Lesser Evilism

My friends at Adgitadiaries have an article posted about the dangers of voting for the lesser of two evils....pretty much the situation we are facing with this election and the differences between the Democrats and Republicans. You can read it there.

Here is the thing. We have to acknowledge that the current system is corrupt—both parties are poisoned by big money, big banks and big corporations. When you look at the money required to run for President today it says it all. Morality and ideals are not really a part of  today's political reality. As liberals and progressives we are in a war and when you are at war you have to think and act strategically. In our current situation it would be a colossal strategic failure to allow the GOP to regain control of the White House.  Regardless of how we do it we have to prevent Romney from getting to the White House. Romney as President would be a catastrophe for the elderly and the poor not to mention the middle class. There are lives at stake here and millions of them. If I was strategically allowed to vote my moral conscience I would probably vote for Jill Stein but it would be a strategic disaster. The strategic vote in our current situation is for President Obama as it is the least negative vote with respect to the lives of most Americans and especially the poor and regular working folks. Someday we may become a truly enlightened society where we can carry our morals to the polls but we aren't anywhere close.

Dumb as a Fox

In retrospect it seems that President Obama was wise in not using the 47% gaffe during the debate as a cudgel. He apparently suspected that Rmoney would already be expecting it and have a tested response at the ready. Instead of giving Mitt a huge audience for his mea culpa Mitt has to use it on the Hannity show last night to a much, much smaller audience.

Much Ado About Nothing

Thanks to Mother Jones for pointing out that all this flap about President Obama’s “unprecedented assault on America’s religious freedoms” by requiring church-related hospitals and universities to cover contraception at the federal level has actually been on the books for, oh, about 12 years now.

That's right

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn’t provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don’t offer prescription coverage or don’t offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC’s interpretation of the law, you can’t offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

The wingnuts are so uninformed about the real world it just makes you want to crawl away and hide.

H/T Balloon Juice

Not Really So Bad

Here is a post that is worth reading entitled: President Obama: A Radical Liberal Moderate Conservative Socialist Corporate Stooge?


Here is the great line in the last paragraph...

...the next bill the President needs to sign, aimed at Congressional Republicans, is the Cut the Crap Act; Republicans won’t out-game this president, and he seems ready to let them know it.

While I can say that I was expecting a "little" more change from Mr. Obama I cannot honestly say that he is a failure as many on the left are saying. I mean the man was handed a "bag o' shit" when you boil it down and the reality is that he prevented it from getting a lot more worse. When you consider what he has had to deal with from Congress it is amazing that he has had any successes at all. Just because the "professional left" didn't get all their blue sky dreams answered doesn't mean we haven't made progress. You really have to be a bit pragmatic about it.

Getting There

I must say I am encouraged by the latest tack taken by the White House. Is the hope for a happy honeymoon with the insane GOP over finally? All indications are that the President has finally realized that no matter how much he bends it won't be enough for the Republicans whose only goal in life is to insure he is a one term president. Of course, regardless of how defiant the President is and how firm he is on standing his ground with respect to progressive issues the GOP ain't going to budge.

You do have to love the President's line from yesterday..."It's not class warfare. It's math."

Amplified Failure

The thing that is really somewhat tragic about President Obama's performance so far is that we are at a time where greatness was needed. We are faced with an insane group of people that want to take the country back into the 19th century. Obama promised us greatness and change. He promised to end the Bush tax cuts, stop the free trade agreements, and take away all the tax breaks for companies that moved our jobs overseas. Nothing has happened and we should have seen the clues that nothing was going to happen early on when it was apparent that he was going to surround himself with Wall Street folks and not folks that represented the middle class or labor.
We're were/are at a cusp that will determine the future of this country and to a large degree the world. We are looking at the huge impact of climate change, and unprecedented challenge for most of the world's economies and finally a disparity in wealth in this country that is nearly at the revolutionary point. This is the time we need greatness and fearlessness and thus Obama's failure to rise to the times is thus greater in comparison to the need and the opportunity in less challenging times. Now that the 2012 campaign season is officially underway the President and his handlers are going to try and make us forget our disappointment and renew our faith that Obama is the instrument we need. The tragedy is that, looking at the GOP challengers to date, Obama, despite his faults and failings, is still the best we have been offered.

Spinning Up The Wacko's

I must say I am impressed by President Obama's comments on the Manhattan mosque. This is mighty strong language and I am sure we'll hear a lot about this from the crazy people. Here are the the President's remarks at the White House Iftar dinner:

Now, that's not to say that religion is without controversy. Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.) And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

It's good to see him come down on one of the fundamentals of our society so forcefully.

Who Did I Vote For?

There is a 'must read' today at Huff Po by Drew Westen, the political psychologist/neuroscientist, that is probably going to get a lot of people cranky today but it is the most accurate assessment I have seen to date on what has happened to 'Change We Can Believe In'.

This is a brutal, but accurate, assessment of the Obama presidency so far. It's a bit long but if you are like me you will have some 'Ah ha' moments and recognize some of what you have been thinking for the last few months but couldn't put into words. The article in annoying because it is spot on.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

I guess the big question is...What can we do to change it and can we?

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Jim DeRosa has a post up this morning A Great Society or a Great War. You Can't Have Both.

I too, have been thinking a lot about the weight of the decision President Obama is having to make. While President Obama was left with hundreds of tough problems by the preceding administration none are more critical to the future of what America will become than the lingering disasters of these two wars. Millions upon millions of people both here and there will have to live with the consequences of our next steps.

The always eloquent Bill Moyers had this to say about where we are:

BILL MOYERS: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

Aside from the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of lives at stake there is also a terrible political impact to the impending decision. There is a very strong likelihood that should President Obama choose to not escalate the conflict in Afghanistan and, in effect, walk away he will most likely be a one term president. If the President chooses, instead of war, the almost impossible domestic problems which he inherited, he will pay for it with his Presidency. The charges from the war mongers and wingnut right will be poisonous. He will be labeled as weak and unpatriotic. He will be accused of betraying our dead and casting aside all of the lives and treasure we have invested in these misguided wars and it will be relentless. Trust me, it won't matter one whit to the mouthbreathers if we move toward energy independence, reduce the deficit, enact health reform or any other of the myriad opportunities we have to improve life in America. The only thing that will matter is that Obama quit. It won't matter that it was fruitless to continue. It won't matter that we were crushing ourselves under mountains of debt for no reason. The only thing they will see is quitting which they will see a losing.

This is the choice President Obama faces and it is a mighty dilemma. Is there a way to end the quagmire that was deliberately left for him in Afghansitan and still serve two terms? I, for one, believe the choice should be to end our engagement in a conflict we cannot and never will win even it means a return to power of the right. As much as I hate the idea of a return to incompetence of the GOP I have come to the conclusion that we can't, as a nation, continue on our present course. Escalating the Afghanistan conflict will just amplify the disaster. Abandoning it will be the political ruin of Obama and the Democratic party. Withdrawing from Afghanistan will add high octane fuel to the efforts of the extreme right to tear this country apart. If you think the insanity displayed since the election has been spectacular just wait until they have this to batter the President with.

The sad thing is that President Obama will probably bow to the pressure and escalate in some fashion and, in effect, turn his back on the mountain of domestic problems we face. Thousands more American and Afghan lives will be sacrificed until someone comes along and makes the right decision. I just hope that if and when the escalation comes it is wrapped in clear and decisive terms with respect to goals and exit strategy. I think it is a mistake to kick the ball down the field one more time no matter how the process is defined but it will probably happen.

None of us should delude ourselves about the reasons either. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is strictly about politics and the President's desire to not be a one term President. It will be about not ceding political power to the extreme right in the next presidential election. We have been here before and to paraphrase Bill Moyers, it is "de ja vu all over again". President Obama is in the same position as President Johnson when it came to Vietnam. Johnson chose war out of political expediency even though he chose not to run for a second term. Would that President Obama take a lesson from that dilemma and the results of the wrong decision.

Those of you that have been coming around here for any length of time know how much I loathe the far right and what they have done and are doing to our country. As much as I hate to say it, I would rather see them return to power than see us spend any more lives and treasure in the pointless conflicts in the Middle East. It was a mistake in the beginning and it is even more of a mistake now. If ending this costs us a return to the fascism of the right then so be it.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe that we should be engaged in the world and especially the potential hell hole that could erupt in the Middle East. I just don't think we should be doing it with bombs and bullets. Pakistan is trouble squared and Iran could be as well. Palestine and Israel will ever be a sucking wound on the world until we settle the issue of the West Bank and settlements. Who knows what will become of Iraq and Afghanistan if we disengage militarily. We and many before us have proven conclusively that bombs and bullets don't work in Afghanistan and the same can be said for the rest. We can't ignore the hole but we should at least stop digging.

Bad Numbers

The October jobs numbers are out and it is not good. "The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September".

I think it is time to refocus our efforts on job creation.

Paul Krugman, Obama’s Faces His Anzio (and why we need more jobs/stimulus):

If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.

Obama was left with a lot on his plate by the last administration. And the efforts at health care reform, environmental policy change, financial reform, an education bill, immigration reform are all important but the jobs picture has become, I think, the number one priority.

The Republicans proved yesterday that they are not serious about moving the country forward. The Republican leadership embraced extremism at the Michele Bachmann 'tea party' event on the Capitol steps. It was an ugly spectacle. It just reinforced the notion that the GOP is not going to partner with this administration to address the problems that we face. Moreover, it proved that they are seriously pushing the fact that they are, if not completely insane, irresponsible and detached from the reality that is America today. We cannot count on them to be at our side as we try and move forward.

We need to re-prioritize and get something done that will add jobs and, in turn, build the economy.

Stupid in Action

It began with the "daughter of Darth" criticizing President Obama for honoring fallen troops at Dover Air Force Base and now, yesterday, it was Mr. Ego himself criticizing the president for being on hand as flag-draped coffins returned home. The interview on FAUX news even made the second page of the AJC this morning!

Mr. Limbaugh criticized Mr. Obama's trip as part of a broader attack on the president's handling of Afghanistan and his credentials.

"It was a photo op precisely because he's having big-time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation," Mr. Limbaugh said on "Fox News Sunday." ... "I think he's got an out-of-this-world ego. He's very narcissistic. And he's able to focus all attention on him all the time," he said.

President Obama paid his respects to fallen U.S. soldiers. So what? This isn't an especially controversial thing to do unless you consider that President Bush purposely didn't greet returning caskets even once during his two miserable terms in office and to top it off didn't even allow photographs of the hundreds and hundreds of caskets that came home to Dover on his watch. Gimme' a break!

Neither Liz Cheney or Gasbag noted that when 16 Americans were killed in an attack on the U. S. Embassy in Beirut, then-President Reagan appeared at Andrews Air Force Base greeting the flag-draped coffins with a full press contingent and the First Lady to boot. How convenient. How does that not qualify as a 'photo-op'? All I can say is that someone with "talent on loan from God" has a lot of nerve uttering statements so brazenly full of shit.

A couple of days ago digby, as usual, put her finger on core issue:

"Any discussion that there's something untoward in the President greeting dead soldiers is wingnut revisionist crap. Kings and leaders have been doing this since time began. It's a sign of respect for the fallen and they do it publicly as gesture on behalf of the people. That these so-called patriots think there's now something wrong with that tells you everything you need to know about their sincerity."

Attacking the Roots

Back in the days(last year) when companies paid my company rather healthy sums of money to have me help them solve problems with logistics and inventory I was known as a systemic problem solver. I took a holistic view of the processes and attempted to identify root causes and efforts that were not adding value. I was usually successful and the problems were most often small things that in and of themselves were minor but synergized into something that created a significant problem.

It seems that the President has decided this approach has value.

With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News. President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.

The wingnut noise machine and its enablers such as Limbaugh, Beck, and FAUX news and the money behind them can, as separate entities, be ignored without too much pain. Collectively however they are causing irreparable harm to the country in a way that far exceeds their individual merit. It is about time someone started calling them out and pointing to their lies and hatred of what is best about our country. Good for Obama. Let's keep it up.

Winds of Change

I've been reading around and it seems the idea that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize is because he is not George W. Bush is predominant. That, in fact, might not be too far off the mark but I think it goes a little deeper.

I might not have been surprised if he had received it a little later in his presidency but I think a lot of people fail to realize that much, if not most, of the world looked upon the reign of "W" as a very dark time in American history. In spite of the constant railings by the wingnuttia, the rest of the world saw the Bush presidency for what it truly was, a time when the greatest power on earth was the cause of a global destabilization and in many ways a maverick nation that actually bordered on lawlessness. It was a scary time for many people around the world and a scary time for many of us as well.

Regardless of the hyperbolic attacks that are virtually unending from the right and in spite of the fears of some of us supporters that we haven't gotten the 'change' we need and want, Obama is beginning to change the way it works. While I will be the first to say that I am not happy with the hesitant and sometimes imperfect start to this presidency, President Obama has started turning the American state in a different direction. I think possibly that we have been so numbed by the last 8 years of American history that we are having trouble seeing any change in the wind. I believe what the Nobel committee is saying is that while what may seem like a meager start from an American perspective is actually a profound change in the way American fits into its role as the most powerful nation in the world and that they are immensely encouraged and relieved that we have found our path again. While we are far from out of the woods we at least have a compass and a direction.

The damage done to our country over the last 8 years is apparent everywhere you look and the efforts to rectify all the myriad ills inflicted upon us and the world in the name of a "New American Century" and "compassionate conservatism" are massively difficult. Let's hope the Nobel committee's faith in our new leader and direction he leads us in justified.

Obama Wins the Nobel Prize

Uh Oh! Get the popcorn going. This is going to drive the right wing absolutely bonkers. I can see the usual suspects foaming at the mouth.

From the New York Times:

OSLO (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Friday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play."

We are going to hear the Nobel Prize discounted....because it has lost all meaning since they gave it to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone say that this was the real reason Obama went to Copenhagen last week even though Denmark has nothing to do with the Nobel Prize...but whatever is was Scandinavia.

This is going to be fun to watch.

Next It Will Be Sheets and Hoods

It has been going on since the election... the lowest and most vicious of Obama's opponents have been subtlety adding a racial 'color' to their attacks. For the most part it has been very carefully worded but if you took a second look you could hear the dog whistle. Most recently it was Saxby Chambliss warning the president to show humility during his speech or Joe Wilson's shout "You Lie! and carefully leaving the 'boy' word unsaid but understood. Apparently, the time for carefully shaded remarks is over and unvarnished racism and race-baiting is now the order of the day.

It apparently started with a headline on Drudge: "White Student Beaten on School Bus; Crowd Cheers." What makes a fist fight among teenagers on a school bus in St. Louis national news is beyond me but since it was a black kid hitting a white kid it was evidently serious enough for the far right to make it important on a national scale.

While a number of wingnuts jumped on the story as an excuse to accuse President Obama of creating a new era of black on white hate, Rush Limbaugh took the prize for the most unvarnished race-baiting of the day when he decided that somehow President Obama is responsible for this tragic event.

"It's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white."

It doesn't appear to matter that the event wasn't racially motivated but rather the result of some bullies who like to dictate who sits where on the bus. Of course, the truth doesn't matter when it comes to the real goal of the far right which is to try and transfer their racial hatred of the president to as many of their mouth breathing listeners as possible. The mostly sane and somewhat civilized among us recognize and revile this kind of crap for the hateful and dangerous thing that it is. Many of us lived through Jim Crow and the pain of the civil rights movement and remember how this kind of talk strains the fabric of our society. I had actually believed that except for a small fringe of society that we had moved beyond this sort of thing and never would I have believed that such transparently racist language would be on national media. The real tragedy is that it will get worse and that it will most likely trigger some kind of violence but even if no one gets hurt physically it will generate emotional pain and foster hatred and sadly Limbaugh and his cohorts will not suffer any consequences for their nasty discourse.

This is a terrible fire the far right are unleashing and something that will burn us all.

Update: Some more reading.
MoDo thinks it is.

Jimmy Carter thinks it is.

Cynthia Tucker thinks it is.

Good Speech

I thought last night's presidential address was spot on. I just wish he had given it a couple of months ago. He left the public option on the table and most of all let the opposition know that he was in the fight to win and would call liars liars when it needed to be done.

The old saying "A caught pig squeals" is about all you have to say about the outburst from SC GOP thug Wilson. This will come back to haunt him as is evident by the increase in contributions to his campaign overnight.

I've got errands to run and bread to get shaped and rising but I'll be back a little later. All in all I feel a little more encouraged after the speech. There may be hope for meaningful change after all.

How Long Will It Take?

President Obama's speech in Cairo is getting rave reviews both from the Muslim world and from sane people in the West. From MJ Rosenburg at TPM we have a summary of the eight major themes of the speech. I am just wondering how long it is going to take before the leaders of the wingbut brigade take exception to all or part of the message because in the speech Obama makes a direct hit on some of the unhinged right's most beloved untruths especially with respect to the place Islam has in our country. The president made a special point of equating the fundamental truths of the Bible, Talmud and Koran which is sure to horrify the nutso crowd of "christians" who think they are the only true religion and that everyone else is going to fry in hell. It will be interesting to see what really flames the whackos off the most and who their annointed spokesperson or persons will be. I'm sure we'll here a "rebuttal" today sometime.

The President conveyed eight distinct messages.

1) It's a new day. Not only is Barack Obama not Bush, he isn't any of the other 43 Presidents either. And he explained exactly how different he is. America is a great country, not least because it elected a half-Muslim, half-African. We are not who you may think we are. We are still America.

2)Islam is part of the American fabric and always has been.He knows Islam and honors it, like the other great faiths -- but with his special connection. We oppose the violent extremism of a segment of Islam but understand that the vast majority of Muslims reject that path.

3)9/11 was a crime against America and humanity. We are at war with its perpetrators -- Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Iraq was a "war of choice" and we are getting out as soon as we can.

4)We oppose violent extremism by anyone.

5)We are committed to Israel and to Palestine. Both peoples have a right to a safe secure state. Palestinian terror must stop. So must settlements. He will work to end this conflict. The language here was utterly evenhanded and emotional. He cares deeply about this issue. And, although he intends to push Israel hard on settlements, etc, he understands and shares the feeling Jews have about the country created in response to the slaughter of six million Jews. He will not do anything that endangers Israel's real security but, at the same time, "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own."

6)We will keep talking to Iran about a resolution of the nuclear issue. It is entitled to have peaceful nuclear power. His goal is to prevent a nuclear arms race in the region.

7)Freedom of expression, democracy, and full rights for women are essential in the Muslim and Arab world just as in the west.

8)We intend to work with Muslims to remake the world. They are not our enemies.

Conclusion:

"It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples - a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.

Insanity Rules

If you look around the web or use a reader like I do you will note that some 80% of the current traffic is about President Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor. The wingnut churn in non-information is hard to believe. People are discussing her food preferences, her heritage and I am sure her shoe size in trying to disqualify her as a legitimate candidate for the Supreme Court.

Let me make this simple for everyone.

If Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich don't like her then she is obviously the perfect choice. You can read all her past opinions from the 2nd Circuit and study how many have been overturned by the Supreme Court(not many) and you can worry that she is Puerto Rican and that Puerto Ricans have only been citizens of the U.S. since 1917. You can even worry about the fact that she is 'emapathetic'. Don't waste your time... Rush and Newt not liking the pick is all you have to know. She's perfect.

What Josh Said

As you may or may not know, Darth Cheney is going to rebut President Obama'a speech today about closing GITMO. Josh Marshall at TPM reminds us about who and what Cheney really is. We should all keep this in mind for reference as the mainstream media talking heads vainly attempt to put Cheney on an equal footing with Obama. You should read the entire post but I especially like the middle two paragraphs.

This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean.

Monday Insanity

Our Georgia boy Newt is making an ass out of himself again today. Why change a winning formula?

Believe it or not the "outrage" on the "never right" is that President Obama shook hands with President Chavez of Argentina.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tore into President Barack Obama Monday for his friendly greeting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying Obama is bolstering the "enemies of America."

Gingrich appeared on a number of morning talk shows comparing Obama to President Jimmy Carter for the smiling, hearty handshake he offered Chavez, one of the harshest critics of the United States, during the Summit of the Americas. [...]

Two Republican senators, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and John Ensign of Nevada, joined in the criticism Monday, with Ensign calling Obama's greeting of Chavez "irresponsible."

President Obama prbably realized when he shook hands with old Hugo that the "tea baggers" back home would have a kitten and accuse him of selling American babies to the devil. He made a point of saying...

"It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States," Obama told reporters. "I don't think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela."

That evidently wasn't enough for Gingrich, Ensign and Gregg who were still licking their wounds after the miserable results of the teabagging follies. They needed something, anything to attack the President with and this was all they could find.

The strange thing is that these "leading" Republicans didn't think through the ramifications and the real message that their attack on President Obama carries. What these so called patriots are saying, in effect, is that America is too weak and fragile to afford extending even the simplest courtesies to foriegn heads of state. On the other hand, the President is acting like the leader of the free world that he is. He is acting like America should act and doesn't hesitate to engage in proper civility toward a foriegn dignitary. Obama sctually said,

"We had this debate throughout the campaign, and the whole notion was, is that somehow if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness -- the American people didn't buy it. And there's a good reason the American people didn't buy it -- because it doesn't make sense."

Why do you think the Republican leadership is promoting the idea of American weakness? Really, GOP find something important enough to get your shorts in a wad for...there are plenty of issues with more spit and substance. The U.S. President was photographed shaking hands with the twice-elected head of state of a large South American democracy at a forum for hemispheric leaders. That's it. The President didn't whisper nuclear secrets in his ear or kiss him on the lips. Enough already.