Obama Takes a Bold Stand on Equality

Barack Obama delivers a speech at the University of Southern California (Video of the speech) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week was remarkable for the United States.  President Obama made the case for allowing marriage rights to same sex couples.   I think by doing so he expanded the boundaries of freedom and established the notion of an equal playing field for same sex orientation.  Even so, this announcement does nothing but allow the nation to see where Barack Obama believes the line should draw on this issue.

It was the beginning of a step that follows a long line of steps to bring more equality to humanity and allow equal sets of rules to be applied for an oppressed group in our nation.   Not only does it signal a greater move, but it also signals to the world that under Obama, the US is still a land of opportunity for everyone regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.   Of course, discrimination still exists throughout the world in these areas, yet the US can still provide a guiding light for all.

I’m heterosexual, but I can still appreciate President Obama’s position staked out this week.   First off, it is a bold declaration on his part.  It is politically risky.   Not only does this fire up the right wing, it pokes a stick in the eye of all the backwards goobers out there who compensate for their closeted gayness with mindless homophobia.  Some people do not understand or derive any pleasure from Obama’s revelation.   The reigning wisdom is that the people who are adamantly opposed to same sex marriage will vote against the president in November anyway.    Also, this move illustrates that President Obama’s base is ripe and receptive for this kind of an activation.  Signals like this during the campaign will continue to activate his base.   Beyond the political calculus, by taking up the struggle of LGBT people, other forms of discrimination become more outdated and barbaric.   The fight in this area only makes the injustices of racial and gender discrimination more undeniable under the law.

Personally, I’m inspired by the pronouncement because it is morally correct in the context of freedom and equal rights.  Also it is a risky move and that also gives me some new respect for the President that he could take an outspoken stand on what is right.  Pretty exceptional stuff, all in all.  It’s nice to get inspired over what has always been an American value during my lifetime, equal rights.  Much better than complaining how the GOP continues to monkey wrench economic recovery and the will of the people.  I hope this fires you up to get out and make everyone you know cast a vote in all of the years elections.

http://liberaltalkingpoints.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/liberal-maxim-14-equality/

 

 

 

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Scowling at the Nation: Do We still have what IT takes?

Republicans for Obama (Photo credit: EN2008)

Why does the GOP think they can push unpopular laws through?  We have seen limits passed on access to contraception and invasive laws designed to humiliate women who are seeking abortions.   The polling on these issues is conclusive.   Why do Republicans think they can stir up these contentious issues in an election year?  The prevailing wisdom before this year of breathtaking rollbacks in womens health rights has been that these issues are pushed in off election years.  Has the Right become so drunk with power, holding the majority of assets in the nation and using significant amounts to control access to government and outcomes of elections.   Do they believe they are going to be able to buy the elections or control the vote?

Apparently, they think the time is ripe to pull back the curtain a little to bring in more followers on a moral issue that they can claim is a high ground.  It is an absolutist posture that appeals to someone who does not want to think about the issue.  Oh we’ll hear the various politicians walk back from these extremes.  Mitt is starting to pivot back to the middle but make no mistake, we got to see some holy righteous bare ankle of the extremism of the GOP during their primary.

The GOP trifles with these moral quandaries and does nothing to recover the economy .  Also, they have taken the fight to contraception, the very practice that helps reduce abortions.  They must think we’re pretty dumb huh?  Maybe they just think they have the whole election thing ‘locked up’.  Make no mistake, just like Scott Walker, all these GOP players are wearing long frocks before entering office.  We don’t get to see the whole show until they make it there.  We only get to see their ugly proselytizing souls bared after they attain office.  We have seen enough to say there is definitely a misogynist,racially biased and homophobic agenda lurking behind the curtain.

The GOP is working all the angles and the Dems are days late and billions short.  It is a nearly vertical challenge, but rubber on the road, sweat and tears may still prevail.  If the people do not come together to solidly reject the GOP this years election, we will see the rollback of the 20^th century and the ascendency of the robber barons of the new millennium.

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Teapartiers are Suckers

US Representative Michele who? (R-Minn) addressing a Tea Party Express rally outside the Minnesota state capital building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The modern day tea party movement is just a hollow leg in the GOP meant to channel all the recent angst and fury in the right leaning grass roots over the disaster left behind by GWB.  Tea Party members are complete tools expressing true grievances but looking to the wrong party and wrong leaders to change the situation.  They are minions full of righteous outrage but caught up in the blame games that the GOP loves to play.  Irrationally, they look to the culture that created the mess for the answers to the problems.  They are happy to hand the keys to the car right back to the same group of drunk drivers that put the car into the ditch.

Should we pity the portion of the American public who have access to nothing but Faux news?  Can you blame someone who knows nothing else?  Its amazing when you sit back and look at all the catch phrases they seize on.  Then again there is something unfortunate for someone who lets others tell them how to think or what to believe.

The Tea Party was a construction of Dick Armey and a consortium of right wingers to mobilize their grass roots after a demoralizing loss of the presidency.   They bred a herd of dingoes that may not be easily controlled locally, but tea partiers mostly know who the head hyena should be when it comes to the presidency.  It will be interesting to see if Romney tries to boost his standing with the pack.

Many Tea Partiers don’t seem to realize they are just a subsect of the GOP.  They get all outraged about circumstances but they mostly fold into the mainstream GOP, the main source of much of the outrage.  We have seen the Tea Party have great sway in the GOP but also it seems to be an unbalancing force within the GOP because the Tea Party is at odds with the mainstream GOP.   This will continue to cause a ruckus for progressives at the local level and frustrate the GOP on a national level for years unless more fox zombies come out of their stupor and examine the cold hard facts.

To those who still fancy themselves members of Tea Party, it is not too late to go furthur afield and seek better leadership.  Ultimately, if you are a Tea Partier to this day, I do not know how you can bring yourself to vote for Romney.     You are a tool of the elites if you do.  Catch phrases like “Anyone but Obama” are from the same stuff that brought you GWB.

Parents, Stand Your Ground

MLK Jr Memorial (Photo credit: alvesfamily)

I should not have been shocked when I learned that George Zimmermans father is a retired judge.  There is a long history of bubbas backhand overlooking the excesses of their progeny.   It is easy for a racist mindset to rationalize the killing of an unarmed kid and then stand behind a law supposed to protect people in their home.

Some people say that George Zimmerman is lucky to have a retired judge for his father.  Talk about some kitchen table legal advice.   I wonder how involved Robert Zimmerman has been with the lack of an investigation.  So far, it looks like this law is being used to stand down expensive investigations when the injustices may be better swept under the blind rug of hypocrisy.  The plan was for this story to go away.  Maybe there is hope for our news media if it can shine a light on what looks like a pile of rats chewing on goobers.

My kids are not African American but as MLK said ‘Injustice anywhere, is a threat to Justice everywhere.’   It sounds like the wild west has gone south and east.  Our children deserve better.

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Hope Springs

Winter is over, time to spring into action.  I believe the spring of occupation will provide a sea change in our political discourse.  When the movement awakens from a seasonal hibernation, the nation will move.  An undeniable mass of people is an undeniable force. It will be awesome to see as well, much more fun than the tired old debates and listening to politicians try to outmaneuver each other.

It will go viral this spring.   It has to.  There is no choice but for the occupy movement to become a cottage industry.  The pols will have to get serious very quickly about engaging the issues that the occupy movement is kicking up.

I hope Obama spends time engaging with the Occupiers.   He needs to understand the outcry and speak to it even more.  They will lift him on their shoulders if he does this and carry him right back into the white house.

If the movement rears up as I think it will, the whole paradigm will shift on a dime into our time, the future is now.

Fair Game: What we didn’t find in Iraq or Afghanistan

Its been nine years and the past is definitely blurry, unless you served.  Not every one served in the theater.

I know I’m way behind.  I finally saw the movie Fair Game, depicting the Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson story.    Holy crap this is a great movie although it depicts a sad reality.  Kudos to Sean Penn and Naomi Watts who were both outstanding in their craft.  I love how the story is shown from the perpective of the family of Ms Plame and Mr Wilson, something I doubt most people considered at the time.  At the time, they were parents of four year old twins and coping with the loss of career, public defamation and desire to shed light on the lies that were leading an angry grieving nation into a war on a country that had nothing to do with 911.

After seeing this film, I am wishing that the real Joe Wilson would enter politics.   He strikes me as a good leader, someone with a conscience.   Also, I wonder if the gender roles had been reversed if the Bush administration would have been so flip as turn on their own agent.

In chess, sometimes it is a good move to lose a pawn to gain the advantage, ultimately Ms Wilson was used as a pawn in the game of going to war that can be played in the white house.   She was robbed of her career, bottomed out, as the ‘fall girl’ for the Bush administration.  There does seem to be a tragic injustice in the end with the family moving to New Mexico to escape DC , while no justice is served to the executive branch out of control.  Scooter Libby, an agent of Cheney, barely served time for his lies and no one else was held to answer for blowing her cover in the press.

In many ways, Valerie Plame was fighting the war on terror before the military even got started.  After the dust clears, it will be units like hers that are left to clean up the mess.  She suffered a huge injustice and paid a high price for putting her duty in front of everything for years.   She is a living hero in my book.  Joe too is a hero for trying to speak the truth to the power that was revving up the engines on a machine that just mows stuff over rightly or wrongly.

Of all the reasons we went to these two wars, it cannot be denied that we waged war on Iraq based on layers of  lies and deception.  Iraq did not have anything to do with 911, yet we were easily led into believing it was so.   At the heart of the reasoning for going to war was the so called weapons program in operation in Iraq.  By the time it was obvious to most informed and reasoning folks, we were embroiled in a second war mostly because it seemed closer to the target.

It is not easy to draw a greater conclusion or gain a moral to the story, but here it is: the GOP in control of our military and intelligence complex will put it to work on expensive and immoral  operations  in order to create a political advantage and/or support their big business cronies.  That’s what happened with Iraq.

Looking at the future, I cannot figure out what the mission in Afghanistan is but to get out.  I think we went there to get Osama but now it’s truly a mission accomplished.

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El Rushbo Speweth Over?

Rush Limbaugh - (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

I was just graduating from college in the Midwest  in 1991 when I remember becoming aware of Rush Limbaugh.    A good friend of mine listened to him regularly and had become quite partisan to the right back in the days when politics were almost like cryptography, the era for me when anything to do with politics was ‘wonky’.   I checked in with El Rushbo then and sampled his offerings and it did not take long before I was thoroughly disgusted by the content that was alternately misogynistic, racially degrading, menacing, self aggrandizing pomposity and never ending foul tasting ?humor?  Further, the ‘news’ and opinion was full of easily debunked mendacity.   Never truly challenged, Rush’s conservative brand of ‘entertainment’ apparently was embraced by a mostly white male audience.   Being a new graduate, I was moving around through out the Midwest as I started my own career and was able to sample various radio markets while looking for work.  Exploring the radio dial across the midwest was a pasttime and I was amazed by the reach Rush had established already and the lack of any true counterpoint to all of his outrageous claims.

Being curious about this new exciting conservatism and whether there was a fair debate available on his broadcast, I personally spent time calling in to his show to present points in contention with his arguments of the day.   It took only two attempts before I realized there would be no fair debate with liberals on his show.  Anyone who made it to the airwaves was cut off as soon as was convenient and then thoroughly excoriated and marginalized.  Most liberals will never get past the call screener filtering callers so Rush doesn’t have to face the ‘unwashed unruly’ masses with inconvenient and embarassing questions.

Rush established a platform and echo chamber in which only right conservative ideas were allowed and no rigorous debate with consensus beyond that of the right wing could form.  He is an architect of the polarized political environment we now find ourselves in where neither side can have a fair discussion with the other.   He allowed and encouraged conservatives to believe they do not have to concede anything in a debate with the left and that they do not even need to engage in a debate at all with counterpoint from the middle and poverty stricken classes.

In turn, conservatives came to worship at the platform he created and maybe even mistook it for a town square of sorts.  Rush became so elevated in their eyes, that there is nothing the the Rushbo can do that could be wrong or indefensible.  Megadittoes became the code word for everything you say is true and we surrender our critical thoughts over to you Rush.

I say Rush deserves to be able to speak his mind freely, as loudly and as noisily as he wishes — on a street corner.  He should be able to go out on the internet and blog all he wants and podcast all he wants even.  I do not think he deserves however, the benefit of the American public’s am or fm radio air waves.  There is nothing in the bill of rights about the freedom to speak on the radio.  We have something in the US called the FCC that settled that years ago.

 

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Falling into the Cracks on Memory Lane

Slaves, Puritans and Poisoned Wheat (Photo credit: drurydrama (Len Radin))

Sometimes when I look at the push by conservatives to pass restrictions controls and private invasions over rights to choose and contraception, I think the GOP would be happy taking us back to some Victorian 1800s form of culture or maybe back to the pilgrim days when the ladies got scarlet letters and witch trials.  Our country has taken years to evolve, but we have evolved as a society and culture.   It never fails to surprise me how much our GOP counterparts yearn for days of yore when the ladies wore long gowns and men nearly creamed at the sight of a mere bare ankle.

Speaking of the pilgrims, they left their country, bloody old britain,  to escape the power of a religion that wielded the power of the State in their personal lives, religion and society.   The State enforced an adherence to a particular belief system that was in disagreement with the beliefs of the puritans.   This was the conflict that birthed the concept of separation of church and state in our own constitution.   Funny how ‘freedom of religion’ is now being used by the GOP to allow a church to wield the power of the State.

Are the evangelical conservatives really that backwards?  I guess it’s time to dust off the frocks and chastity belts.

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barriers to contraception for adults

Rick Santorum's image of women and mothers

The logical conclusion of Rick Santorum  and the catholic church’s abhorence to birth control is something like the above picture carried out on a human scale.

Do we really need bigger families at this time in America?  Just saying , it costs money to raise a child.  Do we really need more poor people at this time?

You don’t see rightys get too upset when an innocent person is executed.   Yet they seem to  want to carry the ‘save every baby’ philosophy down to the legality of the sperm swimming upstream to the egg.

Ultimately they are advocating for more poverty by pushing on this issue.   I want to hear them talk all about it though.  I want to hear a whole GOP debate on contraception. Nearly every sentence uttered on the subject by the right is  b-s crazee!

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Liberal Maxim 14: Equality

Suffrage Paraders, N.Y. (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)

Liberals believe in equal opportunity.

We would not have fair employment and fair housing laws without liberals in government pushing for rules that discourage discrimination based on race, religion, gender.   Some of the big impact in governance through liberal philosophy have been the rules that protect opportunity and the right to vote.

It is one of the finest qualities in liberal philosophy.  Conservatives try to turn this positive into a negative by complaining about political correctness, impositions to the existing (stratified) social order.   They even claim we are trying to guarantee equal outcomes beyond the concepts of equal opportunity.  We need to remember that freedom and political power for all were enshrined in laws by liberals to protect from discrimination based on race, religion and gender.

Soon we may add orientation the that list.   It was impossible for the slavers of the 19^th century to see the wisdom of the abolitionists.   Men in power could not hold back the tide of a generation of women pushing for suffrage.  Each of the turns of the struggles for greater equality among the people has only marked the beginning of larger shifts toward freedom within our culture.  There have been long drawn conflicts over how to approach the matters of equality but liberals have always been on the side of equality and freedom for all the People.

Elmer Fudd vs Coyote

I don’t envy conservatives who have to choose between Newt and Mitt.  I was posting on another blog tonight and hit on the notion that choosing between them is like having to choose between Warner Brothers antagonists Elmer Fudd and Coyote.

Now don’t get me wrong, both Elmer and Coyote have some endearing qualities, but ultimately, Fudd never gets Bugs Bunny and Coyote never catches the Roadrunner.

Take Elmer,

He makes good use of known method.  He is a dogged hunter but has no staying power because he is not very smart and always misses his prey by a misstep or two.

 

Then you have Coyote.

He has yards of faith and inches of food. 

He is a simple humble genius who can architect the most epic methods of falling flat and far behind the Roadrunner.  Everytime he comes close to the roadrunner, something blows up in his face or an elaborate trap backfires.

 

 

 

 

Oh, yeah don’t forget.

Sylvester the cat.

Sylvester is always ready to pop that Tweety in his mouth when no one  is looking.

Sylvester ends up taking a wailing from a boxing kangaroo.  Karma is real.

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Hail the Union of Laborers

Image via Wikipedia

 

 

Conservatives love cheap labor.  They are not concerned if a laborer working a 40-60 hour work week earns enough to live and avoid debt.  Henry Ford was a conservative in his day but even he understood that his business would flourish if his employees could afford to purchase the products they produced.  Conservatives today love to talk about the problems caused by illegal immigration but ultimately do not want to make any changes.  They might even talk about jobs being outsourced to foreign nations, but you’ll never see them move on this issue in law.  They are numb to the raw deal of capital spasms in the economy.   They keep the labor market in a constant churn with unemployment dragging down wages.   Though they would never say it, high unemployment is not that big of a deal to the conservatives.

Why do conservatives hate unions, and almost for the very same reasons, why are unions good for the middle and lower class?  They have pushed up wages for everyone.  They democratically represent the views and interests of the employees.  They protect employees from inhumane demands placed by management.  Conservatives want people to be desperate for a job so they will accept lesser working conditions, lower pay, few perks like medical coverage.   Unions help workers by giving them a voice in the workplace that forces employers to remunerate for the cost of labor.

Unions have traditionally been supportive of the democratic party and this is another reason they are targeted by conservatives.  It is politically and financially convenient.  When you sit back and look at the legislation being pushed by the various GOP controlled states this year, it is hard not to conclude that the GOP has initiated an undeclared war on unions.  Arizona is the latest battleground.  “Right to work” laws seem to neither protect rights nor the ability to work yet we must have more legal backsliding to the early 1900s for these conservative states.

You also hear a lot of braying over corrupt union officials and seeds of mistrust sown on this brave lot that takes on the sorry job of dealing with the mgmt.   I like to say at this point, you have no further to look than the k street lobby, super pacs,  our elected leaders constant fundraising, barely paying attention to the American people.  That’s the real corruption that no one is fighting.  In the meantime, I appreciate personally if there is a group that speaks for the interests of employees.  There is no choice but to have unions.

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Sometimes a picture is worth more than a 1000 Talking Points

Elizabeth Eckford goes to school

President Obama goes to work

Thanks Melissa Harris-Perry!  Smart cookie!

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Obama saved the American auto industry

Image by Toban Black via Flickr

note:  This started as a reply to the last comment from spreadeagle72 but it became so long and full of import that I had to post it.   Thanks for the conversation Spread, you spawned a post!  

Here is his last comment so you can get the gist:

‘I hate to see anyone lose their job. I’ve lost a few jobs in my life but didn’t need the government to “bail” me out. If the feds would have stayed out of the automobile industry in the first place and allowed the free market to fend for itself there would have been more than 3 or 4 manufacturers in the country and we would not be in this mess to begin with.
It doesn’t have anything to do with democrats or republicans…..
Bad business is just that….whether you do it with the burden of union pentions, labor costs, or the Hill with all it’s taxes and regulations it’s always bad business practices that end jobs.

All you have to do is look across the pond to figure out that bailouts no matter how small are never the answer. It always bites you one way or the other.’

The Blunt Response:

Today, Chrysler and GM are among the most successful auto companies for the year 2011.  In 2008, Chrysler and GM would have closed down their shops and sold anything of value to the still standing victors and tens of thousands of automotive jobs would now be gone.  We would have been down to one, that’s right, ONE American car company with other FOREIGN owned manufacturers doing some part of their business in the states (especially the states where employers do not have to provide health care or negotiate collectively with employees for better pay).  The banks and right wing conservatives were ready to let them fail but Obama and a Democratic Senate and House saved the American automotive industry with a federal program.

Also, it was not a ‘bailout’.  The banking industry with it’s comparatively small but very well paid staff qualified for massive massive give aways so they could continue the foreclosures and multimillion end of year bonuses.  GM and Chrysler could only qualify for loans.  That’s right, the federal money given to GM and Chrysler were structured as loans and much has already been paid off, plus interest to the US treasury.   Here, we have proof that the government saved jobs and still conservatives scoff and try to spin a success into a failure.  It perplexes me when the facts are in front of people and they do not see them.  Spreadeagle must be seeing ideological smudges on the eyeglasses of reality and thinking the world is cloudy.

Also, it’s perplexing to hear conservatives complain about government ‘bailouts’ yet they don’t complain when we subsidize the oil industry to the tune of billions of our tax dollars per year.  We don’t just give them tax breaks, but we also give oil giants billions in ‘credits’ per year.   Why don’t you ever hear about that on False News or Rushinta Limbo?   You certainly don’t hear them talk about actual bailouts that occurred under former GOP presidents.

You also hear a lot of carping about a free market taking care of things.  A ‘free’ market implies a competitive market with a variety of suppliers competing for customers, not a hand full of players agreeing in private how to set pricing, crowding small businesses out or buying them off.  Conservatives seem to think creating  jobs and a free market means loosening clean air and clean water regulations so the oil business can get down and dirty again.  Why is the US exporting oil overseas if we need it here so much?  We can drill baby drill, but that is not going to lower gas prices like truly free markets protected from a multinational industrial monopolistic trust.

Conservatives speak with a forked tongue when they say they ‘hate to see folks lose their jobs, but don’t let the government do anything to protect them’.  It’s time for people like that to look more clearly at how far backward we have gone in this decade.  It didn’t start with Obama, it started right around the year 2000.

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How the GOP led House is working for America

Image via Wikipedia

We have had the House of Representatives ruled by the GOP for over a year now.   I thought it might be instructive to review their year of inaction.  This list is by no means exhaustive and I’m sure someone else could better research and document the year in review.  My point in doing this is that this congress began with John Boehner yelling ‘where are the jobs?’  Did that yelling help your job search?

Here is what the GOP really wants to spend their time on:

• In God We Trust
• Terminate taxpayer voluntary funding of presidential campaigns
• Repeal the Health Care act
• Eliminate funding for NPR and PBS
• Install a statue of Gerald Ford in the capitol
• Terminate the Emergency Mortgage Relief program
• Terminate the FHA Refinance Program
• Eliminate tax funds for Planned Parenthood
• Defund provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act
• Prevent the EPA from addressing climate change due to greenhouse gases
• Refuse to continue funding the government and jeopardizing the bond ratings of US Treasury bills.
• Eliminate rules concerning the use of pesticides near water as regulated in the Water Pollution act
• Deregulate clean air rules for oil drilling and refining
• Fund non public elementary charter schools and CIA pensions
• Eliminate financial transparency for the judicial branch
• Balanced budget amendment to the constitution
• Further deregulate Wall St
• Defang rules established by executive order
• Allow increases to payroll taxes

Don’t get me wrong, while I am opposed to most of these provisions, I am ambivalent to a few of these.  Back to my point though, where is the major jobs creation bill that was proposed and debated on the floor of the House?

Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list.  I think I forgot to include the ‘Improving the golf handicap act of 2011′.

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The GOP counts on the People’s Misunderstanding of the Filibuster

Obama did not get much of anything he wanted despite the emerging right wing talking point to the opposite.   He has had to put a brave face on a record level of congressional obstruction not seen in history before his administration.  Even though the dems held both house and senate for two years, not much happened without huge give aways to the right wing.  This is because nearly every effort to pass bills through the senate was barricaded by the GOP with by procedural delays such as calls for quorum and threats of a filibuster.

The only stimulus bill to help get the economy back on track was passed in the last days of the Bush administration.  After Obama’s inauguration, conservatives have actively blocked any further attempts by the congressional majority to help along a more successful economic recovery.  The GOP needs to have a crisis they can try to blame on Obama.

The 1939 movie with James Stuart,  ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ dramatized the use of the filibuster as it came into uncommon use.  In a filibuster, senators may hold the floor and speak out on any subject for as long as they wish purely to obstruct the debate on the bill from going forward.

In recent years, the senate leadership has preferred to avoid the filibuster in order to proceed on other business.  For the convenience of allowing debate on other issues, it went from being a process requiring all day and all night speech on the floor to a short procedure, after which the senator may exit the door.

Until the senate leadership changes its policy on avoiding the filibuster, all the senator must do these days is threaten the filibuster and force a motion for cloture and the issue is closed.   Now that it is such an easy process, the GOP has used it to hold off Democratic initiatives such as the various jobs bills.  The cloture process has been used more in the last two years than in all preceding years combined.  This is an abuse of this arcane parliamentary procedure allowing the GOP to obstruct the recovery of our economy.

The current leadership should call the bluff of the GOP threats to filibuster and force them to stand in the well of the senate until their bladders explode and all phone books have been read into the record.   Maybe then we will see a rollback in the use of this procedure.

Filibuster Chart, Talking Points Memo, Brian Beutler

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The Shark of 2012?

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Building on Maxim 13, it could be that the next crazy ploy is back with Iran. Tensions between Iran and the US and Europe are building and it looks like elements of both sides are ready as ever to stoke the fires of war.

Hijinx to ensue? The set up is this:

Iran is pursuing nuclear arms and France, Britain and US are not happy with it. Talks are underway whether to halt oil imports from Iran to Europe and the US. Iran is threatening shipping in the straits of hormuz as a result. It’s unclear what Russia and China think about a nuclear Iran but a new brinksmanship is emerging.

Watch for a growing rabid open calls in the GOP for war with Iran. It’s a great chance to pound your chest , shout about appeasement and throw around a few banana peels. Even a threat of Iranian conflict will push up gas prices on the futures market – not good for an election year incumbent. Also an environment is created that is ripe for provocative scenarios by the dark ops partisans. Would the GOP like to take the Iran tiger by the tail to throw up some dust into the political arena? You bet.

As a liberal, I am torn. I do not want to advocate war, but also not sure if I trust a nuclear armed Iran despite that it is a sovereign nation pursuing arms achieved by many other nations. If I feel like that, I’m pretty sure most Americans can willingly swallow the bitter pill of a war with Iran.

It may be that time is dwindling before we will not be able to choose whether there is a nuclear Iran. On the other hand, perhaps the pride we carry as Americans fools us into thinking we can prevent a nuclear Iran. Will anyone be able to cool the war machines at odds in this situation?

Related articles

• Top general says Iran shouldn’t ‘miscalculate our resolve’ (cnn.com)
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Liberal Maxim 13

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Conservatives will say and do nearly anything to attain and retain power in office. 

That means the craziest schemes to move the public opinion may be entertained as possible ploy.  The current scheme is the attempt to prevent any further stimulus to our economy that may spur on a recovery.  It is a useful horse to beat in the next election if the public can be convinced that Obama is to blame for our continued stagnant recovery.  It has been openly stated that conservatives intend to make Obama a one term president and determined to make him fail at every step.  That also means the American people are doomed to fail so long as congress is willing to obstruct the Obama administration.

Here is a short list of examples to prove the maxim:

• Wisconsin governor Scott Walker considered sending agent provacateurs into the initial protests that resulted out his draconian moves against public employees.
• GWB got the supreme court to rule the 2000 Florida election in his favor despite the fact that all votes had not been counted.
• Reagan set up an arms for hostages deal with Iran that prevented Carter from resolving the hostage crisis and set American voters against re-electing him.
• GOP nominee Richard Nixon negotiated with North Vietnam to prevent President Johnson from ending the war.

These are all instances that have been documented beyond the realm of conspiracy theory.  If we wanted we could delve into those theories that have yet been shown to contain truth.

The craziest moves will be considered by righties who thirst to attain and retain power.

Liberalism had a baby and we named it Progressivism

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It has been pointed out to me recently that wielding rule of law over monopolies is in the domain of progressives more than the classic liberal philosophy.  Just my opinion but, I believe Jefferson would have been in agreement with Teddy Roosevelt in his day given the circumstances.  Corporate power did not exist in Jefferson’s time only emerging and growing more sophisticated in the mid 1800s.

By the time Roosevelt had a chance to deal with a monopoly, the Sherman Antitrust Act had been in place to allow him to go after the banksters of his day.   This movement grew out of 25-30 years of single owner domination of the railroad industry and widened as other problems associated with corporate power became apparent.  It is true that Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt have some differing ideas on what freedoms should be allowed, but I believe Jefferson would have adjusted his opinion if he had had to face the devilish details presented by corporate power.

Related articles

• Obama’s Teddy Roosevelt strategy (geneveith.com)

The Monopoly Chain

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In the game Monopoly, the game is definitely over when one player owns all the properties.  You might say the game of free enterprise is over when a market is in a monopolistic condition.

What happens in a monopolistic market?

The price of a good is not set at market demand, rather it is controlled by the supplier in order to boost the ultimate price over market demand levels.  In this environment, wealth trickles up on a one way path, a MONOPOLY CHAIN which ends up in the pockets of a very few people.  There are no opportunities to compete unless you create your own market or go into a monopolized market and shake it loose somehow.

What happens when monopolies are broken up?

More jobs are created.  More people are participating in the industry of a given market in a competitive environment. Quality of product goes up and consumers get a wider array of options.

Monopolistic conditions may occur also in markets with just a few producers who can collude on price levels.  Trusts and collusions to artificially affect pricing must always be viewed with the greatest scorn by progressives.

 

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• Monopoly Market (bhanusigdel.wordpress.com)