Archive for October, 2011
The Corporate President, The Real Romney and Birth of a Nation
The Corporate President
This week, The Washington Post reported that Barack Obama is receiving more campaign donations from the financial sector than any of the potential GOP nominees combined. The trick to this calculation is that Obama has access to funds raised by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). If we look at Obama’s own fund-raising, he comes in second behind Mitt Romney. Interestingly, three guys at Bain Capital (Romney’s former company) gave Obama enough money to outweigh the 18 others at Bain who gave to Romney.
Since campaign contributions imply some sort of quid pro quo, one has to wonder what the financial sector thinks they will get out of Obama. Perhaps in between all the moaning and groaning, they know that Obama could have been much tougher on the sector than he has been. More disturbingly, despite his public condemnation of the financial sector, perhaps Obama is currying favor with them privately and raking in the dough.
In any case, don’t expect anyone in the Obama camp to brag about their fund raising prowess with the top 1%. This won’t do much to solicit votes from the far left or the OWS crowd. The last thing we need going into 2012 is the image of Obama as just another bought and sold politician.
The Real Romney
In this week’s GOP Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, Mitt Romney said something that may have been a bit too revealing.
In a heated exchange with Texas Governor and Presidential wanna-be Rick Perry, Mitt Romney tried to explain why undocumented workers were doing his lawn work. Perry claimed that Romney knew he had “illegals” working for him and did nothing about it. In a moment of candor, Romney supplied fodder for an opposition campaign ad when he said that he confronted the owners of the lawn company and told them, “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals.” In other words, “If I weren’t under scrutiny, I would care less about undocumented workers on my property.” The big reveal here does not concern Romney’s convictions about illegal immigration but rather the general meme that Romney is a phony. Fortunately for Romney, the whole exchange made Perry look desperate since the illegal worker issue had already been disposed of in the 2007/2008 primary season. Besides, most of us watching the debate were on the edge of our seats wondering if Perry would coldcock Romney for reaching out and touching his shoulder.
Birth of a Nation
We Americans get rightfully excited when an oppressed people overthrow an evil dictator and embark upon forming a free democratic society. Such was our enthusiasm this week when the regime of Muammar Gaddafi met its complete demise with his death in his home town of Sirte. There is only one problem. Is this really the way a budding democracy is supposed to get started? Gaddafi, a 69 year old man was captured and (as far as we can tell) video taped badly bloodied. Other videos purport to show his dead body. While the exact circumstances will probably never be known, it appears that Gaddafi was summarily executed.
There are a couple of things that ought to give us pause before we celebrate Gaddafi’s death. First, we have had an on-again, off-again relationship with Libya. In the wake of 9/11, Gaddafi condemned terrorism (despite prior acts to the contrary) and gave up development of weapons of mass destruction. The release of the Lockerbie bomber and his welcome in Libya then soured the relationship again. The bottom line is that our attitude toward Libya over the years has been ambiguous at best.
Then there is the matter of precedent. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was captured, tried and executed. Gaddafi received no such trial. One could point to the recent murders of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki and say what’s the big deal. But neither of them was a head of state. I would think that a coup designed to establish a free society would not get its start by ignoring the standards of justice accepted by most civilized societies.
Our President stood in the Rose Garden this week and expressed his satisfaction with the murder of a fellow head of state. Personally, I don’t see the parallel between the birth of the new Libya, which in its infancy operated like a crazed mob and the birth of our own noble nation. This is not the outcome we should have hoped for when we started “leading from behind” several months ago.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Photo credit: Ethan Miller, Getty Images
Can a GOP Brotha Get a Break?
Poor Herman Cain. The brother just can’t win. Every time he speaks truth he gets slammed, sometimes from the right and sometimes from the left. It once again proves how hard it is to navigate the rough seas of race in America.
First we have the famous Rick Perry racist rock incident. Perry, Governor of Texas and one-time leader in the GOP Presidential nomination contest, owned a ranch with the N word in its name. ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, among other journalists asked former Godfather Pizza CEO and Presidential contender Herman Cain his thoughts on the matter. Of course in this society we always assume we have the right to ask any black public figure his thoughts on any “black issue”. Cain could have played it cool and deflected somehow but instead he chose to tell the truth. It was a lousy name for the ranch. Herman avoided loaded terms like racist or bigoted and simply said it was highly “insensitive”. Seems to me we can all agree that naming a ranch “N****rhead” is highly insensitive to black folk. (Should upset the sensitivities of decent white folk as well.)
What did Herman get for telling the truth? He got the scorn of several right wing pundits:
You might have anticipated that Perry would face a firestorm for being associated with the property, but it’s Cain whose remarks are drawing the most criticism from the right. At RedState, Erick Erickson concluded, “It also seems to be a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place.” Glenn Reynolds remarked that until now, Cain’s “big appeal is that he’s not just another black race-card-playing politician.” Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis called Cain’s remarks “a cheap shot, and, perhaps a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him.”
via Faced With Perry’s “Niggerhead” Controversy, Conservatives Slam…Herman Cain | Mother Jones.
How stating the obvious concerning an offensive name is “playing the race card” is beyond me. I guess, as a Republican, Herman should have known the best course of action would be to downplay it and given a second chance, that is exactly what he did.
But telling the truth can smack you from the liberal side of the fence also. In a radio interview with Neal Boortz, Herman said that Obama has “never been a part of the black experience in America. I can talk about that. I can talk about what it really meant to be ‘po’ before I was poor. He can’t.” Well, this caused MSNBC host Ed Schultz to have a conniption and he brought on “expert black” Michael Eric Dyson to share the fit with him. They spent the better part of three minutes griping about Cain’s comment but they missed a key point. To some extent Cain was absolutely right.
How many average American black men do you know who were born in Hawaii? How many average black men do you know who grew up partly in Indonesia? How many average black men do you know who spent virtually none of their childhood on mainland America? To say that such a person has had even remotely the same experience as the average black man in America is absurd. In fact, I have always felt that the “exotic” background of Obama made him more palatable in a racially charged country than he would have been if he’d had an American ancestry of slavery. Dyson talks about Obama’s autobiography and how he describes in it “embracing his blackness.” That implies he had a choice. I guarantee Herman Cain had no choice but to embrace his blackness.
The other hilarious aspect to Ed and Michael’s outrage is how they play into a false standard of blackness implied by Cain. Cain says he was “po” before he was “poor”, suggesting that he was once very poor. Ed and Michael go on to suggest that Obama was once poor. First of all, I beg to differ. Even if Obama’s mother had financial difficulty as a single mother, Obama was raised for much of his childhood by his comfortable grandparents. He attended private schools. So painting Obama as the product of poverty is a bit much. But beyond that, why is being poor the measure of the black experience? So a poor black man is more “black” than a comfortable black man? Believe me, a comfortable black man has as much trouble catching a cab in New York City as a poor one does.
But if we get beyond economics, Cain is right on the money. Growing up on the mainland of America in the 50′s and 60′s exposes the average black man to a very different experience than the one Obama had.
So bottom line, poor Herman just can’t win. The truth gets him kicked from both ends of the political spectrum. We’ll see how long he can stay at number one. Will he be the flavor of the month or in his words “Haagen-Dazs Black Walnut” because “it tastes good all the time”?
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
American Protest and Hypocrisy
Flashback to early 2009. Barack Obama had barely finished the Presidential oath of office before folks started gathering in the public square with teabags hanging from their hats. They were fed up and angry. Among their gripes: over-taxation, bailouts being given to banks and auto companies, and later, the “unauthorized takeover” of health care by the federal government. The Fed was becoming too powerful and these folks who embodied the fledgling Tea Party movement wanted to go back to the fundamentals of the Founding Fathers.
As liberals looked on, a few red flags arose. First, the movement seemed triggered by the election of Barack Obama. At least two major gripes of the movement (exploding deficit and TARP) occurred during the Bush administration but where were they then? Second, there seemed to be precious few people of color at the Tea Party rallies. Third, some of the signs carried at these rallies were outright offensive to anyone of even somewhat thick skin (a sign calling Obama a “lyin’ African”, another with Obama with a bone through his nose like a witch-doctor.) Fourth, for reasons never adequately explained some folks chose to bring their guns to the rallies. Those that didn’t, carried signs saying “We came unarmed …. this time.” Last but not least, before you could say “Patrick Henry”, several powerful players, from Fox News to Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks had attached themselves to the movement.
These factors led many liberals, including me, to declare the Tea Party destructive, dangerous and racist. Sometimes the shoe needs to be on the other foot to realize how wrong you are. I was wrong. Were all the factors I just listed manufactured? Absolutely not. Were they troubling? Damn right they were. But at the core of the Tea Party was something that every American should cherish: freedom of speech and the right of the citizenry to assemble and air their grievances. The great preponderance of Tea Party activists wanted to save a country clearly in trouble. The fact that powerful forces attempted to co-opt the movement was not the fault of the Tea Party members. In fact, when Michele Bachmann kick-started her Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives, I distinctly remember some TPM members pushing back lest folks start to think Bachmann was “leading the cause”.
Fast forward to Autumn, 2011. A bunch of mostly young folks stage a sit-in of sorts. They camp out in downtown Manhattan and name their gathering “Occupy Wall Street”. Like the Tea Party protesters before them, they are angry that bankers got bailed out and then got huge bonuses, continuing the abuses that precipitated the bailouts. Unlike the Tea Party, they are presently more angry at the bankers who went unpunished, than at the government that bailed them out and let them off the hook. Even so, the OWS crowd recognizes that government has not helped.
Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are fighting a class struggle. The Tea Party’s attitude, best enunciated in the now famous rant by CNBC’s Rick Santelli, is that irresponsible Americans were looking for assistance at the hard-working middle class’s expense. OWS, on the other hand contends that it is inherently unfair that 1% of Americans control most of the country’s wealth while the remaining 99% struggle to keep their jobs and homes.
What do we see now from conservatives? We see the same reaction that I had back in 2009. The OWS crowd are unkempt, lazy communists and anarchists. They need to get a job. They only want to destroy. They have no focus. They are, according to Eric Cantor, a House Representative from Virginia, a mob. One of my fellow WordPress bloggers, Blackiswhite, Imperial Consigliere posted the most offensive photo he could find of an OWS protester getting ready to defecate on a police car. Reminded me of every liberal who posted pictures of every offensive Tea Party sign we could get our hands on.
As I read the conservative criticisms of Occupy Wall Street (which has spread to Occupy Boston, Occupy Atlanta, Occupy D.C.) I’m angered and ultimately saddened by the myopic view of the critics. But then I consider how I might have no one to blame but myself. It was much easier for me to impugn the motives of the Tea Party than to consider that some, if not most of them, were exercising the time-honored American tradition of protest to right perceived wrongs.
Perhaps I’m letting myself off the hook but I think I suffer from a disease common to most Americans. Those protesters whose message resonates with us are patriots and heroes. Those with whom we don’t empathize are traitors, bigots and criminals. We give lip service to freedom of speech and making our voices heard when our government ignores us. But as soon as a group of people actually exercise this prerogative in the public square, we condemn them if it looks like they’re going to upset our world order.
The simple truth is that the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street crowd share a fundamental common complaint. They are both fed up with a society that ignores their voice and is headed in a direction that will only make matters worse for them. Those who insist that the OWS movement is a front to reelect Barack Obama just don’t get it. They’re not happy with Obama either. They’re not happy with our government. They choose to take their fight to the site that most symbolizes the problem, a corporate environment run amok and in control of our government. Just because they are occupying Wall Street doesn’t mean they don’t want governmental change. The notion that marching in front of the Federal Reserve building is a prerequisite to expressing their dissatisfaction is ridiculous.
The Tea Party’s voice eventually was heard as evidenced by the number of Congressmen and Senators carrying their torch (albeit somewhat disingenuously since they still have big business and big money in their pocket). The OWS movement is in its infancy. If it lasts and matures, it will not manifest itself in the overthrow of our government (as some on the right fear) but will result in legislators who carry their torch.
If we could get past the hypocrisy at the core of the American psyche, we would see that we all ultimately want the same thing. We want a government that promotes equal opportunity for all in an environment where folks are encouraged to play fair and not rewarded for taking advantage. One notable thing about the OWS movement has been its inclusiveness, almost to a fault. Yes, there are anarchists. There are socialists. There are also plain old vanilla liberals. No doubt a smattering of moderates. What I’d really like to see now is a couple of Tea Party Patriots join the crowd and see what they have in common.
We can’t change our lot if we don’t let others speak and we don’t listen to their concerns. The OWS movement should be a wake up call to every liberal who dismissed the Tea Party out of hand. In the words of Lincoln, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Now is the time for us to unite, raise our voices and be heard so that our country can change course and avoid what appears in our darkest days to be an inevitable decline.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Photo credit: Photo via Wikipedia
Re-Imagining Reagan and the End of Palin (We Can Only Hope)
The Myth of Reagan
Sometimes the legend is way more powerful than the man behind it. The hero of conservatism is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Every cockeyed idea coming out of the GOP lately supposedly has Reagan’s mark of approval all over it. That’s why it was refreshing to see ThinkProgress remind us that Reagan was just as guilty of “class warfare” as our current president.
In fact, not only did Reagan condemn under-taxation of the rich, he actually raised taxes several times during his administration (albeit after cutting them massively at the beginning). The truth is that the Ronald Reagan of the 80′s could not get nominated by today’s GOP. The fact that they re-imagine Reagan to justify their current policies is completely consistent with a party that lives in an alternate reality.
Now Can She Please Just Go Away?
After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States.
You have to hand it to Sarah Palin. Unlike Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, at least Sarah listens to God. You see, God is the ultimate political strategist and there is no way He advised Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann to run for President. At least Sarah took the Almighty’s advice. Now the question remains what lies ahead? In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, Sarah discussed and dismissed the possibility that she might be politically dead with this decision. I think she should think again. Now that the long tease is over, Palin is irrelevant. The only reason there was to tolerate her word salad foolishness was the possibility she might make headlines with a Presidential run. With that possibility gone, Sarah is now a truly powerless ditz.
If you need proof, just look at the interview with Van Susteren. Greta started the interview not by discussing Sarah’s decision but by asking her what she thought of Apple genius Steve Jobs’ untimely death. In effect, Greta was saying, “before we talk about the end of your footnote to history, let’s discuss some consequential news.”
While I hope Ms. Palin simply returns to Alaska to be with her family, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of how much we see her on Fox News, ultimately she will end up being nothing more than the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Photo credit: Ronald Reagan via Wikipedia
The Frat Boy and the Knowing Smile
This week, old Rick Perry decided to go birther or so say the liberal MSM. It started with stupid comments made in Parade magazine and then he doubled down in an interview with John Harwood of CNBC.
Perry says “it’s fun to poke at him a little bit”. Look at his demeanor during the interview. Smiling, having a good old time. Believe me, Rick Perry is no birther. Rick Perry is a frat boy ass-clown. Rick Perry was the kid in school who would look at some poor kid whose pants didn’t reach his ankles and yell “hey Charlie, the flood is over.” Your basic dumb-ass bully. Anyone who truly gets upset over this latest twist is taking Perry way too seriously. Perry is not a serious man. He’s a good ole boy who shoots coyotes in the face.
Speaking of faces, the face of the week has got to be that of Herman Cain who has just released what I declare to be the best damn campaign ad ever.
The ad consists of a testimonial by Cain’s chief of staff, Mark Block. And what a great friggin’ spokesperson he is. Take Mitt Romney’s clean-shaven, polished, rehearsed, moneyed facade and bust it to shreds with a man who looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. A guy you just met for a business meeting at the local bar, not the country club. And then, to prove the ultimate street cred, the dude puffs a cig and exhales into the camera. No politically correct stuff here folks. This guy is real. This guy is America. And so is Herman Cain … and then the pièce de résistance, as the background singer declares “I am America”, we see Herman slowly, and I mean very slowly, give us that knowing smile. That smile speaks volumes. It could be saying “I KNOW you love me.” Or perhaps, “I’m leading in the polls, bet ya didn’t expect THAT did ya?” Or simply “I’m gonna be the next President of the United States of America and screw Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”
America is basically a simple country. Most of us just want to go to work, make a decent living, provide for our families and enjoy our communities. We’ve not big fans of nuance. One reason why Sarah Palin captured the country’s imagination for a short time was her down home simplicity. She didn’t have to read the New York Times (or any other paper actually) to still have a valid opinion. Everyday Americans identify with that. Herman Cain is Sarah Palin without the mean streak. I discovered recently that even his “if you can’t find a job blame yourself” comment, which on its face sounds heartless is based on his motivational speaking gigs where he encourages self-sufficiency and a can-do attitude. You can get a taste of Cain, the motivator at his web site “The Hermanator Experience“.
Now let’s not sugar coat Cain’s problems. He is inconsistent on lots of issues, from abortion to immigration policy. He is proudly ignorant of foreign policy. His tax policy was elegant in its simplicity and deadly in its effect on the middle class and the poor. But even when he equivocates, as he did in his abortion interview with John Stossel, he equivocates with conviction. You cannot help but like this guy. And interestingly, while Barack Obama inspired millions with the promise of a glass ceiling being broken, he was never particularly warm or likeable. The truth is, Obama does come off as elite. Cain does not.
Normally, I’d look at all of Cain’s weaknesses, as detailed by political guru Karl Rove, and I’d dismiss Cain without a second thought. But I’m telling you, that slow smile shows balls! Herman Cain may be smiling all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
October 26, 2011 at 2:07 am Rutherford 445 comments