Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Obama More Popular Than Reagan At This Point In Presidency
Obama More Popular Than Reagan At This Point In Presidency; http://oursalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/obama-more-popular-than-reagan-at-this-point-in-presidency
Thursday, January 3, 2013
A Solidly Republican House Crashes Down on Grover Norquist
At this point all I can do is laugh when I think about how some of my friends on the far right were naive as to think that sensible Republicans in Congress had failed to heed the message of the 2012 election and the current political realities borne therefrom. The latest development in the fiscal cliff drama show to what degree some on the right have regained their senses and moved back to the center, in the direction of much needed compromise. Quoting political commentator Jennifer Steinhauer: “Ending a climactic fiscal showdown in the final hours of the 112th Congress, the House late Tuesday passed and sent to President Obama legislation to avert big income tax increases on most Americans and prevent large cuts in spending for the Pentagon and other government programs. The measure, brought to the House floor less than 24 hours after its passage in the Senate, was approved 257 to 167, with 85 Republicans joining 172 Democrats in voting to allow income taxes to rise for the first time in two decades, in this case for the highest-earning Americans…The decision by Republican leaders to allow the vote came despite widespread scorn among House Republicans for the bill, passed overwhelmingly by the Senate in the early hours of New Year’s Day. They were unhappy that it did not include significant spending cuts in health and other social programs, which they say are essential to any long-term solution to the nation’s debt.” Clearly and unequivocally the resolution of the fiscal cliff represents a major defeat for Grover Norquist and his Tea Party allies as well as a significant victory for president Obama.
And what of those Republican Congressman who voted to let tax rates rise? Remember how often we’ve been told that almost every Republican in the House had signed Grover Norquist’s “No Tax Pledge.” Quoting Politico’s Alexander Burns and Maggie Habberman: “…given the lopsided Senate vote in favor of the tax-hiking measure, as well as the 85 GOP House members who voted yes, members of the GOP have violated the party’s no-new-taxes orthodoxy for the first time in two decades. It’s a significant concession in the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s November defeat and a potentially existential moment for a party that has prided itself on a defiant and dogmatic dislike of tax increases. What remains to be seen is whether that is merely a tactical retreat — bowing to the unique circumstances of the fiscal cliff — or a more meaningful cave-in on the part of Republicans who believe that their anti-tax platform has become politically unsustainable, particularly after a presidential cycle in which the party found itself caricatured as the puppets of the rich and powerful.” Perhaps it was the fact that a large majority of Republican Senators had voted for a tax hike that finally drove home the political reality to the 85 Republican Congressional legislators who decided to follow suit. Why even such staunch conservatives as Congressman Paul Ryan and Senators Patrick J. Toomey and Tom Coburn voted in favor of raising taxes. The fact that, in the face of a growing fiscal crisis, that Republicans voted to raise revenue via tax hikes, should come as no surprise as 2012 election exit polling showed 75% of the voters supported said increases, including a large minority of those who voted for Mitt Romney. Fox News contributor and prominent conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer opined: “This is a complete surrender on everything” and “a rout.” Not surprisingly, Norquist himself appeared on the cable circuit claiming to Anderson Cooper, among others, that the “deal was technically not a pledge violation”, but then what would you expect to hear from a guy who just went off of his own political cliff.
Many on the right have been seen to try to spin this defeat as a tactical maneuver that takes taxes off the table thereby enabling the G.O.P. to be more hard-nosed in dealing with the debt ceiling / spending cuts debate that we’ll be revisiting in a few months. But this too may amount to nothing but wishful thinking. Again quoting Burns and Habberman: “The president’s party, meanwhile, has no intention of easing up on a GOP they believe is in serious disarray. And while Republicans take heart from the hope that they’ll have more leverage in the next showdown, emboldened Democrats say the demand for “balanced” deficit reduction — meaning both spending cuts and new taxes — remains a challenge for their foes. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who advised the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, called the fiscal cliff deal “a band-aid on a serious wound” for Republicans. “The sane wing of the Republican Party recognized the GOP was playing a losing hand badly on taxes in a way that was deeply damaging to the Republican brand,” Garin said. “The Republicans will find themselves in a similar mess going forward if they insist on entitlement cuts while resisting new revenues from closing loopholes and tax breaks for those at the top.”
In the final analysis, when the spin and the political posturing is put aside there is one simple fact that comes through as the dust settles in the aftermath of the fiscal cliff and that is that Barack Obama has just cashed in on some major political capital and the sensible conservatives knew he had it to use and fully intended to use it. Obama ran, in part, on solving the fiscal crisis by raising taxes on the richest among us and won. America had two clear choices to pick from and they didn’t pick the conservative version. Much has been made of the fact that the G.O.P. had held onto the House but they only did so as a result of redistricting. In terms of absolute votes cast for those running for Congress, across the nation as a whole, “Democratic candidates for Congress won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, according to a tally of the popular vote kept by David Wasserman, the House editor of The Cook Political Report.” The Republican leadership in Congress knows that winning as a result of map making means a lot less politically than does winning by popular appeal and presently the G.O.P. ranks near the low end of its historic popularity. More importantly, the American people have demanded compromise and they indicated that they are clearly fed up with Tea Party obstruction on Capitol Hill. This had to be a motivating factor for Republicans as it is they, not Obama and the Democrats who would have been blamed for the country’s sliding back into a recession. In the end President Obama wound up giving less in the way of concessions than he would have just two weeks ago when he bargained with John Boehner in search of a deal and dramatically less than he would have back in 2011 when he and the Speaker were on the verge of a “Grand Bargain.” Such is the measure of the political shift that has taken place since the Tea Party victories in 2010 and Obama’s re-election this past November.
Steven J. Gulitti
1/2/2013
Sources:
Jennifer Steinhauer: “Divided House Passes Tax Deal in End to Latest Fiscal Standoff”; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/us/politics/house-takes-on-fiscal-cliff.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=todayspaper
“John Boehner, Eric Cantor Split On Fiscal Cliff Deal”; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/john-boehner-eric-cantor_n_2395593.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=010213&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei: “BEHIND THE CURTAIN -- Why the GOP caved: The politics are horrible on the backside of the cliff”; http://www.politico.com/playbook/
“Tea party backers swallow a bitter pill in ‘cliff’ bill”; http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cliff-bill-is-a-bitter-pill-for-houses-tea-party-adherents-to-swallow/2013/01/01/5345286e-544d-11e2-8e84-e933f677fe68_story.html
“GOP anti-tax policy goes over the cliff”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/gop-anti-tax-policy-goes-over-the-cliff-85657.html
Charles Krauthammer: “Cliff deal a 'rout”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/krauthammer-cliff-deal-surrender-85656.html?ml=po_r
“Why President Obama, Mitch McConnell took the deal”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/why-mcconnell-obama-took-the-deal-85655.html#ixzz2Gr6BLtPZ
“Obama hails tax bill, warns GOP not to pick fight on debt ceiling”; http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/275123-obama-hail-cliff-deal-but-warns-gop-on-debt-ceiling
"How Maps Helped Republicans Keep an Edge in the House"; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/po
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Who Is Barack Obama: Should We Believe Beck or Limbaugh?
Americans to some degree and particularly those on the Right are now beset by a true conundrum. Is Barack Obama a Christian or a Muslim? According to the latest Pew Research polling: "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama's religion is." Well, it's no wonder people are so confused, especially when two of the most prominent talking heads on the far right differ as to what is the actual religion of the President. If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't on the same page on this, how can we expect the lowliest schlep to know what's the truth?
In a recent anti-Obama rant, Mr. Limbaugh intoned: "Imam Hussein Obama is probably the best anti-American president we've ever had." Limbaugh has been at center stage in railing against the proposed "Ground Zero Mosque' while trying to somehow insinuate that Obama's defense of the constitutional right to religious freedom somehow proves that the President is an Islamic. Meanwhile just this past Sunday, in a follow up to his Lincoln Memorial Rally, Mr. Beck appeared with Chris Wallace of Fox News to proclaim that Obama is in fact not a racist after all, but a practicing Christian who just happens to be enamored with Liberation Theology. This brand of Christian thought is defined: "as a movement in Christian theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions." According to Beck himself: "he misunderstood Obama's philosophy and his theology...which is liberation theology... he didn't understand, really, his theology his viewpoints come from liberation theology. That's what I think as in -- at the gut level I was sensing. And I miscast it as racism. And really, what it is liberation theology." Thus, its now official, according to Glenn Beck, Barak Obama is legitimately some sort of Christian. Well fancy that, one of the most prominent forces in the American right has reaffirmed that the President is in fact a Christian while the other is still working overtime to convince Americans otherwise.
So what is really going on here? Is there a genuine question as to Barack Obama's faith or are we in fact looking at a garden variety witch hunt perpetrated from two different angles in a crass and unvarnished attempt to undermine a legitimately elected president through the propagation of falsehoods? Do Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really believe what they are publicly saying or are they and their followers just unable to face up to the fact that their idea of what America should be just does not comport with what people voted for in 2008. Is that truth just too much to bear? And where is the leadership that we should be seeing from responsible and respectable Republicans in opposition to this political falderal and farce? Perhaps the leaders of the G.O.P. are just too cowed by the far right to stand up for political decency or perhaps they just don't have the requisite courage. In a recent op-ed on this very topic, Paul Krugman opined: "What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate. Obama's election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn't, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage...Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate Obama is a Muslim. And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found." That said, it's more than evident that the time for the truly patriotic to stand up for political decency and honest debate is now and that's especially true for the leadership of the G.O.P. How can they legitimately ask for our votes when they allow this type of anti-democratic demagoguery to take place right under their noses and in plain view? Perhaps this is what you get from a political party that may be on its way out of business in the long run. Then again, maybe it's what you get when there is just a lack of courage in a party that has for so long prided itself as the repository of "real American values." At any rate every American voter has to ask himself this question: If the leaders of the Republican Party lack the courage to take on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, where will they find the courage and stamina required to get us out of the Great Recession or face down Al Qaida or any other threat that will surely emerge in the brave new world of this new century? Failing that courage, do they really deserve our votes?
Steven J. Gulitti
New Haven, Ct
8/31/10
Sources:
Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim; http://pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Growing-Number-of-Americans-Say-Obama-is-a-Muslim.aspx
Liberation theology; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
Beck: Obama's not a racist, he just believes in an "evil" theology; http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008310014
Limbaugh Dubs NYC Islamic Center "The Hamasque"; http://mediamatters.org/research/201008180055
Rush Limbaugh Newswire: Comprehensive Real-Time News Feed for Rush Limbaugh.; http://www.topix.com/wire/radio/rush-limbaugh
It's Witch-Hunt Season
In a recent anti-Obama rant, Mr. Limbaugh intoned: "Imam Hussein Obama is probably the best anti-American president we've ever had." Limbaugh has been at center stage in railing against the proposed "Ground Zero Mosque' while trying to somehow insinuate that Obama's defense of the constitutional right to religious freedom somehow proves that the President is an Islamic. Meanwhile just this past Sunday, in a follow up to his Lincoln Memorial Rally, Mr. Beck appeared with Chris Wallace of Fox News to proclaim that Obama is in fact not a racist after all, but a practicing Christian who just happens to be enamored with Liberation Theology. This brand of Christian thought is defined: "as a movement in Christian theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions." According to Beck himself: "he misunderstood Obama's philosophy and his theology...which is liberation theology... he didn't understand, really, his theology his viewpoints come from liberation theology. That's what I think as in -- at the gut level I was sensing. And I miscast it as racism. And really, what it is liberation theology." Thus, its now official, according to Glenn Beck, Barak Obama is legitimately some sort of Christian. Well fancy that, one of the most prominent forces in the American right has reaffirmed that the President is in fact a Christian while the other is still working overtime to convince Americans otherwise.
So what is really going on here? Is there a genuine question as to Barack Obama's faith or are we in fact looking at a garden variety witch hunt perpetrated from two different angles in a crass and unvarnished attempt to undermine a legitimately elected president through the propagation of falsehoods? Do Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really believe what they are publicly saying or are they and their followers just unable to face up to the fact that their idea of what America should be just does not comport with what people voted for in 2008. Is that truth just too much to bear? And where is the leadership that we should be seeing from responsible and respectable Republicans in opposition to this political falderal and farce? Perhaps the leaders of the G.O.P. are just too cowed by the far right to stand up for political decency or perhaps they just don't have the requisite courage. In a recent op-ed on this very topic, Paul Krugman opined: "What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate. Obama's election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn't, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage...Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate Obama is a Muslim. And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found." That said, it's more than evident that the time for the truly patriotic to stand up for political decency and honest debate is now and that's especially true for the leadership of the G.O.P. How can they legitimately ask for our votes when they allow this type of anti-democratic demagoguery to take place right under their noses and in plain view? Perhaps this is what you get from a political party that may be on its way out of business in the long run. Then again, maybe it's what you get when there is just a lack of courage in a party that has for so long prided itself as the repository of "real American values." At any rate every American voter has to ask himself this question: If the leaders of the Republican Party lack the courage to take on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, where will they find the courage and stamina required to get us out of the Great Recession or face down Al Qaida or any other threat that will surely emerge in the brave new world of this new century? Failing that courage, do they really deserve our votes?
Steven J. Gulitti
New Haven, Ct
8/31/10
Sources:
Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim; http://pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Growing-Number-of-Americans-Say-Obama-is-a-Muslim.aspx
Liberation theology; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
Beck: Obama's not a racist, he just believes in an "evil" theology; http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008310014
Limbaugh Dubs NYC Islamic Center "The Hamasque"; http://mediamatters.org/research/201008180055
Rush Limbaugh Newswire: Comprehensive Real-Time News Feed for Rush Limbaugh.; http://www.topix.com/wire/radio/rush-limbaugh
It's Witch-Hunt Season
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Comedy Central Moves to the Right
I once heard conservative columnist David Brooks refer to a Republican Party political miscalculation as stupidity on stilts. Well, courtesy of the national media, the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has provided a few prominent people on the right with a new opportunity to once again make fools of themselves.
Just days after the Deepwater Horizon collapsed and sank, Rush Limbaugh opined on his April 29th show: “Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day… But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here.” Okay Rush, I’ll play the game, who actually blew up the Deepwater Horizon, environmentalists or the “Federal Swat Teams” that are supposed to be securing the oil patch? I know that Greenpeace has a ship it employs to disrupt whaling, but which environmentalist group has the capability to pull off an act of sabotage a mile down on the ocean floor? Could it be that this act of environmental sabotage is actually for the purposes of furthering a secret green agenda or could it be that having recently endorsed offshore oil exploration as a component of a new energy policy; Barack Obama has now destroyed an oilrig as a means of achieving energy independence?
Appearing days later on Fox and Friends former Bush White House spokesperson Dana Perino, suggested a conspiracy was afoot: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved." Well that’s certainly a prescient line of logic coming from someone who publicly admitted that she “didn’t really know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis”, what was arguably the most dangerous two weeks in history. Is it not more than a little comical that fresh from her regular pratfalls in the White House, Ms. Perino feels rather qualified to comment on offshore oil drilling and underwater pyrotechnics? I mean, after all it’s pretty impressive for someone who majored in mass communications and public affairs to now have such a firm grasp on the particulars of ocean engineering and underwater ordinance. Is it me or is some of this stuff is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously?
However, in what may be the most ironic commentary of all, Michael Brown the former Director of FEMA during the Bush Administration contends that Obama wants to capitalize on the Deepwater Horizon disaster so as to pander to environmentalists. Quoting Brown: “They want this crisis so they can respond to it and shut down oil and gas drilling for being too dangerous.” Brown went on to suggest that Obama will use the current disaster to impose new restrictions on the coal industry. Well coming from a guy who’s primary qualification for being Director of FEMA was his experience with the International Arabian Horse Association, this sort of commentary is more than just a bit comical. After all, in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Brown had been given sufficent warning of impending disaster by the National Weather Service whereas the Deepwater Horizon disaster was unpredicted. Thus the two events are not exactly congruent, except perhaps, for the geography. Who could ever forget Bush’s praise for Brown during the Katrina Crisis: “Brownie, you’re doing a hell of a job.” Days later, Brown was sacked and yet today he feels qualified to second guess the Obama Administration based on his own botched handling of Katrina and it’s aftermath.
If stupidity makes you laugh, well Limbaugh, Perino and Brown can certainly be considered headline acts in what has become a fully booked and never ending theater of the absurd on the far right. Don’t get me wrong, thus far the Obama Administration has definitely made mistakes in handling the Deepwater Horizon crisis and there is nothing funny in that. But to suggest that Obama and his consort are destroying oilrigs to further an agenda friendly to the environment is beyond absurd and borders on the surreal. Like those crackpots on the far left, who continue to maintain that the Bush Administration was either behind the 9/11 attacks or knew something of them, these characters are just as absurd and moronic in their claims that Obama has a hand in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I can’t help but laugh as the jokes not on the Obama Administration, but on Limbaugh, Perino and Brown for believing their own content free cackle. Likewise the laughs on those people who turn to the likes of Limbaugh or Fox News for serious political analysis or commentary and take much of what they hear as gospel. Just a few weeks ago Bill O’Reilly claimed that comedian Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had become the point man for left-wing attacks on the right and asked why there were no conservative comedians on the air to counteract Stewart and the rest of the left leaning late night comedy crowd. Well Bill, their out there, you just need to know where to look for them.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
May 6, 2010
Just days after the Deepwater Horizon collapsed and sank, Rush Limbaugh opined on his April 29th show: “Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day… But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here.” Okay Rush, I’ll play the game, who actually blew up the Deepwater Horizon, environmentalists or the “Federal Swat Teams” that are supposed to be securing the oil patch? I know that Greenpeace has a ship it employs to disrupt whaling, but which environmentalist group has the capability to pull off an act of sabotage a mile down on the ocean floor? Could it be that this act of environmental sabotage is actually for the purposes of furthering a secret green agenda or could it be that having recently endorsed offshore oil exploration as a component of a new energy policy; Barack Obama has now destroyed an oilrig as a means of achieving energy independence?
Appearing days later on Fox and Friends former Bush White House spokesperson Dana Perino, suggested a conspiracy was afoot: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved." Well that’s certainly a prescient line of logic coming from someone who publicly admitted that she “didn’t really know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis”, what was arguably the most dangerous two weeks in history. Is it not more than a little comical that fresh from her regular pratfalls in the White House, Ms. Perino feels rather qualified to comment on offshore oil drilling and underwater pyrotechnics? I mean, after all it’s pretty impressive for someone who majored in mass communications and public affairs to now have such a firm grasp on the particulars of ocean engineering and underwater ordinance. Is it me or is some of this stuff is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously?
However, in what may be the most ironic commentary of all, Michael Brown the former Director of FEMA during the Bush Administration contends that Obama wants to capitalize on the Deepwater Horizon disaster so as to pander to environmentalists. Quoting Brown: “They want this crisis so they can respond to it and shut down oil and gas drilling for being too dangerous.” Brown went on to suggest that Obama will use the current disaster to impose new restrictions on the coal industry. Well coming from a guy who’s primary qualification for being Director of FEMA was his experience with the International Arabian Horse Association, this sort of commentary is more than just a bit comical. After all, in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Brown had been given sufficent warning of impending disaster by the National Weather Service whereas the Deepwater Horizon disaster was unpredicted. Thus the two events are not exactly congruent, except perhaps, for the geography. Who could ever forget Bush’s praise for Brown during the Katrina Crisis: “Brownie, you’re doing a hell of a job.” Days later, Brown was sacked and yet today he feels qualified to second guess the Obama Administration based on his own botched handling of Katrina and it’s aftermath.
If stupidity makes you laugh, well Limbaugh, Perino and Brown can certainly be considered headline acts in what has become a fully booked and never ending theater of the absurd on the far right. Don’t get me wrong, thus far the Obama Administration has definitely made mistakes in handling the Deepwater Horizon crisis and there is nothing funny in that. But to suggest that Obama and his consort are destroying oilrigs to further an agenda friendly to the environment is beyond absurd and borders on the surreal. Like those crackpots on the far left, who continue to maintain that the Bush Administration was either behind the 9/11 attacks or knew something of them, these characters are just as absurd and moronic in their claims that Obama has a hand in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I can’t help but laugh as the jokes not on the Obama Administration, but on Limbaugh, Perino and Brown for believing their own content free cackle. Likewise the laughs on those people who turn to the likes of Limbaugh or Fox News for serious political analysis or commentary and take much of what they hear as gospel. Just a few weeks ago Bill O’Reilly claimed that comedian Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had become the point man for left-wing attacks on the right and asked why there were no conservative comedians on the air to counteract Stewart and the rest of the left leaning late night comedy crowd. Well Bill, their out there, you just need to know where to look for them.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
May 6, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Coming Unhinged On the Far Right: A Postscript
When I wrote my earlier article there were doubters among the readership as to who actually was perpetrating violence against those in Congress who had voted in favor of health care reform. Since that article there continues to be a growing stack of evidence of both borderline seditious rhetoric as well as actual examples of threatening behavior having been leveled against the more progressive elements in American political society.
The F.B.I. defines domestic terrorism as follows: “Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction, committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat to the country. During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat. …Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change.” (F.B.I. "The Threat of Eco-Terrorism" (February 12, 2002): http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/jarboe021202.htm.)
If you had the opportunity to watch the Chris Matthews Show this past Sunday, the 18th of April, you would have witnessed a lively discussion on the nature of the present threat of political violence emanating from the far right side. I have taken the time to delve into several of the show’s references, as a means of producing undeniable evidence of the propensity for political violence among right-wing extremists.
First there is Michael Savage who, on his April 9th Savage Nation Show said: “What we need is a vigorous right-wing movement in America, not a Tea Party. And you need to face off against those scum on the left and then you’ll have a nation.” (See - Michael Savage: “Obama a traitor who is not Loyal to America” http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004120011) Then there is the example of Mike Vanderboegh, former Alabama Militiaman who now hosts the Freedom Radio Show. In his “To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.” He clearly and explicitly incites his followers to violence: “Pelosi and her ilk apparently do not understand that this Intolerable Act has some folks so angry that they are ready to resist their slow-rolling revolution against the Founders' Republic by force of arms… These are collectivists. They do not hear you grumble. They do not, it is apparent after the past year of town halls and Tea Parties and nose-diving opinion polls, hear you SHOUT. They certainly do not hear the soft "snik-snik" of cleaning rods being used on millions of rifle barrels in this country by people who have decided that their backs are to the wall, politics and the courts no longer are sufficient to the task of defending their liberties, and they must make their own arrangements…. So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows. Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.” (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html).
Finally there is Michele Bachmann who recently advocated that Minnesotans become “armed and dangerous” in reaction to Barack Obama’s energy policy. As reported in the Minnesota Independent: “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.” Quoting the author, Chris Steller: “Smart Politics notes it’s not the first time since the election of President Obama and a new Democrat-led Congress that Bachmann dubbed her conservative compatriots “foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines.” The metaphor, combined with her “armed-and-dangerous” rhetoric, drifts close to Sean Hannity’s excited speculation about a militant right-wing reaction.” (“Bachmann wants Minnesotans ‘armed and dangerous’ against Obama energy policy” BY CHRIS STELLER, MINNESOTA INDEPENDENT, March 24, 2009 http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/03/24/bachmann-wants-minnesotans-%E2%80%98armed-and-dangerous%E2%80%99-against-obama-energy-policy.html.)
If the above dosen’t constitute incendiary or seditious rehetoric, than what does in fact constitute? At this point in time it would seem to me that the preponderence of reported incidents seems clearly aimed at the current administration and its supporters, not the other way around. I know there are those on the right who are bending over backwards to try to explain away today’s clear and present evidence of a trend toward right-wing violence with comparisons back to the sixties, violence by animal rights or enviornmental groups but that was then and this is now. Today the problem lies clearly on the far-right and generally speaking, nowhere else. There are those who will say that there is plenty of evidence of current left-wing violence if one cares to look, well fine, give us some credible and empirical examples in the present and not five or six or forty years ago. As we observe the fifteenth anniversary of the America’s greatest act of domestic terror, the Oklahoma City Bombing, let us be ever mindfull of those clear and present threats aimed at our public safety, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they come from, and as good citizens, stand up to reckless rehtoric when ever and where ever you confont it.
Steven J. Gulitti
19 April 2010
The F.B.I. defines domestic terrorism as follows: “Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction, committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat to the country. During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat. …Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change.” (F.B.I. "The Threat of Eco-Terrorism" (February 12, 2002): http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/jarboe021202.htm.)
If you had the opportunity to watch the Chris Matthews Show this past Sunday, the 18th of April, you would have witnessed a lively discussion on the nature of the present threat of political violence emanating from the far right side. I have taken the time to delve into several of the show’s references, as a means of producing undeniable evidence of the propensity for political violence among right-wing extremists.
First there is Michael Savage who, on his April 9th Savage Nation Show said: “What we need is a vigorous right-wing movement in America, not a Tea Party. And you need to face off against those scum on the left and then you’ll have a nation.” (See - Michael Savage: “Obama a traitor who is not Loyal to America” http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004120011) Then there is the example of Mike Vanderboegh, former Alabama Militiaman who now hosts the Freedom Radio Show. In his “To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.” He clearly and explicitly incites his followers to violence: “Pelosi and her ilk apparently do not understand that this Intolerable Act has some folks so angry that they are ready to resist their slow-rolling revolution against the Founders' Republic by force of arms… These are collectivists. They do not hear you grumble. They do not, it is apparent after the past year of town halls and Tea Parties and nose-diving opinion polls, hear you SHOUT. They certainly do not hear the soft "snik-snik" of cleaning rods being used on millions of rifle barrels in this country by people who have decided that their backs are to the wall, politics and the courts no longer are sufficient to the task of defending their liberties, and they must make their own arrangements…. So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows. Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.” (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html).
Finally there is Michele Bachmann who recently advocated that Minnesotans become “armed and dangerous” in reaction to Barack Obama’s energy policy. As reported in the Minnesota Independent: “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.” Quoting the author, Chris Steller: “Smart Politics notes it’s not the first time since the election of President Obama and a new Democrat-led Congress that Bachmann dubbed her conservative compatriots “foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines.” The metaphor, combined with her “armed-and-dangerous” rhetoric, drifts close to Sean Hannity’s excited speculation about a militant right-wing reaction.” (“Bachmann wants Minnesotans ‘armed and dangerous’ against Obama energy policy” BY CHRIS STELLER, MINNESOTA INDEPENDENT, March 24, 2009 http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/03/24/bachmann-wants-minnesotans-%E2%80%98armed-and-dangerous%E2%80%99-against-obama-energy-policy.html.)
If the above dosen’t constitute incendiary or seditious rehetoric, than what does in fact constitute? At this point in time it would seem to me that the preponderence of reported incidents seems clearly aimed at the current administration and its supporters, not the other way around. I know there are those on the right who are bending over backwards to try to explain away today’s clear and present evidence of a trend toward right-wing violence with comparisons back to the sixties, violence by animal rights or enviornmental groups but that was then and this is now. Today the problem lies clearly on the far-right and generally speaking, nowhere else. There are those who will say that there is plenty of evidence of current left-wing violence if one cares to look, well fine, give us some credible and empirical examples in the present and not five or six or forty years ago. As we observe the fifteenth anniversary of the America’s greatest act of domestic terror, the Oklahoma City Bombing, let us be ever mindfull of those clear and present threats aimed at our public safety, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they come from, and as good citizens, stand up to reckless rehtoric when ever and where ever you confont it.
Steven J. Gulitti
19 April 2010
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Mr. Limbaugh’s Nazi Obsession
It is a cardinal rule in American political discourse that one refrain from associating an opponent or an opposing position with Adolph Hitler or the Nazis. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) discovered this all too well when he found himself on the floor of the Senate, apologizing for having associated American military police personnel at Abu Ghraib with Nazi concentration camp guards. That said; it makes for a rather insightful discussion when we stop to analyze several of Rush Limbaugh’s recent insinuations that the present administration of Barack Obama resembles the regime of Adolph Hitler.
Back in August, at the height of the health care town hall follies, Mr. Limbaugh attempted to theoretically tie the Obama administration to that of Adolph Hitler by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis opposed big business, cigarette smoking, Jewish Capitalism and environmental degradation. Limbaugh’s grasp of the Nazi platform is largely accurate. The Nazi 25 Point Program of 1920 called for the nationalization of all corporations, profit sharing by large industries, a communalization of department stores and, where necessary, the seizure of land without compensation for the good of the community. German doctors were the first to link tobacco consumption with lung cancer and the Nazi regime instituted the world’s first government backed anti-smoking campaign. By the 1930s, Germany had the most powerful conservation program in the world. My problem with Mr. Limbaugh lies in his ipso facto reasoning that reaches back in history to elements of a particular regime and suggests that they are in some way organically linked to the present. Beyond this elementary appreciation for Nazi economic and social policy, Mr. Limbaugh has strayed far from reality in his assertion that Hitler affected a reduction in chronic unemployment by a policy of mass arrest and internment at the Dachau concentration camp. Limbaugh has gone so far as to suggest that Nancy Pelosi has advocated the arrest of those who refuse to purchase insurance under a reformed health care system and have the arrested interned in prisons, which would thereby reduce the level of unemployment.
In a July 2009 interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News, Limbaugh boasted of his “refusal to go to college” as if this were somehow a badge of honor. Perhaps it is this lack of a formal education that lies at the root of his constant misapplication of history as a means of explaining present day politics. With regard to government efforts to stabilize the economy, Limbaugh has wrongly conflated sound Keynesian measures with all-encompassing state control in a centralized economy. Outside of a relative handful of libertarian economists, you would be hard put to find any reputable economic thinker today who does not agree with the fact that government action a year ago prevented the world from sliding into another depression. On the topic of health care it is impossible to deny that the system here is not broken and that the market has failed to adequately deliver affordable care at a reasonable cost to the majority of Americans. Would Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have preferred a collapse of the banking system and Detroit along with it so as to test conservative economic theories in real life? The mere fact that the federal government has acted to shore up the financial system and the auto industry does not equate with a centralized program of nationalizing all industry nor is it a harbinger of some economy-wide profit sharing scheme. Most educated individuals are sophisticated enough to see this so my question is, why can’t Mr. Limbaugh? Does the fact that the Nazis recognized the dangers of smoking do anything to undermine the now more than established fact that tobacco consumption is unhealthy? With regard to Nazi environmental policy, a recently published book: How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, points out that the environmental movement’s popularity pre-dated the Nazi regime and many of the policies enacted under Hitler would have come about anyway.
It is in his contention that the Nazis reduced unemployment via a policy of mass arrest and internment that Mr. Limbaugh reveals just how little he actually knows about Nazi policies aimed at reducing unemployment in pre-war Germany. As a college senior, I undertook a yearlong study of German labor policy from 1876 to 1976 and over the course of this project and all of the material examined in the course of a year, I never once came across any evidence that mass arrest and internment were a major component of pre-war German labor policy. During the course of the three-hour oral examination that I took at the conclusion of this study, my supervising professor never once interrupted me to point out that arrest and internment were an essential element in reducing unemployment in Nazi Germany. Rather than through mass arrests, unemployment was reduced by public works and conservation corps projects, paid employment within the Nazi Party, the subtraction of women from the labor force via family building and marriage incentives, the recruitment of one million men into the military and the economic disenfranchisement of Jews, Communists, Socialists and Pacifists and their subsequent classification as being no longer in the work force. While many in this last category did in fact find themselves behind bars that was never the main element in pre-war Nazi labor policy. A concise review of this subject can be found at Nazi Economics: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm.
It is one thing for Mr. Limbaugh to try to spin historical facts upon the present policies of the Obama administration and thereby attempt to force fit the past into the present. It is an altogether different matter when Mr. Limbaugh misrepresents one narrow element of the Nazi regime as having been it’s main policy tool for reducing unemployment and then, beyond that, to suggest that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi actually intend to enforce adherence to a reformed health care program by way of mass arrest, which would have the corollary benefit of reducing unemployment. Such a misrepresentation of history goes beyond the pale of a polite and informed disagreement and crosses over into the realm of fraudulent misinterpretation. One can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh’s actual intent is the undermining a legitimately elected president who, for all of his missteps, is still grappling with the worst economic environment in eighty years. If Mr. Limbaugh has a problem with Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with this nation’s present predicament then let him endeavor to confine his arguments to the realm of established facts. It would benefit Mr. Limbaugh to leave the intellectual flights of fancy and the fantasizing about Hitler and the Nazis to the denizens who inhabit the netherworld of the far right blogosphere. On the other hand if Rush Limbaugh sees his future in reinterpreting history to the point of corrupting facts beyond recognition, then so be it. It will be his reputation that will suffer far greater damage than it already has. Mr. Limbaugh’s content free cackle about Communism, Socialism, Fascism and his conflating of these three ideologies to the point where one can only wonder if he really understands the difference between them in the first place, adds nothing to the national political debate. From what I can observe, the only discernible positive that emanates from Mr. Limbaugh’s commentary is that it further burnishes his image as America’s national buffoon.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
28 November 2009
Back in August, at the height of the health care town hall follies, Mr. Limbaugh attempted to theoretically tie the Obama administration to that of Adolph Hitler by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis opposed big business, cigarette smoking, Jewish Capitalism and environmental degradation. Limbaugh’s grasp of the Nazi platform is largely accurate. The Nazi 25 Point Program of 1920 called for the nationalization of all corporations, profit sharing by large industries, a communalization of department stores and, where necessary, the seizure of land without compensation for the good of the community. German doctors were the first to link tobacco consumption with lung cancer and the Nazi regime instituted the world’s first government backed anti-smoking campaign. By the 1930s, Germany had the most powerful conservation program in the world. My problem with Mr. Limbaugh lies in his ipso facto reasoning that reaches back in history to elements of a particular regime and suggests that they are in some way organically linked to the present. Beyond this elementary appreciation for Nazi economic and social policy, Mr. Limbaugh has strayed far from reality in his assertion that Hitler affected a reduction in chronic unemployment by a policy of mass arrest and internment at the Dachau concentration camp. Limbaugh has gone so far as to suggest that Nancy Pelosi has advocated the arrest of those who refuse to purchase insurance under a reformed health care system and have the arrested interned in prisons, which would thereby reduce the level of unemployment.
In a July 2009 interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News, Limbaugh boasted of his “refusal to go to college” as if this were somehow a badge of honor. Perhaps it is this lack of a formal education that lies at the root of his constant misapplication of history as a means of explaining present day politics. With regard to government efforts to stabilize the economy, Limbaugh has wrongly conflated sound Keynesian measures with all-encompassing state control in a centralized economy. Outside of a relative handful of libertarian economists, you would be hard put to find any reputable economic thinker today who does not agree with the fact that government action a year ago prevented the world from sliding into another depression. On the topic of health care it is impossible to deny that the system here is not broken and that the market has failed to adequately deliver affordable care at a reasonable cost to the majority of Americans. Would Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have preferred a collapse of the banking system and Detroit along with it so as to test conservative economic theories in real life? The mere fact that the federal government has acted to shore up the financial system and the auto industry does not equate with a centralized program of nationalizing all industry nor is it a harbinger of some economy-wide profit sharing scheme. Most educated individuals are sophisticated enough to see this so my question is, why can’t Mr. Limbaugh? Does the fact that the Nazis recognized the dangers of smoking do anything to undermine the now more than established fact that tobacco consumption is unhealthy? With regard to Nazi environmental policy, a recently published book: How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, points out that the environmental movement’s popularity pre-dated the Nazi regime and many of the policies enacted under Hitler would have come about anyway.
It is in his contention that the Nazis reduced unemployment via a policy of mass arrest and internment that Mr. Limbaugh reveals just how little he actually knows about Nazi policies aimed at reducing unemployment in pre-war Germany. As a college senior, I undertook a yearlong study of German labor policy from 1876 to 1976 and over the course of this project and all of the material examined in the course of a year, I never once came across any evidence that mass arrest and internment were a major component of pre-war German labor policy. During the course of the three-hour oral examination that I took at the conclusion of this study, my supervising professor never once interrupted me to point out that arrest and internment were an essential element in reducing unemployment in Nazi Germany. Rather than through mass arrests, unemployment was reduced by public works and conservation corps projects, paid employment within the Nazi Party, the subtraction of women from the labor force via family building and marriage incentives, the recruitment of one million men into the military and the economic disenfranchisement of Jews, Communists, Socialists and Pacifists and their subsequent classification as being no longer in the work force. While many in this last category did in fact find themselves behind bars that was never the main element in pre-war Nazi labor policy. A concise review of this subject can be found at Nazi Economics: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm.
It is one thing for Mr. Limbaugh to try to spin historical facts upon the present policies of the Obama administration and thereby attempt to force fit the past into the present. It is an altogether different matter when Mr. Limbaugh misrepresents one narrow element of the Nazi regime as having been it’s main policy tool for reducing unemployment and then, beyond that, to suggest that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi actually intend to enforce adherence to a reformed health care program by way of mass arrest, which would have the corollary benefit of reducing unemployment. Such a misrepresentation of history goes beyond the pale of a polite and informed disagreement and crosses over into the realm of fraudulent misinterpretation. One can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh’s actual intent is the undermining a legitimately elected president who, for all of his missteps, is still grappling with the worst economic environment in eighty years. If Mr. Limbaugh has a problem with Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with this nation’s present predicament then let him endeavor to confine his arguments to the realm of established facts. It would benefit Mr. Limbaugh to leave the intellectual flights of fancy and the fantasizing about Hitler and the Nazis to the denizens who inhabit the netherworld of the far right blogosphere. On the other hand if Rush Limbaugh sees his future in reinterpreting history to the point of corrupting facts beyond recognition, then so be it. It will be his reputation that will suffer far greater damage than it already has. Mr. Limbaugh’s content free cackle about Communism, Socialism, Fascism and his conflating of these three ideologies to the point where one can only wonder if he really understands the difference between them in the first place, adds nothing to the national political debate. From what I can observe, the only discernible positive that emanates from Mr. Limbaugh’s commentary is that it further burnishes his image as America’s national buffoon.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
28 November 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Barack Obama, Islamic Radicalism and the Issue of America’s Vulnerability
Try as they will, Conservatives have not really been able to make a good argument that Obama, by moving away from the failed foreign policies of the Bush Administration, has in reality made America less safe. Instead they have responded with a series of knee jerk reactions aimed at the obstruction and rejection of anything and everything that Obama has either done or proposed. Conservatives have fallen back on the now hackneyed idea that they alone are the ones who can keep America safe and that the Democrats in general and liberals in particular will, or deliberately want to, weaken America. In his last book “A Time to Fight” James Webb, decorated Vietnam veteran; former Reagan era SECNAV; Republican turned Democrat; and now Senator from Virginia, devoted an entire chapter to explaining how such an argument by Republicans was no longer tenable or one that they can legitimately promote. Obama has in reality kept in place much of the prior Administration’s policies and procedures that are embodied in the Patriot Act, the wiretapping law and the continued operation of Guantanamo. To date the Obama Administration has recaptured an American merchant ship from Somali Pirates and, in concert with federal and local authorities, uncovered a possible terror ring based in New York and Denver.
Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush’s failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.
Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that “American Exceptionalism” would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.
If America is attacked again, it won’t automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don’t they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, “The Inheritance”: “The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice’s desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion.” In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created “a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq”, whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?
We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to “harden” critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?
Steven J. Gulitti
Iron Workers Local # 697
New York City
10/17/2009
Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush’s failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.
Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that “American Exceptionalism” would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.
If America is attacked again, it won’t automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don’t they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, “The Inheritance”: “The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice’s desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion.” In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created “a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq”, whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?
We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to “harden” critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?
Steven J. Gulitti
Iron Workers Local # 697
New York City
10/17/2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Dick Cheney: Flawed Messenger on National Security
As I sit here on May 25, 2009 and reflect on the meaning of this day, just as I do quietly and privately on every Memorial Day, I remember the service and sacrifice of those who went before me, including my own family’s not insignificant contributions in both World Wars and in Korea. Compared to them, my own twenty years of service as a reservist seems insignificant if not trivial. Nonetheless on a day like today, I can’t but help being galled by the recent “road show” undertaken by the former Vice President Dick Cheney with its theatrical, if not alarmist claim, that the current administration has undermined the security of the United States. Mr. Cheney has suggested that Barack Obama would set the country on a course where other Americans will once again find themselves in harms way. I find this political grandstanding nothing less than preposterous, when one stops to consider that it is coming from a man, who when it was his time to serve his country in Vietnam, opted out as he had, in his own words, “other priorities”. In his pursuit of “other priorities”, Dick Cheney would benefit from multiple deferments from military service while other Americans were fighting and dying in Southeast Asia. Cheney’s assertion that Obama has embarked on a “reckless” course of action in seeking to close Guantanamo should be seen as a rather curious statement when one considers that it was Cheney and his Neocon fellow travelers who advocated for a war with Iraq, on the most dubious grounds, thereby engineering the most reckless undertaking in American history.
I can give the Bush Administration a pass for operating beyond the pale of accepted rules of engagement in the period immediately after the September 11 attacks owing to the gravity of the situation and the unknowable state of national security which resulted from those attacks. I can also understand how American intelligence officers at that time, in an effort to forestall another attack, could chose to employ interrogation techniques that can only be categorized as torture. That said, as time passed and the threat environment was revealed to be far less dangerous than had been anticipated the justification for torture and detainment without due process became harder to justify. It is impossible to deny that the existence of the Guantanamo facility along with the abuses at Abu Ghraib would become key factors in the recruitment of new adherents to the radical Muslim jihad and thereby create new and more multifaceted threats to be addressed.
In an address to American troops in Europe during World War II, General George S. Patton would state:” You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by getting the other guy to die for his.” The corollary line of logic to Patton’s advice for our time is that you don’t win wars by creating new enemies. At this point in time it is a forgone conclusion that the existence of Guantanamo works against our national security interests, as it is the single best recruitment tool presently available to Al Qaeda, thereby contributing to the pool of available enemy combatants. For those who have taken the time to listen to the debate, there is bi-partisan agreement on this fact as evidenced by the recent comments of Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) along with the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, all of whom have agreed that Guantanamo needs to be closed. The crux of the argument revolves around how to relocate the detainees so as not to compromise our security.
With general agreement on the need to deal with the Guantanamo detainees in some other fashion, what then is the motive behind the Cheney “road show” other than the former Vice Presidents seeming need to redeem himself in the eyes of the American public? As has been speculated by the talking classes, Cheney is still smarting from the fact that he and his Neocon clique were marginalized and took a back seat to Condoleezza Rice and the State Department after the 2004 election. Why is it that Cheney just can’t accept that his version of national security may be inapplicable at this point in time or that it is perhaps, less than well founded given the current threat environment? After all, for all of the claims that Bush and Cheney prevented another attack on U.S. soil, the fact of the matter is that this country suffered it’s worst terrorist attack on their watch. In reality Dick Cheney, with his advocating for War in Iraq and his championing of “enhanced interrogation” and unlimited detention may have done more to endanger the security of the country than Obama ever could by closing down Guantanamo. What will Mr. Cheney have to say if individuals who carry out the next terror attack on the United States admit to interrogators that their motive for joining the jihad was the invasion of Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the existence of Guantanamo?
Steven J. Gulitti
Memorial Day 2009
I can give the Bush Administration a pass for operating beyond the pale of accepted rules of engagement in the period immediately after the September 11 attacks owing to the gravity of the situation and the unknowable state of national security which resulted from those attacks. I can also understand how American intelligence officers at that time, in an effort to forestall another attack, could chose to employ interrogation techniques that can only be categorized as torture. That said, as time passed and the threat environment was revealed to be far less dangerous than had been anticipated the justification for torture and detainment without due process became harder to justify. It is impossible to deny that the existence of the Guantanamo facility along with the abuses at Abu Ghraib would become key factors in the recruitment of new adherents to the radical Muslim jihad and thereby create new and more multifaceted threats to be addressed.
In an address to American troops in Europe during World War II, General George S. Patton would state:” You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by getting the other guy to die for his.” The corollary line of logic to Patton’s advice for our time is that you don’t win wars by creating new enemies. At this point in time it is a forgone conclusion that the existence of Guantanamo works against our national security interests, as it is the single best recruitment tool presently available to Al Qaeda, thereby contributing to the pool of available enemy combatants. For those who have taken the time to listen to the debate, there is bi-partisan agreement on this fact as evidenced by the recent comments of Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) along with the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, all of whom have agreed that Guantanamo needs to be closed. The crux of the argument revolves around how to relocate the detainees so as not to compromise our security.
With general agreement on the need to deal with the Guantanamo detainees in some other fashion, what then is the motive behind the Cheney “road show” other than the former Vice Presidents seeming need to redeem himself in the eyes of the American public? As has been speculated by the talking classes, Cheney is still smarting from the fact that he and his Neocon clique were marginalized and took a back seat to Condoleezza Rice and the State Department after the 2004 election. Why is it that Cheney just can’t accept that his version of national security may be inapplicable at this point in time or that it is perhaps, less than well founded given the current threat environment? After all, for all of the claims that Bush and Cheney prevented another attack on U.S. soil, the fact of the matter is that this country suffered it’s worst terrorist attack on their watch. In reality Dick Cheney, with his advocating for War in Iraq and his championing of “enhanced interrogation” and unlimited detention may have done more to endanger the security of the country than Obama ever could by closing down Guantanamo. What will Mr. Cheney have to say if individuals who carry out the next terror attack on the United States admit to interrogators that their motive for joining the jihad was the invasion of Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the existence of Guantanamo?
Steven J. Gulitti
Memorial Day 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A 21st Century Ghost Dance: Rush Limbaugh, The Radical Right and the Politics of Obstruction
In the closing days of the 1880s, beset by far reaching societal change, the Indians of the American West embraced a messianic practice called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance religion, put forth by a Paiute medicine man named Wovoka, foretold of the destruction of the existing world and its replacement with the old order where only the Indians would occupy the landscape. The buffalo would return in great numbers and those Indian warriors who had died fighting the white man would be resurrected. This new world order would be hastened by the performance of the Ghost Dance ritual and the wearing of shirts blessed to repel the bullets of the American Army.
Listening to the rhetoric flowing out of CPAC 2009 one could conclude that the Conservative Movement has embraced its own version of a 21st Century Ghost Dance, led by its own modern day Wovoka in the person of Rush Limbaugh. It is as if by reiterating ideology, invoking the memory of Reagan and maligning the Obama recovery effort as “socialist”, that Conservatives will somehow forestall imminent political change. In an attempt to heighten alarm Limbaugh lays claim to the idea that life, liberty and freedom are under assault. He states that Barack Obama will eliminate capitalism and individual liberty as the cornerstone of American life. Limbaugh makes such a claim in spite of the historical fact that the government has been intimately involved in economic affairs since 1819 with no appreciable loss of personal liberty to date. Nonetheless Limbaugh has put the failure of the Obama recovery program at the top of his personal political agenda because he thinks that such failure will bring about a return to a glorious (imagined) past. Limbaugh defiantly rejects the 2008 election as proof positive that Americans want a change in direction because the electoral results don’t square with his vision of America. All this from a man who, somewhere on the spectrum between ideological purist and buffoon, doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution when it comes to a quote regarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Somehow talk of “true patriotism” rings hollow coming from a man who had more draft deferments during the Vietnam War than some soldiers had combat action medals. As CPAC continued, Mike Huckabee claimed, “Lenin and Stalin would love the Obama program” leading one to believe that the former presidential candidate knows less about history than does Sarah Palin. Anyone who thinks that the Obama recovery plans bear any resemblance to Soviet economic polices of the last century is either irresponsibly playing with words for the sake of incitement or just lacks the background required to engage in intelligent political discourse.
Beyond Limbaugh and CPAC the hysteria over the “slide into socialism” continues unabated in conservative media. Harry R Jackson, Jr. intones that: “a war for the soul of the nation” is raging. Pat Buchanan declared the Obama budget a “declaration of war on the Right.” The latest piece from Dick Morris is entitled “Waging War on Prosperity.” Limbaugh’s own brother David has gone so far as to say that media attacks leveled at Rush are really aimed at those who support him, the “true patriots” that oppose Obama’s “Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.” Newsmax suggests some on the Right may consider armed violent resistance to the Obama Administration, which to me represents a new high watermark in rightwing hysteria surpassing the previous one left behind by the Terri Schiavo case. The “patriot game” was of little use to Republicans in the last election cycle and except for the low- information voter should prove equally useless this time around.
Progressive political thinkers might ask themselves what intellectual ammunition would be of use in countering this 21st Century Ghost Dance. My suggestion is to start with facts. Socialism is defined as the “collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” That definition encompasses the entirety of economic activity. While the present breakdown in the economy has necessitated a large degree of government involvement in economic affairs, nowhere is there any evidence that Barack Obama is advocating government oversight of economic activity beyond those sectors where the free market has failed. Ironically, it was House Republicans that advocated a partial socialization of banking in the financial bailout of 2008. How hypocritical to oppose the very ideas they once promoted. Having dispensed with the allegation that the Obama Administration aims to affect a wholesale socialization of the economy we can skip past the Stalinist / Leninist rhetoric altogether.
Conservative media is obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama wants to punish success and has declared a war on prosperity. For all of the Conservative rhetoric regarding government policy and the economy, it is an established fact that in the post World War II period the economy has generally done better under Democrats than Republicans. Democratic administrations have outperformed their Republican counterparts across the board on average in terms of annualized job creation, GDP and GDP per capita growth rates. Despite all of the talk of taxing the wealthy and its effect on the economy, under Democratic administrations the wealthiest have done almost as well as they have under Republicans. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama won the majority of those earning over $200,000.00 in spite of the fact that Republicans constantly warned voters of the prospect of higher taxes. While Conservatives bend over backwards in arguing for lower tax rates for the rich and businesses, they remain silent on the subject of tax fairness. In 1980 the amount of national wealth received by the top one percent of wage earners was eight percent of the total wealth created in the United States whereas in 2008 it was twenty six percent. Changes in tax laws since the Reagan era have led to the shifting of the national tax burden from wealth to labor resulting in the largest redistribution of wealth upwards since the 1920s. Likewise, the past eight years have seen the percentage of national wealth that accrues to the working American fall to the lowest percentage on record. Median family income, based on Census Bureau findings, actually declined between 2000 and 2007 when adjusted for inflation while at the same time productivity, profits and executive compensation registered strong gains. That said, what are the real arguments to be made for maintaining the status quo with regard to tax policy and the distribution of income as it relates to the economic well being of the people who actually go to work every day and create the goods and services of a modern economy? Somehow, Conservative thinking as it relates to tax policy and prosperity has either missed or ignored eighty percent of the population while obsessing on the well being of the business community and entrepreneurs. Owing to the fact that the “prosperity” of the past eight years was largely fueled by financial engineering, debt accumulation and the housing bubble rather than income growth, where in this time period can we find evidence of the validity of a conservative economic theory which promotes growth through lower taxes?
In their nostalgia for the Reagan era, Conservatives have adhered to an image of the man based on his rhetoric as opposed to his actual record in office. The federal government actually grew under Reagan as he added a new cabinet level department and various other executive level bureaus. While he argued the virtues of limited spending he embarked on a massive military buildup, much of it in excess of what the threat level of that time required. Large-scale military buildups are public spending just the way bridge and highway projects are, it’s only the products that differ. Both ultimately aid overall economic activity. In spite of supposed strength of conservative economic theories, the recession of 1981-1983 was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, until today, with unemployment topping ten percent. While Reagan talked tough with the Soviets he reached out to them and successfully concluded an arms treaty. He was far more bipartisan than are the Republicans of today. He was largely silent on the issue of abortion.
While those in the pro-Obama mainstream media, along with Rahm Emanuel and his Democratic allies, will continue to publicly bait Limbaugh for their own obvious benefit, there is a growing chorus of concern among Republicans inside and outside of government as to how to defuse the extremists on the far right. Former Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Vin Weber have been quick to point out that Limbaugh is not the head of the GOP nor is he its spokesman. Former Republican Congressman and talk show host Joe Scarborough has pointed to a need for the GOP to formulate a constructive strategy for the future and to ignore Limbaugh altogether. Former RNCC Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma summed up the GOP’s current predicament with the following observation: “The politics of the country are changing profoundly and rapidly, much as they did in 1932 and 1980.” While Rush Limbaugh intones that Conservative principles are essentially unalterable and forever, moderate Republican observers will argue that those principals need to be modernized or else Republicans are looking at a future with their party in permanent minority status.
Limbaugh and his CPAC acolytes argue that “Americans are conservative by instinct”, but empirically it is hard to make such an argument. A November 2008 poll by Pew Research would show that only 38 percent of Americans identify as conservatives. More importantly the most recent NYT/CBS tracking poll of political identification shows only 28 percent of Americans consider themselves Republican. On a county-by-county basis the 2008 presidential election reveals a significant shift towards the Democratic Party, even in many of the states that went for McCain. With the exception of an arc running roughly from Oklahoma through Arkansas, Tennessee and into Appalachia, most of the rest of the country shows an overall rise in the numbers of people who voted Democrat. Current opinion polls also show that in the face of stubborn opposition from the Right, Obama’s overall approval ratings remain high. With a 60 percent favorable rating overall, the President does even better when polling becomes more specific. On topics like withdrawing from Iraq or whether the economic crisis is his fault or inherited, his ratings exceed 80 percent, whereas for Republicans 56 percent of respondents say they are playing politics rather than standing on principles. In terms of the direction the country, 41 percent say it is on the right track, up from 12 percent who felt that way in October of 2008. Currently, Congressional Republicans have an approval rating below that of their Democrat counterparts. Meanwhile among those below the age of 40, Mr. Limbaugh receives a paltry 11 percent approval rating. His audience and his appeal among independent voters is essentially nonexistent.
While this modern day Conservative Ghost Dance wends its way across the political landscape, its ultimate destination remains a mystery. Given the current political climate it does not seem that Rush Limbaugh, his acolytes and his defacto, if not unwilling, Republican allies will return to majority status or the seat of power anytime soon. While Conservatives are venerating an imagined past, the number of people identifying with the Republican Party or willing to vote for its program is shrinking. The GOP is seen more and more as the party of the South and one that is only gaining adherents among the less educated living in the most rural regions of the country. While the core beliefs and principles of the Right seem out of date or inapplicable in this current climate of worldwide economic crisis, there has to be more to the movement than the politics of obstruction. Absent a new message and a program that attracts independents, the only hope that Conservatives and Republicans have is to bank on Democratic failure, which is neither creative nor compelling in the eyes of the voters. Beyond this paucity of new ideas the more immediate concern is that Limbaugh, the Radical Right and the politics of obstruction will derail the GOP’s electoral chances altogether in the next election cycle. After all 2010 will be here before we know it.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
March 5, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
Listening to the rhetoric flowing out of CPAC 2009 one could conclude that the Conservative Movement has embraced its own version of a 21st Century Ghost Dance, led by its own modern day Wovoka in the person of Rush Limbaugh. It is as if by reiterating ideology, invoking the memory of Reagan and maligning the Obama recovery effort as “socialist”, that Conservatives will somehow forestall imminent political change. In an attempt to heighten alarm Limbaugh lays claim to the idea that life, liberty and freedom are under assault. He states that Barack Obama will eliminate capitalism and individual liberty as the cornerstone of American life. Limbaugh makes such a claim in spite of the historical fact that the government has been intimately involved in economic affairs since 1819 with no appreciable loss of personal liberty to date. Nonetheless Limbaugh has put the failure of the Obama recovery program at the top of his personal political agenda because he thinks that such failure will bring about a return to a glorious (imagined) past. Limbaugh defiantly rejects the 2008 election as proof positive that Americans want a change in direction because the electoral results don’t square with his vision of America. All this from a man who, somewhere on the spectrum between ideological purist and buffoon, doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution when it comes to a quote regarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Somehow talk of “true patriotism” rings hollow coming from a man who had more draft deferments during the Vietnam War than some soldiers had combat action medals. As CPAC continued, Mike Huckabee claimed, “Lenin and Stalin would love the Obama program” leading one to believe that the former presidential candidate knows less about history than does Sarah Palin. Anyone who thinks that the Obama recovery plans bear any resemblance to Soviet economic polices of the last century is either irresponsibly playing with words for the sake of incitement or just lacks the background required to engage in intelligent political discourse.
Beyond Limbaugh and CPAC the hysteria over the “slide into socialism” continues unabated in conservative media. Harry R Jackson, Jr. intones that: “a war for the soul of the nation” is raging. Pat Buchanan declared the Obama budget a “declaration of war on the Right.” The latest piece from Dick Morris is entitled “Waging War on Prosperity.” Limbaugh’s own brother David has gone so far as to say that media attacks leveled at Rush are really aimed at those who support him, the “true patriots” that oppose Obama’s “Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.” Newsmax suggests some on the Right may consider armed violent resistance to the Obama Administration, which to me represents a new high watermark in rightwing hysteria surpassing the previous one left behind by the Terri Schiavo case. The “patriot game” was of little use to Republicans in the last election cycle and except for the low- information voter should prove equally useless this time around.
Progressive political thinkers might ask themselves what intellectual ammunition would be of use in countering this 21st Century Ghost Dance. My suggestion is to start with facts. Socialism is defined as the “collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” That definition encompasses the entirety of economic activity. While the present breakdown in the economy has necessitated a large degree of government involvement in economic affairs, nowhere is there any evidence that Barack Obama is advocating government oversight of economic activity beyond those sectors where the free market has failed. Ironically, it was House Republicans that advocated a partial socialization of banking in the financial bailout of 2008. How hypocritical to oppose the very ideas they once promoted. Having dispensed with the allegation that the Obama Administration aims to affect a wholesale socialization of the economy we can skip past the Stalinist / Leninist rhetoric altogether.
Conservative media is obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama wants to punish success and has declared a war on prosperity. For all of the Conservative rhetoric regarding government policy and the economy, it is an established fact that in the post World War II period the economy has generally done better under Democrats than Republicans. Democratic administrations have outperformed their Republican counterparts across the board on average in terms of annualized job creation, GDP and GDP per capita growth rates. Despite all of the talk of taxing the wealthy and its effect on the economy, under Democratic administrations the wealthiest have done almost as well as they have under Republicans. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama won the majority of those earning over $200,000.00 in spite of the fact that Republicans constantly warned voters of the prospect of higher taxes. While Conservatives bend over backwards in arguing for lower tax rates for the rich and businesses, they remain silent on the subject of tax fairness. In 1980 the amount of national wealth received by the top one percent of wage earners was eight percent of the total wealth created in the United States whereas in 2008 it was twenty six percent. Changes in tax laws since the Reagan era have led to the shifting of the national tax burden from wealth to labor resulting in the largest redistribution of wealth upwards since the 1920s. Likewise, the past eight years have seen the percentage of national wealth that accrues to the working American fall to the lowest percentage on record. Median family income, based on Census Bureau findings, actually declined between 2000 and 2007 when adjusted for inflation while at the same time productivity, profits and executive compensation registered strong gains. That said, what are the real arguments to be made for maintaining the status quo with regard to tax policy and the distribution of income as it relates to the economic well being of the people who actually go to work every day and create the goods and services of a modern economy? Somehow, Conservative thinking as it relates to tax policy and prosperity has either missed or ignored eighty percent of the population while obsessing on the well being of the business community and entrepreneurs. Owing to the fact that the “prosperity” of the past eight years was largely fueled by financial engineering, debt accumulation and the housing bubble rather than income growth, where in this time period can we find evidence of the validity of a conservative economic theory which promotes growth through lower taxes?
In their nostalgia for the Reagan era, Conservatives have adhered to an image of the man based on his rhetoric as opposed to his actual record in office. The federal government actually grew under Reagan as he added a new cabinet level department and various other executive level bureaus. While he argued the virtues of limited spending he embarked on a massive military buildup, much of it in excess of what the threat level of that time required. Large-scale military buildups are public spending just the way bridge and highway projects are, it’s only the products that differ. Both ultimately aid overall economic activity. In spite of supposed strength of conservative economic theories, the recession of 1981-1983 was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, until today, with unemployment topping ten percent. While Reagan talked tough with the Soviets he reached out to them and successfully concluded an arms treaty. He was far more bipartisan than are the Republicans of today. He was largely silent on the issue of abortion.
While those in the pro-Obama mainstream media, along with Rahm Emanuel and his Democratic allies, will continue to publicly bait Limbaugh for their own obvious benefit, there is a growing chorus of concern among Republicans inside and outside of government as to how to defuse the extremists on the far right. Former Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Vin Weber have been quick to point out that Limbaugh is not the head of the GOP nor is he its spokesman. Former Republican Congressman and talk show host Joe Scarborough has pointed to a need for the GOP to formulate a constructive strategy for the future and to ignore Limbaugh altogether. Former RNCC Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma summed up the GOP’s current predicament with the following observation: “The politics of the country are changing profoundly and rapidly, much as they did in 1932 and 1980.” While Rush Limbaugh intones that Conservative principles are essentially unalterable and forever, moderate Republican observers will argue that those principals need to be modernized or else Republicans are looking at a future with their party in permanent minority status.
Limbaugh and his CPAC acolytes argue that “Americans are conservative by instinct”, but empirically it is hard to make such an argument. A November 2008 poll by Pew Research would show that only 38 percent of Americans identify as conservatives. More importantly the most recent NYT/CBS tracking poll of political identification shows only 28 percent of Americans consider themselves Republican. On a county-by-county basis the 2008 presidential election reveals a significant shift towards the Democratic Party, even in many of the states that went for McCain. With the exception of an arc running roughly from Oklahoma through Arkansas, Tennessee and into Appalachia, most of the rest of the country shows an overall rise in the numbers of people who voted Democrat. Current opinion polls also show that in the face of stubborn opposition from the Right, Obama’s overall approval ratings remain high. With a 60 percent favorable rating overall, the President does even better when polling becomes more specific. On topics like withdrawing from Iraq or whether the economic crisis is his fault or inherited, his ratings exceed 80 percent, whereas for Republicans 56 percent of respondents say they are playing politics rather than standing on principles. In terms of the direction the country, 41 percent say it is on the right track, up from 12 percent who felt that way in October of 2008. Currently, Congressional Republicans have an approval rating below that of their Democrat counterparts. Meanwhile among those below the age of 40, Mr. Limbaugh receives a paltry 11 percent approval rating. His audience and his appeal among independent voters is essentially nonexistent.
While this modern day Conservative Ghost Dance wends its way across the political landscape, its ultimate destination remains a mystery. Given the current political climate it does not seem that Rush Limbaugh, his acolytes and his defacto, if not unwilling, Republican allies will return to majority status or the seat of power anytime soon. While Conservatives are venerating an imagined past, the number of people identifying with the Republican Party or willing to vote for its program is shrinking. The GOP is seen more and more as the party of the South and one that is only gaining adherents among the less educated living in the most rural regions of the country. While the core beliefs and principles of the Right seem out of date or inapplicable in this current climate of worldwide economic crisis, there has to be more to the movement than the politics of obstruction. Absent a new message and a program that attracts independents, the only hope that Conservatives and Republicans have is to bank on Democratic failure, which is neither creative nor compelling in the eyes of the voters. Beyond this paucity of new ideas the more immediate concern is that Limbaugh, the Radical Right and the politics of obstruction will derail the GOP’s electoral chances altogether in the next election cycle. After all 2010 will be here before we know it.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
March 5, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
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