Corresponding Not All It's Hacked Out To Be

Again, we owe Mr. Steven Colbert a world of thanks for the discomfort he dished out two years back to WH hacks who enabled the war on Iraq, torture, U.S. loss of honor, and our economic disasters. Last night was the first WH press corps dinner after the victory of reality-based policy; last night was partially a result of the reality-based humor Colbert deliver.

That humor that brought the country around to reality broke through a lot of pretense, and should not be forgotten. It most definitively hasn't been forgiven by the justly embarrassed WH press corpse.

Today the wingers are incensed over Ms. Wanda Sykes' smackdown of wanting President Obama to fail, which was done outside of the humorous vein. She called it for what it is, the stuff of treachery.

Conservatism was taken over by ideologists who put possession of the country's highest offices above the country's interests, and from that has sprung actual treachery. That kind of power obsession has been the ruin of the party that used to be fond of patriotism, and supportive of the country, even while being wrongheaded in the means it espoused. It is a great element destruction of the former 'republican' party that the right wing has fallen over the edge of beliefs, and into the apostasy of current party hacks. It is a dividing line between the GOP of the past and the present, that ideologists have turned against their country because most U.S. citizens reject the right wing.

When Ms. Sykes wished ill to Rush's kidneys, it was a step over the edge of good taste as well, but not nearly so huge a step as wishing the country failure. Neither remarks, while they are done in a vein of humor, should be absolved on that account.

We don't do right when we condone wishing bodily harm to anyone, not when it is done as a pretense for national security, and not when it is done to condemn the element supporting those atrocities.

The liberal thinkers who have finally come back into control do well to keep watch on our extremists. We should not wander into that ideological defenestration, that equates good ends with inexcusable means.

We don't wish Rush Limbaugh liver failure. We do wish his tasteless fans were as far above the fray as that, too.

By the way, that is not bipartisan. It's partisan in the best way; on the liberal side, we like justice, decency, economic equality and rule of law. We don't stray from our ideals to be pleasant to those that despise those ideals. That wouldn't do our country the good we are trying for. We are partisan in wanting the best for our country, not supporting those that want it to fail.

(W/thanks to David Derbes for support in this concept. And a happy Mother's Day with Avedon's rose, see below.)

Turkeys Gobble Up History

This has been a post-election spectacle of many ambitious pontificators trying to revive their reputations by re-invention of history. Lincoln gets the axe from the right wing and some other critics, with the contention he didn't really set the slaves free, he just recruited potential troops from black people in the South.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't revive the U.S. economy with the New Deal, he misapplied our national treasury that should have been put into CITI, I mean, the banks of the day. George Will has insisted on this point of view and I love Democraticunderground.com on the subject:

As Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman wrote recently in the New York Times, “There’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.”

Krugman observed that the true short-comings of the New Deal policies resulted from the fact that they were not bold enough over the short-term:

The truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious. (…)

In short, Mr. Obama’s chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-run economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity.

If the truth hurts, the pontificators who have been consistently wrong throughout the past more than eight years will tell lies. The lies have had much more play on our talk shows than those librul facts. Now that the lies have proved miserably wrong, we have a lot of pundits whose living is threatened. There can be only one solution for the consistently wrong, and that is to create new myths to support their viewpoint.

It would be fatal to the wingers if they couldn't knock down truisms that refute the ideology they're pushing, and which has so totally failed. I can watch with amusement and realize that only the audience that terribly needs to see right wing myths instead of facts will fall for all this.

President-elect Obama has declared his support for measures like FDR's, which gave us consumers where before there had only been desperate unemployed workers. Without consumers, of course, there is no need to build and manufacture, because there will be no return on those efforts. The occupied White House may squirm all it wants into support of failed financial institutions, but it can't avoid the coming real solutions for the real economy.

Now, though, these curmudgeons want to eviscerate your turkey along with Grandma's house. An attempt at stealing Thanksgiving is going too far. Sunday's Dallas Morning News had to print a little fable that makes the Thanksgiving of the pilgrims a triumph of capitalism over socialism.

So, anyway, these people were on the brink of destruction. The Indians tried to help – taught them something about battering their fishsticks in cornmeal or something. Who are the Indians? Um, they were a noble, primitive people who were so noble they didn't even have any concept of land ownership. Which, now that I think of it, confuses the whole "their land was stolen" issue.

Nevermind. Skip the Indians. We'll come back to that later.

Anyway, despite the fish sticks, the Pilgrims were still living on the edge, because they had no self-interest or incentive. If someone worked harder, they didn't get any additional reward. If someone just lazed about, they still got a ration of food.

"Are you making this up?"

Of course I'm not. This time. See this book on Daddy's bookshelf? It's William Bradford's Of Plimouth Plantation. Mr. Bradford was governor of Plymouth Bay Colony, and he said this socialized system "was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte." So in 1623, Mr. Bradford said, hey – how about everyone just gets a plot of land, and you get to keep whatever you grow, or you can sell it or trade it?

They did.

"This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use," Mr. Bradford wrote a year later between Thanksgiving Day football games.

And that's why Thanksgiving is a celebration of hard work, free enterprise and the abundance people create when they're free to keep the fruits of the labors.

There you go, our feast is turned into a lesson in failed economic policies that rob the poor and give to the rich, as Atrios often says, WHEEEEEE.

There is a big flaw and maybe the author isn't familiar with it, but the background of the Pilgrims is that they tried to create god's kingdom here on earth, and chose as their model the communities that Jesus set up as his own. Without selfish accumulation, the pilgrims thought they would achieve what the ideal of Christianity would achieve. This was long before the term 'solialist' had been added to the lexicon of those who idolize wealth, then known as Mammon.

Indeed, they didn't make it with the original concept of christianity in pracice, for several reasons, but the evils of socialism were not a factor.

William Bradford was a political animal, and in his account awarded himself a First Prize for good rethinking of christian ideals, which Garrison accepts as if it were Newt Gingrich acclaiming success for his Contract with America. In both cases, the politicians themselves had much to do with the failure of the system they proclaimed had proved itself fatally flawed.

A large factor, in the case of the first Thanksgiving feast, ignorance in farming the Massachusetts rocky soil had added materially to the inability of the colony to support itself. The colony did not throw out its ideal of equality but continued to share land, power and access to the things they used. Today, Massachusetts still has a lot of its original leftie character. Gays can marry there, having equality before the law. The state provides public education that is the envy of a lot of the other fifty states. Its elected officials, for instance, congressional representatives Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy, fight determinedly to bring the Rule of Law back to our government. Those are a very few of the reasons the right wing can't celebrate an end of equality as their reason for a Thanksgiving feast.

It's actually rather enjoyable to watch winger pundits shovel down into ever lower depths trying to convince their audience. I have celebrated Schadenfreude a little too much. This one, though, is a jewel. It glosses over the essentially good concept of sharing, and makes it into an evil. As President-elect Obama noted, his sharing in kindergarten will no doubt confirm wingers that he is a practicing communist.

The Thanksgiving feast that we will celebrate on Thursday is a good time to remember that greed is failure, and not just of our pilgrim forefathers' ideals of equality. It is economic failure as well. The maximization of profit at the expense of a fair return for labor has brought our consumer economy to desperate straits.

If you don't have a turkey on your list, because you can't afford one this year, I hope you will realize that we are working to end the trickle-down atrocity the country has suffered. Greed had been idolized for the past eight years, and proved it isn't functional as the basis of an economic system.

Remembering that "as ye do to the least of these my little ones, so do you unto me" isn't just a pretty thought. It is an ideal that works better than its opposite, that has just proved it is a resounding failure.

Patriots

(Kindly get comfortable. I'm wound up.)

A lot of verbiage will be launched into the atmosphere today about patriotism, about the last full measure of devotion, about courage, and about love of country. And perhaps that's fitting. Today we honor those women and men who died in military service to their country. In my morning prayers today I included my older brother, career Navy, who died not during the Viet Nam War, but surely as a result of it. The official cause of death was "Early Onset Alzheimer's", but it was complicated by whatever physical and emotional exposures he had while in service with the Sea Bees during several tours of duty in Viet Nam. His terrified screams during the last months of his life testified to that. While I always disagreed with his decision to enlist back then, and while I really disagreed with his politics thereafter (he turned into a bona fide "ditto-head"), I always respected his stance. It was honest and it was heart-felt. And, most importantly, he acted on his beliefs.

It was those honest beliefs coupled with his willingness to put his life on the line which allowed me to continue my unabated love for that wrong-headed knucklehead. In that respect, he really was an American patriot. He felt it to be his obligation to do more than state his beliefs. He acted on them. And he did so knowing that, at least in this country, that was important.

In today's Boston Globe, James Carroll has an op-ed piece reminding me that as an American I have more obligations than to vote and to serve on a jury, which is what reminded me of my brother's bothersome stance. I'm going to quote more than is allowed under "fair use" because what Mr. Carroll has to say is important, and I suspect not everyone will click through. The column has to do with Americans, like my brother in many respects, who felt that they needed to do more than talk or write about what is going on in this nation now.

TOMORROW a number of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay will finally get their day in court - although, alas, not literally. Thirty-five Americans who were arrested at the US Supreme Court last January during a demonstration protesting the illegal detention center will go on trial in Washington. They are charged with "causing a harangue." Instead of entering their own names, each defendant will enter the name of a prisoner held at Guantanamo. Father Bill Pickard, a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania, will identify himself as Faruq Ali Ahmed. "He cannot do it himself," Pickard says, "so I am called by my faith, my respect for the rule of law, and my conscience to do it for him."

The protesters acted on Jan. 11, the sixth anniversary of the establishment of the US detention center at Guantanamo. They were demanding the restoration of habeas corpus - the right of the prisoners to have their day in court. Wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, the protesters were decrying torture and degradation. The sleeplessness, waterboarding, insults to Islam. Some of the arrested were in the act of unfurling a banner that said with eloquent simplicity, "Close Guantanamo." They broke the law because, despite widespread repugnance at what the Bush administration is doing in Cuba, the laws and institutions of the United States have so far abetted this criminal indecency. ...

The group that goes on trial tomorrow calls itself "Witness Against Torture." They are average folks from across the country. They could not stand it anymore. They did the only thing left for them to do. They went to Washington and caused a harangue. They purposely represent individuals held in torture cells. And, perhaps, they represent a lot of their fellow citizens, too. Close Guantanamo. [Emphasis added.]

Guantanamo Bay is an especially painful issue for me because I'm a lawyer. I'm not a high-powered lawyer by any means. I practice within a tiny niche of administrative law that probably wouldn't ring any bells with any brilliant appellate brief, but I am a lawyer. I take that seriously. Even given my limited practice, I remember enough from my law school experience to recognize the serious and perhaps fatal attacks on democracy which this administration has wreaked upon the nation, and it has to stop now.

The 35 patriots who have done exactly what my brother did so many years ago need some comrades, and now is the time to provide them. If you are not sure just what it is you can do, and you're not up to pitchforks and torches, don't sit back. Thanks to the one samizdat that hasn't been taken over (yet) by the folks in charge, there are plenty of places that can give you advice. Here are just a couple.

Pax Americana

Code Pink

Enough, God Damn It!

I've mentioned before how much I respect the attorneys who are representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees under impossible circumstances. People like H. Candace Gorman reflect what I believe to be the real American spirit.

Ronni Bennett has the story of another American patriot, one who refused to be silent when she believed speaking out was called for:

In 2005, Veterans Administration nurse, Laura Berg, sent a letter to a local Albuquerque weekly, The Alibi, criticizing the bungled rescue operations following Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. Soon, her office computer was seized, her boss reported her action to the FBI and the VA began an investigation into possible charges of sedition against Ms. Berg. All for nothing more than writing a letter to the editor critical of the federal government. [Emphasis added]

Fortunately, with a little pressure from the ACLU and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the investigation was dropped. The fact that Ms. Berg found herself in hot water for exercising her First Amendment rights shows just how sensitive the current administration is. The fact that the current administration backed off once a little pressure was applied shows just how cowardly the current administration actually is.

My point is that we don't all have to go to Gitmo to try to turn our country around. There's plenty that we can do, things as simple as writing a letter to the editor. If you're sick and tired of all this dangerous nonsense, then do something about it. If you need some ideas on just what you can do, I'd recommend visiting Code Pink or Pax Americana.

And then do something.

249 days.