NEON GODS

When Facts Mean Nothing

This email to Andrew Sullivan from one of his readers struck a chord with me.

During the months that have passed since John McCain “tapped” Sarah Palin to be his running mate, I’ve had more and more trouble reconciling the obsessive adoration of Palin by so many in the GOP, including a lot of my relatives, (some of whom are very smart and successful people) with the obvious dangers of having someone like her as president. The bizarre behavior. The vapid thinking. How do they not recoil at the smug way in which she wears her ignorance like a badge of honor? It’s just amazing to me how every word out of her mouth is taken as gospel, and when she can’t even answer a softball question without struggling to form a semblance of coherent opinion, they set off against the liberal media.

Never mind the implications of her “word salad” responses. It’s quite sad actually, especially for me to see how my own family has changed. There’s been this kind of de-evolution from a thinking, reasoned, disinterested opinion, into an irrational, crusading, narrow banded thinking process...

My siblings back in Indiana are all bright and successful.  We can talk and argue intelligently at length on any subject whether it be science, economics, agriculture, music, you name it.  They are thoughtful about what they say and they will call you out when you say something that sounds fishy or illogical, but when it comes to politics or religion, their minds snap closed like a venus flytrap.  Everything is straight from Fox News and even when you confront them with obvious facts they won't back down.  Of course this has been going on for years in our family. It sounds like Andrew's readers family just caught the same disease.

--Trakker

Reducing Violence in the Cities

I have had some feedback to my post about the shooting death of little eight year old Heather Center.  Many objected to my anger directed at the gun lobby for the many shootings each year, telling me that guns don't kill, people kill.

That is without a doubt one of the stupidest arguments ever.  No one has ever claimed otherwise!  (The second most stupid argument is that people can kill with knives, baseball bats, frozen turkeys, etc.  so it will do no good to implement gun control measures because people will just use something else.  The parallel to this argument is that we shouldn't try to find a cure for cancer because people die of lots of other things too so if we cure cancer people will still die of something else. Yeah, that's pretty stupid).

But I digress.  Yes, people kill people, and they frequently use guns.  This has become a real problem in the inner cities (much to the gun lobby's delight).  At first we tried to control the flow of guns into the cities, but there are just too many gun owners and gun shops only too happy to make a profit, so we could only stand by and watch the carnage, but now there is a new program called CeaseFire that has shown promise in reducing the shootings (and other violence) in the cities.

The key is to change social norms so that violence is seen as "uncool" both by potential perpetrators and their communities, instead of being the automatic way to settle a dispute. [...]

"Violence gets transmitted the same way as other communicable diseases, so we train 'violence interruptors' to prevent escalation," says Gary Slutkin, founder and executive director of CeaseFire.

"They change the norm from 'violence is what's expected of me' to 'violence will make me look stupid'," says Slutkin. [...]

A three-year independent evaluation of CeaseFire published by the Department of Justice last year found that in Chicago, it reduced violence in every community where it was deployed.

Shootings and killing fell by between 41 and 73 per cent, with drops of 17 to 35 per cent the result of direct interventions by CeaseFire. Retaliation murders fell by 100 per cent in 5 of the 8 communities covered...

So, yes, this is a recognition that people kill people, and the focus of this program is on the people who kill (or injure) other people.  The idea behind the program makes sense and it would be great if it works, even if it only reduces killings by 50%.

--Trakker

Government Lies, Real Journalism, and Suffering On Behalf of the People

Nancy Youssef, of McClatchy News, wrote a long article about Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, an Afghan who was detained in U.S. custody for 6 years, most of that time was spent in Gitmo.  He was released in 2008.

He's back in Afghanistan working as a tribal to help the people of his province, and much to his horror the Pentagon is now accusing him of engaging in terrorism again.  Read the article to see how ridiculous their claim is and how badly Wakil has been treated by our country.

Glenn Greenwald used this article to highlight the many lies our government has been telling us about terrorists, detainees, Gitmo, and the whole Bush war on terrorism.  Glenn praises Youssef's article and calls it an example of how real journalism should be practiced.

As the McClatchy article reflects, what is and is not real "journalism" is not that complicated.  The government makes a claim.  The role of the "journalist" is not to repeat it or merely report that the government claims..., but instead, to investigate it with skepticism to determine whether it is true, and then report if it isn't.  And journalists don't have to wait for a member of the "opposition party" to call them and object before doing so.  That's so basic that it's staggering to believe that it is disputed, and yet not only is that proposition disputed, it is explicitly rejected by many -- if not most -- establishment journalists.  And in that fact lies much of the explanation for what has happened in the U.S. during this decade (at least).

Also of interest is the first comment posted to Glenn's column.  Jim White is a frequent commenter and here is what he wrote:

At the end of the [McClatchy] article, we have this:

"Where is the justice? I am still being threatened because of this," Wakil said, his arms flailing. "But I do not want to retaliate. People respect me now more than before because they know I am innocent. It is my job as a tribal elder to suffer on behalf of my people."

What a succinct summary of the depths to which we have sunk. First, of course, Wakil understands that the concept of "justice" no longer exists for the United States when it come to the Great War on Terror.

Further, though, I dare anyone to give me a single example of a political figure in Washington who sees their job as entailing the obligation "to suffer on behalf of my people". Inside the Beltway, the only objective is to enrich oneself as much as possible in both cash and power while ensuring re-election. The concept of doing anything, let alone suffering, on behalf of the people is completely foreign to our government...

--Trakker

Heather Brooke Center Was Shot to Death Today

This evening a man in South Carolina shot a little 8 year-old girl to death.

A man put an 8-year-old girl in a headlock Wednesday and shot her to death, then shot himself in the stomach, authorities said.

How many times a week do we read stories like this - innocent people shot to death by a gun owner.  We're told that people need guns for personal protection and to defend us from a rogue government, but every day we read of angry gun owners shooting a wife or girlfriend or their children or someone they hate. They shoot abortion doctors, they shoot guards at museums, they shoot someone to make a statement, they shoot classmates, they shoot someone hoping the police will shoot them, now so common that it has a name, "Suicide by Police." 

While I'm sure gun zealots feel sad about the victims, they have historically refused to do ANYthing to effectively stop these killings.  They respond by blaming the victims for not arming themselves.

Sure, there are laws that are supposed to prevent criminals and the mentally unbalanced from owning guns, but as we all know from reading the tragic stories in the news everyday, those laws are unenforceable.   Just look at the man who shot this little girl:

The sheriff said [the shooter], 50, has a long criminal record.

So why did he have a gun?  Who cares?  Certainly not the gun lobby.

Why are these laws unenforceable?  Because the gun lobby doesn't want the laws to be enforceable.  In fact, if they had their way (and they usually do) everyone would be allowed to own any gun they want, in whatever number they want, with no accountability whatsoever.  They want everyone in America to be armed.

Oh, they scream and bleat and beat their chest about how much they hate criminals and assure us that they want to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have one.  If that's true then the NRA would be outraged that this child killer with a long criminal record had a gun.  They would demand that the South Carolina authorities investigate how this man got his gun and would demand that the person or gun shop that sold him the gun, or neglected to take it away from him once he was convicted of a felony (assuming he had committed one) be identified and punished.

It won't happen. It never happens, in fact sometimes the shooter is even a member of the NRA.  I called and asked the NRA once how many members a year are purged from their rolls because they were convicted of a felony.  They said they wouldn't divulge that information.  Why?  Wouldn't that send the right message, that the NRA doesn't tolerate members who commit felonies?

The little girl who was shot was named Heather Brooke Center.  She only got to spend eight years on earth.  Think of her for a moment because what she was today is all she'll ever be.

--Trakker

[Don't] R.I.P. McNamara

I spent four years in the military during the Vietnam War so I know Robert McNamara well. No, I never met the man but everyone in the military at the time felt his touch.  I never met a serviceman who liked or respected him.  He was your stereotypical bureaucrat, running a war and sending men and women to their deaths from his comfortable office in Washington.

Well, he finally joined the 58,000 plus troops who died in his little war.  I think Joseph Galloway (McClatchy News) has the best response to McNamara's death yet.

When famous people die, we have come to expect scores of tributes to the person, with stories of all the great things he or she did in their life, and how much they will be missed.  Well, this one is different.  Galloway hated McNamara and he's not afraid to show it.  He writes:

The only disagreement I ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

He goes on to describe just how deep Halberstam's hatred was,

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

Read Galloway's piece, it's deliciously irreverent.  And scroll down to WallaceN's comment.

--Trakker

 

"I Quit!"

The latest sport in Washington is trying to fathom why Sarah Palin abruptly resigned as governor of Alaska.  While it's possible it was triggered by a huge scandal that is about to break, I think the best explanation I've found is this: she's a quitter  Whenever she finds the job too hard or too boring, she quits.  Take her college experience for example: five different colleges in five years.

I like this explanation because it fits Occam's razor that the simplist answer is usually the correct answer.

Read more about it in "The Sarah Palin "I-Quit-arod" by Karen Tumulty.

--Trakker

Dear President Obama...

So President Obama is upset at liberals because we demand that any health care reform bill include a public option.  A public option is crucial to creating a system that is affordable to the American people and the taxpayers, otherwise the insurance companies will be able to jack up the costs (and their profits) and we, the taxpayers, will have to pay higher and higher subsidies to those who can't afford it.  Evidently Obama would rather have a bad health care reform bill than fight the monied interests in this country.

This post on Crooks and Liars links to the Washington Post article that reports the following (I refuse to link to the WaPost):

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system. [emphasis added by Crooks & Liars]

Here's my response (and judging by the responses left in C & L and Campaign Silo, I'm not alone):

Dear President Obama,

During your campaign for President you made a number of promises, in return for my vote.  You got my vote.  Now that you have won, it's increasingly obvious that you feel no particular obligation to keep many of your promises.  Why? 

Now I hear that you are upset because WE still want, and are willing to fight for, the things you promised...and you want us to stop fighting for them because it might harm the party.

Uh, just how stupid do you think we are?

I should remind you that most liberals I know feel little loyalty to the Democratic Party.  We are issue oriented rather than politically oriented.  We want a better life for the people who live in this country and we don't care much which party supports our issues.  Traditionally it has been the Democrats, but lately both parties are more concerned about what's better for corporations and special interest groups than for the people that our government is SUPPOSED to be working for.

I appreciate your even-handedness and intelligence in running our foreign affairs, and I feel safer with you in office, but I will not compromise when it comes to health care reform, transparency in government, and opposing your plan to imprison accused enemies, for decades even, without a trial, for example.

Asking us to support a bad health care reform bill so you can get bragging rights for the next election is an insult.  I would rather have no health care reform than one that benefits the insurance companies and screws the taxpayers, leaving our health care system in the hands of corporations whose goals are to increase profits rather than doing what's best for the people of this country.

One last request: please stop berating progressives and liberals to prove just how damn centrist and bipartisan you are.

--Trakker

It's Time To Leave the Democratic Party.

This post about Donna Edwards (D-MD) on FireDogLake is sounding a warning bell that the progressive House candidate we supported with such excitement in 2008 is beginning to show some signs of wavering in her progressive stances.  So far there seems to be nothing to be overly alarmed at, but we need to let her know that our support in 2010 is predicated on how she votes on issues important to progressives (e.g., health care reform that includes a strong viable public option).

Here is what I believe happens when idealistic progressive Democrats, like Rep. Edwards, get elected to the House.  The party leadership begins bombarding them with how important it is to support the party and work as a team, which means that sometimes they will be called upon to support bills that may displease their supporters, but it's for the good of the party and for the nation.

If that doesn't work, then they bring in the President to do some deft arm-twisting - which is hard to say no to, especially in this case where the President is an African American and immensely popular in Edward's district.  If that doesn't work, then the Democrats instruct one of their pressure groups - like AIPAC - to announce that Rep. Edwards is not sufficiently supportive of their agenda and that they may be forced to run a "better" candidate against her in the next primary.

This is how the corporate-run Democratic Party forces left-leaning Democrats to support legislation that benefit the corporations (or harm them as little as possible), and it usually works.

This is why we (liberals, progressives, civil-libertarians) need to break away from the Democratic Party NOW and start organizing a new grass-roots party targeting kids in college and high school - the people most aware of the damage the present Congress has done - and is continuing to do - to their future.  I believe this age group will soon be losing their loyalty to President Obama as they watch him and the Democratic Party cave to special interests and continue to support corporate interests and some of the worst tendencies of the Bush Administration.

We need to groom candidates to run for office at the lower levels of government (and try to lure some present Democrats to switch), and begin building enthusiasm for a government that governs in the best interests of the people, NOT corporations and the very wealthy.  I will keep harping on this because there is virtually no chance we can ever thrive in or change the Democratic Party.

--Trakker

Rep. Bachmann Advocates Breaking The Law

This is just amazing.  We have a member of the House of Representatives who says she plans to break the law and implies that others should also. Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann (R) told the Washington Times that when she fills out her 2010 census form she will only fill in the number of people who are in her household, nothing more.   According to the Census Bureau's website, everyone is required by law to fill out the census form.

The Times article was published two weeks ago and as far as I know there has been no attempt in the House to censure her or cite her for an ethics violation.

I called Rep. Bachmann's office this morning and asked if she had changed her position. The staffer I talked to said no, she still plans to answer only that question.  He further volunteered that she is taking this stance because of ACORN's involvement in the census.  This is kind of weird because as I recall, in the 1990 and 2000 census, the census forms were mailed to me and I mailed them back. No one ever called at my door. I also asked if there had been any action in the House to censure her over this and the staffer said not that he knew of.

I can't believe our Congress now has members who openly admit they plan to break the law and, by example, encourage others to do the same. 

[I called the House Committee on Standards and Official Conduct about this and they told me I would have to write a letter to the committee to file an official complaint, which I will do.  Follow the link above for the address if you want to do the same.]

--Trakker

Mark Sanford

It's been painful watching Mark Sanford's mid-life crisis.  He would be fine in a country like France where people understand human nature and accept it.  But this isn't going to end well in uber-religious South Carolina where a man who strays must repent, reject his lover, and return to his wife and pretend to love her.  Then, if you are a Republican, nutty religious people will forgive you. If you are a Democrat you will always be the spawn of the devil so forget even trying.

--Trakker