I’m stealing an idea from political blogger Sensico today and I’m going to review the top 5 of my blog posts for the “decade” just ending. I place “decade” in quotes because I’ve only been blogging since September of 2007. Still, here you are, the posts that have received the most “hits” since I started.
1. Obama, Racism and Inevitable Self-examination September 18, 2009: For someone who planned to write about racism very seldom, I wound up returning to the issue several times over the past year. What prompted this post was the Glenn Beck inspired September 12 Tea Party protest and specifically some of the blatantly violent and racist signs on display at that protest. I got a couple of things wrong here. First I used Jimmy Carter as a righteous source of outrage without doing sufficient research to determine that Carter’s own political career was not racially spotless. Second, I think (and I hope) that the main stream media and I both got it wrong regarding the real threat of these people. Ultimately, I think these folks are angry folks letting off steam. Every angry crowd attracts nutjobs and it is very easy to focus on them to the exclusion of the harmless. Some folks in the tea party movement have valid concerns and others are sixth grade dropouts eager to be seen on TV. Either way, I think rumors of the country’s imminent civil war were greatly exaggerated.
As a trivial side note, this article attracted someone claiming to be in one of the pictures I posted and threatening to sue me if I did not remove his photo. I complied but not before writing to tell him what a coward he was. If you’re gonna stand in public with a sign threatening violence to America, you should have the guts to be called out on it.
2. The John McCain Female Woman Haters Club July 31, 2008: This is one of my favorite posts, a combination of legitimate outrage and poking a stick in the eye of conservatives everywhere. The sad back story to this post is that it was one of the first of my articles that went through the roof on web traffic and when I examined the phenomenon more closely I discovered people were surfing for pictures of the women, in particular one of Nancy Pfotenhauer.
Nancy Pfotenhauer
So here I was thinking that folks were enjoying my ridicule of self-loathing women when in fact they were probably a bunch of men in the mold of National Review’s Rich Lowry looking for GOP women to fuel their masturbatory fantasies. Oh well, I guess sex sells.
3. Another Fine Moment for Republicans September 10, 2009: September was a rough month for Obama supporters. This article was prompted by the performance of perhaps the most ignorant man in the United States House of Representatives, Joe Wilson. Not only did Joe have the unmitigated gall to call a sitting US President a liar to his face during a joint session of Congress, he wasn’t even right on the facts. The health care legislation being promoted by Obama specifically ruled out care for illegal aliens but not according to genius Joe. The facts of the incident pale in comparison to the overall phenomenon that this President is not deemed worthy of respect in even that most dignified of settings, the Congressional chamber.
Then again, the Chamber has taken some other hits this year, from Dem Representative Alan Grayson saying that the GOP wants you to die to GOP Representative John Shadegg using a baby as a political prop. It is confounding that we pay these folks’ salaries!
4. Is An Effigy No Longer Good Enough? September 24, 2009: I had to chuckle that this one made the top 5. This shoot first, ask questions later post of mine concerned the census worker who was found dead in Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest. The only defense I can make for this post is that I was suffering from “the country is about to be torn asunder” dementia. History (very short-term history) would prove that the dude killed himself and made it look like a murder for the insurance money. I still claim a 98% batting average on my posts (or in Obama’s words, I give myself an “A-”) but this article clearly was dead on arrival.
5. Sarah Palin Just Wants to Help October 10, 2009: This was the biggest surprise of all as I checked my traffic statistics. Usually, my cartoons are not popular but I soldier on since I have fun producing them. I can only guess that this one got lots of hits because any article about Sarah Palin will attract Googlers. Heck, I could have had a headline that said “Sarah Palin Just Farted” and I would have been guaranteed at least 200 hits. In a country that grows dumber with each passing year, Sarah Palin has become its queen.
Feminism has hit either a nadir or a zenith depending on your perspective. Now, instead of intelligent women having to fight to be heard, dumbass and/or crazy women attract huge followings. Whether it is beauty pageant contestants Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean or certifiably insane nutjobs like Michele Bachman, women are making headlines daily. You sure have come a long way baby! (I never dreamed I would love Hillary Clinton but at least she is out there proving that hard-working intelligent women can succeed gloriously in this society.)
An honorable mention:
One of my articles came in eighth in traffic hits but performed spectacularly “overseas”. I cross-post my articles to a couple of other places and on one of them, Best of The Blogs, my article Time to Impeach Barack Obama received more than 34,000 hits. The traffic was in direct proportion to the anger I felt as I wrote the post. I had put up with a lot of Obama bashing but when the Right declared it was unsafe for our school children to hear an address from their President, I very nearly blew a blood vessel.
Speaking of Obama bashing, how can I end 2009 without one more slap at the Dick, Cheney. This hateful, ignorant prick of a man lacks the dignity of a former Vice President as he verges on treason with his constant heckling of our Commander-in-Chief. A true patriot would actively (and privately) campaign for Obama to make him an advisor where he could have some influence on policy. But Dick Cheney is not a patriot. 9/11 transformed Dick Cheney from a hard-working servant of America into a paranoid wreck incapable of setting well thought out policy. One reason Dick probably hasn’t offered his services to the Obama administration is that he knows they don’t want a war criminal in their administration. Cheney is the crazed gorilla throwing his own dung at passers-by.
Sadly, conservatives who desperately need to know the truth behind Cheney’s latest criticism of Obama are too biased to watch the following video. You see, there is no doubt that MSNBC is as partisan on the left as Fox News is on the right. But there is a difference. MSNBC tells truths while Fox promulgates lies, shamelessly and repeatedly. Still, I ask every intelligent reader of this article to watch the following video of Rachel Maddow’s analysis of Cheney and tell me that it is not bullet proof. She shows Cheney and the GOP for the hypocrites that they are. Will 2010 bring more honest and reasoned debate? I doubt it but we can always hope.
On ABC’s This Week and NBC’s Meet the Press, Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano focused on how “the system worked” on the Northwest Airlines flight that almost got blown to bits on Christmas day.
I’m sorry folks but I don’t want Billy Bob Watson of Tupelo, Mississippi and flight attendant Arlene standing between me and certain death. Granted, when passengers and crew act heroically we should be grateful but I get kinda concerned when this becomes Homeland Security’s first line of defense.
Now did I expect Ms. Napolitano to say “we screwed up and this should never have happened”? Of course not. But I also did not expect her to keep emphasizing the role of the average citizen in fighting terrorism. Not a single person involved in saving that holiday flight was an air marshall or any sort of law enforcement officer. Napolitano said she didn’t want vigilantism but I sure got a mixed signal from her.
From what I’ve read it seems to me that we’ve got way too many “people of interest” on one list (about a half million) and too few on the “no fly” list. Abdulmutallab was on the “everyone who ever said something scary list” but somehow wasn’t on the no fly list. I’d be curious what the criteria is to be on these lists. Abdulmutallab was obviously on the wrong one.
Regardless, our government needs to lead with the assurance that they are learning from experience to protect us and not lead by telling me that I have to tackle the guy next to me when he sets his pants on fire.
About this time last year, I posted an article about a song that I found very moving. Today I am just posting the lyrics to the song, based on a Longfellow poem. Even though the song mentions God, I believe regardless of religious persuasion the listener can find a message that resonates.
No matter how bad things seem to be, there is always tomorrow and always the opportunity for good to defeat evil. No matter what damage is done, evil cannot destroy hope for a better tomorrow.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet their songs repeat
Of peace on earth good will to men
And the bells are ringing
Like a choir they’re singing
In my heart I hear them
Peace on earth, good will to men
And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men
But the bells are ringing
Like a choir singing
Does anybody hear them?
Peace on earth, good will to men
Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men
Then ringing singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men
And the bells they’re ringing
Like a choir they’re singing
And with our hearts we’ll hear them
Peace on earth, good will to men
Do you hear the bells they’re ringing?
The life the angels singing
Open up your heart and hear them
Peace on earth, good will to men
Peace on earth, Peace on earth
Peace on earth, Good will to men
This is the sorry state that we have come to. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows more support for the Tea Party than for the Democratic or Republican Party.
When you get underneath the numbers, a major contingent of Tea Party fans get their info from Fox News. In fact 75% of Fox News viewers were fans of the Tea Party movement. Wow, what a surprise there!
On December 15, the Tea Party (or at least one of its many factions) walked into Congress planning to stage a “die-in” where they planned to play dead to illustrate the results of any health care reform that might be passed. The result was not quite what the organizers were hoping for. In fact, subbing for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown”, Lawrence O’Donnell reported that the protesters were treated to beverages when they entered the Capitol and not a single one “played dead”.
This is the band of geniuses who will be running our country starting in 2010 if the polls are to be believed. Well at least they have a sense of humor:
I guess it’s sort of a chicken-egg scenario. Does a polarized society breed a polarized media or does a polarized media breed a polarized society? Increasingly we are seeing folks take opposite positions not on opinion but on the facts. When that happens, someone plain and simple, is lying.
There are loads of examples but the one that was most recently brought to my attention by my readers is the case of Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. Let’s start with the phrase “Safe Schools Czar”. This phrase fits in with the conservative talking point that Obama has all these unconstitutional “czars”. The Safe Schools Czar was in fact created by George W. Bush as part of No Child Left Behind and was staffed with two people with no qualifications in education. Jennings, appointed by Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education (not Obama) was the first Safe Schools Czar with any background in education.
Let’s dig deeper and look at some of the coverage:
Jennings hid a case of statutory rape: A student confided in Jennings that he had been involved with an older man. Jennings “counseled” him that he should wear protection. Jennings actually contributed to the statutory rape part of the story by mistakenly referring to the boy as 15 years of age when he was in fact 16 (the age of consent). Fox News had to correct its sensational headline when the boy himself came forward with evidence of his age. To further lay the matter to rest, Jennings said:
Twenty one years later I can see how I should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities. Teachers back then had little training or guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers.
Admittedly, this statement is a bit too little too late. As gay conservative blogger, B. Daniel Blatt points out, the issue is how could anyone in counseling the boy neglect to give the obvious advice to NOT have casual sex with strangers (which is what the boy admitted to). By fanning the flames of a bogus statutory rape charge, the right-wing lost the opportunity to hammer home Blatt’s more relevant point.
Jennings is a NAMBLA supporter: This one falls in the “Obama pals around with terrorists” category, namely lazy connect the dots journalism. Jennings, who is gay, spoke positively of Harry Hay, a gay activist from the 1950′s and 1960′s. He found inspiration from Hay’s advocacy. Some headlines cited Hay as founder of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association). The fact is that Hay did not found NAMBLA although late in his life he was a vocal NAMBLA sympathizer. At no time did Jennings voice support for NAMBLA nor did he say that Hay’s support of NAMBLA influenced him.
Jennings distributed porn to students: This is one of the latest shoddy jobs of journalism (i.e. lies) coming out of the right-wing. Jennings founded and led GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). GLSEN sponsored a conference at which a third-party (Fenway Community Health) made available pamphlets describing explicit sexual activity. GLSEN did not request this information be made available nor did it approve of it. It was basically a slip up.
Now let’s look at this slip up from a few different angles. First, this was not classroom activity in a school, this was a conference about sexual matters and any parent taking their kid to such a conference had to understand the inherent risk of seeing information that might be over the top. I cannot for the life of me comprehend why any parent would take their kid to such a conference. Second, although Fenway claims no child took any of the pamphlets, let’s assume one did. Would that pamphlet scar him for life? Would it be any different from the kid finding a Hustler magazine in the basement? Cable companies have accidentally broadcast porn in the middle of a family show. While it triggered outrage, were any kids permanently scarred? Third, there is the question of what information should be shared with kids by way of preparing them for the real world. While I found the information in the pamphlet age-inappropriate (various “alternative” sexual practices were discussed) it reminded me of information I received in junior high school some 35 years ago. Back then, under the guise of informing kids about drugs so they wouldn’t use them, very detailed information was distributed to students on every drug imaginable, its effects, its slang names, etc. Years later, I looked back on it a bit puzzled. Why would you tell kids everything they wanted to know about drugs if the goal was to keep them away from it? In my opinion this is a typical pattern in educational circles of giving too much information. While the GLSEN conference is an extreme case, I think it fits the pattern.
Jennings wrote the forward to a pedophilia book: This is one of the more preposterous of the lies promulgated by the right-wing media. This lie is almost understandable because the truth is much more complex and to many minds, just as disturbing. Fox and friends simply found the lie easier to sell than the more complicated truth. The book in question is titled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling. I read an excerpt on Amazon.com. From my reading, it starts from the premise that homosexuals are born that way and therefore, teachers have in their class straight and gay students. Right off the bat, this premise leaves behind an entire league of people for whom homosexuality is deemed a choice, not an innate predisposition. With that premise in place, the book goes on to discuss how can we educate “homosexual children” in such a way that they are not demeaned or pigeon holed into a heterosexual model of behavior.
To any ordinary Joe, this is some radical stuff. The whole idea of labeling a five year old gay is ridiculous to some and downright repugnant to many. The fact is, as far as I can surmise, Kevin Jennings is steeped in a very political view of gay rights that includes the perception that gays are unfairly treated right out of the womb. (By the way, his “hero” Harry Hay seems to have the same view.)
So what is the bottom line to all this? In the never-ending effort to dumb down America and get eyeballs on web pages and TV screens, the right-wing media chose a bunch of lies (and some half-truths) to get everyone riled up about Kevin Jennings. What is fascinating is that the truth, although perhaps harder to present on paper, still leaves the average person with misgivings about Jennings. Should Duncan have appointed him? Despite Jenning’s stellar resume, I think Duncan bought himself more trouble than he needed to. America is justifiably sensitive about who controls their children’s education. While I believe Jenning’s ultimate influence in his job is small, mostly limited to anti-bullying campaigns, his real background (not the trumped up BS) touches on radical ideas for which most of the country is not yet ready. Some may call Jennings an outright pervert, others may call him a man before his time. No matter how you cut it, Duncan could have made a better choice.
If you want to investigate the different sides of this story, Gateway Pundit has made an entire side-business to “following” Jennings. Media Matters has taken the position of supporting Jennings (unfortunately mostly by saying “that’s not true, that’s not true” but providing little contrary evidence). Think Progress wrote a practical unemotional attempt to fact check the Jennings stories. George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity square off on the topic, with George trying to be a journalist and Hannity yelling the sky is falling.
Unfortunately, as long as the media chooses to lie instead of doing the hard work, you will have to do your own research to get a better understanding of any issue.
No, I have not lost my mind. I have not become a “birther”. President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 (incidentally the same year I was born in New York City), is a citizen of these United States and is a legitimate President. What I want to address here goes beyond the facts of his birth. I want to get an angle on the constant “he’s not one of us” theme that we hear. I want to get beyond the obvious suspicions of racism and go a bit deeper, or since the argument is fairly obvious, perhaps not that deep. You be the judge.
On Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast former Vice President Dick Cheney made the usual ass of himself but one of the things he said can be examined more closely.
Cheney says, “this is a guy who … does not share that view of American exceptionalism that most of us believe in.” Let’s put aside the disrespect inherent in “this is a guy” (he’s your damn President DICK), and look at the statement. Obama does not believe that America is exceptional. One could look, as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did, at Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 where he says that his story could only happen in America, and see that Obama thinks our country is special. But does he see this in an academic, almost clinical way? Does he feel it viscerally?
Let’s rewind a few months to see Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz’s assessment:
The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.
He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.
Dorothy says Obama is a “stranger to the country’s heart and character.” A similar perception to that of the former Vice President. Is Obama simply a victim of this assessment or has he contributed to it in some way?
I think there is an intuitive answer that demonstrates Obama’s contribution to this perception. From the time he was born until he graduated from high school, Barack Obama lived outside the mainland United States. I would argue that Hawaii, just barely a state in 1961, was hardly representative of the “American experience” and of course, Obama spent several years in Jakarta, Indonesia. Twenty years after his graduation from an exclusive Hawaiian high school, he wrote in their bulletin, “The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.” [1] I think we could safely argue that although mostly raised by his Kansas bred grandparents, Barack Obama got anything but a typical mid-west white bread view of America.
I believe that having not lived in the mainland United States until college, that Obama had an objective view of our country atypical of most of our other Presidents. In Obama’s world view, America might be special, but not necessarily “better” than other civilized countries. America might be a land of virtue and ideals but not the be-all end-all barometer of morality. On the contrary, America could be capable of doing the wrong thing. America could be imperfect. America could need improvement.
I believe that Obama’s objective view of our country, much from the perspective of an outsider (even more outside than the average black man), makes his love for our country appear less visceral. America likes its Presidents to reek of Americana, whether it’s Abe Lincoln splitting logs or Eisenhower or Kennedy bravely defending their country in war. Obama comes to us with a different story. A story of an outsider who wants to fix the problems that the insiders may be too blind to see. Such outsiders do not usually engender affection from the insiders.
Is Barack Obama an American? Well, yes he is but he is a different kind of American. He is an American who believes you can be special and still be equal to your peers, showing them respect and apologizing when you’ve done them wrong. America is a proud country, proud to a fault. Humility, on an international scale runs, as Ms. Rabinowitz puts it “counter to its nature.” Hence she and Dick Cheney will probably never understand what a good American Barack Obama really is.
Let’s end the work week with some brief items mostly trivial although clearly some less trivial than others.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Apparently at the White House it is indeed guesswork to figure out who is coming to dinner. This was proven last week as the now infamous publicity whores known as the Salahi’s crashed Barack Obama’s State Dinner in honor of the Prime Minister of India. This is old news by now except for one recent and odd development in the story. Congress has been holding hearings investigating how the Salahi’s could have gotten into the White House without an invitation. When it was requested that the social secretary, Desiree Rogers appear before Congress to explain the White House staff’s contribution to this fiasco, the request was denied citing executive privilege. Excuse me? We’re not asking Ms. Rogers to spill state secrets. We’re asking her to own up to her and her staff’s screw up. Granted, the Secret Service is the first line of defense and they deserve a thorough thrashing but they weren’t the only ones who screwed up. (Apparently when the White House staff was made aware that the Salahi’s should not have been there, nothing was done to remove them.) The White House reaction to this incident, including the declaration of executive privilege leads me to believe not only were they complicit in the “crashing” but they don’t understand the severity of the error.
On a side note, should anyone be surprised that the Secret Service screwed up their end of this? Our memories are way too short. When George W. Bush got a shoe thrown at him, the only thing that saved him from minor injury was his own excellent reflexes. The fact that the assailant got off another shoe and that Bush was still in the “line of fire” for the second volly shows that the Secret Service is far from infallible. After the first shoe, Bush should have been tackled to the ground by an SS guy while another SS guy put a bullet in the shoe-throwers head. You don’t attack the President. Plain and simple. With these examples of lackluster performance, it is truly amazing that we haven’t seen a “successful” assassination since 1963.
The Joke, er, Jobs Summit
I’ve heard two people share their view of the hastily assembled Jobs Summit that was held Thursday in Washington. Both people said something to the effect of “I heard some interesting things at the Summit.” Sorry, I’m not interested in a bunch of CEO’s getting together and sharing interesting insights, especially when many of those CEO’s are the greedy bastards who have put thousands of people out on the street to please their stock holders.
In addition to labor leaders, economists and think-tank sorts, the attendees included business leaders from AT&T (where 12,000 jobs were cut a year ago and about 4,600 this year), Boeing Co. (where 6,212 net jobs have been eliminated since November 2008), AstraZeneca (6,000 cuts this year and 1,400 last year), American Airlines (which laid off 6,800 last summer and more workers in October), Home Depot (which announced 7,000 jobs cuts in January), Dow (which cut 5,000 last December), U.S. Steel (3,500 cuts in North America), Xerox (3,000 jobs cut this year), Disney (which eliminated 1,900 jobs in the first quarter), and Dow Corning Corp. (which cut 800 workers globally earlier this year).
What really burned me up was hearing the Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs tell MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that a lot of businesses are claiming “they can’t hire the workers that they need right now.” You’ll never guess why. Apparently, “they can’t hire skilled workers. They can’t find the welders. They can’t find the people who really know the trades.” These companies supposedly have jobs but the kids dropping out of school don’t have the skills needed.
Yes these companies want so badly to hire more people. I call BS big time. Have any of these companies heard of unpaid apprenticeships where you train the person and don’t pay him until he can do the job? Are you telling me that the able-bodied unemployed would not gladly work for free for a few months with a promise of employment once they’re trained? People have mortgages to pay. Many will do whatever it takes to secure a job. And I’m sorry folks, while welding is hard work, it’s not rocket science. Any company that really wants to hire can train within a few months and then have the employees they claim they want so badly. To hear Dr. Sachs repeat this drivel made me sick. This is nothing more than excuse making. To add insult to injury, for purely political reasons a key player, the Chamber of Commerce was not even invited to the summit. Will anything come out of this summit? Only time will tell but as of today, I am not impressed.
Take My Picture, Please
Our favorite Facebook political pundit, Sarah Palin is charging her “fans” sixteen bucks to get their picture taken with her on the book tour. Considering that many bookstores have reduced the price of her book, Going Rogue to $20.00, it costs you almost as much to get a lousy photo as it does to buy the book itself. On the bright side, Ms. Palin has proven once and for all that she is no socialist. In World-Palin, capitalism is alive and well.
What do Meredith Baxter and Tiger Woods Have in Common?
You wouldn’t think that the actress from “Family Ties” fame, Meredith Baxter would have much in common with pro golfer Tiger Woods but you’d be wrong. Apparently they both like girls a bit more than we thought they did. In the case of Ms. Baxter, she announced this week that she is a lesbian. OK, so what. An entertainment footnote if ever there was one. The case of Tiger is a bit different. Folks through no fault of Tiger’s, assumed he was the wholesome athletic hero worthy of being on the Wheaties box. They discovered over the past week that Tiger has been doing way more with his putter than anyone expected, least of all his wife, who may very well have smashed a hole in his car with a golf club when she learned of his indiscretions. While this story is a week old, there is a new development worth addressing.
Apparently, Mrs. Woods is renegotiating the pre-nup agreement with her husband. As I understand it, Tiger will give her $5 million now and an additional $55 million if she sticks around for another two years.
Now folks, call me an old-fashioned romantic but where I come from if a woman is justifiably angry at her husband for infidelity, she has two choices. Either forgive him and stick around or divorce him and get as much money as you can. Mrs. Woods seems to be making a third choice. We have a name for women who get paid to “stay” with a man. The nice word is “escort”. We all know what the not-so-nice word is.
It has been over 24 hours since President Barack Obama made his speech announcing our strategy in Afghanistan going forward. Conservatives, as could be expected, used the speech as another opportunity to bash Obama. The speech was not perfect and the plan it described less so, but in the usual brain-dead fashion Conservatives seized upon the dumbest of talking points.
Karl Rove said the President took longer to give the generals 75% of what they asked for than it took Bush to defeat the Taliban back in 2001. Karl has clearly lost his mojo since we wouldn’t be talking about Afghanistan right now if Bush had defeated the Taliban in 2001.
Another criticism is that we have announced an exit date, giving our enemy the time period in which they can sit tight and wait to re-emerge. More foolishness. We are going to have an 18 month target to achieve our objectives and then depending on conditions on the ground, we will turn over responsibility to the Afghans.
When it comes to military exercises, I’m more or less a regular Joe. I have to distill all the complexities down to the basics. If the Conservatives had half a brain they would be making their complaints based on the basics.
Here are the basics:
1. We will teach the Afghan army and police how to kick Taliban ass.
2. We will nation build. Yes I know Obama calls it a “civilian strategy” but let’s be frank. If you are helping a government behave like a democracy in the image of America, you are nation building.
3. Stronger ties with Pakistan, vaguely stated.
My average Joe perspective on this is that the strategy is muddled at best. First, we cannot afford to go into every country where a corrupt central government is unable to protect its people from the local thugs. The Taliban may be a scourge but how are they a threat to the United States? They want to oppress fellow Afghans. Disturbing, shameful but really not our problem. Our problem is Al Qaeda which has all but disappeared from Afghanistan.
Second, nation building only works in a country that cries out for our brand of democracy. The notion that we will turn centuries of tribal tradition into a united people who respect a central government within 18 months is a wild stretch of the imagination. I have seen no reports of Afghan soldiers particularly wanting to be trained by us. In fact, the situation looks quite grim:
General Egon Ramms, a German commander in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, warned last month that the current police force of around 68,000 is prone to corruption and training has been less than efficient.
Out of 94,000 Afghan soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, he said, while estimating that 15 percent of the armed forces are drug addicts
Finally, the third leg in the stool is the wobbliest, the least well defined and yet to my mind the most important. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan seems more worried and paranoid about India than about the terrorist thugs within their own borders. The bold move and the most truly hawkish one would have been to issue an ultimatum to Zardari that either he cleans up the Al Qaeda mess in his country, including the capture of Osama Bin Laden, within a particular timeframe, or we will send troops into Pakistan and get the job done ourselves. Wonder what old Dick Cheney would have said about that?
As it stands now, we have to hope that the assumption that Afghanistan is a carbon copy of Iraq, just one surge away from stability is the correct one. It does not look like we will see the Afghan equivalent of the Sunni awakening to help us along. We have to hope that an illegally elected President with a drug kingpin for a brother will prove to be a reliable ally. We have to hope that Pakistan will act in good faith to combat the criminals in their own country.
To my average Joe mind, this seems like a lot of hope and not a lot of strategy.
A week or two ago, the daughter who won’t go away, Liz Cheney suggested her Dad a possibility for President in 2012. Well don’t worry too much my friends. A Washington Post poll of almost 500 self-identified Republicans (or Republican-leaning) listed the folks who most represent Republican values. Sarah Palin was at the top of the list (yikes) but Liz’s pop did not make the published list. Liz need not completely despair. Apparently, Daddy did get a vote … yes, one vote.
It looks like even Republicans think that Cheney is a Dick.
@chrislhayes Don't let the fools get u down on the hero thing. I know what u meant. Ask your critics how many of them signed up 2 b heroes. 2 hours ago
Top Five RL Posts of the “Decade” Plus One More Dick Slap
I’m stealing an idea from political blogger Sensico today and I’m going to review the top 5 of my blog posts for the “decade” just ending. I place “decade” in quotes because I’ve only been blogging since September of 2007. Still, here you are, the posts that have received the most “hits” since I started.
1. Obama, Racism and Inevitable Self-examination September 18, 2009: For someone who planned to write about racism very seldom, I wound up returning to the issue several times over the past year. What prompted this post was the Glenn Beck inspired September 12 Tea Party protest and specifically some of the blatantly violent and racist signs on display at that protest. I got a couple of things wrong here. First I used Jimmy Carter as a righteous source of outrage without doing sufficient research to determine that Carter’s own political career was not racially spotless. Second, I think (and I hope) that the main stream media and I both got it wrong regarding the real threat of these people. Ultimately, I think these folks are angry folks letting off steam. Every angry crowd attracts nutjobs and it is very easy to focus on them to the exclusion of the harmless. Some folks in the tea party movement have valid concerns and others are sixth grade dropouts eager to be seen on TV. Either way, I think rumors of the country’s imminent civil war were greatly exaggerated.
As a trivial side note, this article attracted someone claiming to be in one of the pictures I posted and threatening to sue me if I did not remove his photo. I complied but not before writing to tell him what a coward he was. If you’re gonna stand in public with a sign threatening violence to America, you should have the guts to be called out on it.
2. The John McCain Female Woman Haters Club July 31, 2008: This is one of my favorite posts, a combination of legitimate outrage and poking a stick in the eye of conservatives everywhere. The sad back story to this post is that it was one of the first of my articles that went through the roof on web traffic and when I examined the phenomenon more closely I discovered people were surfing for pictures of the women, in particular one of Nancy Pfotenhauer.
Nancy Pfotenhauer
So here I was thinking that folks were enjoying my ridicule of self-loathing women when in fact they were probably a bunch of men in the mold of National Review’s Rich Lowry looking for GOP women to fuel their masturbatory fantasies. Oh well, I guess sex sells.
3. Another Fine Moment for Republicans September 10, 2009: September was a rough month for Obama supporters. This article was prompted by the performance of perhaps the most ignorant man in the United States House of Representatives, Joe Wilson. Not only did Joe have the unmitigated gall to call a sitting US President a liar to his face during a joint session of Congress, he wasn’t even right on the facts. The health care legislation being promoted by Obama specifically ruled out care for illegal aliens but not according to genius Joe. The facts of the incident pale in comparison to the overall phenomenon that this President is not deemed worthy of respect in even that most dignified of settings, the Congressional chamber.
Then again, the Chamber has taken some other hits this year, from Dem Representative Alan Grayson saying that the GOP wants you to die to GOP Representative John Shadegg using a baby as a political prop. It is confounding that we pay these folks’ salaries!
4. Is An Effigy No Longer Good Enough? September 24, 2009: I had to chuckle that this one made the top 5. This shoot first, ask questions later post of mine concerned the census worker who was found dead in Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest. The only defense I can make for this post is that I was suffering from “the country is about to be torn asunder” dementia. History (very short-term history) would prove that the dude killed himself and made it look like a murder for the insurance money. I still claim a 98% batting average on my posts (or in Obama’s words, I give myself an “A-”) but this article clearly was dead on arrival.
5. Sarah Palin Just Wants to Help October 10, 2009: This was the biggest surprise of all as I checked my traffic statistics. Usually, my cartoons are not popular but I soldier on since I have fun producing them. I can only guess that this one got lots of hits because any article about Sarah Palin will attract Googlers. Heck, I could have had a headline that said “Sarah Palin Just Farted” and I would have been guaranteed at least 200 hits. In a country that grows dumber with each passing year, Sarah Palin has become its queen.
Feminism has hit either a nadir or a zenith depending on your perspective. Now, instead of intelligent women having to fight to be heard, dumbass and/or crazy women attract huge followings. Whether it is beauty pageant contestants Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean or certifiably insane nutjobs like Michele Bachman, women are making headlines daily. You sure have come a long way baby! (I never dreamed I would love Hillary Clinton but at least she is out there proving that hard-working intelligent women can succeed gloriously in this society.)
An honorable mention:
One of my articles came in eighth in traffic hits but performed spectacularly “overseas”. I cross-post my articles to a couple of other places and on one of them, Best of The Blogs, my article Time to Impeach Barack Obama received more than 34,000 hits. The traffic was in direct proportion to the anger I felt as I wrote the post. I had put up with a lot of Obama bashing but when the Right declared it was unsafe for our school children to hear an address from their President, I very nearly blew a blood vessel.
Speaking of Obama bashing, how can I end 2009 without one more slap at the Dick, Cheney. This hateful, ignorant prick of a man lacks the dignity of a former Vice President as he verges on treason with his constant heckling of our Commander-in-Chief. A true patriot would actively (and privately) campaign for Obama to make him an advisor where he could have some influence on policy. But Dick Cheney is not a patriot. 9/11 transformed Dick Cheney from a hard-working servant of America into a paranoid wreck incapable of setting well thought out policy. One reason Dick probably hasn’t offered his services to the Obama administration is that he knows they don’t want a war criminal in their administration. Cheney is the crazed gorilla throwing his own dung at passers-by.
Sadly, conservatives who desperately need to know the truth behind Cheney’s latest criticism of Obama are too biased to watch the following video. You see, there is no doubt that MSNBC is as partisan on the left as Fox News is on the right. But there is a difference. MSNBC tells truths while Fox promulgates lies, shamelessly and repeatedly. Still, I ask every intelligent reader of this article to watch the following video of Rachel Maddow’s analysis of Cheney and tell me that it is not bullet proof. She shows Cheney and the GOP for the hypocrites that they are. Will 2010 bring more honest and reasoned debate? I doubt it but we can always hope.
Happy New Year!
Respectfully,
Rutherford
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
December 31, 2009 at 6:39 pm Rutherford 36 comments