politics

This stumbling finish to the end of the Iraq war feels like the end of the college football season: inconclusive, no clearly declared winner, no closure or finality, and will stumble forward despite the declaration of The End because there’s too much money in it not to. And as Iraq is planning to buy $13 Billion in arms from the US, it’s a Federal jobs stimulus program, too.*

I recommend this article on the New Yorker, a Date that will Live in Oblivion:

What President Obama called the end of the combat mission in Iraq is a meaningless milestone, constructed almost entirely out of thin air, and his second Oval Office speech marks a rare moment of dishonesty and disingenuousness on the part of a politician who usually resorts to rare candor at important moments. The fifty thousand troops who will remain in Iraq until the end of next year will still be combat troops in everything but name, because they will be aiding one side in an active war zone. The proclaimed end of Operation Iraqi Freedom has little or nothing to do with the military and political situation in Iraq, which is why Iraqis were barely aware when the last U.S. combat brigade crossed into Kuwait a few days ago. And for most of us, too—except, perhaps, those with real skin in the game, the million and a half Iraq war veterans and their families—there’s hardly any reality or substance to the moment.

Yeah, that.

* Suck it, US Census.

The 14th Amendment is not getting amended or overturned. Not now, not tomorrow, and not ever. The hill to climb to ratify an amendment to the Constitution is monstrous. But Congress has to do something to keep itself busy. After all, there are no wars going on and the country isn’t in any sort of economic crisis!

In the last 20 years, from 1990 to present, Congress, one side or the other, has tried to repeal some or all of:

- the 26th Amendment
- the 2nd Amendment (to explicitly allow for bigger guns)
- the 22nd Amendment (to allow Reagan to run again!)
- the 16th Amendment
- the 8th Amendment — and replace it with explicit language for parking offenses!

I have heard:

- Obama is from Kenya and not an American;
- Al-Qaeda is impregnating women, sneaking them into the US, making them have their babies, and then whisking the babies off to Al-Qaeda training camps*;
- Single, pregnant Mexican women are sneaking over the border to have babies so they can get themselves access to some fine US welfare better known as the noxious term “anchor babies”;
- They themselves are not recipients of the 14th Amendment because Native Americans are all old, white xenophobes and none of their ancestors ever settled here without proper documentation.

This round of hatred from the Republican mouthbreathers is putting me on edge. Instead of sneaking in xenophobic hatred of “the Other” into debate or commercials or television clips on Fox News, they’re holding hearings on modifying the Constitution. Sure it’s election year posturing but it sets my teeth on edge. Maybe we should go back to former slaves not allowed to become citizens of the United States? Let’s get back to our true Conservative roots. All hail Dred Scott!

Yes, I am aware of the immigration problem in this country. Yes, I also am aware of the economic disparity between two countries that share a border. No, this is not the way to discuss it. Xenophobic hissy fits turn my stomach. It used to be Jews and Italians and Eastern Europeans and Former Slaves and African Americans. The flavor of the week are people from the South.

I also know xenophobia and hatred of “the Other” is a favorite horse to flog during major economic downturns. See re: Eastern Europeans and the Great Depression. Someone who is weak and powerless must be to blame. We cannot go after the powerful, those truly at fault, so we’ll go after the weakest and least protected. Whipping up constituents over issues with no possible delivery is a great way to make short term electoral gains.

I watch this process and I’m always relieved that Alexander Hamilton hated people and James Madison felt the unwashed American masses weren’t properly qualified to tinker with the Constitution. The hill to climb to make any modifications is steep. We’ve screwed it up pretty badly once — see Prohibition — but after the Bill of Rights, we’ve only managed to amend the Constitution 17 times in 250 years.

Also, I heard that the 14th Amendment is giving gays the rights to marry, so it’s all good here today. Yay Abraham Lincoln!

* This is my favorite tin foil hat conspiracy theory going around.

Wyclef Jean to Run for President of Haiti.

Jean told TIME he is going to announce his candidacy for the Nov. 28 election just days before the Aug. 7 deadline. One plan that was discussed, loaded with as much Mosaic symbolism as a news cycle can hold, called for him to declare his candidacy on Aug. 5 upon arriving in Port-au-Prince from New York City, where he grew up after leaving Haiti with his family at age 9. “If not for the earthquake, I probably would have waited another 10 years before doing this,” Jean says. “The quake drove home to me that Haiti can’t wait another 10 years for us to bring it into the 21st century.” Jean sees no contradiction between his life as an artist and his ambitions as a politician. “If I can’t take five years out to serve my country as President,” he argues, “then everything I’ve been singing about, like equal rights, doesn’t mean anything.”

If a man who once performed in movies with a chimpanzee can become President of the United States, and the Terminator can run California, there’s no reason that a member of the Fugees cannot become President of Haiti. If anything, it will focus the media cameras back on Haiti’s post-earthquake plight as he runs for President.

Rob, whose gaming blog you should all read, pointed out an article this morning that I now share with you from Bob Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor. This one is about the one and a half dip recession the country is in and what Obama should do:

The President should stop talking and acting on anything else – not the deficit, not energy, not the environment, not immigration, not implementing the health care law, not education. He should make the whole upcoming mid-term election a national referendum on putting Americans back to work, and his jobs bill. Are you for it or against it?

But none of this is happening. The hawks and blue dogs are still commanding the attention. Herbert Hoover’s ghost seems to have captured the nation’s capital. We’re back to 1932 (or 1937) and the prevailing sentiment is government can’t and mustn’t do anything but aim to reduce the deficit, even though the economy is going down.

To which I say: Yes. That. I point to that and say, do that.

I am sadly addicted to the C-SPAN morning call-in show* and every topic, it does not matter what, segues near instantly to “and I do not have a job.” Don’t we have several thousand miles of Gulf Coast that needs to be cleaned? Do we not have idle people who could clean it? Is there not something we can do?

And I am totally for a payroll holiday on the first $20,000 income. Nothing will get money moving faster than a payroll tax holiday.

Anyway. That. Every time I hear Obama talk about anything that is !jobs bill I will get itchy and bitey and ranty. Not that I will ever vote for a Republican after the last decade but I might not be so keen to donate much cash.

Callers on the C-SPAN morning call-in show are the sort of people who would call in to the C-SPAN morning call in show.

I watched Joe Barton yesterday, live, kowtow to BP. It was not a tossed off comment from a politician caught on a live mike. It was an eight minute long apology on live TV when he went, in some detail, on how he felt the President was giving BP a “shake down.”

My instant reaction was to be completely appalled. And thus, I made a comment.

Later I realized the man was simply coughing up the party line and not a new party line for any politician in America. His sin was not to have an original thought — he did not have an original thought — but to accidentally tell truth in a prepared statement on camera. He felt he would have sympathy and cover from the chattering classes. Isn’t this what they all say?

His sin was to say out loud what we already know: these people posing for the camera and giving us a bit of political theater are all bought and sold by corporations. If their patronizing corporation should suddenly die due to, say, killing off a few States we may or may not have been using* and a chunk of Ocean we sort of liked, then said politician is out of a job. And Joe Barton is very sad indeed because now his corporate masters will not have the cash on hand to pay him. Very sad. He is very, oh so very sorry. Especially as his main backer owned a 25% stake in the well now gushing into the Gulf. That $20 billion escrow fund — not even paid out at once but over years and not even compelled but sort of a gentlemanly agreement! — means he won’t get his payoff and his golf junkets.

The “small people” comment from the other day also told us what we already knew: we’re in a war between Corporations and Democracy. And the Corporations are winning. They control it all. They have managed to get rid of the regulations that may have capped profits and kept people safer. They have pursued profit to the detriment of entire countries — Greece is never going to climb out of its hole. They get what they want when they want it. And here is this guy making it plain to us all just how much he’s in the pocket of the very people he is supposed to be overseeing.

Democracy is losing. Freedom is losing.

People are very tightly controlled. We have to throw out bottles and be subjected to searches at the airport. We have road laws. Employers can read our text messages and emails on the job. And because we are afraid of terrorists we are even more controlled than before — the government can tap our phones, sniff our transmissions, and not even bother to read us our Miranda rights. Terrorism! Terrorism Terrorism Terrorism! If you don’t like this, you’re with the terrorists!

Corporations, though. If we try to hold a Corporation’s feet to the fire, especially something as filthy and polluting as the oil industry, it’s Socialism. Regulate health care? Socialism. Suggest cap-and-trade or carbon taxes? Socialism. Suggest we should get rid of the proprietary trading desk or regulate derivatives? Socialism.** Socialism, socialism, socialism. Don’t control the free market because it is good and perfect and never does anything wrong and self regulates and oh, did you just lose your house and you cannot get health care? And were you in the Florida panhandle and now you’re covered in oil? Sucks to be you. Because if we regulate Corporations we lose our freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedoms!

The corporations are winning and to prove it, a corporation vaporized some States through malfeasance and then used their puppet Congressman to demand an apology for being mean to them. We gasp! The truth, it is an ugly beast.

The only good thing about the Deepwater Horizon spill, the only silver lining, is that cover it gives the the Government to fight back. A teeny tiny bit.

Funny, I wanted to talk about this neat graphic about how energy in the US is used and wasted and how changing to wind power does nothing about the use of oil in the US but I have gotten myself way off topic.

* Are we using Alabama? Did anyone keep the receipt?
** These cries of Socialism are also paid for by Corporations.