The WAWG Blog

McCain’s Lobbyist Friends

Anti-Western Political Parties…

Campaign Manager Rick Davis’s Firm Represented Anti-Western Political Party in Ukraine. “A consultant to Sen. John McCain hired a public-relations firm last year to burnish the U.S. image of a Ukrainian political party backed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to documents filed with the Justice Department. The lobbying firm of Davis Manafort Inc. arranged for the public-relations firm’s work through an affiliate last spring, at the same time Davis Manafort was being paid by the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign. The firm is co-owned by lobbyist Rick Davis, manager of Sen. McCain’s presidential campaign, and longtime Republican strategist Paul Manafort.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/14/08]

Mob-Connected Russian Oligarchs…

Davis Introduced McCain to Putin-Ally, Mafia-Linked Russian Oligarch. While seeking to do business with him, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis – while simultaneously at the Reform Institute and lobbying for Davis Manafort – introduced McCain to Oleg Deripaska, a Putin ally whose U.S. visa was revoked due to suspicions over his ties to Russian organized crime. McCain, Deripaska and Davis rendezvoused at least twice – first in January 2006 in Davos, then during a codel in Montenegro in August 2006. [Washington Post, 1/25/08]

The Saudi Royal Family…

Former Campaign Finance Chair Tom Loeffler Lobbied McCain for Saudi Clients. – “But the fallout may not be over. One top campaign official affected by the new policy is national finance co-chair Tom Loeffler, a former Texas congressman whose lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests, including a French aerospace firm seeking Pentagon contracts. Loeffler last month told a reporter ‘at no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain.’ But lobbying disclosure records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to ‘discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations.’” [ Newsweek, 5/26/08: ]

Companies doing business in Iran…

McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis Represented Ukrainian Companies Doing Business in Iran. – “Before Rick Davis began serving as John McCain’s campaign manager, his lobbying firm had a pretty cosmopolitan set of clients. For example, Ukranian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who has several business links to Iran… Davis Manafort was helping Akhmetov’s conglomerate, System Capital Management Holdings, to develop a “corporate communications strategy” between the beginging of 2005 through the end of summer 2005, the company said. The company’s subsidiary, Metinvest, a steel company, has one of its 11 offices in Tehran. And another subsidiary, Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant, sells large pipes to Iran. Those business ties go back to at least 2005, when Davis Manafort was working for the company, according to a handful of stories in business publications like the Russia & CIS Metals and Mining Weekly and the Mining and the Metals report, which we found on Nexis.” [ TPM, 5/30/08: ]

The Brutal Myanmar Junta…

Doug Goodyear Left Campaign After Revelations His Firm Represented Myanmar Regime. – “The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar. Doug Goodyear resigned as coordinator of the Twin Cities convention and issued a two-sentence statement.” [Associated Press, 5/11/08]

Goodyear and Doug Davenport, Regional Campaign Manager, Tied to Oppressive Myanmar Junta. “ABC News’ Jan Simmonds reports: Two of Sen. John McCain’ campaign aides resigned this weekend after media reports brought to light their ties to a lobbying group that once represented the military junta of Burma, which the regime calls Myanmar. The aides, Douglas Goodyear, who was tapped as the GOP Convention Coordinator, and Doug Davenport, a regional manager focusing on the mid-Atlantic states, both worked for DCI. The firm was hired in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta to try to begin a dialogue of political reconciliation with the United States.” [ABCNews.com, 5/11/08]

…and some of history’s Most Brutal Tyrants

Charlie Black Pioneered the “Revolving Door Between Campaign Consulting and Lobbying.” “Then in his 30s, Black already had established himself as a pioneer of the revolving door between campaign consulting and lobbying, having been a senior adviser on President Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign before returning to K Street. And his clients, as often as not, were foreign leaders eager to burnish their reputations…The lobbying shop represented Bethlehem Steel, the Tobacco Institute and the government of the Philippines. The political consulting firm helped elect a slew of lawmakers — including Sens. Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, Charles McC. Mathias Jr., Arlen Specter, Paula Hawkins and David F. Durenberger — who worked on legislation that directly impacted the firm’s clients.” [Washington Post, 5/22/08]

“Longtime Uber-Lobbyist” Helped Burnish Reputations of Some of the World’s Worst Tyrants.” “Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is John McCain’s man in Washington, a political maestro who is hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November. But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi’s man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black’s contacts in Congress and the White House.” [Washington Post, 5/22/08]

Black’s Client List a Whose Who of Repressive Rulers. – “In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.” [Washington Post, 5/22/08]

Regards,

Jim

Tom Delay Says That Barack Obama is a Marxist – Tom Delay launched a fringe attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) by claiming that he is a Marxist. “I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist,” DeLay declared.

Administration Presented Unsubstantiated and Contradicted Items as Fact Part 1, Part 2 – In a sweeping, 200-plus page review of the administration’s pre-war case for invasion, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that in making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. The Committee’s report cites several conclusions in which the Administration’s public statements were NOT supported by the intelligence. They include:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

• The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

“This report again demonstrates how President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others made repeated assertions about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein that were not supported by, and at times outright contradicted, the intelligence available at the time,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, an Intelligence Committee member.

McCain’s Campaign Manager Announces Contest to Spy on Your Neighbor – In what Wonkette calls “the most tragically awkward video in the history of YouTube,” a dazed McCain campaign manager Rick Davis stares goggle-eyed at off-screen cue cards, robotically making a call for Americans to stalk their neighbors with video cameras, and reveal what secret Islamofascists might be walking among us. The lucky winner will be flown to the Republican National Convention to enjoy a session of “Seven Minutes In Heaven” with Larry Craig at the Minneapolis airport, and then it’s off to Guantanamo Bay!

McCain Changes Position; Now Backs Bush Wiretaps – A top adviser to John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team. In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance. Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power.

You May Get to Live in a Toxic Trailer This Hurricane Season – The Federal Emergency Management Agency has promised it will never again use formaldehyde-tainted trailers to house victims of a natural disaster — unless, of course, it does. In a draft disaster housing report, the agency said it would use the trailers if need be, though as a last resort, and for no longer than six months. Some 500 families made homeless in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina are still living in toxic trailers.

U.S. to Add to Pollution of Canada – About two thirds of new gasoline refinery capacity in the United States is going to process dirty oilsands crude from northern Alberta, Canada. Future oil refining in the U.S. may soon get much dirtier – including three times more greenhouse gas emissions in the extraction process – as refineries place their bets on a shift away from traditional crude oil to Canadian oilsands. Matt Price, a project manager for Environmental Defence Canada, said called the oilsands “the most destructive project on Earth. Nowhere else are we talking about ripping up an area the size of Florida, creating massive toxic lakes you can see from space with the naked eye, and giving off three times the greenhouse gas emissions to produce oil when compared with conventional crude.”

Regards,

Jim

(Note: Authoritarian is used throughout this blog in the context of a personality type – not in the sense of a figure of authority such as a policeman, boss or Army general.)

While maintaining this blog for the last couple of years, I have spent more time watching interviews and book reviews on the CSPAN channels than ever before, and searching the internet for information that might help me add to the theme of this blog: Where Are We Going and how did we get where we are now.

The answers have come from many sources.

The first was a list of 14 “common threads” that were derived by Laurence W. Britt after reviewing 7 authoritarian regimes. Next came John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience, which I have summarized in this blog. His book lead to two other areas that helped with understanding our recent direction toward a “single-party state.” One was the extensive work by Professor Robert Altemeyer from the University of Manitoba, Canada, on authoritarianism that grew out of other studies on Germany’s hegemony during WWII. The work of John Dean linked Altemeyer’s authoritarian studies to the neoconservatives and the religious right. This lead to the work of Dr. Shadia Drury on Leo Strauss, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and his extension of the teachings of Plato to what went wrong in Germany and what is going wrong in America. The teachings of Professor Strauss are used by Irving Kristol, his son William Kristol, and other neocons to try and rid us of too many freedoms. Dr. Drury put it this way, “The neoconservative goal is reactionary in the classic sense of the term. It is nothing short of turning the clock back on the liberal revolution. And it will use democracy to accomplish its task. After all, Strauss had no objections to democracy as long as a wise elite, inspired by the profound truths of the ancients, was able to shape, invent, or create the will of the people. In his interpretation of Plato’s myth of the cave, Strauss maintained that the philosophers who return to the cave should not bring in truth; instead, the philosophers should seek to manipulate the images in the cave, so that the people will remain in the stupor to which they are supremely fit.”

The philosophers should seek to manipulate the images in the cave, so that the people will remain in the stupor to which they are supremely fit

Another aspect of today’s current situation is how it relates to the Nixon administration and the culture war that started in the 60’s. We have had two key players and one tyro (beginner) from Nixon’s reign working for his highness Bush: Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove who was a college Republican working for the Nixon campaign. We also have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 that resulted from Nixon’s “bad deeds” and has been ignored and subverted by the current administration for the sake of providing us a false sense of security.

This posting is adding another aspect of how the 60’s contributed to the current situation.

The right wing authoritarians of today were galvanized during the 60’s by a rejection of a few critical authoritarian boundaries which limited people’s freedoms and liberties, but they were boundaries which the right needed to feel secure. They needed the limitations to freedoms and liberties for fear of falling prey to them. They needed someone to protect them from themselves and others who might ‘infect’ them. These are the same freedoms the Taliban tries to control, only they do it with theocracy enforced by religious zealots with guns.

Here is what a few others have said recently about the 60’s and the resulting second “American Civil War.”

Steven M. Gillon discusses the cultural divide of the 60’s:

A few years ago, while doing research for my book, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation, I asked President Clinton to highlight his differences with Speaker Gingrich. “If you want to understand the differences between me and Newt you have to go back to the 60s,” he told me. “If you think the 60s were generally good, chances are you are a liberal. If you think the 60s were bad, chances are you’re a conservative.”

Just as the military battle between North and South in the 1860s molded American politics for the rest of that century, so the cultural civil war of the 1960s has defined politics in our time. The clashes between protesters and police in the streets of Berkeley, Chicago, and Detroit were far less violent than the bloody battles between Union and Confederate armies that took in [sic] place at Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Both civil wars, however, produced a generation that was scarred by the memory of the struggle, deeply divided over its meaning, and determined to win a long-term fight for the hearts and minds of the American people.

What are they fighting about? The ideological struggle over the meaning of the 1960s boils down to a debate over what I refer to as a “culture of choice.” The clashes over Vietnam, racial rioting, and student protesting have faded into memory, but they have left a lasting impression on the nation. Taken together the social movements of the decade expanded the range of individual choices people have about the way they live their lives. The civil rights movement dramatically expanded options for African-Americans. Along the way, it spearheaded other empowerment movements, especially for women and homosexuals. The range of choices expanded beyond political rights into the world of culture, where many young people questioned all forms of authority and loosened the rules of behavior that had guided their parent’s generation. That cultural revolution had a ripple effect that touched nearly every institution in society.

The dramatic changes prompted a backlash among traditionalists who complained that “counterculture” values had seeped into every institution of American society, breeding permissiveness and eroding the moral glue that held society together. Neoconservative thinkers focused on the public policy consequences of a culture that valued liberation over responsibility, claiming that the abandonment of older values such as family, hard work, and discipline have produced an epidemic of divorce, poverty, and crime. At the same time, religious fundamentalists probed the moral and religious results, claiming the culture of individualism led to moral decay. [Neocons and religious fundamentalists are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.]

The Republican Party … has become home to conservatives who advocate a “culture of authority.” They have turned the decade into a metaphor for a constellation of issues that resonated with millions of Americans who feared the erosion of traditional values and authority in society. For them, mention of the “60s” produces subliminal images of privileged students burning the American flag, radical feminists assaulting the family, militant minorities rioting in the streets, arrogant intellectuals mocking cherished values and blurring the distinction between right and wrong, and faceless government bureaucrats wasting hard-earned tax dollars while people on welfare did not have to work.

The clash between these two competing views of the 1960s reached a fever pitch during the impeachment debate in the final years of the Clinton administration. “Why do you hate Clinton so much?” an interviewer asked a prominent conservative. The response: Because “he’s a womanizing, Elvis-loving, non-inhaling, truth-shading, war-protesting, draft-dodging, abortion-protecting, gay-promoting, gun-hating baby boomer. That’s why.”

Joseph A. Palermo, comments on a conservative’s view of the 60’s:

The dominant trope driving Tom Brokaw’s interpretation of the meaning of 1968 for the History Channel goes something like this: The “Greatest Generation” had set up a period of quietude and tranquility that the tumult of the 1960s rudely shattered. He blames the “excesses” of the 1960s, not surprisingly, on the Left and on the kids, and indirectly on the Democratic Party.

“To many,” Brokaw intones, it seemed as though “the social fabric was unraveling” in 1968, and this, he explains, was how Richard Nixon was elected. Brokaw’s narrative is neat and clean: Nixon appealed to the social conservatives who were repelled by the “excesses” of the middle-class youth movement. Nixon promised to bring America back to that fabled (and non-existent) tranquil period of quietude of the 1950s ….

Forty years later, we have a huge national debt, (about $9.8 trillion), a debilitating occupation of an Arab country, gaping current account deficits with the rest of the world, an economic meltdown awaiting due to reckless de-regulation and privatization, and a government that seems unwilling or unable to tackle any of the nation’s most pressing problems. All of this governmental ineptitude and corruption seems natural under Republican rule because the Right never really believed in the power of government to do anything positive anyway so it becomes a convenient self-fulfilling prophecy.

Making matters worse, the right-wing baby boomers, like George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and Grover Norquist, who got draft deferments and were out waving the American flag when most of their generation was protesting the war, have created the worst mess for the nation since at least the Civil War. Brokaw’s underlying assumption is that the country is better off under conservatives because their values mirror the values of his father and those of the “greatest generation” more so than the baby boomers.

Brokaw accepts the premise that America is more “conservative” today, but one could just as easily argue that the workforce is simply more insecure and scared today; the cold hand of the market has disciplined their wayward children far more severely and effectively than their parents ever could. Compared to 1968, the U.S. economy is a shell of its former self, and the new status quo that Brokaw lauds limits opportunity even while the government has grown more authoritarian and nakedly imperialistic.

Our kids today have it a lot harder than we had it — we had far more support from the government in the form of educational and economic opportunities. There is relative quiet in 2008, even with an unpopular foreign war dragging on, because the conservative agenda has helped facilitate fear in the population on all levels, and its cynical brand of divide-and-conquer politics have demoralized would-be idealists. For over 30 years now the Republicans have told young people not to bother dreaming of creating a better world in the future. “Idealism is Dead,” they say in word and deed. Better to pile up material goods and be obedient consumers than act as politically engaged citizens.

There is nothing “great” about a generation — “conservative,” “liberal,” or otherwise — that tells its kids to stop dreaming of a better world, and holds as its creed that government cannot do anything positive for the people, that we should focus on what we cannot do as a nation, instead of what we can do, (or must do). Just look at the lack of “vision” of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. At least in 1968 young people had hope and could dream of a better planet and a better future. Brokaw comes down on the side of the stern father shaming those unruly children for their “excesses,” while he ignores the damage to the nation his “conservative” heroes in his morality play have brought about.

Blake Fleetwood shares his near death experience of the 60’s and included this:

1968 was a heady time.

All over the world, students were angry and challenging authority.

It was the time of the Prague Spring and, later that summer in Czechoslovakia, there were more demonstrations against Russian troops. There were also demonstrations in Poland (against Soviet domination), France (against the Algerian war), and Mexico (against a feudal ruling class), to name a few.

But the real legacy of the ’68 turmoil was the idea that young people and students had the obligation to challenge authority, to question assumptions… and could succeed.

We drew strength from Robert F. Kennedy’s words when he told us, “Let us not have tired answers.”

This spirit of questioning and change from the Civil Rights movement and the sixties taught every succeeding generation of students and young people that they must speak truth to power. That it is their civic duty.

The women’s movement, the environmental movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the current anti Iraq War movement have all built on this legacy of questioning what is.

This attitude was a radical departure from the complacency of those students who grew up during World War II and the Fifties, when challenging authority was out of the question.

Robert S. McElvaine, in his discussion of “America’s 40 Years War,” added this:

The charge of “elitism” is one that Republicans have heaved at Democratic candidates to great advantage since the Sixties. Indeed, the Republican Party has been running as the anti-Sixties party for four decades now. That has been the main casus belli in America’s Forty Years War.

It was in the 1960s that the Republican Party–long (and still) the party of the economic elite–found a way to redirect the anti-elitism of Main Street from its traditional target, Wall Street, toward other thoroughfares that were disliked by Main Street: Pennsylvania and Telegraph Avenues and Santa Monica Boulevard, not to mention Harvard Yard.

McElvaine’s article went on to describe how Richard Nixon, Pat Buchanan and other Republican Presidents started and maintained this 40 year culture war. It was to the benefit of the economic elite and on the back of those on the other end of the economic spectrum. “Republicans have raised the specter of ‘class warfare’ every time Democrats attempt to point out to the victims of the economic elites what is being done to them by Republican policies.”

So, part of why we are where we are today, on the verge of a single-party system, a theocracy, a dictatorship, is that the authoritarians (conservatives without conscience) of the 40 year cultural civil war, similar to those in Laurence W. Britt’s seven authoritarian regimes referenced at the beginning of this posting, want to control the freedom and liberties of others based on their Leo Strauss neocon philosophies and religious right beliefs.

McCain Tries to Mislead on His Hurricane Katrina Record – Unlike last month’s photo-op where the media let him get away with his make-believe Katrina record, Maya Rodriguez with the New Orleans CBS affiliate news brought a dose of reality to McCain’s town hall in Baton Rouge on Wednesday:

Rodriguez: Senator, my understanding is you have voted twice against the creation of commission to investigate the levee failures around New Orleans, and my question is: Why have you voted against that creation of that commission?

McCain: I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground. I’ve met with the Governor. I’m not familiar with exactly what you said but I’ve been as active as anybody in efforts to restore the city. …

Despite his claims otherwise, the reporter was correct, and McCain’s record on Katrina is not at all what he would have you believe.

McCain Voted Twice Against Establishing A Commission To Study The Response To Hurricane Katrina. [ 9/14/2005, 2/2/2006]
McCain Opposed Granting Financial Relief To Those Affected By Hurricane Katrina. [9/15/2005]
McCain Voted Against Five Months of Medicaid For Hurricane Katrina Victims. [11/3/2005]
McCain Voted Against Emergency Funding Bill, Including $28 Billion for Hurricane Relief. [5/4/2006]

Secret Plan to Keep Iraq Under US Control – A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

Fox News Reports Fake Story as Fact (Nothing Surprising About That) -In an April 2007 prank, a middle school student tossed a slab of leftover Easter ham onto a table surrounded by Somali Muslim youngsters, knowing the Muslims would be offended. Muslims consider pork unclean.

A few days later, a parody story spoofing the ham controversy was posted online. The story attributed numerous made-up quotes to Superintendent Leon Levesque, including the need to teach kids that “ham is not a toy” and references to developing an “anti-ham response plan.”

The spoof was reported as fact on “Fox and Friends” on April 23. After Levesque contacted Fox, the network aired a retraction.

Among other things, the anchors had quoted Levesque as saying, “All our students should feel welcome in our schools, knowing that they are safe from attacks with ham, bacon, pork chops or any other delicious meat that comes from pigs.” The anchors also told viewers several times, “We are not making this up.”

U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby, who sits in Portland, concluded Tuesday that Fox News was unprofessional in reporting false and “outrageous quotations” without confirming their accuracy, but did not act out of malice.

The Fox co-hosts “were certainly gullible,” Hornby wrote, adding that portions of the fake story were “so absurd that they should have raised the defendants’ truth-seeking antennae and caused them to question the accuracy of the article.”

Regards,

Jim

U. S. Military Demonstrates Ray Gun Against Mock Peace Demonstrators – The Pentagon has been developing a raygun which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. The Air Force demonstrated the weapon against a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running. In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation.” (And everyone knows the number one threat to America is peace demonstrators (or is it bears?) – JLV) 60 Minutes: Pentagon’s raygun demonstrated on mock protesters

Rush Limbaugh Says Lots of Bad Stuff – On the June 2 broadcast of his radio program, Rush Limbaugh said:

“The growth of government started like crazy when women got the right to vote. Which just proves: Size does matter to ’em.”

The Democratic party is going “with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he’s black.”

“Somebody’s running Obama. Somebody’s behind Obama. … We know that George Soros is involved with Obama, but there’s somebody that’s putting the words in his mouth.”

A caller to that June 2 show said that he’s a teacher at a private school and as such, “I’m doing my best to indoctrinate the next generation here. So — and you’re helping me out there. I often bring my little radio to have them listen to your opening monologue.” (Now we know another reason why conservatives want to get rid of public schools. – JLV)

Also, Limbaugh said on his May 21 broadcast that “Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate” and asserted during his May 14 broadcast that “[i]f Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago.”

McCain Economic Advisor Involved in All Sorts of Schemes – Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm is McCain’s longtime friend and one of his five campaign co-chairs. (A sixth, former congressman Tom Loeffler, quit recently after NEWSWEEK reported on his lobbying work for Saudi Arabia.) The co-chair position affords Gramm broad input into the structure, financing and conduct of the McCain campaign.

Gramm’s day job is vice chairman of a U.S. division of Zurich-based financial giant UBS. UBS has recently written off huge losses in subprime-mortgage-based securities, and Gramm was a registered UBS lobbyist on mortgage-securities issues until at least December 2007.

UBS is also currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens, according to several law-enforcement and banking officials in both the United States and Europe.

One of Gramm’s former congressional aides, John Savercool, is still registered to lobby legislators for UBS on numerous issues, including [against] a bill cosponsored by Sen. Barack Obama that would crack down on foreign tax havens.

Gramm is involved in attempts to sell financial products known as “death bonds,” which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of “the most macabre investment scheme[s] ever devised by Wall Street.”

Gramm “made it easier for bin Laden. … In the Senate, he blocked legislation that would have enabled the Bush administration to force foreign banks into cooperating on anti-terror measures before and after 9/11.”

Texas State Board of Education Tries to Disguise Anti-Evolution Policies – Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution. However, the creationists want to describe anything not fully understood about evolution as a “weaknesses.” “When you consider evolution, there are certainly questions that have yet to be answered,” said Mr. Fisher, science coordinator for the Lewisville Independent School District in North Texas. But, he added, “a question that has yet to be answered is certainly different from an alleged weakness.”

Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry.

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country. In Texas, evolution foes do not have to win over the entire Legislature, only a majority of the education board; they are one vote away.

Dr. McLeroy, the board chairman, sees the debate as being between “two systems of science.” Dr. McLeroy believes that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. Views like these not only make biology teachers nervous, they also alarm those who have a stake in the state’s reputation for scientific exploration. “Serious students will not come to study in our universities if Texas is labeled scientifically backward,” said Dr. Dan Foster, former chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Here’s someone who understands education: Laura Ewing

Bush Said He Doesn’t Care if the Invasion of Iraq Created More Enemies – NBC News’ Richard Engel has written a new book about the years he spent reporting in Iraq. The book is titled War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq, and it contains an interview with President Bush. Among the excerpts of the interview captured in Engel’s new book:

This is the great war of our times. It is going to take forty years.

I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.

Fox News Slips and Acknowledges That Karl Rove is a McCain Advisor – Rove first appeared on Fox as an “FNC political contributor” on Super Tuesday (February 5), and it took the network 118 days to acknowledge his affiliation with McCain. The mention slipped out during an interview with Rove on Hannity & Colmes.

John McCain and the Republican Party Are Out of Touch with the Majority of Americans – A new Gallup poll finds that a large majority of Americans support meeting with leaders of foreign countries who are considered our enemies. Republicans would rather shoot first, talk later.

See also: Authoritarian Issues vs. The Concerns of Others

McCain Says He Would Secretly Spy on Americans
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

As Neocons Try to Tell us That McCain Disagreed With Bush About Iraq, Look at Mc Cain’s Long Record of Being Wrong About Iraq

On the Run-Up to War
“I cannot believe that there is an Iraqi soldier who is going to be willing to die for Saddam Hussein.”
“I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past.”
“I don’t believe it’s going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991.”
“He’s [referring to Ahmed Chalabi] a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.”
On Being Greeted as Liberators
“Absolutely. Absolutely.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and there’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.”

On a Rapid Victory and Mission Accomplished
“I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks.”
It’s clear that the end is very much in sight…It won’t be long. It, it’ll be a fairly short period of time.”
When asked that “many argue the conflict isn’t over, “Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?”

“I’m confident we’re on the right course.”
We’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months.”
On the Safe Streets of Baghdad
“[There] there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.”
“There’s problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know.”

How “Clean Coal” Cooks Your Brain – “Clean coal” is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan. Like “fat-free donuts” or “interest-free loans,” “clean coal” is a phrase that embodies the Bush-era faith that there is an easy answer for every hard question in America today. We can have a war in Iraq without sacrifice. We can borrow more than we can afford without worrying about how we’ll pay it back. We can end our dependency on oil by powering our SUVs with ethanol made from corn. And we can keep the lights on without superheating the climate through the magic of “clean coal.”

Here’s another: mining and burning coal remains one of the most destructive things human beings do on this earth. It destroys mountains, poisons water, pollutes the air, and warms the atmosphere. True, if you look at it strictly from the point of view smog-producing chemicals like sulfur dioxide, new coal plants are cleaner than the old coal burners of yore. But going from four bottles of whiskey a week down to three does not make you clean and sober.

From Big Coal’s point of view, this is a brilliant way to frame the question. If the choice is, coal or anarchy, they win. This framing also disarms environmental arguments – yes, it’s too bad that mountaintop removal mining has destroyed or polluted 1200 miles of streams in Appalachia and that the Environmental Protection Agency projects a loss of more than 1.4 million acres – an area the size of Delaware – by the end of the decade.

But hey, if it’s a choice between losing flattening West Virginia and keeping our lights on, good-bye West Virginia!

McCain Gets a Zero From the League of Conservation Voters – John McCain has managed to garner a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters on his environmental record, including missing every vote where he might have voted against “petroleum companies and other special interests” so as to provide resources for those “green technologies” he claims to so strongly favor. Yes, McCain’s Green Straight Talk Express is actually his Dirty Energy Non-Action Machine.

John Cornyn Also Gets a Zero From the League of Conservation Voters ;

Kay Bailey Hutchison Gets a 7% Rating

Fox News Analyst Says the Lack of Obama Being Radical Shows He’s Been Hiding That He’s a Radical and He’s Going to Convert Us to a Stalinist Form of Government – On the 6/2/08 Hannity & Colmes on Fox News, conservative Dick Morris said, “[Obama] served in the Illinois State Senate for eight years and the United States Senate for four. I guess he was hiding his radical views all this time just so that he could hoodwink the American public into voting for him and then next January convert us to a Stalinist form of government.” (Just how crazy do you think the right-wing will get in the coming months? – JLV)

Regards,

Jim

McCain’s New Communication Director Says the President Should Have Near-Dictatorial Powers – Michael Goldfarb, who was just named the Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign, said, “[The framers of the Constitution] sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.” (Yeah, what could be more American than a dictatorship? – JLV)

McCain’s Lobbyist Co-Chair Hampered Tracking bin Laden’s Financials – McCain campaign Co-Chair Phil Gramm and his lobbying efforts have put him on the wrong side of the ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis. Now, it appears Gramm’s association with the McCain’s campaign is doing far more harm that previously known. UBS, a bank for which Gramm lobbied, is now under investigation for alleged use of overseas tax havens to hide assets of its wealthy clients from U.S. authorities — while in office, Gramm also supported these tax havens after 9/11, which hampered the government’s ability to track Osama bin Laden’s financial network before 9/11.

Bush’s Confused Pep Talk – Among the anecdotes in “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story”, by General Ricardo Sanchez, is an portrait of President Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president. During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk:

“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

A White House spokesman had no comment.

US Does Not Sign Cluster-Bomb Treaty – More than 100 countries reached agreement Wednesday to ban cluster bombs, controversial weapons that human rights groups deplore but that the United States, which did not join the ban, calls an integral, legitimate part of its arsenal.

Regards,

Jim

Money for Nothing – The Internal Revenue Service is spending $42 million on letters to alert taxpayers to expect rebate checks as part of the economic stimulus plan.

Top US Iraq Contractor Skirts US Taxes Offshore – Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in the Caymen Islands. More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq – including about 10,500 Americans – are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

ESPN Radio Host Hopes for Assassination of Senator Kennedy – At the opening of his show on ESPN last Wednesday, Mark Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer: “I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.”

Supervisors Covered Up Risky Mortgage Loans – Wall Street investment banks that were packaging mortgages may have known they were selling garbage loans to investors. A wave of litigation is starting against these firms. One former worker whose job was to catch bad loans says her supervisors covered them up.

Media Executives Pushed for Positive Coverage of Run-Up to Iraq Invasion – CNN’s congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin, appearing on last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 as a part of a panel discussing Scott McClellan’s new book, What Happened, admitted that during the run-up to war, “the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

Regards,
Jim

We keep hearing from the right-wing that everyone thought that Sadam had weapons of mass destruction and that given the information available at the time, the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. How often have you heard that lately?

Back in September 2002, with the Bush administration and much of the Beltway media rushing to embrace war with Iraq, Senator Ted Kennedy delivered a passionate, provocative, and newsworthy speech raising all sorts of doubts about a possible invasion. Some key passages from the Kennedy speech:

[T]he Administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary.

[T]he Administration has not explicitly acknowledged, let alone explained to the American people, the immense post-war commitment that will be required to create a stable Iraq.

A largely unilateral American war that is widely perceived in the Muslim world as untimely or unjust could worsen not lessen the threat of terrorism.

War with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without genuine international support — could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts.

[I]nformation from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

[T]here is no clear and convincing pattern of Iraqi relations with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Talk about a greatest-hits performance. Kennedy nailed virtually every major problem and shortfall that emerged in the wake of the invasion. Why didn’t we listen to Senator Kennedy? Because the media gave nearly no coverage of his speech, so most of us never heard it.

So, the right wing is trying to convince us of what should be in our memories. They think that if they say it often and loud enough, we will think it actually happened that way. Senator Kennedy figured out what was going on. I suspect many of you did also.

I remember sitting at work listening to the live coverage of Colin Powell at the UN showing the so-called “proof” of Sadam’s weapons programs, hoping that this would be just like when JKF showed the photos of the Soviet missiles headed for Cuba. But after hearing Powell, my hopes were dashed and I said to my cubicle mate at work, “We’ve got nothing.” My friend agreed. There did not seem to be any convincing evidence. I also remember thinking each time I heard Bush say that he was trying to avoid war that, actually, he had already decided to invade. His stories didn’t seem to agree with each other, with his actions, or the external facts. If you need it, here’s a timeline of events leading up to the invasion.

Clear your mind of the talking points and think back. Do this before the constant drone of the right wing alters your memory. Until his recent illness, they tried to convince us that Senator Kennedy is a drunken, old, far-left wacko. And much of the media helps them do it, by what they report, and by what they don’t report. Maybe Senator Kennedy is much smarter than they want you to think. Maybe you’re much smarter than they want you to think.

Here is the full text of Senator Kennedy’s speech.

Regards,

Jim

That [NSA survellance] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. … I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

— Frank Church, 1975

The repeated use of conservative or liberal moral language is often the decisive factor in whether an independent uses a liberal or conservative moral system for a given election.

— George Lakoff, The Little Blue Book, page 14

Since the arrival of the Puritans, punishment has been inextricably woven into the fabric of American life, and increasingly it targets young people who have been pushed to the margins of society. Hence, it is not surprising that in America there is a rush to punish individuals for committing crimes but no longer a passion or commitment to examine the larger issues that produce the crimes.

— Henry Giroux, Trayvon Martin and Racist Violence in Post-Racial America

I don’t want everybody to vote.

— Paul Weyrich, Heritage Foundation and ALEC Founder

As people do better, they start voting like Republicans — unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.

— Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain

No wonder Republicans hate government – they’re so bad at it.

— Alan Grayson email on Dumb Rich People, 5/25/2012

[A]nother warmed-up version of the “trickle down” theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

— William Blum, Killing Hope (1995). Introduction

“We have a group of people in this country who are Christian, who are fundamentalist, who have within their midst, individuals who are incredibly dangerous who are waiting to go off like bombs ready to explode with the fuse lit.”

— Frank Schaeffer, Interview about his book Crazy for God.

Connecting education to the possibility of a better world is not a prescription for indoctrination; rather, it marks the distinction between the academic as a technician and the teacher as a self-reflective educator who is more than the instrument of a safely approved and officially sanctioned worldview.

…

One gets the sense that right-wing pundits, politicians and religious bigots believe that there is no place in the classroom for politics, worldly concerns, social issues and questions about how to lessen human suffering. In this discourse, the classroom becomes an unworldly counterpart to the gated community, a space for conformity and punishment as a tool for perpetuating dominant market-driven values and white Christian religious values. This is not education; it is a flight from self and society. As Eric Fromm has pointed out, this type of education embodies a flight from freedom, produces authoritarian personalities and punishes those who refuse to live in a society modeled as a fundamentalist theocracy.

— Henry Giroux, Why Teaching People to Think for Themselves Is Repugnant to Religious Zealots and Rick Santorum

The biggest organizer of the left has always been a capitalism that doesn’t function and doesn’t know how to fix itself.

— Richard Wolff, The Crisis of Capitalism – Richard Wolff in conversation with Robert Ovetz

The rational actor model does not define real rationality. It does not characterize the way people really think, though it is sometimes used as an ideal for how people should think. It is a mathematical model with very specific characteristics, characteristics that are not widely known or appreciated. It can be applied fairly directly, with validity, only in certain very circumscribed situations. … But “rationality” defined in this way has severe limits.

— George Lakoff, The Political Mind.

The people who responded to the call [of the Tea Party] appear to be primarily the authoritarian followers who form the base of the present GOP—social conservatives who, when they campaigned behind religious leadership, were known as the religious right. But the movement also attracted economic conservatives, who also strongly tend to lean Republican. Many of these economic conservatives are libertarians, and they may include a relatively high percentage of [authoritarian] social dominators.

— Robert Altemeyer, Comment on the Tea Party Movement

Taxes are a priviledge in a democratic society, a necessary component for sustaining the common good. And progressive taxes are a fair tribute to a society that has created the conditions that enable some individuals to become wealthy and prosperous.

— William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins, Wealth and our Commonwealth

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody! You built a factory out there, good for you! But, I wanna be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of the police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work that the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God bless, keep a big hunk of it, but part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

— Elizabeth Warren, Nobody Gets Rich on Their Own

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, Jan 17, 1961

Democracy thrives on dissent, but dissent and critical citizenship cannot take place in a country marked by a widening gap between political democracy and socio-economic power. Inequality is not just a normal outgrowth of a market-driven economy; it is fundamental to a political system that destroys democracy.

— Henry Giroux, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men —above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellowmen, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.

— Albert Einstein, 1931

The first rule of effective communication is stating the positive in your own terms, not quoting the other side’s language with a negation.

— George Lakoff, The Policyspeak Disaster for Health Care

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

— Edward R. Murrow

Remember the Miraculous – In the final analysis, the future of ice and climate change on this planet depends on how humanity deals with the nexus of energy and economics. So let me end this book with one last thought about energy supply. Paradoxical as it seems, hydrocarbon energy sources – oil, coal, and natural gas – are not ordinary fungible commodities like, say corn kernels or pork bellies. They are a distillation of life and time in a way nothing else is. Long ago, in the dust of ancient epochs, an infinity of animals and plants were born, grew to whatever maturity was their destiny, fed, inhaled, exhaled, lived in communities, and propagated their young. Their existence – all of it based on photosynthesis – concentrated the blazing light of a trillion sunrises into their bodies, just as our own animate life does today.

The essence of those past lives and vanished sunrises is now being passed to us, transmuted into the clear liquid drizzling into our gas tanks or the flickering of a light bulb or a picture dancing across a television screen or hundreds of other daily events we never notice. We gobble up the heat and electrons in nanoseconds, and then they are gone. It is a process both wondrous and awful. Remembering the miracle of this transformation might inject some much needed grace and humility into the engine of our consumption.

— James Balog, Extreme Ice Now

This is a fundamental debate in our society: Are we a nation of citizens or a nation of consumers? … Consumerism appeals to the greedy and selfish child part of us, the infantilized part that just wants someone else to take care of us. … What is at stake today is the very nature or our democratic republic. If we accept an identity as fearful, infantilized consumers, we will be acting from our baby part and allowing corporate America and an increasingly authoritarian government to fill the role of the parent part. … To save our democracy we must crack that code and bring back the code so well understood by the Founders of this nation: that we’re a country of barn-builders, of communities, of intrinsically good people who work together for the common good and the common wealth. We begin this process by speaking to the responsible part of us, the part that enjoys being grown up and socially responsible.

— Thom Hartmann, Cracking the Code – How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision.

The Old Enlightenment view of reason is not sufficient for understanding our politics. In deed, it gets in the way. It not only hides the real threat to our democracy, it all too often keeps many of our most dedicated political leaders, policy experts, commentators, and social activists from being effective.

— George Lakoff, The Political Mind – Why You Can’t Understand the 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain.

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

— John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience

The ‘war on terrorism’ can never be won solely by plans to find and destroy terrorists, since any individual, anywhere, at any time, can become an active terrorist.

— Philip G. Zimbardo— The Lucifer Effect

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

— Barack Obama, June 3, 2008.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

— Thomas Paine

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. — Abraham Lincoln – Paraphrase of 1838 Lyceum address.

America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

— Attributed to Sinclair Lewis

Throughout this blog, I have written about those that have lead us into the current political mess in our country. They are the right wing authoritarians (RWAs): the social dominators like GWB, his VP Dick, and their followers.

They are the neocons that think they know best and use Noble Lies to fool us into supporting their preemptive-strike mentality. Many neocons are social dominators.

They are the extreme religious right that follow the social dominators without question and without conscience as John Dean has documented in Conservatives Without Conscience. The followers want Mike Huckabee for president. Other authoritarian followers have enabled the illegal activities (torture, suspension of habeas corpus, spying on us, etc.) of the social dominators to help them dominate.

Today, I will add another perspective to the authoritarians, who for now, in this country, tend to support the Republican party, and what they consider important relative to the rest of the country can be helpful. I will contrast their views with those of Democrats and Independents.

In January of this year, The Pew Research Center reported the results of their annual survey on 21 policy issues. One of the reports concentrated on global warming as an overall low level issue. At the end of the article, they provide a summary of these 21 issues. The rankings are based on how many of the respondents ranked the issue as their “top priority.”

In a second article, they make a broader analysis of these issues. This article shows the changes in the ranking of these issues since 2007 and how the divide between Republicans and Democrats continues to widen.

Here are some excepts from this issue survey:

Only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) say that providing health insurance to the uninsured should be a top priority, down 17 points from January 2007. More than twice as many Democrats (65%) and independents (58%) now rate this as a major policy goal.

Democrats currently are about four times more likely than Republicans to rate global warming as a major priority (47% vs. 12%), a much greater gap than in January 2007 (48% Democrat vs. 23% Republican).

Nearly four-in-ten Democrats (39%) list an economic concern, compared with 27% of Republicans. Democrats are also substantially more concerned about Iraq than are Republicans (36% vs. 21%). By contrast, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to name immigration, terrorism and national security as the biggest problems.

Pew’s survey summarized these 21 issues for both Republicans and Democrats in the following table:

The report summarized some of the differences:

On jobs, for instance, 76% of Democrats and just 43% of Republicans say it should be a top priority for the President and Congress.

Notably, 81% of Democrats say that reducing healthcare costs should be a top priority for policymakers – the highest percentage for any issue mentioned. Only about half of Republicans (53%) view this as a major priority.

Republicans place greater priority on defending the U.S. against terrorism (86% for Republicans vs 74% for Democrats), dealing with the issue of illegal immigration (64% vs 43%), and strengthening the military (62% vs 37%).

What the report does not discuss is where the Independents stand on these issues and how they are more in agreement with the Democrats than with the Republicans (home of the RWAs). To evaluate this, you have to add Independents to the table above and then compare all three groups.

Average is of absolute values – the minus sign is excluded.

Analysis of table above shows:

• Democrats and Independents are in greatest agreement with each other and greatest disagreement with the Republicans on nine of the 21 issues. With these nine issues, the discordance between the average of the Democrat’s and Independent’s ratings, and the Republican’s rating ranges from 15 to 34 percentage points. Of these nine, one represents disagreement with a Republican high priority and the other eight represent disagreement with high priority issues of the Democrats and Independents.
• On four other issues, Democrats and Independents are in close agreement and also disagree with Republicans on some of their other higher priority items.
• Where Republicans are more concerned about foreigners (terrorists and immigrants) and strengthening our military to protect us from these enemies, Democrats and Independents are far less concerned by an average of 20 percentage points.
• Where Democrats and Independents are in greatest agreement on “providing insurance for the uninsured,” “dealing with global warming,” “improving job situation,” “dealing with problems of the poor,” “protecting the environment,” “reducing health care costs,” “securing Medicare,” and “improving educational system,” they are in greatest disagreement with Republicans by an average of 23 percentage points.
• Democrats are in greatest agreement with Republicans only on “strengthening the nation’s economy,” which ranked second for both parties, and “dealing with global trade,” which ranked in the bottom four for both groups.
• Independents are in greatest agreement with Republicans only on “securing social security,” which ranked among the top 7 of these groups and “reducing the influence of lobbyists” (Government Ethics), which ranked 16th for both groups.

Based on the above list, we have one group that is fearful of foreigners and want their national government to protect them from these enemies, and we have those that are more concerned about the well being of others, including themselves, their coworkers, their friends and their families.