Sullivan: A Love Letter to Obama

In his Newsweek cover story, Andrew Sullivan comes out of the chute, risking any claim to objective analysis by declaring himself an unabashed fan of Barack Obama. We try to ignore that and look at the claims:

• In 2010, we stopped shedding jobs and since then have gained 2.4 million more jobs, more than were added net in 8 years of Bush. The bleeding stopped concurrent with the stimulus. This is fine enough but Sullivan makes no effort to convince us of the cause-effect relationship of the stimulus to the job gains.
• Government employment has declined 2.6% since 2009. So much for growth of government under Obama. No argument there.
• The stimulus did not reduce unemployment to 8% in year 1 because the damage to the economy was underestimated. True though that may be, is it anything to campaign on? An integral part of solving a problem is properly defining the problem. That’s a failure no matter how you cut it.
• Sullivan writes: “Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms.” It’s hard to believe Sullivan is making reference to Obama’s budgets. It’s been over 900 days since we’ve had a budget.
• The core of Obamacare is the mandate, originally modeled by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Far from a government system, it funnels customers right into the private health insurance industry. Plus, as Sullivan points out, what could be more conservative than not allowing uninsured people to get a free ride in the ER?

After reading Sullivan’s defense of Obama’s domestic record, it’s clear that it’s a mixed bag. The great irony is that the prime objective of his GOP opponents is “to kill Obamacare” which has its roots in Nixonian politics and is not even close to a leftist solution.

Sullivan then moves onto foreign policy. Here, Obama’s opponents have to really stretch to find fault.

• Obama got bin Laden with a method contrary to the advice of the VP and Sec of State. Given the choice of just bombing the site or going in with the Seals, Obama chose the latter and could verify that we did indeed get bin Laden. The Republican spin of course is that Obama owes it all to Bush. While still disputed, let’s concede that information gathered during the Bush years eventually led to bin Laden’s capture. The fact remains that Bush openly admitted that he no longer gave bin Laden any thought. Finding and killing public enemy #1 was not a priority. Obama did it, and rightly said during the recent State of the Union that for the first time in 20 years we are no longer under the threat of Osama bin Laden.
• Sullivan points out that the “lead from behind” strategy in Libya is an improvement on the cowboy reputation we had pre-Obama. He neglects to add it is the smarter way to do business in a tough economy. Sullivan also rightly points out the wisdom of our handling of the Iran uprising in 2009. Had we engaged in covert or overt action to overthrow Ahmadinejad, the revolt would have been tied to the United States and would not have been seen as a freedom movement sparked from within. Contrast that with the overthrows in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya which were clearly seen as revolts from within.
• Sullivan closed with the observation that liberal dissatisfaction with Obama is unwarranted based on the fact that ” Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them.”

I found Sullivan’s defense somewhat soft overall. Even though his article cited hard facts, it was buoyed with some emotional flights of fancy including his main premise that Obama plays a long game and that we are too stupid to look beyond short gains.  That impressed me as little more than wishful thinking.

Sadly, David Frum’s rebuttal was even worse.

David Frum’s Response to Sullivan: A Non-response

About one week after Sullivan’s article, David Frum wrote a response. Frum opens thusly:

Andrew Sullivan had good sport last week shooting fish in a barrel, rebutting the most unfair, the most intemperate, and the most flat-out crazy of the criticisms of President Obama. Now let’s move to the real debate.

In other words, Frum basically says, “I agree with everything Sullivan wrote and I’m going to write about something else entirely.” That, my friends, is not a response to Sullivan’s article. Now that the whole reason for writing the piece has been abandoned, let’s get under the hood of Frum’s analysis.

• Frum starts by bemoaning the rise in Social Security disability claims in the past three years. But he fails to tie this trend to Obama specifically, or to any particular Obama policy. In fact, he basically concedes it is a consequence of a deep recession. So why did he go there in the first place?
• Pointing to government expansion, Frum says, “In fact, hiring is up across the federal government, by 15 percent since 2007.” When you include the last two years of the Bush administration, you don’t prove anything about the Obama administration. I prefer to believe Sullivan’s numbers.
• Frum discusses the folly of public work projects which increase dependency on government for hiring. My confusion with this argument is that construction workers don’t work for the government. They work for whatever company won the bid to do the government work. Then Frum contradicts himself by criticizing the stimulus: “People argue over the size of the president’s fiscal stimulus, but the real problem was its shape. Only about one dollar in eight out of the nearly $800 billion stimulus was devoted to the most effective form of anti-recession spending: infrastructure.” But wait a minute, I thought infrastructure jobs increased dependence on the government as an employer? David, make up your mind.
• Then Frum takes his foreign policy shot: “During the campaign of 2008, Obama vowed a much bigger commitment to Afghanistan. He kept his promise. And what does the U.S. have to show for its redoubled war there? Precious little, if anything at all.By contrast, in Iraq the administration does have something to show for its efforts, including more oil production than at any time in the past 20 years, with more to come in the months ahead. Here the policy of almost total U.S. withdrawal threatens to destabilize all that has been accomplished, admittedly at severe cost.” Frum neglects to point out that Obama was basically cornered into committing more troops to Afghanistan than he wanted. He also neglects to admit that the war there is going poorly not because of Obama but because of insurmountable cultural issues. On Iraq, he accidentally gives credence to the blood for oil motive for war that many Iraq war opponents have always suspected. Then he conveniently omits the fact that Obama is abiding by Bush’s timetable. And most sadly, Frum seems in denial that Iraq is a no-win situation. We put in place a corrupt government incapable of running the place this year, next year, or any time in the future. Is Frum calling for endless occupation?

It’s hard to understand why Frum wrote the article in the first place since he fails to address Andrew Sullivan’s points and then fails to convincingly tie Barack Obama to any of the deficiencies he outlines.

Interestingly, the better critique of Sullivan’s article on an anti-Obama note comes from Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, a blazing liberal. Cenk cites the lack of boldness in Obamacare, the preservation of Bush-era civil liberties violations and Obama’s total failure to change the atmosphere of Washington, D.C. , specifically where campaign finance is concerned.

More than anything, I think the two articles on Obama by Sullivan and Frum demonstrate how difficult it is to pin down Obama as a huge success or an abject failure. Obama has the unenviable task in November of proving a negative … “without me, things would have been much worse.” How do you prove a thing like that? The result is that Obama will have to convince the American people that, with his Republican opponent, things will definitely be a lot worse.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Photo credit: Pete Souza, The Obama-Biden Transition Project

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As for the man he was mourning, Joe Paterno might be a worse “sinner” than Sandusky. At least in Sandusky’s case you can blame it on a mental illness, a sick compulsion. What do we blame for Paterno’s behavior? A man in full possession of his faculties, with enough power and influence to put an immediate stop to the sexual shenanigans that went on at Penn State and he did next to nothing. So, the Los Angeles Times thinks it’s a good idea to publish an article about a child rapist (ahem, allegedly) expressing sympathy for an appeaser of evil and essentially his partner in crime.

I am neither a religious man nor a gambler but I’d wager that Joe and Jerry will meet again someday and it won’t be in heaven.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Must be ACORN

When the news came down today that the Iowa caucus results announced earlier this month were bogus, Republicans across the country were outraged. Tallies from eight precincts are hopelessly lost. Santorum is as of today, the winner of the caucus but we’ll really never know who won.

George Will said, “This is a travesty of justice!”

Erick Erickson cried, “Voter fraud such as this cannot stand!”

Andrew Breitbart exclaimed, “It’s a Catholic conspiracy against the Mormons!”

Rush Limbaugh belched, “This, my friends, is just another nail in the coffin of a free America, hammered in by socialist saboteurs.”

Well, actually none of those quotes are real. I made them all up. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be a single Republican upset that the Iowa caucus resembled an election in a banana republic or perhaps Afghanistan or Iraq. No outrage or finger-pointing. Just an “oh well, maybe Santorum really won, maybe he didn’t.”

Remember this in November when the GOP screams voter fraud upon Obama’s reelection.

My Endorsement

I am making history today by offering a limited endorsement. This endorsement only extends to the South Carolina primary but make no mistake, this endorsement is sincere.

This Saturday I am urging all primary voters in South Carolina to vote for …

Herman Cain

Yes, you read that right. Earlier this week, comedian Stephen Colbert made the point that he could not get on the presidential ballot in South Carolina even if he wanted to. Deadlines have long since passed. But he made the equally valid point that Herman Cain, despite dropping out of the race, cannot get off the ballot. So with a wink and a nod, Colbert suggested that a vote for Cain is a vote for Colbert.

I am fully with Colbert on this one. It’s time we made South Carolina a true protest vote. A vote for Cain/Colbert is a statement that:

1. We are tired of this clown car masquerading as serious contenders for the presidency and
2. We are disgusted with what the Citizens United decision has wrought, where money equals speech and corporate and lobbyist interests now have the biggest voice.

Using his, wups, I mean Jon Stewart’s Super PAC money, Colbert has launched several ads in South Carolina to get his point across including the Cain as Colbert vote initiative.

Citizens of South Carolina, go out on Saturday and vote for Herman Cain knowing that a vote for Cain is a vote for Colbert and a vote for Colbert is a vote to stop the insanity!

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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I just finished watching the thirty minute smear piece against Mitt Romney produced by Newt Gingrich’s SuperPAC. Don’t lecture me about how this isn’t Newt’s SuperPAC. We all know better and I’ll focus more on this “joke” later in the article. The glorified campaign ad “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” is fairly well destroyed by a fact check done by the Washington Post. Still, the film leaves me with two conclusions. First, Mitt Romney was a very successful leader of a company. Mitt Romney was hardly a job creator. So henceforth in the campaign instead of saying he created thousands of jobs, Mitt ought to simply say he ran a very successful enterprise and can bring that successful executive leadership to our country. Don’t mention any other companies like Staples which can be countered with examples like Ampad. Simply stick to Bain — “I ran Bain and we did damn well!”

The second conclusion I came to was that Bain, or perhaps capitalism itself, is the great equalizer. All but one of the “common folk” interviewed in the smear job was white. “When you’ve only got two gifts for your kids [at Christmas] that hurts,” says one woman who lost her job supposedly because of Bain. Mmm, how many blacks can identify with that? I’d guess a helluva lot. Another woman talked about her ten kids, two of whom are still minors who need financially stable parents. I’ve read too many conservatives tell black women in the same bind “keep your thighs together and maybe you wouldn’t have so many kids, welfare queen.” Depending on your perspective, the tragedy or the beauty of full-blown capitalism is it knows no racial or ethnic boundaries. All capitalism knows is winners and losers, the powerful and the powerless. The fact is, white or black, if you don’t sit in the corner office, you’re vulnerable. Survival of the company and share holder value is paramount. I can’t help but believe that some, not all, but some of the folks in “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” thought their whiteness insulated them and protected their comfy middle class existence. It made the rude awakening of their actual corporate insignificance all the more shocking.

Our pastors tell us we are all equal before the Lord. When it comes to capitalism run amok, we in the 99% are all equal too and none of us are safe. That’s the real lesson behind the “King of Bain” campaign film. Yet, in the words of Romney, I’ll bet you “a thousand bucks” that these folks, despite what they’ve been through, given the choice between Mitt and Barack will pull the lever for Romney. What’s the matter with Kansas indeed.

The Big SuperPAC Joke

Four years ago, comedian Stephen Colbert tried to get on the presidential ballot in South Carolina and failed. Well he’s at it again this year but an intervening event has added an extra sharpness to his stunt, namely the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. For the past few months, Colbert has been collecting money into his own SuperPAC. This Thursday night, before announcing an exploratory committee into running for “President of the United States of South Carolina”, Colbert brought on his attorney to discuss what to do with his PAC. Since the law states that you cannot fund a campaign out of your own PAC, Colbert had to find someone else to run his. He chose … Jon Stewart.  For the remainder of the sketch on The Colbert Report, Stephen and Jon discussed how they would not have any communication between them regarding the conduct of this PAC as law dictates.

Behind all the silliness was a great primer on the total BS of campaign funding rules as perverted by the Citizens United decision. We all know that the folks who launched the devastating ad campaign against Newt Gingrich in Iowa with no funding limits, were associates of Mitt Romney. Similarly we know that the folks who launched “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” are cronies of Gingrich. Both claim to be independent SuperPACS. We know it ‘s  a lie. If we don’t cut through the noise, weigh the facts carefully and vote our conscience in November; if we let these SuperPAC ad campaigns overly influence us, then the big SuperPAC joke will be on us.

Killing Scientists, Really?

This week an Iranian scientist was murdered on his way to work. He had been working on Iran’s nuclear program. He was the fourth scientist to be killed in recent times. The last time I looked, scientists were not soldiers. They are not terrorists. They are not criminals. They are gainfully employed working in what is purported to be a peaceful pursuit of nuclear energy capability. No one has claimed responsibility for this murder. The leading suspects are the United States’ CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has gone on record advocating these murders. All I can say is I sincerely hope the United States has nothing to do with this.

If scientists need to be killed to stop nuclear proliferation, then I suppose Einstein and Oppenheimer should have been killed long ago.

Pissing on the Enemy

Apparently four United States Marines didn’t get the memo about Abu Ghraib. Four of them are seen in a video urinating on dead members of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has condemned the behavior. But this gets me to thinking anew about why we need a draft. First, of course, with a draft the war in Afghanistan would be over by now because more parents of dead soldiers and soldiers at risk would be demanding an end to it. However I think it goes further than that. Three types of people volunteer to go to war:

1. True patriots
2. Folks who for whatever reason are not making it in American civilian society
3. Sociopaths and thrill-seekers with blood-lust

I would hope the military is fairly good at screening out the third category but I’m not so sure. I’m damn sure they don’t spend much time screening out the second category. With a draft untainted by corruption the percent of folks in the military who should not be there should reflect the same types of folks in society in general. In other words, as a gross mathematical example, if 30% of Americans are true patriots then a fair draft will pull in about 30% patriots. With a volunteer army you don’t get that representative sampling that a draft encourages. I submit with a volunteer army you get more societal rejects and psychos.

Think about it. With Osama bin Laden dead, and the war in Afghanistan pretty much a waste of time and money, who would volunteer to go there now? You would either have to be blindly patriotic or have some less than ideal agenda. I know it is sacrilege to speak ill of our military, of our brave young men and women. But there is nothing brave about pissing on your enemy’s corpse. We should never forget the lessons of Abu Ghraib. War is dirty and a cross-section of the folks we are sending to fight it are not particularly clean either.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Later in his speech, Rick mentioned his youngest daughter who suffers from Edwards Syndrome, a severe genetic disorder. His daughter has already defied the odds relative to expected life span. Most children with Edwards Syndrome die within the first year of life.  As I thought more about this, my mind flashed back to 2008.

In 2008, the Sarah Palin haters leveled valid and totally invalid claims against her. One of the invalid claims was how could a woman with a special needs child (in Sarah’s case, a child with Downs Syndrome) be on the campaign trail or even want the demanding job of President when she had that child to take care of? The charge, of course, was ridiculous on its face. As long as parents make arrangements for the proper care of their children, it’s nobody’s business if they choose to pursue a career, no matter how demanding. Still, this was a major bullet in the arsenal of the anti-Sarah faction.

So, in 2012 I wonder to myself where is all the outrage about Rick Santorum pursuing the Presidency when he has a special needs child at home who needs attention? The knee jerk answer is that his wife, Karen, is currently a full-time homemaker taking care of their daughter. Isn’t it interesting that no one asked why Todd Palin couldn’t stay home to tend to his disabled child? The responsibility was immediately assumed to be Sarah’s.

For all the gains the women’s movement has made, the old attitudes still linger. Even with many families having two income earners, the woman is still assumed to bear the main responsibility of child rearing, especially for young children. Where Rick Santorum doesn’t get a second look for running an all-consuming campaign, Sarah Palin got smacked for supposedly abandoning her maternal duties.

You may have come a long way baby, but you’ve got a long way to go.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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My Life in a Cartoon

Happy New Year!

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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I am not religious but the almost strident optimism in the song (based on a poem by Longfellow) cannot help but move the spirit. It reminds me, on a lighter note, of an old humorous story:

Two brothers were driving their father crazy. One brother was an eternal optimist and the other a pessimist. In the hope of showing his sons “the other side of the coin”, the father took the pessimist to a room piled high with toys. The boy began to cry. “Why are you crying,” asked the father, “look at all these toys!” The boy replied “yes so many toys that might break if I played with them.” Failing at that experiment, the father tried again with his optimistic son. He brought the boy to a barn piled high with horse manure. The boy joyfully jumped on top of the pile and started shoveling with his hands. “What in the world are you doing? Why are you so excited and happy?” asked the father. To which the gleeful boy replied:

With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!

And so we have a choice between optimism and pessimism. In the old Christmas song, the singer evolves from:

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

to

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.
With peace on Earth, good will to men.

The sound of the bells and their resemblance to the sound of children’s voices (children, being our future)  inspired the singer. He trusted that God (or in my case perhaps hope) had not abandoned the world. I do believe that in the long run, the right prevails.

I wish happy holidays to my readers. In the spirit of self-fulfilling prophecy, let us all take this season to declare that tomorrow will be better than today.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Image: chrisroll / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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If my Republican friends really want to worry about voter fraud, I’d like to turn their attention to a fraud that goes unnoticed every election. Very simply it is the phenomenon of very stupid people entering the voting booth.

My story actually begins with my own stupidity. The other day I was looking at a map of the proposed Keystone pipeline extension which had a solid line and a dotted line on it. I was having trouble understanding the difference. Like an idiot, I had neglected to notice the legend at the bottom of the map. My almost-eight year old 2nd grader explained the map to me when my wife prompted her to. I then updated my Facebook status to say “The verdict is in. I am not smarter than a 2nd grader.”

Things got worse however later in the day. The Lawson family gathered around the warm glow of the television to watch the game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?. For the uninitiated, contestants on this show try to win money by answering questions in topics taught in the first through fifth grades. Each contestant gets the help of one actual fifth grader from a panel that appears in each episode. With that backdrop, the following transpired. Mind you, I am NOT making this up.

The question: Which President of the United States served immediately before Franklin Delano Roosevelt? (Answer: Herbert Hoover)

The contestant thought aloud, “Well, IF Roosevelt served more than one term, then maybe the President who served before Roosevelt was Roosevelt himself?” The host, Jeff Foxworthy was kind enough to tell the woman that there are no trick questions on the show. I could see at this point, things were not going to end well. IF? One of the most well-known facts about Roosevelt was that he was elected four times, the only President with that distinction. Clearly this fact had escaped our poor contestant.

After pushing her brain to its limit she called on her fifth grade partner for assistance. Sadly the young girl was not the best exemplar of our educational system. Her answer was “Abraham Lincoln”. At this point, I went into shock. Lincoln was long dead before Roosevelt was even born. Their terms were not even in the same century. But forgiving man that I am, I gave the poor fifth grader a pass and blamed her teachers for her utter ignorance.

Our adult contestant now had the option to use the fifth grader’s answer or come up with her own. She wisely chose to reject “Abraham Lincoln”. The furrows in her forehead deepened. She descended into intense meditation. And then it came to her. She had arrived at her answer. Her answer was …

JAMES MADISON

Gasping for air, I asked my wife to call the paramedics. Just when I thought the lady recognized the utter impossibility of Lincoln, she picked a President even earlier than Lincoln. In fact, she picked the fourth President of the United States. Could the fourth POTUS possibly have served in the 1930′s? So three possibilities come to mind. She either knew nothing about Madison, or nothing about Roosevelt, or nothing about either. She was a grown-ass woman! She was incapable of making a guess that contained even the slightest hint of deductive reasoning. Had she said Calvin Coolidge, I could have said ok … early 20th century President. Had she said Harry Truman, I could’ve said ok, she’s got a good time frame there and just got the men in the wrong order. But no, her answer was the answer of a blindingly stupid person.

And now the real tragedy … this woman can vote. It makes you wonder just how many of the folks who enter the voting booth cannot discern their anus from a hole in the ground. And if it is true that much of America is dumb-as-a-post stupid, what does that say about the leaders we choose? Is it any wonder we have a Congress that repeatedly makes a spectacle of itself in incompetence? And while I still support our President, is it any wonder that we demanded virtually no relevant experience from him before electing him to the Presidency? Is it any wonder that the current slate of Republican Presidential wanna-be’s appear to be answering a casting call for Saturday Night Live?

The real voter fraud going on in America is that folks who can’t tell the difference between a SALT treaty and a salt shaker are choosing the man or woman who gives the “go” on a nuclear strike. Sadly, while we can legally ask you to produce all sorts of identification to prove you are who you say you are at the ballot box, we can’t legally ensure you won’t put James Madison as a write in candidate on the ballot.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Recently the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the stewardship of Kathleen Sebelius overruled a finding by the FDA that the “morning after” pill could be sold over the counter to anyone who wanted it. The morning after pill (also called Plan B) is used to hedge against pregnancy after sexual intercourse. The FDA based its finding on safety evaluations. HHS apparently overruled the finding based on skepticism of these same evaluations as it applies to younger consumers. To the chagrin of the pro-choice contingent, Barack Obama weighed in by saying that the overrule was just common sense and he used his young daughters to justify his own caution about the drug’s availability.

I support the HHS overrule and I am particularly troubled by one bit of rhetoric surrounding the controversy. I’ve heard many opponents of the HHS ruling refer to its impact on “young women”. Look folks, we’re talking girls aged 11 to 16. They are not young women. They are children. The President’s remarks were called by one pundit “paternalistic”. Well damn straight it should be paternalistic. Just how far have we lost our way in this country that we think an 11 year old girl should be able to walk into a pharmacy and grab a drug to prevent a pregnancy when she shouldn’t be engaging in sexual intercourse in the first place. I’m not one of those who advocates abstinence only education regarding pregnancy prevention but have we really gotten to the point where we readily accept our 11 and 12 year old daughters having intercourse? Have we really flipped so far off course that we believe parents should not be aware of their children’s contraceptive choices?

Sorry, pro-choice lobbyists and feminists in general, you can sling arrows at me all day long. My child becomes a “young woman” when she can put a roof over her own head and pay her own rent. Until then you’re damn right I’m going to be paternalistic and I’m going to be involved in her purchase of contraception.

Farewell to Hitch

This week at the age of 62, author and raconteur Christopher Hitchens died of esophageal cancer.  Whenever I tuned into a TV show and learned that Hitchens was going to be a guest my heart quickened a little and my mind buzzed with anticipation. To say Hitchens had a way with words would be like saying Julia Child could throw together a pretty good meal. Just reading his last contribution to Vanity Fair, I had to look two words up in the dictionary and I consider my vocabulary better than average (the words were inanition and etiolates).

But Hitchen’s final article for Vanity Fair also  illustrates his penchant for killing sacred cows. He takes on the notion of “what does not kill me makes me stronger” and notes quite matter of fact that the treatment to kill his cancer had left him much weaker, not at all stronger. An avowed atheist, Hitchens had no problem attacking the sacred and leaving controversy in his wake. In The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice he portrays the much revered nun as guilty of terrible optics (photo ops with the wife of Haiti’s Baby Doc Duvalier) at best and a cunning religious propagandist at worst. One phrase from the excerpts I read jumps out at me, that Hitchens wished to judge “Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather than her actions and words by her reputation.” Hitchens takes on God Himself in the book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Based on these works, one could simply label Christopher Hitchens a flame thrower enjoying controversy for its own sake. But there was a gravity to Hitchens’ analyses. He wasn’t flippant. He could in one breath recognize the stupidity of a man (George W. Bush) and in the next breath castigate those who might judge Bush who were not worthy to do so. Watch the following two exchanges, one from 2000 and the other from 2006.:

(You can watch a fuller version of the second video here.)

It might appear at first that the two videos contradict each other. However they are completely consistent. In the first, Hitchens criticizes Bush’s lack of curiosity, his mental laziness. In the second, he criticizes the mental laziness of Bill Maher’s audience who rejoice in the “easy shot” at Bush’s IQ. He calls them “frivolous” and points out that calling Bush dumb doesn’t make you smart.

Whether or not you agreed with everything Christopher Hitchens said, there was no denying that the man did not have a lazy mind. When he spoke or wrote he invested a finely tuned intellect and he challenged you to invest the mental energy to understand him, and if need be, challenge him. In a world of stupid soundbites and knee jerk partisan rhetoric, Mr. Hitchens will be sorely missed.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Photo credit: Andrew Rusk from Toronto, Canada via Wikipedia

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Crickets.

Anyone paying the barest of attention to the GOP presidential nomination race would have spotted this inconsistency yet the hosts of “Morning Joe” just let it slip right on by. Before anyone accuses me of being a partisan attack dog, look at the following three stories and tell me how much the main stream media has covered them:

• Solyndra — when we are supposedly fed up with crony capitalism this story of an ill-advised loan to a poorly run energy company with evidence pointing to undue pressure from the White House, has received relatively little attention.
• Fast and Furious — guns end up in the hands of Mexican criminals with the involvement of the US Justice department. Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice staff give incorrect information to Congress. Depending on your politics, the deception was either deliberate or not.
• $7.2 trillion in tax payer money doled out by the Fed without congressional knowledge much less approval.

Now it’s not that you can’t find these stories if you search for them but they are hardly leading news broadcasts.

When I was a kid, television news came from the big three networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. News anchors were assumed to be objective. This is why when, for example, Walter Cronkite came out against the Vietnam War it was a major shock to the system. Now there are cable networks entirely devoted to news and two of them have an obvious bias, MSNBC on the left and Fox on the right. It is now possible to sit down to a night of “news” coverage devoted to portraying an opposing political viewpoint as either dumb, dangerous or at worst treasonous. This kind of reporting leaves out facts that interfere with the politics of the reporters.

The most important purpose of a free press is to accurately inform the average citizen. It is supposed to even the playing field and enable us to better participate in our democracy. It seems what we have now are sloppy journalists who don’t do their homework before interviews and let politicians get away with inconsistencies and contradictions or news professionals who flaunt their political bias.

One thing we didn’t have when I was a kid was the Internet. Now with Google and a little patience, we can weigh the differing sides of a story and come to our own conclusions. Each of us must become our own news aggregator. Either we do that or we wait until comedian Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” covers a news item better than the so-called professionals will.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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