A pilgrimage most sacred

DemWit readers have followed Father Tim Farrell, pastor of Sacred Heart Cathoic Church in Farmington, New Mexico, on many travels. We have climbed with him to the top of Mount Sinai, walked the paths of his Irish ancestors and sat with him as he pondered genocide in Rwanda.

This spring Father Tim made that journey most sacred in the hearts of all of us: a trip “home,” in every sense of the word.

As I read the following account of Tim’s journey through the South, many quotes about “home” came to mind while trying to decide if his visits with family would be of interest to readers.

Of course they will, for so many of us, separated by distance and time from those we hold dearest, will understand. In quiet moments, we have all traveled the streets and backroads of our youth, sat with loved ones on porch swings, listened to the stories of our elders  and stood by sacred gravesides.

Here, then, is Father Tim’s latest pilgrimage:

It is quite cathartic to simply drive across miles and miles of America and have no real timeline. I started out on a very windy morning in late May heading first to Apache, Oklahoma. It was a bright, Spring day, and it felt good to be on the road without any plans to make for the day other than to reach my brother Mike's home by evening.

Hours on the open road open the mind, ease the stress and anxiety, allow a person to let worries dislodge and float away. I crossed into Texas heading for Amarillo, and the wind grew more severe. I looked at the rather ominous clouds forming. The radio was beginning to alert me to possible tornadoes in the area. By late afternoon across the southern Oklahoma border, the winds had died down but the clouds were now a sickish yellow and angry looking. Tornadoes had struck near Anadarko, Oklahoma, the radio reported, not far from where I was at that time, and a tornado was now heading for Oklahoma City. I kept looking up at the skies, a bit worried that I was in the middle of a real Oklahoma whopper of a storm. I prayed.

I made it to my brother's home without incident, but very happy to be settled in the midst of the storms. My brother Mike and his wife Kelly and their family live on my mother's childhood home in a tiny community called Boone, 30 miles from Lawton. My mother and father are buried nearby in a beautiful little cemetery. I spent two wonderful days visiting, drinking in the beauty of the farm. The old farmhouse where my mother and her siblings were raised still stands but is now in shambles. My brother's home is built down the lane from it. So many memories . . . On the morning I left, I stopped by my parents' graves at sunrise, and a golden glow fell upon their headstones, and I thanked God for giving me such wonderful parents. I asked them to help me in life. I always do. They always did, and they still do.

I drove on full throttle to Memphis, Tennessee, and stopped by to see Jeffrey Chiapetti. Jeff was a young man from my days as head of the youth group at Cathedral in Gallup. Our original plans were that we would have lunch. But I ran late, and his schedule for a later lunch fell through. Then we were going to have an early dinner, but I got in later still, so that fell through. I called Jeff and simply said, "Jeff, we'll do this another time." "No, Father, I want to visit with you, so just get off the Interstate, and we can visit in my store." Now, Jeff is quite a success story. He is manager of several I.O. Metro stores in the Southeast. I.O. Metro is an upscale interior design store. When I arrived Jeff and I had a wonderful visit, if a short one. He was hosting designer Vern Yip, and the television celebrity would arrive any minute. So I gave Jeff a blessing, we hugged, and I got out of the way. Jeff and the staff were dressed to the hilt. I, on the other hand, was scruffy from a full day of travel. Guess who didn't fit into this scenario?

I got into Tupelo, Mississippi., by late afternoon to my sister Mary's house. Mary and her husband Glenn have a son and two daughters. Van, my nephew, was in Florida with his buddies for a graduation outing. Could he really be a graduated senior in high school? Really? Along with the three children, there are four or five dogs, big and small. Glenn is a veterinarian and brings home the forgotten little ones no one else wants. There's a three-legged dog who is actually the leader of the pack, and then I really fell in love with the tiny one who had real attitude. Mary's home is situated on a large property where the dogs can run freely, and I'd sit outside with my sister, and we would visit and laugh. Daddy and Mama each have a tree in their memory. I remember Mama, who lived here in her last months, asking me if I thought we would plant a tree in her memory like Daddy's. I let Mary know, and there her tree is, standing proudly near Daddy's.

While in Tupelo, we visited Elvis Presley's birthplace, which is quite a nice memorial. His little home where he was born and raised is there. His first cousin who grew up with him gives the tour of the house, a sweet older lady with those Elvis Presley eyes. There is a little Church of Christ church there where Elvis used to worship and where he first performed publicly.

I travelled on in a couple of days to Louin, Missisippi, to visit my sister Ruth and my brother Joe, who live not too far from each other. It was two days filled with barbecue and long visits. Ruth has an enclosed porch where we would sit and watch the fireflies lighting up in the deep Mississippi darkness of the pine forests surrounding us.

I celebrated Mass that Saturday afternoon for Joe and Ruth and Jay, Ruth's husband. I anointed both Joe and Ruth who have been experiencing health problems. My priesthood is never put on a shelf, of course, and I love that aspect of my life. On Sunday morning I drove on through the fog-laden roads through some of the backroads of southern Mississippi, crossing over into Louisiana, my birth state, and headed down toward Baton Rouge. Around lunchtime, I stopped by a Cajun store where they served po-boys. Now, there is nothing like a po-boy from southern Louisiana. I got the shrimp po-boy, and it was such a huge, delicious sandwich that I ate part of it and then saved the rest for a snack. The Cajuns are simple folk who love life and show that love not only in their music, but in the way they make a simple sandwich.

I made it to Houston by evening and went over to my Uncle Eugene's home. He is in his early 90s now, the last surviving sibling of my mother's side. He is a gentle, thoughtful man, and he and I visited that evening for several hours, eating fried chicken he had picked up earlier. Doug, his son with whom he lives, sat and visited with us. Family is so therapeutic. Just visiting and eating is a healing enterprise.

I stayed the night, and the next morning I headed toward Dallas to visit my Uncle Marty, also in his 90s, my father's only surviving sibling. He and my Aunt Shirley live in Athens, Texas, and we had lunch together. We had a wonderful couple of hours and then off I headed for home. I stayed that evening in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then the next morning through Texas back to the Land of Enchantment.

Those quiet days of driving and visiting were a wonderful way to pray, to let go, to ponder, to come to peace, all wrapped into one. We all need a drive down the long road from time to time. We all need reconnecting with family. We all need the simple visits with loved ones along the way, no special itinerary. Just driving, looking in the rearview mirror, living in the now, looking to the future with hope, and letting go.

***

'The Perry Tales'

Texans have long been known for stretching the truth, but I don’t see the latest tales coming out of Texas ending “happily ever after.”

Not when voters take the time to separate fact and fiction.

Jim Hightower is an author, a nationally syndicated columnist and a radio commentator. He is a Texan who knows Texas politics. According to his Web site:

“Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.”

The eyes of this longtime Texas observer are upon the state’s governor, and before DemWit’s conservative readers get excited over presidential prospects, read on as Hightower pulls back the curtain on “The Perry Tales.” Thanks, Jim, for permission to reprint!

The Perry Tales
Rick Is Not Who He Says He Is

by Jim Hightower
31 Augsut 2011

Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting all around the country — hither, thither and yon — spreading little "Perry Tales" about himself and the many wonders he has worked as governor of Texas.

His top Perry Tale is a creationist story about what he has modestly branded "The Texas Miracle." While the rest of the country is mired in joblessness, says the miracle worker, his state has added 1.2 million jobs during his 10-year tenure.

I've built "a job-creating machine," the governor gushed during one of his recent flits across Iowa, and a Perry PR aide smugly added, "The governor's job creation record speaks for itself."

Actually, it doesn't. Far from having the best unemployment rate in the nation, the Lone Star State ranks a middling 26th, behind New York, Massachusetts and other states whose "liberal" governments he routinely mocks.

Even more damning, Perry's Texas is not creating nearly enough jobs to keep up with its fast-growing population. Those 1.2 million new positions are 629,000 short of the jobs needed just to bring the state's employment level back up to where it was in 2007. Some miracle.

Worse, probe even a millimeter into the million-jobs number that he is sprinkling around like fairy dust, and you'll learn that Perry's jobs are mostly "jobettes" that can't sustain a family. They come with very low pay, no health care or pension, and no employment security, labor rights or upward mobility — many are only part-time and/or temporary positions.

Here's a particularly revealing stat that the Perry pixies don't want us to see: On his watch as governor, Texas added more minimum wage jobs than all the other 49 states combined. More than half a million Texans now work for $7.25 an hour or less. He can brag that he's brought Texans down into a tie with Mississippi for the highest percentage of workers reduced to poverty pay.

Spreading even more fairy dust, Perry claims that his Texas Miracle is the result of him keeping the government out of the private sector's way. But peek behind that ideological curtain, and you'll find this startling fact: During Perry's decade, the greatest job growth by far has come from the public sector, which has more than doubled the number of new jobs created by the private sector.

One out of six employed Texans are now teachers, police officers, highway engineers, military personnel or other government workers — and many of these jobs were created with the federal money that Perry-the-candidate now loudly denounces. Indeed, he's running around ranting about President Obama's stimulus program, but he gladly accepted the third highest amount of stimulus funds taken by the 50 states. There's his miracle.

Interestingly, even his tea-partyish hatred — nay, loathing! — of big government's intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens turns out to be just another Perry Tale. In fact, there would be no Rick Perry without the steady "intrusion" of government into his life.

Local taxpayers in Haskell County put him through their public school system — for free. He and his family were dry-land cotton farmers, and federal taxpayers helped support them with thousands of dollars in crop subsidies — Perry personally took $80,000 in farm payments.

State and federal taxpayers financed his college education at Texas A&M, even giving him the extracurricular opportunity to be a cheerleader. Upon graduation, he spent four years on the federal payroll as an Air Force transport pilot who never did any combat duty.

Then, in 1984, Perry hit the mother lode of government pay by moving into elected office — squatting there for 27 years and counting. In addition to getting regular paychecks from taxpayers for nearly three decades as a state representative, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and governor, he also receives platinum-level health care coverage and a generous pension from the state, plus $10,000 a month for renting a luxury suburban home, a covey of political and personal aides and even a publicly paid subscription to Food & Wine magazine.

So when this taxpayer-supported lifer flits into your town to declare that he will slash public benefits and make government "as inconsequential as possible," he means in your life, not his.

Perry literally puts the "hype" in hypocrisy. Forget his tall tales and political B.S. — look at what he actually does.

***

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT JIM HIGHTOWER

GOP caught in double fork

In a weekend when attention has turned to the past – 9/11 – and the present “threats” and “chatter” of another terrorist plot, I’m still working on the future.

I have read President Obama’s “jobs” speech and a number of reax articles, including a very thorough article on CNN.com this morning.

At the modern-day Tower of Babel known as Capitol Hill, reaction to Obama’s address to Congress is so varied it frankly gives me a headache, but it seems to me one thing is clear, the president has managed to turn the tables on the Republican-controlled House with his own double fork.

A double fork is a chess move where a player’s piece simultaneously attacks two of an opponent’s pieces, resulting in the capture of one of the pieces.

How does this relate to Election 2012?

On the one hand, according to the CNN.com article, House Republicans “unlike most Senate Republicans, face re-election races in 2012.” Possible support for Obama’s jobs plan “may stem from blunt messages they heard from constituents over the summer recess, as well as paltry public support according to recent polls.”

On the other hand, the GOP with a singular goal of defeating Obama in 2012 simply cannot let the president push through lesgislation which would put Americans to work and the country on a path to economic recovery.

If Washington fails to pass job-growth legislation now? Well, DemWit readers know what a stalemate is: that’s when nobody wins – in this case the American people.

Lay off the red herrings

Pay attention in the GOP debates when Texas Gov. Rick Perry starts talking about doing away with “Obamacare.”

A Gallup poll released today, which surveyed 177,237 Americans daily from January to June 2011, has found that:

“Texas residents continue to be the most likely in the United States to lack health coverage, with 27.2 percent reporting being uninsured in the first half of 2011.”

(…)

“Eight of the 10 states with the highest uninsured rates in the country are in the South.”

They are, in order from the bottom up: Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia.

Republican states where citizens have been convinced the country's healthcare woes are the result of so-called “Obamacare.”

Diagnosis: A bad case of dumbass. Recommended treatment: Lay off the red herrings.

UPDATE: CNN promo on GOP debate Sept. 7:

“Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney clashed over job creation, health care”

For the record, the poll cited above found that Massachusetts tops the list of 50 states with the most citizens having health insurance.

Read the GOP debate wrapup HERE.

'Annus horribilis'

In a year when Windsor Castle burned and her family was breaking up, Queen Elizabeth II bemoaned her “annus horrilibis.” The year 2011 is shaping up to be mine.

My problems have piled up so fast that I have reached the point where I would rather avoid emails or phone calls which ask, “How are you doing?” The debilitating act of complaining can erode the spirit, but, then, I’ve never really had that much to complain about. Until now.

So, without going into details – or additional details – about my woes, I’d like to mention some life lessons, which have helped me put them in perspective.

THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS CHRIST – Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus championed the meek and the poor. There are some 700 mentions of the poor in the New Testament, more than any other subject., and 407 were spoken by Jesus.

MARIE – When I was a young woman my Sunday School class got involved with the county welfare department in a project which took us into a world of backwoods Mississippi poverty we could never have imagined. A friend and I took as our “project” Marie. I do not know if our efforts eventually helped Marie and her children, but they taught us about the downward spiraling cycle of ignorance and hopelessness.

THOSE STRANDED BY KATRINA – For five days, I sat in the comfort of my home and watched in horror those stranded in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, asking myself, “How can this be happening in America?”

DOROTHEA LANGE’S “MIGRANT MOTHER” – In 1979, I viewed the Dorothea Lange collection of photos made during The Great Depression. (See Library of Congress collection HERE.) I stood for a long time and looked into the face of Lange’s “Migrant Mother” (shown above) until her despair burned into my soul.

JOHN STEINBECK’S “THE GRAPES OF WRATH” – Now, having just listened to Steinbeck’s desperate saga of the Joad family, I add this reminder of what poverty is and that it really does happen in America. While a fictional family, the reality of the Joads comes alive in Lange’s photographic record. Steinbeck insisted a complete copy of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in the first edition of his book – the anthem from which his title came.

This post was to have ended here, but I received a forwarded email mocking so-called “street people.” More and more prevalent in the news are expressions of disdain for those less fortunate. The belief that their lot in life is the result of laziness should stir our wrath.

Then, I noted this recent editorial in The New York Times:

“The New Resentment of the Poor” points out that Republican candidates and leaders are painting a picture of America's working poor that is “factually wrong, economically wrong and morally wrong.” Don’t let lies prevail, when a few minutes of reading will equip you with facts. READ THE EDITORIAL

There really are haves and have nots in this country – those who have compassion for the less fortunate and those who apparently have none.

Before you leave this page, look once more upon the face of the Migrant Mother. Consolation for our own petty problems is written there.

Six years after Katrina: Lynn's story

As Hurricane Irene was churning toward the Eastern coastline, I sent out an email about an item on CNN’s “Political Ticker,” which had caught my attention. GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, libertarian and congressman from Texas, has declared the country doesn’t need FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The response I got from my longtime friend Lynn was so moving, I asked her for permission to share it with you.

Lynn Lofton is a freelance writer who lives near the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi. Six years ago Hurricane Katrina’s wind, water and wrath swept through her home and assaulted her family. She writes about the effects of Katrina – and FEMA – on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and on her and her children, Tammy, Louann and Chip.

Lynn's story:

“Like any large bureaucracy, FEMA has problems and makes mistakes. However, as a recipent of FEMA funds after Hurricane Katrina, I hate to think where I would be without it. No one had a blueprint for a storm the size of Katrina. My town and others along the Mississippi Gulf Coast would not recover without FEMA.

“It's still ongoing as we're now in the midst of getting new water and sewer lines in my neighborhood. There have been some wonderful police, fire and other municipal facilities constructed with FEMA funds. Some families lost their homes, work places, schools, churches - everything. Thank goodness for FEMA and may no community ever have to go through another Katrina.”

Lynn then reflects on that disaster:

“Today is the sixth anniversary of Katrina so there are lots of reflections where I live.

“I've intently watched Hurricane Irene these past few days. It brought back so many memories. It was bad but it could have been so much worse. I'm glad it's over.

“Today is Tammy's birthday, so now it's forever marred for her as the day Katrina struck! Her home in New Orleans had water up to the roof line. She and her family were displaced for a long time. As a mother it was so unsettling not to be able to offer refuge to them, but my house was a mess, too. I had only about five feet of water, but it took two years to get it repaired.

“Chip was renting a house in Biloxi at the time. It had a small amount of water, and he was able to get back in quickly. He took in Tammy's two dogs, his boss' dog and had two of his own. He ran a kennel for a while!

“I actually was able to save some of my furniture, dishes and clothes. I took family photos and albums with me when I left. It was impossible to think of everything when evacuating. I lost baby books, high school yearbooks and things like that in addition to household items. It is accurate to say I lost most everything.

“Everything in the house had to be re-done (shored up the foundation, new plumbing, wiring, sheetrock, etc.). Because the windows and doors blew out I didn't have any mold. Consequently things dried out and some pieces of furniture were salvagable.

“I was from pillar to post but pretty much stayed with a good friend in Jackson, Miss., until I got a FEMA camper. It took six months for me to get a camper. because the paperwork kept going to the wrong place. I had five addresses within a very short time span!”

Life – so precious – goes on:

“Louann was supposed to get married in New Orleans on Sept. 17, 2005. Everything had been paid for and secured. Of course, that didn't happen in New Orleans so soon after Katrina. She was living in Arlington, Va., at that time. The wedding finally took place on Dec. 3 in Washington, D.C. When I evacuated the day before Katrina hit, my dress for her wedding was hanging in a garment bag outside my closet. For some crazy reason I grabbed it and took it with me. Anyone who's ever been the mother of the bride knows how difficult it is to find a suitable dress to wear - I guess I was taking no chances that I'd have to go through that search again!

“Anyway, she got married on a snowy December evening in D.C. and I, the mother of the bride, proudly wore the outfit I had planned to wear on a hot day in September in New Orleans.

“At that point half of Louann’s family was homeless. and we were just happy to be alive and together. Tammy and her children found an apartment in Alexandria, Va., shortly after Katrina struck. She had to get the children in school, and it was good to be there near her sister.

“I bought a laptop computer and a cell phone and kept right on writing from wherever I was. I was thankful to have work that allowed me to keep earning.”

***

I suppose it is easy to sit on Capitol Hill or in a comfortable armchair somewhere and criticize the work of a government agency. Lynn’s family was lucky: they all survived Katrina, and her story attests to what FEMA, which got off to a sluggish start, has done for the people of her beloved Gulf Coast.

A woman scorned

Forbes has released its annual list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and coming in at No. 19 is Georgina Rinehart, described as “the richest woman in Australia - and said to be on track as the richest person in the world in 2012."

So, how does Ms. Rinehart count her blessings?

According to Forbes, she is using her wealth “to campaign against national environmental reforms and taxes.”

Am I reading that right? If so, Ms. Rinehart, a mining tycoon and heiress worth $10 billion, might just epitomize greed.

She has an American counterpart.

In a town hall meeting in Charleston, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley popped in as a surprise guest to throw Michele Bachmann a softball question about the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Bachmann, No. 22 on Forbes’ list, replied:

"If the NLRB would also be continuing their current stance, they may not last very long. Once they see what I do to the EPA they may shape up,"

So, what would this GOP presidential hopeful do to the Environmental Protection Agency – whose sole purpose is, well, to protect the environment?

“Lock the doors and shut off all the lights.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and apparently Mother Nature is no exception. Talk about a powerful woman.

A few apt adjectives

“He counts votes before he chooses what to eat for breakfast. He’s a two-faced, cutthroat, dirt-dumb, chicken shit, slimy, little bastard with a bright future in politics.”

That’s a defense attorney, desperately trying to save an innocent man from lethal injection, describing the governor of Texas in John Grisham’s “The Confession.”

Copyright 2010.

Might be fiction, but that sounds about right to me.

***

Seriously, folks. The last thing this country needs right now is another evangelical cowboy riding out of Texas with eyes on the White House.

DemWit calls your attention to some pretty slick investments as Rick Perry supporters in Texas turn thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into millions reaped from Texas’ coffers.

And, oh, those lucrative appointments.

Don’t miss “Perry Mines Texas System to Raise Cash for Campaigns,” Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo, The New York Times, 20 August 2011.

Mr. Perry, there’s a passage in the New Testament where Jesus exhibits the very human emotion of anger. This is just the sort of thing to tick off the Master you so publicly – and hypocritically – claim to love.

A study in contrasts

A real look at America’s haves and have-nots that goes beyond partisan bickering:

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) released a report this past week stating that 64 percent of Americans cannot come up with $1,000 to cover an emergency situation.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax data for 2009 shows there were 235,413 taxpayers who earned $1 million or more that year.

According to the non-profit NFCC, of the 2,700 survey respondents, 17 percent of those who could not meet a $1,000 emergency expense said they would borrow money from friends or family. Another 17 percent said they would neglect other financial obligations, such as a credit card or mortgage payment, to meet the emergency.

The IRS data just released shows that in 2009, "incomes fell, unemployment claims rose and the U.S. economy shed nearly 2 million taxpayers."

A previous NFCC study found that “30 percent of Americans have zero dollars in non-retirement savings. A separate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 50 percent of Americans would struggle to come up with $2,000 in a pinch.”

According to the IRS, of the 235,413 taxpayers who earned $1 million or more in 2009, 1,470 paid no taxes.

From a news report in The New York Times: Standard & Poor’s “based its downgrade and its negative outlook for America’s credit rating partly on the assumption that Bush-era tax cuts for high incomes would be extended past their 2012 expiration, ‘because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.’ S.& P. said it could change its outlook to stable if the tax cuts ended.”

Three days that shook America

OK, enough Kumbaya. I’m angry.

My hair has been on fire since I read the following quote from former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, who wants to be president:

“America’s creditworthiness just became the latest casualty in President Obama’s failed record of leadership on the economy. Standard & Poor’s rating downgrade is a deeply troubling indicator of our country’s decline under President Obama. His failed policies have led to high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and now, the unprecedented loss of our nation’s prized AAA credit rating.”

Mr. Romney’s claim is so blatantly hypocritical it takes my breath away.

If this nation is in decline; if it does fall, it can, in my opinion, be traced back to three dates:

12 DECEMBER 2000

As most DemWit readers know, I am a retired newspaper editor with degrees in political science and journalism, so I’ve long had a propensity toward both.

I began to monitor politics in earnest following the 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, simply because I could not believe what had just taken place in the United States of America.

Two of this country's most famous lawyers wrote books about this decision:

Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (boo-lee-O-see) wrote “The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President.” Law professor and famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote “Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000.”

What happened that day wasn’t about your favorite candidate: it was about the real loser, the Constitution of the United States of America. That got lost in the joy of victory and the agony of defeat.

20 JANUARY 2001

How do you argue that George W. Bush, inaugurated on this date, was the worst president ever to occupy the Oval Office? Where do you begin? How do you disseminate in a single article, post or conversation what I referred to in a previous post as “a million pieces of evidence”?

If we view his presidency in terms of our current economic crisis – “treasure” – the equation is quite simple: two wars and tax cuts equal bad fiscal policy.

If we view it in terms of “blood,” how do we measure the cost in countless lives – military and civilian - lost in an unnecessary, pre-emptive, unilateral war to overthrow a tinpot dictator who was no threat to us at all?

And, that’s just two of the million pieces of evidence known to those who paid attention. In his second term – indeed, in his recent book – Bush was concerned for his “legacy.” For the most part, he managed to turn around advances made over decades. History will not be kind.

7 OCTOBER 1996

The first lie was its slogan, “Fair and Balanced.” Since its launch date, Fox News Channel has been the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. The flagship of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has the highest ratings of the three cable news networks, attracting the conservative half of the country. Viewers who tune in simply because Fox News is biased toward their ideology don’t want news, they want validation. Under the skillful direction of Roger Ailes, Fox News has manipulated both the ignorant and the uninformed, convincing its audience to trust no other news source.

According to Frank Rich in New York Magazine
, in an in-depth piece about Murdoch's phone-hacking scandal in England, right-wing Canadian media mogul Conrad Black, in the Financial Times, "describes Murdoch as not merely a ‘tabloid sensationalist’ but ‘a malicious mythmaker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of revered institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism.’ Or as the former Bush speechwriter David Frum said more than a year ago, ‘Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.’ ”

There are Web sites like Newshounds and Media Matters for America which have meticulously documented the lies on Fox News, based on direct quotes from its shows.

Incredulously, Fox News actually used lying as a defense in a court case:

“In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by Fox News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.”

But, there is a good rule-of-thumb used by credible media: always get more than one source. If you must watch Fox News, don’t let it be your only source of news.

***

There have been many days that shook America - from the stock market crash of '29 to Pearl Harbor to 9/11 - but I believe the three dates above have affected America's present and will have a sustained effect on its future.

Divided we fall

It is NOT sour grapes which leads me to share the article below. I honestly believe that if the economy does not miraculously turn around, Obama will be a one-term president. A shattered base cannot sustain him. And God help us all if any one of the current GOP contenders wins!

Hillary will never oppose the president in 2012: she has too much class to do that. And too much sense.

President Obama’s campaign trail will be interesting: I just don’t see multitudes at rallies chanting “Yes, We Can!”

Now about the article – it's a good example of the kind of talk that's out there. No question about that. I hasten to point out that, with the exception of Bill Maher and a few sources who have previously appeared in print, the writer has peppered her “report” throughout with quotes from unnamed sources – look for them. I could have sat at my cpmputer and written such an article with made-up quotes! And, how can she know what’s being talked about from the Beltway to gatherings at office water coolers? Finally, her motivation for writing the article is pretty apparent from the title of her book. While there is nothing wrong with stating a point-of-view in an opinion piece, she attempts to make this sound like a factual news story. As a writer she fails at attribution. I give her no credibility.

Because I believed she was the most qualified to be president and clean up after George W. Bush, I supported Hillary passionately, but I voted for Obama and have given him my support. I do confess, however, that I think Hillary would have shrunk Boehner’s balls. :-)

THE ARTICLE:


Hillary Told You So

Author: Leslie Bennetts
Source: Reader Supported News, August 7, 2011

As Democratic disgust with Obama’s debt fumbling spreads, Clinton supporters recall her '3 a.m. phone call' warnings—and angry, frustrated liberals are muttering that she should mount a 2012 challenge.

At a New York political event last week, Republican and Democratic office-holders were all bemoaning President Obama’s handling of the debt-ceiling crisis when someone said, “Hillary would have been a better president.”

“Every single person nodded, including the Republicans,” reported one observer.

At a luncheon in the members’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a 64-year-old African-American from the Bronx was complaining about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the implacable hostility of congressional Republicans when an 80-year-old lawyer chimed in about the president’s unwillingness to stand up to his opponents. “I want to see blood on the floor,” she said grimly.

A 61-year-old white woman at the table nodded. “He never understood about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’” she said.

Looking as if she were about to cry, an 83-year-old Obama supporter shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in him,” she said. “It’s true: Hillary is tougher.”

During the last few days, the whispers have swelled to an angry chorus of frustration about Obama’s perceived weaknesses. Many Democrats are furious and heartbroken at how ineffectual he seemed in dealing with Republican opponents over the debt ceiling, and liberals are particularly incensed by what they see as his capitulation to conservatives on fundamental liberal principles.

In Connecticut, a businessman who raised money for Obama in 2008 said, “I’m beyond disgusted.” In New Jersey, a teacher reported that even her friends in the Obama administration are grievously disillusioned with his lack of leadership—and many have begun to whisper about a Democratic challenge for the 2012 presidential nomination. “I think people are furtively hoping that Hillary runs,” she said.

The son of a longtime Democratic congressman from Texas, a 73-year-old lawyer, is so enraged with Obama that he’s threatening not to vote for the 2012 Democratic ticket—the first time in his entire life that he’s contemplated such apostasy.

Among many of the 18 million Americans who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, the reaction is simple and bitter: “We told you so.”

On Real Time With Bill Maher, the host said that as far as he was concerned, Obama might as well be a Republican, and added that he thought last week represented the tipping point in Obama’s presidency. Wondering if liberals have “buyer’s remorse” about Obama, Maher asked his panel whether Clinton would have been a better president.

“Yes,” replied astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, adding that Clinton would have been “a more effective negotiator in the halls of Congress.”

“She knows how to deal with difficult men,” Maher agreed. (BJ NOTE: Hillary jokingly made this remark about herself during her campaign.)

Among Clinton fans, particularly older women, the language was frequently far more caustic. “Obama has no spine and no balls,” said a 67-year-old New Yorker.

In recent days, political conversations from inside the Beltway to office water coolers all over America have abounded with unflattering comparisons between Obama and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Capitol Hill veteran who was a master of knocking heads to get things done. A Texas Democrat, Johnson served as a representative, a senator, the Senate minority leader, the Senate majority leader, and vice president before becoming president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “Unlike Obama, he knew how to work the system,” said one political reporter.

In his New York Times Sunday Review essay “What Happened to Obama?” Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen summed up the president’s lack of experience with devastating succinctness.

“Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted ‘present’ on difficult issues,” wrote Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

The presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson went even further with a post under the headline “Run, Hillary, Run!” on the blog Presidential Power. “She did warn you,” Dickinson reminded his readers.

“Remember that 3 a.m. phone call? Remember the warning about the rose-colored petals falling from the sky? Remember about learning on the job? Sure you do. Doesn’t a part of you, deep down, realize she was right?” wrote Dickinson, a political-science professor at Middlebury College. “If I heard it once this last week, I heard it a thousand times: You were duped by Obama’s rhetoric—the whole ‘hopey-changey’ thing. And you wanted to be part of history, too—to help break down the ultimate racial barrier. That’s OK. We were all young once. But now it’s time to elect someone who can play hardball, who understands how to be ruthless, who will be a real ... uh ... tough negotiator in office. There won’t be any debate about Hillary’s, er, ‘man-package.’”

Other observers contrasted the president’s declining popularity with Clinton’s widely acclaimed performance as secretary of State. “To be blunt, her resume outshines the incumbent’s,” wrote Dickinson, noting that Clinton’s approval rating is close to 70 percent while Obama’s is around 40 percent.

Such polls notwithstanding, insiders insist that Clinton will not challenge her president for the 2012 nomination, and many pundits dismiss the idea as political suicide. “A challenge from Clinton would be a complete disaster, both for her and for the Democrats,” wrote Jon Bernstein on the Plain Blog political site.

Political experts point out that Republicans’ hatred of the Clintons in the 1990s was just as virulent as their efforts to destroy Obama’s presidency in the last couple of years. Longtime analysts also remember the carnage that ensued when Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, fracturing the party and paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s election. Four years earlier, Reagan himself had challenged an incumbent Republican, President Gerald Ford; Reagan lost the nomination, Ford lost the presidency, and Carter was elected.

However unlikely a Democratic challenger might seem at present, Obama would be foolish not to heed the deep dissatisfaction represented by such speculation, which is now spreading like an ominous brush fire. Given the abundance of devastating economic news lately, he would also do well to remember the Clintons’ rallying cry from the 1992 election.

“There’s no question in my mind that Obama is a one-term president,” says one passionate Democrat. “Even if he were a great president, this economy is a calamity. And in the end, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’”

“No one ever had to tell Hillary that,” says a disgruntled member of Clinton’s 18 million.

Leslie Bennetts is a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of the national bestseller The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up

***

Obama took on argueably the toughest job in the world today and is learning a tough lesson: these days you can’t be president of all the people. The lies and slime would be hurled just as ferociously at Hillary as that attacking our sitting president.

If we still have hopes of moving our country beyond this moment of insanity, we had better coalesce around our president.

Divided we fall.

Restoring America

I refuse to accept that I am an enemy of America because I am a liberal Democrat. And, I refuse to believe that many of my loved ones are America’s enemies because they are conservative Republicans.

Quoting a CNN report: “S&P gave two primary reasons for downgrading U.S. debt: The nation's fiscal path and its broken political system.”

“Broken political system.”

And so once more that little possum, Walt Kelly’s “Pogo,” reminds America that “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

What then is the fix for a broken America? We are, hopefully, too civilized to engage in a second civil war. Should we divvy up territory, giving the left 25 states and the right 25 – calling ourselves, as my friend Carolyn once suggested, “The Divided States of America”?

While you and I look to our elected leaders for solutions, we do not need to make ourselves part of the problem.

But, damn, it’s hard to shake the unshakeable conviction that, after reading and writing and hearing a million pieces of evidence over the last decade, I am right to be on the left.

The thing is: the other half of the citizenry feels the same way.

Are we loving America to death?

My country is in trouble. So, it goes without saying that the following quote, read this morning, gave me pause:

“It is easy to look at America's place in the world right now and believe that we are in a downward spiral of decline. But, this is a snapshot of a tough moment. If the country can keep its cool, admit to its mistakes, cherish and strengthen its successes, it will not only recover but return with renewed strength. There could not have been a worse time for America than the end of the Vietnam War, with helicopters lifting people off the roof of the Saigon embassy, the fallout of Watergate and, in the Soviet Union, a global adversary that took advantage of its weakness. And yet, just 15 years later, the United States was resurgent, the USSR was in its death throes, and the world was moving in a direction that was distinctly American in flavor. The United States has new challenges, new adversaries and new problems. But, unlike so much of the world, it also has solutions - if only it has the courage and wisdom to implement them.”

This quote was not ripped from this morning’s headlines. It is from a 13 June 2007 post on my previous blog, “I See My Dreams.” Its source is a lengthy and insightful article by Newsweek’s International Editor Fareed Zakaria, “Beyond Bush: What the World Needs Is an Open, Confident America,” June 11, 2007, issue: LINK

Do our elected leaders have the “courage and wisdom” to stop listening to the lunatic fringes on the left and the right, to stop worrying about their re-election campaign coffers and to salvage the strengths that have made this democracy endure?

I’m not sure. Are you?

NRA prez misses target

Could I ask the United Nations to ban telephones in the United States?

Yesterday I was awakened from a much-needed nap by a robocall from David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association.

The message went something like this:

The United Nations is going to take away your guns and ban all guns in the United States, just as they have been banned in, and here he named several countries. And isn’t it just a damn travesty that the United Nations is located on U.S. soil?

OK, that’s loosely paraphrased, but that was the gist of the scare tactic.

At the end of the call I was given the choice to punch “1” if I did not think the UN should (what?) do this on U.S. soil, and “2” if I thought it was OK. I punched “2” and was thanked for taking the "survey."

The NRA knows its target audience. This wasn’t a survey. It was a scare tactic aimed at an area populated by gunowners who love hunting. I do not object to hunting: it’s been around since the cavedwellers. What I object to is the NRA’s eternal effort to raise funds by convincing Americans that “they’re gonna get your guns.”

The member states of the UN, it seems, are drafting a treaty to “regulate the multibillion dollar global arms trade,” aka the weapons of war. To the members of the NRA this translates into threatening their hunting guns.

I am often astounded when my current read echoes current issues. In John Grisham’s “The Brethren,” a fictional member of the U.S. House is handpicked by a fictional CIA director to run for president because he is willing to double the defense budget – a move to ward off Armageddon, because a couple of Russian goons are stockpiling materiel to start “a second Cold War.”

Anyone who read the book or saw the movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” knows that such weapons are readily sold between countries. It’s a fact that Israel sold weapons to arm the mujahideen in Afghanistan as they founght the Soviet Union.

Hey, this stuff goes on, and it’s not just the transfer of war materiel, it arms terrorists, paramilitary groups and drug cartels. It’s got nothing to do with duck hunting.

But, the UN treaty is just the sort of thing to trigger mass hysteria among American defenders of the 2nd Amendment. And, keep the NRA’s coffers filled.

Remember the dreaded “16 words:” “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”

If some nut job really is out there bartering for yellowcake, I, for one, would like to know some effort is being made to control it.

Read more about the NRA’s action HERE.

***

As for the United Nations tainting U.S. soil, I think it’s a good time, once more, to read the preamble to its charter HERE.

A personal plea

This is a personal plea from the president of the United States and from one of the persons he works for – me.

Most of you understand that America is facing a disaster as great as any terrorist threat. Some of you do not. Most of you have television and heard your president speak last night. Some of you did not. There is no mistake about it: the doomsday clock is running. I write this as an optimist – a glass-half-full person who believes in the promise of her country. Last night your president spoke to the American people in terms so clear as not tp be misunderstood. Whether you heard his words or spent your time in other ways, I ask you to copy and paste them to Microsoft Word and save them. Hear them or hear them again. They are honest. Take the time to listen. There’s nothing at stake here but the future of your country.

HIS WORDS:

Good evening. Tonight, I want to talk about the debate we’ve been having in Washington over the national debt -- a debate that directly affects the lives of all Americans.

For the last decade, we’ve spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card.

As a result, the deficit was on track to top $1 trillion the year I took office. To make matters worse, the recession meant that there was less money coming in, and it required us to spend even more -– on tax cuts for middle-class families to spur the economy; on unemployment insurance; on aid to states so we could prevent more teachers and firefighters and police officers from being laid off. These emergency steps also added to the deficit.

Now, every family knows that a little credit card debt is manageable. But if we stay on the current path, our growing debt could cost us jobs and do serious damage to the economy. More of our tax dollars will go toward paying off the interest on our loans. Businesses will be less likely to open up shop and hire workers in a country that can’t balance its books. Interest rates could climb for everyone who borrows money -– the homeowner with a mortgage, the student with a college loan, the corner store that wants to expand. And we won’t have enough money to make job-creating investments in things like education and infrastructure, or pay for vital programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Because neither party is blameless for the decisions that led to this problem, both parties have a responsibility to solve it. And over the last several months, that’s what we’ve been trying to do. I won’t bore you with the details of every plan or proposal, but basically, the debate has centered around two different approaches.

The first approach says, let’s live within our means by making serious, historic cuts in government spending. Let’s cut domestic spending to the lowest level it’s been since Dwight Eisenhower was President. Let’s cut defense spending at the Pentagon by hundreds of billions of dollars. Let’s cut out waste and fraud in health care programs like Medicare -- and at the same time, let’s make modest adjustments so that Medicare is still there for future generations. Finally, let’s ask the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their breaks in the tax code and special deductions.

This balanced approach asks everyone to give a little without requiring anyone to sacrifice too much. It would reduce the deficit by around $4 trillion and put us on a path to pay down our debt. And the cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small businesses and middle-class families get back on their feet right now.

This approach is also bipartisan. While many in my own party aren’t happy with the painful cuts it makes, enough will be willing to accept them if the burden is fairly shared. While Republicans might like to see deeper cuts and no revenue at all, there are many in the Senate who have said, “Yes, I’m willing to put politics aside and consider this approach because I care about solving the problem.” And to his credit, this is the kind of approach the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was working on with me over the last several weeks.

The only reason this balanced approach isn’t on its way to becoming law right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are insisting on a different approach -- a cuts-only approach -– an approach that doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all.

And because nothing is asked of those at the top of the income scale, such an approach would close the deficit only with more severe cuts to programs we all care about –- cuts that place a greater burden on working families.

So the debate right now isn’t about whether we need to make tough choices. Democrats and Republicans agree on the amount of deficit reduction we need. The debate is about how it should be done.

Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask a corporate jet owner or the oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don’t need and didn’t ask for?

That’s not right. It’s not fair. We all want a government that lives within its means, but there are still things we need to pay for as a country -– things like new roads and bridges; weather satellites and food inspection; services to veterans and medical research.

And keep in mind that under a balanced approach, the 98 percent of Americans who make under $250,000 would see no tax increases at all. None. In fact, I want to extend the payroll tax cut for working families.

What we’re talking about under a balanced approach is asking Americans whose incomes have gone up the most over the last decade -– millionaires and billionaires -– to share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make. And I think these patriotic Americans are willing to pitch in. In fact, over the last few decades, they’ve pitched in every time we passed a bipartisan deal to reduce the deficit. The first time a deal was passed, a predecessor of mine made the case for a balanced approach by saying this:

“Would you rather reduce deficits and interest rates by raising revenue from those who are not now paying their fair share, or would you rather accept larger budget deficits, higher interest rates, and higher unemployment? And I think I know your answer.”

Those words were spoken by Ronald Reagan. But today, many Republicans in the House refuse to consider this kind of balanced approach -– an approach that was pursued not only by President Reagan, but by the first President Bush, by President Clinton, by myself, and by many Democrats and Republicans in the United States Senate. So we’re left with a stalemate.

Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling -– a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

Understand –- raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money. It simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up. In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine. Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every President has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it seven times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, August 2nd, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.

Unfortunately, for the past several weeks, Republican House members have essentially said that the only way they’ll vote to prevent America’s first-ever default is if the rest of us agree to their deep, spending cuts-only approach.

If that happens, and we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills -– bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.

For the first time in history, our country’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet. Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans, which amounts to a huge tax hike on the American people. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis -– this one caused almost entirely by Washington.

So defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate. And Republican leaders say that they agree we must avoid default. But the new approach that Speaker Boehner unveiled today, which would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now. In other words, it doesn’t solve the problem.

First of all, a six-month extension of the debt ceiling might not be enough to avoid a credit downgrade and the higher interest rates that all Americans would have to pay as a result. We know what we have to do to reduce our deficits; there’s no point in putting the economy at risk by kicking the can further down the road.

But there’s an even greater danger to this approach. Based on what we’ve seen these past few weeks, we know what to expect six months from now. The House of Representatives will once again refuse to prevent default unless the rest of us accept their cuts-only approach. Again, they will refuse to ask the wealthiest Americans to give up their tax cuts or deductions. Again, they will demand harsh cuts to programs like Medicare. And once again, the economy will be held captive unless they get their way.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It’s a dangerous game that we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now. Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare.

Congress now has one week left to act, and there are still paths forward. The Senate has introduced a plan to avoid default, which makes a down payment on deficit reduction and ensures that we don’t have to go through this again in six months.

I think that’s a much better approach, although serious deficit reduction would still require us to tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform. Either way, I’ve told leaders of both parties that they must come up with a fair compromise in the next few days that can pass both houses of Congress -– and a compromise that I can sign. I’m confident we can reach this compromise. Despite our disagreements, Republican leaders and I have found common ground before. And I believe that enough members of both parties will ultimately put politics aside and help us make progress.

Now, I realize that a lot of the new members of Congress and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But we were each elected by some of the same Americans for some of the same reasons. Yes, many want government to start living within its means. And many are fed up with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle-class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few. But do you know what people are fed up with most of all?

They’re fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word. They work all day long, many of them scraping by, just to put food on the table. And when these Americans come home at night, bone-tired, and turn on the news, all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in Washington. They see leaders who can’t seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary Americans. They’re offended by that. And they should be.

The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government. So I’m asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.

America, after all, has always been a grand experiment in compromise. As a democracy made up of every race and religion, where every belief and point of view is welcomed, we have put to the test time and again the proposition at the heart of our founding: that out of many, we are one. We’ve engaged in fierce and passionate debates about the issues of the day, but from slavery to war, from civil liberties to questions of economic justice, we have tried to live by the words that Jefferson once wrote:

“Every man cannot have his way in all things -- without this mutual disposition, we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.”

History is scattered with the stories of those who held fast to rigid ideologies and refused to listen to those who disagreed. But those are not the Americans we remember. We remember the Americans who put country above self, and set personal grievances aside for the greater good. We remember the Americans who held this country together during its most difficult hours; who put aside pride and party to form a more perfect union.

That’s who we remember. That’s who we need to be right now. The entire world is watching. So let’s seize this moment to show why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on Earth –- not just because we can still keep our word and meet our obligations, but because we can still come together as one nation.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

On presidential criticism

Whether we call ourselves liberals or progressives, we share a common belief that we can guide this nation to a full fruition of both its founding principles and its potential.

Why then must we be a “house divided” over a president we elected, a president who took office under the onerous burden of a previous administration’s missteps?

It doesn’t matter whether this criticism comes from I-told-you-so Hillary supporters or disillusioned Obama backers, the resulting friction can only hurt our common cause and dash our dreams.

As my friend Leslie Parsley and my favorite president point out, it is OK to criticize a sitting president as long as it is done in truth.

In Leslie’s most recent post on Parsley’s Pics, “How Bullshit Gets Started,” she quite wisely rails against criticism based on an undocumented quote, taken out of context if it was spoken at all.

This, of course, is the basis of the right-wing propaganda circulated via forwarded emails – emails DemWit has repeatedly warned against.

A current CNN/Opinion Research poll attributes President Obama’s falling approval rating to “growing dissatisfaction on the left.”

Granted, passions are running high over the deficit reduction/debt ceiling debacle in D.C., but we need to remember that President Obama took an oath to protect this country. Ultimately, it is his job to prevent a financial disaster – a heavy burden for someone who had a greater vision for his country.

If we are to help Barack Obama toward our shared vision, we must not let differences divide us now.

There is no better time to recall the words of my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt, on presidential criticism. (SOURCE: theodoreroosevelt.org)

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

-  Theodore Roosevelt in a Kansas City Star editorial during World War I.

To do as Roosevelt says is not to turn our backs on our basic convictions. Everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Winston Churchill to various song artists has talked about the perils of divisiveness.

Focus, people. Let’s stay together.

Just an update

I’m still here and still missing the ability to do the research required of a decent blogger. Pain has been the culprit, but be assured a good doctor is trying to get to the bottom of what ails me, and it is my sincere hope that one day soon DemWit will return to the blogosphere. I learn so much from it.

Thanks, BJ

Spam

While Blogger blocks spam on blogs, it does not stop spam comments from coming into my EMAIL INBOX. These spam emails have increased at a rate I can no longer handle - some 50 this morning.

They are, I'm sure, part of some VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY.  :-)

I have disabled comments temporarily on DemWit and permanently on my archived blog, "I See My Dreams," in hopes of stopping this nonsense.

Do these twits really think I would want to buy anything they have to sell?

When a new DemWit post is published, I will engage commment capability again.

Thanks! BJ

Tough time in The Big Easy

Way down yonder in New Orleans, Southern governors Haley Barbour and Bobby Jindal pleaded for focus and sanity without taking into consideration they were addressing what Jonathan Swift called “a confederacy of dunces.”

That Swift quote, in my opinion, sums up the three-day gathering of the GOP leadershipt this week in the Crescent City:

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Despite the governors’ advice, the gathering turned into an Obama-bashing free-for-all. And strangely ended with Texas Republican and libertarian Congressman Ron Paul continuing his straw poll winning streak as the Party’s primary hopeful for 2012.

DemWit offers the following ARTICLE because it’s just chock-full of evidence that the GOP is like a fish out of water in its frantic efforts to retake the White House:

GOP tensions on display at Republican Leadership Conference

By Peter Hamby, CNN Political Reporter
June 18, 2011 10:05 p.m. EDT

New Orleans (CNN) -- Conservative after conservative took the stage and railed against President Barack Obama at this week's Republican Leadership Conference, a three-day gathering of presidential candidates, party activists and political operatives in New Orleans.

But their sharp attacks were interrupted by stern warnings from party leaders to remain focused on winning in November 2012 instead of becoming preoccupied with ideology, litmus tests or silly distractions.

The starkest admonition came from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a respected party elder and political tactician, who told the conference that "purity is a loser" in politics.

He urged Republican voters to concentrate on a pocketbook-oriented economic message, and to pick a candidate who offers "plain-spoken, common-sense solutions" instead of an ideology-driven agenda.

"We are not going to have a perfect candidate," Barbour said. "There has only been one perfect person that has ever walked on this Earth, and there's not going to be one who runs for president in 2012."

Barbour's pragmatic message was well received by the roughly 2,000 delegates who came to New Orleans for the conference, which was organized by the Louisiana Republican Party.

But in the end, it was wave after wave of pointed attacks -- the very rhetoric that Barbour cautioned against -- that earned the rowdiest applause at the conference.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich labeled Obama a "national secular European socialist."

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota gave the president a "big F on his economic report card" and claimed, without corroboration, that Obama wants to bankrupt Medicare in order to force seniors to enroll in his new national health care program.

And just 24 hours after Barbour's speech, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Republicans should never back down from their core principles in order to score points with the electorate.

"Our party cannot be all things to all people," thundered Perry, who has emerged in recent weeks as another potential presidential candidate. "It can't be. Our loudest opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's stop trying to curry favor with them."

Conference organizers also invited an Obama impersonator, Reggie Brown, who delivered a comedy routine peppered with jokes about President Obama's birth certificate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's Mormon faith.

The appearance drew applause and raucous laughter but was hardly in keeping with Barbour's plea to stay focused on defeating Obama rather than being distracted by political sideshows.

Organizers eventually grew uncomfortable with the off-color humor and pulled the comedian off the stage.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who may run for president himself in 2016, echoed his neighboring governor and reminded Republicans that winning back the White House is the ultimate prize.

He said conservatives should not stoop to the level of liberals who savaged George W. Bush during the previous administration.

"We must not mimic their shallow approach," Jindal warned.

"Hating President Obama is foolish, but defeating President Obama is absolutely crucial," he said.

If the results of a presidential straw poll conducted at the conference were any indication, Republicans may be ready to put aside some elements of party dogma this primary season.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a hero to libertarians, won the 2012 straw poll in dominating fashion.

But it was former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's surprising second-place finish that attracted the most attention.

Huntsman did not attend the conference, but his strong showing was surprising given his moderate stances on climate change and same-sex civil unions, positions that put him at odds with conservative activists who hold major sway in the key early caucus and primary states.

Even Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, told CNN "there's a good possibility" he could support any of the current crop of Republican candidates in a general election against Obama.

"Most of them are pretty good," Perkins said.

Perkins said he agrees with Barbour's anti-purity approach, but only to a point.

"If you've got the core principles, where you are strong on national security, if you understand the idea of economic freedom as well as traditional values, but then within those parameters there are degrees of difference of opinions, yeah, that's OK," he said.

But, he added, "If you are saying we are going to take a third of these issues, and we are not going to deal with them, then that ain't going to work."

Gingrich's 'Obama depression'

Never a TV around when you need one. I have saved the CNN transcript of last night's GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire and will try to read it along. In the opening segments, the participating candidates briefly introduced themselves, mentioning their accomplishments and family members.

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House, stuck to that old GOP stand-by, “If you can’t say something good about yourself, say something bad about Obama.”

“I'm Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House. And when 14 million Americans are out of work, we need a new president to end the Obama depression.”

Obama depression?

Mr. Gingrich, if you would take a little time to focus on your campaign, you can easily Google "comparing economy in Republican and Democratic administrations." You will find all sorts of data and graphs showing this economic mess began in Dubya's administration.

And, that's pretty much been the case with every Republican administration since FDR.

With only a few clicks, sir, you can find out under which party’s administrations paychecks grew. You can even find out how much you would have today if you had invested $10,000 under one administration or the other.

I've gotta tell you I am amused by one Web site's claim that statistical proof is "unfair to Republicans, because most wars are started under Republican administrations, and wars cost money." Yep, and the tab is still running on two of them.

You simply cannot dispute the facts. Of course, you have to examine them first.

Here’s a start:

The Washington Monthly: “There’s just no way around it, Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.” LINK

The Idea Blog, The New York Times: “The Census Bureau has tracked the economic fortunes of affluent, middle-class and poor American families for six decades. According to my analysis, these tabulations reveal a wide partisan disparity in income growth. The real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families (at the 20th percentile of the income distribution) grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House.” LINK

Something you don't want

Never one to talk about ailments, always one to count the blessing of good health, I have been reluctant to explain my recent inattentiveness to DemWit.

(Yes, I often mention my vision problem, because it’s something I live with and something which often requires explaining.)

Over the last few weeks I’ve dealt with a physical problem which my son assures me should not be considered “an old folks’ condition” – the pain of pleurisy. (One of his college buddies, he recalled, likened it to "being kicked by a horse.")

Before being diagnosed with pleurisy I always grouped it with terms like lumbago and bursitis and thought it was the result of a bad chest cold. I haven’t had a cold in 20 years. So, here’s what I've learned about this condition:

“Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura, which is the moist, double-layered membrane that surrounds the lungs and lines the rib cage. The condition can make breathing extremely painful. The double-layered pleura protects and lubricates the surface of the lungs as they inflate and deflate within the rib cage. Normally, a thin, fluid-filled gap - the pleural space - allows the two layers of the pleural membrane to slide gently past each other. But when these layers become inflamed, their roughened surfaces rub painfully together like two pieces of sandpaper.”

Or maybe something like two plates of the Earth’s crust rubbing together in the “Ring of Fire.”

"Pleurisy can be caused by viral infections, any number of serious diseases, drug reactions, chest injury or simply movement and causes stabbing pain in the rib casge area." (Source of quotes: WebMd.com)

In my case, the pain is exacerbated by sitting for any length of time in my fancy ergonomics computer chair.

I have a friend who lives with chronic pain every day of her life, yet maintains a cheerful and loving nature. I, on the other hand, cry over a stumped toe.

The doc says it could take six more weeks of anti-inflammatory drugs. For someone who hasn’t been “on medication,” this is a bitter pill to swallow. Oh, there’s also a bottle of pain pills, but I’ve tried to tough it out and have only reached for it twice. Narcotic is a scary word.

Other than the pain, I feel great! No kidding. Temperature: normal. Blood pressure: normal. Chest X-ray shows lungs clear.

Let me sign off for a while before you start yelling “TMI” (“too much information” for the acronym challenged). In short, pleurisy is something you don’t want.

A heavy ransom demand

Just another example of Democrats catching hell over the actions of Republicans: this item from CNN’s “Political Ticker” today:

New York (CNNMoney) – Federal workers have a message for the White House: Keep your hands off my retirement benefits. (LINK)

That’s right, blame the Democrats.

At a time when we are on the way to economic recovery, do you want to see ideologues bring this nation and the world to its economic knees?

The backstory on this facet of the debt ceiling debate is dead serious and should scare Democrats and Republicans alike. I take the liberty in the interest of informing DemWit’s readers to publish here, verbatim, the following Progress Report (LINK) from the Center for American Progress, dated 17 May 2011:

CONGRESS
Debt Limit Blackmail

The United States officially hit its statutory debt limit yesterday (5/16/2011), preventing the government from borrowing any more money, as Republicans continue to demagogue the issue but refuse to act. Since a large portion of federal spending is borrowed money, the Treasury Department has been forced to take extraordinary measures to allow the government to continue meeting its obligations, including tapping into government employee pension funds to free up cash. These measures and others should keep cash flow adequate until approximatly August 2, but if lawmakers have still failed to raise the debt limit by then, the effect could be "catastrophic," as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said yesterday in a letter to congressional leaders. In its 235-year history, the U.S. government has never defaulted, so the exact consequences are impossible to predict, but all experts agree that defaulting on our financial obligations would be disastrous for the global economy, shattering investors' confidence in the American government and economy while increasing the cost of borrowing and possibly shutting down the government.

Geithner has said defaulting on our obligations would almost certainly cause a double-dip recession, where a second dip could be worse than the Great Recession of 2008. Moreover, as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman noted, failing to raise the debt limit would "act as a terrible signal about the US political system," telling the world "we're a banana republic, with crazy extremists having so much blocking power that we can't get our house in order." Indeed, fueled by far-right tea party anti-debt dogma, Republican leaders have taken the debt ceiling -- and thus the entire global economy -- hostage, refusing to raise the ceiling unless they are allowed to enact their partisan agenda of radical spending cuts. Many conservative lawmakers have said they will not vote to raise the limit under any circumstance, while others have demanded extraordinary concessions.

HOSTAGE TAKING

Hate radio host Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that the debt limit is a "manufactured crisis," and in a way, he's right -- but not in the way he intended. The debt ceiling is an entirely arbitrary cap Congress sets on the amount of money the federal government can borrow. There is no real reason for having a statutory debt ceiling, which didn't exist until 1917. The amoung of debt the government takes on should be determined by budgetary needs, through the normal Congressional budgeting process, not some arbitrary redline that offers politicians a perennial issue on which to grandstand.

But even with some empty grandstanding, Congress has routinely raised the debt ceiling for decades, increasing the limit 100 times since 1940. Ths limit was raised seven times under President Bush, with hardly any real opposition from Republicans. "[I]t has been a regular, even routine matter. In fact, for many years, it was just rolled right into the budget process, and they didn't have a separate vote to raise the debt limit," NPR noted. But this year, Republicans have seen a convenient opportunity to score political points and advance their partisan agenda, even if it means risking the American and global economies. Republican leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have made it clear they understand the consequences of not raising the debt limit and have said publicly that the limit must be raised.Yet, these same leaders have threatened to vote against any increase in the debt limit if their demands aren't met -- and their demands are huge: "We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions," Boehner said. "This is a hostage situation ... blackmail," Krugman wrote. "In effect, they will have ripped up the Constitution and given control over America's government to a party that only controls one house of Congress, but claims to be willing to bring down the economy unless it gets what it wants." Indeed, for their demands to be effective, Republicans have to be willing to "shoot the hostage" and let the U.S. government hit the debt ceiling and default on its financial obligations.

DOWNPLAYING THE THREAT

Meanwhile, a growing number of Republican lawmakers, especially Tea Party freshmen, have tried to downplay the threat of hitting the debt limit or defaulting. "The case has not been made that this is an absolute necessity," Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) said last week. "The debt ceiling really doesn't matter," the conservative blog Red State wrote recently. But these claims ignore a danger that even former President Reagan, the great conservative icon, recognized. Arguing for raising the ceiling in 1983, Reagan said, "the risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage" of not doing so demanded the ceiling be increased.

More reasonable conservatives today have come to the same conclusion. "Let me tell you what's involved if we don't lift the debt ceiling: financial collapse and calamity throughout the world," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN. Even Boehner warned of "financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy." Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) said, "I won't throw the country into the street" by not raising the debt limit. Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will said it could be "suicidal" for Republicans (if they) actually block an increase in the debt ceiling.

THE 'PAY CHINA FIRST' PLAN

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the important Republican Study Committee, suggested yesterday that hitting the debt limit could be a good thing. "Keeping the debt ceiling at its current level would force Congress to prioritize spending, but it would not force a default on our debt." Jordon's claim that U.S. would not default is based on the assumption that the government would be able to cover all of its expenses through tax revenue alone. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) has made the same argument and even proposed a bill to implement this plan. But while they are technically correct, tax revenue contributes only around 60 percent of every dollar spent, so this plan would force the government to cut about 40 percent of its activities literally overnight to keep spending in line with revenues. Moreover, as Center for Amerian Progress (CAP) fellow Matt Yglesias points out, this approach doesn't actually prevent a default from occurring. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neil Wolin said much the same thing, calling Toomey's plan "unworkable." Others have appropriately dubbed Toomey's plan the "Pay China First" plan, because it would prioritize payments to our debtors, including China, over paying for critical services Americans rely on. "This wouldn't avert a potential global economic catastrophe, but it would make sure the United States wrote checks to foreign governments before anyone else," the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen wrote.

***

A more appropriate title for this post:

United States held hostage; Republicans: accept our radical agenda and/or we will bring this nation down.

A verse for our time

Ah, yet, when all is thought and said
The heart still overruales the head.
So, what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive,

Must still believe for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.

My child, we still must think
When we that ampler life together see,
Some true results will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here.

- Arthu Hugh Clough, “Through a Glass Darkly,” 1849. (Clough rhymes with “rough.”)

This verse is oft believed to be a paean to love. Yes, love in the sense of compassion and social justice – in short, a call for self-examination and sanity. Its words ring true today.

Read the complete poem HERE.

Read about this English poet, who spent his childhood in Charleston, S.C., returned to England, then later spent time with Walt Whitman in Massachusetts HERE.

A day of sharing

It’s time to go through your pantry and kitchen cabinets (or make that special grocery run) and share your bounty with others.

The National Association of Letter Carriers and the United States Postal Service will hold its 19th annual nationwide food drive Saturday, May 14.

This is the largest single effort to replenish food banks across the country.

Place non-perishable food items in bags near your mailbox Saturday morning, and your mail carrier will pick them up for distribution in your area.

Throughout America, through local church pantries and volunteer food banks the needy will benefit - and so will you!

'Deathers' replace birthers

A madness is sweeping this country in the form of conspiracacy theorists on the right and the left. No sooner is one round of idiocy laid to rest than another starts. I am just sickened by the following article, in which poor Cindy Sheehan continues to exhibit that she's "gone off the deep end" and a Fox News host spouts the vilest of accusations against President Obama:

"'Deathers' take over where 'birthers' left off," Shannon Travis, CNN political producer, 5 May 2011: LINK

The truth is enough

You are going to see the following quote from George W. Bush (3/13/2002) recycled over the next few days:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

This quote has been all over the World Wide Web for years. The only problem with it is it’s apparently a fake.

I have spent hours trying to find an official transcript or legitimate news source for this direct quote – to no avail.

I did find a Wikiquotes forum where “fake Bush quotes on Osama bin Laden” were discussed HERE.

But, Bush is on the record saying something very similar when it came to his concern about finding bin Laden, and you can hear him answer a press conference question from “Norah” (presumably Norah O’Donnell) at this YouTube SITE.

The truth is enough, though. Osama bin Laden might have been killed or captured and al Qaeda weakened sooner if Bush had not taken his eye off the ball and sent our troops to a country in no way responsible for the attacks on 9/11. (Amazingly, many Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 despite Bush himself and the 9/11 Commission Report denying any connection.)

Finally, in searching for a source of the quote at the beginning of this post, I ran across a very interesting post on thepresidentialcandidates. I had never heard of this Web site, but the author makes a strong argument that, unlike George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Barack Obama contended all along that getting OBL was a top priority. There is sufficient documentation – including sources, cited quotes and videos – to prove the author’s assertion, and it’s worth a read.

Osama bin Laden is a done deal. I recall the video after 9/11 with bin Laden joking and laughing with his cronies about the twin towers coming down. There is one less truly evil person in the world today. To quote him: “Allah be praised.”

UPDATE

Listen up, folks, ‘cause I worked my buns off on this one.

This post is pegged on the opening quote attributed to George W. Bush.

A DemWit reader emailed that MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said the elements of the quote can be found at various locations in the transcript of Bush’s press conference on March 13, 2002. Well, Mr. O'Donnell is wrong.

A direct quote set between quotation marks cannot be altered. The editor can add the word “sic” in parentheses within the quote to show an error is that of the person quoted and not the editor.

So, essentially, the quote is a fake.

I finally located the transcript of Bush’s March 13, 2002, press conference and, for the convenience of readers, pieced its 15 screen together and placed it in THE READING ROOM. What Bush said about Osama bin Laden can be found on pages 6 and 7.

So, let’s break the quote down:

I don't know where bin Laden is. (Bush said this.)

I have no idea and really don't care. (Bush did not say this.)

It's not that important. It's not our priority. (Bush did not say this, but in the context of his statements, it is most assuredly implied.)

So, some soul decided to author this quote, attribut it to Bush and float it around the Web for years. It has been used, without citation, on Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News and thousands of sites.

SERENDIPITY

I do not regret the time and work put into this or going through this transcript for knowing what we know now -  and what some of us knew even then – it is a treasure trove of hindsight.

Remember, this is just six months after 9/11, and already Bush is marginalizing Osama bin Laden and making his case for war with Iraq, for Iraq, in Iraq - who knows? There’s a lot to be found in this transcript – Afghanistan, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, the debt ceiling and so much more.

And, it also begs the question of how this goofball ever got re-elected. (I’m sorry, I don’t like name-calling, but I can think of no better word to use at the moment.)

DemWit readers – and particularly Republican readers - would be well enlightened by stepping back into 2002 and reading this TRANSCRIPT. For the most part, the reporters’ questions and Bush’s answers will astound you! And, don’t even think this is old stuff, because it has directly affected where this country is today. Thanks, BJ