Gov. Branstad Knows Best

If you happen to be a poor woman living in Iowa and on Iowa's form of Medicaid, you'll have to get permission from Governor Terry Branstad if you choose to lawfully end your pregnancy, as reported in The Des Moines Register today.

A provision of the newly signed state-sponsored Iowa Health and Wellness Plan gives Brandstad the "final say on whether to pay for abortion services provided under the program."

He admitted it was a political compromise.... read far-right demand.... but that "he was comfortable with the new responsibility."

Here is how he explains this indignity.... Branstad, who is a member of the Catholic faith, said "he would seek advice from medical experts when required to make a determination on whether state dollars would be spent on an abortion."

So poor women of Iowa, it's obvious Branstad thinks you're not only poor, but morally inferior and stupid, and thus incapable making a decision on this personal, very personal, health care right.

Where is the ACLU when we need them?  Isn't this an abridgment of not only the First and Fourth Amendments of the U. S. Constitution, but it also nullifies the intent of Roe vs Wade to protect a woman's reproductive rights.

It's nice that Branstad is comfortable with his ultimate veto power over this most personal of decisions, but the women of Iowa should be up-in-arms at the idea of another old white far-right male imposing his anti-choice religious views on them, by Iowa law no less.

This also places Iowa in the unique position of being the only one of the 50 states to suffer this daddy-knows-best embarrassment.   

Obama Warms to Warming...

At last Obama seems poised to enact measures to address global warming.  According to the New York Times, he is preparing regulations for carbon dioxide emissions of power plants.... electric power plants being the biggest polluters responsible for nearly 40 per cent of our country's greenhouse gas emissions.  A major step in the right direction.

Expect to hear weeping and wailing from the power industry, as well as scare tactics from in-their-pocket politicians.

The Ayatollah Would Approve!

Since when does U.S. citizenship hinge on church membership? Margaret Doughty must wonder "what happened to her country" .....the one she's lived in for 30 years.  The Huffington Post fills us in.

Cain: GOP's Latest Showman

This opinion piece, appearing in this morning's Des Moines Register, rips the veneer off of the GOP's public face. A must read.....

Written by HARRY BROD

HARRY BROD is professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of Northern Iowa. Contact: harry.brod@uni.edu

With the most recent poll showing Herman Cain leading in Iowa by a margin of 10 points over his closest rival, it's time to take a longer look at the Cain candidacy, a longer view that looks back to the former candidate whose mantle all Republican contenders now claim, Ronald Reagan.

There's a direct line from Reagan to Cain, but it's not in terms of values or issues, where Reagan was much too moderate for the current crowd. I mean the line from Reagan the actor to Cain the motivational speaker, the line that underscores the increasing victory of style over substance.

Sincerity is everything in politics. If you can fake that you've got it made, goes the old saying. Renowned physician Oliver Sacks (the basis for Robin Williams' character in the movie "Awakenings") tells of patients with a condition that turns them into sort of human lie detectors - they spot insincerity, and find it hilarious. Sacks once walked by a room in which a group of such patients were laughing hysterically. Peeking in to see what was going on, he found them glued to the TV, watching a Reagan speech.

Reagan understood the importance of stagecraft. He was controversially the first president to return a military salute, a violation of military protocol. Not even five-star General Eisenhower did that as president. He respected that the privilege of saluting comes with the uniform, not from the title of commander-in-chief.

Cain's got a commanding stage presence, too, but he takes too much command. He reacts to interview questions thrown at him like a batter at home plate, swinging hard at pitches he likes but ignoring others, even those in the strike zone. One wonders if the swagger Republicans like will continue to be popular. Americans tend to want their chief as well as pizza executives to answer the questions they're asked.

Today the way to convince people you're doing or would do a good job as president is by appearing rather than being presidential. When he tried to actually function as head of our executive branch President Bill Clinton was criticized as a "policy wonk," and President Barack Obama tries hard to avoid that label. As far as I can tell, wonkiness is a charge that they're trying to do their job.

Or at least that they're trying to do the job the Constitution envisions for them. But the line from Reagan to Cain traces a different job description, emptying the job of real content and leaving it as a figurehead position, not so much chief executive as national spokes model.

There is indeed a policy agenda behind the Republican emptying out of the presidency, but it's not spoken out loud. The policy is privatization, meaning increasing corporatization of our lives, with the essential functions of once public institutions like schools, prisons and the military increasingly outsourced to private contractors, putting them outside the democratic process by which they could be controlled.

That's why the Republican Party is out to prevent government from functioning. Convince people that government is inherently dysfunctional, and corporations are there to fill in the gap. The less government does, the more unregulated and excess profit there is to be made.

For those puzzled by Cain's new ad featuring his campaign manager blowing his cigarette smoke into the camera while the song sings "I am America," it's Cain repaying his corporate sponsor. He got his political start as a Washington lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association and made his mark by turning it into a front organization for the tobacco industry by opposing regulations on smoking in restaurants, a move opposed by many restaurant owners who thought his actions were bad for small businesses.

The lines spoken by candidates in the Reagan-Cain line are written by someone else. These candidates are a mouthpiece for the corporate interests behind them, and their seemingly presidential style is just skillful corporate ventriloquism. I'll let you figure out what that makes them.

GOP's Spooky Candidates

As Halloween draws near, ones thoughts turn to things scary, even bizarro.

Like demons.

But for some evangelical Christians, demons stalk us year-round. They believe demons have taken hold of parts of our country, especially Washington, D.C.

O.K… I can live with the D.C. part.

As the recent AP release “Election-year goals of fringe Christian group questioned” points out, some Christian religious leaders, like Lou Engle the leader of The Call prayer marathons, has warned that the tornado that decimated Joplin, Missouri this year was evidence of God’s judgment on the country over…. wait for it…. abortion. Demons are punishing women over choice, so they leveled Joplin.

Say what?

And, Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer, views the acceptance of same-sex marriage as a sign of the end times. The end times, the favorite theme of the follow-my-nutty-ideas-or-you’ll-burn-in-hell pulpit thumpers (pass the plate).

But here is the creepiest part, these apocalyptic doomsayers were the organizers of GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry’s Houston prayer rally in August, a week before he announced his candidacy. The end of the world is an intense focus of many of the religious leaders involved in the rally.

Now that’s scary.

Actually, Perry should be holding prayer meetings about God’s judgment on Texas, as large parts of that parched state burn like the portal to hell-fires.

But, it isn’t just Perry, as Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens reveal in today’s New York Times editorial, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason… The Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans.” Perry and Bachmann also dismiss evolution as an unproven theory.

Giberson and Stephens expose the anti-intellectual fundamentalist evangelicals who promote (and profit from) the idea that “their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy.”

They point us to the earth-is-10,000-years-old leader, Ken Ham; the-founders-intended-America-to-be-a-Christian-nation, David Barton; and the really scary, gay-people-are-unnatural (and SpongeBob SquarePants promotes gayness), James C. Dobson. They left out the Rev. James Farwell who warned that Teletubby Tinky Winky might be gay. All of this would be funny…. if it wasn’t so relentlessly promoted.

These anti-intellectual scare-mongers want to take over our government…the Tea Party (useful dupes) is wrestling for control of the GOP, and intend to place the evangelical boogie-men’s hand-maiden, or man, in the White House.

Egads!

By the way, no Mormons, i.e., candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, need apply for evangelical political blessings... they're not real Christians.

“…when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even it it means criticizing fellow Christians.” Amen to that!!!

GOP's Anti-Patriotism

Sullivan Ballou was a major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers during the Civil War. He wrote this letter to his wife in Smithfield, 14 July 1861 from Washington, D.C.:

Dear Sarah, The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.

I have no misgivings about or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing, perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence can break. And yet my love of country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly, with all these chains, to the battlefield.

Sullivan’s letter continues for many paragraphs as he expresses his undying love for his “dear Sarah," his hopes to see “our boys grown up to honorable manhood around us,” and how when his last breath escapes him, "it will whisper your name."

So how do our politicians today uphold this honorable, courageous recognition of the vital role our government plays in the lives of all of us. The recognition that civilization leans on the triumph of the government. The reverence for the great debt we owe to those who went before us? The burning inspiration that together our country can do great things, for and with each other?

Under this noble lens, it's hard to watch the current crop of GOP candidates elbow each other aside in their eagerness to curry favor with the anti-government, pro-corporate me-first Tea Party.

Presidential wanna-be Michelle Bachmann at a Tea Party rally called the current administration a "gangster government,” to great applause, and even claimed in a recent debate that citizens should pay no taxes at all.

The current GOP-majority House blocks job-creating measures intended to lift us out of the financial morass they are largely responsible for under the Bush/Cheney administration. Their constant drum beat is for tax breaks for corporations…. corporations they and the Supreme Court have labeled as “people” with the right to spend unlimited sums of money to buy elections. As GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said this year at the Iowa State Fair, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry calls the upcoming election a religious crusade to put God in charge of government. God is the cloak scroundels use to mask their raw lusting for the power of the presidency, however unqualified and self-serving. Bible-thumping rheotric designed to obscure their lack of patriotism.

Where are the GOP presidential candidates who will uphold Sullivan Ballou’s honorable, unselfish recognition of the vital role government plays in the lives of all of us?... and the great debt we owe to those who fought and died for this government? Their sacrifice wasn't for corporations.

Sullivan Ballou was mortally wounded at the first Battle of Bull Run a week after he wrote this letter. He was a true patriot… by definition a person who loves, supports, and defends his country and its interests with devotion. It says nothing about slash and burn devisive ideology against his government.

Grand Old Party, where are your Sullivan Ballous?

D.C. Under the Far-Right Heel

What would the country look like if the increasingly far-right Republican party had total sway over our government? They campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs. How about a reality check.

Take for example Washington, D. C. Although the GOP-controlled U. S. House has been in power just a little over a month, they are busy negating the will of the D.C. taxpayers.

Today's article in the New York Times, "Even Less Representation", gives us a glimpse of what Republican control looks like:

"The district’s hard-won home rule came under assault from day one with a House rule scrapping the already pathetic power of its elected representative..... This overreach was rationalized by cynically redefining the city as just another part of the federal government.... now piling on with a proposal to overturn the district’s legalization of gay marriage duly enacted last year under home rule.

"Then came the Republicans’ broad assault on federal financing of abortions in the states, tailored to include a particularly insidious clause, barring the Washington district government from using even local taxes for legal abortions"

While we have watched transfixed in the last weeks as the Egyptians dramatically moved their country toward democracy, the far-right in our bastion of freedom are relentlessly trying to dismantle ours. To insert their religious beliefs into laws that mandate government intrusion into, and control over, our most basic freedoms.

If these rights come under the heel of federal and state control.... what other of our rights could be next? This is what is happening in our country. You can change this.... 2012. Vote.

What's the GOP Tea Party Brewing?

Our country is being battered by a take-over attempt, the battle-plan drawn up by the religious right and corporations. Sure, they call themselves "patriots." But, that's just to keep the unwary faithful from catching on. Winning would result in a corporate-theocracy, based on their narrow interpretation, not just of the Constitution, but of the Bible. The vehicles are the tattered remnants of the GOP and the flamboyant Tea Party led by the looniest of tunes, no need to name them.

The once-Grand Old Party is being dragged behind the stampeding Tea-herd, yoked to them as a result of their obstructionist, personal-attack history. Hopefully, these false patriots have set themselves up to become history. It's just a matter of time until voters realize the "shining city on a hill" is Dubai.

The GOP/Tea Bag consortium proclaims they want smaller government, more liberty, but almost every action they take moves the country in the opposite direction.

It was the Republican administration who misled us into the moral and fiscal swamp of the Iraq war and nation building. It was the Republican administration who put into place the unfunded budget-busting drug program for senior citizens.... a giant boondoggle for the drug and insurance companies. It was the Republican administration that assembled the Homeland Security Administration behemoth, the biggest single expansion of government, ever.

It was the Republican administration who put us on the path to unsustainable debt.... and a good argument can be made that it was done deliberately in order to later say we can no longer afford Social Security and Medicare. For them, corporate welfare is fine, individual help is unpalatable.

Smaller government, fiscal restraint. Read the tea leaves, that's not in the brew.

As for freedom and liberty, GOP liberty is only for some. All are equal except women, gays, and non-believers, next up to receive the GOP backhand. Corporations have been awarded personhood by the ability to pour money into our electoral process thanks to our no longer Supreme-judgment court. Sad to say, the highest court in our land has become just another tool in the GOP/Tea Bag toolbox. Left unfettered, is the United Corporate States of America far off?

As for the promise to create jobs, forget that. What the GOP/Tea Baggers crave is social reform, made in their religious-moral-code image. In their perfect world, women would be forced into burkahood as control over their reproductive rights fall under government control. Gays would be denied civil rights while corporations would be granted more rights... to pollute, to manipulate financial markets, and to further deregulate our food products. And clean energy, less dependence on oil. Forget it.

But there will be a reckoning..... 2012 is coming. We can reject this toxic brew. What happens to our country is up to us.

RNC Fundraising Underbelly

The D.C. lobbyists have been taking all the blame for the distorted campaigns against the Obama administration... especially health care reforms that would start to bring the insurance industry to heel and benefit millions of U.S. citizens.

But it's not only the lobbyists.... they're just the employed messengers.

The lobbyists are, after all, openly, blatantly, in the pay of big insurance, big pharma, big oil. They don't work for the little guy, the working middle-class.

But, our elected representatives aren't supposed to be paid lobbyists, aren't supposed to act like a big legislative wood-mulcher, taking in principled reform and spitting out dirty chips.

But they are. And we now can see how the GOP is fueling that chipper.... the RNC's marching orders linked to Kevin Huffman's "Tweaking the GOP's fundraising strategy," in today's Washington Post.

The Republican National Committee in its zeal to keep its fund-raising troops in perfect goose-step, gave this presentation at its February RNC Finance Meeting. Here is a page from their 72-page blueprint for fundraising success for the upcoming elections. At it's heart, literally, are the motivating factors to be used to raise money from evidently clueless donors:

The image of a heart usually brings to mind thoughts of love, caring.... warm and fuzzies. But this is a rock-hard heart that divides GOP donors into two classes, the average knee-jerk Joes, and the heavy-hitter big shots, or wanna-be big shots, the major ego-driven donors.

What are the RNC's recommended fund-raising strategies? The number one tactic is "FEAR!!!" Number two? "Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration." And there is the tried and true... SOCIALISM charge. This is so important a tactic, it got a page all to itself:

The red-alert type trumpets a Chicken-Little-sky-is-falling approach .... "Save the country from trending toward Socialism." Woooooo.... the "S" word. And it works too, haven't you noticed?

But perhaps the saddest statement of the GOP fund-raising mindset is the attack mentality of reducing your opponent to an agent of the Evil Empire.... wonder what Ronald Reagan would think of the misuse of that phrase. The GOP is into Evil BIG TIME! You know like the "Axis of Evil." Here are the RNC's evil suggestions:

Obama in white-face as the Joker is something we've seen before... oh yes, as a big placard at the "grass-roots," "spontaneous," Tea Parties. It's a PARTEEEE... but the GOP isn't a party to be proud of.

End Senate Minority Rule!!

If it is true.... and it was at the least a major deciding factor.... that it was the proposed health care legislation that bloodied the tide in blue Massachusetts in last Tuesday's election.

That put an ex-nude-model conservative who vowed to defeat that legislation into the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, whose lifelong crusade was affordable health care for all... then there is only one place to point the finger for that defeat.

Harry Reid. The let's-make-a-deal Democratic Senate Leader and the 60th vote rule.

Oh, there were many other factors in play. The all-out court press of the insurance company lobbyists who spread the green around to sway legislators and confuse the issue for voters, for one. And, the health care legislation was complicated and confusing.... until Reid and the Senate extortionists gave it a focus.

A deciding factor.

Thanks to the blackmailing, underhanded and downright unethical behavior of two Senators, and the complicity of desperation by Reid, the voters saw a mugging of the taxpayers, and they revolted.

Who could miss Independent Senator Joe Lieberman's holdup of this legislation. He had loudly proclaimed just months earlier that parts of the health care bill should be an extension of the already functioning Medicare program. But, when this was introduced into the bill, he withheld his needed 60th vote until it was stricken. With Joe, what you hear is not what he means. Don't forget, he's a Senator from Connecticut, the insurance-capitol-of-the-world Connecticut.

That was bad enough. And voters surely took notice, but then perhaps dismissed it as Joe being Joe.... which isn't a compliment.

The brazen holdup that finally soured the Massachusetts voters came from the heartland, from Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson. His 60th vote holdout started as a right-to-life roadblock that quickly morphed into Nebraska being granted certain Medicare benefits free, forever.

Nelson actually stopped the health care legislation train and told the conductor if he didn't give everyone on the train from Nebraska a free Medicare ride FOREVER he would derail it. And, conductor Reid punched Nelson's ticket. There was a national gasp.

The country, even Nebraska, was up in arms over this, disgusted is perhaps a better word. And this desperation on the part of the Democratic leadership in Congress to make any concession to pass the legislation, and President Obama's reluctance to wade into the issue and actually take charge, showed the voters of Massachusetts all too clearly that no one knew where this train was going. They wanted off.

Tuesday, Massachusetts Democrats and Independents sent the message loud and clear.... they didn't like the direction the Obama-Reid train was taking them. Free rides for some while keeping others hostage was a no-go. They cancelled the Democrats 60th vote.

So now the Democrats no longer have the filibuster-breaking 60th vote they need to pass almost anything. Not that they ever did, having to depend on the likes of Lieberman and Nelson, but the appearance at least was there. But that wasn't even the worst thing that happened to the Democrats, and more importantly the nation, this week.

While the nation's attention was diverted by the Massachusetts train wreck, the Supreme Court struck down the concept of one-man-one-vote democracy.

The Supremes reached into the bedrock of our republic and tore apart its foundation as violently, and uncaringly, as the mind-numbing Haiti earthquake disaster. The shock waves will crumble our voting booths into a rubble of irrelevance.

The Supreme Court decided Thursday that soul-less, vote-less, non-citizen, steel and paper corporations are people, protected by the Constitution's freedom-of-speech guarantee. So, Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, oil companies... all those wonderful folks who brought you our budget-busting recession and more, now have the right to spend all they want on elections.

As David D. Kirkpatrick said today in The New York Times, "Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling" ....... "The Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon. A lobbyist can now tell any elected official that if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election."

All legislators will be the lackeys of special interests. The monied carriage-class will rule, and the rest of us.... the poor, sick and plain ignored.... will just pay for their ride.

Obama did show some outrage, stating after the decision that it's “a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” while Democrats vowed to push legislation to install new spending limits in time for the fall campaign. Predictably, Republicans disputed the partisan impact of the Supreme's decision.

So.... will it take 60 Senate votes to put the brakes on the political spending of the newest class of citizen.... corporations? If so, forget it. Nothing will get done for flesh-and-blood citizens until the Senate reinstates the "majority rule" conduct of business, and derails the current "minority can stop anything" obstructionism.

Behind Iran's Election Results

On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, Vice President Joe Biden hinted that Iran's election results last week didn't seem quite right... politicos shake their heads over the odor of corruption and huffing news outlets question their validity.

Of course, our own elections have been rife with questionable results.... think of the Supremes deciding the 2000 presidential contest.... while our hackable electronic ballot systems are nothing to brag about.

What we have here seems to be very wishful thinking, and an attitude of "do as I say, not as I do."

Americans want Middle East peace, they want President Ahmadinejad and his scary rhetoric shown the door.... just like we did to Bush/Cheney in 2004.... oh yes, we didn't do that to The Decider and Darth Dick. Instead, while the world held it's breath, we elected them to a second term, after they lied us into the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation's history, the war in Iraq.... the Middle-East-destabilizing war in Iraq.

Well, now we know how the world felt. According to the Washington Post, the rumors of Ahmadinejad's political demise were very premature. As reported by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty in "The Iranian People Speak," it appears the "election results in Iran may reflect the will of the people."

On what do they base such an outlandish statement.... on a scientific national poll conducted in Iran three weeks before the election. Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate two to one, and those results reflect the election's results. The poll was "conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award." Oh.

That's not what we want to believe. Our instant-gratification conditioning hasn't the patience. But, closing our minds and living in a blame-game la-la land won't change the reality.... nor a system where all Iranian candidates are chosen by a non-elected supreme leader. Here is where the poll's results are very interesting, and encouraging. And, far from the expected safe answers one might expect in a country with an oppressive regime in power.

While preferring Ahmadinejad, for now, four out of five indicated in answer to the poll's questions that they wanted to elect the supreme leader, chose free elections and a free press as priorities, and 77 percent "favored normal relations and trade with the United States." Those weren't safe answers.

So, while choosing Ahmadinejad.... change is in the air. Isn't that what we should be talking about, and encouraging?

In Iran, there are now major protests by supporters of the opposing candidate. One thing all the ballyhoo has done is to evidently unsettle the supreme leader. He's now calling for an investigation into the election. But then, why not. He can't lose. He picked all the candidates.

The GOP is Icing Up

This great illustration appeared with "The Ice Age Cometh" by right-leaning columnist, Mike Murphy in TIME this week. His op-ed is chock-full of good advice that the pooh-bahs in the GOP will likely ignore.

Murphy is facing facts, "Saving the GOP is not about diluting conservatism but about modernizing it to reflect the country it inhabits instead of an America that no longer exists."

Murphy is referring to demographics, the surge of Latino and under 30 voters who are turned off, and away, by pitchfork-waving mobs chasing gays through the GOP countryside. Ditto-heads... tribal GOPers whose "radio dials are stuck on AM"... who viciously scrabble at the constitutional bastion between their church and the state. The "all men are created equal" state.

We are a two-party nation. We need a strong GOP with sound values. To survive, they must tune-out the hairy mammoth's clarion-trumpet.... and yes, even the musty Reagan yesteryear's moldy oldies. Or, as Murphy warns.... "A GOP ice age is on the way."

Friday is Iran's Defining Moment

There is an event this week that could spell the difference between a peaceful settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict, reduced tensions in the Middle East, and a halt to the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists; or.....

Escalating the current dangerous Israel/Palestine conflict, increasing tensions in the Middle East, while enabling the unstable ambitions of a nuclear-capable terrorist-funding regime. A regime headed by a holocaust-denying puppet of radical religious leaders.

There is an election scheduled for this Friday in Iran, and much of President Barack Obama's aspirations for Middle East peace, and curbing the bloody mayhem of jihad-inspired terrorism, rest on the outcome.

As reported in the Washington Post, "In Iran, Harsh Talk as Election Nears," by Robert F. Worth, this final week of Iran's presidential campaign, "has reached a level of passion and acrimony almost unheard-of in Iran."

As Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hurls fantastic accusations at his opponents, he is also ducking incoming fire, impassioned fire, and not from just his rivals, but also from long-suffering Iranians who are mad and not going to take it anymore.

For years Ahmadinejad has resorted to inciteful and false rhetoric.... from a constant refrain of threats against Israel, "to wipe them off of the face of the earth"..... and against any Western power that stands by Israel who "from now on will not see any result but the hatred of the people. You should not claim that we did not give a warning," he saber-rattles, to his oft repeated denial of the horrific WWII Jewish holocaust.

But, he also misled and terrorized his own people. In his last presidential campaign he promised the Iranians relief from poverty and a focus on domestic issues, what they got was a "police state" as one Iranian openly charged, and a foreign policy his leading opponent, reformist Mir Husein Moussavi, calls "adventurism, illusionism, exhibitionism, extremism and superficiality.”

This time, Ahmadinejad's hateful-rhetoric is backfiring.... unofficial polls suggest 54 percent of Iranian voters would support Moussavi, while Ahmadinejad lags at 39 percent.

So much rests on the result of Friday's election, and not just for the Iranian people. By showing Ahmandinejad the door, they can lop off the festering head of a regime bent on taking the people back to the zealous, social-freedom-eviscerating, hard-line piety of the 1979 revolution, and stop the plunge toward a nuclear abyss.

As one Moussavi supporter said, “...at the beginning of the Islamic revolution we were all like Ahmadinejad, but we changed our path and our way. ” Another Iranian added that she was speaking on behalf of her friends, "We love our religion, but they have used it as a tool to take people’s rights.”

The good Iranian people can send a message to a hopeful world.... we're taking our lives and our country back. We chose peace over conflict, hope over fear. We're looking forward.

We wish them Allah's speed.....

No "Bi" in GOP Partisanship

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The Obama administration is failing to fully communicate to a panicky nation facing economic meltdown the fact that an obstinate GOP is crying wolf over a lack of legislative bipartisanship while refusing to conduct themselves in a bipartisan manner.

By Senate procedural rules, the minority party can hold up.... or frustrate.... any legislation by invoking a "filibuster" debate which means the measure under consideration has to get sixty percent, sixty votes, to end the filibuster and put the bill to a vote.

President Obama and Democrats have been watering down their economic stimulus legislation in the name of bipartisanship.... looking for bipartisanship participation, for those sixty votes, paring down job-creating spending programs and increasing tax cuts, the GOP's snake oil cure for all ills.

It's time to realize that for an all-politics-all-of-the-time GOP, there is no "bi" in partisanship. It's still their way or the highway. When time was of the essence as increasing unemployment hurtled unchecked toward depression levels, the Republican party looked to score points with their radical base.... good of the nation be damned!

Eugene Robinson's advice...."Roll Over Republicans" (WaPo) As he points out today, "Bipartisanship is safe and effective when used as directed. In the present circumstance, however -- dire economic crisis, hardheaded Republicans, time running out -- bipartisanship is doing more harm than good. President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress can no longer afford to let comity defeat common sense."

Robinson shares our anger over the end result of this begging-for-votes hijacking by a GOP bent on frustrating the process.... "One of the most effective items in the House bill was $79 billion to be transferred to state governments, which are hurting; in California, our most populous state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is ordering furloughs of state workers. Any dollar given to the states will fly out the door by sundown. That $79 billion would have instant impact.

"But in the Senate, the ad hoc "gang" of moderate Republicans (all three of them) and conservative Democrats cut those state funds to $39 billion. It's wrong to see this as the normal give-and-take of legislative sausage-making, the usual trek down a well-worn path toward the golden compromise that everyone can live with. This is not, repeat not, a time for compromise. Meeting in the middle, which the Senate sees as its role in our democracy, renders the whole exercise potentially useless. If we don't get enough money into the economy, and if we don't do it soon, we risk wasting a king's ransom on a stimulus that's too puny to stimulate."

Robinson is onto something. Bipartisanship isn't working. The conundrum is how to get past or around the GOP grandstanding obstructionists.

Harry Reid, take note..... the next time the GOP Senators want to "filibuster," do it the old-fashioned way. Don't agree to a filibustering set-time debate .... make the naysayers stand up and talk all night, or however many days and nights they choose, so their filibustering impediment is seen by Americans for what it is. A cynical roadblock to progress.

Make the Republicans own their delaying tactics. Make them literally stand up and be counted as they impede and obstruct. Otherwise, these blackmailers will continue to impose their bullying tactics, in the guise of "debate" with cries of non-partisanship, on a nation desperate for government action.... now.

Robinson advises.... "Obama and the Democrats have public opinion on their side and the wolf at the door. Republicans need to get out of the way -- or get run over."

Hear! Hear!

"My Kingdom for a Horse....."

The current stimulus package making it's torturous way through both houses of Congress is like the saying..... what do you get when you ask a committee to put together a horse? A camel.

Nothing wrong with a camel, but the country needs a horse to start pulling us out of the economic ditch.

Paul Krugman's asks today in "The Destructive Center" (NY Times) .... "What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

"A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished."

The centrists in the Senate just created a camel, and President Obama seems unable, or unwilling, to fix it.

Krugman opines, "One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

"The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.

"On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the 'flip your house to your brother' provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.

"All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering."

It was Obama who lifted the flap so the "lower taxes" camel could poke it's nose into his change-we-can-believe-in tent. We are in this economic mess because the GOP rich-get-richer trickle-up policies cost trillions and didn't work.... and according Pulitzer-winning economist Krugman and many others, this camel of a bill isn't the economic horse we need now.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd puts a fine point on this today in his "First Read" posting.... many ask just "how the Obama White House and the Democratic committees allowed themselves to get worked over by the Republicans.... how did a Republican Party that had turned a budget surplus into a projected trillion-dollar deficit get away with becoming paragons of fiscal responsibility? "

Krugman points out, "After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.
Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts.

"Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate."

There's a lesson for Obama here. His high-minded attempt to build a bipartisanship tent ran into the "loyal" opposition's ideological take-no-prisoners stone wall.

Has Obama learned this lesson?

Evidently not. This weekend he was busy trying to saddle this unwieldy stimulus camel.... "Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands, the scale and scope of this plan is right,” he declared on Saturday.

As Krugman laments.... "No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t."

Finally.... It's Over!

Last night Bush The Decider wistfully bade farewell (WaPo).... trying to paint a good face on the stinking corpse of his administration with self-serving "I was willing to make tough decisions" legacy-speak.

Excuse me, but isn't the job of the president making tough decisions?

As Georgie piled on the lipstick, we were reminded that he never could color within the lines.... so now we're left to clean up the smeary mess of his eight years of misapplied ideology.

Which brings us to what he did right.

As Robert Creamer so pithily points out (Huffington) .... "History will record that George W. Bush made one critically important contribution to our country -- and to the entire world. He and his administration provided unquestionable proof of the bankruptcy of radical-conservative ideology, and set the stage for a qualitatively different progressive era in American politics.

"By assuring that all of the fruits of the growth of productivity in our economy went to the wealthiest 2% of our population, the Bush administration set the stage for the current economic collapse.

"By actually putting into practice the Neo-Conservative theories of pre-emptive war and unilateralism, George W. Bush demonstrated their failure more persuasively than could the most articulate progressive critic.

"By abandoning our historic commitment to due process and sinking into the dark world of torture, George W. Bush and his partner Dick Cheney isolated themselves from the growing worldwide commitment to human rights."

The last few weeks we have watched Bush and his Rovian enablers relentlessly apply his legacy lipstick. But a suffering nation knows the truth beneath the rosy facade..... "he will be remembered as the man who set the stage. He has played the Hoover to Obama's Roosevelt, the James Buchanan to Obama's Lincoln."

The omens are good.

Yesterday while Bush was trying to prop up the toxic remains of his poor judgment, lousy execution and disastrous outcomes, a skilled pilot guided (WaPo) his crippled passenger jet to a hard, but safe, landing on the Hudson River in New York.

Rescuers rushed in and with "level-headed teamwork" saved all the passengers.... "the weak and infirm, including an infant and an elderly woman in a wheelchair."

It's a good sign as next Tuesday Barack Obama takes over the piloting of our distressed nation that a reckless Bush administration put on course for a crash landing. With Obama's thoughtful leadership and a spirit of teamwork we can all come through.

A "Can Do" 2009

The Washington Post looks at 2009 today in "The New Year - There is good reason for trepidation, but also for hope."

Most of us know about the trepidation, so let's focus on the hope.

"A new presidential administration is on the way, full of ideas and vigor."

Ideas, vigor.... YES!

And just to put a fine point on president-elect Obama's resolve to move ahead, another WaPo headline tells us that on Monday "Obama, Pelosi to Discuss Scope of Economic Package."

"Sources said Obama and Pelosi will discuss the scope and timing of the economic recovery package, which Obama has said will be his first priority upon being sworn into office. Pelosi has said her goal is to have the legislation on the new president's desk and ready to be signed on Jan. 20."

Obama's thirst to get things moving with solid policies is more than the empty Texas boast we've come to expect. As WaPo editorializes.... "Policy will matter, and in this regard it is good to know that the president-elect is not given to following the tired formulations of the left, the right and the various shills and operators who dominate so much of what passes for public discussion. He is pragmatic, open-minded and thoughtful. But, as he knows, he will also have to take on some powerful forces, those aligned with his party and those in opposition, and that will take courage.

"And in the end, of course, it will be not just policy that saves us but, as always, the energy, imagination and desire of the people -- people who see opportunity where others do not and who have the freedom to pursue it.

"Some well-known words from Abraham Lincoln, delivered to Congress in December 1862, have been cited often in the past few months. They are worth citing once more on this day: 'The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.' "

Out with dogma, in with pragmatism... out with division, in with cooperation... out with pandering, in with courage.

Yes we can!

January 2009... End of an Error

This is the last day of the year 2008. A year when the effects from the missteps, failures and duplicities of the tumultuous eight years of the Bush administration came home to roost. Or, should we say, were flung at him.

As Bob Herbert laments today in "Add Up the Damage" (NYTimes).... "This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job."

The invasion of Iraq is a good example of the wrecking ball the White House mafia took to our country. Herbert reflects on the devastation.... "The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

"Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: 'We cannot wait,' he said, 'for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.'

"He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.... The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz."

So just how does The Decider view this sorry Iraq-war chapter in his catalog of horrors?

"A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.' ”

Couldn't you just die laughing.

Now The Decider is trying to tidy up the record of his apocalyptic reign by rewriting history. But, we were given a more accurate image to remember him by in the form of a size 10. No, not the measurements of his ego-inflated all-hat-and-no-cattle Stetson, but the shoes of an irate reporter flung at his head during his recent legacy-burnishing trip to Iraq.

For a Bush legacy summation after eight years of pent-up frustrations, for a you-deserve-no-breaks-today job evaluation.... on the your-place-in-history scale of 1 to 10, this shoe-fly moment was a ten plus.

On January 22 Barack Obama will right the national course and restore the forward momentum our nation enjoyed before we were so rudely interrupted.

That most of all is why we celebrate the arrival of 2009, a Happy New Year!

In Some the Superficial Runs Very Deep....

Sometimes when you're least expecting it you are gifted with a "wow" moment.

Today's "wow" moment erupted on MSNBC's early show "Morning Joe" hosted by Joe Scarborough with sidekick Mika Brzezinski.

From time to time Mika is able to lure her father Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski onto the show to share his foreign policy wisdom. Today, as all too often happens, arrogant Joe thinks he knows it all and uses his best "final word" pushy attitude to talk down views differing from his own and started down that path with Dr. Z.

But..... today, Dr. Z turned the tables and delivered a jolt to Jivin' Joe. He interrupted Joe in mid-spout after Joe flatly stated about the current dangerous Israel-Hamas escalation of the Palestine conflict.... "you cannot blame what's going on in Israel on the Bush administration."

Unable to bear Joe's sound-bite-analysis any longer, an exasperated Dr. Z stopped Joe in his tracks and face-to-face charged him of having "such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on, it is almost embarrassing to listen to you."

Wow!!!

Mika, as evidently is her assigned task, did her squirming best to restrain Joe's typical slash and burn response.... even throwing her father under the bus by explaining to the obviously ego-bruised Joe that her father's "stunning" comments would pass for affection in their family. For shame Mika. What price honor?

The Morning Joe show has great guests, but Joe needs to drop the rude "Imus wanna-be" routine. He can't pull it off and despite Mika's best efforts, too many times he boringly makes himself and his talking-point world view the story, taking time away from the truly interesting and knowledgeable opinions being offered by real experts.

Here is the video of this "wow" encounter.

Thanks for the upper, Dr. Z.... we needed that! Happy New Year!

GOP Senators: Put USA First

What are the GOP Senators thinking? "Auto Bailout Clears House but Faces Hurdles in Senate." (WaPo)

"The House last night approved an emergency plan to prevent the collapse of the nation's domestic automobile industry, but the measure faces serious opposition in the Senate, where Republicans are revolting against a White House-brokered deal to speed $14 billion to cash-starved General Motors and Chrysler."

After giving white-collar financial types over a trillion dollars.... with barely a string attached.... to bail them out of the fix we're in largely because of their reckless lending and "bundling" practices, Republican senators.... especially southern senators who are protecting their foreign-owned local auto manufacturers.... are threatening to risk all to "stand on principle" and reject a comparatively paltry $14 billion bridge-loan to the blue-collar Big Three.

Risking all means.... bankruptcies that would throw up to 3 million out of work and possibly turn a deep recession into a 1930s depression!

Already rocketing unemployment makes such a denial of financial help an even more death-defying act.... "New Unemployment Claims Surge Unexpectedly." (Huffington)

"The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial applications for jobless benefits in the week ending Dec. 6 rose to a seasonally adjusted 573,000 from an upwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week.

"New jobless claims last week reached their highest level since November 1982...."

And the GOP wants to play Russian Roulette with millions of jobs. It's time to forget mindless ideology and narrow lobbying interests.... it's time to vote for America. Pass the auto financial aid bill!