Mr. Obama said he would hold both the government and BP accountable. But he did not retreat from his plan to expand offshore oil drilling and in fact portrayed the commission as a means to make that possible.
“Because it represents 30 percent of our oil production, the Gulf of Mexico can play an important part in securing our energy future,” the president said. “But we can only pursue offshore oil drilling if we have assurances that a disaster like the BP oil spill will not happen again.”
Adm. Allen rejected the notion of a too-cozy relationship between the government and BP, saying the government was closely overseeing the company’s efforts.
Asked on CNN whether he trusted BP, the admiral referred to the company’s chief executive, saying: “I trust Tony Hayward. When I talk to him, I get an answer.” But he took exception with Mr. Hayward’s comment, in an interview with Sky News in Britain, that the environmental impact of the leak was likely to be “very, very modest.”
The admiral said that it would be wrong to suggest that the problem was anything short of “potentially catastrophic for this country.”
The accident has put some advocates of offshore drilling in an awkward position. But the woman who brought the phrase “Drill, baby, drill” into the political lexicon, the former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, insisted on Sunday that her views had not changed.
“I’m a supporter of offshore drilling,” she said on Fox News Sunday, while adding that “the oil companies have got to be held accountable.” But Mrs. Palin suggested that oil-company donations to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign might help explain why it took him “so doggone long,” in her view, to respond to the spill.
Mr. Obama has come under increasing fire for not being more aggressive. Cable channels were filled with commentators asking why the federal government had left so much to BP to handle, and similar complaints were heard by residents along the Gulf Coast.
Adm. Allen said that he understands their deep discontent. “Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can’t do something about a very big problem,” said the admiral, who helped lead the recovery effort after Hurricane Katrina.
But “we’re on entirely new ground here,” he said on CNN. “This is an entirely new world.”
There’s so much wrong with this that I don’t know what to say. We are in deep shit.
Here’s a modern day tale of what it’s like to have to fight for your right to spend your money in someone’s business:
I recall how, in 1998 I had a triumphant “book launch” event at the flagship Barnes & Noble store in New York City. The event was filmed by NBC’s “Dateline” which was doing a story on the book. What a heady moment this was for me. Like most writers I’d worked in seclusion, sometimes without a job, often insecure about my efforts. Now I was standing before TV cameras and a large audience in New York.
I wonder Dr. Paul if you can imagine what it then felt like for me when I returned to that same book store only 8 months later. I returned in the company of a friend who is also blind and who, like me, travels with a guide dog. We were detained by security as we attempted to enter the store and were told we had to leave. Dogs weren’t allowed. We asked to see the manager who arrived after some delay and who grudgingly admitted us to the store but only after we made it clear that the right to travel with a guide dog is protected by both federal and state laws and that this right pertains to private businesses as well as the subway system. The store’s manager was mean spirited and he offered us no apology. He simply walked away.
I wonder Dr. Paul if you can imagine what it felt like to be so thoroughly humiliated in a store. People watched as we conversed politely with the security guard and the manager, but they were looking for drama, as if the proscenium arch of the sixth avenue Barnes & Noble was just another diversion. Dr. Paul have you ever had your rights questioned in public? Where was MY honeymoon? The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 and I can assure you that every day, every single day, there is someone with a disability (a war veteran, a child with autism, a person blind from birth who travels with a dog) who must file a grievance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Department of Justice because he or she has been told to go away.
There is no honeymoon for civil rights. The fight for equality and dignity cannot yet be consigned to a quaint museum where laws are unnecessary.
In your world view Dr. Paul, I surely have the right to go to another book store, one that’s more enlightened as it were. In your world view the book seller should also have the “a priori” right to sell books or to not sell books depending on the nature of the customer.
Not only that, Dr Paul expects the government to intervene on the behalf of the bookstore owner and have you arrested if you insist on shopping in his store.
This is a fine essay in many respects and you should read the whole thing, but I think there is one passage that stands out for me. He writes:
People watched as we conversed politely with the security guard and the manager, but they were looking for drama, as if the proscenium arch of the sixth avenue Barnes & Noble was just another diversion. Dr. Paul have you ever had your rights questioned in public?
I have no doubt in my mind that that’s exactly what happened and it calls into question the entire notion of what would happen without the “coercive” power of the state intervening on behalf of the individual rather than the store owner in this case if the police had had to be called. Paul thinks that heroic defenders of the downtrodden would step up voluntarily and demand that the private bookstore owner allow people with disabilities into the store by threatening to take their business elsewhere. Do you see that kind of thing happening even when it’s clearly illegal? I don’t. Can you imagine them doing it where it was legal?
Here’s an extreme example of how many people deal with social injustice in our culture on a “voluntary” basis:
Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts high school freshman who took her own life after what prosecutors called relentless bullying by classmates, spoke to a school administrator one week before her death about a threat of physical violence, court documents reveal.
The documents, filed in connection with charges against six South Hadley High School students, raise new questions about how much school officials knew about the bullying. They also provide a glimpse into the final, tortured hours of Prince’s life shortly before the 15-year-old hanged herself at home Jan. 14.
Most people are, at best, passive in these situations. And a whole lot of them become complicit or actively involved. It’s Lord of the Flies stuff. Depending solely on the good will of human beings to protect the vulnerable or step up to right injustices is one of the major fallacies of libertarian thinking. It’s not like the species hasn’t had a lot of experience in this realm.
So where are all the voluntary protests from the libertarian right in the face of injustice toward those who have been oppressed? I might be more convinced of their commitment if I ever saw even one of them boycott a racist or protest a business that discriminates. If they really believed that while the government shouldn’t intervene, it’s still morally wrong to deny service to anyone on the basis of race or religion as Paul insists, you’d think that we’d see them leading the charge. The only injustice these guys ever seem to care about is the “injustice” of having to register your firearm or pay your taxes. Stepping up to protest the rank indecency of a business owner refusing to serve a blind man certainly doesn’t seem to be high on their agenda.
A calamity is unfolding before our eyes – the greatest oil spill in history – and America’s response is little more than a big yawn.
The vast, sprawling coastal marshes of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River drains into the gulf, are among the finest natural resources to be found anywhere in the world. And they are a positively crucial resource for America. The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. … This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter. America is selling its soul for oil. – Bob Herbert
Where is the outrage? Where are the millions marching in the streets, where is the round-the-clock roadblock coverage tracking every moment of the crisis, every effort to plug the leak, every desperate attempt to mitigate the damage? Where is the White House? Where are Republicans? Where are Democrats? Where is the left? Where is the right? Where is the “fierce urgency of now?”
Prominent oceanographers [are] accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean. – NYT
In the movies, pretend heroes like Bruce Willis and Will Smith save the planet while the whole world watches with breath and belief suspended. In real life, a global catastrophe is treated like a mere annoyance, mismanaged by a rapacious oil company, while drill-baby-drillers double down on their folly and the White House puts out defensive fact sheets about how they were on it from “day one.”
In some parts of the country, the sight of oil drifting toward the Louisiana coast, oozing into the fragile marshlands and bringing large parts of the state’s economy to a halt, has prompted calls to stop offshore drilling indefinitely, if not altogether. Here, in the middle of things, those calls are few. Here, in fact, the unfolding disaster is not even prompting a reconsideration of the 75th annual Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. “All systems are go,” said Lee Delaune, the festival’s director, sitting in his cluttered office in a historic house known as Cypress Manor. “We will honor the two industries as we always do,” Mr. Delaune said. “More so probably in grand style, because it’s our diamond jubilee.” – NYT
Is this really the best we can do?
What if it is?
I think that may be what everyone’s afraid of. Somewhere in the backs of our minds I think most of know that Bruce Willis is just a pampered movie star who probably doesn’t know how to fill up his gas tank. And we haven’t seen much competence among the experts in any fields lately. It’s a crisis of confidence.
I know I started averting my eyes when I realized that the company and the government’s first instincts were to control the damage to their stock price and image than to controlling the damage to the environment. Just as they are doing with the economy, they seem to assume that the oil spill will somehow fix itself and their main problem is the political and public relations fallout. What do you do with that kind of magical thinking in light of such a complicated problem with such huge consequences?
I think the human instinct is often to retreat in such circumstances, which is why the public seems apathetic. I suspect they are too afraid to find out that not only isn’t there a real life Bruce Willis — there isn’t anyone who can fix this. It’s a very frightening thought.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence that even on the most elementary level they are simply fucking things up. Perhaps that scares people even more.
My pal Howie Klein mostly eats a raw food diet and so I have had the pleasure of sampling this exotic fare at the handful of Raw restaurants here in LA a number of times. It’s quite delicious in a way you wouldn’t expect. The flavors are all very familiar while the textures are completely different. It’s a very tasty adventure in eating. As someone who likes to cook in a healthy way it’s also very inspirational.
Anyway, like tristero here on this blog, Howie also writes about food from time to time and it’s always interesting. And today, he’s writing about the controversial topic of bacon and running a Blue America contest for tickets to the premiere of a new film about an animal activist who is considered a terrorist under the current draconian laws.
The Seattle International Film Festival is in full swing, so over the next several weeks I will be bringing you highlights. Navigating a film festival is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff. SIFF is presenting 405 films over 24 days. That’s great for independently wealthy types, but for those of us who work for a living (*cough*), it’s tough to find the time and energy that it would take to catch 16.8 films a day (yes-I did the math). I do take consolation from my observation that the ratio of less-than-stellar (too many) to quality offerings (too few) at a film festival differs little from any Friday night crapshoot at the multiplex. The trick lies in developing a sixth sense for films most likely to be up your alley (in my case, embracing my OCD and channeling it like a cinematic divining rod.) Hopefully, some of these will be coming soon to a theater near you. So-let’s go SIFFting!
Life out of balance: Son of Babylon
First up-a heartbreaking, tremendously moving “road movie” from Iraq, called Son of Babylon. Set in 2003, weeks after the fall of Saddam, it follows the arduous journey of a Kurdish boy named Ahmed (Yasser Talib) and his grandmother (Shazda Hussein) as they travel south to Nasiriyah, the last known location of Ahmed’s father, who disappeared during the first Gulf War. As they traverse the bleak, post-apocalyptic landscapes of Iraq’s bomb-cratered desert (via foot, hitched rides, and alarmingly overstuffed busses) a portrait emerges of a people struggling to keep mind and soul together, and to make sense of the horror and suffering precipitated by two wars and a harsh dictatorship. Sometimes with levity; “I’m going to go call Sadaam,” a man says to Ahmed with a wink as he excuses himself to go take a leak. At other times, with understated eloquence; when a travelling companion questions the futility of the pair’s fruitless search through the morass of mass gravesites spanning Saddam’s killing fields, the grandmother says “Losing our sons is like losing our souls.” The man’s mute reaction speaks volumes.
Director Mohamed Al Daradji has given us something here that has been conspicuously absent in the growing list of Iraq War(s) movies from Western directors in recent years-an honest and humanistic evaluation of the everyday people who inevitably get caught in the middle of such armed conflicts-not just in Iraq, but in any war, anywhere. With very few exceptions (David O. Russell’s Three Kings comes to mind), most of the Western-produced films about the Iraqi conflicts have generally portrayed the Iraqis as either faceless “bad guys”, or at best, “local color” backdrops. While the director does allude to the regional and international politics involved, he constructs his narrative in such a way that in the end, whether Ahmed’s father was killed by American bombs or Saddam’s genocide of the Kurds becomes moot. This is a universally relatable story about people, period; and is informed by an unforced neo-realism recalling De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.
If the film has a message, it is distilled in a small, compassionate gesture and a single line of dialogue. An Arabic-speaking woman, who is also searching for a missing loved one at a mass gravesite sets her own suffering aside for a moment to lay a comforting hand on the lamenting grandmother’s shoulder and says “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Kurdish, but I can feel this woman’s pain and sadness.” When all is said and done, there’s one thing I can say for certain regarding this emotionally shattering film (aside from the fact that it should be required viewing for heads of state, commanders-in-chief, generals, or anyone else on the planet who wields the power to wage war)…I don’t speak Kurdish, either.
Serkis circus: Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll
Here’s a few to keep on the lookout for. These films have found distributors, so as credentialed press I am “embargoed” from sharing copious details at this time (undoubtedly, to the relief of some… “Get to the point, Hartley, you wordy bastard!”).
The Extra Man– SIFF’s opening night film is an uneven, yet at times drolly amusing dramedy from American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The directors co-scripted with Jonathan Ames (adapting from his source novel). Once again, Berman and Pulcini plunge into a writer’s mind-well, two N.Y.C. writers-a young aspiring novelist (Paul Dano) obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a playwright (Kevin Kline), who rents him a room. Both characters’ eccentricities pile up faster than you can say “cross-dressers and gigolos”. The film is a quirky, oddball mash-up of The Producers and Midnight Cowboy. John C. Reilly and Katie Holmes also join in the fray. Kline’s wondrously insane performance is the main attraction, and Dano officially confirms what I have suspected for some time now: he IS the Bud Cort of his generation.
Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll– This frenetic and cacophonous biopic attempts to paint a portrait of the late proto-punk rocker Ian Dury…with rather broad strokes. Andy Serkis does do an amazing job at convincingly affecting the polio-twisted physicality and equally twisted persona of the man who gave us classics like “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick”, “Spasticus Autisicus” and the film’s namesake tune, which has also become an oft-repeated catchphrase. Despite some rousing music numbers and a vastly entertaining Serkis (playing his gruff-voiced Dury like a cross between Joel Grey’s emcee in Cabaret and Robert Newton’s Long John Silver in Treasure Island), director Mat Whitecross (who seems heavily influenced here by Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz) and screenwriter Paul Viraugh never quite get a handle (or a rhythm stick?) on what it was that made Dury tick.
Nowhere Boy-There’s nary a tricksy or false note in this little gem from U.K. director Sam Taylor-Wood, which is the toppermost of the poppermost on my SIFF list so far this year. Aaron Johnson gives a terrific, James Dean-worthy performance as a teenage John Lennon. The story zeroes in on a specific, crucially formative period of the musical icon’s life beginning just prior to his first meet-up with Paul McCartney, and ending on the eve of the “Hamburg period”. The story is not so much about the Fabs, however, as it is about the complex and mercurial dynamic of the relationship between John, his Aunt Mimi (Kirstin Scott Thomas) and his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff). The entire cast is uniformly excellent, but Scott Thomas (one of the best actresses currently strolling the planet) handily walks away with the film as the woman who raised John from childhood.
So, I wasted an hour of my life last night watching a middle aged white guy up on a stage, legs splayed wide as he fondled his beer bottle (delivered to him on the stage by his valet, I might add) snorting and leering and shouting incoherently as his fanboys in the audience giggled and smirked in return. No, it wasn’t literally a pornographic nightmare, it was Andrew Breitbart (“debating” Mickey Kaus, Roy Sekoff and John Amato.)
I managed to get some pictures of the man himself:
Just as with a Glenn Beck show, watching Brietbart live is all about that sense that “anything can happen” — like it’s actually possible that his head will spin around on his shoulders and he will spew green vomit or that that somehow he will morph into an evil doll-baby that chokes young children in their sleep. I wouldn’t call it entertaining exactly, but like a trainwreck or a tea party rally, you are both repelled and transfixed at the same time. (And relieved when it’s over.) It’s a lucrative act I’m sure, but like most circus sideshows, it has limited appeal.
The good news is that John Amato didn’t punch him out when he found Breitbart and his servile houseboy riffling through his notes. Evil clowns are creepy but they aren’t worth jail time.
Chip Berlet, one of the country’s foremost experts on rightwing populism and extremism, has an extremely important article in The Progressive. While I am far from an expert on this subject, I certainly am not ignorant about the rightwing in America. Yet I am having problems accepting many of his conclusions which I don’t believe follow from the data he presents. I would be curious to get your own thoughts on this. Here are my criticisms.*
Berlet makes two basic points. (Please note that I’m rearranging and skipping around here, in order to summarize his argument; please tell me, and correct me, if you think I’m doing his ideas a disservice.)
First, Berlet provides us with a picture of what is bugging tea partiers:
It helps to recognize that much of what steams the tea bag contingent is legitimate. They see their jobs vanish in front of their eyes as Wall Street gets trillions. They see their wages stagnate. They worry that their children will be even less well off than they are. They sense that Washington doesn’t really care about them. On top of that, many are distraught about seeing their sons and daughters coming home in wheelchairs or body bags.
Berlet then warns and exhorts us:
When centrist liberals toss smug and dismissive names at the current rightwing populist revolt, they make it more difficult for progressive organizers to reach out to unconvinced people who see their neighbors (and perhaps themselves) unfairly labeled as stupid or crazy.
The only way to counter the resurgent right is to rebuild militant progressive movements and raise a ruckus.
From the evidence in his article, Berlet’s prescription – not to denounce and mock what we sneeringly call “tea baggers” – seems utterly impractical, if not impossible. No matter if we hold our tongues, no matter if we find common cause with them in our disgust at the Afghan war and the privileging of banksters over people who actually do substantive work for a living, progressives will never reach most tea partiers.
Why? Here, for example, is some more information Berlet gives us about the mindset of teabaggers:
With no one appearing to champion their cause, they line up with the anti-Obama crowd, and they stir in some of their social worries about gay marriage and abortion, dark-skinned immigrants, and a black man in the White House.
Quite simply and clearly, progressives strongly disagree with tea partiers on these issues. Berlet, like many people who make the argument that we should find ways to bring tea partiers to our cause,** never quite says how we are supposed to address issues like gay marriage, abortion, etc etc etc. when we try to tell them we are on their side.
The only solution is to assert the truth. For example we could say something roughly like this, “Whether people of the same sex marry or not is a monumentally trivial thing to worry about, unless you’re gay and want to marry your partner and need the financial and social benefits your straight married neighbors enjoys. Your job, and your children’s jobs, those are the important issues to focus on.” But we’ll get nowhere. Gay marriage is indeed a silly thing to oppose. But opposition to it is one of numerous litmus tests that the rightwing has established to identify quickly whether or not you are “one of us.”
The fact is that we – or to make this personal I – am not “one of us.” For a long, long time, I tried not to antagonize rightwingers and I tried to persuade them by seeking common cause. I got nowhere. Certainly, there are people around who are better than I at schmoozing with people who, to coin a phrase, drive pickups with Confederate flags on them, and I wish them all the luck in the world. The problem is that there are so few of them that Berlet can’t even find any progressives who can hang with the right and persuade them to join us. If he did, he would have described them in his article. Here is as close as he comes:
Art Heitzer, a Wisconsin attorney long active in progressive struggles, attended the National Lawyers Guild convention panel in Seattle late last year where Hincapié [a progressive immigration activist] spoke about the plight of immigrants. Heitzer recognizes there are a lot of white working class people being targeted for recruitment by reactionary rightwing populist forces, but is convinced that “many of them could be our allies in holding Obama accountable to his campaign promises.” Polling over the past thirty years shows that when Democrats forcefully stress issues such as relieving poverty or seeking peace, some independents and Republican voters who oppose abortion or gay rights will vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate despite their continued allegiance to gender-based hot button issues.
There are numerous problems here. This is anecdotal evidence from one sincerely committed lawyer. As for the hard data, Berlet furnishes no links to the polls he cites, nor does he quantify how many are included in “some independents and Republican voters.” I’m sorry, Mr. Berlet, I honestly don’t think genuine progressives can pick up enough tea partiers – not independents, but tea party members – to make a damn bit of difference. But if you have the polls that say otherwise, please show me, and I’ll be happy to change my tune if I’m wrong.
Here is another problem. Berlet objects, rightly, to the trivialization and dismissal of the rightwing but I honestly don’t know a single progressive who trivializes or dismisses them as a political force. Their ideas and their values, that’s a very different story. The fact of the matter is that if you really have problems accepting that Barack Obama, a black man, is president of the United States, and your problem is that he is black, then I have very little in common with you. But please don’t mistake my contempt for your ideas, my refusal to “engage” you in “serious” debate about whether a black man deserves to be president, my mockery of your positions, or my open disgust at your moral values for trivialization or dismissal. I am quite aware of how powerful and dangerous you are. But I know that I can’t reach you. I can only defeat you.
How to do that? Well, I’ve just demonstrated one way. Progressives must continue to refuse to grant the screwy ideas and values of the rightwing the status worthy of serious discussion. For example, the notion of invading Iraq, a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, was a batshit insane idea. I believe that the willingness by so many people, including people who were more or less progressive, to engage in serious discussions about it added further imprimatur, helped to mute mainstream criticism, and helped propel the catastrophe forward.*** Not only must progressives become more prominent in the mainstream discourse in denouncing the right’s bad ideas, they must also become better at it. Much better.
In addition, progressives most certainly need to change the subject, to things that are really important, not perverted ideas like whether it is moral to force a poor woman to use a coathanger for birth control. We need to discuss jobs and security in ways that everyone can understand. Further we need to stress that our policies and ideas actually work and provide proof of it, from Roosevelt onwards.
We also need to emphasize the failure of the rightwing to protect Americans (remember 9/11 and Katrina), the failure of the rightwing to protect jobs (the recession is Bush’s fault), and the insanity of the rightwing’s foreign policy (Iraq and Afghanistan are only two of hundreds of examples).
But we should be under no illusions. As much as Chip Berlet would like their votes, the ordinary people in the tea party are never (or, if you insist, no time soon) going to vote in significant numbers for liberals when some lunatic who espouses their moral values stokes the fires of their resentments. Retreat on torture, or on the social issues, is not something progressives can seriously entertain.
We can’t hide where we stand and we can’t compromise on core values. That doesn’t mean we must be quixotic. But it does mean that, like it or not, the lily-white racist core of the tea party – which Berlet himself describes them to be in his piece, albeit “soft” racists, merely tossing epithets around with friends – provides mighty slim pickings to add to the progressive vote.
About this, however, I agree completely with Berlet, who also says it quite beautifully:
… the trivialization of rightwing populism must stop. It is toxic to democracy in a general sense. And it also results in an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Arabs, reproductive rights activists, and lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons.
Indeed. I certainly understand that the tea party organizing, which Berlet describes as being ominously already quite advanced, is very dangerous to American democracy, not just progressives. But let’s never pretend that their really bad ideas deserve respect – or that they do, if they insist on asserting they are worthy of serious attention. Nor ever pretend that the casual remarks tea partiers make after a few beers with their pals which, even if I agreed with Berlet that they are relatively benign (which I don’t) have any legitimate part in the wider discourse today. America is rapidly becoming/has become a country where being white and male is no longer the norm for the politically active citizenry. It’s way past time for anyone who loves this country to accept that.
In fact, it’s cause for celebration.
—
*Please understand: I like an enormous amount of the article, which I am passing over in order to keep this post at something close to reasonable length. While I do have problems with it, I fully realize there is more to what Berlet is saying than the ideas I criticize here.
**By “tea partiers,” Berlet clearly does not mean the fanatical, violent extremists (or the cynical leaders). He is referring to typical members who, he makes clear, resent being lumped with crazies who gun down abortion doctors. For the purpose of argument, I’ll accept his definition.
***Of course, I’m aware that there were many, many factors far more important than the liberal willingness to engage seriously the idea of an Iraq invasion that led to this awful disaster. My point is that such engagement surely helps move such nutty notions into the arena of acceptable discourse, where it clearly does not belong if nothing else than that it distracts from implementing genuinely effective policies to protect our country. Our refusal to engage such nonsense, and also – very important – loudly denounce and mock such nonsense is, I believe, a vital part of establishing a viable alternative to the right.
No, I can’t prove this, mainly because most mainstream Democrats are completely unwilling to be progressive in their politics (even if they are closet liberals). They should try it sometime. They just might be surprised at how well it works…
Question of the day: Would you want to fly on an airplane piloted by a member of Al Qaeda? No?
Then why would you vote Republican?
How very “controversial.”
I’m sure Congressman Grayson doesn’t think this way but frankly, I have often wondered why the left is tarred with being terrorist sympathizers when we are the ones who abhor rigid fundamentalist religion and hate the Big Oil economy which funds Muslim fanaticism. And we also aren’t the ones who want to “drown the US government in the bathtub” or otherwise make it disappear, just as Al Qaeda does. Let’s just say that today’s “conservatives” have a lot more in common with the terrorists than we do.
At 11 this morning (pdt) click over to Crooks and Liars’ and meet Claudia Wright, Blue America’s latest endorsement for the House of Representatives from Utah’s 2nd district. She’s got quite a story, both personal and political.
On the personal side she’s the openly gay great, great granddaughter of Brigham Young (plus much, much more.) And the political story is just as interesting. Here’s Howie:
The congressman from the second is reactionary Blue Dog Jim Matheson, son of two-term Governor Scott Matheson, and he pretty much always votes with the Republicans on important issues. He first got elected by attacking Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore for his healthcare reform proposals. Needless to say, Matheson was an eager aisle crosser when it came to the recent votes on healthcare reform. And three weeks ago Democratic activists in his district– despite a parachute jump in by wheeler/dealer Steny Hoyer– were eager to deny Matheson the Democratic Party endorsement. They forced him into an open primary with today’s Blue America endorsee, Claudia Wright.
Not that anyone in the Village noticed, of course, what with all the hoopla around unseating Senator Bob Bennett, but it’s clear that the tea partiers aren’t the only activists in Utah. Sure it’s a red state but that doesn’t tell the whole story anymore.
Howie explains:
Inside the Beltway pundits and political “pros” insist that Democrats only win in red areas like UT-02 by running on Republican talking points. Ignoring the outstanding campaigns run by working family champions– from Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) to Dave Loebsack (D-IA) and Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), each of whom ousted an entrenched Republican incumbent in a “red” district– the conventional wisdom is that only corporate shills like Jim Matheson can win in places like Utah. We know conventional wisdom is wrong and ignores the reality of the district. And so does Claudia:
Mr. Matheson and the party wasn’t prepared for the reception he got at the mass meetings we had last March. He had no idea how angry he made his constituents. He was boo-ed and jeered… The party has misread its membership and misread the fact that we are witnessing a political realignment, not just here in Utah, but across the country. The alignment is shifting right to left and top to bottom. A large number of delegates at our convention were actually moderate Republicans who are now more at home with our party than they are with the extremist right of the Republican Party.
Interesting, no?
Come over to Crooks and Liars’ comments section to meet Claudia (at 11am/PT, noon in Utah). You can contribute to her campaign through Blue America’s ActBlue page and everyone who donates to Claudia’s campaign this weekend (offer ends Sunday at midnight, PT) will have their name entered in a contest to win an autographed copy of Al Franken’s book The Truth AND an autographed copy of the Al Franken DVD God Spoke.
See you at 11.
Update: if you watch that Youtube, you’ll see Wright discuss a failed Utah initiative to deal with STDs among teenagers and the fact that many of them will end up sterile, among other things, because they aren’t educated about it and don’t get treated. She relays the response from some social conservative harpy which was,”I don’t think we should do anything to interfere with the natural consequences of an immoral act.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put more starkly. In my mind, that is the essence of evil.
Better karoli than me. There is no way, no way in hell, I could sit through a broadcast of a Texas Board of Education meeting without going completely insane.
The Great Civil War Debate
This one went on all day, from kindergarten right on up through 12th grade. The argument, of course, was over slavery, and the role it played as a cause for the Civil War. One board member, clearly frustrated by the ongoing claim that slavery wasn’t really too much of a contributing factor, finally said straight up “It was all about slavery. That’s ALL it was about. You can call it what you want, it was about slavery.”
Sadly, her point was not well taken. Texas children will learn from the time they enter school until the time they graduate, that the causes of the Civil War, in the order of importance, were sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery.
Comic relief: Probably the best moment of the whole stupid debate was when one male board member referred to sectionalism as “sexualism.”
Side arguments: Whether Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address should be studied and analyzed alongside Abraham Lincoln’s. The board concludes that yes, it should. Also, should Jefferson Davis be characterized as a “hero”? Yes, the board says, he should. Finally, should Confederate generals be included on a list of “heroes of the Civil War”? Yes, the board says, oh hell, yes. All hail, Confederate heroes, kids. Because we just don’t have enough of them.
