Notes from the Class War - The right moves further and further out of touch
March 29, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
An early question from NBC’s Chuck Todd posed to Barack Obama during his press conference went: “Why, given this new era of responsibility that you’re asking for, why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?”
Todd may or may not have felt that major investment houses and banks and insurance companies had made terrible sacrifices, but he clearly wanted to know why middle-class people weren’t making more of a sacrifice.
This came on a day when newspapers were reporting on the “tent cities” springing up across America, the 21st century equivalent of “Hoovertowns” during the Great Depression, shanty towns of planks and boards where the desperate homeless struggled to live. Sacramento opened up the state fair grounds for homeless families to pitch their tents where they might be a bit safer from the inevitable predators who have appeared to prey on such desperate families, and take what little they have left. Read more
Holy Minerva! Scientists at War over Human Dignity
March 19, 2009
by George Thomas
The American voter has again convulsed, and the national pendulum appears to be swinging away from a kind of childlike overconfidence.
I shared that common sigh of relief as the world watched Barack Obama begin his term of office. With this promise of competence at the top I’m not sure how I should act. Among many other concerns, we might also get started trying to stop the hemorrhaging of government science advice.
The techie know-how and the appreciation of science that Truman inherited after World War II evolved into a somewhat legitimate process of science advice. Even foreign policy was remade to cope with post-War realities. Government appreciation of science, as well as a know-how, can-do, benign value for Western positivism expanded under Eisenhower and Kennedy, ran into a snag in Vietnam, then coasted through the ‘60s and ‘70s until we hit Reagan. Read more
Reason Returns to the White House
March 18, 2009
by Mary Lyon
Like it or not, knuckle-draggers: Science is back IN.
As a life-long Catholic, I couldn’t be more delighted. I’m sure the airwaves and the cable channels will soon be wall-to-wall with conservatives and Republicans and other assorted 133h-century thinkers whining and moaning and ringing their hands – probably gnashing their teeth and rending their garments, too, according to the Old Testament model. The gas giants certainly will weigh in (there! How ‘bout that for blurring the lines between science and “morals”?). For the sake of decency and morality I will not name them here especially since one in particular got WAY too much undeserved attention last week and doesn’t need any more help from little me. Instead, I will step up, myself.
I am utterly thrilled that the White House has now moved out of the Dark Ages. For the last eight years I have watched the national debate with growing sadness as the volume and temperature turned up, and fact-based reality gave way to the faith-based mindset. The sins were legion. Government-issued “scientific” reports were cherry-picked clean of evidence supporting global warming. Anti-choice red tape strangled federal funding to women’s health programs throughout the country and across the globe. Realistic sex education was deemphasized or even banned from schools (hey, Governor Palin, how did abstinence-only education work out for that still-unmarried, high-school-aged new-mom daughter of yours?). And then there was the narrow-minded religious extremist nominee Dr. David Hager who was tapped to head the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. This darling man was best known for recommending that women struggling with PMS look for a cure by reading the Bible. Why did he even bother with medical school, I wonder? I dreaded the “brain drain” prompted by the Bush tourniquet choking off federal funding for scientific research. No wonder some of our finest scientific minds were leaving the country. Way to lead the world, America! Read more
A Canticle for Liebowitz - Media gets a gobsmacking it richly deserves
March 14, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
The history of journalism includes historic interviews that illuminated, defined, enriched, and sometimes caused changes. Most people have heard of the famous Edward R. Murrow interview of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which marked Murrow as the first major journalist to take a stand in the face of the right wing demagogue’s bluster. The David Frost / Richard Nixon interview, recently celebrated in a major film, is the stuff of journalistic legend. Jann S. Wenner , of Rolling Stone, interviewed the complex and beguiling John Lennon, illuminating one of the most innovative and remarkable minds in rock music. The late, lamented Edward Bradley had several important interviews with Mohammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. The rest of the “60 Minutes” staff have racked up hundreds of memorable interviews, with the famous, the obscure, the powerful and the needful. Some great interviews are a matter of fortuitous timing. BBC’s Martin Bashir interviewed Princess Diana of England, a meeting that would not have been memorable had the princess not died the next week. Some became famous and important too late. If more people had read George Sylvester Viereck’s Q&A with Adolf Hitler, maybe someone would have shot the son of a bitch before he went out and caused the deaths of some fifty million people. Read more
GOP: Feeling Rushed? - Frum the right: a warning
March 8, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
– David Frum
David Frum is something of a rarity in American politics these days. He’s a conservative who is intelligent, introspective, and nuanced. Fairly or not, the public thinks of “conservatives” when exposed to the stentorian bellows of Bill O’Reilly, the passive-aggressive snits of John Boehner, or the emotional toxicity of Ann Coulter. Read more
Budget 2010 - Obama shows that he means it
March 8, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Wow.
OK, Obama just answered my main question: is he willing to put his money where his mouth is?
I’ve been looking at his budget proposal over the past few days with a sense of wonderment. It’s a seminal document, as nation-altering as the “tax revolt” of the late 70s was, the one that led to Reagan and the supply side disaster.
The first number was the startling size of the deficit, roughly four times the size of any other deficit in the history of the country. (Not in constant-value dollars, of course: FDR had two that were bigger during World War II). $1.75 trillion dollars. One millionth of that would leave me set for life.
It really brings home just how serious the economic meltdown is. Democrats are normally the ones who reduce deficits and sometimes even balance the budget. Republicans are the ones who spend like drunken nymphomaniacs in a sex toy shop. Usually on the military and tax cuts for the rich.
Part of the deficit comes from the fact that Obama’s budget has one of the biggest tax cuts in the history of the country. If you didn’t already know that, I’m not surprised. The blow dried creatures of the corporate media, and the stentorian whiners of the right wing, all of whom make far more than a quarter million a year, are busily howling about “the biggest tax hike in centuries” that will “destroy what’s left of the economy.” That would be the fact that Obama proposes to let the Bush cuts on incomes over $250,000 lapse, rather than renewing them. Those rates would revert to the levels they were at in the mid nineties, a time of economic boom. It’s expected to add $637 billion in revenue, but that’s two years’ budget down the line. The tax rates don’t lapse until 2011. With any luck at all, the economy might be in slightly better shape by then. Read more
The Unity of Progressives and Government
March 3, 2009
by Larry Sakin
The main social responsibility of government is to enhance our collective and individual quality of life. The government does this by protecting our social security, our intellectual security and our health security.
Over the last twenty-five years, we have seen our government diminish its social responsibility to her citizens and instead act as lead salesperson for corporate interests that donate the largest part of campaign funds to local, state, and national leaders.
Government has forgotten that we have the RIGHT to be happy. In order to be happy we need a higher quality of life. We need to also keep a high quality of life to keep Americans in America and to keep the unity and strength of this country. When we have a lower quality of life than many other countries then what are we working for? Read more
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Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
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How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
