GOP congressman laughs off Obama death threats

Un-freaking-believable:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2011/02/rep_paul_broun_asked_who_is_go.html?wpisrc=xs_0005&wpisrc=xs_sl_0001

Not 2 months after the Giffords shooting, a GA congressman was hosting a town hall in his district where a guest asked, "Who is going to shoot Obama?"

This apparently elicited laughter from the audience. The congressman's response was, "The thing is, I know there's a lot of frustration with this president. We're going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we'll elect somebody that's going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare."

Where is the decency? The least he could do was scold that person and get security to remove him from the building. Some things are still inappropriate, right? Apparently this GOPer was totally fine with jokes about murdering an innocent man, not to mention he happens to be the head of state. What message is he sending - it's OK to use violence against people you disagree with politically? I am sure there are thousands of Americans out there who have fantasized about, or may actually want to, kill our president. Well we all have some sick private thoughts. But to unabashedly joke about it in public is taking things to another level. I'm ashamed of our people.

The GOP are calling for a Dem congressman from OR to resign because there is a picture of him in a Tigger outfit, and he didn't disclose that he was seeking psychiatric therapy. Heck maybe it was Halloween, and who but a heartless conservative doesn't love Tigger? If embarrassing photos were a criterion for congressional dismissal, then 90% of them should step down (and I bet a few GOPers have some much nastier photos hidden in their desks). I'd prefer a harmlessly loony leader any day vs. someone who doesn't care to defend his president against death threats, even in jest.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//110223/480/urn_publicid_ap_org_a8a243b6f03c456cbb3894b9a0d16b14/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/feb/24/oregon-democratic-congressman-david-wu-pressured/

Koch money behind union-busting in Wisconsin

Guess who are behind Gov. Walker and his legislation to kill collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin (not all workers of course, cops and firefighters are exempt because screwing them is bad PR, even for GOP standards)?

Yep, the Koch brothers again (scroll down to end for a refresher if you like).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22koch.html
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201102210900

The author below has an interesting take on why the Democratic Party no longer represents working people. After the '60s, there was a cultural split between the "new left" of Baby Boomer anti-war, feminist, pro-environment, civil rights folks, and the FDR-type traditional unions and org's that donated to Dems and expected pro-labor legislation in return. Due to the George McGovern debacle, gradual dismantling of union power, and decline of US manufacturing, Dems candidates turned to business as their new lifeline, and they were all too happy to fill the void. Now it didn't matter which party was in power for them. So now is it any wonder why Clinton and Carter have done more for the rich than Bush Sr. and Ford? And what do we have as a result? Real wages for the non-rich have stagnated while costs for college/health care have soared, states and pensions are bankrupt, infrastructure and schools are falling apart, and progressive taxes, worker protections, and various regulations are being rolled back.

Despite its many faults, postwar America was a great nation and a "shining city on the hill" as Reagan put it. But the rich killed the dream, shook us down, gave little back in return (except for oil spills and oil wars), and now we are on a path to "banana republic, third world" wealth gap status (Kristof, Huffington). If the working classes actually had a voice in Washington (and like it or not, labor unions were the best available medium), instead of a virtual monopoly by rich corporatists, then maybe the shining city wouldn't have lost so much luster. Surely collective bargaining causes some corruption and inefficiency. People suffer because of that, but not nearly as much as the suffering due to the rich's excesses (wars, speculation bubbles, eco-disasters, layoffs, etc.). And let's not forget that the concessions won by self-serving labor unions actually improved life for all middle class workers and families. Those people are the real America, not the "corporate citizens" like Goldman and BP that Washington serves.

Koch, Walker, and others claim that unions are bankrupting states and companies, so they must be eliminated in order to restore fiscal responsibility. Well those org's would have more money to cover their negotiated OBLIGATIONS to workers if they didn't give it all away as tax breaks, dividends, and bonuses. Look what our leaders are trying to cut to control the deficit now; it disproportionately hurts the poor and working classes. Sure they killed that GE engine project (Boehner is serious about budget cuts except for pork in his own state), but it should have never existed in the first place. Of course tax hikes are absolutely third-rail, but there's no talk about ending subsidies to big oil and corn, or closing foreign bases either. Budget cuts may be necessary and painful, but we should spread the pain to everyone, not leave the most privileged exempt.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline

Big unions have plenty of pathologies of their own, after all, so maybe it's just as well that we're rid of them. Maybe. But in the real world, political parties need an institutional base. Parties need money. And parties need organizational muscle. The Republican Party gets the former from corporate sponsors and the latter from highly organized church-based groups. The Democratic Party, conversely, relied heavily on organized labor for both in the postwar era. So as unions increasingly withered beginning in the '70s, the Democratic Party turned to the only other source of money and influence available in large-enough quantities to replace big labor: the business community. The rise of neoliberalism in the '80s, given concrete form by the Democratic Leadership Council, was fundamentally an effort to make the party more friendly to business. After all, what choice did Democrats have? Without substantial support from labor or business, no modern party can thrive.

Here's why this is a big deal. Progressive change in the United States has always come in short, intense spurts: The Progressive Era lasted barely a decade at the national level, the New Deal saw virtually all of its legislative activity enacted within the space of six years between 1933 and 1938, and the frenzy of federal action associated with the '60s nearly all unfolded between 1964 and 1970. There have been exceptions, of course... And the courts have followed a schedule all their own. Still, one striking fact remains: Liberal reform is not a continuous movement powered by mere enthusiasm. Reform eras last only a short time and require extraordinarily intense levels of cultural and political energy to get started. And they require two other things to get started: a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.

In 2008, fully four decades after our last burst of liberal change, we got that again. But instead of five or six tumultuous years, the surge of liberalism that started in 2008 lasted scarcely 18 months and produced only two legislative changes really worthy of note: health care reform and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. By the summer of 2010 liberals were dispirited, political energy had been co-opted almost entirely by the tea party movement, and in November, Republicans won a crushing victory.

Why? The answer, I think, is that there simply wasn't an institutional base big enough to insist on the kinds of political choices that would have kept the momentum of 2008 alive. In the past, blue-collar workers largely took their cues on economic policy from meetings in union halls, and in turn, labor leaders gave them a voice in Washington.

This matters, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue in one of last year's most important books, Winner-Take-All Politics, because politicians don't respond to the concerns of voters, they respond to the organized muscle of institutions that represent them. With labor in decline, both parties now respond strongly to the interests of the rich—whose institutional representation is deep and energetic—and barely at all to the interests of the working and middle classes.

This has produced three decades of commercial and financial deregulation that started during the administration of a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, gained steam throughout the Reagan era, and continued under Bill Clinton... At nearly every turn, corporations and the financial industry used their institutional muscle to get what they wanted, while the working class sat by and watched, mostly unaware that any of this was even happening... Organized labor has become a shell of its former self, and the working class doesn't have any institutional muscle in Washington. As a result, the Democratic Party no longer has much real connection to moderate-income voters. And that's hurt nearly everyone.

Michael Scheuer on Osama and the Mideast

This was one of the most refreshing foreign policy interviews I've heard in a while, from Prof. Michael Scheuer of G'Town who used to head up the CIA's Bin Laden group (nicknamed "The Manson Family" for how fanatically they performed their jobs). I guess you might think he was a failure for that, but he informed the Pentagon of OBL's precise location on 8 occasions (of course no way to know if they were right), and the Clinton admin. declined to give the green light for their own reasons. In 2007, Osama himself said that the two Americans who understood him the most were Noam Chomsky and Scheuer (make of that what you will).

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201102231000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

Scheuer said that as early as 1997, Osama's grand strategy was to foment political discord in the US and alienate us from our allies over our foreign policy, stretch our military-intel apparatus thin trying to chase Al Qaeda, and bankrupt us in foreign quagmires. If that is true, then the self-proclaimed greatest nation in history strutted into a major bear trap set by a guy hiding in a cave. We're not on our last legs yet, but we're not winning either (especially when you consider the price we've paid so far for minor gains). He also said that Osama is more of a smart, dedicated "worthy enemy" like Robert E. Lee than a delusional lunatic like Kim Jong Il. Unfortunately the former is a lot harder to defeat.

Osama's top enemies are/were the non-Islamic dictators in the Mideast (especially the House of Saud, Saddam, Mubarak, and Qaddafi, so this has been a great month for him) and Israel. The US and the West are indirect enemies due to our support for said enemies. But one wonders whether our choice of allies could have prevented Osama from becoming militant. After all, he did fight with us at one time, so we must not have been such intolerable infidels. Just as our "trusted Iraqi sources" told the neo-cons exactly what they wanted to hear, that Iraq had WMD for their own interests, Israel and our dictator buddies in the Mideast (who view grassroots Islamic movements as their top threats to power) have fed us crap for years that Al Qaeda hates us because of our values, and won't stop until we're dead or converted. Well if that's the case then it's personal; we better hate them back and wage an endless, amorphous war against them. Good vs. evil, our civilization is at stake, yadda yadda.

Yes Al Qaeda may want a global caliphate, because that is what Muhammad instructed Muslims to do (not necessarily through violence). I want a new job, and even if I try very hard to get one there's no telling if and when it will happen. Some US evangelicals hope to bring about the conditions that unleash Armageddon - not just prepare for the return of the lord, but actively make it happen. Then the US and all nations will be destroyed, and everyone but the true believers die horrible deaths (including the Jews they profess to support). So should we imprison the evangelicals for conspiracy against the US, and send them to Gitmo as religious fanatics? There is no point fearing and defending against every extreme religious endgame. But hey, it makes for a great bogeyman for people like Bush and Beck to peddle on the ignorant and fearful.

All this masks the truths that are politically inconvenient for our leaders, and hinders their propaganda efforts inspiring us to sacrifice for this righteous conflict. We and our allies created Al Qaeda and Osama. Instead of diffusing the causes of their grievances, we have chosen to fight them head on, and on their terms. And we have taken this problematic path because we care more about propping up dictators in order to keep the Israelis happy, Muslims down, and oil exports up (an industry whose profits go to only a small subset of people), rather than forging true partnerships, cultural understanding, political reforms, and economic development. The region is still affected by the legacies of colonialism; they need a Marshall Plan, not Rendition and sanctions. If we took the higher path, maybe Exxon and Lockheed's coffers would be smaller, but the people over there would have a better quality of life and viable political channels of redress (precluding the need to embrace violent Islam), which ensures greater stability and security for our interests in the end.

-------

Scheuer also made pretty good comments about our precarious support of Israel. Any nation founded on the premise that a deity granted a chosen tribe exclusive rights to a patch of land in an unbreakable, eternal covenant (and much of their government is populated by leaders who espouse this belief) is probably not a great partner for rational, 21st Century diplomacy. The US supposedly trusts in god, but no one except Palin types would claim that god cares whether the US is around or not. Scheuer was the first person I've heard to say that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, contrary to most public statements. He of course believes that Israel has the right to defend itself from threats, but no nation has a "right" to exist, and that is an important distinction. It must be true, otherwise the USSR would still be around, and we couldn't have forced Nazi Germany to surrender. Nations exist as long as they can, but if they grow weak or piss off other nations enough, they're going down. That is the way of the world, so why the double-standard for Israel? Because god said so? And we call the Muslims crazy? This is important because it's much harder to think clearly when existential sentiments are always clouding one's judgment.

Regarding Libya, it's amazing that Obama hasn't publicly condemned Qaddafi's violence against his people and called for him to step down (the Arab League already has). Clinton spoke out a bit, and also previously called on the Iranian people to rise up against their murderous regime. That's easy for her to say 10,000 miles away in safety and comfort, but these are not light decisions for the people on the ground. If they want to revolt, they have to go all the way or it's their death and doom for their loved ones. Despots stay in power by paying for loyalty and crushing opponents, especially those who dare to speak out. There's no turning back, and if we realize that we should really salute the courageous young people who risked everything to defy the odds and topple dictators backed by thousands of gunmen and billions of petro-dollars. The typical American can't even be bothered to drive down the street and vote once a year. It's a real shame that decades of our foreign policy blunders have rendered us nearly impotent during this critical time in Mideast history.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/too_little_not_yet_too_late

Why has the US put more heat on Mubarak, when he was responsible for far less bloodshed (at least Mubarak didn't send warplanes to bomb unarmed people in his own cities)? Libya cut a deal with Bush and others in the West to get UN sanctions lifted and to get off the terror blacklist. Qaddafi supposedly agreed to cease his WMD programs, pay reparations to the victims of the Pan Am bombing, and release some Western captives. He must have got a lot in return, including diplomatic cover. And when the EU buys 85% of Libya's substantial oil exports, that's a lot of capital to cash in during a crisis. That shows you how our foreign energy dependence can cripple our diplomatic options and stifle our principles. It's clear that Qaddafi is done; it just matters how much he will kill and destroy in the process. It's better for us and the region to limit Qaddafi's damage now. We enforced no-fly zones over Serbia and Iraq, why not with Libya? Our fleet is already over there. Many Libyan pilots bravely defected and refused to carry out missions to bomb protesters. But at least the US/NATO can embargo incoming shipments of resources and mercenaries from Qaddafi's African allies.

Why do Muslims hate us? Not because of our democracy, shopping malls, and women's rights (well not primarily). It's because we choose to befriend homicidal klepto-sociopaths over the millions of honest, poor people languishing under their boots. It's not just Obama but a long tradition.