My Congressman, Trent Franks (R-AZ), as founder and co-chair of the Missile Defense Caucus (MDC) wonders why the US government can allocate funds toward stimulating an economic recovery, while neglecting to protect our great country from specific missile threat from North Korea and Iran. (Huh?)
When the Strategic Forces Subcommittee voted to curtail $1.2 billion in missile defense and in particular cut $500 million to counter N. Korea and Iran, Franks introduced legislation re-allocating funds designed for the expressed purpose of thwarting intercontinental missile attack on the west coast of the USA. I kid you not. Bet you didn’t know those evildoers in North Korea and Iran posed “a real threat to the United States homeland”.
While the cold war ended back when St. Ronnie of Reagan haunted the white house over 20 years ago, chicken hawks like Franks want us to fear the bellicose barking of mad third world powers N. Korea and Iran. He conflates words with ability, while he equates the desires of Kim Jong Il of Korea and Ahmadinejad of Iran with the real might of the former Soviet Union.
Franks and three other Republican legislators and two Dixie Democrats, have co-sponsored the “Protect the Homeland from North Korean and Iranian Ballistic Missiles Act†H.R. 2845, calling for half-billion dollars to be spent to deploy physical defenses against the words of tyrants — just like we did under the sage leadership of Bush the younger, where Republicans ruled, deficits soared and economic security for the homeland mattered not.
So it is understandable that Franks would denigrate civil project expenditures in this country, while touting military appropriations. After all, when Iraq threatened the east coast with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) we invaded that country. Half a billion for a less ambitious scam should not be asking that much.
Tags: chicken hawks, military-industrial complex, national security
Glen Beck, the other day, mentioned the holocaust museum shooting as proof that “there is a mentality in our enemies, our country is now vulnerable, this kind of stuff is now coming”. The reason for this tempest says Beck-o, “it’s the economy, it is political correctness, it’s corruption in Washington, it’s the militant Islam”. Maybe it’s monsters under the bed. This eclectic collection of boogie-men offers a grab bag of everything scary, triggering the Beck-ster’s chicken little act, as he plays to the heart of his fan base.
OK, so what sort of reaction does Beck expect from such fear-mongering? People who nod in agreement with Glen-boy have a choice, either cower in fear and forfeit their personal liberties under the protection of a strong-arm government (the preferred response during the Republican reign of W), or saddle up for Armageddon and the ensuing epic violence (the tacit direction advocated following Democratic election victories). For it’s easy to be a manly Republican, making the hard choices as only real men do… when your thoughts are no longer even considered as policy.
So the outrage remains constant for these pot stirrers, no matter which political party brokers power. Glen speaks of America as a “boiling pot” so the analogy fits exactly. What cooks in the kettle, depends on party affiliation of the current administration. When Republicans are in charge it is appropriate to kneel to military authority. Give Democrats the helm, and these blowhards advocate individual resistance to perceived national threats, because, well, their ideas are no longer driving the government bus.
Can it be any clearer? In dispute is not whether our country faces a menace. The real issue is which political party holds power, and how best to incite a rabble’s response. Pompous asses like Glen Beck point to domestic hate crime as anticipated anger directed at the usual suspects when our country comes under attack. When in truth, violence prone hate perpetrators, killers of abortion doctors or museum security guards, draw all the feedback they require from sanctimonious right-wing commentators, like Glen Beck.
Some fan mail received from one of my “winger” friends (just for kicks):
Your President and his cabinet of clowns have totally screwed up the car companies of GM and Chrysler. GM is now called Government Motors, and Chrysler is now, Chisler Motors. How can a bankrupt company, GM buy for 2 billion $, Delphi parts. This just going to be a white elephant that will continue to have to be prop up under govt, control.
The govt. should have let both companies close their doors. At that point new management would of came in under strict guidelines. All groups would have to make large concessions. The dealerships that were too weak monetarily would have closed, instead of the govt, choosing which ones will close. Fascism and nationalism is not the way to go. Protectionism is the next thing to come then full blown socialism. You work for what the govt says you need. And the govt officials and cronies take the best.
Nothing is for free, especially liberty.
To which I replied:
It appears you are against the government bailout of auto companies. This I figure, not from your logic, but from your bitterness. And though I agree with much of your worries, I find these measures necessary following a twenty-five plus year deregulation of American capitalism — a vacuum filled since the collapse of communist Russia — in a thoughtless, greedy manner.
For better than a generation, corporations without a public compass (ruthless private sector proponents by design) had been given carte blanche in a push back to communism throughout the cold war. After the fall of the Berlin wall, some contraction of the military-industrial complex took place, but only under duress. Power is never relinquished willingly, so the next generation of big business advocates sought new enemies, to replace the Russian bear. Some entertained thoughts of a US led international police force. Hegemony has its rewards, but nothing generates profit like old fashioned war. Yet the instability of aggression seeds its own destruction and that of imperial design.
At least four presidential administrations prior to the inauguration of Barack Obama, reduced regulation and federal oversight on business after the fall of the Soviet Union. This philosophy fostered a climate of corporate welfare which we witness today. We now pay for this abuse of the public trust, as we naively discover that the private sector will not self regulate. The equity was lost between good governance and private enterprise. Corrective measures may move our nation very close to that which you fear — protectionism and socialism. But again, the ruthlessness of unfettered capitalism is cause for our veering away from so-called free enterprise.
The risk is the greater since Bush & Co. consolidated unitary power at the expense of individual liberties. A desire to deregulate business, while promoting militarism, would be the basis for your fear of runaway nationalism bordering fascism. Bush (our first MBA president), hoped to postpone the recession which followed massive government spending through military build up and deployment while reducing revenue streams (also unprecedented). Deregulation introduced aggressive, unsustainable business models which generated enormous short term profits with forecasts of impending doom. Unfortunately for pocket conservatives, the pyramid game of inflated home prices through overstated property values, coupled with extended credit without merit, tumbled before the schemers who enabled this fiasco could escape office. Polls repeatedly show most folks correctly blame Republican policy for our current mess.
So our country must choose between the near-term socializing of eminent corporations employing huge numbers of US workers, or follow laissez-faire demands for massive business failure. Without a doubt, the latter choice seems the most equitable. A hands-off policy adopted in the 1920’s by three consecutive Republican presidents led to the Great Depression. The Democrat who followed this disaster was also accused of socialism for introducing the Social Security Administration and funding public works programs. The US would have survived in some fashion without these humanitarian measures, but many poor working Americans would surely have suffered deeper into the 1930’s without these welfare models for public responsibility.
Perhaps you disagree. Your tone is remarkably dour. Your speech is inflammatory and derogatory with no reasonable argument. You rail against perceived wrongs and write outlandish assertions. Still, you are right to say, current attempts at correcting imbalance is ugly and unfair. Yet history suggests, a Randian approach, a hands-off market correction, harms more folks for a longer period of time, some irreparably. Efficiency is the wrong measure when US industry and the livelihood of citizens are at stake. Loudmouth commentators, speak otherwise with great bravado. Theirs is a position touted without a chance of implementation. So they spout, just to be contrary. You sound much the same.
Tags: government bailout, private sector, self regulate, unfettered capitalism
Good analysis of purported surveys by Gallop & Pew showing public sentiment for abortion has shifted away from a woman’s right to choose — from Ed Kilgore at fivethirtyeight.com
The money quote: [snip] ‘abstract hostility towards abortion may well disguise a more sympathetic attitude when it comes to actual women making actual decisions about a pregnancy. To put it another way, who cares if there’s a shift towards self-reported “pro-life” sentiments, if consistent majorities basically approve of the constitutional and legal status quo?’
Read Ed Kilgore’s comments. They are spot on.
Tags: abortion, status quo, womans rights
Rather than closing entire elementary schools (as recently dictated in several locations in the Phoenix metropolitan area), over a very few confirmed cases of a successively mild form of flu; we might have turned to informed disease specialists. Instead, our mass media sold panic to the bored denizens of TV land. If the notion had been to close shopping malls and churches, perhaps a more educated response would have emerged sooner. Something like that which follows, has been overdue.
From Wendy Orent in the LA Times last WED 29 April, finally a thoughtful analysis of “Swine Flu” (H1N1 derivative of the Spanish Flu of 1918). And after all the fear-mongering of the past several weeks by our local newspaper the AZ Republic, it’s bloody well time:
Influenzas that have their origins in huge, crowded animal farms are often more virulent than other flu strains. Germs that kill their hosts quickly tend not to thrive; their hosts die before there is time to pass the virus on. But on crowded farms, the next snout is an inch away, and even virulent strains can gain a foothold. It is the same type of conditions that produced deadly avian influenza in giant poultry farms in Asia over the last 10 years.
Natural selection theory also tells us that whatever we will face, it won’t be another 1918. As [evolutionary biologist Paul W.] Ewald has argued for years, only packed conditions allowing deathly sick hosts to pass disease repeatedly to the well can produce highly virulent strains of flu — for animals or for people. The usual sort of human crowding will not do it. Even massive, densely populated Mexico City, with more than 20 million inhabitants, won’t produce the kind of lethal strains that the Western Front did in World War I. People died in Mexico because they were close to the epicenter of the disease, to the probable emergence of lethal strains from crowded pig breeding. But natural selection’s corrective action is swift and predictable: The strains spreading across the world are milder.
For the entire article, please see: “Swine Flu poses a risk, but no need to panic“.
Tags: cultural anxiety, fear mongering, panic