What You Wanna Do). Arthur has linked to a bunch of these mashups.
*11 Hoaxes That Your Gullible Facebook Friends Fell For In 2014
And here’s a list of significant events each month of 2014, plus New Republic spotlights bad predictions that were made about the year now ending.

Facebook’s algorithmic cruelty.

The secret language of twins.

Spite thy neighbor, housing division. Also, The Long But Not the Short of It and The Immovable Ladder and Ye Olde Mispronunciation.

Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues at the wrong speed?

Fashion at the dawn of pop.

Mister Sister by Kate Pierson, formerly of the B-52s.

The James Bond Theme a cappella. And Ranking: James Bond Theme Songs From Worst to Best.

Inductions into the Grammy Hall of Fame. An eclectic bunch.

Christmas in her soul: Laura Nyro.

The Who’s Roger Daltrey: wedding singer.

Maya Angelou’s ‘Harlem Hopscotch’ Music Video.

The What colour is it? clock does a lovely job of showing the relationships between adjacent colors.

History of Franklin: 1st black Peanuts character” How a schoolteacher helped create the first black Peanuts comic strip character.

The Daughter liked this a LOT, and insisted I link to it: Who doesn’t love a good chain reaction?

Legendary Mad Magazine Illustrator Jack Davis Calls It Quits at 90: “I can still draw, but I just can’t draw like I used to.”

Here’s Everyone From the Epic ‘Colbert Report’ Finale. Never saw Andrew Young when I first viewed it.

If Dr. Seuss books were titled by their subtexts.

My failed attempt to draw the Nancy comic strip.

A Hanna-Barbera story, featuring Tex Avery.

Muppets: Thog (with whom I was unfamiliar), Uncle Deadly (who I DO remember), Vendaface (broad comedy), the very early Wilkins and Wontkins and Sam and Friends, the comedy stylings of Kermit and Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster takes direction, and Auld Lang ~~Swine~~Syne.

Mystery of creepy 1970s Sesame Street clip solved.

Artifacts Discovered Buried In Washington D.C. Suggest Humans Once Passed Laws There.

John Oliver speaks of the horror that is New Year’s Eve. Still, woman to ride Rose Bowl float 60 years after she was denied because her race.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

Interesting that both Arthur and Dustbury responded to my post about compact discs.

Dustbury on an analysis of decade-specific words in song titles listed in Billboard.

It appears that Arthur will meet his post per day goal.

Arthur, by request: terrorism in New Zealand and white privilege and police violence and dentists and New Zealand holidays and loss, and memes and the places he’s been in the US and Canada.

The torture report

Antonin Scalia believes in the ‘24’ Effect to rationalize torture.

While I’ve had the intention of writing about the disturbing report that the Senate Democrats recently released about the United States and torture, circumstances have not allowed that. So here’s a bunch of links, with brief observations:

From The Implications of the Torture Report by Mike Lofgren, Truthout:

The present writer will take as a given the veracity of its three main findings: that the United States engaged in practices both legally and commonly definable as torture; that the actionable intelligence these practices produced was negligible; and that the practices tainted the moral prestige of the United States government in a manner that damaged its foreign policy. These assertions may be taken as true both because of the abundant evidence presented in the report itself and because of the flailing and hysterical reaction by our country’s national security elites…

[Secretary of State] Kerry: “Lots of things going on in the world; not a good time for disclosure.” But when is there ever not a lot of things going on in the world?

That would be my general view as well.

Another fair representation of my position: 5 Things to Understand About the Torture Report from the Weekly Sift.

I’m particularly intrigued by the Truth and reconciliation section, which almost certainly will not happen because America is AWESOME! and we’re a “let’s move on” people.

The Rank, Reeking Horror of Torturing Some Folks from Truthout:

“In my name. In your name. In our names.” The narrative was that, in the days after 9/11, the “American people” wanted the government to do “anything” to prevent of another one. Instead, the torture and imprisonment have eventually led to the hate-filled ISIS. That may be true, since a majority of Americans say the CIA tactics were justified, which makes me all sorts of sad.

CIA Lied About Torture, Senate Report Suggests from Newsmax:

All sorts of discomforting items therein.

What torture sounds like from BoingBoing.

Karl Rove Says Bush Knew About CIA Interrogation Program, Defends Rectal Feeding from the Huffington Post:

“Appearing on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ [former GW Bush adviser] Rove claimed the brutal forced rectal feedings — which the report said were not medically necessary — were used out of medical necessity.”

Physicians: “Anal feeding” of prisoners is sexual assault, has no medical use, from BoingBoing:

“What a sad world we live in, when a coalition of medical professionals has to issue a press release announcing this most obvious of obvious observations…”

Dick Cheney: ‘I Haven’t Read’ CIA Torture Report but It’s ‘Full of Crap’ from Mediaite:

He doth describe himself instead, and rather well.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia’s spirited defense of torture from MSNBC:

“We have never held that that’s contrary to the Constitution. And I don’t know what provision of the Constitution that would, that would contravene.

“Listen, I think it is very facile for people to say, ‘Oh, torture is terrible.’ You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it’s an easy question? You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person? I don’t think that’s so clear at all.”

OMG, OMG. (Facepalm) Scalia believes in The ‘24’ Effect: Did the TV drama convince us that torture really worked? from Matt Bai at Yahoo! News. I stopped watching this show regularly after the first episode of the second season because I decided it was torture porn.

But sometimes, you just need a cartoon to break it down for you:
Tortured logic, from Tom Tomorrow in the Daily Kos
An Illustrated A to Z of Torture from Vice.com

Or satire:
Cheney calls for ban on publishing torture reports from the New Yorker

The film PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes at the Linda 12/4

The Pay 2 Play System is where Politicians reward their donors with even larger sums from the public treasury — through contracts, tax cuts, and deregulation.

The movie PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes will be shown on Thursday, December 4 at 7:00 pm at the The Linda, WAMC’s performing arts studio at 339 Central Avenue, on the corner of Quail Street and Central Avenue in Albany. The showing is FREE, but reservations are required; call 518-463-8256 or e-mail ny4democracy@gmail.com.

The 90-minute documentary will be followed by a panel discussion organized by New York For Democracy, “an ever growing group of New Yorkers who are committed to rescuing our democracy from the devastating influences of money in politics.”

PAY 2 PLAY follows filmmaker John Ennis’ quest to find a way out from under the Pay 2 Play System, where Politicians reward their donors with even larger sums from the public treasury — through contracts, tax cuts, and deregulation. Along the way, he journeys through high drama on the Ohio campaign trail, uncovers the secret history of the game Monopoly, and explores the underworld of L.A. street art on a humorous odyssey that reveals how much of a difference one person can make.

See where the film may be playing in a city near you.

The case against The Case Against Liberal Compassion

This is some hope for you liberals who are feeling a bit… down after November 4.

Somehow, I have received in the (snail) mail the current (October 2014) issue of Imprimis. The article, The Case Against Liberal Compassion by William Voegeli, the Senior Editor of Claremont Review of Books, arrived right after the 2014 midterm elections. He attacks “the five big program areas that make up our welfare state.”

Basically, it’s the same old trope about liberals using other people’s money to do good. He uses the Affordable Care Act, and specifically the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website as “proof”, ignoring the value of the actual program to the previously unemployed.

Of course, he does not once mention the major “welfare state,” corporate welfare. Even FORBES magazine, no liberal bastion, asked this year, Where Is The Outrage Over Corporate Welfare? Not to mention the cover-up of economic malfeasance.

In fact, I believe that it would be a very good thing to reduce the number of working families who are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which I knew as Food Stamps. Ultimately, the government is supplementing Wal-Mart and McDonalds and those other businesses providing less than livable wages to their employees, expanding the welfare state.

But rather than creating a blow-by-blow response, for which I haven’t the energy, I recommend to you the Weekly Sift’s Republicans have a story to tell. We’re stuck with facts. It does not actually deal with the Imprimis article, but was, rather, an antidote to it for me.

Everything the Democrats support is on the wrong scale: We want to raise the minimum wage, and subsidize your health insurance, and pay women the same as men, and cut back the war on minor drugs, and create jobs building infrastructure, and put a little less carbon in the air. All good stuff…

What the current Democratic strategy misses is precisely the caring-about-things-that-don’t-directly-affect-you that the Republican story inspires…

It may also provide some hope for you liberals who are feeling a bit… down after November 4.

Ultimately, though, I’m convinced that it’s not just the expenditure of government money that is at issue. That would not explain the increasing number of municipalities that are criminalizing the hungry and the homeless, because it would not “look good.” This made national news. This does not involve government, except as an agent of non-compassion.

Meanwhile, newly-reelected Wisconsin Scott Walker wants jobless and food stamp recipients to face drug testing, an exercise in other states, such as Florida, that is not only demeaning but actually costs more to do than the savings from cutting off drug users; a lousy use of the public dollar.

So, yes, I’ll still accept the liberal mantle. Unlike the straw horse argument by Voegeli, I DO value the implementation of efficiency. Too often, though, those “efficiencies” are implemented to either line the pockets of the connected or obfuscate the real problems.

I’ll opt for compassion.