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Chaos

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware needs to be heard:

It is a disgrace.

We are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan but the Senate Republicans have spent the summer pandering to their base by debating the estate tax, gay marriage and flag burning. The sole debate we've had on Iraq was notable for Republicans once again offering absolutely no strategy going forward and trotting out the same tired "cut and run" charges against Democrats.

Time and again, Republicans have shamelessly put narrow political considerations ahead of policy. Because of the Republican's lack of leadership, the 109th U.S. Senate has not delivered a sound energy policy, a livable minimum wage or any solution for dealing with 46 million Americans without health insurance.

[W]e are just over 100 days out from the congressional midterm elections, and an opportunity to ensure that the 110th Senate acts on issues that really matter. That will not happen unless we wake up on November 8th with a Democratic majority in the Senate. We need your help to get serious leaders in control of Congress.

To mark the beginning of our 100 Days Out campaign, the DSCC has set a goal to raise one million dollars by Labor Day. To help kick off our campaign, a group of Democratic senators will triple all donations made before July 31.

These final 100 days will make or break the Democratic candidates who are trying to bring back accountability to Washington. That is why your help is so vital today. Please make an immediate contribution.

Click here to make a secure online contribution of $50, $75 or more today.

You would think that with the Middle East descending into chaos, Republicans would put politics aside and find a way for America to lead the world from the brink of crisis.
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These guys simply do not have a foreign policy. Four years ago, George Bush swaggered onto the world stage and branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil." But now we know that Bush had no plans to effectively deal with any of those threats, and as a result each country is more dangerous to America in 2006 than it was in 2002.

If we had strong Senate leadership, George W. Bush would have been called to account for these failures. They would have demanded that he explain the incompetence that has Iraq on the verge of trading a dictator for chaos. They would demand to know why almost five years after 9/11 our ports and chemical plants are still unsecured. Instead Republican senators hide behind the flag and make excuses for George Bush because they know their political future is tied to his poll numbers.

Devoid of any positive agenda, Republicans will spend the next 100 days trotting out scurrilous attacks on our candidates. Your support will give us the resources to respond. If you make a contribution before July 31, a Democratic Senator will match you 2 to 1, effectively tripling your donation.

Click here to make a secure online contribution of $50, $75 or more today.

Republican hate speech's result: Orange Co. NY

This Orcinus post about where hate speech like that given voice on Fox News ends up: thuggish, violent bullying by Republican sympathizers, as has occured in Orange Co., New York.

Councilmember Soros is the only Democrat on the Town Board of Wawayanda, New York. From the local paper:

The bent windshield wipers annoyed her. The sex toy glued to her windshield back in June made her furious. But finding a horse's head in her swimming pool yesterday hit Wawayanda Councilwoman Gail Soro right where she lives.

As Orcinus wrote elsewhere:

In a way, I think this is a large part of what is happening to our national body politic: People in key positions of media and conservative ideological prominence (Coulter, Limbaugh, even Bill O'Reilly) exhibit multiple symptoms of being pathological sociopaths, either antisocial or narcissistic, or a combination of both. And not only their fellow participants in the conservative movement, but mainstream centrists and even liberals are unable to figure out that there is something seriously wrong with these people because they are projecting their own normalcy onto them. They cannot perceive because they cannot believe -- that, above all, these people are not operating within a framework guided by the boundaries of basic decency that restrain most of us.

They are political muggers out of control -- and as their rhetoric encourages both the figurative and physical elimination of liberals, they become ever more likely to actually tread into regions of real violence.

One Peoples Project

A new site's been added to the Misc. Political typelist: One Peoples Project. (I found out about the site through Max Blumenthal, who's back to blogging, so start surfing over to his neck of the net again, too.)

"The American Way of Debt"

Jackson Lears, editor of Raritan: A Quarterly Review, is the author, most recently, of "Something for Nothing: Luck in America," an historical analysis in The New York Times Magazine concerning the American way of debt. One can see from Lears' analysis how Republican policies have made more Americans more reliant on borrowing. (Emphases and formatting below are mine.)

The upward spiral of earning and spending survived until the 1970's, when the midcentury ideal of corporate citizenship evaporated in the harsher climate of renewed international competition. Fearing foreign rivals, American business ended its implicit social contract with unions by seeking cheap labor in overseas markets.

During the 1980's, while real income continued to stagnate for most Americans, the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan gave government sanction to unprecedented consumer spending. Reagan's rhetorical refusal of limits combined with the deregulation of the lending industry to detach dreams of luxury from previous constraints. As money worship mounted, job security disappeared and inequalities widened, pundits spoke of a new Gilded Age. By the 1990's, bloated icons of affluence proliferated: the gargantuan pseudo-military vehicle, the 10,000-square-foot hacienda. A bigger standard package of household goods demanded deeper debt and accelerated the pace of the consumer treadmill. No one wanted to look like a "loser."

But for many borrowers, debt has not been just about keeping up appearances. [And now,] less-affluent Americans have resorted to borrowing for groceries as well as cars. Public policies have intensified their plight[:]
*The freezing of the minimum wage,
*the tightening of unemployment insurance and workmen's compensation programs,
*the shifting of the tax burden from the rich to the rest — these changes
have starved public services while leaving ordinary Americans more dependent than ever on debt.

No proper government programs = higher personal debt.

One of the most consistent statistical findings of recent years is that about half of all personal bankruptcies have been caused by medical bills. Whatever else our current indebtedness may signify, it is hardly a riot of hedonism.

The American way of debt is a dangerous dance on the road to social and economic chaos, a road on which Republican policies attempt to keep us trapped.

The freezing of the minimum wage? Republicans are for that; Democrats want to increase the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased in years.

The tightening of unemployment insurance and workmen's compensation programs? Republicans are for letting citizens momentarily-weakened, those who are vulnerable and most likely through no fault of their own, fend for themselves. Democrats believe that the American worker deserves not hand-outs but fair and commonsensical safety nets. No one unemployment or injury should be completely abandoned to the wolves by their government.

The shifting of the tax burden from the rich to the rest? Republicans simply don't care about this, just like they didn't in the decade before the Great Depression. Not for about 100 years has the top 1% richest Americans owned so much of the nation's total wealth. (More here.) Democrats understand that real wages in America have been stagnant too long, and abhor the ever-widening gap between the rich and the rest of us.

(More analysis to consider:

The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to...431:1 in 2004. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe.
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from 1990 to 2004, CEOs' pay increased over 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.5%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 6%, when inflation is taken into account.)

*Starved public services? Republicans hate even the idea of public service. (See the previous post.) Democrats believe that quality public services are an investment in America's future. In our children's future. That's a fact.

It's simple: VOTE DEMOCRAT.

SusanG's commonsense....

Susan on dkos asks:

Would you hire a babysitter who hates children...?

Would you hire cops who think laws are stupid...?

Would you hire a conductor...who believes music [is] an abomination?

But, as Susan points out, this is just what we've done in electing Republicans:

In electing Republicans, America, you put people in charge of institutions they overtly, caustically loathe and proudly proclaim should not exist....

Conservatives have declared officially for decades that they hate public programs and love private business. Why then, do Americans profess shock when these same people run the public credit card up to bunker-busting levels to line the pockets of friendly corporations, leaving taxpayers--current and the as-yet unborn--the bill? It's the dine and ditch mentality writ large, and American citizens are the unfortunate waiters having their lowly pay docked to cover the deadbeat loss--and their future grandchildren's pay docked as well.

We are witnessing an orchestrated, unprecedented transfer of public wealth to private pockets, a national one-party feeding frenzy that's making beggars and beseechers of us all, and yet many Americans stand around muttering in a daze of semi-apathetic befuddlement about [how "]those Republicans shore were right, government doesn't do...the little guy a damn bit of good, no sirree bob. Better drown it some more. Cut them taxes, privatize something, anything, pronto!["]
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If you put people in charge of running a project they are ideologically committed to proving a failure, it will fail.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. But hey, I'm a Democrat. You know, one of those people who think universal quality public education is a massive good to society, that maintaining our highways and levees and bridges and dams is part of what makes this country great, that paying first-responders and nurses what they're worth helps guarantee our public health and safety, that providing for fellow citizens who fall on hard times is not only the ethical thing to do, but the pragmatic one, ensuring that this country does not incubate a permanently inflamed and disgruntled underclass ready to drop a match on a pool of social gasoline.

Here's a thought - just a thought, mind you, beloved America: Perhaps it's time to return to government the party that has an ideological stake in making it...you know...succeed. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to raise our sights a wee bit and elect people who think public service is more than an opportunity for the "Biggest! Fire Sale! Ever!" for their friends and loved ones. Perhaps it's time to insist on greater--if not great--expectations from the employees we decide to hire or fire every two years to carry out our will under the constitution.

As one-party Republican rule has clearly shown, when you expect incompetence, corruption and deceit from your government, you get exactly what you vote for. In spades.

Way to go, SusanG, for returning to the front and center that which is supposedly the most-American of American traits: commonsense.

Of course, too many voters will never hear such a commonsensical argument as SusanG's, because they're too busy being ill-informed by our media that has two roles: performing, like Fox News, as a mindless cheerleading bimbo for the Republican Party, and dishing out mind-rotting non-news about celebrities and fads. There are three things you can trust the American corporate-controlled media to never do: provide a truly global perspective (especially about America), ask relevant, researched questions, and value verified information over easy entertainment.

SusanG, it's unfortunate your argument doesn't have explosions, tits, military hardware, a gay husband, a new-born (perhaps a quintuplet), a lucky lottery ticket, a wardrobe malfunction, or some other feature that our media find so alluring.

Worse than just a waste of time

I've grown impatient with objections to debates over gay marriage ban amendments--be they proposed or debated at the state or federal level--as being a waste of time. These objections are commonplace on the liberal blogosphere. The belief that banning gay marriage is wrong could be charitably inferred from the objections about time being wasted, but it's revealing that such a belief is not stated. Just two recent examples: here, where the dKos story author complains about Congress debating a gay marriage ban amendment while "Rome burns," and here, where Tom Grieve also deems the debate a waste of time.

But these debates are not merely wastes of time.

They are debates on an issue--a ban--that is akin to bans on mixed-race marriages; the ban, and any attempts legislative or judicial to limit the dignity of either Americans who happen to be gay or the long-term committed relationships they enter, represents an assault on both commonsense and the progress of American civil rights.

That's pretty serious. For congress to consider enacting such a ban isn't a waste of time, it's wrong.

I've read many proud, self-proclaimed liberals online and heard them in person here in New York City say that nothing should matter more to us progressives than Iraq. Iraq is the grand issue for today, no doubt--the mother of all issues--because it can encompass everything from the Bush deceptions to get us into the war/invasion/occupation of Iraq to the horrifically high cost we're suffering in terms of military wounded, lost international goodwill, drained coffers, and compromised security. I agree that the Iraq debacle is the most valuable political issue for those wishing to de-throne the Bushite-Republican "Oil and Christ! Now and Forever!" regime.

But why the dismissing of gay civil rights, too?

I find the dismissal of gay rights in the name of concentrating on Iraq to be problematic because just what "Iraq" means in these contexts is often left too undefined: leaving it? democratizing it? paying for our invasion of it? loudly blaming Bush for losing the post-invasion conflict there?

I find that often my fellow liberals who exhibit this passive aggressive dismissal of gay civil rights cite the deaths--military and civilian--in Iraq as part of the reason for the urgency about "Iraq." But how does it then follow that, somehow, talking about anything else--particularly gay civil rights-- is bad. What is mroe, attendant to their focus on Iraq seems an ignorance that the body count of gay Americans, mostly teenagers, who've over MANY DECADES killed themselves, lost jobs, been denied housing, been murdered, been beaten, been refused visitation rights or inheritance, been publicly mocked, or been driven from clubs, institutions, associations, families, or government because of how they are daily demonized (or, on a good day, trivialized or stereotyped) by American culture is higher than the body count from this horrible war in Iraq.

What is more, there seems also to be a failure to recognize that the grand confederacy of problems relating to Iraq, of which U.S. occupation is just a part, and their solutions involve so much beyond real U.S. control--including forces of globalization, Islamic extremism, nationalism, ethnic tensions, international relations between Iraq and the UN and the EU. To me, it is illogical for liberals to shy away from or downplay the important of gay civil rights as somehow non-pressing or a threat to finding solutions to Iraq-related problems, especially when one considers that civil rights for gay Americans is a domestic issue we do have comparatively greater control over as a nation. One might even ask, if we can't clean-up a domestic mess like codified discrimination against gay Americans, if we can't expand rights for any "homeland" minority, how can we expect to clean-up internationally significant and complex messes like the one Bush misled us into in Iraq?

Discrimination in the U.S. against its gay citizens, as with the even more bloody, once Constitutionally-sanctioned, and still grotesquely lingering discrimination against citizens who just happen to have certain skin colors is a festering problem not to be placed far down on the list of issues for progressive Democrats to tackle. It sure as hell shouldn't be treated as an issue that progressives--of all people, progressives!--really just wish would go away. The response to a proposed ban to codify a second-class status for an entire segment of citizenry shouldn't be, "Oo, what a waste a time to discuss that," but, "How disgusting to even propose such a thing." When conservatives debate gay marriage bans, it's not merely a waste of time, it's a sign of the very real and dangerous sickness of American bigotry, one that I suspect infects plenty of liberals, too.

The US-UK special relationship. Business.

The relationship between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has since at least World War II been described in both the US and UK media and in foreign policy circles as "the special relationship." One part of that relationship is the business relationship between our two countries.

Did you know?

Combined, all of the US-UK business relationships represent nothing less than the largest economic partnership between any two countries in the world.

The US and the UK are by far the largest investors in each other. 40% of all foreign investment in the UK is from the US, and 39% of all US invests in the European Union are UK-based. (It will be interesting to see is the expansion of the EU significantly lowers that percentage, and if so, how quickly.)

The two-way US-UK investment total is $460,000,000,000, and--interestingly--that total is, for all intents and purposes, split equally being the two nations. Given that the US economy and population are both much larger than the UK's, it's clear that the percentage of UK foreign investment in the US is staggeringly large.

Annual two-way trade between the US and UK is about $76,000,000,000.

Also, according to the UN, the US and UK are the first and second largest investors in foreign nations generally (i.e., first and second globally in "outward investor" totals), at $1.1 trillion and $400 billion respectively.

Hastert cited in GOP corrupt Congress

Republican Congressman and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, made $1.5 million off the U.S. taxpayers. Here's how he did it.

Poll: Americans prefer Dems 3:1. So what?

A new AP-Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults conducted last Monday-Wednesday found, according to the AP, that "Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule."

My favorite quote from the AP piece is from one Gary Wilson, 51, from Gaithersburg, Md.:

They used to say there's nothing worse than a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat. There is something worse: It's a borrow-and-spend Republican. This is going to come back to haunt us.

Democrats' prospects haven't looked this good in an age. Will the Democrats once again stoop to the occasion and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

But, there are at least # things Democrats need to keep in mind at this point!

*Things were looking bad for Bush and better for Kerry at points during the summer of 2004. Now's not the time to stop working, now's not the time for timidity.

*The Swift Boat Vets for Character Assassination--a.k.a., the Switch Boat Liars for Bu$h--didn't really unleash their gas attack until August, and Kerry didn't respond, because, as everyone knows, nothing happens in August during a campaign, right? Right? The Swift Boasters weren't countered until it was too late; their arguments were not counter-attacked well.

The Dems must at this point assume that the GOP's worst onslaught is yet to come, and when it does come, it will be vicious and dangerous.

*The anti-gay ballot drives in 2004 motivated Bush votes not just among the GOP base, but to an extent among swing voters. This succeeded in part because the Democrats ran scared from the issue or even tried to sound conservative on it. Democratic leaders abandoned the legions of over-worked and under-funded volunteers fighting these bigoted and irrational ballot measures. The anti-gay rights liars with their fear-mongering and retrograde philosophies weren't countered at all. Their arguments were not really counter-attacked at all.

The Dems must at this point assume that the worst manifestations of the GOP's most un-American impulses towards minorities--immigrants, gay Americans, black voters--has yet to come; but, this time, the Republicans should be called on their bigotry, with the vision of a unified, less chaotic, settled American cultural landscape offered in place of the GOP culture wars.

*The above-cited poll also showed that "Republicans hold an advantage over Democrats on issues such as foreign policy and fighting terrorism - 43 percent to 33 percent - and a smaller edge on handling Iraq - 36 percent to 32 percent." This is horrible; but the media is partially to blame. It's disgustingly frustrating that when:
>the Democrats alone, not the Republicans, are looking out for the safety of America's ports and transportation network,
>the Democrats alone, not the Republicans, come up with good ideas like the Dept. of Homeland Security,
>the Democrats alone, not the Republicans, on an almost daily basis are having their assessment of Iraq and recommendations regarding how we handle international relations agreed with by yet another general officer or military or foreign policy expert,
>the Democrats alone, not the Republicans, care about all the profiteering and corruption among contractors in Iraq, and
>the Democrats alone, not the Republicans, are offering foreign relation strategies that, being less arrogant and more mature, would less inflame the Muslim world, and would show respect to our allies and empower them as they join in the fight against Muslim extremism
the American public still doesn't see the party that led America through World War II and ushered in unprecedented prosperity with security during the presidencies of FDR, JFK, and Clinton as the party to trust when it comes to security and defense or even foreign policy. (Bush's foreign policy largely has been a disaster!)

So, it's too early to celebrate the poll numbers. The next four months will require a lot of hard work and careful thought and courage.

The Right is "180 degrees WRONG" on gay marriage

Complete with stats, Troutfishing's fantastic post on Talk To Action and dKos is a must-read. (Excerpts below)

[I]n the first two years of legal same sex marriage in the Bay State, Massachusetts showed a more rapid decline [in the divorce rate] and will very likely hold on to its title as the US state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation. . . .

The institution of marriage in Massachusetts, as measured by the rate of divorce, has not been healthier in at least half  a century regardless of dire predictions of Christian Right leaders and Catholic Bishops. . . .

the group of US states arguably most hostile to divorce, those which have passed both state laws and also state constitutional amendments prohibiting same sex marriage, lag dramatically in terms of divorce rate improvement when compared to same sex marriage friendly states.
. . . . .
If leaders of the religious right are correct that there is a connection between same sex marriage and the health of the institution of  marriage, then they will certainly want to become advocates of marriage equality.  The continued lead of Massachusetts  as the lowest divorce rate leader in the US would indicate that same sex marriage helps to preserve rather than destroy traditional heterosexual marriages.