When CNN showed Lou Dobbs the door recently, CNN President Jon Klein told him the all-news network wanted to pursue a more “middle-of-the-road” path. At least that’s what Dobbs told Jon Stewart in an interview on the Comedy Channel the other night. Stewart, naturally, had some fun with the concept. The audience had a good laugh, as did Stewart and Dobbs.
But the idea that there is a “middle of the road” is no laughing matter. Whose road? I lived in Canada for many years and I can tell you the political “road” in Canada is quite a distance to the “left” of the “road” in America. As far as I can determine, there is no political party in Canada that is to the “right” of any party in America - not even Bernie Sanders’ party, whatever it may be.
That is if my understanding of “left” and “right” is accurate. I find it hard to tell these days. Am I with the “extreme left” when I advocate the ouster of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner? Or the “extreme right”? According to the media, people of both persuasions are calling for his resignation. Naturally, in my view, I am “middle of the road.” And in your view you probably are, too.
I wonder at the innocence of those who think journalism can be “objective.” The first adjective you use expresses a bias of one kind or another. Is the person you’re writing about a “slender young woman”? Or a “thin girl”? To me, those two descriptions conjure up different images although - technically - they mean the same. And when was the last time you read anything devoid of adjectives?
The adjectives generally accepted in the political press leave me especially bewildered. The headline in the local newspaper this morning proclaimed that “moderate” Democrats hold the key to the health care debate in the Senate. Moderate. That’s the adjective the press uses to describe politicians like Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and - Heaven help us - Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
If Lieberman (photo far right) is a moderate, Attila the Hun (picture at right) was a lefty. The former Democrat turned McCain fellow-traveler has extreme positions on a number of things, including the Iran situation. I would describe him as a Zionist but I don’t know for sure that he belongs to a Zionist organization. I just know that he seems always willing to protect Israel, even at America’s expense.
The press uses the word “moderate” in the most surprising contexts. Bart Stupak, the religious zealot who teamed with Republican Joe Pitts to introduce the anti-choice amendment to the House health care bill, is supposed to be “a moderate Democrat.” What’s “moderate” about the Stupak-Pitts amendment?
And what about the politicians who are digging in their heels to protect the interests of health care industry contributors to their campaigns? Are they “moderate” as in moderately corrupt?
I suppose there are “moderate” Republicans, as the press insists, but I can’t think of any in the current political arena. Nelson Rockefeller, if my memory can be trusted, was “moderate.” But who in today’s Republican Party leadership would you compare with Rockefeller?
Today, that Arizona looney who wanted to drop an atom bomb on the North Vietnamese - Barry Goldwater - would probably be a “moderate” Republican - or even a “moderate” Democrat, because (like Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter) he might be too “middle-of-the-road” for the modern Republican Party.
Some people insist that America is a “Christian” country founded by religious pioneers who wanted to create a society that abides by rules spelled out in the King James version of the Holy Bible. You hear that myth all the time from the evangelical community - usually members of a Baptist group or some other Protestant denomination.
The truth, as you know if you studied history, is that America was founded by people who wanted to get away from religious intolerance, who wanted the freedom to worship God in any way they chose - or not to worship Him at all if they preferred.
As far as I know, nobody has suggested that America was founded on the tenets of Roman Catholicism.
After the ravages inflicted by Catholic monarchs like England’s Bloody Mary and the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition, early Americans wanted nothing to do with the Church of Rome (see historic cartoon at right). Indeed, as evidenced by that all-seeing eye on the U.S. dollar bill (picture below), America’s founders were Masons, and Masons are anathema to Catholics.
I have a lot of dear friends and close relatives who belong to the Catholic Church. My mother was a devout Catholic, as I’ve mentioned before. My first wife, who died recently, was also a Catholic, and I am confident that both she and my mother have gone to Heaven, where they will undoubtedly find a lot of good Catholics - and Protestants. For all I know, they might come across Muslims, Buddhists and members of various other faiths there, too. God moves in mysterious ways and I am not about to second-guess His decisions.
But I find the current “Christian” revolution in America totally abhorrent. The conspiracy between some extreme evangelists and power hungry Catholic clergy is not only disgusting but also extremely frightening. To find out about one manifestation of this obscene alliance, you can Google “C Street, The Family.” You will learn about a seditious movement that seeks to control America’s government by the indoctrination and manipulation of elected representatives, a political organization that describes itself as a “church.”
The influence exerted by The Family (known by a variety of other names including The Fellowship) is blamed for an unholy alliance between Catholic and Protestant politicians that is attempting to roll back the clock and take away the reproductive rights of women, as decreed by the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade. A Catholic representative named Bart Stupak and a Protestant representative named Joe Pitts teamed up to get an anti-abortion amendment attached to the health care reform bill in the House. The amendment would not just prevent women from spending government subsidies on insurance policies that cover abortion but would also ban anyone receiving a government subsidy from spending their own money to buy such coverage.
Lurking in the shadows is a group of Catholic bishops who are pressuring politicians to include an anti-choice amendment in any health care legislation that gets passed. According to news reports, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was instrumental in forcing Democrats to accept the Stupak-Pitts amendment as the price for passing the House health care bill.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid is seeking a compromise that abortion rights supporters can live with: allowing coverage for abortion in federally subsidized health care plans, provided that beneficiaries’ own funds are used to pay for the procedure. The bill would forbid including abortion coverage as a required medical benefit.
But that’s not good enough for the bishops (photo at right). Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops’ conference Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid’s compromise “is actually the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.” He called it “completely unacceptable.”
So you can expect a stand-off between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” groups that will probably stymie health care reform after all the time, chatter and money wasted in getting to this point.
I don’t like the health care bill being pushed through the Senate. I didn’t like the one passed by the House. I think they’re both shamefully weak, amounting to little more than a giveaway to the health insurance companies. But I am dismayed by this blatant attempt by a religious group to dictate the U.S. Government’s policies.
Still, perhaps the bishops are doing Americans a favor. Perhaps voters will be so outraged by their presumptuousness that they will purge political representatives who owe their allegiance to religious groups instead of to the people who elected them. And perhaps they will also oust the representatives who gave their allegiance to the golden calf of the health care industry’s campaign contributions. Perhaps.
You will hear - again and again - that Uncle Sam doesn’t have the money to provide care for the millions of Americans without health insurance. And if you consider the country’s national debt of more than 12 trillion dollars, fueled by an annual deficit approaching 1.2 trillion, you might be tempted to agree.
After all, if you added up all the annual economic activity in America you would get something like 14 trillion dollars, and none of us would want a debt burden equal to nearly a year’s income when we were digging ourselves deeper into the hole each year. Especially if we had to borrow money to pay the interest.
So where does America plan to get the money it is committing to “defense” and “strategic interests” around the world?
As you may know by now, it costs a million dollars to keep a soldier in Afghanistan for a year. Yet the President is being asked to send 40,000 more troops there. If my third grade math can be trusted, that’s 40 thousand million - otherwise known as 40 billion - dollars. And that doesn’t include the billions spent on private contractors, bribes to warlords, perks for President Hamid Karzai (photo at left) and his drug dealing confederates, and all the other incidental expenses of the occupation. Giving General Stanley McChrystal the 40,000 soldiers he wants, along with training and equipping the Afghan army is projected to cost about $50 billion each year.
I don’t know how much it costs to keep a soldier in Iraq, but America still has a lot of them there despite President Obama’s campaign promise to bring them home. And apparently there are 40,000 American “troops” in Japan. That’s right - Japan! Can anyone explain why America is still occupying Japan? And America has hundreds of thousands more in places like South Korea, Germany and even the Balkans - about half a million men and women in uniform in some 150 foreign countries (map below shows where most US troops are concentrated).
I don’t think anyone knows the number of private contractors and other “civilians” representing America abroad, and how much they cost American taxpayers, but this nugget from an article by Farah Stockman in the Boston Globe will give you an idea:
Two thirds of the nearly $30 billion in international aid to Afghanistan has been routed through foreign consultants, companies and organizations hired by the U.S. government and its allies.
Pentagon spending this year is projected at $673 billion, for a 10-year total of $6.73 trillion (assuming costs don’t rise, and they always have in the past). With that kind of money floating around, you can imagine how much is “falling through the cracks.” To give you an idea, look at the recently published list of the world’s most corrupt countries. You will find Afghanistan and Iraq near the top of the list. (Iraq is number five; Afghanistan is number two - second only to Somalia.)
The media never tell American taxpayers where their “defense” money goes. How much, for example, is Colombia getting to give U.S. armed forces access to seven Colombian military bases over the next ten years? Details of the agreement between the United States and Colombia are shrouded in secrecy, but an article in the Colombian magazine Cambio this past summer drew international attention to a $46 million appropriation earmarked by the U.S. House of Representatives to upgrade the Palanquero base.
Why is America spending millions to assure access to Colombia’s military bases? If you find out, you might let Hugo Chavez know. The Venezuelan president is eying the U.S.-Colombia pact with apprehension. What’s going on, anyway? Is Uncle Sam expecting to go to war with his Latin American neighbors? U.S. taxpayers will be the last to know.
What I would like to know is why America needs to spend so much money it obviously does not have to defend itself against enemies in such far-flung places. You don’t see China doing anything like that. Or Russia. Or any European or Asian country. In fact, the United States - alone! -accounts for about half of all global military spending. It’s no wonder that most other developed countries can afford to provide health care for their citizens.
I have always regarded vegetables as something cows and goats should eat - or maybe rabbits. As a child I would sometimes try to feed my vegetables to one of the dogs lurking hopefully under the table and the dog would have nothing to do with them. When my mother caught me, she would look at me reproachfully and say, “Think of the starving millions in China. Those children would be glad to get your vegetables.”
Now, I wonder whether Chinese mothers are telling their children to think of the starving millions in America.
For times have changed. As they say in Jamaica, “every dog has his day and every puss his twelve o’clock.” Now, it’s definitely China’s day. Consider this news item:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed Sunday that nearly one in six U.S. households went hungry at some time during 2008, the highest level since it began monitoring food security levels in 1995.
Altogether, 14.6 percent of households, or some 49 million people, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year”, according to the report, “Household Food Security in the United States, 2008″.
That marked a sharp increase from the 11.1 percent of households, or 36.2 million people, who found themselves in similar straits during 2007, according to the report whose lead author predicted that the percentage was likely to be higher in 2009 due to the ripple effects of the financial crisis that erupted 14 months ago.
Among the 17 million households that experienced hunger – or “food insecurity”, as the report referred to it - during 2008, about one-third suffered “very low food security”, meaning that the amount of food of at least some household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were substantially disrupted. Such households experienced such disruptions for at least a few days during seven or eight months of the year.
The other two-thirds were able to obtain enough food to avoid substantial disruptions by using a number of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in government food and nutrition assistance programmes, or obtaining food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens.
And the number of households in which children, as well as adults, were subject to “very low food security” rose steeply – from 323,000 in 2007 to 506,000 last year, according to the report.
That’s right, in America where Wall Street bankers and influential investors are once again raking in millions - a lot of it from government bailouts - (and where it costs a million dollars to keep one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for a year) millions of children are going to bed hungry.
Meanwhile, this from Reuters in China:
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is now the world’s biggest bank by market value, while Citigroup Inc., once the world’s No.1 bank, is worth the same as a second-tier commercial bank in China.
Two senior Chinese bankers said they had been invited this year by U.S. officials, investment bankers and financial advisers to look at several potential investments in U.S. banks, mostly in financial trouble.
“The trend is already there,” said one Chinese banker. “Now they’re going to make this into an agreement to show there’s a change in official attitude toward Chinese investments in the U.S. banking system,” said the banker, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter.
A Sino-U.S. Memorandum of Understanding to encourage Chinese banks to invest in U.S. lenders is in the making, and China’s banking regulator has sought feedback from big domestic banks, bankers told Reuters.
Over 100 U.S. banks have already been seized by regulators in the financial crisis, and more bank failures could come as the Obama administration also needs more capital to take over troubled lenders.
The Chinese are holding American government IOUs worth nearly a trillion dollars, and they’re looking to buy up America’s community banks with some of the excess money. They’re already using some of the U.S. paper to buy up raw materials all over the developing world and are cornering the market on the rare metals needed for electronics (most of which is to be found in China, anyway).
Are there still starving millions in China? Perhaps. The Chinese dictators don’t share such information. And with nearly a billion and a half mouths to feed, the Chinese government has a monumental task. But, from what I’ve heard on PBS, there’s a growing Chinese middle class, and China is taking the lead in such initiatives as “green” technology. Meanwhile, in America, the middle class is rapidly disappearing, and the promised “green revolution” is still a blip on the radar screen.
So, you can tell your kids (and grandkids) to save their unwanted vegetables for the rabbits and goats or whatever. The Chinese don’t need them any more.
I won’t write about Sarah Palin. I won’t buy her book. I won’t read her book. I don’t care what John McCain’s campaign advisers say about her book. I don’t want to know whether she plans to run for president (of the USA or anywhere else). I don’t care that every, single, solitary talking head on television and radio is obsessed with this oh-so-ordinary Alaskan ex-governor. If I never hear her name again that will be OK with me.
I am sure you used to know “gals” like her in high school. And you probably didn’t like them then, either. They were obsessed with being popular and with running their catty little cliques. As a lifelong “loner,” I wouldn’t even be in their universe, and I wouldn’t want to be. (You can say “sour grapes” all you want; I’m used to it, so it will just roll off my back.)
And I am pretty sure that if you’re reading my blogs, you don’t want to hear about Sarah Palin - or her “porno” (her description) foil, Levi Johnston. Since I know you don’t want to hear what the talking heads have to say about her, and since that’s all you’re likely to hear on TV for a while, I suggest playing the video below over and over and over to drown out the prattle.
(The video is of 14-year-old international yodeling champion Tiffany Jo Allen performing at the Tucson Folk Festival. And it’s a lot more edifying than the stuff they’re saying about Palin and her political aspirations.)
We men have made such a mess of it that we should let women rule the world for a change. I know, women can be frustrating, irritating, illogical and - did I mention frustrating? Anyway, with all their faults, they have a much better understanding than men of the basic laws of survival. Yes, I am generalizing. So sue me. You know what I mean. Most of the time, women by and large, etc. etc.
One fatal fault that men (most men, by and large, most of the time, etc.) share is the urge to make things go boom. Check out the “guy movies.” If something doesn’t get blasted to smithereens in the first five minutes, you know it’s going to be a bust at the box office. If I were a shrink I would be theorizing about this being a metaphor for “getting off,” but as a lifelong observer, I can only say for sure that males are fascinated by explosions for whatever reason.
When did you last hear of a woman being a gun collector? Owning a military tank for the sheer joy of it? Blowing up a world trade center? Starting a war? The last one I can remember is Catherine the Great. Or was it Elizabeth I? Anyway, women who enjoy violence are extremely rare. (And no, guys, they do not like “masterful” men who force their attentions on them, regardless of what your cousin Joe - or whoever - may have told you when you were 12.)
What women do best is raise kids, grow and prepare food, make clothes, care for the sick, help the poor, listen to men brag, soothe our frayed egos… Am I being sexist? Hey, I am what I am. I’m a guy. Don’t expect too much from me. Besides, I grew up in Jamaica, where women did all those things - and more - as a matter of course. Jamaica was, and for all I know still is, a matriarchal society. Jamaican grandmas are formidable forces, not to be trifled with. Strong men cower under the lash of their tongues. And in the Jamaica of my childhood, women did a lot of the heavy lifting.
One of my most enduring memories is the sight of a line of Indian women loaded down by baskets of produce on their heads and an Indian man heading the line with nothing to carry but the stick on his shoulder. I was told it was a custom imported from India where the man’s duty was to ward off tigers. The fact that no tiger has ever been seen in Jamaica (except at the Hope Gardens zoo) didn’t make any difference. A custom is a custom.
Anyway, you must be wondering what set off this rant on a beautiful fall morning, when I seem to be in good health and I don’t have to go to work? And, as usual, it’s something in my Yahoo “in” basket. It’s a message from a group called Change.org.
On the organization’s list of injustices this morning are such things as:
Avoiding the Death Penalty (pinting out the excruciating injustices of the criminal justice system in Texas);
The Church vs. the Homeless (the Catholic Church has threatened to stop providing social services in Washington DC if the District recognizes equal rights for gays and lesbians);
Republican Abortion Hypocrisy (the party provides its employees with abortion insurance while fighting any such provision in the new health care bill);
Discrimination at Death (Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri vetoed a law that would have allowed gays and lesbians to plan the funerals for their deceased partners).
But, with all of the above to get me going, what lit my burners was a fairly innocuous article by Katherine Gustafson describing the vital role women play in global agriculture and the way they’re being shafted.
Here’s an excerpt:
Women grow more than half of the world’s food and the lion’s share (as much as 80 percent) of the food in developing countries, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations… Despite their majority contribution, however, women only own 2 percent of the world’s land, according to UN WomenWatch. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they toil over day after day.
Zainab Salbi, founder and CEO of Women for Women International, pointed out … that this is a bigger problem than simple unfairness. “We cannot address environmental issues, sustainable farming issues, industrial agriculture issues, food crisis, if we are going to ignore [the fact that women are over 80 percent of the world’s farmers and they own about 2 percent of land in the world],” she said. “How can you have a policy that ignores the people that are doing the work on a daily basis?”
How indeed? It’s about time somebody did something about the abuse of women farmers all over the world. And it’s only fitting that a woman should be in the forefront of the battle. A woman like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton proclaimed at the closing session of the 2009 Global Initiative in September that improving the lot of women farmers will be a priority for the Obama Administration.
At the G-8 Summit in July, President Obama pledged a minimum of $3.5 billion over the next three years as a contribution to the $20 billion pledged by all the G-8 nations toward strengthening global agricultural systems. And a sizable chunk of that money will go toward boosting women’s rights to the land they farm.
“We have seen again and again . . . that women are entrepreneurial, accountable and practical,” said Clinton. “So women are a wise investment. And since the majority of the world’s farmers are women, it’s critical that our investments in agriculture leverage their ambition and perseverance.”
So women are entrepreneurial, accountable, practical and persevering… Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say the same thing about the men who run the world?
It seemed like such an easy answer. People who didn’t know that much about international affairs would shake their heads knowingly and say, “Oh, the U.S. invaded Iraq just to get its oil.” I would smirk even more knowingly and remind them that there was a lot more than that at stake. The war profiteers, I pontificated, were the ones who stood to gain most -Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR, CACI,Titan and others of that ilk. Look how well connected those vultures are. Didn’t Vice President Dick Cheney have close ties to Halliburton, for example? You bet he did. And didn’t he stand to gain personally from the war? So, put two and two together and see what you get.
And, of course, I was right (I am always right, regardless of anything Sandra might say to the contrary), but only partially. The Halliburtons and other battlefield ghouls did make a killing (sorry about the pun… bad taste and all that, but I couldn’t resist it). But, according to a very authentic seeming article on the AlterNet web site yesterday, the trigger that set off the Iraq disaster was that old, familiar villain, Big Oil.
The article, by Antonia Juhasz, goes into convincing detail to make the point that the United States and Britain ravaged Iraq because Saddam Hussein shut their companies out of the bidding for the country’s oil. Here’s an excerpt:
Before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in March 2003, their oil companies were shut out of oil-production contracts being negotiated by the government of Saddam Hussein. Today, more than six years of war later, Saddam is gone, and the U.S. and British oil companies are not only in on the oil contracts, they have managed to sweeten the terms….
The invasion of Iraq dealt handily with the problem of U.S. and British exclusion.
So, if Antonia (photo at right) knows what she’s talking about - and the article certainly reads as if she does - oil men Bush and Cheney (and their buddy Tony Blair) ravaged Iraq, sacrificed more than 4,000 American lives (and caused thousands of Americans to be maimed and crippled), and killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, just to open the Iraq spigot for western oil companies.
If you’re laboring under the delusion that the world has evolved beyond the bad old days of Standard Oil and the United Fruit Company - and the British East India Company before them - you should read Antonia’s article at:
As it was in the beginning, and probably always will be, the world’s mightiest nations pursue colonialism at the beck and call of commercial powers that pull the strings of political puppets. When will they ever learn? When will we ever learn?
It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. But it looks as if some of those “defense industry” giants are beating their swords into plowshares after all. I know, it’s probably wishful thinking on my part. I am so depressed by the expenditure of so much of a hungry world’s resources on bombs and bullets - instead of bread - that I am probably grasping at straws. However, you have to admit it’s encouraging to read this in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times:
Still, as the Afghan and Iraq wars inevitably wind down, Raytheon is on the hunt for new business opportunities from the Department of Homeland Security, large civilian customers and big international corporations — all in need of better protection.
“Raytheon’s looking way ahead and anticipates a decline in military spending,” says Willy Schweikert, Raytheon director of engineering in Florida. “After 9/11, we have seen and expect to see more demand for protection of the nation’s borders, oil refineries and businesses in general.”
On Thursday evening, Raytheon put its best technology face forward. The company took over the nonprofit Pinellas Science Center to showcase many of the newer, next-stage projects in which the company hopes to become a player. The invitation-only event attracted about 400 Raytheon employees and their families and was intended, in part, to show younger people how “cool” engineering work can be.
Cool indeed. Raytheon also sponsors the new Sum of All Thrills simulator ride (photo at left) that opened last month at Walt Disney World’s Epcot. Guests can “engineer” or design their own thrill ride using math and science principles. Then they experience their own custom ride via a simulator — a giant robotic arm that powers the riders’ experience.
What was so striking at Thursday’s tech show was the extraordinary range of nonmilitary pursuits Raytheon has on its drawing boards.
“Inevitably wind down.” “Extraordinary range of nonmilitary pursuits.” Wow! These matter-of-fact phrases (to borrow a line from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews) sent a thrill up my leg.
You know who Raytheon is, don’t you? Think Patriot missile (top photo). Here’s a reminder from Wikipedia:
Raytheon is the world’s largest producer of guided missiles. Established in 1922, the company reincorporated in 1928 and adopted its present name in 1959. The company has around 73,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues of approximately US$20 billion. More than 90 percent of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from defense contracts and, as of 2007, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world, and is the fourth largest defense contractor in the United States by revenue.
When one of the most powerful agents of destruction and death turns its attention to sponsoring rides for Mickey Mouse, there’s hope for a better world. Let’s hope the company executives who see peace in the future are right - despite all evidence to the contrary.
Every once in a while, something happens that renews my faith in the natural order of things. The firing of CNN’s Lou Dobbs, for instance. (Yes, I know, he “resigned” and was “let out of his contract early,” and if you believe that, there’s this bridge I can get you a good deal on.)
Sure I believe in free speech. What newspaper hack doesn’t? But even free speech has its limits. Even in America, where more crazy things get said in an hour than in any other country over a whole year.
In an environment that boasts the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and where female “talk show” hosts are chosen for the sexy way they cross and uncross their legs, Lou was… Well, let’s just say he stood out.
Lou defines the word “demagogue.” He will say anything, however unfair, however unreasonable, however… untrue, just to get attention. Here’s how he summed up his style for the New Yorker a while back:
It’s very different from any program you’ll see on TV, by intention. What you won’t see on our broadcast is “fair and balanced journalism.” You will not see “objective journalism.” The truth is not “fair and balanced.”
What Lou forgot is that the truth is not xenophobic, either. Or homophobic. Or factually inaccurate…
I have to confess that I used to watch Lou. And, although I came to think of him as “Loud” Dobbs because of his frantic style, I agreed with some of his beefs about the “corporate elite” and their government lackeys trampling the American middle class into extinction. But in the past couple of years, he got so offensive that I couldn’t stand him any longer. It got so bad that I switched to MSNBC for “Hardball” at 7 p.m.
And, increasingly, that smug, self-congratulatory and flat-out rude Chris Matthews grated on me. For one thing, he never lets anyone else complete a sentence. For another, he invites the most hair brained (or hare brained, depending on your preference) fringe politicians on his show in an attempt to make fun of them and sometimes ends up launching them as cult heroes.
So there I was at 7 p.m., with no Marlins baseball game, no golf and no tennis, faced with the choice of Dobbs or Matthews. What did I do, Lord, to deserve such punishment?
But my prayers have been answered. Thanks to a groundswell of opposition by such groups as the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Presente.org, Democracia Now, Free Press, Media Matters, National Council of La Raza, and the National Institute for Latino Policy, CNN was persuaded to jettison the 64-year-old rabble rouser.
He is “pursuing other options,” which could mean a spot on Fox News, where he would fit in just fine. Or a foray into politics. At one time, he was being touted for governor of New Jersey, but that spot was filled recently, so there won’t be a vacancy for years, but there may be other openings in the increasingly rabid Republican Party. Or he could just retire and ride his horses (groomed and fed by those “aliens” he inveighed against), eat at the finest restaurants, and collect Social Security (a “Socialist” program he despises).
And I can watch CNN at 7 p.m., secure in the knowledge that no matter what they choose as his replacement, it will have to be more tolerable than either Lou or Chris.
Surprise! President Obama has said no to the hawks who want an endless war in Afghanistan. Presented with four options, all calling for more troops for the futile eight-year campaign, Obama’s choice was none of the above.
He said that what he really wants to know is how soon (and how) the U.S. can wriggle out of the quagmire and let the Afghans sort out their own mess. His decision was influenced by urgent cables from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry (photo at right), who is strongly against sending more troops to support the blatantly corrupt, incompetent and defiant regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained recently about Karzai’s “corruption, lack of transparency, poor governance (and) absence of the rule of law.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s pretty much the consensus opinion.
The Afghan president has refused even to promise to clean up his act. His response to U.S. demands for less corruption and more transparency is the time-honored one-finger salute.
So what’s a President to do? Obama faces the choice of sending thousands more Americans to die for a lousy government, or backing out of the U.S. commitment to do “whatever it takes” in Afghanistan, inviting the scorn of the neocons who already question his manhood.
He seems to be leaning toward the second alternative.
And that’s completely understandable. Anybody who has been paying attention knows there are insurmountable obstacles to establishing any kind of decent government in Afghanistan. The absence of a democratic history and tradition, for example, and an endemic culture of corruption, pervasive drug trafficking, tribalism and ethnic divides among the population…
The only sensible course is to abandon the costly and bloody crusade and bring the troops home.
Is it too soon to breathe a sigh of relief? Dare we hope that sanity has seeped into the halls of power?
Perhaps. And then again…
President Eisenhower’s warning against the dangers of America’s military-industrial complex keeps echoing in my mind. There’s a lot of money at stake here. And jobs. And power.
As long as America is at war, a massive industry thrives. In various congressional districts, people have jobs, the stock market is boosted by “defense industry” contracts, and - probably most relevant of all - some very influential people make a lot of money.
Beat those swords into plowshares and what do you get? Probably a lot of idle workers, disgruntled investors and ousted politicians. Of course, the net result would be a plus for the American economy, which would be freed of an intolerable financial burden. But there would be a transition period to reckon with, and some very angry, very powerful people.
To quote founding father Thomas Paine, these are the times that try men’s souls. Dare we hope that this president will pass the test? Stay tuned.
But the idea that there is a “middle of the road” is no laughing matter. Whose road? I lived in Canada for many years and I can tell you the political “road” in Canada is quite a distance to the “left” of the “road” in America. As far as I can determine, there is no political party in Canada that is to the “right” of any party in America - not even Bernie Sanders’ party, whatever it may be.
If Lieberman (photo far right) is a moderate, Attila the Hun (picture at right) was a lefty. The former Democrat turned McCain fellow-traveler has extreme positions on a number of things, including the Iran situation. I would describe him as a Zionist but I don’t know for sure that he belongs to a Zionist organization. I just know that he seems always willing to protect Israel, even at America’s expense.
